Friday, December 30, 2011

2011 in Review

And so here we are again.

On the eve of yet another shiny new year in this, the glorious future.

Is it just me?

Or was 2011 some kind of a disappointing year?

I mean, come on, it was 2011. It’s supposed to be the future.  All bright and shiny and futurey smelling.

Sure, there were some good things. 

For example, we’re now more than a decade into the zippy George Jetson 21st Century and there still aren’t any flying cars, for which as I’ve mentioned before I am eternally grateful.  Flying cars. Bad idea. So good on on Detroit for not inventing any yet. 

But, still, the first year of the second decade of the 21st Century was, well, lame.

Frankly, I expected more.

Turns out Obama isn’t an alien reptile terminator in a rubber human suit from some Future Liberal Hell of Evil sent into our past so that he could be born in Africa and then smuggled into the United States to renounce his citizenship so that he could then study abroad in a school full of Muslims which would somehow then facilitate his sneaking back into the US to become President in order to destroy Capitalist Jesus with his Socialist-Darwin White-Baby Abortion Ray powered by the sparkly rainbow emissions of same-sex marriage and the white-hot lies told by global climate change scientists (Well sure, when you say it all together like that it is a seductively persuasive argument).   Heck, as it turns out, he’s not even really black.  As conspiracies go, the sullen whimpering end of Birtherism turned out to be pretty damned disappointing – though admittedly the mascot was fairly entertaining in a wild-eyed, crazy-hair sort of way. Wait, am I thinking of Orly Taitz or Donald Trump? Man, can you imagine what the offspring of such an unholy union would be like? Actually, no need to imagine, that question answered itself – and seriously, look at the picture, Dom Deluise in drag channeling Glenn Beck, or is it just me? Just when you think it couldn’t get any sillier.

Those Swiss bastards at CERN turned on the Evil Large Hadron Collider of Mega Death and ran that sucker up to full power.  Whoopie Tee friggin doo. My unbalanced washing machine was more exciting. No earth destroying black holes. No anti-matter explosion that cracked open the crust of the planet.  For a minute it looked like there might be some kind of faster than light evil beam of evil, but it turned out to be just your standard stream of high energy exotic particles. Ho hum. Just cutting edge physics, insights into the very fabric of the universe, nothing to see here, move along. Not even a giant lightening-wreathed rift in space-time wrenching open a glowing portal that allowed monstrous blood swilling Hell-demons to cross into our world from an alternate Evil Dimension of Evil. Nothing. It didn’t even affect cell phone reception. No God Particle, no Son of God Particle, not even a Minor Deity From An Obscure Cult Particle. Apparently all that happened was some “invisible” particles that cost a lot of money and only physicists can see went whooshing around in a big circle. Not even one evil Hell-demon. Woooo. Exciting.

The much ballyhooed Rapture turned out to be just as big of letdown as the End of Days always turns out to be. Always.  Two thousand years they’ve been telling us Jesus is coming back Real Soon Now and, man, this time he’s pissed. Two thousand goddamned years, folks. You’d think they’d be right at least once just out of random chance. But they’ve been right exactly never. I mean, damn, the Cleveland Indians have a better win/loss record. They’ve predicted the Second Coming what? A hundred, two hundred, five hundred times? Hell, I don’t know, I’ve lost track of how many times Jesus was coming over, but then he stood us up, again – you’d think people would start dating somebody else. But no. This time, man, this time for certain. Read your Revelation, Dude, totally for sure this time. Bible Math don’t lie, Sinner.  Hell, they even had two shots at it this year. What happened? Nothing.  Not one Rapture Balloon. I didn’t even get in any skeet shooting.  The Rapture sucked big hairy donkey balls. Again.

They Repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Coincidently enough, that was the last New Year’s Eve post.  It’s now okay to be totally gay in uniform. And what happened? Anarchy! Chaos! Insanity! Sparkly queer carnage in the streets! Babies fell screaming from the fiery orange sky like taut little water balloons filled with chunky spaghetti sauce! War! Terrorism! The hideous undead rising ravenous from their moldy graves to lick tomato sauce from the sidewalks! What? What’s that you say? Oh. Right. Heh, sorry, I get excited. My mistake, I was thinking of the Iowa Republican Caucus. So, DADT. Gone. Gays serving openly in uniform. Two hot gay queer homosexual lesbians in uniform shamelessly kissing on the pier upon return from extended combat deployment. It was on the national news. Turns out lesbians are just like normal people. And they like to kiss. And now I need a cold shower. And what? Right. Nothing. No sparkly carnage. No exploding babies. No rampaging Hell-demons. Talk about your basic letdown. It was so gay.

They got Osama. Blam! Bullet in the brain pan. US Navy SEALs dropped out of the sky like winged death incarnate and gave him a little double-tap fuck you from America.  Turns out he wasn’t twelve feet tall.  He couldn’t shoot lightening bolts and killer bees from his dagger-like fingers.  He wasn’t living in a cave in Tora Bora making nuclear bombs out of goat skin and coconuts like the Taliban version of the Professor from Gilligan’s Island.  He wasn’t cranking out blueberry Slurpees as the night manager at a 7/11 in Palm Springs either.  He was just some unwashed asshole living like a mange-ridden rat trapped in a box.  The accounting was a long time coming, but when the cold-eyed Navy snake-eaters kicked in the door of his bedroom he didn’t go out fighting – instead he cowered behind his wife like the frightened little rat he always was.  In the end, the US Navy dumped his dead ass into the sea along with the rest of the day’s garbage.  Adios, Stinky, say hi to the fishes.

The war in Iraqi is over. At least for America.  The president promised that our troops would be home for Christmas. And they are. Damn that Obama for keeping his word.  As most of you likely know, Iraq is personal to me. My opinion on the end of the conflict is here.  By setting a date for withdrawal, Obama was supposedly setting us up for our own Dien Bien Phu.  American troops were going to get slaughtered on their way out. Jesus Haploid Christ! You can’t set a date!  Why, Evil Insurgents of Evil, twelve feet tall and shooting killer bees from their eyes, will lay ambush to our convoys on the road to Kuwait!  Except, of course, nothing happened.  We handed over the keys, showed them where the circuit breakers were located and reminded them to water the plants.  Then drove to the airport. Yawn. No ambush. No killer bees. No journalists asking Hairy Perry, the Military Genius of Texas, how come his dire end-of-the-world (oh noes!) predictions on the Iraqi withdrawal were exactly as accurate as Harold Camping’s Rapture Launch Date – this despite Perry’s vast, vast military experience as a junior Air Force reserve C-130 cargo plane pilot with no combat experience or knowledge of the situation on the ground.  Oh well, there’ll be another war, I’m sure conservatives will get that one right. Practice makes perfect.

Hell, it was a bad year for dictators everywhere, wasn’t it?  Moammar Gadhafi died in a drainpipe, again just like a sewer rat in a trap.  After forty years of raping the Libyans, he ended up with a stick shoved up his own ass.  Really can’t say that I blame the Libyans for getting some violent payback – half a century of pent up rage, Gadhafi was lucky he took a bullet in the head before he got violated with a telephone pole, instead of the other way around. Not that it bothers me either way.  Again, Gadhafi was personal to me and I won’t miss him.  Of course, it happened on Obama’s watch and he didn’t fuck it up, so it only took about five minutes for the crazies to come out of the woodwork.  That Obama, how could he betray our friend Moammar like that? Oh noes! Now Libya will become Muslim! And an Evil Terrorist State of Evil! Muslim Brotherhood! Ook! Ook! Libyans will shoot Mohammad-Shaped Killer Bees from the their eyes! Oh noes!  Egypt. Nigeria. Syria. The Arab Spring is breaking out all over, and what in the hell is the deal with that? Why, it’s like those filthy Muslims want liberty and freedom too. But, of course, that can’t be right – they couldn’t be just like us! That’s preposterous! Besides, they wouldn’t know what to do with a democracy if they had one.  No, no, better they live under a dictator. Makes you wonder what the civilized countries thought back, oh, about two and half centuries ago when the filthy American colonists had their own little spring – Good Lord! Those damned uncouth peasants! How will they live without a king? What if the Capitalist Brotherhood takes over? Next thing you know, they’ll be over here demanding that we recognize their crappy lice infested country, spreading their filthy democracy. Like they’ll ever amount to anything.  Quick, turn out the lights and let’s pretend  we’re not home!  The one bright spot is that it looks like Vladimir Putin will be Czar for life of Russia, so at least the conservatives still have one dictator they can cozy up to. Maybe they can get him to build a wall across Germany if they ask really nice.  Question: if conservatives think dictators are awesome and they think Obama is a dictator, why then don’t they… oh, you know, fuck it. Never mind.

 

 

Yep, 2011 was pretty lame alright.

No Armageddon. No Zombie Apocalypse. No Hell-demons. No Anti-Christ.  No Rapture, Rupture, or Raptors.  War in Iraq over. Terrorists dead. Dictators toppled.  Economy improving.  Jobs slowly coming back.  Housing market finally on the upswing.   Steve Jobs died, but the iPad II was released. We got Super-8 and The Debt in theaters, A Game of Thrones on HBO, and The Walking Dead and Terra Nova on TV. Justin Bieber did minimal damage. Astronomers discovered about a billizion new planets orbiting other stars and at least one of them is bound to harbor some kind of weird alien Hell-Demons who thirst for the blood of our babies.  We got a good look at Vesta, which is cool because part of the novel I’m writing (intermittently) is set thereabouts.  NASA launched Curiosity towards Mars where it will join Spirit and Opportunity – still functioning years after they should have died – and with any luck we’ll find weird alien Hell-demons in our own backyard, or fossilized evidence that little hell-bacteriums once existed on our red neighbor.  Facebook turned the sparkly fair dust of the internet into billions of dollars in the real world and made Mark Zuckerberg fabulously wealthy.  Americans are still infatuated with the talentless antics of the Kardashian Sisters – and in that regard perhaps the elusive Hell-demons do walk among us after all.

No, 2011, wasn’t terrible per se, but I’m hoping we can do better in 2012. 

 

I’ll have some suggestions on this very subject tomorrow, they may involve Hell-demons.

In the meantime, here’s hoping that 2012 treats you all better than 2011. 

And remember, no flying cars. Ever.

43 comments:

  1. That is the most bestest LOL-Obama ever.

    Spirit is dead, but Opportunity is still going, and GRAIL hit lunar orbit not 20 minutes ago.

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  2. Spirit is dead

    "Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

    "Don't interrupt him, he's on a roll."

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  3. Hey, I got to legimately link an XKCD that makes people cry.

    The whole Mars Rover program is amazing, even if one component only lasted umpty times its predicted lifespan.

    Also, in the "living in the future" column: I've been watching GRAIL's progress real-time on twitter. No flying cards, just flying information.

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  4. Happy New Year to everyone. I'm staying home.

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  5. Hey, I want a flying car! Just because everyone else with flying cars would fuck things up doesn't mean I shouldn't have a flying car. In fact, I deserve a flying car.

    That's what I expect of 2012. A flying car for me.

    Oh, and if the current crop of right wing fanatics got their brains tranversed, that would be lovely as well.

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  6. Okay, no flying cars. Does this mean no jet packs either? :>(

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  7. If by "Germans Bombed Pearl Harbour" you mean "Pale skinned tourists from Berlin in WAY too skimpy speedos visited Hawaii" then yes.

    Wait... what was the question?

    Best Wishes for the New Year Mr Jim.

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  8. Mybe the Myan prophasey saying that 2012 is the end of a cycle/age will come true and something good will come! NOT the end of the world, it NEVER said that, it says one cycle/age ends and the next starts...let us hope it is something good!

    Happy New Yaer! Thanks for all your great posts!

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  9. With all that's going on in the world right now, I think 2012 will be plenty exciting. Especially since the Russians seem to have joined in the whole "fake elections are not cool!" thing...

    In any event, since it's 2012 here already: Happy new year from Norway, my best wishes to you all, and may your tomorrows be a little bit better than today!

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  10. Fine. No flying cars. But how about planes that drive?

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  11. Maybe this coming year we'll all get iDisc implants above our left or right ear and not even have to be bothered with all this touching of keypads and touch pads. It's getting to be all so "yesterday."

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  12. Think about this: Boston drivers and flying cars. No. No flying cars.

    Happy New Year.

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  13. I'll do you one better, Alaskan drivers shooting out the windows of flying cars...

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  14. Why not, Jim--they just made it legal to shoot coyotes out of helicopters in Texas. Probably that nitwit Perry's idea...no, he just shoots them while jogging.

    Nevermind.

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  15. With some of the crazy people we have to live with and the crazy they spew about infecting other, I'm sort of pray the wackaloons are right about their version of the Myan prophesies.

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  16. Sorry, but flying cars are a reality. See http://www.moller.com/
    And, sadly, Spirit could only be wildly successful instead of wildly, ultra successful.
    2012 ... please let it be nicer to us
    than 2011 has been.
    Happy New Year everyone!

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  17. As long as you keep writing, Jim, 2012 will be fine.
    Thanks for your great posts.

    How about flying cars where Alaska drivers can only shoot out the windows at the decoy spruce hens placed alongside the road?
    Of course, then the Alaska legislature would spend 89 days working on a road sign inclusion, too.

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  18. Flying cars are just fine, so long as cell phones don't function in them... which means my wife and daughters won't be driving !

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  19. Flying cars? This is Alaska! We don't drive girly flying cars, fer christ's sake; we drive flying monster trucks! With big, loud oversized props, enormous landing gear, pterodactyl nuts on the tail wheel and "slednecks" and nobama decals on the empennage!

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  20. Wait, wait. We've just learned that the Mayan calendar has been re-calibrated from 2011 to 2012. (I'm not kidding.) It wasn't supposed to be 2011 in the first place. Now the prospects for 2012 will be even more exciting.

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  21. Ah c'mon; there were some great disasters in twenty-'leven. It refused to rain in Texas and Oklahoma and Rick Perry and James Inhofe got to look like incredibly daft twits trying to deny that climate change might be a little scary. There were some fantastic tornadoes that took out portions of the South, East, North and West while killing less people than our annual motor vehicle carnage. There were the Republican primary debates. Also Herman Cain; no explanation needed.

    On the plus side Occupy Wall Street demonstrated that the american people might not be 100% in favor of untethered greed. There was the release of some really good online games and as always there continues to be a plentitude of free porn.

    Flying makes me queasy anyway.

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  22. That's the spirit. Embrace the mediocrity!

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  23. Low expectations are the key to lasting happiness.

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  24. Brilliant Jim. Again. Simply brilliant.
    And the picture of President Obama carrying donuts...priceless.
    I'm going to send it to the cookhouse at the ranch for all of the right-ish leaning wingnuts. I'm sure they'll choke on their own donuts and spew coffee out of their collective noses as they sputter in outrage.
    Kudos. And Happy New Year.

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  25. Come on Warrant - Not too surprising that the Navy was the first with a service approved post-DADT "2 hot chicks in uniform making out". On the other end of the USN activity scale - good on the SEALS for the Bin Laden hit as well as their continuous high ops-tempo. Hard to take a break in that line of work.

    Gotta say though that the SEALS don't fly anywhere on their own. Most SOF airborne inserts in AF/PAK are accomplished by the US Army 160th SOAR. There were 160th soldiers involved in the Bin Laden op as well as lost in the MH-47 downing in August.

    2011 was obviously the all clear year for Cheney (Bush) admin assholes to come out of their undisclosed locations and start stirring pots again. (War with Iran anyone??). I can't believe that the MSM is posting op-eds by Feith, Wolfie, Bolton, etc as if they have anything to add.

    Last week AEI war slut Danille Pletka dared to bust on the DoD withdrawal from Iraq as if we had "lost Iraq". What a bitch! (I always thought Pletke, Coulter and Malken should have been dumped naked in 2004 Ramadi. If they wanted the war so bad they could entertain the troops. On the OTHER side.)

    What did NOT happen in 2011? - No Bush/Cheney chicken-hawk war cheering fucks, or banker fucks styling orange jumpsuits. Obama has no intention of cracking that can of worms. So no perp walks for weakening America in all regards. So we still have to read and hear their spew on MSM. Fuckers.

    On a positive note, 2012 offers the opportunity to vote most of our the least effective elected public-servents out of office. No problem.

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  26. Anon, you have a point. Several in fact. Since this post was intended as a snarky end of year wrap up, high on the humor content, I didn't want to veer too far into serious subject matter.

    If you follow the links, you'll see that I did however remember to acknowledge the contributions of the SEALs supporting forces (having been in one of those support roles myself more than once) in the post that directly addressed both the Osama Bin Ladin raid and the downing of the MH-47 in the
    Valley of Death
    post

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  27. Jim, I was in a flying car once, it landed upside down, backwards, and in a bar ditch. I was trying to avoid an airborne deer, and land based autos at five am on my way to work. Afterwards, I recieved serious comments from my co-workers on how not to park next to any of them in the parking lot when I get my next "flying" car. Thanks Jim for your clarity of thought this past year.

    On the Mayan calender, the guys who were chipping away on the rock, decided just as they were chipping, Dec. 21 2012, they just said "fuck it." and left to go have a beer. Then their civilization crashed, and the rest is history.

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  28. Jim - on the 160 SOAR input, rgr your "Valley of Death" post. I had not read that deep into the thread. You are deeply committed to the forces, I just added my shallow 2 cents on SOF teams. My apologies.

    On the 2011 post - in addition to Gadhafi's demise, another success was the March recovery of 2 x F-15E crew downed in Libya. The pilot by Marines and the WSO by other means.

    My day job is support to PR/CSAR ops. So, I twig on issues dealing with personnel recovery and downed airplanes. I still think Danielle Pletke is a shrew faced, neo-con hag. (Which is unfair to shrews.)

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  29. No apologies necessary in any way, Anon. And thanks for doing what you do.

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  30. THE BEST END OF YEAR SUMMARY EVER!
    Please excuse the howler, but it was superb.

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  31. I had a flying car once... then this hot alien chick with a more than passing resemblance to Milla Jovovich came crashing through the roof and cost me the last of my points...

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  32. No only Stripes Bill Murray as an avatar, but a Fifth Element riff too?

    Shades of Gray is my new favorite.

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  33. I must agree with "caryn" about the Flying Cars and Boston "Drivers". I'm a professional truck driver from South Jersey (our 51st State. Motto: We don't give a damn how you do things up north. Shut up and go the fuck home NOW and stay there.)

    I have driven in Boston and its environs and I have PERSONALLY seen old blue-haired ladies do things that would get you black-flagged at Darlington. A New York cabbie wouldn't last 5 minutes in Boston, where, as nearly as I can tell, all driving is done strictly by horn and/or accelerator. Hitting the brakes or directionals only marks one as an outsider and therefore "Fair game" to the residents.

    If they ever create flying cars, I humbly suggest that nobody tell Massachusetts.

    OUTSTANDING job on "The Year in Review".

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  34. BTW, WAY better than Dave Barry's "Year in Review".

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  35. Be sure to tell Dave that for me, won't you?


    :)

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  36. Jim, once again you knocked it out of the park! I simply love you!. Can I post part of this on my face book page? There have been several blockhead commenters lately.

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  37. Sure, JoJo. As long as you give me credit.

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  38. Now now, on the flying cars bit and Boston...if you can drive here, you can drive anywhere. Yes we have old cowpaths that are now called "streets" that make no sense along with "Tremont Street" that actually makes several 90 degrees turns and like 10 "Washington Streets" (I used to drive an ambulance here) but we're old school. What I fear is a flying car with Florida license plates driving in the left-hand lane with only a pair of white, wrinkled knuckles and a tuft of white hair visible in the entire car.

    Btw, one of my best friends is an ex-SEAL. He's gay. How did that happen? You mean those macho, swaggering SEALs can be big homos? What's next? Two hot lipstick lesbian sailors kissing on a dock??? Oh wait, nevermind....

    Happy 2012 everyone! Remember for entertainment, nothing beats the Republican Primaries this year!

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  39. Are you kidding? 2011 was a GREAT year! I discovered Stonekettle Station.

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  40. Enjoyed the post. 2011 was pretty much like most individual days are to me, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. None of my loved ones shuffled off the mortal coil (although one moved into what will doubtless be a long-term and permanent limbo status). My health didn't fail me, and, due to diligent flossing, neither did my teeth. Best wishes for the new year.

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  41. Jim yet again you've nailed it perfectly. 2011 went overboard at various points for my own personal liking, from the Billionaire Hairpiece's sad attempt to run for President, to dealing with conspiracy theorist after conspiracy theorist (the anti-George Soros ones in particular) and seeing my city's government shut out a relatively harmless group of Occupy protesters by falsely stating that police were being called there more often due to their presence (the police scanner said otherwise for the month and a half the protest actually lasted, as did CSPD's online police blotter). I'm wondering what 2012 has to offer up now. Flying cars, I hope. Oh, and the hopeful demise of the batshit crazy GOP.

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  42. Christopher I think you're going to be disappointed with 2012. Recent findings show that ever increasing amounts of stupidity is what's causing the expansion of the universe.

    The GOP is staying right where it is.

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  43. Pangolin, that's priceless! "...ever increasing amounts of stupidity is what's causing the expansion of the universe." Or, as it's known to scientists, Dark Intelligence.

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