By the time I get around to posting the latest funny Internet video, I assume most of you have seen it. However, I know some of my audience doesn’t traffic in the faddy parts of the Internet, so I still like to highlight those that stand out for me. And I love this one, which I first saw via Language Log, which makes this about the only interesting post ever on Language Log.
So we’re pretty excited about Al Franken winning the recount of Minnesota’s Senate election by 225 votes. Of course, his asshole opponent Norm Coleman is tying things up in the courts, despite having no chance of winning, only to appease his higher-ups in DC, which is basically all he ever does anyway, so that there’s one less Democratic senator on key votes. Meanwhile, Minnesota goes unrepresented.
Still, we’re excited.
It’s been a couple of weeks, but here’s him gracefully declaring victory via TPM.
Daily Kos is kind enough to remind us that on November 5th when Coleman led by 215 votes (which, you’ll note, is fewer than the 225 he now trails by) he said that he would step aside if he were in Franken’s place and save the taxpayers the cost of a recount because he felt “the healing process [was] so impohtant.”
Of course, now that we’re on the other side of a thorough and transparent recount and he’s behind votes, he wants to deny Minnesota representation in the Senate because, as every blog entry on the subject will tell you, Minnesota law is unique in that they wait until legal challenges have run their course before the Secretary of State can sign the certificate to seat somebody. And all just because his Republican overlords in Washington want one less Democratic vote for the proposals Obama’s got coming down the pipeline. What a mensch.
Fivethirtyeight declares Coleman’s political career over. In my favorite line about the whole thing they reference his loss to Jesse Ventura and the tragic pre-election death of Paul Wellstone (but not Ventura’s histrionics over the memorial service which handed the election to Coleman when Walter Mondale stepped in for Wellstone in the last week) (emphasis mine):
Let’s be frank: Norm Coleman doesn’t have much of a future in electoral politics. Defeated Presidential candidates sometimes have nine lives, but defeated Senatorial candidates rarely do, and in his career running for statewide office, Coleman has lost to a professional wrestler, beaten a dead guy, and then tied a comedian.
The complaint ignores the existence of counter-evidence, employs one maneuver when it is self-benefiting and opposes the same maneuver when it goes against them….
Coleman claims that multiple precincts had “more votes than voters,” a potential irregularity if we understand that as being more ballots than people who signed in on the register. But Coleman has another definition: When the votes tallied in the recount were more than were counted on Election Night, with no reference to what was on the voter register. The whole point of a recount is to find votes that the machines failed to pick up at first.
…
Coleman says those Election Night numbers were bad, too, and wants even more votes for Franken thrown out from absentee ballots that he claims should never have been counted, based on errors on the envelopes. But the envelopes were separated from the enclosed ballots months ago, and he can’t prove whom these people voted for. He just wants to throw out Franken votes by fiat.
…
The Coleman complaint wants to force the review and inclusion of 654 absentee ballots that local officials in both blue and red counties say were properly rejected, and which come almost entirely from precincts that Coleman won. They also re-reject the 930 absentee ballots that were counted this past Saturday, which gave Franken a net gain of 176 votes, saying those ballots were wrongly deemed to be legal and erroneously opened.
But remember: Under the terms laid out by the state Supreme Court, the Coleman campaign is on the record saying that this past Saturday’s ballots were legal and should be counted. Now they want a do-over.
To review, these are absentee ballots that had already been deemed by the counties to be invalid — once on Election Night, and then a second time upon the court-ordered re-evaluation of absentees in December. It is not surprising that their minds haven’t been changed the third time around.
This thing is over and Coleman’s stall tactics are only hurting the people of Minnesota, who will eventually be proudly represented by the man seen here via TPM doing a spot on impression of Mick Jagger.
Seems like Friday’s becoming News-Goes-Onion day on MPL, as here’s another actual news article that I swear could have been taken straight from The Onion.
A recent discovery reveals that toys called “Aqua Dots” are coated with a chemical similar to liquid ectasy. When children eat the Aqua Dots (which they’re not supposed to do, but they’re children, after all), they go into an ectasy-induced coma.
I know this is actually a terrible, terrible thing, but in the abstract, where no children are actually being hurt, this is f’ing hilarious.
But wait, we’ve read this book before….
All this follows the recent, astonishing announcement by Nancy Nord of the U.S. government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) that there’s really no need to enhance the safety monitoring of consumer products in the United States. Under orders from the White House, Nord insisted that the CPSC didn’t need any increase in funding, and that businesses should essentially remain unregulated. Nancy Nord, who is now widely regarded as a pro-business Bush puppet, jetted around the world on trips paid for by some of the very same wealthy corporations who don’t want consumer product safety regulations.
And now I feel like an idiot for getting this far into this post…I should have known from the author’s bizarre pic and the jarring anti-China rhetoric up front, but near the bottom this article fully reveals itself to be written by a cult member.
There’s only one person in the running for the next presidential election who even has a shot at reversing this, and that’s Ron Paul.
Followed by this contradictory and unsubstantiated remark….
It’s not clear what a Ron Paul presidency would do for consumer protection against Chinese-made imports, but it’s crystal clear that U.S. consumers would be freer, wealthier and healthier under Ron Paul’s policies than those of any other potential presidential candidate.
Yeah, crystal clear. So now I’m back to thinking the whole thing is completely f’ing hilarious. In fact, I think Obama and McCain both support heavy Chinese ecstasy use by babies. What do we want? Babies doing ecstasy! When do we want it? At tonight’s rave!
The Dodgers have a shortstop from Korea.His name is Chin-lung Hu.His last name is pronounced, at least on the telecasts I’ve seen, exactly the same as the English word “who.”So when he reaches first base as a baserunner, you can say “Hu’s on First.”This is always funny.
Many of you have already seen this, because I’ve done an awful job of keeping my inbox clean lately.(God, e-mail fills me with rage lately.)But anyway, here’s Josh, of Loin Groove and Woodpecker! fame, starring in a short that appeared in the International Pancake Film Festival (that sounds awesome!) last weekend (or Friday or something…I’m totally burned out.) This is NSFW.
Then there’s this, which features Woodpecker! and their song “Nothing Gets Chicks Hot Like A Guy Who Cares A Lot.”
Via Mind Hacks is this hilarious post written by Cookie Monster, where he struggles with his cookie habit.As somebody who sometimes gets a little too passionate about his passions, I can certainly relate. Replace cookies with CDs and you’ve got KEN.
Here are a few excerpts.
When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can’t stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs.[...]
Me know there something wrong with me, but who in Sesame Street doesn’t suffer from mental disease or psychological disorder? They don’t call the vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood.[...]
Me no have unhealthy obsession. Me love cookies, but it no hurt anyone. Me just enthusiast. Everyone has something they like most, something they get excited about. Why not me? Me perfectly normal. Me like cookies. So what? Cookies delicious. Cookies do not make one monster. Everyone loves cookies.
