Derp Roundup: Your Weekly Tour Of Tawdry Trifling Trivia

 
 Welcome to another installment of Derp Roundup, the weekly feature where we bring you a bunch of stories that didn't quite merit their own posts but were too stupid to ignore altogether. As usual, we recommend you fortify yourself with whatever helps you get through reading it -- alcohol, weed, or a +10 Potion of Protection From Idiocy.

1. Our first story may not be the derpiest of the week, but it's local to Yr Doktor Zoom, so deal.  The Idaho Statesman  reports that the Idaho Transportation Department has ordered Boise's Woodland Empire Ale Craftto remove its sign, pictured above, because it looks too much like an official road sign. As far as we can tell, the sign has not caused any massive traffic delays, but the law's the law, mang:

   "The main issue is one of Idaho Code," department spokesman Reed Hollinshead said in an email. "Namely, you cannot imitate a highway sign or attempt to redirect the flow of traffic."

   For their part, Woodland Empire owner Dusty Schmidt said that he and his partners in the microbrewery were just surprised that the state hadn't taken action sooner against the sign, which has been up since January. He called the publicity over the sign and the order to remove it a success. The sign's designer, Dave Cook, said in a news release, "All billboards distract drivers. Especially the good ones." Discuss amongst yourselves:  Advertising is just another form of trolling. 

   Yr Dok Zoom drives by that place several times a week, but had somehow not noticed the sign. Guess it's time to try the beer at least.

1. Big news from the Birther movement! Birther Report has this thrilling update -- Congress is completely unprepared for the "universe shattering" report that Sheriff Joe Arpaio plans to release sometime in late March, maybe. And how do we know Congress is going to be taken by surprise? Well, by golly, a reporter from "NewsBlaze" (not to be confused with the more well-known Glenn Beck internet fool parade. Also, as far as we can tell, NewsBlaze is not a parody site.) went to a Heritage Foundation event and asked two tea party congressmen, Idaho's Raul Labrador and Kansas's Tim Huelskamp, and

   asked if they had been following developments around Sheriff Arpaio's Cold Case Posse. Our question centered around what their constituents were saying, and if they thought the sheriff was doing the right thing.

   And you know what? Neither of them have any idea about the many developments in the case, such as the possible involvement of the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the collection of "a list of the IP addresses of suspects at the White House who may have forged" the alleged "Obama Birth Certificate" that everyone knows is a fake.

   Labrador simply said, "I really haven't been following that issue at all." Huelskamp also said "Honestly, I haven't been following that at all," and added,

   "I just did fifteen town halls in the last couple of months. I don't think it [the birth certificate] came up at all. But what is coming up is the lawlessness of this administration. Not worried about the President. They are very excited when I talk about articles of impeachment of the attorney general. The birth certificate is not an issue that I've heard. We're not receiving any calls or emails it's just the broader issue of an administration that does whatever it wants."

   And so, based on this exhaustive interview of two members of the House, NewsBlaze reporter Randy Foreman confidently predicts that if their attitudes are shared by the rest of Congress, and if Joe Arpaio's report truly contains universe shattering revelations, then "there will be shocked looks on many faces around the country."

   As Rachel Maddow sez, Watch This Space.

1. Speaking of universe shattering, did you feel the shockwaves from Trey Gowdy's EPIC speech on the floor of the House on Wednesday? Bet you did, since Fox Nationhad this headline:

   

   Gowdy gave a speech about how the Preznit has to enforce ALL the laws, not just the ones he likes. We're totally looking forward to the federal task force that checks Gowdy's compliance with traffic laws. One turn without signalling and that sucker's headed to Guantanamo.

1. In News of Responsible Gun Owners, we have this story of Home Defense: A Texas man shot and killed his daughter's boyfriend after the 16-year-old girl sneaked the 17-year-old into her bedroom. The girls' little brother saw them and got the dad, who confronted the boy. When the daughter said she didn't know him, the father called 911, but then got into an argument with the boy. When the kid "dropped his hands as if to grab something," the concerned parent responsibly shot the home invader to death. CBS reports that the case will go to a grand jury to determine whether the father, whose name has not been released, will be charged with a crime.

1. We also learned that Curtis Reeves, the Florida Man and responsible movie-theater vigilante who shot Chad Oulson to death after an argument about Oulson's texting during the previews for a movie, had himself sent a text from the theater to his son shortly before confronting Oulson about the rude phone use that he had to die for. But where Oulson was rudely preventing others from enjoying the previews, Reeves had a very good reason for sending his text a short time before -- he was replying to his son, who had texted to say he'd be late for the movie, to let him know that Reeves and his wife were already in their seats. It is not known, however, whether the lights had yet gone down when Reeves sent his text, which is apparently the deciding factor in whether it's OK to responsibly shoot someone over texting in Florida theaters.

   Reeves contends that he killed Oulson in self-defense, since Oulson had thrown a bag of popcorn in his face, which made Reeves fear for his life.

1. And advocate for responsible firearm ownership Larry Pratt, president of Gun Owners of America, explained that the responsible gun owners of Connecticut who are refusing to comply with the state's new restrictions on ownership of some weapons are the moral equivalent of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, because of course they are. This was a followup to his recent observation that he's really glad that anti-gun members of Congress have "a healthy fear" of being shot:  "You know, I’m kind of glad that’s in the back of their minds,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll behave.” Not that there's any conflict between those two particular ideas.

1. President Barack Obama said in an interview with Ryan Seacrest that, despite the opinion of fashionista Sarah Palin, he thinks that he's been unfairly criticized for his choices in denim:

   "I’ve been unfairly maligned about my jeans,” he joked in a radio interview with Ryan Seacrest. “The truth is, generally I look very sharp in jeans."

   One fashion faux pas at the 2009 MLB All-Star baseball game was a costly learning experience, he added.

   "There was one episode like four years ago in which I was wearing some loose jeans mainly because I was out on the pitcher’s mound and I didn’t want to feel confined while I was pitching and I think I’ve paid my penance for that," he explained. "I got whacked pretty good. Since that time, my jeans fit very well.”

   This ends your Barack Obama jeans-whacking news.

1. The latest meatpuppet to house the free-floating tea party Id, Dr. Ben Carson, explained to a standing-room-only crowd last week that American government and institutions in 2014 are "very much like Nazi Germany." This completely novel insight, virtually unheard-of in American politics, was well received by the crowd, who were later observed to be fascinated by a shiny bit of foil blowing across the floor. By way of explanation, Carson detailed the eerie parallels:

   “You had the government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”

   Carson warns that our country is in a precarious position, and that political correctness coupled with government intimidation prevents open and honest dialogue. He went on to say that this state of our culture is “creating a horrible schism that will destroy our nation.”

   Commenters on the Breitbart.com thread found Carson's observation quite controversial, and could not agree whether America more closely resembles Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, or perhaps more like North Korea.

1. And finally, Ohio state Rep. Andrew Brenner recently posted a blog entry explaining that since Wikipedia defines socialism as "a social and economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy," then we need to recognize that public schools are a form of socialism, too, because public education "is owned and cooperatively managed by the public." This is just logic, you see. And in fact, says Brenner, the Tea Party may just be a little too soft on the socialist threat, since they're always calling Obama a socialist, but

   they rarely (if ever) bring up the fact that our public education system is already a socialist system. and has been a socialist system since the founding of our country.

   The solution, says Brennan, is to follow the model of what happened when the communist USSR came to an end:

   sell off the existing buildings, equipment and real estate to those in the private sector ... Bust up the education monopolies and do not settle for the lowest common denominator. Privatize everything and the results will speak for themselves.

   Frankly, we can't wait for more Republicans to start advocating exactly that, as loudly as they can.

[ Idaho Statesman / NewsBlaze via Birther Report / FoxNation / KHOU via RawStory / CBS News / CBS News again   RightWingWatch / RightWingWatch again / TPM / Breitbart / Brenner Brief via RawStory ]

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