Interesting bit of business regarding the oath of office.

On Daily Kos, the crazed lefty take is that John Roberts embarrassed himself “and the nation by getting something so simple – something memorized by every boy and girl in, like, the second grade – so excrutiatingly wrong.”

The rightwing nutjobs – represented by Rush Limbaugh (you don’t get more insane than this. Really, if you haven’t checked out Limbaugh’s site before, it’s amazing. The foam from his mouth very nearly flies onto your computer screen.) and Drudge – believe Obama screwed it up. At least, this is what it reads right now on Limbaugh’s front page “Obama Stumbles Through Oath of Office”. Drudge’s original “Obama Flubs the Oath” has already been changed (see the original page here).

Wow. So, okay – Daily Kos, I didn’t memorize that oath in, like, the second grade or in, like, any grade. I never memorized it. And he transposed a couple of words. You want to talk about bad, like, grammar and typos, Daily Kos? I don’t think you do.

And Limbaugh and Drudge – glad to see you have your boots on and were ready to start kicking immediately. What brave Americans. You’re completely insane.

Then, on the way into work, NPR talked about the oath flub – Republican John Roberts transposed some words, Democrat Barack Obama caught it, then Roberts corrected himself and Barack spoke Roberts’ version. On NPR, the editorial was that both sides, despite differing points of view, are trying to get it right.

Interesting, no?

Oh, this is rich. Coming from a doctor who once made a diagnosis based on video footage, this is especially rich.

But fair enough. Africa needed the help and George Bush got it to them. Or at least, he got some of the help they needed to them. That was a good move.

I guess Frist wants us to believe that the reason the nation has such a low opinion of Bush is because the mainstream media ignored all the great things Bush was doing. But that doesn’t ring true. First, when I search for “President Bush AIDs initiative” in New York Times articles, I get back nearly 3000 hits. And second, Bush made the war against terror the cornerstone of his presidency. Should the news outlets of the world be ashamed for making it the cornerstone of their presidential coverage to the detriment of other stories? We can all at least agree that their job is not to give us warm fuzzies.

Anyway – I hate to see the whitewash of Bush’s presidency begin. Let’s just keep a realistic head on our shoulders. Bush did some good things, but he did plenty of terrible things, too.

The first hurdle has been cleared. It’s kind of an amazing feeling, isn’t it? Yeah, I’m just as absolutely sappy about this election as you’d hope I wouldn’t be. It feels kinda like closing your eyes, wishing for something as hard as you can, and then that thing actually coming true.

Check it, world – America just elected Barack Hussein Obama. We’re ready to get back in the game of making the world a better place instead of just… ya know… ours.

I don’t so much believe that because of this, everything is going to be fine, though. It’s gonna be a long, long road.

Hopefully, by 2012, we’ll all be happy Barack was elected tonight.

CNN has turned the debate into a video game.

Today, Bush had this to say to the Israeli Parliament:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”

I love this quote. I think it crystalizes why Bush’s policies have been so wrong and have cost us so much. read more »

Maybe you glanced at the news today and caught this gem coming out of Jonesville, S.C., where Pastor Roger Byrd of the Jonesville Church of God had got himself to thinking about the current presidential campaigns and just who these candidates thought they were. But it seems that Mr. Byrd didn’t get much further than sounding out their names before he realized that the name “Obama” rhymes with “Osama”. And that Osama Bin Laden was a bad, bad man.

Well, Roger kept a-thinkin’ and a-thinkin’. Purty soon he came up with another whopper. What if – now just WHAT IF – Obama was RELATED to Osama?!?

At this point, he probably decided against the council of his Big City brother, who might have advised him “Roger, that’s spine-crushingly stupid. Obama is a last name. Osama is a first name. This is so dumb I feel vaguely nauseous.” and headed straight to his church in order to make up the sign you see in the photo above.

I can’t vouch for any of the story you’ve just read being true, mind you. But there’s this coming straight from Mr. Byrd’s beak:

“It’s simply to cause people to realize and to see what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ.

“See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim ? I don’t know. He says he’s not. I hope he’s not. But I don’t know. And it’s just something to try to stir people’s minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody.”

Roger than flapped his arms and said “Look at me! My name is Byrd! I’m a bird! Wheeeee!” and leapt to his death from the church steeple.

Anybody else watching this Frontline documentary? It’s basically 4 and a half hours outlining how we got to where we are with the war on terrorism. While we know how many holes there are in our government’s reasoning to take us into Iraq, it’s astounding – a-stound-ing – to see it all strung out together like this. read more »

More fair and balanced from the Drudge.

If the Drudge Report isn’t the compendium of terrible Hillary photos, then I don’t know what is.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights claims that what Kathy Griffin said at the Creative Arts Emmys amounts to hate speech. My first thought was “Wow, only a rich head of a religious organization who wants to get plenty of PR so that his membership believes he’s a git-r-done kind of guy would label this as hate speech.”

But then I realized the tragedy of this situation: Catholic League president Bill Donohue has no sense of humor. It’s probably not his fault. How can I sit idly by while Bill wastes away, his heart a lump of rigid, humorless coal?

So Bill – please read on. And get ready to laugh!!

Hate speech is defined thusly:

hate speech n. – Bigoted speech attacking or disparaging a social or ethnic group or a member of such a group.

Here is Griffin’s speech:

“A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award.¹ I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.² Suck it, Jesus.³ This award is my god now.”⁴

Now let’s take this line by line and I’ll explain why this is funny, even to me, a professed Christian.

¹ – Griffin lays down the premise, and it’s a fact: a lot of people do go to the podium and thank God or Jesus for their award. At this point the audience member will think to himself “Yes, I recognize that as being true. I can relate to the person telling this story.”

² – Here Griffin gives us the first twist of the joke – she believes that Jesus had nothing to do with her award. This is classic comedy – the humor comes from unexpected turns in the development of the story, surprising the audience, resulting in laughter.

³ – This is the shockline of the joke. She says “Suck it, Jesus” the way sports fans might say “Suck it, 49ers! The Bears are #1!” The reason this line is funny is because Jesus is a sacred and revered entity and in polite company, one doesn’t say things like this to Jesus.

⁴ – As a bonus, we get shockline #2: the statue is her god now. A ridiculous notion and a line that is consistant with Griffin’s persona. The audience thinks “That’s preposterous! She wouldn’t really worship an Emmy, would she? How outrageous!” and this will normally lead to peels of raucous laughter.

Look closely, Bill, and you’ll see that not only is this speech funny, it attacks no one. It is bigoted in no way whatsoever. It is not hate speech. Now if you were to say “The gay community has yet to apologize to straight people for all the damage that they have done.” or that “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, okay? And I’m not afraid to say it. … Hollywood likes anal sex.”, that would be closer to the hate speech ballpark.

In fact, by being insulting to Jesus, Griffin is acknowledging Jesus’stature. This joke would not be funny if people didn’t think Jesus was generally a great figure worthy of respect.

Isn’t that fun, now, Bill? Isn’t it fun to laugh? Of course it is. See? It’s okay. You can believe and have fun at the same time! In the future it might be interesting to think through these matters before blabbing all over the media like some PR-hungry profit-making corporation. Remember: you believe in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ can not be defeated, even by an omnipotent D-list celebrity.

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This is a separate post for Kathy Griffin only:

Apologies are death. No retreat, no surrender!

I hate to write political posts. I’m a terrible political thinker. It usually takes me a while to put two and two together. As distrusting as I am toward politicians, I find that I take them at their word more often than not.

However, on this the 4th anniversary of the… ahem… end of combat operations in Iraq… ahem… hack, cough – wow, that really sticks right in there – I figured I’d add my voice to the rising din of dissatisfaction, horror, and outrage. If there’s any honest justice in the world, Bush will be impeached. If there’s a little extra justice left over, he’ll be tried for war crimes. I don’t know much about war crimes, but there’s got to be something in the rule book about starting a false war, killing hundreds of thousands of people, lying to soldiers’ families about what happens in combat, and lying to the American public on a daily basis to keep us scared.

What bothers me the most, maybe, is that for someone who has put our country on the skids, Bush is also ridiculously clever. Case in point – Bush and his followers are taking the stance that a pull-out (“surrender” in their cute spin parlance) will lead to more terrorist attacks and greater bloodshed. It’s a genius position to take, seeing as how we won’t win the war no matter how many men and women Bush sacrifices on the altar of his ego and a pull-out is inevitable. So when that pull-out happens, it will look like Bush went down fighting. If and when the attacks begin – attacks exacerbated by the unnecessary war Bush started in the first place – Bush and his folks will break their necks trying to get to a microphone to say “I told you so”. OR if no attacks happen at all, these same folks will take credit for making the world safe for democracy.

You have to admit that’s pretty good coming from a guy who doesn’t even understand if the war he started has ended or not.

To be fair, this is the same thing ANY politician would do. Dems are no better. Greens are no better. Libertarians, Independents… no better.

The difference is — Bush is in the position to make a difference. THE difference. He merely has to put pen to paper to make this situation better. A nod of his big, thick head will save lives. But he refuses to do so. Out of fear? Our of pride? Out of greed? I don’t know. But it’s impossible to make the argument that it’s out of courage.

She was as sweet as can be, no doubt. And she died way, way, way too young.

Her name is Taleshia Ford. She was 17. She was shot and killed in a DC nightclub on January 20th. Did you hear about this? Most likely, no.

There was also another young lady, Nyia Miangel Page, who died of exposure in Pennsylvania. She was 2. Not 12. Not 22. She was 2 years old. She was found last Tuesday. There’s a better chance you’ve heard about this.

But there’s no doubt you’ve heard about how some woman famous for taking her clothes off went crazy and died. That’s front page news. That’s a major headlne! Forget about the Iraq Intelligence report. Forget about nuclear talks in Korea that have taken a positive turn. Forget about possible peace in Palestine. The lady with the boobs took too many drugs and died.

Let’s not miss a second of that.

Even though it looks and sounds like a joke… I think this is for real:

OJ Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened

I have no words.

I stole all of the following text from Matt’s site. If you have a site, you should steal this from me.

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30 days away from the midterm election on Nov. 7th– are you registered to vote? Registration deadlines by state are as follows:

10/7: MS, NV, RI, SC
10/8: AK, TN, WA
10/9: AR, AZ, HI, LA, WY
10/10: CO, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MI, MT, NM, OH, PA, TX, UT, VA, MO
10/13: ID, NC, NY, OK
10/14: DE
10/17: MD, ME, MN, NJ, OR, WV
10/18: MA
10/19: WI
10/20: NE
10/23: CA, KS, SD
10/24: CT
10/27: AL, IA, NH, VT
Election Day Registration: ID, ME, MN, ND, NH, WI, WY

Register here if you need to or go here if you need to vote via absentee ballot.

Not sure what side of things your candidates are falling on? It’s kinda hard when they don’t say if they’re republican or democrat anymore. Go here and look up your state races thanks to the AARP.

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Thanks, Matt.

I’m the last person to hear about this, maybe, but I direct you today to my good friend Brian Crane’s site, Crane’s Inanities so that you might click on the links provided and watch Stephen Colbert speak in front of the Bushes and the press, tearing both groups a new one.

Colbert has officially justified his existence.

Hopefully, we may all do the same some day.

Did you catch this? Remember all the demonstrations in Nepal? He had seized power and was forced to give it back.

But the backstory of this royal family is dark as night.

Check it out.

Nepal’s Controversial King Gives Up Power

A man who set himself afire Monday just outside a White House gate reportedly worked for the FBI as an informant and was distraught over his inability to return to Yemen to visit his critically ill wife.

But then there’s this, too:

In an unrelated incident, a different man jumped the fence on the north side of the White House grounds.

I could barely find it on any of the other major sites today. Weird. But I sure as crap know that Powell resigned and that Condoleeza took his place.

Finally, here is proof that organized religion wants young, unmarried people to die of cancer.

For an extra kick, the URL itself is kinda funny.

Enjoy.

What a bad time to be gay and in love. I mean, it’s been hard enough for me to find girlfriends without people telling me that it’s gonna land me in Hell.