Zachary Quinto vs. Leonard Nimoy: "The Challenge"

If there's ever a time when laughter is the best medicine, my vote would be right about now. Live Long and Prosper, Mr. Nimoy, you will be missed.

2014 year-ender

Our 2014 catch of HIGHpocrisy was a pretty light haul.  So for the year-ender, we decided to just try outright fear.  Fear and surprise.

Debating between which evil is ultimately the cause of our demise isn't really a debate.  Either we blow the planet to bits, or it sinks under the weight of its own avarice.  Here's to a great and happy 2015!

J's. In. Space.

How about those European scientists landing a satellite on a comet …… AMAZING!!  Here’s my big question for the day:

How is it that there are people smart enough in the world to figure out how to shoot a satellite into space 10 years ago, have it travel over 300 million miles from Earth and land it on a comet that is only a few miles wide and travelling over 40,000 mph? Yet climate-deniers can’t simply take the word of these really smart scientists when they are told climate change is real and humans are the cause!  The answer may not surprise you: because they're NOT scientists!

The Colbert Report
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Colbert Report on Facebook

Hello, Lamppost

Well, it's been too long an absence, so we came back for a post-election post rife with HIGHpocrisy.  There's something about elections that brings out the idiocracy, not democracy; the stupidity, not lucidity.TM
Let's just hit a few of the lowlights right off the bat:
CO - votes down a personhood bill, but elects a guy who wants one on the Federal level
KY - anti-incumbent fever re-elects Yertle the Turtle, thereby potentially taking health care coverage away from the very people who need it the most. (AR, WV, what are you looking at?)
FL - whitest of the white-collar criminals beats back challenge from tanned fan-loving mish-mash of a governor.
WI - anti-labor, white-collar criminal wanna-be wins AGAIN! And now he might want to put as much white back in the White House as possible. [This from a state that dumped Russ Feingold, so we're not too surprised.]
KS - ruin a state, keep your job.
IA - warm-blooded Sarah Palin knock-off?  Sure, go ahead, can't have enough of those running around the Senate.
And the list goes on and on. Everywhere there was a chance for voters to put their political speech (read: $$) where their mouth is, guess what happened? Against their own damn interests. Every. single. time!  It's truly amazing how moronic the average American voter can be. Economy on the mend, and always the #1 issue - yet people punish the party that had stewardship in favor of the one that tried to wreck the economy in the first place.
Progressive issues won (hello, Mary Jane, hello minimum wage hike); fair-to-moderate candidates did not. Why?  Was it just about the numbers? Historically, if Dems turn out, they win.  Last night was an historically low turnout.  The people who had every reason to vote, didn't. Of course, the system is broken! It has been for some time.
Was it about hatred of the other (black President, brown immigrant, blood-red Ebola)?  As our good friend* Taylor Swift sings, "haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate".
Was it the media's fault?  Sure, we can lay much of the blame on the sheep, but let's save a small dose of scorn to heap on a glassy-eyed, horse-race only media, not just for a collective laziness, but really for an outright abdication of the role of the Fourth Estate. It would have helped if the bug-nuts would have been called out for their bug-nuttery.
Maybe we shouldn't bother trying to come up with impossible answers to unsolvable problems. A minority of Americans (as opposed to minorities, generally) who are too dumb and frightened to know better, just voted in a Congress that will prove crazier and less productive than the one that already reached record-low approval ratings. Hey, if they can't be bothered to vote for people who might actually want to help make their lives a little better, then the hell with them, right? WRONG! Because real people suffer real consequences.  It's not OK that we all get dragged down into hell together.
* disclaimer: we are not actually friends with T-Swift, though we could be, if she let us! 

More rapid fire

examples, that is, of our daily HIGHpocrisy (with sincere apologies for the tasteless pun, but not really), because.
And let's not forget about Marissa Alexander, who is no George Zimmerman, from last year.
And what to make of Ray Rice getting suspended 2 games for knocking his then-girlfriend unconscious, but CLE all-pro wide receiver Josh Gordon getting booted for the entire season for smoking pot?  America, what a country! What a weird, crazy, confusing experiment of a country!

A dog named Sue

We get that America is a lawsuit nation.  So many people love to sue so many other people.  But, why would the House vote to sue the President over enforcement of a law that the batshade party has already tried to repeal 50 times - and even then, a portion of the law that they wanted delayed in the first place - at a time when they literally cannot accomplish anything else as a governing body?  The longer and latest answers, both historical and comical, may potentially be found in those links, sure.
But the realest, bestest, shortest version of this BATSHADE lawsuit is this: these bag o' nuts are bat-f**king insane!  Full stop. The end.  Sorry, Mr. President, wish it weren't always this way, but haters gonna hate.

Up is down

The world may, indeed, have stopped spinning on its axis, what with Brazil's ultimate and complete soccer humiliation last night + the US Senate confirming an Obama nominee (Houston mayor for HUD Secretary).  If this new alternate reality is worth a look-see, here are some good examples of what used to pass for HIGHpocrisy around these parts.
PS, whoever wins today had also better stop Germany on Sunday in the final, or else we might have to post something else to generate more exposure.  "And you wouldn't want us exposing ourselves".

Rundown

I tried to watch as much MSNBC as I could stomach last night after the "shocking, stunning" upset loss of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-u kidding me?). I've also been checking the twitter-verse for the latest puns, but sadly, only ours make the grade. So instead, please enjoy a short list of the various post-election posts, presented in no particular order.
Nate Silver
Vox (Ezra Klein)
The Krug
Brian Beutler (my fave so far)
oooh, and just found another, RCP's Sean Trende (interesting name)
[Many more can also be viewed via our links on the right.]

Sample size

Been a while since we last posted, so just a quick return with some tasty choice pickins from around the HIGHpocrisphere.  There are plenty more where that came from, but we're too tired right now to do our own search.  Back soon!

Anew

It took long enough, but we (I) finally figured out how to re-establish the hyperlink to Nate Silver's new 538 venture.  It's back on the blogger roll, on the right.  Maybe we needed the official site to launch?  That makes 14, so we will get back to our 15th once Matt Taibbi launches the next First Look sometime later this year.  If you still want to read Rolling Stone, go for it; they still do good work.

Shame (totes obvi)

HIGHpocrisy as glaring and ridiculous as this, we just have to use it!  For the more visceral among you, watch my man Chris Hayes explain it like no one else can:

no brainer

As sad as the fact is that we even have to put up a movie Tuesday, we counter with this:

We could probably post countless clips from here to eternity, and still barely scratch the genius of his comedy.  Even J knows that without Mr. Ramis, there is no "not-so-silent Rollah".  My entire platform was built on movie quotes, delivered at the right time, to the proper effect.  If you try at home, make sure you end with "which is nice".  So thank you, Mr. Ramis, for crossing the streams, as we are all the better for it. Gunga, galunga gunga to you, Sir.

So, we skipped a few.

Never a bad time to bring back Movie Clip Tuesday, even on a Friday?!  Just because I already tweeted to our revered KO doesn't mean we can't all feel a bit brighter now, too.  Enjoy your weekend,

as good a time as any

Just as we've been saying, "batshade".  And that's not even including all the latest HIGHpocrisy this month, what with the various men folk going all retro with their honest-to-goodness, down-homey views on controlling lady liberties.  How retro? Why it just smacks of 1850, doesn't it Mr. Pierce.  So why bother with the SOTU, when afterward there will be plenty of people to deliver the STFU response!

Get your 2nd On

If there was ever a more fitting end to 2013, we could only find it in Modesto.  Once a thriving agricultural town, it now competes with Fresno for most car thefts per capita in the state of CA. Lots of leftover Walter Whites, too, missing teeth and all.  So as we spend every Christmas there, I came upon 2 symbols of all this past year has seemed to represent:
1st is the billboard with the above post title. Complete with targeting scope. I couldn't tell if the ad was meant for a gun/ammo store or a shooting range. Doesn't really matter.
2nd is the sticker on the back window of a white pickup truck (brand omitted) as we pull off Hwy 99 at Kansas Ave. - Statute of Liberty but with an assault rifle where her torch should be. Because I'm sure when the French gifted the US that giant beacon of freedom, they were thinking as far back as 1886 about developing advanced weaponry like AK-47s and AR-15s. And what does that sticker even mean? What does the 2nd Amendment have to do with immigration? We know the gun nuts are out there, but the pretzel logic still defies belief.
So, as we close the books on a year that had more than its share of red, with a government as dysfunctional as ever, with a Pope being called Marxist (the Pope!) simply because he cares about social inequality, let us revisit the actual statue:

What does the torch represent? The torch is a symbol of enlightenment. The Statue's official name represents its most important symbol, "Liberty Enlightening the World."

Nothing says you're enlightened more than replacing the torch with a gun.  Now that is HIGHpocrisy 2013! Happy frikkin New Year!

No play-time

We're not sure why this isn't getting more attention, but we'll just refer you to some of the basics and let you decide for yourself.  Gotta say, though, if the wives catch wind of this (and they may already know?), then no Christmas miracle will save the poor shlubs in the not-so-Great-Lakes-anymore state from the nightmare to be unleashed.
Back soon with our annual year-ender.

What is the "it"

that the doctor-senator from OK refers to in the following phrase:

"It has damaged the ability of us to move forward."

If you guessed the recent Senate rules change that allows for nominations to proceed based on simple majority vote, you win!  But if you think that Coburn and his fellow Rs were capable of moving forward or even wanting to move forward, then you haven't even been playing. 

Scraps

Just in case we already posted an entry titled, "Leftovers" from a Thanksgiving gone by, we still had to throw some of the carcass out with the Cyber Monday trash.

No middle ground

Because Thanksgiving is either this,

Or this,

Hope it's the latter.

trifecta

Linked already to my twitter feed, then to Facebook, so might as well complete the cycle as our movie Tuesday.  [And because 'video clip Tuesday' doesn't sound the same.]