Newt Gingrich 2012 – The “Swingrich” Campaign
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 16, 2011 by admin in Politics
Newt Gingrich’s people told him he could capture the swing vote. He thought they said “swinger” vote. A campaign was born.
I can’t even begin to express how excited I am about the possibility of Newt Gingrich running for president in 2012. This is an even more exciting possibility than the Palyn/Quail ticket we’ve been petitioning for. See? I’m so excited I’m using prepositional endings! Unless you’ve been living under a rock like some kind of (ahem) newt or something, you’ve probably heard about Mr. Gingrich’s exploratory website* for the 2012 election. You know, the one that used the stock photo from an old Ted Kennedy site, instantly spawning a new internet meme based on putting the “awkward prom couple” photo in front of stock photos. If you’re wondering why Newt and Callista – the brittle porcelain princess by his side – look so awkward, it’s probably in part due to the fact that they’re worried about falling off the box they’re standing on. But let’s not be so superficial here. It’s more likely that they’re worried about falling from the massive pile of hypocrisy that their relationship is built upon. You may remember that Newt was leading the morality brigade that tried to destroy the Clinton presidency with a multimillion dollar impeachment travesty that was based on accusing Clinton of two things that are fundamental to political life: cheating on your wife, and lying about it. What never got much press was the fact that Gingrich himself was cheating on his wife while leading the charge. In fact, of the three wives he’s had, the only one he hasn’t been caught cheating on is the current one, who is herself the fling that ended his last marriage. In a compelling display of the Jungian Shadow at work, Newt explains in this interview on the Christian Broadcasting Newtwork that “there’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” Note that unlike Richard Nixon or Bob Dole, who would at least use their own names to put themselves in the second person, Gingrich absolves himself of all responsibility for his actions with the phrase “things happened in my life“. Which is generally how he discusses the topic. Add to this hypocrisy and exemption of self from moral repercussion the fact that the guy is a compulsive liar who fabricates fiction faster than Steven King, and you have what should be considered a consummate politician, i.e.: a two timing, hypocritical liar. If Gingrich and Palin are even remote contenders in the 2012 primaries, stock up on the popcorn. This should be more entertaining than watching Fox News. Oh. Wait. It practically will be Fox News.
10 Essential Items To Survive The Coming Apocalypse
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on March 15, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
With the end of days clearly upon us, we thought it was time to finally assemble that survival kit. And since we’re afraid to leave the house, we thought we’d see if we could order it all on Amazon
  Amazon doesn’t sell REAL machine guns, but you can at least ANNOY THE HELL out of enemy invaders with this realistic BB gun replica . |
These are strange and troubling times. Global economic collapse, which was only prevented (or just delayed) by the nationalization of banks and industry. Border skirmishes in Korea. Continued war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Riots and revolution in the Mideast, massive civilian protests in Wisconsin. Earthquakes in Haiti, New Zealand, and Japan, where tsunamis and nuclear reactor meltdowns were added for extra apocalyptic horror. And in the most telling sign of all, America elects a black man as president. Who could ignore these obvious signs of the coming Armageddon? Well, not us; we started talking about preparations for the econopocalypse back in 2008 and have revisited the theme regularly since then. But with the official end of the world less than 650 days away, we thought maybe it’s time to take a more serious look at finally assembling those essential tools for surviving the apocalypse. We’re so frightened by recent events ourselves that we’re afraid to leave the office, so we decided to see if a person could secure all the supplies they need on Amazon. Aside from automatic weapons, water tanker, and razor wire, we think we did pretty well. See below.
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Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 14, 2011 by admin in Popular Media
If you have three hours to kill and love German electronic music, this Kraut Rock doc will knock your socks off. And if you just don’t have the attention span, you can always pick up Kraftwerk’s new “Kling Klang Machine” iPhone app.
  If you don’t have the attention span for the documentary, maybe you should just get the unrelated Kling Klang iPhone app. |
If by chance you spent any time in a nightclub in the last thirty years, there’s a fairly good chance that you owe what your feet were doing either directly or indirectly to the band Kraftwerk. From their early experimental work that led to the more commercial Autobahn
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Is Nuclear Power Really Such A Good Idea?
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on March 13, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Sure. Nuclear fission is all fine and dandy until somebody grows a third eye and pokes it out.
 The three-eyed fish of the Simpsons don’t seem as funny as they once did. |
The nuclear reactor catastrophe that is adding to all the other terrible tragedies in the wake of Japan’s quake and tsunami this week serves to highlight a question that hasn’t been asked much for a while: does nuclear power make sense at all? If you want a quick refresher on the topic, this Discovery “10 Pros and Cons” list seems even-handed and apolitical in its assessment. While some of the virtues of nuclear power are remarkable – i.e., the low cost and clean process during actual energy production – I’ve personally never thought they outweighed the impact of mining the necessary materials, the short term risk, or the necessity to store thousands of tons of radioactive waste annually for literally tens of thousands of years. The process only has a low environmental impact while producing the energy, and really only in comparison to the horrific waste and destruction wrought by fossil fuels. Although legislation has put on hold the use of the Yucca Mountains as America’s dumping grounds for radioactive waste, there has been no commitment to stop creating the stuff, so I don’t know what we call that. Progress? Poor planning? In any case the event in Japan will of course politicize the topic again; Joe Lieberman, for instance, didn’t miss a beat to do some bandstanding on Face The Nation, and I have to admit I experienced a little queasiness when today’s headlines commonly said things like Japan radiation unlikely to reach US , and pointed out that the only fallout here in the states would be legislative. The irony of a US-made reactor failing in Japan of all places is of course both a sad and painful irony. For insight into what actually is happening in the Japanese reactors, see this Scientific American piece. If there has been any positive news, it is that the reactor problems in Japan so far are not full meltdowns, and even if they were, the results would be nothing like the Chernobyl disaster in the eighties. By the way, if you’ve never seen the Kid of Speed website created by Elena Filatova back in 2004, you should. It captures the weird vibe of an area hundreds of miles wide that humans won’t occupy safely for decades, thanks to a single nuclear accident. And although a tremendous increase in the wildlife population around Chernobyl has occurred, mutations are in fact common. Maybe the three-eyed fish of the Simpsons cartoons aren’t so funny after all.
Wikileaks, The People
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 12, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
In an era of civil unrest driven by injustice and anonymous activism, you may already be a part of the revolution and just not realize it.
 This image makes more sense when you see the whole thing. |
I find it interesting that the media forces behind the political movement in America that fancies itself to be somehow modeled after the protests of the Boston Tea Party are amongst the loudest voices proclaiming that the teachers, fireman, police officers and others who are protesting to protect the livelihood of the working class in Wisconsin are “rabid mobs of criminals and thugs”. I also find it interesting that in spite of plans for a “day of rage”, the Saudi Arabian monarchy managed to prove once again that the best way to oppress people is to tell them that God wants it that way. And in efforts to squelch information elsewhere, it’s likely that the appeal by the lawyers of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange will fail, and he will be extradited to Sweden, and later be snagged by the US government, in keeping with the Swedish government’s previous complicity in US-organized rendition and torture. One minor problem the US government may face is where to torture people like Assange now; the Egyptian protesters seem to have breached their favorite destination for torture. Not to worry though, they can just stick him naked in a cell with Bradley Manning if they have to, right? But these are interesting times, and I don’t think that these conventional methods are going to stop the slowly growing sense of injustice that’s spreading around the world. It’s becoming difficult to even keep track of where exactly the unrest is; this CNN summary covers much of the Mideast, but almost no media sources are talking about what’s happening in Portugal for instance. And aside from the public protests, there’s another interesting movement afoot. One that will be very difficult to target as an “enemy”, because it has no body, no face, no singular agenda, and no headquarters. I’m not only talking about hacktivists like Wikileaks and Anonymous. I’m talking about people like me, and maybe you. People who have enough common sense to realize that in almost every country in the world, the concern for collective well-being is no longer about which political party is in office, but which corporations own them. Hacktivists will obviously play a role for a while, but in an environment of protests, whistleblowing, and crackdowns against them, it will be hard to keep the facts straight. One recent example of this was when, in an hilarious variation on the ancient adage “if you meet the buddha on the road, kill him“, the American media was hoodwinked in a huge way about the nature of the amorphous internet group Anonymous. MSNBC recently interviewed a fellow who claims to be a “senior strategist and propagandist” for Anonymous, and even tech blogs like this one took the bait and ran with it. People seem to just eat this stuff up; one of the few sources you’ll find that questions the likely fallacy of this fellow’s claims is TheOtherMcCain.com. It doesn’t take a genius to piece together that a group of extremely intelligent anarchistic programmers probably doesn’t send their chain-smoking general to lay out their agenda on MSNBC. Another example is a recent Gawker piece that asks What Does Anonymous Have on Bank of America?, and then goes on to basically say “nothing”. But that you should watch for that nothing this coming Monday. Careful Gawker, remember what happened last time you got Anonymous pissed off. But I personally expect to see more unrest, and to see it fueled by the kind of leaks that can only happen via the internet. Regardless of whether you approve of the specific actions of groups like Anonymous or Wikileaks, or individuals like Bradley Manning, they’re going to affect you. It may be impossible to intentionally engineer a bankrun, but the seed gets planted in the mind, and when the dirt comes out on a politician like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, we’ll see more events like the bankrun by Wisconsin fireman against M&I. Anonymous may be more on the mark than we think with the slogan “none of us is as cruel as all of us”. Read the rest of this entry »