[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4aoSUL5G18[/youtube]
And for the record, I believe that Blazing Saddles is the pinnacle of comedy. I thought that when I was 10, and I’m certain of it now.
Category: Society Page 14 of 69
There’s no particular point to me posting a link to this story, other than me thinking that it’s fantastic. LBJ, in Pakistan, making friends with a dude on the side of the road. Seriously, click it.
Hey, do you beat the shit out your girlfriend, and then drag her through the lobby of your apartment building? Cool. Then you, too, can vote to protect the sanctity of marriage in NY.
(And also, you pathetic Democrats? You better not lift a finger to reelect him.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3KhZsMXw9I[/youtube]
He says all the right things. And he does . . . nothing.
I present this in honor of the smoking ban that came into effect yesterday:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjgArB7PKTU[/youtube]
I suspect you don’t really need a translation for the piece, but in case you do . . .*
*And really, that’s not an exact translation. If you want one, ask your closest Hindi/Urdu-speaking friend what bhenchod and maderchod means. (You’re welcome.)
I used to bang my head against the wall every time I heard someone say “I’m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative.” And then I realized I was going to need my brain for (hopefully) another 50 years. But silly shit like this is the origin of that problem. There are, in reality, *very* few “fiscal conservatives” (in a literal reading of the phrase) in elected office. Rather, the phrase identifies those that cite spending/deficit/tax concerns as a reason to oppose most any social spending. If you look at the records of the vast majority of these self-proclaimed “fiscal conservatives”, you’ll see that they go in – whole hog – for defense spending, farm subsidies, and tax cuts as if they’ve never encountered the idea of responsibility for balancing the books. There’s no inherent fiscal conservatism there. It’s simply someone who has latched onto a popular phrase to dishonestly explain away his behavior.
Rank stupidity abounds:
Projections based on ballot results suggest Swiss voters have backed a campaign to ban the construction of minarets, local television reported.
[ . . . ]
Rightwing parties led by the nationalist Swiss People’s party, the country’s largest, have labelled minarets symbols of militant Islam.
That’s right, centuries old architectural features are coming for you.  Morons.
From an email to a listserv I’m on:
[E]arlier this week, we extended Google Scholar to allow anyone anywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts. We hope that this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all. As we worked to build this feature, we were struck by how readable and accessible these opinions are. Court opinions don’t just describe a decision but also present the reasons that support the decision. In doing so, they explain the intricacies of law in the context of real-life situations. And they often do it in language that is surprisingly straightforward, even for those of us outside the legal profession. In many cases, judges have gone quite a bit out of their way to make complex legal issues easy to follow. For example, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court justices present a fascinating and easy-to-follow debate on the legality of internment of natural born citizens based on their ancestry. And in United States v. Ramirez-Lopez, Judge Kozinski, in his dissent, illustrates the key issue of the case using an imagined good-news/bad-news dialogue between the defendant and his attorney.
The original announcement is here. It’s a bit of an optimistic sheen, but not ridiculously so, I think. Take advantage of it.