Marceauxed

Mike3550 posted this hilarious and sad political ad a few weeks ago. Well, I think it may have a competitor: Basil Marceaux, your next Republican governor of Tennessee.

The barely intelligible website I just linked to is mostly Marceaux' (Marceaux's?) platform. Here is the Tennessee titan in a video outlining his proposed policies.

He is into gun control, education, and flying the flag right. (I'm looking at you, Arah-Say Alin-Pay; it's actually illegal to drape a flag like that.)

Some highlights from Marceaux' campaign platform:

--"Make sure that if national insurance is put in place, I will make sure the roots of such bill with not inclued any type measuring of the waist like other counties."

--"VOTE FOR ME AND IF I WIN I WILL IMMUNE YOU FROM ALL STATE CRIMES FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE! (Except violating a citizen rights this would be a special punishment )"

Hell YES. Keep your grubby hands off our waists, government. I don't want my doctor knowing anything about my body. Just give me the pills! Also, immunity from crimes? How does that work? If he's sworn in and I get arrested, could my defense just plead "Marceaux voter?"

But let's cut to the chase. What does Marceaux really stand for? What will he be fighting for in government? What important? Well:

"WHAT IMPORTANT:
"1.Education
"a. School violents
"b. Add reading of the minutes to the U.S.Congress mandatory
"c. Get more of the lottery money to 1-12

"2.Equal Health care
"a. a free gift program
"b. take a look at and redo all mandtory insurance programs
"c. See why dental is not in most plans a tooth aches hurt more than a back aches and no teeths depresses people

"3.Citzens Safety+Citizens Constitution Rights

"4.Improving Our Environment

"5.Budget

"6.Open doors more for Tn.food manufactures

"7.My plan will give the state free gas for all governmental cars and trucks

"8.Make the U.S. Flag in all state buildings and court fly right. if you fly a U.S.Flag you will fly it right"

Honestly, this platform could use a copy editor or six, but I think I get it. Hey, at least he wants Tennesseans to have clean, lovely, pain-free teeth. I could even get behind at least 1, 2c, 3, 4, and 8. Maybe 5, if all he's saying is that the word "budget" is really important to think about - I mean, it's not hard to say, but did you know that it derives from Latin, via French? And what have the French ever done for us besides threaten to measure our waists?

h/t Wonkette.

See you at the polls!

Nomination for Most Bizarre Political Ad of the Year

Posted without comment:

Unhinged

Today, four members of Congress asked the sergeant-at-arms to investigate whether interns were internal spies. How did they come upon evidence that these interns might somehow be spies? Based on a book published by World Net Daily. One of the coathor's sons posed as a Muslim to intern at the Council on American Islamic Relations and stole documents — including documents that (gasp!) laid out a lobbying and PR strategy!

This is obviously not funny but, really, I just cannot help myself from laughing. I mean this is so absurd, I cannot do anything except laugh. Let's enumerate the problems with this plan:

1. They had one of their sons intern at an organization to get the inside scoop. I mean, how many organizations give their interns access to vital details and why would any terrorist organization do that, especially?


2. Following a similar line of logic, would the U.S. Congress tell its interns anything important. I mean, the U.S. government doesn't even tell the members of Congress important details.


3. What is the sergeant-at-arms going to do? Call them out of order — I mean really, that is the highest authority they could go to?


4. These people got elected to CONGRESS!!! (alright, that one is not funny at all)

I thought that we had gotten rid of the clowns. Apparently, we only got rid of the ones that were marginally sane.

This is What Incompassionate Conservatism Looks Like

We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly. I'm not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.

This is a quote from Colorado state senator Dave Schultheis (R-Colorado Springs). What might he be talking about? Food stamps? Welfare? Obama's plan to aid struggling homeowners who were "irresponsible?" No, the honorable Sen. Schultheis is arguing against a law requiring pregnant women to be tested for HIV so that if they are infected their babies can be treated to prevent the virus's transfer. Leaving aside the obvious lack of any knowledge about HIV transmission or concern for basic principles of public health to avoid disease epidemics, he actually wants to endanger the lives of children to make a (unsubstantiated and wildly off-base) point to their mothers! That's solid "pro-life" public policy if ever I've seen one. This comes two days after a different Colorado State senator, Scott Renfroe (R-Greeley), argued (on the floor of the state senate) that

Leviticus 20:13 says, 'If there is a man who lies with a male as though to lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act, and they shall surely be put to death. ... ' We are taking sins and making them to be legally OK, and that is wrong. ... And I'm not saying that this is the only sin that's out there. Obviously, we have sin, we have murder, we have all sorts of sin. We have adultery ... and we would never think to make murder legal.

This outburst of free speech (this is what Sen. Renfoe said in his defense - as if he has no responsibility that comes with that free speech being, I don't know, a state senator) led one Republican member of the Colorado House to say something that I finally agreed with:

"What are they doing over there?"

Good question.

Shoot 'Em 'Fore He Run Now

(apologies to Jr. Walker)
I'm not usually in the forecasting game, on account of I lose bets, card games, and trivial pursuits, but Wobblie informs us of the buzz about Bristolevi Johnstin Governor Palin's daughter tying the knot pre-election. Doubt me if you wish.

Here's the program:

Palin-Johnston Wedding
Monday, November 3, 2008
8 pm Eastern/4 pm Aleutian
Fox News

4 pm: Pledge of Allegiance by Henry Kissinger
4:30 pm: Abraham Lincoln's great- great- great- grandniece welcomes the crowd
5 pm: Ronald Reagan's frozen corpse gives a reading
5:15 pm: Sarah Palin arrives, hair in an updo, glasses glamorously absent
5:30 pm: Levi Johnston, who wrote his own vows, tells Bristol he "f***ing loves kids" and wants to "have like a million" so he can "f***ing teach them how to slap the s*** out of a puck! Aw hell yeah!"
6:00 pm: Shot of Todd Palin crying tears, presumably of joy
7 pm: Wasilla Assembly of God congregation puts aside their doubts about the politicization of marriage and engages in blessing of couple
7:30 pm: Punditry! I just hope I don't sleep in past votin' time.

It's John Kerry's Fault

I nominate Tucker Carlson and Willie Geist, his lackey correspondent, next to him for a prime profile in douchebaggery. At a John Kerry event at the University of Florida, student Andrew Meyer was tasered (see videos here, here and here, h/t The Bellman). Carlson and sidekick's loyalties were divided... On the one hand this student was arguing that the election results in 2004 were a sham so he's obviously some liberal punk who was probably "indoctrinated" by his UF profs (and TAs). On the other, he made John Kerry look bad at his own event. See how they manage this tightrope:



This line from Willie takes the cake, though:

He carried on and I think that might have been the most excited anyone's ever been at a John Kerry speech.

Of course, blaming John Kerry continued into Carlson's show the next day, when he said:

CARLSON: That is just—six cops on this kid. I don’t see what the excuse for that kind of behavior would be.

Here’s my point. This is how John Kerry responded. John Kerry, of course, was feet away at the lectern watching this. I don’t believe he couldn’t hear that, the kid being tasered.

Here’s his response. “In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way. I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption. But again, I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention. I asked the police to allow me to answer the question and was in the process of answering him when he was taken into custody. I was not aware that a taser was used until after I left. I hope that neither the student nor any of the police were injured. I regret enormously that a good, healthy discussion was interrupted.”

What a wuss this guy is. I regret enormously that a good, healthy conference was interrupted? What about this kid got tasered for asking a question? What, he can’t say that? Is that like against the rules for...

I can't believe these people.

Congratulations to Good Friends

Congratulations to the folks over at Free Exchange for their positive coverage in today's Inside Higher Ed. It seems like those who want transparency of our academic institutions are themselves not so transparent.

More Attorney-General Corruption - No, Not That Attorney General

It appears that, along with the suspension of basic civil liberties and wrong-headedness about the "War on Terror", the U.S. and Britain share corrupt attorneys general. The Guardian reported that the attorney general of Britain, Lord Peter Goldsmith knew of bribes being paid by the corporation BAE to Bush family friend, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, but that Lord Goldsmith intentionally misled an international anti-corruption agency, the OECD.

What is more, Britain claimed not to let the OECD know about the payments because of "national security" concerns. Now, what, might you ask, are these "national security" concerns that would prevent the government of Britain admitting that they are paying off the royal family of Saudi Arabia? I'll let Tony Blair explain:

Standing beside George Bush, a close family friend of former US ambassador Prince Bandar, Mr Blair said it would have "wrecked" the relationship with Saudi Arabia if he had allowed investigations to go on. "This investigation, if it had gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations and investigation being made of the Saudi royal family," he said.

"My job is to give advice as to whether that is a sensible thing in circumstances where I don't believe the investigation would have led to anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital interest to our country."

Yes, that is right &mdash "national security" now includes protecting information about bribes paid to the Saudi royal family. I thought that we were in this entire war to advance freedom and democracy to the Middle East? So "national security" is used to protect a monarchy in the Middle East for no other reason than we don't want to embarrass the Crown Prince by creating an uproar because British tax dollars are going to pay into the sultan's slush fund.

Of course, Prince Bandar, in a statement to The Guardian, has denied that these were bribes, and through his "London solicitors", Herbert Smith says:

Whilst Prince Bandar was an authorised signatory on the accounts any monies paid out of those accounts were exclusively for purposes approved by MODA.

This is the exact problem in dealing with royal families and not democracies: The prince can withdraw money, by himself, anytime he wants to!!!.

What also truly amazes me about this second article in The Guardian is how careful they are to document exactly what they did in order to get Prince Bandar's statement and the editorial decisions that were made regarding the decision to go to print without any statement by the prince. To me, this is an amazing contrast to the way that I imagine American newspapers would handle the same situation. I imagine that the American media, whether the NYT or Fox News, would impugn the credibility of any person who dared challenge their authority and sensationalize the fact that they were criticized. Rather, The Guardian is simply matter of fact: we asked for a statement from this person on this occasion, that person on another occasion, informed the prince this is what we were going to do in order to give him one more chance and then we made the decision to go to print for x, y and z reasons. And, after he released a statement, we printed it and explained why the allegations made in it against our paper were false, using the evidence cited. Amazing.

Dumb, dumb, dumb...

On his own MSNBC show, TUCKER, Tucker Carlson just said, "Do you really think that gay rights is one of the top issues today?" Seriously, he asked that. His guest, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, pointed out that anti-gay-rights ammendments passed in eleven states in 2004.

Oh yeah, and in case all you coasters didn't know -- Democrats hate people from middle-America and are therefore going to be sad because they don't have their figurehead to express all of their hatred of people from the Midwest and the South. Somehow, I don't think that Howard Dean is going to be crying.

I think we have our answer...

YouTube video under the title, "Which of them will Jesus smite first?":



Although I have no ill-feelings toward Jerry Fallwell as a person and wish the best for his family, I have to think that the news that Fallwell is moving on to meet his maker signals the end of an era in American politics in some sense.

Six (More) Months

Via TAPPED:

FRIEDMAN VIEW-NIT. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand soldiers. Check out this graphical depiction of Tom Friedman’s many assurances over the past four years that we were entering (another) critical, six-month period.

Really?

I would just like to let all of you know that "illegal immigrants" are messengers of Satan. That's right - the largely Catholic workers coming from Central America, are

...in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said.

At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as "Joe," said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because "they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. ... If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do."

No joke - this is what happened at the Utah County Republicans convention [1], as reported in the Daily Herald of Central Utah (via hilzoy). Rather than bursting out laughing throughout the article, the reporter actually reports the goings-on of the convention in more attention and detail than our national media does of the Democratic debate. That means that there are people in Utah County, Utah actually take this seriously enough that the reporter would be concerned for not reporting it with sincerety.

The good news for undocumented workers is that, if they do end up going to the county jail, the people of Utah County, Utah are fine enough people to make sure that criminals are prepared for their visit in the county jail.[2]

I couldn't make this shit up.

UPDATE: Via Pandagon, MSNBC has picke up on the story. View YouTube clip here.

[1] For those who have not spent twenty minutes online becoming an expert of Utah County, Utah (I guess they got bored coming up with county names after a while), it is the home of the main campus of the Mormon Brigham Young University [BYU-Idaho is the other campus] found in Provo - the land of no caffine OR alcohol and where students are upset that Vice President Cheney will be giving the commencement address.
[2] Check out the banner on the jail's website -- it's a dartboard with a BULLSEYE!!!

What she said...

from Femeniste.

These people make me sick. As someone who is doing research on infant mortality (admititly, helping more on the methodological rather than substantive front), the denial of any link between maternal health and child mortality is just plain stupid.

"Culture of life" my ass!

Not Viable (Hopefully)

I think the Straight-Talk express is a runaway train...



But, listen to the crazy in his question, we have all "for quite a long time now, known where the real problem is in the Middle East..." in reference to Iran. Wait a minute, I thought that all of our problems would be solved by bombing Iraq?

I can't believe this! Or, maybe I can.

And I don't know which is worse.

For those who have not heard, Ann Coulter just said something offensive. For those who have not heard her comments, you should take a look at this video.

On the one hand, it really doesn't surprise me that she says this stuff. I mean, it is kind of like watching The Network: she started just a little too crazy to be "normal" then the rest of the right-wing punditry "caught up" with her bile -- so she had to push it a bit further. Soon, the only way that anyone listened to her was to hear what insanity would come from her mouth next. So, the only way for her to survive is to continue with this crap.

On the other hand, it does surprise me that the right continues to listen to her. I mean, Peter Finch's character in The Network was silenced by his own exectives [1]. I am tired of watching right-wing attack-dogs get away with this BS. It is not surprising that she would say something incendiary. She did so last year at the SAME EVENT! (link via Glenn Greenwald) And, while the right-wing will try and distance themselves from her, they will invite her back again next year. I guess if you push the envelope far enough to the right, you make the crazies seemingly less crazy. Meanwhile, John Kerry is painted as the left-wing crazy for a botche joke.

Although it does me no good to think about this for half a second (or write a blog about it for that matter), there needs to be some way to stand up to this kind of absurdity. I actually really appreciated Elizabeth Edwards' statement about the comment. While she is obviously asking for money, I think that this kind of statement is really written to organize (as much as one can effectively organize through blogs). In fact, I have a lot of respect for the way that the entire Edwards campaign has handled themselves throughout this whole thing. Their attitude seems to be, "Don't get mad, get even."

Just like bullies when I was young, it seems like this is the best advice for dealing with these bullies.

[1]Incidentally, Peter Finch's character was shot. I am not suggesting that Ann Coulter be shot. She, however, has advocated assissinating a Supreme Court justice.

Global Warming Hullabaloo

I was watching the Oscars with E and her roommate. We started joking around that it would be funny to see Al Gore waving from his SUV while talking about saving the earth from global warming.

It turns out that we weren't really that far off. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a libertarian think-tank cited Al Gore's electricity bill in this report.

Now, the debate has turned to carbon offsets and whether that makes up for Gore's $30,000 a year electricity bill. Now, those people at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research should like this kind of proposal, as carbon offsets are a "free-market" "solution" for global warming - so it shows you just how partisan the crazies are, and how out of touch limousine liberals can be.

While Al Gore continues to maintain that his lifestyle is not the issue and that his "net carbon footprint" is zero, the fact that he consumes FAR more his fair share of carbon emissions is exactly the problem. Technology is not going to save us or the earth; only changing our behaviors and consumption will really work in the end. While I don't think that Al Gore is a hypocrite, I do believe that he is being disingenuous. As long as he is taking up as much energy as he does, and as long as the Oscars continue to be the lavish affairs that they are (for example, how many people carpooled in their limos on the way to the Oscars?), neither is truly "green"; both are just "less bad" than they would have been otherwise and distract us from viable solutions.

Fairfax Phobics with Archbishop Restaurant Monitor

This was too good not to pass along...

Mars, Bitches...

So, in Bush's never-ending quest to establish his legacy at all costs, it appears that he will be trying to establish a weapons system in space. I can't wait for the graphics to come out of the most recent Star Wars - I mean technology was nowhere when the Reagan Administration pubished their graphic simulation.

At least there aren't any insurgents in space...