http://youtu.be/jYeDRKB1RXw
(fyi Ms. Five Waffle Iron McButtcrack: there’s a blue light special over in “belts”)
for shame.
I may be snarky, but I am not a physical stereotyper. Narrow minded, critical, quick to shove people into boxes based on their attitudes and beliefs, yes. But not critical of people’s appearance. Trust me, I fit in to more than a few stereotypical boxes. I really think the way Republicans think is: fat = poor and black, so the fatter and poorer black people can get, the sooner they can die and leave all the $$ for the thinly rich. But then these tea party events started to be covered by the media and the photos exposed the vast majority of the tea partiers non-ironically decrying health care from the coziness of their scooters, were, well, chubby. Sure there were also pinched, methy, racist trash with compromised dentition, and yes, parody inflates negative characteristics. But, for the most part, we saw the new face of the Republican Party to be standard white, slightly overweight to morbidly obese, 60+ disabled, blue jean wearing, poorly informed, reactionary, patriotic, gun-loving, flag-waving, myopic racists sitting down because they can’t stand up for themselves for too long. You know, this:
Suddenly it’s cool to be fat – if you’re white – and Jeebus help anyone who tries to tell you what to put in your own sacred mouth. If you are poor, black or brown and fat, it is a different story entirely. This is evidenced by the peculiar conservative backlash to the First Lady’s benign “Let’s Move!” campaign. God forbid we have another confected “crisis”, as with gambling, smoking and drinking and taking drugs, where the middle class declares war on the underclass! A gaggle of fat cat conservatoids have attacked Michelle’s efforts as – there they go again – another Obama Family assault on the personal freedoms and liberties to kill ourselves with Double-Downs, Hot Pockets and Mayonnaise (all the tea bagger food groups). “Let’s Move!” mostly calls for labeling stuff and reforming school lunch programs, OR, according to baggers, “Nanny State Big Government Overreach”, government “run amok” (Sarah Palin), or an “Obama government obesity task force” (Sean Hannity). Hannity rhetorically editorialized: [click to continue…]
Watching the “news” coverage of Black Friday macing and stampeding gave me an idea for a TV show. A reality/game show. Competing, desperate redneck families have to race through a corn maze. The teams of tense, fringe hillbillies would leave booby traps for each other, and fight each other with nonlethal weapons, all to be the first out of the maze and to the grand prize: a rusted out pickup truck rigged with CB radios and meth, the bed full of Redman, hobo beans, nacho cheese, and cheap, off-brand electronics. The show will be called “Black Friday”. It could be mc’ed by that crazy, redneck quran-burning pastor. This show would go over big with the hungry, fear junkie demographic. I would totally watch that shit. And compete, also.
Some schedule their lives around The Office or Diners, Dumps and Drive-In’s. I like the GOP debates. And after a painful a 3 week hiatus, they’ve returned in full tilt. “Holy crap there’s a debate on” I’ll routinely shout, fumbling to find the feed and log into Twitter to see if I had “missed anything”. Part Survivor, part Real Housewives of the Deep South, the GOPDs are splashy affairs with 3 wall sets, in front of live studio audiences, brassy intro music and a stage that looks like a flag vomited all over the Ape Hall of Justice. The simplistic bromides, political point-scoring and half-assed non-solutions are peppered with gold; Perry and Romney fighting about lawncare; “Let’s see. I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops“; Bachmann being asked if she’d submit to her husband; Ron Paul telling us all to mind our own business. Folks, as painful as this sometimes is, this is a moment of monumental historical significance. America has never been this dumb and will never be this dumb again. [click to continue…]
Lt. John Pike, the brave mustachioed U.C. Davis campus police officer who famously pepper-sprayed passive student protesters, is popping up in some of the world’s most famous paintings as part of an Internet meme intended to shame him for his actions.
Archibald Willard’s “The Spirit of ‘76” has a new addition.
Pepper Spraying Cop via Tumblr
Now they can wear their costumes for realz! In a rare case of schadenfreude, the evil Steven J Baum firm – who threw that funtastic Halloween party mocking down-on-their-luck homeowners – was dropped by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s lists of law firms eligible to handle foreclosures!
From the Buffalo News:
In an abrupt turn of events, Steven J. Baum is shutting down his foreclosure law firm and laying off at least 90 full- and part-time employees in Amherst and Long Island just days after losing the bulk of his business when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stopped giving the firm new work. The closing could also affect 600 employees at Amherst-based Pillar Processing, a neighboring firm that handles much of the paperwork from the Baum office.
Steven J. Baum PC said Monday it had filed a WARN notice with the state Labor Department and local authorities, notifying them of impending “mass layoffs which [are] occurring at the law firm.” The firm said it notified its employees as well.
The notifications are required under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law. The law firm employs about 67 at its main office at 220 Northpointe Parkway and another 22 on Long Island at a secondary office.
“We will fulfill all of our obligations under WARN and during this process we will also fulfill our remaining work on behalf of our clients,” Baum said. “Disrupting the livelihoods of so many dedicated and hardworking people is extremely painful*, but the loss of so much business left us no choice but to file these notices.”
But what may have hastened the firm’s demise were photos that recently emerged into the national spotlight from the firm’s Halloween party last year, at which Baum employees dressed up as foreclosure victims and attorneys, mocking and ridiculing them. Baum says he has apologized, but the damage was done. In the wake of those photos and national stories, politicians, consumer advocates, and even other attorneys denounced him for a lack of sensitivity, and the mortgage industry quickly began to distance itself.
Yes, it IS very sad that all these folks are losing their jobs… I guess. Hopefully, they hated their jobs anyway. But really, anybody who mocks the innocent victims of the financial debacle by partying the night away dressed up as hobos, deserve a helluva lot worse than having to deposit their bi-weekly unemployment checks. Steven Baum’s crocodile tears are laughable in the face of his firm’s flouting the court rules and profiteering on the misery of borrowers whose rights were trampled in the rush to foreclose. He is nothing more than a vulture that picked over the financial carcasses of people who have already been destroyed by the nihilistic actions of the Wall Street banksters.
Last week, the great and satanic Steven J. Baum himself sent Joe Nocera, the Times columnist who first published the pictures, an alarmingly pathetic email accusing Nocera of destroying his firm: “There is blood on your hands for this one, Joe… I will never, ever forgive you for this.”
If I were the columnist covering this story, this email would be my Red Badge of Courage, that would totally make my day.
*Really? I thought that was your business model.
I had a friend once whose father was a bigot, who – although never having to come into contact with homosexuals – aggressively abhorred the gays. When I met him for the first time, I realized why. He was gay. At least he seemed as such. Flaming, even. He was macho, Grecian haired, a closet case hiding behind his so-called “religion”, you know, evangelicalism (to be fair, he also hated illegal immigrants, although a successful produce tycoon in California, whose children were not the ones out there pickin’ his tomaters*). Anyway, NO one who hates gays and spend so much time of his/her brief life on earth hating gays is not gay him/her self. Some day it will scientifically proven as such.
How many days until Rick Santorum is outed in some horrific/delightful scandal involving a dude, meth, a dude and meth, or worse? If I can figure out how to turn on the comments on this blog,please give me your best guess.
*Hypocrisy, the foundation of the evangelical.
My friend Marmel texted me this morning that Scott Walker is “not just anti-union, he’s a fundamentalist TOOL! The more you know”. Sure ’nuff, Evangelicals Choose Walker! The good Governor – son of a Baptist preacher – has pontificated about his “walk to Christ,” and his belief in the need to “trust and obey” the Lord. I knew there was something behind this guy’s simpering, expressionless visage, his stoic, relentless determinism, that was more than just filthy Koch dollars. Now I know it’s just Jeebus! Walkers is the same brand of evangelical “spirituality” that shaped George W’s dry-drunkedness – the one that led him to wage war and “stay the course” in Afghanistan and Iraq for ten fucking years. Obeying Christ’s plan is the only option, and once you know his plan, you stay the course. Doubt or introspection opens the door to failure. It was the same quality that made W so insufferable, with his intractable bullshit and his narrow eyes. In this cracked theological universe, stubbornness is a virtue. You must be unwavering, anything else, any attempts at compromise are the Devil’s work. Anything that helps God’s plan along is ethically justifiable. It makes sense, then, that while the Roman Catholic Church, and mainline pastors, including Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and American Baptists have written letters supporting collective bargaining, and given sermons encouraging public employees in their resistance to the governor’s plan to break their unions, Walker has remained slack jawed and unmoved. His doughy skull hangs there, his eyes fixed and on the prize. [click to continue…]
At the 2011 East Los Angeles Veteran’ Day parade, this guy (think Manny from Modern Family), in a “Freakin’ Sweet!” shirt, was the self-appointed Master of Ceremonies, introducing each parade participant with rousing toots from his horn, from the comfort his curbside lounge chair.
