Hank and the First Amendment: A Primer

To no one's great surprise, ESPN and Hank Williams have parted ways after he compared Obama and Boehner playing golf to Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu playing golf. Just as well; we've been subjected to that retarded "Are you ready for some football" song for 20 FUCKING YEARS. About damn time to shake things up.

Anyway, Hank immediately played the Victim Card:

"After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision," he wrote in a statement on his website. "By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It's been a great run."

No.

Here's what the First Amendment actually says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

First phrase: CONGRESS shall make no law. Not ESPN shall make no law. The First Amendment is designed to keep the GOVERNMENT from telling you what you can and can't say, not ESPN or any other basic cable network. Or your employer. Or your Mom. Or any other non-governmental body. Hank Williams Jr. and ESPN had a mutually beneficial business relationship. When ESPN decided that it would no longer be beneficial, they cancelled it. I have no idea what kind of contract ESPN and Bocephus had, but I'm sure it didn't contain a provision saying that "ESPN will not terminate its relationship with Williams Jr. because of any retarded thing he says in public." But there's not First Amendment involvement here at all.

(Of course, over the years, courts have added a number of exceptions to the seemingly plain "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." It's illegal to threaten to kill someone, for example, even though that's a law abridging the freedom of speech. But that's neither here nor there.)

Oh, one more thing: I fully support Hank's right to say whatever the fucks he wants. If he wants to say Obama faked the moon landing and is secretly a Chinese spy, go for it. I'm just saying that ESPN firing him has nothing to do with the First Amendment, despite what he says in his oddly capitalized email.

This Week in San Francisco in Verse

Haight and Fillmore, burning bright!
The whole damn building's done for
Haighters, no condoms for you tonight
Walgreens is no more

Lee and Yee and Avalos
Herrera and some scrubs
We got more mayoral candidates
Than fully licensed pot clubs

Anonymous done given up
BART protests served no use
Now they can go on back
To hassling Tom Cruise

Giants took an early fall
The playoffs are no more
You could give them a tub of rohypnol
And they still couldn't score



Obama came to the peninsula
To get some cash from plutocrats
I don't care who the Repubs nominate
I just wish there was a Democrat

OMG! Heat wave! Everybody freak!
90 degrees and clear!
I know it seems unique as fuck
But it happens every year

Lyric Deconstruction: "American Ride"

Toby Keith, 2009



Winter gettin' colder, summer gettin' warmer.

Tidal wave comin' 'cross the Mexican border.

Why buy a gallon, it's cheaper by the barrel.

Just dont get busted singin' Christmas carols.



By this point, about 24 seconds into the song, you're probably thinking "Oh no, here's some more Toby Keith retarded bullshit," and you're partially right. It's difficult to put a charitable spin on "Tidal wave comin' cross the Mexican border." And if you have any reports of anyone being arrested for singing Christmas carols, do forward them.



That's us, that's right

Gotta love this American ride.

Both ends of the ozone burnin.

Funny how the world keeps turnin.

Look ma, no hands.

I love this American ride.

Gotta love this American ride.



I feel like I really don't have to explain that ozone degradation and the rotation of the Earth are two widely disconnected phenomena. I mean, we could lose the entire ozone layer - indeed, the entire atmosphere - and the world would keep turnin, for billions of years. It's angular momentum, a widely-understood property of physics. So it's really not that funny that the world keeps turnin. IT'S NOT FUNNY AT ALL.



But wait! You have to see the video to appreciate this song. I mean, it's a terrible video, but it makes clear that this song is an equal opportunity hater.







There's a fascinating scene that begins around :40. We see the classic American Gothic couple, only they're getting foreclosed on! And what's replacing the family farm? Big box stores!



Now wait a minute. Isn't the guiding principle of unfettered capitalism that you should be free to do whatever you want with your money? So if you're Best Buy or whatever and you want to buy a farm and put up a store there, you should be able to, right? So what's the problem, Toby Keith? What are you, some kind of socialist?



Momma gets her rocks off watchin' Desperate Housewives.

Daddy works his ass off payin' for the good life.

Kids on the YouTube learnin how to be cool.

Livin in a cruel world, pays to be a mean girl.



I guess this is more or less the standard kind of workin-hard-to-make-a-buck-my-wife-don't-understand country music stuff. Hard to have any problem with that.



Chorus



At this stage in the video, we are presented with two interesting animated images. The first is Pat Robertson riding George W. Bush like a horse. Let's set aside the extremely disturbing aspects of this tableau and try to divine what's implied here - that Bush was a tool of the Religious Right? Meh, he certainly had that potential, and God knows what would have happened, but 9/11 kind of took the focus off those nutbags.



The second image is Obama being carried aloft by Wall Street bankers. Hard to argue with that. In fact, that's probably the most straightforward and accurate political commentary in the whole thing.



Poor little infamous, America's town.

She gained five pounds and lost her crown.

Quick fix plastic surgical antidote.

Got herself a record deal, can't even sing a note.



Hmmmm. Well, Dominique Ramirez, Miss San Antonio, did, in fact, lose accuse pageant officials of taking her crown when she gained weight. But I have no information that she got herself a record deal.



(I initially thought this was a backhanded slap at Carrie Underwood, another former pageant contestant who got herself a record deal. But I think the consensus is that she's a perfectly fine singer, although, I confess, I'm not really down with the Nashville gossip.)



Plasma gettin bigger, Jesus gettin smaller.

Spill a cup of coffee, make a million dollars.

Customs caught a thug with an aerosol can.

If the shoe don't fit, fits gonna hit the shan.



I have to confess, when I first heard this, I thought "I, for one, am glad that plasma is widely available! It's a valuable life-saving tool that doctors in emergency situations use every day!" Oh, wait, he's not talking about that, is he. Oh, he means TVs.



Well, so what if TVs are getting bigger! That's progress!



I won't even bother with the frivolous lawsuits thing. Yawn.



The last line is completely impenetrable, and I assume the songwriters just ran out of gas at the end. Just as I have here.



Chorus

Fox has now completely Onionized itself

From Fox Nation (via Dave Weigel on Slate):



I normally wouldn't even touch this because, hey Fox News and all, but it appears that they have finally rounded the corner into complete and total self-parody and I thought I'd just leave this here as a marker of that event.

This cracks me up, obviously, and not just because it's a transparently racist sop to hardcore conservatives but also because WHEN DID CHARLES BARKLEY AND CHRIS ROCK START RAPPING? God, I hope they aren't rapping.

Also, just because everyone loves a good counterfactual, can you imagine if NPR ran a headline like "George Bush's redneck hootenanny fails to stop terrorism" or "Dick Cheney's wild gunfire party fails to prevent fellow plutocrat from getting face half blown off"? I mean, I think NPR would be a lot more entertaining if they did that, but no, you can't imagine that.

But hey, "fair and balanced"!

The Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory

In 1977, Jimmy Carter used the Philadelphia Experiment to travel back in time and take two dinosaur eggs from fellow Illuminatus Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home. He put one of the eggs on the Roswell UFO and sent it to England and stored the other one in a janitorial closet in the basement of the Washington Monument. One of the eggs hatched in 1926 and became Queen Elizabeth II.

Years later, Franklin Roosevelt and the Bilderberg Group engineered Pearl Harbor to benefit International Paper, who would make the ration books used during the war. It was around this time that Moses appeared to L. Ron Hubbard and gave him a microfilm that contained all Scientific Knowledge in the Universe. Unfortunately, Hubbard ate part of the microfilm, thinking it was blotter acid, and mistranslated the rest. This would be the basis of Scientology.

After the war, David Rockefeller and the Trilateral Commission invented Jell-O as a mind control substance. When Jell-O proved ineffective, they switched tactics and began implanting subliminal messages in episodes of “Gunsmoke” and in Petula Clark albums. John F. Kennedy accidentally learned of the backward making operation and so Dean Martin was sent to kill him. Dean Martin is an alien. Lee Harvey Oswald just happened to be there. Jack Ruby accidentally shot Lee Harvey Oswald when he was supposed to shoot the startled-looking guy next to him, who was also an alien. This has nothing to do with the rest of this stuff; it was just some unrelated alien-on-alien violence.

Whoops.

In 1961, the second dinosaur egg hatched and Obama was born. Ironically, the egg had just been with Rockefeller in Kenya when Rockefeller was there on safari, but the egg actually hatched in the main galley of a TWA flight from Kinshasa to Montreal. When it was later learned that there may have been some alien egg residue left on the plane, it was shot down when it was flying as TWA Flight 800. The Masons decided to have a Hawaiian birth certificate prepared because the original plan was to make Hawaii and independent kingdom and Obama would be the King of Waikiki. This plan was abandoned when that title was used for a 1978 Burt Reynolds comedy that flopped at the box office.

The moon landing actually happened just as NASA reported. However, Neil Armstrong lost the film on the way home and the whole thing had to be recreated. To do this, all the Apollo 11 astronauts actually went right back to the moon and filmed the whole thing over again. There were also some aliens there too.

Most of the main Illuminati and aliens were running AT&T. They wanted AT&T broken up because one of the aliens spilled a full glass of wine on Nikola Tesla at a party in Hoboken in 1981 and there was a whole big thing about it and everyone was pissed. This ruined Tesla’s plan for him and Regis Philbin to control people by using high-intensity microbursts. Later, Tesla and Philbin invented a new people control technology, but it has only a short effective range. They are currently planning to install 726 mind control boxes in San Francisco to test the new technology.

Caution: Mind Control Box. (Photo courtesy of the SF Appeal, which is controlled by the Bohemian Club and Italian Freemasons.)

Flouride is perfectly harmless and is effective at reducing tooth decay. However, the Council on Foreign Relations spread rumors that it is harmful pretty much just for kicks.

In 1982, Obama died in a Coca-Cola and Pop Rocks accident. He was replaced by an identical, but slightly less cool, copy.

Tupac Shakur faked his own death to pursue his real interest in professional football scouting. He actually died under mysterious circumstances in 2007 after advising the San Francisco 49ers to draft Alex Smith with the first overall pick of the 2005 NFL draft.

The Debra Saunders Leap of Logic Watch

Sometimes I feel like I need to start a different blog just to deal with the inanities Debra Saunders spews forth on a regular basis. I will call it something like "Oh, Debra Saunders" or "You Are Such a Fucking Idiot, Debra Saunders" or "Debra Saunders is Wrong Again" or something like that but I would have to do every single column (with certain exceptions) and I don't have the time.

(The exceptions are that she and I are both opposed to draconian drug sentences, so I guess we can agree on one thing.)

Yesterday's column - "Obama tries to obstruct executions" - promised a bombshell! You mean the President of the United States is trying to keep individual states from enforcing the death penalty within their borders? WOW.

Except there is nothing in the story like that. Here's how it starts:

President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war - this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws - on the dubious grounds that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs intended to kill convicted killers.

Oh, hold on a second. "Well may have begun"? What the fuck does that mean? Did Obama begin a war on states trying to enforce their own death penalty laws? MAYBE! Does Debra Saunders drink childrens' blood from a chalice made from a piece of the True Cross? MAYBE!

Here's the evidence:

On March 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug given under the three-drug lethal injection protocol used in most of the country's 34 death-penalty states. The DEA also asked Kentucky and Tennessee for their sodium thiopental to aid its investigation. Why? The DEA referred me to the Department of Justice, which sent an e-mail declining to comment. News reports indicate that the feds had concerns that the drugs were imported improperly.

A-HA!!! That Bad Old Obama must have called up the FDA and told them not to let anyone have sodium thiopental, right? Because he secretly hates the death penalty, right?

Wait, what's this? "FDA helped two states get scarce execution drug"?

The Food and Drug Administration, which has long maintained that it has nothing to do with drugs used in executions, has quietly helped Arizona and California obtain a scarce type of anesthetic so the states could continue putting inmates to death.

The shortage of sodium thiopental has disrupted executions around the country. But newly released documents show the FDA helped import it from Britain.

Huh, so maybe the FDA was just doing its job with the shipment in Georgia, and meanwhile was actively helping other states get the drug. I guess Obama forgot to call the FDA when they were busy helping Arizona and California get the same thing.

The point is, when your worldview is that everything the president does is wrong and evil, you see all kinds of conspiracies where none exist. Never mind that Obama supports the death penalty. Why let facts like that get in the way when you can construct a fictional account of Obama somehow reaching down from the White House to stop executions in Georgia because he's secretly against the death penalty, I suppose, just like he's secretly a Muslim and secretly whatever else you want to ascribe to him.

If you object to the FDA's concerns about the importation of lethal injection drugs, that's fine. State your objections and the factual basis for them and move on. But for God's sake, Debra, no need to invent conspiracies that you can't support with actual facts. You "may well have" to stop listening to your Lizard Creature Overlords if they're feeding you this shit.

This blog post is at Threat Level Heather Grey

EXHALE. FINALLY. We are no longer at THREAT LEVEL ORANGE:

Starting Thursday, the Homeland Security Department will begin phasing out the nation's color-coded terror-threat system, ending it entirely by April 27, officials tell the Associated Press. The five-tiered warnings were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The "national threat level" has not changed since 2006 -- yellow, or "elevated," the middle rating. For all domestic and international flights, it has been one level up at orange, or "high."

Well, thank God for that. I know I've been in a state of TOTAL PANIC AND FEAR since we went to Threat Level Orange in 2006. Oh, wait, it was yellow. Unless you're flying. Then it's Orange. Unless it's Delta. Then it's Red. Just kidding. I've been in a state of total panic and fear my whole life. The threat of being blowed up was a nice break in the day for me.

The whole Threat Level thing now seems like such an artifact from the Early Aughts when we were busy buying duct tape and plastci sheeting and alerting the authorities anytime someone in a turban was in front of us in line at BK. It was obviously part of the government's hamhanded attempts to keep us in abject terror all the time. It worked on some people! They're just watching Glenn Beck now.

Wait, I had another point to make. What was it. Oh, right, it's this: There is absolutely, without a doubt, going to be another terrorist attack in our lifetimes. That's because (1) there are terrorists, and (2) they're crazy and want to be on the news. Also, our foreign policy increases the risk of terrorism. Oh, that was stupid! ANYWAY, point being, there's no way to be 100% safe from terrorist attack, even though that's what we expect of our government and what we impliedly hope we're getting by subjecting ourselve to the ridiculous Security Theater at the airport and whatnot. Hell, you're more likely to die by falling than die in a terrorist attack.

So what are we replacing our Threat Level Peach system with? Obviously, we won't want to scare people or anything, right? Right?

The Obama administration plans to replace the widely mocked color-coded terror warnings with a simpler, two-tier system: “imminent threat” or “elevated threat,” with more detailed information.

Oh, that's just fucking great. Now we have two choices: "Elevated Threat" and "You Are All Going to Die So Say Goodbye to Your Loved Ones Right Now." Much better.

And in today's distressing polling news

About a third of the people polled by Time magazine think Obama's a Muslim. 46% of Republicans do. Wrap your head around that for a minute.

(It occurs to me that there's probably a huge amount of overlap between people that think this and people who thought Obama was under the thrall of Jeremiah Wright. You can't have it both ways, people. Either he's a Wright-Christian or a Muslim. Pick your poison.)

(You know what else about the whole Jeremiah Wright thing? Who the fuck listens in church? You and I both know Obama was sitting there going "Just 25 more minutes and I can get home and watch the fucking Bears. Oh God will this guy ever shut the fuck up.")

Muslims have to pray like 6 times a day and there's a whole thing with a rug and pointing towards Mecca and whatnot and do you think for a second that the President of the United States could get away with this without someone noticing and going "Oh, hey, I wonder why the President kneels down on his little rug with the Presidential seal 6 times a day. What's up with that?" The White House Press Corps is so far up his ass that they can report on what he had for breakfast based on personal observation from inside his duodenum. You think they're going to whiff on him worshipping Allah? Bitch please.

Personally, I don't want my President to be any religion at all. The last thing I want is for the one person who can destroy the planet to believe that the Afterlife is a good place to be. Fuck that, I want him to think that This Life is the best and should be preserved at all costs.

That being said, my best guess is that, religion-wise, Obama is probably like a lot of guys his age who went to Columbia undergrad and Harvard Law - basically agnostic, but goes to church because it's expected in his social circle. And if I'm right, FINE BY ME.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised. 48% of people believe in ghosts. LOOK OUT WHAT'S THAT BEHIND YOU!?! Just kidding, there's nothing behind you. 23% of people believe in "witches," whatever the fuck that means.

BUT WAIT! It gets even better! I love this shit:

When Americans are asked to identify the country from which America gained its independence, 76% correctly name Great Britain. A handful, 2%, think America's freedom was won from France, 3% mention some other country (including Russia, China, and Mexico, among others named), while 19% are unsure.

19% are unsure! Love it. That roughly correlates with the 18% who think the Sun revolves around the Earth. Teach the controversy, I say!

Why am I blathering on about this? I don't know. Let's go get a drink. It's Friday.

Here are two activities you should do if you live anywhere near SF

So last night The Wife and I had Grown-Up Night, which means we went to dinner and the theater. They were both great.

Dinner was at The Corner, 18th and Mission. I gotta warn you ahead of time, the menu is somewhat unconventional, but trust me, this is a good thing. Like, there's not the usual beef short rib and flatiron steak and roasted chicken that everyone has. Instead, there's shit like rabbit or sole w/ fennel sausage or chicken thighs, interesting stuff like that. The waitress (who was just as much of a hipster as you'd imagine for a restaurant at 18th and Mission - in fact, the whole staff looked like Vice Magazine) totally tipped us off that the apps were huge, so we just got a couple of those. The Wife had poutine with beef cheeks and some kind of cheese that starts with an "h" like "hourumi" or "hurami" or something like that. It was fucking killer. Poutine's like the national dish of Canada or something and I can see why because it's basically like this thick gravy and meat poured over french fries and it's a good cold weather dish and as you know, it's always about 20 below in Canada.

I got the pork shank over cheesy hashbrowns with some kind of wilted green in the middle and a poached egg on top. THAT'S NOT A LOW FAT FOOD. But man, was it good. Not so good was burping up pork the rest of the night but that's kind of my fault for eating too fast.

Both the apps we got (which were entree-sized, at least for us) were like $11 or $12. 2 glasses of outstanding pinot for $10 each. I almost went for the PBR tallboy for $2 but that's too predictable. 7 out of 10 stars WILL DO BUSINESS AGAIN.

(Confidential to the Corner - do something about your fucking website. The "menu" pages are all blank and it hasn't been updated since May. Seriously, this is SF and your web game has to be on point. Really, I'm not kidding, deal with it.)

Then (after a brief stop at the Latin-American for some whiskey for me and some Stoli for her) we hied ourselves over to The Marsh for Dan Hoyle's show "The Real Americans." The show is based on Hoyle's travels in, for the lack of a better word, the "heartland" and he does a ton of characters based on the people he met. Now, of course you're thinking it's going to be smug and condescending but it's actually not. I mean, I don't think he had to invent the fact that people think Obama is a Muslim or whatever. And people in SF get treated just as badly, or worse, than people everywhere else. As you can tell, it caused a great deal of liberal urban coastal angst in me because we coastal urban liberals worry a lot about this kind of thing. Anyway, it's way more complicated than I can sum up here but we both loved it and it is totally worth seeing.

Then we went home and watched the Giants almost fuck it up in the 9th inning (and shouldn't Bautista be throwing BP or something until he can find the strike zone?). Exhausting.

The World Cup, explained for Americans

Soccer is a game in which a bunch of guys kick a ball around aimlessly for about an hour and a half. Sometimes, but not very often, it goes into a net and then someone takes his shirt off. This is called a "goal" and is to be avoided whenever possible. Soccer games usually end in scores like 1-0 or 2-1, although a 0-0 tie is the best.

Soccer is very popular in socialist countries like France and Japan because you don't win very often and the game is all about passing the ball to someone else - i.e., transferring wealth from those who have it to those who don't. Plus, people fake injuries a lot and fall down, just like they will when Obamacare takes over and everyone gets all kinds of free health care they don't need. Plus, it's boring, and anywhere that's not America is boring.

Every few years, all the countries in the world call home their players from Chelsea and Man U and form national teams. Then they have a big tournament called the World Cup. Predictably enough, it's not straightforward like March Madness. Instead, you can play like 3 games before you get eliminated. Stupid. Oh, and little bullshit countries like Paraguay win all the time. Germany's really good, which figures, since they make BMWs and fascism there. Brazil's really good, too, which also makes sense because Brazil is socialist too and no one has to work and they can spend all day playing soccer instead of working. France cheats. Shocker, I know.

San Francisco is full of foreigners and socialists, so everybody here pretends to like soccer.



See, they'll even stand in front of City Hall and pretend to watch France and something called a "Uruguay" play soccer on a big TV that's far away. They're really thinking about drugs and how much they hate God.

So everybody plays a lot of these games and the US usually doesn't do very well and that's about it. Football season starts in like 2 1/2 months, thank God.

Boring travelogue, Part 6: You're not going to believe who I ran into in Washington DC

I'm positive there's a totally fun part of Washington D.C. where the cool kidz hang out and smoke Gauloises and listen to Animal Collective and spend all day hanging out in the cafe with their iBooks posting snarky things about selfsame neighborhood to their blogs. Statistically, it has to exist. We just haven't found it. In D.C.'s defense, we haven't been looking very hard.

So from what I can tell, DC is populated mainly by extremely preppy people wearing laminated keycards around their neck and engaged mostly in Very Important Conversation. Then every 10 minutes a brazilian cops roll up and shut down the intersection you're trying to cross and a convoy of trucks and SUVs and limos goes by carrying a lot of Serious Looking Guys in suits holding assault rifles and maybe The President. This happens so frequently it's boring and annoying instead of exciting and interesting.

There's some Nuclear Summit dealio in town, so maybe this doesn't happen every day, just every day we're here.

I love museums and DC is basically Museumland, so we're loving that. Let me nutshell it for you:

Museum of American History: Great. Really interesting, well-designed exhibits. Most people just want to see Kermit the Frog and the Ruby Slippers from Wizard of Oz, but I didn't care so much about that. Surprisingly good food in the cafe.

Museum of Natural History: Yes, all those stuffed animals are real. The dinosaur exhibit is a great place if you like screaming kids.

Air and Space: I liked it better when I was 13.

Last night we met up with a friend of mine from college and had a 4-hour binge drinking session dinner at this place called Posto and it was good and everything and here comes the best part of the story and damn if you aren't going to accuse me of burying the lede but whatever. We're sitting at the bar and this guy is at the end of the bar like 10 feet away anbd he's wearing a suit like everyone else in DC all the time and my friend goes "You know who that is?" and I was looking at a different guy so I said no but then when I looked at the right guy HOLY SHIT GUESS WHAT.

IT WAS MOTHERFUCKING RAHM EMANUEL. Hand to God, I shit you not. Talking to some chick at the bar and having a glass of wine.

My friend looks at his watch and goes "It's only 7 o'clock. Why isn't he working?" I was kinda wondering the same thing. I guess he doesn't watch "The West Wing."

Word of the Day: Quixotic

Let me get this out of the way first: No St. Patrick's Day bullshit here. I'm married to a girl from Ireland. Every day is motherfucking St. Patrick's Day in my house. No, let's talk politics! Oh yay.

Two days ago I was walking home when two guys coming the other way stopped me and jammed a flyer into my hand. It was for a guy running for Nancy Pelosi's seat in the House. I said, "Well, good luck with that," because Nancy Pelosi has about the same chances of losing an election in her district as Castro does in Cuba. They sailed past me. "Yeah, we need to get rid of that witch," one of them called over his shoulder.

When I got home, I looked the guy up. It's this guy, Summer Shields. He looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. Then I remembered where I'd seen him - in front of a big poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache, at Civic Center Plaza one day. That's the way to win votes in San Francisco! Oh wait, here's a picture:



This is what someone who's not electable in San Francisco looks like.

As it turns out, Summer Shields is a follower of Lyndon LaRouche. A taste of what that's all about:

For those unfamiliar with the range of his thinking, Mr. LaRouche also claims that the Queen of England “personally runs the military and intelligence services” of the United Kingdom, and recently suggested that “top circles in London, who are furious at President Barack Obama for flubbing the British demands to impose fascism on the United States,” may soon “attempt to assassinate the President.”

And so forth. Let me be out in the open here and say that I'm not a huge Pelosi fan and I don't think she's a particularly effective Speaker of the House. Even my Dad and I agreed that if we still had Tip O'Neill in charge, the health care bill would have been passed and signed about a month after we started talking about it. But that's beside the point. The point, which should be blindingly obvious, is this: You cannot march around SF with pictures equating Obama and Hitler and expect to be elected anything, much less unseat the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Maybe in Texas, but not here.

In other political news, Unfortunately-coiffed Meg Whitman is in a virtual dead heat with Jerry Brown in the governor's race. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that her TV ads are on every 30 fucking seconds and Jerry is doing his best to keep his candidacy a secret from everyone except his closest advisors. I don't know. Want to know why Meg can't win? Read this.

More proof we're truly fucked

I imagine it's possible to have a reasoned discussion about the federal budget. From what I can tell, though, there is no reason to believe that's going to happen.

I have to say that I'm more than a little apprehensive about the massive federal debt and the fact that Obama's FY 2011 proposes a $1.3 trillion deficit. I was equally apprehensive when Bush & Co. ran the debt up something fierce while claiming to be fiscal conservatives. We could have a conversation about why Obama has proposed the largest defense budget, even adjusted for inflation, since World War II, or talk about how we're going to have to eventually reign in entitlement spending. Those are all valuable conversations to have.

But we're not going to have those conversations. Yesterday, Obama said the following:

"You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It's time your government did the same."

Now, one rational response to this would be "Mr. President, how do you reconcile the need to make tough choices with the fact that your budget proposes the largest deficit in history?" That would be a good question, a valid question, a question we'd like to hear the answer to. But that's not what happened.

Instead, the Mayor of Las Vegas got pissed because, you know, why should the President pick on Vegas by discouraging people from blowing their college funds there? And I turn on my fave right-wing radio and it's the same thing. I hear a guy call in and say something to the effect of "My wife and I just got back from Vegas and we had a wonderful time and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let this President tell me how I can or can't spend my money."

The next caller was - I kid you not - a woman who emigrated from Vietnam and has spent her life building a business in Vegas and wants to know why Obama wants her business to fail.

When this level of breathtaking stupidity finds a place in the national conversation, we all have reason to despair.

(If you're one of the right-wingers who only comes out to comment and tell me how wrong I am whenever I write about something political, spare me. The point of this isn't that Obama is great and Bush is bad or whatever. The point is that people will willfully misconstrue anything.)

Obama wants cavemen to stare menacingly at you

As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of weird and even weirder advertising, but this one takes the cake.



WTF TIMES A MILLION. Obama asks Moms to return to school to what, become male loggers or serial killers? To study Cro-Magnon man? To join a freak-folk band? WHAT THE FUCK COULD THIS ILLUSTRATION POSSIBLY MEAN?

I hope I'm wrong about this, but it makes me think that Internet display ads are constructed entirely by computers. They select an image at random from their memory, assign it randomly to some text, and place it on various websites.

[Also, and this feels entirely like piling on, the fact that Pell grants are available for returning students does not, in fact, mean that Obama has asked Moms to return to school, any more than the fact that the U.S. Army owns helicopters means that Obama has asked teenagers to take rotary-wing flying lessons.]

The crazy is strong in this one

Arlington is apparently a town in Tennessee. It is "rich in history and heritage in the midst of vibrant growth." It is also rich in BATSHIT FUCKING CRAZY. Take it away, Memphis Commercial Appeal:

In the opinion of Arlington Mayor Russell Wiseman, President Barack Obama's speech on Tuesday night on the war in Afghanistan was deliberately timed to block the Christian message of the "Peanuts" television Christmas special.

Wait, what? Obama timed his speech so people couldn't see the Peanuts Christmas special? No, no, no, Commercial Appeal. You are making that shit up. He didn't really say that. Let's check his Facebook post just to make sure.

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose."

Oh dear. Now we have to try to convince Russell Wiseman that the President did not time an important policy speech about an ongoing war to deprive Russell Wiseman's family of the opportunity to watch the Peanuts Christmas special. Have you noticed that Obama has not answered these charges yet!!??!!? Very damning. Very damning indeed.

For Russell Wiseman's benefit, and the benefit of all other Interested Parties, I have compiled a short list of other things Obama has done that you may not be aware of:

1. Caused mosquitos to bite Russell Wiseman/other residents of Arlington/your children/you
2. Raised price of 20 oz. Diet Coke at 7-11 near Russell Wiseman's house from $1.35 to $1.50.
3. Borrowed Russell Wiseman's weedeater last summer; never gave it back; probably still in White House garage.
4. Dried out Russell Wiseman's Thanksgiving turkey during cooking process; made it resultingly unpalatable.
5. Injured Eagles' DeSean Jackson, resulting in damaging loss to Russell Wiseman's fantasy football team.
6. Unfriended Russell Wiseman; he knows why.

What does Obama want?

Moms to go back to school, apparently. And to make school longer. And have more of it. And to have it year round. It's weird, but I never knew that Obama was so fascinated by education and/or the length and intensity of the school year. And Moms.

He also wants to change the national anthem and shut down Fox News. DUH.

Did Taylor Swift really lie about illegal immigrants? Or something?

There were two high-profile, shocking breaches of etiquette in the past week or so, both of which people need to generally chill out about at this point.

The first, of course, was South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson yelling "You lie!" to Obama during The O's speech to Congress on health care. If Wilson was responding to Obama's claim that proposed health care legislation would not apply to illegal immigrants, he was wrong, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that it's generally agreed upon that one does not shout out interruptions at the President during a speech to both houses of Congress.

But here's the thing. The man apologized to the President, and the President accepted his apology. Fair enough! Let's move on. It's a sideshow at best, and Wilson's Democratic opponent has already benefitted. To keep this thing alive, by calling for censure and the like, is counterproductive. In fact, if you're a Democrat, it's probably harmful. Americans like the powerful to get taken down and be forced to grovel, but only to a point. Once you keep going after someone, sympathy starts to build. Can you imagine Joe Wilson as a sympathetic figure? Keep this up and it'll happen.

The second was Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards. It seems that young Taylor had just won the award for Best Female Video, when Kanye took to the stage and expressed his contrary opinion that, no, Beyonce should have been the winner.

(P.S. I saw Taylor Swift in the airport once. She's 8 feet tall and sparkles like rock candy. People went "Ohhhhh, Taylor Swift" when she walked by. I asked my sister who she was.)

Well, people were OUTRAGED. BOOOOOO KANYE!!!!!

Think about what that means. People got upset because one multimillionaire interrupted another multimillionaire during the presentation of a fake award for a music video on a channel that doesn't play music videos. Seriously, if this really upset you, I hope to God you're a 13-year-old girl, because otherwise, you have much better things to get outraged about.

I'm with Gawker. I think the whole thing was staged.

Nevertheless, I'm glad that at least we got this out of it:




UPDATE: Anna Pickard of the Guardian thinks the Kanye thing was staged too. Conspiracy theory gathering steam! Now waiting to learn how ACORN was involved.

The health care debate explained

The amount of money we spend as a nation on health care is going to double in the next 10 years. 14,000 people lose their health insurance every day. Forget quitting your job if you have something wrong with you; you'll never get insured again. HALF of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills.

There is something, perhaps, wrong with the health care system in this country. And it's so big, and so unwieldy, that obviously something needs to be done at the national level.

What SHOULD happen is that Congress passes some kind of comprehensive health care bill that will allow every person in this country to have access to health care at a reasonable rate that he or she can afford. It better include some kind of preventive care incentive and probably needs some price controls. As part of my job, I sometimes have to look at medical records, and I was just looking at one itemized bill that listed hydrocodone tablets (i.e., Vicodin) at 18 dollars each in this particular hospital. When you can get a prescription filled at Wal-Mart for FOUR BUCKS, there's something seriously fucking wrong with this picture.

What WILL happen is that Congress will pass some sort of watered-down, cobbled-together mess that won't work and will cost way, way, way more money that anyone can imagine and that everyone will hate. There are a couple of reasons for this:

(1) Members of Congress are basically owned by, and beholden to, lobbyists and major donors, and do you think those lobbyists and/or donors are people who have just gone bankrupt due to medical bills? BZZZZZZZT MOVE TO THE BACK OF THE CLASS PLEASE. Do you think maybe it's health insurance companies and doctors and people who make $18 vicodins? BING BING BING BING YOU WIN A GIANT STUFFED PANDA.

(2) Plus, you got the right-wing crazies out there like the guy I heard on radio yesterday saying that Obama is like Hitler (no joke) because the health care bill encourages old people to kill themselves. THE HOST OF THE RADIO SHOW AGREED WITH HIM. I've got to scour this bill and find that provision now. These nutbars are fucking loudmouths and people (i.e., Republican politicians) pay attention to them and they influence national policy to some extent as a result.

(3) Then there's the fact that you could easily set up a national health insurance plan and charge people between 1 and 2.5% of their income for it and everyone could be covered but no one wants to talk about what would be considered a new tax and plus the insurance companies are all like "WAHHHH WAHHH IT'LL PUT US OUT OF BUSINESS" and wouldn't that just be the saddest day? Because your health insurer is your BIGGEST BESTEST FRIEND and wants nothing more than to give you all the delicious health care you need.

So we'll get the plan we deserve. It won't work, you won't be covered, and it's going to cost more than 3500 gold-plated F-22 fighters with a DVD player and a bidet.

At least he didn't give her the golf tees with "United States of America" printed on the side

So I know everybody's all in a big tizzy about Obama giving the Queen of England an iPod during his visit there and blah blah blah how gauche and whatever but I'm all "That's a pretty cool fucking gift" and I wish he had loaded it up with the soundtrack from Superfly instead of the lame-ass show tunes he put on there. I mean, really, who the fuck wants to hear "Getting to Know You" when you could be fucking jamming to "Pusherman"?



Anyway, I was checking out the coverage in the Telegraph from the UK, and I got one word for that: H A T E R S. I thought Europeans all loved Obama. Guess not! Commenter "William" says:

The US president is a dreadful cur, with no appreciation for history or former relationships in the world. Even the dumb American people with grow to detest the very mention of his name. It will take a little while, however, because they have been so dumbed down by the educational system here.

Dude. I'd call you a dreadful cur, if I knew what that meant. I R STUPID. Must be the educational system here.

And what did the Queen give him? A framed picture - of herself!! Check out the ego on QEII!! How come no one's talking about that?! What if Obama had given her a framed picture of him and Michelle? People would have freaked the fuck out. Whatever.

We should stick to football and the weather

I love my Dad to death, but I have to remember never to discuss politics with him, because, I think it's safe to say, we come from slightly different ends of the ideological spectrum. So when he asks me something like "What did you think of Obama's press conference?" I should just say "I don't know, Dad, I was facedown in a puddle of my own vomit" instead of cautiously replying "Ummm, I thought he did a pretty good job," because then WHOOSH we're off on a POLITICAL DISCUSSION and it ends up like this:

Dad: "Well, all I know is you can't spend your way out of a recession."

Me: "Actually, Dad, I kind of think you can. How do you think we got out of the Great Depression?"

"World War II! By building a lot of planes and tanks!"

"Right, and who paid for those planes and tanks?"

"The taxpayers did!"

"The fuck they did!" Oh, wait, I didn't actually say that. I said, "Actually, Dad, we ran up huge deficits during World War II. Right after the war, the budget deficit was like 120% of GDP, much bigger than now."

And Dad goes, "Well, I WAS THERE." Like he was sitting in on Treasury Department policy meetings and not busy occupying Japan.

And I was all, "Well, THE SHRINERS KILLED KENNEDY," because now I was flustered and there was really nowhere to go with this.

Long pause. Then Dad: "It's raining here."

Happy Friday, everybody!

Apparently dogs are the new spinach. It's always something, isn't it? Let's be careful out there.