Sadly, No!

Welp, Richard Cohen has done outdone hisself in today’s column. He acknowledges that both Obama and McCain are something of an ideological chameleon — that each has changed his positions on certain issues in order to suit his political ambitions.

But guess what? McCain’s flip-flops demonstrate that he has more character than Obama does! Why? Who the hell knows! Just try to follow the reasoning behind this:

McCain’s Core Advantage

In politics, we’re having a Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr kind of year. It was Karr, a French writer, who coined the phrase plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, which means, as Barack Obama has shown, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. N’est-ce pas?

Oui . And the same principle holds for John McCain. Like Obama, he was going to give us change, and in a sense, he has. He has abandoned his maverick persona of old and moved to assure the GOP that on most matters, he is devoutly orthodox. This is change, all right, but for most voters, who hanker for something other than what they’ve had for most of the last eight years, this is not much change at all.

So: We’ve established that McCain has significantly changed his position on a whole range of things. This seems to indicate to me that McCain has some character issues — that is, he’ll change his previously-stated ideological convictions in order to gain a political edge. In this case, he’s trying to shore up support from the right-wing crazies who kinda hate his guts.

Fine.

Now, moving on:

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Another classic. Carlin’s ability to parse the insanity that is advertising language is something to behold.

Over at Free Republic, they’re investigating the Barack Obama Birth Certificate Scandal.

What scandal? They don’t seem to know yet, but confidence is fairly high that something will turn up. Here’s one essai:

I belive the reason [Barack Obama] won’t release [his birth certificate] is because it lists his full name including the firstname of Barry, not Barack, and lists him as caucasian, not african.

He’s worked awfully hard (changing his name to something african sounding and calling himself black, instead of white or mixed) to further his career. He’s not about to have that all blown up by the truth that he’s just as much white as black.

Um, yeah. Or maybe the doctor’s signature trails off and reads “Aieee!” and the document is spattered with human blood. Also, be warned that we mean ‘kerners’ in the literal sense. A scanned copy of the document was released earlier this month (on Daily Kos and at least one other liberal site), and here’s where that’s been going:

The typeface on [a sample birth certificate from Hawaii, the ‘Decosta image,’] is much darker and thicker, and has less kerning (spacing between the letters), than the Obama image. Moreover, the color of the green paper comes through almost all of the letters regardless of magnification or image compression.

By comparison, you will not see the grey and white pixels found between the letters on the Obama image.

When you enlarge the letters in the Decosta image, they all tend to remain solid, especially letters like “I, L, B, E, H,” that continue to look the same no matter how large you make them. Conversely, when you enlarge the letters in the Obama image, they start to fall apart — that is, they start losing pixels. This is exactly what happens to bitmapped text created by a graphics program.

OK, now let’s compare the borders of both images.

In the Obama image — or, should I say, “images,” because the edges of the vertical borders in the Kos image overlap the horizontal ones, whereas the…

People have asked why I’m so fascinated by the right wing in America. I believe this goes some way toward answering the question.

Guilty Knowledge

Above: Gaffney, Pam Atlas

• As the president of a leading conservative think-tank, I should like to sound an alarm about [cough cough] an international conspiracy of Semitic bankers.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

White Looters In Iowa

• Ah yes, something reminds me again: Have I explained my theories about black people?

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

The Bad Boys,
One-a Dem Gummint Yards,
Trenchtown,
Kingston
Jamaica

 
 
 
June 23, 2008

National Association of Police Organizations,
317 South Patrick Street,
Alexandria,
Virginia 22314
USA

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Some time has passed since your query first reached our desk, and we wish at once to reassure you as to the careful and detailed consideration it has undergone, through various internal committees and in a number of fact-finding initiatives. Indeed, your repeated and ongoing entreaties seem to imply a perceived lack of interest on our part, and we hope it is to your relief and satisfaction to learn that the dilatory nature of our response is due exclusively to the great care and attention with which we have considered it.

This brings us directly to the first item. Simply, sirs and madams of law enforcement, the apparently ceaseless crescendo that your request has reached, its trumpeting repetition at all hours on cable and satellite television, has led us well to appreciate the claim that police naw give you no break.

The effect on our well-being has been noticeable. We should like to reserve special mention for Sheriff John Brown, whose coming has been heralded with such spectacular fanfare that we feel a clawing unease as each new sunset finds him still on his dawdling way. Truly, sirs and madams, it has lately begun to seem to us as though naw soldier-mon, naw even we i-dren — indeed, at times, that nobody — naw give us no break.

Our second item is by way of explanation. As you say, despite any troubling proclivities that we might have displayed at a young age, the public education system taught us to do unto others as we would have others do unto ourselves, such that the reasons for our unwise behavior might easily seem unclear. Nonetheless, we have come to believe that it is necessary, in life, to give vent to the choleric passions (e.g., activities including robbin’, stobbin’, lootin’, and a-shootin’), and perhaps here is the nexus of our disagreement, for we remain unconvinced as to the utility of relaxation as a counterstrategy.

Thus we come to the answer toward which you have so zealously inquired. Our intention, since you ask, is to chuck it on that one, to chuck it on this one, to do likewise to various mothers and fathers, to similarly treat an array of brothers and sisters, to once again chuck it on that one, and then to chuck it on Mr. Calton Coffie, until 1995 the lead vocalist of the reggae ensemble, Inner Circle. Our intention as to Coffie’s replacement, Kris Bentley, is to chuck it on him.

We hope this clears things up and look forward to finally meeting Sheriff John Brown, should he not continue, as it seems, to be held up by other commitments.

Best Wishes,
The Bad Boys

P.S.: Yuh nuh know seh wi nuh give a damn if dem hate wi.

* Cf.

Of Rice, Mushrooms and Lies

• Condi Rice’s assertion that Saddam Hussein could soon blow us all up with a nuclear weapon was demonstrably true even though Saddam didn’t have a nuclear weapons program.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

ABOVE: America’s newest Hitler.

UPDATE: You know, this will probably go down as one of the great “I-can’t-fucking-believe-he-wrote-it” passages of the last 50 years:

While emphasizing the disparate estimates about how close Saddam was to a nuclear bomb, Rice was saying that the CIA would not necessarily know when Saddam acquired one. She was warning that we might not learn this until after a detonation. This was an important and accurate statement.

Sure it was. Similarly, the CIA suspects that the citizens of Belize could try to summon the ancient Mayan death god Ah-Puch to eat the first-born male child of every American household. And while we have no idea when the Belizeans plan to unleash this ancient fury from the underworld upon us, we don’t want the smoking gun for their plot to come in the shape of a giant rotting Technicolor corpse eating our children.

Thus, it’s time to invade Belize.
 
 
 
 
 
 

George Carlin is dead. This sucks on, like, a billion different levels.

The most remarkable thing about Carlin as a comedian wasn’t just that he never lost his edge as he got older; rather, it’s that his edge actually got sharper. The older and bitterer the dude got, the funnier he became. His “seven dirty words” routine, while still his best-known work, is nothing compared to stuff like this:

I’ll miss you, George Carlin. You’re easily the funniest guy of my lifetime.

Aah, whatever: Let’s quote an AP piece with impunity, and if they give us any of that flak they’ve been giving people lately, I suppose we’ll take a tip from ol’ Confederate Yankee and start billing people for the stories we generated last month. Because in any case, there’s some added-value that demands to be added to this story’s, you know, value:

Ohio board votes to ax teacher accused of branding

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The school board of a small central Ohio community voted unanimously Friday to fire a teacher accused of preaching his Christian beliefs despite staff complaints and using a device to burn the image of a cross on students’ arms.

School board members voted 5-0 to fire Mount Vernon Middle School science teacher John Freshwater. Board attorney David Millstone said Freshwater is entitled to a hearing to challenge the dismissal.

It’s coming; wait for it.

The report came a week after a family filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus against Freshwater and the school district, saying Freshwater burned a cross on a child’s arm that remained for three or four weeks.

Freshwater’s friend Dave Daubenmire defended him.

Above: Coach Dave “Spaghetti Puller” Daubenmire

Holy crap, It’s Coach Dave again!

“With the exception of the cross-burning episode. … I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district,” he told The Columbus Dispatch for a story published Friday.

Since the recent unpleasantness at Licking Heights, Dave Daubenmire’s Minutemen United group has been disrupting gay-friendly church services in central Ohio. And now, his feckless comedic genius still at full hurtle, he’s crafting sentences for publication that begin like, “With the exception of the cross-burning episode…”

Apparently he defended Mr. Freshwater on Geraldo yesterday, at 10PM EST. Such are the bestrewments of life’s plenty-horned bounty that we miss by leaving the house, and in other such self-indulgent and wasteful habits.

* Cf.

SAME-GENDER ‘MARRIAGES’ = MAJOR SIN

Above: Swankius laxicranius

• Among other things, George W. Bush’s presidency is under a divine curse because of the time he placed the Koran in the White House library.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™