Bogus, batshit, banal, bizarre, or bicubic: Assorted News

[Mongrel]

I doubt "lost cause" is a phrase in very many conservative lexicons.

Sure it is!

[MarsDragon]

Depends on the lost cause.

EDIT: Curse you, Mongrel!

[Thad]

Conservatives are trying to end no-fault divorce.

They just keep doubling down. What's the encore, bringing back miscegnation laws?

It seems to me that, when you can't win a social battle, the solution isn't to go back and try to re-fight one you already soundly and universally lost decades ago.

I mean, unless you're a Supreme Court Justice. Then you can just roll shit back 50 years and November is just another month on the calendar.

[Mothra]

What the fuck are they thinking?

[Mongrel]

Portland drains an entire 38,000 gallon reservoir after a single teenager pees in it

Yeeeaaaahhhh, that's one city bureaucrat who needs to be fired.

[Blossom]

Deliberate human contamination of a city's water supply is not something where you want to mess around. And in Portland of all places, that robs the kid's act of any semblance of a cool factor.

Joke answer: Maybe they were worried he'd visited another city and had tap water there, and couldn't risk the fluoride.

[Mongrel]

Math whiz uses data to make OK Cupid fulfill it's intended purpose

Love is a data field.

[Blossom]

West Virginia man tricks children into sex by claiming to be a 'magical warlock' and promising to cure their sick mother.

[Thad]

Deliberate human contamination of a city's water supply is not something where you want to mess around.

Which is true but one hell of a stretch of the definition of "contamination".

And in Portland of all places, that robs the kid's act of any semblance of a cool factor.

I really can't begin to see how the kind of jerkass who would think it was awesome that he peed in the water supply would think it was LESS cool if it caused the city to drain the entire thing to the tune of (at minimum) tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.

At any rate, according to Ars the guy is actually claiming he never pissed in the water supply in the first place, which doesn't exactly indicate he's bragging about it to his friends.

I dunno, man, I'm from the desert. I have certain opinions on the subject of letting tens of millions of gallons of drinking water go to waste, and on paying for the privilege. If Portland's worried about 3 parts-per-billion of contaminant, I can name a couple of places that would be happy to take it off their hands.

Hell, our water already TASTES like piss.

[Cait]

Not just that, but it's an open-air reservoir so birds are already shitting in it.

[Mongrel]

OK Gov orders executions stayed by judicial order to proceed anyway; OK legislators also suggest bill to impeach judges involved in the stay

Uh.

I may be misreading this, but is the Governor of Oklahoma actually straight up murdering people now? Jesus Christ what is GOING ON down there you guys?

Not to trivialize the new MURDER GOVERNOR, but this comment exchange was good:

"The only Judge I will accept as an authority here is Judge Dredd."
"Excuse me governor, but Judge Dredd is fictional."
"Well excuse me mister, but Judge Dredd is THE LAW"

This is actually how things work in Texas.

[Blossom]

I like all the people pointing out that the governor's legal position is untenable, because the eventual finding of such will be so very comforting to the people she is having murdered.

[Mongrel]

Hanging out at the Bundy ranch (from Esquire)

Some of the people who were at the protest appear to be paranoid kooks who were happy to go on the record. That's the most fun kind!

A militia member with the group Oath Keepers named Mark, who drove in from out of state by way of Zion National Park (“which was absolutely beautiful — you should go”), offers to explain to me the truth behind public land management.

“The assumption is that the BLM is part of the federal government. But we need to check the facts on that one. The BLM doesn’t work for the government: they work for the United Nations. They might as well be wearing blue helmets. If we find out there’s money being exchanged between Harry Reid and the Chinese government, no one should be surprised.”

A self-trained lawyer tells me the same. He adds that Bar-certified lawyers, like the ones who prosecuted Bundy, have sworn loyalty to the British government, whose statutes encourage sex with clients. “That’s what they do with all their clients.”

There's also some MKULTRA and microchips in there.

[Mongrel]

This Bundy stuff might eventually require a thread of it's own, but I'll just leave this here for now: It looks like the Bundy militia has set up armed checkpoints on the roads.

I've heard guesses that these guys are essentially trolling for a Waco. I would say that's a good guess. I would also say that the Feds have probably also figured this one out and are smart enough to not be feeding these particular trolls.

[Mongrel]

Minnesota goalie Ilya Bryzgalov's helmet features pictures of Shadow the Hedgehog, Rouge the Bat, and Tikal the Echidna



Apparently it's for his kids. And Bryz has always been something of a character.

But, uh, yeah!

[Thad]

Here's a headline: Bill Clinton 'Dumbfounded' By Hillary Brain Damage Talk

Here's the world I wish we lived in:

A reporter asks Bill Clinton what he thinks about Karl Rove saying Hillary has brain damage.

Bill shakes his head, chuckles, and says "What an asshole."

Now, taking on Karl Rove's various superPACs is hard. But taking on Rove himself, personally and directly, is easy. People just need to start treating him like the horrible little clown that he is.

This is a guy whose friends call him "turdblossom". This is a guy who got fired after the Republicans got spanked in the 2006 midterms, shortly after an interview in which he dismissed polls saying Republicans were going to get spanked by saying "You're entitled to your math, and I'm entitled to THE math."

I mean, Fox News is always going to be a haven for guys like him, and Dick Morris, and Bill Kristol. But nobody else has to act like they need to be taken seriously. Sometimes a little bit of derision is exactly the right thing.

(I should add that Bill could get away with calling Rove an asshole but Hillary couldn't. She could still chuckle, shake her head, and say something milder than "asshole", though.)


There's a bit in one of the Foundation books -- I think it's the last one? -- where somebody figures out that Eto Demerzel is a robot, and he and Seldon get wind that this person is going to confront them with it at a press conference. They work out a plan: when the reporter asks the question, Demerzel responds by just laughing.

Of course, Demerzel actually IS a robot, so then they have to teach him how to laugh convincingly. But if they could do it for him, I'm betting someone could teach Hillary Clinton, too.

[zaratustra]

And, of course, Bill Clinton doesn't really have to be political anymore.

[Mothra]

It's a tough call. Personally, I think Bill should have just dismissed the guy as a ridiculous dickhead, but politically, it's almost worse for the GOP to have Clinton give a polite response, as if Rove spoke for the GOP as a whole and he needed to be diplomatic in light of that.

If he just dismissed him without a thought, it would seem more like what it is: Rove being an idiot, unrelated to his party.

That said, I've seen that ultra-conservative Facebook group I mine for wingnut gold running with this "Hillary has brain damage" thing in the past few days, photoshopping her as a zombie and whatnot, so maybe the conservative powers that be are into it.

[Büge]

banana Morris

Hee hee hee

I love the word filter.

[Thad]

And, of course, Bill Clinton doesn't really have to be political anymore.

But see, I think even if he were still President it would have worked.

Yes, the right-wingers would have howled about it for years. But I think the chief lesson of the Clinton Administration is that right-wingers are wildly out of touch with what mainstream Americans think is scandalous.

(And of course Bush publicly called a reporter an asshole, while running for President -- hell, Cheney said "Go fuck yourself" on the Senate floor. Most people forgive behavior they don't like if it's from their guy, and pounce on it if it's from the other guy.)