License: If You're Gonna Steal

You're gonna need one.

How?

Change the law, stupid (h/t Taibbi).

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"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

-- Honore de Balzac

Welcome to Downstate Illinois

Land 'o road side, gun nut Burma-shave-style signs

(TYRANTS AND CROOKS/LOVE GUN CONTROL/DISARMED VICTIMS/IS THEIR GOAL), the World's Largest Cross, and a 3rd term Republican mayor who believes the Kenyan Usurper warn't born here in Murrica.

I also thought that capturing this true-blue Conservative Murrican Patriot and Chief Local Elected Official stand right beside an American flag being desecrated by being flown upside down in violation of the United States Flag Code:

§8. Respect for flag

No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.

1. The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.

...

was just too fucking perfect.

Because I'm sure that, right after Mayor Shtiforbrains was finished declaring the President of the United States illegitimate, his great love of country compelled him to rush right over to the flag-defiling Patriots in question and informed them that what they were doing might not only be worse on the SuperDuperFuckingPatriot Scale than, say, not wearing a flag-pin

but could plausibly be interpreted as a "Class C" felony under Illinois' (720 ILCS 620/) Flag Desecration Act.

Birth of a Teabagger Nation

New Blogging Device Unveiled

Promises years of low-maintenance, high-yield and furrows straight and true :-)

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

The reclusive John McSame finally broke his decades-long silence and took to the nation's airwaves to announce that he has always been at war with Eastasia (from Think Progress):

WALLACE: You said, I never considered myself a maverick.

MCCAIN: Well, all I — what I was saying was that I have considered myself a person who’s a fighter. I wouldn’t be around today if I wasn’t a fighter. I fight for the things that I believe in, and sometimes that’s called a maverick. Sometimes that’s called a partisan. And people can draw their own conclusions. I prefer great American myself, but…

WALLACE: So are you running away from the maverick title…

MCCAIN: No, of course not.

WALLACE: … because somehow it indicates that maybe you’re not a true blue conservative?

Kinda sad for the man who, just 18 months ago, still dreamed of being the body over which Sarah Palin would walk

to get into the Oval Office.

Said The Pollster To The Fireman:

"We really need to sell what we're doing with a zippy name?"

Said the Fireman to the Pollster:

"We're putting out planet-sized fires. Who in their right fucking minds is gonna side with the arsonists?"

Silly Fireman: thought D.C. was going to be like playing poker with Republican farmers and pharmacists in the state senator -- with a bigger table and higher stakes -- instead of orcs and berserkers who would rather see "their" country burned to the ground than rather than being run by someone else.

Pity he pissed away an entire year learning what any Liberal in America could have told him for the price of a beer.

================= ================= =================

Sometimes when the pen needs a rest, the muse will lead with a graphic jab instead of a verbal hook. Impulsive, and I never know if it will end well -- or end at all -- but it is always an adventure.

I did this in very large format Photoshop.


With a couple of variations.


All of which look better bigger, and any of which can be clicked on for poster-sized.

When Photoshops Attack

I did this pic over a year ago.

It was good for a laugh.

A year later it has not only come to life like something out of the "Night Gallery" , but has become the official policy of "Meet the Press".

From "Washington Monthly":

Political Animal

April 12, 2010

DAVID GREGORY'S SENSE OF FACT-CHECKING....
The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz noted this morning that NBC's "Meet the Press," still the most watched Sunday public affair show, is poised to undergo some cosmetic changes. It will not, however, follow ABC's lead on the fact-checking front.

[A]ccepting a challenge from New York University's Jay Rosen, interim host Jake Tapper has arranged for the St. Petersburg Times' PolitiFact site to fact-check what "This Week" guests say after each program.

An "interesting idea," Gregory allows, but not one the NBC show will be emulating. "People can fact-check 'Meet the Press' every week on their own terms."
...

I don't call the mythohyperbolic goo that the teevee extrudes into millions of American homes every Sunday Morning "The Mouse Circus" for nothing.

What makes this tidbit a little different is Greggers' explicit endorsement of the I-don't-give-a-shit-if-guests-lie-as-long-as-it's-Shiny-Go-Boom ethos of the infotainment-industrial complex: usually the Circus' clowns and mimes and bearded ladies have the good sense to keep that kind of shop talk away from the tender ears of the rubes they're trying to fleece.

As usual, Colbert squeezes the stone until it weeps.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sunday Morning Fact-Checking - Jake Tapper & Bill Adair
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Once the smoke has cleared, I'm betting that Greggers will turn out to be the wisest one of all. Because in the end, demanding that the Sunday Morning puppet show be held to anything remotely approaching the neighborhood of accuracy and integrity (or "this 'truth' gimmick, as I am willing to wager more than one network executive has called it) is bad for the bottom line.

After all, Tapper (whose attempt to trick Media into going out on a blind date with Facts I find admirable) is a "temp" with less to lose that his colleagues, while by all appearances Greggers wants to go gray(er) in his new gig.

And this being the case, I'm sure the memory of what befell the last handsome, vacant, bilaterally symmetrical copy-reciting haircut who shook his gilded cage a little too hard

is vivid in Gregger's mind

Driftglass and Blue Gal's Friday Podcast

In a closed society where everybody's guilty,
the only crime is getting caught.
In a world of thieves,
the only final sin is stupidity.

-- Hunter S. Thompson