House minority leader John Boehner, who recently said of Democrats “I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people.”, got all weepy today over the “solemn” debate on the President’s politically-motivated Iraq war escalation. Later, as part of his contribution to the debate, Boehner noted that “al Qaeda and terrorist sympathizers around the world are trying to divide us here at home”. Of course, Rep. Boehner would never try to be divisive now, would he?

The Smoking Gun has excerpts from an internal “vulnerability study” done by Rudy Giuliani’s 1993 campaign for mayor. There’s lots of embarrassing stuff for the doomed from the outset 2008 candidate (He married his second cousin. Ewww…), but one of my favorite parts is this quote from the cover of the 450 page doc. It looks like Rudy’s staff are even bigger tools than he is :

So, what does Sun Tzu have to say about pointing out every one of your weaknesses to the “enemy”?

I don’t begrudge CNN and the other news networks for hyping the hell out of the sudden death of Anna Nicole Smith (which, to be fair, is newsworthy). To paraphrase Chris Rock, complaining about the media giving a compulsive amount of attention to celebrity news is “like playing basketball with a retarded kid and calling him for double dribble.” Poor Wolf Blitzer, he just can’t help himself.

Where CNN (and I’m assuming some other networks as well) cross the line is the way they become involved in stories they should be covering in an objective manner. For example, CNN has turned their website into a virtual mourning grounds by collecting tributes to the former model and reprinting them. I can understand this sort of thing when the Pope or former presidents die, but why would CNN lend their site to devotional eulogies such as these :

“She died of a broken heart.”

“Watching her hurt was much to much. I pray that she has made peace with God. Bless her soul and Daniel’s.”

“Wow this is a huge shocker for me…I’m numb…I loved Anna as a person..a fighter..a mother…a partyer…a person with problems…a real tragedy…I’m sick at the news”

“May Anna Nicole find the peace in death that so evaded her in life. I have no doubt that she will become as iconic as Marilyn Monroe.”

…and these :

“I’m astonished at how sad I am about her death. I do not think I have ever said this about someone I did not know — but I will miss her.”

“Her passing is very sad and unfortunate and there will always be a unique void that will be empty since she is gone.”

“She was more like Marilyn Monroe than she thought. She had that same “lost little girl” look in her eyes. You know the old saying … the eyes are the mirror to the soul. Like Marilyn, Anna wasn’t a dumb blonde either.”

“All she wanted at the end was to be left alone, and that’s exactly what she did. She left. Alone. She will be with her son now. Bless them both.”

“She always struck me as a wounded bird that just needed the right chance to heal”

Obviously the sudden death of someone who’s been in the news as much as Anna Nicole Smith is worthy of covering, but when CNN is helping people wallow in their grief, they stop being an impartial observer reporting the facts and just become another shallow, fame-obsessed rag.

Happy Anniversary, Colin!

At least, that’s the implied message of Snickers’ current ad campaign that made it’s debut at the Superbowl. John from Americablog has been all over this story. The commercial shown during the game was juvenile and slightly offensive, but the rest of the campaign is horrifying. The website (which has been pulled down) featured three alternate versions of the commercial, including this one in which the mechanics’ reaction to accidentally kissing is to gay-bash each other :

But even more disturbing are the video “extras” from the website in which NFL players are visibly disgusted by the two men kissing and letting the audience know why homosexuals “ain’t right”.

So…how is embracing bigotry supposed to sell chocolate? I don’t really get the connection.

Lieberman just voted with the Republicans to prevent a vote on a non-binding anti-surge resolution. Apparently it’s only Democratic filibusters that Lieberman has a problem with.

In the previous post about the Aqua Teen hysteria, Dave makes this point :

Honestly – everyone looks at this like its the police jumping the gun, but you seem to forget that the first device was found during daylight (no ‘Brite-lit’ action) under a bridge – a square with batteries and wires hanging off of it.

So, let’s take a look at what these “suspicious devices” looked like when they were the catalyst for a government-led and media-fueled panic attack :

A close-up look at the “devices” should have made it clearer that these weren’t explosives.



If these look like bombs to the Mr. Magoos that run the Boston PD, then why aren’t they using one of those fancy bomb squad robots to take the “device” down? Did these unlucky bastards just draw the short straw?

Apropos to another point made in the comments, it shouldn’t take familiarity with Adult Swim’s overrated programming to recognize these as cartoony faces giving the finger. As Scott McCloud argued in his book Understanding Comics, recognizing cartoon faces is practically human nature :

Yet, the Boston authorities, in their quest to act responsible, drove everybody into a frenzy. It’s an embarrassment that five and a half years after 9/11, we’re still so easily frightened that a bunch of cartoon lights can send our security establishment into a whirl. Homeland security has always been a joke and this is the latest, pathetic example.

I really hate how 9/11 legitimized all sorts of paranoid dipshittery. It’s embarrassing enough that the people who make the rules think bringing a bottle of water to the airport is a security risk, but now it seems that it’s a crime to inadvertently frighten a bunch of fools :

Boston police say they have made in arrest in connection to the suspicious device scare that turned out to be a marketing ploy for a television cartoon. The Peter Berdvosky was arrested in Arlington Wednesday night and charged under a recently enacted statute making it a crime to place a hoax device that results in panic.

The scare forced bomb units to scramble across Boston all day. The “devices” were actually magnetic lights which resemble a character on the show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”, on Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network.
. . .
The suspicious device reports forced the temporary shutdowns of Interstate 93 out of the city, a key inbound roadway, a bridge between Boston and Cambridge, and a portion of the Charles River but were quickly determined not to be explosive.

“It’s a hoax — and it’s not funny,” Gov. Deval Patrick said.

With all the loaded language, you’d almost think this guy did something wrong. After all, this “device” was a “hoax” that “forced” the Keystone Cops to chase each other in circles while waving their tiny baseball bats at each other. Throw this guy in jail because we all know this kind of panic isn’t the fault of the people who overreact to anything they consider weird.

Here’s what the “devices” looked like that caused everyone in Boston to pee themselves :

If they can’t tell the difference between a bomb and a Lite-Brite giving the finger, then we’re all screwed. God forbid these guys ever find an LED clock counting backwards, they’d have to declare martial law. After all, everyone knows that terrorists always go to the extra trouble of installing a visible timer into their explosive devices to ramp up the tension.