YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Bill

Not to brag but I’m friends with the president on facebook. It’s a pretty exclusive list.

Just me, Barry and 35, 298, 515 of his closest friends.

Really it’s just his PAC posting a bunch of pictures and quotes and whatever. I “liked” his page during election season and every now and then some pic from his page pops up on my timeline. Usually something cute and benign like this one that was posted on St. Paddy’s day –

A beer on St. Paddy’s day! Just like me! So relatable!

You might think it’s endearing, you might think it’s dumb, you might think it’s a cheap ploy to appeal to people, whatever. It’s a picture of the prez. having a beer on St. Paddy’s day. I usually just see a pic like that and keep scrolling down my timeline but this time I decided to check out the comments.

Big mistake. Don’t read the comments. Never read the comments on the president’s facebook posts. Nothing good can come from the comments.

Sure, there’s plenty of people just commenting “yay Obama”, plenty of spam comments but why all the hate comments? Why do you even follow the president on facebook if you think he’s a muslim socialist antichrist? This is one of the most benign comments –

MAH TAXES!

There were plenty variations of the above comment. “and how much did this beer cost THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?” “How about you quit wasting my tax money and do your job?!?” etc. Every second the president is not doing his job he is wasting valuable taxpayer dollars. Does he look like he’s signing a bill into law in that picture? No? QUIT SLACKING AND DO YOUR JOB, BARRY.

Where’s your long form certificate of intoxication?

I’ve seen about a half dozen comments that just up and claim it’s photoshopped. I call these people conspbeeracy theorists.

and finally –

Of course there’s a muslim one. There’s so many muslim ones. This one doesn’t even accuse him of being muslim. This lady’s just pissed that there are muslims that like him. Dirty, dirty muslims.

Jesus. The guy can’t even have a beer. Oh well. How about they just post a pic of him at the office with some visitors?

aw, cute.

GODDAMNIT.

You Can’t Stop the Signal. Well, Unless You Can.

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Jena

Yesterday, the “hactivist” group Anonymous threatened to break up President Obama’s State of the Union Address. It didn’t happen.

This could have happened for a number of reasons. They could have tried and failed. I mean, the white house had notification that it was going to happen. Anonymous released a statement saying they were going to like 9 or 10 hours before hand. That gives other people plenty of time to figure out how and to make it not happen. They also could have NOT been planning to hack, or only a small subset was going to and the rest decided they shouldn’t and cut them off. Or, they could have been really intent in their Borderlands 2 campaign.

For whatever reason, SOTU did not get “hacked” last night.

Obamanous.

Anonymous is a group of hackers. This means they circumvent certain technology or programming to be used in ways different than the original intended use. As a programmer, I “hacked” systems regularly, meaning I developed programming as a “work around” to the original programming. I do it all the time with WordPress structures. Usually, you want to go in and change the structure itself, but sometimes you have a one off. Sometimes you’re working with third party and can’t change the structure. And sometimes site growth just demands you get it up quickly, and structure change is a lengthy process.

It’s not necessarily best practice, but it is how programming changes happen about 99.9% of the time.

Hacking has gotten a bad rep. I think it’s rather inventive by nature, using the resources and code around you in a creative way to work around a problem. But when most people think of “hackers,” they think of renegade nerds out to disrupt the system, causing havock for havock’s sake. They think of this guy:

WarGames

or these kids

Hackers

or even this guy

Serenity

Ah, the glorification of hacking. They never think of the poor computer programmer, trying to get something changed or updated because a client last minute wanted the product to do THIS instead of THAT.

Anyway, SOTU did not get hacked. Do you know who did get hacked? The state of Montana:

These guys hacked a television show to broadcast an emergency zombie apocalypse. Now THAT’s some quality hacking.

Obama Needs to Stop Giving Hitler Such a Hard Time

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Bill

President Muslim McCommie has been compared to Hitler quite a bit by conservatives who don’t like him. He’s been likened to Hitler –

Oh man remember that time Obama tried to exterminate all the Jews? Total Hitler clone.

He’s been called worse than Hitler, too. I’m sure there’s somebody out there that thinks Obama’s some sort of Hitler Voltron where five different Hitlers come together and form Obama.

Granted… it’s not like my team is completely innocent of Hitler comparisons –

When you think about it the conservatives are just ripping off the liberals of 6 year ago.

It’s an easy comparison to make. Hitler was the worst so comparing somebody to Hitler is really just saying they’re the worst. The imagery of the swastika and nazi salute stir up strong emotions in people and that shitty little mustache is really easy to photoshop onto a picture –

My photoshop skills are worse than Hitler.

The point is that Obama has been compared to Hitler in a lot of ways but up until last weekend nobody ever said he was too harsh on Hitler. Thankfully we have The National Review.

Last weekend the NR blog “The Corner” posted that Obama was way off the mark in calling the Holocaust “senseless”. Here’s just a little snippet from the post.

Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.” By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the “unification of all Germans,” a demand for “land and territory for the sustenance of our people,” and an assertion that “no Jew can be a member of the race.” Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded.

…the fuck?

Seriously. I had to check to make sure the National Review wasn’t some shitty satire site because I’ve been fooled by that before (fuck you, Daily Currant!) but they’re serious. These people actually think the president shouldn’t have called the Holocaust “senseless” (which it was) because it made perfect sense to a bunch of Germans at the time. What? Are conservatives really so willing to bash Obama that they’ll say “Hitler’s ideas did kinda make sense” to do it?

I think I can say, without hyperbole, that NR writer Eliana Johnson is worse than VoltronHitler.

THANKS, OBAMA

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Bill

So on Sunday the lights went out in the Superdome for about 30 odd minutes and the world went online to post all their hilarious and original jokes about the blackout. I was no different. I posted on facebook –

Boom! Take that, buzzfeed!

No more than ten minutes after I posted that, my friend Patrick commented on how buzzfeed buzzfeed already had a article up about people on twitter blaming the blackout on Obama. 13 tweets with people saying things like “I blame Obama” and “THANKS, OBAMA.”

Just one problem, though. As people have commented on the article and on my post, the whole “THANKS, OBAMA” thing is a meme.

Seriously. It’s a joke. It has it’s own entry in “Know Your Meme”. One of the tweets they screencapped for the article is actually from a comedian.

Now, I get that buzzfeed’s bread and butter is rounding up screencaps saying awful, stupid and racist things on twitter but they totally jumped the gun on this one and missed the joke. Has buzzfeed become so jaded that it can’t even recognize sarcasm anymore? If so, I totally have some articles I can submit to buzzfeed.

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This Is Not the Petition You’re Looking For

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Jena

I’m a huge fan of the Steven Brust books, and most especially the Vlad Taltos series. Maybe it’s because the series doesn’t neatly fall into fantasy or sci-fi, but plays each genre against the other to create a very full and complicated world. Maybe it’s because he tends to deal in philosophical concepts and character development with witty banter and natural character interaction. Maybe it’s because I love sword fighting and mysteries. Maybe it’s because I grew up with his children as some of my closest friends and devoured his books throughout my childhood. Maybe it’s because I consider Brust a friend, having had long philosophical talks with him (ie- having talked with him for more than 5 minutes) and worked with him at RenFest.

Oh, you think this article has topped out its geek factor at drumming with a sci-fi/fantasy author at a Ren Faire? Buckle up kids- it’s about to get all sorts of geeky up in this post.

Yeah, I know this guy. No big deal.

I bring up the series because in the world where it takes place, there is an Empress, and every citizen of that Empire has a psychic link to the Orb, which the Empress monitors at all times. In one of the books, the protagonist (usually) of the books, who has had a link to this Orb since he was a child, is told that every citizen, due to the nature of the Orb, has the ability to psychically talk to the Empress at any given time. When the main character suggests that this must be a hassle for the Empress, his friend assured him that no, she actually gets very little in direct psychic communication because if the Empress doesn’t find your topic important enough, she simply destroys the sender via the Orb.

It’s like shooting the messenger times a thousand.

In September of 2011, the WhiteHouse.gov website saw the addition of the “We the People” petition section (petitions.whitehouse.gov). Any person can create and post a petition to this site, and if it gets enough virtual signatures, it gets reviewed by the Obama Administration and you are given an answer.

“My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and efffectiveness in government.”

— President Barack Obama

Our president can be so very adorably idealist at times. I just wanna give him a giant rainbow hug, wrapped in sunshine, and decorated with kittens.

This is the same petition process that, when Obama was re-elected, all 50 states had at least one disgruntled dude file a petition to secede. Which isn’t how that works, even though 7 of these petitions got enough signatures for review. So the Administration will have to review them and give them an answer. The answer will be “no- fuck you. That’s not how you secede, dumbass” but they will get an answer.

Do you know what else will have to be reviewed by the Obama Administration? A petition that just barely got the required number of signatures in which the petitioner asks the President to “secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016.”

Honey? Can you pick up a Death Star on your way home from work? We’re out.

The petition goes on to describe how doing so would contribute to job creation and national defense. And honestly, dude makes a valid point. Having an active space program where we put money into research and development does create jobs and can give us a scientific edge compared to other countries, including national defense.

Now, where did I put that NASA funding? Oh, right. Here it is. Just about to fall of the fiscal cliff, resulting in thousands of jobs lost, but successfully cutting millions out of the federal budget.

I’m certain that the Obama Administration is going to review the Death Star petition, and review our economy and the budget, and, once they pick themselves up off the floor from laughing so hard, respond with a well thought out and carefully crafted message. But I really want them to respond with three short but meaningful words:

“IT’S A TRAP!”

YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Bill

Last night was pretty awesome for me. Obama got reelected. Both the Marriage Amendment and the Voter I.D. Amendment were shot down, pretty much every republican who said awful things about rape this campaign were defeated, Donald Trump completely lost his shit on twitter and Josh Reimnitz won the District 4 Minneapolis School Board seat –

We’ve received like 2 dozen letters, door hangers, flyers etc. from this guy’s campaign. His website is super well done. I simply voted for him just because he put so much damn effort into his campaign.

All in all this election was a big win for me but there’s always a couple of things that didn’t go how I hoped –

BACHMANN FUCKING WON AGAIN

Seriously? That crazy bitch is fucking bulletproof. Two more years of her having legislative power. Two more years of her getting in front of TV cameras and talking about freedom for lightbulbs and God telling her to do shit. Granted, as a comedian I’m kind of relieved she’ll still be here to kick around but it’s too high a price to pay. I’d gladly give up all the low hanging fruit in the world to have her disappear from the public eye forever.

HOLY SHIT THEY ACTUALLY SHOT DOWN THAT MEASURE 5 THING IN NORTH DAKOTA

Remember that blog I did a couple of days ago about that wacky N.D. measure? It didn’t pass. By a huge margin. Turns out 67% of North Dakotans love strangling cats.

In spite of the minor WTF losses, I’m really optimistic about the next four years of Obama. Mainly because it will probably make Donald Trump literally go insane.

Seriously. Fuck that guy.

Jena Does a Political Post

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Jena

Bill said he was done doing political posts. I haven’t made one yet… not my thing. I’m not nearly the die hard Democrat he is. Hell, I’m not a Democrat. And no, that doesn’t make me a Republican. I just don’t really feel that the views of either of those political parties match mine enough to where I’m willing to ascribe myself to it.

Which makes it really hard to get riled up over what one party is doing vs another. I’m just constantly angry at everyone

I suppose I’m probably more libertarian than anything, only Ayn Rand makes me want to vomit. Oh sure- there are a couple of good ideas in there about owning your responsibility and going out and doing, but her views on the rest of humanity make me want to puke until all of the bile is out of my body so I don’t have to taste it anymore when her name comes up.

Really, politics just make me tired and cranky. They make me want to tear my hair and cry. Like a 4 year old. Like THIS 4 year old:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/kj5bmcBSQyM]

Well played, little girl.

Last Night’s Presidential Debate as Told by Facebook.

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Bill

I didn’t get a chance to watch the presidential debate last night but I really didn’t need to. My decision is already made. It’s not like Romney’s going to say anything to win my vote so why watch the debates? They’re not for me.

Besides, if I want to find out how the debate turned out I can just check my facebook newsfeed and let all the partisan hysterics and hastily created memes inform me! Let’s see what facebook had to say about last night’s debate, broken down by political view.

CONSERVATIVE: “Romney won by a million points.”

To hear my republican friends on facebook tell the tale, Obama got his ass handed to him. Romney brought the pain last night as President Obama stood there shaking like the scared little secret muslim socialist he is, unable to defend the last four years or lay out a good plan for the future. The best comment I saw on a right wing circle jerk thread from last night – “You can’t spin this. The mainstream media will attempt to ‘fact check’ Romney tomorrow to mitigate Obama’s lackluster showing, but the verdict is in. To say otherwise is either incompetence or denial.” I love how “fact check” is in quotes, like fact checking is some junk science that has no room in politics.

Whatever. Enjoy your victory, assholes.

LIBERTARIAN: “YOU SHEEP CAN WATCH THESE PUPPETS DEBATE ALL YOU WANT BUT THEY’RE THE SAME PERSON BLAH BLAH TWO PARTY SYSTEM BLAH BLAH RON PAUL.”

Gotham City’s newest villian was once two presidential candidates until a debate went horribly awry…

I’m pretty sure most libertarians and independents are just in it for the smug sense of superiority they feel over democrats and republicans. They’re like the political version of people who say atheists are as annoying as fundamentalist christians. Don’t ask them how we’d actually change such a large, broken system otherwise they’ll just scream “Ron Paul!” and run away.

LIBERAL: OMG ROMNEY SAID HE’S GOING TO KILL SESAME STREET NOOOOOOO!

So less than an hour after the debate these images started filling up my newsfeed –

I don’t even get the reference on this one, honestly.

Apparently last night in the debates Mitt Romney said something about cutting PBS funding and now the democrats are jumping all over it. Now, I’ll admit cutting gov’t funding to PBS to lower the deficit is stupid and inefficient but to have the left jump all over that one thing he said just shows me how much better he did than Obama last night.

Also, when the fuck did all these people suddenly care about PBS? If half the people on facebook jumping to the defense of PBS actually fucking donated to PBS then it wouldn’t need to get part of it’s funding from the government anyway. Republicans would have to find another red herring to blame the debt on and the channel which you probably only use as a babysitter and maybe watch one cool documentary a year on would be safe.

EVERYBODY: “Jim Lehrer is a shitty moderator.”

To hear about it afterwards, Jim Lehrer stammered his way through the entire thing, couldn’t get the candidates to stick to their time or topic, peed himself, cried and hid under the table rocking back and forth in the fetal position for the last 20 minutes.

Man, I can’t wait to see what my facebook friends have to tell me about the next two debates!

Dumb Racists For Obama

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Bill

I’ve seen this photo being shared around facebook a lot lately –

Did you need to use the confederate…. whatever.

In fact, if you google it, you can find a surprising amount of stars-n’-bars support for Obama –

The south shall rise again! Until then, vote Obama!

Obama at a campaign stop in Cousinlove, AL.

I can just imagine Jeff Foxworthy hunched over a notebook scribbling “If you’re in favor of a public health care option…”

The furthest I could trace back that first sign is from a politico article in 2008. In fact, all of the images are from around the time of his first campaign. I even found a blog called obamaredneck.com and all their posts are from 2008 and 2009 (there’s really not much there. The last few posts are about Ted Nugent’s latest book, mercury in fish and legalizing pot). How did I miss out on this seemingly huge base of redneck fans? And why do they keep having to use the Confederate Flag image in all their stuff?

I know that there’s an ongoing debate on the whole Confederate Flag thing. There are some who think that it’s a racist symbol. An image linked to the Confederacy, which seceded from the U.S. when Abraham Lincoln was elected because he campaigned for ceasing the expansion of slavery. Then there’s the racists who use it because they don’t like black people and shout “IT’S ABOUT STATE’S RIGHTS” when they get called on their bullshit.

Seriously, if you think the Confederate Flag isn’t steeped in racism then you’re either just dumb or you’re dumb and also racist.

I remember a few months ago when West St. Paul Councilman Ed Hansen made news for hanging a confederate flag in his backyard that said “redneck” (he subsequently took it down). From the article – “He sees the flag as a symbol of free speech and individual liberty.” The only way the Confederate Flag is connected to free speech is if you want to be free to yell “work harder, boy!” at a black guy that you’re making work for no pay.

As far as the “State’s rights” argument goes. Ask somebody who uses that argument which state’s rights they’re talking about. If they don’t have an answer (which they probably don’t), here’s one from the wikipedia page for state’s rights –

Supporters of slavery often argued that one of the rights of the states was the protection of slave property wherever it went, a position endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1857 Dred Scott decision. In contrast, opponents of slavery argued that the non-slave-states’ rights were violated both by that decision and by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Exactly which—and whose—states’ rights were the casus belli in the Civil War remain in controversy.

So basically the Rednecks for Obama are saying that ideally, he’d be a slave but since that can’t happen they’ll settle for President.

Fox News… I don’t… Jesus Christ, Fox News… Goddamnit.

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Bill

I’ll usually check out the front page of all the major news sites every morning. I’d love to say that it’s because I like to stay informed on what’s going on in the world but really I’m just looking for stories to make fun of for the blog. I’ll start with CNN, go on to MSNBC and then Fox News.

I know Fox can be biased but they’re still a news organization and a lot of their web content is just slightly aggregated AP and Reuters stuff. Most of their heavily biased stuff is saved for their horrifying Fox Nation page anyway. You wouldn’t expect to see their most biased stuff on the front page, right?

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Fucking wrong.

The headline fucking piece on foxnews.com today is a bullshit non-story about how the white house added links to the end of presidential biographies. So, after a president’s bio on the white house website they added a new section called “Did you know?” Here’s the one for BushII –

Did you know?

In 2002, President George W. Bush’s State of the Union was the first to be live broadcast on the Internet. In 2011 and 2012, President Obama’s State of the Union speeches were available in an enhanced live stream version that featured infographics, charts and data side-by-side in real time with the President’s speech.
In 2009, former President Bush partnered with 42nd President Clinton to help rebuild Haiti, after the country was devastated by an earthquake.

Okay, a slightly political but incredibly benign move. Here’s that story with a little Fox News sprinkled on it.

Goddamnit.

Click the link to the article page and the headline reads “White House under fire for adding Obama policy plugs to past presidents’ bios”. Read the article and you find out who he’s under fire from. Bloggers. There’s a tumblr set up to make fun of him. No other news organization has reported on this and no other politician has questioned his motives. It’s nothing and they’re pretty much lying about it. To read the headline and see the picture you’d think he was altering FDR’s bio to say Obama helped win WW2.

Well of course Fox News pulls this incredibly partisan bullshit but we all know that’s how they play. Who takes everything Fox News says at face value?

PEOPLE WHO READ FOXNEWS.COM DO. THEY’RE FUCKING IDIOTS.

This was honestly the first comment I saw when I read the article.

cobrajet69 0 minutes ago
This just shows that Obama is Mentally ill, cut & pasting his picture with people he didn’t even know……this is not normal behavior

You know he didn’t… that was actually Fox News who… which they shouldn’t even have done in… forget it.

Don’t even bother trying to read the other comments. If these people bash Obama when the article has nothing to do with him you can only imagine what they say when an article outright attacks him. I saw the term “porch monkey” in no less than five comments and one guy called him “GAYBAMA”.

Goddamnit, Fox News.

YoungNotions

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