A second quality advertisement today comes from Will Brooke, who is running in Alabama for the Republican nomination for the Senate race. Invoking the Second Amendment, he gets in his truck, taking a print-out of the Affordable Care act with him out to where he can shoot it with a handgun, a rifle, and finally in super-dramatic-slow-mo an assault rifle (that music!), before eventually putting the whole deal through a Will-Brooke-branded shredder. However, this is such a rip-off of Sen. Joe Manchin’s campaign ad from 2010:
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Temperance Railway, next stop Cigaretteville
I love maps, I love transit, I love transit maps, I love historical documents, and I love all things drink. So, you can imagine that I love this map. It’s pretty great. From 1908, and recently dug up by the Library of Congress, it shows all the stops you’ll go through if you continue down your non-temperate life. Such places as Selfishburg, Hypocrisy Heights, Whiskeyton (my neighborhood), Treasondale, Malicefort, Cocain Park, Sing Sing, Dissipation Gap and Prizefight City. Here it is full-sized and huge in case you want to print me a present. <via>
Continue reading...Republican Iowa Senate Candidate Joni Ernst wants to castrate Washington’s spending and make them squeal or something
Oh, man, it’s finally that time in the political cycle where we get back to some quality advertisements. Here we have Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa who is running for the Senate. In this spot, she basically says that she knows how to castrate pigs, so she’ll know how to stop spending, all while we hear the squeals of pigs in the background. It’s all kinds of creepy. Enjoy. And she was just endorsed by none other than the Killa from Wasilla.
Continue reading...Rich guy wants five more Californias
It’s easy to look at California and imagine Churchill instead having said “Democracy is the worst form of government. No, really, it’s the fucking worst.” Between often electing unconventional politicians to high office, and a overly powerful ballot initiative system that makes it nearly impossible for even those few responsible leaders to govern, California is an example of democracy at its probable worst. And that’s before you get to the eccentric rich people who like to exploit this system to do eccentric rich people things. This time it’s venture capital investor Tim Draper, who is funding a drive to...
Continue reading...Surprise, Wendy Davis isn’t the progressive hero she’s made out to be
It was just a of couple days ago that we learned that Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis thinks Texas’s gun controls are too strict. Now we’ve got this: Wendy Davis said Tuesday that she would have supported a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, if the law adequately deferred to a woman and her doctor. First, what in the hell is that even? What does “if the law adequately deferred to a woman and her doctor” mean? Okay, explain yourself: “My concern, even in the way the 20-week ban was written in this particular bill,...
Continue reading...Majority of Americans want better relations with Cuba, and so do I
A poll by the Atlantic Council found that 56% of Americans favor a more direct engagement, or even normalized relations with our neighbors off the coast of Florida. What’s more: The poll offered even greater evidence that a political tide has turned with its finding that two critical domestic political constituencies favor renewed ties to Cuba by even larger majorities than the nation at large. Survey respondents from the US Hispanic community supported broader Cuban relations by 62 to 30 percent. And voting-age residents of Florida, a decisive swing state in recent presidential elections, back a policy...
Continue reading...Putting a terrorist to death
Today, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for the bombing of the Boston Marathon. This is not without precedent, and this was not unexpected. Hell, it might be the most predictable news story of the day. There are a number of reasons to find the death penalty unjust. Some see the massive racial disparity, some see the sheer number of innocents who accidentally get murdered by their state, some see the torture possibly inflicted by unverified drug cocktails, some straight-up do not believe the State, as such,...
Continue reading...A final short thought on the State of the Union address
Yes, I’ve called the State of the Union address long, boring and pointless. And it is. But how is it that the most important presentation before the most powerful and important institution in the country is basically a 16th-century Puritan sermon? Hell, even churches—those bastions of technological innovation—in the 21st century use music to accompany to enhance the experience and use screens to present images to make the material a little easier to understand. But the president walks up an aisle, stands at a lectern, and simply talks for a while, thanks God, and then we’re on our way...
Continue reading...“Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.”
I’ve been struggling all day to put together thoughts on the Challenger tragedy anniversary and the bigger question of what role the U.S. should maintain in humanity’s exploration of space. Part of it is the very happenstance of the calendar: it’s a thought that only occurred because of the anniversary, as probably any other day that isn’t already taken over by State of the Union madness would be a better day to meditate on the theme. Surely, unlike President John F. Kennedy’s address to Congress on May 25, 1961, or President George W. Bush’s own 2004 State...
Continue reading...The State of the Union address is too long and boring
As according to custom, the president (LOL) has been invited to address Congress tomorrow on “the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” There are lots of ruminations and predictions going about as to what the speech will contain, what themes will be prevalent, and what initiatives will be unveiled. I predict that it’s going to be long, boring and utterly ineffectual. Arguably the greatest State of the Union address to date is President Franklin D. Roosevelt\’s 1941 installment (he, uh, had a few), which is...
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