This and That
Scumbag war criminal on the run.
US-IRAQ: Ill-Equipped Soldiers Opt for "Search and Avoid"
Year of the Rat: A 2008 Campaign Diary By Matt Taibbi
This is the first installment of Matt Taibbi’s new 2008 presidential campaign blog.
Part 1: Fred Thompson’s Wocket’s Wed Gware; no toilets in Council Bluffs; the homeless discuss the race.
I was only back on the campaign trail for about four hours before I started to feel unhappy again; this was back a few weeks ago, on actor Fred Thompson’s kickoff tour (see “Running on Empty” in the current
Rolling Stone), specifically on a bus run between Des Moines and Council Bluffs on the afternoon of Thompson’s first day of campaigning.
Thompson had had a rough start to his presidential experience. His people had chosen to start things off by having a cow-eyed former Miss Iowa named Carolyn Haugland sing the national anthem for the large crowd of press and supporters gathered at a Des Moines convention center. Haugland is something every state should have – a right-wing beauty queen with a Hannitoid political blog (“That’s when it dawned on me,” she writes, “Bin Laden isn’t just a terrorist. He’s worse – a liberal!”) who eschews post-pageant catalogue work for stridently patriotic campaign performances. Her anthem would have been fine, except that she has a mild lisp. She ended up sounding like Robin Williams doing Elmer Fudd doing Bruce Springsteen doing “Fire.”
“Oah de wam-m-m-pahts we watch…” she belted. “Wuh so gaow-want-wee stwee-e-e-e-ming. And de wockets wed gware…!”
From there Thompson’s handlers cued his campaign video, entitled “The Hunt For Red November.” The signature propaganda piece in a campaign that labors openly to blur media fantasy and political reality, the video is additionally confusing in that it starts off with a photo array of Democratic candidates Edwards, Hillary and Obama, interspersed with a dramatic HUNT FOR RED NOVEMBER title frame set against a frankly “Red” background. I thought they were trying to say something about the “Reds” on the other ticket, and so did someone in the crowd behind me. “Do they mean communiss?” I heard someone whisper in an Iowan twang.
So I ran to Todd Harris, the Thompson campaign’s press guy, just to check. He seemed pissed by the question. “No,” he sighed. “Red November, red state. Republican.”
“Right, but in the original movie, it was Red like Lenin Red, and you’ve got Hillary and Edwards there all covered in red… Do we want a Red November, or do we not want a Red November?”
“We want it. Now it means Republican,” he said, trying to smile, then walked away. You can read the rest here at
Rolling Stone.
You've got to be kidding me
The
Telegraph reported this story.
Man who had sex with bike in court.
A man has been placed on the sex offenders’ register after being caught trying to have sex with a bicycle. Robert Stewart was discovered in his room by two cleaners at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr, south west Scotland, in October last year. On Wednesday Mr Stewart admitted to sexual breach of the peace in Ayr Sheriff Court, where depute fiscal Gail Davidson described how he had been found by the hostel workers. She said: "They knocked on the door several times and there was no reply.
"They used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white T-shirt, naked from the waist down.
"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex."
Both witnesses, who were extremely shocked, notified the hotel manager, who in turn alerted the police. Mr Stewart was placed on the sex offenders’ register but his sentence was deferred until next month. He is not the first man to be convicted of a sexual offence involving an inanimate object, however. Karl Watkins, an electrician, was jailed for having sex with pavements in Redditch, Worcs, in 1993. Was that more than you needed to know? LOL
