the durnMoose blog » moose droppings

drop drop fizz fizz, oh what a relief it izz…

Posted on Friday, November 14, 2008 by durnmoose

droppings

if it’s friday, it must be time for some moose droppings…

item! oxford university has compiled a list of the ten most annoying phrases… amazingly enough, “y’all have a good day now” did not make the list…

item! the latest terrorist threat? radioactive keggers…

item! the latest cure for milk allergies? drink milk… (those of you who answered “radioactive keggers” give yourselves five points…)

item! the easiest way to piss off a bunch of christians? give jesus an erection…

item! the real question is how many people are hoping the news in the fake new york times turns out to be true…

item! usually you hear of beaches washing away inch by inch over time… not human feet (with sneakers) washing up on beaches over time…

item! you know you want a vibrating toilet seat…

item! thought you should be able to invite who you want to your birthday party? think again… and again…

item! think maybe once bush is out of office we’ll be able to get some answers about what was going on in his administration? see the above think again…

last item! finally, if you happen to speak frog, georgia might have a job for ya…

zero-gee porn, candidate condoms, and viagra missiles…

Categories: moose droppings

Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 by durnmoose

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droppings

ok, so since we’re working on catching up from our time off last week, how about a first of the week moose droppings special?

item! so i guess we’ll find out how forgiving letterman is as mccain pokes his head into the lion’s den thursday night…

item! yet another case of what is NOT supposed to be meant by the term “laying on of hands“…

item! we’re sure you’ve heard of the various “mystery shopper” programs where people are paid to go to various stores undercover and act like everyday shoppers while secretly reporting back to their superiors on conditions in the store… but now there’s a new twist - mystery worshippers…

item! sorry, folks, but it appears that zero-gee porno is a nogo after all…

item! wondering what to do with that extra $1000 burning a hole in your pocket? how about a very special lap dance?

item! night of the voting dead - texas identifies some 23,000 registered voters who appear to be deceased…

last item! finally, i’m really not sure what the most distressing part of this report is… the viagra rocket, or the mention of condoms depicting senators mccain and obama…

drops…

Categories: moose droppings

Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 by durnmoose

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droppings

it’s friday, so let’s get to the droppings…

item! showing that sarah palin’s already having an effect on international relations, pakistan’s president has had a fatwa issued on him over their meeting last week…

item! “It’s curious. When I think of Halloween or a haunted trail, I don’t think of cows as being scary - although this one was,”…

item! forget treasury bonds, it’s time to invest in big macs…

item! want your book to be a sure-fire best seller? get the christian coalition or some other morality group to try to get it banned…

item! despite this wired report, the orphans are not as dead as it may appear..

item! one suggestion… don’t try this guy’s hot sauce…

item! who better than carp to give you a pedicure?

final item! lastly, we leave you with a series of quotes from a newspaper article about sarah palin… which newspaper? pravda…

A former beauty pageant contestant noted for her fierce competitiveness who would easily qualify as a MILF in the pornography industry and who takes great pride in her capacity to stick her head up her ass and go for it instead of “blinking,” this “lipstick pitbull” embodies nearly all that we worship in a nation fueled principally by narcissism, arrogance, willful ignorance, and belligerence. She may lack the obscene wealth that also triggers our reflexive genuflection, but she will acquire that in time.

Like George Bush, who is demonstrably imbecilic and morally retarded, the “hockey mom” who “worked her way to the top with grit and determination,” also fuels the naïve, jejune notion that “anyone can be President of the United States because we live in a democracy.” Forget the pablum concocted to pacify the masses; the POTUS could actually be ‘anyone who hails from a family with direct ties to the power elite of our bourgeois democracy or who shares their sociopathic tendencies and is willing to sell their souls to do their bidding.’ But who amongst us wants to burden our atrophying minds attempting to understand complexities when the simplistic sweet little lies are so much more palatable and takes so few brain cells to process?

…

So who better to serve as the “elected” face of the ruling class than Sarah Palin? After all, she is a faux populist, physically attractive woman (proving that beauty is indeed only skin deep), fundamentalist Christian, Paleolithic conservative, savage huntress, foreign policy nincompoop, and “corruption fighter” (with undeniable connections to pork-barrel king, Internet expert and now indicted Alaska Senator Ted Stevens). Palin is one of “us.” Or at least what many of us have been indoctrinated to admire or aspire to be.

Palin epitomizes the banality of evil that permeates our planet murdering nation. Nursed at the teat of our culture of death and fiercely inculcated with the various components of its dominionism, it would be an existential impossibility for a person of her age to extricate herself from her mental straight-jacket. On a conscious level, she is probably as clueless about her malevolence as she is about US foreign policy and world affairs. And many of us perceive Sarah Palin to be a God-fearing, patriotic, “average Jo” showing those damn “intellectual elites” that we don’t need no stinkin’ knowledge to “git ‘r done,” champion of “family” values and the American Way. Again, Palin is one of “us,” or what many of us wish to become.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, we US Americans are all (to varying degrees), perpetuating the malignant expansion of our culture of death. We are the cancer. The Earth is the patient. And the prognosis is not very reassuring…

mooses, masseuses, amusements, and stolen deer heads…

Categories: religion, republicans, cheney, mccain, moose droppings, evangelicals, gonzales, conservatives, palin

Posted on Friday, September 19, 2008 by durnmoose

1 Comment

sorry about the lack of updates yesterday, but hey, we’re back today with an all-new full-length version of the droppings… so let’s get right to it, shall we?

item! you’ve already met the unwed teenage daughter and her baby daddy along with “first dude” todd… now meet more of sarah palin’s family, including the 9/11 firefighter, the “ex-lesbian” cousin, and the mexican half-brother…

item! according to nsaba buturo, uganda’s minister for ethics and integrity, ugandan society is facing a number of threats including “Theft and embezzlement of public funds, sub-standard service delivery, greed, infidelity, prostitution, homosexuality [and] sectarianism…” and miniskirts… “What’s wrong with a miniskirt? You can cause an accident because some of our people are weak mentally,” he said.

item! just in case you happen to have an spare 1.5 million lying around…

item! lose your home in the recent mortgage crisis? then we hope you don’t plan to vote… or at least the republicans hope not…

item! ummm… guys… let’s just agree to do the dishes… or at least make sure there are no swords around..

item! attention nude dog-walkers… please stay out of the tallahassee area if you do not wish to be tasered…

item! the author of the “lemony snickett” series prepares to continue the “hitchhiker’s guide” series… sorry, gang, i tried to come up with a joke for this, but it just makes me sad…

item! mr sulu says “i do“…

item! thought that bible-themed amusement park was dead? nope, it’s back and locating in lebanon, tn…

item! it wasn’t until she started stealing the mounted dear heads that things really went awry…

item! “blind masseurs jump from bridge” why? because recently the south korean health ministry recently decided to grant licenses to sighted masseurs and masseuses to practice certain kinds of massages… since 1963, the law allowed only blind people to practice the profession… talk about letting your fingers do the walking…

item! proving that they have already learned so much from the current administration, the mccain campaign is already refusing to comply with subpoenae (possibly hoping to induce some gonzales-like amnesia first), claiming “executive privilege” in order not to release potentially harmful documents despite a public records request, and refusing to state whether the vice-presidency is part of the executive branch of the government…

last item! seriously, all of this palin stuff is really starting to get to us here at moose central, and we apologise if it seems like we’re sort of “piling on”… at the same time, none of the other candidates have really done anything lately to deserve this kind of attention, and she just keeps it up, so… nonetheless, we promise this’ll be the last time we mention ms. p. this column… after watching this video one really can’t help but wonder, after the furor over barack obama’s association with the reverend wright, and how the two clips of him were played over and over again in the media, why ms. plain’s church and their just-as-out-of-the-mainstream beliefs are being given a pass… oh, yeah, it’s because they don’t really condense down well to a 10 second clip… nonetheless, check it out…

Sarah Palin’s Churches and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.

giant ice penises, nude salesladies, environmentally conscious penguins, and sambo….

Categories: global warming, clinton, religion, evolution, bush, democrats, republicans, obama, satire, headlines, racism, education, mccain, politics, moose droppings, evangelicals, terror, conservatives, flying spaghetti monster, palin, reincarnation

Posted on Friday, September 12, 2008 by durnmoose

[4] Comments

droppings

so, for those of ya who are new, “moose droppings” is our (supposedly) weekly roundup of all those things that might have fallen through the cracks during the rest of the week… stuff that either caught our eye or is just plain humorous… just click on the link within the item for more info… so, without further ado, let’s get to the first

item! in case you were sitting around thinking to yourself (as the moose was just the other day) “y’know, i still can’t figure out why tanya harding would have done that to nancy kerrigan”, now we have the answer… it seems they are the reincarnations of lee harvey oswald and j.f.k…. of course, the real surprise is oksana baiyul bein the reincarnation of nikita krushchev…

item! the times of india reports on a scientific study that proves something we have really known all along… a study by the University of Leuven found an inverse relationship between testosterone levels and price awareness among males… in other words, according to the article, “men who are exposed to naked women stop paying attention to prices….” umm, well yeah….once again, the main thing this study makes the moose wonder is… where do we get in on one of these studies?

item! at first i was rather taken aback by this article from the daily mail online… another instance of the nanny state doing everything they can to “protect the children” and make parents and other adults that much more impotent… then i realised upon actually reading further into it that they really only want to keep the kids safe from the environmentally-conscious penguins…

item! in an apparent attempt to prove that they really are insane and the election of jesse ventura as governor was not just some poorly organised joke that backfired, the people of minnesota have elected al franken to be the democratic candidate to the u.s. senate…

item! if ya didn’t have enough reason to check out ebay, surely you’ll be tempted by this next item… a pair of size-28 Calvin Klein white briefs once belonging to michael jackson… and to make them even more appealing, according to the new york post “The unwashed underpants … were part of the evidence confiscated in 2003 by then-Santa Barbara DA Tom Sneddon, who wanted a DNA sample for his unsuccessful child-molestation case against the washed-up King of Pop”… so apparently you get the sticky along with the icky…. uck..

item! at least they’re impartial.. not only can you order your schoolgirl sarah palin figure, you can also get a beach blanket obama figure from the same place…

item! apparently it’s not even easy being green if you’re a polar bear…

item! the latest example of anti-social behavior? apparently looking for your missing cat…

item! y’know, one of the reasons the moose didn’t come back earlier in the week was not wanting to have to confront all the sarah palin b.s…. a lot has been and will be said about the woman, some of it credible, some of it not… but, when we run across a quote like “so sambo beat the bitch“, well…

item! y’know, we are always grateful when our greatest minds turn to solving problems like this one…

item! i always knew those cyclists and their exposed ankles were gonna get somebody sent to hell…

item! “Last night there was 11 big ones on my house, jumping and hitting me in the head and stuff like that,”…

item! the latest global warming threat? giant ice penises…

item! coming from a time when the federal government tried to pass off ketchup as a vegetable in order to meet school lunch requirements, i can’t help but wonder when baked potatoes became “not healthy enough”

item! “Clearly, we don’t support being a surveillance culture,” says head of firm supplying belt-mounted video cameras to police officers in seattle…

item! obviously, the broken pencil sharpener was a threat to the safety of every student in the school… fortunately, the miscreant who brought it to school and then actually tried sharpening his pencil with it was given a two day suspension… that’ll teach the little terrorist…

item! some 21% of those making $100,000 or more say that they are living paychek-to-paycheck… hmmm, wonder can i convince them to swap paychecks?…

item! “Just because something lacks scientific support doesn’t seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from the science lesson…” says the “rev prof” michael reiss, the director of education at london’s royal society… the flying spaghetti monster couldn’t agree more…

item! once again, sometimes the headline says it all… “teacher ok after crashing into bear on a bicycle“…

item! much has been made of barak obama’s possible affiliations, whether or not he is a secret muslim, etc., and the common refrain that we hear is that we don’t know enough about him and his beliefs to really trust him… unfortunately, however, we know plenty about sarah palin’s church’s beliefs…

item! in a rare instance of someone actually saying what they think, “Obama isn’t even really black — Bill Clinton is more black than Obama,” said Mike Wallace…

last item! finally, today, we leave you with a couple of clips to prepare ya for the upcoming vice presidential debates (which we are banking on to be some of the most entertaining political theater we’ve seen in years), here are a couple of clips of the candidates at their finest…. first up, joe biden rallies supporters including one who just happens to be in a wheelchair…

and finally, sarah palin (as portrayed by the ever-sexy and surprisingly-fitting-lookalike gina gershon) explains her positions on… well, pretty much everything…

See more Gina Gershon videos at Funny or Die

ok, mooseheads, that’s it for this week… be sure to check in tomorrow for our saturday morning toon time, sunday for (hopefully) some moose drop-ed, and then monday for the return of our regular daily moosings…

bleep, blorp, and blarf…

Categories: religion, democrats, republicans, obama, mccain, freedom of speech, moose droppings, evangelicals, conservatives

Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 by durnmoose

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droppings

yeah, it’s been awhile… life happens… nonetheless here we are today so be glad for that, right? and yeah, we may be messin’ with the format a bit, but hey… anyway, off we go…

hulk1 item! ok, honestly, we’ve been more than a little lukewarm on the new hulk movie… though we didn’t hate the first one as much as some, still, the previews we’ve seen for this year’s iteration have done little to dispel that “been there, done that” feeling that it’s going to wind up another over-cgi’d mess… which, after the huge success of iron man and the obvious attempt that marvel is making to build their movie franchises into the same kind of “universe” that is the strength of their comics, really is the last thing they need… the hulk being a bust could be a real momentum killer… then along comes this particular tv spot (see below) which, while suprisingly giving away what was supposed to be an end-of-the-film easter egg for the faithful, at the same time shows that marvel realises the precarious position they’re in with this one and is pulling out all the stops to get butts in seats…

of course, it’d be even sweeter if the supposedly shot captain america cameo had been left in, but that may be made up for by stan lee’s supposedly expanded cameo…

item! while we’re on the topic of movies and tv we’re looking forward to, of course we can’t help but mention the new x-files movie due out next month… can all involved recreate the old magic, or is this a show whose time has passed? well, from the looks of the new trailer, (again, see below) we may be in for a treat… (hey, what can we say, everyone here at moose central are huge billy connolly fans, so seeing him have such a prominent role definitely is a positive…)

item! and looking forward to the fall, really the only new show that’s caught our attention so far is fringe coming in september from fox… we quote:

Coming to FOX in fall of 2008 is Fringe from executive producer J.J. Abrams. Described by one Fox executive as The X-Files meets Lost, this series features an FBI agent investigating mysterious and unexplainable incidents. However, the best way to describe this new series (which will air at 9pm Tuesdays) is in FOX’s own words…

“From J.J. Abrams (”Lost”), Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind “Star Trek,” “Mission: Impossible III” and “Alias,” comes a new drama that will thrill, terrify and explore the blurring line between science fiction and reality.

When an international flight lands at Boston’s Logan Airport and the passengers and crew have all died grisly deaths, FBI Special Agent OLIVIA DUNHAM (newcomer Anna Torv) is called in to investigate. After her partner, Special Agent JOHN SCOTT (Mark Valley, “Boston Legal”), is nearly killed during the investigation, a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to DR. WALTER BISHOP (John Noble, “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”), our generation’s Einstein. There’s only one catch: he’s been institutionalized for the last 20 years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son PETER (Joshua Jackson, “Dawson’s Creek”) in to help.

When Olivia’s investigation leads her to manipulative corporate executive NINA SHARP (Blair Brown, “Altered States”), our unlikely trio along with fellow FBI Agents PHILLIP BROYLES (Lance Reddick, “The Wire”), CHARLIE FRANCIS (Kirk Acevedo, “Oz”) and ASTRID FARNSWORTH (Jasika Nicole, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) will discover that what happened on Flight 627 is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth. ”

FOX is going all out in supporting this program including having a number of cows situated outside of the presentation (picture attached) in a nod to a fact raised in the series that “genetically, humans and cows are separated by only a couple lines of DNA.” They were also distributing copies of the New York Post with a promotional Fringe wraparound cover.

Fringe will also be the first program in a new FOX initiative called Remote Free TV where the commercial load and number of promotional minutes will be half what is found in a typical program. Additionally, the commercial breaks will be shorter. Fringe will also be joining a number of other FOX shows (including Bones and Prison Break) in premiering prior to the traditional season during the week of August 25th.

whaddaya think? want a preview? ok:

of course, this being fox, it’s likely to be canceled after 4 episodes no matter what the ratings are like…

item! on the political front, for the third time now, the supreme court yesterday told pres. w. that he’s not as all-powerful as he’d like to be, basically restoring the habeas corpus rights to those being held in gitmo… in the 5-4 opinion, justice kennedy wrote “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” … fotunately, those extraordinary times are set to expire next january… now if we can only trust mccain to stand by his approbation of dictatorship by pen fiat… (unfortunately, obama (and for that matter hillary) has not ruled out that particular practice, instead sounding quite a bit like someone from the current administration: “No one doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president’s constitutional prerogatives.” ummm… senator, i’m not sure that’s “change i can believe in”… as a matter of fact, i’m not even sure that it’s change…

item! speaking of following in his predecessor’s footsteps, (seriously, i’m starting to get a little confused here as to who is in which party and who’s supposed to be zooming who… one reason we just had to step away for a little while…) while calling pres w.’s fiscal policies “the most irresponsible in history“, guess who’s at the same time proposing sending out another round of “stimulus” tax rebate checks? we’ll give ya a hint… it ain’t the geezer republican…

item! meanwhile, john mccain continues to spout the usual democratic lines (and at the same time show just exactly how little he understands about how economics really works) about speculators ruining the stock market and the obscene profits the oil companies are making… quoth the senator:

I believe there needs to be a thorough and complete investigation of speculators to find out whether speculation has been going on and, if so, how much it has affected the price of a barrel of oil… There’s a lot of things out there that need a lot more transparency and, consequently, oversight.

I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies not only because of the obscene profits they’ve made but at their failure to invest in alternate energy to help us eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. They’re making huge profits and that happens, but not to say, ‘We’re in this so we can over time eliminate America’s dependence on foreign oil,’ I think is an abrogation of their responsibilities as citizens.

item! all of this as mccain continues to rally the troops behind him… go base!

item! hey, how about a little musical interlude? ok, here’s a song from hayes carll we think you’ll enjoy…

item! well, it appears that though cleanliness may be next to godliness, your shower curtain may be next to deadliness…

item! ok, now this study has aroused (ahem) quite a bit of discussion here at moose central … in some ways, the results are not that surprising… “Bikinis and other sexy stimuli can make men more prone to seek immediate gratification — leading to blown diets, budgets and bank accounts, new research suggests.” but in other ways… “The researchers conclude that there is one common appetite system in the brain monitoring our desire for a host of pleasures from sweets to pretty faces, alcohol to lotto winnings. When it is stimulated by, say, a sexy picture or the smell of baked goods, we experience a general craving for anything pleasant. ‘Basically, you just want to be rewarded,’… hmmm… also interesting was this observation: ” It wasn’t that the men were simply distracted by their sexual arousal, which caused them to choose more impulsively. On the contrary, they exhibited improved cognition and creativity after exposure to sexy stimuli.” now we know what to do right before that big exam, right? of course, the way the study was conducted -”men alternately fondled t-shirts and bras (which were not being worn during the test)” really led us to two major questions: 1) how would the results have been affected if they were being worn, and 2) where do we go to sign up for this kind of study?…

item! let’s see… 16,500 condoms divided by 125 staff members equals… when do these people have time to do any research? or maybe we should ask what exactly it is they’re researching?

item! we certainly have to thank dennis kucinich for introducing new articles of impeachment against pres. w. earlier this week… not because they have any chance in hell of going anywhere, but because it gives yet another reason to run another picture of his way hotter than he deserves wife…

item! for those who might have forgotten there was still another contender in the presidential race, ron paul has officially ended his run for the white house…

item! from the “know what you’re all about” department, the texas gop has been working on their platform… among other things, it advocates:

prayer in school, getting out of the United Nations, teaching intelligent design with evolution in science classes, repealing of the minimum wage, declaring illegal immigrants criminals and outlawing abortion with no exceptions.

The platform calls homosexuality contrary to “the unchanging truths” ordained by God. It opposes gay marriage, civil unions and the custody of children by gays.

The party’s own leaders aren’t spared. There’s a call to repeal the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, sponsored by the party’s presidential nominee, and to oppose the Trans-Texas Corridor, the brainchild of Gov. Rick Perry.

oh, and as far as the war goes?

“There is no substitute for victory!” the platform says in supporting the Bush administration’s war on “radical Islamist terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries around the world.”

last item! finally… we always suspected something like this was going on, but we weren’t sure until now:

In a ruling made public on Tuesday, Judge Peter C. Dorsey of the United States District Court in New Haven agreed that the plaintiff, Robert Jordan, was denied an opportunity to interview for a police job because of his high test scores. But he said that that did not mean Mr. Jordan was a victim of discrimination.

Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.

what more need we say?

moose out…

drop drop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is

Categories: moose droppings

Posted on Monday, May 5, 2008 by durnmoose

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droppings

so instead of ending the week with moose droppings what say we start this one off that way just because it’s been so long since we visited with each other…

item! maybe it’s just me, but i’m thinking if you’re gonna try cashing a fake check on your girlfriend’s mother’s account you might want to make it out for a little less than $360,000,000,000…

item! remember the story of the princess and the pea? where she couldn’t sleep because a single pea under her mattress was keeping her awake? yeah, well this guy had to deal with a few more than that, but we’re betting he didn’t sleep for awhile either…

item! they say one of the ways to judge how good a president a candidate is going to be is to look at who they surround themselves with and who they take advice from… obviously this is the strategy hillary is taking when she says she’s not going to listen to what actual economists have to say about her gas tax plan… after all, why listen to people who know what they’re talking about when not doing so has done so well for pres. w. for so long, right?

item! ok, well, if i wasn’t completely convinced before, i am after watching this video… the heart has four chambers and is red just like a tomato which is good for the heart… a kidney bean is >gasp< shaped just like a human kidney?!!? wow... (oh, btw, what i'm "convinced" of is that i.d.'ers truly are comppletely insane...)

item! here’s one for those of you who are crying that there’s never any honest politicians out there…

item! for some reason we’re thinking this guy may not exactly have been the most productive worker… well, there’s productive and then there’s productive, i suppose…

item! “Just when you’d thought you’d seen every crazy act of censorship a college administrator can dream up, along comes a case where a student is found guilty of racial harassment simply for reading a book”

item! well, then, what exactly was it that made the green fairy so powerful?

item! some japanese trends we don’t mind seeing emulated over here, but really… can we just skip the detergent suicides?…

item! the good news out of the latest florida legislative session? they may have failed to pass the bill to allow “i believe” license plates, but at least bestiality is still legal… let’s all head down to the gator rasslin’ farm, shall we?

last item! finally, with great original art comes great responsibility…

ed? ed who?

Categories: uncategorized, clinton, bush, democrats, freedom, sunday morning moose drop/ed, politics, moose droppings

Posted on Monday, February 18, 2008 by durnmoose

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drop ed

yeah, it’s been awhile since we’ve done one of these round-ups of various editorials and think-pieces, but with lots of folks having time off today for presidents’ day or just maybe having a few extra minutes to indulge a little reading, we figured why not… as always, we may not agree with them all, but they’re all definitely worth your time to read… also, as always, click the link for the full article…

item! first up, we have author philip ross in an interview with der spiegel talking about his writing, growing old, and why president w. is the worst american president ever:

Philip Roth, who will be 75 in March, is one of America’s most critically acclaimed living writers. His 1969 novel “Portnoy’s Complaint” brought him fame, and he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for 1997’s “American Pastoral.”

SPIEGEL: What will remain of the current president, George W. Bush? Could he be forgotten once he leaves office?

Roth: He was too horrendous to be forgotten. There will be an awful lot written about this. And there’s a lot to be written about the war. There’s a lot to be written about what he did with Reaganism, since he went much further than Reagan. So he won’t be forgotten. Someone has said he’s the worst American president we’ve ever had. I think that’s true.

SPIEGEL: Why?

Roth: Well, the biggest thing would be the war, the deceptions surrounding the entrance into the war. The absolute cynicism that surrounds the deception. The cost of the war, the Treasury and the lives of the Americans. It’s hideous. There is nothing quite like it. The next thing would be the attitude towards global warming, which is a global crisis, and they were utterly indifferent, if not hostile, to any attempt to address it. And so on and so on and so on and so on. So he’s done a lot of harm.

SPIEGEL: Since your book is set in that week during the 2004 elections, can you explain why Americans voted for Bush once again?

Roth: I suspect it was the business of being in a war and not wanting to change, and political stupidity. Why does anybody elect anybody? I thought highly of John Kerry when he began, but he couldn’t stand up against Bush. The Democrats aren’t brutes, which is too bad, because the Republicans are brutes. Brutes win.

item! up next, an article from salon on how technology makes killing in war easy and impersonal:

You see a man, walking through a shrub-dotted, dusty field. A small dog wanders behind him. Another screen shows a group of individuals, standing huddled together on a city street, looking like they could be chatting about a ballgame. A third Predator tracks a figure getting into a car, following as the car snakes through traffic. Yet another screen stays fixated on a single squat house surrounded by what looks like a low cement wall, as if someone is about to emerge from the front door.

The scenes look misleadingly pedestrian. The miniature people on the screens do not know they are being watched. “We are looking for individual people,” Lt. Col. Walt Manwill says, as he stares up at the massive screens. “Especially when you are killing people, you want to make sure you do it right.”…

Targeters here show me recent footage of two men on the ground in Iraq. The two men, far below the Predator drone’s gaze, appear to be setting up a mortar on a city street. They are in the shadow of a building just feet away. Suddenly, the two men explode. Everything around the men, including the buildings, looks unharmed. But when the dust clears, the two men are wiped away. A small bomb, tailor-made for hunting single individuals, has done the job.

An Air Force colonel describes these operations to me as “getting Bubba.”

item! next, arianna huffington writes on something we almost tackled last week - john mccain’s vote against the torture ban last week:

He made a similar case on the campaign trail in Iowa in October 2007: “When I was imprisoned, I took heart from the fact that I knew my North Vietnamese captors would never be treated like I was treated by them. There are much better and more effective ways to get information. You torture someone long enough, he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to know.”

And there was this pithy and powerful summation of why torture should never be an option: “It’s not about who they are, it’s about who we are.”

Of course, all that was before he put his conscience in leg irons — and before caving to the would-be Torquemadas on the Right became his campaign strategy.

Now we get tortured logic instead. Taking to the Senate floor to justify his vote against the torture ban yesterday, McCain twisted himself in knots trying to explain how he could sponsor a bill — the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act — that prohibits the use of any cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment by the military while voting against a bill that would extend that ban to the CIA and other intelligence agencies: “It is important to the war on terror that the CIA have the ability to [detain and interrogate terrorists]. At the same time the CIA’s interrogation program has to abide by the rules, including the standards of the Detainee Treatment Act.”

Got that? The CIA has to abide by rules prohibiting torture but we can’t tie the CIA’s hands by making it abide by rules prohibiting torture. Straight talk, RIP.

item! in the new york times book section, patricia cohen asks if americans are hostile to knowledge:

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”

Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture….

Ms. Jacoby, however, is quick to point out that her indictment is not limited by age or ideology. Yes, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked and dismissed throughout American history. And liberal and conservative writers, from Richard Hofstadter to Allan Bloom, have regularly analyzed the phenomenon and offered advice….

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

item! on the huffington post, joe wilson (yes, the husband of valerie plame wilson) writes about why he thinks hillary clinton will make the better nominee than barack obama to go up against john mccain…

I have spent the past four years fighting a concerted character assassination campaign orchestrated by the George W. Bush White House.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is one of the few who fully understood the stakes in that battle. Time and again, she reached out to my wife — outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson — and me to remind us that as painful as the attacks were, we simply could not allow ourselves to be driven from the public square by bullying. To do so would validate the radical right’s thesis that the way to win debates is to demonize opponents, taking full advantage of the natural desire to avoid confrontation, even if it means yielding on substantive issues. Hillary knew this from experience, having spent the better part of the past 20 years fighting the Republican attack machine. She is a fighter.

But will Mr. Obama fight? His brief time on the national scene gives little comfort. Consider a February 2006 exchange of letters with Mr. McCain on the subject of ethics reform. The wrathful Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of being “disingenuous,” to which Mr. Obama meekly replied, “The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable but does not in any way diminish my deep respect for you.” Then one of McCain’s aides said of Obama, “Obama wouldn’t know the difference between an RPG and a bong.”

Mr. McCain was insultingly dismissive but successful in intimidating his inexperienced colleague. Thus, in his one face-to-face encounter with Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama failed to stand his ground.

What gives us confidence Mr. Obama will be stronger the next time he faces Mr. McCain, a seasoned political fighter with extensive national security credentials? Even more important, what special disadvantages does Mr. Obama carry into this contest on questions of national security?

last item! finally, a video commentary from keith olbermann on president w., the telecom bill, fisa, and how according to his own definition, president w. is siding with the terrorists:

Does this endless presidency of loopholes and fine print extend even here? If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it! There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend.

You’re a fascist — get them to print you a T-shirt with fascist on it! What else is this but fascism? Did you see Mark Klein on this newscast last November?

Mark Klein was the AT&T whistleblower who explained in the placid, dull terms of your local neighborhood IT desk how he personally attached all AT&T circuits, everything, carrying every one of your phone calls, every one of your e-mails, every bit of your Web browsing into a secure room, room No. 641-A at the Folsom Street facility in San Francisco, where it was all copied so the government could look at it.

Not some of it, not just the international part of it, certainly not just the stuff some spy, a spy both patriotic and telepathic, might be able to divine had been sent or spoken by or to a terrorist.Everything! Every time you looked at a naked picture. Every time you bid on eBay. Every time you phoned in a donation to a Democrat. “My thought was,” Mr. Klein told us last November, “George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ And here I am, forced to connect the Big Brother machine.”

And if there’s one thing we know about Big Brother, Mr. Bush, it is that he is — you are — a liar.

“This Saturday at midnight,” you said Thursday, “legislation authorizing intelligence professionals to quickly and effectively monitor terrorist communications will expire. If Congress does not act by that time, our ability to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying and what they are planning will be compromised.” You said that “the lives of countless Americans depend” on your getting your way.

This is crap. And you sling it with an audacity and a speed unrivaled by even the greatest political felons of our history.

drop kick that ball…

Categories: moose droppings

Posted on Friday, February 15, 2008 by durnmoose

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droppings

item! lookout! the mutants are already among us…

item! feel like ya got no one to vote for? hey, there’s always ralph nader… (again) (maybe)…

item! you have to know that it’s ideas like the marijuana vending machine that leads to ideas like cheeseburger in a can… or at least to people actually trying it…

item! once again it’s so good to be reminded that we have freedom-loving forward thinking allies like this…

item! ah, yes, we all know the best way to harm a democracy is to kill its cartoonists…

item! once we’ve included the phrase “internet sex auction” do we really need to say any more? i didn’t think so…

item! okay, so remember that whole concept about unlawful search and seizure… yeah, well, they’re not quite all that unlawful now…

item! don’t want to be arrested, taken downtown, and have your fingerprints and dna sample taken? then you better make sure a fellow commuter doesn’t think that mp3 player in your pocket is a weapon…

item! or let it’s own cowardly lawmakers back down in defending the constitution against an ever-increasingly-powerful executive…

item! fortunately for us all, the europeans are apparently willing to share their toe-jam and ear-wax databases with everyone else so we can protect ourselves further against international travellers…

item! fortunately, as the tone of this article indicates, the eu is thrilled to have our president putting more and more restrictions on them and telling them how they’re going to run their airlines…

item! we’re pretty sure the insurance companies would call this an “act of god“… what we’re not sure of is what baby jesus did to piss daddy off so…

item! nebraska no longer allowed to make fries for their prisoners… oh, wait, no, that’s make fries out of their prisoners… sorry, our bad…

item! good thing this kid doesn’t live in nebraska, we think… or maybe that’s where he should be so we know he won’t get the chair for his heinous crime…

item! no,no,no,no,no,no,no,no,no,no,no,no,no,no…..

item! well, if amsterdam goes through with their plans (see last item) we guess we won’t be needing these anymore…

last item! finally, in a study that came as no surprise to any of the guys here at moose central approximateely half the men in the u.k. would quit having sex for six months in exchange for a…

pet droppings…

Categories: clinton, religion, bush, democrats, republicans, obama, education, politics, moose droppings, conservatives

Posted on Friday, January 25, 2008 by durnmoose

[2] Comments

droppings

friday! moose droppings! let’s do it!

item! say it isn’t so… hydrox cookies are gone?!?!?!

item! the price per pound for selling fruit by the pound? apparently somewhere around $130,000… umm… how much is that in pounds?

item! apparently the bus driver was afraid they were going to the back seat to do a little heavy petting?

item! tonight is burns night, but apparently ol’ rabbie won’t be getting any of his favorite food… at least not around here…

item! ok, we really could care less that oliver stone wants to do a movie about president w… after all, we’ve managed to ignore most of his other flicks… but… josh brolin as w? now that’s just wrong…

item! y’know when you go to the mcdonalds drive-thru and they ask you to pull forward to wait for your food so they can keep their official window times down and look good to the district manager…. looks like you’d better do what they say…

item! dang! where’s steve mcqueen when you need him?
item! a very interesting essay on the legacy of doctor king… “All we know is that this guy had a dream. We don’t know what that dream was.”

item! good news! apparently the u.s. doesn’t torture people after all… canada apologises for thinking “forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners” falls under the “definition of torture”…

item! dennis kucinich has abandoned his run for president… unfortunately that means we’ll no longer have an excuse to run pictures of his gorgeous wife…

item! what would jesus do? apparently he’d hold himself hostage until your weiner dog quit crapping in the neighbor’s yard…

last item! finally, we’re gonna try to use little words here and not get too complicated so that maybe even the republicans in our audience can understand what we’re driving at… when one of the basic standards of your party is a strict interpretation of the constitution, when one of your most sacred tenets is that we need judges who are going to “apply the constitution, not interpret it”, how can one of the front-runners for your party’s nominee to be the president be a man who says “[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,”? (you all do remember the constitution, right, it’s that thing president w. called “just a damned piece of paper”)… are you truly so desperate for the evangelical vote that you’d put forward a man who says that gay sex is the same as pedophilia and bestiality? of course, considering the other candidates in the race, huckleberry may very well be the best chance you have… (not that the dems are doing any better… between bickering about who might actually have said something nice about ronald reagan and whether it’s worse to have defended a slumlord in court or been on the board of the ultimate evil that is wal-mart it’s been a banner couple of weeks in presidential politics…)

-moose out…

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