Virginia GEORGIA (thanks anon) Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, who despite wanting to display the 10 Commandments in the Halls of Congress, famously couldn’t name them when asked on camera by Stephen Colbert (as shown in the video above) made himself look even more like an idiot today when he called Barack Obama “uppity” while discussing his new hero Sarah Palin:

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Of course, he omitted the second word that almost always follows a Southerner’s use of the term uppity in reference to a black man who is acting a little above his station, but anybody with a brain knows what he means. Ah! AMERICA!!

Kevin Powell is a former cast member from the first season of MTV’s The Real World. Now he’s running for Congress in the 10th district (Brooklyn) of New York. I don’t think being on The Real World is any sort of credential but he does have a BA in Political Science. At least he was on the show before it went completely downhill and turned to crap.

He is up against Ed Towns, a 13-year incumbent, so we probably won’t see him in office anytime soon. Powell thinks “civic engagement should be a part of our values as much as MTV and Xbox.” He is trying to get more young people involved and what better way than making a tape of his speeches mixed with music from Tupac, 50 Cent and Kanye West?

[The following article, written by Bob Howard for Synthesis Weekly, was originally published in the print version of Synthesis on Monday, May 19th, 2008. He can be reached at bob@madbob.com]

Keep on Drinking
By Bob Howard

“Be it destiny or free will, there are those amongst us who might do the rest of society a favor by staying on the couch, taking bong rips and playing the latest version of Grand Theft Auto.”

A Long History of Stupid: I’ve just started reading a biography of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and as a result, I’m learning quite a lot about the history of this country and the tradition of our government cracking down on dissent. This latest episode of our history is far from the first time the Bill of Rights has been superseded and suspended in the name of “security.” I have yet to grasp the logic of suspending freedoms to ensure security when I thought that the whole thing we are trying to secure in the first place is freedom; but I digress.
Anyway, here are some interesting factoids I’ve picked up thus far: Remember when in protest of the French dissent against the “War on Terror” our Congress made the brilliant move of re-naming French Fries “Freedom Fries?” Seems like a pretty creative manifestation of nationalistic stupidity, right? Wrong. During World War I, our Congress re-named Sauerkraut “Liberty Cabbage.” Our current stupidity isn’t even original! How do you like that?

Think the threat of terrorism is a new thing? Wrong. Just prior to and then after World War I, the Red Scare developed. Anarchists and Communists were on the rise and there were actually a series of letter bombs and bomb attacks that riddled the nation’s capitol and industrial power figures.
These attacks lead to a complete abridgment of the freedoms granted in the Bill of Rights. Anyone suspected of being a communist, a socialist, or a sympathizer — essentially any Russian factory worker — was rounded up in mass arrests and many were unceremoniously deported so quickly that there wasn’t even time for an appeal.

More heartwarming thoughts after the jump. (more…)