Amber Sparks
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A tax on breathing! IRS agents multiplying like rabbits! It’s Obam-a-Tax-a-Geddon!
April 14, 2010
No, for realz, people. Obama is going to tax the shit out of your wheelchair. And your oxygen tanks. And…SNEEZING! That’s right. You’ll have to pay a tax EVERY TIME YOU SNEEZE. And…
Oh, just watch the video. Which is clearly aimed at old people. It is funny (but, sadly, not on purpose) and like a movie trailer. (Thank you, Wonkette.)
Sarah Palin’s New (Slightly Sinister) Reality Show
March 29, 2010
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably heard that Sarah Palin has just scored a multi-million dollar deal for a reality show about Alaska on TLC.
Maud Newton suspects a sinister motive underlies the entire thing. And she thinks she knows exactly where Sister Sarah is coming from:
“Planet Earth,” like many of Palin’s favorite phrases, has one innocuous set of associations for the population at large, and also an inflammatory shadow resonance for her base. While most of us naturally think of the popular documentary series, the touchstone for holy-rollers is Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth, an incendiary fundamentalist text published in 1970 that forecast the imminent dawn of the End Times.
Read the whole thing here. It’s fascinating. And slightly terrifying.
Also, I’m rather irked at TLC lately, what with their fourteen zillion shows about giant families with too many kids, half of them taking up way more than their allotted space and taxpayer money for weirdo religious reasons, and no doubt voting conservative despite the fact that they use so many public services. Add Sarah Palin’s showcase to that and I’m this close to swearing off of What Not to Wear, the only decent show left on there. Hear that, TLC?
C-SPAN Health Care Summit Coverage Throwdown
February 26, 2010 — 3 Comments
I’m sick today. Terrible sinus infection. Luckily, I have health care. Unluckily, 45,000 Americans don’t and this is what the debate around the issue is starting to sound like. Enjoy and happy weekend!
(h/t DougJ at Balloon Juice)
It’s Getting Medieval Up in Here
February 23, 2010
Reason number 351 for never moving to Utah: I am woman of childbearing age. And, via Balloon Juice, Utah has just passed a bill more or less criminalizing miscarriages.
Neat, huh? 
Tea Partiers and Rubio and CPAC, oh, my.
February 18, 2010
Every year entitled white frat boys in bad suits swarm my neighborhood during CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee’s yearly event. And every year, when it’s over, I silently congratulate myself for the remarkable restraint I’ve shown in not beating to death a single one of them, even when they stand in giant groups DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE METRO ESCALATOR DURING RUSH HOUR COMPLAINING ABOUT PAYING TAXES WHILE RIDING A SYSTEM THAT THEIR TAXES (BARELY KIND OF) PAY FOR.
But this year might be different. The tea partiers are coming to CPAC. And this guy is coming to CPAC, busting fat rhymes like these:
“Politicians need the truth, it will set you free, and I hope you paid attention to the march on D.C. …Liberalism is like a cancerous tumor, just look at Harry Reid, Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.”
I don’t know if this means I’ll be even more irritated, or more entertained. Hopefully the latter.
Goddamnit, people are stupid.
February 16, 2010
A group of anonymous people chipped in to put this up.
Did you know? You actually CAN’T impeach a president who’s committed no impeachable offenses (and who by the way was elected by a sizable majority) just because you disagree with his policies. Ohmygod I know, it’s like, so unfair.
Via Balloon Juice.
“Who the hell does Frank Luntz think he is?”
February 1, 2010
Nice takedown (by Michelle Cottle of TNR) of the self-important pollster’s new book.
Cottle on Luntz:
But what WARWR is really offering…really… is “Dr. Frank I. Luntz’s prescription for “What Americans really need right now.” This, in fact, is the theme and the title of the book’s conclusion—a section so heavy-handed, patronizing, and clichéd that it led me to change my overriding question about WARWR from the benign if bemused, “Who was Luntz writing for?” to the more pointed, “Who the hell does Luntz think he is?” The short answer is that Luntz is a pollster, and, as such, is burdened by the belief that he is privy to the innermost secrets of the American psyche.
See also: Mark Penn.
Sometimes I really hate DC.
January 13, 2010
This is one of those times. I mean, look at this:
Haiti is in the midst of a devastating crisis, with reportedly hundreds of thousands dead or insured, and all our intrepid Beltway bunch can talk about is how some Coakley staffer may or may not have pushed some asshat from The Weekly Sub-Standard into a railing?
It makes me sad. I have just donated more to the Red Cross, on behalf of all the bloggers and gossip-mongers too busy to bother in my city.
Hitchens on Vidal
January 12, 2010 — 3 Comments
While Christopher Hitchens has engineered the decline of his own reputation among the best and brightest minds, at least he hasn’t completely lost his own mind quite like Gore Vidal has. And since he was one Vidal’s annointed heir, or something similarly silly and pompous, he’s probably best qualified to write about Vidal’s extra-chunky nuttiness in this entertaining and bitchy little piece in Vanity Fair.
(Also, does anyone remember this story in The Onion? It’s been almost seven years and I still haven’t laughed harder at maybe anything in The Onion since. Damn.)
It is really too bad about Vidal. Because before he went nuts, he wrote some very good books and said some zesty things–including remarking once that the three most dispiriting words in the English language were “Joyce Carol Oates,” which I’d never heard before I read the Hitchens’ piece. Delicious.
But now Vidal seems bitter and hateful, a parody of his former self and without much cause or context. Here’s what he said recently about the 13-years-old-at-the-time rape victim of Roman Polanksi:
Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?
Not charming. Not witty. Just weird and icky and nasty and sad. Poor Gore.
Top Ten Awesomely Stupid Michael Steele Quotes
January 8, 2010
My theory about Michael Steele is this: he’s actual one of the greatest actors ever, and this is his best performance art to date. A long, amazing piece of performance art that will be unveiled as the most brilliant bit of acting in our lifetime when he finally throws off the RNC cap and says “just kidding, everyone.”
This list is pretty good, except that they’re missing my favorite quote: when Michael Steele sent some “slum love” to Bobby Jindhal. That was inspired. See? Nobody could say that unless they were performing. Wait and see, people.
