If you get a chance, read the profile of Joe Biden in the New Yorker today.
Biden’s riff on George W. Bush’s soul-reading performance in 2001 (when the idiot in chief looked deeply into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and got “a sense of his soul“), is genius. Biden tells New Yorker reporter Evan Osnos this anecdote about meeting Putin in 2011:
“As I turned, I was this close to him.” Biden held his hand a few inches from his nose. “I said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’ ”
“You said that?” I asked. It sounded like a movie line.
“Absolutely, positively,” Biden said, and continued, “And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, ‘We understand one another.’ ” Biden sat back, and said, “This is who this guy is!”
Then there’s another anecdote, back in 1979 when Biden was a young Senator and the son of a Welsh coal miner:
“on one of his first trips to the Soviet Union, he listened to an argument from his Soviet counterpart, and replied, “Where I come from, we have a saying: You can’t shit a shitter.” Bill Bradley, then a fellow-senator on the delegation, later asked the American interpreter how he had translated Biden’s comment into Russian. “Not literally,” the interpreter said.”
Classic Joe.
More classic Joe:
“His smile has been rejuvenated to such a gleam that it inspired a popular tweet during the last campaign: “Biden’s teeth are so white they’re voting for Romney.”
“Joe and Barack were having lunch, and Obama said to Biden, ‘You and I are becoming good friends! I find that very surprising.’ And Joe says, ‘You’re fucking surprised!’
a typical house/lawn in hancock park, a los angeles suburb
Hi. How are you? Fine? Well that’s just dandy. Because I am not fine. I am fucking weirded out and terrified. Did you know it hasn’t rained in Los Angeles in, like, a million years? It’s undergoing the biggest dry spell since prohibition. Southern California water managers are doing such a great job that you would hardly know we are in the midst of the worst drought since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. Most selfish, solipsistic Americans think water shortages only occur in third world distant lands; their faucet will always flow water on command. Maybe because on the surface, our LA’s landscapes look as lush and healthy as Kentucky. Fountains continue to shoot water in great arcs, our cars are freshly washed. This “drought-proofing” of SoCal is giving us a false sense of security. It is exceedingly difficult to convey the urgency of the situation when most everything around us is green.
FACT: we have only enough water in storage to get through the next 12 to 18 months, and that’s it.
Californians has historically made efforts at water conservation with our mandatory low-flow shower heads and toilets (we got them FREE), front loading washers, no lawns, etc. During the horrendous drought in the early 1990′s, you’d get scolded for leaving the water running when brushing your teeth, and homeowners would roll with it by replacing their lawns with sand dunes, cacti, and decorative cow skulls.
Today, the state’s driest year on record, and no rain in sight, the Dept. of Agriculture declaring a Natural Disaster for 27 California Counties, Gov. Moonbeams having begging us to take whatever steps we can to cut down on our water use and for us to take a moment to think about how we are all connected to each other in a time of water crisis, as well as to the plants and animals that live here….and our usage is going up.
Now you all know I’m not a religious person, but it’s times like this when I wish there was a God, maybe even THE God that this Bryan Fischer tool believes to be in existence. I wish that when Bryan Fischer died (a horrible, painful, exploding pus-filled fiery rash-covered death), he would meet that God, and that God would punch him in his stupid face before dooming him to an eternity of being skinned alive while splintered branches are shoved up his ass.
I thought in my darkest imaginings, when I heard about the dead AIDS researchers, that some wing-nut(s) would say something like it’s “God’s judgement blah blah blah” the gayz, yadayadayada”, but then I though, “naw, who would be such a fuckhead to do something so depraved?”
Technically speaking, Bryan Fischer and the AIDS researchers who died on that plane are all humans. But what rotten, shriveled, mildewed pulp of acidic fruit does this Fischer guy have in place of a soul? Consider the difference in the world made by those AIDS researchers and Bryan Fischer. Just think about how much the fight against AIDS just lost, relative to the gnarled broken thumb who lived to tweet about it. Bryan Fischer – your continued existence while useful people die is all the proof I need that there isn’t anything like a decent god in this universe.
295 people died on the Malaysian Airlines flight yesterday. A good number of them were on their way to Australia for an AIDS research conference. Some were activists; many were doctors and scientists. And many people aboard the plane were going to vacation in Bali, or Kuala Lumpur and had nothing to do with AIDS or the gayz at all. Yet, every single one of them was a better human being than Bryan Fischer. Every single one of them is still a better human being than Bryan Fischer. Every single one of them is also still contributing more to the betterment of humanity than Bryan Fischer.
So, Lord, I’d like to order a shipment of hellfire and brimstone to be delivered to 107 Park Gate Drive, Tupelo, Mississippi. And if you could put a rush on that, I’d really appreciate it. Or you could just nuke that shit from orbit, which would also work just fine.
Bryan Fischer exists, for now, so that the rest of us don’t forget what major assholes fundamentalist scolds can be. This is God’s Plan. But someday, AIDS will be extinct. So will the Bryan Fischers of the world. All like him, they will be extinct, like the Dodo or the Stellar Sea Cow. This is also God’s plan.
Not even all the AIDS researchers combined can make up for the damage Fundie Neanderthals like Fischer have done in the world. So, while he’s thinking “Good” about those AIDS researchers dying. it’ll be nothing compared to how much better I’ll feel the world will be when his God packs him off to his fiery eternal damnation.
As Mark Twain said, “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter”
from paul krugman’s blog in today’s NYTimes
Chris Christie says that Obamacare is “a failure on a number of levels”. Which levels, exactly?
I mean, first-year enrollment is above projections. The number of Americans without insurance has dropped sharply. Costs appear to be lower than expected, and more broadly cost control on health seems to be doing remarkably well:
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To some extent I suspect that Christie is living in the bubble; I keep remembering how Rand Paul was shocked and disbelieving at the proposition that government employment had fallen under Obama, even though all it takes to know that is a quick look at public data.
But it’s not just misinformation; the reality doesn’t matter for Christie, or Republicans in general. Just as tax cuts can never fail, programs that help the unlucky can never succeed.
My thoughts: Christie Christie is not “living in the bubble” — he is employing Cheneyspeak, in which language is not used for communicating facts. Its purpose is to persuade others to join your side. It does not matter what you say, as long as someone can be persuaded by it. In other words, he’s LYING. Pure and simple. Don’t give these guys any benefit of the doubt that they don’t know what’s happening. They can’t admit it and retain any hope of surviving the Republican base’s jungle of ideologically driven hatred for all things Obama; but that doesn’t excuse them for their cowardice in refusing to be open and honest about what they actually do know full well.
So Chris Christie says that Obamacare is “a failure on a number of levels”. Which levels, exactly? I think the answer must be: Federal, state, and local elections for Republican candidates.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1970′s/early 80′s, my siblings and I were not allowed to have any toy related guns, no toy guns including water pistols. In fact, we were not allowed to make that gun sign with your hand, you know, when you are pantomiming shooting yourself in the head? One summer, gun deprived and away at summer camp, I became totally gun crazy and spent the entire month at the target range. When I got home I hid all my marksmanship certificates under my bed.
Why are we not supposed to be afraid of guns again? Why are we not supposed to be afraid of people lugging around objects which have no other purpose than to kill or maim, objects that you don’t even have to use maliciously to cause great injury or death?
“In fact, a citizen with a gun makes you more safe even than a police officer with a gun.”
Unless said citizen is:
(a) crazy person,
(b) criminal, and/or
(c) careless idiot.
And sometimes you can’t tell! Sometimes you can’t tell just by looking at him (if he walks into Burger King with an AK-47 slung over his back, please err on the side of caution).
I always thought at least PART of the idea of Open Carry was to scare the hell out of the “Bad Guys”. The fact that it also scares the hell out of everybody else is what’s called “collateral damage.”
My favorite part of the Declaration of Independence is the middle part, the airing of grievances so to speak. It’s basically a laundry list of all the shitty tricks the GOP and teaparty have used to keep the federal government from getting anything done since Raygun. I have always loved that the founders were basically pissed because the Brits wouldn’t govern.
It. is. epic.
the preamble is just icing.
Dripping as it is may be with self-contradiction, it’s hard not to feel one’s heart leap up when reading old Tom’s Declaration:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God* entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
* But wait a minute…”Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”? What kind of Deist (= atheist) bullshit is that?