January: Hundred watt incandescent light bulb bootlegging begins. The Vatican announces it is Mac-based, and proclaims Steve Jobs iGod. Over the counter asthma inhaler bootlegging begins. The EPA mandates household detectors for deadly neon gas. Harry Reid proposes his “sure-fire economic stimulus,” a fifteen minute, seven second 1.0723% tax break on the first $23.48 of taxable income earned on the first Sunday after a Saturday in March. Republicans ridicule the idea, until a New York Times editorial excoriates them as, “Renfields who eat middle and lower class flies and spiders to serve their hyper-rich, vampire masters.” Ezra Klein openly admires Pinch Schulzberger’s restraint. President Obama makes good on his promise to bypass a recalcitrant Congress and orders the IRS to impose “Senator Reid’s much-needed middle class tax break.” Mitt Romney tells the New York Times he’ll consider a carbon tax. The President’s popularity inches up to forty-one percent. After their latest debate, no Republican candidate garners more than thirty percent support. Additional debates are scheduled.
We have obtained the Dissociated Press memo congratulating Ben Nukols, head writer, for his work in obscuring the real scandal that was exposed by James O’Keefe. There is really little to add; the memo speaks for itself … and reveals so much more.
January: Noting that every adult who ever died has eaten, the Center for Science in the Public Interest demands the FDA ban food. Congress considers increased subsidies for America’s farmers. The Democrats’ new minority status notwithstanding, Nancy Pelosi declares she is still Speaker and refuses to vacate her office. Democrats unanimously support Pelosi until they discover she’s promised every one of them chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee and the lead on her new ABC television series, “Extreme Takeover.” Cash-strapped New York City announces a “Tutoring Fee” for each lesson in its public schools. The President departs for a vacation in Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and a Lesser Antille to be named later. At New York City’s historic New Amsterdam Theater, a chorus line of America’s elite university presidents simultaneously high kicks and pats themselves on the back for forcing Congress to end “Don’t ask don’t tell,” Yale President Richard C. Levin steps downstage and announces a new reason to ban ROTC: military coffee isn’t certified fair trade. He adds, “We got a million of ‘em!”
February: Andrew Breitbart posts video taken in the Detroit Renaissance Center showing Representative Charles Barron forming a New Black Panthers cell with a call to “overthrow the oppressive, white power structure and burn this damn country to the ground!” Al Sharpton attacks Breitbart for racism, noting that fire is part of African culture. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange announces the release of five million documents exposing secret American plans to fight enemies in case of war. Harry Reid declares “Future wars are already lost.” While on a brief, three week break in the Seychelles, President Obama is informed that fires engulfing Detroit are out of control.
March: ABC News wins a Peabody Award after it re-edits footage of several Sarah Palin interviews to give the impression that her favorite sport is buck naked hunting and her favorite book is “Red, Blue, Yellow Shoe.” Steve Jobs announces the first combination computer, telephone, and handkerchief, Apple’s micro-thin iRag. The EEOC bans radio, “to end discrimination against the deaf.” President Obama and ex-President Carter report on the status of peace talks with North Korea, when Obama abruptly departs, “to help Michelle with her packing.” Carter then compliments Kim Jong Un’s wife and reveals the North Koreans possess a terrifying new weapon: nuclear-capable, deep-water rabbits. He surrenders unconditionally. President Obama spends a quiet fortnight vacationing in Rio de Janeiro, and brags to Brazilian President Lula about the new beauty of Michigan sunsets. Tom Tancredo demands the Border Patrol take steps to prevent illegal bird immigration from Mexico. Chris Matthews denounces “right-wing, spittle-flecked hysterics in the Republican party.”
April: President Obama garners some well-deserved rest during a four-week stop in Tierra Del Fuego. An incoherently babbling Nancy Pelosi is forcibly removed from the famed “Whisper Spot” in the Capitol, sedated, and taken to St. Elizabeth’s. The NTSC begins vetting volunteers from around the nation to insure they meet Federal height, weight, and diversity standards before permitting them to fight the fires that have destroyed Detroit and are moving inexorably on to Flint. Bill Gates admits that Windows Vista was, “just an April Fool’s joke that got completely out of hand.” Cash-strapped New York City begins selling naming rights to city departments. New Yorkers exhibit a surprising new level of respect for the Gambino Department of Parking Enforcement and the Luchese Office of Health Protection. Upset by an unscreened question during his Easter Egg Hunt greeting, President Obama abruptly departs. Fortunately, J. Z. Knight is there to channel President Cleveland.
May: From St. Elizabeth’s, Nancy Pelosi announces her election as “Speaker of the Communal Room,” and appoints John Hinckley to the powerful Thorazine Committee. Keith Olbermann attacks John Boehner in terms so vile the air melts in all three homes where the show is seen. After the broadcast, MSNBC suspends Olbermann for fifteen minutes and bars him from the office coffee maker for the rest of the day. Before permitting the use of “unsafe water” to fight the Detroit-Saginaw-Lansing fire, the EPA demands testing for a two hundred page list of potentially hazardous chemicals. The Yankees drop two out-of-town series, and George Steinbrenner claws his way out of his grave to strangle manager Joe Girardi. Steinbrenner returns only when told most of his estate will be taxed at thirty-five percent if he didn’t die in 2010. The President and his family enjoy a quick, three-week stay in Målselv and Kalvaag.
June: Keith Olbermann is named White House Chief of Protocol. A thirty-five year old Islamic radical, Mohammed Muhammad Mohammad, whose fingernails were replaced with miniature bombs, gets past TSA screening and boards a plane. His plan is foiled when an alert passenger notices Mohammad attempting to light his left thumb. Janet Napolitano announces, “Once again, the system has worked,” and orders TSA screeners to remove passengers’ fingernails. Liquor sales skyrocket. President Obama enjoys brief, week-long stops in Seram, Ambon, and Buru. With East Tawas threatened, Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder’s proclamation of “a state-wide day of prayer for rain” is thwarted when the ACLU wins an injunction stopping it.
July: Citing America’s expanding waistline, the FDA bans buffet restaurants. The regulations are so sloppily written that a specific exemption must be granted to avoid deporting Warren Buffet. Another outbreak of AIDS in adult film workers prompts porn star Ron Jeremy to lament “there are some days when I just don’t feel like getting into bed.” Bill Clinton and Eliot Spitzer commiserate. OSHA issues safety regulations for plastic coffee stirrers. Stung by Democrats’ increasingly vitriolic attacks on his administration, President Obama blames, “Republicans who act like mass murderers, pretend to look sad, shake head gravely, and fleem plooner swonts.” The President’s teleprompter is quietly replaced, and he takes a well-earned break in Albena, Bourgas, and Chernomorets.
August: The L. A. Weekly revives Jerry Brown’s old nick-name, “Governor Moonbeam,” when he announces massive state funding for his “Lunar Powered Night Vehicle” program. California voters pass Proposition 10-96, requiring the state to secede from reality. Ratings services discover Comedy Central has more news viewers than NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, and CNBC combined. An unrelated Gallup poll finds the public better informed about current events than at any time in the last twenty-five years. After returning from his vacation in Pitcairn’s Island, President Obama expresses regret that most fire trucks in the mid-west do not meet federal fuel economy mandates, and refuses to sign waivers allowing them to fight the fires that now threaten Traverse City. A single box of five coffee stirrers sells on eBay for $160.00. President Obama’s new vacation plans are spoiled when the Australian Government won’t consider renaming Christmas Island “Kwanza Island.” The President refuses to come out of his room until dessert.
September: After delivering a spirited, two hour tribute to a legendary win notched by the University of Nevada, Reno 1953 poker team, Harry Reid makes an impassioned plea for his bill granting citizenship to illegal casino workers, who, “when the chips were down, rolled the dice, came to America, and who now call for us not to Welsh on the ‘bet’ in the better life they want.” An impassioned Carwyn Jones, the Prif Weinidog Cymru of Wales, protests, and Vice-President Biden cracks an unfortunate “Weinidog” joke on “Good Morning America.” Secretary of State Clinton’s condescending apology inflames the situation, prompting Wales to declare war. PETA applauds the President’s response: banning Welsh Rabbit from state dinners. Furious Democrats attack Republican attempts to suspend OSHA’s new toilet paper perforation regulations as “endangering our troops.” President Obama’s vacation in Papua New Guinea is ruined when the Detroit Free-Press (printed in Windsor), runs a hurtful editorial titled, “Put Out the Damn Fire, Mr. President.”
October: The President enjoys quality time with his family in Ibiza while Attorney General Eric Holder regrets the FBI was unable to complete background checks of ten thousand out-of-state volunteers in time to save Petosky and Cheboygan. Copyright troll Righthaven begins suing websites using English words, noting that the Las Vegas Review-Journal has already used English in copyrighted material. Attempting to stay solvent, New York City begins charging pedestrians $2.50 to walk on city sidewalks. Disaster looms in the Welsh War after the President is forced to recall the Navy in the face of a Greenpeace campaign to save the Wales. A thirty-three year old Islamic radical, Mustafa Allah Jihad-Jihad, whose hair was surgically replaced with micro-thin strands of high explosive gets past TSA screeners and boards a plane. His plan is foiled when an alert passenger notices Jihad-Jihad combing his hair with a matchbook. Janet Napolitano proudly asserts, “Once again, the system has worked.” TSA screeners begin scalping all passengers. Heroin sales skyrocket. Devil’s Night in Detroit comes and goes without incident, everything having long since burned down.
November: The financial crisis in New York City is so acute, the FDIC seizes the banks of the Hudson River. Denouncing President Obama for accepting a suggestion from John McCain on the wording of a Veterans’ Day statement as, “The last hay,” the newly-released Nancy Pelosi takes a group of tourists hostage and threatens to defenestrate “one dead hick per hour” if she doesn’t get an official Boeing 787 and six cases of 1990 Buena Vista Cabernet Sauvignon. Attorney General Holder checks the FBI hostage negotiating team for ethno-sexual diversity. Bloodshed is averted when the quick-thinking House Sergeant-at-Arms rushes to Pelosi’s office and plays a tape recording of a face-lift. Beguiled by the prospect of “the beard I’ve always wanted,” Pelosi surrenders without further incident. FCC announces new rules requiring its prior approval for any “words, phrases, clauses, or sentences used to convey information,” printed or broadcast to the public. Television executives note their news programs won’t be affected because they haven’t conveyed any information in years.
December: The first broadcast of “It’s Beige …” the new PBS show specifically designed to avoid undue excitement in children, triggers narcoleptic seizures in forty-five percent of viewers under the age of ten. EEOC announces its “Campaign to End Discrimination in Employment,” has successfully placed Gitmo detainees in jobs as TSA screeners. Propofol and Demerol prescriptions overwhelm manufacturers, and the remaining U. S. airline declares bankruptcy. The FCC approves the announcement of Thomas Jefferson’s victory over John Adams in the 1796 Presidential election. Cornel West demands reparations from the Federalist Party. Salvation Army Kettles are targeted by a mysterious “Anti-Santa,” who donates large bills for his liquor, automobile, and jewelry purchases. From her office at the University of Michigan-Sandusky, Catharine MacKinnon issues a law review jeremiad denouncing “A Holly Jolly Christmas” as “unmistakable in its hyper-textual telos of the perpetuation of the prepotency of the phallocentric power structure,” noting, “If the line, ‘kiss her once for me,’ isn’t a thinly-veiled incitement to rape, I don’t know what is.” Most law professors agree she doesn’t. In cash-strapped New York City, soup kitchens begin feeding the homeless to the hungry. From his vacation home in Margarita Island, Venezuela, President Obama tearfully announces he’s not coming back, lifting the holiday spirits of Americans who hope for a change for the better in 2012.
Originally posted here.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
[Pretty color mine].
It’s hard to believe that a nation with the above material in its founding document is now supporting Muslim nations in their attempt to have the UN Human Rights Council recognize a blasphemy exception to freedom of speech. (We hereby duly note the contradiction in terms in ” UN Human Rights Council,” a body indiscriminately containing members from such paragons of liberty and human dignity as Cuba, Burkina Faso, China, and Saudia Arabia).
Nonetheless, if a column in the rabidly right-wing USA Today is to be believed, that is exactly what is happening.
“While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any “negative racial and religious stereotyping.” The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians. Though the resolution was passed unanimously, European and developing countries made it clear that they remain at odds on the issue of protecting religions from criticism. It is viewed as a transparent bid to appeal to the “Muslim street” and our Arab allies, with the administration seeking greater coexistence through the curtailment of objectionable speech. Though it has no direct enforcement (and is weaker than earlier versions), it is still viewed as a victory for those who sought to juxtapose and balance the rights of speech and religion.”
This is to say, that the Obama Administration has either let its UN delegation go completely insane, or it supports an attempt to prevent people from characterizing radical Muslims as people who decapitate their enemies while those same radical Muslims threaten to decapitate anyone who so characterizes them.
Things could get tricky quickly. We know this is a wild speculation — things like this just don’t happen in the twenty-first century, but imagine an incident where Member In Good Standing of the United Nations Human Rights Council Saudi Arabia finds its religious police forcing schoolgirls back into a burning building because the girls in question failed to don their religiously required headscarves before fleeing the flames. This profoundly moving religious observance once resulted in the deaths of fifteen young Saudi females. One can recognize that we mere mortals cannot question the words of The Prophet (peace be upon him), but other questions arise. Would the simple act of reporting this outrage be enough to trigger a blasphemy complaint, or would the offense be in noting the derangement of mutaween who would rather girls be burnt to death than appear in public without their headscarves?
We ask this question with some trepidation — it could turn out to be blasphemous, and we don’t know whether the UN Human Rights Council’s ukases are retroactive. While we recognize the previously noted “weakness” of the resolution, like an infant, it will soon begin to cut teeth. The Obama Administration will no doubt be providing state of the art dentistry, perhaps as part of its Health Care initiative.
The Obama Administration should be clear about this. It might also consider providing a little more clarity in whether it considers criticism of itself to be blasphemy. Even if no one else will be affected, we, a couple of other websites, and Fox News are interested.
Incredible as it may seem, the American Society of Magazine Editors, ASME, now has an award for the Best Obama Magazine Cover. It shouldn’t be interpreted as an award for the best happy-smiley coverage because the New York Times Magazine entry, as befits the nation’s most grimly self-important source of left-wing group-think, shows an unsmiling president, his head resting on his left thumb, behind the caption, “His Economy.” No doubt this headline will be subject to later revision. Indeed, we suspect it is the reason this cover did not win first prize. How the multiple layers of fact-checkers and editors at the Times managed to miss the obvious possibility of future embarrassment to the President may never be known.
The ASME site’s write-up of the May 3, 2009 Times Magazine cover merits mention:
This amazing portrait of President Obama is striking because it captures a deeply thoughtful and real expression. It is not a posed portrait done in the studio, but rather a very real and vivid portrait made during an actual exclusive interview in the Oval Office. Normally that would be considered the least appealing of situations to shoot a cover portrait, but in the incredibly skilled hands of Nadav Kander, it became an opportunity to reinvent and stretch what a cover portrait can be. It is both beautifully lit and well-crafted, as well as a documentation of an actual candid and revealing moment.
Even the most jaded reader must vicariously feel the tingle going up the legs of the editors as they first beheld this inspiring portrait of the object of their adoration. And bear in mind: this cover was only a runner-up! Those inclined to read the description of the winning entry are duly warned: “The Color Purple” is no longer just a title.
Could this be the first hint of a new trend in awards? Much fun has been made of President Obama’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, but this sort of thing is self-limiting. In his first term, the president can win it, at most, four times.
We presume no rules change to allow more than one win annually, but on second thought, why rule out multiple Nobel Peace Prizes per year? The President may unexpectedly announce a new impulse or fancy, and these tremendous feats deserve recognition as they occur. Even we are compelled to acknowledge that no one in history has so boldly embraced the ideal of peace using exactly the words our beloved President has so movingly recited from his teleprompter.
So let us encourage the idea of awarding prizes in a new “Best Obama” category for all awards. This will insure that the wealth will be spread around, the President’s summum bonum … or so he says … and the ensuing laughter won’t be quite as distracting.
It’s easy to imagine a Pulitzer Prize for the “Best Obama Story of the Year,” but the competition will be heavy. Why stop there? “Best Coverage of the Obama Family” will allow newspaper style sections and women’s magazines to bask in the glow as well. A “Best Obama Pet Coverage” category will give publications like Dog Fancy, Dog World, and Dogs For Kids a chance for recognition and loot. We omit Dogs in Review, not because of their global perspective, a good thing, but because of the ugly possiblity inherent in their name — they might write a bad review. Upon proper assurance that their content will be safe for the first canine’s image we shall revise our thinking.
Some may object that the Pulitzer Prize is supposed to honor “excellence in journalism and the arts,” but this is petty. With a properly corrected definition of excellence, anything is award-worthy.
The Academy Awards are a natural area to award Obama-centric prizes. While an endless cycle of movies about Obama might prove so repellent to the general public that even Hollywood won’t produce them for long, perhaps something more subtle can be arranged. We suggest an Oscar category in the President’s honor, “Best Mis-Leading Actor.”
The folks at the Caldecott Medal and the Newberry Medal should take note as well. Given the general level of most of the Obama coverage, these awards are stunningly appropriate.
We feel compelled warn organizations that award anti-prizes (the Ig Nobel Prize, The Razzies, and the Bulwer-Lytton Awards, for instance, that their present status as beloved jesters will be destroyed if they attempt to create an Obama category. There are some subjects one simply cannot mock and still be considered worthy of NFL team ownership.
Rumors of an automotive snuff film have been circulating around the Net, and our resident Gumlegs has tracked them to the source. DarwinCentral brings you an Internet exclusive, the elusive true story, and the snuff film itself. Just remember, when the truth erupts, you’ll hear it here first.
Senator Charles Shumer (D-NY), has never been known as an exemplar of logical thinking. Nevertheless, as Chairman of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, he must be taken seriously. The partial transcript below is of a November 2008 Schumer interview aired on Fox television. We address this now because the issue is not going away.
This Premise Media production begins with video of the Berlin wall being constructed to the cello and violin sounds of All Along the Watchtower. This song would have been perfect had it been used by the side of the evolutionist. All Along the Watchtower describes going against the establishment and that is really what Darwin and his followers went against for a century. Now, the ID frauds want to make the scientific community out to be the great evil that has stifled the truth. The truth has evolved because of Darwin and his ideas, not the other way around. The ID crowd also has to personally go after Darwin to destroy the man as well as the message like the nasty propagandists they really are.
WHEREIN ELMO ZONEBALL pulls no punches, and spares no feelings, in calling shenanigans on Barney Frank and the rest of the Democrats for their naked opportunism in the face of financial crisis…
SOME OF OUR CONSTANT READERS may not be familiar with the Darwin Central discussion forums, which is a shame – it’s where all the cool kids hang out. We’re open to all, and welcome those of a like mind. We believe you shouldn’t have to choose between self-styled conservatives who reject newfangled ideas like the scientific method, or scientists whose politics make Cynthia McKinney look like a mushy moderate. Here we strive for rationality in all things, both in the natural world and in human affairs.