Saturday, October 30, 2010

History Lesson For Y'all

Here's are some excerpts from political "pundits" after the massive Republican (sidenote: even though it is painfully clear to us at this point in Earth's history, 2010 BCE in case you time travelled here recently and were confused, it is still funny how a word can signify so many different things, isn't it? Like, the word Republican, for example, can be used to represent both a political group composed of the most non-constructively offensive people in the United States, but it can also be used to represent an emancipatory political group in (mostly Northern) Ireland. Now, bear with me here, because this is going to get a little bit complicated, structurally speaking. I'm going to embed a video on this topic that I think is one of the best and funniest things I have ever seen, and then I am going to pick right back up where this audaciously parenthetically-induced ellipsis of a sentence left off. Ready? Go:



gains in Congress in 1994 (midway through Clinton's first term). The main reason I want to bring these quotes to your attention is to facilitate you finding some humor, dark though it may be, in this coming week. So read these, swap out Clinton's name for Obama's and have some fun seeing history repeat itself next week.

G. Gordon Liddy, on his radio show the day after the election:

"This marks the beginning of the end of the dreadful, disastrous, venal, corrupt, sleazy Clinton presidency. The American people have rescued themselves."

Newt Gingrich, the incoming House speaker, on why the American people had rejected Bill and Hillary Clinton:

"They really are left-wing elitists and they really thought the country didn't get it and therefore it was their job to give the country the government that they thought the country needed, even if they didn't want it. That's the whole history of the health plan."

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show the day after the election:

"These two years of the Clinton administration have been a national hiccup, a belch. We've gotten rid of our indigestion, and we're ready to move forward."

George Will, on why Clinton wouldn't be able to recover:

"The country is much more conservative than it was when it elected Reagan, and significantly more conservative than in 1992. But liberals will be a larger portion of congressional Democrats in the 104th Congress than in the 103rd.

"If Clinton remains to the left, he will be trying to govern against the grain of the country and will be peripheral to the nation's political conversation. If Clinton moves to the right, he will alienate his base, such as it is -- liberals, blacks and public employees. That base cannot re-elect him but can help unelect him. Regarding the dangerousness of disaffected liberals, Clinton should ask Jimmy Carter about the spring of 1980.

"Clinton cannot win bidding wars with Republicans in tailoring tax cuts or welfare reforms for a conservative country. Yet if he adopts a veto strategy regarding Republican initiatives, who then is the obstructor of "change" and the author of "gridlock"?

"Clinton's decision to conduct the 1994 campaign as an argument with Reagan underscored the conservatives' contention that 1994 is year six of the Bush-Clinton era, and that Clinton, a passionate opponent of systemic change by term limits and a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, clings to the status quo. The October fear-mongering about the campaign illustrated the Democrats' intellectual sterility.

"And speaking of recycling ideas, some Democrats dream of Clinton emulating in 1996 Truman's 1948 run against the "do-nothing 80th Congress.'' But there are three problems. First, Truman was Trumanesque; Clinton would be pretending. Second, Truman rallied liberals and labor when they were formidable and when government enjoyed unnatural prestige as organizer of the victory in war. Third, the 104th Congress will not do nothing."

(Quotes originally discovered through this article at Salon)

But, you see, Bill Clinton DID get re-elected in 1996 (Things I Learned in College 101), and went on to prove himself one of the better Presidents that this country has had in recent memory, though that may not be saying all that much. So, this is also a post tendering some tentative hope. Though this coming week may at first seem to usher in some obscene and catastrophic idiocracy.... it might not be that bad? In any case, Cake Police still loves you! Unless you eat cake or drop your tea bags on the sane people of the world! Then you're fucked!

Friday, October 29, 2010

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Barack Obama Talking Sexy, As He Is Wont To Do

Okay, so The Daily Show's embed codes are apparently incompatible with Blogger all of a sudden, but start here and work it our yourselves, I guess.

I have voiced many problems with President Obama, both on this blog and in the non-digital realm. However, I also have a long, documented history of firm belief in the fact that he is a seriously smooth operator who can make me believe in almost anything he sets his mind to making me believe in... okay, wait, that sounds pretty dystopic and religious. ANYWAYS, lost in all of the faux-populist fervor and partially justified though severely misplaced outrage is the recognition that, you know what, he has really improved things for the average person in this country (though not for the average person in Afghanistan) quite a bit.

And, also, Democratic Congresspeople have played a significant role in the realization of those things (loathe as they inexplicably are to admit it). And this is where Jon Stewart has really shone these past months leading up to the election (next week, FYI). I haven't personally seen anyone else (besides Stephen Colbert, in his own way) point out so forcefully and frequently the single biggest reason why the Democrats are most likely going to lose their majorities in the House and Senate in this coming election: they are afraid to tout their accomplishments because of a very small but very vocal group of Tea Baggers who have managed to dominate the political discourse through a deadly combination of vitriolic rhetoric and mainstream media compliance to the extent that Democratic Congresspeople actually believe that they represent the majority of Americans! Never mind that these idiots, unbeknownst to them, don't even represent their own interests!

So, here Obama makes even Stewart look a bit foolish (especially his cheap-shot concerning unemployment levels). Because, as bad as things continue to be in America, one need only look at the way things were before Obama was president and had a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, the behavior of the Republicans in the House and Senate, and the Tea Baggers who now have candidates in serious jeopardy of becoming the policy-makers of our country, to realize how much worse things could have, and could still, be.

And, since any post of mine wouldn't be complete without a tacking on of some unrelated subject, does anyone else watch the NBC comedy Community? Because you really should watch the NBC comedy Community. It airs on Thursday nights, as does any good comedy show on television, but I recommend looking it up and starting from the beginning, because the first season was awesome, and the character development is great. That is all.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Found Artifacts From A Place Called YouTube


HAAAAA! The Tea Party has now definitively added Curb Stomping to their official policy regarding how to deal with liberals! This fills me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, yes, of course, this is the best election cycle that has ever been. Hands down. The Shakespeare of political theatre, is what everyone should be calling these tea baggers. But on the other hand, elections are next week, and then, what? Well, then it is winter time. Then it is time for all of us to steal garbage cans and desperately attempt to glean some semblance of warmth and comfort from the impotent flames that will arise from the refuse of this country. And once the tea baggers have repealed the already inadequate healthcare reform, infinitely extended the Bush tax cuts, decided Iran just looks too delicious not to blow the fuck up, and, finally, after having bankrupted the country and turned it into the racist, illiterate cesspool that they so fondly idealize as "the good old days", they will turn around and blame it all on Barack Obama.

So vote Democrat! (See? The Left can use scare tactics too! Get off your high horse, Democrats, and start calling an ignorant racist with a mild-to-moderate learning disability an ignorant racist with a mild-to-moderate learning disability!)

Secondly, I found this video that I think is the best possible metaphor for what religious people look like to me always:


Friday, October 22, 2010

Paul Jay on "Journalistic Mythology"


More at The Real News


"[T]he biggest deception of mainstream news—and this goes for television and the newspapers— at the very heart of the deception or the mythology, is they report as if we don't live in a class society. I believe, it's absolutely the heart of the problem. Everyone knows we do. Every reporter knows we do. Everyone they report on knows we do. In fact, when Obama ran his campaign, it was all about we're for the middle class. How can you have the middle class if you don't have some other classes? They don't talk about them... During election times you hear all kinds of talk about the middle class. But if you have a middle class, you also have elite. However, you may want to describe that elite, you have to have one [or] else, you don't have the middle class either. And everyone that does news knows that every story you approach, you have to decide where is your starting point, who's your audience, who you speak to. And the people who are most honest about this are people that report for the business press—to some extent The National Post, a little bit The Globe and Mail, but even more honest are, say, The Wall Street Journal or some of the other financial papers. What's honest about them is they know their audience is a section of the elite that has the most capital, and they write for them, and try to write more or less as realistically as they can for them. But there's no independent journalism who says straightforwardly, we're not going to report or side with or be an appendage of one section of the elite or the other, because what's called diversity of opinion here is diversity of opinion amongst the elite, 'cause there are very competing interests amongst the elite. But if you try to say, okay, well, we want to represent what's in the interest of workers, well, then you're marginalized, you're utopian, you're naive, you're a lefty, you're this or you're that."

Monday, October 18, 2010

From the Desk of Evan Backer

Alain Badiou:

Althusser, who maintains that philosophy is dependent on science, also maintains something very strange, which is that philosophy has no history at all, that philosophy is always the same thing. In this case, the problem of the development of philosophy is an easy one: the future of philosophy is its past.

It sounds nearly like a joke to see the great Marxist Althusser as the last defender of the old scholastic conception of a
philosophia perennis, of philosophy as pure repetition of the same; philosophy in the Nietzchean style as an eternal return of the same.

But what is this "same"? What is the sameness of the same, which returns in the a-historical destiny of philosophy? Behind this question we naturally find an old discussion about the true nature of philosophy. There are roughly two main tendencies. For the first one philosophy is essentially a reflexive knowledge. The knowledge of truth in theoretical fields, the knowledge of values in practical fields. We have to organize learning and the transmission of knowledge. And the appropriate form of philosophy is that of a school. The philosopher is a professor, like Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and so many others., including myself, when you address me under the name of "Professor Badiou ".

The second possibility is that philosophy is not really a knowledge, that it is neither theoretical nor practical. It lies in the direct transformation of a subject, it is a kind of radical conversion, a complete change of life. And consequently it is very near religion, but by exclusively rational means; very near love, but without the violent support of desire; very near political engagement, but without the constraint of a centralized organization; very near the potency of artistic creation, but without the physical means of art; very near scientific knowledge, but without the formalism of mathematics, and without the empirical and technical means of physics. For this second tendency philosophy is not by necessity a matter of school, learning, transmission and professors. It is a free address of anybody to everybody. Like Socrates speaking to young men in the streets of Athens; like Descartes writing letters to Princess Elizabeth ; like Jean-Jacques Rousseau writing his confessions ; or also the Nietzsche or the novels or Sartre plays; or like, if you forgive me for a narcissistic touch, my own novels and plays.

The difference is that philosophy is no longer knowledge, or knowledge of knowledge. It is an action. One could say that what identifies philosophy is not the rules of a discourse, but the singularity of an act. It is this act that the enemies of Socrates called: "the corruption of young people ". And because of that, as you know, Socrates was sentenced to death. "To corrupt young people" is after all not a bad name for the philosophical act. If you properly understand "to corrupt". Here "to corrupt" means to teach the possibility of refusing any blind submission to established opinions. To corrupt is to give to young people some means of changing their minds about all social norms ; to corrupt is to substitute discussion and rational criticism for imitation, and even, if the question is a question of principles, to substitute revolt for obedience. But this revolt is neither spontaneous nor agressive inasmuch as it is a consequence of principles and rational critics. In the poems of the great French poet Arthur Rimbaud we find the strange expression: "Logical Revolts". That is probably a good definition of the philosophical act.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

spacePhone

A non cynical balloon boy story we can all get behind! Space is cool!


Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Animal City record came out yesterday!

here's a making of the record before for no reason. we recorded it on the michigan side of lake michigan. on the other side of the frozen lake is where we all grew up. enjoy!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

ATTENTION CAKE POLICERS!


John Waters is a smart man, heed his advice:







Sunday, October 10, 2010

Yikes!


This soft serve-esque, moderately anatomically correct portrayal of intestines is the existential excrement from which the life of your fast-food experience grows. More literally, these are your McNuggets.



Whoops! That's what you want credit for!


And finally, I give you this article on Senator Jim DeMint (Republican, as will become evident) from South Carolina (home of the bat-shit insane), from the prestigious Spartansburg, S.C. newspaper, with color commentary:

"During his roughly 45-minute speech during a Greater Freedom Rally at First Baptist North Spartanburg, DeMint said he's become an outcast in Washington — most recently standing up against a $400,000 congressional earmark to study dredging the port of Charleston. It's an earmark that his colleague Sen. Lindsay Graham supports and a stand that South Carolina chef and cookbook author Nathalie Dupree said convinced her to enter the congressional race as a write-in candidate."

"DeMint said supporting the earmark is like an alcoholic only wanting one more drink and afterward saying he has quit."

God knows, I'm no fan of dredging. I mean, don't even get me started. So, I'm with you on this one, bro. But I do find the whole alcoholic after his or her last drink analogy a bit flawed. Don't worry though, I will join your writing staff at a very reasonable rate, considering our shared hatred of the beastly and highly controversial practice of dredging. We're still on the same page here.

“People are beginning to see that there's no way we can pay the interest on our debt and every week, we're borrowing money to pay the debt we have and are creating new programs that are costing more money,” he said. “Hopefully in 2012, we'll make headway to repeal some of the things we've done, because politics only works when we're realigned with our Savior.”

Okay, I think we need to work on your basic understanding of economics here, but we'll get there. Once I'm your chief of staff, we'll get this all sorted out. I think you should, however, immediately cool it on the "Savior" business, because you're freakin' me out a little bit there. But that's okay, every relationship has its rough patches, and I'm confident that we can overcome this with some quality couples counseling.

DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn't be in the classroom.

“(When I said those things,) no one came to my defense,” he said. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn't back down. They don't want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”


You know, I'm going to unfortunately have to say fuck off now. I mean, I just don't think I can be associated with someone with such low moral fiber. I mean, first off, this country decided sexism wasn't okay decades ago (in case you missed the lack of a mention of unmarried, sexually active male teachers on that list of the morally incorrigible). Secondly, even this backwards country of ours is realizing that homophobia ain't so great either. And thirdly, THIS WASN'T EVEN OKAY IN THE 70's! This is clearly an abusive relationship, and I'm going to have to put a stop to it here. Lots of luck in your delusional cocoon of hatred, buddy (Although, the part about people not wanting the government "purging their rights" was pretty good, I'll admit. Maybe you don't need me to help you with your writing after all)!


Saturday, October 9, 2010

while earth be art talkin.....

i'm crashing a 24' box truck into some Acuras


whoops

'i'm so blue collar my red neck is purple' -made it up

Friday, October 8, 2010

MEAN NAMES I GOT CALLED IN HIGH SCHOOL

MICROCHIP TASTER


STRAIGHT VELCRO, DAWG


DUST IN THE CORNER OF THE HOUSE


HUMMINGBIRD TONGUE (taken as compliment)


CIGARETTE SKIN


so fuck you tphs who's cryin now

you dont know mikie? you dont know nothin man

mikies the best man mikies good people



his blogs real out there like i dont get you kid but special

this blog





i found all this cool stuff over there



he made a notebook full of cool stuff
http://castlemorbius.com/turds_notebook.pdf

Free Weed!

I don't know how you kids in California could have not heard about this by now, but just in case, you can legalize weed! Clearly I don't need to make any kind of a pitch for this, right? I mean, this should so obviously happen its ridiculous. It's polling at 52 percent in favor right now, which is great. But, I'm told, these things tend to take a turn for the worse come election day (ever hear of Prop 8?), so I'd just like to encourage you to vote, even if you usually don't. Here's some discussion of the issue on last night's Colbert Report, which effectively highlights how weak the argument against legalization really is:

UFOs Love China


Think they're from Gliese 581 g?

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Savage Action

So, if you pay attention to the media and/or social trends at all, two things will have become very evident to you at this point in the earth's history:

1) Bullying in schools (specifically homophobia-induced bullying) is an all too real problem that destroys, and, often, and tragically, prematurely ends lives.

2) Social networking websites are very fun and convenient to beat up on and blame for societal ills!

Obviously, bullying and homophobia are stupid things; a basic sense of right and wrong will suffice as a proof here. I'd be willing to bet that almost everyone who is reading this was bullied during some period during their adolescent life, and found it a miserable, suffocating experience. Unless you were yourself a bully as a kid. In which case, you are definitely going to Hell. Haha, I'm just kidding, that is an imaginary place. However, the fact remains that in the real world, these are real problems that destroy lives. The last story there (click on lives), that of Tyler Clementi, ties these two threads together in the most negative sense.

Also obviously, all of us here at Cake Police believe that social networking via the internet can be a positive thing, or else this blog would not exist. A mostly unspoken objective of this blog, which has organically evolved multiple times, has pretty consistently remained to disseminate information that we individually find valuable in some way. Whether those values lie in LOLz or in politics varies depending on the poster and the individual posts.

And herein lies the purpose of this post. Author and activist Dan Savage, in response to the often related epidemics in this country and the world of homophobia and child bullying, has launched a YouTube channel called It Gets Better, whose purpose is to unite adults, gay and straight, to send messages of hope to these kids that life does get better after the brutal experience of junior high and high school. The inspiration for which, according to Savage (aside from the slew of recent suicides by bullied gay teens to which I referred you in the hyperlinks above), is Harvey Milk's old maxim: "You've gotta give em hope."

So, basically, I wanted to share this as an example of the positive potential of the internet and social networking, as well as an example of someone not just citing a societal ill, but taking action to, if not single-handedly repair it (which, let's be honest, is more than a one person job), then at least aid and empower the afflicted in their struggle.

Here is the first video, made by Dan Savage and his husband, Terry: