Combat! - Page 273 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Good night, sweet priss

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates April 11, 2012 4 Comments

Pictures into which flaccid dicks must be Photoshopped immediately

Shocking news yesterday: Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign for President. That in itself is not so shocking, but I still can’t believe that it happened before a sex scandal destroyed his personal life. As of this writing, I can only conclude that he has no personal life to destroy. Where a normal person would crusade against gay rights and contraception because he is raw-dogging it six days a week in the bathroom at Wal-Mart, Santorum seems to genuinely believe the words that emerge from his mouth. In this way, he was an anomaly in contemporary politics. I would say that he will be missed, except everything he said—sincere or no—was insane. It’s like if there were a bird that, instead of singing, made extremely realistic farting sounds at high volume, and then it became extinct.

Study links conservative politics to “low-effort thinking”

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse April 10, 2012 5 Comments

Scientists in a lab inspect a readout from the Conservatometer

As a modern, intellectually engaged American, there’s nothing I like better than a study that shows something. Granted, some studies show better stuff than others. When studies show that certain organic compounds affect the reaction rate of ATP synthase, for example, I get extremely bored. But when studies show stuff that I kind of knew anyway—like people in sweatpants are less likely to know where their kids are, or coffee is good for you—I perk right up. Luckily for me, the Huffington Post exists. Yesterday they observed their bimonthly tradition of linking to a scientific study that suggests conservatives are dumber than progressives. The study in question is right here, and it’s worth reading to understand the methodology researchers used to correlate increasingly conservative views with “low-effort thinking.”

Grassley calls President “stupid” via Twitter

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media April 9, 2012 5 Comments

Pictures into which harmonicas must be Photoshopped immediately

The last time we checked in with Senator Chuck Grassley’s (R–IA) Twitter account, his message to his followers was “Barb made oatmeal.” That was in 2009, on the morning his Senate committee abandoned its attempt to reach bipartisan consensus on health care reform. Grassley operates in the Iowa tradition of laconic hicks who are secretly genius assholes, and he uses Twitter accordingly. Like Basho, his poetry is in what he does not say. It was therefore surprising to see him issue this long-winded rebus on Saturday:

Am they? Oh, wait—that’s “American people” who r not stupid.

Friday links! Economic forces edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links April 6, 2012 6 Comments

Graphs, graphs graphs! First of all, I don’t get punished for using a spectacularly uninteresting visual image for my header, because you are already looking at this page. All your hits are belong to us. Second, that image is actually totally interesting. Had I not cropped out the title, you would know that it plots the percentage of total US pre-tax income—including capital gains—garnered by the wealthiest one percent of earners. A lot of people have said that the interesting thing is its impressive upward trend right around 1980, when America began the long fight to make the Laffer Curve a legitimate conceptual instrument. I personally think the interesting thing is the locations of its two highest peaks, in 1929 and 2007, respectively. I’m not saying economics is a science, but maybe there’s some sort of principle at work there. It’s Friday, and today’s link roundup is all about weirdo economic phenomena, plus judo highlights and a book review. I’m not entirely stupid.

Close Readings: What do you mean “we?”

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading April 5, 2012 3 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I miss Sarah Palin. She’s still around, of course—on Tuesday she guest-hosted the Today show, and I assume she still has the Fox News show where she connects surviving childhood leukemia to free enterprise or whatever. But I miss Sarah Palin the awful thing that happened to American politics. Now that she’s an awful thing that happened to daytime television, my loathing lacks that tang of panic. Not that Sarah Palin is totally useless. She still serves as a valuable warning in both electoral politics and English usage. Lucky for us, she continues to pose as a competent practitioner of both—as she does in the subject of today’s close reading.