Friday, February 03, 2012

Tee-hee:

My laptop is experiencing hot flashes and wheezing piteously, which means I’ll have to hitch up the wagon for a trip into town to see if I can find a Super Bowl sale this weekend. Any laptop recommendations?

[H/T: Buzzfeed]

Posted by Betty Cracker on 02/03/12 at 08:51 AM
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Friday, January 27, 2012

Last night’s debate saw President-in-Waiting Gingrich express his vision for a privatized 51st US state—the Moon.

But how will the current inhabitants react?

(More Clangers here if you want to gen up on your future overlords)

Posted by YAFB on 01/27/12 at 01:23 PM
Comments (2) • Permalink

Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Fabulous Four go at it again, and this time there’ll be none of that “silent room” nonsense that revealed that Newt likes a screamer.

CNN live stream here.

Incomparable Guardian live blog here.

Posted by YAFB on 01/26/12 at 08:05 PM
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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Did the earth move for you last night? To read the pundits this morning, when our bleary eyes crested the pillow we’d been biting through the dark hours before dawn, a new era greeted them, the like of which has never before been witnessed.

The base is revolting because they swept the GOP back into relevance in Washington just under two years ago and they have been thanked with contempt ever since.
(Asshole Assholeson)

The unstoppable force that is Newt Gingrich and the immovable object that is Mitt Romney are headed for a collision in Florida.
(Politico)

A more sober observer, the Atlantic’s Robert Wright, asks:

How did Newt do it? How did a candidate who seemed near death only a week ago rise up to win in South Carolina? He did it the way he always does it: By playing the hate card.

read the whole post »

Posted by YAFB on 01/22/12 at 11:58 AM
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Friday, January 20, 2012

When you set yourself up as a self-described “fact checker,” you’d better have your ducks in a row. We here at Rumproast, among a number of others, have had cause to point and laugh at Glenn “Gepetto” Kessler’s “fact checking” efforts at the Washington Post before now.

A notable example was when Kessler judged President Obama’s claim that “We said working folks deserved a break, so within one month of me taking office, we signed into law the biggest middle-class tax cut in history, putting more money into your pockets” false by the simple expedient of asking whoever was hanging around the WaPo offices that day what they thought “biggest” meant:

We took an informal survey in our office and asked people what they thought the president’s statement meant. Everyone agreed he was claiming the biggest tax cut in terms of dollars.

After a bunch of fancy-dancy semantic shuffling, Kessler dealt from the bottom of the deck:

“The point the president was making [is] that is there is not a tax cut that has been enjoyed by such a broad section of the population,” an administration official said, pointing to a report that said that 95 percent of working families received some kind of tax cut under the Making Work Pay provision in his stimulus bill. ...

In other words, this isn’t about the size of the tax cut, but about the fact that every working family, except those making more than $190,000, received as much as $800 in tax cuts.

That strikes us as very odd way to claim “the biggest,” but maybe that’s because Obama can’t make that claim. We ran the numbers every which way, but the fairest over time is to look at the tax cut as a percentage of national income (Gross Domestic Product minus depreciation.)

Ding! Goalposts successfully moved. Four Pinnochios.

read the whole post »

Posted by YAFB on 01/20/12 at 07:08 AM
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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Not so fast there, Gov. Romney:

Mitt Romney stripped of Iowa win after recount

The Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney has suffered a setback when the party stripped him of his victory in Iowa after a final tally of votes.

His rival, the socially conservative former senator Rick Santorum, emerged with the most votes, a majority of 34.

The party was scheduled to make an official announcement but the Des Moines Register reported its findings hours earlier.

Yup, apparently figuring that the GOP couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery, the Des Moines Register preempted the party by looking into the results and making its own announcement:

Results from eight precincts are missing — any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney — and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday.

GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts, although not all the changes affected the two leaders. Changes in one precinct alone shifted the vote by 50 — a margin greater than the certified tally.

The certified numbers: 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney. The turnout: 121,503.

It’s not a surprise that the ultra-thin gap of eight votes on caucus night didn’t hold up, but it’s tough to swallow the fact that there will always be a question mark hanging over this race, politics insiders said.

“Pah,” says Mitt. You can’t legislate against inevitability, vote-counting is something that should happen in quiet rooms between consenting adults, and anyway, why bother counting votes at all?

Romney said on Thursday the new tally showed it was “a virtual tie” between him and Santorum.

Meanwhile, Rick Perry will finally announce the suspension of his campaign today, and endorse ... go on, guess.

read the whole post »

Posted by YAFB on 01/19/12 at 09:51 AM
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Monday, January 16, 2012

Posted by YAFB on 01/16/12 at 07:55 PM
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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Bonus: Conniptions from Paulites and Romneyites battling it out in the Youtube comments.

Posted by YAFB on 01/12/12 at 08:29 AM
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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

[An Open Letter to Our International Readers]

Dear Not-My-Fellow-Americans:

First of all, I apologize for assuming that you paid any attention to the speeches given by candidates in the New Hampshire Republican primary last night. Hell, most Americans weren’t watching, and practically none of us pay any attention to your elections, even the ones conducted in countries with which we share a border.

Maybe one in 20 of us could name the leaders of our neighboring countries, and a not-insignificant percentage would respond with a blank stare if asked to name those countries. That’s how we roll. But I am assuming that many of you do follow our elections—perhaps in the same spirit that the driver of a Mini Cooper keeps tabs on the movements of a semi-truck that is fish-tailing wildly in the traffic ahead.

Anyhoo, if you did see the speeches, you may have noted that all the candidates agreed on one thing: America is the greatest country in the history of the planet—nay, the galaxy! Nay, the universe! The candidates didn’t deliver this observation in a perfunctory way to scratch their listeners’ patriot-itch: They asserted it and repeated it and returned to it again and again. And most of all, they compared their own bug-eyed devotion to that notion to the president’s and found his pride in his homeland wanting.

read the whole post »

Posted by Betty Cracker on 01/11/12 at 08:00 AM
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Monday, January 09, 2012

Brent Bozell is still cocky after his recent attention-getting media masterstroke of suggesting that describing President Obama as “a skinny ghetto crackhead” might be a valid campaigning tactic:

“How long do you think Sean Hannity’s show would last if four times in one sentence he made a comment about the president of the United States and said that he looked like a skinny ghetto crackhead?” Bozell asked.

“Which by the way, you might want to say that Barack Obama does,” Bozell opined.

Not bad for a pup who cut his teeth at the Parents Television Council, decrying the decline of decency in television programming.

A couple of days ago, Bozell persuaded me of the case for introducing a V-chip into online written media—preferably implanted in the region of his amygdala—with a PG-13 tour de force of projection. His thesis?

Clearly, Romney is the opponent that Barack Obama and the liberal establishment want nominated.

Journalists have mercilessly savaged every single conservative alternative to Romney who’s ascended to the top of the polls: Palin, Bachman, Cain, Perry and Gingrich. It’s too bad for them that the results from the Iowa caucuses threw off their bold predictions that the Romney juggernaut would achieve lift off in Des Moines, Iowa. Yet Romney won by only eight votes over, surprising, Rick Santorum. This means one thing only: Senator, step up to the guillotine.

I’m not sure whether we at Rumproast Towers count as a branch of the “liberal establishment”—and many would no doubt vehemently argue against our bona fides—but speaking for myself, the prospect of Romney as nominee leaves me lukewarm—which is apparently considerably warmer than his stock among a large swathe of the Republican electorate. Sure, he embodies highly mockable qualities of tonedeafness and entitlement that promise days of entertainment ahead.

But the problem with this GOP primary campaign is that it’s frontloaded all the fun into the first 20 minutes of the horror comedy hour, and all that’s in prospect is the tedious unraveling of the plot, leavened by the scant pleasure of pointing and laughing at the disarray and infighting among the GOP ranks as they awkwardly line up behind the eventual nominee before stabbing him in the back in the final scene. It’s a poor scriptwriter who kills off the most outrageous caricatures among the cast before the first ad break.

read the whole post »

Posted by YAFB on 01/09/12 at 10:07 AM
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Monday, January 02, 2012

I have my first new blog crush of the year: drpaul2012 (“America’s 57th President, If He Can Just Hold On”), wherein the Dr. Zeuss theme is pursued mercilessly.

In this book, you’ll find out who stuck the cactus up Dr. Paul’s ass. He dispenses some tough love to the lazy people mucking it up for the rest of us. Dr. Paul explains the difference between “makers” and ”takers” and how being a maker is preferable unless you’re taking business risks or making babies. Tony Robbins credits this book with changing his life and writes a moving foreword. (Ha! “Moving foreword” cracks me up every time I read it.)

Enjoy!

Posted by YAFB on 01/02/12 at 09:47 AM
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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Looks like being taken under Funny or Die’s wing hasn’t taken the edge off the Bad Lip Reading folks.

Posted by YAFB on 12/21/11 at 06:30 PM
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Thursday, December 08, 2011

Daily Show correspondent asks Voldemort Rick Scott to pee in a cup to prove that the country’s most despised governor is not squandering Florida taxpayer dollars on drugs:

Just how despised is Bat Boy Rick Scott? Let’s just say he’s about as popular as a shot of urine in a latte: Scott’s approval rating is now at the low end of the Crazification Factor range.

This means that only survey participants who would choose “lead paint flakes” over “corn flakes” as their favorite breakfast cereal are still on the Scott bandwagon. Oh, and tea partiers, of course. Pardon the redundancy.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 12/08/11 at 09:22 AM
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Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Oh, you thought that just because co-blogger Gil Mann brilliantly exposed Lady Lynn’s cheeky attempt to employ William Butler Yeats as an “edginess” condiment in the latest revenge soufflé she’s whipped up in response to being denied an ambassadorship in a Hillary Clinton Administration, we were, like, done with that subject?

You thought just because the great TBogg weighed in, noting that Lady Lynn was “sensing revolution in the air and wary that a ride in tumbrel might make her ass look big,” there was nothing new to add?

Well, you’re right: Gil and TBogg thoroughly covered both the literary pretentiousness and ratfucking angles. But as I had already Photoshopped an illustration for a post that would have been weak sauce compared to their efforts—before pecuniary considerations compelled me to shelve the project (thus sparing me the indignity of suffering by comparison)—I will instead use this image to draw your attention to Gil and TBogg’s superior products on the topic. And to provide an open thread. You’re welcome.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 12/07/11 at 07:52 AM
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Monday, December 05, 2011

Reality TV silly person and recreational racist Donald Trump is moderating a GOP debate later this month in conjunction with wingnut media site Newsmax. The Huntsman campaign was the first to send regrets:

“We look forward to watching Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich suck up to Trump with a big bowl of popcorn,” Huntsman spokesman Tim Miller told Yahoo News.

Somewhat awkward sentence construction since it’s not clear whether Huntsman and Miller will share the popcorn or if Mittens and Newt will present it as an offering to Trump. But in either case, kudos to Miller for treating the invitation with the seriousness it deserves. To its credit, the Paul campaign declined with extreme prejudice:

“The selection of a reality television personality to host a presidential debate that voters nationwide will be watching is beneath the office of the Presidency and flies in the face of that office’s history and dignity…Mr. Trump’s participation will contribute to an unwanted circus-like atmosphere,” campaign chairman Jesse Benton said.

What of the others? Well, Gingrich is meeting with Trump today, so evidently he doesn’t regard the short-fingered vulgarian* as politically toxic. Romney has met with Trump in the past and seems craven enough to remove the rings in Pam Geller’s hot tub with his tongue if that’s what it takes to bag the nomination. By virtue of her status as an actual elected official, Bachmann is even more of a national disgrace than Trump. And Santorum is merely a naughty word, so what does he have to lose?

My guess is the remaining candidates show up. As pundits have noted ad nauseam, this year’s GOP nomination race represents a fusion of politics and reality TV. So how can Trump be beneath their dignity? Huntsman and Paul pretend he is, but they’ve participated in the serial clown car pile-ups we’ve witnessed thus far without denouncing the liars and phonies with whom they’ve shared the stage. So pardon me if I find their sudden squeamishness a little precious.

* H/T: Spy Magazine

Posted by Betty Cracker on 12/05/11 at 08:48 AM
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