I Don't Like You Either

Wonkette's Top 10 Political Vids for 2008....

They start with Sean Hannity being chased by angry Republicans.....so you know you're going to enjoy this Very Special New Year's collection.

Needful Diversions: The Large Hadron Collider Rap

Lyrics & credits after the jump:

Craziest..Press Conference...EVAH (Blagojevich & Burris)

Via HuffPost, where you can read Jason Linkins' write-up. ""Please do not allow the allegations against me to taint this good man," Blagojevich said, futilely...""

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It's Still an Option: "C'mon, Move to Canada!"

Progressives who are disappointed with Obama still have the option! Personally, we're on a "wait and see" basis!

Slate V: The Best Viral Political Videos of 2008

Department of Valedictions: Lefty Bloggers Reflect on W

Did you know that Bush is still president?  It's true.  BUT NOT FOR VERY MUCH LONGER.

Bloggenfreude at Agitprop mourns W's passing.  "We will never see his like again."

As a lefty blogger, I will miss him. Sure he’s a dangerous sociopath, a pathological liar, and a national embarrassment.  But he’s also The Decider, The Commander Guy, and Commander Codpiece.  Think about that as January 20, 2009 approaches....

The photographic tributes are particularly choice.  We recommend clicking.

Zbiggy Calls Out Joe Scarborough on Mideast Policy: "You Have Such a Stunningly Superficial Knowledge of What Went On That It's Almost Embarrassing to Listen to You"

Brzezinski sorts out "Morning Joe" Scarborough, former Florida Congressman.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

FYI, From Wikipedia:

On October 10, 2007 Brzezinski along with other influential signatories sent a letter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice titled 'Failure Risks Devastating Consequences'. The letter was partly an advice and a warning of the failure of an upcoming  US sponsored Middle East conference scheduled for Nov 2007 between Israelis and Palestinians. The letter also suggested to engage in "a genuine dialogue with Hamas" than to isolate it further.

Snark O' the Day: Roy Edroso's Top Stupid Wingnut Moments for 2008

Roy Edroso posts his "top 10 stupid right-blogger tricks" for 2008 at The Village Voice.  An excerpt:

Pop stars made a video for Obama and the American Spectator compared it to Triumph of the Will. National Review called Obama's national service plan the "Obama Youth." Obama spoke in Germany, and Melissa Clouthier compared his signage to that of the Third Reich.

Jonah Goldberg said liberals only liked Obama because they didn't know any real (that is, poor and dangerous) black people; Taranto said Democrats were intimidated into nominating him, as an old lady might be intimidated into surrendering her purse to a mugger.

Snark O' the Day: Not Your Grandma's End of the Year Review

No, it's Flying Rodent's!

And as he says, and we agree, it was a very odd year.   For example,

It was the year when it finally became apparent that the West's economy was entirely based upon the ruling class's willingness to believe in the literal existence of golden unicorns that shoot rubies out of their eyes and gold bricks out of their arses, leading to massive government investment to shore up the ruby-shooting, gold-shitting unicorn industry...

...And it was a year in which the great and the good leapt to their feet in spirited defence of lowly Georgia, finally opening their mouths to righteously denounce the mighty Russian bastards, before slowly sitting back down, opening their newspapers and pretending they'd never spoken as it emerged that the Russo-Georgian War was a bit more of a level-bastardry field than we had initially been led to believe.

Here are a few specifics (he worked backwards starting with December 2008) from Part 1:

Jim Cramer: Show Me the Bailout Money!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Department of Viral Videos: 'Some Say the World Will End in Fire'---An Animation of an Asteroid Crashing into Earth

Via.  At least it appears we'll go out to Pink Floyd.

2008's Most Risible Moments in Politics (with Video Evidence!)

The HuffPost has Daniel Kurtzman's list with a whole string of videos. We posted quite a few of these here, but it's so nice to have them all lined up in one place.

Bonus:  HuffPost's best You Tubes of 2008.

Snark O' the Day: How Much do Conservatives HATE AMERICA? Sadly, No! (& Its Commentariat) Attempts to Answer

All during the campaign we kept hearing from Sarah Palin that Obama and his supporters didn't think about America the same way she and the morons who voted for her aspire to think of it or give it the same blind love and loyalty that the wingnuts claim to give it.  In a way, this is true.  We think it's the duty of the citizen of a democracy to place democratic ideals before blind loyalty and that "tough love" is required to keep the country on the right path. 

Joel Stein, who---at least when writing in character--- is a conservative's idea of a liberal, may or may not understand this.   Affecting to speak for all liberals, he said:

Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn’t love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I’m more in ‘like’ with my country.”

Conservatives had a field day with this, ingenuously taking him at his word and assuming that he is infallible on the subject of liberalism and is appointed by all liberals to speak for them.  And so Clif at Sadly, No! thoughtfully compiled a list of all the things those America-lovin' wingnuts HATE HATE HATE!!!!! about their country.

Britblogs React to British Culture Minister's Plans for Making the Internets Safe for *the Children*

(Sir Baz says this story is "days old", but we liked it too much to delete it.)

British Culture Secretary (Hey, why don't we have one of those?  We should get one of those ASAP!) Andy Burnham, worried about the effect of the internets on children---good; good; we like children too--- has a solution!

Ratings for websites!

Okay, scratch what we just said about getting one of those.  According to the BBC,

Film-style age ratings could be applied to websites to protect children from harmful and offensive material, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said.

Snark O' the Day: Betty Cracker on Camille Paglia

by Damozel | I read Sexual Personae Vol. 1 in---what was it? 1992?  A LONG time ago, anyway---and I really enjoyed it.  I love reading other people's literary hallucinations, even when I don't buy into them, and Paglia's hypnotic hyper-visual prose style is exceedingly well suited to the discussion of painting and literature. 

Though I couldn't agree less with her fundamental premises, I enjoyed reading her strange and wondrous reframings of my favorite works of art and literature.  It was like looking at them...um, through a glass, and darkly. Some of her eerier interpretations (on Sade, on Blake, on Baudelaire, on Coleridge on Swinburne) are forever seared upon my memory, not necessarily in a good way or in accordance with my wishes.

So I wish she hadn't ruined it all for me by trying to get herself positioned as some sort of cultural (including popular culture) arbiter.  Not satisfied with being a critic and commentator, she wanted to be Ye Supreme Arbiter of American Popular Culture. 

A Wingnut Marital Aid: Dennis Prager Gives Holiday Sex Tips to Ladies Married to (A Seasonal Snarkfest!)

Yes, it was four days ago that we first tried to ignore this piece by Dennis Prager  [When a Woman Isn't in the Mood: Part I] because we have our own sex lives to think of and we can't afford to have Prager get all mixed up in those thoughts, but at last we decided we had a duty to ourselves to round up the best of the snark generated from Prager's cornucopia. 

It is, after all, a cornucopia filled with highly mockable phallacies (though we have our own thoughts about the "copia" part of the "cornu" in question).

Sadly, many of our favorite cruel bloggers didn't cover this because it came out on December 23.  (We can't WAIT for When a Woman Isn't in the Mood:  Part 2.)   Everyone can play!

Department of Needful Diversions, Presenting: The Beijing Olympics (Alternate Universe Version)

This is a whole ship full of awesome, and we found it via The Red Tory 3.0.

The Red Tory said, and it was a true word:

I think this deadpan (東京オンリーピック　開会式＜フルバージョン＞) animated take-off of the Olympics may be one of the subversively funniest videos of the year....

As he says, "the giant motorized pigeons feasting on acrobats [and]...[t]he giant Buddha sweeping teams of competitors off his tongue into the Olympic pool" are alone worth the time.  But there so much more. 

It is a veritable televisusal feast.

InstaSnark: All Sorts

Hey!  Go easy on them, dude; they're not used to it.  Fact-esque: Squealing Like Stuck Pigs: Bushies Respond to a Modicum of Truth

We knew there had to be a reason....  Bats Left, Throws Right: Oh, So That's Why The Times Hired Kristol

The war on the War on Christmas..... Brilliant at Breakfast: Ah, yer all a buncha pagans... :.  Heh.  Indeed.  Hehindeed.  Heh indeedie deedie do....

Right-wing male theocrats:  indistinguishable the world over, especially as regards their views on women and teh gays......Betty Cracker:  Mullah Warren;  Alas, a Blog;Rick Warren Blatantly Lies; Katha Pollitt on Warren’s Misogyny;  Chicken, er um Turkey Yoghurt: Benedict XVI: making a list, checking it twice

Sean Mullen ain't surprised.    GOP:  They Don't Get It.  They Never Will. We ain't surprised either.

Snark O' the Day: World O' Crap Reviews a Review Coulter's Latest [ Guilty]

Er, Coulter?  Ann Coulter?  Oh.  Yeah.  We remember Ann Coulter.

Ann’s wardrobe consists entirely of black cocktail dresses from ”Skanks ‘R Us.”  You know, the title of her book reminds me of that pretentious Calvin Klein perfume ad from the ’80’s with the slogan, “If obsession is a sin, let me be guilty.”  In Ann’s case, I guess the line would be, “If an obsession with demonizing half the country is a sin, let me be guilty, and then send me to Gitmo for the rest of my life.”  Ah, Coulter, the smell of it.  Smells like tobacco breath, stale gin, and desperation.

Ride the Wayback Pony: A Southpark Christmas (Santa versus Jesus)

Dave Neiwart at C&L reminded us of the first episode evah:

(Not for the sensitive or pious).

Needful Diversions: Shirtless Presidents (Meme O' the Week)!

HuffPost has a whole slideshow of presidents OTHER than President-elect Obama whose pecs became public domain.   (Reagan frightened us, and we were sad to see that when he isn't leveling his razor-like stare at the camera, Putin is kind of a....well, a hottie.) 

Even more shirtless presidents (American) here at Gawker.    And if that ain't enough, go here.

JibJab: 2008 in Review

More Awards! GoLeft TV Chooses ALL of Fox News as "Media Moron of the Year" for the War on the "War" on Christmas

Via Video Cafe, this gift of seasonal awesomeness: 

Transcript is over here.

Needful Diversions (For Pagans Only): Atheistic Elves Get All Elfed Up, Sacrilegiously Dance Xmas Jigs to Traditional Xmas Tunes!

Best O' Wingnut Douchebaggery 2008: Vote Now for the Year's Greatest Smears (& Blots); Bonus Poll: Vote for Your Favorite Right-Wing Loathly Hag

by Teh Nutroots | WHICH WINGNUT NOMINEE SHOULD WIN EACH OF THESE COVETED AWARDS FROM THE POOR MAN'S INSTITUTE?

Chickenhawk of the Year:

We are talking about rhetorical courage, the puffed-chest bravado and keyboard-rattling grandiloquence from which true heros are made.  Whether they are warning off the Moorish hordes, threatening to start a civil war if they don’t get their way, fearlessly yelling racial slurs from behind a pseudonym on the internet, or steadfastly proclaiming their indomitable will to continue blabbing on about all the super-butch things they’d do if only they hadn’t already made plans to play Starcraft, these Warriors of Words are truly our last line of defense against not having to listen to them.(The Poor Man)

Department of Valedictions: This Final Christmas Under Bush, Give the Gift of Satire to a Fellow Progressive: "Songs of the Bushmen" by Harry Shearer

 Though it was nominated for a Grammy, we just don't think there's been nearly enough screaming about Harry Shearer's musical send-up of the Bush administration's main players.  If you've had all the peace and good will you can handle, you might enjoy a bit of black comedy, in diverse musical stylings. 

If you're looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for a progressive friend, we don't see how you could do better than this album (available at I-Tunes):

Department of Valedictions: Meanwhile, Kristol Waves a Fond Farewell to Cheney....

Cheney is a douchebag wrapped in an enigma and dipped in a mystery, but Bill Kristol is still just a douchebag.  Amazingly, Fox News viewers and others still listen to him, proving that what we suspected about them all along is TRUE.

From Think Progress, this delightful wingnuttery on the half-shell:

Department of ValeDICKtions: Dick Cheney---Going Out with a Growl, Not a Whimper

We're all caught up in holiday activities at the moment, but who could resist all these cherishable Cheney moments?  Certainly not us.   It's just the right time for the Anti-Claus!

As Jon Stewart has so rightly said, we don't know Dick.  Yes, he's still douchebag wrapped in an enigma and dipped in a  mystery! And---in the immortal words of the Turtles, c. 1960-something---the more we see, the more we see there is to see! 

So it seems Dick Cheney, Man of Mystery, had quite the little gabfest on Fox News:

WALLACE: Did you tell Senator Leahy, “bleep yourself”?

CHENEY: I did.

WALLACE: Any qualms, second thoughts, or embarrassment?

CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time.... (Think Progress)

Dennis Prager Wants Minorities to Apologize for The Sins of Fellow Minorities

Apparently, in Prager's universe white Christians, especially white Christian males, are always apologizing.  Who knew? 

Prager thinks it's about time for minorities to "express shame."  Prager himself, as you can see, has none.  

Clif at Sadly, No! sees this one off in Town Hall of Shame.

Basically it appears that Prager thinks that individual members of minority groups should apologize for the bad things that other members of that group did which forced the majority to enact discriminatory laws against the entire minority group and then feel vaguely guilty years later for doing so....

Gay Penguins in China Zoo Given Their Own Eggs

The zoo separated them because they kept stealing other penguins' eggs---"they were caught  placing stones at the feet of parents before waddling away with their eggs." (MailOnline)  This is the sweet part:

But angry visitors to Polar Land in Harbin, northern China, complained it wasn't fair to stop the couple from becoming surrogate fathers and urged zoo bosses to give them a chance.