Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

The revolution will be supervised.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Occupy the Toybox

Occupy the Toybox

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Lego figurines, Kinder surprises and other toys played the role of ‘demonstrators’.
Photograph: Sergey Teplyakov/vkontakte

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I would love this even I didn’t have a half-dozen tchotchkes on my desk right now. From the Guardian:

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: “I’m for clean elections” and “A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”.
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“Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests,” Andrei Mulintsev, the city’s deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. “In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event.”
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Activists set up the display after authorities repeatedly rejected their request to hold a sanctioned demonstration of the kind held in Moscow to protest disputed parliamentary elections results and Vladimir Putin’s expected return to the presidency in a March vote.
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Passersby admired the display with giggles, but police took it more seriously, examining its details and writing down each placard…

Worth clicking the link just to read the comments. I’m looking forward to seeing what American protestors can achieve with their homespun Makerbots and the fast-advancing field of 3D printers.

And then, * sigh *, there is the state-sanctioned “creative play” of this guy, complete with gender-biased color insult:

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  8. 8.

    daveNYC

    I believe they snared it by jamming the remote signal, then feeding it fake GPS data that convinced it that it was at its home base that it should land (since it couldn’t detect the actual base signal). Once it was down, pretty easy to stick the thing in an area with a shitton of jammers and/or some sort of Faraday cage.

  9. 9.

    lamh35

    So all these polls have Romney with 15-20% leads over Gingrich in FL. Anyone else getting a de ja vu of New Hampshre in these numbers???

    Wasn’t candidate Obama in the leads in the polls going into NH primary in ’08? Then what happened…Hilary C actually won NH. Now I don’t think that Newt’s gonna win FL, but I would not be at all surprised if Newt closes the gap on Romney tomorrow. Especially since the Palins are now in his corner (Todd reportedly gonna be making robo-calls, Sarah all but endorsing Gingrich on FoxNews the past few days) and with the numbers out that say that Mittens has spent 15 million so far to Newt’s 3 millions in negative advertisements (negative ads do work, but they also tend to bring down the numbers of the opponent using negative ads) and what you have is a pretty perfect storm for which Newt can comeback from.

  12. 12.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    @MikeJ:

    me and toner cartridges have a long standing rivalry.

    i imagined it would be something like that, i would think the money would be in making the product that makes the product. that is until the technology leaps into multiple and then many more grades of material.

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    @lamh35:

    I’m thinking (and hoping) that Newt will do better than the powers that be expect.

    Lot of angry voters out there.

    @JPL:

    Gave up on the Obama youtube. Too slow on my MacBook.

  14. 14.

    JPL

    @Elizabelle: It’s great. One person called whose husband was out of work. He’s an engineer and the government is still issuing visas for engineers. He spoke about civil engineers having a tough time because we are not spending enough money on infrastructure. She wasn’t pleased with his answer and he asked what type of engineer her husband was and she said semi-conductor. His response was for her to send the husbands resume to him because he would like to know the answer to that.
    The questions are tough..

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @lamh35: my recollection is Obama got a big bump out of Iowa, and it was more than HRC lost a lead and got it back, but that’s off the top of my head. I’d be surprised at this point if Newton Leroy can finish less than ten points behind, pleasantly surprised, but surprised.

    Watching Tweety, what surprised me is how much Joe Scarborough seems to hate Willard.

  16. 16.

    lol

    @lamh35:

    Aside from the closed primary mentioned above, voting has been going on for a couple weeks already in Florida. Every day, Romney has been banking that lead.

    Now, sure, lots of people will vote tomorrow, but Gingrich will have to absolutely destroy Romney with those voters to even make it close, and there’s no sign of that happening.

  18. 18.

    Egg Berry

    @JPL: He’s also gotten a couple of drone questions and college debt. and the people asking the questions are doing a better job than the washington press corpse, holding his feet to the fire.

  22. 22.

    JPL

    Most of the questions are related to the economy but as egg berry mentioned drones and foreign policy questions were addressed. The questions show that we have a shitty media because they never approach this level of intelligence.

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    @Egg Berry:

    Plz let me know if you hear the youtube appearance will be broadcast later. Maybe C-Span, after the fact? (Checking on that now…)

    Wouldn’t it be awesome if, for a week or two, you replaced the DC press corpse with college students and other intelligent Americans?

    They’re not into the horse race. They’re concerned about the society and environment we live in.

  25. 25.

    kay

    David Koch:
    The Mormon card?
    Newt Gingrich?
    No one could have predicted that, certainly :)
    Maybe he can combine food stamps and Mormons, and just blow this wide open.

  26. 26.

    Egg Berry

    @Elizabelle: I’m not sure if it will be on cspan, but i’m sure it will be archived on youtube. It was actually using google hangout to host the questioners. As I type this, the message on the youtube channel is “miss the interview? check back shortly for the full video.”

  28. 28.

    freelancer

    @Elizabelle:

    President Obama on Youtube in a few.

    Wingnuts are going to jump on this quote:

    Med Student: Mr. President, in 10 years when I’m done with school and residency and all that, can I be your personal doctor?”
    POTUS: “Well, I have a doctor right now, he’s in the military, but 10 years, I don’t know, presumably, I’ll be out of office by then, so who knows?”

    OMG, Obama threatens to abolish elections and stay on as dictator!

  31. 31.

    JPL

    @jl: He also started to say there were 22 million jobs in three months but corrected himself. Drudge could lead with that.

  33. 33.

    Cain

    Just finished watching on the youtube hangout with the prez. It was pretty fun. More of this please. More interactiosn with normal folks instead of the fucking washington press.

    Fabulous!

  35. 35.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Benjamin Franklin:

    Do you know what fix there is for Flash?

    There really isn’t a fix for flash (badump bump), but you should be able to get the YouTube videos in HTML5 format, which would play fine.

  40. 40.

    General Stuck

    Drat, I’m in a bloggy mood, and all the FP’ers are apparently picking their teeth in Poughkeepsie

  42. 42.

    pseudonymous in nc

    I don’t know if the pollsters have been running crosstabs on the number of sampled voters who’ve already voted, but I imagine that the handful of days in the Newtmentum window wasn’t enough to bank votes. Nate Silver’s projection is just under 45%, and that’s about what I’d go for — and if he gets in the upper 40s, you’re going to hear the establishment GOP trying to slam the gate hard in the faces of the Anyone But Mitt brigade.

  44. 44.

    Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Watching Tweety, what surprised me is how much Joe Scarborough seems to hate Willard.

    Not surprised. Romney is just sane enough looking to be the establishment pick and simultaneously so horrible as a candidate that he can’t possibly win. He’s like a really yummy looking treat that actually tastes like shit, so it’s twice as bad as just a shitty looking treat that tastes like shit.

  45. 45.

    scav

    Has been rather a dull day but I guess we’ve now got the obligatory suit about a campaign song. Anyone want to guess in lieu of new post? Song and Candidate. Don’t peek here.

  48. 48.

    brettvk

    I made Google stop using my personal info to set ads before me, and in revenge they start posting nekkid ladies on old cars. Make it stop. Ain’t nothing premium about this blog ad.

  51. 51.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @brettvk: Maybe if we make enough comments about $hoe$, they will show us some pretty ones? Nekkid chick isn’t doing it for me, either, plus I’m at work and I do try not to frighten the horses.

  52. 52.

    Roger Moore

    @brettvk:
    Actually, that one seems to be run by blogads, rather than Google. They don’t do the same kind of targeting, which is why everyone is complaining about the same ad. They also don’t seem to do good taste, which is a secondary reason why everyone is complaining. IIRC, they were also responsible for the naked, three armed Pam Anderson.

  54. 54.

    Laertes

    My workplace is pretty open-minded, and that’s a tame photo as nudes go, but it’s still a bit more NSFW than you’d expect at a site like this.

  55. 55.

    eataTREE

    Gee. I show up to make some lame blogad-related joke about politicians and whores, and like nine people have beat me to the punch. I need to find some blog to read where everyone isn’t quite as smart as this one.

  56. 56.

    Lyrebird

    Come on baby, inflate my tire????

    Had missed the ad before people pointed it out. I would expect the ad on Wonkette rather than here, and even the PETA prn is tamer than the ad — interesting.

  57. 57.

    brettvk

    “Mutually Beneficial Arrangements”…yeah, that’s a winning formulation. Prostitution was never so effectively marketed.

    ETA: Sir Terry was more clever: “Negotiated Affection” would probably get more clickthroughs.

  58. 58.

    gbbalto

    Why don’t I ever get p0rn on this site? Everyone bitches and moans about the naked lady and I cannot help them out because of censorship!

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