Tag Archives: politics

Oh, Republicans! Volume #5,360,285

Posted on by
Reply

Move over, already way too overcrowded group of Republican politicians that have said horrible things in the last year, there’s a new Republican saying horrible things about rape and he’s here to defend your honor!



Georgia Rep. (they’re not always southern but they’re usually sothern) Phil Gingrey stepped up to the plate to defend Todd Akin’s awful “Legitimate Rape” comments.



In case you missed it, Todd Akin was running for Senate this summer and he said this on a news show –



“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”



Now granted, this was in Missouri so he may have actually heard that from doctors but it was wrong.



Akin lost the election just like a half dozen other Republicans who said awful things about rape over the summer. It was actually pretty disturbing to see so many people in or trying to get into political office have such backwards views but it all mercifully died down once the election was over. OR DID IT?



Rep Gingrey felt poor Akin needed to be defended so he up and told the Marietta Journal that Todd Akin wasn’t completely off with his statement. Here’s the full quote.



“In Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, “Look, in a legitimate rape situation” — what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, “Hey, I was raped.” That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that. …
And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, “Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.” So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.



Gingrey’s comment may have a little medical know-how than Akin’s but has the same fundamental flaw. These two are basically stating that the problem isn’t rape, it’s girls “crying rape” or using rape as an excuse.



See, the only real bulletproof defense in the abortion debate the pro choice side has is the whole “in instances of rape an incest” so Republicans have taken to trying to poke holes in that by trying to introduce the idea that rape doesn’t happen as much as you’d think it would when the exact opposite is true.



Frankly, I love these guys. I can’t tell you how glad I am that people like Phil Gingrey are out there speaking out for what they believe. With people like him, the republicans can purge every woman voter from the party by 2016.

This Is Not the Petition You’re Looking For

Posted on by
Reply

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.

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.”

YES!!!

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!”

The Republican Candidates. Where are they now?

Posted on by
Reply

Can you believe it’s been over a month since the election? I got thinking about all those kooky republican primary candidates that were occupying my nightmares no more than a year ago when I heard something on the radio about Tim Pawlenty getting a job as a consultant for something or other. It made me think about what happened to all the other candidates? What are they doing? Let’s take a look.



Mitt Romney
mitt

Before we get to the primary candidates let’s look at the biggest loser. Last I saw was some fluff news story about him pumping his own gas or something. My guess is that he’s dealing with the loss by hiring Obama look-alikes to hunt on his private island for sport or trying to build a spaceship to find Kolob.



Herman Cain
Herman

Probably out sexually harassing some chicks.

Seriously though he pops up in the media every now and again. He’s recently been calling for conservatives to create a 3rd party because the Republicans don’t represent true conservatives these days and the current party has a little too much legitimacy.



Ron Paul!
ronpaul

Ron Paul quit Congress. Below is his 48 minute retirement speech. I only saw the first couple of minutes but he comes out the gate by shit talking Democrats, Republicans, government and Congress. I don’t know if he’s being badass or just whiny.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q03cWio-zjk&w=420&h=315]



Michele Bachmann
220px-Bachmann2011

We will never be rid of the monster. This bitch is bulletproof. Pure teflon. She will be screeching on TV about lightbulb freedom and trying to get people to pray the gay away long after I’m dead. I don’t know how the 6th district keeps re-electing her. I seriously don’t.



Rick Santorum
frothymix

Ugh. Who cares? Seriously. I think he’s doing weekly columns for worldnetdaily or some bullshit. Whatever. Fuck him. Ugh.

The Liberal’s Guide to Murdering Christmas: 2012 Edition.

Posted on by
1

Well, it’s December so that means I’ve been very busy with my liberal friends trying to wage our war on Christmas. My nights have been filled with meetings with local reps from the ACLU, PETA, ADL and Planned Parenthood trying to brainstorm for ways to weaken Christmas even further. We’re trying to petition Congress to recognize the phrase “Merry Christmas” as hate speech but there’s little else we can do because Christmas has just become so… secular.



It’s hard to completely kill the holiday with our current battle plan because we’ve been attacking it as a religious holiday. We can use the First Amendment (the only Amendment that matters) to weaken Christmas on that front publicly but how do we take care of all of the many, many aspects of modern Christmas that have nothing to do with Christianity?



If we liberals are going to kill this holiday once and for all we need to think outside the organic, recycled, fair trade box. Here’s a few things we can do to start.


1: Santa’s Elves are non-union labor.
Nothing destroys a business quite like a union! Now, of course Santa’s elves aren’t real but just by injecting unionization of his labor force into the Christmas myth it will rattle the foundations of the whole story. We should probably make people call the elves something overly politically correct, too. Something along the lines of “Vertically Differentiated Polar Natives”.


2: Christmas trees are killing the environment
It’s hard, as a liberal, to attack something so tied to Paganism but it needs to happen if we’re going to get rid of Christmas. Real or fake, the use of Christmas trees are killing mother earth! The real ones chop down trees and the fake ones are made from plastic. To make it seem like we’re trying to be fair, offer some hideous alternative nobody will want like growing a potted soyplant to put the presents around and eating the soybeans with Christmas dinner.


3: Santa promotes childhood obesity.
Santa Claus promotes unhealthy lifestyles and unrealistic expectations. He tells kids you can live off of candy canes and cookies and live to be hundreds of years old.

Diabeetus.

Diabeetus.

Bonus: Try to get conservatives to hate Santa by saying he promotes socialism by giving away toys.


Okay, liberals. There’s the plan. Together we can finally murder this holiday. Namaste.

The Republican Party: A Voice for the Voiceless.

Posted on by
1

In just a few weeks the tax cuts implemented by George W. Bush will expire, causing a hike in tax rates that will put a huge hurt on Americans. The President keeps butting heads with Congress trying to pass a bill that will extend some of the tax cuts on middle class families but the republican led House of Representatives refuses to back down from a bullying president that wants to try to help fix the country’s deficit on the backs of the most underrepresented minority in this country, the rich man.



For far too long rich people have been treated as second class citizens in this country. They’re forced to fly on private jets rather than use public transportation. They have to send their children to private schools. Some of them are so ostracized from society that they have to send somebody out to shop for their groceries.



This sort of prejudice is so deep and widespread that it’s affected rich people’s very own view of their identity. Most of them don’t even see themselves as rich and actually say things like it’s hard living on $400,000 a year.



Even if they do see themselves as rich they try to hide it. They call themselves “Job creators” and “small business owners”. They’ve been so bullied by society that some of them will actually try to make it look like they make less money when they file their taxes out of shame.



Some people try to justify their rich bashing by hiding behind the bible. Taking quotes out of context like “it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Hate is hate, no matter how you try to mask it.



Thankfully, the rich have an ally with the Republican party. Republican congressmen have stated over and over that they do not want this economy fixed on the backs of the rich. They will not see this country raise tax rates on some people just because they have an insane amount of money.



Thank you, republicans. When our grandchildren look back and scratch their heads at how we’d even think to ask people to pay more because they have more, you’ll be content to know you were on the right side of history.

YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!

Posted on by
1

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.

What Day Is It?

Posted on by
2

I feel like there’s something I’m supposed to do today.

Hmmmmm……..

Maybe I’m missing something… I wish my friends would let me know.

What? I can call Chris Kluwe a friend. We hung out in a basement and played video games for charity. We’re like BFFs. No big deal.

If only I had some clue… something to tip me off…

Make sure to read Chris’ post in there. It’s nerd-perfect.

Okay, fine. Yes, it’s voting day. There wasn’t a moment that I didn’t know that today, because this morning, Bill woke me up with “work told us to go vote first and then we will start our workday do you wanna come vote with me huh do ya” like a little kid on Christmas morning. My original plan was to go at 2 in the afternoon because that’s when no one else will be there, but he was just so goddamned excited over this I had to say yes.

So we woke up the boy, and brought him with us to go vote. We all stood in line. Bill and I signed a piece of paper and were given tickets. We went to the next table and were told how to fill out our ballots. We went to the NEXT table and got our ballots. We sat down at a table and filled out our ballots. Then we turned in our ballots and got our stickers.

I did it all for the sticker.

Democracy, bitches.

At just about every table, people asked jokingly if Jared was voting. Honestly, it’s gotta be so dull in there, with all these serious people people being very serious about their serious duties to seriously make the serious choices. Seriously. Jokes (and the Youngs provided a couple) were probably the best “thank you” we could have given them.

When I went to vote, Jared sat next to me and I pointed out various parts of the ballot. I told him not to share, as privacy during voting is very important. We talked afterward why not voting on an amendment counts as a no. We talked about how you could bring a list of who you were going to vote for. And we talked about how important it is to vote.

It sounds like I did voting correctly, right? Like ours is pretty much the example of how you should vote? As a family, teach the next generation as I go? Proud to be participating in the greatness that is our electoral process?

Dead wrong, kids. Once I got back, I hopped on Facebook, and had this conversation with master voter Chris Olsen:

High five!

Kids, if you haven’t voted yet, please, PLEASE promise me you’ll take joy in it. We all get so jaded and so serious and so stuffy over our duty, but remember the fact that we have the right is FUCKING AWESOME! That we don’t live in a dictatorship, that no one is pointing guns at us, forcing us to “vote” for a specific person. The fact that we get to have a say in WHO is leading our country… It’s one of the best parts of being an American! We should be voting with glee!

And we should totally be going out for ice cream after. Who doesn’t like ice cream?

Communists, that’s who. Don’t be a commie. Eat ice cream!

This is not a Political Post

Posted on by
1

Really. It isn’t. I promised I wouldn’t make any more political posts until the election is over and I’m sticking to that. This isn’t about politics.



Okay, it’s kinda political but it’s about North Dakota. I don’t think talking politics counts if it’s North Dakota. Here’s what happened.



Last weekend I went up to Bismarck, ND to tell some jokes with Mike Brody. As we drove down Interstate 94 further and further away from the cities we saw fewer and fewer lawn signs and billboards telling us what to vote for. Instead, we saw more and more hand-painted signs with clever little slogans like “WORST PRESIDENT EVER! SAY NO TO SOCIALISM!” or “REAL MEN VOTE YES. SO DO SMART AND PRETTY LADIES!” (actual sign on 94 by Fergus Falls). As we crossed the border to ND, we started seeing hand painted political signs against “5”. The first one we saw said “Don’t hurt hunters and farmers! NO on 5!”



Well, shit. I don’t know who’s hurting all these hunters and farmers but I hope they beat this “5” thing and leave the poor guys alone.



The second sign we saw said “Stop outside special interests! Vote no on 5!”



So it’s outside special interests coming to hurt hunters and farmers? Somebody needs to stop them! These poor hunters and farmers are getting hurt by outside special interests! If I could, I’d have voted no on 5 right there on the spot. Hunters and farmers are people, too!



When I was home last night I remembered all the “no on 5” signs in ND so I decided to look up what that bill was all about. Was it a law that, if passed, allowed outside special interests to come in and punch hunters and farmers? Who knows?



Turns out it’s a measure that, if passed, will make it a felony to torture dogs, cats and horses.



Seriously. Here’s the official ballot measure courtesy of ballotpedia –

Initiated Statutory Measure No. 5
This initiated statutory measure would create section 36-21.1-02.1 of the North Dakota Century Code. This measure would make it a class C felony for an individual to maliciously and intentionally burn, poison, crush, suffocate, impale, drown, blind, skin, beat to death, drag to death, exsanguinate, disembowel, or dismember any living dog, cat or horse and provide a court with certain sentencing options. The measure would not apply to production agriculture, or to lawful activities of hunters and trappers, licensed veterinarians, scientific researchers, or to individuals engaged in lawful defense of life or property.

YES — means you approve the measure summarized above.
NO — means you reject the measure summarized above.



Okay. How the shit does this hurt hunters and farmers?



Seriously. Have I been Pheasant hunting the wrong way all these years? I mean, I’ve shot a few birds but I haven’t beaten any cats to death or exanguinated any horses. They never covered horse exanguination in our gun safety class.



Also, how does this hurt farmers? Exactly how many dogs do you have to impale to grow an acre of corn?



There’s a ton of exemptions for all this written into the measure, too! If this measure passes you can still drag a cat to death if you’re a licensed veterinarian or scientist. You can still blind a horse if you can prove he wanted to kill you.

It’s not just a few farmers off of 94 that feel this way, either. North Dakota seems pretty split down the middle on whether it’s within your rights to disembowel a dog for no reason.



Granted, it seems some of the opposition comes from the fact that the bill is limited in scope and does nothing to prevent the most common forms of animal abuse seen in the state. Which sort of makes sense I guess but “it’s not good enough” shouldn’t invoke such vehement opposition. The other big sticking point with the “vote no” crowd is that a lot of the financial support for this bill is coming from the Humane Society of the United States (the “outside special interest group”). To get a better idea of why people oppose this, you can either read this article detailing farmer’s concerns or just check out this comment from a blog post criticizing measure 5 –

mony • 13 days ago −
Im born and raised north dakotan hillbilly broke horses raise cattle chickens goats aint never done nothin wrong this measure was NOT wrote here some dumbass veggie lovin ass did it wake up nd all animals are equql not just the horses cats n dogs vote no and say yes when they can protect ALL farm critters i hunt and trap and there is nothin inhumane about it like i said wake up nd and if u aint from here dont vote this year u city crybaby jerk



Man, I thought politics in this state were fucked up…

Protect Hunters and Farmers! Because… horses…. uh….

Jena Does a Political Post

Posted on by
1

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.

I am so Fucking Burned Out on Politics

Posted on by
Reply

Okay.  Here’s the deal.  I’m not going to blog about any political stuff until this election is over this week.  

 

Really.  I’m totally serious.  

 

This was started as a comedy blog but with this being an election year and the whole gay marriage issue being on the ballot I’ve been getting more and more political.  It’s been super easy, too, considering every time a Republican politician opens their mouth they say some awful, demeaning thing about rape being okay.  

 

Not talking politics will be kind of hard.  With one week to go it’s the only thing that will be on the news and people’s Facebook news feeds will be full of political bullshit.  It’s on everybody’s minds but I just can’t bring myself to post about it anymore.  You can even get sick of your favorite food if you eat it every meal.  

 

No problem.  I’ll use this time to get back to the roots of this blog.  Posting fake responses to Craigslist job ads and poop jokes.  You know, write about stuff that really matters.  

 

So there you go.  For my last political rant in the election season I’ll predict some quotes from Republican politicians about rape we’ll hear in the next 8 days.  

 

“Come on.  We all know that there’s ‘rape’ and then there’s RAPE.  There’s a difference.”

 

“Being a mother is a full time job so when you think about it, rapists are really job creators.”

 

“I’m not saying women ask for it with how they dress but those Muslim ladies are covered head to toe and there are almost no reported rapes in middle eastern countries.”

 

“Maybe they should fight back harder.  I see ads for women’s self defense classes all the time.  I’m not saying it’s all on them but rape really is a two way street.  

 

Ugh.  Fucking republicans.