Combat! - Page 178 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Friday links! Human endeavor edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links March 14, 2014 2 Comments

Ah, the human: so much more ambitious than the object, yet so much less reliable. It seems that wherever you look, human beings are trying various stuff. Be it opening a pickle jar or writing a play about an ambivalent Danish prince, people can’t get enough endeavoring. Does every endeavor succeed? Probably, is what I’m thinking, but let’s just run the numbers and make…okay, nope. It turns out history is littered with failed endeavors, be it opening a pickle jar or writing a comedy series about a handsome lawyer. Today is Friday, and you don’t know until you try. Won’t you hurtle down the ramp with me?

Paul Ryan invites us to save money by embracing false dichotomy

By Dan Brooks in lying March 13, 2014 0 Comment

Paul Ryan, who has not held a job since 1999

Paul Ryan, who has worked in politics since graduating college in 1992.

After over-composing to make deadline yesterday, I am enjoying my first semi-day off in weeks. While I propagate a culture of laziness and entitlement, how about we check in with a guy who knows all about that stuff from the perspective of righteous election? I refer of course to Paul Ryan, who recently complained that poverty is largely due to people in the inner cities “not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” In case this blog post falls into a time machine set for 1954, “inner cities” is futurespeak for “people who are not white.” We need to stop spending money to help them, or this poverty thing might spread to another demographic.

Merkel Effect strikes Senate Intelligence Comittee

By Dan Brooks in War on Terror March 12, 2014 1 Comment

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the results of a hoagie-eating contest.

Yesterday, Dianne Feinstein told the Senate that the CIA had hacked into and deleted files from computers the Intelligence Committee used to investigate agency waterboarding and interrogation techniques, calling the spying a “defining moment” in the oversight of American intelligence. It sure felt that way. Back when ~~whistleblower~~ traitor Edward Snowden revealed that the agencies were spying on the American people, Feinstein vigorously defended the secret electronic surveillance as an indispensable tool in the fight against terrorism. Later, when we learned that the NSA and CIA had also spied on foreign heads of state including Angela Merkel, our elected representatives lost their minds—a hypocrisy Snowden identified in Feinstein again yesterday. Call it the Merkel Effect.

President appears on “Between Two Ferns”

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media, Uncategorized March 11, 2014 4 Comments

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama from President Barack Obama

That’s the president of the nation, not just California, appearing in a Funny or Die video with Zach Galifianakis. He would be the first sitting president to appear on an internet humor program, were it not for James K. Polk’s hilarious “What Treaty?” telegraph comedy routine with Sitting Bull. Still, it seems important that the president of the United States would do a low-budget video with a waning film buffoon. It’s something Reagan probably would never have—oh, wait.

Regarding my dispute with Leng the Torturer

By Dan Brooks in Leng the Torturer March 10, 2014 7 Comments

Image from “Secret of the Space Monster,” DC Comics 1958

When Leng the Torturer captured me, I pretty much knew what would happen. Okay, I thought as his oily henchmen trooped down the corridor, stopped, and trooped back to my hiding place. Now for torture. That’s what Leng does. Whole squadrons of space marines have vaporized themselves rather than be taken as his prisoners, and I would have done the same if I’d had a vaporizer or been wearing a belt and sitting in a chair. But they got me.