Putting the 'NS' in NSFW

There's a new Ed Wood movie out . . . 34 years after the schlockmeister's demise -- Revenge of the White-Trash Half-Wits.

What appears to be an angry YouTube outburst by knuckle-draggers is really the unexpected piéce de résistance of the bad-movie universe. Unless, of course, it actually is the real deal.

Unfortunately, this probably is more likely than it being an Ed Wood anti-masterpiece or some sort of bizarro performance art. Disturbing performance art, but still. . . .

Here's the story thus far, which has gone viral on YouTube, Boing Boing, Tosh.0,  Gawker and the rest: Trashy-ass gal named Ashli Hall-Gay, apparently one of the biggest losers in life's genetic sweepstakes, likes to make rambling, profane and patently obscene smackdown videos with her hapless sidekick, Cindy, otherwise known as Mom. (And please note that hapless is a relative term here; this is because "haplesser" is not a real word.)

Ashli

These videos -- to which I won't link because the one above is by far the least offensive, and even it's Not Safe for Work in giant neon letters above the entrance of the trailer park -- are directed toward people who have somehow disrespected Dumb and Dumber on the Internet. They've apparently directed the one above at a couple of teen-agers -- young teen-agers -- who posted a YouTube video making fun of Ashli's videos.

THAT'S RIGHT. That profane, whack tirade above (and stay with it past the 2:51 mark to see how bizarre and inappropriate it can get) seemingly is directed at a couple of little girls.

What the f***?

No, who the f***?

Indeed.

(By the way . . . where were those girls' parents? Kids were watching enough of this garbage that they could pimp on it?)

Again, if this is some sort of warped performance art, it's disturbing. If it's real, it's disturbing and tragic. Tragic that, yes, there are people who dove headfirst into the shallow end of the gene pool.

Then there's the much larger tragedy -- using one's limited resources for evil and not for good. Giving oneself over to a toxic wave of anger and spite rolling across an endless sea of futility. Abandoning any pretense of human dignity and grace . . . but there's more still.

Cindy

The worst thing about Ashli Gay and her mom, Cindy Hall, is that they not only reject the notion that God has created each one of us in His image and bestowed upon us great dignity just because we are, but that they make us all question the premise. I look at these pathetic wretches in the wilds of Mount Vernon, Ill., and I think that maybe somebody lied.

That maybe I'm lying to myself when I say apparently ludicrous things -- Well, look at the damn video! -- like "God has created each one of us in His image and bestowed upon us great dignity just because we are." Really?

Look at 'em! What kind of a dumbass could believe that?

Exactly.

LOOKING at the wide array of humanity and asserting that each human is made in God's image and charged with the dignity of heaven is nothing if not a supreme act of faith. Sorry specimens like Ashli Gay and mom Cindy -- and it doesn't really matter whether they're real or a giant Internet ruse -- make that leap of faith a longer one than it was yesterday.

Sometimes, the World Wide Web is an amazing thing. Here, though, it's just a networking tool for the devil. Ain't that right, Cindy?

"Yeah!"

People of Walmart do that thing they do

Look at this.

It must be Black Friday, and this must be the People of Walmart.
 
Yet Walmart management has a problem with its employees who demand a living wage, decent treatment and decent benefits to deal with the kind of mindless, consumerist barbarism the retail giant encourages every Black Friday. No, the retail giant hasn't cornered the market for this kind of mob mayhem, but there's a reason why you see so much of it at Walmart and other stores aspiring to Walmartishness.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., bloody well knows every single thing about its clientele, and management knows everything there is to know about the "downmarket" they target. Plenty of people at corporate know their sociology in addition to their retailing.

And management damned well knows what's likely to happen at "X" number of random locations on Black Friday, and I'd also wager it knows which "doorbusters"  are most likely to provoke the kind of mayhem you see here . . . and where.


NEVERTHELESS, the Bosses of Walmart are perfectly happy to send the Associates of Walmart into the violent maw of the People of Walmart, who were set off by the Marketing Strategy of Walmart . . . and pay them the Crappy Wages of Walmart for the dubious privilege. 

Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free. . . .

When your president's a Muslin . . .

Don Mason, via Flickr

. . . what the hell is a patroit supposed to do?

No, the troo patroit must secdee! Because we must detsroy this contrey inn order to save it!

If at first you don't secede. . . .

The last Louisianian with such a bright idea ended up taking potshots at Fort Sumter, S.C., in April 1861.  

That didn't work out so well in the end for Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, for the sovereign state of South Carolina, for secessionist Louisiana or for anybody else in the Confederate States of America. "In the end" came almost exactly four years later, after the United States Army had smashed the South into rubble, destroyed its slave-based economy, plunged its people into privation and ripped out a region's false pride with the business end of a sabre.

All at the low, low price of about 700,000 dead.

But if at first you don't secede, try, try again. Especially if there's a Negro in the White House who also happens to be a commerniss and a socialiss and maybe the Antichrist, despite governing a lot like Richard Nixon . . . and the black sumbitch done got re-elected by them DamnYankeePinkoFags. (OK, the Nixon part might qualify Barack Obama for his Antichrist Jr., merit badge.)

 
Anyway, the Gret Stet of Louisiana done had enough of that un-American crap, so one true patriot in Slidell decided that the only rational response to such a brazen attack on everything the United States stands for . . . is to blow up the whole damned Union. 

Trust me -- this makes sense to people in Slidell.

UNFORTUNATELY, reports Nextgov, it also makes sense to people in 22 other states who don't have Slidell as an excuse for being dumbasses:

Residents of 23 states had petitioned the White House for permission to peacefully secede from the union as of 4 p.m. Monday.

A petition from a Slidell, La., resident posted to the White House’s We the People website the day after President Obama’s reelection seems to have started the trend.Nextgov first reported on that petition on Friday. The other 20 petition were posted over the weekend.

The Louisianan’s petition was mostly an extended quote from the Declaration of Independence suggesting the time had come for his state to “dissolve the political bands which have connected” it with the rest of the nation.

The majority of the secession petitions are carbon copies of the Louisiana petition with just the state’s name changed. A few petitions, such as this one from Texas, offered their own arguments for secession.

The Texas petition crossed We the People's 25,000 signature threshold for an official White House response around 3:30 p.m. Monday. All the other petitions were several thousand signatures shy at that point.

“Every petition that crosses the threshold will receive a response but we don't comment on what the substance of that response will be before it's issued,” a White House official said.

The majority of the secession petitions were from states that cast their electoral votes for Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the presidential contest rather than for the president. Six of the 21 petitions, however, were from states that broke for the president, including petitions from New York and New Jersey.

As of noon Monday, secession petitions had been filed by citizens of Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, Michigan, New York, Colorado, Oregon, New Jersey, North Dakota, Montana, Indiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arizona.

I KNOW . . . I know. This is bat-sh*t crazy. And it's been long settled that a state can't secede from the Union.

And President Obama -- no matter how much he might want Louisiana and Texas to get the hell out of his rapidly graying hair -- has no authority to let any state go anywhere, being that that would require a constitutional amendment.

In other words, the secession crisis of 2012 was over before it started. This, however, is unpersuasive in Louisiana, which right now wants to know whether people thought it was over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. No, a stupid and futile gesture is required on somebody's part in the wake of Obama's re-election, and the Gret Stet just might give you a tax credit for it.

Check with Presidente Bobby Jindal.

MIND YOU, Louisianians who luv, luv, luv this petition are itching to extract themselves -- out of sheer pique over socialism, welfare Cadillacs and Obamacare -- from a country in which the hard-working, self-sufficient conservative pillars of the Gret Stet get to spend the livelong day sucking at the federal teat and bitching about how sour mother's milk has become.

Perhaps it's a fit of conscience emanating from a state that takes in $1.35 in federal funds for every federal tax dollar Washington collects from it. Maybe it's just the Louisiana "brain drain" having done a number on math skills -- after all, even with the taxpayer largess the state gets as recompense for a loveless marriage to Yankee tyrants, it still spends a smaller percentage of its budget on higher education than Haiti.

Wait till secession, when Louisiana's higher-ed budget drops overnight to about $273.86 annually. Then, the prospect of becoming another Haiti may well be a case of one's eyes still being bigger than one's distended stomach.

OR MAYBE all this secession noise might be a result of something as simple as mass insanity. My money's on this one. Besides, Louisiana has a long, sordid history of cutting off its nose to spite Washington's face, and not much of a history with civil society.

But if you're already nuts, you just as well engage in a little magical thinking. Post-secession policymakers in Louisiana would no doubt be optimistic that the sovereign state could soon -- maybe in a matter of just a few years -- be just as up-to-date as Port au Prince.

I mean, once Presidente Jindal's "kidneys for gruel" public/black market welfare partnership started turning a profit and contributing to the fiscal bottom line, the soot-choked sky would be the limit, right?

Pistol envy as public policy

People in Louisiana always have been a little bit nuts.

Sometimes, that's a good thing. When you enter the realm of public policy and self-governance, usually not.

Chalk up this latest news of Louisiana Whack, as reported by The Associated Press, as a definite "not, no, nuh uh":

Former Gov. Mike Foster is featured in an NRA radio ad supporting a constitutional amendment on the Nov. 6 ballot that would set a tougher standard for restricting weapons use and remove a provision that spells out legislative authority to limit concealed handguns. 

Supporters of Amendment No. 2 say the change would guard against possible future Supreme Court rulings that might affect the Second Amendment. 

In the ad, paid for by the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association, Foster says he's voting for the amendment to "guarantee our rights to own a gun in Louisiana no matter what happens in Washington."

BEHOLD, the breakdown of civil society in Louisiana -- what there ever was of it -- continues apace. This kind of bat-sh*t crazy constitutional amendment is not the sign of a healthy society or culture.

It is the sign of people who believe that civil society is either a) not possible any longer, or b) undesirable. If you were to gauge what there is of the "Louisiana mind" today, you'd probably find that it's a little of both.

That the Legislature sent to voters a measure making it difficult for the state to regulate firearms at all and seemingly all-but-erasing authority for government to regulate the carrying of concealed weapons is a profound loss of faith in, if not the rule of law itself, the ability of the state to maintain order.

Or at least enough order that it wouldn't be considered normal to pack heat -- hidden heat, no less. No, ascendant is the idea of concealed firearms as so crucial to individual freedom and well-being that the state has precious little right to interfere or regulate. Welcome back to the Wild West. And good luck prosecuting gangbangers on gun charges before they actually pull the trigger and cap somebody's ass.

NEVERTHELESS, I bet it passes. Crazy does as crazy is, and if you look at the numbers and the newspapers, you realize that only a bunch of flat-out lunatics could create the monument to dysfunction and delusion that is the Gret Stet.

Louisiana never has been big on the rule of law. Now, however, it threatens to go "all in" on the rule of force. Yeah, that should work out well in America's largest insane asylum.

Going after the twit vote

This is almost enough to make me vote for Mitt Romney out of sheer disgust at the mind-numbing emo craptasticness of it all.

Almost.

What I want to do is to start a social-media campaign to convince any college kid susceptible to this kind of stupidity to not bother on Election Day (Erection Day?) -- that his or her vote really doesn't count. That everyone under 35 should just dial up something sufficiently navel-gazing on the ol' iPod, crack open a six pack of PBR and call it good on Nov. 9.

(Wink, wink.)

And if that didn't work, I'd be open to poll taxes and literacy tests. Or mass kidnappings. One approach or the other.

Because, like, President Obama, you're creeping me out, man. The only thing worse than the cynicism behind this ad -- the whole "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" je ne sais quoi of it all -- is that it probably represents an astute reading of the demographic tea leaves.

In other words, "Just kill me now."

Mormons, Quakers . . . they're all the same, right?

Go to 4:49 in the video for Whoopi's epic fail

There always have been idiots on television.

Thing is, they used to be limited -- on network television, at least -- to areas where their lack of intellectual prowess didn't really matter that much. Now, however, the mere fact that you're famous for something automatically means you must be qualified to talk politics, or science, or about any damn thing where the "little people" obviously need straightening out.

This cultural development, then, just had to lead to this moment on The View, where noted intellectual (snort, sputter)  Whoopi Goldberg tries to play gotcha with Ann Romney, wife of the Republican presidential nominee, about Mitt's lack of military service but apparently gets Mormons confused with Quakers or Jehovah's Witnesses or something.

Because all those religious freaks are all alike, no doubt. 

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: As first lady, if you get the job, it’s going to entail a lot of things, and one of those things is going to be talking to the mothers whose children are coming home in bags, you know, from wars. Now, I know -- I believe that your religion doesn’t allow you to go fight.

ANN ROMNEY: No, that's not correct. We have many, many members of our faith that are serving in armed services.

WELL, at least Whoopi didn't ask Mrs. Romney why Mitt didn't have a beard and why they had electricity and cars and stuff.

I guess that's not nothin'.

Vote for the black Muslim. It's important.

Madonna lectures on political science. Not safe for work . . . or young ears.

The only part of Madonna Louise Ciccone that's anything like a virgin is her brain, having for 54 years avoided being deflowered by a serious thought.

Monday night, the chastity belt around her cranium was cinched up extra tight as the crowd at her Washington, D.C., concert got three minutes' worth of Politics for Dummies . . . by Dummies.

"Y'all better vote for f***ing Obama, OK? For better or for worse, all right? We have a black Muslim in the White House."

And the crowd goes wild.

"Now that is the s***! That is some amazing s***! That means there is hope in this country. And Obama is fighting for gay rights, OK? So support the man, goddammit."

AND THE crowd goes wilder, stopping its whoops and yelps only long enough for the singer's political-science pupils to breathe through their mouths.

Tonight, the absent-mind professor sent a statement to the serious media -- in other words, Perez Hilton -- to clarify that she was being "ironic."

“I was being ironic on stage. Yes I know Obama is not a Muslim (though I know that plenty of people in this country think he is.) And what if he were? The point I was making is that a good man is a good man no matter who he prays to. I don’t care what religion Obama is – nor should anyone else in America.”

OH . . . okaaaaay. Sure, honey bun. Whatever you say.  

What? Oh.

I apologize. I was having a flashback to what my wife tells me whenever I try to BS her that blatantly after being caught saying something moronic.

See, it doesn't count as irony without an eye roll or air quotes. Them's the rules.

OTHERWISE, you're just being an idiot. You know, like if you'd stripped half naked to show off your new "tramp stamp" -- it said "OBAMA" -- then made a solemn vow to the faithful:

“When Obama is in the White House for a second term I'll take it all off.”

Mighty big talk for a woman who does that just to celebrate Tuesdays.

And Wednesdays.

And. . . .

Obama the appeaser: Soft on seagulls

What you see here is the global seagull menace, caught in shocking detail in videos shot by ordinary folk . . . and in a couple of instances by the winged terrorists themselves.

Above, we see how a participant in a brazen San Francisco radical-seagull theft ring swipes a GoPro video camera from a French tourist as she photographs the setting sun behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Note how the felonious fowl, unmolested by the law under the Obama Administration, has no fear whatsoever of apprehension or of legal repercussions.

And note well what we've heard from the administration concerning such organized crime against unarmed, innocent individuals on American soil -- nothing. It is difficult to understand such indifference from the president or any of his Washington "comrades" in the face of this wave of terror taking flight across the homeland.

One supposes right-thinking Americans might be grateful that Barack Obama at least hasn't issued politically correct statements expressing sympathy with the "oppressed" gull community, caught no doubt in the maw of "parasitic" humanity. Yes, me must count our blessings, no matter how meager . . . assuming, of course, that the Obama Administration isn't at this very moment preparing to extend sympathy toward avian extremists.


BUT THE REACH of organized terror so fowl extends far beyond American shores. Europe is in seagull crosshairs, also.

Watch this from Cannes, France (above).

Not only does the gull extremist openly strike against the video camera of yet another hapless victim, it uses its purloined prize to record some sort of manifesto for fundamentalist seagullism. AAWWWWK, indeed.

And the response from the appeaser-in-chief to this seagull attack upon a close, still-capitalist European ally -- note that this happened last year, when the pinkos had yet to seize the reins of French power -- was again nonexistent. Birds of an ideological feather, perhaps?

We report. You decide.


IT IS AMERICA, though, that is the epicenter of terror attacks by fundamentalist seagullism. And it is here that the Obama indifference (or worse) most enables the destruction of American property . . . and American values.

Listen to these young Americans (above) -- brainwashed by this Obamanation against our fair land -- laugh at the terrible sight of criminal seagull anarchy. Words fail. Tolerance of airborne terror, corruption of America's youth . . . when, pray tell, will enough be enough?


AND WHERE is the ultraliberal Humane Society of the United States when even house pets are victimized by global gull terrorism? And for the record, at least dogs tied to the roofs of family station wagons are able to eat unhindered by the criminal plague of avian extremism.


IS WHAT we're saying.


WHEN will the madness stop?

It will stop when Americans stop it. But the necessary War on Seagulls cannot commence until we first achieve a different sort of victory.

Our first blow against this extremist enemy so fowl will be to give Barack Hussein Obama, appeaser of fundamentalist seagulls, a one-way Greyhound ticket back to Chicago. But not a plane ticket -- that would be the height of budgetary imprudence.

Freedom from seagulls: It's fundamental, and Mitt Romney will not rest until Americans, from sea to shining sea, once again can look to the sky without fear.

May Our Heavenly Father continue to bless the United States of America.

No good speech goes unpunished

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Never are we humans -- stupid, sorry wretches that we are -- so contemptible as we are when wholly convinced that we're as moral and worthy as the other guy is depraved and unfit.

No one likes a self-righteous jerk, and for good reason. So I guess we can start right there when pondering why everybody hates America today.

Today is the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In what may be a reasonably reliable sign of al Qaida's ultimate victory in the resulting War on Terror, many Americans have spent this Patriot Day -- today of all days -- trashing Vice President Joe Biden for referring to the anniversary as a "bittersweet moment."

Unsurprisingly, talk-radio blowhards Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been leading the charge. From Politico:

Hannity blasted Biden as either “callous” or “ignorant beyond belief” for using the word “bittersweet” to discuss the 9/11 anniversary, and Limbaugh told his listeners that “with 9/11, it’s all bitter.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Biden addressed a crowd at the United Airlines Flight 93 memorial and said it was a “genuine honor” to be there.

“But like all of the families, we wish we weren’t here. We wish we didn’t have to be here. We wish we didn’t have to commemorate any of this. And it’s a bittersweet moment for the entire nation, for all of the country, but particularly for those family members gathered here today,” Biden said in Shanksville, Pa.

With the “bittersweet” remark, Hannity said that the “vice president buffoon is at it again.”

“Does he even know what the word bittersweet means? What on earth is bittersweet about what happened on 9/11? Explain the sweet part, Mr. Vice President,” Hannity said.

“What happened on 9/11 was unmitigated evil,” he added after playing a clip from Biden’s 9/11 speech. “I don’t see describing it bittersweet. It either means you’re just callous or you’re just ignorant beyond belief and don’t know the meaning of what the term bittersweet is.”

Biden wasn’t the only one to use the word “bittersweet” in his remarks on Tuesday. National Park Service Flight 93 National Memorial superintendent Jeff Reinhold used the term “bittersweet” in his Tuesday address before Biden spoke to the gathering. In a transcript of his prepared remarks, Reinhold said, “and a very special welcome to the families of the 40 passengers and crew of Flight 93. As always, it is bittersweet to have you with us again.”

“As you can imagine, it’s been an incredibly personal and emotional journey,” Reinhold wrote in an email to POLITICO. “The families have been involved in every aspect of the process and I — and our entire staff — have developed wonderful friendships and very close bonds with many of them. We look forward to their visits in September and throughout the year, but always with a tinge of regret as we know it is a tragedy that brought us together. ‘Bittersweet’ seemed very appropriate and is a term that I think many of the families would use to describe their relationship with the staff at the Memorial.”

Hannity also slammed the media’s response to Biden’s “bittersweet” comment.
“And I can say this — and I’m trying to stay away from politics — if a Republican vice president had said this, the criticism, the ridicule, would come on like an avalanche,” he said.

PERHAPS IT'S merely that Hannity's and Limbaugh's minds cannot deal with complexity. Maybe it's that these gentlemen have an insufficient understanding of grace, particularly that which arises from great tragedy or evil, confirming for our hearts that "the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

Then again, maybe it's something else entirely with Hannity and Limbaugh. (See Paragraph 2.)

Whatever the reason for a really, really pointless and deeply, deeply idiotic attack on the vice president on this day -- Really? REALLY??? -- that it could be made and taken seriously at all should be a sign of how very sick we have become as a country . . . and as a people. As a fever is sign of an infection, this kind of mindless, hyperpartisan and wildly popular spleen-venting is a sign of a nation deathly ill from a poison that has overtaken the heart and has spread to the brain.

Look around you today. Watch the TV news or pick up a newspaper -- if you dare. For God's sake, spend even 10 minutes on Facebook. If Osama bin Laden was responsible 11 years ago for setting in motion even 15 percent of what we Americans now freely and lustily do unto each other, history will award him an honored place in the Pantheon of Evil Genius.

That we are talking about this today, 11 years after witnessing unspeakable horror unfold on our television screens, says much about us, none of it good.

We have become so practiced at blithely dehumanizing our ideological opponents that our own humanity now comes into question. Are we still human? Or, perhaps, have we become some new thing -- some sort of antihuman being.

Then again, it's a story that's as old as Rome and as sick as Hitler. We just can't help ourselves.

BUT AS we take to Facebook, Twitter and talk radio to call the vice president callous, a dumbass or worse as we peer down upon him from our high horse, it might be worth it to consider that he just might know a lot more about the subject of suffering -- not to mention what is and isn't "bittersweet" -- than the vast majority of us ever will. Actually, TPM's editor, David Kurtz, did consider just that:

Rarely do I watch Joe Biden give a speech or an interview without looking for some evidence, in his eyes or the lines of his face, of the fact that he lost half of his young family when he was 30 years old. It is inconceivable to me, always has been, but especially in the years since I became a father. For all his goofballism, Biden has gone through a crucible that I cannot imagine. And he did so when he was 30, an adult, already deeply invested in the life he was building.

That’s not to diminish the tragedies that children endure. But at 30 years old to lose your wife and baby daughter, to almost lose your two toddler sons, and to somehow carry on? It truly baffles me. I know everyone says you do what you have to do. But that’s not really true. You don’t. You could curl up in the fetal position, if not literally then emotionally, and shrivel up. I’m more certain that that’s what I would do than I am confident I would find a way to persevere. But Biden has been through it. He’s seen hell and been back.

That he served his entire 36-year Senate career after that searing experience in December 1972, shortly after winning election, and then went on to become vice president, adds some drama to the story, I suppose. But for me the emotional highlight is just him getting out of bed the next day, and the day after that, and the one after that.

Which brings me to Joe Biden’s speech today in Shanksville, Penn., commemorating the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. The speech is marvelously and sensitively written. But rendered by Biden, drawing on his own life experience, in rhetorical ways that are not ostentatious and which don’t try to elevate his own story above those of the victims’ families, it packs a wallop that still makes me cut him a lot of slack for his sometime inexplicable goofiness.

I DISAGREE with the vice president on many things, particularly social issues. But I do well to remember that God loves him just like He does me . . . and that Joe Biden has guts. It takes guts -- and more than a little strength of character -- to survive, as he has, not only shattering grief but the shattering of one's whole world.

The way I figure it, if Rush, Sean and all the angry birds on Twitter actually had to walk a mile in the vice president's shoes, we might find out who the real "dumbass" and "buffoon" is. (ANSWER: Not Joe Biden.)

What is dumbth?

WAFB 9 News Baton Rouge, Louisiana News, Weather, Sports
I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

Oh, look! Here's a great example caught on camera as Hurricane Isaac turned Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain into a swollen, storm-tossed tempest -- which, of course, is to moron 20-something males as a light bulb is to a moth. And with similar results.

#*@! you and the false idol you worship

As a native of south Louisiana who seven years ago watched on TV as New Orleans drowned -- and whose hometown of Baton Rouge is gonna get whacked by Isaac -- I would just like to say to Rev. Airhead of the Fashion-Challenged Church of God's Own Party that . . . never mind.

It's not fit for print.

I will say, though, that the God you worship seems to me to be a pretty piss-poor caricature of the Creator of the universe. Furthermore, you might be surprised at what the Holy Trinity really thinks of the Republican Party, not to mention nimnals such as yourself.


HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

Leadership = Never having to say you're sorry

Your new superintendent-to-be quits her old job early because the emails she sent on official accounts read more like Lady Chatterley's Lover, only with dildos attached to chairs.

Nancy Sebring advises you about the reason for her early departure -- and that she's desperately trying to keep the whole thing out of the newspaper. She says she doesn't want Omaha Public Schools board members to be blindsided.

You, the board president, along with the board's lawyer, tell no one. And when it all hits the fan, you lie through your teeth about what you knew. You claim ignorance.

And when your lies are found out, your supporters start to cry racism. And sexism, for you are a black woman. If you've gone this far, what's a little shamelessness?

It must be interesting to be you, Freddie Gray.

ULTIMATELY, your fellow board members vote 8-4 to keep you as president, because the OPS board is more a close-knit conspiracy than a governing body. According to the Omaha World-Herald:

Before the vote, Gray made a statement highlighting her goals and accomplishments and urging her fellow board members to “continue on this journey with unity and purpose regardless of tonight's outcome.”

Gray said she wished to be judged on her entire work, not just the Sebring situation.

“There are privacy and withholding of information rationales that can be debated,” she said. “But it comes down to my fellow board members looking at my president's tenure totally and coming to the conclusion that we are, or are not, moving in the right direction.”

She said she believed that she still could be an effective board spokesman and leader. With a crowd of nearly 250 people packing the board room, Gray's supporters on the board praised her leadership and said she shouldn't be removed for a well-intentioned mistake.

“She made a mistake,” [board member Shirley] Tyree said. “She's going to have to live with that mistake.”

Tyree said she didn't want to disrupt the board as a second superintendent search gets under way and kids head back to school on Aug. 20.

[Member Justin] Wayne said the board “can't preach about accountability if we don't hold ourselves accountable.”

He said he wanted Gray to acknowledge that she made a mistake. If she did, he said, he would be willing to support the board publicly censuring Gray but allowing her to stay on as president.

“I heard a lot of people today talking about mistake. I've never heard Mrs. Gray use that word,” Wayne said.

Kersten Borer made the motion to remove Gray, calling her a “bold and passionate leader” but saying that removal was necessary “in order to move forward, improve communication and regain trust from the community.”

Wayne seconded the motion, but the votes weren't there.

[Member Nancy] Huston said Gray was at the center of “a scandal she did not create.”

“She has been a good president,” Huston said. “She is leading us.”

LEADING YOU is no virtue if it happens to be over a cliff.

Support for public education is a tenuous thing these days. When an inner-city school district starts to look as if its governed by arrogant, unaccountable incompetents and overall moral cyphers, it is only a matter of time before middle-class parents with the money to have options abandon it to the poor and to the incorrigible, who have neither.

Really, if you can't deal with l'affaire Sebring, can't get rid of a renegade board president and your moral compass can't point straight, running a successful school system really is a bridge too far. "Urban nightmare," on the other hand, isn't.

And "pathetic" is your everyday reality.

The United States of Acme

This country only starts to make sense if you think of it as a Looney Tunes cartoon.

Things start to fall into place further if you imagine some sort of superpower client state of the Acme Corporation. And you begin to achieve perfect clarity if you view the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government in the personages of Wile E. Coyote, Foghorn Leghorn and Daffy Duck.

Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner? Emigrated to Canada in '04.

IN THAT LIGHT, may I present the latest Looney Tunes: Washington episode, "The Postal Service Runs Off a Fiscal Cliff" -- presented with limited commercial interruptions by Acme.

"Acme Corporation . . . if you're askin' for it, we'll let you have it. But good."

Now we switch you -- live and direct -- to CBS News and The Associated Press:

The U.S. Postal Service braced Wednesday for a first-ever default on billions in payments due to the Treasury, adding to widening uncertainty about the mail agency's solvency as first-class letters plummet and Congress deadlocks on ways to stem the red ink.

With cash running perilously low, two legally required payments for future postal retirees' health benefits -- $5.5 billion due Wednesday, and another $5.6 billion due in September -- will be left unpaid, the mail agency said Monday. Postal officials said they also are studying whether they may need to delay other obligations. In the coming months, a $1.5 billion payment is due to the Labor Department for workers compensation, which for now it expects to make, as well as millions in interest payments to the Treasury.

Some members of Congress are seeing Wednesday's default as a cry for help, CBS Radio News correspondent Dan Raviv reports from Washington. The Senate passed a bill in April to spread retiree health payments over a longer period and to allow the Postal Service to save money by canceling Saturday deliveries, but the House of Representatives has not taken any action.

Congress let the Postal Service delay Wednesday's payment for more than half a year.

Financial analysts feel Wednesday's default could be a step toward filing for bankruptcy, Raviv reports.

The defaults won't stir any kind of catastrophe in day-to-day mail service. Post offices will stay open, mail trucks will run, employees will get paid, current retirees will get health benefits.

But a growing chorus of analysts, labor unions and business customers are troubled by continuing losses that point to deeper, longer-term financial damage, as the mail agency finds it increasingly preoccupied with staving off immediate bankruptcy while Congress delays on a postal overhaul bill.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has described a "crisis of confidence" amid the mounting red ink that could lead even once-loyal customers to abandon use of the mail.

MEEP! MEEP!

Splat!

Thank you, God!

Because the female breast is so unexceptional, tit libber Moira Johnston makes her living as a topless dancer at a topless bar, where cerebral gents pay good money to marvel at her sparkling personality and towering intellect.

And if a patron might get overenthusiastic about her towering intellect and sparkling personality, then grab hold of her unexceptional tatas, it of course would be no big deal. Obviously, that would be just one more way of saying "Atta girl!"

I'm sure that's how Johnston would see it, too. Because there's nothing exceptional -- or sexual -- about a woman's boobs.

But do you think she ever wonders why the most enthusiastic supporters of her tit-liberation movement are 13-year-old males?

Tweets from the tolerant

This is America, which now means that if you express the "wrong" opinion, the "right" people are justified in doing any damned thing they want to you.

Three words to that, Roseanne: "Eat mor chikin."

With that, we begin another episode of Tweets From the Tolerant, brought to you by the Internet . . . if you have nothing constructive to say, say it here!

* * *

Suck my d*** chick filet- nazi chicken f***ing pricks

-- Roseanne Barr,
flunked sex ed, biology
(via Twitter)

anyone who eats S*** Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ

-- Roseanne Barr,
humanitarian

off to grab a s*** fil-A sandwich on my way to worshipping Christ, supporting Aipac and war in Iran.

-- Roseanne Barr,
??????????????????

christian liars: i never wished cancer on you at all-jesus will punish u 4 ur deceit-I said processed foods cause cancer.

-- Roseanne Barr,
angry theologian

I lost two brothers to cancer, Roseanne. What a truly heinous thing to say.

-- Jim Henson,
OBVIOUSLY a hater

Retreading my tweet I realize that I used the wrong word-I shouldn't have used the word deserves

I shouldn't have used the word deserves in my tweet and I apologize

-- Roseanne Barr,
got a call from agent

sex, lies and emailgate

Pity Freddie Gray.

The president of the Omaha school board decided to hone her mad JoePa skillz just when everybody -- and by "everybody," I mean the entire world outside State College, Pa. -- decided the late Penn State coach was criminally pathetic.

Consider this: You've just picked a new superintendent for Omaha Public Schools. Suddenly, your new hire abruptly resigns her job in Des Moines, Iowa -- weeks ahead of schedule. She contacts your board attorney. Something about emails. That they would expose an affair. Fairly explicit. A district email account. Public-records request from the Des Moines Register. Embarrassing.

Mein Gott! Mon dieu! What, oh what . . . what should you do?

Well, if you're Freddie Gray and OPS board counsel Elizabeth Eynon-Kokrda, you don't bother to find out what exactly is in those "fairly explicit" emails. You take Nancy Sebring's word for it that the content is "somewhere along the lines of what most seventeen year olds are reading in Cosmo." You don't even check out what most 17-year-olds are actually reading in Cosmopolitan today.

Also, you assume that a woman who's cheating on her husband with a man who's cheating on his wife is being straighter with you than with them. After all, Eynon-Kokrda tells Sebring, “my thought is you have a pretty sympathetic situation.”

Most importantly, you and the lawyer take what Sebring, the naughty superintendent, has told you and make it into "just our little secret."

Even though Sebring has reached out to you and counsel because “I don't want anyone on the OPS board to be surprised by this situation in Des Moines,” you don't inform a single board member because. . . .

Because. . . .

BECAUSE you feel obliged not to after the fun superintendent expressly said she didn't want anyone on the Omaha school board to be surprised by the brewing scandal.

“We had an individual who ... we thought was being very open and honest with us about something that was a very personal issue, a very painful issue for the individual,” Gray told The World-Herald. “We believed that we had a contracted employee who was reaching out and was telling us the truth.”

In a May 24 email to Sebring, Eynon-Kokrda wrote that she did not share Sebring's emails with board members: “I do not forward your emails because I want them arguably protected and/or not known to exist, per se, but I do advise Freddie of our contacts so she is current.”

In that same email, the lawyer wrote that Gray was the only OPS board member who knew of the Des Moines Register's public records request, through which that newspaper eventually obtained the personal emails.

WHO IS working for whom here?

It's rather interesting, in the same sense that his evening at Ford's Theater gave Abraham Lincoln a headache, that Eynon-Kokrda and Gray seem to lose track of where their primary loyalties lie. They protect OPS' wayward new hire to an extent she didn't even ask for, refusing to give the full school board even the slightest heads-up about her naughty-email problem in Des Moines.

They take Sebring's word for everything. In short, they try to keep her viability as OPS' new superintendent totally intact by aiding and abetting an ultimately failed cover up.

When she resigned abruptly from Des Moines in early May, Sebring said publicly that it was because she needed extra time to take care of personal matters, such as moving to Omaha and preparing for her daughter's summer wedding.

The newly released emails show that after resigning from Des Moines, Sebring kept in regular contact with Eynon-Kokrda, who relayed information about those contacts to Gray as all three anxiously waited to see what the Des Moines Register would do with the volatile emails the newspaper had requested from the Des Moines district through a public records request.

The emails Sebring made public last week were sent between May 18 and June 1, the day The World-Herald and the Des Moines Register broke their stories online.

The emails show that Eynon-Kokrda and Gray remained committed to making Sebring the next OPS superintendent if she could survive the uproar of the emails going public or if the emails never went public.

The three of them planned how they would respond publicly should news organizations discover that the emails were the actual cause of her resignation from the Des Moines job and publish stories about them.

(snip)

In a May 24 email to Eynon-Kokrda, Sebring wrote that four of the Des Moines emails were “highly personal and contain fairly explicit content (somewhere along the lines of what most seventeen year olds are reading in Cosmo),” referring to the women's magazine Cosmopolitan.

In the same email, Sebring offered to resign from the OPS job, telling Eynon-Kokrda: “I would rather bow out gracefully before starting my job in OPS, than be caught up in a scandal after I begin the job.”

She asked Eynon-Kokrda whether OPS would fire an employee who had done what she did.

Eynon-Kokrda wrote back that she would not recommend that Sebring submit an immediate offer of resignation, saying that “seems extreme” and “my thought is you have a pretty sympathetic situation.”

Eynon-Kokrda wrote that she knew of no OPS employee ever terminated solely for personal use of email, saying that OPS informs employees that emails are not confidential and that individuals must “use good judgment” but that sending personal emails has never by itself demonstrated sufficient poor judgment as to result in termination.

“The closest I've ever seen is where a principal involved with a subordinate at his school had about 50 texts and emails per day during school hours, over months and months (thousands of emails and texts on school phone) some of which proved he had inappropriately approved sick leave so she could join him on business trips,” Eynon-Kokrda wrote.

She wrote that if the situation “starts to really go south,” she would recommend meeting with the OPS board “to explain and provide them with the opportunity to circle the wagons.”

(snip)

“Freddie will be in about the same place,” Eynon-Kokrda wrote. “If asked for comment, she will say it isn't appropriate for her to discuss your personal life.”

If pressed, Eynon-Kokrda wrote, Gray would say that while people shouldn't use work email for personal purposes that interfere with job performance, “she is unaware of any allegation that you have anything but a stellar job performance record, and your personal emails and private life don't change that.”

UNTIL THEY did change that. The Register and the World-Herald not only ran their stories about why Nancy Sebring quit Des Moines so quickly, but they ran the worst of the emails, too.

At that point, Gray ended up running away from Sebring like her feet were on fire and her ass was catching. A thoroughly surprised (thanks to Freddie Gray) OPS board ended up accepting Sebring's resignation from a job she'd yet to begin.

The emails were exactly what one would expect from a Cosmo "sex issue," which I presume is just like a regular issue of Cosmo (as read by "most seventeen year olds") only a little more so. Thus, "circling the wagons" wasn't a viable option, as we already had learned low "in love" Nancy Sebring was with her boyfriend's d***.

And the emails got better than that.

UNFORTUNATELY for Gray, the board president's ability to lie convincingly to the press just doesn't get better at all.

On June 1, Gray told the World-Herald "she had heard only 'rumors and innuendo' about why Sebring resigned. During that interview, she said she had not discussed with Des Moines district officials the circumstances of Sebring's resignation and did not know what was contained in the emails.

"I haven't seen them," she said then, "so I have no clue what they are, what they're not."

In a later interview, a World-Herald reporter asked Gray whether Sebring had been in contact with her or Eynon-Kokrda about the personal emails prior to them going public.

“No, why would she be?" Gray had said.

UH . . . lots of reasons?

Unfortunately, some people never learn that when you tell a big one, at least be plausible:

Gray and Eynon-Kokrda told The World-Herald this week that they would have acted differently had they known the actual contents of the emails.

“She never characterized these as graphic, pornographic or in any way sexually embarrassing,” Eynon-Kokrda said. “She portrayed them as not salacious, as chatty, and as emails that would reveal that she had an affair.”

When Sebring wrote to Eynon-Kokrda May 24 describing the explicit emails as something a 17-year-old girl might read in Cosmo, that still didn't cause alarm, Gray and Eynon-Kokrda said this week, because they didn't perceive Cosmo as a raunchy magazine.

TWO PROBLEMS with this one render it a no-percentage assertion -- it requires Omahans to believe either that Gray and Eynon-Kokrda think they're really stupid, or that Gray and Eynon-Kokrda themselves are really stupid. Personally, I go for a third option: Yes, they think we're stupid . . . because they're idiots.

Make that complete idiots.

Here's Gray, back in June:

“For the board, this is about policy violation. It's not about the content,” she told The World-Herald after Sebring resigned. “These are things we tell our staff all the time not to do. It's a big violation to use company equipment and emails.”

BUT NOW Gray defends her secrecy and her inaction regarding Sebring's emails by saying she was misled about how bad they were. That she didn't think Cosmo was "raunchy," so it couldn't be that big a deal.

But if "it's not about the content," as she said last month, who cares? Sebring admitted to doing, in Gray's words, "things we tell our staff all the time not to do." Which, she told the reporter back then, was "a big violation."

And certainly no rationale to help a sister out, which is exactly what she and OPS' legal counsel set out to do. In secret.

The other OPS board members ought to be furious right now. Beyond furious, actually. But the biggest problem the school system faces today is that I'll bet most aren't that upset at all.

After all, if they "circle the wagons," Freddie Gray might be able to survive unscathed as president despite having been caught in more than one big lie. Despite having kept her board, and the board's constituents, completely in the dark about the time bomb ticking away nearby. Despite having proven that her loyalties lie not with her board, or the voters who elected her, but instead with a fatally flawed would-be superintendent whose personal and professional sins finally caught up to her.

If the board circles the wagons well enough, maybe there won't be the unpleasantness of Freddie Gray getting what she so richly deserves -- immediate removal as president, accompanied by the board's demand that she resign her seat.

NO, that would be ugly. Firing the board attorney would be, too.

In that light, I'm sure Gray is banking on her colleagues being "incredibly supportive," just like Eynon-Kokrda was for Sebring, because this whole World-Herald exposé thing is "ridiculous."

After all, "hindsight is 20/20." Yeah, that's the ticket.