Today's Professional Left Podcast

Another good one, guys.

Friendly reminder:  This shit's free. Send 'em a little card and 5 lousy bucks, ya fuckin' moochers.

The Professional Left Podcast

PO Box 9133

Springfield, IL 62791

--or--

Do it with PayPal at their site:

The Professional Left

God Love The Onion

My Recent Discovery

I've been reading Charlie Pierce for years, and he often makes reference to "Obvious Political Anagram, Reince Priebus".  I've always wondered, but I never looked very far trying to find out about it.

I swear to Zalmoxis that I didn't know this until today, when I Googled it and found a Facebook page explaining it all*:

Reince Priebus = Rube's Epic Rein

No wonder they keep re-electing the guy.

*Ed Note:  I can't guarantee this is what Mr Pierce has in mind, but - you know - holy crap.

Told Ya

A coupla days ago, I posted a bit about the Great Gathering of Grifters aka: Kaptain Kornball Klub, aka: The Iowa Freedom Freakout Summit.  And in that post I opinionized about how certain of the "candidates" were there for reasons other than Public Service.  Well - imagine my surprise when I find out that there are people out here in the Blogoshpere who do more than just opinionize - they actually look into this shit.

Last week, Mother Jones reported that Mike Huckabee used his PAC to funnel more than $400,000 to his family. This week, Politico’s Ken Vogel gives us a story about scammy conservative PACs that make thousands of dollars from home with just one weird trick. These “scam PACs” play fast and loose with federal election rules by claiming-but-not-quite-claiming to represent Tea Party favorites like Ben Carson, Allen West, or Donald Trump’s hair plugs. The catch is that almost none of the money these scam PACs raise goes to those candidates. It’s the political equivalent of selling beachfront property in North Dakota, and because it’s politics, it’s somehow not fraud. ‘Tis truly a blessed time to be a conservative grifter!

Aha!  I posted mine 2 days ago, and then all of a sudden, there it is all over the place.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc, muthuhfuckuh.  Well, Ok, except for that 'last week' thing.  shit

You're welcome, Wonkette - glad I could help. Please keep doing that part of my job for me.

The Explanation

It seems so obvious.  Maybe that's why I need a reminder once in a while.



hat tip = Democratic Underground

A Mighty Metaphor

Jon Stewart having fun mocking the Press Poodles is nothing new - and also something that never gets old.  

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

But what really comes to mind is the Clauswitz bit - paraphrased for my purposes: A good plan for your news show can survive anything except contact with actual events.

But the suits are in charge now, so "actual events" - aka: Reality, aka: The-Fucking-Truth - none of that matters if it's in conflict with The Plan.

Management made enormous commitments and invested at great expense to come up with The Plan, and Management is never wrong.  We must stick to The Plan - The Plan is everything because fuck you, we'll drop you like a bad habit, that's why.

Of course, Stewart says it a lot better.

Unintended Truth

Some of those dirty fuckin' hippies have been trying to tell us for a pretty long time about how the "political center" has moved way to the right over the last 30 years, and practically everybody I know either shrugs it off or tells me I'm a fool for believing the left-leaning media which we all know has a wicked librul bias.

But then, along comes Steve King making a bit of a slip as he introduces Moose-alini at the annual meeting of the Kaptain Kornball Klub in Iowa.  

This turns into the Mother of All Word Salads as it appears Palin tries it without the teleprompter, but listen close in the first few seconds:



Yeah, I know - I couldn't stay with it either.  After the first few minutes, it's like you can hear your brain cells screaming as they start to die.

BTW - everybody and his fuckin' uncle is running on the Repub side so far, and I think it might be because the rubes' pockets aren't quite as deep as they used to be - having nuthin' at all to do with stoopid GOP economic policies of course - so you have to show up and do some of the huckstering in person - gotta work 'em a lot harder than just a coupla years ago.

I'll go out on what I consider a very short limb here, and I'll say that everybody not already positioned to get rich by holding an elected office is in this thing to boost their mailing lists, bolster their networks of "supporters", and make it all pay off by hittin' up every yokel for a generous donation...cuz that's what most of these jag-offs are - they're panhandlers; they're fuckin' moochers playin' every sucker for every dime, every chance they get. And boy has it been a good long run.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Pix

Comin' Back On Ya, Barry

OK, to be real clear - I hate the thought of the Secret Service guys brainstorming on how to handle this new type of potential threat, and coming up with the idea of carrying Obama around in a bullet-proof sedan chair or some-fuckin'-thing, but at the same time, why am I having such a hard time not thinking, "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?"

--and--

As Meat-Space becomes too dangerous for everybody but the cops and the military, when might we expect the emergence of the first All Cyber-Space President?

Today's Quote

"If you're very very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you're very very stupid?  You'd have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid you are.  This explains almost the entirety of Fox News." --John Cleese

Monday Tunes

Fever (cover) --A Fine Frenzy





Albatross --Fleetwood Mac





Duck Before You Drown --Dinah Washingtion




La Vie En Rose (cover) --Sophie Milman




Exactly Like You --Diana Krall





Dance Me To The End Of Love --Madeleine Peyroux





Europa --Santana

Dearest Anti-Vaxxers

Sunday Funnies

Outa The Mouths Of Babes

So, "conservatives", DumFux News gets called out and then spanked by a dozen teenagers because it's just way obvious that Rupert World is a fantasy (aka: bald-faced lie), but you still hang in there believing practically everything that falls out of Bill O's ass - what does that say about you?  

We all find it difficult admitting we've been wrong, and/or that we've been bambozzled, but seriously, you can't just go on denying reality when a high school journalism class knows more about Press Corps Ethics than your #1 Cable News Channel.

The real danger in having your head that far up your ass is that even if you open your eyes, all you're gonna see is your own shit.

Today's Chart

I have to think long and hard about how the hell I'm gonna get a coupla 17-year-olds thru the next 4 years of college.

I don't like thinking about that right now, but what I really don't wanna have to fuck with is the belief on the part of so many rubes that "them durn thugs are getting all the scholarship money, and all the good placements in all the good schools just because they're black and it ain't fair that they're takin' the spot of a deserving white child blah blah blah."

(btw - the rubes really do use the word "thug" in polite company so they don't have to use the word "nigger".  Yes. Really.)

Anyway, here's another of my handy dandy charts to illustrate just how stupid some of these clowns can get.

That tiny blue line at about 12 o'clock on the doughnut is the one-quarter of one percent of the total scholarship money available which is actually "earmarked" for use by kids with brown skin.  Which means that the white people, who make up about 80% of the total population are collecting most of the remaining 99.75% of the bucks.  Sound familiar?

Could you please stop bitching about it now?

The Honesty Episode

Keep it 100.

Get Your Bucket List In Order

The hard-workin' kids at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists did this presentation midday yesterday.  

But somehow, it just wasn't deemed quite as important as the story about Boehner once again gettin' butt-fucked behind the coat rack in DC.  

It didn't have the appeal of The NFL Scandal du Jour (I helped on this one - my bad).  

Somehow, we needed to know about the awesome manliness of Chaz Bono more than we needed to know that the people who actually understand this shit are kinda fucking worried that we're about to screw the pooch like we're all amped up on Ex and Crystal at a Lady-N-The-Tramp costume party.  

What the fuck, you guys!?!

See the whole nightmare here.

Billy Belichick

...rhymes (in a Slant Rhyme kinda way) with Lyin' Sack O' Shit.

hat tip = FB friend KH

Maybe That's It

We spend an awful lot of time and energy trying to figure out what's wrong up in this joint.  And for once, maybe looking to a nice simple bumper-sticker exlanation is all we need to do.

"You know that being American is more than a matter of where your parents came from.  It is a belief that all men are created equal and that everyone deserves an even break." --Harry Truman

"...everyone deserves an even break."  That's it.  So now all we have to do is figure out - do we have too many suckers, or do we have too many PT Barnums?

hat tip = FB friend VWE

Today's Pix