Bush is a space alien from a stupid planet

by twit

Finally, it all makes sense now:

Via the Star-Telegram on July 16, 2008:

Federal Aviation Administration radar appears to confirm the presence of unidentified aircraft on Jan. 8 over the Stephenville-Dublin area, with at least one appearing to head toward President Bush’s Crawford Ranch, the same night that dozens of people reported seeing UFOs, according to a report released Thursday by a national group that studies reports of unidentified flying objects.

Beware the little green men!

Kid delivers LSD-laced cookies to cops. Actually, nevermind, the cops were just trippin’

by twit

When I first saw the article about the teenager accused of going to several police stations in Texas and delivering batches of cookies that smelled like pot but were actually laced with LSD, I figured it was another illustration for the “children left behind” files, the part of the chronicle where representatives from the upcoming generation are doing things that sound completely insane yet also so jaw-droppingly stupid.

But now it turns out that the allegations were actually the product of overactive imaginations of law enforcement officials (and their preliminary drug tests), and the charges have been dropped.  What we actually have here is an episode of the “romper room,”  featuring children of all ages left far, far behind:

On July 8, 2008, the Associated Press first reported:

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A teenager is suspected of delivering baskets of drug-laced treats to about a dozen police departments in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to police who charged him Tuesday with LSD possession. At least three officers have gotten sick.

The 18-year-old man was arrested after taking cookies to the Lake Worth police station, said Brett McGuire, the suburb’s police chief. Officers there had been tipped off that someone was falsely claiming to deliver treats on behalf of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

“Our officers took a good whiff and thought they smelled like marijuana,” McGuire said, adding that preliminary tests instead detected traces of LSD.

Christian Phillips was taken into custody and later charged with possession of the powerful hallucinogen, although the charge may be changed, McGuire said.

The suspect denied trying to contaminate the goodies or harm anyone and said one of his friends might have been smoking pot while Phillips was baking, McGuire said.

The suspect is not affiliated with MADD, the chief said.

which is what I had cut and pasted after I first read the story. Much of this clip has been scrubbed from the link where the article first appeared.

The art of propaganda

by twit

The AFP got a photo from the Iranian government “the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, on Wednesday,” with a teensy alteration…

Top, the image that Agence France-Presse obtained from Sepah News on Wednesday. Below, another image that The Associated Press received from the same source on Thursday.

and the next day, the Associated Press got an almost-the-same image from the Iranian government…

Oh what fun it is to fly

by twit

Thank you Consumerist:

[T]he EMD Safety Bracelet from Lamperd Less Lethal is designed to make flying a fun experience once again. Just check out everything it can do:

Take the place of an airline boarding pass.

Contain personal information about the traveler.

Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage.

Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes.

That made my eye twitch. and then on April 18, 2008, Wired reports:

This is the worst air travel security idea I’ve heard of in a long time.

A Canadian company called Lamperd Less Lethal is promoting the EMD Safety Bracelet. It’s equipped with electro muscular disruption technology, which effectively short-circuits the central nervous system. Zap someone and they’ll be completely immobile for several minutes.

The technology isn’t new — cops and security guards have been using it for years in tasers. What’s new is the marketing approach. Lamperd is hawking the EMD bracelet as the ideal tool for fighting terrorists intent on taking over an airplane.

And they’re doing so with a blatantly exploitive promotional video.

The FDA would like you to die a slow, painful death

by twit

Via the Consumerist on July 3, 2008, there is a database from the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization that lets you search for your brand of sunblock and review the findings of scientific studies that detail the cancer-causing, reproductive organ-damaging, endocrine system-disrupting chemicals that places like Japan have banned and regulated, but the FDA has done nothing about.

The baby care section is terrifying. Skin care is even worse. Think you’re doing alright by getting that hypoallergenic makeup? Think again!

An advanced search of the site can be conducted here. The organic products listing is a lot of fun, if you like freaking out about suddenly realizing that ‘organic’ is absolutely no guarantee that a product is anywhere close to being considered by scientists to be safe for human use.

morning cartoons

by twit

more dramatic proof of the impending fall of civilization:

Chinese hackers don’t watch the news

by twit

and Congress doesn’t get access to the important information about how our government operates. That’s why the President and Vice President are starting to get impeached…

Nevertheless, The Hill reports on June 21, 2008:

More Members of Congress have had their computers infiltrated by hackers within China than initially suspected, a lawmaker has revealed.

Apparently, we’re just beginning to get a sense of what has happened:

Computers within the Foreign Affairs Committee, on which Smith serves as a senior Republican, were also infiltrated. Kirk suspects that other committees may have been attacked as well.

“I would suspect that the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Intelligence, (and) Appropriations committees would all be top targets,” Kirk said.

Condoleezza Rice is “just very supportive” of Hezbollah

by twit

Slog points this bit out from a June 17, 2008 article by the NYT:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon on Monday, the first by a senior American official since an agreement last month that handed decisive new powers to Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that the United States considers a terrorist organization.

Ms. Rice met with government leaders from both the government majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition …

but there’s so much more!

“Congratulations,” Ms. Rice said as she shook hands with President Michel Suleiman, the former army chief who took office last month, filling a post that had been vacant for six months. “We are all just very supportive of your presidency and your government.”

Ninja bandits

by twit

According to Local6.com on June 18, 2008, there are ninja bandits on the loose in Florida:

Several men dressed in ninja costumes forced people into a cooler at gunpoint during the fourth robbery of a Central Florida drug store in a week.

now wherever did they get such an idea? The New York Times has a suggestion on June 16, 2008:

Between early 2004 and mid-2007, a period of unprecedented wealth on Wall Street, seven of the nation’s largest financial companies earned a combined $254 billion in profits.

the twit reads the news

by twit

whoops: Those levees they had thought would hold the Des Moines river back have breached. Total evacuation has been ordered and is well underway in affected areas due to the coordinated efforts of the earlier voluntary evacuations and the police going door-to-door before dawn to wake and assist the people still there. The BBC has video from Cedar Rapids.

damn: Tim Russert is dead. Long live Tim Russert:

What we hope to do in this campaign is recognize there are big differences on big issues between John McCain and Barack Obama – the war in Iraq, Iran, Social Security, taxes. You don’t need to get into this other stuff. If it does surface, then I think the mainstream media has an obligation not to just instinctively put it out there without vetting it.

wow: Protests in Tibet continue, including a report about a monk using a sword to defend himself from officials attempting his arrest and then managing to escape into the mountains before 200 Chinese officers arrived.

McCain vs. The Internet

by twit

It was fun while it lasted, although the party is now officially over. Last night, Wonkette noticed that the website selling McCain’s campaign gear allowed people to write reviews of the products. The twit then endured laughter so painful she could hardly work her computer, but she did manage to preserve some highlights for posterity.

For example, there are pins for sale:

eom	June 11, 2008
Reviewer: George Orwell from Washington, DC United States

Irony is dead.

welcome to the future

by twit

USA Today reports on June 6, 2008:

Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation’s busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts.

and according to the TSA:

“It’s the wave of the future,” said James Schear, the TSA security director at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where two body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.

this is how it works:

The scanners bounce harmless “millimeter waves” off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector.

A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body.

Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint to search the passenger.

and for entertainment purposes, the TSA explains what ‘protecting privacy’ means:

The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers’ faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person’s gender. “You can actually see the sweat on someone’s back,” Schear said.

Denver left behind

by twit

Is there really so little news out there that an omg-space-alien-in-the-window story gets this much coverage?

A video you can watch by clicking on the pic is the local news channel doing a fairly oblivious caricature of itself, at least from the twit’s perspective.

Some more oblivious than others, perhaps…

I told you to go before we left the planet

by lestro

Houston, we have a problem.

Four words you don’t want to hear in space:

“The toilet is broken.”

Space is a long way to try and hold it. Try sitting on the edge of the capsule and crossing your legs.

Russian mission control told the crew — Russian Cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, and Garrett Reisman, a NASA astronaut, to use the toilet on the Soyuz capsule that is attached to the station as a lifeboat. But that system has very limited capacity, and so repairing the system has become an increasingly urgent issue.

“Increasingly urgent.” I like that.

I know when my toilet is busted or the water in my building is turned off for repairs, things can get a bit, um, difficult for me, but at least I am not 217 miles away from the closest toilet. Or tree.

If you discovered a whole mess of Japanese pot in your suitcase…we want it back…unsmoked.

by loadz

What’s worse than breaking the law to slip 142 grams of pot into some poor sucker’s suitcase?

Not being able to find it.

A customs officer hid a package of the banned substance in a side pocket of a randomly chosen suitcase in order to test airport security.

Sniffer dogs failed to detect the cannabis and the officer could not remember which suitcase had the stash.

Whoops. Hey listen, we’re really, really sorry about the 142 grams of pot we slipped into your suitcase next to your unmentionables, but if we could have that back we’d surely appreciate it.

One hundred forty-two grams? That’s five ounces. And their dog couldn’t find that?

Apparently now is the time to start smuggling your dope into Tokyo.

Bush foreign policy advice is like weight loss tips from those fat twins on the scooters

by lestro

Today the President in all his wisdom chided those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals.”

It is being perceived as a shot at Obama, for his (amazingly Christian, something you’d think our born-again crusader of a president would know) view of talking with our enemies in an attempt to resolve the issue by not having to start a multi-billion dollar, never-ending war.

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Mr. Bush said.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”

We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

What a son of a lame duck bitch he is.

New York State is just silly…

by the squid

Today New York State signed into law legislation which would require pedophiles to register their screen names and e-mail addresses that so they can not be used when trolling for children on the social networking sites. I am not a fan of pedophiles, they are the lowest of the low. However, I am a fan of human nature.

My spidy-sense makes me think that those who are trolling on social websites posing as teenagers looking to “score” with the under-age are not the “follow-the-rules” type of people. The new law demands that the CONVICTED sex offender notify the proper authorities within ten days of changing or adding a new screen-name or e-mail address.

“Under the new law, registered sex offenders must also disclose all their user names and e-mail accounts for the purposes of chat, instant messaging, or social networking. If they create any new online profiles, they must notify the state within 10 days or face prosecution for a new felony. “

That is just silly.

we’re kind of between leaders at the moment…

by twit

this kind of thing seems to happen so often, it hardly lifts an eyebrow these days…

Starting in Phoenix, reports flood a local radio station, including a witness describing lights in the sky as

“about 3,000 feet high, approximately. They looked as though they were kind of hovering or floating from west to east, very slowly. They were up there for 15 or 20 minutes.”

Better yet, KTAR.com reports:

Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said, “A lot of people were reporting seeing some strange lights in the sky around Phoenix last night.

Air traffic controllers at the control tower at Sky Harbor saw them. But, we have no idea what they were.”

Gregor added, tongue-in-cheek,

“It could be aliens coming down to save us from ourselves, you never know. The only thing I do know is if they were coming down, they weren’t talking to air traffic controllers.”

sigh. perhaps click the image to link to the Simpsons episode “Citizen Kang,” so we can all laugh together…

raw milk must make people stupid

by twit

Thank you, Associated Press, this about made my head explode:

“Raw milk is like a magic food for children,” said Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates consumption of whole, natural foods.

because I don’t care if it has “health benefits” if it also is a serious health risk. Especially to kids.

More than 1,000 people, including two who died, got sick from raw milk or cheese made from raw milk from 1998 to 2005, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

even the FDA has got this one spelled out pretty clearly, although it is basic fucking germ theory, so it isn’t exactly asking a whole hell of a lot.

who needs to search for an appropriate metaphor when our tax dollars have written that giving a kid raw milk is like giving a kid a loaded gun with a bullet loaded at random:

Top Ten Things About to Fall Down

by twit

Thank you Popular Mechanics, for this lovely roundup of “The 10 Pieces of U.S. Infrastructure We Must Fix Now” and apparently, are doing not much, if anything, about…

Chicago’s Circle Interchange

“going nowhere”

Brooklyn Bridge

“Repairs aren’t due to start until 2010″

Industrial Canal Lock in New Orleans

“Construction is expected to take 12 years”

Atlanta Water System

“Municipal lines running beneath the streets lose massive volumes of water” … “A similar situation is found throughout the country.”

Seattle Viaduct

“still no decision” … hmm… sounds familiar…

Herbert Hoover Dike

“a 1-in-6 chance that [it] will fail” … “The Army Corps of Engineers has been working on improvements, but funding is limited”

Idaho’s Dover Bridge

“an outrageously low “sufficiency rating” of 2 out of 100 in the National Bridge Inventory.” but the Seattle Viaduct gets a 9… which means “basically intolerable,” apparently…

Wolf Creek Dam

“despite the ongoing construction work, the danger of collapse hasn’t been significantly reduced, and probably won’t be for years”

Sacramento River Levees

“Ongoing efforts to investigate and repair the levees have been met with opposition from local officials”

Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport

“among the worst in terms of near-misses on the runway”

More fun:

1,700,352…1,700,353…1,700,354 and …S**T!! One…two…three…

by loadz

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - Technology problems will force the government to count all of the nation’s 300 million residents the old-fashioned way in the 2010 census — with paper and pencil.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was scheduled to tell a House subcommittee Thursday that the government will scrap plans to use handheld computers to collect information from the millions of Americans who don’t return census forms mailed out by the government.

The change will add as much as $3 billion to the cost of the constitutionally mandated count, pushing the overall cost to more than $14 billion.

Alas! Poor Justice, I knew her well

by lestro

The politicization of the Department of Justice has really been the ugliest thing this administration has done. And these fuckers have been up to no good since Day One.

But the literal corruption of Justice really is the most despicable.

Maybe it is because the president and his cronies have been treating the Justice Department like their own lawyers and legal loophole finders and torture apologists for years, but it’s fairly obvious something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Which is why we can’t even let this little “restructuring” effort go without it being fully checked out.

Asked about the recent dismantling of a high-profile unit in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles that specialized in public corruption cases, an office spokesman provided what some saw as a curious justification:

Eliminating the public integrity and environmental crimes section, spokesman Thom Mrozek said, would actually enhance the effort to prosecute such cases.

The Bush Administration going after people that look at public corruption and environmental crimes? Check.

Bizarre doublespeak explanation? Check.

Red Flag.

our tax dollars at work

by twit

The Raw Story reports on March 28, 2008:

“The 22-year-old Florida man who allegedly provided old, substandard Chinese-manufactured ammunition to troops in Afghanistan as part of a nearly $300 million Pentagon contract also started a private company that specialized in selling foreign munitions to civilian gun enthusiasts, according to public documents”

aaaand:

“The company’s Web site was taken down after RAW STORY began asking questions.”

But they were able to find at least one naughty picture from the now-defunct site:

our surge can beat up your surge

by lestro

With all the talk about the great effectiveness of “the surge” in Iraq, one little important bit of evidence is always left out when discussing the reduction in violence: the Mahdi Army’s decision to lay low since last summer.

However, this week Moktada al-Sadr - a guy who went from a terrorist who needed to be killed into a political leader we deal with - decided to reassert himself:

Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who commands the Mahdi Army and initially called for a suspension of his militia’s activities in August, called on Monday called for a nationwide civil disobedience campaign, beginning in Baghdad, in response to what his followers say is an unwarranted crackdown.

and what happened?  all hell broke loose.

nuclear fuses? what nuclear fuses?

by lestro

oh! you mean the ones we didn’t even know we lost?

“The U.S. Air Force mistakenly shipped fuses that are used in nuclear weapons to Taiwan in 2006, believing the crates contained helicopter batteries, officials at the Pentagon announced this morning.

The error — undetected by the United States until last week, despite repeated inquiries by Taiwan — raises questions about how carefully the Pentagon safeguards its weapons systems.”

I am at a complete loss on this one. Yet not surprised. Goooooo Romper Room!

and this is obviously a lie:

“There are multiple players, there are multiple parties involved,” said Ryan Henry, principal undersecretary of defense policy. “We’ll do a thorough investigation, and those who are found responsible will be held accountable.”

No one has EVER been held responsible for ANYTHING in the Bush administration. With the possible exception of Brownie, who was doing a heckuva job until a scape goat was needed.

But luckily, the US moved quickly when it realized its mistake, right?

romper room airlines

by twit

is proud to bring you this understatement of the day:

“This is an agency or department that is critical for the U.S. long-term security needs,” [Former Rep. Tim] Roemer [D-Indiana] said. “So the basic building blocks, the front line of defense are air marshals. If you’re not providing that safety for our people on a pretty basic program seven years after 9/11, we’ve got a lot of work to do at the department, and probably Congress has a lot more work to do on its oversight.”

about the TSA:

Of the 28,000 commercial airline flights that take to the skies on an average day in the United States, fewer than 1 percent are protected by on-board, armed federal air marshals, a nationwide CNN investigation has found.

a romper room round-up

by twit

There are moments of history reported in the news about our government, particularly with regard to national security issues, that around here may get referred to on occasion as the “romper room.” For example…

Romper Room of the Day via Wonkette and Star-Tribune.com:

The Shitting Bandit apparently just wandered in through an unlocked door in, let’s repeat that, the Minnesota Homeland Security building. He was captured on film by surveillance cameras…

aaannd:

St. Paul police say it’s unlikely that a man who entered a Minnesota government office building Sunday and defecated in several rooms will be caught.

‘Black is the new president, bitch’

by twit

and other morning cartoons…

“Bitch may be the new black but black is the new president, bitch” The Tracey Morgan SNL sketch can be seen at NBC and commercial-free at the Raw Story.

REJECTED is one of the more demented cartoons the twit has seen in a loooong time.

“In the spring of 1999, the Family Learning Channel commissioned Don Hertzfeldt to produce promotional segments for their network.“

via twit’s neighbors

live from the romper room via Boing Boing: “1 in 300 US Residents are terrorists”

dolphins strike back, for now… Due to the legal restrictions on the use of marine-mammal slaughtering sonar, the Navy currently can’t use it at all, because dolphins travel in the wake of their ships.

it’s like an instinct or something

Fuck You and Your H2 is “a site dedicated to pictures of people flipping off Hummers.”

via kottke.org

whoops the Raw Story reports that “[a]n Air National Guard jet mistakenly dropped a 22-pound non-explosive, practice bomb on an apartment complex, damaging the foundation but no one was injured, police said Friday.”

but women belong in the kitchen… what’s this about not being able to take the heat? Pro-Clinton bloggers abandon their perch on the nets because they can’t reconcile “she’s electable” with the torrent of opposition. The twit thinks that it is one thing to dodge trolls, and another to dodge the crappiness of one’s own ideas…

ever wonder what exactly is wrong with Google? well, the twit has a theory anyway… something within the BBC report that

“Google assured the more cynical members of the press that the slide is used every day.”

Vanilla Ice is attacked by bees and the twit laughs and laughs

whatever the President says must be true

by lestro

the subhead says it all. From the Washington Post: