FunctionalAmbivalent

The Party of Small Government Reveals, Once Again, a Preferance For All-Powerful Government

Taking a break from insisting that Republican Presidents should have the power to imprison and torture people they don't like in order to gain political support for their policies, pissy Republicans have decided to use government to penalize corporations opposed to the Republican agenda.

Specifically, Republicans are going to offer amendments to climate change legislation designed to punish a small group of big corporations which is tying to find reasonable middle ground. The amendments penalize by name members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of corporations that "have come together to call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions."

If the legislation is passed, the amendments remove tax breaks given previously to those corporations by Congress. Corporations that do not endorse climate change legislation will retain their tax breaks.

Decisions, Decisions

John Cole contemplates which movie to see:

Star Trek because I’m dying to see it, or Angels and Demons, which I really don’t care much about, but it might make that insufferable prick William Donohue cry?

Question mark added. Grammar: it's my life.

An Interesting Erection

A sex theme park is being built in China.

Love Land is set to open in October in the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing and will feature exhibitions about sexual history and how to use condoms properly. It will also host sex technique workshops, the China Daily newspaper said.

A picture of the main entrance shows a signboard bearing the park's name being straddled by a giant pair of women's legs topped by a red thong.

There will reportedly be no "It's a Small World After All" ride in the park.

Also, I know of at least one regular F/A commenter for whom "a giant pair of (Chinese) women's legs topped by a red thong" is the realization of a lifelong fantasy.

Soon To Be Greeted With Horror and Outrage

Conservative policy wonk Max Borders posits a libertarian conservative agenda not rooted in either the past or the culture wars.

Add yet another “R” to the things Republicans need to do to pull their party from the abyss: Risk. What sorts of risks can the GOP take? Let's start with policy. Consider some platform changes that may seem crazy at first, but if you’re prepared to embrace them, own them and see them through you could a) change the national conversation, b) restore your credibility on all this recent “freedom” talk, and c) win younger voters.

I'm having a hard time imagining the party of social conservatism buying into ideas like civil unions for gays and legalized drugs, but at least Borders is trying.

Further Evidence, If Any Were Needed, That Kentucky Mall-Goers Are Remnants of an Extinct Tribe of Cave Dwellers

A German archaeologist has uncovered what is thought to be the oldest depiction of a human being, a small, anatomically explicit female.

The short, squat torso is dominated by oversize breasts and broad buttocks. The split between the two halves of the buttocks is deep and continuous without interruption to the front of the figurine. A greatly enlarged vulva emphasizes the “deliberate exaggeration” of the figurine’s sexual characteristics, Dr. Conard said.

Put a t-shirt and stretch pants on the statue and it's a dead-on depiction of Saturday afternoon at the mall.

Bring Your Own Clown Shoes

The Republican National Committee is holding a hastily-called meeting next week to address an issue of such great and immediate importance that it can't wait until their regularly scheduled meeting this summer. According to Politico:

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

No, seriously: that's what they're meeting for. Oh, there are a couple of other things on the agenda. They'll pat themselves on the back for speaking out against all those earmarks they wrote into the budget bill and congratulating each other for refusing stimulus funds they didn't actually refuse. But mostly they're just getting together to fling a little snot at Democrats.

Today's Irony

Eco-sailors rescued by oil tanker. Here.

Simplicity Itself

Do I need an umbrella? Here.

The Sophisticated Media Manipulator Has a Non-Embarrassing Answer At the Ready

There are certain questions those who are regularly interviewed need to be ready to answer. They're the questions that are in the grab-bag of every tired, lazy reporter working a beat, questions like, for example, "What's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you on stage?"

Apparently, Fergie's handlers haven't prepared her properly, and when asked the above question she responded not with a charming-but-innocuous story of the time she tripped over one of her back-up singers and bruised her left boob, but by recalling an actually humiliating event that she would prefer  people forget: the night she peed her pants on stage.

"I think everyone has seen the pictures on the Internet when I didn’t use the bathroom before I went on stage. We were doing Let’s Get It Started and I was jumping all over. Yeah, I should have used the toilet before I went on stage. That was and always will be the most embarrassing moment of my life. I can never live it down."

Whether she can live it down is largely a function of whether she keeps bringing it up.

I mean, if she's going to talk openly about the event, she might as well do an adult diaper endorsement deal and make a few bucks off of it.

Life At the Cool Kids' Table

The New Republic speculates on Michael Steele's thought process -- a dangerous thing to do, for sure. But Christopher Orr has a theory that goes a long way toward explaining Michael Steele's strong support for Norm Coleman's continued thwarting of democracy in Minnesota:

Although plenty of Republicans have suggested that Coleman should keep fighting in the federal courts, none have been as aggressive on the subject as Steele. Now part of that, obviously, is that Steele has a greater tendency than most to utter loudly the first thing that comes into his head. But I can't help but be reminded of a blind nugget that Politico ran two months ago, claiming that the "word on the street" was that "the next RNC chairman will be Norm Coleman, after he loses his recount fight and big donors see Michael Steele’s March numbers." 

Now the Politico item, which was unsourced, could easily be wrong. But someone was at least floating the idea of replacing Steele with Coleman, and Steele knows it. Moreover, the precariousness of Steele's chairmanship is abundantly clear, as he's already lost at least two internal battles in the last few weeks. Encouraging Coleman to continue his pyrrhic legal fight might look to Steele like a pretty good way to keep a potential competitor for his job out of circulation.

This may be one of those too-good-to-be-true things, but it's a reminder of how much politics is like high school.