Say hello to the crew over at How to Get Rid of Things.

If you're looking for a guide for dealing with those pesky things in your life that you'd like to show the door, here's a humorous and practical look at how to go about it...

Remember when you were a kid, sittin' spread eagle in the lawn, plucking dandelions and blissfully blowing the seeds all over tarnation? You didn't know it, but your old man was watching you from inside at the kitchen table. He was sitting there drinking his coffee, cursing, and secretly hoping you'd inhale just a little too hard, suck in a just a few of them there seeds, send yourself into a coughing fit and learn your lesson the hard way.

Some of what I've been doing while recuperating from surgery for cancer...

I no longer stay awake late enough to hear late night jokes about current events such as Tiger Woods' shortest drive, so I've had to write a couple

The Floating Wingnuttery has made its way to the very top of the RNC - they're seriously considering a purity test to decide who gets money and endorsements.

Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they �espouse conservative principles and public policies� that are in opposition to �Obama�s socialist agenda.� According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues� in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire � would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.

The proposed resolution was signed by 10 Republican national committee members and was distributed Monday morning. They are asking for the resolution to be debated when Republicans gather for their winter meeting.

The resolution invokes Ronald Reagan, and noted that Reagan had said the Republican Party should be devoted to conservative principles but also be open to diverse views. Reagan believed, the resolution notes, �that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent.�

Hence the provision calling for cutting off Republicans who agree with the party on seven of 10 items. The resolution demands that Republicans support �smaller government, smaller national deficits and lower taxes,� denial of government funding for abortion, and �victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.� It calls on candidates to oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants and repealing of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Forgive my asking, but doesn't that sound a bit...Stalinist, or something?

Gin and Tacos' review of Going Rogue. It's simply a masterpiece of snark. Here's a sample:

Following American politics for the last two decades (and teaching about it for the last six years) I often feel like our political spectacles have taken on the air of an elaborate Dadaist performance piece, with each 'Tea Party,'� Fox News segment, and Republican Savior more egregiously blurring the lines between reality, farce, and surrealism. We watch each Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal speech fully expecting Ashton Kutcher to appear and let us in on the joke, informing America that it has in fact been punk'd and laughing uproariously at our gullibility. Our collective capacity for credulity has been strained to breaking.

Now we are faced with the daunting task of wrapping our minds around the Palin memoir Going Rogue, appearing atop a bestseller list near you. Millions of copies will be sold of a book written by someone who can't write, intended for an audience that doesn't read, about the thoughts of a person who doesn't think. God is dead.

If you are in a hurry, here is the succinct version of this review: Going Rogue is shit. It is groundbreaking in its banality and disregard for facts. If you are sentient, it will pain you to read it. Imagine watching your parents 69 one another while John Madden sits behind you and bellows out color commentary and you will have some idea of how excruciating and profoundly scarring it is to plow through each page of this wholly fictional monument to self-aggrandized mediocrity. Going Rogue is to the art of writing what the Holocaust is to the concept of a just God - the piece of disconfirming evidence so overwhelming that we are left questioning whether it can exist at all.

Go read it all. Worth every minute.

Hat tip: Sean Paul at The Agonist.

So, Republicans are anti-abortion, right? They honor the sanctity of life, right? They don't want anyone in this country to be able to get an abortion, right?

Then explain to me why the RNC's health insurance plan covers abortions.

I meant to post this at the beginning of the week, but things like days out of town and work got in the way.

I noticed something interesting this week, and it has to do with Glenn Beck and public recognition. In the past week, we've seen Beck get sent up by both The Daily Show and on Saturday night Live. While both bits were pretty good - both Stewart and Jason Sudeikis did pretty savage parodies - if you listen to the audience's reactions on both clips, it's pretty clear that the audience isn't quite sure what they're laughing at.

I've got to conclude that both audiences were unfamiliar with Beck's Crazy Man schtick, and that's why the clips are uproariously funny to bloggers and those who keep an eye on the Crazy Contingent of cable news but somewhat less so to the people who were actually sitting in the audiences.

While Beck drives bloggers and media watchers batshit, isn't it interesting that such accurate parodies don't generate more than weak titters among your average sane Americans?

Here's why: Your average sane American does not know who the fuck Glenn Beck is. There's really no other explanation.

Update: Not to be upstaged by either Stewart or SNL, Eric Cartman does his best Beck imitation.

Remember when the town of New London, CT, bent over and took one for the team for its anchor tenant, Pfizer, by bending over its own residents and exercising eminent domain, kicking them out of their homes to develop the land, ostensibly for commercial purposes that Pfizer's presence there would attract? Remember Kelo v. New London, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the town and allowed it to takes its residents' homes? Remember that this was an issue on which Republicans and Democrats actually agreed?

The joke's on all of us -- especially the town of New London: Pfizer's pulling out. Gonzo. Doing for corporations is rarely as good an idea as doing for people.

From the Supreme Court decision (June 2005):

"Petitioner Susette Kelo has lived in the Fort Trumbull area since 1997. She has made extensive improvements to her house, which she prizes for its water view. Petitioner Wilhelmina Dery was born in her Fort Trumbull house in 1918 and has lived there her entire life. Her husband Charles (also a petitioner) has lived in the house since they married some 60 years ago. In all, the nine petitioners own 15 properties in Fort Trumbull--4 in parcel 3 of the development plan and 11 in parcel 4A. Ten of the parcels are occupied by the owner or a family member; the other five are held as investment properties. There is no allegation that any of these properties is blighted or otherwise in poor condition; rather, they were condemned only because they happen to be located in the development area."

And from a report elsewhere on the web since the announcement that Pfizer is departing:

"The area on which Susette Kelo�s house once stood is now an abandoned wasteland, the Associated Press reported in September."

For some reason, I received not one but two registered letters from Sen. Orrin Hatch today, each containing what's called a 'Republican Strategy Ballot.'

I have no reason why they'd be sending these to me, but I'm interested in what they contain. I'll post more tonight with the grisly details.

Update: Questions as they appear on the 'ballot' after the jump.

Perhaps Don Luskin's latest column is the scariest:

Two weeks ago I visited the New York Federal Reserve, for a meeting with a high-ranking official in an elegant conference room overlooking Wall Street.

Why anyone but a career counselor is meeting with Don Luskin is way beyond me.

A fucking idiot over at LolliPop Land says if soldiers were able to carry guns with live ammo on the grounds of Fort Hood, then yesterday's death toll would have been lower.

Soldiers in other countries are allowed to carry arms on base and even when they are off-duty. In Israel, for instance, soldiers are issued a rifle and then . . . it's theirs. One sees slender 18-year-old girls, traveling from base, home to the suburbs for Shabbat dinner, still slung with a massive M-16 rifle almost as big as they are. The prevelance of arms doesn't mean the country experiences the kind of random mass murders seen in the United States. It means that the few times someone has gone crazy with a gun in a city street, he was taken down fast by bystanders.

The aforementioned fucking idiot fails to realize that a soldier carrying a gun with live ammo was the reason that 12 people were killed yesterday.

Leave it to a fucking conservative idiot to presume to know more about gun safety and protocol than the goddamn US Army, and criticize those protocol as 'political correctness.'

My God, some people are just beyond fucking stupid.

My, my. The Hoffman camp is a damned paranoid bunch, ain't they?