Monthly Archives: November 2010

The GOP: Made of Lies.

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The right wing is freaking out over the idea that Obama is spending $200 million a day on a trip to India and Asia. By the way, the war in Afghanistan? That costs about $190 million a day.

The problem? It’s a complete lie, yet another example of the right wing echo chamber. They don’t care about truth.

Fortunately, at least some members of the media are paying attention, and breaking it down. The White House won’t (and shouldn’t) disclose actual costs and security measures on the trips, but Anderson Cooper pulled up figures for Clinton’s trip to Africa several years ago. Adjusted for inflation, that longer trip to more countries (6 countries in 11 days vs. Obama’s 4 in 9) cost the taxpayers some $5.2 million a day.

But the damage is largely done, just as it has been done countless times before. Some right-winger fabricates some piece of bullshit — say, death panels, or go back further to the Swift Boat horseshit in 2004 — and gets it into the media conversation from pundits and hacks like Limbaugh and Savage and Beck, and then gets quoted by party hacks like Michelle Bachmann, and a good chunk of our halfwit nation buys it and never hears the truth.

That’s how the GOP plays. They do it over and over; they do it far too often to claim innocence here. They are the party of open mendacity. This is what it means to be Republican in 2010.

Life in Space

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Check it out:

Unsurprisingly, falling asleep can take some getting used to. Just as you are nodding off, you can feel as though you’ve fallen off a 10-storey building. People who look half asleep will suddenly throw their heads back with a start and fling out their arms. It gets easier with time. One Russian crew member is renowned for doing without a sleeping bag and falling asleep wherever he ends the day. Anyone still awake after bedtime would see his snoozing form drift by, slowly bouncing off the walls, his course set by the air currents that gently pushed and pulled him.

TSA: Now even MORE obnoxious

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Because people are justifiably uncomfortable with the “naked scan” aspects of the new backscatter x-ray machines in airports, and because more than a few have wondered at the health implications of these things, there’s a growing backlash. People are insisting on a manual patdown instead of the x-ray, as is their right.

Well, the jerkoffs at TSA have decided to make the patdowns more intrusive, and the clear implication is that they want them to be more uncomfortable, more degrading, and more humiliating so that you’ll be a good little drone and take your x-ray dose like they want you to.

Fuck. That.

Here’s a counterplan: Let’s all refuse the scans. Sure, it’s annoying to have some halfwit pawing your junk, but we’re not the ones who’ll spend 8 hours a day doing the junk-pawing.

So let’s try to put an end to security theatre. Let’s take back our rights, along with our dignity. Let’s remember what Ben Franklin taught us, that those who sacrifice liberty for security (or worse, the illusion of security) deserve neither. Let’s find our balls, and then make them touch ‘em.

Word.