March 28, 2011
February 14, 2011
The Tattlesnake – New Definitions from the Askewed Dictionary Edition
Glimpses Behind the Curtain of Our Blutocracy
“Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!”
– Sen. John “Bluto” Blutarsky, from the film “Animal House” (1978).
BACHMANNALIA: 1. The sound wild-eyed gibberish makes in a rubber room. 2. An election-year holiday celebrating the unity of corporate money and gullible voters with sensibilities as squishy as wet teabags. 3. A sexless outdoor orgy in Minnesota in mid-winter, the quintessential Republican idea of how the public should be treated.
BACHMANNLINESS: 1. Putting on your ‘man pants’ backwards, while staring at the wrong camera. 2. Having the balls to misquote the Constitution on national television.
BLUTOCRACY: 1. A plutocracy as operated by Sen. John Blutarsky, the fictional ‘Bluto’ character from the film “Animal House,” and those who are likeminded. 2. The USA today, and not the newspaper. 3. Wall Street week.
BOEHNALITY: 1. Crocodile tears shed by one who is only half-crocked. 2. Pretending you’re in control of something you plainly are not, such as a bus when the steering wheel has come off in your hand. 3. The illusion that you stand for anything beyond your own personal gain and your next putt.
CALIPHATE: 1. In a ten-gallon hat, combine eleven-gallons horse manure with equal parts leftover Cold War fear and carbonated Holy Water; add a hefty scoop of Islamophobia, smother with nuts, and top with a lemon slice carved into the shape of a swastika and a cherry carved into the shape of a star. Strain through Fox News and serve at the temperature at which blood boils.
CONAGRA: 1. What polite Southern Republicans call the only conservative black guy in the county after he’s left the room.
CRAPITALISM: 1. An unregulated form of capitalism practiced by well-dressed carnival pitchmen that turns everything it touches to pure shit, commonly ruining the lives of a few million civilians in the process. 2. The hypotheses adhered to by many of the financial elite that the light at the end of Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public’s tunnel must always be a privately-owned oncoming train in order for them to prosper. 3. The theory that enough taxpayer money, filtered through a nation’s banks and large corporations, can persuade the political class and the media to do anything, and that much of that money must then be used to prolong the ignorance of the taxpayers from realizing they are financing the scheme.
FOX FIRE: 1. An event that never occurs at Fox News, no matter how inaccurate or disturbed the opinion expressed, unless the speaker happens to slip and tell the truth.
THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS: 1. The assortment of adjectives, verbs and adverbs Jonah Goldberg uses to, without irony, accuse liberals of fascism and blame them for all of the misery visited on the public in the past 30 years by those who think like Jonah Goldberg.
KOCHAINE: 1. Money secretly doled out by the wealthy to influence public opinion in their favor, opinions which are usually contrary to the public interest or even common sense. 2. The primary addiction of Washington lobbyists and prominent politicians of both parties, causing them to lie, cheat and commit desperate degenerate acts to continue their dependence, that is strangely not included on the DEA’s list of dangerous drugs deserving long prison terms, but certainly should be.
LUNTZTITUTION: 1. The creation of government policy or public outrage based on buzzwords or catch phrases invented by Frank Luntz that have little or no relationship to the reality of the subject; e.g.: describing an orange as a ‘bad apple,’ or a grapefruit as a ‘cancerous lemon,’ or smog as ‘clean air.’ 2. Any doomed political party or corporation that believes such linguistic concoctions are anything more than a thin disguise for its true purpose of picking the public’s pocket or skinning the yokels to the bone.
POLYPSYCHOTIC: 1. Capable of jabbering delirium in more than one medium. 2. The conservative media endlessly parroting the same right-wing talking points.
PROLESSIVISM: 1. “Two For Me and None For You.” A game played by the US Chamber of Congress – excuse me, ‘Commerce’ – their financial backers and various politicians, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The point of the game is to convince voters that balancing budgets and lowering taxes for the over-privileged is more important than their jobs, pensions, homes, or eating regular meals. It is akin to the “Sure I’m Jobless and Broke, But at Least I Don’t Have Worry About Bank Overdraft Fees Anymore” game indulged in by millions of less fortunate Americans every day, except much more profitable for the major players.
SOLIPSIMPSONISM: 1. The belief that the best way to clean the ears is by passing a handkerchief through the head while wearing a blindfold and a shoe in one’s mouth. 2. The conviction that unworkable remedies that cause public suffering will resolve budget ills if inartfully expressed at length. From Solipsimpson: A dried-up old boob with 300 million nipples.
“My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.”
– Sen. John “Bluto” Blutarsky, from the film “Animal House” (1978).
© 2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
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February 8, 2011
100th Birthday Quote-to-Quote: The Real Ronald Reagan
Ever wonder where current Republican twits like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann get some of their goofiest, dumbest twists on history, society and government? Seems they are simply borrowing from the ‘Master,’ the same mental colossus many members of the GOP want engraved on the dime and enshrined on Mount Rushmore:
“Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?”
– Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980.“Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal.”
– Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976“I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary.”
– Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965“I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
– Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966“Today a newcomer to the state is automatically eligible for our many aid programs the moment he crosses the border.”
– Ronald Reagan, in a speech announcing his candidacy for Governor, January 3, 1966. (In fact, immigrants to California had to wait five years before becoming eligible for benefits. Reagan acknowledged his error, but nine months later said exactly the same thing.)“…a faceless mass, waiting for handouts.”
– Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”
– California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966“We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”
– Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964“History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people’s income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government…. When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness.”
– Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980. (History shows no such thing. Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)“Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything.”
– Ronald Reagan, in Newsweek, April 21, 1980. (Wrong again.)“What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”
– Ronald Reagan, defending himself against charges of callousness on Good Morning America, January 31, 1984“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”
– Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980. (In reality, the average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per year.)“Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile, with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon.”
– Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1980. (The U.S. Department of Transportation calculates that a 14-car train traveling at 80 miles per hour gets 400 passenger miles to the gallon. A 1980 auto carrying an average of 2.2 people gets 42.6 passenger miles to the gallon.)“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia.”
– Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Detroit Free Press, March 23, 1980. (According to the USGS, the Saudi reserves of 165.5 billion barrels are 17 times the proven reserves–9.2 billion barrels–in Alaska.)“I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I’m not a scientist and I don’t know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind.”
– Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time magazine, October 20, 1980. (According to scientists, Mount St. Helens emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day at its peak activity, compared with 81,000 tons per day produced by cars.)“…until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this.”
– President Reagan revealing a disturbing view about the “coming of Armageddon,” December 6, 1983“Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy.”
– James David Barber, presidential scholar in “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,” by Mark Hertsgaard“He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts.”
– David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist“He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless”
– Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father in “The Way I See It.”“Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears.”
– British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Quotes selected from a post at DemocraticUnderground.com.
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September 8, 2010
September 2, 2010
July 27, 2010
June 18, 2010
May 27, 2010
News of the Future, Rand Paul Edition
Sen. Rand Paul Dead; Author of Controversial Bill
Special to the Louisville Courier-Journal
July 5, 2014
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) died yesterday afternoon from food poisoning that investigators say he contracted from contaminated meat at his favorite Washington restaurant, the exclusive Le Petomane. Autopsy results concurred that the filet mignon cooked medium-rare consumed by Sen. Paul contained large amounts of deadly E-coli bacteria.
Sen. Paul will be remembered for co-sponsoring, with Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the controversial Paul-Bachmann Restoring Our American Freedoms Act that, as well as allowing racial segregation in private businesses open to the public once again, also eliminated the Dept. of Agriculture and ended government inspection of meat and other food products. President Palin signed the act into law just a month before Sen. Paul’s untimely death.
The Senator’s life might yet have been saved, but public ambulance service was discontinued following passage of last year’s Republican-sponsored National Personal Responsibility Act, which Sen. Paul also avidly supported. A spokesman for Paul’s office said he had forgotten to renew his private ambulance subscription due to his hectic Senate schedule. Instead, a very ill Sen. Paul was put into a cab by his wife and died in transit to the hospital, stuck in rush-hour traffic made worse by the crumbling roads that have not been repaired by their new private corporate owners.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a donation be made to the Club For Growth’s Accidents Happen Fund. Private services will be held Wednesday at the Exxon-Mobil Memorial Cemetery in Louisville.
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
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May 3, 2010
December 29, 2009
November 26, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Some Things Not to Be Thankful For Edition
Or, What a Curmudgeon Does on Thanksgiving
Major minor aggravations that ‘wear on the mind and make you old before your time.’
– These people who leave comments on various websites claiming they’ve been to teabag rallies and never once saw anyone who was a racist. Really? Not even a single racist? This is just as incredible as those who say there’s not a Republican in the land who hates Obama because he’s black — nope, it’s all about his policies, and that’s why we’re waving this here Confederate flag.
– The Obama/Hitler, Obama/Stalin comparisons. Seriously, think about this for a minute, paranoid teabaggers: If Obama were really anything like Hitler or Stalin, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, et al, would all be off the air. For that matter, you wouldn’t be listening to crazy Michele Bachmann at a teabag rally, because government troops would have closed down the event long before she had a chance to speak. In fact, there wouldn’t be any teabag rallies and Bachmann and her GOP ilk would be in jail for treason by now, if not executed. Of all the Obama smears invented by the fringe right, this is, along with the Birther nonsense, the most ludicrous and easiest to disprove.
– Then there are the good Christopublicans praying for Obama’s death or bodily harm. Saved by Jesus were you, you hateful little twit? Did you ever bother to read what the man you worship is quoted as saying about those who judge others, engage in hypocrisy, and misuse his name for spite and revenge or their own advantage? Hint: It’s all in the first four books of the New Testament.
November 25, 2009
October 12, 2009
Michele Bachmann’s Wacky ‘School Sex Clinics’
See a video of Crazy Michele in action here.
“Can you believe this, Mr. Speaker? Let’s put sex clinics in our schools, and let’s put Planned Parenthood in charge of these sex clinics, because the bill requires under this provision, Planned Parenthood would be authorized to serve as a sponsoring facility for the Nation’s schools.”
– Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Kookooland) on the House floor, Sept. 30, 2009.Debunking:
“We see no language in the three main versions of the bill that would allow school-based clinics, which have a long history of providing basic health services to underprivileged students, to provide abortions. Nor would the clinics even be new — they have been around for three decades. So we rate the claim Pants on Fire!”
– PolitiFact.com’s Truth-O-Meter.
August 20, 2009
May 7, 2009
April 30, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Rep. Hoot, Sen. Smalley and the Fox Swine Crew Edition
The Harder They Fall…
What a Hoot: As Keith Olbermann reported Wednesday night, perpetually-insane Minnesota comediatrix Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Daft) brought the funny the other day when she took to the House floor to condemn Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Dems for the ‘Hoot-Smalley Act’ of the Great Depression era. While you can never be sure when dealing with a dingbat like Bachmann, who apparently stole her blank eyeballs from a crazy doll in “Bride of Chucky“, she probably meant the ‘Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act‘ that was sponsored by two Republicans, and signed into law by Republican President Herbert Hoover in 1930. In reality, FDR campaigned against the act in 1932, and a Dem majority in Congress effectively repealed Smoot-Hawley in 1934 with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, but in Michele’s loopy-dumb, wish-I-had-a-brain, far-right universe facts are a liberal, commie plot invented by the Devil to trip up those patriotically lying in the name of Jesus. If you’re a sane Republican (okay, that would be confined to ex-McCain manager Steve Schmidt and Sen. Olympia Snowe) you know that Bachmann’s Sixth District is already in the ‘D’ column in 2010 (she nearly lost to an unknown children’s book character named Elwyn Tinklenberg in ’08), and that you must find a legal means to (a) shut this woman up before she further damages what’s left of your party and (b) prevent her from running for president or vice president in 2012. (The vision of a ‘Palin-Bachmann 2012′ ticket privately induces dyspeptic nightmares of an LBJ/Goldwater electoral slaughter among GOP bigwigs.) Of course, it may be too late – the GOP brand is so tainted that if you jettisoned all of the dotty Dittoheads, nattering neocons, tone-deaf teabaggers, putrid Palinites, raging racists, Savage Nation neo-Nazis, fatuous Freepers, flaming fully-automatic gun nuts and kinky religious kooks, you could assemble what’s left of the party in a Washington hotel ballroom with space to spare for a trained elephant act. (For more on this, read the last two items in this article.)
He’s Good Enough, He’s Smart Enough and Doggone It, the People Liked Him! Speaking of Minnesota, the drab electoral Death March of Numb Norm Coleman, the Republican Sore Loser, received a little spark of life thanks to the wily minds in Al Franken’s
How Many Attended Beck’s ‘Sermon on the Make’ on the Washington Mall?
There was no promised miracle, unless it’s that 80,000-plus people showed up to the New Messiah of the Right’s Gospel Meet-and-Bleat. (Incidentally, a possible third of the crowd may have just been ordinary tourists who stuck around to see what was going on rather than Teabagger acolytes of St. Beck.)
Carrie Dann at MSNBC’s First Read fretted:
We already know dippy Michele’s estimate of anything, including the size of the Teabagger movement, is as solid as Dick Cheney’s interpretation of the Constitution, so discard that ‘million’ tripe. In this case, Wasilla’s Mama Grizzly may be closest; about 100,000, with perhaps a quarter to third apolitical, unreligious sightseers or celebrity gawkers. As Sam Seder confirmed, it was an old, white, middle-class gathering, just like Fox News’ dwindling audience.