"Kerry defends liberties, says Americans have 'right to be stupid.'"

Lucky for him.

Typical rich bastard, always looking out for his own interests.

"No, it was not the asteroid that hit Russia. I got so many people saying, 'Rush, the asteroid, it didn't just come close, it actually hit!'"

"No, no, no, no, it was a meteorite.  It was a meteorite and it was very cool.  You ought to see the video of that thing....  But they're now speculating, folks, that the meteor might have been connected to the asteroid, might have broken off of the asteroid and then came down.  That asteroid is gonna get fairly close, not gonna hit us, of course, but the meteorite did and of course that means the reporters can say that the meteorite hit us because of global warming. The asteroid is out there because of global warming.  CNN told us that, so that's how we know that."

If you're going to mock CNN for seeming to connect an asteroid with global warming, Rush, you ought to be sharper about science. Now, go look up the difference between an asteroid and a meteorite. If the asteroid had come down it would have been a meteorite. (But that asteroid was not that meteorite.)

ADDED: Here's my earlier criticism of Rush's mocking the CNN person.

If you're going to mock someone for stupidity...

... recognize the difference between a question and an assertion.

"CNN Anchor Blames Asteroid on Global Warming." No, she didn't.

If you're going to play the other-people-are-stupid game, you have to play well.

"Grandma called very worried that you would get lost in the snow and eaten by penguins."

"Give her a call to reassure her if you get the chance. Stay warm."

Have you expressed sufficient concern over your East Coast adult children?

And make sure they know not to eat yellow snow:

It's a very important point.... Let me explain this to you.  Snow is white.  That is, until cars drive on it, and of course they just turn it black and dirty like they do to the environment anyway.  But sometimes when you're in the snow where cars haven't been, and it's just lovely, beautiful and white and you're walking in it, which again you shouldn't do.  Don't go outside.  But if you do, and if you've stretched and if you're not exerting yourself, you're walking and you might see a patch of yellow snow, and say, "Whoa, what is that?"

It might look like a natural snow cone to you.  Don't eat it.  Do not scoop it up and eat it.  Yellow snow is not good for you.  It is sterile, I mean, you can rest assured that it is sterile.  But you know what the problem with this is, though?  It's like when I say, "Don't think pink," what are you doing?  You're thinking pink.  Don't eat yellow snow, people are gonna go, "Oh, yellow snow, Limbaugh said don't eat it. I wonder why."  Just don't.

After Beyonce's publicists asks Buzzfeed to remove some unflattering photographs of her (from her Super Bowl show)...

... Buzzfeed publishes the email, and the photos become a meme. Why don't publicists get the internet? What the publicist wrote:

"I am certain you will be able to find some better photos. The worst are #5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 19 and 22."

What the internet heard: I am certain you will be able to photoshop these photos. May I recommend #5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 19 and 22.

ADDED: The Daily Mail link in the post doesn't work anymore. Here's Buzzfeed's original article, including the email and unflattering photos, but not the Photoshops. Google beyonce photoshop if you want to see some of them.

"I got it because we got drunk and it was just a really funny idea and my friend said he’d do it for free."

"I sat on it for a couple days and was finally like, 'Man, I’m gonna get a butthole tattoo that says "Let It Be" with a bumblebee flying out!'"

She sat on it for a couple days and now she will sit on it for the rest of her life.

She's not even a Beatles fan. Well, no. If she were, she'd have a beetle crawling out.

"Using masking tape, [the super] connected the [garden] hose to the [water] heater, just inches from the flame, cops said."

Jeez. At least use duct tape!

"The jelly looked like pus, the peanut butter like God knows what and the bread was hard as a rock..."

So says Frank Hannibal, describing the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in jail, where he was sent after he joked about his expensive peanut butter. When the TSA agent at LaGuardia Airport opened the jar, Hannibal said "They’re looking to confiscate my explosives."

What idiot doesn't know not to joke about bombs in the airport security line? Now, this guy is suing for $5 million.

This lawsuit looks like pus. There. Whatever judge gets stuck with it is welcome to use my joke against this phenomenally stupid man who purports to be a connoisseur of humor and peanut butter. Hannibal should have to reimburse the taxpayers for all the public money he's consumed and will continue to consume.

2 men try to carjack a Corvette at gunpoint, but can't make it go, because it's a stick shift.

The owner of the car — one Mr. Bean — even tried to explain it to them. 

"I had to tell him four different times to push in the clutch... My first thought was I guess we don't have driver's ed. in school anymore... And my second thing was, don't shoot me because you can't start the car," Bean said. "I'm trying to help you out here, you know. Thankfully they didn't."

"I was trying to make the horse have a baby."

"I was thinking it would have a horseman baby."

"Schools train people to be ignorant, with style."

Frank Zappa, opining, years ago.

"By now, you have likely listened several times to the muffled 911 call placed by the Catholic priest who enjoyed..."

"... slipping into a bondage mask and handcuffs inside a church rectory in Springfield, Illinois.... this time he put the handcuffs on with the keyhole up instead of down...."

Although I find this bloggable, I don't want to listen to the recording. Hmmm. I guess don't enjoy hearing suffering, but I want this to be a lesson to you. Stop wasting the police's time with your handcuff incompetence.

"The biggest and weirdest myth out there about the $1 trillion platinum coin is..."

Matthew Yglesias debunks a myth without establishing that anyone believes it.

Clue to Matt: No one believes it.

This is one of those glaring examples of the attitude of superiority leading to missing humor and subtlety. You may think you're smart, but it's not smart to assume other people aren't smart too. I recommend a working assumption that other people are smart, and when you think you're reading something ridiculously stupid, go through the exercise of reading it with the thought that the writer is wonderfully clever. This is especially important when you are reading something concise/elliptical. Look at every word. Think before you mock.

A euphemism for "aging": "evolving."

Example:

One of my wise [yoga] teachers told us that after 50, she began to cross off the list poses that she no longer felt made sense for her evolving body.

Cue the episode of "Outer Limits" where David McCallum enters the evolution machine:



Tip for "wise" teachers: You're not evolving. And why you find the notion of evolving more comforting than aging is a mystery you might want to ponder.

"Your ignorance makes me ill and angry."

Also... here's the trailer for "Altered States":

What time is the world supposed to end?

It is 12/21/12 at long last, I just noticed, after paying some some attention to the real, albeit mini, apocalypse that is Draco the Blizzard. I was going to note that the world hasn't ended, but there's the question of what time the Mayans pinpointed on this Day of Days:

I know the world isn't really going to end today, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that anyone would believe it is. But my 11-year-old brother thinks it's going to end, and I want to be able to go scream "I told you so!" in his face as soon as possible.

Thanks.

ABC is checking midnight in each of the world's time zones. Weather prediction noted:



I like NASA's reassuring web page. Excerpt:

Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?

A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on January 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.

Wikipedia has a huge article on the somewhat larger topic "2012 phenomenon." Excerpt:

Many assertions about the year 2012 form part of Mayanism, a non-codified collection of New Age beliefs about ancient Maya wisdom and spirituality.... Archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni says that while the idea of "balancing the cosmos" was prominent in ancient Maya literature, the 2012 phenomenon does not draw from those traditions. Instead, it is bound up with American concepts such as the New Age movement, millenarianism, and the belief in secret knowledge from distant times and places. Established themes found in 2012 literature include "suspicion towards mainstream Western culture", the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Age by individual example or by a group's joined consciousness. 

Is there a bigger crock than secret knowledge from distant times and places?

The origins of Ed Grimley.

From a Vanity Fair article about Martin Short:

Grimley grew out of an existing Second City sketch called “Sexist,” in which a male employer interviewed two candidates for a job, one an accomplished, over-achieving young woman played by the future SCTV star Catherine O’Hara, the other a flagrantly stupid man—“the joke being,” Short said, “that the guy who’s hiring says, ‘You’re both so good, I can’t make up my mind!’ ”

Click "read more" for the part that made me laugh out loud.

Short’s version of the stupid man grew increasingly broad and outré with each performance, until he morphed into Ed, with his checked shirt (an artifact from Short’s actual teenage wardrobe), hiked-up trousers, hunched posture, and forelock greased straight up into a point. But as much of a hit as Ed was onstage, Short, by the time he joined the cast of SCTV, in 1982, had not played him in public for four years and was initially reluctant to do so again because, he said, “Ed had become a part of my life with my wife, Nancy.”....

“A part of your life with Nancy?”

“Yeah! So I’d come out of the shower nude … like this.” [Makes grimacing Grimley face.]

“With the hair sticking up?”

“Not even the hair—just nude.”

“Just doing the face and posture?”

“Just the face. And she’d say, ‘Ed, get outta here!’ Or sometimes we’d get into a fight, and she’d say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to Ed! Ed, what is wrong with him?’ [Grimley voice] ‘Oh, he’s jealous of you, Miss Nancy. It’s very sad, I must say.’ This was a private thing. So when I joined SCTV, I thought it was now way too personal to do Ed.”

“Marty—are you saying that Ed Grimley had therapeutic value in your marriage?”

“Yes.”

"Two students from the University of Colorado Boulder were arrested after they gave marijuana-laced brownies to their professor and unsuspecting classmates Friday."

It was "bring food to class" day. Perhaps they thought it was amusing, considering that "legalization" they have in Colorado now.

[21-year-old Thomas Ricardo Cunningham and 19-year-old Mary Elizabeth] face felony charges including inducing consumption of controlled substances by fraudulent means, and second degree assault.

"Monsters: Planned Parenthood tells teens ‘look your best’ after being beaten with these make-up tips."

Twitchy is aghast... after not getting it.

Do I really need to explain? Maybe I do, because those people are so dumb... or maybe only playing dumb. Let me take an intelligence test over here. You've got to watch the video first: here. Now, here's the test:

Did Twitchy understand the video it condemns as shameful?
	No. They really are that dumb.
	Yes, but they're pretending not to so they can slam PP, their usual agenda.
	Yes, and the ad actually is monstrous.
pollcode.com free polls

Man shoots his girlfriend in an argument about the possibility of a zombie apocalypse.

"He felt very adamant there could be a military mishap that would result in some sort of virus being released that could cause terrible things to happen," said the cop. “She felt it was ridiculous. He’s passionate about it. And it escalated from there."

"Congress Holds An Anti-Vaccination Hearing."

"Congressman Dan Burton... rehash[ed] a series of some of the most thoroughly discredited anti-vaccine positions of the past decade."

In a classic political move, the committee called on scientists Alan Guttmacher from the NIH and Colleen Boyle from the CDC to testify, but in fact the committee just wanted to bully the scientists.  Committee members lectured the scientists, throwing out bad science claims, often disguised as questions, thick and fast....