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Late Night Political Humor

“On Friday, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who ignited his underpants in a failed attempt to blow up a jet landing in Detroit, plead not guilty to six federal charges, while his testicles pled guilty in absentia.” – Seth Meyers

“The underwear bomber pleaded not guilty in court today. He had a bomb in his underpants, okay! ‘I didn’t know there was a bomb in my underpants.’ ‘I was framed by the Fruit of the Loom.'” – Jay Leno

“His lawyer said he was very respectful for the judge because he stood the whole time. Yeah, that’s because his ass was on fire.” – Jay Leno

“While criticizing President Obama during an interview on ‘Good Morning America’ this week, Rudy Giuliani said, ‘We had no domestic attacks under Bush.’ You know, I knew one day we would reach a point where people would forget about 9/11, but I never thought you would be the first.” – Seth Meyers

“While speaking about the war on terror yesterday, President Obama said, ‘There is of course, no fool-proof solution. We have to stay one step ahead of our nimble adversary.’ Nimble adversary? Sounds like somebody saw ‘Sherlock Holmes’ over the holiday.” – Jimmy Fallon

“President Obama on Tuesday met with the heads of all 16 intelligence agencies try to correct the intelligence failures surrounding the Christmas day bombing attempt. Unfortunately, two of the agencies were late and the CIA locked their keys in the car.” – Seth Meyers

“President Obama also said, ‘We are at war against al-Qaida, and we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.’ Then Obama was like, ‘Literally whatever it takes — speeches, talks, speech talks, talks about speeches, speaking about the talk I just spoke about.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“In an effort to calm people down after this latest security problem, the White House said it is working even harder to find Osama bin Laden. And here’s the frustrating part. Turns out we almost had him. Did you hear about this? Earlier this year, he snuck into a White House state dinner.” – Jay Leno

“In Obama’s defense, he is taking responsibility for the security lapse on Christmas. Obama said, ‘Ultimately the buck stops with me.’ Then he was like, ‘Unless it’s a billion bucks, in which case it just goes to AIG.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“President Obama was named most admired American. Most admired American. Most admired man in America. And I’m proud that my name is also on that list. It’s a little farther down. I was right between Balloon Dad and Carrot Top” – David Letterman

“Now, here is some frightening news. … The worldwide fund for nature came out with its list of the ten species most likely to be extinct in the near future. You know what number one was? … Us, yes, us.” – Jay Leno

“According to the New York Post, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag announced his engagement to an ABC News reporter six weeks after his ex-girlfriend gave birth to his baby. And of course, people were shocked. ‘The White House has a budget director?'” – Jay Leno

“The New Jersey Senate rejected a gay marriage bill. Now, why? Last time a gay man got married in New Jersey, he went on to become governor of the state, didn’t he, as I remember?” – Jay Leno

“The Mexican government says that Starbucks is using a pre-Aztec logo without permission. In fairness, Mexico is using the United States without permission.” – Jimmy Fallon

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Pirates in Glass Houses

I don’t know how many of you know about the new anti-piracy law in France, which takes a “three strikes” approach to copyright infringement. For example, if people in your house are accused of three acts of copyright infringement, your whole household is cut off from the Internet for two months to a year. You don’t even have to be convicted of anything, just suspected, in order to get your internet access blacklisted.

Well I’d call this irony, except that you knew that something like this was bound to happen. Hapodi, the new French agency responsible for enforcing the new law, rolled out their new logo, and it turns out that they pirated the font in it. The font is named Bienvenue, and it was developed by designer Jean-François Porchez and licensed exclusively to France Telecom/Orange.

Which only goes to prove what a mess the world of copyrights is, and how easy it is to become a pirate, even unwittingly. I think it also shows that despite the protest of record labels and movie studios, the biggest pirates out there are corporations.

What I really want to know is, will Hadopi cut off its own internet access for a year for such a blatant violation? They may have to, because the designer is suing. Meanwhile, Hadopi is busy trying to find similar fonts to license to replace the illegal ones in their logo. Hopefully too busy to go around cutting off people’s internet access.

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Late Night Political Humor

“How many people flew to get here? I mean, come on, isn’t flying more fun than it used to be? I mean, really. They make you take off your shoes, make you take off your underpants. … I mean you think about the guy, the Nigerian guy, he is going to blow up the thing. He was wearing a pair of Fruit of the Lunatic.” – David Letterman

“Legal experts are saying, if he’s convicted, the underwear bomber could be sentenced to life in Federal prison. But even worse, for the rest of his life, he’ll be known as the underwear bomber.” – Conan O’Brien

“They took the guy to court and the guy said he was charged with having weapons of mass destruction in his pants. And he told the job, ‘Well, I get no complaints from the ladies.'” – David Letterman

“Guy was not too bright. He said that the reason he became a suicide bomber was to work his way up in the al Qaeda organization.” – David Letterman

“Now, some people are really upset because President Obama has decided to redecorate the Oval Office, and he got rid of former President Bush’s bust of Winston Churchill. When he heard about it, Bush was furious and said, ‘Winston Churchill? I thought that was Higgins from ‘Magnum P.I.'” – Conan O’Brien

“Next week, President Obama will visit the auto show in Detroit and look at cars from the Big Three automakers. Or, as the Big Three automakers put it, ‘the new owner is coming for a visit.” – Conan O’Brien

“Hey, a man in Washington, D.C., was apprehended by Secret Service yesterday for taking off his clothes and jogging naked near the White House. In related news, I say that’s probably the last time Biden ever takes Ambien.” – Jimmy Fallon

“This is weird. Yesterday, a naked jogger was stopped near the White House. Secret Service grabbed the man and immediately allowed him to attend a state dinner.” – Conan O’Brien

“The Secret Service was alerted when someone reported a man with a suspiciously shrinking package.” – Jimmy Fallon

“There is a sex scandal roiling the nation right now. The tale of one man’s insatiable sex drive and the beautiful women who succumb to his magnetic machismo. Does it involve … lusty golfing legend Tiger Woods? Or perhaps it’s six-foot, 15-inch and 174-pound bespectacled White House Budget Director Peter Orszag? Oh yeah, baby. The OMB director had a baby with this lady, a beautiful shipping heiress, just weeks before he got engaged to this other beautiful lady, who is a news reporter. I guess ‘OMB’ stands for the ‘Office of Managing the Boo-tay.’ Heeey!” – Jon Stewart

“Folks, I fear we are headed back to those dark days between 1972 and 1976 when a liberal Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty just because it was being ‘wantonly and freakishly imposed.’ Come on! If we outlawed everything that was wanton and freakish, what would happen to Lady Gaga?” – Stephen Colbert

“Do you folks know anything about the Skull And Bones society? It’s like a fraternal organization, at Yale University. Well, they’re auctioning off a human skull. And I was thinking about this. I believe this is the first empty skull to come out of Yale, well, I think since George W. Bush, actually.” – David Letterman

“There’s a rumor floating around that we were cancelled. I heard it coming in this morning. So far, nobody’s said anything to me. But Kev, if we did get cancelled, give us time to maybe do some traveling. In fact, I understand Fox is beautiful this time of year.” – Jay Leno

“Actually, I don’t think there’s any truth to the rumors. See, in my experience, NBC only cancels you when you’re in first place. So we’re fine.” – Jay Leno

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Why the prison at Guantanamo Bay must be closed

Two interesting pieces of news concerning the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay:

The first is a report from the Pentagon that about one in five detainees who have been released from Gitmo have joined (or are suspected of joining) militant groups like al Qaeda. This includes two released prisoners who went on to help plan the Christmas day underwear bomb attack.

So, if 20% of the released prisoners “go back” to belonging to a terrorist organization, does that mean that 80% of the “terrorists” at Gitmo are innocent? Or even worse, was Gitmo’s main outcome the creation of new terrorists?

But the second article is the real stunner, about a macabre reunion of sorts after a former prison guard at Gitmo, Brandon Neely, contacted two former prisoners to apologize after he was haunted by their poor treatment. The BBC invited Neely to fly to London, where he met with the former prisoners (who are both British subjects) to ask for their forgiveness. Says Neely:

The news would always try to make Guantanamo into this great place, like ‘they [prisoners] were treated so great’. No it wasn’t. You know here I was basically just putting innocent people in cages.

The reunion will be televised tonight on BBC Two.

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Jon Stewart on Terror-Ball

Finally, a simple explanation as to how Republicans are claiming that we had no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration.

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The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage

Conservative Ted Olson makes a strong case for why gays should be allowed to marry, and he does a better and more eloquent job of it than many liberals. He and David Boies are arguing the case in federal court that is attempting to overturn California’s Proposition 8.

While acknowledging that many conservatives are strongly against gay marriage, Olson points out that “Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation” and “The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in the vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this”.

I am glad to see that gay marriage doesn’t have to be a conservative versus liberal issue.

From Newsweek.

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Shortest List Ever — Republican accomplishments of the last 20 years

A few nights ago, Todd Harris, a top Republican strategist appeared on Hardball to talk about Republicans winning Congressional seats in this year’s midterm elections. Chris Matthews invites him to give a rundown of the accomplishments of the Republican Party in the last fifteen to twenty years. Watch what happens:

Harris doesn’t seem to be able to think of anything, until he tries “The Bush administration kept the country safe.” To which Matthews responds:

I just wanted to get the Republican bragging points straight here. So the Republican Party has kept us safe, except for 9/11. Is that the argument? No, really, because you had the worst attack on the American homeland in history, but you’re bragging about your ability to defend the country. … That’s your defense, right?

Harris doesn’t have an answer.

So is it really true that the Republicans don’t have any recent accomplishments? Interestingly, even the Republican National Committee website had trouble coming up with any real accomplishments in the last twenty years:

The Republican National Committee has a newly-redesigned website on which party leaders have highlighted the party’s accomplishments dating back 150 years. For the past 20 years, the page lists the following: a D.C. school voucher scheme (which didn’t work), invading Iraq (which didn’t turn out well), tax cuts for the wealthy (which isn’t exactly an “accomplishment”), invading Afghanistan (which Republicans didn’t handle well), welfare reform (which Clinton signed into law), and the Contract with America (which, again, isn’t an “accomplishment” in any meaningful sense of the word).

I think this might be the start of a new trend in Republican campaign slogans:

  • The Republican Party kept us safe, except for 9/11 (well, and Anthrax, the shoe bomber, etc.)
  • The Bush administration captured and brought to justice the top terrorists who threatened America, except for Osama bin Laden
  • No US cities were destroyed under the last Republican presidency, other than New Orleans
  • Bush has a perfect record on military invasions of other countries, except for Afghanistan and Iraq
  • Republicans protected our constitution, except for habeus corpus and the bill of rights

Can you think of other campaign slogans for the Party of No?

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Blow Back is a Bitch

Way back in September, we reported on wing-nut Michelle Bachmann telling people to not participate in the census, saying that she didn’t trust ACORN with her personal information (never mind that ACORN has never collected census data), and that the government was trying to gather information about people’s mental health.

But now, the largest newspaper in Bachmann’s state of Minnesota is warning people that if they don’t participate in the census, the state stands to lose a seat in Congress to another state. The main purpose of the census is to determine how many representatives each state receives in the House, and other states like Texas and California are growing faster than Minnesota.

And irony of ironies, if they do lose a seat, the district that is most likely to be dissolved and merged into the other districts is … wait for it … the Sixth District, currently represented by Bachmann. In order to stay in Congress, she would have to run in another district, against an incumbent.

Curiously, Bachmann has not said anything against the census lately.

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An Explanation for Republican Lies — the Universe is only 5 minutes old


© August J. Pollak

Or maybe they just have Institutional Alzheimer’s disease.

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Move Your Money!

Are you upset about the Wall Street Banks that are “too big to fail”? You know, the ones that brought our economy to the brink of financial disaster and then sucked up our tax money in the bailout?  Yes, the bailout that was sold to us as a way to increase credit in order to get the economy moving, but then the big banks took our money and actually reduced credit, and instead used that money — our money — to buy up smaller banks and become even bigger (increasing their too-big-to-fail-ness). You should be upset!

Don’t just get mad, get even! Vote with your wallet by moving your money out of the big banks (like JP Morgan/Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, or Bank of America) and into a smaller, community bank or credit union. Who knows? If enough of us move our money out of a bank that is too big to fail, it won’t be as big anymore. Not only that, but moving to a smaller bank might even save you money, since smaller banks don’t typically employ predatory tactics like excessive fees and penalties. Smaller banks also tend to lend money locally, helping your local community, and they are less likely to make those risky investments that almost killed our economy. You’ll be helping yourself and your country at the same time.

Can this become a movement? It already has a website, called Move Your Money, and they have tools that help you find a community bank or credit union in your area. They also made a short video that is a take-off on the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” — apropos since that movie was all about the struggle between a small community bank and a larger, greedier bank.

Thanks to Huffington Post.

UPDATE: Cenk Uygur (host of the video blog “The Young Turks”) invites Tea Partiers to join the fight against the big Wall Street banks.

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Victory in the War on Terror


© Tom Toles

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Late Night Political Humor

“Well, the story about the 23-year-old Nigerian man, who put the explosives in his underpants still continues to dominate the news. Boy that shows you how time can change, you know? When I was 23, the only thing I ever put in my underpants was a rolled up sock.” – Jay Leno

“I was reading a book about Osama bin Laden, and it was written by his son, and according to the son, in the book about his father, the kid claims Osama bin Laden was a cruel parent. Gosh, you think you know somebody. But the book is written by bin Laden’s dumb son, Osama W. bin Laden.” – David Letterman

“According to TMZ, Joan Rivers was detained by airport security in Costa Rica because her married name was Joan Rosenberg, on her passport, and they wouldn’t let her leave. See, they’re very vigilant down there in Costa Rica, you know? Maybe we can try that here in this country sometime.” – Jay Leno

“Joan Rivers was reportedly very angry on Sunday because she was detained at an airport by airline security. She was detained at the airport because her passport photo was taken ten faces ago.” – Craig Ferguson

“On Fox News, Ann Coulter said she’s against body scans at the airport because terrorists will still be able to hide explosives in their anus. So finally Ann Coulter is speaking on a topic she knows something about.” – Jay Leno

“Congratulations to President Obama on becoming an uncle. His brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, and his wife just had a son in Oregon. Or so they claim. Lou Dobbs is demanding to see the birth certificate.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“The child’s name is Austin Robinson. Next week, he’ll go before the Senate, and if they confirm him, he becomes the official nephew of President Obama.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“They have an interesting tradition in the Obama family. Every new baby born into the Obama family is baptized by Oprah in a 24-karat gold tub full of angel tears.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Today, Senator Chris Dodd unveiled his plan to reduce corruption in the Senate. He’s retiring.” – Jay Leno

“After 30 years, embattled Senator Chris Dodd announced he would not seek re-election. He said he may go to work for the banking industry. Have you seen his voting record? I think he already works for the banking industry.” – Jay Leno

“The religious right is upset over transgender Cabinet appointee Amanda Simpson, saying Obama picked her as part of the ‘transsexual agenda.’ so, I’m pretty sure ‘get appointed to the Cabinet’ is the second goal on the transsexual agenda, right after ‘swap out genitalia.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Oh, and Mitt Romney was on ‘Fox and Friends.’ He talked about his plan to run for president in 2012. It could be Mitt Romney versus Sarah Palin, which would be quite a matchup. I mean, one is a former governor obsessed with looks and hair. And the other, of course, is from Alaska.” – Jay Leno

“Today, President Obama honored more than 80 teachers for excellence in math and science. Then he begged them to leave China and come teach here in the United States.” – Conan O’Brien

“The annual list of the most admired men in the world came out today. Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods are tied. I wonder what those two would have in common.” – Jay Leno

“An 86-year-old politician in India resigned after a sex tape surfaced showing him in bed with three women. 86 years old, three women. A lot of his constituents are saying it was a stupid idea for him to make the sex tape of himself. But the guy is 86. How else is he going to remember having sex?'” – Jay Leno

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Everything we know about terrorism is wrong

Andrew Sullivan reprints a great question from one of his readers that really makes you think about how stupidly the US is responding to terrorist acts. The (paraphrased) question is, if the Christmas day underwear terrorist really wanted to blow up the airplane, why did he go back to his seat where he had to fiddle with a makeshift detonator in public (where other passengers would jump on him and stop him)? Why didn’t he stay in the toilet?

One interesting possible answer to this question is: because the people who planned the attack knew that there was no way they could get enough explosives (or a good enough detonator) past airport security to actually blow up the airplane, so he had to be in public (not in the toilet) when the bomb failed so that we would think that he tried to blow up the airplane. They figured that if this was publicized as a failed terrorist attack, we would overreact and become terrified. Which we did.

The real goal of terrorism is to create terror, not to blow up airplanes or kill people. Therefore, this terrorist attack succeeded brilliantly (well, except for the patsy who fried his privates instead of going to heaven to claim his promised virgins).

Interestingly, they’ve done this before. Recall the shoe bomber. He supposedly failed in his mission, but caused plenty of overreaction and terror. The terrorists seem to have learned from that experience, but apparently we did not.

So, the next time Cheney or some other politician accuses Obama of not reacting fast or strongly enough to a terrorism attempt, think about what they are doing.


© Jim Morin

UPDATE: Fareed Zakaria has an excellent article about this. Here’s one quote:

Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack didn’t work. Alas, this one worked very well.

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Political Irony may need a new home — any suggestions?

[In case you are wondering — I’m continuing to post new stories, they appear after this one.]

When I first started this site, I never expected it to become so popular. In fact, I thought people would lose interest after the election, but instead readership has kept going up (and up!) I list total visitors in the footer of every page, and you can click on it for more detailed statistics.

Unfortunately, my hosting provider is now telling me that I have outgrown shared hosting. You might have noticed that the server on which this is running has crashed several times recently, so they may have a point.

I’m looking for alternatives.

What would be nice would be to become part of some larger content site. For example, a while ago the political humor site 23/6 became part of  Huffington Post, and CQ has “Politics (Un)Seriously“. If anyone knows of a content site that wants some political humor and commentary, please let me know.  I sent an email to Politico, but haven’t heard back from them — does anyone have an in with someone who works there?

If that doesn’t work out, I would need to move the blog to a service that can handle more traffic. Currently, I’m running my own copy of WordPress on a shared server, but it is a constant battle against spammers and hackers. So I’m looking at services that specialize in blogs.

One example is Google’s Blogger (also called Blogspot). I’m looking into that, but since they aren’t using WordPress, it would be quite a bit of work to move my existing content over to their system, and probably impossible to keep inbound links the same (so all those people who have links to my blog entries would have broken links). Blogger does have the advantage of being free, which would be nice since I already lose money on this blog (anyone who claims that you can make lots of money with Adsense ads is delusional — typically my daily take wouldn’t pay for a trip to Starbucks). Another problem with Blogger is that the blog name “politicalirony” (and pretty much every variant I’ve been able to think of) is already taken (sadly, mostly by blogs that have no posts in them).

If anyone can help, or has an idea I haven’t thought of, I would deeply appreciate it. I love doing this blog, but moving it to an expensive dedicated server is not an option. I would hate to have to shut it down, just because it is too popular.

Wouldn’t that be ironic?

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Republicans just can’t stop lying

The propaganda technique of the “big lie” requires two things: that the lie be so outrageous that people don’t bother to rebut it, and that you keep repeating it so that people with impaired senses of reality start believing it.

And indeed, when former Dubya press secretary Dana Perino claimed that there were no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration, I was willing to think that she had misspoken. I mean, there are big lies, but would anyone actually be so crazy as to believe that 9/11 attacks didn’t happen during the Bush administration? Really? Not to mention the shoe bomber, anthrax in the mail, etc. I thought that was just a little too big a lie.

I guess I was naive. I probably should have gotten suspicious when it Perino turned up as the family spokesperson for Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove during his recent divorce, since Rove might as well have held the title of propaganda minister for Dubya.

But now, as they say, the other shoe has dropped. This morning Rudy “9/11” Giuliani told George Stephanopoulos:

We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.

Maybe they are just trying to see just how stupid some people really are.

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