Month: October 2009

FU Penguin is Baby Bat, you are destroying my ability to successfully categorize safe animals and animals that want me to drop whatever I am doing and make sure they are comfortable and happy.

You are supposed to be trying to suck my blood or finding your way out of a cave using radio waves or Google maps or whatever. Instead you are like a big-eyed baby deer crossed with a webbed monkey sucking on a pacifier. You're really little, too, aren't you? There's nothing in this picture that I can compare you to, but I get the sense you're something disgusting like a pound and a half. I bet you would fit in my hand and then look up at me and I wouldn't even be able to check to make sure you aren't going to turn into a vampire.

Fucking bats.

And while we're at it, F U dolphin.

A reader writes:

A good showing in 2010 may lead the Republican party to espouse radical right ideas that will lead to a debacle worse 2012 than Goldwater's in 64. Hoffman doesn't even live in the district. He had no ideas on local issues when interviewed by the local newspaper. His consort, Dickie Armey, called the newspaper's questions "parochial."

I guess Hoffman is supposed to represent Sarah Palin and Dickie Armey and not the constituents of his House district. We'll see how far this tactic takes the Republicans in 2012.

Eden, North Carolina, 12.49 pm

In an unprecedented move, the University of Akron is requiring that new employees should be willing to give their DNA to administrators. One adjunct faculty member has already quit over the issue. Scott Jaschik reports:

Laura Martinez Massie, spokeswoman for Akron, said that the university would not comment on the resignation of [Matt] Williams. She also said that to date, the university has not collected DNA and has no plans to do so, but is "merely reserving the right to do so."

Declan McCullagh digs deeper:

It's true that the University of Akron's DNA-testing policy isn't designed to weed out potential employees with, say, a gene linked to breast or prostate cancer that could make them more expensive to insure — which is what [the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act's] drafters were most concerned about. Instead, the school's ultimate purpose is the more conventional one of a criminal background check.

That doesn't matter, says Jeremy Gruber, president of the Council for Responsive Genetics in New York City. "GINA specifically prohibits employers from requesting or requiring genetic information," Gruber says. […] Gruber believes that, in theory, there may be a way for the Akron administration to implement its policy in a way that complies with GINA: "If the university had sufficient handling safeguards to demonstrate that they were collecting biological samples and sending the entire sample on to the federal government for testing without taking any steps to analyze the sample they might not be in violation of GINA." But, he adds, if the FBI relies on fingerprints for background checks, why is a DNA sample necessary?

Morgan Meis defends the most banal of conversation topics:

The weather is superficiality at its essence. Except that the weather matters. It is the fundamental tool by which nature adds flavor, color, mood to the variety of our daily experience. Nature is mechanistic in its functioning, tied to the laws of physics that give it rules. But it speaks to us in feelings. The light of a day is "like this." The shadows of winter make the world one way: brittle maybe, precise. The angle of the sun makes the world of summer another way entirely: smeared across the afternoon, vibrating.

That's why so many Romantic artists like the weather. They know that the weather does not make the world, but it does make the world "what it's like." So, the Romantics enjoy writing about the weather, and they enjoy painting the weather. They are cloud watchers and rain walkers. They wait for the light to be just so.

The gay news magazine – one of the oldest titles out there -  will now become a 32-page insert in Out.

Ayers and Wright have not visited the White House – just people with the same names. Drudge wasn't the only one busted: Goldfarb, Morrissey, and Mary Katherine Hamm were
They create their own reality, remember?

What's next? Ambers:

Where do the rest of her votes go? CW says that most go to Hoffman, but I'm with Jonathan Martin: I think half go to Democrat Bill Owens or they stay home. GOP registration exceeds Democratic registration by nearly 50,000. This is a Republican district that is likely to remain Republican, — only significantly more conservative than it's been.

Within the GOP whatever nerve anyone had to resist the imprimatur of Erickson, Malkin, RS McCain et al is surely gone now. If a moderate cannot survive even in up-state New York, it's over.

Scozzafava’s statement, as she attempted to remain a Republican candidate, while actually supporting abortion rights and marriage equality:

In recent days, polls have indicated that my chances of winning this election are not as strong as we would like them to be. The reality that I’ve come to accept is that in today’s political arena, you must be able to back up your message with money—and as I’ve been outspent on both sides, I’ve been unable to effectively address many of the charges that have been made about my record. But as I’ve said from the start of this campaign, this election is not about me, it’s about the people of this District. And, as always, today I will do what I believe serves their interests best. It is increasingly clear that pressure is mounting on many of my supporters to shift their support. Consequently, I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit to do so.

I am and have always been a proud Republican. It is my hope that with my actions today, my Party will emerge stronger and our District and our nation can take an important step towards restoring the enduring strength and economic prosperity that has defined us for generations. On Election Day my name will appear on the ballot, but victory is unlikely. To those who support me – and to those who choose not to – I offer my sincerest thanks.

No one knows what might happen now. For the insurgents, it means a scalp they will surely use to purge the GOP of any further dissidence. But the insurgents were also backed by the establishment, including Tim Pawlenty, who’s supposed to be the reasonable center.

What we’re seeing, I suspect, is an almost classic example of a political party becoming more ideological after its defeat at the polls. in order for that ideology to win, they will also have to portray the Obama administration as so far to the left that voters have no choice but to back the Poujadists waiting in the wings. And that, of course, is what they’re doing. There is a method to the Ailes-Drudge-Cheney-Rove denialism. They create reality, remember?

From the mindset of an ideologically purist base – where a moderate Republican in New York state is a “radical leftist” – this makes sense. But for all those outside the 20 percent self-identified Republican base, it looks like a mix of a purge and a clusterfuck. If Hoffman wins, and is then embraced by the GOP establishment, you have a recipe for a real nutroots take-over. This blood in the water will bring on more and more and deadlier and deadlier sharks.