BETTERS’ READING 2012-2-14: I love the way you crush all my hopes and dreams, baby.

The Cockfight Family wishes that you and your love's Valentine's Day is bursting with Santorum.

Things people better than you worthless lessers have been reading.

-Happy Valentine’s Day, lessers! You’re all going to die alone and unhappy and go to Debtors’ Heaven, or, perhaps if you’re lucky and saved enough during your lifetime, Hell!

-As much as we hate that lying son of a bitch “Cal Alabaster, Jr.” and hope that a cat uses his dead wives’ ashes as litter, these politically themed valentines are quite heartwarming. Trust me: Nothing says “I love you” like Richard Shelby telling you your lover has earmarked their heart for you and the improvement of Tuscaloosa’s parking infrastructure. And as the fiancee and I can attest, there’s very little better than some manufactured holiday lovin’ with a federal kick-in… #SeventyThirtySplit

-Look, handing off the direction of Alabama’s two-year college system is not going to do worse to it than what the Board of Education has done to it now, which is essentially relegate most of the community colleges to being low-rent, come-and-go thirteenth and fourteenth grades. And shoot, if the State is going to grab its ankles to toss out all the incentives it can to get manufacturing companies to locate here, then having the people who are going to eventually hire workers for jobs in Alabama shape the training of people who could take those gigs is actually a pretty darn good idea.

That being said, the Cockfight Family would prefer such arrangement to have much more of an indentured servitude angle to it. You get your associate’s degree in something related to manufacturing, you spend twenty years paying us back by working at borderline nonexistent wages without any benefits.

It’s only fair…

-Rationale of a failed bill: “HOW DARE GOVERNMENT KEEP ME FROM BEING FORCED TO PAY FOR RECYCLING AND TRASH PICKUP AND THEREFORE MAKE SURE I ACTUALLY DO IT INSTEAD OF BURNIN’ MY SHIT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET! THERE ARE PRIVATE COMPANIES OUT THERE! PRIVATE! HOW DARE GOVERNMENT THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE IT CAN DO SOMETHING COST EFFECTIVELY AND EFFICIENTLY THAN THE PRIVATE SECTOR IT CAN! PRIVATE!

“ELBA’S TIRE RECYCLERS MUST BE FREED! SOLYNDRA!”

I believe you and I have different definitions of racism, black Jefferson County legislators.

Not racist.

So you know that whole referring-to-black-people-in-Greene-County-as-”aborigines” thing, the immigration bill that all-but requires the harassment of racially different schoolchildren that are legal citizens, the discussion of using free food and public transportation because they’re like black voters’ kryptonite that was probably the much more objectionable part of the “aborigines” tape that Scott Beason made knowing it would probably be played in open court?

Don’t worry about it.

Birmingham Representative John Rogers, along with three other black members of the Jefferson County legislative delegation, says ol’ Scott ain’t no racist:

ASDFafajsdla;fjda;lsfja;lsdkfjasdfwjoierjepwarioealaksdfjdlakfjblwa

Oh, sorry, that’s just what John Rogers sounds like to the untrained ear because he talks funny. Here’s what he actually said last week:

“I felt like Scott was getting a raw deal,” state Rep. John Rogers, D-Birmingham, said in an interview this afternoon.

Rogers and state Reps. Mary Moore and Juandalynn Givan, both Birmingham Democrats, signed a letter saying in part, “We know the man and Scott is not a racist.”

He’s just hyperracist, right?

Right?

BETTERS’ READING: Martha Roby is so conservative that atrophy has set in. Also: Signing Day!

This year's improper benefits of choice for recruits at UAB? Free tickets to Alabama games.

Things that people better than you worthless lessers have been reading.

-To accomodate the influx of new readership following our holy war against the liars at Weld for Birmingham, I have updated the Cockfight Family bios page. In my Ancestry.com commercial, I talk about how one of my grandmothers was a dyslexic whore and my Family’s patriarch used dead slaves as insulation.

-Today is National Signing Day: Remember, Alabama and Auburn football fans, obviously the kids your football team signs today to possibly play a down or two are much more important than, you know, the kids in South Alabama living in homes without running water because their parents do not have jobs because of the BP oil spill that certain oil companies want you to believe is all better now since some couple from Wisconsin saw the shark’s head at Souvenir City and thought it was cute.

But Roll Tide, okay?

The turtle and the harebrained.

I'm so sorry Mr. Turtle. I'm so very sorry for what Scott Beason is about to do to you...

Alabama’s unemployment rate is now below the national average, settling at 8.1 percent. At first glance, it is good news, but many have been willing to acknowledge that the figures may be gilded statistics due to the likelihood that the rate has dropped in large part due to seasonal hiring and unemployed workers exiting the hiring market.

Making improvements to Alabama’s economy is difficult at the moment because industry leaders have been spooked by Alabama’s harsh immigration law. Not because they want to employ illegal immigrants here, but because the over-the-top, poorly drafted “We hate Mexicans” bill was the equivalent of the State telling the world that we are all foaming at the mouth, putting on war paint, and firing any ordinance we can find at everyone who looks different than the rest of us. Because the global economy embraces diversity, such behavior is not very attractive to corporate leaders.

After repeated embarrassments following the law taking effect, State leaders have promised to change the law to make corporations less wary while still catering to the people who elected them, voters who remain quite convinced that brown people who speak Spanish are, in some ill-defined way, the cause of many of their personal problems.

The task with which legislators must deal necessitates that they strike a very precarious balance, and success will take tact and an intelligent assessment of what is really causing the things that benefit and ail Alabama.

Meanwhile, over at Fucktard Mountain in Gardendale…

BETTERS’ READING: Get to the choppers! Before they shoot your Medicaid!

Secret anti-helicopter device or really large interstate-adjacent reminder of, you know... Jesus?

Things that people better than you worthless lessers have been reading.

-Horrifyingly sad and creepy.

-There’s apparently a fifth guy in the AL-06 (“Douche-Belt“) GOP race, and he is the candidate who posts on Facebook that he thinks that a three-year-old Los Angeles Times story about a military training exercise with the LAPD involving black helicopters is a sign that the guvmint is about to send the Blackhawks to shoot up Gardendale’s First Baptist Church. But Al, they were training in LA! They’re obviously just going to go after all the black people! They just thought that might be something you would be into dude…

-As they stand to play a critical role in the race for not-Muslim not-president, a GOP congressional candidate reckons there’s some seriously fucked-up things going on in the heads of some of Florida’s Republican voters, including picturing the Solyndra people in the Cialis bathtubs for some reason.

It took me two days to figure out this ad’s message, which I reckon is that what liberals are excited about is going to be paid for by our kids—and that would, if simply stuck to, would have made a pretty excellent ad. Unfortunately, whoever made this ad decided to throw in so much deranged Republican shit that it kind of gets buried (in particular, the references to Occupy Wall Street and Anonymous make no damn sense). The “They’re driving us off a cliff” bit at the end would be great in a separate ad, but if you’re going to do a metaphorical ad, stick to one metaphor and play it to the end.

Sure, I puzzled it out because I think about these things an awful lot—other folks, like voters, don’t, which means this ad’s opaqueness and randomness makes it completely useless.

Though Alan Grayson as a parrot does haunt my dreams…

-Here‘s some vague protest about Alabama A&M sucking.

-Aw look, they still think that the University of Alabama System’s leaders really give a fuck about what they want. It’s so darn sweet…

-Governor Dr. Dr. Robert Bentley Dr. is wussing out on his plan to eradicate Alabama’s wasteful public education system. Governor, you are missing out on a cheap labor supply that will attract corporations from around the country by refusing to do what needs to be done. Do the right thing and we could have Apple! #ReturnToGreatness

-Speaking of innovative new ways to enslave people…

BETTERS’ READING: Jeff Foxworthy will teach your children how to discriminate against MoonPies, you goddamn ridiculous Southern caricature, you.

This has been more costly and pointless than Biloxi's Bathe-in-RC Valentine's Day Jubilee.

Things that people who are better than you worthless lessers have been reading.

-Fucking MoonPies.

-I’m sure you’ve read it several times over by now, but Newt’s Spaaaaaace Cooooast public masturbation fit yesterday afternoon is such a moment of unchecked ego and bombast that you really have to continue to behold it.

-Your sweatshirt is just too gay for Brookwood High School.

-When you you read the Huffington Post headline in a couple years about an absurd sentence being handed out for someone stealing a bunch of manhole covers or copper things from a graveyard—strange but true thing, some people don’t know taking things off graves is stealing because, um, lack of zombie comeuppance, I guess—look back at this story. The copper theft bill is otherwise fairly reasonable when you look at its practical legal effect (making the value of what is stolen measurable off the repair cost, which often dwarfs the value of the wire stolen by wire thieves), but making stealing manhole covers and copper grave decorations a felony? Shit, are we planning on farming all the people in our overpacked prisons for blood at some point? Somebody’s got to pay for this somehow.

-Huzzah to government and private companies actually getting something done in Hackleburg here in my neck of the woods, I just wish I didn’t have to permanently associate the product with Brett Favre’s penis.

-It may be a few more months yet before we figure out exactly how Alabama’s legislators will strip away black voters’ voices for the next decade.

-Warning, kids: Based on the subject matter, the final will be bullshit. But hey, whatever keeps you from burning churches.

-My God, Steve Harvey has aged poorly. Though be forewarned, this has-been-comedians-as-principals thing will only lead to Larry the Cable Guy as the Superintendent of Lauderdale County Schools. (This has already happened, most likely.) (#BacktoBackDayLauderdaleCountyJokeAchievementUnlocked.)

-But, but AirTran and the Huntsville Airport were a match made in Suck Heaven! You know, the place right next to Mediocrity Purgatory! You know! Down by the old outlet malls in Boaz!

BETTERS’ READING: Shake that ass at the Germans before Coffee County takes it away.

Things that people who are better than you worthless lessers have been reading.

-ThyssenKrupp, the German company that Alabama tossed millions at to build its steel plant in Mobile County, is considering selling that steel plant because it loses a lot of money. State leaders’ immediate response was to dial the nearest European manufacturer on FaceTime and press their genitals to the camera as directed, no matter how bizarre and tawdry.

-Oh my God Coffee County has a grant for a tire recycling program that the private sector cannot sustain because that’s how government works but holy crap its really somehow like Solyndra (really! Solyndra!) because they are “Alabama’s most out of control County Commission.” #FreeElba

-First of all, God-less liberal lesser press, the correct term is and always will be “chicken combat”—if we lose our trademark on the Edible Confederate Flags, we will fuck you up. Second of all, as owners of a maker of chicken combat implements and training videos, we will stand once again in the way of those who would force koala-man marriage upon us and penalize America’s third grandest and most noble animal bloodsport (behind manatee fights and hog-dog rodeos) into nonexistence in Alabama. And if you don’t believe us, our side has hired Ken Guin as lobbyist—and a crocodile ate and replaced the real Ken Guin three years ago. Try convincing one of nature’s most brutal reptilian death machines that your cause is viable, rooster-coddlers!

-Left in Alabama humors us all by not only somewhat pretending that Mo Brooks will lose AL-05, but that a black Huntsville City Councilman could win the congressional district housing the Land of Olive Garden-Consuming Carpetbagger Whitey that is Madison County.

-Heaven may think it has hired the best football coach in Joe Paterno, but that assumption overlooks the strength of Hell after Bear Bryant has been recruiting for them without NCAA or moral restrictions for more than thirty years.