The real scary thing about this is not that she’d lie about something like this – that’s par for the course for these people. It’s that so many people believe her.

I was thinking, after seeing Machete last night, and having a rip-roaring time, perhaps she was somehow mistaking a movie about a Mexican who cuts peoples heads off with reality. Conservatives are known to do that sometimes, confusing a larger-than-life movie persona with the mediocre people who acted the part (see “John Wayne”, “Ronald Reagan”, “Fred Thompson”, etc).

I’m gonna write a review shortly, which I’ll undoubtedly have more on the political angle of this movie, as well as some video from some right-wing whiny-ass fucktard about how the movie’s trying to start a “race war”. Stay tuned.

Here’s the fake trailer that got it going:

I might get a review up for ya’. Have a good weekend.

Let me know how it is, won’t you?

To recap:

* CBS low-end (78k): 13 sq. ft. per person
* CBS high-end (96k): 10 sq. ft. per person
* Beck low-end (300k): 3.3 sq. ft. per person
* Beck high-end (600k): 1.7 sq. ft. per person

What would those numbers mean in real life? Let’s look at it a couple of different ways. First, let’s assume each person was was in standing in the middle of a perfect square and that nobody else was inside of their square. What would the dimensions be of each person’s square?

* CBS low-end (78k): 43 inches by 43 inches
* CBS high-end (96k): 38 inches by 38 inches
* Beck low-end (300k): 22 inches by 22 inches
* Beck high-end (600k): 16 inches by 16 inches

Now let’s translate this to something most of us have experience with: airline seats. An airline seat is typically about 19 inches wide and there’s about 31 or 32 inches between each row. Roughly, that’s about 600 square inches or 4 square feet. So given that, how much area, in terms of airline seats, was the average person occupying according to these estimates?

* CBS low-end (78k): 3.1 airline seats of area per person
* CBS high-end (96k): 2.4 airline seats of area per person
* Beck low-end (300k): 0.8 airline seats of area per person
* Beck high-end (600k): 0.4 airline seats of area per person

I fully expect this to be rejected by any and all teabaggers because a) it’s at a liberal blog, so it couldn’t possibly be true, and b) it has actual statistics, numbers and evidence to back up its claims, which are anathema to teabaggers. Remember, Reagan said “Facts are stupid things.” Evidence and proof are elitist, dontcha know? Fuzzy math!! Reality is really only what the crazy voice in their heads (or on FOX news) sez it is. Anything else is soshalizm.

I don’t like little-dicked macho horseshit that plagues some of ‘em and the complete conformity(necessary for it, but certainly not my thing),  as well as how a certain segment of society fetishizes the military as though military service is always “good” or superior or something like that. The big issue for me is that more often than not, the U.S. military is not used for “defense” in any stretch of the imagination, other than the defense of capital. And if you’re in it, in most cases, you gotta do what they tell you, no matter how wrong it may be. And before you jump down my throat, I’m speaking from experience, having had several close family members and some friends in the military, so it’s not like I’m pulling this out of my ass. And yes, there are some genuinely good people of conscience in there, too, so spare me your poutrage.

One thing that’s gotten scary is the seemingly increasing presence of evangelical Christianity in the Armed Forces, which is adding another layer of madness to the whole thing. It’s almost as though some top military brass somewhere feels that the best way to fight the radical Muslims is to have a bunch of our craziest Christians in there fighting them.  Theoretically, were that to happen, it would be a net plus for all of us, as we’d keep them out of the general population, but the sad fact remains that many soldiers do not subscribe to that insanity. Hell, Pat Tillman (remember him?) was an outspoken atheist.

So the latest in the Christofascist military complex story? Soldiers being punished for not going to a Christian rock concert. Apparently, the featured act was called BarlowGirl, a band that describes itself as taking “an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God.” Beautiful. So, anyways, it was very clear that this was some sort of evangelical event, and about eighty soldiers had their wits about them and chose, apparently under great pressure, not to attend. And so the vengeance of the Lard was swift and merciless:

“Those of us that chose not to attend (about 80, or a little less that half) were marched back to the company area. At that point the NCO issued us a punishment. We were to be on lock-down in the company (not released from duty), could not go anywhere on post (no PX, no library, etc). We were to go to strictly to the barracks and contact maintenance. If we were caught sitting in our rooms, in our beds, or having/handling electronics (cell phones, laptops, games) and doing anything other than maintenance, we would further have our weekend passes revoked and continue barracks maintenance for the entirety of the weekend. At that point the implied message was clear in my mind ‘we gave you a choice to either satisfy us or disappoint us. Since you chose to disappoint us you will now have your freedoms suspended and contact chores while the rest of your buddies are enjoying a concert.’

If you’ve ever heard Christian rock, it’s punishment enough, so perhaps the military punishment was actually better. Now some of you undoubtedly will say, yes, order, discipline, military blah-blah, if you’re in, you just bend over and take what they give you, whatever, but this is a bit different. Read the whole thing… it was “voluntary” yet they were ostracized for exercising their right not to attend. That ‘freedom of religion” thing doesn’t stop when you join the military. Hell, that’s why they allow for conscientious objectors.  So, hats off to those who chose not to attend, and furthermore, let’s hope the complaint they filed gets somewhere.  The already bloated military budget shouldn’t be going to fund this kind of crap. It’s bad enough it’s paying for weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass stupidity makes it even worse.

I’m increasingly convinced now that one of the favorite pastimes of the right is necrophilia. But not just necrophilia… it’s necrophiliac sodomy. Conservatives love to sodomize the corpse of Ronald Reagan ad nauseum, and by all accounts, yesterday Beck gleefully and repeatedly sodomized the corpse of MLK, Jr., as the pasty white masses gathered on the National Mall to, get this, “take back” the civil rights movement from all those gays, blacks and others who were really just using the civil rights movement as an excuse to take jobs from straight white men and in some cases, have sex with their women.

Ever consistent, the Teabaggers who showed up (as they are all part of Glenn Beck’s Dumbfuck Nation®) didn’t seem to cry “censorship” when they were asked to leave their “Obama is an Islamofascisocialist” signs home, and gladly curtailed their freedom of speech for Mr. Beck. It’s not surprising, as as much as they fetishize the Constitution, few of ‘em have actually read it, let alone understand it. Nevertheless, some had no problem expressing themeselves, whether it be through the wearing of super-tacky (dare I say “drag-queenesque”) Chinese-made “patriotic” attire, or in the case of this fine upstanding citizen, simple t-shirts (h/t Gawker):

Keeping with the teabagger theme, I never said it was coherent. Is “Mauitania” some sort of Hawaiian breakaway republic?  But is anything they do coherent? It was funny. Not ha-ha funny, more like the “funny” you feel after you’ve eaten some bad clams or something. As C&L points out in this great bit, Glenn Beck really does remind us of the Civil Rights Era — that is, the people who hated Martin Luther King.