Saturday Evening (News) Post

Like the cheap champagne we're going down in flames...

O'Reilly's O'Meltdown
So it seems Bill O'Reilly got into a shoving match with an Obama staffer at an Obama event, an event where the crowd was very, err, unhappy to see him to start with.

When the popular Fox News entertainer arrived at the Obama event in Nashua, people turned to him but not always approvingly. "Hey O'Reilly," yelled a man. When O'Reilly turned he got a single-finger salute. A few people approached Bill to shake his hand but the overwhelming sentiment was unfavorable. "O'Reilly hatemonger," yelled a woman. A few other people gave him the bird. "I hate you Bill," yelled a man. "You can't stop us Bill," yelled another. I thought someone might brain him with one of those Obama "Hope" signs.

A number of people shouted falafel, the word O'Reilly used in a racy set of telephone conversations with a young woman he was trying to seduce as he described a shower they might take together. He meant loofa, which is not a Middle Eastern delicacy but a bath item.

That would be a funny enough story in itself, but it seems O'Reilly lost his cool completely when the Obama staff failed to show him the deference to which he is accustomed.

The incident was triggered when O'Reilly--with a Fox News crew shooting--was screaming at Obama National Trip Director Marvin Nicholson "Move" so he could get Obama's attention, according to several eyewitnesses. "O'Reilly was yelling at him, yelling at his face," a photographer shooting the scene said.

O'Reilly grabbed Nicholson's arm and shoved him, another eyewitness said. Nicholson, who is 6'8, said O'Reilly called him "low class."

"He grabbed me with both his hands here," Nicholson said, gesturing to his left arm and O'Reilly "started shoving me." Nicholson said, " He was pretty upset. He was yelling at me."

Secret Service agents who were nearby flanked O 'Reilly after he pushed Nicholson. They told O'Reilly he needed to calm down and get behind the fence-like barricade that contained the press.

Yeah Bill, err, acting angry, agitated and physically aggressive around a Presidential candidate might not be the best move you could make. Those Secret Service guys will drop you without giving a second thought to Fox News' primetime ratings if they think you're going to go all whacko on the candidate.

Though, man, that'd be entertaining.

Source: Slate
blogs.suntimes.com

Cute Stunt, But Careful Now...
So the Lakota Sioux, after something like two decades of debate, have decided to unilaterally withdraw from their treaties with the United States and reform their nation.

At least, on paper.

In practice of course, rather a large number of other people live there now and that would make for a headache. For now one supposes they just want to set their own laws without interference on whatever reservation territory they have left.

Given that, while drawing up maps of your new country might be funny, it might not be the best idea...

Source: Jazz From Hell

So the Drama
The National Academy of Sciences puts out a book detailing the relationship between science education and evolution, which pans creationism and says it has no place in the classroom.

NBC, far from recognizing the obvious and letting the statement of said obvious things lie, decides it'd make a racier story if it was a 'controversy', so they whip one up, and have an idiot from the Family Research Council on as an opposing viewpoint to thousands of educated scientists.

This is just..... garghhg.

Source: Raw Story

Random Sweeney Related Thing
So the roommate was curious where Johnny Depp was from, and we looked up his wikipedia bio. Turns out, Kentucky, of all godforsaken places.

Later in his bio it said he played a slide guitar. I didn't know what that was, so I looked it up. Short answer: a guitar you play with a thing over your finger that you slide up and down the strings. Neato.

There's a nifty picture of how to play one using a coke bottle as the slide.
Source: Wikipedia

Rethuglican Post-Iowa Meme
So Obama's victory in Iowa has the thuggish Republicans scared, and when they get scared, they turn to conspiracy theories.

Now the theory being advanced is that the Democrats are running Obama because white people will be afraid not to vote for him, or else the big, scary black mobs will rise up and burn down their houses.

Seriously.

Source: Glenn Greenwald

Monday Clear Out the Tabs News

Opera, Opera, sing to me... sing of news...

Lost World, Giant Rat
Another expedition into Indonesia's virtually unexplored jungle, another series of bizarre and adorable animals.

In particular, in the picture slideshow, note the pygmy possum and the unnamed, but GIANT rat. It's the size of a cat. A pretty big cat. And completely docile, it seems.

Source: AOL News

Sovereignty is Another 'Quaint' Concept
The U.S. Border Patrol has been firing tear gas and pepper spray into Mexico in response to stone throwing mobs, or just because they feel like it.

Innocent people live in perfectly legal housing in the area. The border people just don't care. They're shelling a sovereign foreign power, and they just. don't. care.

Technically folks, that's a declaration of war on Mexico.

Source: Raw Story

Insert Witty Human Interest Title
A reporter/news anchor with vitiligo, the disease that kills off pigmentation cells in the skin but is otherwise harmless, is telling his story and writing a book. The contrast between the man with and without his work makeup is astonishing, I have to say. I can't even blend a halloween mask in decently.

Nice of him to go public. I can see how a disease like that would be humiliating, and in his line of work it's a real economic issue too. I hope they find out how the disease works, if for no other reason than that it'd be useful science. Kind of curious, an autoimmune, or seemingly so, disease that has such a mild effect.

Source: USA Today

Curses
So they've been making an effort to actually sift through all the archaeologically useful trash the Romans left in their wake in England, of late. In particular, it seems, the Romans had a custom of inscribing a person's name in lead and throwing it in the hot springs at Bath to curse them.

A recent rare find shows that someone did something like that to an Emperor by stamping his face, via a coin printed with his likeness, into some lead.

The Romans were kind of odd.

Source: The Guardian

Maybe This Means the Daily Show Will Return Soon
So various deals are being cut with the WGA to get late night shows back on the air without strikebreaking or scabs. Letterman in particular, as he owns his show, rather than CBS, seems ready to tell his parent network to shove it and agree to the new terms to get back on the air full steam. Leno and Conan are having to settle for skeleton crews.

Still, the networks are obviously starting to lose their bargaining strength.

Source: Firedoglake

Historical Irony Department
While the U.S. considers requiring an internal passport to fly from one American city to another, Eastern Europe moves into the travel paper free EU zone.

It's like bizarro-land when your former communist states are acting so much freer and more open than America, but there you go.

Source: Raw Story

Human Strain of the Endless War Against Eastasia
A story in the Army Times about the toll new tactics in particular are taking on already exhausted units in Iraq, and how one 'rebelled' by following mental health advice and medicating themselves out of a murderous frenzy.

The article is noteworthy to my mind for three things. One: The military continues to ignore its own mental health professionals, dealing with post-trauamtic stress as cowardice. Two: a unit that had lost, in rapid succession, something like a quarter of its men to attacks and suicide, is still expected to serve in active duty. Three: the insurgents in Iraq have already adapted to our new heavier personnel vehicles by using massive under-the-road bombs (500 lbs of explosives) that flip the vehicles on their backs like turtles, where they burn with everyone trapped inside.

Fourth-generational war, folks. There's no way known to win one. Welcome to the 21st century, where your billion dollar bombers and heavy armor don't mean jack.

Source: The Army Times

MSM: She's Mad As Hell, But The Good Old Boys Will Keep The Cunt in Line

A journalist on one of MSNBC's psuedo-news variety hours apparently got fed up and refused to read, as the lead story on her segment, about Paris Goddamned Hilton getting out of jail. She thought it was a travesty that this was what the network insisted on covering instead of, say, the catastrophic war in Iraq.

There's a widely available youtube video of the confrontation between journalist Mika Brzezinski and her smirking, wiseass, self-important co-hosts that's been floating around.



People are hailing her for standing up for basic journalistic principles, and she certainly did, but for me, that's not what jumps out about this segment. Watch how a professional journalist is treated on a cable news network when she dares to deviate from the script and tries to bring some sanity and reason back to public discourse. She is mocked, belittled, patronized, even outright physically overpowered (as when the one host takes away her lighter and copy of the script), all because she dares to do the responsible thing. Then, when they've finished dragging out their mockery of her work and her profession, they toss her turn to speak back to her, discarding the air time as if, now that they've covered what's Really Important, the viewers should tune out while the crazy bitch rants about a war.

Naturally, one of the two domineering male douchebags is Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman and all around asshole. His utter contempt for women and the job he supposedly performs as a newsman shows through here with startling clarity. Beware even the friendliest seeming Republican out there, folks. They all carry knives of one sort of another, and are waiting for you to turn your back.