* “The economy is collapsing, millions are unemployed, and the country’s credit rating has just been downgraded. What are you going to do next, Obama?”

“I’m going to Martha’s Vineyard!”

Yay, the president has decided that after all of his hard work of… I dunno… ineffectual nagging to raise taxes, he’s going on vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, favorite hang out of effete, rich liberals. It’s the perfect way to tell the American people, “Not only do I not understand the problems you’re going through, I could not care less.”

I look beyond the optics, though, and see it as more time Obama will be spending golfing. Things have been pretty rough for the economy over the past week, and maybe knowing Obama will be busy on a golf course and thus not meddling with things elsewhere will help give people time to recover. And if Obama just never gives a speech again ever, maybe we can really turn things around. I say we turn his vacation at Martha’s Vineyard into an exile.

* So the riots have been going on in London for days now, and the Prime Minister has raised the possibility of using water cannons. Water cannons? The people rioting aren’t the aliens from Signs. How about actual cannons — you know, like you’d use against pirates. Get a militia together of concerned citizens and have them load and fire live cannons at the rioters, and if you participate, you get all the grog you can drink. That’s taking a hard line on criminals… which they should have done the first day.

The puppy blender put up this poster:

I think it’s from the 1940s, because people having guns and exercising their basic human rights is kind of against the law in London now. Of course, enforcing laws isn’t London’s strong suit for the moment.

* Sarah Palin will be doing a bus tour in Iowa this week. Is she still thinking of running? Who knows. She’s a crazy woman; you probably can’t predict her actions using rational thought. And what happens if both her and Perry jump in the race? Then we probably have Palin, Perry, and Bachmann splitting up the conservative vote while Romney runs away with all the “meh” vote. Man, I’d rather not have Romney as our candidate. Palin, please do whatever best reduces the chance of us getting stuck with Romney.

No, Palin, I didn’t mean the moose gun! Put down the moose gun! You’re crazy!

* The Huntsman campaign finally has what it needs to take off: The endorsement of Jeb Bush… Jr. Jeb Bush was the successful governor of Florida, and Jeb Bush Jr. is… the son of that guy.

Anyway, there’s a Republican debate tonight which is Huntsman’s last chance to make an impression among people other than the sons of somewhat relevant politicians. It’s also probably Pawlenty’s last chance to… :yawn: …Man, I’m so sleepy.

* So there’s actually a project to build helmets for our soldiers that allow them to talk to each other telepathically. This is what I’m talking about! We need telepathic soldiers riding dinosaurs and backed by space lasers to take on… ignorant terrorists armed with old Russian surplus AK-47s hiding in caves. Man, we need a better enemy. I think China is about the only one around who could start a real world war. China, you up for a world war? We want to try out our telepathy; it’ll be cool.

* According to a poll, Casey Anthony is the most hated person in America. But she was found not guilty!

I hate it when some people think the legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty” is how we’re personally supposed to behave. Like if you yourself saw someone gun people down, you couldn’t call the guy a murder until he was convicted in a court of law. No, we’re able to act rationally based on more common sense standard of evidence, which is why I wouldn’t expect Casey Anthony to be embraced by society any time soon. She’ll be shunned as much as a member of Congress.

* To get a special variant cover on a Marvel comic book, comic retailers will have to rip off the covers of 50 current DC comics and send them to Marvel. Is this really the time for cut throat business like that? While comic book characters are as popular as ever in movies and TV, haven’t comic book shops been dying? Comic books are kind of a niche market where you have to go to a weird store run by a fat guy with a ponytail who’s overly bitter and sarcastic to buy them. Plus, they’re like $3 or $4 each for about 5-minutes of reading time; not economical. It seems like the main hope of comic books are tablet PCs where now anyone can easily buy comics without getting weirded out (and avoid the comic clutter), but the problem is they’re still trying to charge print prices there. Why pay $4 for a couple minutes of reading when you get hours of game play from Angry Birds for about the same price. If comic books are to survive, they need to reduce their prices and expand their market. And bring back a regular Aquaman series.

* Wisdom of the Day: “London, the progressive dream: shopkeepers of every race and creed, looted by thieves of every race and creed.” –David Burge

* Fun link I found from Krankor on Twitter: Kim Jong Il Looking at Things

* So the unions keep trying to prove they’re not irrelevant in Wisconsin. They think everyone is still out there using their rotary phones, reading their daily newspapers, and fearing the force that are unions, but I kinda think times have changed a bit. Still, the unions put $30 million into trying to recall five Republicans in the Wisconsin state senate as they only needed three to change the balance of power there. And they successfully replaced two — at $15 million per. For the state senate. And now some recall elections for Democrat senators are coming up.

Yes, we could laugh at the unions and their irrelevancy… so let’s do that.

BWA HA HA HA HA HA!

You know, that $30 million was the union members’ dues. If they all wanted cheaper health care or something, couldn’t that have gone towards it? Yeah, I know, flushing money down the toilet is a perfectly legitimate use of union money with a long history, but I’m just suggesting they should consider a new paradigm. But what do I know; I’m not an irrelevancy from yesteryear.

* For those confused about Wisconsin, new MSNBC anchor Al Sharpton explains:

You know, we make fun of Obama’s ability to read a teleprompter, but it’s not as easy as it looks.

* So Obama actually said in his speech the other day, “Not much further we can cut.”

"I'm mainly muscle!"

Yes, when we look at that giant, bloated government that spends trillions more than we take in, the first thing we always think is, “Wow, is that streamlined.” So if you had any illusions the downgrade would cause Obama to finally wake up and take on the out of control spending, just put that with Obama’s promises of unicorns.

* Don’t worry, though: Cuts are on the way! That’s why we’re forming a super committee! And the Democrats have announced that their appointing to it the partisan, extreme left-wing dimwits John Kerry and Patty Murray. So yay! Nothing will significant will happen cuts wise! Oh, the Democrats are also appointing Max Baucus who is from a red state and might be movable. So the strategy will be to give Kerry and Murray some tinfoil and string to play with while we try to convince Baucus to do what’s needed to actually save the Republic.

Remind me why we set up a system of government that gave these idiots any power in the first place?

* For the first time ever, most Americans don’t think their own representative deserves to be reelected. This is great news, because now maybe we can pitch to everyone some sort of “dump all the bums” measure where we just kick everyone out of Congress and start over. I know there might be a person or two we like in Congress, but if we could just ever actually get an opportunity to throw everyone out, it’s too awesome a deal to pass up. I say we amend the Constitution to allow a vote every couple years or so to kick everyone out of Congress. I know, then some of you are thinking, “Won’t angry voters just toss everyone every two years?” Maybe, but I’m not seeing the downside.

* There’s been a lot of talk about the Bachman Newsweek cover:

But did I warn you that Bachmann has crazy eyes? I did! And you just know left-wing hacks were going to make an issue of it. Just think of how devastating this would be if it appeared not just on a weekly news magazine but in a media people actually paid attention to.

You know what Newsweek should do? Have a whole issue on the importance of unions — really just wallow in irrelevancy.

* Yesterday, Apple was briefly valued higher than Exxon, the U.S.’s biggest company. Does that mean instead of always fretting over “Big Oil”, we’ll soon hear whining over “Big Shiny, Rounded-Edge Consumer Devices”? For some reason, I don’t think the liberal status seekers will immediately start shouting “No war for tablet computers!” They’ll be more like, “Well, how big a war, and if we win, how many new features will this tablet have? …Really? Twice the resolution! Kill those for’ners!”

* Wisdom of the Day: “Gentlemen, we of the Home team put a good scare into Away! They will remember this at their championship parade next week!” –Josh Trevino on the unions’ performance in Wisconsin.

* Wow, big stock market drop yesterday. That’s a few days in a row now, and combined with the credit downgrade, financially the U.S. is not doing… well… smurfy.

But don’t worry: Obama decided to give another speech yesterday! Here’s a partial transcript:

“Let me be clear: I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. I’m much more scared and confused by all of this than any of you. The reason I keep giving these speeches is because I just want other people to be around so I don’t feel so frightened and alone. I don’t know why bad things are happening, I just wish it would stop and that people would stop yelling at me. And does anyone know what an economy is and how to fix it? I asked Geithner that, but the only thing he seems to know how to do is steal boxes of pens.”

After Obama’s speech, the market dropped 634 points, but Obama said it would have dropped 2,000 points, so he saved or created a whole 1,366 points for the Dow with his intense talking action.

You’re welcome!

* Seriously, though, why does Obama keep giving these speeches? He has absolutely nothing useful to say, so the only purpose of the speeches seem to be to confirm his uselessness. We got it by now, Obama: You’re useless. Stop talking.

* Rick Perry is supposed to finally announce his intentions to run for president on Saturday. This will give us a stark contrast because we’ll have Rick Perry who oversaw the creation of jobs and got his state’s credit rating upgraded versus Barack Obama who is black.

…Well, that’s how they’re going to play it, people. What exactly do they have left to argue for Obama’s election other than accusations of racism? What exactly has Obama done that people would like another four years of? It’s going to be an extra ugly election because liberals will feel like it’s their dying last gasp.

If only it was.

* So there are riots in London. About what, no one seems to know for sure. Maybe it was over soggy crumpets… or are crumpets supposed to be soggy? No one but the British know what a crumpet is. Anyway, so “youths” are rioting and burning and stealing stuff and texting — kids loves texting… and looting — to keep ahead of the police, and it’s total chaos. And it’s looking really bad for London who is hosting the Olympics in 2012, because the Olympic committee specifically told them, “If you’re going to host the Olympics, make sure your city isn’t on fire. We don’t like fire. Also, make sure you don’t have total anarchy. Total anarchy with broken windows and overturned cars really distracts from the festivities. And finally: Please bribe us.”

Londoners need to toughen up and just round up all those rioting youths and send them to their prison colony in Australia… but not the good part of Australia where they cook you steak and bloomin’ onions, but instead the bad part with the alligators and poisonous snakes. Crikey!

* They joke that the lottery is supposed to be a tax on people bad at math, but this one woman who has won four multi-million dollar lotteries has been revealed to have a PhD in statistics. Know what I’m thinking? That’s right: We’ve found our new Treasury Secretary.

* New tapes reveal that Jackie O believed that LBJ and a cabal of Texas tycoons were behind her husband’s death. Before you dismiss that as conspiracy silliness, watch the video again of JFK’s death. It really doesn’t look like he died of natural causes.

* Often as I’ve played videogames, I’ve wondered if scientists would tell me why I like playing videogames. Well, Science! to the rescue! Quoth the scientist: “The attraction to playing videogames and what makes them fun is that it gives people the chance to think about a role they would ideally like to take and then get a chance to play that role.” So the reason you play Tetris is because you always wanted to be a block made of four segments. And I can see why, because those blocks all fit together. But in real life, you never seem to fit in. That’s why you want to be like those blocks. But remember, when those blocks all fit together, they disappear. The only way they remain is when they don’t fit — when there is a hole in them. See, that’s what you are: You’re that hole that we can’t fill that keeps us all from disappearing. So feel good about yourself. And play some Angry Birds for a change.

* Wisdom of the Day: “Remember the good old days when George W. Bush was the worst president ever?” –James Taranto

* Okay, kids; the word of the day is “failure”.

So the United States of America just got its credit rating downgraded by the S&P. It seems bad, but this is something lots of presidents have had to deal with… Oh, wait, no — just the one. Just the useless failure. And they’re trying to blame this on Republicans and the Tea Party, but the fact is we got downgraded for not seriously taking on our debt, and what Obama originally wanted was the debt limit raised without any cuts. The only people who had a serious plan to avoid this was the Tea Party. But hey, you can do something to fix the problem or you can try and demagogue to gain advantage.

Obama chose poorly.

But no, it’s the Republicans fault. If only at some point did the Democrats hold the White House and both the House and Senate with enough votes to pass whatever they wanted — then surely Democrats would have used their economic genius then to fix everything. Oh, they did have that? And they used that power to spend more, create more government programs, and then failed to pass a budget?

So I guess that means that all the Democrats are useless idiots who should in no one way have any power in government? I mean, there’s no legitimate argument against that now, right? They should all just be tossed out of power — along with maybe half the Republicans — and then finally we can work on some solutions. Everyone is agreed on that, right? Even liberals have to bow to that simple logic, correct?

Oh, no; you’re just going to continue to scream nonsense, liberals? Okay; I guess we’ll just work around you.

* I just wanted to note that because of Rick Perry’s budget, Texas recently got its credit status upgraded — in case for some reason you wanted to compare Rick Perry and Barack Obama.

* So you’re probably wondering what the credit downgrade of the U.S. means for us in the near future. Well so am I. If someone could google the answer and put it in the comments, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

* Here’s something Michelle Malkin noticed — from our government, it’s the new Department of Innovation logo:

So, to represent innovation from government, we have the metaphor of three interlocked cogs that are unable to move. Of course, we only wish the government was a bunch of cogs grinding to a halt. It’s more like cogs that steal all our money, uselessly waste it, and then act like we’re the ones who are all stupid.

I’m not good with metaphors.

* Study shows that pundits are less than useless. A scientist has been following pundits and their predictions for years and years and years. He comes up with three possibilities for the future, has the pundit pick one, and then waits to see what happens to evaluate. And the pundits got the right answer less than 33% of the time, i.e., they were less accurate than a chimp throwing darts.

So, should we replace all the talking heads on TV with dart throwing chimps. NO! You might think it’s a great idea to improve the accuracy of political predictions, but CHIMPS WILL BITE YOU! In fact, they may THROW THE DARTS AT YOU and then BITE YOU! Do not trust chimps! Well, trust them on their political predictions, BUT NOT ON ANYTHING ELSE!

You’re probably wondering how accurate I’ve been as a political pundit. Well, to check my accuracy, you’d actually have to nuke the moon or put rocket launchers on dinosaurs. So, safe to say, I’M THE ONLY PUNDIT WHO HAS NEVER BEEN PROVEN WRONG! Also, I’m good at darts.

* Hollywood is going to do a movie about the killing of bin Laden. Finally, we’ll have a movie that makes the military look good… because it might also make Obama look good and will open in October of 2012. I’m guessing there will be a dramatic scene where an aide comes to Obama and says, “We know where bin Laden is; we just need your okay to get him.” And then Obama will think a moment while choosing his golf clubs and then finally shrug and say, “Yeah, okay. I guess you should do that.”

So is that what Obama is going to run on? Forget the domestic situation; he’s the waterboarding, terrorist-killing president who took Bush’s torch and gladly ran with it!

Good luck to him with that.

* Talking about the real heroes, thirty-one U.S. troops and seven Afghan soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash due to a Taliban RPG. Among those killed were members of SEAL Team 6. Nothing funny to say; pray for their families, and thank God our country has such brave people — the true foundation of what we are as a nation.

* Wisdom of the Day: “Liberals deny spending is killing us, then blame Bush for killing us thru war spending. Then they insist on spending again to save us.” –David Limbaugh

* In case you missed it, I had a column up over the weekend at Pajamas Media about how we should make future generation pay all our debt because they’re a bunch of jerks. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it before, but I’m quite clever and funny.

* Obama turned 50 years old yesterday, and the market celebrated by dropping ten points for each year Obama has been alive (and a few extra for good luck). It doesn’t seem like getting Obama to let up on the gas a little as he races towards a cliff was enough to convince the markets things are going to be peachy.

But, man, 50 years old — that’s a long time not to pay much attention. I mean I look at him with his fifty years of experience of… whatever exactly it is he did with his life, and then I see what a foolish president he is and it’s like he’s barely learned anything worthwhile in his life. How do you do that for fifty years? How do you keep yourself at such a distance from reality so as not to learn anything about it? I mean, I won’t be fifty for another eighteen years, and over that time I expect to learn so much that at a half a century I’ll be unstoppable. Literally unstoppable. Nations and armies will try to stop me, but they won’t be able to.

Because I’ll be so knowledgeable.

* BTW, Obama has said he’s going to “pivot to jobs”. He’s said that a number of times before, but this time he totally means it. Unfortunately, Jay Carney undermined him a bit when he said the unfortunate truth “The White House doesn’t create jobs.” Really, if you’re waiting on Obama to create jobs, you’re an idiot. The man has never held a real job in his life — much of his cabinet hasn’t either; why in the world would anyone think he has the slightest idea how jobs are created. He doesn’t even know what a job looks like. It’s like waiting on a caveman to build you an airplane.

* I spoke too soon! Obama’s pivot on jobs worked! Unemployment has shot down by 0.1% Of course, these numbers always get adjusted later, and it’s always the other way. Also, a lot of the drop in unemployment is from people giving up on looking for work. Actually, there’s a doable strategy for Obama to eliminate unemployment: Make it so bleak and depressing that everyone just gives up. Finally, an economic idea that Obama would actually have some skills at.

* Congress’s disapproval is at a record 82%. I don’t see why. Congress isn’t doing much, and they’re taking a long time to do it. What else would you want?

* Sarah Palin responded to Biden calling Tea Party members terrorists with this:

“Yeah, right. Independent patriotic Americans who desire fiscal sanity in our beloved nation being called terrorists, heck, Sean, if we were real domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us, wouldn’t he?”

I’m just surprised someone hasn’t reported this yet as “Palin Says ‘Shoot President Obama'”.

* The Communist Party has already endorsed President Obama for the 2012 election. Seems a little premature when they don’t even know who the Republicans are nominating, but guess it’s just hard for them to imagine a better candidate for Communist to vote for than Obama. I’d have trouble imagining a better one, but I’ll try…

No, anytime I try to use my imagination, all I can ever think of are dinosaurs fighting giant robots.

* When speaking to Keith Olbermann, Al Gore said… Okay, I can’t even pretend to care. Let’s just move on.

* When I brought up RiffTrax in the last Nuke the News, a few people said they like MST3K better, but I disagree. I’ve been watching some of those too, but the riffing seems slower back then. I think they’ve really refined their skills since the TV show and the humor is much punchier. Also, I get more of the references; some of MST3K — especially with Joel — could be pretty obscure. Furthermore, the ScfFi channel seasons were actually my favorite, and RiffTrax has the same three from then (Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett). Plus, it’s pretty cool to finally see them take on blockbusters instead of just bad movies we’ve never seen before.

Though I do agree I miss the silhouettes.

* In the area of this being my blog and I’ll talk about what I want, I would like to reminisce about video games. One of my all time favorite video game experiences was the game Riven, the sequel to Myst. I got that game while home on Christmas vacation from college and thus had lots of time to sit down and play it uninterrupted. And the way you start out in a big confusing world where nothing makes sense and then, through lots of exploration and trial and error, it all eventually comes together and makes sense was just beautiful. I still remember the glory of finally realizing *SPOILER* they were using a base five numbering system, which finally put a bunch of confusing things into place. It reminds me a lot of reverse engineering and debugging someone else’s code, how you have to slowly follow the logic and piece it together.

I know hardcore gamers scoff at the Myst series, but that was one of my all time favorite game experiences. I say favorite experience versus favorite game, because you can’t really ever go back and play it again and it be anywhere near like the first time.