“Just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it the ‘Army’, but a more alarmist name would be, the Kill-Bot Factory.” – Kent Brockman There was much tumult this week as the Senate, in a move that was brazenly craven even by its spineless standards, [...]
Archive for the ‘Institutionalized Stupidity’ Category
Pat McCarran Lives
Drug Blinders
“Prohibition? Pfft. They tried that in the movies and it didn’t work.” – Homer Simpson Even by the increasingly low standards of the former Atlantic Monthly, the article currently up at their website entitled “How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police” is grossly subpar. The premise is a sound one, namely that police [...]
Forgotten Birthdays
“Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, overlooked middle child, happy birthday to me.” – Lisa Simpson With hardly any fanfare, our little war in Afghanistan celebrated its tenth birthday this week. (They grow up so fast.) With even less notice, the tenth anniversary of the anthrax attacks went almost completely unmentioned [...]
Dope on the Table
“With her behind bars, our store is secure.” – Apu Nahasapeemapetilon “I’m taking this thing to Mexico.” – Snake Way back in the fall of 2001, when bloodlust was in style and only a tiny minority of people still cared to remember that Bush the Younger was an incompetent boob, one of the few voices [...]
Confessional Credibility Gap
Damn Your Facts, Pretend Harder!
“Hey, I am no longer illiterate.” – Mayor Quimby There’s a decent case to be made that the criminalization and constant demonization of certain kids of recreational drug use is the biggest problem facing the United States. It’s an enormous drag on our economy, locking up hundreds of thousands of otherwise perfectly law abiding and [...]
The Sacred Cow Is Bleeding
“Marge, I’ve figured out an alternative to giving up my beer. Basically, we become a family of traveling acrobats.” – Homer Simpson “I don’t think you’ve thought this through.” – Marge Simpson On Friday, Glenn Greenwald performed his usual (and vital) service of stripping away the daily ephemera and sporting aspects of our political conversation [...]
Neither Culmination, Nor Rapture, Nor Even Armageddon
“How is this a Mexican standoff?” – Kremensky “Uh.” – Sterling Archer “Dumbass.” – Lana Kane “I don’t care if you shoot her.” – Kremensky “Oh.” – Sterling Archer As I write this, I do not know how (or if) the sadly self inflicted wound colloquially known as the “debt ceiling” fight will be sutured. [...]
A Good Terrorist Is Hard to Find
“Now, let’s discuss the, um, ‘mo-tive’.” – Chief Wiggum In 1993, there was a truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. The FBI made its first arrest after one of the men responsible returned to the truck rental place in an effort to get his deposit back. In 1995, another [...]
What Line of Business Did You Say You Were In?
“Lisa, the mob is working on getting your saxophone back, but we’ve also expanded into other important areas: literacy programs, preserving our beloved covered bridges, world domination.” – Homer Simpson “World domination?” – Lisa Simpson “Oh, that might be a typo.” – Homer Simpson “Mental note, the girl knows too much.” – Homer Simpson’s Brain [...]
See No Sense, Hear No Sense, Speak No Sense
“I think we can do without the crack pipe. Oh hi! As the FOX censor, it’s my job to protect you from reality.” – FOX Censor Last week, a clutch of important people got together and held a press conference in New York City. This list of the world’s elite included former presidents of Columbia, [...]
Still Afraid of Monsters Under the Bed
“Oh, god!” – Tweek Among the not unreasonably paranoid, it has long been assumed that every piece of electronic communications is intercepted and stored. From e-mails to cellphone calls, the ease with which digital things can be invisibly copied means that such copying is happening. It’s almost axiomatic that an organization with the practically unlimited [...]
Shell Shock Nation
“It’s my nerves, sir. I just can’t stand the barking anymore.” – Springfield Kid Even without unmistakable physical signs, it’s often plainly obvious when a cat or a dog has been abused by a former owner. They’ll be jumpy and skittish, they’ll piss and shit out of even mild fear, they’re very slow to trust. [...]
Offshore Surrender
“Yeah, it’s a crummy system, but what are you gonna do?” – Homer Simpson Last week, in response to the Levin Report that establishes beyond even a shadow of a doubt that Goldman Sachs is essentially an organized crime ring focused on financial fraud, Matt Taibbi wondered why politicians don’t hammer them for it. It’s [...]
Show Trial
“I move for a bad court thingy.” – Lionel Hutz There is little left to be said about the Obama Administration’s decision that the immediate political relief of arbitrarily imprisoning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed outweighs the costs of giving him a real trial. It was a long time coming, and had been written on the wall [...]
The Same Old Lines: Written, Read, and Snorted
“Continue the research.” – C.M. Burns The cover of last Thursday’s New York Times featured a below the fold picture of a seventeen year old digging a grave with a pickaxe. He’s done a very good job; the hole has sharp corners, is nicely rectangular, and appears to be plenty deep. The grave is soon [...]
Monoculture
“Password? Hmm, password, how ’bout ‘guest’. No way! It can’t be, Jesus Christ, that is just baby town frolics.” – Sterling Archer One of the more amazing things about the increasingly connected world in which we live is the ability to combine so much functionality into a single device. Whether it’s a smart phone, a [...]
What’s the Singular of Archipelago?
Torturing The New York Times
“This reporter promises to be more trusting and less vigilant in the future.” – Kent Brockman On Thursday, The New York Times ran an article about an Afghan diplomat who was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2008. He was held for two years by al-Qaeda in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan and, for the [...]
Ship of Fools
“Where are you taking me?” – Jay Sherman “We set all our mental patients adrift at sea . . . wait, that’s the Carnival Cruise.” – Ambulance Driver There are fewer rungs of (former) fame lower than that of cruise ship celebrity. A person once adored by many, once powerful and connected, is reduced to [...]
Codifying Inequality
“Jay, I just finished my etiquette book. It’s called, ‘Why the Poor Should Be Blasted Out Into Space’. You know, we have the technology.” – Eleanor Sherman George Carlin once said of America: The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does [...]
Domodedovo and the Ethos of Keep Calm, Carry On
“Well, a lot of companies would put in a pretty system that looks good but doesn’t provide any real protection.” – Ex-Con Home Security Guy “Ohh, let’s get that!” – Homer Simpson Between the State of the Union and the riots in Egypt, Monday’s bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport is already fading from the international [...]
Institutional Cruelty
“What the hell are you doing?” – Kyle Broflovski “We’re playing Lambs.” – Eric Cartman There was high drama in Virginia today when uber-blogger Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake tried to take David House to visit presumed Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning in the brig at Quantico. Hamsher’s full write up is here, and it’s well worth [...]
It’s Alive! It’s Alive!
“We are Trapper Keeper, we are one.” – Trapper Keeper Hot on the heels of the FCC’s near complete abandonment of net neutrality, even on the old fashioned “wired” internet, comes this week’s announcement of more or less total capitulation to Comcast’s acquisition of the National Broadcasting Company and its various subsidiaries and divisions. This [...]
Wrinkled Skin: Our Last Line of Defense
“Bart, the school is a police state. Students are afraid to sneeze, and I have you to thank.” – Principal Skinner There’s no real mystery behind this past week’s massive, multi-front blowback against the genital scanner security theater at airports. The creeping police state that’s been infecting America ever since the cops began militarizing in [...]
