Tea-bagged Geico man fires back

Political Carnival

Yesterday, Paddy posted about the Geico spokesman who got fired over an insulting telephone message he left for the Tea Baggers' little astroturf extended family, FreedomWorks.

FreedomWorks' Matt Kibbe then posted Douglas' cell number on biggovernment.com, which caused Douglas to get harassed and ultimately sacked.

None of this hubbub prevented Douglas from making light of the situation in his own riveting little video...

Su. Perb:

Thanks to lancebaxter.

Computer problems ...

Back after work. Go surf the blogroll until Gordon wakes up. TGIF!

FDL 'Name That Pot Campaign'

Following up on yesterday's post:

Jane Hamsher, be still my heart!

Last night we had the first night of our contest to name FDL’s marijuana campaign. We were going to have the semifinal voting tonight, but I changed my mind.

I’m having too much fun being back at Late Nite again, and Mike Whitney decided he wanted to expand the contest to everyone on our email list, so we’re continuing the contest for a second inspired night.

...we have a SPECIAL PRIZE FOR EVERYONE just for playing…co-author of Marijuana is Safer, Steve Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project, emailed me say that they’re offering a FREE DOWNLOAD of the book to everyone until midnight tonight in honor of the contest!
...

Since we’re going to be doing a lot more around pot in the coming months, take advantage of this great opportunity, say thanks to Steve for this incredibly generous offer, and download away.

Much, much more and a list of the entries so far. Enjoy. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

If the Beverly Hillbillies Had Invested in a Fraudulent CDO

I'm sort of a Beverly Hillbilly in reverse, so I liked this.

Guess who!

Mr. Drysdale knew he wouldn't make it through the night. Cowering, sweating, and pissing himself in the panic room of his mansion, he watched on the monitors as what seemed like every Clampett under the redneck sun, if not the entire town of Bug Tussle, looted and wrecked his mansion where he had lived, if not quite peacefully, then at least continuously next to the proud hillbillies. Now, he wept as he saw Jethro Bodine stare straight into one of the security cameras and say, "When I find you, Mr. Drysdale, I'm gonna fuck ya like a mule." Drysdale clutched at the packet of cyanide capsules, his last resort should he face fire or fucking. Across the room, the corpse of Miss Hathaway mocked him, its slit throat like a cruel second smile.

[...] On her deathbed, Granny told Jed, "Don't you listen to that bastard. He's a-gonna steal your money like a backwoods whiskey runner."

It was that goddamn Ellie Mae, Drysdale thought, as he saw Jed use his shotgun to destroy a vase. Ellie Mae and Jane Hathaway fell in love and wanted to get married, but Drysdale had donated money to support Proposition 8, making their dreams fall apart. That was the final straw. They worked together to go to the SEC with everything they knew from their jobs at Commerce. When they told Jed about what really happened, there were only two parts of it that the Clampett patriarch understood: that Drysdale had outright lied to him and that he was making money off people losing their houses. Jed looked at Jethro and said, "Call up the kinfolk and get some buckshot for the guns. Let's show this city shithead how we treat liars and thieves back in the mountains."

Y'all'r gonna hafta ta go read ta see how this hyar yarn turns out. Cue the banjo music...

Chickens for prostate exams?

Sue Lowden's plan to solve the problem of skyrocketing health care costs? Go back to the barter system!

So Doc, I have one box of cereal and one '95 Ford Taurus with 150,000 miles (though trust me it runs great), how much of my broken leg can I get fixed?

For non-chicken related Nevada news visit http://www.ProgressNowNevada.org

Thanks to ProgressNowNevada.

And this looneytoon is ahead of Reid in the polls? Yeesh.

I'm no stranger to the barter system. I've traded motorcycle work for stuff I needed, like firewood and getting my house painted, for decades, and I can tell you this:

If I took a chicken to pay my doctor she would give me a rectal exam with it. I'd be fartin' feathers for a week.

In case you missed it

Jon apologizes for criticizing Bernie Goldberg and Fox News, but it's only because they're a terrible, cynical, disingenuous news organization.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bernie Goldberg Fires Back
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Must be nice to be an officer ...

Because if I'da pulled some shit like this, my ass woulda been in Leavenworth so quick, my shadow wouldn't be able to catch up:

...

One week ago, the military announced that Lakin is under investigation after he refused to report for a second tour in Afghanistan. Lakin believes that President Obama may not be a natural-born citizen, and therefore that military orders are invalid..."

...

There should be a blindfold, a cigarette, a wall, and a bullet with this guy's name on them.

It might not play all over ...

But to 'city boys' like me, this hits the spot:



More here.

Great, great thanks to my homie Watertiger for the link.

Headline of the Day

Religious Right vs. the Tea Parties — Can the GOP Exploit Both at the Same Time?

The Repugs have just about used up the fundies and they're concentrating on the teabaggers, but I'm sure they'll try.

Best case scenario: The teabaggers and the christofascists go to war with one another and take each other out and the GOP along with 'em. Ah, to dream...

We don't give a shit what assholes from Texass think

LATimes

Poll: Majority oppose marijuana legalization, new nationwide poll finds -- but where do Californians stand?

In line for the taco truck? Por favor amigo, make mine with everything, duuuude!

But seriously folks...

One commenter got it right:

sunnysmoothe wrote: Let me get this right... a NATION wide poll of 1,001 adults opposes legalization of marijuana.

So basically they could have polled anyone from Wisconsin to Florida? What does the polling of Americans from other states have to do with the base of this article which is the legalization of Marijuana in CALIFORNIA?

I am in the L.A. Now Southern California This Just In section correct? Why not write an article with a poll from 1,001 Californians? Wouldn't that make more sense? Sometimes after reading the LA Times, I really do get dumber.

Go see the other comments. The LAT has their own poll. Take it to see the results. Skew the results from as far away as you like (Smiley face).

Related:

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake is sponsoring a contest:

We're holding a contest to find the best campaign name for our marijuana legalization efforts. Use the form below to submit your ideas (please limit submissions to five words or less).

Much more. Go see. Hurry, contest ends at 8PM Back East Time tonight.

My submission is "Legalize California's Biggest Cash Crop", to include a suitable marijuana plant graphic on the bumpersticker.

A bit of history ...

Might help the teabaggers to actually read it before making fools of themselves in public:

...

On Dec. 16, 1773, colonial dissidents famously protested British taxation without representation by dumping shiploads of tea into Boston Harbor. According to John C. Miller's Origins of the American Revolution, British hawks responded exactly as Palin now recommends: by focusing on ego, power, and dominance. They called the Tea Party a "wanton and unprovoked insult" and proposed "to blow the town of Boston about the ears of its inhabitants." King George III declared, "We must master them or totally leave them to themselves and treat them as Alien."

The British hawks, like Palin, saw self-restraint as wimpy and dangerous. If Britain retreated from the tax policies that had provoked the Tea Party, they warned, the colonists would take this as "Proofs of our Weakness, Disunion and Timidity." Miller writes, "Few Englishmen believed that the mother country could retain its sovereignty if it retreated in the face of such outrage: it was now said upon every side that the colonists must be chastised into submission."

...

Was a time the "sun never set on the British Empire". The British sowed the seeds for their downfall centuries before and caused problems, the effects of which we feel to this day. If the Palins and Bachmanns of the Right get into power here, the downfall of the American Empire will come faster and be more far-reaching than anything the British of the 18th Century could accomplish.

Great thanks to our pal Maru for the link.

Fiscal responsibility ...

When the Republicans talk about "deficit spending" I laugh. They mean we should all be bartering for services with livestock while they use AmEx:

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Giving your chicken up for someone else to choke doesn't sound like a great health care scheme, but it does sound like a typical RNC reimbursable expense.

Just because I'll suck a dick ...

Doesn't mean I'm queer.

Poor Ol' Lindsey:

At a South Carolina Tea Party rally, one speaker wanted to know if South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is gay.

The rally held last week in Greenville included an unidentified speaker saying: "Barney Frank is more honest and brave than you. At least we know about Barney Frank, and nobody is going to hold it over his head. And we got to just … Look, I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey. But as a U.S. senator, I need to try and figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen. And I need to make sure you being gay isn't it."

...

The teabaggers have thrown him under the bus. I wonder when he'll pull an "Arlen" and try to become a Dem?

You haff papers?

Good fucking god. And to think, the Mrs. and I were actually debating retiring to Sedona a few years back. Thankfully, we were bitten by Provence. Isn't this still America? Can a state of this Union actually do this without getting federally fucked?

I had a friend who isn't into politics, but would say that Bush's goal was to enact martial law over the country. I told her she was not based in reality. But this new law in Arizona gives the police exactly that type of power -- at least, if you look somewhat "brown."

I know it'll be targeted at Latinos, but I wouldn't doubt that it'll be used on anyone in sight if they happen to have a bug up their ass about you.

...

This is America, right? This is wrong on so many levels. Even my inner German has a problem with it.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys...*

*Thank you, Willie and Waylon.

I made a comment on Fixer's earlier post, and it got me ta thinkin' about cowboys. My Dad was a cattle ranch broker and I got to spend several summers travelling around the West with him as he set up deals. I got to spend time on ranches all over California, Oregon, and Nevada.

The ideal of the cowboy as rugged individualist loner who fights for truth, justice, and the American way with a pearl-handled nickel-plated six-shooter instead of a cape is a crock a' shit from the movies.

If you ever saw a real cowboy with his shoulder up a cow's ass as he "tails 'er up" out of a mudhole, or cleared irrigation ditches with an idiot stick aka a shovel, or fixed fences out in the middle of nowhere, or let gas bloat out of a cow (stinky!) with a special hollow knife, or getting his old crock pickup running so he can go get drunk and lust after bar hogs on Saturday night, or any of a hundred other things that go with a low paying hard job, you know that the romance of being a cowboy is a fiction.

That said, I like Western movies. Mrs. G sent me out yesterday special to get these stamps:

Click photos to embiggen, Pilgrim

Pretty cool, huh?. Got my memory to churning, and I came up with this old photo:



The autograph reads: "To Gordon, your saddle pal, Gene Autry".

That picture is probably 55 years old, a treasure from my childhood. The point being that I'm not ten years old anymore. I may not be as grown up as I should be, but I'm certainly grown up enough to realize the difference between a fictional Saturday morning movie cowboy, like George Bush, and reality.

The teabaggers need to grow up at least that much.

No, Really, We Don't Want the Tea Parties to Stop Yet

El Rude-o

[...] What we do think is patently absurd is that they are marching and threatening and yelling about shit that's just not factually true.
...

Speak more, good teabaggers, because you sound like dumb fucks.

So, no, march and dissent away, motherfuckers. It's your right to stand in public and be an idiot who parrots the lies of those who are actually fucking up your lives.

My earnest hope is that the teabaggers figure out how badly they're being punk'd. Once they do, they'll be so embarrassed we'll never hear another word out of 'em.

Headline of the Day

Iranian cleric: Promiscuous women cause quakes

I see a religious battle brewing: our idiot fundie preachers think it's homosexuals.

The 411 on 420

HuffPo via EssEffChron

Where does 420 come from?

He pauses and thinks, hands on his side. "I don't know the real origin. I know myths and rumors," he says. "I'm really confused about the first time I heard it. It was like a police code for smoking in progress or something. What's the real story?"

Depending on who you ask, or their state of inebriation, there are as many varieties of answers as strains of medical bud in California. It's the number of active chemicals in marijuana. It's teatime in Holland. It has something to do with Hitler's birthday. It's those numbers in that Bob Dylan song multiplied.

The origin of the term 420, celebrated around the world by pot smokers every April 20th, has long been obscured by the clouded memories of the folks who made it a phenomenon.

The Huffington Post chased the term back to its roots and was able to find it in a lost patch of cannabis in a Point Reyes, California forest. Just as interesting as its origin, it turns out, is how it spread.

It starts with the Dead.

And your point is...? Doesn't everything? Heh.

Good story. Enjoy.

Update:

420 truths about working on a pot farm

Interesting.

The volcano ...

With the name none can pronounce. Great pics via Chris.

Sorry to hear about your dick ...

Digby:

... Why do these people find so much meaning in this faux macho, nihilistic silliness?

Because, for 8 years, they had a role model in the White House and now they don't.