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August 12, 2008

please reelect michelle bachmann

I'm just about to hop off the typey-tv thing for the day, but this cannot pass without a mention and a, "Lookin' good, your eminence!".  This is crazy-crazy Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN, plus did I mention crazy?) on Rep. Nancy Pelosi saying that her motive on environmental votes is wanting to save the world:
[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she's just trying to save the planet," Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow.  "We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet -- we didn't need Nancy Pelosi to do that.

Stop trying to save the world, you show-offs, or you'll upstage Jesus!

Interesting that Bachmann decided to use the gender-neutral pronoun to describe her Lord and Saviour -- doesn't she keep a Bible between her cheek and gums at all times?  Unless she meant someone else.  Who else would Bachmann think saved the world 2,000 years ago?  Maybe Billy Graham?  Charlton Heston?

Posted by mrbrent at 2:57 PM

mukasey: we're going to need a bigger pail

Good news!  Attorney General Michael Mukasey has drawn (erased?) a line in the sand -- the Department of Justice is going to stop wasting time trying to prosecute criminals:
But, [Mukasey] told delegates to the American Bar Association annual meeting, "not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

After all, prosecuting criminals is hard, and it costs money, and if U.S. Attorneys have to keep filing charges and going to trial, it's going to be a serious drain on morale -- and an unhappy Justice Department will underperform in their summer softball league.

The AG is referring, of course, to the report that confirms that the DoJ was vetting civil service positions for ideological positions and fealty to the Bush Administration.  Which is wrong, and violates civil service regulations.

But AG Mukasey is wisely confirming the repurposing of Justice, whose responsibility to uphold the laws of the United States shrieks to a halt when it conflicts with Justice's responsibility to carry the water of the president.

This will also free up the president's workload when pardon time comes around and the end of his term.

Posted by mrbrent at 12:33 PM

joe browne only makes 150K -- jerk!

I don't know what I was doing wading around in the tall weeds of the business section, but therein I found a story on the NFL which contained my new favorite Great Moment in Speciousness, at least for the day.

The NFL is lobbying for certain tax laws that require the disclosure of the salaries of "key employees" (which it has to do as a result of its tax qualification that enable it to receive reduced rates on bla bla bla).  Why would the NFL want to keep it salaries secret?

“I’ve been here 40 years,” [Joe Browne, NFL vice president for communications and public affairs] said.  “I finally get to the point where I’m making 150 grand, and they want to put my name and address on the form so the lawyer next door who makes a million dollars a year can laugh at me.”

Because they don't want their employees to be mocked for their unusually low salaries.  Because then the NFL would have to pay for counseling and all sorts of shit for its scorned executives, plus also be the laughing stock of professional athletics, with its clownishly low salaries.  So Congress please act now!

That would be an unusually redolent crock of shit, even from a vice president for communications and public affairs.  But as long as he's hanging his ass out there -- what's wrong, Joe Browne?  I thought the dog ate all your salaries.  Or is it that your salaries >koff koff< think they maybe came down with something and >koff koff< can't be disclosed today?

Dissemble faster, Joe Browne!

Posted by mrbrent at 9:03 AM

August 11, 2008

retard retard retard

This will be fodder for many a snark, but in case you had nothing better to do this weekend, you would have read that certain special interest groups are planning a boycott of the motion picture "Tropic Thunder".  Basically, advocacy groups for the disabled want to boycott because the film throws around the word "retard" too loosely for their tastes:
“Not only might it happen, it will happen,” Timothy P. Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, said of the expected push for a boycott.  Speaking by phone, Mr. Shriver said he planned to be in Los Angeles with representatives of his group and others to picket the movie’s premiere on Monday evening in this city’s Westwood district.

A particular sore point has been the film’s repeated use of the term “retard” in referring to a character, Simple Jack, who is played by Mr. Stiller in a subplot about an actor who chases an Oscar by portraying a mindless dolt.

Wait, the New York Times can't use the phrase "mindless dolt" when describing a character also described as a "retard", can they?  Isn't that even worse?  Do we get to boycott the NYTimes now, too?

And before you spend too much time pondering the endless comedic potential of the word "retard", be advised:

Mr. Shriver said that he had also begun to ask members of Congress for a resolution condemning what he called the movie’s “hate speech” and calling for stronger federal support of the intellectually disabled.

If someone can hang the "hate speech" tag on a dumb movie making a joke about a bad actor including the word "retard" while referring to his strategy to increase his Oscar chances, then no one gets to use "hate speech" anymore.  Sorry.  If you're not going to play with your toys right, then your mother and I are going to take them away from you.

With regard to the "stronger federal support": yeah, I guess if we're going to make words illegal, the first one should be "retard".  That makes a boatload of sense.

And doesn't "intellectually disabled" better describe the comments of Mr Shriver than it does the developmentally challenged, or whatever we're allowed to say?

(I realize that this is a "politically correct speech" argument, and my thoughts put me on the side of the fence with a lot of assholes (i.e., anyone who would use "politically correct speech" non-ironically in polite conversation).  To differentiate, my argument would be that the hurtfulness of words is not exactly something that we should legislate, nor is the reference to the hurtful word equivalent to the malicious deployment of the hurtful word.  Those other guys are arguing something along the lines of, "All you complaining retards are pussies -- can't you see how hard we have it, not being retarded?" as close as I can tell.

Posted by mrbrent at 7:35 AM