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Warren Stupidity

Warren Stupidity's Journal
Warren Stupidity's Journal
May 14, 2016

There is nothing in the text about having to be

replaced if a person would serve more than ten years. If a former two term president was the Vice President and the president died immediately after inauguration, he could serve all four years.

March 14, 2016

Vermin News Network Rehabilitation Monday Special Pi Day Edition

Monday March 7

Clintonites are in an uproar! (Vermin news analysis: an uproar from Camp Clinton generally indicates PANIC over the Sanders campaign's ability to actually contend for the nomination.) It seems that the sexist racist white MAN Sanders interrupted Clinton while she was speaking, in typical sexist MAN behavior. Sanders did in fact interrupt Clinton, in order to ask her to stop interrupting him whenever he tried to speak. Clinton has been trained in the Talk-over Strategy deployed by rightwing media people. This is a simple but effective debate tactic: don't let your opponent finish one sentence, instead interrupt constantly and once you start talking never stop. It was in the midst of Clinton's full out Talk-over that Sanders uttered the now infamous hideously sexist and misogynistic phrase that will haunt him for the rest of his miserable life: "excuse me but I was talking".

Belligerent Hairless Apes, Planet of: The US and South Korea are busy conducting military exercises as close to North Korea as they can get without actually being in North Korea. They announced that they are practicing blowing up all of North Korea's nuclear plants and nuclear missile bases and at the same time killing all of North Korea's leaders (meaning you Kim.) So just in case the insane paranoid leaders of North Korea were unsure if they ought to be insanely paranoid....

A naked woman dancing on the top of a tractor trailer truck stopped traffic for hours in Houston Texas this morning.

The US announced with great pride that it blew the crap out of some place in Somalia, and that because of our magic technology all of the 150 or so people we killed were Real Bad People. We are blessed to have this magic tech.

The US denounced with stern words the Russian airstrike in Syria that killed dozens of people. This has got to stop! Russians do not have magic bomb tech.


Tuesday March 8


Department of WTF: The Republican National Committee has targeted Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth as a seat they can pick up in November. Their twitter campaign yesterday included the following attack "Tammy Duckworth has a sad record of not standing up for our veterans". Duckworth is an Iraq War veteran who lost both of her legs in the war.

TRUMPF! four states hold primaries today, the big ones being Mississippi and Michigan and Der Drumpfinator is expected to do very well in both of those states. Assuming TRUMPF! indeed wins as expected things get very grim for the NOT-TRUMPF forces in the Republican Party. They have several problems, the major one being that it is quite possible that TRUMPF will be the only candidate qualified for the nomination by the end of the primaries. The problem is RNC Rule 40, which states: "Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination."

Vermin News is going to get a little technical here. This Rule 40 thing is not a joke. Here is how it matters: currently nobody has qualified for even one of the eight state delegate majorities needed, because it is a three way race and the early primaries all allocate delegates roughly proportional to the vote. After March 15 the remaining primaries are almost all winner take all - so the candidates will have to qualify by winning those races. It is entirely likely that only TRUMPF will qualify, which will put the NOT-TRUMPFS in a bit of a pickle. It is also possible that nobody will qualify, which would force a rule change and a fist fight on the floor of epic proportions as the Republican establishment will attempt to void TRUMPFs clear win by delegate count. The Republican establishment could also deal with the TRUMPF! only scenario by re-writing the rules, presumably they would do so having convinced Rubio and Cruz and the rest of the Klowns to toss all of their delegates over to Romney who would then have enough votes to block a TRUMPF! victory. All of these scenarios leave TRUMPF! and his angry white male supporters outraged, with TRUMPF! likely running a third party campaign.

The Republican Party is on the verge of a complete shit storm self destruct event. Or the establishment will just back down and say fuck it, our best bet is to back Benito TRUMPF!. I'm guessing they will choose TRUMPF!.

Surprise! Bernie won Michigan, forcing the official media to actually waste some bandwidth and interrupt their TRUMPFATHON to report that, while he has won 4 out of the last 6 primaries, he is still not a serious candidate. TRUMPF of course continued to win states people have heard of. TRUMPF 3 states, Cruz Idaho, Rubio nothing.

Wednesday March 9


Refugee Pong. This is a great game. Here is how it works. First The Big Powers all decide that they should topple the evil dictator Assad in Syria, because after all what could possibly go wrong? It isn't like we just did that in Lybia and it was ginormous disaster, it isn't like just a little while before that we did it in Iraq and literally somewhere around a million people, almost all of them civilians, got killed in the chaos that not only followed, but is continuing right now 13 years later. It isn't like we did this in Afghanistan and we are still there trying to figure out how to get the fuck out without having a helicopters-at-the-embassy fall of Saigon re-enactment. Vermin News is sorry but we seem to have forgotten what we were discussing.

Oh yes, Refugee Pong. So the US and its European buddies created chaos in Syria, failed to topple Assad, and created a massive refugee crisis that has thousands of Syrians fleeing their totally screwed up country for somewhere they won't get outright killed. Briefly Europe responded with compassion and opened their borders and started taking in thousands of refugees officially and tens of thousands unofficially. The the nutjobs from ISIS shot up Paris and despite the fact that all of the ISIS nujobs were born in either France or Belgium, the general reaction was NO MORE SYRIANS. They have the TRUMPF! problem too.

But the refugee situation is not a simple matter of plumbing. You cannot simply turn a policy valve and shut off the flow of desperate people who have no choice but to flee and nowhere to go but Europe. So the refugees have started piling up on the border between Greece and Real Europe. The EU wants them to turn around and go back the way they came. (Interesting idea, as many of the arrived by swimming from their sinking boats, and quite a few of them drowning while doing that, should they swim back out to sea and try to re-float the boats that failed to get them there?)

Turkey, busily murdering Kurds who are the only organized effective non-Assad force fighting ISIS, has also shut down its borders from the North, informing the EU that it could pay Turkey to take in refugees, otherwise no deal.

So the refugees are being rousted from their makeshift camps on the northern border of Greece and sent South, and then Turkey is telling them to fuck off and go north. Ping, pong, back and forth.

The estimate on the total number of refugees from Syria now somewhere in Europe is 500,000.

Clinton and Sanders are having a debate tonight. There is no way they can compete with the penis size contest from the last Republican debate, so the ratings are not going to be good.

Both Nancy Reagan and the Despicable Scalia are still dead. But are they still dead together?

The Clinton Camp, which had previously explained that Sanders could only win in small caucus states that the Clinton team forgot had contests, explained the upset loss in Michigan by blaming young inexperienced voters who don't understand simple instructions regarding who to vote for.

Marco Rubio forgot to win any primary contests yesterday so he is now officially in campaign zombie mode.

George Martin, "the 5th Beatle", died. He took the boy band to a different level as their music producer. The score is now Dead Beatles: 3 Beatles: 2. The odds on a complete 5-0 sweep by the Dead Beatles have gotten significantly better.

Chipotle had another Noro Virus outbreak. Nobody we know has ever eaten there. Certainly nobody at Vermin News has ever had one of their extremely yummy and reasonably priced veggie burritos. Poor Chipotle. The moral of the story is never present a serious competitive threat to MacDonalds.

Thursday March 10


A presidential debate is not actually a sporting event. This is a little known fact. Despite that the non-Vermin Human News insists on reporting debates in terms of who "won". There actually is competitive debating, it is done in schools and there are judges who award points. The presidential debates are not scored and there are no judges.

What the Human News doesn't do is to bother reporting what the debaters actually said, what issues were debated and what positions were held by the debaters on those issues, unless somebody said something really stupid or mean. That aside, in the Democratic debate last night the score was Sanders 4, Clinton 3.

Many people shot each other yesterday. Since this is not really news anymore, the only time it is of interest is if one person shot a lot of people or a shooting was so bizarre that it merits mention.

Today's moment of WTF: 31 year old Jamie Gilt was shot in the back by her four year old son. Jamie is "a guns rights advocate", or as Vermin News editorial policy describes this type of person, "a bizarre fucking whackadoodle gun nut". The kid picked up one of Jamie's many guns, this one a loaded .45 caliber pistol loose in the pick up truck, with the safety off of course, and shot her while they were on their way back from the gun range, where naturally the 4 year old was shooting guns.



That's her facebook photo of her little gun-nut monster (with the balloon head problem) and one of the many fambly guns. Just hours before being shot she updated her gun-nuttery page with the fact that the cute little future mass murderer "gets jacked up to target shoot". Indeed.




She's taken her facebook page down since she got shot.


While the media tries to figure out if Benito TRUMPF! is really a fascist or just playing one on tv, one of his patriotic supporters flattened an african american protester at a TRUMPF rally, with a punch to the side of his head as he and his fellow protesters were being escorted out of the event by the local police. Note: Benito could be both a real fascist and playing one on tv, those are not exclusive choices. His supporters however would happily go along with mass executions.

The Clinton Campaign, having failed to convince enough people that Sanders is a racist sexist all around bad person has decided that the best tactic to finally put him away is to simply lie about his record in congress. Somehow this is not going to work either. Perhaps a better approach would be to start explaining what Clinton's reason for running is. We understand what Sanders is about: he is about three or four explicit proposals that would transform this country: medicare for all, expand public education from k-12 to k-16, re-regulate wall street, and make a huge investment in repairing our crumbling public infrastructure. Clinton still has not articulated what her vision is. One suspects her vision is "Look at me! I'm President!".

Friday March 11


Today's moment of WTF: Hillary Clinton, speaking at Nancy Reagan's funeral, praised Nancy for her work on AIDS. Said Clinton:
It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s and because of both president and Mrs. Reagan — in particular Mrs. Reagan — we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that too is something I really appreciate with her very effective low-key advocacy. It penetrated the public conscience and people began to say, hey, we have to do something about this too.

Well basically that is the opposite of what happened. As Dan Savage stated it:

That is a fucking lie. You could only say the Reagans started "a national conversation" about AIDS if terrified, desperate, and dying people screaming"WHY AREN'T YOU SAYING OR DOING ANYTHING ABOUT AIDS!" at the Reagans counts. It does not count.

Savage went on to quote the Guardian's more sedate, and damning take on this:

Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004, was president for nearly five years before he said the word “Aids” in public, nearly seven years before he gave a speech on a health crisis that would go on to kill more than 650,000 Americans and stigmatize even more. In recent months, published reports have revealed an administration that laughed at the scourge and its victims and a first lady who turned her back on Rock Hudson, a close friend, when he reached out to the White House for help as he was dying from an Aids-related illness. “If there is a hell both Ronny and Nancy are Roasting,” wrote one Sister.... “Nancy and Ron Reagan were a functional team in the Presidency,” wrote Kenneth Bunch, aka Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch, one of the order’s co-founders. “They are both responsible for the death of thousands from HIV in the LGBT community due to their inaction in the 1980’s. So I understand the anger in the LGBT community toward Nancy. I feel that anger as well.”


The twitter-verse exploded and Clinton, to her credit, apologized.

Last night's BIG YAWN: the Republican's had a debate, but the game is over and everyone knows it so they forgot to have a fight and instead spent the entire debate saying incredibly stupid shit, outright ridiculous lies, and other blathering nonsense, none of which was even remotely challenged by the "debate moderators".

Oh Look! TRUMPF! Rally Cancelled due to Protester at the rally and in the streets.

The beautiful people of Chicago are saying NO TRUMPF! NOT IN OUR TOWN! Thank you beautiful people of Chicago, you bring tears to our little vermin eyes.

Saturday March 12

It was ALL TRUMPF ALL THE TIME. The nasty snarly idiot has become the media and the nation's obsession. We are all now watching the long slow disastrous train wreck. TRUMPF rallies in several midwest cities were again met by angry protesters. TRUMPF is blaming Bernie Sanders. Rubio blamed Obama. Cruz blamed TRUMPF in a moment of sanity. Ben Carson endorse TRUMPF.Mitt Romney has just learned that his political party is dominated by klowns, a fact that the internets has known since 2008.

Clinton, fresh from extracting her foot from her mouth over the whole Reagan and AIDS thing, put that footsie right back in there. In a well thought out attack on Sanders, Clinton, who has spent the last six months opposed to universal healthcare as something we just can't have, decided to portray herself as the decades long champion of universal healthcare and Sanders as some bernie-come-lately to the issue.

"And I always get a little chuckle when I hear my opponent talking about doing it . Well, I don't know where he was when I was trying to get health care in '93 and '94, standing up the insurance companies, standing up against the drug companies."

As the internets were quick to point out, Sanders actually was with Mrs. Clinton at at least one of the health care reform events in 93.


Sunday March 13

The primaries are headed into the winner-takes-all part of the primary campaign. Delegates are no longer allocated proportional to votes. Unless every poll out there is wrong Benito TRUMPF! is going to more or less wrap it up on tuesday, and more importantly Cruz and Rubio are going to be shut out because they will not qualify for the nomination as per the Republican Rule 40. Unbeknownst to many the Democrats are also having a hotly contested primary campaign. The tediously centrist corrupt and boring Clinton is likely to dominate on Tuesday.

Nothing to worry about. An extreme right wing political party made significant gains in regional elections in Germany.

Horrible people. Terrorists killed 22 people at a beach resort in the Ivory Coast, adding that country to the long list of nations afflicted with islamic inspired violence.
March 7, 2016

Vermin News Network Rehab Mondays 7 March 2016 Edition

my nephew 'had to go to rehab' and is cut off from the real world except for a few hours on Monday. My sister asked me to provide a weekly news summary for him.



Monday February 29

First world problems department: fabulously wealthy white people invented new and fabulously tone deaf ways to 'splain the unremarkable lack of diversity in Oscar nominations for 2016. The general theme of the splain was that every year hundreds of hollywood people of all types fail to be nominated for or win Oscars, so really non-white hollywood people, what's the BIG DEAL?

Moscow: just to demonstrate that the entire planet, after a more or less 150 year hiatus, is obsessed with chopping heads off, a woman was arrested while standing in a subway station waving the head of a toddler recently removed from its body. See! Its not just muslims! Other deranged crazy people do this too.

In a last ditch effort to prevent Trump Nation, the other republican nutjob whackadoodles are claiming that President Trump's apparent refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan is a HUGE DEAL. Trump has 'splained this latest outrage as the result of a faulty earpiece. It is not clear what the point of this attack is. Trump's supporters are not particularly opposed to the KKK. In fact Rubio's and Cruz's supporters aren't either. So what demographic is this supposed to upset? The 2 African Americans who might vote republican this year?

A google robot car hit a bus. The score is now Robot Driving Malfunctions: 1. Human Driving Malfunctions: 2,107,124,200,169. Until we can get robot malfunctions down into negative numbers we had better stick with idiot human drivers drunkenly texting while screaming at their kids in the back seat.

Tomorrow is Super Stupid Tuesday and an extremely stupid electorate will likely end any chance of meaningful reform by overwhelmingly endorsing the corrupt centrist Hillary Clinton. The more things don't change the more they stay the same.

Super-Duper Trumpf! Tuesday March 1

Department of WTF: an Israeli Army unit patrolling the occupied territories accidentally stumbled into a palestinian refugee camp and a battle broke out that resulted in 20 people getting wounded and one killed. The unit was using Waze to navigate through the area and had no idea that they were headed where they ought not to be. Waze was developed in Israel and acquired by google as their premier auto navigation software. I thought armies had this whole map thingy figured out. You know where they have a map that has the Bad Guys clearly marked out on the map with big block letters and warnings saying "DONT GO HERE EXCEPT TO FIGHT".

The French, in reaction to their own citizens committing mass murder because god said so, are closing down the huge refugee camp in Calais known as "The Jungle". So far no refugees have mass murdered anyone. Mostly they are just really happy to not be dead.

Having successfully contained new refugees from the disaster in the middle east to Greece, the EU is shocked (SHOCKED!) to discover that the problem isn't going away, it is simply happening in the region least prepared to deal with it. As mentioned previously, wasn't this the plan?

Over here in Raleigh North Carolina yet another young black man was executed by the police for no apparent reason. But really the problem is Mexicans or Syrians or something.

The Rolling Stones, the Oldest Boy Band Ever, will be giving a free concert in Havana Cuba, which is actually really cool. They still have some awesome left.

Plus Trump v Clinton. Good grief.

The google smart car that smashed into a bus has apologized and says it has learned its lesson.


Trumpf! Wednesday March 2

TRUMPF!

Last week the alleged grownups in the Republican Party had settled on Rubio as the anti-Trump and their brilliant advisers ordered him to go into full combat with Trump at last week's debate. (See last weeks Vermin News.) FACT THAT IS NOT MADE UP BUT SHOULD BE: That attack included accusing Trump of having peed in his pants during the debate. The results on Stupid Tuesday were that Rubio's campaign failed to beat Trump, failed to beat Cruz, and failed to provide an alternative to Trump. Rubio is done.

The official media woke up this morning to the reality that The Trump House at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is a very real possibility. !Super-Duper-Stupid-Tuesday! was the worst of all possible outcomes. Rubio, the anointed not-Trump won only one state, and that just barely. Cruz, who is actually more loathed by the Republican Establishment than Trump, won three states, while Benito Trump crushed in all of the other seven states. The primaries move out of the south after yesterday and Trump will continue to pile up delegates, likely acquiring more than enough to secure the nomination. The fact that Rubio failed to deliver yesterday, but managed to win one state, means that he won't drop out, he and Cruz will continue to split the not-Trump vote, and Trump is the nominee.


Ben Carson dropped out of the race and nobody noticed.

Mitt Romney has announced that on Thursday he is going to give Republicans a stern lecture regarding their bad habit of voting for Benito Trump. Given that Romney is second on the teabag hate-list to Clinton, this should be very helpful. Very helpful to Trump that is, just in case there were some teaparty fence sitters undecided about which whackadoodle nutjob to vote for.

Trump held an approximately 12 hour news conference Tuesday night, covered without interruption by both CNN and MSNBC, the only stations covering the election at all, using the same camera, the same graphics and perhaps the same reporters, in which he repeatedly told the tv screen that he was very smart and moderate and would build a huge goddamn wall to keep out Mexicans and would be a great president and that everyone would vote for him. He did all this while the improbable Chris Christie played the role of Trump's wife, standing behind him gazing on him with adoration for the entire 12 hours. As neither of them peed their pants during the endless press conference it is assumed they both were equipped with catheters and leg pouches to hold the incriminating evidence.

The Democratic base has decided to nominate the candidate with the best chance of losing to Trump in the general election.

We are not the only idiots! Demonstrating that we Americans have no monopoly on abject stupidity, France started demolishing and closing down the refugee camp in Calais known as The Jungle. There appear to be no plans for those who have been displaced. Many of the camp's residents are there to try to get to England, and the governments of France and England are discussing the 'situation'. Perhaps the English could re-assert their territorial claims to Calais, dormant since the 16th century, and France could just be done with the problem entirely. Better yet, make Calais part of Greece. The refugees meanwhile, understandably upset about having their tents demolished and their stuff destroyed, responded by demolishing more tents and destroying more stuff.

Scalia might have resurrected. Clarence Thomas, also known as Scalia's mute sock puppet, as he has not spoken in the court in the last ten years and always voted the same way as Scalia, suddenly spoke up in court. Shocked lawyers described him as appearing zombie-like, and that while he spoke in a clear voice, his lips did not appear to be moving.


Thursday March 3, year of the Trumpf!

Only Joking, Say What? Department: France warned England that if they go and Brexit (bail on the EU) all those damn refugees in Calais are going to England.

The Irony, it Burns! Mitt Romney just publicly berated Trump for being a "phony and a fraud". Mittens, as he is fondly called by the three people who like him, famously pretended to be a liberal Republican in order to get elected governor of Massachusetts, and then jettisoned his liberal persona entirely, coming out as just as rabidly nutjob whackadoodle right wing as the rest of the Republican Krazy Klown Kar parade in order to win the 2012 nomination. And just for reminders about what a nozzle Mittens is, he famously put the family dog on the luggage rack on top of his car for a family vacation road trip.


We are so screwed. Public Policy Polling published a poll they conducted two weeks ago in South Carolina. Here are some interesting facts about the "other" America.
25% of respondents think Islam should be illegal.
47% think there should be a national database of all muslims.
29% think all mosques should be shut down.
29% wish the South had won the Civil War.

Trump unveiled his healthcare plan: scrap the ACA and replace it with "go fish". After waffling for months on retaining the core features of the ACA, he has joined in with the rest of the hateful mob and proposes replacing the ACA with nothing at all. This program will work well for billionaires. Why aren't you a billionaire, luser?

Planet of the Apes. The US, India, and Japan are going to see if they can taunt China into doing something really stupid by conducting joint naval maneuvers as close to China's islands in the South China Sea as they can get without actually beaching a battleship. This is Belligerent Hairless Ape Behavior at its best. The worst that can happen is planetary nuclear war, so really calm the f*ck down.

Retraction: it turns out the scary deranged crazy nanny woman in Moscow showing off her recently beheaded charge was in fact a muslim doing god's bidding. Vermin News will continue to search for proof that in fact there are other scary deranged crazy people doing horrible things who are not muslims. Wait, we know, there are at least *many* here in the US, slaughtering people at planned parenthood, assaulting Bird Sanctuaries, executing young black men for no apparent reason while being police, and just generally shooting guns at people. They don't count. We don't know why.

Trumpf! Friday March 4

TRUMPF! the highlight? of the debates last night between Benito Trump and the Klowns was an exchange between TRUMPF! and Rubio over the size of their penises. We would like to admit that we made this up, but we didn't. Note: Vermin News did not watch the debate. Due to the violent content of the debate program we watched Mad Max Fury Road instead.

Coal to Newcastle the Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska had to import snow.

Robots are driving cars while monkeys are driving wheelchairs using their thoughts. Eventually these technologies will converge and we will all be robotic monkeys in wheelchairs.

Trumpf! Saturday March 5

Five more states are voting for TRUMPF! and Clinton today. The slow motion disaster of the impending TRUMPF! presidency has been and continues to be fueled by TV news outfits' inability to turn the camera away from TRUMPF or clearly state that he is a dangerous fascist buffoon. Instead if TRUMPF wants to speak for 12 hours, well dammit then 12 hours of non-stop TRUMPF ON TV is what we will get.

In other news chimpanzees apparently build and worship at tree temples. The religious aren't quite sure what to make of the fact that religion seems to be an evolved social feature.

Finally the media states the obvious: "The guy is Hitler. He is an insane bigot.". Oh wait, no it was comedian Louis CK begging his fans not to vote for the asshole TRUMPF.

Yet another young black man shot under questionable circumstances. Abdi Mohamed was critically wounded by police in Salt Lake City, Utah. The police claim the shooting was entirely justified but have so far refused to release the video of the incident. Mohamed's family fled the violence in Somalia in 2004. Little did they know that we have the violence right here. But, what can we do? Say a few weepy prayers around a heap of dead and dying flowers and candles, and most certainly we needs more gunz..

Cruz! Sunday March 6

Desperately trying to convince reality to bend to the will of the establishment, the official media decided that the split decision on Saturday, with Cruz and Trumpf! each winning two states, was a victory for Cruz, the newly anointed not-Trumpf!. Trumpf! won the largest state - Louisiana, but well we need a not-Trumpf!.

The Democrats also had primary elections in three states, but one would have to search high and low for reporting on that contest. Sanders won two of the three states, which it seems doesn't matter, because Clinton won the big state of Louisiana.

Logic and consistency are not required for political analysis. Let's go through this again. Trumpf! and Cruz split 2-2 with Trumpf! winning the big state of Louisiana: victory Cruz!. Clinton and Sanders split three states, with Sanders winning two states and Clinton only winning the big state of Louisiana: victory Clinton!

Speaking of Trumpf!, he re-iterated that the US should legalize torture. In a sense this is a good thing as an explicit torture policy would force the International Criminal Court to act against the leaders of the United States for crimes against humanity.

Nancy Reagan died. Vermin News policy is to not speak ill of the dead unless it is a truly evil knob like Scalia. Nancy seems to have been a nice person married to a colossal jerk. She also likely was acting president for several years as Ronnie descended into dementia.

Late update: Sanders decisively won the Maine primary, winning three of the four contests this weekend. An avowed Democratic Socialist is making a serious run for the presidency.
February 29, 2016

Vermin News Network Rehab Edition.

my nephew 'had to go to rehab' and is cut off from the real world except for a few hours on Monday. My sister asked me to provide a news summary for him.

Rehabilitation Monday Leap Day Edition 29 February 2016


Wednesday, February 24, 2016.

The world woke up Wednesday morning practicing the phrase "President Trump". Most of the world that is except the Official Media in the United States, which organization has decided that the real contest in the Republican Party is for which bizarre nutjob comes in a distant second place to Trump in the primary contests. Their current favorite distant second bizarre nutjob is a loon named "Marco Rubio". The official narrative is that Mr. Rubio is a "moderate" alternative to the nasty nazi Trump.The reality is that the nasty nazi Trump is more moderate on just about every issue except immigration, where he is a startlingly overt nazi. Rubio actually has the same immigration policies, he just doesn't let loose his inner nazi.

Meanwhile the FBI continues to pretend that it has no way at all, ever (really they don't) to access the data on the iphone that belonged to the nutjobs who shot up the christmas party in San Bernadino. This appears to be a PR campaign to force congress to pass legislation requiring encryption systems to have back doors the government can access any time they see fit. Apple has so far refused to comply with demands that it should implement a crack-factory for iphones. The rest of the computer industry is behind Apple. Way behind. So far behind that they are basically on the other side of the planet hoping that none of this mess will fall on them.

Over in Europe it appears that the European Union has decided that the best solution to the refugee crisis is to let all the refugees pile up in Greece. This is a good solution because over the last few years the EU basically destroyed the Greek economy and turned the entire country into a refugee camp, so the Syrian refugees will fit right in there and not bother the more well-to-do populations to the North.

Back over here President Obama has presented plan number 236 for closing the Guantanamo Torture and Kidnapping Center to a congress that would rather publicly munch on turds than pass any legislation he proposes. Ain't gonna happen. Obama could simply transfer the victims there to normal military prisons in the US and charge these people with actual crimes,but the problem with that is that if any of these people make it onto US territory they would immediately have legal standing to press civil or criminal charges against their kidnappers and torturers. So they will continue to rot in Guantanamo. Forever. President Trump isn't going to let them out either.

In the fair state of Texas it was decided that the best way for students at public universities to educate themselves is to be armed to the teeth. Universities issued guidelines to professors to avoid sensitive topics in order to not be killed while teaching. Have I mentioned that we are a terminally stupid society?

Thursday February 25 2016

The clueless and tone deaf Mitt Romney was sent out to demand that President Trump release his tax returns. Romney notoriously stalled on releasing his tax returns for almost the entire presidential campaign, and when he did release some of them it was clear he was paying a far lower tax rate than regular working people.

China responded to threatening noises from Washington that its military activity on its islands in the South China Sea were a response to an increased US military presence in the region. In the inexorable logic of hairless ape social behavior, we will respond by increasing our military presence in the region.

The republicans had a debate. Rubio and Trump got into a fist fight. Ted Cruz joined Trump, both piling on Rubio, punching and kicking him and calling him a "punk ass bitch". John Kasich threw up and Ben Carson got very excited and then had to leave the stage after a mysterious splotch appeared on the front of his pants.The oddly named moderator Wolf Blitzer, after the melee was over, asked the bloody and bruised Rubio if he thought his choice of tie incited the attack and if he wished to apologize for provoking his attackers. None of that happened, but it might as well have.

Closeted gay republican former hopeless presidential candidate Lindsey Graham actually had A Moment Of Lucidity when he publicly observed that his party had gone, and this is a direct quote "batshit crazy". That did happen.

Friday February 26 2016

Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump for president. This is the first crack in the republican party establishment official "shun trump" policy, and brings forth the prospect of these two repulsive assholes being on the same ticket in November.

Another day another mass murder by gun. 14 people shot four dead. The shooter had just been served with a restraining order because of violent abusive behavior. As usual the reaction to this latest bit of gun insanity will be an increase in gun sales. Normal people will shudder in silent horror and politicians will shrug their shoulders and say "what can we do, our hands are tied?". Tied to what, one might ask. Tied to the bags of money sent forth by the gun lobby to assure that nothing ever will be done.

In the charming news department a unicorn was on the loose on the LA freeway and had to be captured before serious mayhem resulted. Virgins everywhere were in a swoon.

Sandra Boos -- and the California Highway Patrol -- spent more than three hours chasing her runaway pony, who was outfitted with a unicorn horn, through orchards and roads in California, but she says that isn’t even the wildest part of the story.
Boos says what stopped her in her tracks was the reaction of some bystanders.
“I heard crazy things like, ‘They are real!’ and ‘I didn’t know unicorns were real,’” Boos, of Fresno, California, told ABC News. “I would just stop running and say, ‘They’re not.Sandra Boos -- and the California Highway Patrol -- spent more than three hours chasing her runaway pony, who was outfitted with a unicorn horn, through orchards and roads in California, but she says that isn’t even the wildest part of the story.

Saturday February 27, 2016

It's the South Carolina Democratic Party primary today, and the awful Mrs. Clinton is expected to beat the crap out of Mr. Sanders. Oh well.. it seems that Democratic voters agree that we really shouldn't even try to make this country a better place for all of us. The only thing puzzling about this is why black voters like Clinton. The Clintons championed the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" legal "reforms" of the 90's that have produced the largest prison population on the planet. She supports the death penalty. She still supports the war on drugs. She supports privatizing education. The Clintons ran on abolishing welfare in 96. She opposes making public college education free. She opposes universal healthcare. WTF?

Just in case you were wondering just what a pile of suck republicans are, the state legislature of Alabama just passed a bill outlawing local cities and towns from having their own minimum wage regulations because Birmingham passed a local regulation raising the minimum wage in the city.

In other news Justice Scalia remains dead. The faithful hover around his tomb to witness his resurrection.

Sunday February 28, 2016

As expected the tediously centrist and unabashedly corrupt Mrs. Clinton kicked Mr. Sanders ass in South Carolina. Oh well. All we can do is dream.

March 1 is "!Super !Tuesday" and unfortunately Mrs. Clinton will again mostly kick the tar out of Mr. Sanders. Over on the Idiot Party side, Benito Trump is expected to win most of those races as well, setting the stage for an absurd Clinton v Trump general election.

(As an aside Gawker actually baited Mr. Trump into retweeting phrases originally uttered by 1930's Classic Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini.)

Over in Ireland the two corrupt establishment parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, each failed to get enough votes to govern, leaving the IRA's political wing Sinn Fein as the only major party that increased its vote count. Of course Sinn Fein will continue to be ostracized by the two bigs, so until they win an outright majority they will be shut out of any coalition.

The corrupt British establishment political parties are desperately trying to avoid "Brexit" - the UK voting by referendum to exit the EU's economic treaty. The get the fuck out campaign is backed by a coalition of "euroskeptics" on both the right and the left.

A memorial service was held in the Kansas town where Yet Another Gun Slaughter occurred. Flowers, more guns, and weepy prayers are now our only response to this madness.

San Francisco is evicting its homeless people from a tent city in order to make room for high tech bro worker tents. The worker tents will rent for 5000/month and will include Google and Facebook bus transportation for the bros living there.

Our War Department is unveiling the new B-21 bomber at $0.5 Billion per plane. You can bet we will be buying a lot of these planes at bargain basement prices like this! Any sense of irony involved in putting down Mr. Sanders suggestion that perhaps we ought to invest instead in free public college tuition is entirely missing from the political discourse.
May 4, 2014

Dishonesty and thoughtlessness in believers.

I'm on the record here as having made the claim that believers are either dishonest or thoughtless. It is a weak claim, in that there probably exists at least one believer who is neither, and it really only applies to Christians, although it might apply to other faiths as well, I just don't know enough to make that case.

What I actually mean by that claim is this:

1. Christianity in modern times is basically divided into "literalist" and "modernist or liberal" camps. The literalist believe that the bible, or large parts thereof, is the literal and inerrant Word of God, while the modernists believe that the bible is instead a series of metaphorical stories not mean to be taken literally, except for some stories, which are.

2. The literalist position is basically an honest position, by which I mean that many literalists really do believe that the bible is the literal word of god and are not being disingenuous or dishonest when discussing their beliefs. This form of belief is however "thoughtless" in that there is no way to reconcile the massive set of contradictions, impossibilities, and immoral horrors contained within the holy text that is claimed to be the literal word of god. The literalist position, if honestly held, is unconsidered, it is not thought out, it is "thoughtless". There are however plenty of literalists who are simply opportunists who don't believe one damn thing in their holy book, but act like they do for various reasons.

3. The modernist position is basically an intellectually dishonest position, by which I mean that the modernist, when discussing their beliefs, reformulates those beliefs based on the context of the argument. The parts of their holy text that are obviously impossible are recast as metaphors to fit with whatever modern conception of reality they conflict with. The contradictory texts are again reformulated on the fly to deal with the logical absurdities. Pinning down actual beliefs in a modernist is, in my experience, impossible. I don't think the modernist position is an honest one.

April 1, 2013

Trends with benefits, This American Life drinks the kool aide.

I was yelling at my car sound system this morning. The podcast of This American Life was playing the march 22 episode, Trends With Benefits, and it was rightwing radio hour.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2013/03/trends-with-benefits-web-extra

The story was the long term upward trend of Americans receiving disability benefits, how they track other trends (unemployment and the de-industrialization of our economy), but beyond the actual facts was an underlying theme of, well, Cadillac Welfare Queen, is what came to mind.

This sentence grabbed my attention:


And it's a deal 14 million Americans have chosen for themselves.

Well no really it isn't. The vast majority of people on disability are people who have not made a choice at all, they have serious physical or mental problems that offer them no choice but to try to get by on the miserable disability stipend.

I wanted to strangle Chana Joffe-Walt, the author of the piece, when I heard that sentence. Interestingly, apparently I was not the only potential neck wringer as the web site notes that sentence has been revised to read

And it's a deal 14 million Americans have signed up for.



September 30, 2012

Romney campaign demands debate against empty chair.

The Romney campaign today demanded that the debate format be revised to require that the Obama stand in used at the Republican National Convention be used for the debates. "Governor Romney would be at a severe disadvantage if the Obama chair were switched at the last moment for an actual Obama" noted Rinsed Penis, RNC spokesman. The Presidential Debate Commission has taken this issue under consideration, noting that prior debates also included empty chairs, empty suits, and blank stares.

February 29, 2012

politics in the workplace

So this guy wanders over to engineering to strike up a conversation with the local republicans about how gas prices suck and its all Obama's fault and how remember under Bush it was 1.90 blah blah blah...

So I thought about that a bit and pulled up this:
http://www.GasBuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?city1=USAAverage&city2=&city3=&crude=n&tme=72&units=us

and said "hey _____, come over here for a minute."
He wandered over.
" who was president there (summer of '08 4.12)?"
"and what happened there (pointing at the valley of the fall/winter 2008-2009)?"
"like the worst recession since the 30's, huh?"
"that's what Bush handed to Obama. Gas prices are driven by economic activity".

He muttered something about have aconversation with an engineer and they'll pull up a pie chart. "Yeah, don't let the data get in the way of your opinions", I said.

I didn't bring up the part about deregulated commodity speculation, it was over his pay grade.

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