THIS MODERN WORLD

Regarding the imminent legalization of gay marriage in New Jersey, it’s probably worth pointing out that gay people have been getting hitched in Massachusetts for two and a half years now and the gates of Hell haven’t opened up and swallowed the entire country. The right wing’s Chicken Little crap was proven wrong a few years ago and it’s still wrong. The only thing that gay marriages have really changed is that gay people are getting married now. Big deal.

(via Crooks & Liars)

In a sane world, Rush Limbaugh would spend every morning telling fart jokes as part of the “Morning Zoo” crew at a tiny Top40 station in the middle of nowhere, but for some absurd reason, the gatekeepers of the pundit world take this asshole seriously. So here we go with yet another reason to dismiss everything that comes out of the mouth of this overrated shock jock :

Possibly worse than making fun of someone’s disability is saying that it’s imaginary. That is not to mock someone’s body, but to challenge a person’s guts, integrity, sanity.

To Rush Limbaugh on Monday, Michael J. Fox looked like a faker. The actor, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, has done a series of political ads supporting candidates who favor stem cell research, including Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin, who is running against Republican Michael Steele for the Senate seat being vacated by Paul Sarbanes.

“He is exaggerating the effects of the disease,” Limbaugh told listeners. “He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. . . . This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting.”

Classy guy, that Limbaugh. I’d be willing to bet Rush wouldn’t be so nasty if stem cell research showed promise in curing pill addiction and impotence. Like the rest of his selfish ilk, the only problems Rush ever cares about are his own.

I haven’t even seen it, but I have a feeling the Iraqi hit comedy “Hurry Up, He’s Dead” might be the best TV show ever (via BoingBoing) :

Nearly every night here for the past month, Iraqis weary of the tumult around them have been turning on the television to watch a wacky-looking man with a giant Afro wig and star-shaped glasses deliver the grim news of the day.

In a recent episode, the host, Saad Khalifa, reported that Iraq’s Ministry of Water and Sewage had decided to change its name to simply the Ministry of Sewage — because it had given up on the water part.

In another episode, he jubilantly declared that “Rums bin Feld” had announced American troops were leaving the country on 1/1, in other words, on Jan. 1. His face crumpled when he realized he had made a mistake. The troops were not actually departing on any specific date, he clarified, but instead leaving one by one. At that rate, it would take more than 600 years for them to be gone.
. . .
The newscast opens with an explanation of the show’s underlying premise: it is the year 2017 and the main character, Saaed, is the last Iraqi alive. He is lying face down on a beach with a red suitcase next to him. When he comes to, he is quickly encircled by beautiful women.

Cut to a scene of Saaed clad in a black T-shirt imprinted with “2PAC,” showboating in front of a white stretch Humvee limousine with dancers cavorting all around.

The show’s raucous theme song, which has become a popular cellphone ring tone here and is sung by children in schoolyards, laments that it would be better to be a lowly cat on the street than an Iraqi: “No one asks the cat where you are from, which party you’re from, whether you are an Arab, a Kurd, a Sunni or a Shiite.”

He sings on, “I am the last Iraqi alive, but I still do not own a house,” a reference to the country’s acute housing shortage.

I think somebody forgot to tell Saad Khalifa that things are getting better in Iraq.

Officials in Ned Lamont’s U.S. Senate campaign said today they expect to file complaints with both federal and state authorities concerning $387,000 in “petty cash” U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman spent before the Democratic primary election.

George C. Jepsen, a former state Senate majority leader and Democratic state chairman who chairs Lamont’s campaign, said the complaints would allege violations of the federal campaign finance law and state labor laws.

$387,000 “is just unprecedented in its scope,” he said, referring to the money the Lamont campaign has characterized as a Lieberman “slush fund.”

“We’re not alleging that any Lieberman staffer knowingly broke the law, but who is naïve enough to think you can put north of $387,000 on the street in a very compacted period of time and not have some level of abuse?” Jepsen asked.

“Petty cash is supposed to be used for pizza for volunteers and paper clips,” he continued. “It’s not intended to fund a massive field operation. “This is a throwback to a generation ago when ‘street money’ was completely unregulated and widely abused, so at a minimum by law they’re supposed to keep detailed records of who was paid and how much, and make those records public.

“If you’re doing it right and by the book, so that it’s 100 percent legal, you would be cutting roughly 6,000 individual checks and keeping track of the money,” Jepsen added.

More here.

I was at the Lieberman rally when Lindsay took the picture she’s got posted here. I asked the kid on the left why he liked Joe Lieberman so much. He shrugged and looked away and said, without much conviction, “I just like him.” I didn’t push him any further, it felt too mean.

(Speaking of Lieberman, don’t miss this week’s cartoon.)