We wrote about them, but there might actually be some information we didn’t cover.
Tragically, our hero Alvin Greene lost. So there will be not be any of his action figures this Christmas. Why do Republicans hate Christmas so much?
Russ Feingold lost. Prop 19 failed. Allan Grayson lost.
But on the other hand, a lot of the worst candidates lost, too. The homeopath-endorser and anti-fluoride conspiracy theorist Sharron Angle lost. Homophobic bestiality enthusiast Carl Paladino lost. The anti-sex activist Christine O’Donnell lost. It looks like Joe Miller will lose to a write-in candidate. Art Robinson, who’s a denier of HIV and climate change, lost. The anti-abortion extremist Ken Buck lost. And Mark Reese or Racee or whatever his name is, he lost, too. His name’s too un-American, so I can’t pronounce it, let alone type it correctly.
So the Republicans have the House now, and the Democrats will keep the Senate. That’s what pretty much everybody predicted. It’s probably a mistake to think that this is a huge game-changer. The conservative / corporatist wing of the Democratic Party had, since 06, made what the actual numbers will be in the next Congress a reality in practice. So now the actual numbers will reflect the actual situation more accurately.
This is just a very funny Onion article “by” Ron Johnson, the challenger to Russ Feingold’s US Senate seat. But seriously, he’s in a very close race. I don’t much care for the Democratic Party as a whole, but Feingold is one of the only high-ranking politicians with any sense at all. He was against NAFTA. He was the one and only Senate vote against the USA PATRIOT Act. He was against deregulation of the financial industry when both parties were for it. And if he loses, it’s going to have this nauseating effect on the news media where they adopt a narrative of progressives being left behind as the country moves even further to the right.
On the other hand, if Feingold wins and the more conservative / corporatist Democrats lose, that will indicate that sticking with real progressive values like Feingold has is a sure way to stay in office for an honest politician.
These two tweets were twitterered one after the other this past weekend by Carl Paladino, or maybe his staff.
So why isn’t a NY Sun endorsement a kiss of death for Paladino? I’m no big fan of our one and only major local daily newspaper, but it certainly has more substance to it than the NY Sun. There are probably a lot more New Yorkers alienated by a Sun endorsement than locals here in Buffalo who are alienated by an endorsement from the News. It’s really our only newspaper. There aren’t any readers of the local competition to appeal to in this case because there is no local competition.
It’s unreasonable to expect consistency from a politician like Paladino, especially during the home stretch of a campaign. But seriously – one right after the other? How dumb do you have to be to not notice that? Dumb enough to vote for Paladino, I guess.
The 2010 mid-term elections has been a massive coming-out party for all kinds of crackpots. HIV deniers, creationists, anti-condom activists, and every other brand of conspiracy theorist have been nominated by their party to run for alarmingly high public offices. Journalists usually try to use reasonable methods to understand this unreasonable trend. At the very least, they try to make it sound like that’s what they’re doing.
But the innovative folks at AOLNews are taking a different path in their political reporting today. A guy who works there (I’m deliberately not calling him a reporter) talked to an astrologer named Shelley Ackerman about the elections and called it an article. Here’s how it begins:
Some swear by astrology. Others scoff at it.
That’s the beginning and end of Barry Weintraub’s investigation into the validity of astrology. It’s not like it’s his job to find out whether or not astrology actually works. That would be biased.
But here’s what’s not biased, for some reason: Pretending that an astrologer’s opinion of US politics is newsworthy.
Traditionally astrologers look to the lunation just before we go to the polls on Nov. 2 (in this case, the Oct. 22 full moon) to determine which party will fare better. And it’s no surprise that the elevation of Jupiter in the chart cast for Washington at 9:37 p.m. favors gains for the GOP, but how many?
Who among us didn’t know that the elevation of Jupiter means a Republican-controlled House? If you raised your hand just now, stop reading this now – for you are ignorant in the ways of astrology. It’s like the first rule: Most gas giants are very conservative. Those of us who were following this last election cycle may recall Saturn’s 2008 racist gaffe on CNN with Wolf Blitzer which many expert astrologers say cost John McCain the presidential election.
Ackerman later turns her focus to the Connecticut Senate race:
I’m having second thoughts about this one. Blumenthal (b. Feb. 13, 1946) was practically a shoo-in before he fibbed about serving in Vietnam. Bad move.
But why didn’t the stars tell her that this was going to happen? I thought this was the whole point of having professional astrologers in the first place. I am shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU that this astrologer only discovered this by reading it in the news instead of reading it from Neptune’s magical aura.
Will Neptune give Blumenthal the same magical aura that it provided for Palin in 2008, or will Saturn in Libra deliver the victory that McMahon has earned (and/or paid for)? It’s Blumenthal’s to lose: One false move and he will.
Come on, Ackerman! Don’t keep us in suspense! I really want to know about that magical aura’s political leanings. Maybe the entry on Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will provide better information:
Astrologically aligned with the United States’ Aquarian moon, and buoyed by Neptune’s transit in Aquarius since 1998, will their popularity wane when Neptune enters Pisces for the first time (since 1860) in April 2011, or will their influence hold through the presidential election of 2012?
That’s where that entry ends. And then she goes on to another issue. She wouldn’t risk all of her well-deserved credibility on the election. But what else can you expect from a Libra?
I’m not buying all of this ‘Christine O’Donnell was a witch’ business. Yeah, I’ve seen the video footage of her talking about it on Politically Incorrect, and I don’t have any direct evidence contradicting her claim, but it all just doesn’t quite add up. So here’s my completely uninformed speculation.
First of all, Christians who focus a lot on being “born again” have this need for their own little spiritual rags-to-riches story. Listen to any former alcoholic or drug addict or whatever turned fundamentalist Christian for long enough and eventually you’ll hear a sob story about how they were once “at their lowest point ever” just before they heard the good news about the Jesus. Usually the low point has to do with sex, drugs, and that sort of thing, but O’Donnell’s going one step further by throwing witchcraft into the mix. It’s only by debasing their former selves can they show the great healing power of the Jesus. If you joined a church just because you were feeling a bit lonely and wanted a regular community activity, that’s not a very compelling narrative to sell to other potential converts.
There’s another advantage to O’Donnell lying about this witchcraft, if that’s what she did. As a professional Christianity advocate, which is what she was doing at the time of the video in question, it’s in her interest to appear as though she tried out other religions before discovering the one true faith. In the minds of her audience, it’s to her credit that she saw through the lies of her fellow witches or Wiccans or Satanists or whatever. Now she gets to say that she’s emerged wiser for having a diversity of experience with other religions.
So that’s pretty much what I think about why she lied, if that’s what she did. But there are some tips in the video itself, too. First of all, she interchanges Satanism and witchcraft. I don’t know much about Wicca or Satanism, but even I know that they’re very different. That’s why Wiccan leaders have been speaking out against how O’Donnell equated the two. Wiccans don’t believe in Satan, for instance. And even some Satanists, like the LaVeyian variety, don’t seem to believe in an actual Satan.
Another big tell is how she immediately followed up her “confession” by shouting about how she didn’t join a coven. In other words, nobody can verify her story. I wonder who this fellow who took her on the Satanic altar blood date was. He’s probably still around, right?
I’m not saying that she made this story up in 1999 in order to help boost her 2010 Senate campaign. That would be absurd. I’m saying that I think she made it up in order to self-promote as a professional advocate for Christianity knowing that her stories about what she dabbled in were difficult to confirm or falsify.
Unfortunately I’m not supposed to vote today because New York state has something called closed primaries, which means that you have to be registered in the relevant party to vote. So I will be forced to do so using my “name.” The obvious choice for maximum hilarity is the communist / local yokel Carl Paladino.
Another state with closed primaries today is Delaware. The Republican primary in Delaware for Joe Biden’s Senate seat is between Mike Castle and Christine O’Donnell. Castle is the normal (yet atypical for this year), moderate candidate which the party supports. So he’s a pretty appropriate choice for Biden’s seat since Biden was basically a moderate Republican while in the Senate.
O’Donnell is the teabagger candidate, and she’s against masturbation because of Matthew 5:27-8:
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust.
Please fap to this picture while reading this post, kthx -mgmt.
So it’s pretty clear that’s the verse to which she was referring. It’s the Sermon on the Mount, if you didn’t know. But it’s just too bad that she didn’t continue using the Bible to dictate her politics with the next few verses. Here’s Matthew 5:29-30:
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
This… well this might be a tough sell, even for the teabaggers. Or maybe not! Maybe Christine O’Donnell will win the primary tonight, and she will then introduce masturbation (no, not this kind) to the national stage inre: the 2010 mid-term elections. The next thing you know, they’d be running attack ads accusing each other of being too liberal on the issue of Biblical, guilt-induced self-mutilation. That. Would. Be. AWESOME!
And if you’re a Republican politician in Delaware, you better hope that’s what happens or else you might get yourself killed. Tom Ross, the chairman of the Delaware Republican Party, received a death threat via email saying that he deserved “a bullet in the head” for supporting Mike Castle instead of the hilarious anti-masturbation lady. This is definitely NOT TERRORISM though, well, just because.
UPDATE: O’Donnell has pulled it off and beat Mike Castle. She then cleaned up with a sock.
I really should’ve just devoted this space entirely to covering all of the kooky shit the Republican candidate for US Senate from Nevada Sharron Angle says and does, but now I’m way too far behind to possibly keep up. Each time her name appears in the news, I just think she can’t possibly get any crazier. But then she does.
Earlier in her campaign, Angle was for eliminating the Department of Education. She pretty quickly learned that taking this position (and others like it) was so unpopular that it boosted the campaign of someone as generally loathed as her opponent Harry Reid. So she deleted it from her website and got her lawyers to start yelling at Harry Reid for talking about it.
Her position’s pretty radical, but it’s based on a standard conservative position on federal v. state bureaucracies. From the National Review:
“Look, the Department of Education is a policy machine that sends down one-size-fits-all rules that fit no one,” Angle says. “Education works best when you have all of the stakeholders involved and working toward the same commitment. That happens best at the local level. Anything bureaucratically, administratively, these layers and layers — that just diminishes the involvement of the stakeholder. They feel like their voice isn’t being heard because there is too much of a loud clamor from the top.”
So it’s oversimplified, but that’s basically how conservatives attack federal programs like the DoE. See, it’s not that they’re necessarily against education in general. They just think it would function better if control were held at the state level. Well that’s how they’d like to frame it, at least.
Sharron Angle has a history of handling things at the state level since she’s been a State Senator for Nevada from 1999 through 2005. So we can test whether or not it’s true in her experience that education is best handled at the state level with her own experience in the state legislature. This would be a good way to test whether she actually follows her espoused conservative political philosophy, or if she’s just against any public funding of education be it on the state or federal level.
ThinkProgress did some digging on this matter and found it to be the latter. In 2003, she was part of a vocal minority which temporarily blocked a funding bill to maintain the public schools. Not to spend more on public schools, you see, just enough to keep them functioning. Fortunately for Nevada’s schools, this attempt was later thwarted by the Nevada Supreme Court. But why did the Nevada Supreme Court need to get involved when 2010 Sharron Angle tells us that education funds handled at the state level works so well? Maybe we should ask the 2003 Sharron Angle.
But then again why a Sharron Angle in any time-space continuum want to fund education? More education is just going to make less people inclined to vote for her.
I have seen a very disturbing film recently which the public needs to know about. And I need to yell at you about it without getting any follow-up questions from the media. Josh told me I could do that on The BEAST for $20, and that’s why I’m posting my thoughts on this film here and not at an open press conference.
The film I saw was a documentary about the Messicans called Machete. It exposes the truth about the violence on our Southern border. Especially the beheadings. I’ve learned that most illegal immigrants behead Americans while in close quarters, and they usually do it with a machete, which is why the movie is called Machete.
Stupid unions.
Another important thing we learn from this movie is that we need to start monitoring VOIP calls. It turns out that many Messicans, such as Steven Seagal, like to make death threats and kill people while on the Skype. So we can listen in on the Skype and catch lots and lots of drug dealing kidnappers just by scanning through different internet calls and listening for creepy laughter. We’ll just make sure to not have any federal funding to pursue this method of law enforcement. OK, maybe a little bit of federal funding. OK, a LOT.
Hospitals are actually a secret communist conspiracy to help illegal immigrants kidnap Lindsay Lohan so that they can dress her up as a liberation theology nun and then use the intestinal tracts of real Americans as bungee cords. That’s another true fact I learned from this groundbreaking documentary. Has my enemy Terry Goddard ever gone to a hospital? Probably!
All of the bad guys in this film look kinda… you know, suspicious. And that just proves how useful SB 1070 will be after weI finish suing President Imam Barack Hussein NOBAMACARE for appointing judges. Or something.
I’m not doing any more movie reviews ever. It’s an unfair medium for me to spread my message. SO THERE. Please follow me on the Twitter, thanks.
We all know that the Democratic nominee for US Senate from South Carolina Alvin Greene is a lover of music. But can he dance?
Oh yes. Yes, he can.
It’s not on the YouTube, but the radio deejay claims that Greene dances like “a white guy at a wedding.” This is a totally unfair judgment. It’s almost as unfair as when the South Carolina judicial system unfairly indicted him of obscenity, which then made Greene howl and wail at reporters like a werewolf which was just shot with a silver bullet.
And about a week ago, Greene was doing some politicking at Jimmy’s Restaurant in Seneca, SC. He had been dis-invited to a speaking engagement there due to his recent legal problems, but Greene was all like Fuck that, I’m going anyway. And he brought his crew along with him, one of whom is called Dottie Sue Maggart-Feldman.
Dottie Sue apparently thought that the county party chairwoman was “out to get her,” and then shit got real. The conflict escalated, and in the end the police had to ask candidate Greene to please leave the restaurant.
My theory is that now that Greene knows that the political establishment is out to get him and is willing to press false charges against him, all bets are now off. Blood will be shed. Restaurants will be disrupted. And he’s got someone named Dottie Sue on his side.
Oh shit, yo! This hot new jam from Alvin Greene is off the hook! It just dropped yesterday when it flew onto the YouTube in a DeLorean DMC-12 from the early 1980s.
In case you can’t make out the auto-tuned parts and really want to sing along (you know you do), here are all of the dope rhymes:
When I say “Alvin,” you say “Greene.”
Alvin! Greene! Alvin! Greene!
When I say “Alvin,” you say “Greene.”
Alvin Greene for Senator!
Listen up everybody, ’cause I’m here to say
If you’re tired of the government you have today
And you wanna big change in a major way
Then vote Alvin Greene on Election Day!
Jobs! Education! Justice, too!
My man Al knows what’s best for you
So come together party people, both red and blue
And don’t believe the rumors that are just not true.
Well, Greene’s a new face in politics,
And he don’t show porno to college chicks.
But he’s got some ideas that’ll fix the state,
So open up your minds and stop the hate.
Time to dig down deep in your wallet or purse.
It can only get better and it can’t get worse.
Shake up DC, sat in the church,
And put me, you and Alvin Greene back to work!
Well, let’s talk about the issues one time -
Makin’ sure the punishment fits the crime!
And if you don’t think that’s cool enough -
He’s gonna give lots of money to the schools and stuff!
Real family values those are rad –
He loves family and lives with his mom and dad!
November’s coming, it’s time to choose -
And Jim DeMint should be ready to lose!
Alvin Greene, is on the scene.
Gotta get out and vote, if you know what I mean.
Alvin Greene is the one for you.
He knows how you feel ’cause he’s unemployed, too.
Alvin Greene is the natural choice.
Don’t listen to the folks that make fun of his voice.
Alvin Greene, his campaign’s legit,
And you know this great nation will benefit!
Running very close to Sharron Angle to take the lead in the Craziest 2010 Challenger Competition is Alvin Greene. If you haven’t heard, he is an unemployed veteran who somehow won the Democratic Party’s South Carolina US Senate primary over the favored Vic Rawl about a month ago without even really campaigning. Now he is facing Jim DeMint, who is also pretty crazy but in a much more frightening way, if only because his views on things like abortion, immigration, and teacher-led prayer in public schools can carry some weight within the lucrative ‘dipshit’ voter’s bloc.
Unfortunately he has been reluctant to talk to the press. Alvin Greene’s a different kind of crazy, and this is why I support him. It’s pretty rare that I’ll vote for or support someone from the major parties, but I’ll have to make an exception in this case for entertainment purposes. Lately, the only novel kind of psychosis we’ve been getting out of our national politicians only appears to be new and exciting to most of us because it has been out of the spotlight for so long. Rand Paul and Sharron Angle and people like that are merely reviving this kind of John Birch Society style of paranoia which most of us didn’t experience firsthand the first time around. But again, Greene’s got the advantage here. From the Guardian:
“Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That’s something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It’s not something a typical person would bring up. That’s something that could happen, that makes sense. It’s not a joke.”
At first I kind of thought that maybe this guy has some mental problems and this is why he says these things. But the fact that he feels like he needs to say that it’s not a joke kind of makes me wonder. Is he trolling the South Carolina US Senate elections? Because that. Would be. AWESOME.
On the other hand, maybe he felt he needed to clarify because the Guardian reporter involuntarily started pointing and laughing at the candidate, as any normal person would.
I would like to see Alvin Greene in a toy factory wearing an unnecessary hardhat and safety glasses, watching hundreds – no THOUSANDS – of action figures bearing his likeness being manufactured on the assembly line. And I want to see it in a campaign ad on television. That. Would. Be. AWESOME.
Come on, South Carolinians. Together we can make this happen. The world will be much stranger and therefore better for it. More recently, Greene talked to AOLNews (I know, right? AOL still exists, it’s weird). Here’s a bit of a transcribed interview, left without comment:
If you were teaching an English class, what books would be required reading? How about “Journey to Justice,” Johnnie Cochran; “Bad as I Wanna Be” — Dennis Rodman wrote that one; and “Moonwalker,” Michael Jackson.
If you could punch one famous person, who would it be? Grouchy Smurf. Hahahaha.
Hi. My name is Josh and I am in the snake oil business.
You can email me by clicking on the nanobot above. You can also get in touch with me by going into your bathroom, turning off the lights, lighting at least seven candles, staring into the mirror, and saying my name three times.
As a matter of fact, I am standing behind you right now, watching you read this. Do you feel that? It's a knife, pressed up against your back. Now gimme all your money or I'll cut ya.
Running very close to 
