from the Dick Armey memoirs

The fevered imagination of Tea Party shaman Dick Armey went into overdrive this week, causing him to confess his fantasies of having intimate knowledge about people of actual importance.   "When I heard that Newt had been carrying on an affair for all the years that we'd worked together," he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "I went home and said, 'Honey, I had no idea about this'. She said, 'Of course not. You're the last person in town Newt would have wanted to know about this'. Newt was scared of me." Because in his mind, Dick Armey is one extremely intimidating motherfucker. And yet, Newt would reveal so much more.   "Newt and Clinton actually developed sort of a bond over it," Armey revealed, reveling in his imaginary omniscience. "They had many meetings that we didn't know about where they'd drink wine and smoke cigars and talk about their girlfriends."   Wrap it up, you Dick.   "Politicians are fascinating. If you ever want to do developmental psychology, use them. They are much, much, much more skillful at developing rationalizations than developing rational thought."   "It's true," Gingrich and Clinton said in a written joint statement. "We did form a bond. We would get together, drink wine and smoke cigars, and talk for hours about what an enormous asshole Dick Armey was."

China unveils the mighty Tianhe-1A

The People's Republic of China has once again managed to totally piss off the Western World, in that smug, passive-aggressive manner that they deploy against us so often these days. It seems that whenever they're not hosting our Olympics or buying up our debt, they're bypassing our technology, often for no better reason than they 'just feel like it'. Now they've chosen to undermine us once again, this time by unveiling the world's fastest supercomputer, the mighty Tianhe-1A. The 155 ton supercomputer is said to be 1.4 times faster than what used to be the pride of America, the Cray XTB Jaguar, which is now locked in it's room and insisting on being called Lois. China's pretentiously named National University of Defense Technology claims that the machine's peak performance can reach 1.206 petaflops, which is a lot of flops indeed.   As is their wont, the Chinese even gave their machine a cooler name than anything an American developer has come up with for a computer. Tianhe is Chinese for 'Milky Way' and 1A is Chinese for 'simply the best'. The computer will be used to process seismic data for oil exploration, help design aerospace vehicles, and keep track of the interest on China's U.S. debt portfolio.   "What is scary about this is that the U.S. dominance in high-performance computing is at risk," said suspiciously named Virginia Polytechnic Institute supercomputer expert Wu-chun Feng. "One could argue that this hits the foundation of our economic future." To which we can only add 'duh'.   Not everyone, however, is all that impressed.   "Hey, they're using components manufactured by Intel and Nvidia," said Samuel J. Palmisano, CEO of the formerly respected IBM. "And what's this nonsense about 1.2 petaflops? That sounds like a made-up word to me. Of course if it's not, we're in real trouble."

The Breakfast Club, Part 9: The End?

Parts 1 to 8

Well, we're finally all here, Rahm, even though it took a couple of days. But all of us are on a really tight schedule. I've got a campaign event, Rob has to hit the stage, Shepard has to hit the set, Mister Ellison is racing his yacht, and I'm sure that Mister Soros is up to something both sinister and mysterious.

I'm busy too, trying to fix the economy, but it's not like I have a deadline other than sometime in 2012... It's kind of unrewarding work, in a way. I mean, you never know when you're done.

I thought you had to tape The Daily Show later.

Oh, right... Sorry, Rahm, I'm on a really tight schedule, too.

I know that it's a hassle for all of you to join me as a group, but the fact that none of you except for Rob is telepathic made this video conference a necessity.

Yeah, I learned telepathy from this blue disembodied head named Jambi back when I was a production assistant on Peewee's Playhouse. I'd be happy to give you guys some tips after I finish up my tour.

Rob, by the time your tour is finished, the election will be over and done, and if we can't stop the corporate overlords, it won't be long until the whole progressive dream is finished... I guess it's pretty much finished now, anyway, at least for this election cycle.

Well, you've always got Chicago, Rahm. I suppose that if worse comes to worse, I can always get a job at NPR or MSNBC... I'm afraid we don't have much good news.

At this rate, there won't be a NPR or MSNBC for long, Debbie, but I digress... I've tapped into most of the databases we were interested in, and it's pretty much what we suspected all along. Austan?

We know for a fact there's a lot of foreign money, but it's been co-mingled in a manner that would make tracking it a matter of months - months that we don't have. But the truth is, most of the big money is coming from the multinational corporations as well as a handful of very wealthy and powerful individual players.

sigh... I just wish some of our very wealthy and powerful individual players had been a little more forthcoming this year.

Hey, what can I say? Tell them, Mister Goolsbee, there's a recession going on.

And I was pretty much tapped out after 2008.

The sad fact is that pretty much everything we know for sure about the financing has already been reported throughout the media - for the few people that give a shit. It's all temporarily legal. We've got nothing.

Yeah... Well, the reason I wanted to get everyone together is to say that sooner or later, we will have something, and we need to stay with this. And just like Austan, our deadline is sometime in 2012.

You know there's got to be more. What about the Breakfast Club, Mister Soros? You told us that it had a secure side that even most members can't get inside of. What's going on in there?

I wish I knew. The one time I managed to sneak into the place, I only saw a few people access it. The Koch brothers, who were escorting Mitt Romney, and Blankfein, who brought in John Boehner.

We believe that it's some kind of indoctrination area where they train the politicos and pundits like Rove, Gingrich, and Limbaugh to be group organizers, but whatever else is happening in there we can only...

Rahm! Look out! Behind you!

**WHOMP**

Sorry about that, Mister Emanuel, but The Chairman figures maybe you need to be on ice for a little while.

Hey, take a look at this, Dante. The Red Man was talkin to some kind of a chat group. You recognize any of these people?

Lemme see... Yeah! Yeah, I think this one guy here is Rob Zombie. The guy who made those Halloween movies and 'The Devil's Rejects'.

Aw, crap. I shoulda known the Red Man would be talkin to some fuckin Hollywood dingleberries. C'mon, let's get movin. Svanberg wanted us to get this loser back to The Chairman pronto.

Bummer.

Bummer? At least they recognized you... As a newsman, I've got to ask a very important question. Is there any way we can avoid reporting this incident to the FBI? Because I'll tell you, if Murdoch were to find out I'm involved with you guys, I'd be better off faxing in my resignation from Timbuktu.

No doubt Rupert would be able to track you there, Shepard, but if worse comes to worse, I could find you something in Oracle's PR department. But I wouldn't worry, would you, George?

Perhaps a little worry might be in order, although I believe Mister Emanuel will be left very much alive. Oh, I expect he'll experience a bit of unpleasant debriefing, and most assuredly he will undergo an intensive session of brainwashing...

But still, shouldn't we...

They won't kill him, Debbie. Svanberg is a member of the Breakfast Club, obviously a rather prominent one. That's most likely where Rahm is headed now. Well, I'm afraid I also must be going. Toodeloo.

Yeah, I'm on the air in fifteen minutes. Sorry about what happened to Rahm...

Yeah, me too... See you guys.

My goodness, take a look at the time.

Well...

Well, what?

Well, aren't you just going to give up and walk away like the others?

No, man, my show doesn't start for another two hours.

Then maybe you could try that telepathy thing of yours and see if you can reach Rahm. Do you need to be high first?

Nah, I can't perform and still do that shit. But it does help if I'm wearing my sunglasses. Hold on...

Calling Rahm Emanuel...Calling Rahm Emanuel...Rahm, if you can hear me, we think they're taking you to the Breakfast Club. What should we do?...Rahm, pick up...

Anything?

Nah, but I woke some chick up out of her sleep.

Todd! Wake up! Todd, you're talking in your sleep!

Huh?

Don't you pull that innocent act on me, Todd. You were talking about Rahm Emanuel and how you wanted to take him to a breakfast club. Are you gay, Todd?

No, I...

You better not be, Todd, especially not with Rahm Emanuel. You know he uses the 'r' word.

Republican?

Retarded, you moron. Now you've got me wide awake with all your gay talk. I'm going to go Twitter.

To be continued?