Author Archives: Stephen VanDyke

Already clocking in at over 5K signatures, a bit of levity is being aimed at the horrible White House petition web application which so far has scorned over 150K marijuana petitioners and there are accusations flying that the Obama administration is simply deleting petitions making the system “unavailable” when it detects an influx of signatures.

I don’t know about you guys, but I heard the dark side actually hands out cookies and would absolutely never lie about aforementioned promised cookies. Then again, the dark side is full of lawyers.

Rumors, innuendo and jeers seem to haunt this administration’s every move, so it is good to see someone finally playing to their strengths in delivering more vapid, condescending and meaningless rhetoric.

Clint Eastwood seems to be an enduring fan of the word ‘fuck’ when it comes to politics. His exact words, from a GQ interview companion piece for the upcoming movie J. Edgar (badly formatted on their fishwrap website, which could be entered in a web design hall of shame):

GQ: [To Eastwood] You’ve described yourself as a social libertarian. What does that mean to you?
Clint Eastwood: I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21, because he promised to get us out of the Korean War. And over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it. And libertarians had more of it. Because what I really believe is, let’s spend a little more time leaving everybody alone. These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage? I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of.

Leonardo Dicaprio: That’s the most infuriating thing—watching people focus on these things. Meanwhile, there’s the onset of global warming and—
Clint Eastwood: Exactly!

Leonardo Dicaprio: —and these incredibly scary and menacing things with the future of our economy. Our relationship to the rest of the world. And here we are focusing on this?
Clint Eastwood: They go on and on with all this bullshit about “sanctity”—don’t give me that sanctity crap! Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.

Leonardo Dicaprio: It’s the great diversion. Politicians are masters at getting you to be on their side so that you don’t look at how big business—
Clint Eastwood: I love big business! [They both laugh.]

Clint Eastwood: I love big business if it hires everybody and does all the right things, and if they get off track then they’ll have to deal with whatever—

Leonardo Dicaprio: But they often do get off track, unfortunately. See, now you’ve got us in a political debate!

Clint Eastwood is estimated to have a net worth of $400 million, Dicraprio is pegged at $200 million. As actual living, breathing, social libertarians with strong fiscal libertarian tendencies, I have no problem encouraging them to embrace their wealth and influence to steer the political debate a little more.

Ideologically, we could endure far worse.

Technologist Richard Stallman is one helluva eccentric speaker, just don’t talk about breakfast or breakfast-related foods with him.

The president of the Free Software Foundation (est. 1985) and eternal advocate for everyone to please just refer to Linux as GNU Linux (said like “grew” but all nasally) had his interview and speaking “rider” posted on a public list recently by Andrew Wood an arms trade activist turned privacy warrior in Oxford, England. It is a fascinating read, clocking it at over fifty-one thousand words.

Stallman has a few select words about government surveillance abuse. Like the bit on bus and train tickets where he is an advocate of anonymous travel, “If you buy bus or train tickets for me, do not give my name! Big Brother has no right to know where I travel, or where you travel, or where anyone travels. If they arbitrarily demand a name, give a name that does not belong to any person you know of. If they will check my ID before I board the bus or train, then let’s look for another way for me to travel. (In the US I never use long-distance trains because of their ID policy.)”

He also wants his travel transactions off the books too, as any techno-terrorist surveillance wary traveler would, “Don’t give them your name either: please pay for the ticket in cash.”

As for hotel accommodations, he wants the air-conditioning to be functioning like a champ at 72°F when he checks in as Anonymous, “Many countries have a law that hotels must report all guests to the police. In most cases, this orwellian policy applies not only to foreigners like me, but to citizens as well! The citizens should be outraged by this, but often they are not.”

He goes on “Please call the hotel and ask whether they will demand to see my passport, and whether they report all their guests to the police. If it has this policy, please join me in striking a blow against Big Brother, by looking for a place I can stay in that doesn’t demand to see my passport, or report my visit to anyone. If the police want information about free software, they are welcome to come to my speech.”

One question in my mind: If he’s so worried about big brother in technology, why give them a list of things that could potentially be used annoy him by a secret police agent? In theory, he could be made to snap, and maybe even pull out his katana in a flash of rage if you dared to offer him nothing but breakfast food items, “I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions about what I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up.”

I like him though, us paranoid technologists gotta stick together in these trying times.

But don’t mention breakfast, ever… check.

Free Software Foundation – fsf.org
DEVELOPERS MAILING LIST Richard Stallman speaker visit – mysociety.org
ANDREW WOOD: The man who beat Big Brother Britain – dailymail.co.uk
photo credit: XKCD – blog.xkcd.com

#2 – Spread the word about BlackThisOut on Facebook
25,000 people are going to be HAMMERING facebook ALL DAY TODAY about BlackThisOut. Please add your voice! Send out private messages, post of your friend’s walls, post on your own wall, “Like” any and all posts related to BlackThisOut so that your friends will seem them in their newsfeed.

There’s an entire internet out there, kids. Facebook is just one website.

Of course, they address that:

#3 – Spread the word about BTO on ANY WEBSITE THAT HAS TRAFFIC
Post about the BlackThisOut Money Bomb anywhere and everywhere you can online. Blogs, news websites like FoxNews.com, CNN.com, HuffingtonPost.com, etc., web forums ot where ever else you spot an opportunity to share. As with facebook messages, these things add up fast when performed by thousands of individuals at the same time.

Oh yeah, here’s Hammer of Truth telling you to go ahead and donate already. You cheap fucks.

From time to time, here at Hammer of Truth one of us will liveblog a debate or something. This is what it looks like.

On Tuesday October 18th, 2011 seven GOP candidates for president got on stage to once again lay into each other in the new public blood sport democratic process of of getting to know our next commander in chief. From left to right on the stage were Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann. John Huntsman boycotted and ultimately shot himself in the foot. Gary Johnson was once again not invited because if there are two libertarians on stage that might start making it seem normal and we can’t have that.

The order is chronological, which I did drunk so there’s probably mistakes in it. Onward! see more…

Obama walks into a bar and decides to have a drink. He bumps into a underemployed construction worker, a welder who just got laid off, and an electrical contractor struggling to keep his employees all sitting around commiserating. The president decides to sit with the men and ask them about how the country is doing. Soon enough, the subject turns to the economy and how work is really hard to come by these days.

Each laborer takes turns telling a story about how tough it is to find new work. Everyone ends on a chipper note of optimism, but then turns to Obama and frowns a little bit.

Obama looks around at the blue collar workers, perplexed by the upbeat attitude followed by sourness and asks them in bewilderment, “The economy is in a rough patch and you’re all barely scraping by, but you guys seem so happy? So why are you guys frowning at me?”

They all look at each other nervously before the construction worker leans over to the commander in chief, and says, “It’s easy Mr. President, we drink beers here because people get jobs and people lose jobs all the time.”

He takes a drink of beer and chortles, “We’ll all be okay because we’ve learned highly valuable trade skills that will always keep us in demand… well, except you.”

“Wall Street Spirit” is a gritty yet uplifting rap anthem for the global protest movement created by Dan Bull, who asked his many fans “Which do you like most: Radiohead, dubstep, or #occupywallstreet? Now you don’t have to choose!”

For every one protester camped out in some kind of miserable weather there are dozens of sympathizers and supporters out of sight, and a great many of them actually acting as auxiliary media and organizational units to the actual occupiers. The production value behind videos like this is ample proof.

You can download the song for free here (for a limited time, until the music lawyers show up).

On Saturday, in proving that the Ron Paul political organization is working better than ever, Paul won the iconic Values Voters Straw Poll with a whopping 37% of the total 1,983 ballots cast.

Herman Cain, who is experiencing a modest bump in popularity as values voters shuffle away from Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, placed a distant second with 23% of the votes. Paul was also top choice among attendees for the Vice President straw poll, with Bachmann coming in close second.

For his part, Paul’s speech spoke directly to the Christian anti-war sentiment that has been growing in popularity. In his delivered speech (video: part one, two), he said, “Divorce rates are very, very high among the military, because these young men are being sent back two and three and four times. And there was one story told me about a little boy, a little boy who was 10 years old, and his dad was getting ready to go back again. He was screaming, I hate you, daddy, I hate you, daddy, because he was leaving him.”

“So this is why, in the early church, they talk about being very careful about going into war, and also to be thinking about the admonition that peace is far superior to war. That should be our goal.”

Doug Wead, a born again Christian and former adviser to two U.S. Presidents, said he was blown away by Dr. Paul’s command of the scripture. “He offered a scriptural rationale to every position and moved from one passage to the next without hesitation. The man knows the Bible.”

Less than a week ago, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made a bold set of statements in an op-ed with Washington Times about the then upcoming poll writing, “The Values Voter Summit will test each candidate’s ability to motivate its base to get out and cast a vote in the summit’s straw poll.”

The Perkins piece is also full of other compelling reasons to put stock in the poll. “The winning candidate will be the Reagan-style uniter of the three cords of the conservative coalition: the strands of fiscal, social and foreign-policy conservatism.”

Now, Perkins is quickly changing his tune, claiming that a win in his own poll is not that important. “Let me just take you back four years to this event, when we had a straw poll. Mitt Romney won that straw poll,” he said. “I think people are still in the process of deciding where they want to go.” He also hinted at a fix, because allegedly Ron Paul supporters showed up in droves, got their vote on, and left.

To me, it sounds like a simple case of sour grapes by someone who doesn’t like that Ron Paul’s base of support is more energetic in out-organizing the rest of the field than in 2007.

Bumpdate (Mon Oct 10): Tony Perkins continued to make the news rounds, further hinting at impropriety and attempting to distance his ultra-conservative Family Research Council from the straw poll’s winner. In an interview with CNN’s American Morning on Monday he continued the verbal downplay, “I don’t think Ron Paul is truly reflective of where values voters stand.” He remained recalcitrant in painting a picture of 600 Paul supporters (a number pulled out of thin air, no doubt) who came merely to listen to the congressman’s speech, cast a vote, and promptly beat feet.

It seems fairly easy to predict that the newfound personal vendetta — after inviting Ron Paul and his supporters to attend (not for free, tickets were $99) — will continue to vex the campaign as Perkins responds to future interview requests.

Perkins did finally cede a point to the Revolution, “I give them credit for being organized.”

Update (Tue Oct 11): Jack Hunter, the dedicated Ron Paul campaign blogger, has responded by posting a ton of screen shots “showcasing how the mainstream media is spinning or downplaying” the win. The screen shots show The Washington Post, FoxNews, CBS (twice), The Atlantic, Politico, Business Insider, The Daily Beast, New York Magazine and Hot Air all giving backhanded coverage of the straw poll with pertinent selections marked or underlined. Credit went to the Ron Paul Forums for their detective work.

The first time watching this, I didn’t even realize it was based off a 2009 speech that has been remixed and rehashed by artists until the narration began to transform into Paul’s voice at very end. Seriously, it’s been that long since I heard it that it seemed fresh and new. I know, I’m a dolt:

Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Clocking in at over three minutes it might seem a bit unwieldy to slip it into the commercial slots between reruns of Seinfeld or Friends, but then again why raise all these millions across the various Paul PACs and committees if we can’t think outside the box and actually politically inform people?

Unfortunately it seems more Paul supporters are interested in taking umbrage over the title of RevolutionPAC’s post title — Tea Party to Obama: Stop policing the world! — than with the substance of the video. I’d like to gently remind them that though the Original Tea Party (OTP, as the kids might coin it) was brilliantly capitalized under Ron Paul, it was claimed as a banner for libertarians long before 2007.

All over facebook and the rest of the internets comes this very upset gentleman who is capable of balancing his checkbook and expresses his wishes for Obama to simply shut up and do the same:

The video has been watched at least 1.3 million times since August (and reposts are abundant).

Balance that, B.

@Felonius_munk [twitter]
Felonious Munk Presents: Stop It B! OBAMA PAY YOUR &*%$#% BILLS [YouTube]

CIA operative gets away with double murder in Pakistan after US pays $2.34 million “blood money” to families (presumably so when they don’t get justice their jihad will be well funded or something, LOLIDUNNO).

CIA operative comes home to suburbia Highlands Ranch, Colorado and goes berserk at Einstein Bagel Bros. over a parking spot on a Saturday morning, arrested for assault.

CIA operative gets sent back to Pakistan to serve jail sentence and taxpayers get a refund.

A fine waste of taxpayer dollars:

The “reporting” in question claims that a group of visiting schoolkids was taken hostage by a dozen members of Congress.

“…[So] far none of [the FBI snipers] has been able to get a clear shot at any senators or representatives,” according to a fake quote from a special agent.

It’s called satire. Investigation closed, dumbasses.

By “investigating the reporting” that just means some guy (or, ooh ooh, a blue ribbon committee) gets paid to sit around drinking coffee and munching on donuts while reading The Onion (presumably to ensure that no politically embarrassing lines are being crossed). Bring in a writer for questioning, maybe ask them what kind of music they listen to, what movies are they fans of, before throwing them on a watch list so the higher ups know you’re doing serious cop stuff. It’s the perfect hipster police job.

NBC-DC reports that “No one is currently answering the phone at a number provided by a public information officer with the Capitol Police.” I’m sure the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed individual who came up with this investigation at Capitol Police HQ will love to answer the press’ questions on why the Onion is being investigated for making funnies as this ridiculously true story makes its way to other satire writers.

This is local man, reporting live from a stack of servers on the Internet.

I typically don’t give Nancy Grace the media attention she so famously wants, but I will weigh in since I live in a house where Dancing With The Stars (or as we not so generously refer to it: Dancing With The Tards) is religiously watched. Because of this, I of course get the dirt on any massive faux pas from the show before the regular media wake up to fresh scandal.

If you were watching tonight, you may remember the rehearsal scenes where Grace pouted by the window, or pouted in the arms of her dance partner Tristan MacManus, or pouted when you know… things started to look more like actual work and less like sitting around on a TV set bitching about some crazy mom murdering their daughter.

But what you may not remember — if you were so cornered like me into watching this travesty of Nancy Grace “dancing” (it resembled something more like a lot of bouncing around, wildly kicking her feet up, yet lacking of any semblance of rhythm) — was the rather unceremonious cutaway to the audience before the end, presumably to give some reaction shots. Funny enough though, to portions of the audience that were not applauding. Woops, ABC cares.

That swift cutaway was because of an eye-scarring wardrobe malfunction that partially exposed Grace’s nipple.

UPDATE WED SEP 28: It’s come to my attention that Nancy Grace is actually denying this took place, in no less than an Eric Cartmanesque feat of mental gymnastics.

She’s somehow contending that what everyone saw was a pastie or “jiggling”. Well color me blind, but unless it was a pastie designed to look exactly like a nipple, then Nancy Grace is a big fat brown-nippled liar.

UPDATE THU SEP 29: The lady doth protest too much. Grace has tweeted a picture of Breast Petals, we checked out the alleged product and compared it to the high-definition video Hammer of Truth obtained of DTWS (oh lord, help mine eyes). Our analysis stands, this was real nip… and we’re also now keen on her new-found attempt at milking NippleGate for all the attention it will garner her. She’s even slyly claiming that those obvious hair extensions are also hers (in the most clever legal sense, of course).

Tom Bergeron probably takes the cake for best response, telling Wetpaint Entertainment, “It would be ungentlemanly of me to say anything different than what Nancy believes happened. How’s that for an answer, huh? It kind of gives you the answer with a little bit of a dodge, but not really.”

Classy truth, “what Nancy believes.” Go ahead and just let that sink in. [h/T TWoP forums]

Our advice to Grace: stop with all the lying, we are now done dry-heaving for the third day in a row and we’d like you to stop conniving us into verifying that: “yes indeed, it’s a nipple.” Thanks so much. /UPDATES

NSFW pic, after the jump. You can’t unsee this, you’ve been warned: see more…

As part of a media tour — Ron Suskind is making the rounds on TV shows to sell his new book Confidence Men. His interview with Tavis Smiley last night has me intrigued:

Well, Geithner and I went through it letter and verse, and I just would tell readers if they want to see Tim Geithner’s real response, the response that’s full, complete, in paragraph-long quotes, it is in the book, two pages.

I think if you read that, at the end of the day it’s hard to come to a conclusion other than Tim Geithner gamed the president on arguably one of the most important decisions of his presidency, which was his desire to really look at the taking down of the big banks, Citibank, other big banks, when he felt a kind of Rooseveltian urge to step up.

Hard to do. He was really studying hard in January, February, in March of 2009. This was decisiveness by Obama, and the fact is it didn’t happen. A month later he thought plans were being drawn up about how to dissolve Citibank by Treasury. Only Treasury can do it, after all, and he found out they weren’t. He got quite agitated.

He said to Christie Romer, she said, “There is no plan, Mr. President.” He said, “There better be.” Well, I talked to the president about it; I talked to Tim about it. Everybody involved, everyone in that meeting that day when he raised his voice. I don’t think there’s any dispute about it. There’s certainly no dispute that I’ve seen about what happened.

The question is what does the president do then? Did he take Tim to the woodshed in April of 2009? I asked them both. They said there was discussions; there was a lot of rolling discussions. I think one of the issues is how does this president rise to this moment and have a White House around him that now carries forward his more seasoned and deeper experience to express his will, to express his qualities? That’s still a battle, I think.

It’s no wonder the White House is in full spin mode trying to deflect Suskind’s revelations. They’ve rebuked with the best headline grabber in a long time: The Suskind Book Game: ‘Too Big to Fact Check?’

My dear White House public relations wing, it’s only 800 pages or so — seriously, it’s not that hard to read a book and mark down what you think are errors without sounding like complete twats about it. One factual error writeup wins out at Politico, “Sperling played tennis at Minnesota. Though, to be fair, both universities start with an ‘M’ and are only about 800 miles apart.” My suggestion is to read it with a nice glass of wine, and learned to cut out the whine. Just a thought.

I’ll give credit to Tavis Smiley for asking a really important question, “Everybody wants to get a conversation with the president. But when these books come out and I find out that the president and his people cooperated, I’m like, ‘Duh, why don’t you guys shut up, stop talking to these writers.’”

Easy Tavis, you might be asking the right questions, then you’ll be curbed in the media game. In case you’re wondering, a cool Suskind responded to that inquiry by deflecting, “you’re going to have to ask the president and his staff about that.”

Watch the complete interview here: see more…

On September 22, a Thursday, from 9PM to 11PM EST all most of the GOP presidential candidates who declared their candidacies were invited to a forum in Florida to air their grievances about Obama and the economy under the pretense of debate. Here are my LIVEBLOGGED REACTIONS (reverse chronology):

Shit like this at 3:15AM You know you done wrong Google/FoxNews:

11:44PM Ron Paul Flix busts out the highlight reel in record time. All six questions.

11:25PM via Judy Morris, the question countdown:

One of my FB friends timed the speaking. Tonight: The opportunity FOX allowed each candidate to speak:

Romney – 16
Perry – 11
Bachmann – 9
Huntsman – 9
Santorum – 9
Gingrich – 7
Cain – 7
Paul – 6
Johnson – 5

Even with Google splashing their logo on things, the debates are still an uneven match. Here’s your pudding!

11:15PM Best loaded poll of the night… we’re done… post-analysis from Fox is derping too hard now.

10:54PM Great question from Youtube: Darrel Owens asks them to pick their running mate pair-ups (AS A GAME)… here we go: BIG FINALE!!!!

Johnson picks Paul
Santorum picks Gingrich
Gingrich says FuckoffIhateyourquestionlolz crowd laughs
Paul says Inappropriatetooearlyrespectfullydecline crowd cheers
Perry picks CainGingrichFrankenmorph
Romney steals Gingrich’s FuckoffIhateyourquestionlolz
Bachmann gives Longwindednonanswer
Cain picks Romney then Gingrich
Huntsman picks Cain

10:42PM Ron Paul gets woops and applause. Blames the Fed, everyone on stage repeating what he already said what he’s been saying for years.

Gingrich gets surprise cheers, somehow people have forgotten what a skeezy guy he is. Santorum talks fast and squanders his time. Polite cheers.

Johnson makes joke about his neighbor’s dogs shitting making more shovel-ready jobs than Obama… LOOOOOOOOL

see more…

I guess r/trees is fostering the idealistic grassroots fires and has started a people’s petition on the White House website to force Obama’s administration to respond (again) to the louder and louder calls for marijuana legalization. So far the number of signatures collected in the course of a single afternoon is well over the 5,000 threshold required to be considered a legitimate petition. Our current estimate of signature rate is 100/min and climbing. Eh, whatever, it’s making the rounds.

I agree: Legalize in our lifetime, dammit! It’s not stopping anyone, anyways. And the icing on the cake is how culturally blasé we are about recreational drug use that doesn’t interfere with one’s work ethic.

We have multiple gold medals and several presidencies (albeit hypocritical) in our partaking purview, so suck it… policia.

For the record, no I don’t trust some government flunky not to dick with the numbers on this, but do it for the lulz anyways.

Update: The Hill is reporting that this petition was the first to cross the threshold and is dominating the rankings page by a 2-to-1 margin. Even worse is four of the top six petitions are directly addressed at marijuana prohibition:

Wow, that’s an awful lot of pot smoke being blown in Obama’s face by We The People.

Update 19:41EST: whitehouse.gov/petitions is intermittently throwing 404 errors (ha, we expected this, which is why we took screenshots). Stay tuned to server meltdown drama.

Update 9/23 4:09EST Kerplah!

[Popular Petitions - The White House]
[Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol. - The White House]
[Alright r/trees, it's time to be heard. We the People online petition from whitehouse.gov is active! - reddit.com]

…if you like the new facebook.

[Barack Obama joins Open Government Partnership for group photo] – MSNBC.com
[Where To Complain To Facebook About The Changes] – AllFacebook.com

The tone in Washington may not get much play any more as a stump speech soundbite, so it appears Mitt Romney’s people are working diligently to lower the tone in website error messages instead — whenever a link breaks.

Well one did: it seems a PDF of the vaunted economic plan has disappeared, and I was greeted instead with a demonic-eyed donkey kicking in the the air (I assume angrily) and yelling at me in uppercase at how wrong things have gone. A subsequent search for all pdf files on the site did not turn it up either.

Based on a generous impression of this system’s error message, broken links on a republican candidate’s website can now somehow be pinned on democrats. Go figure:

Incidentally we have automated bots that check for broken links on the site in order to strike broken links and better curate our archives. Our bot was not amused at the divisive message from Mitt Romney’s website.

Last year’s ridiculous 9/11 death and destruction celebration with religious people inciting hatred seems to have really been tamped down this year, so I’ll defer from telling people to go burn another copy of the PATRIOT Act (still a good idea, all things considered).

Instead I’m going to repost something I made for a previous amoral anniversary of the infamous date, an image that still resonates. I’ve updated it slightly from the original:

I would eulogize for the dead (and still dying) in the name of a War on Tactics, but we all can see their memories being politicized on this date more than any mass murder victims should ever be. And the fact that we also see terror tactics being embraced by a radically authoritarian power structure pretty much makes their deaths another of history’s vanities in the backdrop of mass war. “Cynical” doesn’t begin to describe how far down the rabbit hole we’ve slid in ten years.

Say hi to an automatic-rifle toting, militarized policeman today, if you dare venture outside.

I guess forgetting is better than acknowledging you let Prick Perry touch you inappropriately.

These pictures are probably famous now, which is a fucking shame because pictures are more open to interpretation — “oh look, Perry is so strong and could kick Ron Paul’s ass, herp derp fisticuffs, yay.” This is really how it’s meant to be played out, Rick Perry is a dick, not a retard to the political game.

Yes, let’s put another macho Texan act in the White House, rack up some more wars and enemies. That shit is going swimmingly.

Haha those suckers will believe anything, won’t they? Not:

Update: Just noticed that Ron Paul’s jacket and tie matches the HoT site colors. Fucking ace.

Additional notes (copy-paste from facebook): I’m officially done watching any more presidential debates hosted by corporate media outlets.

FOX/CNN/MSNBC have finally proven they don’t want to be taken seriously in our democratic process and their bias towards creating superfluous political drama is now beyond nauseating.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert cracking their jokes as moderators would be more honest than most anything we’ve seen so far this cycle. Pathetic.

“New GM” won’t cover recalls of pre-bankruptcy GM, so up yours, Chevy Impala owners:

General Motors Co (GM.N) is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit over a suspension problem on more than 400,000 Chevrolet Impalas from the 2007 and 2008 model years, saying it should not be responsible for repairs because the flaw predated its bankruptcy.

…The current company, called “New GM,” said it did not assume responsibility under the reorganization to fix the Impala problem, but only to make repairs “subject to conditions and limitations” in express written warranties.

Translation: this is a novel cost cutting measure by a short-term, myopic management that doesn’t care about customer loyalty. Thanks for the honesty, fuckers.

Guess what? Since the government has a pimp hand in the car business still, they’ll likely urge the courts to back down and shovel more corporate socialist manure under the rug. Watch for a team of “New GM” lobbyists and PR lackeys to mount a campaign to fight this tooth and nail in the coming weeks. Meanwhile the layoffs and consolidations will continue unabated. “New GM” is a cruel joke against designers and the working man never stood a chance.

Karen De Coster over at Lew Rockwell writes, “for those folks who insisted on the “Buy American” paradigm, I do not feel their pain for buying junk from a financially insolvent bank masquerading as an auto manufacturer.” Nor should we, they made their own bed.

Here’s a question: how many more government billions will it take to build another crappy hybrid once they wake up and realize their precious Volt has already failed the market test?