The Spice of Life

I love variety.

That's today's weather here in Madison. Here's Jon's neck of the woods:

Not too shabby for the end of November.

Survey

No, no. Not one of those.

If you've got a couple of minutes, why not help out the fine people at the J-school here at UW by completing this survey? It's free, and it's easy [insert joke about your mom here].

Jim Brown Speaks

Listen up, motherfucker!

There's an excellent interview with Jim Brown at Yahoo Sports.

Go read it. You don't want Jim Brown pissed at you.

Here's his website, too.

We here at Punch and Jude love Jim Brown, the baddest motherfucker who ever graced any sport. Including Ali, man.

Now if only Bomani Jones can write more about this guy.

Madness

Right-wing sleepover

Read this from a person who calls himself Dr. Sanity. Then weep.

These words are what neoconservatism stands for in the truest sense. It acknowledges the reality of human nature, both the good and the bad; but chooses the good; it seeks truth from history and uses it to better the world now--not by imposing useless utopian fantasies, but by supporting human freedom and individuality and opposing tyranny wherever it is found; it recognizes that all men and women are entitled to life, libery (sic) and the pursuit of happiness; and it understands that freedom is often messy and chaotic, while tyranny is orderly and deadening to the human soul.

Deadening to the human soul, huh?

This little excerpt illustrates, I believe, the emptiness, idiocy, and downright insanity of the supporters of the neoconservatives and their war. Deadening to the soul?

I'm certainly glad all of these people aren't having their souls deadened by tyranny anymore.

I shouldn't have to mention this, but I will anyway. Of course tyranny is awful. But the "chaotic freedom" that Dr. Sanity so cherishes (for others) is not an improvement--not in Iraq, anyway, and that's the best example we've got right now. Over and over again, humans have shown that they prefer repressive authoritarian governments to anarchy (that's how the goddamn Taliban came to power in Afghanistan). Yes, tyranny is bad. But chaos is worse. It doesn't take any kind of advanced degree to figure this shit out. What has happened in Iraq is a crime of the highest order. The obscene, paternalistic, deluded experiment in nation building is not some noble calling that "the West" undertook because of our love of freedom. It's a fucking crime. Period.

So is Dr. Sanity a liar, an idiot, or a madman?

I suggest choosing "All of the above."

Profile

Adalius Thomas introduces himself to David Carr.

Somehow, last week, I forgot to point you to Peter King's profile of Adalius Thomas.

I kind of wish USM would've gotten a little more love, but hey. It's enough that people are noticing Thomas, who is an amazing defender.

A 270 pound guy lining up at cornerback? Insane.

Oh, Sweet Irony

He teamed up with Dudley Do-Right for this one.

I have a hard time believing this story doesn't come from Florida.

Get this: A burglar breaks into a home in Canada.

He finds child pornography on a video camera he lifted.

He turns it into the Mounties, with a note about what's on it and an address where he found it.

The cops raid the house and bust the dude whose camera got ganked.

That's just fucking hilarious.

Child porn asshole gets sentenced on Friday.

And, as noted, none of this happened in Florida.

Whee, Bitches!

So do the Saints kick ass this year, or what?

NFC South champs, baby!

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you've got one of these coming your way.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Enjoy this most American of holidays, and do take time to reflect on for what you should be grateful. We've all got tons of things, circumstances, and people in our lives that should make us thankful and humble daily. Spend a little extra time savoring them today.

That, and pecan pie.

More Racist Bullshit

Racism killed this woman, Kathryn Johnston.
Racism and racist cops. But I repeat myself.

Cops in Atlanta broke down the door of this 92-year-old woman and shot her dead.

The niece of a 92-year-old woman shot to death by police said her aunt likely had reason to shoot three narcotics investigators as they stormed her house.

Police insisted the officers did everything right before entering the home Tuesday evening, despite suggestions from the woman's neighbors and relatives that it was a case of mistaken identity.

The woman, Kathryn Johnston, was the only resident in the house at the time and had lived there for about 17 years, Assistant Chief Alan Dreher said. The officers had a legal warrant, "knocked and announced" before they forced open the door and were justified in shooting once fired upon, he said.

Sarah Dozier, the niece, told WAGA-TV that there were never drugs at the house.

"My aunt was in good health. I'm sure she panicked when they kicked that door down," Dozier said. "There was no reason they had to go in there and shoot her down like a dog."

As the plainclothes Atlanta police officers approached the house about 7 p.m., a woman inside started shooting, striking each of them, said Officer Joe Cobb, a police spokesman.

One was hit in the arm, another in a thigh and the third in a shoulder. The officers were taken to a hospital for treatment, and all three were conscious and alert, police said.

Rev. Markel Hutchins, a civil rights leader, said Johnston's family deserves an apology.

"Of the police brutality cases we've had, this is the most egregious because of the woman's age," Hutchins said.

Do you think this shit would have happened to a 92-year-old white woman?

Because the Classics Never Go out of Style



Enjoy The Gourds' version of "Gin & Juice." I'm sure Snoop loves this shit.

Idiocy in Action

I think this is Joel Surnow lighting up.

Joel Surnow, the co-creator of TV series 24, is collaborating with the jagoffs at Fox "News" to produce a conservative version of The Daily Show.

That's right. Right-wing satire. It should be a real hoot.

What these douchebags don't get is that TDS is not a "liberal" show. First, it is a satire of the news media itself (naturally, Fox "News" is a frequent target of their barbs, but I think the reasons why are obvious). Secondly, as satire, they mock the powerful--whoever they are. Now that the Democrats have some semblance of influence in Washington, look for them to be skewered regularly by Stewart & Co.

I give this stupid idea about five months, if it makes it to production.

Besides, Fox "News" already has a lineup of (unitentional) comedy shows. The market's already saturated.

What the Fuck?

I think the tall one there is Michael Richards.

So when did Kramer lose his fool-ass mind? You have got to watch this ignorant shit.

I'm not sure how he got out of the room without catching a serious beating.

Word is, though, that one person in LA was happy with the entire affair.

Another minion for my racist army! Ha ha ha haaaaa!

Don't get me started on his bullshit "apology," either.

It's simple, motherfucker. You said a bunch of incredibly racist shit. Therefore, we will assume you are a racist. Your empty words promising us that you aren't racist? They're worth about as much as Confederate dollars.

Ouch

Not gonna be like this at all.

It's Monday night, and the Giants are on TV. Eli Manning's stat line, early in the third quarter, is:

Player Comp./Att. Yds. TD INT
E. Manning 5/16 59 0 1


Ouch.

I'm sure he'll improve for the remainder of the game, but damn.

Hooray for Wisconsin!

Oops. Wrong Wisconsin.

I meant this one.

Congratulations to the Wisconsin Badgers football team for their first-ever eleven-win season.

Way to go Badgers! You make Bucky proud.

That's one happy badger.

The Idiots Who Rule Us

Read this, asshole.

Forty years too late, George W. Bush finally made it to Vietnam. If you know anything about George W. Bush, you won't be surprised to find out that he started spewing idiotic blather as soon as someone shoved a microphone in front of his slack jaw.

In his first day in the capital of a country that was America’s wartime enemy during his youth, President Bush said today that the American experience in Vietnam contained lessons for the war in Iraq. Chief among them, he said, was that “we’ll succeed unless we quit.”

--snip--

“The Maliki government is going to make it unless the coalition leaves before they have a chance to make it,” he said of Iraq’s prime minister. “And that’s why I assured the prime minister we’ll get the job done.”

With emotional imagery to deal with on every side here, it is no surprise that Mr. Bush’s national security team has spent great effort drawing distinctions between the war that their generation grew up with, and the one that they ordered.

--snip--

“Historical parallels of that kind are not very helpful, and I don’t think they happen to be right,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters the other day. “This is a different set of circumstances, with different stakes for the United States.”

Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, struck a similar note last week when he suggested that the “domino effect” that Americans worried about in the 1960’s and 70’s — the fear that neighboring countries would fall to Communism’s lures — was nothing compared to the problems today.

“There were discussions about dominoes, some which fell, some which didn’t fall,” he said. But, he added, “Most men and women in America believe that it is important that we not fail in Iraq; that the consequences of an Iraq that descended into chaos would be an Iraq that would be a safe haven for terrorists.”

Ultimately, he said, that “could result in 9/11-type attacks against the United States.”

In private, Mr. Bush says there is another big difference between then and now — the draft. There is little question that by signing up to be a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, the risk was low that he would end up in Vietnam as a 23-year-old. But according to an academic called into the White House recently, Mr. Bush said the administration could never have sustained this effort in Iraq, politically, without an all-volunteer force. He declined to be named because he was relaying a private conversation.

Just once, it would be nice not to have important foreign policy decisions left to morons like these.

If Barbara Tuchman were still alive, she'd be furiously writing another section of that book. Iraq is an exercise in pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest that makes Vietnam look like child's play.

This would be funny if it weren't for, you know, the dead and maimed.

UPDATE: Check out Keith Olbermann's lessons for Mr. Bush. Honestly, I had no idea that Keith Olbermann would turn into this generation's Edward R. Murrow. But here's the proof.

Brilliance

No, not that kind. The kind humans create.

Brilliance, courtesy of Jim Webb and Steve Gilliard.

Absolute brilliance on Mr. Gilliard's part.

Forgetting Seems to Take the Longest Time

Take two, and you won't have to worry about calling me in the morning. Or anyone else.

Sorry for the lack of news.

I'm still trying to get that repulsive "Quiverfull" story out of my head. Every time I see that word or think of those fruitcakes, I throw up a little in my mouth.

I might have to start snorting Comet cleanser if this keeps up. That'll scrub away a few memories, right?

One for the good guys

You know that feeling you get when the good guy in a movie puts the final beatdown on the bad guy that has plagued him for the entire movie? Well that's the feeling I get when I read this.

Long story short -- Cops break down the door for no reason, handcuff the owner, then leave a couple hours later with an, "oops my bad." Owner sues. Jury awards over $100,000 from the bank accounts of the three cops. Sweet!

The best part about this (and the reason its newsworthy) is that this isn't usually the case. Usually the law says the same thing as the cops: "we made a booboo. sorry." Well this pretty much blows because if average joe breaks in you can sue his pants off. But if it's cops taking the law into their own hand, usually there no recourse in the courts. So the 4th amendment is generally protected by the exclusionary rule, i.e. you search something illegally you can use the fruits of the search at trial.

Well readers you tell me, if you're a police officer contemplating violating someone's constitutional rights, what's the greater motivation to not break the law: the thought that the fruits of the search will be excluded if the perpetrator has a lawyer good enough to make the argument, OR the thought that it might cost you $50,000? Tough call huh?

So if you're ever in Tacoma, don't fuck around with Alan Morris, Gary Stril, or David Alred.

Thanks to Volokh.

Be Afraid

Even scarier than this. No, really.

Be very afraid

When the Gospel Community Church in Coxsackie, New York, breaks midservice to excuse children for Sunday school, nearly half of the 225-strong congregation patters toward the back of the worship hall: the five youngest children of Pastor Stan Slager's eight, assistant pastor Bartly Heneghan's eleven and the Dufkin family's thirteen, among many others. "The Missionettes," a team of young girls who perform ribbon dances during the praise music, put down their "glory hoops" to join their classmates; the pews empty out. It's the un-ignorable difference between the families at Gospel Community and those in the rest of the town that's led some to wonder if the church isn't a cult that forces its disciples to keep pushing out children.

But after the kids leave, Pastor Stan doesn't exhort his congregation to bear children. His approach is more subtle, reminding them to present their bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord, and preaching to them about Acts 5:20: Go tell "all the words of this life." Or, in Pastor Stan's guiding translation, to lead lives that make outsiders think, "Christianity is real," lives that "demand an explanation."

Lives such as these: Janet Wolfson is a 44-year-old mother of eight in Canton, Georgia. Tracie Moore, a 39-year-old midwife who lives in southern Kentucky, is mother to fourteen. Wendy Dufkin in Coxsackie has her thirteen. And while Jamie Stoltzfus, a 27-year-old Illinois mom, has only four children so far, she plans on bearing enough to populate "two teams." All four mothers are devoted to a way of life New York Times columnist David Brooks has praised as a new spiritual movement taking hold among exurban and Sunbelt families. Brooks called these parents "natalists" and described their progeny as a new wave of "Red-Diaper Babies"--as in "red state."

But Wolfson, Moore and thousands of mothers like them call themselves and their belief system "Quiverfull." They borrow their name from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they're building for God.

Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship--"Father knows best"--and female submissiveness. They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess's 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ, which argues that God, as the "Great Physician" and sole "Birth Controller," opens and closes the womb on a case-by-case basis. Women's attempts to control their own bodies--the Lord's temple--are a seizure of divine power.

Though there are no exact figures for the size of the movement, the number of families that identify as Quiverfull is likely in the thousands to low tens of thousands. Its word-of-mouth growth can be traced back to conservative Protestant critiques of contraception--adherents consider all birth control, even natural family planning (the rhythm method), to be the province of prostitutes--and the growing belief among evangelicals that the decision of mainstream Protestant churches in the 1950s to approve contraception for married couples led directly to the sexual revolution and then Roe v. Wade.

"Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice," write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement's founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, "My body is not my own." This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They're domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women's liberation: contraception, women's careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.

Pride argues that feminism is a religion in its own right, one that is inherently incompatible with Christianity. "Christians have accepted feminists' 'moderate' demands for family planning and careers while rejecting the 'radical' side of feminism--meaning lesbianism and abortion," writes Pride. "What most do not see is that one demand leads to the other. Feminism is a totally self-consistent system aimed at rejecting God's role for women. Those who adopt any part of its lifestyle can't help picking up its philosophy." "Family planning," Pride argues, "is the mother of abortion. A generation had to be indoctrinated in the ideal of planning children around personal convenience before abortion could be popular."

Instead of picketing clinics, Pride writes, Christians should fight abortion by demonstrating that children are an "unqualified blessing" by having as many as God gives them. Only a determination among Christian women to take up their submissive, motherly roles with a "military air" and become "maternal missionaries" will lead the Christian army to victory. Thus is Quiverfull part of Mary Pride's whole-cloth solution to women's liberation: embracing an opposing way of life as total and "self-consistent" as feminism, and turning back the tide on a society gone wrong by populating the world with right-thinking Christians.

The gentle manner of Deidre Welch, another Coxsackie mom, with four boys, seems at odds with Quiverfull's militaristic language, which describes children as weapons of spiritual war, as arrows shot out by their parents. But she describes the movement toward larger families in the same way: "God is bringing revelation on the world. He wants to raise up His army. He wants His children to be."

Angel Mays, a 31-year-old mother to three in West Virginia, spoke with me just before she was to have her tubal ligation reversed in order to make her body "God's home" again. Mays suspects a divine purpose to her change of heart and believes the Quiverfull and home-schooling movements are signs of a revival. "It seems the Lord is preparing for something, and I'm wondering if He's doing something big. There's so much selfishness, with people thinking they need to make their lives easier. But we're to seek the Kingdom of God first. The further the nation gets away from God, the starker the Christian contrast grows. The darker the world gets, the more we stand out."

In his 2004 column for the Times, David Brooks concluded that mothers like Welch and Mays are too busy parenting to wage culture war. A home-schooling mother of nine on the 2,700-family-strong online forum Quiverfull Digest (www.quiverfull.com) responded in irritation to Brooks's misunderstanding of the movement's aims. Raising a large family, she replied, was itself her "battle station," as deliberately political an act as canvassing for conservative candidates, not to mention part of a long-term plan to win the culture war "demographically."

Population is a preoccupation for many Quiverfull believers, who trade statistics on the falling white birthrate in European countries like Germany and France. Every ethnic conflict becomes evidence for their worldview: Muslim riots in France, Latino immigration in California, Sharia law in Canada. The motivations aren't always racist, but the subtext of "race suicide" is often there.

Pastor Heneghan of Gospel Community Church sees the issue of population growth in more biblical terms, specifically those taken from Genesis and Revelation. "Some people think that what I'm doing--having eleven children--is wrong. I don't really get into that much. The Bible says 'be fruitful and multiply.' That's my belief system. They don't believe in God, so they think we have to conserve what we have. But in my belief system, He's going to give us a new earth." Overpopulation isn't a problem in a universe where God promises a clean global slate.

Religious fanatics having tons of kids. Nothing bad can come of this, right?

A lot of this is rehashed racist and sexist shit with a Christianist veneer. You know, the brown people are gonna outbreed us if we don't start poppin' out babies, and the world will end if women are allowed control over any part of their lives or bodies. But hey--racism and sexism coupled with religion--that's never led to any unpleasant outcomes before, right? Right?

These are the "values voters" that the mainstream pundits are always exhorting the Democrats to start courting. Fuck that. They need to be exposed, not courted. Most people in this country don't share their fucked-up world view, and we need to stop acting like these people's asses need to be continuously kissed, just because they have a religious justification for their blatant idiocy. Given a taste of what these assholes believe, most people will recoil in horror, like they will from that picture above.

Oh, and Pastor Heneghan? You, sir, are our douchebag of the day. Good job with that whole stewardship of the earth deal.

Also, David Brooks is a fucking idiot. But you didn't need me to tell you that.

Finally, I'll leave it up to you to come up with a joke about "Coxsackie." Come on! It's easy.


UPDATE: Newsweek also has a story about this insane phenomenon, and the sub-header is almost guaranteed to induce vomiting: "In a new movement, Christians 'open their wombs to God.'" Ewwwwwwwwww.

This Should Scare Away Any Chicken-like Aliens

At least, that's the only reason why I can imagine this would be constructed.

Col. Harland Sanders is shedding his white suit jacket for a red cook's apron as the company he founded unveils a worldwide redesign of its KFC restaurants and one of the world's most recognizable icons.

The company unveiled a new brand logo Tuesday that includes bolder colors and a more well-defined visage of the late Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, who will keep his classic black bow tie, glasses and goatee.

As part of publicity for the new logo, KFC commissioned a giant, 87,000-square foot version of it that can be seen from space. The massive logo consists of 65,000 1-foot square painted tiles that were laid out in the Nevada desert over 24 days.

It can be seen from space.

I guess those astronauts at the ISS really are an untapped market share.

Elsewhere in that article, it's noted that there are 1700 Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in China alone, and more than one store per day (on average) gets opened in the PRC.

That's some bullshit. If we're gonna export a fried chicken chain, it should be Popeye's, for true.

Conservatism Can Never Fail; It Can Only Be Failed

Kinda like that other big "C" word, Communism.

I'm really busy today, but you should go read Glenn Greenwald. Seriously. You should.

He's a sharp dude.

Also, to further support the title of this li'l post, check out what the true believers are wailing about at Der Frei Republik and RedState.

For your daily dose of schadenfreude, check out the comments below, taken from RedState and FreeRepublic:

RedStater Bob Frazier says:

This shows they have learned nothing.

The Republican leadership has clearly learned nothing from the election results Tuesday.

Could they have made a worse pick?

I tell you, for the next two years we are going to have to think of President Bush as a democrat and act accordingly. My hope is complete government gridlock for two years.

RedStater OldLineGOP says:

Gridlock doesn't happen when the executive and legislative branches are held by the same party. Look at what Bush wants, and what the Dems who will soon control Congress want. Well, they both agree on eliminating our national borders, which Bush has deemed to be his most important legacy, even more important than the failed war in Iraq. Conservative are angry because we got nothing accomplished when we controlled Congress and the Presidency. It's almost like we had...well..."gridlock." That's because Bush is practically a Democrat, and is at odds with most Republicans. I stand by my original belief that Bush is glad the GOP lost the election.

Freeper TulsaRamjet says:

This is a disaster....Okay, who do I start emailing to express my "displeasure"?...does actually someone think that this centrist is gonna gain the Hispanic vote? It won't. '08 disaster is guaranteed with this choice.

RedStater Mayhem:

This has little to do with the actualy influence of the RNC chair and plenty to do with the mindset behind the choice. It shows that Bush still thinks he's right; has learned nothing from the election (except that we should become MORE moderate); and that he will go to all lengths to ensure his view of amnesty is shoved down our throats.

This is Harriet Miers all over again, except this time Bush has absolute say.

Freeper ShawTaylor:

Apparently the Rep leadership has chosen to go for the so called "moderate middle"...?

IMHO conservatives need to consider forming a whole new political party.

Freeper Fritzy:

I am SO ready for a new party...
Do you know how to work Wikipedia? If so, we can get crackin' in a few hours.

RedStater Spainishirish:

No wonder Pelosi is so adamant against impeachment! Why destroy the gift that keeps on giving?

Finally, RedStater EZontheEyez:

I mean...if competance is not an issue for RNC Chair - who is charged with the political lives of Republicans in 2008 - then surely he is willing to play these games with a next Supreme Court nomination. Hello future justice Connie Callahan.

Good grief.

Let's impeach Dubya now, before this gets any worse. I'm almost willing to let him be dragged before a war crimes tribunal if it will get him out of the White House, pronto.

Looks like they're drinking deeply from the bitter cup of disappointment. But they're not disillusioned with Conservatism! Oh, no. Yet again, the One True Faith has been betrayed by dissembling mortals.

Fuck these idiots.

I'm glad they're turning on one another. Let 'em eat their young. It'll make for a good show for the rest of us.

It Was in Florida. Where Else?

It was only sitting around, anyway.

You've probably heard about this by now.

Someone in Florida (of course) mailed in an absentee ballot for last Tuesday's elections with an extremely rare stamp on it for postage.

Damn.

I don't know shit about stamp collecting, but I know the upside-down airplane is a ticket to a vacation home in Aruba.

Worth half a million dollars.

Ahh, Florida.

The funniest part of all this is that the ballot didn't even count--no return address on the envelope.

Stupidity in Action

Even dumber than this.

So a couple of frat boys have sued Borat.

Why?

You read.

The legal action filed Thursday on their behalf claims they were duped into appearing in the spoof documentary "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," in which they made racist and sexist comments on camera.

The young men "engaged in behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in," the lawsuit says.

"Borat" follows the adventures of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's Kazakh journalist character in a blend of fiction and improvised comic encounters as he travels across the United States and mocks Americans.

The plaintiffs were not named in the lawsuit "to protect themselves from any additional and unnecessary embarrassment." They were identified in the movie as fraternity members from a South Carolina university, and appeared drunk as they made insulting comments about women and minorities to Cohen's character.

Whaaaa! He recorded us being pricks! We're gonna sue!

Go ahead. Sue a comedian. You're not satisfied with the humiliation you're already dealing with (which, I might add, is due to idiot shit that came out of your mouth)? Then go right ahead, geniuses.

Make Borat's day.

Oops

D'oh, indeed.

Things I should know by now:

1. The names of all the Presidents of the US, in order.
2. How much wood a woodchuck could chuck if, in fact, a woodchuck could chuck wood.
3. The secret of NIMH.
4. Football games are 60 minutes long, not 30.
   

Yeah. I should know that. I watched the first half of the Louisville-Rutgers game last night, and figured it was a lost cause for the Scarlet Knights.

Shows what I know.

Apparently, they came back with a fury in the second half to win, 28-25. They shut out the Cardinals after the half and won with a late field goal.

The scariest part? Rutgers is still undefeated.

And I was worried about the Detroit Tigers.

A Whole New Ball Game

Congrats to the dems – I can’t claim any piece of the victory because I’m not a registered democrat and I didn’t even vote (didn’t register in time). Put I do share everyone’s optimism, so go us!

Since I haven’t blogged in awhile, I think I need to address the most pressing issue of the recent weeks – that’s right, the new NBA zero tolerance of whining about officiating. If you haven’t heard, the NBA is calling technical fouls on any player who complains about a call.

Now David Stern is a smart guy. He doesn’t really think that the constant whining is a threat to the sanctity of the NBA. The real problem of course is that the officiating in the NBA is horrible, and Stern is fully aware of this. So instead of trying to crack down on shitty calls, he just wants us to try and forget that games are rarely decided by the players.

Example, last night I finally had the chance to watch a couple of games. 70% of the calls in the 10 minutes of basketball that I watched were wrong. 50% were blatantly wrong, obviously wrong.

The real travesty of the rule is not how it affects the game, its how it affect my life and the experience of watching basketball. Usually when the refs blow a call, I yell at the TV and the offended player yells as well, or frowns, or at least rolls his eyes. I get to live vicariously through the players who bitch at these shitty refs. Then I take comfort in the fact that they go home and feel guilty for being so horrible at their job. Now these injustices just linger on the conscience like my neighbors loitering in front of my apartment.

The silliest part of the rule is that players can no longer bounce the ball off the goal post, for any reason. Kenny Thomas got whistled for that last night. It’s really absurd because it was totally unrelated the officiating. But then I think, why are the players just taking this? Don’t they have a union? I say they should bounce the ball off the post after every single basket. See if Stern lets the refs call a technical foul after every basket. Somebody needs to put that punk in his place. I nominate Jude.

Fair Winds and Following Seas

R.I.P., Mr Bradley

Ed Bradley of CBS News has died. That's pretty damn sad.

Attention, Race-Baiting Southern Strategizers

Check out this graphic at the NY Times.

The majority of white voters broke Republican. But the Democrats still won everywhere.

The demographers have been telling you about this for some time, but you were just too deeply involved with the Southern Strategy to understand. Well, welcome to the minority, suckers.

Oh, and young white people, for the first time since 1982, broke Democratic. Looks like you done fucked up, Karl. Looks like you guys are gonna have to scramble for a new strategery.

Keep Barf Bags Handy

If you're gonna watch this:



Through puking yet? Probably not.

Found over at Feministing. Check it out.

Oh, yeah. If you don't know what a "Purity Ball" is, look here.

When Pigs Fly

No, no, I mean the four-legged kind.

In today's best example of Wishful Thinking, a couple of highly intelligent writers at Newsweek (a Web exclusive! Ooooh!) have decided that "Bush now needs to work with the Democrats. Why humility might be his best strategy."

That's gonna happen.

'Cause if George W. Bush is known for anything, it's his humility. Yeah, he's got that in spades.

These two geniuses remind us that Bush once promised to bring a "humble foreign policy" to Washington.

He really followed up on that, didn't he? Oh, wait.

Humility in action.

Here's some in-your-face humility.

Fuck these idiot stenographers. Bush doesn't know from humble, and he's not about to learn now. He'll be the same obstinate bully he's been his entire life. To assume otherwise is pointless. But I bet they get a pretty good salary for this exercise in counterfactual thinking. If, indeed, you can even call it thought.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu

The man of constant sorrow.

One last time today, let's bid Donald Rumsfeld a not-so-fond farewell.

What I'm really going to miss, of course, is being able to use this picture.

Oh, how I'll miss it.

Still on the Schadenfreude Express

All aboard!

Oh, this is too much fun. Watch the meltdowns. They're gonna miss their Rummy. Ain't that sweet!

It's a Celebration, Bitches!

Break out the champagne glasses and the muthafuckin' condoms. Have one on us.

I gotta say, it's a good day here at Punch and Jude World Headquarters.

We are some smilin muthafuckas here today.

Well, except for the gay marriage amendment here in Wisconsin. Other than that, it's all sunshine and daisies.

First One Under the Bus Wins!

It's a big bus, though. There's room for everyone.

Looks like Rumsfeld is the first one to get tossed. Who's next?

Say It Ain't So

Next you'll be telling me that this isn't the real Santa.

Army Recruiters Accused of Misleading Students to Get Them to Enlist

Nov. 3, 2006 — An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist.

ABC News and New York affiliate WABC equipped students with hidden video cameras before they visited 10 Army recruitment offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

"Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter.

"No, we're bringing people back," he replies.

"We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says.

Last year, the Army suspended recruiting nationwide to retrain recruiters following hundreds of allegations of improprieties.

One Colorado student taped a recruiting session posing as a drug-addicted dropout.

"You mean I'm not going to get in trouble?" the student asked.

The recruiters told him no, and helped him cheat to sign up.

During the ABC News sessions, some recruiters told our students if they enlisted, there would be little chance they'd to go Iraq.

But Col. Robert Manning, who is in charge of U.S. Army recruiting for the entire Northeast, said that new recruits were likely to go to Iraq.

"I would not disagree with that," Manning said. "We are a nation and Army at war still."

Manning looked at the ABC News video of his recruiters.

"It's hard to believe some of things they are telling prospective applicants," Manning said. "I still believe that this is the exception more than the norm. … I've visited many stations myself, and I know that we have many wonderful Americans serving in uniform as recruiters."

Yet ABC News found one recruiter who even claimed if you didn't like the Army, you could just quit.

"It's called a 'Failure to Adapt' discharge," the recruiter said. "It's an entry-level discharge so it won't affect anything on your record. It'll just be like it never happened."

You know, I gotta admit--recruiters were always square with me. They didn't bullshit me much, if at all. Of course, even though they were straight with me, I still couldn't understand what they were saying (no proper context for the info dump I got, etc.). However, overall, Sandle & Johnson did right by me.

That being said, do these clowns in this article really think they're doing the Army any good? I mean, anyone stupid enough to believe that "We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," is only gonna get other people maimed and killed. We've tried having stupid people in the military before. It don't turn out so well.

I know that recruiters are under enormous pressure to meet their quotas, and that recruiting is one of the shittier assignments that doesn't involve shitting in a slit trench and dodging bullets.

But god damn, this is a bad idea. Stupid soldiers fill body bags with themselves and the soldiers around them. I hope these schmucks get called on the carpet and fuckin' keel-hauled for this.

Thanks to Angela for the article.

End of the Line

Last stop, Coney Island. End of the line.

Well, everyone, it's election day. If things go as predicted, we'll see the end of the Repulican revolution, and that can only be a good thing.

It's not over, of course, but it looks like there'll be some celebrating tonight.

If you haven't already, go vote. And take everyone you know to the polls with you.

Of course, you can still do more than vote, too.

Do all that you can, then grab a few cold ones to watch the returns come in tonight. Here's hoping that, among other things, a fair Wisconsin really does vote no.

I don't imagine that Blogger will be very cooperative today, and I've got a lot of stuff to do, so this will probably be the only post out of me today. See you at the polls.

Phrase of the Day

You win

The Phrase of the Day comes to us courtesy of the Rude Pundit.

What is it, you ask?

It's beautiful: "tumescent cougar."

Beat that, aspiring poets.

Work to Be Done

Not time for a break yet.

Vote tomorrow. Do More Than Vote, if you can.

For my Madison peoples, here's the local link.

Let's get it done, everyone.

An Open Letter to Mike McCarthy

Is this man your coaching inspiration, Mike?

Dear Mike McCarthy:

Why, in the name of all that is holy, would you call a slant pass on first-and-goal from the one yard line?

Why? You only needed seven points to tie the game. You've got a good halfback. Buffalo has a shitty run defense.

Why the slant pattern?

Is it already too chilly in Green Bay for you, and you want to make sure you won't have to worry about being there next year? If so, good plan. However, if you were actually trying to, you know, win the game, that was a stupid fucking call. I'm sure you'll be hearing this sort of sentiment a lot this coming week.

You should.

Jerk.

Cordially yours,

Jude

Just a Reminder

That's right.

For those of you who are in Wisconsin, don't forget to vote Tuesday. Tell the crazy homophobes that they can't have this one.

Everything About This Kicks Ass

Fuck 'Em

Turn right to get to Republican headquarters.

Go read the Rude Pundit today.

It's worth the time, for true.