Paris Hilton – Still Paris, Only More So

HuffPo’s Jennifer Kushell has written one of those quaint, bleeding-heart wish-pieces titled “Ten Good Things Paris Hilton Can Do In Prison“.
How cute.
Sadly, though, we all know Paris isn’t going to change, so I think it’d be more appropriate to speculate on the
TEN STUPID THINGS PARIS HILTON WILL DO AFTER SHE GETS OUT OF PRISON
1) Put her newly-perfected shank-wielding skills to good use during a knife fight with Lindsay Lohan.
2) Lose a fortune trying to sell her new line of designer orange jumpsuits.
3) Adopt a baby with her new “special friend” Joquanda “Fisty” Jackson.
4) Start bragging about the tunnel she made behind the Raquel Welch poster in her cell.
5) Get kicked out of Victoria’s Secret for trying to pay for her purchases with cigarettes.
6) Embarrass herself at the Cabana Club by continually yelling “Shakin’ the bush, boss!” from the ladies’ room.
7) Launch a new perfume called “Cavity Search”.
8) Get matching “P-A-R-I-S” tattooed across fingers of her right hand.
9) Reject slave name and finish process of legally becoming “Paris X”.
10) Realize how many doors have become closed to her as an ex-con, say “screw it”, and embark on a multi-state armed robbery spree that ends with her getting taken down in a hail of bullets on national TV.


I’m sorta rooting for that last one, but then again, I also really dread the thought of Jennifer Kushell’s “Ten Wonderful Things We’ll Miss About Paris Hilton” post.

Tuberculosis FAQ

With all the slipshod, panicky press coverage about the Andrew Speaker’s disease-riddled world travelling, there’s been a lot of conflicting stories about what the health threat actually is & why you should care.
As a public service, I present the following:

Tuberculosis FAQ

Q. What is tuberculosis?
A. Tuberculosis or “TB” is a respiratory illness caused by a bacterium. It was originally developed by a now-defunct covert agency operating within the Polk administration in the late 1840’s as a means of combatting the increasing threat from the Irish Menace.
Q. I thought TB had been eradicated?
A. Almost. Turns out the disease was susceptible to antibiotics and was nearly wiped out in the 1950’s. This allowed the Irish Menace to return in the form of Kennedys, nearly destroying America.
Q. Why was TB not eradicated?
A. Because it’s still useful. The Bush administration’s top scientists developed a new strain of TB that can be used to combat the rising threat from the Mexican Menace. Current plans are to pave all Home Depot parking lots with it if Bush can’t pass an Amnesty Immigration Bill to solve the problem.
Q. Can TB really help combat the Mexican Menace?
A. According to testing on illegal immigrants through the INS’s “Catch (TB) & Release” program – Yes!
Q. What are the symptoms of TB?
A. Persistent cough, unexplained weight loss, fever, tiredness, and being a filthy little border-jumper.
Q. But Andrew Speaker was white! How did HE get TB?
A. Must have been the Irish strain. Unfortunately, this type is strongly drug-resistant, since Kennedys frequently overuse antibiotics to cure… um… other things.
Q. Should I get tested for TB?
A. Only if you hang out with coughing, skinny, sweaty, lazy brown people. Or Kennedys.
Q. How is TB diagnosed?
A. The only way to tell for sure is to get a chest x-ray, but I think “House” did an episode on it once. Watch that, and if your symptoms match the whiteboard, you’ve got TB.
Q. Why are poor people more vulnerable to TB?
A. Because poverty is a sign of moral weakness and God is punishing them.
Q. I’m not poor, Mexican, or Irish, but I have TB. Why?
A. Because God hates personal injury lawyers too, Mr. Edwards.

Perhaps We Need to Increase 1911 Awareness

Treat me right.

I finally have to ask: Am I wrong and the world right, or is there never a reason to manually cock a 1911?
I see it all the time in movies and TV and even recently saw it in a comic book (The Watchmen — not a light afternoon read); people draw a 1911 and then cock it (the novel Cryptonomicon even had someone removing the safety and then chambering a round on a 1911 which I won’t even get into how ridiculous that sequence that is). As I understand, you should never have the hammer down on a 1911 with a round in the chamber. Also, decocking a 1911 is awkward and should probably never be done with a round in the chamber (I have to use two hands to do it; one to hold down the grip safety and squeeze the trigger and the other to thumb the hammer). You either carry the 1911 with no round in the chamber or you carry with it cocked and safety engaged (and you can only engage the safety if the gun is cocked). Or you leave it at home.
Am I wrong?

Obama Warns of “Quiet Riot” Among Blacks

HAMPTON, Va. (AP) — Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a “Quiet Riot” among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.
The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots, prompting Obama to give the following fiery speech:

“Those ‘Quiet Riots’ that take place every day are born from the same place as the destruction in New Orleans. We look around that once-fair city and see the rusted-out hulks of cars everywhere. The ‘Metal Health’ of New Orleans is in a sorry state. We are tempted to abandon you, New Orleans, yet we ‘Don’t Wanna Let You Go’.”
“We love that city, but thanks to Bush’s neglect, we’ve discovered that ‘Love’s a Bitch’. We are left ‘Breathless’ with sorrow, anger, and frustration at the unfairness of it all. Bush does nothing but drive through in his ‘Slick Black Cadillac’ for a cheap political photo-op with the downtrodden residents. People with no jobs, no homes, and nothing to comfort them except maybe a cheap bottle of ‘Thunderbird’. People who had to ‘Run for Cover’ when Katrina made the city a ‘Danger Zone’. And Bush did nothing for us. He ignored us because we remained silent.”
“But no more! We must scream and shout and pound out our anger so that the very earth itself trembles, and we can say to Bush all the way in Washington, ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’! We must rise up as one and become a veritable ‘Battle Axe’ of protest! The time for calm discussion has passed. Let’s get our message out by any means necessary! ‘Let’s Get Crazy’!”
“This is your last chance, President Bush. We’d prefer peaceable means, but if we have to ‘Bang Your Head’, we will.”


[NOTE: explanatory linkage for the 80’s-impaired]

Frank Criticisms of President Bush

No one likes President Bush anymore, and it seems to be popular for conservatives to criticize him. So here I go:
FRANK CRITICISMS OF PRESIDENT BUSH
* He’s getting a little fat.
* His last name is too easily used for sexual innuendo.
* I’m betting he’s secretly a Mexican.
* While spending $400 on a haircut is excessive, it’s okay to spend more than $4.
* Why is Hugo Chavez still alive? Is President Bush too big of a sissy to assassinate foreign leaders?
* Those Scotty dogs he has look ridiculous.
* His front lawn could use better maintenance.
What don’t you like about President Bush?

And the IMAO 2007 Commenter of the Year Award Goes To…

commenter of the year.jpg

Yeah, it’s a ripoff of Time Magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year Award, but you can still use it to pad out the “Awards” section of your resume.
That, and I just wanted to thank the folks who daily brave the terrors of IMAO’s slow-loading templates to leave comments.
Even though I don’t respond to them all – or any of them, really – I read all the ones you leave on my posts and they are greatly appreciated. Especially when you guys beat down trolls so that I don’t have to. A real time-saver, that.
Anyway, thanks for making me laugh and feel appreciated.

Clinton: Marriage Saved by Faith, Power Lust

WASHINGTON (AP) – In a rare public discussion of her husband’s infidelity, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that she probably could not have gotten through her marital troubles without relying on her faith in God and her insatiable lust for power.
Clinton stood by her decision to stay in the marriage in the aftermath of former President Clinton’s admission that he had an affair, as she considered it God’s will as well as a path to becoming the most powerful woman on earth.
“I am very grateful that I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right, regardless of what the world thought,” Clinton said during a forum where the three leading Democratic presidential candidates talked about faith and values. “And as president, my position of unquestioned authority will allow me to continue ignoring the world’s opinion. I can’t wait!” she gloated.
“I’m not sure I would have gotten through it without my faith,” she said in response to a question about how she dealt with the infidelity. “The fact that it locked in the ‘cuckolded wives vote’ didn’t hurt, either,” she chuckled darkly.

“Hillary finds your lack of faith disturbing.”

Clinton said she’s “been tested in ways that are both publicly known and those that are not so well known or not known at all.” She said it’s those times when her personal faith, the prayers of others, and knowing enough political dirt to make Congress her bitch have sustained her.
“At those moments in time when you are tested, it is absolutely essential that you be grounded in your faith,” she said. “It also helps to be willing to throw anyone under the bus if it’ll get you one step closer to having your hand on the Bible in January of 2009.”
Also during the forum, moderator Soledad O’Brien asked candidate John Edwards to name the biggest sin he ever committed, and he won the audience’s applause when he said he would have a hard time naming only one thing.
“As a former personal injury lawyer, I’ve borne more false witness than a semi full of OJ trial transcripts. I’m totally going to hell,” Edwards said.
“Still,” he mused, “unlike Hillary, there are SOME things I won’t do in my quest for the Presidency. Like that time Hillary shot a campaign-worker as an example to the others. It’s vicious ruthlessness like that – and religious faith – that’s making her the Democratic front-runner for 2008.”
Edwards also said he doesn’t feel his belief in evolution is inconsistent with his belief in Christ and he doesn’t personally feel gays should be married, although as president he wouldn’t impose his belief system on the rest of the country.
“I have a deep and abiding love for my Lord, Jesus Christ,” Edwards said, “but I don’t have Hillary’s despotic thirst for total domination. I only wish I had her raw, Stalinesque passion for forcing people to cower before her iron-fisted authoritarianism.”
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama said he believes that the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were the result of evil. But he said that the United States’ treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay is unjust.
“The danger of using good verses evil in the context of war is that it may lead us to be not as critical as we should about our own actions,” Obama said to applause. “So basically I’m a pants-wetting Nancy-boy who can’t even give murdering terrorists the level of condemnation that Jesus gave the moneychangers.”
“My faith,” continued Obama, “is weaker than a tubercular kitten, as is my determination to become President. It’s a job for which I obviously lack the stones. Now Hillary, on the other hand… she TOTALLY wears her ovaries on the outside, if you know what I mean.”
“Big BRASS ovaries,” Obama said enviously, “and strong religious faith.”
Clinton acknowledged that talking about her religious beliefs doesn’t come naturally to her.
“I take my faith very seriously and very personally,” she said, “but not as personally as disloyalty or failing to avert your gaze when I enter a room.”
“And I come from a tradition that is perhaps a little too suspicious of people who wear their faith on their sleeves,” Clinton continued, the flames of hell dancing merrily in her eyes, “but the future slave-citizens of the United States of Hillary better damn well wear their unquestioning obedience on their sleeves.”
“There will be,” Clinton said, “plenty of walls, blindfolds, and last cigarettes for those who don’t.”
“For that,” she added, “I thank God every day.”

Will the Bill Die So the Republicans Can Live?

A cloture vote on the immigration bill wasn’t even close to passing, and John Hawkins says he’s heard from inside sources that that was the beginning of the end for the bill. If so, then maybe the Republican Party is trying to listen to Republican voters for a change.
So, the question is: What will rise from the ashes of the dead bill?
With a combination of them now trying to listening to what we say and how they seem to misinterpret our motives for opposing the bill, the Republican Party will probably propose a new bill that calls for a death squad to search out and kill anyone suspected of being Mexican. That bill will also be a disaster. I suggest that you call your Senators and tell them in clear language — as one would explain something to a two year old — that we want some sort of border security. Our preference is, strangely enough, a border that anyone can’t just run over willy nilly. Tell them that we actually love hard working immigrants of all kind and that we also like the rule of law — and that those two things actually aren’t mutually exclusive if you think long and hard about it.
It could be a long phone call. Maybe some sort of YouTube video with puppets might explain things better.
UPDATE:
Ding dong. It’s dead.
UPDATE 2:
John Hawkins has an exclusive, behind the scenes look at how the bill was killed including what in the world was going through the heads of the Republicans who supported it.

Maybe They Should Shift Their Paradigm

This seems like the millionth story about crazy and violent protesters getting worked up about a G8 summit, and I just realized that the only thing I know about G8 summits is that they’re like flypaper for incoherent protesters. I have no idea what they don’t like about G8 summits. I don’t even know what a G8 summit is. What’s the ‘G’ stand for? Why are there eight of them?
Here’s what the protesters need to do. Next G8 summit, don’t protest. If no protesters turned out for a G8 summit, that would be huge news. Everyone would be like, “The only thing I know about G8 summits is that protesters protest them, but now there are no protesters! My world is turned upside down! I don’t know what to think!” Reporters would then seek out the usual protesters wondering what happened, and then they could finally get their story out… as long as a few of them learned how to string words together in coherent sentences.
Maybe one of them could explain what a G8 summit is. Is it anything like E3? Those are cool.