Flashback Friday -- Billy Childish

Billy Childish was/is the front man for several bands including The Milkshakes, Thee Mighty Caesars, and Thee Headcoats, and I know I'm forgetting at least one, but my personal favorite is Wild Billy Childish and the Blackhands.

What Yahoo! News Considers Important

Here are some of today's top stories, according to Yahoo! News:

'Jersey Shore' Fight May Have Been Staged, Sock Continuity Suggests

 Oh, my God! Stop the presses! We must get to the bottom of this! A TV show might have had a scene which was staged? Oh, if only Edward R. Murrow were here!

 

Too Many Men in Tights? 5 Reasons the Superhero Summer Has Been a Bust

by: Daniel Frankel

 

'Thor,' 'Green Lantern,' and 'X-Men' Paramount/Warner Bros. Pictures/20th Century  

Why aren’t the superheroes delivering audiences this summer?

 Well, I was going to look into why are we still in Iraq, or why isn't the economy doing better, but yeah, this is really the million-dollar question. Why aren't more people rushing out to see shitty movies about comic-book superheroes? They paid to see Iron Man, Batman, and Spiderman, why wouldn't they shell out ten bucks to see a hero no one has heard of played by a b-list comic actor? Wasn't that movie already made last year?

 

Green Hornet, Green Lantern. tomato, tomahto!

 

Also, the Green Arrow. Did they have a big sale on green ink or something?

Go to Video

Over-40 stars who have killer legs

Stars Over 40 With Killer Gams

Wow! Hollywood actresses who are physically attractive! And some of them are over the age of 40? Well now I've seen everything!

Kate Middleton's special wedding present

Camilla Parker Bowles surprised her daughter-in-law with a very pricey token of her friendship

Holy shit! A bride got a wedding present? From the groom's stepmother? No wonder we have no time to discuss Lybia! (seriously, none of the top stories are about Lybia.

Future mother-in-law's rant goes viral

Heidi Withers receives a scathing email after a visit to her fiancé's parents.

Oh  my God! Something humorous is being passed around on the internet! Let's go live to our reporter on the scene!

Which fast-food chains are the best?

ha! Trick question. They're all terrible!

Beyoncé's daring onstage look

The singer makes a bold fashion statement by pairing a chic sequined mini dress with hot pants

This just in: popular singer wears shiny outfit!

 

 

Totally different that what she normally wears! I want to see ten column-inches on my desk by press time!

 

 

New smartphone boasts one huge screen

Photo: Jim Merithew

This phone was made to be seen.

No, really. The Samsung Infuse 4G’s huge 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus screen not only looks great, but practically begs for video playback.

Of course, that raises the question: Is that enough to differentiate the Infuse from Android’s numerous oversized offerings? For the most part, yes.

Even though it looks exactly like every other smartphone out there, trust me. This is big news!

Somehow.

At least according to Yahoo!

The Worst Thing About the Bachmann-Medicare Kerfuffle

Bachmann’s hubby – $137,000 from Medicaid

Republican presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann has decried Medicaid for swelling the “welfare rolls”, and charges that President Obama wants to bankrupt Medicare to force seniors onto “Obamacare.”
But a “quality Christian counseling” clinic run by Bachmann’s husband has collected more than $137,000 in Medicaid payments for treating patients over the last six years, according to an NBC News investigation.

It's not the hypocrisy. The blatant, stunning, shameless hypocrisy of Bachmann complaining about Medicare while profiting from it. That's pretty much what you would expect from someone like Bachmann. This is the same Michele Bachmann who is all up in arms about government spending and "socialism" while collecting thousands of dollars in federal farm subsidies. There's nothing even surprising about someone like Bachmann trashing a program while taking money from it. That's to be expected. It's also not surprising that she sees absolutely no irony in this.

Here's the worst thing. Bachmann's husband's psychology practice specializes in de-gayification.

"Bachmann and Associates believes in providing all clients with quality counseling in a Christian environment," reads the mission statement on the business's website. Some of the listed specialties of the clinic and its counselors include "abuse issues," "co-dependency," "men's and women's issues," "shame," and "spiritual issues."
But some observers claim that the mission of the practice includes counseling homosexuals in an effort to "ungay" them. "It is absolutely sincere," adds former school board member Cecconi. "They specialize in 'reparation' regarding sexual orientation."  (source)

This is not only bullshit, it is hate-based bullshit, and Medicare dollars should not be going to such a practice.

This is him, by the way, addressing the topic of what to do about gay youth:





If you are a psychologist, and someone comes to you and says "help me, doc, I'm gay!" your job is to say "let's see if we can't help you to accept yourself. You need to come to grips with who you are and learn to love yourself." or something like that. Your job is NOT to pray the gay away. Your job is NOT to say "don't worry, I can help you become straight!" It's bullshit, it doesn't work, nor should it. Gay people don't need to be "fixed" or "cured" or "converted." And the taxpayers of Minnesota should not have their tax money wasted on this this type of horrible faux-therapy.

Nikki Haley Can Teabag Like a Man

I don't know why I always expect women to be less evil and stupid than their male counterparts.

 

And I'm almost always disappointed.

 

You were expecting, maybe, Mother Theresa?

Aaaaanyway. . .  Somehow South Carolina ended up with a budget surplus of around $210 million dollars. Now you'd think that South Carolina could figure out a lot of things it needs to spend money on, 

 

 

  

Like a less embarrassing school mascot?

But, this being South Carolina in the teabagger era, they could only agree to spend half of that money on schools, while the other half would go to lowering business taxes in the state.

 

Mah Distillin' bizness needs a tax break more'n them kids need that fancy book-lernin'!

( I kid South Carolina, I've been there, it's a fine state. )

But even that was too much for Governor Nikki Haley.

Gov. Haley Would Veto Spending Surplus on Schools

Gov. Nikki Haley says she would veto a Senate plan 
to spend $105 million in surplus funds on schools.

"If you're not giving it in tax relief, if you're not giving it to pay down debt, you send it back to the taxpayers. That's where it belongs," she says.

Okay, South Carolina has a population of about 4.5 million people. So if Haley sends that $105 million back to the taxpayers, that comes out to about Twenty-Three Dollars and Thirty-Three Cents per South Carolinian. I'm sure that will be a real life-changer for them.  Or you could hire 2,100 teachers at $50k per year. But yeah, it's generally accepted teabagger wisom that the people know better how to spend their money than guv'mint does! So, I'm sure each set of parents will take their $46.66 and use that to make a much smarter investment in their kids' futures. What ever they spend their $46.66 on will obviously have a much more positive impact on their children's lives than some dumb old teacher would have.

 

Forty six dollars? Here's to you, South Carolinians!

Heck, I'm sure the schools probably don't even need the money anyway! You know how well-funded these darn socialist schools are what with their commie teachers' unions, and their PTA bakesales and whatnot!

"It's a bad situation out there as far as education is concerned and good teachers are being laid off because the school districts just simply don't have the money," says Sen. John Land, D-Manning, Senate Minority Leader.

"You've got to remember that we are way behind in education," he says. "Three years ago, we were giving $2,500 per student going back to the local districts to educate our children across this state. We are down now to about $1,700 per student."

Oh. Well still, though. Forty six bucks per family! Thank you Governor Haley!
Screw giving money to schools, right governor?

"We could give double this budget to education and there would be people saying it's not enough," Haley said, without specifying how much money public education should get. "It needs to go to students in the classroom."

Yeah, double the amount is still not enough, so it only makes sense to give nothing. It's like one meal a day isn't really enough food for a growing boy such as myself, heck even two meals might not be sufficient, so why eat at all? And the money needs to go to the students in the classroom. God knows you can't accomplish that goal by givng money to the schools!

Horrible Supreme Court Continues to be Horrible.

(Via NY Times)

WASHINGTON - In its first campaign-finance decision since its 5-to-4 ruling in the Citizens United case last year, the Supreme Court on Monday struck down an Arizona law that provided escalating matching funds to candidates who accept public financing.

Wow! So the same judges who just ruled that money = speech are against a law that would provide more speech because um, I don't get it. What exactly is the problem with having more speech. I thought speech was good?

The vote was again 5 to 4, with the same five justices in the majority as in the Citizens United decision. The majority said the law violated the First Amendment rights of candidates who raise private money. Such candidates, the majority said, may be reluctant to spend money to speak if they know that it will give rise to counterspeech paid for by the government.

 Jeezus! So it's not enough that one candidate has more money, he also gets to prevent his opponent from getting more? And since when is making someone "reluctant" to "speak" the same thing as infringing on his right to speak? The Scalia wing of the court will do all manner of impressive mental gymnastics to make the law fit the decision they want to make. Rather than looking at the law, weighing the arguments pro and con and then arriving at a decision, they seem to begin with a decision, then try to figure out how to make the law agree with that decision.

Okay, we all agree that we hate public financing of elections, right?

Oh, sure, yeah! Really inhibits the corrupting influence of zillionaires!

 

So, we're agreed that we'll strike down this law, 

now what principle can we twist to justify this decision?

 

I dunno, freedom of speech? We could say that giving one candidate the ability to have more speech is actually taking free speech away from the other candidate?

 

Bra - Vo! 

Well done, Mr. Scalia. Make it so. 

And set a course for happy hour.

I'm pretty sure it goes something like that.

Also, Carol Channing, because why the hell not?