How is it possible that we’re only ten days into the new year and we’ve already found the dumbest idea of 2007? Brace yourself for an idea so bad, it could only come from Stan Lee :

TVGuide.com: I heard you have a POW! project with Ringo Starr. What’s that all about?
Lee: Well, after Mosaic, we have one called The Condor or El Condor that features a Latino superhero, because I felt we have a need for more of those. After that, our next one will be Ringo. I was talking to Ringo the other day, and I said, “You know, I feel it’s my duty to make you more famous.” So it’s my attempt to make Ringo more famous. He’ll kill me when he hears this.

TVGuide.com: You’re going to make a Beatle more famous?
Lee: Sure. The world doesn’t know he’s a great adventurer, who has saved civilization many times. They will learn that when they see our little DVD. He’s going to do the voice and the music.

TVGuide.com: It’s not going to be anything like Caveman, is it?
Lee: No. It’s going to be like that movie out now with the three singing girls….

TVGuide.com: Dreamgirls?
Lee: Yes. This is like a masculine version of Dreamgirls, only it features just one man.

Ringo Starr as a superhero adventurer – slash – “masculine version of Dreamgirls”. This sounds so stupid I’ve gotta see it.

As the old joke goes, how can you tell when Pat Robertson is lying? His lips are moving.

In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in “mass killing” late in 2007.

“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

I’m sure Pat’s latest prediction is scaring the money right out of wallets all over the country, but I wonder if it’ll be as successful a fundraising tool as this one from May :

In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America’s coastline this year.
. . .
“If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms,” Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he added, “There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest.”

Or this prediction from March :

On the March 7 broadcast of Christian Broadcasting Network’s The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson pronounced that there will be a new vacancy on the Supreme Court by “the end of this year.” Robertson did not say what led him to believe a vacancy would open, why it would open, or which justice would be leaving the high court.

Or these predictions from early 2005 :

“Well, the Lord has some very encouraging news for George Bush … What I heard is that Bush is now positioned to have victory after victory and that his second term is going to be one of triumph, which is pretty strong stuff. … He’ll have Social Security reform passed. He’ll have tax reform passed. He’ll have conservative judges on the courts. And that basically he is positioned for a series of dramatic victories which I hope will hearten him and his advisers. They don’t have to be timid in this matter because the wind is blowing at his back, and he can move forward boldly and get results.”
. . .
“2005 will be another good year for the world. The terrorist threat will diminish. Nations will walk in peace, but it will be an illusion. The peril to Israel is greater now than it has ever been for she will be seduced into a false peace that will leave her vulnerable.”

Or this one from the 1998 :

On the June 8 edition of his “700 Club” show, Robertson denounced Orlando and Disney World for welcoming gay tourists to the theme park during a privately sponsored “Gay Days” weekend. Robertson predicted dire consequences.

Noting that the city government allowed the display of rainbow flags on light poles, the TV preacher warned that acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombs and “possibly a meteor.”

Or his prediction that the world would end in the fall of 1982. Sorry Pat, but I’ll take my phony predictions from a more reliable source :

We all know how much George Bush loves to play dress-up…

…but this morning he wore the most outrageous costume of all. He dressed up as a budget hawk. As his seventh year of his presidency is beginning, Mr. “My Only Veto Was Stem Cell Research” has suddenly decided that earmarks need to be stopped. Cute.

Just as predictable as the President’s newfound love of fiscal responsibility is his favored method of stopping earmarks, that conservative greatest hit, the line-item veto. Does the President really think the new Democratic Congress is going to heed his demands that they give an unpopular president who couldn’t balance a budget to save his life the right to pore through their bills to pick and choose which spending items are unworthy of passage? Just the sort of arrogance you’d expect from a guy who already uses his signing statements as a de-facto line-item veto anyways. Earmarks are a serious problem, but giving the executive branch the ability to shred the work of the legislative isn’t the answer.

Luckilly, not that it would phase this president, the line-item veto is unconstitutional.

Editor & Publisher has a rundown of the voyeuristic and bloodthirsty media coverage of Saddam Hussein’s death. Although newspapers had a dilemma to face over which photos to print, their peers on television had it even worse. Not only did they have to contend with a live event that may or may not be happening on a Friday night, but they had to figure out a way to film their on-air personalities without showing their massive erections.

The glee that has accompanied the execution of Saddam Hussein is ghoulish. If anyone deserved to die, Saddam did, but it doesn’t make the American response any less shameful. It’s like our entire country is a big, torch-wielding mob…by proxy. Every aspect of Saddam’s trial and imprisonment was done by the Americans, but the actual killing was done by Iraqis. The news channels pat themselves on the back for their decency for not showing the actual moment of Saddam’s death, but giddily report that video has “leaked” (code-words for “look for it on Google”). For all the moral certainty of those who have cheered for Saddam’s death, they sure are a bunch of cowards.

And, it goes without saying that this incident, like everything else related to this foolish war, was a monumental, disgraceful, and preventable clusterfuck.