Broken in Brief: Homeland Security fears mass terrorist attack as citizenry exhibits strange behavior

WASHINGTON—Minutes ago the Department of Homeland Security and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that they feared a terrorist attack had resulted in mind altering gases or a virus being released at multiple sites around the United States, that they were taking the precaution of raising the alert level to orange, and were declaring a preliminary state of national emergency.

“It has come to our attention that terrorist groups may have dosed large sections of this country with some noxious, brain scrambling substance at some point around noon,” announced FBI Director Robert Mueller.

“As of now we’re uncertain of the exact means of attack but currently victims are exhibiting signs of low level euphoria and a nationalist interest in foreign frivolities. Be forewarned that if one of these poor souls walks up to you and asks if you ‘saw the soccer’ or can name more than three of the fancy types who play this game, you may be in a contaminated zone and should take shelter immediately.”

CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden added “While these reports are preliminary, we do have to admit that these widespread reports could refer to citizens of other countries showing excitement over soccer, which is normal. Those exhibiting symptoms may in fact be Dutch, we repeat, may be Dutch. We advise American to take extreme precautions -face masks and the like- in the event that this is a viral outbreak and the soccer virus has started to spread from immigrants to the white, indigenous US population.”

For now the government advises that people stay inside and inoculate themselves with televised baseball games and NFL off-season training camp reports.

“We’re on the precipice of something large taking hold here,” Mueller advised. “After years of fighting this foreign footballing menace off, we are in extreme danger of taking an interest in a sport America isn't ready to dominate in. Not on my watch.”

Dirty, dirty, dirty

You know, I really thought we were done knocking George W. Bush. OK, that's a lie. I really thought we were done directly knocking the man on a personal level. Oh sure, we'd savage his policies, the consequences of those policies, and the members of the conservative established who were part of his administration and now won't go away, but we thought we were done with G-Dub himself.

Why? Because he's mostly done with politics, content just to earn money on the truck show and motivational speaker circuit. Plus he made himself part of a genuinely good thing; palling up with Bubba to raise money, awareness, and humanitarian aid for the people of Haiti. Oh sure, you could knock him for supporting the Aristide coup, which looks poor in hindsight. But it's not like that was what made building code regulation non-existent. Then... well, then he went and did this:



Yeah, he did just shake hands with a dirty poor person and then immediately wipe his hand off -- in that demonstratively unsubtle Bush way we all came to know and love -- on Bill Clinton. Clinton seems to have a slight reaction of "Did he just do what I think he just did? Did he just try to wipe a double dose of the black and the poor off of his hands?" Yeah Bill, he did.

George, we've heard you're an obsessive hand-sanitizing germophobe. But the next time... could you wait just a few seconds before you recoil in horror, your body contorts itself into an "Ewwwwww" posture, and you immediately try to cleanse yourself of dirty Haitian on the shirt of the nearest dignitary? Just hold it in, subsume your revulsion towards everything that surrounds you, and at the end of the day have the staffers prepare you a nice, hot bath of Purell.

Otherwise this sort of thing makes you look like... well, George W. Bush. But you ought to be used to that by now.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.20

Monsanto's GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals
Worried that not enough of your food was either made of corn or sweetened to the point of tooth pain with high fructose corn syrup? Well, what would you say to those things if they were made with genetically modified corn that also caused your liver and kidneys to shut down? You probably wouldn't want to eat them, right? Too late, they're already on the market, having been deemed by Monsanto to be safe after a 90 day study. Ah well, everyone in this country is either going to die of obesity or a recession related alcohol problem. Why not have dangerous mutant corn help speed us on our way into Jesus' loving embrace?

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All
Since Sean and I are both the proprietors of These Bastards, the web's number one parenting and child rearing blog, we have a duty to speak out to all you moms and dads out there who look to us for advice on vaccinating their child. DO IT!!! What the fuck, are you fucking insane or something? What's wrong with you?! Yes, of course vaccinate your little snot nosed brat. If not for its sake than for the sake of everyone else's child or, more importantly, for my sake. I'm not catching air herpes just because you think Jenny McCarthy is a credible medical source. Scientific studies are showing just how dangerous it is when people don't get vaccinated. You remember science, right? It's what we listen to in the 21st fucking century. Vaccinate your little puke before everyone dies of the mumps or the goddamn ass spewing plague.

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes
Pop quiz. When you've got Mommar al Raghead in the sites of your sweet ass fucking sniper rifle and you're about to plunge a hollow point into his jugular at such force that it'll cause his head to pop off his shoulders like a goddamn NASA space launch, do you prefer your rifle scope is inscribed with a reference to Corinthians 4:6, John 8:12, something from Matthew, or Revelations? Which one do you think personifies the faith you live by while shooting the shit out of America's enemies? Which one would Jesus put on his sniper scope? You don't have to come up with an answer now, I'll let you think it over.

US Military BitTorrent Users Targeted By MPAA/RIAA
Just a word of warning to our soldiers overseas: if you think that just because you're fighting in a warzone you can download the new Vampire Weekend album or the Hurt Locker from a torrent site, well think again motherfucker. The MPAA and RIAA will be on your ass with a lawsuit so fucking fast it'll make you wish the insurgents would stop attacking you long enough for you to deal with this petty, tin eared, shortsighted legal bullshit. If you want to watch a movie, you go to the goddamn Kandahar Blockbuster and you rent in on the level, Mr. Army Guy. Freedom to steal movies isn't one of the freedoms you're fighting for. They MPAA and RIAA will see you in the courtroom, you fucking amoral, shiftless crooks. That'll teach you to serve in a godforsaken desert hellhole.

Help Wanted
Pop quiz 2. If you had to guess the number of Obama Administration appointees still languishing in the Senate confirmation process after one full year because of Republican holds, delays, and filibusters, what would your guess be? Did you guess 177? Because that's what it is. 177 positions, from TSA head to head of the Office of Legal Counsel to the director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to any number of officials that run agencies responsible for security, foreign policy, diplomatic, and defense are unfilled because of petty Senate bullshit. That's over a 100 more unfilled positions than at the end of Dubya's first year. Just in case you needed a reminder: we are governed by adults. I'm sure this situation will improve dramatically now that Republicans have 41 Senators, right Massachusetts?

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.13

Making Health Care Better
The New York Times' David Leonhardt provides us with an exhaustive story on doctors, administrators, and public policy dorks who are doing the hard work of trying to hold down costs and make health care more effective in the current broken system. You may know them by their other title: people who aren't as smart as our elected betters in the Senate. He focuses specifically on the work of Brent James, who probably wakes up every morning, reads about the health care debate, and then has to spend 15 minutes talking himself out of suicide. It's an article that's worth your time.

How the US Funds the Taliban
I bet you're thinking "I'm sure it's just some labyrinthine trail where we find out that things we buy and things we do eventually flow back to the Taliban and terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, meant to teach us a lesson about the complexities of war." Nope! We're just straight up paying them. In cash. Sometimes just to not do anything, sometimes we pay them for protection. Often it's just huge, corrupt payments to Hamid Karzai's family. It's all very sordid and is definitely one of the many, many things your shouldn't think about when we decide to send a bunch more troops over there.

CDC Estimates 22 Million H1N1 Cases In US Between April And October
Oh, you forgot about Porcine AIDS, didn't you? Well it didn't forget about you, infecting maybe as many as 36 million and killing 4,000. Ok, that doesn't sound frightening, but what if I pointed out it was Friday the 13th and said it in a spooooky voice? No? Fuck you anyway, we're all going to die. Might want to think about getting that flu shot.

Al-Qa'ida prefers U.S. to stick around
What would you say if I told you that the United States military and political establishment didn't really understand Al Qaeda or it's political and military goals in reference to Afghanistan. Would you say 'no shit' or 'no fucking shit'? Well, anyway, it basically boils down to how they really, really, really, want us to stay and keep sending troops in. Boy, good thing we're not going to do anything stupid like that. By the way, this is also one of the many, many things your shouldn't think about when we decide to send a bunch more troops over there.

China proves to be an aggressive foe in cyberspace
Hey, while the US is spending trillions on not having health care, building super duper fighter planes, missiles, and various things that Michael Bay totally beats off to, you know what China is spending their money on? Well, infrastructure, energy, and wrapping its tentacles around the world. But militarily? Mostly they're watching Hackers over and over again and taking notes. Aaaand they're pretty much countering any intelligence imbalances and could do major damage to us if we ever started a war with them. In fact they're pretty much already running an undeclared war on us. I'm sure this is a problem a few more F-22's that are built the districts of every congressman on an appropriations committee will solve.

Gates is the insect king

Well, we were almost there. A milestone. We almost had one of the richest men in the world turn cartoonish supervillain on us. In front of a group of his peers, colleagues, and underlings, Bill Gates almost released a deadly animal into the room to kill the audience for their insolence. Except he chickened out.

Microsoft founder turned disease-battling philanthropist Bill Gates loosed mosquitoes at an elite Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference to make a point about the deadly sting of malaria.

"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes," Gates said while opening a jar onstage at a gathering known to attract technology kings, politicians, and Hollywood stars.

"I brought some. Here I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected."

Gates waited a minute or so before assuring the audience the liberated insects were malaria-free.

I can just imagine the room reaction. Unease, followed by impending horror. Tony Robbins turns to Michael Eisner and asks if he's sure Bill is just fucking around. Philippe Starck makes his peace with God. Al Gore screams out "This maniac is trying to kill us all". Paul Allen looks into Bill's eyes to see if he has that crazy glazed over look like he did when he bashed that hookers head open in '83. The Bill tell them it's all a hilarious joke and they all laugh nervously while texting their bankers to cancel donations to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Can one of you billionaires stop buying sports teams for a second and just kill a room of people to make a point about a global disease or problem? Then flee to your mountain fortress and threaten to launch nukes unless world leaders meet you demands of curing rheumatoid arthritis or upping child literacy levels? It would take some of the edge off the impending world economic collapse.

We're all going to die by 2013

Biological terror attack likely by 2013, panel says

Terrorists are likely to use a weapon of mass destruction somewhere in the world in the next five years, a blue-ribbon panel assembled by Congress has concluded.

They are more likely to use a biological weapon than a nuclear one, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism said in its report.

The U.S. government "needs to move more aggressively to limit" the spread of biological weapons, the commission said.

The impending financial apocalypse got you down? Worried about how you'll afford to eat or find non cardboard based shelter? Don't worry, you'll be dead from a weaponized version of the AIDSbola pox sometime in the next five years. So you have that going for you. Just toss this prediction on the pile with all the other predictions of imminent terrorist related horrible death. Every five years groups get together to tell us that within the next five years something awful will happen, be it suitcase nukes, regular nukes, monkey pox, chemical attacks, or bio attacks. They're all always coming in.......THE NEXT FIVE YEARS.

So I don't know, start praying it comes before the man comes to haul your family off to debtors prison. It doesn't matter anyway, any serious group knows that the Mayans foresaw the world ending in 2012 anyway. You don't even have to worry about 2013, by then Queztlecoatl will have returned, the poles will have reversed, and an asteroid will have smashed our planet to bits all at the same time. What's a case of the monkey sniffles compared to Halley's Comet crashing into the moon? Where's a panel of wizened elders warning about that?

Bush bright ideas department

Bio Lab in Galveston Raises Concerns

How a laboratory where scientists plan to study viruses like Ebola and Marburg ended up on a barrier island where hurricanes regularly wreak havoc puzzles some environmentalists and community leaders.

“It’s crazy, in my mind,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in Houston. “I just find an amazing willingness among the people on the Texas coast to accept risks that a lot of people in the country would not accept.”

Officials at the laboratory and at the National Institutes of Health, which along with the university is helping to pay for the $174 million building, say it can withstand any storm the Atlantic hurls at it.

Not content with super hurricanes, Bush feels we need super hurricanes that hurl horrifying, rare, organ liquefying diseases at the populace with gale force winds. We're sure he isn't a Bond villain right? Has he built any unstable nuclear reactors on fault lines or in unstable volcanoes? No? We sure? TNT factory next to a school? I'll take your word for it. So, gulf coast......uh...yeah....enjoy your next hurricane. Shit, I mean Ebolacaine. The rubble in your house will have Marburg virus on it. Rubber gloves and goggles, people.