Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Political-Wank's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
10:02 am [anthologia]	my god, it's full of stars! Senator Brian Nieves really loves mailing list. He loves it so much, in fact, that when a gentleman wishes to be taken off it and says so rather rudely, he e-mails back to defend its (and his) honor. Highlights of this exchange include: Senator Nieves: "Who are you? Is there something wrong with you? Are you incapable of communicating in a way that common, decent people do? Tell me this, how did you ever even get on MY Distribution list?" ( Rest under cut ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 12th, 2012
3:52 am [spawn_of_kong]	"Sudan: Israeli 'spy vulture' nabbed during reconnaissance mission" Link. ( The article. ) Current Mood: *sporfle!* (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 9th, 2012
12:22 am [darksumomo]	Video blogger trolls U.S. Representative into flamewar and flounce Blogger John Henry tells his story of trolling, flaming, wanking, and deletion (yes, there are screencaps) in this video. He then posts a petition to Change.org demanding that the representative involved (John Fleming of Louisiana's Fourth Congressional District resign. Yeah, like that's going to happen. Still, the video is enough to get the attention of Naomi Klein, who mentions John Henry in The Guardian. Not bad. Finally, if John Henry reminds you of a wrestling promoter, he used to be one. Some habits die hard. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: crickets chirping (Comment on this)
Friday, March 30th, 2012
9:25 pm [darksumomo]	Fans mourn and foes gloat as Keith Olbermann gets fired from Current TV The oft-dismissed sportscaster and political commentator lost another job, as today he was fired by Current TV and replaced by Eliot Spitzer. In response, Keith Olbermann has threatened to sue. In the comments to the Politico articles linked above, conservatives gloat while trolling Keith's fans. The exchanges are very wanky. Meanwhile, over at the liberal blogosphere, where it's more difficult for conservatives to troll, fans are mourning. PoliticusUSA is indignant and the commenters are taking Keith's side. At Daily Kos, the post has 650+ comments and counting, including a thread of Babylon 5 references. Surprisingly, ontd_political on LJ is giving a more balanced response. Let's see how long that lasts. ETA: For bonus wankiness, at Huffington Post, the main article on the subject has 9,000 comments both approved and pending. Current Mood: Amazed Current Music: incidental music to Star Wars: The Old Republic (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
11:17 pm [darksumomo]	Romney supporter in Ohio says Santorum should give back delegates won in Michigan Yes, really. Here's the Huffington Post headline. Mitt Romney Surrogate Says Rick Santorum Should Give Back Delegates A Mitt Romney campaign surrogate said on Wednesday that Rick Santorum should "give back" some of the delegates that he won in the Michigan primary on Tuesday, insisting that some were obtained by nefarious purposes. "[Santorum] cheated by asking people who would never vote for him for president to vote for him in the Republican primary," Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said on a call with reporters. "I believe that he should agree to give back a percentage of the delegates that he won in the Republican primary with Democrat votes that would never support him for president." The Santorum campaign made robocalls to Michigan residents earlier in the week urging Democrats to vote for him on Tuesday. Some did -- he won 53 percent of the vote among people who identified themselves as Democrats. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, who dreamed up Operation Hilarity and had earlier claimed victory with Democrats contributing to Santorum winning up to 8 delagates was on the conference call where this request was made and reported it as "15 minutes of nothing but whining about those mean Democrats doing exactly what Romney previously did in Massachusetts. And heck, the Michigan primary was open precisely because Romney allies thought he'd be able to win more Democratic crossover." ( In the spirit of a picture being worth 1000 words, a commenter put it even more succinctly. ) As for the validity of those claims, I noted in my Blogspot and Examiner.com article on the subject that the clearest case for Democrats flipping the result was because of a grassroots effort in Detroit to vote for Ron Paul, not a netroots effort to vote for Santorum. Even so, the Operation Hilarity video is a riot. UPDATE: The Detroit Free Press reports that both of the two statewide delegates have been now been awarded to Romney, despite a memo saying that they were to be split proportionately. First Iowa, then Maine, now Michigan--this is the sloppiest primary/caucus season so far and it's only March! As I wrote in my Blogspot, I am glad I am no longer a Republican! Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: Background Music for The Sims 3 (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
11:41 pm [darksumomo]	Lou Dobbs thinks "The Lorax" and "The Secret World of Arrietty" are liberal propaganda The Hollywood Reporter via MSNBC: FOX's Lou Dobbs attacks 'Lorax' and 'Arrietty' as left-wing brainwashing During his Tuesday night show, Dobbs dubbed Disney’s "Arrietty" and Universal’s "Lorax" “insidious nonsense from Hollywood,” then he announced: “Hollywood is once again trying to indoctrinate our children.” "Arrietty," about four-inch people who “borrow” what they need from normal-sized humans, encourages class envy and redistribution of wealth, according to Dobbs, while "Lorax" is just another example of environmental radicalism. “So, where have we all heard this before?” Dobbs asks after showing a clip from each of the two films. Then he answers himself: “Occupy Wall Street forever trying to pit the makers against the takers and President Obama repeating that everyone should pay their fair share.” It's Obama's fault! Never mind that "The Lorax" is from 1973 and "The Borrowers" is from 1952, as Keith Olbermann pointed out. Bonus snarking from Time. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: Keith Olbermann snarking (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 27th, 2012
8:02 pm [darksumomo]	Study links prejudice to low IQ and conservative beliefs; conservatives outraged A study called Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes is published in Psychological Science. It has the subtitle "Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact." It gets picked up by LiveScience, which writes about it under the title Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice. So far, it has 70 comments, some from displeased conservatives. It then is picked up by Yahoo! News. The comments section explodes with 26,000+ responses in the first 30 hours, most from outraged conservatives. For the flip side, Daily Kos gloats. Wank (and some unfunny) galore! Current Mood: *thud* Current Music: incidental music to Star Wars: The Old Republic (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 14th, 2012
7:48 pm [darksumomo]	New York Magazine compares the GOP primary to the Oscar race How the Oscar Race Mirrors the Republican Primary You rarely find much overlap between Hollywood and Republican voters, but this year is different: When Republicans complain about front-runner Mitt Romney and search desperately for a contender who can supplant him, it uncannily resembles the conversations of awards voters or Oscar pundits less than impressed by this year's crop of Best Picture candidates. Like Romney, The Artist is considered to be the one to beat, and both certainly fit the bill on the surface, each projecting a retro idea of what presidents and classic movies are supposed to look like. And yet, the field in both cases has been unusually volatile, with a great majority of voters refusing to line up behind the front-runner but unable to come to a consensus on which of the year's weak competitors could win instead. But the comparisons go well beyond the unsettled (yet seemingly preordained) nature of the race: In a weird twist, the themes and plot twists of the Best Picture candidates actually seem to mirror the Republican candidates. Not terribly wanky, but very funny and insightful. Be sure to check out Thesnarkknight's comment with his comparison between the GOP candidates and movies. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: incidental music to Star Wars: The Old Republic (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
4:52 pm [platedlizard]	Hoarders: Dictator's Edition Link Apparently being the autocratic ruler of an entire country does not mean you have good taste. Saddam Huesain had horrible paintings of big breasted women and muscly men all over the place. Kim Jong Il loves movies so much that he had a South Korean movie director and an actress kidnapped to make movies for him, and, well, let's just say I'm feeling really sorry for Condoleezza Rice right now. Shoot, I want to take a shower right now, just reading that. I laugh more if these guys hadn't been, you know, in charge of countries and guilty of the death of tens if not hundreds of thousands. /heads for the shower room //crossposted to all my journals via Semagic EDIT: just realized that I made it sound like liking Dr. Rice is bad taste, when actually I meant to point out the sheer creepiness factor. There's liking, then there's being a fucking creep about it. I'd blame the beer but I was sober at the time (I'm not now, lulz) (18 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 14th, 2011
9:01 am [darksumomo]	Herman Cain's "Plan 999 from Outer Space" could be cribbed from Sim City Original at The Cain Scrutiny on Hysterical Raisins. Amanda Terkel on Huffington Post: Herman Cain 999 Plan: Did It Come From SimCity? WASHINGTON -- In Herman Cain's America, the tax code would be very, very simple: The corporate income tax rate would be 9 percent, the personal income tax rate would be 9 percent and the national sales tax rate would be 9 percent. But there's already a 999 plan out there, in a land called SimCity. Long before Cain was running for president and getting attention for his 999 plan, the residents of SimCity 4 -- which was released in 2003 -- were living under a system where the default tax rate was 9 percent for commercial taxes, 9 percent for industrial taxes and 9 percent for residential taxes. (That is, of course, if you didn't use the cheat codes to get unlimited money and avoid taxes altogether.) ... Presumably, under the Cain plan, disasters would be turned off. At "Plan 999 from Outer Space" is really from Sim City on my own blog, I have Heath Ledger's Joker describing what a bad joke this is if it's true. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: sirens (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
10:20 am [darksumomo]	Rice's Marching Owl Band mocks Rick Perry for being an Aggie Rice University's Marching Owl Band (MOB) makes fun of Rick Perry being an alum of Texas A&M at the Rice-University of Texas game and it gets posted to YouTube.  Juanita Jean shows the YouTube clip and explains it for non-Texans in Rice MOB Vs. Rick Perry. Her commenters get it. Move On also posts the clip, but the commenters there miss the point. Rice also mocks A&M for leaving the Big 12 for the SEC by spelling $EC during the same halftime show. This is only the latest sniping by Rice at Texas A&M, as the Rice MOB and Texas A&M have a long history of issues with each other. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: airplane (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 29th, 2011
11:03 pm [darksumomo]	Krugman on a fake alien invasion and a fake Paul Krugman A couple of paragraphs of last week's Silly Sustainability Saturday for August 20, 2011 were devoted to a Huffington Post article "Fighting Global Warming Could Stave Off Alien Invasion: Report," which linked to an article in The Guardian. The gist of both articles was "[r]ising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat." A commenter pointed out that the point of the original study was the Aliens are going to destroy us because of Global Warming. I responded that it gets even crazier. Not only did six times as many Fox News viewers think we should prepare for an alien invasion than research climate change, which I mentioned in the Silly Sustainabilty post, but the week before, Paul Krugman postulated that preparing for a fake alien invasion would bring us out of recession. ( Read more... ) Above excerpted from For Narb: Paul Krugman and fake alien invasions and Silly Sustainability Saturday for August 27, 2011 on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: Song song a fake flash mob is dancing to (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
12:05 pm [darksumomo]	Christine O'Donnell's "Troublemaker" living down to its name First, the e-book version of her book says it's a work of fiction. Huffington Post: Christine O'Donnell Memoir's E-Version Called 'Work Of Fiction' By E-Publisher Failed U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is out with her new book "Troublemaker," which she describes in the introduction as "a political memoir slash campaign diary slash position paper slash rallying cry, with an emphasis on the slash." In an email to supporters, she promised the book would offer "the real, raw story of my life." But the e-version of her book says she's making it all up. The copyright page of her book in both the Kindle and iTunes versions state that O'Donnell's memoir is, in fact, a novel. "This is a work of fiction," reads the disclaimer. "All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously." "Emphasis on the slash," LOL. Next, the trolls are having a field day mocking her through the tagging and recommendation functions of Amazon. The Daily Beast: Christine O’Donnell Gets Punked Just in time for her book’s release, the former Senate candidate’s Amazon page is the target of cyberpranksters—who won’t let shoppers forget the Tea Partier’s past comments about witches, masturbation, and abstinence. Many of the recommended products are NSFW and take the notion of wank literally. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: conference call for Coffee Party USA (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011
11:36 pm [darksumomo]	Most of Newt Gingrich's Twitter followers are fake The average Gingrich Twitter follower, according to Daily Kos Yesterday Newt Gingrich laid out a new argument for why he should be the GOP presidential nominee: He's got the most Twitter followers. But according to a former Gingrich staffer, he bought them. Gingrich complained yesterday that the press is ignoring his prodigious Twitter audience: "I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn't count because if it counted I'd still be a candidate; since I can't be a candidate that can't count." Which is true! Gingrich currently boasts 1,325,842 followers, whereas competitors Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann have yet to crack 100,000. But if Newt is winning the Twitter primary, it's because of voter fraud. A former staffer tells us that his campaign hired a firm to boost his follower count, in part by creating fake accounts en masse: Gawker has more, including bonus Twitter wank in comments. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: crickets chirping (19 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
10:30 pm [rosehiptea]	Raids on Anonymous I didn't think it had enough connection to fandom, despite 4chan, but "politics" should work? FBI raids suspected Anonymous hackers in 10 states, from New Jersey to California ( Text Under Cut... ) Current Mood: tired Current Music: Imperial State Electric: Lord Knows I Know That It Ain't Right (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 15th, 2011
11:47 pm [darksumomo]	Tea Party Patriots now against manatees; think it's a UN conspiracy St. Petersburg Times: Tea party members tackle a new issue: manatees By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer Wednesday, July 13, 2011 Everybody knows what the tea party members oppose. High taxes. Big government. Obama's health care plan. High-speed rail. Now, for at least some local tea party members, there's one more to add: manatee protection. A Citrus County tea party group has announced that it's fighting new restrictions on boating and other human activities in Kings Bay that have been proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We cannot elevate nature above people," explained Edna Mattos, 63, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, in an interview. "That's against the Bible and the Bill of Rights." ... "We believe that (federal regulators') aim is to control the fish and wildlife, in addition to the use of the land that surrounds this area, and the people that live here and visit. … As most of us know, this all ties in to the United Nations' Agenda 21 and Sustainability." Agenda 21 is a program, adopted by the U.N. in 1992, to encourage countries around the world to promote only development that does not harm nature. Pundit Glenn Beck and other conservatives have attacked it as an attempt to impose world government's rules on every aspect of American lives. The Citrus County tea party group's website says Agenda 21 is "designed to make humans into livestock." Mattos said she enjoys showing off the manatees to her grandchildren, but she had little use for the Save the Manatee Club, explaining, "If some of these environmental movements had been around in the days of the dinosaurs, we'd be living in Jurassic Park now." Wonkette and her commenters are on the case. They think the following macro is appropriate for this story. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: background music for Rift (27 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 5th, 2011
3:45 pm [darksumomo]	Palin gets history wrong; Palin fan tries to edit Wikipedia to make her right "Palin Fans Trying to Edit Wikipedia Paul Revere Page" Little Green Footballs has the info. Current Mood: *sporfle!* Current Music: Cafe World theme music (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 3rd, 2011
1:49 pm [seraangelus]	Godwins Peter Phelps Godwin's NSW Parliment.  http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2742686.html   Current Mood: *sporfle!* (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 30th, 2011
1:28 am [platedlizard]	The Weiner is a lie. I love a good Internet Detective story. Background: Congress Critter Representative Anthony Weiner has something a fan-following, naturally. A female fan* asked several weeks ago for him to follow her, which he did (as he follows about 200 people). She also did a little fanish gushing, and really, who hasn't gushed at their favorite idol. So far, so good, right? Well, in most fandoms, yes. But this isn't just any fandom. This is POLITICS, BABY. Which mean mudslinging at the lowest level. A screencap of a man wearing gray briefs and sporting a (covered) boner starts circulating. It appears to be accidentally tweeted from Weiner's account to the girl instead of being sent as a Direct Mail. The only problem? Only one person saw it. This one person happens to be very anti-Weiner. Oh, that and the fact that it was photoshopped. In this wank we have: 1. Twitter. 2. Facebook account hacking. 3. Photoshopped screencaps. EDIT: Or not. 4. Non-photoshopped screencaps. 5. Breitbart. 6. Plucky Internet Girl Detectives 7. Timelines. Oh boy do we have timelines. 8. Weiners of at least two different varieties. DailKos did a far better writeup than anything I could do. So rather than stealing it I will simply point you in their direction. *yeah, she's under-aged, but she's also rather incidental to the whole wank. With news outlets and Breitbart and DailyKos I'm pretty sure JournalFen is the least of her worries. Apologies if I am a bad wanka. According to DailyKos she's in college so never mind. EDIT: danceprincess20 on ontd_political has something interesting to say. So apparently the best theory so far (and the one Weiner seems to be saying) is that his account was hacked. (29 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 26th, 2011
8:03 pm [galateus]	REPEAL OBAMASTROID Ripped from sf_drama: The Onion: Republicans Vote To Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed For Earth Libertarian law professor Sasha Volokh: Yes. Yes, absolutely. That would be the morally correct response. I... I can't even add anything to this. I'm too busy lolling. (17 Comments |Comment on this)