If that funny-talking Limey John Oliver thinks he can embarrass "Miss Mitch" McConnell, he's got another think coming

John Oliver tells us all about the "Thurmond Rule" -- and
shows us Miss Mitch calling it "this rule that doesn't exist"


"If the President has trouble doing nothing, we will be more than happy to show him how it is done."

-- Senate Majority Leader "Miss Mitch" McConnell, as
quoted this morning by the Borowitz Report (see below)

by Ken

First, a confidential to whoever thought it was a good idea to have John Oliver's Last Week Tonight off HBO's airwaves for three months: WTF??? I assume there were Reasons. There are always Reasons, aren't there?) I just trust that somewhere among those Reasons there's some assurance that the LWT team will be on the job with only minimal interruptions between now and the election.

As probably everyone knows by now -- since by this morning I saw the lead item plastered all over the Internet (here, for example, is Marlow Stern at The Daily Beast) -- the LWT gang was back last night. And as John explains, that lead item hadn't been in preparation for three months. It was only precipitated by Saturday's of the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and the subsequent declaration by Senate Majority Leader "Miss Mitch" McConnell that his cabal of crackpots and thugs will not consider any nomination for a new Supreme Court justice which comes from President Obama. And never mind that the Constitution clearly makes such a nomination not only the president's right but his responsibility.


TO CATCH YOU UP ON THE STORY --

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a television appearance on Sunday, the leading Senate Republican warned President Obama “in no uncertain terms” against doing anything in his remaining three hundred and forty days in office.

“The President should be aware that, for all intents and purposes, his term in office is already over,” Mitch McConnell said on Fox News. “It’s not the time to start doing things when you have a mere eight thousand one hundred and sixty hours left.”

While acknowledging that the President has eleven months remaining in the White House, McConnell said that he and the President “have an honest disagreement about how long eleven months is.”

“The President believes it is almost one year,” he said. “I believe it is almost zero years. I’m not a mathematician, but I believe I am right.”

As for how Obama should spend his remaining time in office, McConnell said, “If the President has trouble doing nothing, we will be more than happy to show him how it is done.”

WELL, YOU KNOW THOSE RIGHT-WINGERS!

They don't answer to the law or the Constitution. They answer to a higher power: their megalomania and psychotic delusions.

Writing Saturday night, arguing that "we mustn't pretend that Justice Nino was anything but, you know, what he was," I may have surprised readers by being fairly accepting of Miss Mitch's declaration that his cabal will not allow consideration of an Obama Supreme Court nomination. But I was simply  accepting the reality --

that as our system has evolved, there isn't much chance of Senate consideration of a Supreme Court nomination that's made in the final year of a presidential term, even though the Constitution doesn't offer any such proscription. But it is the reality, isn't it?

I did, though, add a footnote noting that if we were to play the game I'm so fond of, If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot, we could expect Miss Mitch and his fellow cabalists to sing a wildly different tune. "Of course," I wrote,

if it was a Republican president faced with a Supreme Court vacancy in February of the fourth year of his/her term, any attempt by Democrats to interfere with his/her constitutional responsibility to name a replacement would be greeted with choruses of right-wing outrage and cries of "tyranny!"

Even as I wrote, I had a hunch that some version of this game had already been played for real. Now the Last Week Tonight team has given us the video.


DOES THE THURMOND RULE EVEN APPLY HERE?



I confess that when I wrote Saturday, I was fuzzy on the exact time frame specified in what John explains is known as the Republicans' Thurmond Rule. That's why I took pains to describe the situation of a president "faced with a Supreme Court vacancy in February of the fourth year of his/her term." The LWT segment clarifies that the actual terms of the Thurmond Rule would disallow a presidential nomination for a lifetime judgeship in the last six months of his term. (Note: I don't think we have to say "of his/her term" where Strom Thurmond is concerned. For old Strom, the idea of a "her" president was probably as inconceivable as, say, the idea of a "colored" president.)

As John Oliver points out in the segment, the last six months of the Obama administration begin on July 20. Meaning that even under the Thurmond Rule-that-isn't-a-rule, we're nowhere near the Point of No Lifetime Judicial Nominations.


SO WHAT? DOES IT MATTER AT ALL TO MISS MITCH?

Is there any reason to think that Miss Mitch cares any more about the terms of the wholly extra-constitutional Thurmond Rule than he cares about American law or the Constitution itself? He answers to no authority but the "Fuck America!" ethos of the 21st-century American Far Right, whose overriding goal is to turn the country into the toxic cesspool that is their minds.

Because, after all, Miss Mitch has done a lousy job of keeping it secret that throughout the Obama presidency his entire objective has been to obstruct and destroy. Fuck America! If he can't have his diseased vision of a fascist autocracy, then just fuck it, and Fuck All the Americans Who Don't Matter, because that's what right-wingers want to do: Fuck All the Americans Who Don't Matter. Of course for our One-Percenters, which is to say the most important group of Americans Who Matter, there's money to be made off the misery of the Americans Who Don't Matter. And for those who sense -- some rightly, some wrongly -- that they're being screwed but nevertheless embrace right-wing ideology, there's some kind of primitive satisfaction to be had in seeing those other poor souls screwed.

Otherwise, how to explain the existence, let alone the actual popular followings, of life forms like The Donald, Rafael "Ted from Alberta" Cruz, and the world's most immoderate "moderate," Marco Rubio? What has appalled me most about the creatures who have made up the Republican presidential "fields" in this and the last couple of presidential election cycles isn't that their politics is so reactionary and stupid but that they are all such screamingly horrible, inexcusable people.

And in their various ways they have all cynically embraced, even encouraged, modern-day America's Flight from Reality, something I've been squawking about for years now. It's the triumph of reality-substitute over reality -- of, as Stephen Colbert framed it, "truthiness" over truth.


WE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

In that Saturday footnote in which I speculated about the application of the If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot game to Miss Mitch's declaration of policy-by-hissy-fit. So what if it were to turn out that Miss Mitch was being hypocritical?

For right-wingers nowadays, hypocrisy is considered not just "no foul" but a virtual obligation. If you aren't being hypocritical, it's assumed you aren't really trying.

After all, hypocrisy is the least of it. Reality and truth have been prime casualties of the rise of the modern Far Right. Somewhere in the formative years of the new century, under the influence of propagandists like Karl Rove and Roger Ailes, and under the unwatchful eye and imbecile grin of George W. "Chimpy the Prez" Bush, the Right formally went off the truth standard, disclaiming any obligation at all to reality or truth.

Where Chimpy's own presidency faltered, it wasn't for lack of truthfulness, after all. He was never held to account for any of the lies with which his administration's policies had been sold. But well before he left the White House, Chimpy had begun to disappear before our very eyes, and it seemed clear to me that the public wasn't looking to him for truth -- about the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan policies, for example -- but instead was insisting on its right to newer and better lies.

Instead the people got the Great Financial Meltdown of 2008. And even then they didn't connect the dots: that there's a price to be paid for government by the One Percent for the One Percent. Similarly, if there's any price to be paid for Government by Lies, the bill comes due far, far down the line, and can usually be fobbed off on some poor, unsuspecting souls.

The Right's Grand Disconnect from Reality hit home for me in the 2008 presidential campaign of Young Johnny McCranky, in which the candidate managed not just to avoid ever speaking the truth about anything but on most issues to offer a minimum of two, and usually more, mutually contradictory lies. After the election, I looked at the number of votes McCranky had nevertheless scored, and couldn't help but think there was going to be a price to pay for the GOP's official Disconnect from Reality. Even so, I couldn't have imagined the 2012 and 2016 GOP presidential "fields."

And the hard core of Democratic officialdom managed to remain only a few steps behind, making it official party philosophy that the very most that Dems had to do was be just the merest hair's breadth better than the R's.


Ain't this a kick in the pants? Compared with the nutso ravings of Miss Mitch and The Donald and Ted from Alberta and the rest, Colonel Jessup's argument sounds reasonable.


BONUS: A SCENE FROM THE FLIGHT FROM REALITY

The great David Sipress is currently on "Daily Cartoon" duty at The New Yorker, and today's offering seems very much appropriate to the theme of "Reality as Perceived (and Promulgated) by the Modern-Day Right."

“I had a dream last night that Planned Parenthood
did something new and horrible to a fetus! We need
to launch an immediate congressional investigation.”

#

As the hustling Hucksterbee makes more candidate-like noises, we ponder: What makes Minister Mike run?

"Everywhere I go," says Minister Mike, "people tell me they hope I run." Like this guy? Has the Hucksterbee perhaps been spending too much time on the "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" circuit?

by Ken

Yesterday former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee announced that he will announce his decision whether to run for president in 2016 on May 5. Already, though, our radio fanatic Jack, who keeps us up to date on doings at the intersection between radio and politics, was passing along word that Minister Mike, now a perennial GOP presidential wannabe, was making noises like a 2016 GOP presidential wannabe.

First there was this Inside Radio report:

Huckabee Ends Radio Commentaries

Posted: Thursday, April 16, 2015

As he considers a potential presidential run, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee will end his daily radio commentaries, effective May 1. “The Huckabee Report,” which currently airs on more than 500 stations, will be available in podcast form to subscribers.

The three-times-daily commentaries were picked up by WYM Media Management in January, after Huckabee ended a six-year relationship with Westwood One. Syndicated talker and Fox News Channel contributor Mike Gallagher will replace Huckabee, starting May 4. Huckabee earlier announced he’s leaving Fox News Channel, ending his six year-old television show.

Huckabee said Wednesday morning that his daily commentaries would no longer be broadcast and hinted he was getting closer to deciding whether to make a second run for the White House. "I've had biting and tough commentary about some of the more absurd ways in which Washington defied common sense and busted our family budgets as well as in which their naive and so called smart diplomacy caused us to lose our friends' trust and gain nothing but the ridicule of our enemies," Huckabee said. “But, as I move closer to the decision to do more than talk about these concerns and do something about them, I will bring the broadcast version to a close.”

Huckabee will distribute his commentaries online as part Huckabee Exclusive, a subscription-based portal that offers daily podcasts, weekly videos and a news summary of the big stories of the week with Huckabee’s take on them.

Then there was this perspective from radio maven Tom Taylor:

Sounding like a 2016 candidate, Mike Huckabee launches a subscription site and drops his daily radio commentary

Radio’s been pretty good to the former Arkansas governor, ever since a local station helped him through college as he worked as a DJ. Nearly a year and a half ago, he ended his three-hour daily talk show with Cumulus, but kept up his thrice-daily commentaries through WYM Media and WYD Media Ad Sales (December 17 NOW). The latest from Arkansas Online is that Huckabee’s leaving the short-form business at the end of this month, and that WYM will replace him with Mike Gallagher’s “Gallagher Online,” starting May 4. Huckabee says “Everywhere I go, people tell me they hope I run [for president], but they miss the television show and would miss my being on radio, if my candidacy caused it to cease as well.” He says “that’s why I have launched the Huckabee Exclusive,” costing $7.95 a month or about $60 a year. That keeps him from running afoul of the FCC’s equal time rule for broadcasting – and gives him a new revenue stream. He reportedly felt that his 2008 Presidential run was hampered by a lack of funds. Meanwhile, Huckabee’s about to be a radio station owner. The March 16 NOW had the story about Huckabee buying stations through the new Bluff City Radio group, in which Mike’s a minority partner. Bluff City’s buying AC “K-Train” KTRN (104.5) in Pine Bluff, plus construction permits for three new FMs.

At the mention of that $7.95-a-month "Hucksterbee Exclusive," Jack asks: "What kind of nuts are going to pay for that?"

A fair question, but I take it back a step and ask, what kind of nuts think the Hucksterbee has a shot at the 2016 GOP presidential nomination? Or, for that matter, most of the other GOP nutters making candidate-like noises for 2016 -- in the grand tradition of the Band of Nutters who comprised the never-to-be-forgotten (however-hard-we-may-try) 2012 GOP presidential field?

It puts me in mind of this recent Borowitz Report:

LOUISVILLE (The Borowitz Report)—With an official announcement on his campaign Web site, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has joined a crowded field of people who will never be elected President in their lifetimes.

While Paul and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are the only officially announced Republican candidates with a zero-per-cent chance of ever winning the Presidency, a burgeoning roster of totally pointless candidacies is waiting in the wings.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and neurosurgeon Ben Carson are just a few of the men thought to be considering squandering time and money pursuing an office that they will never occupy in a billion years.

On the Democratic side, only former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has stepped forward as someone who could only be elected to the White House in an alternate universe.

Minutes after his announcement, aides to Senator Paul said that they believed that he would emerge as the top choice of voters who are determined to waste their votes in 2016.

“There’s no one out there who has a more remote chance of being elected, unless Trump decides to run,” one aide said.

Well, I'm here to say that Minister Mike has every bit as remote a chance as the Rand Man. No, I'm going to say remoter. And he's someone who might at some point be talked to by other, less remotely chanced GOP candidates, since the Rand Man with his crypto-libertarian views has access to a slice of the GOP voter base that the other candidates don't. At this point does anyone really believe that Minister Mike can bring any significant amount of support from his supposed evangelical base to the dance?

But I guess for all these nutters who crawl out of the woodwork to preen as GOP presidential wannabes -- yes, even for The Donald -- there's the upside of a kind of national attention they can't get any other way, which might at some point lead to other opportunities, without any real downside, unless you count the possibility of making a disastrous fool of your candidatorial self. But then, how big a price did one of 2012's most celebrated GOP candidate fails, then Texas Gov. Rick Perry, suffer? After all, is he not pretending to be a serious 2016 candidate, and are there not media hucksters on call to explain to us why it could really happen?

Meanwhile, all those commentating gigs Minister Mike is having to separate himself from in anticipation of another run, would he have had those if he hadn't invented himself as a presidential couldbe? So maybe it's not so much politics per se as politics-as-bizniz?

#

The Idiocracy Files (Redux), Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!

[We continue our encore presentation of Noah's Idiocracy series. And don't forget Noah's new "Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?," "50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles," and "A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina."]

[On Wednesday Noah began chronicling a spate of 2012 "Idiocracy moments" that recalled for him Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, a look 500 years into the future at a world gone, well, you know. Yesterday he was back with more, and still his list of sightings overflowed. So today we have Part 3. -- Ed.]

by Noah

All hail the new confederacy -- of dunces! For those about to secede, we salute you, with a finger raised high!

We knew that, if President Obama were to be reelected, the Republicans would completely lose what tiny remnants of sanity they had left. The precedent was there back in 2008, when their leaders at the FOX "News" channel and the rest of the hate-pundit universe went all crackers all the time after the first election of the man Republicans refer to as Barack Hussein Dark Lord Muslim Obama. They just keep going and going and going, beating their drum like some Energizer Bunny of doom, pushing the envelope of crazy into regions known only in asylums.

Sadly though, there can never be enough syringes of calming thorazine or other antipsychotic medications for all of the media wackjobs and health-hatin', gun-totin' citizen nutballs out there. With the reelection of their imaginary black-skin boogie man, they, their political allies, and the gullible subjects of their psychotic propaganda have entered a universe from which there seems to be no return. We are fully in a Civil War now, and the disgruntled want to secede.

IT'S NO SURPRISE THAT TEXAS LEADS THE WAY!

Even their freely chosen governor, Rick Perry, has hinted as much (with video at the link) as far back as 2009.

Even better, "actor" and McCain cheerleader Chuck Norris wants to be the president of Texas when that glorious day comes.

I may run for president of Texas. That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone, someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.

Chuckie wrote all that in his column in WorldNetDaily (link above). Yes, the folks who gave us "Hillary killed Vince Foster" and, much more recently, had their Erik Rush (who is also a regular FOX "News" contributor) tweeting that armed resistance may be just the ticket.

I suppose suggesting that we shoot them wouldn't be taken very well, although that is precisely what it came down to 236 years ago.

Here's the video that Rush tweeted at the time.



It's by a guy named Christopher Greene, who says that not only is President Obama using the horrific Sandy Hook murders to take away guns and subvert liberties, but concentration camps for those in Obama's way are next on the horizon. To the gullible low-information, angry citizen, this kind of thing is all too plausible and provides a target for their fears and frustrations. To people like Rush and Greene, what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School was some sort of CIA psy-ops job. Greene is all over the place, as you will see. It's a fascinating look into the minds of the deranged, but Greene's brand of psychotic lunacy reaches a lot of people, especially when it is being promoted by FOX on-air personalities like Erik Rush.

It's not just about what we can see on FOX "News." It's about the people they promote and their views. When you take it all in together -- FOX, the WorldNetDailies, and the Christopher Greenes that do Internet broadcasting from the basement fringes or even abandoned-missile-silo survivalist encampments -- can it be any wonder that so many of the angry and foolish now talk about secession?

Remember Michele Bachmann's pronouncements about FEMA Camps? People believe this stuff, for real. Let's not forget that the Republican Party has already run a candidate for vice president who has ties to the Alaskan Secession movement and 50 million people voted for the ticket. She now has a job on FOX.



IT'S AMAZING HOW A BROADCAST CAN
MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE ANYTHING!

Back on Halloween night in 1938, Orson Welles, then only 23, did his now-famous radio broadcast of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds over the CBS network. It was a story about an invasion of Martian monsters.



It set off a panic among many of the listeners as they believed an actual Martian invasion was taking place in New Jersey. Just being on the radio gave the story a sheen of credibility, just like being on the TeeVee or Internets does in today's world. You think Roger Ailes doesn't know this?

Times were already uneasy. The economy was showing some signs of recovery from the Great Depression but was still shaky and news of war was in the air. So was paranoia. Sound familiar? Watch the clip. Note the call for able-bodied citizens to report to the sheriff to do battle with the monsters. Note the mention of "being watched" by the enemy as they planned our demise. To way too many Republicans, that monster is a Marxist secret-Muslim Martian who has already taken over the White House.

************

SO WE CAN LAUGH AT THE 2012 FREAKSHOW . . .

. . . that was Rick Perry and Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann and, finally Willard Mitt Romney, as seemingly each week another of these people became the leading spokesperson or candidate of the Republican Party. We can laugh at the real leader of the party being an obese, sweaty man with a bag of Oxycontin in one hand and a bag of Dominican Viagra in the other who makes millions feeding the paranoid hate-filled frenzy.

We can laugh at the fringe hucksters and the fringe true believers alike, but, as we well know, not everyone is laughing. People who have critical-thinking powers will always laugh at such people -- laughing at some more than others. But half of the country is taken in by their warped messages about banning contraception, about rape just being another form of insemination, about how the president of the United States wasn't born here, about gays not being equal, about the evil of teachers unions (which among other things create gun-free zones), about how the very air isn't in danger, and how certain voters just "want stuff" (you know, free stuff), and, lastly but not the least, you better stock up on some weaponry and do it fast, because Obama is a-comin' for ya, you betcha.

WHERE WILL IT END?

Where does FOX want it to end? What violence does Rupert Murdoch crave? In service of whom? What will set the employees of FOX off into a wave of high-fiving? We now have a Civil War without borders so it's not just an issue of which states want to go. Republicans are everywhere. I'm very tempted to say, "Just let the South go again." They will never stop fighting the first Civil War. When Texas goes, we can keep Austin and San Antonio and just set them up like postwar Berlin.

People in the other states who want to go too can go, I suppose. I'll even give 'em a choice: They don't have to call their new country Crackpotopia. They can call it Transvaginalia, for all I care. If they don't want to be here, get the fuck out. Let them all go. They blather on about the founding fathers and the Constitution a lot, but they don't seem to understand that we were originally built as a confederation of disparate colonies/states working together.

Let them all go and take all their passionate negativity and nihilism and set up their dream Taliban in their right-to-work-for-less states. They can all go, as soon as they agree to accept no more money whatsoever from the United States federal government. They must service and secure their own ports with their own money. They must close their military bases, which the U.S. government pays for with our taxes. They must form their own Coast Guard and Navy to protect their shores. Let their highways disintegrate into nothingness, and let their bridges collapse. Let them be responsible for their own borders with no foreign aid -- that dreaded foreign aid, from us.

Let them turn to full-time moonshining and meth-cooking to raise whatever money they need. Let them teach their kids that their forebears rode dinosaurs at the beginning of time 6000 years ago. Let them feed themselves as their states turn into modern-day dustbowls because of the global warming they don't believe in. They can live on a diet of Twizzlers and jerky. Twinkies are no longer on the table, since those mean, mean union workers wanted a fair shake.

There must also be no federal involvement from us in regulating the safety of any other food they can process or water they drink. They can get their own Centers for Disease Control. They are on their own. Let them all die of ebola, cholera, and, perhaps the inevitable, cannibalism. Eventually, of course, they will form their own versions of Hamas, and we will begin shelling eachother. They will miss the irony.

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

-- The Narrator, Idiocracy

Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: Beware the Girl Scouts, Sheldon Adelson, and more
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

#

2012: The Year That "Idiocracy" Moments Broke the Scale, Part 1

As our friend Bil pointed out in a comment on our colleague Noah's Sunday evening post "Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?," Noah has not done one of his traditional blockbuster multipart end-of-year holiday series. I'm afraid plates have been rather full in the Noah household this holiday season, but I thought what we might do is to repeat last year's enormously popular series based on one of Noah's favorite films, Mike Judge's Idiocracy. (Also check out Noah's new "50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles" and "A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina.") -- Ken

2012 was the year of the memorable "Idiocracy moment" when a Republican presidential candidate couldn't count to 3.

by Noah

One of my favorite films of all time is Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. Is it a great film, strictly speaking? No. Does it hold more truths about the sad state of our society than any ten other films? Absolutely! It is the world that I see around me.

The Idiocracy world that Judge depicts takes place 500 years in the future, but if you stream or rent the movie, you might find yourself swearing that Judge either made the movie back in 1512 and imagined our present, or that the movie is just an ever so slightly exaggerated documentary of today's world.  In the movie, an ordinary guy, Pvt. Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), finds himself the victim of a Pentagon experiment gone awry. He is put into suspended animation and is due to be woken up in exactly one year. However, when the man in charge of the experiment is given the pink slip, Bauers is completely forgotten about, only to awaken 500 years later in a world where 500 years of the dumbing down of our culture has digressed so far that he finds himself in a world where he is considered a genius simply because he can put a coherent sentence together and knows that crops need water, not sports drinks with extra electrolytes and vitamins, in order to grow.

Having served my time in corporate America, I can relate to Joe Bauers. It's a world where you better park most of your vocabulary in the back of your brain, and God help you if you know how to sell your product or use logic to solve a problem. You might be askin' for a beatdown.

In the world of the future, or tomorrow, literally tomorrow, Google is now a porn site. In fact, virtually every corporation has become some sort of sex-oriented enterprise. FedX is now FedXXX. U.S News & World Report is now Hot Naked Chicks and World Report (above), and a fast food chicken place, Pollo Borracho, features "ADULT CHICKEN -- Bucket of Wings with 'Full Release' " (below).

In the same time, corporate sponsorship has taken the next, most obviously logical step. The stars on our flag are now fast-food chain Carl's Jr. yellow stars, and even federal government buildings (State Dept., Agriculture Dept., etc.) are named like sports stadiums. Also, the president of the United States is an ex-professional wrestler. (Jesse Ventura, anyone?) Really, the world of Idiocracy is not much of a stretch from our present day.

With all that said, I have gathered up a small list of some "Idiocracy moments" that I observed over the crazy year of 2012, a year where the Idiocracy really came to the foreground -- the biggest, saddest reality show of all time.


1. The Entire Republican Primary Season

There's no need to go into detail here. It was an appalling scene that played out across the months. Fast Food man Herman Cain -- 9-9-9. Rick Perry, who incredibly is the governor of a whole state, reportedly hates Methodists for welcoming gays, and he can’t even count to 3 (see clip above). Newt "I'm Gonna Be the Candidate" Gingrich, Mitt "Corporations Are People, My Friend" Romney -- take your pick. Perfect Idiocracy.

Here’s Idiocracy’s President Comacho. Just imagine if Herman Cain was president and some Idiocracy congressloon from South Carolina shouted out, "You lie!"

PRESIDENT COMACHO: Shit! I know shit's fucked up right now with all that starving bullshit, and all the dust storms, and we're running out of French fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution!
SOUTH CAROLINA REPRESENTATIVE: That's what you said last time, dipshit.

Like I said, Idiocracy is only a slight exaggeration of our reality. Or is it an exaggeration at all?


2. Bad, bad computer!

As I write this post, a madman who serves as the head of a front for the armaments industry and gun runners everywhere, a man named Wayne LaPierre, is giving a crazed, desperate, evil lecture on my TV, like some cartoonish Latin American dictator from the 1960s. He is extolling the virtues of gun owners, promoting sales of more and more guns and ammo, and blaming recent mass murders on everything under the sun except the out-of-control proliferation of guns in our country, and calling for not one more law. It's another "out of my cold dead hands" moment and more. To him, the solution is more, more, more. Sell, sell, sell!

Back in February, a North Carolina man, infuriated when his spoiled teenage daughter complained on her Facebook page about having to do some household chores, did what any good old rational yahoo would do.

He took the computer, which his daughter no doubt used for school, out in the backyard, set up a camera, and pulled out his .45 and blew it away with nine shots to the hard drive! Then he put it up on YouTube to show the world what a great "take charge of the situation" parent he is. Now, that’s teaching that damn computer machine! Guns don’t kill computers. People kill computers!

I'm glad he didn't shoot his sweet little princess. That happens a lot in our society. And I know kids can be really frustrating little critters but, what has he taught his child? Kids often end up solving problems as adults the same way their parents did. Monkey see, monkey do. Maybe one day she'll be using an AK-47 on her kids' computers.  LaPierre will, of course, blame a video game or some heavy-metal record, but maybe, instead of blaming Hollywood, he should blame the movie this father made, if he wants to blame movies.

Meanwhile, how much of the kid's schoolwork was on that computer? And, how attention-craving do you have to be that you film the episode and upload it to YouTube? He didn't exactly keep the discipline in the family or in the house, did he? Is Daddy teaching his kid a lesson at this point, or is he just hoping for some notoriety? Well, you got it, buddy. This clown is a candidate for the Jerry Springer Show. They can have a "Dads Who Shoot Inanimate Objects" day -- sponsored by the NRA, of course.

Personally, I save my gunplay for vending machines that don't give me what I paid for. Not to worry, I only used licensed weapons, except for that time I put a grenade in the dispenser slot, pulled the pin with a string, and ran away. (Idiot me: I didn’t think to film it!) LaPierre would probably defend that.

In Idiocracy, a frustrated woman robbed by a vending machine freaks out all over it, until a vapor of traquilizer sprays her and she is carted away. Don't hit your laptop. One day soon, the newest version of Windows might have that spray feature.


3. The Bizarre Inner World of Tennessee State Sen. Stacey Campfield

Stacey Campfield worships at the church of his own ignorance. He thinks you choose to be gay. No! You, Stacy, and others like you, choose to be ignorant fools.

Campfield is the man who spearheaded Tennessee’s "Don’t Say Gay" bill. That's it! Don’t say it and "it" won’t exist! Brilliant! If only this were true, I would never say "Republican" again. And oh, how I long for a world where you could just not say "Hannity"!

More evidence of Senator Campfield’s brilliance includes these timeless utterances:

"That bullying thing is the biggest lark out there."

"Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community. . . . It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall."

"My understanding is that it is virtually, not completely, but virtually, impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex . . . very rarely."

"What's the average lifespan of a homosexual? It's very short. Google it yourself."

"Homosexuals represent about 2 to 3 percent of the population, yet you look at television and plays and theaters, it's 50% of the theaters, probably more than that, 50% of the theaters based on something about homosexuality."

"There was a time when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories. . . . "

Disclaimer: One of the above quotes in fact is from Idiocracy. I'll let you decide which.

Tennesseeans must be very proud of this guy. They obviously feel that he speaks for them. He is also known for referring to Africans as not being "regular people."


IN AN ALL TOO IRONIC MOVE . . .

What passes for the corporate geniuses at 20th Century FOX buried Idiocracy. They couldn't handle the truth. The movie was shown in fewer than 10 theaters nationwide and it was gone. Or so they thought. Since then, sentient human beings have had their say. The movie has -- like Judge's previous film, Office Space -- become a huge DVD and late-night-cable-TV hit. It escaped the clutches of the Hollywood troglodytes. Damn subversive!


TOMORROW: MORE IDIOCRACY MOMENTS FROM 2012!

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

-- The Narrator, Idiocracy

Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: More Idiocracy Moments for 2012
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

#

What Happened To The Class Of Rahm? Will The Class of Israel Follow Them Down The Toilet?

The Democrat voting most consistently with Boehner & Cantor-- Ann, again!

Rahm Emanuel took over the DCCC in 2006 and ran it that year and in 2008, the two cycles when voters were repulsed by right-wing extremism and overreach compliments of George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and their cronies. Emanuel and his sidekick Steny Hoyer went out and recruited a pack of conservative corporate whores and drove as many progressives out of races as they could. But they picked up 31 seats in 2006 and a net of 21 more in 2008. So where are they now? We'll start with the 2006 batch:

• Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ)- defeated in 2010 in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Gabby Giffords (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Jerry McNerney (CA)- ran as a progressive and beat the DCCC candidate, Steve Filson, then beat Dick Pombo in the general and quickly sold out to the Establishment and slipped into ConservaDem-ness
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)
• Joe Courtney (New Dem-CT)
• Chris Murphy (CT)- a progressive, he handily won a U.S. Senate seat in 2012
• Tim Mahoney (Blue Dog-FL)- defeated in 2010 in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse after a sex scandal and an atrocious voting record
• Ron Klein (FL)- defeated by Allen West in 2010 in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN)- threw a Hail Mary pass in 2012, lucked out to run against teabagger Richard Mourdock and won a Senate seat
• Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN)- also threw a Hail Mary pass but lost by a landslide in 2010
• Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN)- defeated in 2010 in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Bruce Braley (IA)- keeps winning reelection as a populist
• David Loebsack (IA)- keeps winning reelection as a progressive
• Nancy Boyda (KS)- lost in 2008
• John Yarmuth (KY)- keeps winning reelection as a progressive
• Tim Walz (MN)- keeps winning as a moderate
• Carol Shea-Porter (NH)- a progressive, she was mistakenly defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse and then won her seat back from an insane teabagger in 2012
• Paul Hodes (NH)- a progressive, he was defeated when he ran for the Senate in 2010
• John Hall (NY)- a progressive, he was mistakenly defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Kirsten Gillibrand (Blue Dog-NY)- switched from progressive to Blue Dog and back to progressive again and won a Senate seat in 2008
• Mike Arcuri (Blue Dog-NY)- defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)- retired after the 2012 gerrymander scared him off
• Charlie Wilson (Blue Dog-OH)- defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse and again in 2012
• Zack Space (Blue Dog-OH)- defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA)- defeated in a 2012 primary
• Joe Sestak (PA)- defeated in a 2010 Senate race
• Patrick Murphy (Blue Dog-PA)- defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA)- defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Nick Lampson (Blue Dog-TX)- defeated in 2008 and again, as a challenger, in 2012
• Peter Welch (VT)- keeps winning as a progressive
• Steve Kagen (WI)- mistakenly defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse

And the 2008 winners:

• Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL)- defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Parker Griffith (Blue Dog-AL)- switched to GOP and lost reelection in 2010 anyway
• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)- voted like a Republican and was beaten in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse; reelected in 2012 and is voting like a Republican again
• Betsy Markey (Blue Dog-CO)- defeated in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- reelected
• Alan Grayson (FL)- mistakenly defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse and was reelected in a landslide in 2012
• Suzanne Kosmas (Blue Dog-FL)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Debbie Halvorson (IL)- ConservaDem defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse and again in a primary in 2013 running as the pro-NRA conservative
• Don Cazayoux (Blue Dog-LA)- defeated after 6 months in office
• Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Mark Schauer (MI)- mistakenly defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Gary Peters (New Dem-MI)- reelected
• Dina Titus (NV)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• John Adler (Blue Dog-NJ)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Martin Heinrich (NM)- elected to the Senate in 2012
• Henry Teague (Blue Dog-NM)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Ben Ray Lujan (NM)- reelected as a progressive
• Michael McMahon (Blue Dog-NY)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Eric Massa (NY)- resigned
• Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC)- ran as a progressive, turned Blue Dog, defeated in 2012
• Steve Driehaus (OH)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Mary Jo Kilroy (OH)- mistakenly defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• John Boccieri (Blue Dog-OH)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Kathy Dahlkemper (Blue Dog-PA)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse
• Tom Perriello (VA)- defeated in 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse

So of these 59-- some of whom were elected in special elections during Rahm's term (and taking Giffords out of the equation)-- 43 were defeated, an astronomically high number. And the overwhelming majority of them were defeated because they disappointed Democrats by voting like Republicans-- enough so to keep Democrats from bothering to go to the polls in 2010.

Why bring this up now? If Democrats in the House vote for an Obama-Boehner Grand Bargain that slashes benefits under Social Security and Medicare the Rahm defeats will look like the good old days in comparison to what is likely to happen to Democrats. Only 24% of Americans now identify as Republicans. 36% identify as Democrats. If Democrats in Congress betray the New Deal, not only will they be toast, they will utterly destroy the Democratic brand. When Blue Dog/New Dem corporate whore Kurt Schrader of Oregon voted against the conservative-leaning Senate budget last week he said it wasn't bipartisan enough and it didn't slash entitlements deeply enough. Slashing earned benefits for seniors is a Republican value not a Democratic value. Kurt Shrader has forfeited the right to call himself a Democrat.

Blue Dog Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) said he voted against the Senate budget because it did not go far enough on entitlements.

"It is not enough entitlement reform in there going forward. It needs to be a more complete and balanced picture and it wasn't bipartisan in the end of the day," Schrader told The Hill.

...He said there are many centrist Republicans who would do something to increase revenue in exchange for real entitlement reform.

The current crop-- the Steve Israel crop-- may fare as poorly as the Rahm Emanuel crop did. Of the new freshmen, 16 are voting against progressive values half the time or over half the time. That's too much. Below are the freshmen in danger of turning off their constituents enough likely to wind up as one-termers. The number next to each name is the ProgressivePunch crucial vote score so far this session.

• Julia Brownley (CA)- 50
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX)- 50
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)- 50
• Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA)- 47.06
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)- 44.44
• Bill Enyart (IL)- 44.44
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- 44.44
• Brad Schneider (New Dem-IL)- 44.44
• Cheri Bustos (IL)- 38.89
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)- 38.89
• Ann Kuster (NH)- 38.89
• Sean Maloney (New Dem-NY)- 38.89
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)- 38.89
• Raul Ruiz (CA)- 38.89
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)- 38.89
• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)- 23.53

The freshmen with the best voting records so far? Tony Cardenas (CA), Matt Cartwright (PA), Mark Pocan (WI), Joyce Beatty (OH), Jared Huffman (CA), Hakeem Jeffries (NY), Joe Kennedy (MA), and Rick Nolan (MN)-- all over 90% progressive on the crucial roll calls.

The Idiocracy Files, Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!

[On Monday Noah began chronicling a spate of 2012 "Idiocracy moments" that recalled for him Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, a look 500 years into the future at a world gone, well, you know. Yesterday he was back with more, and still his list of sightings overflowed. So today we have Part 3. -- Ed.]

by Noah

All hail the new confederacy -- of dunces! For those about to secede, we salute you, with a finger raised high!

We knew that, if President Obama were to be reelected, the Republicans would completely lose what tiny remnants of sanity they had left. The precedent was there back in 2008, when their leaders at the FOX "News" channel and the rest of the hate-pundit universe went all crackers all the time after the first election of the man Republicans refer to as Barack Hussein Dark Lord Muslim Obama. They just keep going and going and going, beating their drum like some Energizer Bunny of doom, pushing the envelope of crazy into regions known only in asylums.

Sadly though, there can never be enough syringes of calming thorazine or other antipsychotic medications for all of the media wackjobs and health-hatin', gun-totin' citizen nutballs out there. With the reelection of their imaginary black-skin boogie man, they, their political allies, and the gullible subjects of their psychotic propaganda have entered a universe from which there seems to be no return. We are fully in a Civil War now, and the disgruntled want to secede.

IT'S NO SURPRISE THAT TEXAS LEADS THE WAY!

Even their freely chosen governor, Rick Perry, has hinted as much (with video at the link) as far back as 2009.

Even better, "actor" and McCain cheerleader Chuck Norris wants to be the president of Texas when that glorious day comes.

I may run for president of Texas. That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone, someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.

Chuckie wrote all that in his column in WorldNetDaily (link above). Yes, the folks who gave us "Hillary killed Vince Foster" and, much more recently, had their Erik Rush (who is also a regular FOX "News" contributor) tweeting that armed resistance may be just the ticket.

I suppose suggesting that we shoot them wouldn't be taken very well, although that is precisely what it came down to 236 years ago.

Here's the video that Rush tweeted at the time.



It's by a guy named Christopher Greene, who says that not only is President Obama using the horrific Sandy Hook murders to take away guns and subvert liberties, but concentration camps for those in Obama's way are next on the horizon. To the gullible low-information, angry citizen, this kind of thing is all too plausible and provides a target for their fears and frustrations. To people like Rush and Greene, what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School was some sort of CIA psy-ops job. Greene is all over the place, as you will see. It's a fascinating look into the minds of the deranged, but Greene's brand of psychotic lunacy reaches a lot of people, especially when it is being promoted by FOX on-air personalities like Erik Rush.

It's not just about what we can see on FOX "News." It's about the people they promote and their views. When you take it all in together -- FOX, the WorldNetDailies, and the Christopher Greenes that do Internet broadcasting from the basement fringes or even abandoned-missile-silo survivalist encampments -- can it be any wonder that so many of the angry and foolish now talk about secession?

Remember Michele Bachmann's pronouncements about FEMA Camps? People believe this stuff, for real. Let's not forget that the Republican Party has already run a candidate for vice president who has ties to the Alaskan Secession movement and 50 million people voted for the ticket. She now has a job on FOX.



IT'S AMAZING HOW A BROADCAST CAN
MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE ANYTHING!

Back on Halloween night in 1938, Orson Welles, then only 23, did his now-famous radio broadcast of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds over the CBS network. It was a story about an invasion of Martian monsters.



It set off a panic among many of the listeners as they believed an actual Martian invasion was taking place in New Jersey. Just being on the radio gave the story a sheen of credibility, just like being on the TeeVee or Internets does in today's world. You think Roger Ailes doesn't know this?

Times were already uneasy. The economy was showing some signs of recovery from the Great Depression but was still shaky and news of war was in the air. So was paranoia. Sound familiar? Watch the clip. Note the call for able-bodied citizens to report to the sheriff to do battle with the monsters. Note the mention of "being watched" by the enemy as they planned our demise. To way too many Republicans, that monster is a Marxist secret-Muslim Martian who has already taken over the White House.

************

SO WE CAN LAUGH AT THE 2012 FREAKSHOW . . .

. . . that was Rick Perry and Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann and, finally Willard Mitt Romney, as seemingly each week another of these people became the leading spokesperson or candidate of the Republican Party. We can laugh at the real leader of the party being an obese, sweaty man with a bag of Oxycontin in one hand and a bag of Dominican Viagra in the other who makes millions feeding the paranoid hate-filled frenzy.

We can laugh at the fringe hucksters and the fringe true believers alike, but, as we well know, not everyone is laughing. People who have critical-thinking powers will always laugh at such people -- laughing at some more than others. But half of the country is taken in by their warped messages about banning contraception, about rape just being another form of insemination, about how the president of the United States wasn't born here, about gays not being equal, about the evil of teachers unions (which among other things create gun-free zones), about how the very air isn't in danger, and how certain voters just "want stuff" (you know, free stuff), and, lastly but not the least, you better stock up on some weaponry and do it fast, because Obama is a-comin' for ya, you betcha.

WHERE WILL IT END?

Where does FOX want it to end? What violence does Rupert Murdoch crave? In service of whom? What will set the employees of FOX off into a wave of high-fiving? We now have a Civil War without borders so it's not just an issue of which states want to go. Republicans are everywhere. I'm very tempted to say, "Just let the South go again." They will never stop fighting the first Civil War. When Texas goes, we can keep Austin and San Antonio and just set them up like postwar Berlin.

People in the other states who want to go too can go, I suppose. I'll even give 'em a choice: They don't have to call their new country Crackpotopia. They can call it Transvaginalia, for all I care. If they don't want to be here, get the fuck out. Let them all go. They blather on about the founding fathers and the Constitution a lot, but they don't seem to understand that we were originally built as a confederation of disparate colonies/states working together.

Let them all go and take all their passionate negativity and nihilism and set up their dream Taliban in their right-to-work-for-less states. They can all go, as soon as they agree to accept no more money whatsoever from the United States federal government. They must service and secure their own ports with their own money. They must close their military bases, which the U.S. government pays for with our taxes. They must form their own Coast Guard and Navy to protect their shores. Let their highways disintegrate into nothingness, and let their bridges collapse. Let them be responsible for their own borders with no foreign aid -- that dreaded foreign aid, from us.

Let them turn to full-time moonshining and meth-cooking to raise whatever money they need. Let them teach their kids that their forebears rode dinosaurs at the beginning of time 6000 years ago. Let them feed themselves as their states turn into modern-day dustbowls because of the global warming they don't believe in. They can live on a diet of Twizzlers and jerky. Twinkies are no longer on the table, since those mean, mean union workers wanted a fair shake.

There must also be no federal involvement from us in regulating the safety of any other food they can process or water they drink. They can get their own Centers for Disease Control. They are on their own. Let them all die of ebola, cholera, and, perhaps the inevitable, cannibalism. Eventually, of course, they will form their own versions of Hamas, and we will begin shelling eachother. They will miss the irony.

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

-- The Narrator, Idiocracy

Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: More Idiocracy Moments for 2012
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

#

2012: The Year That "Idiocracy" Moments Broke the Scale, Part 1

2012 was the year of the memorable "Idiocracy moment" when a Republican presidential candidate couldn't count to 3.

by Noah

One of my favorite films of all time is Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. Is it a great film, strictly speaking? No. Does it hold more truths about the sad state of our society than any ten other films? Absolutely! It is the world that I see around me.

The Idiocracy world that Judge depicts takes place 500 years in the future, but if you stream or rent the movie, you might find yourself swearing that Judge either made the movie back in 1512 and imagined our present, or that the movie is just an ever so slightly exaggerated documentary of today's world.  In the movie, an ordinary guy, Pvt. Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), finds himself the victim of a Pentagon experiment gone awry. He is put into suspended animation and is due to be woken up in exactly one year. However, when the man in charge of the experiment is given the pink slip, Bauers is completely forgotten about, only to awaken 500 years later in a world where 500 years of the dumbing down of our culture has digressed so far that he finds himself in a world where he is considered a genius simply because he can put a coherent sentence together and knows that crops need water, not sports drinks with extra electrolytes and vitamins, in order to grow.

Having served my time in corporate America, I can relate to Joe Bauers. It's a world where you better park most of your vocabulary in the back of your brain, and God help you if you know how to sell your product or use logic to solve a problem. You might be askin' for a beatdown.

In the world of the future, or tomorrow, literally tomorrow, Google is now a porn site. In fact, virtually every corporation has become some sort of sex-oriented enterprise. FedX is now FedXXX. U.S News & World Report is now Hot Naked Chicks and World Report (above), and a fast food chicken place, Pollo Borracho, features "ADULT CHICKEN -- Bucket of Wings with 'Full Release' " (below).

In the same time, corporate sponsorship has taken the next, most obviously logical step. The stars on our flag are now fast-food chain Carl's Jr. yellow stars, and even federal government buildings (State Dept., Agriculture Dept., etc.) are named like sports stadiums. Also, the president of the United States is an ex-professional wrestler. (Jesse Ventura, anyone?) Really, the world of Idiocracy is not much of a stretch from our present day.

With all that said, I have gathered up a small list of some "Idiocracy moments" that I observed over the crazy year of 2012, a year where the Idiocracy really came to the foreground -- the biggest, saddest reality show of all time.


1. The Entire Republican Primary Season

There's no need to go into detail here. It was an appalling scene that played out across the months. Fast Food man Herman Cain -- 9-9-9. Rick Perry, who incredibly is the governor of a whole state, reportedly hates Methodists for welcoming gays, and he can’t even count to 3 (see clip above). Newt "I'm Gonna Be the Candidate" Gingrich, Mitt "Corporations Are People, My Friend" Romney -- take your pick. Perfect Idiocracy.

Here’s Idiocracy’s President Comacho. Just imagine if Herman Cain was president and some Idiocracy congressloon from South Carolina shouted out, "You lie!"

PRESIDENT COMACHO: Shit! I know shit's fucked up right now with all that starving bullshit, and all the dust storms, and we're running out of French fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution!
SOUTH CAROLINA REPRESENTATIVE: That's what you said last time, dipshit.

Like I said, Idiocracy is only a slight exaggeration of our reality. Or is it an exaggeration at all?


2. Bad, bad computer!

As I write this post, a madman who serves as the head of a front for the armaments industry and gun runners everywhere, a man named Wayne LaPierre, is giving a crazed, desperate, evil lecture on my TV, like some cartoonish Latin American dictator from the 1960s. He is extolling the virtues of gun owners, promoting sales of more and more guns and ammo, and blaming recent mass murders on everything under the sun except the out-of-control proliferation of guns in our country, and calling for not one more law. It's another "out of my cold dead hands" moment and more. To him, the solution is more, more, more. Sell, sell, sell!

Back in February, a North Carolina man, infuriated when his spoiled teenage daughter complained on her Facebook page about having to do some household chores, did what any good old rational yahoo would do.

He took the computer, which his daughter no doubt used for school, out in the backyard, set up a camera, and pulled out his .45 and blew it away with nine shots to the hard drive! Then he put it up on YouTube to show the world what a great "take charge of the situation" parent he is. Now, that’s teaching that damn computer machine! Guns don’t kill computers. People kill computers!

I'm glad he didn't shoot his sweet little princess. That happens a lot in our society. And I know kids can be really frustrating little critters but, what has he taught his child? Kids often end up solving problems as adults the same way their parents did. Monkey see, monkey do. Maybe one day she'll be using an AK-47 on her kids' computers.  LaPierre will, of course, blame a video game or some heavy-metal record, but maybe, instead of blaming Hollywood, he should blame the movie this father made, if he wants to blame movies.

Meanwhile, how much of the kid's schoolwork was on that computer? And, how attention-craving do you have to be that you film the episode and upload it to YouTube? He didn't exactly keep the discipline in the family or in the house, did he? Is Daddy teaching his kid a lesson at this point, or is he just hoping for some notoriety? Well, you got it, buddy. This clown is a candidate for the Jerry Springer Show. They can have a "Dads Who Shoot Inanimate Objects" day -- sponsored by the NRA, of course.

Personally, I save my gunplay for vending machines that don't give me what I paid for. Not to worry, I only used licensed weapons, except for that time I put a grenade in the dispenser slot, pulled the pin with a string, and ran away. (Idiot me: I didn’t think to film it!) LaPierre would probably defend that.

In Idiocracy, a frustrated woman robbed by a vending machine freaks out all over it, until a vapor of traquilizer sprays her and she is carted away. Don't hit your laptop. One day soon, the newest version of Windows might have that spray feature.


3. The Bizarre Inner World of Tennessee State Sen. Stacey Campfield

Stacey Campfield worships at the church of his own ignorance. He thinks you choose to be gay. No! You, Stacy, and others like you, choose to be ignorant fools.

Campfield is the man who spearheaded Tennessee’s "Don’t Say Gay" bill. That's it! Don’t say it and "it" won’t exist! Brilliant! If only this were true, I would never say "Republican" again. And oh, how I long for a world where you could just not say "Hannity"!

More evidence of Senator Campfield’s brilliance includes these timeless utterances:

"That bullying thing is the biggest lark out there."

"Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community. . . . It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall."

"My understanding is that it is virtually, not completely, but virtually, impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex . . . very rarely."

"What's the average lifespan of a homosexual? It's very short. Google it yourself."

"Homosexuals represent about 2 to 3 percent of the population, yet you look at television and plays and theaters, it's 50% of the theaters, probably more than that, 50% of the theaters based on something about homosexuality."

"There was a time when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories. . . . "

Disclaimer: One of the above quotes in fact is from Idiocracy. I'll let you decide which.

Tennesseeans must be very proud of this guy. They obviously feel that he speaks for them. He is also known for referring to Africans as not being "regular people."


IN AN ALL TOO IRONIC MOVE . . .

What passes for the corporate geniuses at 20th Century FOX buried Idiocracy. They couldn't handle the truth. The movie was shown in fewer than 10 theaters nationwide and it was gone. Or so they thought. Since then, sentient human beings have had their say. The movie has -- like Judge's previous film, Office Space -- become a huge DVD and late-night-cable-TV hit. It escaped the clutches of the Hollywood troglodytes. Damn subversive!


TOMORROW: MORE IDIOCRACY MOMENTS FROM 2012!

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

-- The Narrator, Idiocracy

Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: More Idiocracy Moments for 2012
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

#