Perfidy Attacks

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The Fat Twin is Getting Married

EntertainmentPartisan PoliticsPerfidy Attacks

Oops. Did I say that out loud?

I’m sorry, but I always thought of Jenna Bush as the fat twin, not the blond twin. I don’t know why, but I’ve only been able to remember how to tell the twins apart by their relative chunkiness to one another rather than by hair color. Of course, one day I noticed that one is weaselly-faced like her father and the other one has that weird wicked stepmother face where she’s seemingly friendly, but going to slit your throat. Oh. I guess I haven’t told you guys that white people kind of scare me sometimes because they look like reptiles. (I must have watched V on tv too much as a kid.) Mrs. Shrub distinctly lacks an upper lip which is what makes me think that about her. But I digress.

At any rate, the fat one is getting married to the scion of a prominent Virginia Republican family. Whoopdeedoo. Not sure why CNN is posting it as breaking news, but I do like the stupid haircut that boy has at a black tie affair. It’s awful and Karl Rove should have done something about it. I am sure SOMEONE at the White House could point that boy to a decent hairdresser of Pennsylvania Avenue. Shit, I know a few people who can do a bang up fade with a pair of clippers for free. As always, I’m glad to oblige with a weed wacker. As I once told another fat twin, “Moppy hair only looked good on the Beatles, now get a haircut.”


Posted by Mapgirl on 08/16/07 at 11:20 PM
Entertainment • Partisan Politics • Perfidy Attacks • Permalink

Thursday, June 28, 2007

I Was Having Such a Good Time, I Shit Myself

Darwin Award ContenderFakeBloggingLead Pipe CrueltyPartisan PoliticsPerfidy Attacks

One gauge of a person’s moral fiber is how they treat animals.

Mitt Romney, for example, supports “extreme measures” for interrogators, and apparently thinks it’s fine to strap the family dog to the roof of the car and drive from Massachusetts to Ohio. The shit rolling down the back windshield? That’s doggy laughter.

Just sayin’. 


Posted by Johno on 06/28/07 at 11:50 AM
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Sunday, June 24, 2007

I Hate You Jericho Hill

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Jericho Hill, one of the list mods at Get Rich Slowly forums went to the happy hour for PF bloggers I hosted last week. I extended an invitation when I saw he was from DC. My bad. He is a prime Casey Serin Hater, so he brought me up to date on Mr. Serin’s sad travails.

And all I could do is pray that God would not kill me for my schadenfreude.

JH then told me to visit caseypedia.com, the wiki for the Casey Haters. I fear I am one and will have to join this elite club of people who pay their bills on time and have integrity. How many of the ministers and their fine minions are secret Casey Haters as well?

It’s people like Mr. Serin who ought to be jailed for fraud. Having worked a bankruptcy case for a fraudulent flipper in Baltimore, it disgusts me that people who get liar loans and then end up in foreclosure on multiple properties are going to bring the economy down with their stupdity. It’s the greedy mortgage brokers and banks who need to tighten credit a little and exercise a little fiscal responsibility and stop idiots like Mr. Serin from even getting into the position of being irresponsible. I’d love to let him hang himself, but apparently he’s quasi-homeless in Australia. Most likely he’ll get a free trip back courtesy of extradition papers. (OMG, I hope so. That would be frickin’ awesome! Eek. I am sure Mr. Serin would use those exact words to describe the experience of being violated in federal prison. It seems to be one of his favorite phrases.)

N.B. this is a modified cross post of something on Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge.


Posted by Mapgirl on 06/24/07 at 09:35 PM
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Friday, June 08, 2007

This Jail’s For You!

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I am sure you all know by now, but Young Miss Hilton is going to jail!

More schadenfreude for me!

I love the pictures of her crying. Save it for the runway or your big acting break.

Someone toss her a sandwich to shut her up.

Mommy? Mommy? How OLD are you that you still need your mommy? You never should have moved out of your mother’s house.

I am certain your parents are still so very proud of you, your sex tape and your irresponsibility.

************

Fortunately, I’ve never had a DUI in my life. Yes, I admit to probably driving when I shouldn’t have. But I also plan my drunk-drunk so that I am relatively sober by the time I leave the nightclub/restaurant/house party/picnic. We all know the rules, stay to the right, stay between the lines and drive the speed limit.

She’s under 30 and thin as a the finely etched lines of copper interconnect on a 300mm wafer. Her birdlike-metabolism should have her right stone sober in 30 minutes!

What kind of idiot still gets a DUI these days? On top of all that, she could afford a freakin’ driver or take a cab! Sheesh. I can’t AFFORD to do 45 days in jail or the legal fees for a lawyer, therefore I sober up!

I have zero sympathy. Don’t f*ck with the law. You had your chance. You do the crime. You do the time.

Dumbass.


Posted by Mapgirl on 06/08/07 at 07:48 PM
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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Yes, this logo blows

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On the subject of the 2012 olympic logo and its relative quality, I am told by the whole internets that the prevailing opinion is “it looks like Lisa Simpson giving a blowjob.”

Why yes… yes it does.

London must stand firm. They MUST NOT bow to pressure to abandon this hilarious and utterly appropriate logo! If this logo goes, the terrorists win.


Posted by Johno on 06/05/07 at 01:50 PM
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Sunday, June 03, 2007

The purity of essence of our precious category tags

No CategoryCrazy ForeignersDarwin Award ContenderFakeBloggingEntertainmentFilthy LucreHoly Shit!It'll Be a Cold Day in HellJust So You KnowLead Pipe CrueltyNaNoWriMoMusic WonkeryPartisan PoliticsPerfidyPerfidy AttacksPerfidy RespondsThat Buck Rogers StuffThe Miracle of ScienceUnmitigated GallWar

Patton has accused me of being overly concerned about wasting a scarce natural resource.  The category tag.  In this, of course, he is completely wrong.  Naturally, I could have argued that over-categorizing a post dilutes the utility of tags.  And I would have been right.  But that wasn’t the point.  I was attacking him on aesthetic grounds, and just to stick a stick in his eye. 

Just to prove that I am not some sort of homo-tree-hugging-enviro-commie, this post, which really is about everything, is tagged with every category we have.  And, when I have a free moment, I’ll add some new categories, and add them to this post.

So there.


Posted by Buckethead on 06/03/07 at 09:34 PM
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Friday, June 01, 2007

Comparative legal analysis

Filthy LucreHoly Shit!It'll Be a Cold Day in HellJust So You KnowPerfidy AttacksUnmitigated Gall

What do these two suits have in common?

image ”Couple sue Wal-Mart over slip in vomit“
(AP/Nashville Tennessean)

and

“ACLU: Boeing offshoot helped CIA“
(AP/Houston Chronicle)

Simple:

  • They each have a distinct odor associated with them
  • They’re both based on slippery circumstances
  • They’re both as baseless as the day is long

Only one of them, however, appears to have been categorized by the Associated Press as an “Odd Story”.  So let’s look at that one first:


Posted by Patton on 06/01/07 at 02:31 AM
Filthy Lucre • Holy Shit! • It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell • Just So You Know • Perfidy Attacks • Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Monday, May 21, 2007

I guess that’s one indication of bad economics

Holy Shit!Just So You KnowPerfidy Attacks

Who knew that trail mix was cheaper than corn? Not me, at least not until this morning’s WSJ article entitled ”With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch To Fatty Snacks“.

GARLAND, N.C.—When Alfred Smith’s hogs eat trail mix, they usually shun the Brazil nuts.

“Pigs can be picky eaters,” Mr. Smith says, scooping a handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews from one of the 12 one-ton boxes in his shed. Generally, he says, “they like the sweet stuff.”

Mr. Smith is just happy his pigs aren’t eating him out of house and home. Growing demand for corn-based ethanol, a biofuel that has surged in popularity over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn, Mr. Smith’s main feed, to near-record levels.

...

Mr. Smith says he’s paying about $63 to feed a single pig for five or six months before it goes to market—up 13% from last year. His costs would be even higher if he didn’t augment his feed with trail mix, which he says helps him save on average about $8 a ton on feed.

(ellipsis mine)

The presumption that corn-based ethanol was somehow going to be a great net-positive for the US economy has always been based on the thinnest of pretense, put forward by the farm lobby in the US.  As covered in an earlier post here (regarding Michael Bloomberg’s energy plan), corn is just about the stupidest way to make ethanol, perhaps second only to making ethanol out of oil itself, if such a thing is even possible.

And even if it were technically wise to do so, the mad rush to corn-based ethanol, driven by government mandates and subsidies that help nobody but the farm lobby, was always going to affect the supply/demand curve for corn.

Better late than never, there appears to be a sudden realization of the problem, if recent press mentions count for anything:

The items above are cherry-picked from among many, many other such recent stories. The last two are of a genre that puts the lie to the entire boondoggle being foisted onto the American consumer, particularly given that cane-based ethanol actually generates far more energy than it takes to produce, unlike corn-based ethanol.  Cane-based suffers, however, from the choke-hold the farm lobby continues to wield on the American legislative windpipe.

Much the same as, say, in the waste industry, where at a high enough price for landfill space, people are willing to recycle, prices for oil in the energy market can cause people to willingly overpay for alternatives. But when the costs of the alternatives, direct and indirect, become high enough, as they appear to be doing in the ethanol market, consumers are certain to rethink that entire “energy independence” thing.

Corn based ethanol is “ethanol done wrong”. Add to that the fact that it’s “ethanol done expensive”, and you can just wait for the increased backlash, attempting to drown out the farm lobby. The question, of course, is whether our legislative overlords will be allowed to listen and undo the damage they’ve done over the past twenty years on this front.


Posted by Patton on 05/21/07 at 06:57 PM
Holy Shit! • Just So You Know • Perfidy Attacks • Permalink

Speaking of head-hunting

Partisan PoliticsPerfidy Attacks

(apropos previous story, below)

Democrats seek “no confidence” vote on Gonzales

As previously covered here, I don’t see the firing of the US Attorneys, itself, as an affair worthy of even 10% of the coverage it’s received over the past several months.

That said, the fact that the Senate is working to craft and pass a “no confidence vote” on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ tenure in his present office strikes me as far less silly than does the World Bank’s dogged (and successful) pursuit of Paul Wolfowitz.

The initial response to the Democrats’ concern over the firing of political appointees for (gasp!) political reasons was completely mishandled. Obfuscation, bluster, and confusion were the order of the day. None of this was required, and instead the response should have been to tell the Democrats to get stuffed, as it is the president’s prerogative to fire any of his appointees, without regard for the sensitivities of Democrats looking to make political hay out of thin air.

However, once the AG’s office acted as though they needed to explain the events, bordering on covering up the facts, it seemed clear that the AG wasn’t qualified to handle his office. Subsequent events haven’t been kind to his position, because each has seemed to provide yet another opportunity for him to demonstrate his cackhandedness in office.

Among those subsequent events, the May 14 resignation of Paul McNulty, Deputy AG, and the testimony on Tuesday, May 15, of James Comey, describing the attempts by Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales to get John Ashcroft, then in intensive care, to approve of an administration spying proposal.

Using only NPR as a signpost, have a look at the recent progression of this story:

Gonzales himself has recently opined that it looked like he’d weathered the storm, even while, in a complete reversal of form for anyone in the Bush administration, he took responsibility for the firings, sort of, -ish.

I continue to believe that nothing wrong was done in the termination of the US Attorneys. Far more important, though, is the focus on how the aftermath-that-shouldn’t-have-been was handled, and Gonzales has repeatedly shown himself to be a tone deaf stumbler during his defense.

Such a set of skills seems ill-suited to the highest levels of the Justice Department, and the Democrats (plus either 6 or 11 Republicans, depending on how you count, so far) seem likely to get their vote of no confidence passed, symbolic as it might be.  Better still to hope for Gonzales’ resignation as a result, though, as a friend pointed out to me yesterday, how hard might it be to get confirmation for a replacement?

[Wik] For the record, all the ninnies calling for a wave of impeachments should also get stuffed. Focus on the problem at hand, rather than the problems you want to be at hand, sez me.

[Alsø wik] Specter indicates that the pressure may be working. For once, I hope Specter is right.  He hasn’t been worth much since he created the Wall of Sound, and isn’t even competent to hire a decent combination of chauffeur/murder trial witness.


Posted by Patton on 05/21/07 at 05:47 PM
Partisan Politics • Perfidy Attacks • Permalink

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Grammatical Animadversion

Perfidy Attacks

Those who know me well know that I’m fairly flexible on matters of language. Go ahead, say “ain’t” or write a double negative. I don’t care all that much unless the context calls for precision. Coin a word! I do it all the time! (I’m personally very proud of “libervasion,” as in “Five years in, the libervasion of Iraq has yet to draw to a favorable close for the USA.")

But what really burns my bacon is people who consistently fail to realize that two homophones are different. Case in point: Marshal, and Marshall. One denotes a person of high or ultimate rank in an organization, like Field Marshal or Fire Marshal. The other is a proper given name, like Marshall Mathers or Marshall Fauk. When everyone from high-school dropouts to tenured faculty, plus the guys who enter the scrolling headlines on major news networks, consistently write “Fire Marshal” as “Fire Marshall” I go a little nuts inside and wonder which Marshall it is who has fucked up so badly that his ass needs to be fired on the afternoon news.

That is all.

[Wik] (Now, if was “Fire Alberto” or “Fire The Stoner Who Took Two Hours To Deliver One Freaking Mushroom Pizza Light On The Mozzarella To My House And Couldn’t Even Put Together A Better Response Than To Cut His Reddened Eyes Away From Me And Mutter “Sorry If It’s Late” ("Sorry If It’s Late?” You Disingenuous Tool? We Both Know You Were Somewhere Doing Bong Hits, That’s Fine, Just Don’t Pretend You Don’t Know What Goddamn Time It Is When A Stone Cold Pizza Arrives At My House In A Cloud Of Resinous Smoke)” then I’d understand. But Fire Marshall? That poor bastard was just doing his job.)


Posted by Johno on 05/09/07 at 10:25 AM
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

An inconvenient phrase

Perfidy Attacks

Everyone can now stop using “inconvenient truth” - or its derivatives in any sort of writing, anywhere.  If you feel tempted to do so in spite of my request, please read Orwell’s ”Politics and the English Language“ and reconsider.  Failing that, find an unabridged copy of Orwell’s collected works and hit yourself repeatedly in the head with it. 


Posted by Buckethead on 04/24/07 at 01:52 PM
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Rudeness, and possible reasons therefore

Perfidy Attacks

In a Huffington Post blog entry (via the last item in today’s WSJ Best of the Web, after a bit of work, because BOTW referred to it, in error, I’m certain, as the “Puffington Host"), we find this dispatch from the cultural battleground, describing an encounter at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner:

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, “Don’t touch me.” How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, “You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us.” Karl then quipped, “I don’t work for you, I work for the American people.” To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, “We are the American people.”

While I don’t doubt for a second that Karl Rove is capable of random rudeness to songstresses and Hollywood types who make fake documentaries, I figured there had to be a better reason, and that James Taranto, of Opinion Journal, was too polite to tell the rest of the story.  It turns out that there’s an excellent chance Rove just doesn’t know where Sheryl Crow’s hand had recently been.

The answer was found in another entry at the Huffington Post site, Sheryl Crow’s wisdom on how to help stop the ravages of our future global warming overlords.  This excerpt summarizes both her deep, deep thinking on the matter and the reason for Rove’s apprehension at her attempted laying on of hands:

I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming.

Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of forest conservation which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required. When presenting this idea to my younger brother, whose judgment I trust implicitly, he proposed taking it one step further. I believe his quote was, “how bout just washing the one square out.”

See also (first four found via links from Huffington Post):

[Wik] Possibly related, regarding Sheryl Crow: She’s well intended, and I don’t mean this with any disrespect, but she’s dumber than a road lizard.


Posted by Patton on 04/24/07 at 01:05 AM
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Monday, April 23, 2007

Me neither

FakeBloggingPerfidy Attacks
Even CEO Cant Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business

The Onion

Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business

FORT WORTH, TX—After a thorough review of the its operations, RadioShack CEO Julian Day could provide no real explanation for the analog-riddled company’s staying power.


Posted by Patton on 04/23/07 at 02:33 PM
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Friday, April 13, 2007

Taking a turn in the barrel

Partisan PoliticsPerfidy Attacks

Ouch.  Johno gets Mitt.  Buckethead gets Joe.  I get Hillary.  One of these choices is not like the other two.

Why?  Well, Mitt’s a serious guy with a serious reputation among a fairly small subset of serious people who don’t otherwise know too much about him, as Johno’s undressing of him might indicate. He’s not widely or well known, but Mitt has a vocal support group, and will do fine until the heat reaches room temperature in a national campaign.  At that point, he’s toast. Which is hard to do at room temperature, and don’t ask me how long it took me to find that out.

Joe?  He’s famous for the same things that make him infamous, as Buckethead’s clearheaded yet evenhanded rant exposes. There’s a chance that he’s a decent guy, underneath his hugely irkssome and noticeable but ultimately unimportant flaws.  The fact that he can’t seem to keep anyone’s words from coming out of his cakehole, let alone his own, seems even more damning than the fact that he also has a history of not caring whose words he’s using. 

Easy targets, the both of them.

imageNot so, Hillary Clinton.  Ms. Clinton is far more broadly known than either of the other two, and is still the frontrunner by a wide margin in the Democratic Party field. (See Mar 29 2007 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll).  In that poll, Mitt Romney is tied for fourth place (at 6%) in the Republican ranks. He’s tied with a guy who’s not even sure he’s running (Gingrich), a guy who, if he runs, would be a very interesting candidate and among the most (simultaneously) intelligent and arrogant candidates we’ve had to choose from in recent memory. Perhaps worse, Mitt’s also trailing a guy in third place who wasn’t even included in the poll until the March 29th issue, a man who has only recently entered the collective imagination for the presidency - Fred Thompson, at 9%. Fred’s a guy who may still not run due to lack of energy, desire, or freedom from “indolent lymphoma”.  Worse yet for Fred’s supporters, he’s a guy who may even be too late to successfully run.  And yet Mitt’s still sniffing his exhaust. Like I said, easy pickings, both Mitt & Joe.


Posted by Patton on 04/13/07 at 01:39 AM
Partisan Politics • Perfidy Attacks • Permalink

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Best description ever of Dan Brown’s writing style?

Just So You KnowPerfidy Attacks

Found on Digg Spy, as the most intelligent comment on a story entitled ”Tom Hanks signs on to Angels & Demons for Record Payout?“.

Now, mind you, it came after a bunch of comments about how Angels & Demons was far superior to the Da Vinci Code. Which is absurd, as it’s like comparing runny shit to smelly shit.  Who knows which was actually worse?  Who cares?  They both (the books, not the types of shit) served a purpose, namely to be throw-away airport reading purchases, which is precisely how I came to read them both.

Anyway, the comment linked above, from Dumbledorito, reads, in its entirety:

A&D has a plot so linear you could put your eye out with it. Plus, it has an antimatter bomb (WTF?) and will probably piss off even more Catholics. The ending was more improbable than the Pope having been a former ping-pong champion, and lastly, if you’re going to make a movie about the Illuminati, it should be based on the works of Robert Anton Wilson.

Sorry to rant. I just didn’t care for it. It was also another “scholar wet dream” film as the bookish nerd-professor gets the hot chick thanks to his esoteric knowledge of an obscure subject.

Yeah, like s/he said.


Posted by Patton on 04/10/07 at 10:46 PM
Just So You Know • Perfidy Attacks • Permalink
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