James Dobson doesn't know the Gospel.

James Dobson continues his quest to unseat Jerry Falwell as the world's biggest religious hate-filled moron. And it looks like he just might succeed.

Enjoy an incredible 'Baracknophobia' segment that takes aim at everyone's favorite religious douche bag, James Dobson...

Should've been in theater

MORE KANYE!!!! Woohoo!...

"I am sick of negative people who just sit around trying 2 plot my downfall... Why???? I understand if people don't like me because I like me or if people think tight clothes look gay or people say I run my mouth to much, But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I've ever had in my life. This is the most offended I've ever been... this is the maddest I ever will be. I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!! Call me any name you want.... arrogant, conceited, narcissistic, racist, metro, fag whatever you can think of.... BUT NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL! NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL! THIS SHOWS NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO BE GOOD AT SOMETHING THERE WILL BE PEOPLE THERE TO LIE ABOUT YOU AND BRING YOU DOWN! LIKE WAYNE SAYS PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ME DOWN CAUSE I'M FLYING! I'M FUCKING HURT BY THIS ONE. ALL I CARE ABOUT ARE THE FANS. JUST SAY THIS OUT LOUD IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE, "KANYE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT GIVING A GOOD PERFORMANCE." CAN ANYONE HONESTLY SAY THAT ????????? HAS ANYONE EVEN TAKEN THE TIME TO AT LEAST DO THE MATH??? BONNAROO SHOULD HAVE RELEASED A STATEMENT IN MY DEFENSE BUT SINCE THEY HAVEN'T LET'S BREAK DOWN THE WALLS ON THIS TRUMAN SHOW AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY OCCURRED!!! FOR OVER A MONTH WE WENT BACK AND FORTH ON WETHER OR NOT WE COULD EVEN FIT MY STAGE AT THE FESTIVAL. ONE DAY THEY WOULD SAY YES... WE'D SEND THEM OUR SPECS THEN THEY THEY'D SAY OK... THEN THEY WOULD SEND SPECS BACK THAT DIDN'T FIT THE STAGE. WE WERE OBVIOUSLY DEALING WITH FUCKING IDIOTS WHO DIDN'T REALLY HAVE THE CAPACITY TO REALLY PUT ON THIS SHOW PROPERLY. THEY TRIED 2 GIVE ME A TIME SLOT WERE IT WAS STILL LIGHT OUTSIDE ... I HAVE A FUCKING LIGHT SHOW DUMB ASS, IT'S NOT CALLED GLOW IN THE DARK FOR NO REASON SQUID BRAINS! MY PEOPLE WORKED OUT A COMPROMISED STAGE PLOT AND A 3AM TIME SLOT AND I AGREED. FAST FOWARD TO THE DAY OF THE SHOW. MY PRODUCTION MANAGER TRIED TO LOAD IN FOR 24 HOURS BEFORE I WENT ON STAGE BUT THE FESTIVAL WOULDN'T ALLOW US TO DO ANYTHING UNTILL PEARL JAM LEFT THE STAGE. PEARL JAM ENDED ONE HOUR LATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT THAT POINT WE'RE RACING AGAINST THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT 4:20AM DON COMES BACK 2 THE BUS AND TELLS ME, " IT WOULD TAKE 45 MORE MINUTES TO PUT ALL YOUR PYRO IN!" I SAY I HAVE TO GET OUT THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE . I HIT THE STAGE AND PEOPLE HAD BEEN THROWING SHIT ON THE STAGE AND HAD ACTUALLY HIT THE JANE SCREEN WITH, I GUESS BOTTLES OR SOMETHING AND HAD BROKEN MY FUCKING SCREEN. REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE A SHORTY AND WATER WOULD HIT THE TV?????? WHEN I GOT 2 "THROUGH THE WIRE" I STEPPED ON THE FRONT PART OF MY STAGE AND THERE WAS SO MUCH LIQUID ON THE STAGE I COULDN'T MOVE WITHOUT SLIPPING. I HAD TO ADJUST MY WHOLE PERFORMANCE STYLE BECAUSE OF IT. A FEW MORE SONGS IN AND THE SONG WAS ON IT'S WAY UP.. I CUT A FEW SONGS FROM THE SET BECAUSE I WANTED PEOPLE 2 EXPERIENCE STRONGER WHILE THERE WAS STILL SOME DARKNESS TO PERFORM IT IN. I'VE STRUGGLED WITH STRONGER FROM IT'S CONCEPTION. REMEMBER LAST SUMMER WHEN I CANCELED SOME TV APPEARANCES. IT WAS BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT TO PERFORM STRONGER IN THE DAYTIME. ANYONE WHO CAME TO THE GLOW TOUR CAN UNDERSTAND WHY I WANTED PEOPLE TO SEE IT PROPERLY. IT BROKE MY HEART THAT I COULDN'T GIVE THESE FANS STRONGER IN IT'S GREATEST FORM... BY THE TIME I GOT TO STRONGER IT WAS DAYTIME AND IT BROKE MY HEART. I'M SORRY TO EVERYONE THAT I DIDN'T HAVE THE ABILITY 2 GIVE THE PERFORMANCE I WANTED TO. I'M SORRY... SOMETIMES I GO 2, 3 DAYS W/O SLEEP WORKING ON MY PERFORMANCE... I HAVE TO ICE MY KNEES AFTER EVERY SHOW AND THEY HURT WHEN I WALK THROUGH THE AIRPORT... HAVING AN EXPENSIVE STAGE CUTS MY PAYDAY IN HALF... CALL ME WHAT YOU WANT BUT NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL!!!" - Kanye West


"CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME!!!!"
- unknown

I wonder what other 'hoods' parents place on kids?

Photograph: Anthony Karen
from NPR

(p.s. this picture is from this decade)

Update: Kanye Alert

Kanye is a common source of entertainment at his expense for me on this blog and he never disappoints (just search the tag, 'Kanye' on this blog and you'll see why).

Here's his latest narcissistic antics at our Tennessee's own Bonnaroo:

Kanye West Doesn't Care About 'Roo People
[animal-ny]

Photo: |Dru5000|

An increasingly fan hating Kanye West made a huge miscalculation this past weekend at the Bonnaroo musical festival in Tennessee, thinking that grungy concertgoers would rather see him glow in the dark than just perform his damn songs. After numerous jumbotron displayed delays, crusty crowds began chanting "Kanye sucks" and throwing trash onto the stage. Scheduled to perform at 2:45AM, 'Ye didn't make it to the stage till at least two hours later due to problems with setting up his elaborate gimmicky stage set, "which included an interplanetary landscape of a wavy black platform with a slanted floor in the middle and a video screen above." When he finally appeared, an unapologetic Kanye didn't even acknowledge or address his lateness which further incensed the crowd, some of whom used spray paint to express themselves, tagging the walls with anti-Kanye messages. We compiled some of the indignant graffiti below, plus a bonus photo of a hippie chick using both body and makeshift sign to display her disdain for the rapper.

Photos: |Diverting Bailey|

Photo: |Pixie Jane1980|

Photo: |KP!|

No Alarms & No Surprises

Over a year ago I gave away the award for 'The World's Biggest Douche" to Rush Limbaugh for accusing Michael J. Fox of faking and exaggerating his Parkinson's symptoms to garner sympathy for stem-cell research legislation. Today, he has been trumped. So much so that I believe that douchebag is inadequate to describe this rare specimen of humanity's sheer "doucheatude." So today I not-so-proudly declare the dishonorable Republican congressman from California, Rep. Darrell Issa, "The World's Biggest Fucktard," and here is why:

Congressman: Tim Russert Would’ve Wanted Us To Drill

"This afternoon, the House of Representatives took up a resolution honoring the life of Tim Russert. Following speeches by several speakers who issued heartfelt condolences, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) brazenly exploited Russert’s death by cynically transitioning his own remarks into yet another push for more domestic oil drilling:" [Think Progress]

ISSA: We are going to miss Tim Russert when it comes to the people on both sides of the issue of why we have $5 oil — $5 gasoline and $135 oil. I think Tim Russert would have been just the right guy to hold people accountable, who would talk about the 68 million acres that are, quote, inactive, while in fact 41 million are under current lease and use and are producing millions of barrels of oil and natural gas a day. […]

So, Madam Speaker, I am going to miss Tim Russert because this debate is too important not to have a fact-oriented, unbiased moderator who could in fact bring to bear the truth that we need to have.

Apparently, Issa’s heart is overcome with fondness for Big Oil. So in honor of Issa's major award I think we should apply this fun little game of attributing beliefs to people posthumously to other famous dead folks. Following Rep. Issa's example, here's some good starting points for your own wildly inappropriate and untimely ways to push your point of view:

"I think we should rid the world of the gayz and muzzlims, that's what Helen Keller would have wanted."
"There are too many mexicans in this country... Franklin Roosevelt wouldn't have stood for this. [oh wait, he couldn't have stood for anything, well he certainly wouldn't have wheeled up for this.]"
"The best thing to do is strike Iran before they strike us, it's what the little 8lb 6oz infant Jesus would have done."

Now you try! Who knows, maybe you'll be a winner too.


Other shameful Rep. Issa moments can be found here.

Meet the Press (and then politely ask them to leave)

Obama, McCain, and Gershon agree: The press needs to get off the stage

by Eric Boehlert
from Mediamatters.org
Tue, Jun 17, 2008

Two hopeful sparks were visible from the campaign trail last week that suggested there is growing support for the idea of pushing the press off the stage and letting voters get on with the important business of picking the next president. For years, the press played a central and welcome role in that decision-making. But over the past 12 months, the increasingly self-absorbed Beltway press corps has shown that it's no longer up to the job, that it cannot be trusted to oversee it.

The first thanks-but-no-thanks signal to the press came when the campaigns of both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain quickly rejected an offer made by ABC News to exclusively air the first of the proposed town hall forums that the candidates agreed, in principle, to have during the general-election campaign. ABC News, as part of its pitch, offered to have Diane Sawyer act as moderator.

But both campaigns insisted that any citizen-based town hall event had to be open to all television outlets, as well as be seen on the Internet, and not be sponsored or organized by a single news organization. More important, the campaigns stressed that the town hall meeting would not be moderated by the press.

The other refreshing forum being proposed for the general election is a Lincoln/Douglas-style event, which would also let the candidates address voters unfiltered and keep journalists on the sidelines, where they belong.

I cheered that bipartisan rejection of ABC's offer because, for me, at least, the entire appeal of the citizens-first town hall format is that the television networks would have virtually no role and that their millionaire moderators (like Sawyer) would be nowhere in sight. What was the point of letting ABC News brand a town hall forum as its own by putting its host in the chair, building space-age sets as it did during the winter debate sessions, selling lots of advertising time off the event, and then turning it into prime-time programming? The town hall forums aren't about the networks, they're about the larger electoral process.

By smartly swatting down ABC's proposal, the message seemed clear: The campaigns want to get the media off the stage. Journalists are not the collective third candidate in this election, although at times it's obvious they consider themselves to be just as important as political leaders. That runaway narcissism has severely damaged the craft, and the campaigns have wisely decided to give the press a time-out.

(story continued here)

WTF.

TN Dem. Superdelegate Davis slow to endorse Obama
[camp suggests terrorist connections...I kid you not]
Nashville City Paper
By John Rodgers
jrodgers@nashvillecitypaper.com
Updated: Friday, June 13, 2008 2:33 am

Some Tennesseans wonder why Congressman Lincoln Davis (D-Pall Mall) is waiting until the Democratic National Convention in August before endorsing his party’s nominee for President. Courtesy of lincolndavis.com

The rise of Sen. Barack Obama, to become the Democrats’ presidential nominee has put most of his party’s faithful on his bandwagon — but not Lincoln Davis, a rural Tennessee Congressman with gubernatorial ambitions.

Davis (D-Pall Mall) is not yet endorsing the presumptive nominee in Obama, saying he’ll wait until the late August Democratic Party national convention.

In Davis’ sprawling 4th Congressional District — which ranges from as far west as Hickman County to as far east as the upper Cumberland Plateau — less than a quarter of Democrats in the largely rural district voted for Obama, the nation’s first African-American presidential candidate nominated by a major party, in Tennessee’s presidential primary.

Davis, a rural white Congressman, represents two-dozen counties — 21 in their entirety and three in part — including Williamson’s southwestern corner.

In February’s Tennessee Democratic primary, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) won 23 of those 24 counties, garnering 68 percent of the vote compared to Obama’s 23 percent. Obama won only Williamson County.

When examining the 21 counties resting entirely within Davis’ district, Clinton’s numbers rise from 68 percent to winning 73 percent of the vote. Obama won a meager 18 percent.

The situation presents perhaps a unique political situation for Davis. He is withholding his endorsement of Obama while he prepares to face a Republican challenge for his conservative “swing” district that overwhelmingly supported Obama’s rival.

Meanwhile, Davis has gubernatorial ambitions for 2010, in which Tennessee political history strongly suggests the Democratic strongholds of Shelby and Davidson counties with their large groups of black voters are a must for his or any Democrat’s aspirations for statewide office.

Fred Hobbs, a state Democratic Party Executive Committee member representing part of Davis’ district, said he understands why Davis is not endorsing Obama and is “skeptical” of the Illinois senator himself.

“Maybe [it’s] the same reason I don’t want to — I don’t exactly approve of a lot of the things he stands for and I’m not sure we know enough about him,” Hobbs said when asked why he thought Davis wasn’t endorsing Obama. “He’s got some bad connections, and he may be terrorist connected for all I can tell. It sounds kind of like he may be.”

Davis was not made available for comment.

His chief of staff, Beecher Frasier, said he doesn’t know for sure if Obama is “terrorist connected” but he assumes he’s not.

Frasier denied that Davis was withholding his endorsement of Obama for political reasons, saying Davis believed that was how the superdelegate system was intended to work.

(story continued)

Weakness and American Culture

The Art of Growing Up

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: June 6, 2008
(c) New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/opinion/06brooks.html?hp

In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln seems to have at least vaguely thought of suicide. His friend Joshua Speed found him one day thrashing about in his room. “Lincoln went Crazy,” Speed wrote. “I had to remove razors from his room — take away all Knives and other such dangerous things — it was terrible.”

Lincoln was taking three mercury pills a day, the remedy in those days for people who either suffered from syphilis or feared contracting it. “Lincoln could not eat or sleep,” Daniel Mark Epstein writes in his new book, “The Lincolns.” “He appeared at the statehouse irregularly, hollow-eyed, unshaven, emaciated — an object of pity to his friends and of derision to others.”

Later, Lincoln wrote of that period with shame, saying that he had lost the “gem of my character.” He would withdraw morosely from the world into a sort of catatonic state. Early in his marriage, Epstein writes, “Lincoln had night terrors. He woke in the middle of the night trembling, talking gibberish.”

He would, of course, climb out of it. He would come to terms with his weaknesses, control his passions and achieve what we now call maturity.

The concept of maturity has undergone several mutations over the course of American history. In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self. Human beings were born with sin, infected with dark passions and satanic temptations. The transition to adulthood consisted of achieving mastery over them.

You can read commencement addresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the speakers would talk about the beast within and the need for iron character to subdue it. Schoolhouse readers emphasized self-discipline. The whole character-building model was sin-centric. So the young Lincoln had been encouraged by the culture around him to identify his own flaws — and, in any case, he had no trouble finding them. He knew he was ferociously ambitious and blessed with superior talents — the sort of person who could easily turn into a dictator or monster.

Over the course of his young adulthood, Lincoln built structures around his inner nature. He joined a traditional bourgeois marriage. He called his wife “mother” and lived in a genteel middle-class home. He engaged in feverish bouts of self-improvement, studying Euclid and grammar at all hours. He distrusted passionate politics. In the Lyceum speech that he delivered as a young man, he attacked emotionalism in politics and talked about the need for law, order and cool reason.

This concept of maturity as self-conquest didn’t survive long into the 20th century. Progressive educators emphasized students’ inner goodness and curiosity, not inner depravity. More emphasis was put on individual freedom, authenticity and values clarification. Self-discovery replaced self-mastery as the primary path to maturity, and we got a thousand novels and memoirs about young peoples’ search for identity.

In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.

And yet, though we’re never going back to the 19th-century, sin-centric character-building model, for breeding leaders, it has its uses. Over the past decades, we’ve seen president after president confident of his own talents but then undone by underappreciated flaws. It’s as if they get elected for their virtues and then get defined in office by the vices — Clinton’s narcissism, Bush’s intellectual insecurity — they’ve never really faced.

It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.

Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.

Somehow a leader conversant with his own failings wouldn’t be as affected by the moral self-approval that afflicts most political movements. He’d be detached from his most fervid followers and merciful and understanding toward foes. He’d have a sense of his own smallness in the sweep of events. He or she would contravene Lord Acton’s dictum and grow sadder and wiser with more power.

All this suggests a maxim for us voters: Don’t only look to see which candidate has the most talent. Look for the one most emotionally gripped by his own failings.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

To provide an example, here, courtesy of NPR's All Things Considered, is an interview with Obama following a debate in which Obama, Edwards and Clinton were asked about their greatest weakness. Not that Obama's answer is all that great by any means, because it's not, but his response to the other candidate's b.s. is pretty funny.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18186247

MS. BLOCK: You did say the other night in the debate, when you were asked about your greatest weakness, you confessed to a certain lack of organization. You said your desk and your office are not pretty things and you need good staff around you, and that you can't do everything alone. Do you think that may be the wrong message to be sending to voters?

SEN. OBAMA: It was interesting. I guess I should have listened to the answers that Senator Edwards and Senator Clinton provided. I think John Edwards said that his biggest weakness was he was too passionate about helping poor people and Senator Clinton indicated she was too impatient to move the country forward. So I thought the question was what’s your biggest weakness as opposed to what your greatest strength is, disguised as a weakness. I should have said that I like to help old ladies across the street.

MS. BLOCK: You want a redo on that?

SEN. OBAMA: No, I don’t actually. You know, I think one of the hallmarks of our campaign is that I actually answer questions honestly and try not to engage in too much spin.

GObama.

OBAMA CLAIMS NOMINATION

Obama secured enough delegates tonight to make history as the first African-American to lead a U.S. major-party ticket.


Addendum:
David Brooks thinks there is not so much reason to celebrate. He reminds us to not forgot the power of stupid people in large numbers. Good points, though I think he also fails to notice the power of smart people in large numbers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/opinion/03brooks.html?_r=1&hp&oref=login