Political Subversities

How Marco Rubio Is, In Fact, A Bigot

March 22, 2013

David McGee - Guest Writer

Hi, it’s me, Political Subversities’s Marco Rubio correspondent. I really would move on to other topics (climate change, antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, Splash on ABC) but he just keeps talking and guys, for real, I’ve said it here twice before, but he is just a grade-A clusterfuck of hateful idiocy and so, so proud of it it makes my head spin. In his most recent speech at CPAC (“Like church, but more hostile to gays!”) he had a couple of choice quotes. Like this one. Which I promise — I PROMISE — I am not making up”

“We don’t need a new idea. There is an idea. The idea is called America, and it still works.”

Yeah, right on! America has never needed new ideas! That’s why only landed white male gentry can vote, slavery is legal, and you conduct all of your business with a quill and ink! Dipshit.

Oh, he had more.

“Just because I believe states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot.”

Sigh. Yeah, actually it does. That’s what being a bigot is. Like, you’ve provided a pretty good working definition of bigotry, homeslice. I’d tell you to look it up but since we all know by now you don’t believe in evidence it would just be wasting both of our time. Plus, dude, unless you believe in arranged plural marriage your view of it isn’t quite traditional. I’ve read the Bible, Marco. Have you? Maybe you have. And I guess you’d maybe say that times have changed since then, and therefore so has our definition of marriage. HMM. INTERESTING. I WONDER WHAT NEW IDEA I MIGHT BE LEADING TO.

Not that it’s surprising at this point, but what you’re calling “conservatism” is actually just ignorance, selective and willful. Of course times change. I know you know this. We don’t live in a feudal society. We don’t have anti-miscegenation laws. We don’t enslave people anymore unless they’re really good at assembling phones. You know? Society progresses towards inclusiveness. Agonizingly slowly sometimes, but the train’s a-movin’ Marco. Get the fuck on board. Or at least shut up for a while OK? Splash is starting.

Wow, Maybe Rubio Really ISN’T a Scientist?

February 20, 2013

David McGee - Guest Writer

A couple of weeks ago I had the honor and privilege of making fun of Marco Rubio for not being a scientist, man. Well, for that and for being either intellectually dishonest or a fucking moron, but HEY, maybe GQ just misquoted him? Thankfully Rubio’s response to the State of the Union came through totally unmediated by any so-called “journalists” who might have made him sound like an “idiot” when he really “isn’t.” LET’S SEE HOW IT TURNED OUT.

Now, as you know if you’ve looked at the news recently, Rubio is being castigated for taking a sip of water in the middle of the speech. To be fair, that was an exceptionally creepy and weird sip of water, but we shouldn’t be mocking him for that, we should be mocking him because everything he said was stupid. I’d do a line-by-line response to it but I have a word count and an evolutionarily-crafted nervous system that dislikes pain (or WHATEVER. I mean, I’m not a scientist either, man), so I’ll skip it. But here are three or four things from that speech. And some calm reactions.

Rubio: “When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather – he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air.”

OH COOL FALSE DICHOTOMIES. They’re my favorite kind of dichotomies. They’re so much better than those TRUE ones like “When we point out that humanity burning everything we can lay our hands on is having effects on the global climate that could potentially kill everything you love so maybe we should stop doing that — you accuse us of looking at evidence.” Wait, is that a dichotomy? What is a dichotomy anyway? I’m not a linguist, man.

Never mind. The point is, we can have JOBS or we can TRY TO CONTROL THE WEATHER! There is no third option! So we have to… wait, but hold on a second… if government can’t control the weather then how did Reagan make it Morning in America? GOTCHA THERE, MARCO.

Rubio: “In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies.”

Yeah, in the sense that getting killed by influenza is a health crisis caused by reckless immune system policies. Like, true, but sort of reversing cause and effect.

Listen, this is a sentence I would totally agree with if it were about how the government needs to do more to regulate dangerous financial instruments and to promise — as a base-level right of being alive in the 21st Century — that everyone will have a roof and walls. But it’s instead surrounded with just utter bullshit about how what the government needs to do is get out of the way of banks and businesses. Which should apparently be trusted with running the economy. No, for real. If it’s possible, this is actually crazier than not believing in anthropogenic climate change, because to understand that you have to look at more than five years of records. And who has time for that? But to believe that businesses will not create major crises means being blind to things as far back as, say, 2012. But why should he care? He’s not a historian, man.

Rubio: “Of course solar and wind energy should be a part of our energy portfolio. But God also blessed America with abundant coal, oil and natural gas.”

God ALSO also blessed us with a fusion reactor a million times the size of the planet and functioning brains, so clearly we don’t have to use everything he blessed us with right? But fine, fuck it, let’s burn some more shit! I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?

Rubio: ”When I finished school, I owed over 100,000 dollars in student loans, a debt I paid off just a few months ago.”

And for which you should demand a refund. Man.

…

David McGee writes things. Things like letters making fun of bank CEOs, which you can find at davewritesthings.com. And things like this bio, which has a twist ending. BANANA SANDWICH!

Obama Decides He Can Kill Anyone Anytime Pretty Much (Not a Joke)

February 7, 2013

David McGee - Guest Writer

Remember that time back in 2002 when George W. Bush claimed the right to murder Americans if he thought they might be bad guys? OH WAIT that was yesterday and it was Barack Obama.

Taking advantage of the little known “LOL J/K ABOUT ALL THIS” section of the Constitution, Obama and his Justice Department (ironic! actually! not like in the Alanis way!) have actually put in print their belief that they can just decide that any given American is a terrorist and kill them with a flying robot. Hi, I’m Dave, and I am not writing dystopian fan-fiction I am reporting on something that is actually happening today.

Look, even if Obama is your Presidential BFF and you will swear on a stack of Dreams From My Father that he of course is wise and righteous enough to only decide a bad guy is a bad guy when he’s really actually a very bad guy, this should scare the ever-loving shit out of you because a) he only gets to be President for four more years (will you trust the next President to wield this power righteously? did you trust the last one?) and b) no for real we are talking about the Executive Branch claiming the power to be judge, jury, and executioner which is some shit that was done away with by Hammurabi, savvy? Not allowing your citizens to present evidence before you kill them isn’t taking us back to the Ashcroft era, it’s taking us back to the fucking Stone Age.

I like the Fifth Amendment. It’s one of my favorites. You don’t have to testify against yourself in court, you can’t be put on trial for the same thing twice, the government can’t take your house just because they want to, and you cannot be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” SECRET FOOTNOTE “unless the President swears you’re really honestly a bad guy.”

I like you all. So please don’t be accused of maybe doing something bad because I would hate for you to get Michael Bay’d to death without getting to say goodbye first.

…

David McGee writes things. Things like letters making fun of bank CEOs, which you can find at davewritesthings.com. And things like this bio, which has a twist ending. BANANA SANDWICH!

2012 Reviewed By A Dog

December 19, 2012

David McGee - Guest Writer

New ball ok cold outside. Outside and run at ball to get ball. See squirrel. Bark at squirrel. Run and bark. Inside bed and warm. Quiet and bed and no running. One loud sky. Bark at loud and scared. Food a lot but want more some. Snuggle warm. Warm outside and sun. Get ball. See dog. Friend? Good friend. Other big dog bad. Not friend but some friends and chase and bark. Take ball and run. New smell by tree and find stick. Bite stick. Hide stick. Remember stick? Smell friend and run but no. Find food. Go away and stop and food to run. Sky flash loud banging and bad. Hide from loud bad. Get treat and snuggles. Hot and run and pant and friends and squirrels to barking. Find stick and take it. Friend? Friend? Leaves and running. Smell new smell and find it. Eat it but bad. Bad smell ok and run more and roll and stuff. Loud wind and barking inside but ok. Find food and get food and snuggles. Outside cold. Old ball and running get ball. Get treats and good dog. Good dog and good. Friend?

How the Creation of the Universe Could Fuck Up Our Economy

December 6, 2012

David McGee - Guest Writer

This month’s GQ Magazine (“The Magazine for Gentlemen Who Love Quarters”) features an interview with Marco Rubio, the junior senator from the great state of Florida. Are you familiar with Rubio? He’s considered to have the inside track for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, because he’s not white but still hates gay and poor people, and so I suppose they’re thinking “Eh, two out of three ain’t bad, I guess.”

During the interview, Rubio was asked how old he thinks the Earth is. And his response began with:

“I’m not a scientist, man.”

OK. Hold on, sparky, don’t freak out yet. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s not necessarily the beginning of an outrageously stupid answer, because he might follow it up with, “But some people actually ARE scientists, and they all say 4.5 billion years old, so I’ll defer to them because they know what they’re talking about and I’m a moron.”

Cross your fingers. Let’s see how he actually finished up:

”I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.”

There’s so much crazily wrong with this I don’t even know where to start.

Firstly, sure, fine: parents are welcome to teach their children whatever the hell they want, but it doesn’t make what they teach them CORRECT. You see the difference, Marco?

More importantly, acknowledging the age of the universe actually has an imperial fuck-ton to do with the GDP and our economic policies, because believing that evidence is important in evaluating solutions is a sign that our political philosophy is going to be based on reason and not on playing pretend. It’s a sign that when all (ALL!) of the available evidence says that cutting taxes on the wealthy does not lead to greater prosperity, we’ll go “Huh, guess THAT doesn’t work” and try something else, instead of saying “Guess it’s a debate amongst economists” and punting the ball while actual people suffer. It’s a sign that when faced with consumption that far outpaces the scarce resources available to us, we’ll search for new ways of being, rather than hoping everything’ll just shake out in the end. It’s a sign that when someone suggests that our economy can just keep on growing forever and ever amen, we’ll evaluate the likelihood of that being true (hint: none) and adjust accordingly. Sheesh.

Finally, nobody — really, nobody at all, anywhere — thinks the earth was created in “7 actual eras”. It was clearly created in 9 Semi-Actual Eons. Duh. Come on, Marco: TEACH THE DEBATE.

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Come see Political Subversities LIVE on December 12th & 13th at Ars Nova in NYC! Info and tickets HERE.

Dave Goes to College

July 11, 2012

David McGee - Guest Writer

I was at the bar the other night sitting next to a college admissions officer. Because I am me I was like “OH WORD? What are the essay prompts?” One of them was something like “Tell us what you hope to experience in college” and because I am me I switched from the banana bread beer I was drinking to the one that tastes like cherries and said GIVE ME TEN MINUTES. We set a timer. And this is what I wrote.

Day One, 5am

I awaken to the sound of my cock. His name is Benton and he eats only dried corn which I provide from a sack. I assume your dormitories allow livestock, or if not, I assume they will make an exception for Benton, for Benton is no ordinary cock.

6am

Jumping Jacks.

6:12am

I arrive at the dining hall 48 minutes before it opens. More Jumping Jacks.

7am

Grapefruit

8am

First class - Fine Art

I will learn to draw and paint and I will always be respectful of the professor who knows more than I do and I will find the prettiest girl in class and I will woo her.

9:20am

Run from class. Massive grapefruit dump.

9:30am

Second class - Theory of Theories

I have no earthly idea what we will learn in this class, but because it’s college I know it must not be bullshit.

10:50am

Pushups and grunting.

10:55am

Snack (Pringles).

11am

Fellowship with roommates and other friends. Begin my campaign for Student Council. I plan to be Student Council Vice President. I do not plan to then murder the Student Council President. That would be weird.

11:22am

Nap or kickball on the quad.

12pm

Lunch at the dining hall. Insult the cleaning crew, then show them up by doing a better cleaning job than them. Stand on a table and announce plan to violently take over school. Photograph everyone who agrees with me, and take those photos to the Provost to show who must be eliminated.

12:20pm

Counseling.

1pm

Disciplinary meeting. Promise to never do it again. Blame stress of new environment. Cry loudly.

3pm

Dance class.

4:20pm

German.

4:30pm

Hate German.

4:40pm

Leave German, swearing never to return.

5pm

Dinner (milk).

6pm

Homework and crying.

9pm

Shower and more crying.

10pm

Bed.

Next Day: Repeat. For four fucking years.

He said he would have admitted me in a heartbeat. So take THAT Grad Schools.

…

David McGee writes things. Things like letters making fun of bank CEOs, which you can find at davewritesthings.com. And things like this bio, which has a twist ending. BANANA SANDWICH!

Wipeout: Worst Creation of Mankind or Just Most Evil?

July 1, 2012

David McGee - Guest Writer

I just watched the season premiere of Wipeout. Why? ‘Cause the ad was like “Here’s a show about people hurting themselves you should watch it!” and I was like “No, come on, it’s the 21st Century. We’ve mapped the human genome and invented the welfare state. Surely we’re beyond this. It’s not really just a show featuring video of people smashing their faces into things, right?”

I WAS RIGHT. It’s not just that. That would be stupid; this is actively evil. It actually undoes some of the good done by art. Beethoven’s music is now just slightly less beautiful; Ernst’s colors have lost some of their shine. The world is a worse place because Wipeout exists. Aliens who are monitoring our television signals have been going like “Oh… they have nuclear bombs? I don’t know about these Earthlings… Let’s see what they do next before we decide” and in a couple of years they’re gonna get the Wipeout broadcast and then it’s “CODE RED CODE RED PLANETARY EXECUTION SQUAD TO FASTEST POSSIBLE SPACESHIPS DANGEROUS CREATURES MUST BE ELIMINATED TO ENSURE UNIVERSAL SURVIVAL!”

I know it’s my job as a writer to explain to you why it’s so bad, but it’s literally beyond words. It’s something out of fucking Lovecraft. It feels like a viral ad for the voluntary human extinction movement. It’s aired by the Walt Disney Corporation, which spent your entire childhood telling you how magical and romantic life was going to be, and is now gamely attempting to obliterate your grown-up soul.

Look, I’m not above watching reality television; I’ll watch the hell out of some Project Runway (SHINY PRETTY THINGS!). Or Amazing Race (FARAWAY PLACES!). Or Storage Wars (JUST KIDDING THIS IS A SHOW ABOUT OBNOXIOUS PEOPLE BUYING ROOMS FULL OF GARBAGE!). And I’m human, and so have sometimes laughed at people falling down. Whatever.

But this is not normal reality TV, and this is not normal falling down. This takes every possible vapid, awful, terrible, unfunny, sexist, anti-thought, visciously-schadenfreudetastic, dehumanizing stereotype about our current lived reality and condenses it into a single hourlong black hole of suck. The event horizon has swallowed our world, and we have entered into crushing endless night. We’re all doomed. Good riddance.

Americans, it’s available to watch here for the next thirty-odd days but DON’T, for REAL, just trust me on this. Non-Americans WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM?

GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER

May 6, 2012

David McGee - Guest Writer

You know what we don’t talk about enough here at PoliSub? FOOD POLICY.

You may think I’m going to talk about how Monsanto is like the Devil except worse and actually real, or how crazy it is that people are starving but we pay millions of dollars to people every year to not grow food, or how holy shit Taco Bell is selling a taco shell made out of Doritos [ed. note: for space we cut a 7,000 word parenthetical here in which the author tried to figure out the correct plural of Dorito] and how in related news I think the end-times are at last nigh.

But NO. I’m here to talk about the shit that really matters: soybean oil.

Listen: I’m almost 30. In my time I’ve bought a lot of soybean oil. And I am here to tell America — nay, THE WORLD — that I am not buying ANY more soybean oil until that shit is FULLY HYDROGENATED. Do you hear me, people who make food? I’m sick of you skimping on what should be the full hydrogenation of my soybean oil. The hydrogenationing process is what makes soybean oil into SOYBEAN OIL. But no. You don’t deliver. It’s always effing PARTIAL.

“Ho hum, here I am at work, where my only job is hydrogenatoring this soybean oil YAWN I’m tired 10:30am already guess I’ll just go home now and leave all this soybean oil unfully hydrogenganinated!” You know who that was an impression of? YOU. Yeah, I went there.

You think you can keep getting away with that? With giving me soybean oil that you were supposed to fully hydrogenate but only doing part of the job? Well you CAN’T. This is America and I will not stand for it. I mean, sit for it. Yeah, I’m sitting. It’s like I told you: THIS IS AMERICA.

Listen: The next time I get soybean oil, I want that shit literally dripping with hydrogen. I want to smell the hydrogen from the next county. When I dip my tongue in I don’t even want to taste the soybeans. I want a tongue bathed in of delicious, delicious liquid hydrogen.

Now to questions sent in by our readers:

Q) What has one electron and tastes good in soybean oil?

A) Hydrogen.

Q) What has two electrons and tastes better in soybean oil?

A) TWICE AS MUCH HYDROGEN.

Q) Help! This recipe said “season to taste” but I’m an idiot. What does that mean?

A) It means add more hydrogen to your soybean oil, or whatever you’re making that isn’t soybean oil, although you should just be having soybean oil.

Q) Hold on… won’t drinking liquid hydrogen give you frostbite?
A) Yeah, delicious frostbite.

NO MORE QUESTIONS. You know what you have to do soybean oil hydrogenators. Get to it.

Because as my good friend Edward Teller always used to say: Hydrogen? It’s the bomb.

Two Fun, Easy, Not-Angry-At-All Ideas for NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly

March 18, 2012

David McGee - Guest Writer

Dear Ray Kelly, NYPD Commissioner,

Hi. You probably don’t know me. Let me tell you about myself: I’m 5’11”. I really enjoy frozen yogurt. I sometimes go outside in support of an inclusive economy and then your police officers threaten to arrest me for crimes as eeeeeeeevil as “dancing in the street” and “having a stack of books for people to borrow” and “noticing how fucked up everything is and actually caring about it.” Release the hounds, right? So far, I’ve managed to avoid getting clubbed, punched, sprayed with toxic chemicals, having my head shoved against anything, being handcuffed for no reason, being left on the street seizing without anybody untying me, beaten bloody, or any of that really awesome stuff you guys are getting to be sooooo good at.

Honestly, I’m starting to take it a little personally. What do I have to do to get you to notice me? Should I carry two signs? Should I let you imagine a really arrestable slogan by carrying a sign that’s blank? Would that be fine?

Hey speaking of “blank” and “fine”, you know Lloyd Blankfein? (listen, I’m a professional writer; these are the kind of segues you gotta watch out for). He’s the guy who runs Goldman Sachs. And since you and I are both fully in support of arresting people, I was wondering: would you please go arrest that miserable asshole? You know that he illegally accepted naked short sales in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, enriching himself and his company while the world economy was crumbling? You know that he underwrote bonds and then went and illegally encouraged other customers to bet against those bonds? You know that he helped Greece hide the true nature of its debt in order to keep making money from them, helping the European economy and therefore likely the world economy to the precipice of collapse? You know that he “failed to disclose to investors vital information about the CDO, known as ABACUS 2007-AC1, particularly the role that hedge fund Paulson & Co. Inc. played in the portfolio selection process and the fact that Paulson had taken a short position against the CDO?” OH MAN that sounds complicated. I bet it must have been really bad, right? But what are we supposed to do about it if we don’t even know what it MEANS?

So I have an idea. WAIT. TWO IDEAS.

Idea 1: I will convince Lloyd Blankfein to come down and dance in the street. We all know how illegal THAT is. I’ll see him on the sidewalk sometime (we run into each other a lot, because we eat at the same restaurants (Taco Bell)) and be like HEY LLOYD. I FORGET WHAT THE MACARENA LOOKS LIKE. HELP A BUDDY OUT? And then BOOM you can send in the commandos with their machine guns and their Star Wars helmets to lock him up. And then when people are like “You can’t arrest him! He’s a rich white man!” you can be like “HE WAS DANCING IN THE STREET. WHAT ABOUT THIS DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?” and then you can arrest all of THOSE people too for having the temerity to question you!

Idea 2: We set up a ratio. A good, solid arrest ratio. You get to keep arresting people for “sitting in a park that is required by law to stay open 24 hours a day” or “feeding the hungry” or “thinking of power structures that wouldn’t have your punk-ass in charge of them”, but for every thousand of us you arrest you HAVE to go arrest ONE bank CEO. Just one. I mean, you know how Goldman Sachs’s creation of the Goldman Commodity Index helped literally starve millions of people? How much worse than publicly doing the Cabbage Patch is the widespread starvation of millions? You tell me, Ray! I just want to believe that we’re working toward something here. Like frequent flier miles! Eventually, we’re going to earn something right?

I’ve already chosen my reward. Keep arresting us. But just tell me how many more arrests it’s going to take before you start to actually do your goddamn job.

BTW I LOVE what you’ve done with the city. I feel so SAFE these days.

Fuck you,

Dave

…

David McGee writes things. Things like letters making fun of bank CEOs, which you can find at davewritesthings.com. And things like this bio, which has a twist ending. BANANA SANDWICH!

A Very Private Letter to Rush Limbaugh

March 12, 2012

David McGee - Guest Writer

OH HAI RUSH

Sorry about all this kerfuffle. I realize you must be pretty confused about what happened, so I wanted to offer some friendly advice to help you avoid things like this in the future. Here we go:

Hey shit-for-brains! The fact that no women will have sex with you isn’t evidence of sex being immoral, it’s evidence of you being a tremendously shitty human being. Sex can be super fun, but nothing can be fun when it’s done with you, because you’re a contemptible misogynistic gasbag with no respect for anyone who isn’t a rich white conservative man!

I know you’re in your 60s now, and that it can be hard to teach an old dog new tricks (speaking of dogs, remember when you called 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton the White House Dog? That’s the sort of thing you’re going to want to try to avoid going forward if you’d like to ever have sex ever ever) but I recommend getting laid at least once so that you can at least know whereof you speak. Like when you undertook that project to become a drug addict so that when you talk about putting all drug users (even the white ones!) in prison you’d at least have some personal experience.

It’s not going to be easy to do this, Rush. You’re going to have to overcome the jealousy you feel for other people who get to experience sex when you don’t. It’s going to take some real effort on your part to get past these feelings and to start unthinking some of your myriad cretinous thoughts.

Here are some facts for you to repeat to yourself as you go throughout your day (read them once and then just say DITTO!) to help get your mind in the right place:

-Women are human beings!

-Human beings have evolved to be repelled by pieces of shit!

-You are a piece of shit!

-Sex is not just for procreation!

-You really suck at being a person!

-Try to stop being such an unfathomably hateful asshole!

Repeat these simple truths to yourself every time you feel like opening your reeking cesspool of a mouth and someday soon you might begin to get a sense of why everyone’s so pissed at you. Which could — if you work hard — mean that someday you get to experience the physical act of love.

In the meantime, a final bit of advice: go fuck yourself.

Because sure as shit nobody else is going to.

…

David McGee writes things. Things like letters making fun of bank CEOs, which you can find at davewritesthings.com. And things like this bio, which has a twist ending. BANANA SANDWICH!