Alan Miller & Dr. David Overbey

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Ogre-oids 29 Aug. 2010

Dismas charities: Today's C-J reports the "non-profit" charity organization funded by tax payer dollars purchsed one of the $92,000 suits at the new Yum! downtown arena in Louisville. The CEO makes, according to the C-J, more than most CEO of other charity organizations and last year had an income higher that Papa John sugardaddy J. Schatner, who himself has not been an Ogre-oid in MoPod's brief journalistic history only by default.

NYC skyscraper: the latest outrage in NYC is plans to build a new skyscraper that will rival the Empire State Building. The rationale is to boost the economy by building another giant skyscraper in the vicinity of the Empire State building (Bloomberg-ville thinking that emphasis on the economy and high-rise developments is just what NYC needs). What imagination. NYC needs another skyscraper like the Catholic church needs another pedophile.

CIA funded Afghan operatives: Both the NY Times and Washington Post report that a man at the center of an investigation into corruption in the Karzai administation is on the CIA payroll. Fidel Castro reported that Osama bin Laden is on the CIA payroll to scare the shit out of Americans as soon as the military industrial complex needs more taxpayer dollars to produce more corpses and mutilated bodies. Not that I'm a big fan of Castro, but until bin Laden is found and killed a la Hussien, this theory remains plausible.

Surging deaths in Afghanistan: Three more dead U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and the Taliban is spreading its reach and influence throughout the country. If I didn't know better, I'd say this looks a lot like Iraq.

Media sugar-coating: "U.S. deaths for the month of August totalled 38, down sharply from 66 last month." See: everything is getting better. Just like since it will be cooler in December than in June: so no global warming. How's that for objectivity?

Spreading violence in Iraq: I know: it's hard to believe. Yet as the U.S. follows through in its plans to withdraw forces from Iraq which it's told the whole world about for the last four years, violence again is on the rise. Time for another surge!

Firing employees for medical marijuana use: Employees using medical marijuana have been fired for testing positive for THC. We can't regulate the financial banks, but sleep well, because if you use medical marijuana you'll be fired! That'll help put Americans back to work!

"Restoring honor": Glenn Beck's call to restore "American values" by recognizing God is our King is like saying we should all eat with chopsticks and use the metric system. America was founded on freedom of speech and religion and a democratic system that has a President, not a monarchy--but if you need to be reminded of that you are already a brain-dead tool.

President Obama's "military learning curve": Mainstream media again depict our commander-in-chief as someone who needs to learn about America's military culture. This point betrays that the military does not honor authority and respect. Obama is the commander-in-chief. If you respect authority, then you do what he says, rather than tell him what he should do. The military can't even fight wars functionally (see above). I don't give them much credibility for telling a Harvard law school graduate and editor of its law review how to do his job.


Catholic priests: when they're not butt-fucking deaf male youths, Catholic priests like Deacon Dominick Azzara defend war by saying that "I thank God we have young men and women willing to die for our country." Of all the times we hear about the Ten Commandments, the one context where it might actually be welcome might something like "Thou shall not kill" when discussing the loss of life in the Fort Campbell, Ky area. Alas, not to be.

Daily Show Rips Beck's Thing on MLK Day

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Friday, August 27, 2010

8/27/2010 Video dump



Well. Glenn Beck must be very important.



And the "Ground Zero" mosque thing according to the Daily Show:

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Bat Shit Stupid Report: Bachmann Misspells Own Name

From the "Can't Make This Shit Up" department:  The raving lunatic and drooling idiot Michele Bachmann started her own PAC recently... and didn't even spell her own name right.  I wonder if "Michellepac" is going to confuse anyone.*

*Apparently it didn't as anti-abortion groups immediately poured money into it.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Modus Operandi Podcast episode 29


Notes:  At 1:48:12 This is one of the longest episodes to date as we were off for almost three weeks so there was a bit of catching up to do.

Here are some visual aids and comments that accompany this episode that aren't already posted on the blog in the recent past:

We totally fail to perform the Ogrefest theme song.  

I do not know the source of this graph but it is a good one. We mention this during the podcast and it is important that you look at this. The Democratic tax plan is truly progressive taxation. Someone that makes $10,000 a year simply cannot afford to pay $1000 in taxes, but someone that makes $1 million a year can pay $100,000 and still have $900,000 dollars in their pocket for that year. That's an enormous amount of money, enough for most of us to live out the rest of our lives comfortably. Progressive taxation is incredibly fair because the financial pain that paying $25 causes for someone that makes $10,000 a year is far greater than the financial pain caused by a millionaire paying out $100,000.

Oil plume under the water.  I notice since the podcast that there are suddenly a spate of optimistic newspaper articles about microbes eating the oil.  I wonder how much BP paid to make that happen.

In relation to Target giving money to the MN pact that supports this extremist right wing tea party, it appears that Best Buy gave around $100,000 to the same group.

T-Shirt Coming Soon:  Ogrefest - War Mongering Machine

Because I am running so late getting this podcast edited and uploaded I did not insert the "Dr. David Overbey Says Something Positive About Anything" theme music or introduction, but there are at least three places in the show that I could have used for the segment.  My apologies for being a lame ass though the intro and theme music would have made this 1:48 episode even longer and screw you for being upset if you are.  Which you aren't.  Because you're awesome.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Mosque in Florence Kentucky

It's bad enough to live in the State that gave this nation Jim Bunning and Rand Paul, but the dimwits are jumping on the anti-Islam bandwagon here and doing it in good ole Kentucky style:  loudmouthed and stupid.

More here and here.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Ogre-oids, 20 Aug 2010

Maastricht coffeeshops: In its latest obsession with cultural amnesia and xenophobic fundamentalism, the Dutch are taking legal steps to deny access to the 13 coffeeshops (which sell marijuana products) in the border town to any non-Dutch citizen. Since European borders are porous, and Maastricht sits at the boundary of Germany, France, and Belgium, local government frowns on the heavy traffic and loud music of young foreigners who come into town to smoke weed. I've been to Maastricht and have gone out of my way to find the traffic jams and trouble makers ruining life for the locals. There are no problems in Maastricht that don't exist in any other city in the world. How stupid is all of this going to get? You can't de facto legalize weed and then suddenly say, "That's it, no more."  If the people of Maastricht think they have problems now, wait until they start telling everyone who is not Dutch that they can't go into a shop that is still open for locals to blaze up. Like that will work. "Hey man, here's 50 euro if you'll go into that shop over there and score me some hash." Locals will simply stock up and find bars, clubs, or other outlets to sell to tourists.

Stopping people from smoking weed will not stop Islamic fundamentalists from trying to wreck Western culture and it will not bring Theo van Gogh back to life. The next time some xenophobic Dutch jackass scapegoats the coffeeshops, someone should remind them of Ciudad Juarez, Exhibit A for the dystopia that the forlorn and miserable war on drugs creates:  Car bombings. Random murders and kidnappings. Sounds like a fun place to visit, doesn't it? Drug use is not out of control; it's the war on drugs that's out of control. In the name of order and public safety, the war on drugs turns places like Ciudad Juarez into a cauldron of bloodshed and anarchy. Yet we live in such hopeless and visionless times that no one ever gets tired of the violence and chaos that somehow are equated with morality and order. Mayors of Mexican cities get kidnapped by their own police force. Cartels set up roadblocks by car-jacking people in broad daylight and paralysing the traffic. Everyone is killing everyone else, the flow of drugs does not stop, the money and the weapons remain there for the taking.

Meanwhile, rather than indict the CEO of BP and the other psychopaths who blew up an oil rig and killed eleven people last April, a federal grand jury has indicted former pitching great Roger Clemens on charges of perjury for allegedly lying to Congress about steroid use. As usual, the mentality that justifies the indictment is fundamentalist: he lied to Congress, he must be indicted. If I lie to congress about eating donuts at Sunday school when I was eight years old, I guess I get indicted too, right? Clemens, like many pro athletes, probably used some performing-enhancing drugs, but maybe not. My question is: who gives a shit? If you think American society will fall apart because a jock lied about taking steroids then you probably also think pubic hair will soak up all the oil still in the Gulf. Speaking of, predictably mainstream media are now telling us that the Gulf is safe, the oil is all gone, it's OK to eat the shrimp, and that the environmental nightmare forecast by wacko-paranoid America-hating scientists has not happened. As always, the qualifier is we still don't know what the "long term effect" of the so-called "spill" will be. That's just it: scientists understand the importance of a forensic grasp of the long-term consequences of human interaction with the planet.

The same thing goes for climate change. Russia has record heat and burning wheat fields, an ice island four times the size of Manhatten (yet only a tenth of the size of Michael Bloomberg's ego) has broken off from Greenland (that happened because Greenland is melting, e.g. global warming, climate change, get it?), Iowa and Pakistan are underwater, and many parts of the U.S. have experienced record-breaking heat waves. The typical American response: "well, it's summer, it's supposed to get hot! When summer's over, it'll cool down! These academics don't know anything about the real world! What do they think happens in the summer? Is it supposed to snow? They say all that conspiracy stuff so they can get grant money from tax payers so that they don't have to get a real job and do real work in the real world!" Climate change is real. That giant chunk of ice on a collision course with the eastern coast of Canada is real. It's not an ice cube in a cocktail and it's not a videogame.

But I'm sure as long as we keep paying sports coaches 50 million times what we pay college professors, there's nothing to worry about. Why? Because we have people like Nick Saban and John Calipari who can remind us of how important a player's "basketball IQ" is or how critical it is for a player "to read" the defense. Calipari just got done guiding his latest collection of one-and-dones through a three-game exhibition against Canadian teams. The games were a joke, a bore, and a waste of time. If I want to take my students to Prague so they can learn more about Czech literature and culture, what will the taxpayers say to that? Yet a three-day jock tour of Canada to play against teams that couldn't beat a parapalegic wellchair team if they were playing five against three is apparently a great investment of time and money. These coaches are ego-manical con artists who have less integrity than pimps and the whole enterprise of "university" sports is a complete fraud.

UK football coach Joker Phillips dressed up in an Army uniform to look tough and remind us that playing football is a lot like war. It isn't. Children don't get blown up when the running back fumbles. People don't get their arms and legs blown off because the quarterback throws an interception. Yet the brilliant minds of the coaches keep making the parallels, as Saban did three years ago when he equated losing a home game to some nobody team to the attacks on the World Trade Center. Yes, he apologized for his "inappopriate remarks" but that's not the point. For a country that has zero respect for college professors to worship sports coaches who make such blatantly vapid comments illustrates how determined we are as a nation to sabatoge anything of virtue or vital importance to keeping our culture and our minds alive.

Finally, America's obsession with the mutilated body continues, as the Aug. 9 cover of Time features a picture of an Afghan woman who had her nose cut off by the Taliban, with the question, "What happens if we leave Afghanistan?" as though if we stay and continue the war no one will get mutilated or killed. Please help me out here: who wants to look at a picture of someone with their nose cut off? who wants to look at Iraq vets who have no arms or legs? It's some kind of sick obsession that reinforces and normalizes a world where humanity is so alienated from itself that it takes pride in circulating the image of its own bodily mutilation.

Hey, at least it's not as bad as LeBron James ruining the lives of everyone in NE Ohio by signing with the Miami Heat, or the prospect that one day Brett Favre actually will retire from football. In the meantime, Joker Phillips can hunt down Osama bin Ladin. Should be an easy job for the coach of a football program so pathetic it hasn't beaten Tennessee in a quarter-century. Here's a wacked-out abstract theory from a dreaded liberal geek: football coaches are supposed to win football games (which UK coaches chronically cannot do), not pose as military heros. I'm against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but I do respect the people in the military. People who put their lives on the line even if it's for a cause I don't agree with have a better chance of beating Tennessee in football than any sports coach has of contributing anything of any worth to society.

Oh yeah, one last thing: Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa is a fucking idiot.

Ogre-oid: News Corp's $1 Million Donation to GOP

And the floodgates are open and we're off to the races!

Monday, August 16, 2010

Dr. Overbey Has Gone Missing

A few garbled messages have been received from David over the last few days. As for some reason he has disabled texting on his phone the audio messages have included nonsense phrases such as "friends from out of town," "really hung over," and "my folks dropped in." We hope this isn't code for something as we don't have the key.

This being said we hope Dave shows up soon so that episode 29 doesn't end up to be another Alan solo thing. We're all bored with those.

[update 8/18/2010]  Dr. Overbey and Mr. Miller were seen together cooking, eating, and discussing politics, but they were, it appears, too intent on relaxing to bother to provide you, dear listener/reader, with a podcast this week.  At the end of the evening it was agreed to record episode 29 Friday evening so expect your new podcast before next week begins!

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

14th Amendment No Longer Touted as "Achievement" by GOP

Thanks to Salon for pointing me to this Minnesota Independent Article.  All it takes is Lindsey Graham suggesting there's a problem with giving people born in this country automatic citizenship to bring the GOP full circle from its embrace of its pre-Southern Strategy self.  No longer the party of Lincoln?

Anti-Ogre-oid? Target Apologizes

From TPM:
 The head of the Target Corporation is now taking the amazing step of apologizing for the company's financial support of Tom Emmer, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor in the company's home state of Minnesota, after coming under fire from gay rights activists.


 Is this sincere, or did they just get caught distorting the democratic process?  In case you haven't been paying attention, Target was caught giving $150,000 to a racist, gay bashing, far right political organization supporting a racist, gay bashing, far right teabagger piece of shit.  Target's CEO was surprised when all his gay, liberal, non-bigoted employees and customers protested and threatened a boycott.  More likely he freaked the fuck out when the boycott threat caused his company's stock to plummet by over $1.3 billion. 

But Target got caught.  With the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizen's United the flood gates have opened for the mega-corporations to openly buy our government at every level.  In this age of near instant communication via the internet and cell phones these actions by the ultra-megas can be exposed, but how many boycotts can go on at once?  How long until the fickle and pathetic American public loses interest or just simply gives up?

Monday, August 9, 2010

High Fructose Corn Syrup Loved By Cancer Cells

A recent study has found that pancreatic cancer cells metabolize fructose (the cheap, corn based sweetener found in just about every refined American food) more easily than sucrose disproving the "all sugars are the same" claims of Big Corn. Yet another reason to drink Mexican Coca-Cola, other than the fact that the corn sweetener tastes like crap.

Bike Paths Road to Communism Says Teabagger Politician

You just can't make this shit up.

Maybe the Mayans Were Right...

BP Ends Meeting When Someone Brings in Some "Missing" Oil



Not surprisingly, at a public meeting BP shuts off the mics when a fisherman pulls out a bag of oil he got out of the marshes a few miles away after BP claims there is no oil.

No Help for 9-11 Rescue Workers from GOP

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Shhhhh, So Very Quiet

In case you couldn't tell, MOPod has been on vacation this last week.  Dr. Overbey has not bothered to tell me why he hasn't posted anything new but I, your intrepid editor, was overwhelmingly busy with the Kentucky Artcar Weekend which should[1] have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with cars made into art.  Expect some catching up this week and a new podcast this weekend!

[1]  We had this bizarre "Smoker's Rights" teabagger woman trying to wedge her way into the show with her admittedly extremely decorated car.  We told her she could park and join us but that she couldn't be screaming at people and blowing smoke in their faces.  She was having none of it so the police were summoned to ask her to leave.  I will post a picture of her van soon (I haven't had time to look at my pics yet).

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Modus Operandi Podcast episode 28

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episode 28 7/30/2010



Apologies for such a short program, folks, but Dave was away playing in Arizona and I spent the week trying to make my van work.  I succeeded, and I did manage to contact Dave out there wherever he was so, despite the short length it was the magic it made, not the length.  You see.  That was a sad penis length joke.  Sorry about that.

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