They’re just being cockblocked by the vagina dentata that is the Republican party.

But “you hardly post anymore” you’d say.

True.  The world’s gone to shit.  South America’s going to blow up when Chavez dies.  Mexico’s a failed state.  Obama’s foreign policy consists of pissing off our allies and trying to surrender without dignity to the Taliban, as if they are some kind of honest broker for peace, in time for election season.

On the other side of the aisle, the clown show of the Republican Party will enter Ringling Brother’s vaunted third circle at the convention when they unilaterally pick Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio over anyone who is running now.  Because if there’s one thing America’s clamoring for it’s another Bush.

I toyed with the idea of Gary Johnson before I saw him speak.  Herman Cain was never ready for primetime.  Huntsman was Obama’s Mandarin-speaking Manchurian and Michelle Bachmann couldn’t ever get off the ground despite her outfits borrowed from wardrobe of the last Star Trek outing.

Which leaves us with the cream of the crap:  Santorum the Self-Righteous, Romneybot, the always erratic yet quotable Gingrich & the every 3rd world dictator’s idea of a good time – Ron Paul.

With those choices, what’s there not to be excited about?

As someone who’s crawled over broken glass before, let me say that I would gladly do it again to punch a bloody “VOTE” button against Obama regardless of who’s running.  Even for Ron Paul despite my long held hatred of that consistently myopic troll.

I struggle to care.  I love what America has been and what it has historically represented but I increasingly hate Americans themselves.  Too stupid and satisfied to survive on an internet connection and a handout.  57% of them voted for $8.00 gallon gas and then have the nerve to bitch and mewl about it.

This next November isn’t an election – it’s a slow-motion Suicide Watch with a Kevorkian media happily dispensing a veinful of poisonous class envy and State-approved spin to a credentialed but uneducated electorate.

I’d turn the channel if I could.

In the high profile wake of Iraq’s new corruptocracy kicking us out of the country we liberated from Saddam Hussein and Hamid Karzai’s candid admission that he would rather side with Pakistan against us is there any other reasonable conclusion to arrive at other than our troops should not wait until the end of the year to evacuate?  The hardline Iranian tied backers that constitute the new Iraqi Caliphate are grudgefucking their goats at the opportunity to put US soldiers on trial.  In Karzai’s case, the man would have been killed long ago had we not been the shield to protect him from the eternal poppy field in the sky.

And this is the thanks we get?

Not one soldier should expect to waste another drop of sweat to pay for Obama’s re-election campaign and his spin for this unmitigated cludterf*ck will be magnificent.  He killed Osama Bin Laden with the special forces and intelligence apparatus he inherited from his predecessor and assassinated Qaddafi in Days, Not Weeks(tm) (in many months actually) for the crime of him not being the ruler of Syria.

Excuse me.  Obama killed Qaddafi once Qaddafi was killed.  It was a NATO operation when he was still at large.

He brought our troops home from Iraq (after getting us kicked out) and Afghanistan is siding with the people he’s been bombing with drone strikes.  It is truly amazing what can be accomplished when the media doesn’t hound the President for following the letter of international law.

Pouring water on the head of a non-uniformed terrorist captured on a battlefield?  High crimes ready for impeachment!  An extra-judicial killing of a US citizen who was a propagandist for our enemies?  Courage.  Leadership.  Hemming and hawing about means to an end if that.  John Walker Lindh was lucky he wasn’t caught in Obama’s time.  Since he was caught under Bush he’s a hero to the Left.  If it were a few years later his bloody mug would be pasted at the top of the NY Times with a “Got Him!” 72-font headline.

This could have all gone very differently.  Instead, China and Russia got the Iraqi oil contracts (thanks to John Kerry) and the Taliban was overthrown so that we could build the country up and hand it back to them better than new. This is what, somehow, qualifies Hillary Clinton as some kind of foreign policy expert.  At the State Department, she’s moved from Carrot Top “Reset Button” prop diplomacy and now we’re on to charades.

It’s enough to make you want to vote for Ron Paul.

Your Time to Divest From Facebook Is Now.

Realizing, of course, that your information is the asset.  Given freely and with no hopes of ever concealing it.  Your real name, your hometown, every medical issue you’ve ever discussed, every old flame you’ve ever looked up, every opinion on every issue and your Zynga poker strategy to boot – handed over to an untouchable, Democrat sociopath:

For years, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, has extolled the virtue of transparency, and he built Facebook accordingly.

….

“Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity,” Mr. Zuckerberg has said.

Now, Facebook is being taken to task for trying to conceal its own identity as it sought to coax reporters and technology experts to write critical stories about the privacy implications of a search feature, Social Circle, from its rival, Google.

Transparency for thee, not for me it seems.  The Founding Fathers of this country understood perfectly the role of anonymity and I would rely on their 200+ year old integrity against Zuckerburg and his ilk any day of the week.

I was always reluctant to ever open a Facebook account and never fully embraced it. But hey, everybody’s doing it.  And if everybody’s doing it…that’s a lot of guys doing it*.

You’re faced with handing over not just your content but a map of everyone you know (home, work, church, other)  to someone who ostensibly hates you and has the ability to use it against you.  That I cannot stomach.  I don’t go to movies or buy the music of people who openly express contempt of my values.  Why should this be any different?  This isn’t to say that I’m so self-centered that I think a multi-billion dollar corporation is after me.  It just could if it wanted to and I don’t have to be the one to give it the ammunition.

It’s the Disclose Act on a personal level.

In a statement issued Thursday, Facebook said: “We wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst. The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way.”

After they were caught hiring a top flight PR firm to engage in an anonymous smear campaign.  It’s almost like the private sector parallel of the President they support. Openness, honesty and transparency for all – except me!  It’s still the Gilded Age for these information railroad robber barons and it’s time for a trustbuster.

Don’t anyone be offended when I start de-friending you.  I’m not hating the players, I’m hating the game.

Is there anything richer than a gaggle of smarmy progressives snickering at the conservative “Constitution fetish”? “Fetish” is the fashionable Left’s latest suggestive imagery turned talking point, a dig at the new Republican majority in the House, which began its session this week by reading the Constitution aloud. It’s as if Dracula were complaining about a crucifix fetish.

Look into my eyes.  I’ve been fantasizing about repealing your mammoth, heaving, soapy penumbras all day.

McCarthy then proceeds to brutalize the pervy progressive projectionists, not unlike Jodie Foster in The Accused, with some of the more depraved hits they laid down on their metaphoric mattresses.

Yea.  Look at yourself in the mirror you dirty little tramps.

Explaining (sort of) why Blackmun’s iconic Roe v. Wade decision simply had to be preserved despite its void of support in law and logic, they wrote: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” You’re telling me you think James Madison could compete with that?

Jimmy Jam was always spittin’ Mad game but Blackmun was Supafly TNT in the legal sack.

And would that it were just a fetish. In 2005, the justices sparked public outrage by ruling that government kleptocrats could seize private property in order to increase the tax haul — er, I mean, for sustainable community development. Was this really an appropriate invocation of eminent domain? Shouldn’t the people’s representatives rein in this blatant judicial overreach? Once and future minority leader Nancy Pelosi was astonished at such impertinent questions. “It is a decision of the Supreme Court,” she harrumphed. “It is almost as if God has spoken.”

Nothing makes San Fran Nan aka Madam Nasty Pelosivic start screaming “Oh God” faster than 6 men in black robes (and three kinda, sorta women) waving their gavels over her head.  All public holes filled with unappealable adjudication that’s bound to test the nation’s gag reflex.

Her courtroom climax?  Precedent setting.

Check it all out.  It’s in the NRO After Dark section.

Open question:  Where do you keep your Constitutions?  Personally, I keep my main one between my mattress and box springs.  An extra one in a sock drawer.   Every year I keep getting older but they keep staying the same age.

Who’s Your (Founding) Daddy? Yea.  You like that dontcha?

“She was the heart and soul of Demos’, and she made the heart and soul the way she did with her kids, which was with discipline of the staff — and she did it with 100 percent love,” he said.Peter explained that his mother had been in good health her entire life, but suffered a massive stroke Tuesday night that caused hemorrhaging next to her brain stem. She died on Wednesday afternoon.

I started going to Demos’ shortly after they opened when I attended MTSU.  Mrs. Demos was an omnipresent fixture.  Everything was always outstanding – the food, the staff – everything.  Especially the price.

One night, and this is my only Doris Demos story, I ordered a steak that might have been a little too rare and did not feel so well afterwards.  In what was sure to be a sign of things to come, I left a negative comment card on the table.

Bright and early the very next morning, I got a personal phone call from Mrs. Demos inviting me to come back and that she would take care of everything.  And she did.   That’s been over 15 years ago as much as it pains me to say and to this day I still go there for a bowl of baked chicken and rice soup whenever I start feel a cold coming on.

Godspeed, Mrs. D and condolences to the family.   You are already missed.

Sorry if we’re not licking the ‘Milk’ out of your saucer, Hollywood.

It is a testament to the nature of the American people that they would freely give up a hundred large for a mawkish send-up cynically and laboriously designed to pluck at your heart strings.

This is what makes our culture different from the Islamic ones.  We care more about our dogs than they care about their children.

I’m not going to go into any spoilers here like I usually would.  Suffice it to say, when you bring a pet into your family it is an assumption that your pet is going to pass away one day.  The loss of a pet is different in ways from losing a relative or friend because so many times the love of an animal is completely unconditional.  People have conditions.  All we ask of our pets is that they don’t attack any small children, pee on the rug or track mud through the house and we are willing to compromise on the last two.

Admittedly, I don’t cry at movies or funerals.  Partly because I’m some kind of monster but mainly because  the former is specifically designed to evoke a response and the latter because they’re designed too well to exploit some tragedy in your life.

If  you feel the need to take part in the Great National Cry of ‘Marley & Me’ in need of some cathartic release because your 401k has dropped 40% – go in prepared.  Don’t go out and buy a labrador or a chihuahua because all of the chirrens are going to want a Marley of their own or a celebrity handbag like Paris Hilton unless the thought of animal shelters overflowing with our forgotten friends doesn’t matter to you.

A pet is a voluntary commitment not unlike a marriage.  It is ’til death do you part and the failure of the relationship to work is strictly on your part.  For a child, it is usually the first real measure of responsibility that they will ever have and an important tool to help them show devotion to something outside of themselves.

If you are one of the soulless pod peoples incapable of taking care of yourself or others – go buy a cat. There’s a reason why there are dozens of famous dogs but the most famous cats are cartoons.

An unidentified software bug has affected 30GB first generation versions of the Microsoft Zune digital media player.

The company appears baffled by the cause but on its website said it is aware of the problem and is working to correct it.

The problem is apparently a worldwide one with customers reporting their devices freeze when booted.

Let’s not confuse “appears baffled” with “pantshittingly retarded”.

Quote one expert:

“I’ve never heard of a consumer electronic device fail en masse like this,” said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a Seattle-based research firm that focuses on the software giant.

Rosoff estimated that as many as one million people may have been affected by the glitch, which disabled the original 30 gigabyte Zune players.

Never again, MicroStank.  This the Corvair of the Digital Age and unsafe at any speed.

Due to your complete inability to produce a media player untainted by the foul stench of your software failures, I will never buy one of these again and will likely choose a Mac or a Linux OS in the future for all future desktops or laptops.

Congratulations on another successful PR campaign, doucherags.  Z2K9, indeed.

Not one just to bitch and moan, I’m all about solutions:

A)  You can bite the bullet and trade these out for new models of the same size.

B)  Sub out the repair to local outlets like Best Buy.

C) Overnight the tiny screwdriver kit to remove the case to everyone responding on your website with directions for the hard reset.  Not even my eyeglass screwdriver is small enough to fit these screws.

D)  Eat the peanuts out of my crap.

The choice is yours.

Cranky gloats in the comments.  What can I say?  We didn’t listen!

Blank Zune templates after the jump.  Just do a “Save As” and  Photoshop your own idea of what a real frozen Zune screen should look like and I’ll post them (send to -b-dot-mcmurphy-at-yah00000!-dot-com).

Micro Soft On Quality Update: Allegedly this time freeing feature of the Zune will work itself out at the stroke of midnight.  In other words, “don’t just do something – sit there!”*

Yay.  Just in time for everybody to go home.

Another wonderful bit of tech advice from the people who never met a problem that powering down your system and restarting couldn’t fix.

Eric just passed his CDL exam and has delivered a truckload of fail.  I checked the Bill of Lading.  It’s true.

Preston sends us greetings from Master Shake.  It’s not a Happy Time Harry Doll but it’ll have to do:

One more from your humble narrator.

Here’s mine. Happy new year to my favorite virtual friends.

Turn ya stereo up’n'shit.

Concerned citizens or bullying bureaucrats?

More importantly, does anyone think McCain’s going to do anything but bring a Nerf rocket launcher to a South Side of Chicago gunfight?

I’m voting early this weekend based solely on the performance tonight and then I’m done with this mess.  If McCain stinks up the hall like a nursing home again then I am walking right into that voting booth and leaving the choice for President blank.  Republicans need to admit that they have a problem and it’s not that they are too conservative.

My friends on the Right side of the aisle, in the future you might want to nominate someone whose main accomplishment includes something other than knowing how to take a beating.  We’ll file that under “foreshadowing”.

I know.  I don’t see “The Big Picture”.  As if this cinematic nightmare has not been rolling across my screen for the past two years.  It took eight long years of watching the people I voted for, showing no desire to lead whatsoever, to get me to this point.   But I’m here now and I doubt I’m alone.

So….Debate Thread?

The Madcap Live Laughs after the jump.  Might as well jump.

Bob Schieffer’s getting his last chance at relevancy.

Right out of the gate, McCain decides to bailout the people who, unlike me, bought a house they could afford and got a fixed interest rate.  Why am I still paying mine?  Just a fool, I guess.

The Middle Class is the helpless white woman from the old movies.  Always getting in trouble.  Always needing to be rescued.  The Middle Class is a working gal on the side of the road with a flat tire and her exposed thigh hitching a ride.

The Middle Class gets me hot.

McCain smears Obama with plumber’s crack.  As we all know, any type of crack is racist and planted by the CIA.

If I hear about “Joe The Plumber” again, I’m going to go stop up to the toilet so he’ll have job security.

Saying “tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts” will not win this election.

McCain did get a good line off, that didn’t sound rehearsed, about if Obama wanted to run against President Bush that he should have 4 years ago.  He should have followed up with a point about working with who is in office and when has Mr. Post-Partisanship ever accomplished anything with anybody (offer does not include Chuck Hagel).

Bob Schieffer’s obviously not very familiar with the history of “dirty politics” if he thinks this campaign is somehow worse than 1828, or Bill Moyers’ Daisy Ad, or the NAACP’s James Byrd ad.

Men don’t cry.

Obama says that Palin has been encouraging people to kill him.  What a lying piece of shit.

Finally, a hit on Ayers and ACORN.

Huh.  Obama just implied that Biden would make a great President assuming someone assassinates him.  Who can stand four years of his racebaiting bullshit?

Should children with autism be aborted?  Come on!  Follow-up question, Bob.  That’s what a professional would do.

On Energy, McCain hits back on Obama’s fascist, go-it-alone, unilateral policies.  We can clean up the environment and save energy by creating 45 new rainbow reactors to harness our nation’s vast unicorn reserves.

Free Trade gets brought up with Colombia – need to bring up his name being on a FARC leader’s laptop and him actively undermining US policies abroad.  In Colombia, in Iraq, and everywhere.

Why do I run my own life?  Why can’t the government come in and tell me how to do it?  They do such a good job on their own of living clean lives and living on a budget.  All the choices confuse and frighten me.  Calgon, take me away.

Joe The Plumber, Joe The Plumber, Joe The Freaking Plumber.  Lame.

Nominating SC judge on an abortion litmus test?  Ruh-roh.  McCain brags about putting Breyer and Ginsburg on the high court.  That street only goes one way, John.

Obama sends his kids to a $20,000 per year per kid private school.  He’s pro-choice on abortion and anti-choice on your kid’s education.  So you can kill ‘em but you can’t take them out of a bad school run by his cronies.

Closing arguments – Obama argues for universal healthcare and universal college education.  And your sacrifice will make his dream possible.  Ugh.  How did this one get this far?

WWJD?

What would Joe (the Plumber) Do?