Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Can I be frank? What the hell were you thinking when you elected Michele Bachmann? It's not clear whether she's a lying sociopath or just a freaking idiot (or both) -- based on the fact that she got a J.D. degree and managed to pass the bar exam I'm inclined to lean towards sociopath -- but seriously, she's an embarrassment to you. Or should be. I'll ignore for the moment her promotion of creationism in public schools, her statement that "our children... are the prize for [the gay] community, they are specifically targeting our children," and other run of the mill right-wing nonsense she routinely spouts. Instead just look at her recent speech in Iowa where she shares the alternate reality in which she lives : Apparently in this other universe, our founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery instead of actually owning slaves. It's pretty bad when John McCain's daughter calls you a " poor man's Sarah Palin ." Ouch. Now dow...

Much has been said by some of my Libertarian friends about Al Gore's career as a shill for the global-warming crowd after losing the 2000 election to George W Bush. Let's take a look at what Bob Barr, our latest losing Libertarian candidate for president, is doing now. CNN has a story today about former Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who wants to use $5.7 million in frozen Swiss bank accounts belonging to a "family foundation" to help rebuild Haiti. Baby Doc, in case your Haitian history is a little rusty, inherited the position of President from his late father, "Papa Doc," in 1971 and held it for 15 years until his countrymen threw him out. While marginally better than Papa Doc, Baby Doc lived like a playboy, looted the struggling nation's treasury, and allowed his father's cronies to continue to run the country. Under his rule thousands of Haitians were killed or tortured. Now representing the Former President of Haiti is For...

Full disclosure: I've had a Yahoo! account for well over 10 years. Yahoo got its start as "David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" only to be later renamed as Yahoo! by its creators, Jerry Yang and David Filo , a couple of Stanford grad students.  While  "Yahoo" was backronymed to stand for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," Yang and Filo admitted they were drawn to the earlier meaning of the word, coined by Jonathan Swift . In his satiric novel Gulliver's Travels , Swift describes a race called " Yahoos " as savage and filthy, obsessed with "pretty stones." The term has come to mean a crude, thuggish uncultured yokel. Want an example?  You need look no further than any random sampling of reader comments from pretty much any news story posted on the Yahoo portal, especially something like this weekend's shooting of a Member of Congress. The level of discourse to be found makes schoolyard brawl...

This happened a couple of days ago but I've been under the weather and it still gripes my ass. If you were a loyal TCU fan (I'm an alumni) and foolishly chose to watch the Rose Bowl Parade on NBC / channel 5 here in the Dallas/Fort Worth television market you probably waited patiently to see the TCU float and Horned Frog marching band. Alas, you would have been rewarded with bitterness. About 30 seconds before the Frogs came a marching, NBC decided to cut away for a couple of minutes of commercials, huzzah!  After they return to parade coverage after pimping for their sponsors, you could hear the faint strains of the Horn Frogs fading into the distance. FAIL! All we get is about 5 seconds of a tape-delay insert shot. No float. Booyah! To which I say, "What the fuck?" They had a list of the parade participants and the order in which they appeared - it's not like TCU snuck up on them. Some jack-leg producer just decided if ONE OF THE FUCKING SCHOOLS IN...