And now for something completely different from whacko right wing bizarro land

[CatWoman]

[robinlynne]

1. funny.

[live love laugh]

77. No. Pathetic. n/t

[BattyDem]

2. So ... Congress changed the amount of daylight coming from the sun?

:rofl:

[Mandate My Ass]

3. Just the librul ones

What a moran! Priceless. :rofl:

[JuniperLea]

21. They are so much more powerful than the last Congress!

The Republicans just don't have the network that the Democrats have!

I think we should lobby Congress to get rid of hurricanes next. And we all need to get our family picnic dates in so we can make sure it doesn't rain! And there's this ballgame next week...



:rofl:

[tabasco]

4. Can this be for real?

This just seems too stupid to be for real.

:shrug: Then again, how stupid do you have to be to support the Bush mafia and believe Rush Limbaugh?

[flamin lib]

5. Yeah, that extra hour of daylight is hard on the crops too. Burns 'em

right up . . .

[CatWoman]

10. but what about "ME"???????

getting up an hour earlier is really cutting into my sleep time :)

I am NOT a morning person :hangover:

[BOSSHOG]

6. This is a well thought out letter

Its a fact that mankind can add an EXTRA HOUR OF SUNLIGHT to the earth. Connie is right on the money here. But she should be grateful, now she has more time to gather the stones she will use on those who work on the next sabbath. Or is that part of the bible that those wacky christians pass on? I think its what one who is smarter then me refers to as cherry picking. You go Connie. You keep writing those letters.

[mike_c]

7. this is what happens...

...when cousins marry.

[maxrandb]

13. Or get their news exclusively from Faux and the Limpball Show

[CatWoman]

53. also, she has her facts wrong

as it was the REPUBLICAN Congress that passed the Energy Bill in which that provision is included.

[louis-t]

8. Naw, no way could anyone be this stupid.

Could they? Has Exxon/Mobil been pumping MTSB into the water system in Arkansas again?

[nolabels]

95. Just for starters, a suggestion * would be

I wouldn't consider that in the classical sense but more of kind of ignorance to the world that surrounds the ones being pointed out. That is to say they might be that stupid but it is hard to tell because of how poorly they are processing the information about the world around them. Thus the chicken and the egg.

[NV Whino]

9. You just can't make these things up

:rofl:

[Catherine Vincent]

11. Oh my! I was in Hot Springs yesterday.

I should have looked her up. :)

[sandnsea]

12. Bill Clinton's hometown

*sigh*

Wouldn't it be nice to think we could at least get Bill's hometown educated. Just one town in America.

And Arkansas has 2 Dem Senators, 4 out of 5 Dem Congressmen, a Dem Governor and State House.

Almost all Dem.

So close and yet so far.

[Jacobin]

61. I think Bill grew up in Hope, not Little Rock

Not that it matters much

[Catherine Vincent]

66. He grew up in Hope and Hot Springs.

He didn't live in Little Rock until much later. The person that send the lte is in Hot Springs.

[Nevernose]

109. And used to eat at McClard's Bar-B-Q

He is a man with excellent taste...



http://www.mcclards.com/

[gatorboy]

81. Well let's not get too carried away with the insults.

Signing in from Hot Springs, Arkansas :hi:

[sandnsea]

83. Well it is sad

I'd be upset if it were in my own paper and I wouldn't be upset if somebody said it would be so nice if we could get one blue city in America thoroughly educated either.

[gatorboy]

85. So you're going to base a population's cerebral average on a single letter?

This must be the elitist attitude I keep hearing about. :eyes:

You should probably read up on the artistic/film contributions my city has made before deciding whether we can tie our shoes properly.

And I can't understand half your sentence. It's missing punctuation in a few places.




Signed,

The (somewhat) Educated of Hot Springs ;)

[sandnsea]

96. You're doing that at this point

Seeing as how you're intentionally misinterpreting what I said - or need some more of that education yourself.

There's obviously one stupid person in Hot Springs, the one in the letter. Consequently, the entire town, the home town of Bill Clinton, isn't educated. Correct?

Now how do you take the obvious - and exaggerate that into a slur on the whole town?? Saying that it'd be nice to get at least Bill Clinton's home town completely educated, and that the majority of Arkansans are Dems - actually means I think the majority are on the right track, but there's still work to do.

That would even be true of Portland, or my blue state. Did you see the idiocy about gays that one of our state reps was rambling about? It was awful. Gee, it'd be nice to have ONE blue state completely educated, don't you think?

[gatorboy]

98. No one's intentionally misinterpreting anything

You said, "Wouldn't it be nice to think we could at least get Bill's hometown educated." in your original post. That has the stuffy air of condescension.

But hey, I'm willing to believe that you didn't mean what you wrote and let by-gones be by-gones. :hi:

[sandnsea]

100. I meant exactly what I wrote

I didn't mean what you read. So there's no bygones to let be gone.

[niyad]

14. alas, this is not the first person I have heard making this statement.

[Fire Walk With Me]

15. Perhaps if we close our eyes, the sun can't warm the earth as much.

Wow, is that LTTE for real? Whew!

[Jackpine Radical]

16. A brilliant, subtle piece. I wish I had written that.

Yeah, I do think Connie knew what she was doing.

[vickitulsa]

17. It boggles the mind how they can be so hilarious and so pathetic at the same time!

Makes it hard to laugh my ass off at them because they scare me so damn much!

Yeah, blast that "liberal Congress" for changing how much warmth the earth gets by changing the time!

Truly beyond belief, what they can come up with....


:eyes: :crazy: :argh:


(Bet Connie hates the name of their local newspaper too! ;))

[Supersedeas]

18. I am floored -- did the liberaalll edumacation system generate this?

[Burma Jones]

19. The Onion is jealous

It's getting harder to tell the difference between satire and reality.

[GreenPartyVoter]

22. LOL

[Celeborn Skywalker]

20. I hope that's satire.

No one can be that stupid, right? Right????

[Oilwellian]

23. I wouldn't have thought this was real....

if you didn't painstakingly cut the LTTE out of the paper, scan it, dump it and then post it here in all of its glory.

Stunning. The editors of the paper must have had a good laugh. Or did they?

[Lobster Martini]

24. Darn that liberal congress!

They'll be changing the tides next, just to prove that beach erosion exists, or manipulating tectonic plates...ok, I have no idea where I was going with that one.

[Beaverhausen]

25. Shouldn't that headline say "warming" not "warning"?

even the headline writer got confused by this!

[tmlanders]

26. I saw a similar rant in a local Maine paper...

The writer wanted us to look at the bright side of global warming like, you know, tropical temperatures in winter in Maine! He apparently doesn't realize that the population of the planet will be moving north in search of water and livable temperatures. Hope he likes all the new neighbors from "away"!

[wryter2000]

46. Welcome to DU

:hi:

I've only been to Maine once, but the folks there didn't strike me as the type who'd love to be overrun by hordes from other parts of the country.

[evlbstrd]

27. It ain't just Freepers.

A DUer posted the same misguided idea that DST actually adds an hour of daylight.

[SoCalDem]

28. Well. Here's a NEWSFLASH for ya.

[Javaman]

29. ow...just ow...that made my brain hurt. nt

[KayLaw]

30. Oh, dear.

And you have to wonder how many people in Hot Springs are reading this and nodding their heads.

[uppityperson]

31. I hope it is satire.

[On the Road]

32. I Wonder If Connie Meskimen is Related to Laszlo Toth

[MLFerrell]

34. No, but undoubtedly related to Laszlo Panaflex...

:rofl:

[Stinky The Clown]

I;m surprised someone that stupid can actually write understandable

sentences. Illogical. But understandable.

I wonder if she learned about this 'warming' at some church someplace?

[MLFerrell]

33. Nobody could actually be THIS stupid...

I refuse to believe it. This HAS to be parody. Besides, what newspaper editor would be dumb enough to run this?

[gilpo]

39. Uh, 251,000,000 americans? eom

[MLFerrell]

69. Where did you get that number from?

If it's *'s alleged vote tally in '04, I believe it was ~60 million and change. I remember some British paper's headline the day after the election that said, "How can 59,xxx,xxx people b so stupid?"

In any case, voting for * was stupid. But the author of this LTTE is STUPID.

If I may make an analogy, voting for * was stupid on the scale of a house aflame. The idiocy of the LTTE author is more akin to a full-blown nuclear holocaust.

[gilpo]

88. Sorry, that was the number I was thinking of, the 60MM

I seemed to have slightly exaggerated it, though. My bad.

[HughBeaumont]

35. I don't know who's dumber:

Hot Springs Connie or the Editor for printing this with the intention of seriousness.

[Gelliebeans]

36. I read on two separate blogs

that Connie is a lawyer, I wonder if she is looking to get on Gonzo's good list? :shrug:

[mcg]

63. Meskimen is a Bankrupcy and Wages/Commissions/Overtime lawyer

http://arkansas.statelawyers.com/Lawyer/Profile.cfm/AttorneyID:80186

I wonder if Meskimen really sent in this article,
if so, was it a joke? A publicity stunt? Or just idiocy?

[MLFerrell]

64. My vote is for the latter:

Sheer, unmitigated idiocy.

You can't make this stuff up. If this is satire, Meskimen could have a rather lucrative career at the Daliy Show or the Colbert Report.

[Hobarticus]

37. "Hi, I'm Connie Meskimen from Hot Springs, and I'm a moron."

Even better, she probably told everybody she knows that she's in the paper.

:rofl:

[roamer65]

48. She's a "moran".

;)

[Dora]

38. stupid on two counts!

The letter is stupid, but the headline is stupider.

:banghead:

[phylny]

40. Oh. My. God.

I needed the laugh today, and this didn't disappoint.

Oh, my.

[depakid]

41. Ms. Meskimen makes some excellent points

Americans are prepared believe anything, no matter how ridiculous. The past 12 years of Republican rule in Congress, along with the past 6 years of Bush have left people bereft of a healthy sense of sarcasm and satire. They've lost the ability to read beyond a headline, and are prepared to jump to preset conclusions, without thinking about (or looking into) an author's intentions....

signed: U. Ben Took.

[Uncle Joe]

42. Dayum, that must be some wicked smoke!

Probably some of that Christmas Tree with the little red hairs, sort of smells like sausage.

[Sweet Freedom]

43. Here's an online link to the letter

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/187608

[CatWoman]

52. thank you

:hi:

[Sweet Freedom]

97. You're very welcome /nt

[tavalon]

44. Wow

That's breathtakingly stupid.

[wryter2000]

45. Oh, lordy!

Can you imagine what the assistant said to the editor? "Do you really want me to run this one?"

:rofl:

[Cha]

47. connie, connie, connie..

perhaps you should stop listening to toyko rush and fauxnoise and think for yourself? :think:

What did you think of that republicon congress who lost some seats last year because of all the crooked scandals they were involved in? Did that enter your brainwashed infested mind?

Sit tight connie..others on the Planet will take up your slack.

[Sapere aude]

49. Man are we liberals powerful. We can add daylight? I guess that is intelligent design.

[MN ChimpH8R]

50. That woman is the daVinci of stupidity.

:crazy: :wtf: :dunce:

[A HERETIC I AM]

75. ...

:spray: :rofl: :spray: :spray: :rofl: :spray:

Holy shit, that's a funny line.

[iverglas]

92. funny thing -- that woman is A MAN

And a lawyer in Arkansas.

http://www.arb.uscourts.gov/orders-rules-opinions/opinions/evans/wayman.pdf
"Mr. Connie M. Meskimen, attorney for Defendant"

I wonder how many people are more likely to regard this as satire now ...

If it was, and one wonders how anyone could have got to be a lawyer and be that dumb, if it wasn't, then it was damned funny.

[Madspirit]

51. Hilarious!! Wow...

The stupidity of the Right knows no bounds.
Lee

[MLFerrell]

54. I sent this to Snopes...

Someone beat me to the punch, but here's a link to their article:

http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/daylight.asp


Apparently, it's real. As to whether it's intended as satire or not they didn't say.

In any case, LOTS of responses from Democrat-Gazette readers... Here are a few gems:


"I am baffled by your accepting, much less featuring, the letter about Daylight Saving Time. Did the editor accept the premise that our warmer March was due to the extra hour of daylight? Or was the intent to show how illogical those opposed to the concept of global warming can be?"

"With regard to the extension of Daylight Saving Time, I would like to point out that this measure was enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by a Republican president as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. So much for her vast, left-wing, liberal conspiracy."

"But perhaps her most bizarre thinking is that somehow Congress has created an extra hour of daylight out of thin air. Anyone with even a basic understanding of reality knows that the number of hours of daylight we have on any given day isn't altered by simply resetting a clock. We also know that this simple shift of time can help reduce the consumption of energy by delaying the increased need and use of electricity after sundown. Perhaps Meskimen can find an elementary school student to explain it to her."

"Well, we did "spring forward" a few weeks earlier than we have in the past. What I am confused about is, no matter whether our clocks are set forward one hour or back one hour, don't we continue to have the same amount of daylight hours every day? I have decided, though, to be very careful about my voting in 2008. Whether conservative or liberal, I don't want to be guilty of voting in someone who has that much power over our weather!"

:rofl:

Ah, freepers... If they didn't exist, who would we have to ridicule for willful stupidity?

[and-justice-for-all]

62. I GOT IT, I GOT..ITS ALL FIX'd NOW!!!!

I just moved my clock back an hour!! let me know if that got'r dun!

[Lex]

70. You is smart.

nt

[A HERETIC I AM]

73. Would you please put your clock back the way it was? I'm freezing now....

Dammit....It's cold outside now and i am in SW Florida. It's all your fault cause earlier it was really warm but now that the sun......has......gone .,,,,,,,down,,,,,,,

.





.






.. Never mind.

[tjwash]

55. DAMN! Them libruls done turned up the sun!

:rofl:


Thanks CW. After the effed up day I've had at work, I needed that laugh in the worst way!

:yourock:

[Decruiter]

56. Huh?

[CatWoman]

57. LOL

:rofl:

[tsuki]

58. Connie's been dippin' in them hot springs overly much. nt

[HCE SuiGeneris]

59. Them Librul Congressers are morans!!!1111!!!1

[and-justice-for-all]

60. If thats real...

..what a dumb and ignorant bitch. DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME does not effect the damn weather, for fucks sake. Thats just as dumb as creationism/ID...Get raptured already!! there is the Cyanide express.

[davekriss]

65. The "M" in her name stands for "Mark Twain"

No way she didn't intend the twistingly funny irony! (No one is that dumb ... right?)

[MLFerrell]

67. "(No one is that dumb ... right?)"

Sadly, there are indeed people that dumb. And I strongly suspect that this is one of them.

If this WERE satire, the author would have taken credit for his or her brilliance by now, as this is either the most subtle, pointed satire in the history of humor, or the author is a grade-A 'tard.

My money's on the latter prospect...

[Cleita]

68. Wow! That's the dumbest thing I have ever read.

She really thinks the government can control the weather with daylight savings time?

:rofl:

[Theres-a]

71. !

Thanks for sharing this.F'ing hilarious.

[jimshoes]

72. Do they make a smilie

for jaw droppingly stupid? :wow: This is close enough.

[BattyDem]

74. Stupid enough to make your brain explode

[A HERETIC I AM]

76. Does this deserve a "Smacktard" award? Yes. Yes it does.

Connie?

[MLFerrell]

78. Smacktard, hmmm...

Is that a 'tard who does heroin?

[TheGriz]

79. I hereby legislate that winter will be abolished...

and autumn will progress immediately into spring!

[Infomaniac]

80. Thanks for the howl

I'll be passing this one along to my lawyer friends.

[slampoet]

82. She's listed in the book.

But her address is Hot Springs National Park, AR

So who knows.

[Hobarticus]

84. UPDATE: She's an ATTORNEY!!!

http://pview.findlaw.com/view/1096575_1

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[CatWoman]

86. Gawd

Bush will probably nominate her to the Supreme Court :)

[iverglas]

93. just in case anyone misses my update above -- SHE'S A MAN

Paradigm shift.

[Hobarticus]

99. Well, I'll be dipped in global warming sauce....

That's the first man I've heard of with that name.

[MADem]

104. Actually--I'll bet you remember Connie Mack.,Fl Congressman?

It's a rare name for a guy, but he's the one that came to my mind...

http://mack.house.gov/

[Hobarticus]

105. Is that a regional thing?

Like, how some names are more common in diffrent parts of the country?

Interesting.

[MADem]

106. Could well be...like Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind (played by a dude named LESLIE Howard,

ironically...)....

And then there's that Boy Named Sue!!!!

[MADem]

103. Doncha mean...she's a MAN, baby!!!!!

[B3Nut]

94. And apparently a he, look upthread a bit

I knew a sax player named Connie years ago, only guy I never knew with that name. Great sax player, played at the Greenbrier.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[redwitch]

87. She forgot the sarcasm smilie

:-)

[Infomaniac]

89. I think this one's a candidate for Worst Person in the World

Or at least Oddball.

[RushIsRot]

90. I wondered what happened to my tomato plants!

This explains everything!

[Richard Steele]

91. You GOTTA be frickin kidding me! That must be satire. Just -HAS- to be. nm

[EnviroBat]

101. The sad part is...

There's probably some mouth-breathers reading this right now saying, "You know whut? I reckon she's right...", (scratches head, farts in toddlers face...)

[NoPasaran]

102. You'd think a Congress powerful enough to increase sunlight

Would be powerful enough to end the war, wouldn't you?

:shrug:

[iverglas]

107. and the last laugh seems to go to Mr. Meskimen

First, best LTTE about the letter in question:

"Re the letter from Connie M. Meskimen about Daylight Saving Time: Oh, please, please, please tell me that the date of that submission was April 1."


I suspect that Mr. Meskimen is as amazed at the dullwittedness of his audience as they thought they were at his.

Other letters written by Mr. Meskimen found on a search of the newspaper where the daylight savings letter appeared are reproduced below. Note the last one in particular.


http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/115665
Posted on Friday, May 6, 2005

I read Philip Martin’s recent column with profound sadness. Martin wrote, "When I had the chance to meet Saul Bellow, I did not care to meet him." The great novelist Bellow died an incomplete man, never having been afforded an opportunity to meet Martin. What a horrible and tragic loss to literature.

Just think what Bellow missed. He could have had the opportunity to meet the man who, in the same column, wrote: "Now he’s dead—like the Pope and Prince Ranier—and I mourn the man I didn’t know (and didn’t care to know) like some weepy teenager fashionably distressed by the overdose of some sad and pretty singer boy. I am just a fluttering crow, come to pick at noble bones."

Alas, if only Martin would just have agreed to meet him. Why, with a little help from Martin, Bellow could easily have won two or three more Nobel prizes for literature instead of just that one.

Bellow’s "The Adventures of Augie March" ends with a hearty laugh from ole Augie. Martin’s column certainly had the same effect on me.

CONNIE M. MESKIMEN
Hot Springs


http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/16016
Posted on Thursday, January 9, 2003

... According to reader Connie M. Meskimen, tonic water, also called quinine water, was developed by the British to make quinine palatable to troops in India suffering from malaria. "I would suggest then that by liberally imbibing gin and tonics you will experience a great curative effect. You might explore whether your health insurance would pay for part of the liquor bill."


http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/48211
Posted on Friday, December 26, 2003

I finally get it. I feel so stupid. Absolutely everyone must have known but me.

While reading Philip Martin’s column in which he used 12 or 13 hyphens and as many column inches to say that he reads Playboy only for the articles, and only then if the articles are about the erudite, it suddenly came to me: Martin is not a real person. He is a creation of Michael Storey, just like the columns written by the long dead Otus the Head Cat.

I know, the clues should have been obvious: the run-on hyphenated sentences; the William F. Buckley-size words; the endless prattle about his disdain for conspicuous consumption interspersed with his reports to the readers of his most recent experience with old scotch and fine dining in Paris. The self-indulgent "I know" columns by themselves should have been a dead giveaway. Then it came to me. No newspaper would print the likes of those columns unless they were satirical. So my congratulations to Storey on a hoax well executed. I can stand to read the columns now that I know they aren’t serious. I do wish, however, that he would spend a little less time on the Head Cat column and try to make Phil as interesting as Otus. To borrow a phrase from the fictitious Martin, I know Phil Martin. I don’t know what he wants.

CONNIE M. MESKIMEN


Huh.

[StarTurtle]

108. After reading the Snopes article with some of his other letters,

I've decided I like Mr. Meskimen. And I'll bet he's getting a huge laugh out of this thread.

[alarimer]

110. There's an equal amount of daylight

All they did was change the time for sunup and sundown. Daylength remains the same and it depends on where you are.