Picture in your mind the most insane possible story that could be contained in a book named Steampunk Palin. Go ahead, take ten seconds or so to imagine it perfectly in your mind's eye. Use this cover image for help.

Got it? Good.

You're wrong. You're absolutely wrong. It's at least ten times more insane than that.

I haven't seen the comic book but this review is excellent. Don't miss the 2D chart at the end which is very informative.

'Steampunk Palin' Comic More Insane Than You Imagined - ComicsAlliance | Comics culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews

janelane wrote:

AT&T can no longer feel his hands and feet.

AT&T is people! AT&T is people!

-janelane, post-apocalyptic fan

I don't really agree with the left's campaign against the concept of corporate personhood. The idea, unless I don't understand it, is that corporations don't have rights, only people do. For example, the thinking goes that corporations don't have the right to freedom of speech. Nike doesn't have the right to freedom of speech, for example, so its OK to regulate anything Nike publishes.

But every newspaper in the United States is a corporation. Do newspapers not have a right to freedom of the press? In 10 years of arguments over corporate personhood I have not heard any articulate explanation of how the left's view can be reconciled with freedom of the press in the context of newspapers.

What about freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures? Is it OK for the government to raid the offices of Nike without a warrant? What about non-profit political organizations? Every non-profit political organization is a corporation. Can their offices be raided without warrants?

What if their offices were raided, and their trade secrets, client lists, internal email discussions, and other confidential information were collected by the police. Would it be reasonable for the police to publish all of that information on the open internet based on an FOIA request?

That seems to be what is an issue in this case, and it seems to be that AT&T has a right to privacy regarding this sort of information regardless of whether or not they are a "person."

RE: FCC v. AT&T reveals the limits of corporate personhood at the Supreme Court. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine

I wrote this in the thread:

The problem is not with Scanlan's answer to the question. Her job is to win over peoples hearts and minds. She did exactly the right thing under the circumstances. The problem is with the circumstances.

America wants to see it's sweetheart put security before democracy. This question was asked because the people who run this pagent know that the spectacle with make their audience feel good by reinforcing their prejudices. Its a litmus of the present state of mind of the general populace.

That state of mind is troubling if you realize that a people who want their sweetheart to tell them how much she prefers safety to democracy are a people who would be willing to allow their leaders to take that democracy away from them if it was necessary to keep them safe.

That is the great danger of the present moment, front and center in one of our most characteristic national spectacles.

BoingBoing's community consists of people along the intellectual fringes of society, and those kinds of people know from history that they are vulnerable to nationalist purges. So to see this sort of thing happen - its scary. If American embraces the dark mistress it is flirting with we're all in a lot of trouble around here.

Miss America 2011: "Wikileaks was actually based on espionage." - Boing Boing

The not-so-smart members of the public need to be shielded from references that smarter people can put into context.

Congratulations Canada. You have simultaneously demonstrated that:
1. You have no sense of humor.
2. Everything conservatives say about "politically correct" censorship is absolutely true.
3. You're not really a free country.

(Don't be fooled by the subterfuge that the entity enacting this ban is a "private organization." The last station that seriously defied them saw the government sell their broadcast license out from under them to another company while the case was still being tried.)

Dire Straits song banned in Canada

...

YouTube - Minnesota Death Star

Members of Tennessee tea parties presented state legislators with five priorities for action Wednesday... “educating students the truth about America.”

The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

Wheeeeee......

Tennessee Tea parties issue demands to cook history books

A conflict that has been going on between local Arizona Republicans came to an end in the wake of the shooting in Tucson on Saturday when Arizona's Republican District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller and several others chose to resign.

The Arizona Republic reports that Miller, 43, a former campaign worker for Sen.John McCain who was re-elected to a second one-year term last month, has been concerned for his family's safety by constant verbal attacks and blog posts from some local committee members with tea party movement ties.

44 - Some Arizona Republican party officials resign after Tucson shooting

Seasonal flooding across eastern Australia has been widespread and devastating this spring - their wettest on record. Cyclone Tasha came along two weeks ago, and dumped even more water on Queensland. Hundreds of thousands of people in an area the size of France and Germany combined are now affected.

Australian flooding - The Big Picture - Boston.com

For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.

The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them.

Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code - WSJ.com

Baring new information, the youtube videos associated with the Arizona shooter have the hallmark of someone who is simply mentally ill.

It has become normal for conservatives to hint that they will take up arms if they don't get their way politically -- a violation of the cultural norm of respecting democratic outcomes that forms the basis for the stability of our political system.

This is, I think, a serious problem. But it's also a problem that has nothing, or almost nothing, to do with the tragedy in Arizona. This was not a right-wing militia member taking apocalyptic right-wing rhetoric about watering the tree of liberty too seriously. It was a random act.

There may be legitimate reasons to pillory conservatives over their rhetoric. This isn't one of them. If you are willing to pillory conservatives for this reason you must also accept attacks on violent video games, music, and other popular culture that sometimes factors into the paranoid delusions of the mentally ill.

I am not interested in living in a society that is rubber padded to be safe for people suffering from the most extreme mental illnesses.

As gratifying as it must be to be presented with an opportunity to attack your political opponents, it is wrong to use this moment to do so.

The Arizona Shooting Is Not A Product Of Right-Wing Rage | The New Republic