Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo: Fracking-Free for You and Me

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


The Lamb Lies Down on Wall Street: Selling America by the Pound
by IDI AMIN DADA

• Kelly and Gil Bates, good friends of the Duggars and similarly creepy quiverfull evangelical Christians, are expecting their 19th child. The Quiverfull movement believes that husbands and wives should have as many children as God wants them to, and as such, do not use birth control and have over a dozen kids. Apparently miscarriages aren't God's way of saying "no more," as Kelly Bates is undergoing hormonal therapy to repair her uterine wall. This is something that doesn't seem appropriate to joke about, even with the inconsistency in ideology and the idea of reducing the purpose of children to arrows made for casting in theological warfare, until you consider that the quiverfull movement is inherently misogynist and has liberal sprinklings of white supremacy.

• Republicans in Virginia are one State Senate seat away from having total control of the State's legislative process. They have twice as much cash on hand as Democrats, and Democrats need that money more: 12/16 Republican Senators face no opposition, while 16/20 Democratic Senators have a Republican opponent in the fall's elections. Their sales pitch is completely intangible and non-specific:

"The focus of our race is on jobs and the economy,” Mr. Black said. "The Democrats under the Obama administration have drawn us to where our economy is near collapse, and Republicans are going to have to bring it back."

It's also the exact same strategy which gave the party a stunning victory in the 2010 Congressional elections, so hopefully Virginians are ready for more of the same great pro-citizen victories passed since the beginning of the year, only on a state level.

• It's an especially exciting time for Virginia's elections with not only the upcoming complete Republican takeover of the State Senate, but famed Republican George Allen running for the Senate on the bigger level, after a humiliating defeat in 2006. While some attribute Allen's 2006 loss to his use of a racial slur when calling on a reporter (one he would later claim to be a "made-up word" that just happened to correspond with the poor guy's race), it's highly doubtful that, as the Washington Post bizarrely claims, his baggage this time around will be his intensely close ties to the coal industry.

Idi Amin: 'Download a Jail Bid, Punk'

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


Entertainment Industry Blazes New Avenues of Public-Private Partnerships
by IDI AMIN DADA

If you're a Tennessee resident and share your Netflix, Hulu Plus, or other premium digital service accounts with individuals who don't have paid accounts, you've committed a serious crime. In early June, the governor signed into law restrictions not shared by any other state, ones that enable you to be charged with a Class E Felony.

If you get caught sharing your Netflix password enough, you'll lose your right to vote and can face jailtime and fines. As the violation is considered "theft of property," here is the potential range of punishments you can face:

1. A Class A misdemeanor if the value of the property or services obtained is $500 or less.
2. A Class E felony if the value of the property or services obtained is more than $500 but less than $1,000.
3. A Class D felony if the value of the property or services obtained is $1,000 or more but less than $10,000.
4. A Class C felony if the value of the property or services obtained is $10,000 or more but less than $60,000.
5. A Class B felony if the value of the property or services obtained is at least $60,000.

This is another great example of the Government doing the bidding of the entertainment industry, and serves as a great sidearm to the Protect IP Act introduced in the Senate. The Protect IP Act makes it a felony to stream movies online, and was introduced by liberal hero Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo: Yer Fracking Dead

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


Wake up to Five-Hour Energy from Glorious Leaders' Natural Gas Plan

of Explosive Prosperity
by IDI AMIN DADA

• Former Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) desperately wants you to pay attention to him. Come on, he's doing all sorts of neat stuff! He's mangling history and likening the National Labor Relations Board to the Soviet Union. He's simultaneously calling Obama a "champion of class warfare" and advocating class warfare, by calling for the elimination of the capital gains tax, the estate tax, interest income taxes and dividend taxes.

That's not all. Pawlenty proposes a flat tax rate of 10% for everybody earning under $100,000 and 25% for everybody earning above that. He claims these tax cuts for the wealthy on an unprecedented scale would lead to 5% growth of the economy over ten years — despite the fact that 5% growth of the economy over ten years has never been done. Ever. Do you care about him yet? Really—no? You're still doing that thing where you stand alone in your driveway shooting free throws and saying to yourself, "If this goes in, it means that Melissa likes me"? Jeez—uh, okay, how about this: he casually mentions a "Google Test" that says if you can find a service being offered by the internet, it should be done by private industry and not government. Some astute people observe that this covers "everything ever."

That Pawlenty is thoroughly unexciting despite his best attempts has been satirized on The Daily Show and Colbert Report for the past few months. However, the media's portrait of him as a non-entity because of his boringness rather than as the sort of person who can destroy the social composition of America via his radical views allows the Republican narrative to slip even further to the right without consequence, so you probably should care about him.

Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo: SNAP INTO A COAL PIT

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


Passengers Traveling with Small Children Are Encouraged to Stop Somewhere Other Than the United States
by IDI AMIN DADA

• President Obama's annual promise to end the Bush tax cuts (this year he'll finally keep his word, liberals are sure of it!) is taking a toll on conservatives who are sick and tired of class warfare. They can't even hide their disgust with his statement that taxes are lower now than they were under President Reagan, something which is factually true. As is par for the course, they respond to correct statements by mocking the person making them and joking as if laughter chases away reality. They could have even cited this shitty Politifact calculation which ignores the context of the tax rate discussions and was tailor-made for conservatives who want to misrepresent history, but that would offer too much dignity to the truth, which deserves nothing more than mockery.

• Unrelenting in their anti-reality stance, Republicans blocked President Obama's nominee to the 9th Circuit Court by portraying his views as the exact opposite of what they actually are. Now Obama has no choice but to try to swear him in on Opposite Day.

• President Obama's nominee to the Federal Reserve Board, Peter Diamond, has withdrawn his nomination for the position after being blocked and renominated several times since April 2010. Not even some award he got in October 2010 helped his cause, which is evidenced by the scathing and wickedly awesome letter titled, "When a Nobel Prize Isn't Enough." The letter was written by Peter Diamond.

It's really worth reading in full, as it castigates the relevant GOP senators with exactly the level of scorn they deserve. Also noteworthy is this quote from Norm Ornstein of the fucking American Enterprise Institute, of all sources:

We've had huge numbers of nominees blocked, and very few of them for reasons to do with the qualifications or character....

You wonder if there's anything that could bring some level of shame to those who block nominees for partisan purposes and just take people hostage and leave them twisting in the wind for months.

Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo: Liberal Extremism

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


You Can Keep the 'Climate Change'; I'll Cling to My Fracking and Logs
by IDI AMIN DADA

• Due to budget cuts, the government will shut down or significantly scale back several web projects which increase government transparency. One of those projects involves showing which private companies were awarded stimulus contracts. Surely this move won't benefit companies owing millions in back taxes, for a total of almost $25 billion given to companies that hate the government so much that they want to ensure it won't be able to afford to give them contracts in the future.

• Blue Dog fuckhead Steny Hoyer insists on ruining the well-being of Federal employees, by asking as a part of budget negotiations to bring down their employee benefits to the nonexistent level of the private sector. Give Hoyer credit for mastering the art of Democratic negotiation: abandoning all major demands as a prerequisite for getting to the bargaining table and converting all those golden concessions into the lead of GOP demands rubber-stamped by "liberal" policymakers.

• State Park Obituaries:

California — Democratic (questionable) Governor Jerry Brown has proposed closing a quarter of the state's parks, with 70 scheduled to shutter as a result of budget cuts. Thankfully, closing 16 of those parks may violate federal law, meaning a mere 56 would be closed. Besides, the ones remaining open are already in such bad shape, it's like, who cares?

Ohio - A bill to allow Oil and natural gas drilling in state parks has passed the state house, and famous asshole governor John Kasich supports the measure. Nevermind that fracking for natural gas is like sticking nitroglycerine in your air-popper before the start of movie night, and that it's worse for the environment than just straight-up using coal. The big problem is that otherwise there's just not enough of a chance that Ohio will experience earthquakes, and this is something fracking can finally correct.

Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo: O, Minnesota!

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


Land of 10,000 Corpses
by IDI AMIN DADA

• Perhaps to invigorate old people on death's door with a sense of empowerment, nursing homes want to ensure that employees receive less care than residents. To this end, they've sought exemptions from obligations to provide care to workers, who are already so terribly compensated that one in three don't have any health insurance at all. The ironic occupation of uncared-for caregiver gibes neatly with an existing program pioneered by Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), in which congressional cafeteria busboys and servers were replaced by people who are starving to death and paid in useless 20-lb lead ingots they are too weak to lift.

• Speaking of Minnesota: Republicans proposed cutting the rolls of MinnesotaCare, which provides poor and indigent state residents with health care. Instead of leaving them sick and dying like people with normal private health insurance, they thoughtfully gave them vouchers to purchase private health insurance, whereupon they could be denied care just like a successful person who's going to die of a treatable illness in his own home. A Democrat brought forth an amendment to test the effectiveness of this method of money-saving by also putting members of the state senate on that same voucher program. It was a failure, just like other attempts to replace public health care programs with private insurance vouchers.

Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo: Let's Get Sick

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


Welcome to America; If You Drink the Water or Breathe the Air, You Will Die
by IDI AMIN DADA

• Fracking sounds awesome, like the thing you do with a lady, or when playing Call of Duty and you headshot some guy, or a thing you say when some bandit gets on your tail in a flight simulator game. It's also a lot more environmentally neutral than "hydraulically injecting rocket fuel into the ground," especially when the process results in people being able to set the water in their kitchen sinks on fire.

Undaunted by his inability to launch cap-and-trade and give our homies at Goldman Sachs another market of non-things to buy, sell and gamble on, Barack Obama is still determined to be your environmental president. Despite existing peer-reviewed studies on the process that deem it basically stupid and evil, Obama's appointed a panel to seriously study the issue. Thankfully, the panel's stacked with people either tied to energy companies or sitting on their boards, so this way everyone can skip the boilerplate about incinerating dirt-poor West Virginians to focus on the more detail-oriented stuff: how, like, totally safe it is, brah.

• The Sierra Club asked Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) to revise its cap and trade program, which corporations and the Environmental Defense Fund love — the same EDF which houses the environmental representative on President Obama's fracking approval research panel.

• Enjoy for a moment a must-read tale of a Republican governor who stood up to energy companies, which held a deathgrip on the state's economy, by booting out corrupt elected officials and implementing a heavy tax on their profits. This tax subsequently turned the state into the most well-off in the country during the current economic depression. It carries a $12 billion surplus, $8 billion of which came from that governor's new taxes. The state is Alaska, and that Governor was Sarah Palin.

Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo: Floridapocalypse

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


Starve a Disabled and Illiterate Child for Just Pennies on the Dollar
by IDI AMIN DADA

• Drug testing welfare recipients: coming soon to Florida! You've got to love public policy drafted to punish hoary dog-whistle campaign scare tactics. We need to drug test welfare recipients, because you wouldn't be on welfare if you weren't also on drugs. Good people don't go on welfare. Good people live in gated communities and buy a new Honda Odyssey every five years, because they practice the rhythm method and love Jesus Christ.

Here's one of the many problems with this: to administer the drug tests to everyone would cost more money than it could potentially save. Naturally it will come as no surprise if Florida Governor and Buffy the Vampire Slayer villain Rick Scott's wife's trust in er his former? company Solantic Urgent Care wins a lucrative contract to administer these tests, much like the one it will probably get for testing state employees and managing the privatization of state Medicaid. You don't have to be crazy to think this makes sense — in part because being crazy in Florida is incredibly hazardous to your health.

Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo

Note: every week, news aggregators address hundreds of worthwhile stories or opinions that never catch on, either because they lack an obvious follow-up or because sites that live off ad revenue would rather bang high-traffic drums over and over. Idi Amin's Briefs Rodeo provides a summary of good stuff you might have missed. He has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


Cut-Pains Courageous; Rep. by Divine Right; and 'How, Redman — Put Down That Firewater'
by IDI AMIN DADA

• The Guardian wonders why the Republicans' budget, from gee-whiz kid Paul Ryan, which balances the budget over a very long period of time via radically slashing social services, is called "courageous" in the American media, while the Congressional Progressive Caucus's budget, which balances the budget much faster and in a fair manner, is all but ignored.

Courageous is an old refrain, and it's the wrong one. Ryan's budget plan has been touted for over a year, with stuff like "analysis of it" only reluctantly dragged into mainstream discussion in the last month. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait even went so far as to bite his magazine's GOP overlords by noting that Ryan used to justify the exact same tax cuts to avoid a budget surplus. Regardless, there's nothing courageous about rephrasing Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign platform. Celebrating tax cuts in America is a gesture of the moral castrati. A really ballsy gesture involves vowing to keep one's promises even to American citizens who lack deep campaign paychecks and vowing to do so by putting the soft screws to someone in a bespoke suit and Sulka tie.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Black Caucus has released an almost completely ignored budget proposal that's so good you should fucking cry, because nothing close to it will ever be enacted. By the reasoning of Beltway "common sense," it's probably because black people are cowards.

Picket Lines: Wisconsin, Unions—and a Nation of Immigrants Unsurprisingly Forgets Where It Came From

Note: unlike many guest pieces on Et tu, Mr. Destructo? today's article was co-written by a real, live person. Idi Amin Dada has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. Since his exile at the hands of imperialists, he has busied himself researching topics ranging from politics to philately. In the coming days, he hopes to explore labor issues in America in "Picket Lines," and he invited Mobutu Sese Seko to pitch in. Neither author has eaten anyone since 1980.


Solidarity, 2011
by IDI AMIN DADA and MOBUTU SESE SEKO

It's extraordinarily upsetting that so many Americans broadly oppose unions without giving much thought to the reasoning behind their opposition. In the case of Wisconsin, critics of union workers are especially difficult to understand. Newly elected Governor Scott Walker wants to use a budget crisis to not only crush the take-home pay of unionized state workers, but to strip public employees of the right to collective bargaining.

His supporters assert that Wisconsin public-school teachers net much more in salary and benefits than private-sector teachers. And despite the fact that this is not true, and that Walker's initiatives to give out generous corporate welfare actually caused significantly exacerbate the crisis he's attempting to capitalize on, public sector employees have already agreed to tough concessions with respect to pay and benefits. Even these concessions are not enough for Walker, who refuses to budge on stripping collective bargaining rights, a move that would have no impact on the state's finances whatsoever, but would effectively destroy unions as a force for the middle and labor class.

One could argue that in the long-run, Walker's stance saves the state money, as public unions periodically negotiate contracts to obtain higher wages and more benefits at the state's expense. Two polls regarding this issue are available at the moment. The first comes from the firm Clarus Group and shows 64% of Americans think that government employees should not be represented by labor unions. However, the firm admits that its phrasing may have swayed responses with language seemingly mirroring that of deficit hawks.

Another poll, this one conducted on behalf of the right-leaning group "We Ask America" shows that those in Wisconsin actually oppose the bill by 51%, with 43% supporting it. However, this same poll also shows that 55% of Wisconsinites want Democratic senators — who fled to Illinois to avoid giving the bill a quorum — to return to the state to vote on the bill anyway; only 36% of those polled disapprove of the idea. Such an action would make the bill pass, as Republicans seem unwilling to compromise, already have the votes they need, and Walker's disdain for those opposing him remains unwavering.

His attitude might make sense if not for conservatism's twin enemies of history and math. Wages for American middle and lower class workers have been all but stagnant since the 1970s, compared to the actual productivity and output of their work; meanwhile, profits for corporations and bonuses for CEOs annually reach record highs. At a time when many states desperately need funds — and corporations reaping record profits pay little to nothing in taxes — the acceptable course of action, according to a vast majority of Republicans, most Independents and some Democrats, is to point to the household working paycheck-to-paycheck and say, "Their desire to negotiate for fewer sleepless nights might hurt the state's finances. It's belt-tightening time."

Idi Amin: 'Wal-Mart: the Ultimate Welfare Queen'

Note: unlike many guest pieces on Et tu, Mr. Destructo? today's article comes from a real, live person. Idi Amin Dada has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. Since his exile at the hands of imperialists, he has busied himself researching topics ranging from politics to philately. Fans can find him engaging in lively debates on FreeRepublic, Redstate, AIPAC, and Stormfront, where he blends in seamlessly. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


Rolling Back Lives... One State Budget at a Time
by IDI AMIN DADA

You'd be forgiven for not hearing about a recent bill proposed by a Democratic state legislator in Ohio that targeted businesses whose employees are compensated so poorly that they rely on public aid. No story besides this transcriptless audio report on Northeast Ohio Public Radio seems to exist.

With continuing dire warnings from deficit hawks that found their voice the instant Barack Obama won the Presidency, with the Ohio state budget in such dire shape, and with newly-elected fiscal conservatives licking their lips in anticipation of taking office, a chance to reduce the state budget gap seems like it would gleefully be seized. But if you're Ohio state Representative Bob Hagan (D), such an offering has been rejected without a single sensible reason consistent with the political ideology of the Republican party, which doesn't publicly state that the only welfare it favors is the corporate form.

The Democrats' Authority Problem

Note: unlike many guest pieces on Et tu, Mr. Destructo? today's article comes from a real, live person. Idi Amin Dada has a Bachelor's degree in political science, the rank of Field Marshal and was the last ruler of a free Uganda. Since his exile at the hands of imperialists, he has busied himself researching topics ranging from politics to philately. Fans can find him engaging in lively debates on FreeRepublic, Redstate, AIPAC, and Stormfront, where he blends in seamlessly. He has not eaten anyone since 1980.


It's Unfortunate That Walruses Were Included, and It's an Embarrassment That They Were Included
by IDI AMIN DADA

More than 50 days into the largest oil spill in the planet's history, oil company executives converged on Washington for some finger-wagging from Democrats before being sent back to corporate headquarters to do the exact same thing they'd been doing before they were slightly inconvenienced.

That Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) said a thing sympathetic to the company responsible for the spill is a shame, both because an opportunity was missed for conservatives to tell the country how they really feel about government regulation and because other important events went undiscussed, deemed unworthy of anything other than a cursory mention in articles covering the hearing. For instance, who at ExxonMobil could have allowed this to happen?