The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    FRIDAY FOLLIES:On Jockey shorts, Palin's bus, Christie's 'copter, and Stone dead alligators

    By Ramona on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 1:35pm | Politics, Humor & Satire

    We were all a-twitter last week by the big news that a close-up photo of a suggestive section of a pair of gray jockey shorts was sent to a young follower from Rep. Anthony Weiner's Twitter page.  Weiner denies sending the Tweet but seems reluctant to answer the question:  Boxers or briefs?  Yours or Andrew Breitbart's?  Weiner jokes abound.  Weiner snarls.  The Right Wing breaks out the champagne, pours it over Breitbart's head.  Yee Haw!  Done and DONE!

    Sarah Palin's Magical Mystery Bus Tour:   What's it all about?  She has a pizza date with Donald Trump.  The press goes wild!  (and so does Jon Stewart).  She crashes Mitt Romney's presidential bid party in New Hampshire and pooh-poohs it with "just a coincidence" in signature sweet-sticky-Sarahness.  Stephen Colbert explains it all.

    Addendum:  With emphasis on the "dumb":  Palin gives a history lesson about Paul Revere's ride.  Can we please stop pretending this person is a grown-up ready to be president?  My God.  We're talking about the presidency.  Of the United States.  It's not funny!!   (Click here.)

    New Jersey governor Chris Christie took a government-owned helicopter to his son's baseball game last week -- the same Christius Rex who spends his throne time figuring out ways to slash funding going to poor people with their own ball-playing kids -- and got haughty-hot when confronted with the fact that there might be the slightest impropriety there.  Come on, people!  With all they do in his family ("family values"), there's no way they could do it all with just a car!


    (Note to Gov's son:  In the future you might want to hide the team schedule and avoid all the fuss.  Any dad who arrives at his son's game in a government-issue helicopter isn't there to watch his son play ball, anyway.)

    Now, I really like Missouri.  It's a beautiful state.  The greatest father-in-law in the entire world (mine) was from there.  And from the looks of things, they've got a pretty progressive governor --  though his bio page works hard at keeping secret his party affiliation.  I had to work a bit to glean from clues that he must be a Democrat.  (His name is Jay Nixon. He won, anyway.)  So I do hesitate to even bring this embarrassing episode to light, but what is one to do when a story like this presents itself? Especially when it comes from the "Show Me" state?

    Okay. 

    Police in Independence got a call that a huge alligator was seen in the woods.  They don't get many calls about alligators in Missouri, but when you live in the "Show Me" state, you check out everything.  And sure enough, when they got there, there was indeed a huge alligator lying on the ground.  Here's the story:

    INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- Police responding to an alligator sighting in a suburban Kansas City pond took quick action to dispatch the big reptile. It wasn't until after the second rifle shot bounced off the beast Sunday that the three Independence officers realized it was a concrete lawn ornament. Independence police spokesman Tom Gentry said the department received a call from a man who said a gator had been spotted in the woods. Gentry said the alligator was in the weeds near a tree by a pond and it looked real. An officer shot the gator twice in the head -- per instructions from a conservation officer -- before realizing it wasn't moving. Gentry said the landowner told officers he put the fake gator there to keep children off his property.

    I couldn't find a picture of the actual alligator in question, but for future reference, here's a photo I took of a couple of real alligators:


    In Michigan, where they drastically slashed public education funds but left prison funding alone, the Ithaca, MI school superintendent had an idea.:

    Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children. This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison.


    See?  All it takes is a little imagination.  We can do this!



    Moment of Sublime:  Bubble-smith Sterling Johnson creates giant beach bubbles.  Stinson Beach, California:

     

    Cartoon of the week:

    Tom Toles, The Washington Post

    Topics: 
    Politics
    Humor & Satire
    Series: 
    Friday Follies

    Comments


    by Richard Day on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 3:27pm

    Richard, that pic is too small.  I can't tell what it is!  Looks like a turtle made out of an army helmet.  Was it in Missouri?  Has it been shot??


    by Ramona on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 3:52pm

    Here is the link, just an army helmet made into a turtle. When I attempted to steal the pic, it came out like that.

    http://www.gardenart.com/Metal-Sculptures/Fred-Conlon-sugarpost/SP11-Turtle.html

     

    Q wished to make fun of our fair city and published some comment about our huge wooden duck placed  in one of the two ponds in this town.

    Ironic, but the shooting range is right next to where they place the stupid duck!

    Shooting a lawn ornament has got to be the story of the week! hahahahaah


    by Richard Day on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 4:04pm

    Love that turtle!  And oh, that Q.  Tsk.  But before I pass judgment, how about a picture of the duck?  Is it cute or is it just a plain nuisance?


    by Ramona on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 4:16pm

    I assume that the governor has not noticed the following irony:  His 2 helicopter rides cost about the same as the ANNUAL INCOME OF A FAMILY OF 3 WHICH HE CONSIDERS TO BE TOO RICH TO QUALIFY FOR MEDICAID!

    Secondly, why does everyone think that the proper response to an animal being where it doesn't belong is to shoot it?  For one thing, alligators generally eat small fish, etc.  It is crocodiles that go after people, dogs, etc.  But even having said that -- the animal is the victim here!!!!  (OK, I know it was concrete, but my point is that shooting an animal because it is where it shouldn't be is wrong.)


    by CVille Dem on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 7:18pm

    Yes to the irony.  I want to believe this will be the end of Chris Christie, considering the hypocrisy to the nth degree, but I know it won't hurt him.  That hurts.

    And yes to your feelings about animals getting shot while minding their own business, which is what they're almost always doing.  Obviously, if the alligator wasn't real, it wasn't moving.  But they shot it in the head twice. 

    I had a bat in my house once and my husband was out of town so I called my neighbor to see if he would come and help me get it out.  It was lying on the floor by the fireplace minding its own business, its only sin being that it was kind of ugly and it was in my house.  I was terrified of it.  So my neighbor came in and dropped a towel over it and carried it out to the yard, where it would have been easy to remove the towel and let it just fly away, but instead he stomped it to death.  He was a good neighbor but I could never see him afterward without thinking about what he did to that bat.  And how I was actually an accomplice.  If I could just have dropped that towel on the poor bat and carried him out myself he would have flown away and lived his bat life and I would have had one less reason to feel guilty. 

    PS:  I've watered plastic flowers but I've never killed an animal -- real or otherwise -- on purpose. (Had to insert that qualifier.  Our adorable new beagle puppy ran under my wheels as I was backing out of the driveway.  May he RIP.)


    by Ramona on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 11:20pm

    If it was lying on the floor, it may well have been sick.


    by Donal on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 7:46am

    I have been longing to be enlightened by the jaw dropping intellect that is Sarah Palin. For example, being the American History buff she is, she discovered that Paul Revere actually warned the British!

    I am rendered speechless by her amazing mind.


    by mageduley on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 9:29pm

    Sorry Ramona, I didn't realize you already had the link to this vid. It is some hysterical stuff though :)


    by mageduley on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 9:31pm

    Actually, I appreciate you putting the video up there.  I can never get inserting the videos right.  I've about given up.


    by Ramona on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 11:22pm

    Right now Palin's the story. Let's keep it that way.

    In 1963 Profumo, the British Secretary of Defense, visited Lord Astor's Stately Home and had sex with the 16 year old Christine Keeler who was also sleeping with a Soviet official [but not at the same moment :-)]. The story had everything. When Harold Wilson, disembarked at Heathrow he was besieged by reporters with mikes, asking for a quote. His entire reply was

             " No comment" ..  pause "in technicolor".

    Profumo continued to be the story ...  

    Let's not make this story that, in effect, we're lying. By taking her words out of context.

    Palin' didn't make a serious historical error, she expressed herself unclearly. As Joe Lunchpail often does.

    In the context of her complete paragraph, her words "warning the British" was her loose way of saying: that he would teach them they'd made a mistake.

    Which is true. By spreading the alarm to every Middlesex village and farm, he got the farmers to get out their guns, and get ready to use them April 19th. That was indeed a warning to the Brits they were in a serious situation.

    She then, cleverly I think, shifted the subject to gun control, unpopular in NH, saying: Revere was going to show" the Brits  he wasn't going to let them take away our guns. To my faulty  knowledge that hadn't been their objective on April 17 but I bet it was on April 20th.

    If we let the video speak for itself the divine Sarah loses some points. But if we go on and on about the historical inaccuracy, the story will be effete pedant liberals persecuting the People's Sarah. We'll be the story instead of her.

    No comment should be the (non)Talking Point.


    by Flavius on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 3:11am

    I can't agree that she was simply expressing herself unclearly.  Paul Revere wasn't warning the British that they had better look out.  He was warning the townspeople that the British were getting close.  That was his goal and his only goal.  She got it wrong.  And she did it in language not befitting a presidential candidate but rather as a kid standing around a playground giving her interpretation of a history lesson she just heard but got wrong. 

    We might snicker at a kid and think it was cute before setting them straight, but we just can't ignore the fact that we're talking about a grown woman who actually thinks she could be president of the United States.  There's more to the attention this is getting than that we want to lord it over her about how smart we are and how dumb she is.  Any sane person living in a country like America should be horrified that this immature, ridiculous woman has risen to the point where a chance at the presidency is not out of the question.


    by Ramona on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 7:48am

    You may be right but that isn't necessarily the case.

    Factually of course  Revere was giving a message to the patriots. As you say , that was his only goal. And possibly she didn't know exactly what Revere did  but her statement that he was showing them that they couldn't take away our guns establishes that she understood the Revere was hostile to the Brits. Which puts a major ? over the idea that he was giving the Brits a warning.

    And makes it more likely that she spoke metaphorically: Revere was "sending a message " to the British by taking the first step in initiating the process of resistance.

    Either way I think a two guns blazing attack on her is against our interest.

    o If she was just wrong, by attacking her the story becomes our attack rather than her error. 

    o If she was speaking metaphorically , we look stupid.

     


    by Flavius on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 8:13am

    Sorry, Flav, I still don't get your argument. Looking more stupid than Palin would be quite a feat, but I'll take my chances.  You don't fight stupidity growing into power by looking the other way.  We've done that.  It didn't work.


    by Ramona on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 8:44am

    OK


    by Flavius on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 6:29pm

    I've noticed that lately I can't see an inserted video right away, but I can after I come back to the saved page. Happens in both Linux and Windows XP. Not sure why.


    by Donal on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 7:56am

    I've tried both your instructions and Stardust's and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  I have Windows 7, and I use both Explorer and Firefox.  I just get tired of fussing with it, but I'm envious of all of you who seem to do it without problems.  Sigh. . .


    by Ramona on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 8:48am

    I use Chrome at home, and Firefox at work, and it happens the same.


    by Donal on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 9:08am

    It took so damn long to find this next set. I look for it all the time but the copyright bastards take it away. hahahahah

    Here is my take on Sarah:

     

     


    by Richard Day on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 6:36pm

    Thanks, DDay.  I haven't listened word for word in at least 2 decades.  You are right.  It describes Sarah to a TEE.

     

    My only regret is that I would have preferred her take-down to be by Tiny Tim.


    by CVille Dem on Sun, 06/05/2011 - 10:40pm