Derp Roundup: Rand Paul Explains How Not Deporting People Is Just Like WW II Internment Camps

Yes, it's another Derp Roundup, where we steam-clean our browser tabs of stories that were too stupid to ignore, mix the slurry with booze, and serve it up to you. Consume carefully!

• Our Top Derp comes from Rand Paul, who approaches every topic as if it were a late-night discussion in a college dorm. He's found the perfect historical parallel for Barack Obama's executive order on immigration: It reminds him of nothing so much as Franklin Roosevelt's infamous Executive Order 9066, the 1942 order that sent all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast to internment camps. Wow, the two actions really are similar, in that they are executive orders! On Friday, Paul explained why not deporting undocumented immigrants is surprisingly similar tolocking up U.S. citizens behind barbed wire:

  "I care that too much power gets in one place. Why? Because there are instances in our history where we allow power to gravitate toward one person and that one person then makes decisions that really are egregious," Paul said. "Think of what happened in World War II where they made the decision. The president issued an executive order. He said to Japanese people 'we're going to put you in a camp. We're going to take away all your rights and liberties and we're going to intern you in a camp.'"

  "We shouldn't allow that much power to gravitate to one individual. We need to separate the power."

  Of course, it's worth recalling that Rand Paul thinks all executive orders are tyrannical, including the Emancipation Proclamation (no act of Congress there, either), although he has generously promised not to rescind that one.

• In what appears to be a real news story, the Croatian Times informs us that the local council of Tuszyn, Poland, has rejected a proposal to adopt Winnie-the-Pooh as a mascot for a local playground, because the plush ursine is a pantsless pervert of indeterminate gender. Let's say it together: Silly old PedoBear.

  Councillor Ryszard Cichy, 46, said: "The problem with that bear is it doesn’t have a complete wardrobe.

  "It is half naked which is wholly inappropriate for children."

  He then suggested a Polish fictional bear, saying: "Ours is dressed from head to toe, unlike Pooh who is only dressed from the waist up."

  Another official reportedly objected, "It doesn’t wear underpants because it doesn’t have a sex. It’s a hermaphrodite."

  In a shocking example of journalistic sensationalism, Gawker's Jay Hathaway claimed that the fictional plushie had been "banned" from the playground for his ambiguous gender status, when in fact Mr. The-Pooh had simply been rejected as a mascot. There is no indication that the council will take any steps to prohibit the character. We would say more, but Tonstant Nitpicker fwowed up.

• Like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann before him, rightwing "film" maker and convicted vote-frauder Dinesh D'Souza wants to get into some hot spanking action with the President of the United States.

  D’Souza called Obama an “extremely spoiled brat” who has “been a spoiled brat since he was two,” insisting that the president is acting like a misbehaved infant who wants to “see whether you spank him or not.”

  “And the big question is, will the Republicans now do what is needed and spank him?” D’Souza asked.

• In further news of the ongoing outbreak of Bad Analogy Syndrome, Travis Kalanick, CEO of technojitney concern Uber, explained that his company's problems with bad press -- particularly one of his own executives' dumb suggestion that the company should dig up dirt on media critics -- sometimes make him feel like a childless mother. According to attendees at a Goldman Sachs party for "bankers and tech tycoons" in Las Vegas, Kalanick told the loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires that Uber's struggles with Las Vegas taxi regulators reminded him of Ferguson, Missouri. Sadly, no tape (yet), but one person in attendance tweetedabout it:

  

  To be fair, maybe Kalanick wasn't saying that Las Vegas taxi regulations shot an unarmed teenager to death -- maybe he was simply saying that the regulations were tear gassing him and shooting him with "pepper balls." Whatever the exact analogy, he at least managed to get a gasp out of the attendees. As PandoDaily's Paul Carr notes,

  It takes real effort to make an entire roomful of bankers gasp at your insensitivity. It also shows that, despite his company being pilloried on every front page in America, the CEO of Uber really, really doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks.

• Speaking of Ferguson, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar had a little revisionist history lesson for America this week: Despite what you thought you saw on teevee this summer, his Keystone Storm Troopers absolutely did not lob tear gas at a single peaceful protestor. In an interview with St. Louis Public Radio, Belmar explained that despite loose phrasing in press reports, his officers didn't use "rubber bullets" against protestors, because “(If) they’re actually rubber bullets, they’ll kill you." Instead, they used those "pepper balls," projectiles that merely hurt like hell, leave bruises all over whoever they hit, and dispense a little pepper spray to get the point across. But none of the St. Louis County arsenal was used against peaceful protestors, because if you're getting gassed, you obviously asked for it:

  We did use tear gas. We did use smoke. We did use pepper balls — different things such as that. We did use armored trucks. But you know what? We didn’t use those on peaceful protesters. We used that on unfortunate criminal activity that spun out of the protest.

  Belmar didn't explain what crime was being committed by journalists who were videotaped getting gassed, but why would he have any reason to lie about that sort of thing?

By now, you may well need a kitty cat. Thankfully, the internet is pretty good at providing those:  

And finally, just in case you may have missed it, here's a little blind screech owl who just might be GOD:  

Yr Wonkette could certainly get behind a deity that eats mice and can turn its head 180 degrees. Owl-ahu Akbar!