Wednesday, March 19, 2014

ASSHOLES WANTED: APPLY WITHIN.

Josh Encinias at National Review:
Labor groups held 30 protests against McDonald’s franchises across the country Tuesday. The focus of today’s protests is “wage theft,” part of an ongoing campaign to raise the federal minimum wage.
That's not what "wage theft" is -- it's doing work and not getting paid for it, and at least one major franchisee has recently made restitution for it.

Here's how Encinias ends his report:
Three black-leather-clad French women asked National Review what the protest was about. When they appeared not to understand that it was a minimum wage protest, this reporter raised his hands and shouted “Rah rah, give us more money.” The three visitors to the United States nodded and walked away.
Encinias appears to be new at National Review, but he's already a champ at missing the point.

UPDATE. Some commenters question young Encinias' verisimilitude. "The three visitors to the United States come from a nation famous for a 35-hour work week, vacation the entire month of August, and a willingness to go to the barricades when provoked," says Spaghetti Lee. "I suspect they understand Encinias all too well."

Wrangler says, "it sounds like the kind of pointlessly overspecific detail I use to increase the perceived reality of a story when I'm trying to lie to someone." To me, it sounds like the kind of detail one is taught in writing classes; with this technique, real writers struggle to portray truth, while hacks cheerfully festoon propaganda, hoping their bosses will appreciate their porcine cosmetics skills.


160 comments:

  1. montag211:03 PM

    Just what the NRO needs--yet another "reporter" who's completely unclear on the concept.

    When does Ruprecht Murdoch buy them out?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AGoodQuestion11:10 PM

    Being approached by "three black-leather-clad French women" sounds like the start of a fantasy. If for you that fantasy concludes with you talking supply side spin at them until they beat a hasty retreat, you may have a future at NRO.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AGoodQuestion11:11 PM

    As soon as Rupert Murdoch the conservative propagandist defeats Rupert Murdoch the guy who wants to stay rich.

    ReplyDelete
  4. montag211:14 PM

    "Dear NRO: You won't believe the three...."

    ReplyDelete
  5. PersonaAuGratin11:34 PM

    I want to treat this comment to a night on the town with three black-leather-clad French women.

    ReplyDelete
  6. black-leather-clad french woman #1: "fait que le journaliste sérieusement juste crier, 'ra ra nous donner plus d'argent'? qui fait de la baise il pense qu'il est ?"

    black-leather-clad french woman #2: "je pense qu'il est l'un de ces no-account journalistes de droite qui a
    obtenu leurs os battre sur gay allié jours et anti-viol rallyes dans
    leurs journaux de collège, et puis juste côte sur huile et wall street l'argent pour leur reste de
    leur vie alors qu'ils livrent le racisme leurs lecteurs en guise
    d'articles de magazine vous-sont-ilabout des gens qui sont malade et fatigué d'être opprimés par un système économique qui exploite leur travail."

    black-leather-clad french woman #3: "eh bien, merde. fuck cette bite de crayon et fuck putain jonah goldberg trop"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Spaghetti Lee12:01 AM

    So, their first trip to America, and they meet a guy who makes fun of people who think they should be paid more than 7 bucks an hour to sling crappy chemically-altered foodstuffs.


    No wonder the Europeans think we're all savages.

    ReplyDelete
  8. DocAmazing12:09 AM

    The three visitors to the United States come from a nation famous for a 35-hour work week, vacation the entire month of August, and a willingness to go to the barricades when provoked. I suspect they understand Encinias all too well.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Spaghetti Lee12:12 AM

    Yeah, what's gonna be his next magic foreigner-conversion trick. Explaining to a bunch of Canadians why private health insurance companies kick ass? Convincing a German tourist that unions are evil productivity-killing scams? Guy sure knows how to pick his targets.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Spaghetti Lee12:12 AM

    Sacre Bleu!

    (I...I don't know that much French.)

    ReplyDelete
  11. "Put the cork on the fork! Don't make me use the genital cuff!"

    ReplyDelete
  12. JennOfArk12:26 AM

    Three black-leather-clad French women asked National Review what the protest was about. When they appeared not to understand that it was a minimum wage protest, this reporter raised his hands and shouted “Rah rah, give us more money.” The three visitors to the United States nodded and walked away.



    Clearly Encinias does not watch foreign films; otherwise he would have known that the three French women were being ironic. I mean, they were all wearing black leather. How many clues does this guy need?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Warren_Terra12:28 AM

    Explaining to a bunch of Canadians why private health insurance companies kick ass?Yeah, that doesn't always end well.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Warren_Terra12:31 AM

    If your fantasies involving three leather-clad French women involve having them nod and walk away, you're doing the whole "fantasizing" thing wrong.


    And, yes, you may have a future at NRO.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Well, there you have it. The quintessential NRO comment. I think all of our work is done, really.

    ReplyDelete
  16. There's a comment down there from some guy who asserts that the minimum wage doesn't matter because it's just a measure of "activation energy for employment." I have no idea what that means, which is a shame because I'm sure that most of the people on NRO believe it.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Spaghetti Lee12:45 AM

    "Employment Energy, ACTIVATE! (Goku-style scream)

    ...What? Like it makes any more sense to the rest of you? It's word salad.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Spaghetti Lee12:49 AM

    Or, Jerk Shirks Clerk Work.

    ReplyDelete
  19. montag21:09 AM

    Just a guess, but, I'd suggest that it's intended to mean the minimum amount required to get the blahs off the couch and fill out a job application.

    It is the NRO comment section, after all.

    ReplyDelete
  20. montag21:12 AM

    "How many clues does this guy need?"


    None. He's adamantly clueless.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Spaghetti Lee1:21 AM

    You said it better than I did: Not only is he stupid enough to think he, an American, needs to explain to French people what a strike is, he's stupid enough to think they'll take his side.

    ReplyDelete
  22. AGoodQuestion1:38 AM

    Talking to some NRO stooge about people who actually work for a living is going above and beyond for the sake of irony.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Wrangler2:03 AM

    This is one hell of a rookie effort by Encinias. Of course, you always want to be careful projecting the future of a young prospect from such a small sample; but based on his current "head slapping error to word ratio", in a few years, as he enters his prime, Josh could quite possibly overtake Jonah as the best player in all of Griftball.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Wrangler2:11 AM

    The black leather bit is fantastical, but it's also really odd in that it's totally superfluous, except that it sounds like the kind of pointlessly overspecific detail I use to increase the perceived reality of a story when I'm trying to lie to someone.


    Also, it makes it seem like Encinias somehow met a triplet version of Delphine Roux from The Human Stain.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Wrangler2:12 AM

    That's surprising since your first name sounds so European.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Spaghetti Lee2:17 AM

    Alright, you got me: My real first name is Noodles. But I heard that chicks dig Italian guys, you know?

    ReplyDelete
  27. Spaghetti Lee2:24 AM

    It's the little details that reveal the avalanche of bullshit within. Maybe I'm just a sheltered flatlander, but I think the percentage of people who wear all black-leather outfits day-to-day is low. And not just one french woman, three. Are they the French Charlie's Angels or something?

    Really, the only thing missing is one of them admitting that the French have done a really shitty job running France, and they sure wish a bunch of American venture capitalists could take a crack at it instead.

    ReplyDelete
  28. ColBatGuano2:29 AM

    We do need some advanced stats for this sport. Like TWATMUD (Totally Worthless Arguments That Make Us Dumber).

    ReplyDelete
  29. Spaghetti Lee2:36 AM

    VACK-P: Value Added to Charles Koch's Portfolio (or, if you prefer, Penis).

    ReplyDelete
  30. mortimer20003:25 AM

    Young Master Encinias is a very recent graduate of The King's College,
    the for-profit ultra-conservative Christian school located right in the
    heart of Gomorrah. (Yes, the same school that just accepted the
    resignation of its model Christian president, Dinesh D'Souza.) Can you
    imagine being that young and that marinated in the philosophy of Jesus,
    and yet so filled with such contempt for human beings forced to bust
    their ass for shitty minimum wages? I'm guessing these are the same
    species of "religious" folks who found slave-owning to be sanctioned by
    God in their precious Christian bible.

    Speaking of missing the point, or making up a new one, from another cubicle class warrior in the NRO comment thread:

    Isn't 'wage theft' why you don't stroll through Central Park after midnight?

    You've
    got it right. These idiots want other people's money. Period. They're
    thieves. I'd love to see a franchisee who is a victim of one of these
    attacks fire the whole staff and shut the store down while the protest
    is going on.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Spaghetti Lee3:38 AM

    For people who scream 'Contracts!' at any complaint about economic injustice and hope people stop complaining, they don't seem to actually understand...hell, I don't need to finish that sentence, do I?

    See, Buford, when these workers were hired, they signed a contract of employment, one of the explicit features of that contract being a promise, on the part of the employer, of money in exchange for their work. It is no longer 'other people's money.' It is legally theirs, and it's being stolen. Dispute that and you dispute the idea that legal contracts have any meaning whatsoever.

    I'd love to see a franchisee who is a victim of one of these attacks
    fire the whole staff and shut the store down while the protest is going
    on.


    Well, obviously. Everyone knows that the manager of individual outlets of a large franchised business has the ultimate authority in hiring/firing, as well as deciding if the store stays open or not. There's nobody above them who actually makes those decisions, no sir. I guess that's why us lefties just DON'T UNDERSTAND CAPITALISM! God, these people are so fucking dumb.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Odder4:00 AM

    Three black-leather-clad French women

    I would like to add a third level of beefy savor to the Big Mac essence of this post.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Pope Zebbidie XIII5:33 AM

    Only taxi drivers say that sort of thing.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Pope Zebbidie XIII5:38 AM

    Not Noodles Romanoff per chance?

    ReplyDelete
  35. Jaime Oria6:30 AM

    I want to draw this comment like three of Encinias's French girls.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Jaime Oria6:37 AM

    Interestingly, a recent post at LG&M pointed out how a massive corporation like McD's uses frachisees as a form of 'plausible deniability' when it comes to labor issues. The guys at the top turn up both palms, shrug and go 'Who - us? Talk to G. Babbitt; he's the one with 3 stores in Skunkville, Ugh.'

    ReplyDelete
  37. Bethany Spencer6:42 AM

    The comments are... well, not priceless. What's a good word for vurping up your breakfast in disgust?

    ReplyDelete
  38. carolannie6:51 AM

    musta used google translate it is so close to bad French

    ReplyDelete
  39. Bethany Spencer6:52 AM

    As a former cheerleader I have to say:"rah rah Give us more money!" is a really lame cheer. "Rah rah?" Really? Christ, what a dorky asshole.

    ReplyDelete
  40. carolannie6:55 AM

    Wage theft: expecting people to give up their very own money to pay wages to the moochers who work for them

    ReplyDelete
  41. smut clyde6:56 AM

    None more clues.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Wrangler7:13 AM

    "Thieves"? "Thieves"?! Way to soft-peddle their degeneracy, ya commie. They're called Nazis.


    I for one would like to see this man's conservative credentials.

    ReplyDelete
  43. redoubtagain7:53 AM

    MMPFO--Most Missed Points Flying Overhead

    ReplyDelete
  44. Derelict8:01 AM

    Shorter Rightwing: "Get a job, you lazy moochers! And stop demanding to be paid for your work!"

    ReplyDelete
  45. redoubtagain8:04 AM

    Franchise owner stealing employee wages = OK
    Employee demanding unpaid back pay/overtime from franchise owner = theft
    Got it.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Derelict8:07 AM

    Noodles? The old Dick Tracy character? We've missed you and Moon Maid!

    ReplyDelete
  47. Derelict8:18 AM

    . . .marinated in the philosophy of Jesus,
    and yet so filled with such contempt for human beings . . .

    Since Conservapedia was such a smashing success, I'm surprised they haven't embarked on a rewrite of The Bible. After all, it's crystal clear that all that stuff about healing the sick, feeding the hungry and so on is just a bunch of leftist liberal bullshit that Jesus never would have said.

    ReplyDelete
  48. VORP- Value Over Real Person

    ReplyDelete
  49. El Manquécito8:26 AM

    Dude, you haven't been in a bookstore in the South. There are aisles full of re-writes of the Bible.

    ReplyDelete
  50. El Manquécito8:30 AM

    Sluggo %

    ReplyDelete
  51. William Miller8:39 AM

    Amazing the dude's still alive after having eaten so much of other people's spit over the years.

    ReplyDelete
  52. tigrismus9:12 AM

    He's so dense he's got an event horizon, once clues cross it they're deformed and ripped apart until all evidence of their existence disappears.

    ReplyDelete
  53. "Je vous apporterai une eau de vaisselle. Vous ne saurez pas la différence."


    (I, um...I don't know that much French.)

    ReplyDelete
  54. L Bob Rife9:18 AM

    The ladies were still confused from riding in Thomas Friedman's taxi cab.

    ReplyDelete
  55. then reciting the moochers speech from Atlas Shrugged.


    Who is Jean LeGault?

    ReplyDelete
  56. Uh ... vurping?

    ReplyDelete
  57. The conservatives must be thinking of Supply Side Jesus:
    http://www.buzzfeed.com/provincialelitist/watch-al-frankens-the-gospel-of-supply-side-4t5

    ReplyDelete
  58. redoubtagain9:27 AM

    I, for one, don't want to live in a country where "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" is considered a liberal plant.

    ReplyDelete
  59. dmsilev9:30 AM

    Dick Tracy got a new art/writing team a few years back, and recently they brought back Moon Maid. Sort of. It was very triply.

    ReplyDelete
  60. dmsilev9:41 AM

    Well, the scientific meaning of 'activation energy' is the amount of energy you need to initiate something (a chemical reaction, say). You may get some of that energy back as a result of the reaction, but it's what's needed to get things going.


    Since a minimum wage refers to money paid on an ongoing basis in exchange for hourly work, and has nothing to do with say a signing bonus, I conclude that the NRO commenter is pulling random pseudo-scientific terms out of his ass.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Shakezula9:48 AM

    Did he really refer to himself as "this reporter"? Wow.

    I do hope "wage theft" gains traction though. I can see Paul rAYN talking about wage theft and proposing people who attempt it should be sent to jail.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Leonard Pierce9:51 AM

    "Encinias appears to be new at National Review, but he's already a champ at missing the point."


    I assume that's how he got the job in the first place.

    ReplyDelete
  63. XeckyGilchrist9:52 AM

    http://youtu.be/pWnmaFnXIJQ?t=11s

    ReplyDelete
  64. XeckyGilchrist9:55 AM

    PGV - Peak Goalpost Velocity

    ReplyDelete
  65. Halloween_Jack9:58 AM

    Wm. Bennett Iscariot!

    ReplyDelete
  66. Halloween_Jack10:03 AM

    My take on it is that they were young Josh's version of Tom Friedman's ever-proverbial cab driver, with added fanservice.

    ReplyDelete
  67. While words cannot adequately express how much I appreciate that clip, my prior comment was not a request for a definition of "vurping" (which was fairly clear from the context regardless), but a timid suggestion of a good single word shorthand for "vurping up your breakfast in disgust." Though I suppose something like "vurpgusting" would allow one to distinguish between Vanellope's vurplike excitement and vacuumslayer's vurplike contempt.

    ReplyDelete
  68. XeckyGilchrist10:15 AM

    Oh, OK. Please excuse my pop-pedantry.

    ReplyDelete
  69. The fact that they didn't mention how they were sick of cheese eating and would like to surrender to John Galt makes me partially believe the story is true. I mean, if he was going to make it up, why wouldn't he go for the gold (as it were) standard?


    "Oo eez Jean Galt?" They asked me.

    ReplyDelete
  70. Yup. It reeked of google.

    ReplyDelete
  71. Try it in Finnish, why don't you?

    ReplyDelete
  72. "Rah rah?" Really?

    Hey, those French dolls had some classy chassis, you dig me Clyde? That's what's buzzin' cuzzin', so don't snap your cap--put an egg in your shoe and beat it!



    (h/t Formerly_Nom_De_Plume, whose relevant comment made it onto my "Top 14 alicublog comments" list.)

    ReplyDelete
  73. Oh, hell, should have read down the thread.

    ReplyDelete
  74. For some reason this really made me laugh. I like PGV the best.

    ReplyDelete
  75. All wages are theft. The workers are stealing from the owners. I think that's the basic argument.

    ReplyDelete
  76. Minä tuon teille jonkin tiskiveden. Te ette tiedä eroa ... Wait, are you making fun of me?

    ReplyDelete
  77. Kyllä teillä pitäisi olla.

    ReplyDelete
  78. But once I have the wages, they're my property, right? That seems to be the gist of all the hollering this same crew do at tax time. So:


    All wages are theft.
    Wages are property.
    Therefore, all property is theft. Commence implementing the mutualist utopia.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Halloween_Jack10:46 AM

    Aside from les trois dames françaises en cuir noir (oui, Google Translate, merci beaucoup), so far young Encinias seems to be doing mostly straightforward (albeit conserva-tinged) news reports. (Maybe he's Jonah's unpaid intern?) This is what the GOP intends as their appeal to Da Yoof uv 2Day.

    ReplyDelete
  80. StringOnAStick10:49 AM

    Let's also toss into the mix the fact that most western Europeans speak English, hell, even American, quite well.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Daniel Björkman10:56 AM

    As I recall, there was some Wikipedia-style online project to do exactly that a few years ago. The rationale was that everything in the Bible that sounded liberal-ish was in fact "mistranslated," and that a bunch of online amateurs could do a far better job at bringing out what the authors had clearly meant than those hippie-dippie seventeenth-century scholars working for King James.

    ReplyDelete
  82. Magatha11:07 AM

    Maybe they were ninjas who just got totally bored and scrapped the mission. I mean, three ninjas for a brand new wee NRO hack? No way.

    ReplyDelete
  83. That was probably Andy Schlafly again. Here was the sequence: Schlafly decides that previous translations had been irretrievably corrupted. He then alleged that he knew Ancient Greek and Latin and could do it himself, focusing on a handful of passages that he was convinced were fake. Unfortunately, some people who actually knew Ancient Greek showed up, assumed that it was a serious project, and started asking inconvenient questions of Schlafly. The project vanished soon after.


    About a year later, Schlafly recreates the project, now with the more honest moniker "Conservative Bible Project." This time, he came out and proclaimed that elements had been added to the Bible by "liberals" going back hundreds of years - specifically the story of the adulteress as well as a few passages he claimed had been corrupted by "feminists" because they didn't use exclusively masculine terms. He also wanted to add words from his list of "conservative words," and for space reasons I won't get into that here, but rest assured that it's awe-inspiring. He put all this on a (heavily-restricted) wiki on the basis of his then-recent philosophy that "the best of the public is better than a group of experts," whatever the hell that means (it changes every time he's asked).


    Andrew Schlafly's a weird dude, and there's a very good reason that he never became a player in the conservative movement.

    ReplyDelete
  84. mgmonklewis11:12 AM

    I think the commenter has a rich fantasy life involving Zan and Jana, the Wonder Twins.

    ReplyDelete
  85. Chic chicks nix worker's trix.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Magatha11:13 AM

    Ju jeni kaq zbavitës. Dhe tërheqëse.

    ReplyDelete
  87. mgmonklewis11:13 AM

    It is irony raised (lowered?) to the level of performance art.

    ReplyDelete
  88. You're not that far off. There are at least five comments down there from people who are convinced that McDonald's could fire all their employees and put in a conveyor belt like a gimmicky Japanese restaurant, but they keep their employees out of the goodness of their hearts, dammit. Why do keep trying to hurt the people who love you?

    ReplyDelete
  89. dstatton11:15 AM

    Yes. Ever been to France when the farmers are pissed off? Tractors on the highways.

    ReplyDelete
  90. Yes, the tip off is the people who think that they can fire everyone and still have the franchise be worth something. Labor is really invisible to these people.

    ReplyDelete
  91. If that's the guy they (ahem) exposed on Gawker someone on the Gawker thread pointed out that the object of the hipster ad push is really just to please the big money donors who want to see some outreach, dammit, and some of the glamor associated with Obama fall on an imaginary rising Millenial Republican generation. Before reading the Gawker thread about what a shit head this kid is I saw the ads themselves and came to the erroneous conclusion that he was a paid actor, acting under mere monetary duress and using horrible acting to signal to the viewer that his heart wasn't in it. Could not have been more wrong, apparently. He's a true believer.

    ReplyDelete
  92. [Blush]


    Well, thank you. It must be the top hat.

    ReplyDelete
  93. brendalu11:26 AM

    Late for lunch at the Applebee's salad bar.

    ReplyDelete
  94. Poli-tricks, even

    ReplyDelete
  95. Yeah, but black-leather-clad French women, no doubt of Parisian extraction, would pretend they didn't, évidemment.

    ReplyDelete
  96. BigHank5311:44 AM

    ATECW: (pronounced at-choo) Arguments That Embarrass Charles Murray, for the most blatantly racist assertions.

    ReplyDelete
  97. dstatton11:47 AM

    That Forbes article Roy linked to says that McDonald's employees receive an estimated $1.2 billion a year in public assistance. Now who's the moocher?

    ReplyDelete
  98. Mechazaurus12:02 PM

    Am I the only who thinks he looks disturbingly like a young Heinrich Himmler with dorkier glasses?

    ReplyDelete
  99. Wrangler12:14 PM

    I agree actually. The black leather part first jumped out at me as being an especially superfluous detail, but really so is the fact that they were French. It's not hard to see how that could have been important in his story whether it's real or not, but this guy doesn't seem to know what to do with this information except report it. If it's supposed to mean anything, well, I guess that's up to the reader to figure out what that is.

    ReplyDelete
  100. I would have kept them engaged a bit longer but I was due to teach a tactical firearms class to some navy seal newbies.

    ReplyDelete
  101. dmsilev12:41 PM

    "Andrew Schlafly's a weird dude, and there's a very good reason that he never became a player in the conservative movement."


    His endless campaign against things like general relativity (look up the Conservapedia article on GPS for instance, and don't forget to check the talk page) is proof of that.

    ReplyDelete
  102. redoubtagain12:59 PM

    "For the wages of work is theft, but the gift of Galt is eternal smugness." St. Ayn of Rand 6:23

    ReplyDelete
  103. shortstop1:18 PM

    This entire threadlet is so full of win I can't stand it.

    ReplyDelete
  104. dmsilev1:31 PM

    It's just filled with wondrous nonsense (article link: http://conservapedia.com/E%3Dmc² ). I think my favorite bit is this: "Some claim that the best empirical verification of E=mc2 was done in 2005 by Simon Rainville et al., as published in Nature (which is not a leading physics journal)."


    (Nature is one of the top two science journals in the world)

    ReplyDelete
  105. Mark_B4Zeds1:37 PM

    Actually, empirical verification of E=mc^2 has been done since the early part of the 20th century to a very high degree of precision. It provided an alternate confirmation of the special theory of relativity, besides the Michelson Morley experiment.

    ReplyDelete
  106. RogerAiles1:39 PM

    In reference to The Corner, it's called "Asshat Reflux."

    ReplyDelete
  107. dmsilev1:44 PM

    You know that and I know that. And actually Andrew Schlafly knows it as well, it just makes him angry for some reason.

    He's apparently also a Young-Earth creationist:

    "t takes only one counterexample to disprove the theory of an Old Earth. Most of the "evidence" for an Old Earth is based on claims that lack testability, as in radiometric dating, and hence would not even satisfy minimum requirements for admissibility in a court of law. As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of these 45 counterexamples has merely a 10% chance of being valid -- an underestimate -- then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is only 1%. In other words, the Earth must be young with a likelihood of 99%.[2] [3]"

    One of his counterexamples: "The age of onset of graying of hair or balding is rapidly decreasing, with many teenagers now experiencing baldness or premature graying (CNN's Anderson Cooper began graying as a teenager and was fully gray long before age 40);[23] many celebrities (such as American Idol winner Taylor Hicks graying in his 20s)[23] and athletes (such as Cal Ripken, Jr. graying and balding in his mid-30s)[24] increasingly experience premature graying or balding."

    ReplyDelete
  108. Mark_B4Zeds1:49 PM

    Yeah, I'm familiar with the creationist style of argument. I've even seen that some of the fairly ridiculous lines of argument would be admissible in a court of law, and the nonsensical misapplication of statistical arguments. When people say that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, they're talking about this kind of person.

    ReplyDelete
  109. Halloween_Jack2:24 PM

    I... wouldn't go there with someone with the last name of Greenberg.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Cronkite on a Fucking Crutch, that piece of "reportage" wouldn't run in a
    fucking elementary school one-page newsletter, for fuck's sake.

    “This reporter” and "NATIONAL REVIEW" and more “this reporter” makes me think Encinias has sprung fully-formed from the ass of cub reporter Jimmy Olsen, but instead of sycophantic fantasies about Superman Encinias cub reports to the court of Jester Jonah of Monstrous Phallacys.

    I mean, the entire give away is right there in the lede – That reporter and
    NATIONAL REVIEW don’t have a fucking clue what “wage theft” means, and that reporter from NATIONAL REVIEW is going to show us all how NATIONAL REVIEW and that reporter are the nadir of “journalism.”

    “Great work, Joshie. Now get out there and gimmee 500 words on how Obama is canceling Easter in America this year.”
    Bog fucking weeps.

    ReplyDelete
  111. montag22:52 PM

    FPP = Farrrrts Per Paragraph

    ReplyDelete
  112. montag22:56 PM

    RDMWFMPPA = Readers, Do My Work For Me, Please Per Article

    ReplyDelete
  113. satch2:57 PM

    Well, they think they can fire the current workers, since with unemployment so high, there'll be hundreds of desperate would-be replacements lining up around the block. Of course, they also believe that minimum wage workers are inherently lazy, since if they had any gumption, they would be working to improve their education and work habits so they wouldn't have to BE minimum wage workers. The resulting cognitive matter/antimatter explosion could be devastating if they actually gave it any thought.

    ReplyDelete
  114. But French women always come in threes. Hence the famous expression, "menage all three."

    It’s also why they have three colours on their flag.

    Finally, it’s at the root of their tripartite motto, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. These are the names of three famous French women.

    ReplyDelete
  115. montag23:06 PM

    "Andrew Schlafly's a weird dude...."

    And, of course, Mom had nothing to do with that....

    ReplyDelete
  116. GlockPalin3:10 PM

    If you had to talk to this ambulatory sphincter, wouldn't you feign ignorance of English? I know I would.

    ReplyDelete
  117. satch3:11 PM

    "This reporter", huh? Zombie Edward R. Murrow needs to hunt this guy down and rip all ten of his fingers off so he can never type again.

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  118. Jon Hendry3:17 PM

    I'm sure he talks to all foreign people he meets in shouted, simplified terms.

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  119. Pajama Boy's gone Galt, what ho?

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  120. satch3:22 PM

    What was kinda funny was that the thing he most wanted to bitch about was... Gas Prices??? This young hipster is right on the cutting edge of the 2010 campaign.

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  121. Jon Hendry3:23 PM

    Last summer I went down to NYC and met some friends. We walked around the LES, and stopped at a cupcake shop. There were a couple girls behind the counter, and a guy who I'm *pretty* sure was gay. One of my friends mentioned we were on the way to the Empire State Building and the probably-gay person mentioned that he used to go to school there.


    I wasn't sure how exactly to tactfully ask why the heck he was going there, given that I was making all kinds of assumptions.


    But I boggled. Couldn't have been easy.

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  122. KatWillow3:28 PM

    By "wearing leather" the author means one had a leather purse, another a leather jacket, the third... ahhhh.....leather shoes; pumps of course.

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  123. montag23:32 PM

    That's some extraordinary bullshit, and I'm sure that it just boggles the mind of the average Christian school graduate (which I presume is Schlafly's principal audience).

    But, that "political pressure" business sounds exactly like the argument against evolution, doesn't it? An argument which can be distilled to "science is icky and ungodly and I don't want to know fuck-all about it."

    But, I think we have some very practical lessons in E=mc^2 as a matter/energy equivalency equation. Just ask the residents of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Bikini Atoll (just to include the fusion side of the Curve of Binding Energy to the evidence).

    It was also Einstein who said, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Funny how the Schlaflys of the world provide Einstein, even in death, with the proofs he needs.

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  124. Jaime Oria3:35 PM

    To quote my favorite science crank letter exhortation: None may have such knowledge again!

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  125. Jaime Oria3:38 PM

    But what, what, what if they were Canadian? What then, hmmm?

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  126. smut clyde3:40 PM

    kind of pointlessly overspecific detail I use to increase the perceived reality of a story when I'm trying to lie to someone
    ...to lend verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative?

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  127. montag23:43 PM

    This is one little-recognized problem with wingnut welfare. Since it affords them income without productive labor, it leaves people like Schlafly with entirely too much time on their hands, which they expend on what they invariably but erroneously term, "thinking."

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  128. Halloween_Jack3:53 PM

    Funny, one of my first thoughts upon seeing this was that Reince Priebus had second thoughts about making fun of PJB.

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  129. smut clyde3:54 PM

    there's a very good reason that he never became a player in the conservative movement.


    He's General Counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, so he's not completely marginalised.

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  130. catclub3:57 PM

    Belgian, not French. They get no respect.

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  131. montag23:58 PM

    Oh, dear, that's some funny shit. I can just hear the oohs and ahs coming from The Human Anagram over that ad.

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  132. Smarter than Your Average Bear4:14 PM

    Pardonnez-moi abruti je ne comprends pas américain

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  133. XeckyGilchrist4:20 PM

    I would be very surprised otherwise.

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  134. Smarter than Your Average Bear4:54 PM

    Google's translations of those are hilarious - thankfully my 5 years of HS French and being married to a Montrealer are enough to get the gist without Google's help :)

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  135. smut clyde5:00 PM

    Here I was mentally translating it as "Pantload Grande Vitesse".

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  136. BG, dismayed leftie5:02 PM

    Three black-leather-clad French women asked National Review what the protest was about.


    He wishes.

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  137. Unpaid intern... what happens when he puts w-2 and w-2 together regarding wage theft?

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  138. slavdude5:44 PM

    Dear Jonah,

    I never thought this would happen to me...

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  139. Spaghetti Lee5:52 PM

    Hey Roy, as much as I'd love to take credit, DocAmazing said that, not me.

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  140. TGuerrant5:59 PM

    Andrew Schlafly's a weird dude, and there's a very good reason that he never became a player in the conservative movement.


    I blame it on Phyllis not being a tiger mom like Lucianne.

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  141. TGuerrant6:03 PM

    Ha ha! From Wikipedia:

    AAPS also publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (formerly known as the Medical Sentinel). The Journal is not indexed by mainstream scientific databases such as the Web of Science or MEDLINE. The quality and scientific validity of articles published in the Journal has been widely criticized, and many of the political and scientific viewpoints advocated by AAPS are considered extreme or dubious by mainstream scientists and medical groups.

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  142. MRC2106:53 PM

    I don't know, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is pretty marginal itself. They're the people who came up with the "immigrants carry leprosy" claim that Lou Dobbs made a fool of himself over. They also claimed that Obama was using hypnosis techniques on his audiences. I suspect that Andrew's qualifications to become their counsel didn't rely heavily on his success at passing the bar.

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  143. Guest8:31 PM

    I even went to the page to read it, and I still don't get how earlier instances of gray hair are supposed to relate to a young earth, even by crazy moon-man logic...

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  144. Halloween_Jack8:59 PM

    Try to figure out how he can get to be the one to get the paycheck and farm out the work, of course.

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  145. Mechazaurus9:50 PM

    OK, would you buy Enrique Rizzo?

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  146. ... the large hairless guy who self-identifies as evil said, dejectedly.

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  147. Oh, sure, like we believe you anymore ... Noodles.

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  148. Magatha11:47 PM

    Es ist nicht der Hut. Du bist einfach urkomisch.

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  149. the worst part is that it wouldn't translate "pencil dick."

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  150. most franchisees now aren't actually real people; they tend to be hedge funds and holding companies.

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  151. Smarter than Your Average Bear9:28 AM

    Ya you either have to know the slang or go for a more literal translation - pénis maigre

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  152. Halloween_Jack9:46 AM

    That would be Enrico, but sure.

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  153. … I never thought this would happen to me ...

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  154. Come to think of it, Pajama Boy was looking off-camera too… just like this Young Republican.


    Maybe that's what the "cool factor" is: never making eye contact.

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  155. Not only is the value of Pi a liberal plot, but it's unbiblical as well.

    In First Kings, chapter 7, verses 23 and 26, we read:
    "And he [Hiram] made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one rim to the other it was round all about, and...a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about…."


    Clearly, the value of Pi is exactly three.

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  156. TomParmenter1:34 PM

    I met his father, J. Fred Schlafly, there's a reason you've never heard of him.

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  157. TomParmenter1:37 PM

    Noodles Romanoff and his Ring!

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  158. realinterrobang3:03 PM

    I would just like you all to know that this comment finally drove me to YouTube to find out exactly how it is you pronounce "Reince Priebus." (I are a furriner and don't have teh cables.) I'm upset at what that's going to do to my YouTube recommendations, and baffled at how you get the phonemes "rynts preebus" out of that combination of graphemes.


    Also, what the fuck kind of name is that, and where does the Republican Party *find* these people?

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  159. Halloween_Jack6:25 PM

    Reince Priebus, like his name, is completely synthetic.

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