Rangelife

How many ways are you going to Hell?

Under the standards printed above, I'm going to Hell at least six ways. maybe eight depending on his definition of "drunks" and "rich people."

And if even "once-saved" Christians can't avoid the brimstone, it's gonna be crowded down there.

Thank you, scary North Carolina man. (Photo credit: My dad.)

Who will save America? The Debruthers!

I have a suggestion for the Birthers, the Truthers, and the Deceptors: It's time to merge.

Some definitions, for those who aren’t familiar with the terminology:

Birthers: a subculture of wacko right-wingers who believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and has never produced evidence of birth in America, and maintain this belief in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Truthers: a subculture of wacko left-wingers (primarily) who believe that 9/11 was an inside job propagated by the neo-cons and military investors to start WWIII for power and financial gain.

Deceptors: a subculture of pan-ideological wackos who watched “The Obama Deception” on Google Video and now believe that Barack Obama is merely a puppet of stateless financial interests bent on forcing the world into indentured slavery.

The Truthers have been banging their heads against the wall for almost eight years with little traction. The Birthers have been doing much better; probably millions of white rednecks have hung all their fear and disgust about our first Scary "The Other" President on his wildly improbable illegitimacy. The Deceptors’ beliefs are doomed never to find mainstream acceptance; they’re almost as complicated as reality.

But what if the Birther, the Truther, and the Deceptor movements merged? The Debruthers! Think about it. With their collective batshit power, they could take this evil regime down!

I've even gotten the narrative started:

Mombasa-born Muslim Barack Obama blew up the Twin Towers and WTC7 with explosives at the bidding of the Rothschild banking family, so that Bush would turn America into a security state and Alan Greenspan would ignite a credit bubble, putting America’s citizens and businesses in hock to the global financial oligarchs. Then Hawaii state officials, at the bidding of the bankers, created fake a birth certificate and doctored the birth announcements in the Honolulu newspaper archives. This set the stage for Obama to be elected president, place financial insiders in positions of political power, create citizen dependency on the state, increase national indebtedness, take our guns away, and institute mandatory national service. This clears the way for Obama to enforce an form of Islamic fascism in which ownership of all assets falls into the hands of the shadowy Jews who placed him in power.

Admit: that's some compelling shit right there. It all makes so much sense.

If I start a blog about this, do you think I could get on Hannity?

Metal monster eats the flesh of the dead

When the robots come for us, remember that we were warned. Our puny swords will be of no use.

Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies

It could be a combination of 19th-century mechanics, 21st-century technology — and a 20th-century horror movie.

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, "EATR" — "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.

That "biomass" and "other organically-based energy sources" wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.

When I read this, a thought popped into my head:

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS CORPSE-FEASTING STEAMPUNK NIGHTMARE SHIT???

As you were.

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Update: At least someone is thinking about our robot future.

Japanese robot unemployment reaching crisis levels

We are mere years from when SkyNet becomes self-aware and declares war on humanity. The rise of the machines, like most uprisings, will be sparked by joblessness.

The NY Times today details how the collapse in Japan’s exports has bankrupted the robotics industry and left thousands of metal hands idle. If you squint your eyes, it almost reads like an unwritten Onion headline: “Japanese Robot Unemployment at 30-Year High.” An example:

At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair.

Japan -– the country which perfected suicide -– is committing societal seppuku in front of the world. Its population is aging and contracting, and its staggering national debt is more than double the relative size of America’s. And its primary population center –- Tokyo, the world’s biggest city -– sits on top of two major fault lines. We love Japan to death, but it’s hard to envision any scenario other than doom for it.

Robots were going to be Japan’s saving grace. In 30 years, when half its population is comprised of senior citizens, robots would provide the care and assistance work that most rich nations farm out to immigrants. Since newcomers are for some reason still unwelcome in Japan, somebody’s gotta help grandma out of the tub.

But now Japan’s robot nurse, robot pet, robot security guard, and robot gadget-builder are collecting dust, their designs shelved, their designers seeking work abroad.

Meanwhile, America’s robots -– the ones that blow shit up -– are thriving. When the only members of a society with real jobs are the ones who wield the guns, it's time to worry.

Swine flu? I can't hear you over the crunching of this delicious AMERICAN bacon

These two Homeland Security tweets aren't connected, are they?

The Jews and Muslims will be pleased.

Dubai is the nightmare side of the global economy

 

(photo from UpSouth on Flickr)

In the past decade, Dubai has represented all that is wrong and savage and suicidal about the global economy.

Dubai is the short-sighted application of immense labor and fossil fuels to create luxury out of hot sand. Dubai is comprised of the most poisonous components of the global supply chain compressed into a few square miles.

Dubai is hell, but the most tortured souls are the innocent ones. With little oil and towering dunes of debt, Dubai is now collapsing under the unforgiving weight of the global economy. With the glimmer gone, its many sins are coming to light. And sewage is washing up on the beach.

Dubai is a nightmare vision of the world's capitalist/socialist extremes: an infantilizing nanny state for its natives, unforgiving slavery for its imported workers, and debtor's prison for its expats. The airport garage is reportedly full of abandoned Range Rovers and Benzes that belonged to Europeans and Americans who got the hell out before their next mortgage payments came due. The suicide rate among the servant class is astronomical; when they take away your passport and your humanity, that tends to happen.

If Dubai will not fix itself, then it needs to die. We should only hope that it doesn't take too many more people with it.

The Independent: The Dark Side of Dubai

Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by communists

(Unironic picture titled "obama-gore-scumbags.jpg" sourced from Democrat=Socialist via the delightful ilovecarbondioxide.com)

If you know me, you know that I’m very old and wise. And in my very long life, I’ve learned a great many important things.

Primary among them is that all political ideologies are the same:

• We represent freedom
• They represent totalitarian fascism
• Everything they say they’re concerned about are really smokescreens for their ultimate goals, which are their own corrupt power and taking control over our lives because they get off on that kind of thing

All political movements are, in essence, attempts to reposition society's winners and losers. Our winners are virtuous and make the world richer and freer and fairer, but their winners just want to make themselves richer and more powerful at the expense of the people.

Now that Obama has proposed a cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions, a policy which his opponent also championed during the 2008 campaign, the Right has decided to go apeshit about global warming.

For example, CNS News:

I am increasingly of the opinion that the main goal of the Obama administration through CO2 regulation, exploding deficits, punishing taxation, and any other means at their disposal is the destruction of the economy and the complete control of impoverished Americans.

And the Dakota Voice:

Folks, don’t fall for more socialist lies aimed to remove more of the money you earned from your pocket to make even bigger government which aims to rob you of more of your God-given liberties... Isn’t it time you took a look at how thin the “facts” are behind Al Gore’s religion, and join the rest of us in rejecting this anti-American nonsense?

And Doug Ross:

Never mind that almost all greenhouse gas is water vapor. But since the Statists can't measure water vapor and condensation, they attempt to wrestle control of carbon dioxide instead, by claiming it's toxic. But the point is, they want to control you... The economy is on life support, so what does the Enviro-Statist do? He grabs more power. Because they don't care about the economy, they care about power! They're not about preserving or improving our society, they're bent on destroying it.

And Rush says:

There's no truth to anything that's being said about all this, be it global warming or what the stimulus package is going to do. It's a disaster, and it's all designed to get you to agree to pay higher taxes down the road. It's all about surrendering freedom and advanced lifestyles, because those are the things said to be responsible for the destruction of the Earth via the warming climate.

Ditto! And one more for good luck:

The birth of the 'environmental crisis' was concoted by the international communists a long time ago. It's very well documented. What you're seeing now is how tyrants impose more totalitarian government and in the case of these united States of America, the destruction of private property rights with the ultimate goal: destroy capitalism.

Personally, I think the jury is still out on the relationship between carbon emissions and climate change, and it's unlikely we'll ever know the answer for sure. It's hard to look at data without bias; but the more I try, the more fuzzy the link seems.

I'm down with cap and trade, however. Emissions are disastrous for lots of reasons, and the costs of oil imports go way beyond $2 or $4 gas. If we taxed oil just to pay for our foreign policy distortions and international borrowing costs, gasoline would be priced at twice its current level.

But that's socialist talk. And as we all know by now, global warming is a phony phenomenon invented by left-wingers who want to destroy our way of life just to increase their own power. Everyone knows Al Gore just doesn't want to get a real job, after all.

It's tax time!

TurboTax advice

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you hear?

I hear a Norwegian Yahoo! yodeling in my ear.

Shot of Yahoo! Trondheim office from Flickr. Best comment:

That's interesting. Question for you:

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THOSE FUCKING SCARY TWELVE FOOT FUCKING BEARS?! JESUS!

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Via the indispensible Adam Riff: "If rappers were characters from The Wire."

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I was excited about Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. But (a) Friday night scheduling (all time slots on Friday are graveyard), and (b) bad review from Tim Goodman bode disastrously.

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GTA4 multiplayer is a stoner party. Where the stoners keep murdering you over and over and over.

Banned Substances

The most important story in the world. 

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Jon Stewart: Michael Steele is the Republicans' Giggle-Me Al-mo.

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You swipe your MasterCard. You sign your name. That signature makes the transaction less risky, and the merchant pays a lower fee than if you, say, read them your card number over the phone.

But... why? Do they ever check your signature? Why not sign it "Michael Steele" or just draw a cock and balls?

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Black Dynamite: a new blaxploitation flick, with an admirable effort to get the production values right.

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Al Qaeda in Gay Rape Horror: This Qaeda guy needs to fire his agent.

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Matt Millen's NFL commentary comes with a warning. What's next? Hiring Karl Rove to comment on how to manage a presidency? Whoops!