Monday, February 20, 2012

America, Distilled

From a Trib story about the "Santorum surge":

Part of the Santorum surge can be accounted for by disaffected supporters of Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"I decided to support him three weeks ago. Before that, I was for Gingrich," said Steve Izev, 34, of Westerville, Ohio. "The more popular he got, the more I liked him."

The more popular he got, the more I liked him. Before that I liked the other guy that was getting popular. I love it. So....honest. I'm not really thinking about it, I'm just going with whoever everyone else likes, coz this Romney guy is suspect in some sort of way...

Someone who agrees with the @fungsterm

I'm a Chicagoan, and I like ketchup on my hot dog. Deal with it. | Chicago Quirk:

Friday, February 17, 2012

Why does Rolling Stone want Romney to win?

Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. "I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," he vowed, promising an end to the Bush administration's high-profile raids on providers of medical pot, which is legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush's record for medical-marijuana busts. "There's no question that Obama's the worst president on medical marijuana," says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "He's gone from first to worst."

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Awesome new films

I thought Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter looked promising.

But I have been upstaged. Iron Sky tells the story of how a Nazi space program deposited the master race on the dark side of the moon, where they went on to live for 70 years, studying our culture, and only now returning to exploit our weaknesses. Oh - and the president is apparently Sarah Palin.

All this and the twinkie workers are apparently going on strike. The cosmic dissonance is going to tear the planet apart.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Shamelessly Recycling


I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, why else would it be on my hard drive?

Sunday, February 12, 2012

"We don't need to ask who you're talking to. We know."

[T]he Obama administration...has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined. [...]

“The Justice Department has always taken seriously cases in which government employees and contractors entrusted with classified information are suspected of willfully disclosing such classified information to those not entitled to it,” a department official explained. “As a general matter, prosecutions of those who leaked classified information to reporters have been rare, due, in part, to the inherent challenges involved in identifying the person responsible for the illegal disclosure and in compiling the evidence necessary to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Saturday, February 11, 2012

This is probably nothing to worry about (cont'ing)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., noticed that to subject American citizens to arrest without warrant and to detain us without trial violates the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution. Feinstein proposed to specifically exempt American citizens from the NDAA's arrest policy.

Her clarification of the NDAA passed the Senate by a vote of 98 to 1. That's as bipartisan as it gets, even in good times. In these times, passage of Feinstein's clarification was a miracle of agreement.

Yet in the NDAA's final version, as signed by President Obama, American citizens are not exempt. How did that happen? [...]

The Obama White House specifically asked that U.S. citizens be subject to arrest without warrant and detention without trial.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Congressman Falls for The Onion's Planned Parenthood 'Abortionplex' Story

Meet the next rising Republican star...

Meet John Fleming, the unfortunate Republican U.S. Representative from Louisiana who made that wonderful and all-too-common mistake of thinking that an Onion article was real and telling his Facebook followers to read it.

Who was all gung ho about Iceland again?


Huh huh, Icelandic "handball". Huh huh, huh huh...

Presidential Power. Also, Al Green Sucks.

Sales of Al Green up nearly 500% after Obama 'cover' - POLITICO.com:

Who knew that President Obama could make a 30-odd year old song shoot up the chartsagain?

Digital sales of Al Green's (hate dis guy - ed) 1972 hit "Let's Stay Together" (hate dis song - ed) are up 490 percent, since a video of the president singing a few bars at a fundraiser surfaced last week.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, the song was downloaded about 16,000 times last week — making it the best week for the song since digital sales data became available in 2003.

And that's the only Obama-Al Green (add dat to the nexus list - ed) news.

House Democrats, at a retreat in Maryland, presented President Obama with a CD of the caucus doing a rendition of the song. POLITICO's Seung Min Kim has more.

To which the Fungster says Boooooooooooo!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Canadian plutocrats, we got your dog here

DougieDog Hot Dogs says the footlong creation is "mouth-wateringly delicious" — and it'll set diners back $100.

The Dragon Dog is made with a bratwurst infused with century-old Louis the 13th cognac, which costs more than $2,000 a bottle.

Other ingredients include Kobe beef seared in olive and truffle oil, fresh lobster (NO KETCHUP! - ed.) and a secret picante sauce.
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Thursday, January 19, 2012

For 35 years in a row, science has been rooting for the terrorists to win ...

... or, perpetrators of most elaborate hoax ever going to ever more elaborate lengths to perpetrate hoax (cont'd)

This marks the 35th straight year that global temperatures were warmer than normal. NOAA's records for world average temperatures date back to 1880.
~

Exciting developments in booze (cont'd)

We can now drink meteorite-infused wine.

Imagine a wine connoisseur swirling Cabernet Sauvignon around in his mouth, and then comparing the experience to "drinking elements from the birth of the solar system."

With those exact words, vineyard owner Ian Hutcheon is promoting Meteorito, the first wine aged with a roughly 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite believed to be from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Rick Perry - Savoring the Dumbering


His campaign is probably almost over, so we must cherish these golden nuggets of inanity (new team name?) while they're still coming.

"When you have a country [Turkey] that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then yes, not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO, but it's time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it."

— Rick Perry

This was the most jaw-dropping statement of the night.

The ruling party of Turkey is moderately Islamic, but it generally has not interfered with the country’s secular traditions. While Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has prodded the leadership about its commitment to media freedoms, few analysts — if any — would say the Turkish leadership is made up of "Islamic terrorists." We really have no idea what Perry is talking about.

As for foreign aid, Turkey is a wealthy country that already gets virtually no foreign aid from the United States. The State Department this year made a request for about $5 million, which was earmarked for peace-keeping and security operations — not what one could consider traditional "foreign aid."
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Sunday, January 15, 2012

I guess what's been killing the bees should have been obvious



If they need to find a healthier way to cope with all that bee stress, I suggest booze.

Apparently, neonicotinoids are "a group of toxic chemicals designed to paralyse insects by attacking their nervous systems." But, as it turns out, bees are insects too. Hmmph. And you spelled "paralyze" wrong.

Nicotine-based pesticides in widespread use by farmers are implicated in the mass deaths of bees, according to a new study by US scientists.

The authoritative, peer-reviewed research undermines the pesticide industry's long-repeated arguments that bees are not being harmed, and piles pressure on UK and US authorities to follow other countries by introducing bans on the chemicals.

Pesticide companies have been trying to protect their multi-billion pound businesses by lobbying internationally against bans on neonicotinoids, a group of toxic chemicals designed to paralyse insects by attacking their nervous systems.

Agricultural crops in Scotland, England and around the world are dosed with the chemicals to prevent insects from damaging them. But evidence has been mounting that they could be to blame for the "colony collapse disorder" that has been decimating bee populations.

The US has been losing one-third of its honeybee hives every year, while beekeepers in Europe say that more than one million bee colonies have been wiped out in France, Germany, Italy and the UK since 1994.

Although neonicotinoids have faced bans or restrictions in Germany, France, Italy and Slovenia, regulators in the UK and the US have so far accepted the industry's contention that the toxins were not poisoning bees.

But that view has now been seriously challenged by a new study from scientists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. They found neonicotinoids in bees, in pollen, in soil and in dandelions, suggesting that bees could be contaminated in several different ways.

"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology at Purdue and a co-author of the study. Bees also suffered from tremors, unco-ordinated movement and convulsions, which are all signs of insecticide poisoning...