Tragedy and Comedy

My emotions feel like they've been strapped to an automated pogo stick and set to bouncing between extremes. Part of this is likely due to perimenopause and the imminent arrival of Aunty Flow, but most of it's down to the news cycle rather than the natural one. It's been one of those days when I look at the world and say, "What a fucking piece of work."

Grab a pogo stick of your own and bounce along, my darlings.

Tragedy:

JAIPUR, India - A series of bomb blasts across the ancient Indian city of Jaipur killed at least 80 people and turned busy markets, a jewelry bazaar and a Hindu temple into scenes of carnage, police said Wednesday.

This sort of thing always leaves me sick and shaking with outrage and horror. What sort of sick fuck thinks this is what their God wants them to do? When are humans going to stop being so fucking stupid and so fucking blind and realize that violence is just a particularly loud way of saying you're a weak, frightened little coward who deserves to be despised?

No one does a greater dishonor to their beliefs than when they decide that blowing a bunch of innocent people to pieces is the right thing to do. Filling an empty argument with explosives doesn't make it compelling. Having the power to kill doesn't make you right: it makes you a disgusting, murderous loser.

Get off of my planet.

Comedy:

Bob Barr will run for president! Celebrate!

You may remember Barr from such low points in American history as the hypocritical “impeach Clinton because he’s the only one of us having an affair” fiasco, and the passage of the draconian “Defense of Marriage Act.”

So why am I excited? Think Nader. But conservative. Bob Barr has the same appeal to selected elements of the Republican Party that Nader has to elements of the Democratic Party. In many ways, he’s more conservative than George W. Bush. And he’ll be running as a Libertarian, a party with intellectual bona fides and support from right-wing talk radio (just ask Neal Boortz). In a party that distrusts McCain as “too moderate” for them (see my earlier post), Barr is just the thing we need to either throw the general election into disarray, or spread McCain’s already weak funding just a little too thin.

Oh, my darlings, I'm feeling shades of Dr. Evil here. The laugh is fairly erupting from the bit o' my belly. In fact, as I told Ames in his comments thread, I feel nearly compelled to go campaign for Bob Barr. 'Twould be an act of kindness, truly: conservatives should not be denied the excitement of having a choice of candidate. I can't wait to tell my conservative friends who've spent the last few months bitching about how much they hate McCain the excellent news. I shall become an evangelical Barrist!

Tragedy:

MIANYANG, China - Soldiers hiking over landslide-blocked roads reached the epicenter of China's devastating earthquake Tuesday, pulling bodies and a few survivors from collapsed buildings. The death toll of more than 12,000 is certain to rise as the buried are found.

Crews worked through a steady rain as they searched wrecked towns across hilly stretches of Sichuan province that were stricken by Monday's magnitude-7.9 quake, China's deadliest in three decades. Tens of thousands of homeless spent a second night outdoors, some sleeping under plastic sheeting, others bused to a stadium in the city of Mianyang, on the edge of the disaster area.

[snip]

Buses carried survivors away from Beichuan, which was flattened — a few buildings standing amid piles of rubble in a narrow valley, according to CCTV video.

The next time you bitch and moan about all those icky government regulations dictating how things should be built, the next time you're tempted to be pissed at the delays as bits of perfectly good roadway are ripped up to make them even better bits of roadway, think of this: a whole city fell down on these people.

A whole fucking city.

And as for you creationist fucks who want God's will to trump science, all I can say is this: tell me again how much you hate science when the folks studying plate tectonics are finally able to accurately predict earthquakes. Just think of them as Noah if you have to: I'm sure you could make a case for science being the new Noah's Ark, right?

Comedy:

COFFEEVILLE, Miss. — Democrats scored a remarkable upset victory on Tuesday in a special Congressional election in this conservative
Southern district, sending a clear signal of national problems ahead for
Republicans in the fall.

The Democrat, Travis Childers, a local courthouse official, pulled together a coalition of blacks, who turned out heavily, and old-line “yellow dog” Democrats, to beat his Republican opponent, Greg Davis,
the mayor of Southaven, a Memphis suburb. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, the vote was 54 percent for Mr. Childers to 46 percent for Mr. Davis.

The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the district, largely rural and stretching across the northern top of Mississippi, had been considered one of the safest in the country for President Bush’s party, as he won here with 62 percent of the vote in 2004.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Take that, you neocon Republicon fuckers! We're three for three! Who's your daddy now, douchebags? AH HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Tragedy:

Both Mississippi candidates depicted themselves as down-the-line conservatives on social issues, and there was little difference
between them on abortion and gun rights: staunchly against the first, and for the second.

Sigh. Deep South conservatives: pissed off enough to elect Democrats, but not yet enlightened. The pogo stick bounces on.

Tip o' the shot glass to The Carpetbagger Report and Submitted to a Candid World, who provided all of the news contained herein. What? You think I actually sift through the newspapers myself?