Monday, October 26, 2015

Our Wacky World— 10/26/2015

Almost a Darwin Award:
"Man tries to put out garbage fire by driving over it in a van loaded with ammunition"
Kansas City Star


Matt Drudge: idiot, liar, both?
"I had a Supreme Court Justice come up to me and say to my face it is over for me. Matt, it is over for you, they've got the votes to enforce copyright laws, you're out of there. They're going to make it so you can't even use headlines.To have a Supreme Court Justice say that to my face, that it is over, they've got the votes. It means time is limited. Time is not forever, how many more moons and sunrises will you see in your life rise and fall, not that many, it is a small amount.”​
Both. And a narcissist. (Esquire)


The comments to this are great. The usual idiots show up:
"With the rise of both marijuana use and public support growing, this could make for a precarious political issue for politicians in a presidential election year. Forget about the chicken in every pot, these citizens just want the pot.”
Jonathan Turley


Ben Carson M.D., who like so many right-wing talking heads has bafflingly become relevant in our time, rather like comets appearing from out of nowhere one night on Fox News (or returned from purgatory after an unexpectedly less-than-perpetural period of public disgrace). Carson is the classic intelli-educated screwball in whose mind all things make sense without a requisite basis in fact:

"What is it with brain surgeons? The strange ideas of leading GOP presidential candidate and retired brain surgeon Ben Carson have been making the headlines a lot lately… The statements that Carson has made are staggeringly ignorant for a man with an advanced science education.”
Skeptic

And now he’s being "threatened" by “progressives”:
“I’d prefer not to talk about security issues but I have recognized — and people have been telling me for many many months — that I’m in great danger, because I challenge the secular progressive movement to the very core”
People have been "telling him." (Dispatches From The Culture Wars)

'A regular guest commentator on Fox News who has been lying for years about working for the Central Intelligence Agency was arrested on Thursday...by federal authorities following his indictment by a federal grand jury for allegedly committing major fraud, wire fraud, and making false statements to the government. Simmons claims to have worked for the CIA from 1973 to 2000, and "used that false claim in an attempt to obtain government security clearances and work as a defense contractor, including at one point successfully getting deployed overseas as an intelligence advisor to senior military personnel”'
Huffington Post

"China was tired of the Nobel people giving a human rights price to human rights advocates, particularly Chinese dissents or the Dali Lama. So it created its own prize to give those hard-working dictators an opportunity to shine. So this year, China is honoring a man who has destroyed the economy of Zimbabwe, starved his people, oppressed dissidents, and maintained one of the most disgusting levels of corruption and personal excess of any dictator in the world.”
Jonathan Turley


Carly Fiorina has a moment of startling clarity:
“Finally my degree in medieval history and philosophy has come in handy… because what ISIS wants to do is drive us back to the Middle Ages, literally.”
So your degree was worthless before? (Sun Times)

'But the session became violent, the police chief said. "Both brothers were continually subjected to physical punishment over the course of several hours in the hopes that each would confess to prior sins and ask for forgiveness” ...Leonard was taken to the hospital after church members found he wasn't breathing, Inserra said. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.’
‘… [an] ex-member denied reports the church is a cult. "I realize this situation makes it look like this," she said, "but if you listen to the teachings, they are accurate to the Bible.”'
But then everyone does "what the bible says," don't they? (CNN)

More:
"Lucas Leonard, a 19-year-old whose family was immersed in Word of Life’s secretive practices, said that he was the [witch], that he wanted church elders to die and that he had considered making a voodoo doll of a church leader.”
New York Times