Headline of the Day

Toilet only casualty as MILF attacks Army base--spokesman

No, not that kind of MILF. The Islamic fundamentalistic kind. Read the whole story here.

Headline Tells the Tale

In the Baltimore Sun:

Shooting victims had poor attendance, system's data show

There's a little more to the story, but even the revelation that kids who are shot have poor school attendance before the shooting is pretty worthless.

Blogging:The New Deadly Epidemic

This may come as a shock to just about all 20 or so of you that read this blog; but blogging is a very stressful job, hobby, waste of time. Really it is. At any moment I could die of a heart attack. Could happen during this post, or maybe tonight as I worry about just what filth I'll publish tomorrow. All because of blogging. Certainly it wouldn't be because of my smoking, drinking, and risky sexual behaviour. No way. All blogging's fault. I'm positive, because I read it in the New York Times:

SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home. A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment. [...]

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

I like it, "Death from Blogging". You hear that ladies, I do dangerous things -- like blogging. And taming man-eating tigers. But the blogging is definitely more deadly. Tigers have shit on blogs. That was actually going to be To the People's slogan, "More deadly than the deadliest tiger". I might just do it now as a quote,

"Blogging: More dangerous than taming maneating tigers"
-- New York Times.

Full article here.

Reuters Discovers Gun Collectors

Who knew they existed?

The American affinity for guns may puzzle foreigners who link high ownership rates and liberal gun ownership laws to the 84 gun deaths and 34 gun homicides that occur in the United States each day and wonder why gun control is not an issue in the U.S. presidential election.

The owners are not just urban criminals and drug dealers. There are hunters and home security advocates, and then there are the gun collectors.

Wait...you're blowing my mind Reuters...You mean all firearm owners AREN'T violent criminals?

Story here.

George Will on the Economy

In his latest Newsweek column, George Will has one of the best takes I've read to date on the economy and the inevitable stimulus package. I can't do the article justice by quoting a paragraph or two, so I recommend the whole thing.

From Will's article from the November 19th issue of Newsweek, the hard copy of which I just received last weekend due to the administrative cluster fuck involved in forwarding my mail to Japan, comes this great quote:

Everyone should remember the witticism that the stock market has predicted nine of the last three recessions.

Besides George Will and John Tierney, can anyone think of any other MSM columnists you'd recommend to a libertarian? I'm sure there are one or two more who I just can't think of right now or maybe have never even heard of.

Added: I later remembered PJ O'Rourke, who I guess can still be considered MSM.

Liberal Biased Media vs. Bush

Look, I'm no fan of President Bush. But if this is what passes for good journalism at the Associated Press our country is in serious trouble.

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

Sounds scary, right? The truth, however, is that the study didn't look at whether or not Bush and his people were telling lies. It only measured if the evidence they relied upon turned out to be wrong.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

There's a big difference between knowing Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction and believing that he did but turning out to be wrong. The first is an actual lie or false statement. The latter is a mistake. Given that the British, the French, the German and other intelligence agencies thought Hussein had or was close to having weapons of mass destruction I'm willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. Did he fuck up? Yes. Is he total douchebag? Yep. Did he lie his way into war? There's no evidence of that and the media should stop reporting this myth as fact.

Damn, I Feel Bad For These Poor Kids

CNN's Nancy Grace gave birth to twins.

I can only imagine what it would be like to have Nancy Grace as a mom. And frankly, I don't even want to think about it.

I think TtP should start a fund for these poor kids to ensure that as teens they will have all the drugs they need to put up with mom's shit.

Multiple videos of Grace being a huge bitch on national TV here.

A New Newspaper Shows Up in DC: The Rock Creek Free Press

On Connecticut Avenue today I noticed a bastard news dispenser and picked up its paper: Rock Creek Free Press. The paper bills itself as "A fiecely independent newspaper."

Its front page echoes libertarian themes. Here are some headlines:

Liberty Dollar Company Raided by Feds

CIA Hides Torture Tapes

International Regulation of Dietary Supplements Looms

US Claims Right to Kidnap British Citizens

NIE Exposes War Party

Sounds good, but then the paper goes off the rails by running a page one article featuring former Italian president Francesco Cossiga alleging that 9/11 was "an inside job." Does anyone really think that the CIA would take down both towers of the WTC, bomb the Pentagon and try to hit the Capitol? No.

But Rock Creek Free Press is a fun read otherwise.

Paul Who???

Since I just saw this on TV, I have no sources or links. But CNN just reported the "average" results in the Republican and Democratic presidential polls, and they completely dogged Ron Paul. They showed the percentages of Republicans (well... Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee, McCain and Thompson, anyway) in each of the early primary states (and Iowa).

I could have sworn that Paul was polling at 8% in New Hampshire. But CNN left him out completely and reported the typical five, including Thompson's impressive 3%.

I'm under the influence at the moment, so I can't get too analytical about this, but it seems like CNN thinks that Paul is a less serious candidate than Fred Thompson. Why, exactly?

Fun Fact: Of the six candidates' names that I typed above, Blogger's spellcheck only catches "Huckabee" as a spelling error... and it recommends "Hackable" as the first correction. Interpret it however you like...

Mean People Say Mean Things On the Internet

Brilliant idea for a newspaper column! I mean who knew about this?

Ahh, Craigslist, that happy little website of frugal friends buying, selling or trading worn-out cars and cozy apartment furniture.

Plus, there are all those hilarious jokes about blacks, gays, Hispanics, women and Jews.

The dirty little secret about the wildly popular Craigslist is that one click away from its home page are some raunchy and often deeply offensive forums inviting blatant racism, rants and sexual kinks.

This is what offends the guy on Craigslist? The forums? Clearly he's never clicked on the women seeking women personals. Yikes. Nothing but black, BBW lesbians lounging around in sexy/disturbing/hideous (take your pick) nude poses. Words are words. But a clit the size of refrigerator, is a clit the size of a refrigerator. And that sir, is offensive. Or hot. Personally I think it's hot. But I'm a mess. So whatever.

Generation RX

While watching Kid Nation (btw, I'm pretending to be working on a piece on what Kid Nation says about what we have come to expect from our political leaders) on CBS I caught an AD for a Nightly News special -- beginning next week -- covering prescription drug abuse among our kids. News to me, hadn't heard much about that epidemic...Not much at all...Anyways, they had spooky graphics, scary language, and a catchy name for the special: Generation RX. Can't wait.

20/20 Takes on Dateline

I'm sorry I missed this on Friday night; 20/20 did an expose on Dateline's To Catch a Predator series.

It's tough to make me cringe; but the To Catch a Predator series does it. It can be entertaining no doubt, but the whole legal aspect of it and the fear mongering that the show does, scares the shit out of me.

More here.

Is the Murdered Oakland Editor Our Own Theo van Gogh, And Why Does Nobody Care?

The MSM wrote very generic stories about the editor of the Oakland Post being gunned down in broad daylight last week. As the facts come out and I follow this story it becomes apparent that the editor, 57 year-old Chauncey Bailey, was targeted by Muslim fanatics because he was working on an expose of Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Police are testing guns recovered from raids in which authorities arrested seven members of an Oakland Black Muslim splinter group who investigators suspect were involved in the killing of a journalist and two others...Bailey, 57, was the editor of the Oakland Post, and had been working on a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery before he was ambushed and slain, his colleagues said.

Police have nabbed the alleged murderer, and he proclaims, "I'm a good soldier." For what, we might ask. The weird part is that the press, who religiously cover anything that befells their brethren, is mostly sitting this one out.

Shenanigans!

I should have gone out tonight.

Instead, I watched the Democratic CNN/YouTube debate and the subsequent self-fellatio of CNN talking about how revolutionary it was. All night long guests appeared, from the founders of YouTube to people who asked debate questions, and everyone praised the debate for allowing "real people" to ask questions from their living rooms.

And yes, sure enough, there were some people in costume and some one-line jokes embedded in the questions, and that was a change, but CNN is missing the point: content!

If I was to read a transcript of the Q&A, with no access to video or audio, I'm willing to bet I could barely tell the difference between this debate and the others. According to CNN, about 3000 video questions were submitted on YouTube. Thirty nine were aired. And there is no doubt in my mind that CNN's selection panel chose the most watered-down questions available, content-wise. Some were emotional, yes, and some were slightly amusing, but this is a matter of delivery only. A melting snowman asking about global warming... yeah, fucking cute.

So if anyone was not disappointed by this debate, please comment and tell me why.

If Ron Paul doesn't get a drug war question in the September Republican debate (and you know there will be hundreds submitted), I will lose all respect I have left for CNN. I knew it was going to take a lot on their part to make up for Lou Dobbs, but they didn't even come close last night.

YouTube Debates

I'm looking forward to the CNN/YouTube debate on Monday. I like the idea of having the general public submit questions for the candidates rather than the same old politically correct questions that seem to come from reporters and moderators. It has potential to be a great step forward for presidential debates.

However, I say "has potential" because it also has potential to be pretty disappointing. The questions will be screened by a CNN VP and Political Director.

So the big question is: How much different will the selected questions turn out to be? Of course, many will consist of the same topics found in any of the debates: health care, immigration, abortion, the war, and so on. But I'm sure YouTubers are also submitting questions on the drug war, decentralization of education, and separation of church and state. I especially hope for more meaningful environmental questions (e.g. "How will your plan for cutting carbon emissions affect the economy, and do you think the benefits outweigh the costs?")... the kinds of questions that demand a stronger response than the usual sugar-coated but content-free responses to environmental concerns.

There is no doubt in my mind that the general public will think of better questions than those who have moderated debates in the past. The success of the CNN/YouTube debates will depend on whether the selected questions are clever and new, or whether they are the same old questions asked by different people.

I'll be at work during the live debates, but I plan to watch the entire thing on rerun. Whether the format of the debate is revolutionary or just a gimmick will determine the anger level of my Tuesday post. See you there.

Friday Links

Some links for you to digest on this semi-holiday Friday.

AC Milan wins the Champions League Final. Final tally 2-1 over Liverpool. Not nearly as exciting as 2 years ago; however, I saw the score before I had a chance to watch the whole game and still enjoyed the match. In true English fashion, Liverpool supporters leave behind some 98 tons of beer cans, making me wonder how much they trucked out of Pimilco this past weekend for Preakness.

Kevin Durant is one hell of a basketball player. The question: On June 28 is he 1 or 2?

This is an interesting twist on the usual theme parks:

Welcome to Dickens World, a theme park with a difference. If you thought theme parks were all about thrilling roller coaster rides, wolfing down hotdogs and cotton candy, and shaking hands with overgrown mice and goofy dogs, you're in for a rude awakening. Dickens World recreates the filth, squalor, and even the unpleasant whiffs of Victorian London, the city in which Charles Dickens lived and breathed, and wrote so memorably about in "A Tale of Two Cities," "Great Expectations," and "Oliver Twist." It's less a theme park, and more a "grime park."

My only question --- Are you allowed to smoke in this Victorian time capsule?

Senator Kohl -- who sells some incredibly affordable, and wearable clothes for his day job -- is urging the FCC to block the XM/Sirius merger. I'm a big satellite radio guy. Love XM. But I'm on record (and by record I mean I was talking to myself alone while taking a shit one time) as saying that the deal will not go through. Does satellite radio survive without the merger? I think so, or at least one company you would think, but I'm also not sure. The two companies have buried themselves with expensive contracts for talent, and the revenue just isn't there yet. It will be interesting to see how the industry shakes out.

Gingerbread Man Found Dead in Bay, Officials Puzzled by Intact Head

A few days ago a boater found a floater in the Chesapeake Bay. WJZ News, a Baltimore-area news channel, reports on the story and provides us with the graphic to the right. A gingerbread man cut-out, imposed on mountains. Odd. Via Baltimore Crime. WJZ article here.

This I Love

The Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild -- engaged in contract negotiations with the Baltimore Sun -- hires PR firm to:

The guild, which represents 480 Sun employees, has hired the Baltimore office of public relations firm Weber Shandwick to represent its viewpoint to the media and the financial community so that the negotiations are not viewed as a "classic labor versus management" fight, but rather the guild's interest in maintaining the quality of the newspaper, Hill said.

Look, I think I get what they are trying to do; but you still have to admit that the irony of newspapermen hiring a PR firm to "represent their viewpoint to the media.." is just tasty in every way.

Full article here. Via Baltimore Crime.

Berlusconi is Money

From the Guardian:[emphasis mine]

Silvio Berlusconi's famously stormy marriage looked as though it was heading back into choppy waters yesterday, two months after his wife humiliated him into a public apology for flirting with TV showgirls.

An Italian magazine announced it was to publish photographs of the media tycoon relaxing with no less than five young women at his Sardinian villa. In one picture he is shown with a girl on each knee. In others, he is seen walking hand in hand with one or more of his guests.

[...]

The photos are likely to refuel a debate about the interaction between paparazzi and public figures in a country where politicians have been discreetly protected. Oggi, which is published by the same group as Corriere della Sera, was criticised last month for failing to publish photos showing the spokesman for Romano Prodi's centre-left government talking to a transvestite streetwalker from inside his car

Cheap trannys, beautiful young Italian women -- what's not to like about Italian politics?

Via The Corner, where Andrew Studdaford points out that Berlusconi is 70 years old. Brilliant. Full article here.

Note: Interestingly enough, when you do a google image search for "Berlusconi" the first pic is a full frontal, of what appears to be the former prime minister. See for yourself.

Now Imus's Critics Losing Jobs

Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Sam Fulwood III wrote a column yesterday attacking CBS for retaining Don Imus.

Since the column ran, Imus lost his job. So did Fulwood.

The Plain Dealer notes Fulwood's reassignment here. I don't know anything about Fulwood -- please enlighten me if you do -- but if he was canned under this ir-rationale, he would have lost his job for reasons even dumber than those he was professing should sink Imus.

NPR -- Part 1

Whew. I was worried for a moment when I first saw the NPR series, that it might do a fair job in covering both sides of the issue. That worry quickly dissipated as I came to realize that they didn't even present an opposing view for reform. Good news: They couldn't misrepresent reformers. Bad news: A reader or listener wouldn't even know another side existed.

The Walters piece is a great example. Critical piece, everyone is blasting the Drug Czar. Except -- and it's a big except in this case -- everyone who is criticizing him is in fact, just more of a lunatic and thinks the guy should be leading a more resolute charge against drugs in our country. Welcome to bizarro world my friends. Not one voice to attack his revolting attempts to crush local democratic processes, or his hand in making marijuana public enemy #1.

This is the problem with the whole NPR series, and the drug problem discussion in general. Everything about the War on Drugs in failing, but they don't give a line of space to what potential reforms, radical or not, that could be looked to for relief from this war.

Same idea, diferent rant: I seriously wonder how libertarians, free marketeers, etc; that small segment of the population who believes in market solutions to most any problem, are considered irrational nuts. Yet, every time we utilize a market approach it actually works. Then people say "well yeah the market can work here, but it wouldn't work for education, or drugs..etc." Blows my mind how you can be correct so often, but yet, respect for the ideas that have proven themselves to be correct seems to be non-existent.

A 'Sassy' Blast from the Past

What are Bill & Ted up to? When's the next PiL tour? Is River still dating Martha Plimpton? Will The Smiths reunite? What's up with that Sassiest Boy in America controversy?

If you cared about the answers to these and other (even in hindsight) essential teen questions nearly 20 years ago, you were reading Sassy.

From about 1988 to 1990 or 1991, I never missed an issue. I also never bought one. In fact, that was the weird paradox of Sassy. It appealed nearly equally to both genders, but only teen girls bought it. And they were totally willing to lend it out, share it, and flip through it with you. Wow -- was Sassy a metaphor?

Though Sassy has been over for more than a decade, the magazine's back in the news because a) editor Jane Pratt just copped to having sex with Drew Barrymore and b) a needs-no-explanation paean to the magazine, How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, is being released later this month.

I'm picking it up, along with this homage to the only magazine that bested Sassy in the 1980s.

20/20

Tonight I'm feeling a little under the weather and ordering my hookers in; so I decided to take advantage of the night off and catch the Rudy/Judi interview on 20/20. I know, I know. Honestly though, I usually only watch a news magazine show if it involves a pedophile bust. Not because they're funny, but because I like to draw up a grid of where MSNBC has been in the last month or so. Remember what my advice on the Target security cameras? It's called doing your homework folks.

Anyways I was greeted first with a network orgy of a hit job. Big corporations and drugs. Jackpot for fear-mongering journalism. The story went like this: The proliferation of chain-store pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS that (heaven forbid) attempt to fill a lot of prescriptions for a lot of customers at a highly discounted price, are causing an "epidemic" (their words, not mine) of deaths and debilitating injuries due to their never-ending pursuit of the "bottom-line" (again their words, not mine). The chase of the evil profits leads them to hire teenage pharmacy assistants and over-worked pharmacist who make mistakes and cause children to become retarded. OK the last sentence is mostly my description. Still though, that's a fairly accurate summary from the 20 minute segment that I forced myself to watch because I felt like blogging on something.

A couple ill-informed, crazy libertarian thoughts. How many people are being saved from cheap drugs? How many people are being saved from a drug store on every corner? Aren't people still free to choose their local pharmacy where Tom, who sings in the church choir and has known their kids since they were in diapers, works? How many people are actually dropping dead from mistakes? If we introduced regulations that attempted to control how many hours pharmacist worked and who worked behind the counter, wouldn't we just be preventing the majority safe transactions from ever happening? Wouldn't any regulation be shouldered by the lower-income families more so than the middle-class and upper-class customers that could afford to shop elsewhere? Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong and add to what I may have missed. The whole segment left a nasty taste in my mouth.

As for Mr and Mrs Giuliani...Decent performance, though I'm not sure about Rudy's idea of inviting his wife in on future cabinet meetings. Last time we tried that we almost ended up with socialised health care.

Cancer is a Beast

But at least it leaves us with hotties like Dana Perino. God, I love these 30-something gals that just seem to be everywhere I go. Best age out there.

I know you're nodding in agreement, so I'll give you my "Rob Tip of the Day." Spend as much time as possible in Target. They love the Target...Just watch out for those tricky cameras around the changing rooms. You need to be crafty in your peversions, very crafty.

Best wishes Mr Snow. Take your time with the recovery. Take all the time you need.

P.S: Meant to add a link to the Kurtz piece on Perino that drew me to attention. Go here.

Karl Rove: Falsetto Rapper

Charlize Theron is Probably Reprehensible

Actress Charlize Theron, who's produced a new documentary, East of Havana, about teenage rappers living under the Cuban dictatorship, told CNN's milquetoast Rick Sanchez during an interview yesterday that the U.S. is, like Cuba, not free. Here's my transcription.

Sanchez: Do you think the lack of freedoms in Cuba are parallel to the lack of freedoms in the United States?

Theron: Well, um, yeah, I would compare those two.

[...]

Sanchez: Sounds like you don't have a very high opinion of the United States...

Theron: Oh my God! You're so wrong... I absolutely love... Why do you think I live in the United States?

[...]

Theron: I want to make out with you right now.

Video here If Broadway Joe can't get away with this shit -- hey, at least his meltdown was funny -- then neither should Ms. Theron.

In Theron's defense, she did have some more thoughtful words on the topic for the Miami Herald yesterday:

Theron said that many of the young people she met questioned Fidel Castro's regime.

'I think the younger generation is starting to say, `You know what -- it doesn't work. We're not happy. We want to have freedom of speech. We want to be able to travel,' '' she said.

OK, fine. But such questioning may not extend to her co-filmmakers, who -- though they give the de rigeur shout out to freedom in this Latina interview -- also link to some equally de rigeur 'Oh, the wonderful Cuban healthcare/education/arts' bullshit from the film's MySpace page.

If you're looking for a better way to spend your time on something Cuban, go check out 1997's ¿Quién diablos es Juliette?, the true story of a young prostitute who is the inspiration for and subject of a documentary hatched on the spot during the filming of a music video starring Fabiola Quiroz-Brown, the Mexican wife of Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown. Good stuff. Honest.