2016 Olympics bid: A plague on both your miserable houses

Let's get one thing straight, here: although I lean heavily Democratic in my voting, I have never, never voted for Richie Daley for mayor in the open 50 percent-plus first round election we have in Chicago for mayor. The man has always smacked of the goonish machine politics of his late father, and his efforts to skirt ethics rulings (such as the Shakman Decrees) and engage in all sorts of budgetary hanky-panky (like the various TIF fiascos detailed by Ben Joravsky in the Chicago Reader) only proves that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I wasn't a big Chicago 2016 supporter, either: for all of the promises that holding Ye Olde Olympics here would result in a huge economic boom, more evenhanded assessments say otherwise. 

All that being said, the parade of obnoxious right-wing yahoos delighting in Chicago not getting the quadrennial bread and circuses act merely because Barack Obama lobbied for it only proves that the Birther/Deather/Tenther/Idioter crowd is just as vapid in their level of thinking as the Daley machine is. It's as if two sociopathic Siamese twins discovered the existence of each other for the very first time and decided to get into a fistfight. 

Now, never mind that the Dumbster crowd seems completely wrong in their assessment that this will somehow doom Obama's presidency after a mere 8-plus months; it just shows that really, really desperate loudmouths will grab on to any reason to support their odd delusions, and the USOC whiffing on a Olympics bid was the one for this week. 

To which I heartily respond, "who the hell cares?"

And I sayeth unto you, "vote for this loon or God shall smite thee..."

A number of very strange people from Conservapedia have decided that, above all else, their interpretation of scripture is good and correct and that true Christians show up at Town Hall meetings with loaded guns and placards accusing the President of being a secret Trotskyist Muslim Indonesian jazz musician.

(Weirdness further detailed at length by Daily Kos here.and by PZ Myers here.)

Is it just me, or are cultural conservatives actually trying to conform to the script for a particularly weird skit from The Kids in the Hall these days?

Freedom of Speech for me, but not for thee

It's nice to know that Glenn "Weepy" Beck is concerned about his own freedom of speech. A pity he doesn't extend that courtesy to others, though. If you wish to see a fun response by the site owner's lawyer Mark Randazza, here 'tis.

Louisiana creationists: the herpes-like "gift" that just keeps on giving

I shouldn't have been surprised that the Bobby Jindal fan club would continue their shenanigans down in Cajun country, but this is more than a bit galling.

Apparently, there's a race between Louisiana and Texas to the bottom.  Too bad for them that the brown, wet stuff down there is anything but chocolate pudding.