Bad Ads - Liberty Mutual (I fixed the video)

Liberty Mutual Insurance has recently been running a series of ads featuring the whiniest bunch of mopes complaining about their insurance coverage. They are so annoying I actually find myself on the side of the insurance companies. I find myself yelling things at the screen like "you got into an accident, of course your rates went up, idiot!"




Yeah, the accident is "no big deal" to you, but the insurance company has to pay out, so naturally your rates go up because you are a worse risk than they originally thought and goddammit, you just made me defend a fucking insurance company!




Jeezus Christ, you had the car for what, one hour, and you wrap it around a fucking tree? How is that not your fault? That tree wasn't moving, ya know. And what, the insurance company is just supposed to pretend like this is just one of those things that happens to people? You've made one payment on your policy and they're already out like 20 grand because you can't avoid a fucking tree! And you're going to whine about this? Like it's so unfair that your rates went up after you did the most cartoonishly irresponsible bit of driving possible? You're a menace! You're lucky they didn't cancel your policy, notify the DMV and make it their goal in life to prevent you ever buying another car. But sure, be a big baby about a rate increase, that's super endearing.

Then there's this moron:





So it's insurance for people who can't grasp the concept of depreciation?
That's a hell of a target market.

2 Headlines I saw Today

Presented without comment:

Huckabee: Less Race Conversations, ‘More Conversions’ — Because God Solves Racism

by Andrew Kirell | 10:21 am, June 23rd, 2015

“I keep hearing people saying we need more conversations about race,” he said. “Actually we don’t need more conversations. What we need is conversions because the reconciliations that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God.”
He concluded: “When I love God and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as He made me, I don’t have a problem with racism. It’s solved!”

KKK Leader Disputes Hate Group Label: 'We're A Christian Organization'

This is going to end badly

Hard to imagine this not turning out horribly.

Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio to send armed volunteers to protect churches

Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio will send armed volunteers into 60 predominantly black churches Sunday in response to the shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church.

 

Arpaio said he was responding to a request from Rev. Jarrett Maupin, who USA Today reported is a progressive Baptist preacher and civil-rights advocate, to provide the volunteers.

Arpaio said Maupin told him he was worried about racist white supremacists in the area, according to USA Today.

 

 

Pretty sure the last thing these black churches need is a bunch of gun-toting rednecks stomping around their houses of worship. You know, when I was a kid I got bit by a dog and for a while I was afraid of dogs and my parents didn't get me a fucking watchdog to make me feel safe. But if Joe Arpaio was my dad, that's probably what he would have come up with.

Arpaio took a similar approach after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., when he sent more than 100 volunteers to prove security outside of his county's schools.

 

Oh, yeah. I remember that. That's when we got to learn stuff about some of these volunteers that Arpaio was sending out to protect the innocent. Stuff like:

Kevin Ray Campos was arrested in 2007 outside a Scottsdale club for disorderly conduct. According to the police report, he spit on several bouncers and then hurled profanities at a Scottsdale police officer. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, according to court records, and was hired as a posse member a year later.

And then there was Jacob Cutler. According to a Flagstaff police report, Cutler threw his girlfriend to the ground and choked her while trying to sexually assault her in 2008. When she didn’t cooperate, he allegedly threatened to call police and said they would side with him, because he “has a badge.” He was a member of Arpaio’s posse at the time.

And then there’s the accusation from 2007 that a driver backed into Clark’s car and then left the scene. Clark allegedly followed the car, rammed the vehicle and held the driver and passenger at gunpoint, all while he was off-duty.
Yet, Clark still remains in the posse.

 

Who could've guessed that a bunch of Arizona teabaggers who would volunteer to march around playing cops and robbers with real guns might have a violent streak?

More Stupid People Saying Stupid Things Stupidly

Of course, most of the stupid people saying stupid things are syupidly saying them about the Charleston terrorist and/or the Confederate flag.

First up: Jeb Bush:

Jeb on #CharlestonShooting: “I don't know what was on the mind or the heart of the man who committed these atrocious crimes.”

I just asked Jeb if the shooting was racially motivated. He said “I don’t know”
— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) June 19, 2015

Next: Bobby Jindal:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), like Santorum, emphasized the religious aspect of it all. On Thursday afternoon, he suggested it would be hard to know what the gunman was thinking. "Law enforcement will figure out what his so-called motivations were," Jindal said. "We shouldn’t try to pretend we’ll understand his mind. 

 

 There's no way of knowing whether this guy likes the Oakland A's or not.

Maybe it's just about music!

And the topper: Rick "oops" Perry:


WASHINGTON — Rick Perry asserted Friday that President Obama succumbed to a “knee jerk” liberal impulse to use the massacre at a black church in Charleston to push a gun-control agenda.

“This is the MO of this administration anytime there is an accident like this,” Perry said, asserting that since Obama “doesn’t like guns… he uses every opportunity” to push an anti-gun agenda.

This makes no sense. I mean, beyond the fact that it makes no sense to pretend that a guy who was clearly, openly committing an overt act of racially-motivated violence might not be motivated by race. I mean, why wouldn't Republican candidates take this opportunity to condemn racism? This should be a no-brainer. Maybe as a Republican you can't come out in favor of affrirmative action, or criticize violent white cops, but no sane person could possibly be offended by your condemnation of mass murder. Other than the Stormfront crowd, everyone was shocked  and saddened and horrified by this mass shooting. I get they can't say anything remotely critical about our nation's gun problem, but what do they gain by pretending that a murderous racist is anything but a murderous racist? It's bizarre. I can't imagine what would motivate this.

You can still be in favor of "responsible gun owners" and cheer for "open carry" laws, and claim that background checks are the first step in the march to totalitarianism and just love gun-totin' rednecks in general and say "this particular white Southern Christian gun-toter was a murderer, a racist and a terrorist and he does not represent white Southern gun-fellaters in general."


 Then they started saying stupid things about that most racist of emblems, the Confederate "Stars and Bars" flag.

First: Lindsey Graham:
 When Graham was asked his thoughts regarding the Confederate flag, he said, "It works here, that's what the statehouse agreed to do. You could probably visit other places in the country near some symbol that doesn't quite strike you right."

Oh, it works here, does it? Yeah, look how well it works!



 Yup, seems to be working exactly as it was designed to.


Then Rick Santorum:

RADDATZ: -- what about the Confederate flag?
You saw Mitt Romney's Tweet, I'm sure, bring down the flag. Jeb Bush has said bring down that flag.
Should they bring down that flag?
SANTORUM: You know, I -- I take the position that the federal government really has no role in determining what the states are going to do.

Jeezus! Your weaselly non-answer to whether the confederate battle flag should be taken down is to invoke states' rights? Gawd, you're an asshole!


After all this, it was kinda nice to hear a stupid person say a stupid thing about a non-racial issue: Rick Perry had a stupid thing to say about healthcare for a change.


Rick Perry was interviewed by FOX's Chris Wallace, who every now and then has some brief flicker of memory that he's supposed to be an actual journalist.
And so Wallace actually asked a legitimate question.

"More than 1 in 5 Texans didn't have health coverage," Wallace noted. "And yet, you refused to set up a state exchange under Obamacare, you refused to expand Medicaid. I mean, is that looking out for the little guy when 21 percent of Texans didn't have health insurance?"

ADVERTISING

"If how you keep score is how many people you force to buy insurance, well, then I would say that's how you keep score," Perry opined. "We make access to health care the real issue, we passed the most sweeping tort reform in the nation."

Tort reform. Great. And that somehow gives people "access to health care?" And you don't even have some cockamamie phony explanation for how tort reform helps people get healthcare? Because you're saying that you didn't help people in your state get access to healthcare because what matters to you is access to healthcare. You're just going to toss that out there and pretend it makes sense?

 Does this normally work for you? Do you get away with saying things like "no, dear, I didn't take the trash out, but if you're keeping score, I did eat some ice cream?"

"I understand that, sir, but don't you -- you were the governor for 14 years -- don't you feel some responsibility when 21 percent of the people in your state didn't have health insurance?" Wallace pressed.
"That's not how we keep score," Perry insisted. "

Dear God!

Giants 6, Dodgers 2

	Final

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
San Francisco (38-32)	2	0	0	0	2	2	0	0	0	6	8	0
Los Angeles (38-31)	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	7	0

W: T. Hudson (5-6) L: C. Frias (4-5)

HR: SF - J. Maxwell (6),B. Belt (9)   LAD - J. Pederson (18),J. Turner (8)

Sure, the Giants scored more runs, but that's not how we keep score down here in Texas!

"That's not how we keep score," Perry insisted. "I think it's a fallacy to say access to health care is all about insurance. What we happen to say in the state of Texas is we're going to try to make accessible as we can good quality health care."

Yeah, let's totally make sure that people have access to healthcare that they have no way to pay for. That totally makes sense!

When is a hate crime not a hate crime?

I was kind of half-joking when I wondered whether FOX would claim that the Charleston church shooting was part of the "War on Christianity."  But then Lindsey Graham went and did it for them:

Lindsey Graham Claims Right-Wing Racist Killed Black Church Members Because They Were Christian

Even though he very specifically said that he was there to kill black people.

Even though he said “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country.”

Even though he is clearly a white supremacist.

 Somehow, somehow Graham just can't bring himself to admit that this was a racially-motivated hate crime/terrorist attack.

This guy literally said out loud what his motivation for these murders was and Graham has the balls to sit there and speculate about "well, maybe he was one of those guys who hates Christians!"


Graham told the hosts of The View this morning that Dylann Roof had gone to school with his niece and she described him as “strange”:

“Strange, disturbed young man. Emily said in school he was just a quiet strange kid. Seems like one of these Newtown-type guys….I can’t explain this. I don’t know what would make a young man at 21 get so sick and twisted to kill nine people in a church, this is beyond my understanding.”

Really? You really can't understand how someone could be this filled with racist hate? Have you ever seen the internet?  Do you know how easy it is online to wrap yourself up in a blanket of hatred and paranoia? Have you ever heard AM talk radio? I know you're familiar with FOX. And some of the shit on the radio and online makes FOX look like the Elie Weisel Foundation.

And it goes without saying that when a Muslim person kills a bunch of people, it's because his religion encourages jihadism, and when a black person kills someone it's because of the flaws in "black culture," but a white kid who commits mass murder is just a "strange, disturbed young man," with no connection to any larger socio-political movement or gorup.

One of the hosts asked if Graham thought Roof was mentally disturbed or if he thought it was a hate crime. . .
"Probably both,” he replied. “There are real people out there that are organized to kill people in religion and based on race. This guy is just whacked out. But it’s 2015, there are people out there looking for Christians to kill them. This is a mean time we live in.”

Oh my God. Republicans will go through any amount of mental gymnastics to make it seem like their side is the one being victimized. This wasn't a group of black people being murdered by a white supremacist, this was a bunch of Christians, being killed by a religion-hater. Oh, what a scary time to be a Christian!

And, right on cue, it's the three stooges chiming in:

Fox & Friends: Charleston Massacre An Attack On Faith, Not Race

 Steve Doocy: Uhhh, it was released earlier—and extraordinarily they called it a hate crime—uhhh, and some look at it, because it was a white guy, apparently, and a black church, uhh, but you made a great point just a moment ago about the hostility towards Christians, so—and it was a church! So, maybe that's what their talking about. They haven't explained it to us.

 Jeezus Christ! "They" don't have to explain it to you. The shooter explained it himself. You don't need "them" to give you any insight into the murderer's motives, the murderer already told you why.

“I am here to kill black people”

How much more plain could he be?



It's also worth pointing out that this terrorist, who was known to be armed and extremely dangerous, was taken into custody by police without any shots being fired. Lucky for him, he wasn't an un-armed black kid.