Tag: Stupid Politicians

A Journalistic Bombshell

Dear President Obama,

It has recently come to my attention that White House policy is now decided based on things people post on blogs.

Sir, I won't brag about my credentials, but suffice it to say that I know how to operate WordPress and I spend upwards of ten dollars per year to maintain a domain name.

To that end, I must share with you a shocking photo I have unearthed, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently made some highly inappropriate and racially-charged remarks:
Tom Vilsack saying he fucking hates white farmers.  Not edited on a computer.

Please remove this individual, who has clearly proven himself to be a complete fucking idiot who is not competent to make cabinet-level decisions, from his post and replace him with someone who is not a complete fucking idiot.

If I am not available, I hear Shirley Sherrod is looking for work.


Thaddeus R R Boyd, Blogger

PS: If my blogger credentials are insufficent for the White House to do what I say, I am willing to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress.

Devaluing Language

The news media have been misusing the term "hacker" for at least the past two and a half decades -- to the point that their definition has become the accepted one, and a formerly positive term has developed a terrible stigma. But apparently the past 25 years of shoddy "journalism" on the subject were just not sloppy enough, because now they can't even adhere to their own stupid and wrong definition of the word -- as evidenced by a million articles currently claiming that Sarah Palin's E-Mail was hacked.

By all accounts, a scammer gained access to Sarah Palin's account by using the "reset password" feature -- and, allegedly, the secret question she had used as the key to resetting her password was her zip code.

Let me be absolutely clear on this: Knowing how to use a phone book does not make you a hacker. If you think it does, shut up, because you are stupid.

"Hacker" used to be a positive term. And then, it became a negative term that at least implied some level of skill. Now, it apparently means anyone unscrupulous who has at some point been in the same room as a computer.

Hell, when our Internet connection goes out, I call the cable company and tell them I'm my roommate, because his name's on the cable bill and they won't talk to me if I tell them the truth. Apparently that qualifies as "hacking" now.

You can't be serious

So I was listening to NPR on the way to work this morning, and they were talking about the attorney firing scandal.

And they played a clip of George Bush saying, "Democrats now have to choose whether they will waste time and provoke an unnecessary confrontation, or whether they will join us in working to do the people's business."

That is not a paraphrase. That is the exact quote.

President Bush -- President George Walker Bush, the current President, that President Bush -- just excoriated somebody for provoking an unnecessary confrontation.

You can't make this shit up.


In yesterday's post, I suggested that perhaps it was inappropriate for Rep. Marsha Blackburn to defend Bush's troop surge using a turn of phrase that also happened to be a Marvel Comics marketing slogan.

Not to be outdone, Florida's Rep. Ginny Browne-Waite has shown her support for the surge by saying -- I shit you not -- "Git-r-done."

Ladies and gentlemen, your United States Congress.

I'm With Captain America

Dear Rep. Blackburn,

I was thrilled to hear you sum up the Iraq escalation debate in the terms, "Whose side are you on?" I have always felt that the decision to send people off to war should be approached with the same gravity and solemnity as a comic book slogan.

Your black-and-white, either-or rhetorical question, "Are you on the side of freedom or are you on the side of allowing the terrorists to get the upper hand?" is certainly food for thought. Here are a few variations on that theme:

Are you on the side of the CIA, who said there was no link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda (at least, prior to our invasion), or of Douglas Feith, who cooked intelligence to send us to war?

Are you on the side of the Iraq Study Group, or the side of an administration which told us Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, we would be greeted as liberators, the war would take less than six months and pay for itself, major combat operations ended in May 2003, the insurgency was in its last throes in May 2005, there was no chance of sectarian strife -- in short, an administration which has been wrong on each and every single aspect of this war to date?

Are you on the side of the American people, or do you want more of our soldiers to die?

Hopefully that question is sufficiently black-and-white for you.

An Open Letter to Mayor Thomas M Menino

I'd like to dedicate this post to the late, great Molly Ivins. I may not have her wit, but I do share her love of sarcastic mockery of absurd politicians. Consider this my way of making the ridiculous look ridiculous.

(Context, for those who haven't heard it. And please feel free to contact the mayor yourself.)

Dear Mr. Mayor,

I am not a constituent. I live in Arizona -- though I'd love to move to Boston one of these days.

I'm sure you're receiving a lot of messages from out-of-towners today. I will not sugarcoat -- that is because today, you are a national laughingstock.

Sir, your city was brought to its knees by Lite-Brite representations of blocky cartoon characters flashing obscene gestures.

Please reread that sentence. Take a moment for it to sink in. Because it certainly doesn't seem as if you've done so yet.

Again, Sir, I will be blunt: you should be embarrassed. That people within your city government would see an object like that and conclude that it was an explosive device is absurd. What were they thinking -- that Boston is under attack by the Riddler? Use your head, man -- if it were the Riddler, there would have been riddles!

But are you embarrassed? No. You have attempted to hide your Keystone Kops' incompetence behind a wall of outrage. You have set the narrative for the news reports; you have used language like "hoax" and listened as the media parroted your words. And incidentally, Sir, controlling a message by repeating distorted language and getting the media to do the same? That's a tactic best associated with Republicans.

Sir, this was not a hoax. Nobody, anywhere, ever dreamed that any human being could possibly mistake those objects for bombs. This is not a case of somebody crying "Wolf!" This is somebody saying, I don't know, "Toothbrush!" and your city officials reacting as if they heard "Wolf!" Instead of suggesting that perhaps the officials made a mistake, you are acting outraged -- outraged! -- that someone would dare say "Toothbrush!" in a post 9/11 world, knowing fully well how much it sounds like "Wolf!"

Yes, this is a sign of a post-9/11 world -- it is a sign of frightened, hysterical people who cannot think clearly and have unsound judgement. Mr. Mayor, a little old lady is no threat when she has a bottle of hand lotion in her carry-on bag. Cellophane and duct tape will not make us any safer in our beds. And a brightly-colored cartoon character flipping the bird bears no resemblance to a bomb. (Actually, perhaps this isn't intrinsically post-9/11 thinking after all -- I remember quite a few people stockpiling canned food in 1999.)

End this foolishness. Don't make any more arrests. Don't file any lawsuits. Just slink away. You don't even have to apologize for your behavior (though that's what somebody with class would do -- and possibly shrug it off with a self-effacing joke in the process). Just move on.

Otherwise, your legacy will be "the mayor who wasted tax dollars suing a cartoon company because his underlings couldn't tell the difference between a bomb and a Lite-Brite".

Think about it, Sir.

And have a happy Groundhog Day.

I assume you will enjoy it -- it's a holiday celebrating a rodent that jumps at his own shadow.


Thaddeus R R Boyd
Phoenix, AZ