Uh Oh – They Know About the Lesbian Nose-Ring Mines!

The Sarah Palin Channel, and others of its ilk, may know too much already:

Given the content available and the affectedly simple presentation, it’s hard not to see the new Sarah Palin Channel as simply a moneymaking enterprise.

Her competitor Glenn Beck’s vertically integrated TV-website-dogwhistle aggregator, the Blaze, takes in $36m per year before ad revenue. And, as both Rick Perlstein and Alex Pareene have noted, one of the animating principles of the conservative movement over the last 40 years has been soaking every last dollar out of people whose intellectual incuriosity has never been an impediment to further rage and paranoia. It’s why places like WorldNetDaily run obnoxious flash ads in columns that, top to bottom, tell you to buy and hoard gold, to click here to join a paid newsletter that outlines the UN/Agenda 21 plans to annex Joe’s Crab Shack, and how your $25 check to FreedomWorks is the only thing standing between repealing Obamacare or toiling in the lesbian nose-earring mines while wearing Soviet-style tracksuits that give everyone frontbutt.

[Emphasis added] (h/t John Cole)

Well, dang. If they know about the nose-ring mines and the tracksuits, it’s only a matter of time before they discover Operation Mandatory Gay Makeover and—I’ve said too much.

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About that Whole “Rape Prevention Nail Polish” Thing

These guys invented a nail polish that can supposedly detect date rape drugs. Some people were critical of it. I made a Storify about it.

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I Guess He “Fit the Description”

Police in Beverly Hills arrested Scott Weiland last month, and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has had him in jail since then—except that the person they have in custody isn’t actually Scott Weiland:

The story begins almost a month ago when the cops picked up a guy who they thought was Scott Weiland shoplifting razors from a drugstore in Beverly Hills, only to end up finding meth on his person. The guy told police that he was Scott Weiland and that seemed believable enough given Weiland’s history of chronic drug relapse and the fact that the shoplifter allegedly has a passing resemblance to the singer.

He’s been in the jail since July 26, but officials only recently figured out that the guy isn’t the former lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots. Beverly Hills PD checked the guy’s fingerprints after he’d been in custody nearly four weeks, and after the real Scott Weiland recorded a video somewhere other than L.A. County Jail to demonstrate his not-in-jail-ness. Or possibly that he has teleportation powers. Or the power to clone himself. Or……wait, is Scott Weiland a Mutant?

Anyway, the other dude is still in jail, but presumably under his correct name. And Beverly Hills police continue to have a hard time identifying people correctly.

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This Week in WTF, August 29, 2014

– The location must have been great: I guess if you really want to rent an apartment in London:

At a London apartment the rent is too damn high, and the ceiling is too damn low.

A landlord has been fined for renting out a studio apartment that could only be entered by crawling on all fours. Not only could the apartment itself only be entered on all fours, but to get to the tiny front door tenants needed to first crawl up a set of stairs in the same fashion, with the ceiling varying between 27 inches at its lowest point and 47 inches at its highest. The Guardian points out that this would be too low for the average 3-year-old to stand upright.

Landlord Yaakov Marom had been warned by the city that the apartment was not fit for renting, but he failed to comply with the warning and was discovered to be renting to the room to a couple for about $700 per month.

Yes, $700/month to have to crawl into your domicile. Now, to be fair, maybe the apartment itself was really nice.

Also, to be fair, I haven’t rented for a few years, so maybe $700/month actually is a good deal. Sigh.

Not a pearl necklace: (Warning, sophomoric sex humor ahead.) Continue reading

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What I’m Reading, August 28, 2014

Georgia man shoots self in hand outside bar, bullet kills nearby woman, Robyn Pennacchia, Death and Taxes, August 18, 2014

The man will be charged with “involuntary manslaughter.” Though if you ask me, taking a gun to a bar makes it pretty voluntary. I mean, if you get drunk and you have a gun on you, you assume the risk that you may fuck up and shoot yourself in the hand or “accidentally” shoot another person. You weigh the risks and you decide which is more important to you, and if you err on the side of “I’d rather have my gun with me, I will assume that risk” then you need to take responsibility for your choices.

Scarborough: ‘Who Would Put An Uzi In The Hands Of A Nine Year Old Girl?’ Susie Madrak, Crooks & Liars, August 27, 2014

Continue reading

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The Unbearable Suckiness of PACER

The Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system is rather terrible, as anyone who deals with federal court records as part of their job could tell you. No one seems able (or willing) to do the apparently simple things necessary to fix it. Here’s one theory as to why.

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Thanks Be to Doctors

It has become something of a cliché to note when a person of faith, after making a recovery from a horrific disease, thanks their deity of choice but fails to mention the doctors, nurses, scientists, and countless others1 who undoubtedly played a part. In the case of the doctor who has essentially been cured of Ebola after receiving treatment at Emory University in Atlanta, the sentiment that God saved his life strikes me as….well, adjectives honestly fail me.

First of all, if it was God’s doing, why did he have to leave Liberia and come to Atlanta, and why did he need an experimental serum?2 It’s possible that God played a part in this, but the serum definitely did. Second, the same observation3 always comes up in these scenarios, via Ed Brayton this time: Continue reading

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A Victory for Conservatives over the ACA May Have Ruined Originalism

Over at Concurring Opinions, Gerard Magliocca observes a possibly unintended consequence of the Halbig decision, as it pertains to the doctrine of originalism. “Originalism,” of course, being the legal theory popular among certain conservative jurists (e.g. Scalia) that holds that the “original intent” of the drafters of the Constitution should be the primary (or only) consideration when interpreting or applying said document.

Part of the criticism of originalism involves the difficulty/impossibility of applying the views of men who lived in an 18th-century agrarian society to the issues of the 21st century. Defenders of originalism say we can resolve these issues by looking at context, other writings of the Founding Fathers, and so on. Magliocca writes: Continue reading

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Ironic Sexism

I guess it’s the new “ironic racism” or something:

Sofia Vergara has been nominated for an Emmy four times for her work on “Modern Family.” But to the TV academy, she’s a good-looking object to put on display.

Vergara introduced television academy CEO Bruce Rosenblum, who delivered a speech about the state of television, or something — it was frankly hard to pay attention, as Vergara had stepped onto a rotating pedestal so that the audience could view her from 360 degrees. The actress is game for anything and usually makes fun of herself first (as when she made a strange joke about her unfamiliarity with American TV customs, as “Modern Family” prepares for its sixth season). Maybe she shouldn’t!

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R2D2, Interpreted

The news that Kari Byron will be leaving “MythBusters” is troubling. (Oh yeah, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci are leaving too.) In honor of ten years of top-quality television science (not once have they attributed anything to aliens), here is her tribute to R2D2.

She’s auctioning the R2D2 dress on eBay for charity, by the way. Continue reading

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