WARNING:  Hot graven images ahead.  Turn back if you believe Jesus' image on toast should remain a miracle and not be used as a promotion by clever, sacrilegious Vermonters for a Made in China toaster.  (It's International Blasphemy Rights Day today but I swear I didn't know that when I chose this segment.  Not that I'm not okay with it.  I am.)

I can't believe it's not butter!  In Wisconsin there is a law on the books that forbids restaurants, schools, hospitals and prisons from serving margarine instead of butter.  This weaker version of a 1897 law has been on the dairy state's books for 44 years but most restaurants can get around it, since the interpretation of the law these days is that if a customer asks for margarine it's okay to give it to them.  No mention of how the margarine is delivered to table -- in plain sight or disguised as something else.  (The bovine version of "Don't ask

 I swear, the weirdest thing going last week was the Tea Party debate hosted by Ted Turner's brainchild gone wild.  (When I heard that the once-venerable CNN was going to give free air-time and thus a large dose of credibility to yet another crazy bunch hell-bent on taking back every single right and privilege afforded us by hundreds of years worth of struggle by our more forward-thinking ancestors, this is what I said out loud:  "Waaaaaahhhhhtt??"  (Mo

I spent a lot of the summer driving U-Haul trucks instead of blogging, so I didn't keep up with the early Republican jostling. Tonight, I'm going to do something useful with my time, so watching the Republican debate is out of the question. But the New York Times published a great piece about the Republican's political situation three months back. It simply didn't use the words "republican" or politics. It was a piece about movie studios and Comic Con.

It's college football season, and that means corruption and scandal. (Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about that corruption.) We've actually gotten to the point where Sports Illustrated, not the Chronicle of Higher Education but Sports Illustrated, has called for a major university football team to be disbanded.

How jealous are we of that lavish, over-the-top Royal Wedding the Brits got to celebrate this year?  So pathetically jealous we had to pretend we're capable of having one of our own by latching onto the lavish, over-the-top Kim Kardashian-Kris Humphries wedding.

Although it's been crowded out by actual news, there's been another uptick of interest in whether or not Sarah Palin will attempt to run for president.

A few weeks ago, when I wrote about the Bulwer-Lytton contest for the worst first sentence of a novel, I had no idea there was actually a worst novel in the world, too.  The consensus, from what little research I've done on the subject, is that Amanda McKittrick Ros is the author who wins, hands down.  (A literary group that included Tolkien and C.S.

I can't believe they prefer Al Sharpton to this guy.

 Once there was a post by Simon Dumenco called, "Poor Steve Jobs Had to Go Head to Head With Weinergate in the Twitter Buzzstakes. And the Weiner Is ...."  It appeared online on June 8.  The next day The Huffington Post published a piece by Amy Lee called, "Anthony Weiner vs.

Picking on Fox News stopped being fun a long time ago. It's a right-wing propaganda station, period. Hell, books have been written on the subject.

But I do admit to enjoying seeing when Fox News "journalists" so plainly admit that they are hacks and paid shills. Like in this off-camera moment from this weekends Fox Show "News Watch," which did handstands to avoid mentioning Rupert Murdoch and News Corps crimes in the UK:

The FBI has caught Whitey Bulger, after a mere sixteen years. The arrest made national news because of the FBI's well-earned embarrassment and because of the mythology around Bulger. As a crime boss, Bulger was not nationally significant. He was a formidable gang leader with firm control over one slice of Boston's organized crime, but it was only a slice.

The media can't resist talking about Congressman Weiner's penis. That's no surprise. The American entertainment industry exists to talk about penises and the things various penises like. And our news media is only a minor subsidiary of that entertainment empire.

I don't always read or agree with Maureen Dowd, but I do have her on my blogroll and now and then a title grabs me.  Yesterday she wrote "Your Tweetin' Heart".  Yes, I knew it was going to be about Anthony Weiner, but I read it anyway because sometimes her take on odd things like that is refreshingly different. 

Speaking as a some-time member of the corporate media, let me just say that Sarah Palin's recent Bus Tour has been driving me nuts. Not only won't Palin tell the Media what the main purpose of the tour is, aside from the hazy patriotic gibberish, but she hardly gives the "Lamestream Media" the time of day!

Now, I understand that Palin quit her job as Governor of Alaska half-way through and that it's highly unlikely she'll ever hold a political office again. But what is the bus tour about!?

Since my previous post on the satirical Web site CoalCares.org, there have been several interesting developments. First off, the infamous Yes Men have been outed as the masterminds behind the site.

Over the course of the day, I've come across three stories from major media outlets that shared two things in common. First, all three stories were trivial. Second, all three of these trivial stories were based on comments from anonymous sources.

First up, Derek Thompson at the Atlantic:

GOP Aide: Republicans Not 'Intellectually Honest' on Taxes

If you need more proof that Libertarianism is an ideology of the soul-less, let John Stossel finish the deal:

After my FBN show last week, where I let critics of my FREELOADERS show talk back, I got this e-mail:

Dear Mr. Stossel,

I am a veteran who is rated and compensated as 100% disabled.

Do you, and Libertarians in general view me as a “freeloader;” and should I not be compensated according to your views of this situation?