Half of me wants to laugh and half of me wants to weep. Watch this video and find out why.

I thought I was pretty harsh in my last post about people’s ignorance, but I’m rethinking that. This woman is so mindbogglingly stupid that she thinks rainbows are created by an unnamed toxic sludge dumped into the environment by a government effort to search for new energy sources. I guess her backyard sits at the corner of Paranoid Street and Stupid Lane.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that she is from Northern California. I don’t know if this is a byproduct of 60′s drug culture but this place is dominated by people just like her; totally ignorant of their own ignorance. She recorded this video because, in her mind, she was going to sound the alarm about this environmental abuse. Yet it never occurred to her to take a moment to research what causes rainbows. The thought never crossed her mind that there might be a simple explanation for it. No, she thought this phenomena was weird so immediately she just knew it was something toxic and caused by the government.

I just love that she jumped to this government conspiracy conclusion too because I would bet my paycheck that she is the type that supports a government takeover of the health care industry. She would be completely happy if the very same government that she believes is polluting her backyard with rainbows, controlled her health care.

Maybe there should be an intelligence test for voting.

I saw this video this morning and man did I have to cringe while watching it. It’s South Carolina Congressman Gresham Barrett being lambasted by the crowd at the Tax Day Tea Party in Greenville, South Carolina. It’s merciless. People turned their backs to him. There was one guy who shouted “Go Home” during Barrett’s whole speech. Everyone in that crowded booed for 5 minutes straight.

What did Barrett do to desire this ire? He voted in favor of funding the $700 billion TARP program. Supposedly he’s going to run for South Carolina governor. I can’t see that contest ending well for him.

I am just a hopeless pessimist. Here I sit worrying about the state of the country and the world. Why? Well a few things come to mind: the imminent bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, pirates off the Horn of Africa, China expressing concern over our debt levels, budget cuts to the missile shield, an ever rising unemployment rate, a media in bed with the White House, a war in Afghanistan getting worse. There’s probably more if I think real hard. However all of this proves I’m just an idiot who can’t see the forest for the trees because George F. Will has identified the real worry; the one, single snowball that rolled into the avalanche that is destroying society – jeans.

Yes, George Will took time to castigate the lazy, slovenly Americans who persist in wearing denim everywhere. Because really, what other problems are there?

Actually I planned to write a much longer post about Will’s fashion don’ts column, but then I read this post on Lileks. I can’t top that. If I try, I’ll fail and probably end up ripping off a lot of that good material in the process. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite.

We can gather much from this, aside from the fact that the tea was tepid when served that morning, which always puts one in a querulous humour. We can assume he hasn’t seen more than two seconds of “King of the Hill,” a very clever show that’s firmly on the side of the folk who share his instincts and understands their culture far better than Mr. Will does. (Hank Hill is a man haunted by Oughts of all sorts, constantly parsing the demands of modern life with the Oughts that arise from being a middle-aged Texan father who deals with propane. And propane accessories.) The self-contented sneer against animation suggests no disrespect for the thing itself, but rather the moving drawings aimed at adults. They should content themselves with the amusing engravings in Punch, which stay in one place and do not excite the blood.

Read the whole post. It’s smart, wry and hilarious.

Tenuously related, and also quite funny is this old SNL clip about George Will I saw today on Ace of Spades. I actually remember watching this on TV as a kid when it was brand new. I shouldn’t have found it all that funny back then, but I was a weird child who loved to watch This Week with David Brinkley, so it really struck a chord with me.

I hope you watched ALL of that video. I know it’s 9 minutes long but it’s well worth it. It’s the end of an occupation of an NYU cafeteria by a student organization named Take Back NYU. They planned to seize the cafeteria and I guess start a chain reaction that would topple NYU’s administration and lead to a state for the Palestinians I think. One of the big problems was their scatterbrained agenda. Here are there 13 demands. I copied that from their website.

1. Full legal and disciplinary amnesty for all parties involved in the occupation.
2. Full compensation for all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.
3. Public release of NYU’s annual operating budget, including a full list of university expenditures, salaries for all employees compensated on a semester or annual basis, funds allocated for staff wages, contracts to non-university organizations for university construction and services, financial aid data for each college, and money allocated to each college, department, and administrative unit of the university. Furthermore, this should include a full disclosure of the amount and sources of the university’s funding.
4. Disclosure of NYU’s endowment holdings, investment strategy, projected endowment growth, and persons, corporations and firms involved in the investment of the university’s endowment funds. Additionally, we demand an endowment oversight body of students, faculty and staff who exercise shareholder proxy voting power for the university’s investments.
5. That the NYU Administration agrees to resume negotiations with GSOC/UAW Local 2110 – the union for NYU graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and research assistants. That NYU publicly affirm its commitment to respect all its workers, including student employees, by recognizing their right to form unions and to bargain collectively. That NYU publicly affirm that it will recognize workers’ unions through majority card verification.
6. That NYU signs a contract guaranteeing fair labor practices for all NYU employees at home and abroad. This contract will extend to subcontracted workers, including bus drivers, food service employees and anyone involved in the construction, operation and maintenance at any of NYU’s non-U.S. sites.
7. The establishment of a student elected Socially Responsible Finance Committee. This Committee will have full power to vote on proxies, draft shareholder resolutions, screen all university investments, establish new programs that encourage social and environmental responsibility and override all financial decisions the committee deems socially irresponsible, including investment decisions. The committee will be composed of two subcommittees: one to assess the operating budget and one to assess the endowment holdings. Each committee will be composed of ten students democratically elected from the graduate and under-graduate student bodies. All committee decisions will be made a strict majority vote, and will be upheld by the university. All members of the Socially Responsible Finance Committee will sit on the board of trustees, and will have equal voting rights. All Socially Responsible Finance Committee and Trustee meetings shall be open to the public, and their minutes made accessible electronically through NYU’s website. Elections will be held the second Tuesday of every March beginning March 10^th 2009, and meetings will be held biweekly beginning the week of March 30^th 2009.
8. That the first two orders of business of the Socially Responsible Finance committee will be:
   a) An in depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories.
   b) A reassessment of the recently lifted of the ban on Coca Cola products.
9. That annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students, starting with the 2009/2010 academic year. These scholarships will include funding for books, housing, meals and travel expenses.
10. That the university donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.
11. Tuition stabilization for all students, beginning with the class of 2012. All students will pay their initial tuition rate throughout the course of their education at New York University.  Tuition rates for each successive year will not exceed the rate of inflation, nor shall they exceed one percent. The university shall meet 100% of government-calculated student financial need.
12. That student groups have priority when reserving space in the buildings owned or leased by New York University, including, and especially, the Kimmel Center.
13. That the general public have access to Bobst Library.

I think this video shows their other problems: cluelessness, lack of planning, repetition of meaningless buzzwords. I can only assume they thought NYU would cave in immediately. Why else would you go through with a pointless exercise like this?

I actually feel some sympathy for the cameraman. It’s pretty clear he knows he’s lost control of the situation but has no idea how to proceed. Somehow he never got around to planning for this moment. Really, the most pathetic scene was him taking inventory. NYU won’t negotiate. His protesting comrades won’t listen to his cries of “consensus”. Yet he needs to find something to do in that hard-fought consensus zone.

NYU showed a good balance of strength and patience. They gave the students a chance to leave on their own accord. When they refused, the guards marched in. Simple and stern. You could really see where the bearded guy’s patience wore thin though. I guess he heard “consensus” one too many times. He stopped bothering with the cameraman and moved on to giving the guards orders. Pretty damn funny. They all showed much more restraint than I would have. Frankly, I would have given them one warning that they would have to leave on their own or they would be seized by the guards. Once they refused and I had the guards enter, I would have instructed them to immediately restrain these protesters; just put them in shackles and drag them out. It’s a good thing I don’t have to suffer these fools.

Just for giggles, read the comments at NYU Local.

Conan O’Brien takes a trip to the 2009 Detroit Auto Show…

This got me thinking maybe Conan is the Johnny Carson of my generation. Carson was a comedy legend and made the Tonight Show the premiere late night talk show for about thirty years. If Carson blessed a project with his presence it was guaranteed to be comedy gold. I never really found him all that funny though. He was okay sure. I could get some laughs out of watching, but Carson never really pulled me in as a diehard fan. Perhaps though that was just because I wasn’t a part of his generation so his comedy couldn’t reach me. Conan, on the other hand, never disappoints me. I have a feeling Conan connects with today’s 15 to 35 year old group, the way Carson did back in the 1960s through 1980s.

I made the mistake of watching this clip at work so I actually had to pinch my nose hard to stop myself from laughing out loud and making a spectacle of myself. Watch and celebrate Augbert’s double-800s on the SATs!

This is way too funny. I mean laugh out loud funny.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

The slightest change in technology is known to baffle the elderly, so America’s transition from analog to digital TV will provide plenty of befuddlement. Here’s a video that encapsulates it.

Some People Have a Knack for Getting Right to the Heart of a Matter

White woman: How are things with John?
Asian woman: I don’t know. He’s just not manly enough for me. He listens to Miss Saigon at the gym. Maybe he has an Asian fetish.
White woman: Sounds more like he has a dick fetish.

–E Train

Overheard by: Brad
via Overheard in New York, Dec 16, 2008

Here’s an unexpected benefit to Barack Obama’s election. With George Bush’s term ending and the US still a sovereign nation, the North American Union conspiracy is safely discredited.

You’ve never heard of this? Well that’s because you only hear the mainstream media who, of course, are part of the conspiracy. Yes, NAFTA is actually a nefarious plot to merge the US with Canada and Mexico. That plan to build a big highway that runs from Mexico to Canada is just phase one of the NAFTA superhighway that will tie up the continent.

What utter crap. It’s not that I can’t believe government officials would be involved in a conspiracy. It’s that creating a North American Union completely favors the United States. Population-wise and economically we tower over Canada and Mexico. Any union would essentially be America taking over those two countries.

Don’t even try and tell me the real objective of any union is to strip Americans of their constitutional rights. We have plenty of fights about the Constitution now without Canada or Mexico in the fray. Whether or not people are allowed to have guns is a constant fight. First Amendment issues are a consistant bitch-fest. Americans can lose their cherished rights today without this North American Union. Frankly the creation of the NAU has the potential to enhance some rights. A document that would fuse the three countries would be so scrutinized, there’s no way any rights in the US Constitution would be allowed to fall by the wayside.

The US would dominate the NAU economically. We have the world’s largest economy today. Canada and Mexico added together and doubled still do not come close to comparing. The Federal Reserve would remain the central bank. New York City would remain the financial capital of the continent. The US timber industry in the current Pacific Northwest would be hurt by cheaper timber from Canada, but hey timber is only one industry. Manufacturing probably wouldn’t change a great deal. Whatever companies that were going to move to Mexico did so ten or more years ago. Modernizing the decrepit Mexican economy could actually be a boon to American companies.

And I don’t believe for a second that we would be using Ameros for money. The US uses the dollar. Canada uses the dollar. Mexico uses the peso. Two versus one says the NAU has dollars. The real fight will be whose faces go on those dollars.

That’s not to say you can’t get an Amero today! Daniel Carr, designer of the New York and Rhode Island state quarters, went ahead and created some Amero coins. You know Christmas is coming and there are a few 2008 Ameros left. What better way is there to baffle historians in a thousand years than with fake currency from a fictional nation?

Or at least knew how to set up a shot.

You’ve probably seen this video. If you haven’t, then enjoy. You don’t even need sound for this. Just watch the guy in the background.

The guy is priceless. It’s like silent movie comedy. “Whoa, are you filming? Ummm… Should I stop? Go ahead? You sure you want to film there? Well, oookay.”

And I would have dismissed this as unintentional humor until I read the faux outrage. SLAUGHTERED the Huffington Post cries! Wonkette, the blog that invented snark, refers to it as “bloodporn“. Please. With that sort of hype I expected to hear a chainsaw buzzing and see blood splattered everywhere. That was a let down. The turkey shakes a bit and that’s it. What a petty, manufactured controversy.

Amazingly MSNBC tops all the blogs by actually inserting their own smartass commentary into the chyron running over the video. Watch the whole video again. You have to read the graphics.

That was so unprofessional. Plus I don’t think it counts as “breaking news”. Isn’t that reserved for urgent news?

• “Pardoned Turkey Is Too Filthy For Governor Palin To Hold”
• “Gov. Palin Picks Worst Possible Backdrop For TV News Interview”
• “Turkeys Die As Governor Palin Takes Questions From Media”
• “Turkey-killing Fowls Palin News Conference”
• “Gov. Palin Apparently Oblivious To Turkey Carnage Over Her Shoulder”

Oh and wasn’t David Shuster’s tut-tuting just fantastic? He’s been practicing his gravitas.

But turning to reality, since when are interviewees in charge of setting up their camera angles? The camera guy should have said something right at the beginning. He could have taken one big step to the right and cut out the turkey slaughter. He could have zoomed in on Palin’s face and kept the slaughter out of frame. He did none of that. Did you happen to notice that Palin isn’t centered in the shot? She’s standing a little left of center, leaving just enough room so the turkey slaughter is kept entirely within frame. I suspect this was set up intentionally. There’s just too much incompetence there for me to comfortably dismiss it as coincidence. Asking Palin if she’s bothered by the location after the interview is over is a little pointless.

And why go through the trouble of setting up an embarrassing video? Oh it’s not some grand conspiracy. I think this was done for shits-n-giggles. Either the reporter thought it up or the camera guy, and suggested it to the other probably with the intro, “Hey, let’s make Palin look real stupid.” Way to go douchebags.