I HOPE YOU HAVEN’T MADE ANY PLANS, INTERNET, BECAUSE IT’S JUST GOING TO BE YOU AND ME THIS WEEKEND

God, it’s early.

Just saw the bridal unit off at the airport. She’s off to Thailand for a few days with her church group. This is the same trip she was supposed to go on a few months ago when protesters shut down every airport in Thailand because they figure there’s no point in having elections if yr guy doesn’t win.

Now the people who supported the PM that the other protesters forced to step down are now demanding that the replacement step down so they can put their guy back in charge. Elections – who needs them?

Well, at least they haven’t shut down the airports. Yet.

Anyway, I’ve got you all to myself until Monday night.

Bring me yr finest meats, cheeses and concubines directly.

I kid.

Left to my own devices,

This is dF

BOBBY JINDAL IS YR NEW FAVORITE SARAH PALIN

[And now is the part in the blog where we do political commentary for our own amusement – feel free to skip as usual (though I recommend the Daily Show clip), but we’ll have recession bondage queens and hot nude divorce lawyers coming up soon, so be sure to come back!]

So yr the GOP, and yr hated enemy, President Barry HUSSEIN Obama (right), is about to give his first SOTU address. And he’s probably going to blow the roof off the dump. So you need someone to deliver yr party response that can follow an act like that.

What do you do?

You send in Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, that’s what.

Oh snap!

You know you’ve bombed when people in yr own party say, “Dude, you sucked.”

Still, there’s something disingenuous about all the conservative backlash at Jindal’s speech – I mean, he pretty much telegraphed the whole thing from his Sunday talk show gigs, so it’s not like he caught them off-guard. And nothing he said deviated from the official GOP party line. Except for the part about actually admitting that “Republicans lost your trust, and rightly so”. And actually bringing up Katrina as an example of govt failure (under a GOP admin).

I’m sure he’d have got better conservative reviews if he’d skipped those two items. Admit past mistakes? Dude, this is politics. You just don’t DO that. He might as well have said: “How do I know you can’t trust the govt to fix anything? Look at the last eight years under GOP management. Hell, look what they did to MY state. If my own party can’t find its own collective ass with both hands, how are those terror-hugging taxaholic libtards in the Democratic Communist Party going to help you?”

Still, it’s amazing to hear even David Brooks saying that this is no time to repeat the same old GOP mantra of small govt and tax cuts. Bookmark that, because yr not likely to hear it from a Republican’s mouth again.

The other interesting angle to all this – as Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox have already pointed out – is that this is the third time the GOP has struck out trying to find someone (anyone) in their ranks who can counter Obama’s mojo, even if that only means not being an Old White Guy. Sarah Palin came close, but she served on a losing ticket, and she does have a tendency to go off-message for no real reason. Michael Steele? Too hip-hop for the Midwest, plus he has a tendency to make one-armed midget jokes that only other Republicans find funny. Jindal must have seemed like a bargain in comparison – who knew he’d launch his 2012 presidential campaign this early?

Anyway, it’s only really a problem for the GOP because, in the absence of a Party Star, their default spokesperson seems to be Joe The Plumber, who no one in the GOP seems to have the sense to disown as an attention-seeking nincompoop.

In the meantime, it’s not all bad for Jindal. He still has Rush Limbaugh in his corner, after all. And at least he didn’t deploy the “Obama = AntiChrist and/or Hitler” line.

Unlike some people.

PRODUCTION NOTE: Via dinopollard . And you really should watch it just for the awesome reactions from Jason Jones during the interviews. Which is exactly how any rational person should react – yet CNN and Fox News give these dingbats airtime as though they’re worth taking seriously. Bonus points for the Keyser Soze bit at the end.

Obama Youngblood cover via bedsitter23 .

Swift like a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion,

This is dF

BREAKING: FETISH SEX WILL SAVE THE ECONOMY

ITEM [via Def Agent lorilori ]: As the economy tanks, many women who lost their office jobs are doing freelance dominatrix work to supplement their incomes.



The “gig economy”, it’s called.

Interesting stuff, though probably a limited trend, and really, it’s only an excuse for me to post an Eric Stanton picture.

Good gig,

This is dF

DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE

BoingBoing recently mentioned this post about a Chicago alderman who didn’t find the following billboard from lawyers Corri Fetman and Kelly Garland funny and found a legal excuse unrelated to censorship to have it taken down:



( Alternate version here if you prefer thongs with yr cynicism! )

As it turns out, the story is a couple of years old and the alderman in question, Burton Natarus, has since lost his seat (not for the billboard flap so much as verbally abusing journalists, I hear).

But there’s a wealth of extras and discussion points in this story.

I confess, my first thought on seeing the ad is, “And conservatives blame gays for wanting to devalue marriage.” Even if you accept the notion that it’s intended to be humorous, the idea of divorce lawyers drumming up business is funny only in the sense that Nick Naylor promoting cigarettes is funny.

That aside, if you believe that there’s no such thing as bad publicity (and it was probably a lawyer who came up with that phrase), as a marketing gimmick it’s arguably a success – enough to justify creating a dedicated web site.

It gets better. Meet one of the lawyers, Corri Fetman Esq.



After the billboard takedown incident, Corri ended up posing for Playboy, and now has her own Lawyer Of Love advice column. [Both links NSFW, incidentally.]

Which is fine. I’m just thinking there’s got to be a Farrelly Brothers movie in here somewhere. Or, you know, Paul Verhoeven or someone. Surely someone’s written a screenplay based on all this by now.

And here’s the punchline (no, the Playboy gig wasn’t it):

In a nationwide survey of divorce lawyers by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 37 percent reported a drop in divorce cases. Why? More couples are putting off divorce because of the economic slump. See, it’s cheaper to stay married to someone you hate than to go through the cost of a divorce.

The economic meltdown: hard on divorce lawyers, but keeping America’s families together.

Lawyers in love,

This is dF