Tuesday, 23 November 2010

If World War One was a fight in a pub...






If World War One was a fight in a pub...



Germany, Austria and Italy are standing together in the middle of a pub when Serbia bumps into Austria and spills Austria's pint.

Austria demands Serbia buy it a complete new suit because there are splashes on its trouser leg. Germany expresses its support for Austria's point of view.

Britain recommends that everyone calm down a bit. Serbia points out that it can't afford a whole suit, but offers to pay for the cleaning of Austria's trousers.

Russia and Serbia look at Austria. Austria asks Serbia who it's looking at. Russia suggests that Austria should leave its little brother alone. Austria inquires as to whose army will assist Russia in compelling it to do so.

Germany appeals to Britain that France has been looking at it, and that this is sufficiently out of order that Britain should not intervene. Britain replies that France can look at who it wants to, that Britain is looking at Germany too, and what is Germany going to do about it?

Germany tells Russia to stop looking at Austria, or Germany will render Russia incapable of such action. Britain and France ask Germany whether it's looking at Belgium. Turkey and Germany go off into a corner and whisper. When they come back, Turkey makes a show of not looking at anyone. Germany rolls up its sleeves, looks at France, and punches Belgium.

France and Britain punch Germany. Austria punches Russia. Germany punches Britain and France with one hand and Russia with the other. Russia throws a punch at Germany, but misses and nearly falls over.

Japan calls over from the other side of the room that it's on Britain's side, but stays there. Italy surprises everyone by punching Austria. Australia punches Turkey, and gets punched back. There are no hard feelings because Britain made Australia do it.

France gets thrown through a plate glass window, but gets back up and carries on fighting. Russia gets thrown through another one, gets knocked out, suffers brain damage, and wakes up with a complete personality change.

Italy throws a punch at Austria and misses, but Austria falls over anyway.

Italy raises both fists in the air and runs round the room chanting.

America waits till Germany is about to fall over from sustained punching from Britain and France, then walks over and smashes it with a barstool, then pretends it won the fight all by itself.

By now all the chairs are broken and the big mirror over the bar is shattered. Britain, France and America agree that Germany threw the first punch, so the whole thing is Germany's fault . While Germany is still unconscious, they go through its pockets, steal its wallet, and buy drinks for all their friends.

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Thursday, 14 October 2010

You might be a Republican if...





1) You believe that Bush's redistribution of middle-class tax cuts to the top 1% of tax-payers was good for America, but Obama's plan to return it to the middle class is 'socialism.'

2) You believe stem cells are living human beings, but thousands of Iraqi children are 'expendable collateral damage.'

3) You believe tax cuts for billionaires is a great idea, yet you wonder why the economy has stalled, your job just got outsourced to India, and oil company executives receive $400,000,000.00 retirement packages as they cut pensions for their labour force.

4) You believe that the surge worked because the violence in Iraq is back to 2006 levels, which is only horrible, compared to what it was in 2007; intolerable. Besides, Brit Hume said so.

5) You think trial lawyers are harmful to America, but you support prosecuting some guy in Muncie Indiana who burned his 99¢ American flag that was made in China by forced child labor.

6) You're all for the 'rule of law' when it's applied to Bill Clinton for lying about his infidelity, but not for prosecuting Karl Rove and Scooter Libby for committing treason.

7) You think George W. Bush is actually a really smart guy, but his folksy mannerisms just makes him seem dumb.

8) You believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own, and that those who are born to poverty and never have opportunities for advancement, got what they deserved.

9) You believe Ronald Reagan was a great president who had complete control of all aspects of government, and that Iran-Contra Affair was an insignificant scandal that went on without his knowledge.

10) You believe Democrats tax and spend, but George W. Bush was a fiscal conservative.

11) You believe Oliver North, who was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, destroying evidence and accepting bribes is a patriot, but John Kerry, who saved a man's life while under enemy fire in Vietnam is a coward.

12) You believe George W. Bush has kept us safe from terror, and that the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks were Clinton's fault.

13) You actually believe Fox News is fair & balanced.

14) You still believe Saddam had truckloads of WMDs, and that he somehow managed to sneak them into Syria, right under our noses.

15) You believe Terri Schiavo was sentient all along, and that Bill Frist had the ability to diagnose her condition by watching a 5 second video of her sleeping.

16) You're in favor of stronger prison sentences for drug abusers, yet your favourite radio personality is Rush Limbaugh.

17) You complain about having to press 1 for English, yet you hire illegal Mexicans to mow your lawn because they're cheaper than hiring the kid next door.

18) Homosexuality is abhorrent to you, except when a Republican senator, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and a planted White House journalist all turn out to be gay, then you suddenly feel sorry for them.

19) The war in Iraq makes perfect sense to you, but any suggestion by Barack Obama that we target al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan is 'dangerous and reckless.'

20) You don't mind that president Bush tortured men who were never charged with a crime, yet you're horrified by the barbarism of al Qaeda when they capture one of our guys.

21) You believe the 1/10 of 1% of scientists who claim global warming is a hoax, and reject the 99.9% who say it's real, because Sean Hannity and his sponsors from the oil industry have convinced you that science is a liberal conspiracy.

22) You believe patriotism means you should support your government right or wrong ... unless a Democrat's in power, then it's your patriotic duty to call him a closet Muslim, a Marxist, challenge his birth certificate, expose his sex life and impeach him.

23) You're proud of your party's 'culture of life.' Yet you support the death penalty for minors, you believe 600,000 dead Iraqis is justified because one of them was Saddam Hussein, and you oppose confronting the genocide in Darfur (after all, they don't have oil).

24) You support prayer in school, as long as your kids aren't subjected to any prayers other than the ones you hear in your own church.

25) You think Darwin's theory of evolution is a loony fairy tale, and that mankind actually began with two naked teenagers, a magic apple and a talking snake.

26) You think $35 billion spent on health care for children is a waste of taxpayer's money, but $2.5 TRILLION spent on a catastrophic war that has isolated us from our allies, decimated our economy and made us less safe was money well spent.

27) You believe embargoing communist Cuba is sound foreign policy, but trading with China is just good business.

28) You believe Bill Clinton was an immoral cad, but Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde were faithful husbands -- and that Larry Craig just has a wide stance.

29) You fervently defend the Constitution, but when president Bush got caught monitoring 200 million phones without a warrant, politicizing our justice system, hyping evidence for going to war and commuting the sentence of a convicted perjurer who just happened to be on his staff, then it's okay, because he was 'protecting America.'

30) You were outraged when a gallon of gasoline went from $1.29 to $1.40 during the two terms of the Clinton presidency, but you didn't seem to mind when prices tripled under George W. Bush, the "oil man."

31) You were furious when Bill Clinton pardoned international commodities trader Marc Rich, who was convicted of tax evasion, but applauded when George W. Bush exonerated Scooter Libby for obstructing justice to protect Dick Cheney from a treason indictment.

32) With no evidence whatsoever, you complained of 'voter fraud,' and demanded that thousands of blacks be scrubbed from voting lists during the 2004 election in Ohio, yet when Rush Limbaugh asked his audience to illegally claim to be Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton during the Ohio Primary in February to "stir up trouble", a felony, you were okay with that.

33) You believe that Barack Obama should be held accountable for every sermon that Jeremiah Wright ever gave, but John McCain, who sought the endorsement of anti-Semitic, xenophobic, openly racist and homophobic pastors should be given a pass.

34) You believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, was actually born in Kenya, and his parents forged a fake birth certificate back in 1961 - just in case he should ever run for president of the United States, and that his father's nationality disqualifies his son from being president, all because you read that on the Internet.

35) You believe that the 8 consecutive years of prosperity and strong economic growth from 1993 - 2001 was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but today's recession is all Clinton's fault.

36) You laugh at how much better Barack Obama speaks with a TelePrompTer than without one, yet you never mention the fact that even with a TelePrompTer, every time George Bush opened his mouth, gibberish tumbled out. Bush couldn't construct a coherent gaff-free sentence even when Karl Rove was whispering in his ear via a wire.

37) You still believe Barack Obama is lying about being born in Hawaii, and has somehow succeeded in fooling every government and independent examination with his "obviously Photoshopped" documents. Instead, you rely on Internet blogs, WorldNetDaily and Jerome Corsi as your sources for "truth."

38) Your conservative media spent more air time discussing Michelle Obama touching the queen than on the economy, the environment, terrorism and health care combined.

39) You believe Barack Obama is "nation building" in Afghanistan, yet for eight straight years of Bush's bumbling incompetence there, you kept mum. Therefore, attacking Iraq makes sense, even though they never threatened us, but finishing off the job of finding Osama bin Laden; the terrorist who killed 3,000 Americans -- Bush's original task -- is a dumb idea because it's nation building. Got it!

40) You were furious that Barack Obama admitted in France that Americans had in the past been "arrogant, dismissive and derisive," yet you cheered them on for eight years while Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were arrogant, dismissive and derisive.

41) You believe that Obama's $3.6 trillion budget is an outrage, but never once complained that George Bush turned Bill Clinton's $300 billion surplus into a $1.3 trillion deficit. And it never once occurred to you that Bush deliberately omitted the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from those statistics, which means Bush's true deficit was over $3.1 trillion.

42) You supported Gov. Sarah Palin, partly because you believed that she kept a good Christian home. This, despite the fact that her seventeen year old unmarried daughter was knocked up, her son was accused of vandalizing 44 school buses (cutting the brake lines - HELLO!!?) and was given the choice of going to jail or join the military, and Palin herself was found guilty of abusing the power of her office. But Barack Obama can't possibly be a true Christian, because his father was a Muslim, and his middle name is Hussein. (Besides, he's black, and everybody knows that Jesus was a blond haired, blue eyed white man.)

43) You believe that the only solution to gun violence is to make sure everybody packs heat. That way, when some crazy person goes on a killing spree, right-thinking people will take out the killer, and tranquillity will prevail throughout the land.

44) You believe the mainstream news anchors are crazy and filled with hate, but Glenn Beck, Terry O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are rational, accurate and informative.

45) You defend Rush Limbaugh's right to wish for Obama to fail, and therefore, the failure of our republic, yet you call Democrats the "blame America first crowd."

46) You believe the economic crisis is the fault of liberals, but never mention that it was the Reagan administration that massively deregulated the banking industry in 1982, and it was Phil Gramm - McCain's choice for economic advisor - who completed the task for his pals in the banking industry in 1999.

47) You believe the failure of the US automobile industry is primarily the fault of the unions, and not because management of the three corporations insisted on producing vehicles that nobody wanted. And you're angry with the $28.00 per hour average wage of the work force, but you believe that the multimillion dollar salaries of the men who bankrupted the industry are perfectly reasonable.

48) You think this list is mean-spirited and biased, and even though you privately acknowledge to yourself that it's all true, you believe the Democrats are just as bad. Here's a bulletin: Nobody has ever been this bad.



***************************************

Thanks to Bruce Lindner for the write-up!

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Friday, 24 September 2010

Sometimes you read something and think it's so bad, it just has to be a joke...






And then you read this, which plainly isn't.

And notably the cowardly bigot restricts what reader comments appear on his site - so playing the game with all the bravery of being out of range.

Feel free to comment.
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Friday, 3 September 2010

The G.W. Bush Presidency - 8 years in 8 minutes




Just woeful



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Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" Rally - Interviews With Participants



Bearing in mind Beck is a national disgrace, how does he want to restore the US's 'honour'? And what empowers him to do so?



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Sunday, 29 August 2010

Glenn Beck (after MLK) - "I have a Scheme"




What a clown.




The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Tags: The Daily Show: I Have a Scheme, COMEDYCENTRAL

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The Daily Show - 'The Parent Company Trap'



Priceless







The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Tags: The Daily Show: The Parent Company Trap, COMEDYCENTRAL

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Thursday, 26 August 2010








August 25, 2010, 8:30 pm

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings



Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.

Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”

McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”

That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 47 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

The Democrats may deserve to lose in November. They have been terrible at trying to explain who they stand for and the larger goal of their governance. But if they lose, it should be because their policies are unpopular or ill-conceived — not because millions of people believe a lie.

Rush LimbaughIn the much-discussed Pew poll reporting the spike in ignorance, those who believe Obama to be Muslim say they got their information from the media. But no reputable news agency — that is, fact-based, one that corrects its errors quickly — has spread such inaccuracies.

Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images Rush Limbaugh

So where is this “media?” Two sources, and they are — no surprise here — the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans. A few quick examples of the Limbaugh method:

“Tomorrow is Obama’s birthday — not that we’ve seen any proof of that,” he said on Aug. 3. “They tell us Aug. 4 is the birthday; we haven’t seen any proof of that.”

Of course, there is proof as clear as that baseball box score. Look here, www.factcheck.org, for starters, one of many places posting Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate.

On the Muslim deception, Limbaugh has sprinkled lie dust all over the place. “Obama says he’s a Christian, but where’s the evidence?” he said on Aug. 19. He has repeatedly called the president “imam Obama,” and said, “I’m just throwing things out there, folks, because people are questioning his Christianity.”

You see how he works. He drops in suggestions, hints, notes that “people are questioning” things. The design is to make Obama un-American. Then he says it’s a tweak, a provocation. He says this as a preemptive way to keep the press from calling him out. And it works; long profiles of Limbaugh have largely gone easy on him.

Once Limbaugh has planted a lie, a prominent politician can pick it up, with little nuance. So, over the weekend, Kim Lehman, one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members, went public with doubts on Obama’s Christianity. Of course, she was not condemned by party leaders.
It’s curious, also, that any felon, drug addict, or recovering hedonist can loudly proclaim a sudden embrace of Jesus and be welcomed without doubt by leaders of the religious right. But a thoughtful Christian like Obama is still distrusted.

“I am a devout Christian,” Obama told Christianity Today in 2008. “I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” That’s not enough, apparently, for Rev. Franklin Graham, the partisan son of the great evangelical leader, who said last week that Obama was “born a Muslim because of the religious seed passed on from his father.”

Actually, he was born from two non-practicing parents, and his Kenyan father was absent for all of his upbringing. Obama came to his Christianity like millions of people, through searching and questioning.

Finally, there is Fox News, whose parent company has given $1 million to Republican causes this year but still masquerades as a legitimate source of news. Their chat and opinion programs spread innuendo daily. The founder of Politifact, another non-partisan referee to the daily rumble, said two of the site’s five most popular items on its Truth-o-meter are corrections of Glenn Beck.

Beck tosses off enough half-truths in a month to keep Politifact working overtime. Of late, he has gone after Michelle Obama, whose vacation in Spain was “just for her and approximately 40 of her friends.” Limbaugh had a similar line, saying the First Lady “is taking 40 of her best friends and leasing 60 rooms at a five-star hotel — paid for by you.”
 
The White House said Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha were accompanied by just a few friends — and they paid their own costs. But, wink, wink, the damage is done. He’s Muslim and foreign. She’s living the luxe life on your dime. They don’t even have to mention race. The code words do it for them.

Climate-change denial is a special category all its own. Once on the fringe, dismissal of scientific consensus is now an article of faith among leading Republicans, again taking their cue from Limbaugh and Fox.

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

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Thursday, 19 August 2010

OUTRAGE OVER PLANS TO BUILD LIBRARY NEXT TO SARAH PALIN





OUTRAGE OVER PLANS TO BUILD LIBRARY NEXT TO SARAH PALIN

19-08-10
PLANS to build a state of the art library next to Republican catastrophe Sarah Palin are causing outrage across mainstream America.


Image
Almost 40% of Americans still support the idea of books
Campaigners have described the project as insensitive and a deliberate act of provocation by people with brains.

The issue is forming a dividing line in advance of November's mid-term congressional elections with candidates being forced to declare whether they have ever been to a library or spoken to someone who has books in their home.

Meanwhile President Obama has caused unease within his own Democratic party by endorsing the library and claiming that not everyone who reads books is responsible for calling Mrs Palin a fuckwit nutjob nightmare of a human being.

But Bill McKay, a leading member of the right-wing Teapot movement, said: "Sarah Palin is a hallowed place for Americans who can't read.

"How is she going to feel knowing that every day there are people going inside a building to find things out for themselves and have thoughts, right in the very shadow of her amazing nipples."

He added: "Our founding fathers intended for every building in this country to be a church containing one book, written by Jesus, that would be read out in a strange voice by an orange man in a shiny suit who would also tell you who you were allowed to kill.

"Building a library next to Mrs Palin is like Pearl Harbour. Or 9/11."

And Wayne Hayes, a pig masseur from Coontree, Virginia, said: "I is so angry right now.

"It's like something is on fire right in the middle of my head. Like I've eaten a real hot chilli, but it's gone up my nose tubes rather than down my ass tubes."

He added: "Would these library lovers allow me to set up a stall next to the Smithsonian Museum and start selling DVDs of bible cartoons as long as it was in accordance with local regulations?

"Oh they would? I see. So is that why they're better than me?"


Thanks to 'The Daily Mash' for its content

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Tuesday, 17 August 2010

Rupert Murdoch Lied to Media Matters


Surprised? Given FOX 'News'' complete abandonment of any meaningful (i.e. non-partisan) news coverage, and its embracing the practise of simply broadcasting unvarnished US conservative opinion, perhaps we shouldn't be.


And now, at least with this news, we can dispel the doubt and Fox can quit the charade of being, ahem, "fair and balanced", and admit it's just the GOP's mouthpiece.




Click to read: Fox News' corporate parent gave Republican Governors Association $1 million


Thanks to Media Matters for its content

 

 


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