Whiskey Fire

Coming into Town with the Giggling

The things you find in Townhall rummage...

The Power of the Gay Female Republican of Faith

 Well, I'm hooked! What a headline!

As an LGBT person of faith who believes in liberty and individualism, I can say that the tale that Democrats hold the key to happiness for LGBT people is hogwash; liberals want LGBT people to wave the rainbow flag but only if they tone down the red band of color that stands atop the flag.

Whut?

Oddly, many of the LGBT folks I know are, like, also liberals. We're kind of a coalition of folks with shared values? It's weird to think that the reason, well, say, gays, blacks, Jews, Latinos, tend to vote Democratic is because of some sort of Protocols of the Elders of Clinton type of shit. Everyone's smart enough to vote their own self-interests, which is, like, kind of the point of democracy...

But then.

LGBT Republicans of faith have a unique opportunity to expose the fanciful fallacy that tethers too many people to the left – that LGBT people must be Democrats and that people of faith cannot be proudly LGBT – and offer the Republican Party a chance to undermine the Democratic narrative and to connect two constituencies that will lead to GOP wins throughout the country.

Approximately nobody Over Here believes that gay people can't have religion. Dowhatchalike.

Why though are you supporting a party that says you're not allowed to marry someone you love? And is full of all kinds of unreconstructed bigots who hate you?

I'm fascinated!

Similarly, LGBT Republicans need to expose the inaccuracy of the liberal claim that the LGBT community is “overwhelmingly” Democrat. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2012, one in four LGBT people consider themselves to be conservative or very conservative, and a deeper look into these numbers reveals that the demographic breakdown of LGBT voter preferences is similar to that of the overall population.

One in four people in an overall population self-identifying as imbeciles is actually not all that bad. You could probably get that percentage for "I'd stab out my eye with a fork because Jesus."

But... why? Why on earth would you be proud to belong to a party that explicitly would deny you the freedom to have recognized as valid your union with the person you love?

By living openly and honestly, LGBT Republicans – especially LGBT Republicans of faith – have a powerful chance to counter the left’s messaging and provide the Republican Party with an important opportunity to better position itself as the Party of individualism and inclusion, with a message that will lead to electoral victory.

Or not.

Brilliant, though!

(Whistles)

I mean, run on that in the South.

Or in, say, New York.

I encourage this strategy not at all because I enjoy the comedy of obviously disatrous political messaging. It's the merits.

Clearly.

Bag and Tag

I'm too tired to go into detail right now, but I want to shoot a dart with tracking device into this arse. It is a fine specimen!

Of course, mass opinion is never something to act credulously toward.

Delicious.

Thanks to Lindsay. It is a fine specimen for our menagerie!

Especially When It Makes Us Laugh

Hot FUCKING dog!

Now can we get Cokie Roberts to call Allah a pimp or something? I mean, now that we know just exactly what it finally takes to get a smug airhead axed from NPR?

MORE. An example of the Fun Jokes you miss if you don't subscribe to my Twitter Feed, when I, er, remember I have one:

My kids will miss Juan Williams, wondering why Daddy is not yelling "GET THIS PISSY ASSHAT TWERP OFF MY RADIO" anymore. End of an era.

 

Worthy of a Drink

The Sensible Opposition. I swear, this is the greatest thing I have ever read on the Internets:

I HAVE ALREADY SEEN AN INFLUX OF NEWBIES INTO THE NY METROPOLITAN AREA...

Omigod that is The Tits.

Hello, Stupid

William Jacobson is not very smart, but in his defense, he's also kind of an idiot.

One political scientist, who also totally missed the Scott Brown election call, vehemently objected that the claim the government would regulate salt was a totally wingnut conspiracy theory:

But don’t kid yourself: the fact that one assemblyman proposed an idiotic law that has as much chance of passing as Rush Limbaugh has of being the Green Party’s candidate for president in 2012 means that the federal government is about to ban salt. It’s a very slippery slope!,

Uh, we have slipped and sloped:

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

Just how will this help?

Well, the blue words will help, in that they're "links," and you can "click" them, thereby demonstrating that William Jacobson is not especially intelligent, though you could have already guessed that, insofar as he doesn't know the difference between a "ban" and "regulation." And indeed, clicking through, note these Interesting Facts:

1. A New York City Assemblyman proposed banning restaurant chefs from using salt in cooking, a proposal that is indeed stupid; 

2. The federal government is now proposing a gradually imposed restriction on the amount of salt included in processed foods;

3. These are different things.

4. For fuck's sake.

Wingnuts find freedom in the strangest places, such as the Inalienable Right of processed food manufacturers to pump as much sodium as they possibly can into the Sir Chomps-a-Lots and the Hungry Man Salisbury Steak Sports Grillers, and similar culinary masterpieces. Telling them to cut that shit out, just a skosh, is hardly incipient Stalinism. Get a grip, fellas.

Indeed, to illustrate how backwards the more internetty libertarian-ish persons get the issue of Democratic Choice, you can't do much better than this from the WaPo. I've highlighted the best parts:

Morton Satin, director for technical and regulatory affairs at the Salt Institute, which represents salt producers, said regulation "would be a disaster for the public." He said that the science regarding sodium is unclear and that consumption does not necessarily lead to health problems.

"If you consume a lot of salt, you also get rid of a lot of salt -- it doesn't mean it's an excess," he said. "I want to make sure they're basing this on everything that is in the scientific literature, so we don't end up being guinea pigs because someone thinks they're doing something good."

Right, because I bet the fucking Salt Institute sponsored extensive Scientific Research into the health benefits of ramping up the salt content of processed foods before corporations flooded the market with them.

Also, "Morton Satin" is a fuck of a name. But write your own "Morton's Salt Girl" jokes, must I do everything?

Oh

My

What is most fun about this is the sheer impenetrability of the writing. The hell?

Whatever. The following is the Classic Wingnut Sentence, the one that rules them all, and in the darkness binds them:

And as a non-lawyer who once toyed with going into law, I see several areas where a judge (especially in very, very blue Maryland) might rule in their favor, by the precise letter of the law, but most people would laugh in their faces.

The claim to authority here is fantastic: "oh yeah? You think you know the law? Well. I once idly considered becoming a lawyer, but then I said 'fuck it.' TASTE MY STEEL!

Comedy 101

Funny.

Funnier.

(That second link goes to what is easily the most completely bugshit loony blog post of all time -- and I am not exaggerating even a small tiny bit. In it Stacy McCain says that Jesus has chosen him as His Holy Vessel with which to smite Charles Johnson for the sin of saying that Pam Gellar is a bit of a kook. Seriously.

And then it gets weird.)

Linking Crimes in Progress with Previous Foul-ups

It appears that the Wisest, Most Important Person on the this or any other Internet, Andrew Sullivan, has a Bad Habit -- A BAD HABIT FOR DRUGS.

Political commentator, author and writer for The Atlantic magazine Andrew M. Sullivan won’t have to face charges stemming from a recent pot bust at the Cape Cod National Seashore....

While marijuana possession may have been decriminalized, Sullivan, who owns a home in Provincetown, made the mistake of being caught by a park ranger with a controlled substance on National Park Service lands, a federal misdemeanor.

The ranger issued Sullivan a citation, which required him either to appear in U.S. District Court or, in essence, pay a $125 fine.

This blog takes the view that if the federal government is going to maintain and preserve certain areas of the country because they are pristine and beautiful, the federal government should allow people to smoke weed in them. Otherwise it's como que dice, entrapment. 

But then what can we say, Sullivan is One of Ours, a Communist, because he opposes torture, and because Barack Obama said "if you don't let Sully get stoned, I'll waterboard your ass":

But the U.S. Attorney’s Office sought to dismiss the case. Both the federal prosecutor and Sullivan’s attorney said it would have resulted in an “adverse effect” on an unspecified “immigration status” that Sullivan, a British citizen, is applying for.

At the hearing, Collings observed that Sullivan would still have to state on his application that he had been charged with a crime, and he asked both the prosecutor and Sullivan’s attorney, Robert Delahunt Jr. (cousin of U. S. Rep. William D. Delahunt), for more information about why paying the $125 would have “any additional adverse effect"....

In his opinion, Collings wrote that the U.S. Attorney is “is not being faithful to a cardinal principle of our legal system, i.e., that all persons stand equal before the law and are to be treated equally in a court of justice once judicial processes are invoked. It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances.”

Ultimately, Collings acknowledged that he had no choice other than to allow the case to be dismissed, but “that the Court must so act does not require the Court to believe that the end result is a just one.”

I have tried to care about this case twice now, but find myself failing, and just falling asleep. So allow me to just note that the reason none of us on the left care about this now, even though we noted this then, is because we Hate America, and Dick Cheney. 

Squawk Blargle Floop-a-Glug

Jammie-Pooping-Chimp discovers that Slick Barack is consorting with KNOWN TRADE UNION MEMBERS. For instance, Slick Barack has appointed Ron Bloom, a KNOWN TRADE UNIONIST, to be a CZAR. CZARs are something Slick Barack invented because he is basically Stalin and they have never existed before ever except in Russia. It was a Bolshevik innovation.

Anyway, who is Ron Bloom?

He has a long history of being the negotiating face of unions in a suit.

According to History, Ron Bloom has often PUT HIS FACE in a SUIT. That is remarkable because A SUIT is an unusual place to put a FACE. Or else perhaps ENTIRE UNIONS are wearing A SINGLE SUIT which I guess would be in keeping with their COMMUNIST PRINCIPLES.

Jammie-Wearing-Fool wears those jammies with the trapdoor at the butt in order to more efficiently plop out DANGLING PARTICIPLES, but he may still have trouble with DINGLEBERRIES. You see, he CANNOT WRITE ENGLISH SENTENCES as he is ONLY SEMI-LITERATE.

Anyway, it's a weird post, as the dark conspiracy seems to be that a Democratic politician has ties to unions. Egads. Intrepid citizen journalists might also upon investigation learn that Democratic politicians also have ties to corporations. No, really, look into it.

We also discover that Slick Barack is in sinister cahoots with unions to keep major car manufacturing corporations from going bankrupt, like should have happened with steel corporations in the 1970s. This theory is (a) weird on its face, and (b) something that will startle the folks at Chrysler.

On the whole it's impossible to figure out just why this idiot is complaining, since he can't write and is an ignorant paranoid know-nothing:

Today's meeting with a powerful union, while announcing yet another veteran of unions to a high level position all under the guise of furthering the health care reform debate appears to be more of message to those Democrats in congress that not giving Barry O what he wants on this issue, which he will supposedly outline on Wednesday, could have some unfriendly consequences for those wishing to continue to draw a taxpayer paycheck.

The who with the what now? If the wicked theory is that Obama will twist nad-hairs to get a public option, that would actually be pretty great. Bonne chance!

Ignoring the ignorance, however, as it were, what's remarkable about this ridiculous, hysterical post is the outrage that democratically elected president might just be trying to live up to his campaign promises by working with law-abiding members of his coalition. Dipshit isn't even accusing Obama of lying. 

I suppose this is a case of delayed Bush Derangement Syndrome: Jammies is clearly unacquainted with English, which neatly explains his confusion.

We Participate

The Ole Perfesser twangs his braces.

OKAY, I STEPPED OUTSIDE A LITTLE WHILE AGO, and it was actually a bit chilly. In Knoxville, in mid-July. My dad says it hasn’t broken 90 all summer, which may be right. I’m saving real money on A/C bills this year. Could be worse — could be Michigan.

Meanwhile, Nate Silver says it’s all in your mind. Two thoughts: (1) I hope so — better that than living in a John Ringo novel. (2) Just remember Nate’s stuff when the press is yammering on about a hot day, or a hurricane, being “caused by global warming.”

UPDATE: Reader Bobby Clarke writes: “Here in Austin, we’re having one of the worst summers ever. We’re on the tail end of a 2 year drought, and we’ve had record highs for most of July (well over 100). I don’t want to think about the utility bills. Those 70 degree days sound pretty good to us right now. So it’s cold in most of the country, and hot in the other parts. Its almost like weather is some amazingly complex and hard to understand system!” Nah — hot or cold, it’s always because of global warming. I think that’s in the AP stylebook or something.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Schroeder of Mantorville, Minnesota writes:

"In regards to the post about Minnesota Temps Nate Silver is just picking out high temps for a weird period of time – 6/21/09 to 7/17/09. What really matters in Southern Minnesota is Growing Degree Days – how is the Corn growing? Here is a link showing that we are behind by 131 growing degree days for the entire 2009 growing season. I have lived in Southern Minnesota for over 45 years and can say that the field corn is behind in its’ development and we are also behind by about a week or two eating the great sweet corn that grows here in Minnesota. In the real world these are the statistics that matter because it is a major economic driver for our local economy."

My tomatoes aren’t doing well, either. I don’t know that that says much about the global temperature, but you can bet if it were unseasonably hot we’d be hearing that it’s a vindication of Al Gore.

As a reminder, we're getting this Snuffy Smith bullshit because John Hinderaker is too fucking stupid to properly operate a thermometer.

Dance, my leprechaun, dance!