Poe's Law

Per RationalWiki:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

Poe's Corollary:

It is impossible for an act of Fundamentalism to be made that someone won't mistake for a parody.

Poe's Paradox:

In any fundamentalist group, a paradox exists where any new person (or idea) sufficiently fundamentalist to be accepted by the group is likely to be so ridiculous that they risk being rejected as a parodist (or parody).

Micro Sculpture

Willard Wigan does some pretty amazing things.

Today's Quote

"Knot by knot I untie myself from the past
And let it rise away from me like a balloon.
What a small thing it becomes.
What a bright tweak at the vanishing point, blue on blue."

— Charles Wright, closing lines to “Arkansas Traveller,” from The Other Side of the River (Vintage Books, 1984)

The Carrie Prank

Remember back in the 70s, when The Exorcist came out, and suddenly there was a whole rasher of "real life" stories (planted by the PR guys) that popped up in newspapers - about mysterious and unexplained behaviors that just maybe might be possibly "demon possessions"?

Well, taking it up several levels:



What do you think you can't be manipulated into believing?

hat tip = All In with Chris Hayes

Prophecy

From Paddy Chayefsky's Network (1976):



ARTHUR JENSEN:
"And I have chosen you, Mr Beale, to preach this evangel."

HOWARD BEALE:
"Why me?"

ARTHUR JENSEN:
"Because you're on television, dummy."

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Today's Toon

Clay Bennett's the greatest.

Music

Live from Daryl's House, with Dave Stewart - Heart of Stone:



(I couldn't find it on Amazon)

At The Nexus

...of dreams and reality - yeah, OK it's pretty obviously a little Twilight Zoney, but damn if this ain't impressive either way.

Go Blow Yourself, Kenny

SCOTUS has refused to hear Ken (Kenny the Kooch) Cuccinelli's appeal to overturn a Circuit Court's decision that his ass is just way too tight for post-11th-century law, not to mention people who're...well, you know - normal.

From Addicting Info:

Ken Cuccinelli’s Law Would Outlaw Sodomy And Oral Sex Among Consenting Adults.

The VA Republican’s now-invalid law is known as the “Crimes Against Nature Act.” Here’s the part that outlaws oral sex and sodomy between consenting adults:

“If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.”

First off - "carnal knowledge"?  Who the fuck even talks like that anymore?

And with McAuliffe posting a 9 point lead, together with falling approval for the GOP generally, Kooch can't afford this.

Up Next

Let's hope the fuck ups in congress can get done fucking up the Federal Budget and the US Credit Rating and the global economy real soon so they get on to the confirmation fight over Janet Yellen and fuck that one up too.

Can't wait - should be lotsa fun.

Mr Moyers, If You Please

In A Nutshell

Today's Best Tweet

In reaction to Obama stiffing the TV Poodles at his press conference yesterday:

Obama refuses to call on any TV network reporters at press conference, leading to nationwide false equivalence shortage.

The Amazing Charlie Pierce

Copied in it's entirety from Esquire - picture and all:

Jesus god, Ed fking Meese?

Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama's health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

I didn't know that there was an Old Timer's Game for Authoritarian Yahoos.

Will the sad detritus of the Saint Ronnie administration ever stop fouling American public life? We have Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins on the teevee almost every weekend. We had a whole clutch of the foreign-policy fantasts rehabilitated during the late reign of C-Plus Augustus. And now, this guy, who once advocated concentration camps for student demonstrators, who personally oversaw the most embarrassing "investigation" into the porn industry ever conducted, and who functioned as lookout and getaway driver for the Iran-Contra crooks, up to and including the increasingly dim president himself, comes back to help screw up the nation again. Nobody listens to Gary Hart, but Edwin Meese III still has a place in public life. Wingnut welfare is forever.

At least part of the blame has to be shared by those nominal Democrats who, either through their silence on the crimes of that era, or in their admiration for Reagan's "style" and toothy obliviousness. (The latest of these, alas, is Chris Matthews, who has written a book about how Tip O'Neill and Ronnie made politics "work," and who, between 1980 and 1982, probably sold out truly progressive politics for at least two decades.) A number of truly horrible things were set in motion in our political life in the 1980's. The people responsible never have really been called to account for it. Now, one of the worst of them is back, doing further damage. I am, frankly, stunned.

Tom Foolery

Anybody else notice that the rhetoric of the hostage-takers has kinda slopped over into the stoopid? (I mean more than the usual stoopid)

Repubs say they won't vote to raise the debt ceiling unless the Dems agree to a list of demands.  This of course scares the fuck outa lotsa o' people who're supposed to know about such things because either the debt ceiling goes up or the US government can't pay  everything it owes; and if we don't pay our bills, then others can't pay theirs, and "the markets" get the willies, and the cascade effect makes things real bad real fast.

So the imagery of the TeaBaggers holding a knife to throat of the world economy seems pretty valid.  Except now, we've got guys like Tom Coburn denying the terribleness of what happens if we don't raise the debt ceiling - he says it'll be OK; no big deal.

But that doesn't sound quite right; denying the dire consequences if your demands aren't met - "Gimme what I want or the hostage will probably be OK"(?)

Is this some kind of weird double flip?  Maybe Coburn's denial is aimed at the crazies and not at the rest of us.  Maybe he's trying to talk 'em down(?)

One last frightening tho't - what if it turns out that Tom Coburn is now what passes for a reasonable Republican?

We are so fucked.

Suicide Bombers

...and the American Taliban.  (see handy dandy self referencing reminder here)

Somebody's driving this Tea Party crap and it has nothing at all to do with "the American people".

The Repubs put out "opinion polls" (where the pollsters call only registered voters in the reddest of the deep red districts); then they point to the numbers of people who agree totally with their radical proposals in Saddam-Hussein-like percentages, and then they peddle this glop to us with the perfect complicity of The Press Poodles like David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell and Joe Scarborough.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And btw, when might we expect Doc Maddow to call bullshit on the bullshit that her colleagues are helping the radicals dump on us every fucking day?

Today's Quote

Today's Pix

Today's Quote

(updating a post from a coupla days ago - Kinda Says It All)

The president also mocked Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) for saying Wednesday that his party has "to get something out of" the shutdown fight, even though he doesn't "know what that even is.”

"You have already gotten the opportunity to serve the American people. There's no higher honor than that," Obama said to applause. "You've already gotten the opportunity to help businesses like this one. Workers like these. So the American people aren't in the mood to give you a goody bag to go with it. What you get is our intelligence professionals being back on the job. What you get is our medical researchers back on the job. What you get are little kids back in the head start."

That's the Obama we need to hear from on a much more regular basis.

I'm not saying The Prez should match nasty for nasty, I'm saying there's no need to suffer fools.  You get a chance to grab a dipwad like Stutzman by the heel and dangle him in the sunshine so everybody can see him for the small and empty-souled know-nothing leech that he is, then you should do it.  And as for pickin' on some junior putz who nobody's gonna remember when he's gone?  Fuck him - little man wants to be in the majors, then he plays the full nine.

Both Sides(?)

In the atmosphere of All Shutdown All The Time, it became fairly easy to overlook this one from a law professor at Liberty University:

The Christian mission field is a “magnet” for sexual abusers, Boz Tchividjian, a Liberty University law professor who investigates abuse said Thursday (Sept. 26) to a room of journalists.

While comparing evangelicals to Catholics on abuse response, ”I think we are worse,” he said at the Religion Newswriters Association conference, saying too many evangelicals had “sacrificed the souls” of young victims.

What is it with these god freaks?  If they're not invading the Middle East - or hatching plots in the Middle East to blow up the infidels - they're hanging "witches" or "honor murdering" teenaged girls for the sin of being raped; or they're preaching hellfire and brimstone about home and family while buying meth from their homosexual lovers etc etc etc.  And in this country, they get to do all that in the comfort and safety of a tax-free corporate office.

But back to the point - maybe we should be taking a much closer look at the high rate of incidence of sexual assault/sexual abuse in organizations with very top-down authoritarian power structures - like churches and the US military - and maybe we shouldn't be leaving them alone with the kids.