January 28, 2008
Ye Olde Scribe Presents: More Than a Little Sore About Our New Thesaurus
Non-Democrat Related Darwin Awards
“Since this edition of YOS is about stupidly suicidal Dems, he thought you’d relate to this then…”
(From an E sent to Scribe… Note: after publishing this Scribe learned for a reader… Thanks Sanity! …that the more recent ones are HERE. As Scribe said to Sanity. once he found out…)
Never let it be said that an older brother; especially one who passes such things on as “new,” is always the wiser brother.
The 2007 Darwin Awards
Yes, it’s that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us.
Here is the glorious winner:
1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach , California , would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.
And now, the honorable mentions:
2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and, after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef’s claim was approved.
3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.
4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.
5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.
6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer… $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]
7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he’d just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.
8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, “Yes, officer, that’s her. That’s the lady I stole the purse from.”
9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti , Michigan , at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away. [*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]
(Scribe did edit one out he knew was an urban legend: the one about the guy sucking out the septic of an RV. It’s an old, rotted, chestnut… and even if it were true, certainly not “new,” by any means.)
In the interest of bettering mankind, please share these with your friends and family… unless of course one of these individuals by chance is a distant relative or long-lost friend. In that case, be glad they are distant and hope they remain lost.
*** Remember… They walk among us!!! ***
Comedy News 2007 Darwin Awards
Now, here we go AGAIN with another edition of Democrats enabling ReTHUGlican strategy. Thanks Guys and Gal!
More Than a Little Sore About Our New Thesaurus
(Note: as far as Scribe is concerned, this election year it seems the Dems: especially Hillary, Barack and some of their over zealous supporters, deserve a political Darwin Award. Hence the inspiration for this column.)
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Paul Krugman: Lessons of 1992
Paul Krugman, The New York Times, January 28, 2008
It’s starting to feel a bit like 1992 again. A Bush is in the White House, the economy is a mess, and there’s a candidate who, in the view of a number of observers, is running on a message of hope, of moving past partisan differences, that resembles Bill Clinton’s campaign 16 years ago.
Now, I’m not sure that’s a fair characterization of the 1992 Clinton campaign, which had a strong streak of populism, beginning with a speech in which Mr. Clinton described the 1980s as a “gilded age of greed.” Still, to the extent that Barack Obama 2008 does sound like Bill Clinton 1992, here’s my question: Has everyone forgotten what happened after the 1992 election?
Let’s review the sad tale, starting with the politics.
Whatever hopes people might have had that Mr. Clinton would usher in a new era of national unity were quickly dashed. Within just a few months the country was wracked by the bitter partisanship Mr. Obama has decried.
This bitter partisanship wasn’t the result of anything the Clintons did. Instead, from Day 1 they faced an all-out assault from conservatives determined to use any means at hand to discredit a Democratic president.
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January 27, 2008
Mark Moford: 29 Things to be Happy About
Mark Morford, The San Francisco Gate, January 25, 2008
Happiness knows no particular order, and neither does this list:
1) We may very well, within a year’s time, have a black president. We may have a female president. We may, unfortunately, also have a bizarre robotic nutball Mormon president. No matter how it turns out, it will be very strange and unnerving and different and a bit startling and therefore at least remotely interesting to watch. Which, you have to admit, is far better than how it’s been for the past seven years, which is utterly humiliating, repellant, cancerous.
2) Here is this ingenious new alarm clock. It has an Internet connection that hooks directly into your bank account. If you oversleep, it begins to withdraw funds from your account. And donate them. To groups you really, really despise. Ten minute oversnooze? Fifty bucks goes to the GOP. Oversleep a half an hour? There goes $100 to the NRA, the Heritage Foundation, the Bush Presidential Library (for all the crayons). Sleep till noon? Five hundred bucks to the Aryan Nation or National Right to Life or the Lindsay Lohan Cocaine Fund. Because nothing is more motivating than abject hate. Except, of course, abject love. But that’s a completely different gizmo.
3) You’re not imagining it. Your intuition was completely correct. Tom Cruise really is insane. Also, it is a safe bet that Tom and Jerry O’Connell will not be working together anytime soon.
4) Women and minorities appear to be galvanized by Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. Youth and college-educated voters appear to be galvanized by Barack Obama’s. No one at all is truly, deeply galvanized by Mitt Romney or John McCain or crazy little Mike Huckabee, and everyone is generally repulsed by the fetid little tyrant that is Rudy Giuliani. All of this, remarkably, seems just about exactly as it should be.
Robert Reich: Darker Days Ahead?
Robert Reich, Newsweek, January 23, 2008
Think the last few days have been bad for Wall Street and the rest of the world’s markets? Hang on, things are probably going to get worse, says Robert Reich, President Clinton’s former secretary of Labor and author of the recent book “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy and Everyday Life.” According to Reich, who currently teaches public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, the United States might even be headed toward a depression.
Newsweek’s Arlyn Tobias Gajilan talked to Reich about the Fed’s surprise rate cut Wednesday, the “D word,” the growing criticism of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and whether a stimulus package will include $500 check for each American. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Many investors had hoped for an interest-rate cut, but this cut’s size and timing took people by surprise. Were you taken aback by the Fed’s three-quarter basis-point cut, the largest single-day reduction in the Fed’s history? And do you think it’s necessary?
REICH: Yes and yes. The Fed is clearly becoming aware of the serious potential of an economic meltdown. The size of the cut is larger than anyone expected because the Fed usually moves in [increments of] .25 or .50 percentage points. But the danger of a cut this size is that it may panic the investors. They may conclude that the Fed has determined that the economy is even worse than assumed and that there is still a way to go before we hit bottom. Yet the Fed has to [cut]. Credit markets are still uncomfortably frozen, and the housing slump continues to worsen.
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The Tattlesnake – The (Yawn) GOP Debate From Outer Space Edition
Americans Can Only Wonder: Do These People Live on Mars?
It was the usual March of the Condemned in Boca ‘Rat-tone,’ Florida Thursday night, only now the Republican Death Row has been pared down to five heads on the block. A brief rundown of the doomed:
Rudy Giuliani, his mouth so lipless and down-turned it looked as if he sucked on a cigar soaked in alum, added little to the GOP confab; his past reliance on ‘911, 911’ a joke even he can’t make with a straight face any longer. An outcast in ‘Rudy Country,’ now losing to McCain in his home state of New York, the unloved Brooklyn-born Vampire apparently just realized that, while the Sunshine State has a lot of ex-New Yorkers in residence, they are mostly Democrats who won’t be voting for him. Sure, long-time supporter Brother Jeb might be able to pull off a little quick-shuffle Florida Election Magic on his behalf, but what’s the point? He’s going to lose big everywhere else, and the Dems are drooling to face-off against the Manhattan Madman. Perhaps it’s dawned on GOP honchos that they don’t want a candidate in ’08 who might very well take a cell phone call from the wife during a debate because he thinks it’s cute, or one who’ll so rile up the Christian Fundies that they’ll stay home in droves, meaning popular Republican candidates for state offices might also get creamed along with the maniac at the top of the ticket. Next up for the G-Man: A run for governor of NY – which he’ll lose as well.
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