Headlines

Florida Senate Candidate Believes That Terrorist Sorcerers Are Coming To Rape Our Cars

Yeah, you're going to want to click through to learn about the conspiracy that reaches back beyond Salem to before the Vikings, effects our bowel movements, and our transportation. Paiboon Sunthonchart Jr. knows and now he wants you to know.

Broken News: Katrina Never Happened

NEW ORLEANS—For many citizens in this once hurricane-ravaged city, the events of the past couple of days remain simply unbelievable. Virtually overnight, all levees have been competently rebuilt, the lower 9th ward and surrounding areas restored to pristine condition, millions of residents back in undamaged homes, and local businesses up and running at full capacity.

“I don’t want to jinx it,” a giddy Mayor Ray Nagin announced to the assembled press who had gathered at city hall when they all realized what was occurring. “But I think that the Saints winning the Super Bowl caused a sort of temporal rift. HURRICANE KATRINA NEVER HAPPENED!”

“Just like all the media and sports press have essentially been claiming. WHO DAT?!” the mayor jubilantly exclaimed.

In a comprehensive list released to the media, Nagin detailed all the policies, programs, relief and reconstruction efforts that were going to be canceled immediately because of the magical circumstances stemming from this sporting victory.

These include such programs as efforts to rebuild and restore the lower 9th and the 80% of building in Orleans parish that sustained severe water damage, attempts to rebuild a fortify the levee system, efforts to encourage growth after nearly half the city population left, efforts to revamp and rejuvenate the education, cultural, law enforcement, and local governance systems, as well as addressing widespread poverty, health, employment and other urban issues, or any other efforts to address the weak tax base, business community, and economy that are all now completely fixed.

In addition, David Simon announced the cancellation of his upcoming New Orleans HBO series Treme saying “I guess there no longer exists an overarching tableau of decay and rebirth that I can use as a backdrop to critique the fading American empire and its self-destructive institutions.”

Added a clearly dejected Simon, "I guess we'll always have Cleveland."

While nearly everyone is pleased to see New Orleans magically overcome the greatest natural disaster in American history through otherworldly means in conjunction with the outcome of a sporting championship, most are just confused as to how this occurred.

While certain sporting events have come to be seen as triggers for important historical events, most notably the 1935 Detroit victory in the World Series ushering in the New Deal and the 1968 formation on the Cincinnati Bengals being retroactively blamed for the My Lai Massacre, there has yet to have been a sporting victory or loss that has seemingly traveled back through time to change past events.

“I don’t claim to understand it, I’m just glad it happened,” a victorious Mayor Nagin yelled from a parade float led by a jazz brass ensemble playing “When the Saints Go Marching In”.

On the other hand some in the media seemingly did foresee such a chain of events, peppering their coverage of the Saints with references to how their good season was part of the complete rebirth of New Orleans and that an arbitrary victory in a football game could possibly signal that the city was back and A-OK.

“Yeah, when I first heard all of that I was a little incredulous,” observed Saints QB and Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees. “I mean I do a ton of charity work around this city and I failed to see just how us winning one game would retroactively fix the deplorable state that the city was in... at the time.”

“I remember being asked by Katie Couric if I had saved New Orleans,” Brees recounted, highlighted a pre-game interview with the CBS anchor that beggared belief. “I just thought to myself ‘Listen you dippy bitch, how the hell is a high octane passing attack and intensive film study going to fix the very real socio-economic problems that I tirelessly work to help fix?’”

“But here we are," he shrugged. “Everything was fixed. Because of a football game.”

In a statement he released to the press Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning, who threw a game changing interception for a touchdown and who himself grew up in New Orleans while his father played quarterback for the Saints, noting that he was “glad to do his part to revive his hometown”, feeling that the complete and total rejuvenation of most of Southern Louisiana was a much better result than what would have happened for Indianapolis had the Colts won: half-price burgers at participating Steak’n’Shakes in the greater metro area.

“Whatever,” Mayor Nagin was heard to yell while reveling in parade festivities on Bourbon Street. “I’m just glad that no one ever has to worry about New Orleans ever again or concern themselves with the status of this city. We won a football game! It’s all golden baby.”

In a related story, the nation of Haiti petitioned several top NFL franchises to legally relocate their headquarters to Port-au-Prince for the upcoming season in the hopes that a Super Bowl victory could not only fix the damage done in the recent earthquake, but provide the country with a mulligan for most of the past 200 years.

Depressing information about Iraq of the day

With lasts month's bombing attacks in Iraq that left 127 dead, an attack that killed 155 in October, bombings that killed 35 in August, and attacks over the weekend that killed at least 35, the question is asked "why don't Iraqis have better bomb detectors?" Well, they have the money, they just choose to spend it on fraudulent technology sold by monstrous crooks. Still.



$85 million was spent on this "technology" from a UK company that is now under arrest for fraud. But the "machines", car antennas hooked up to a device meant to detect department store theft, are still in use by an Iraqi government who still seems to think that they work.

So in case you were wondering why the security situation is still so unstable after this many years and why dozens of bombs seem to go off each month, just know that one of the pillars of our security strategy was hoping that magic detected car bombs. Don't worry though, I'm sure we'll get this figured out sometime in the next intervening decade we spend in Iraq.

This explains so much

We've all taken our fair share of shots at the Bush Administration for their conduct during the eight years they prosecuted the war on terror. Hell, some of us have taken more than our share of shots. But for far too long we've been laboring under the misapprehension that they were acting with some sort of nefarious disregard for the laws of this country. That their actions were a means to some overarching sinister end. Well it turns out they weren't. They were just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really stupid. Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, fucking stupid.

A self-styled Nevada codebreaker convinced the CIA he could decode secret terrorist targeting information sent through Al Jazeera broadcasts, prompting the Bush White House to raise the terror alert level to Orange (high) in December 2003, with Tom Ridge warning of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experience on September 11," according to a new report in Playboy.
...
The man who prompted the December 2003 Orange alert was Dennis Montgomery, who has since been embroiled in various lawsuits, including one for allegedly bouncing $1 million in checks during a Caesars Palace spree -- and whose former lawyer calls him a "habitual liar engaged in fraud."

Working out of a Reno, Nevada, software firm called eTreppid Technologies, Montgomery took in officials in the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and convinced them that technology he invented -- but could not explain -- was pulling terrorist-produced "bar codes" from Al Jazeera television broadcasts. Using his proprietary technology, those bar codes could be translated into longitudes and latitudes and flight numbers. Terrorist leaders were using that data to direct their compatriots about the next target.

Eventually the CIA found out he was utterly and completely full of shit. But not before the Bush Administration had already been using his proclamations as means for action and raising threat levels. And not before he inked another $3 million dollar contract with the Air Force in January. At the very least, no one in the CIA gave Montgomery a nuke when he claimed he could build a Cylon detector.

Seems the only code this guy found out was the one embedded in the Bush Administration: tell them what they want to hear in a way that can benefit their aims and you get millions of dollars. In retrospect, it was not a hard code to crack. But this explains so much. A man claimed he had a magic bean and before anyone could verify if he was as obvious a con man as he seemed, the government was handing him millions and acting the information he divined from said bean. I think our jaws would drop if we ever found out how much money, time, and action was taken on similar ideas and various magic protective rocks.

But just in case you were thinking "Surely this stupid scam I conceived of couldn't possibly fool the CIA and US Government to the tune of millions of dollars", you're either underselling your idea or overselling the intelligence of the United States. Both, as we've learned, are mistakes.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.05

Goldman One-Ups Gordon Gekko, Says Jesus Embraced Greed
God bless Goldman-Sachs. At the very least they're going around claiming that He does bless them. Yes, America's favorite pillagers and looters are sending spokesman to churches around the world to speak on how Jesus would have loved the latest round of massive bonuses that they handed out. Tell me about it. What was it Jesus said? "Sure it's easy for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, it's like trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle the size of the camel. It's fucking simple, now tell me how my stocks did." If there was any difficulty getting into Heaven it's probably because there'd be all these poor assholes standing at the gates (Jesus was a sucker for those destitute SOB's) asking the rich guy for spare change and he'd have a hard time knocking those peasant swine out of the way to get in.

Another View At Goldman's Trading Perfection And Statistical Improbabilities
It's Goldman-Sachs day on the Crutch, so we'll also point you to the Zero Hedge blog where a look at G-S figures finds they make $100 million in profit 3 out of every 5 days, their numbers challenge "not only all preconceptions of realistic trading, but also of statistical distributions", and those same figures are essentially comparable to a Ponzi scheme. I'm sure someone from the SEC will get right on it. Fuck it, why does God need to approve of Goldman-Sachs bonuses? God is obsolete. Goldman-Sachs is God; Money God. Let's worship them now.

The global climate change lobby: inside the battle to influence the most important environmental treaty of our lifetime
The Center for Public Integrity, crooked fuckers that they are, released a report today slandering innocent companies like Exxon Mobil, Peabody Coal and other energy and agriculture interests, for allegedly spreading fear and misinformation about the impact of emissions regulations in their attempts to neuter any proposed treaties that come out of the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen. Just because they have numerous examples of energy companies in multiple countries using lies to drum up fear of any attempt to address climate change destroying everyone's job, doesn't mean it's true. They must be taking hundreds of events, the 5 lobbyists to every 1 member of Congress ratio, hundreds of millions of dollars spent fighting this, and a coordinated strategy out of context.

When antiscience kills: dowsing edition
The Bad Astronomy blog looks into dowsers, the completely bullshit practice of using Y-shaped sticks to divine water or gold, and how Iraq is spending millions, $85 million to be specific, on a "high-tech" version....as a way to detect bombs. To the point where they're phasing out bomb-sniffing dogs. Unsurprisingly the magic wands failed to detect two tons of explosives that ended up killing 155 people, yet the head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives refuses to switch to a different or more effective method citing his extensive knowledge of bombs. I.....you see.....uh.....WHAT THE FUCK? Good Lord, can we get the fuck out of Iraq already?

Broken In Brief: Area man flirts with insanity as he attempts to explain mother's computer problem to her

HARTFORD—Today, after a brief period of around five minutes when the entire world did not make sense to him and his thoughts were consumed by paranoia and murder fantasies, area man Ron Durham was able to regain his senses after a disastrous attempt to explain to his mother how he fixed the problem she was having on her computer.

The brief flirtation with insanity began early in the day when his mother called him up with complaints that her computer, which Mr. Durham had mistakenly bought for her in an attempt to move her into the 21st century, was “acting funny” and added to it a list of nonsensical claims that included the gem “the packets aren’t sizing.”

As Durham arrived to look at the computer, his sanity was initially tested by his mother’s complete inability to explain what was happening in terms that a normal human would comprehend. After a fifteen minute period wading through this crazy woman’s cluttered desktop of solitaire games, pictures of grandchildren, and wrongly installed programs, he finally found the problem and fixed it quite easily.

Tragically he made the mistake of informing his mother of the actual problem and solution, explaining that it was “a simple matter of updating drivers.” As he slowly realized what he had just done, Durham was unable to run out of the house in time to avoid the rapid fire rash of bizarrely nonsensical computer/automotive questions.

As his mind caved in on itself, devouring his will to live under the weight of a carburetor/Windows tandem word bludgeoning, he finally understood the only two solutions to end this madness: murder or escape.

"Magic,” he blurted out. “I was wrong. It was magic that caused it. Magic also fixed it. It was magic all along...inside each of us." As his mother paused, perhaps to contemplate the witness of said magic or perhaps in affront to what she had to know was an egregious lie, Durham used the momentary pause to gather his senses, say goodbye, run from the house, and take stock of how precious life is.

Headline of the day

'Cops Tase Stubborn Naked Wizard at Coachella'

Among the many performances at the Coachella music festival, there was one act more disturbing and brutal than the rest. As hundreds of music fans looked on, three police officers beat down and repeatedly tasered a Naked Wizard who apparently wasn’t eager to throw a robe over his magic wand.

Click the link, there's video.

Obama's magical America

So maybe Obama hasn't delivered on all of his campaign promises yet, like say the secrecy thing or fixing the economy or horsewhipping Harry Reid, but the man has hit on a few and it's still early yet. While all the little creatures of the forest have failed to frolic around us all while bluebirds alight at our shoulders carrying uplifting messages on ribbons of silk, he has hit on one magical, mystical, hopey, changey promise: bubblegum dolphins in a marmalade lake!!!!!!


Ok, it's not really marmalade, the color and chunkiness of the water are pollution related, not jam related. But still: BUBBLEGUM MOTHERFUCKING DOLPHINS!!! Plus I have it on good authority that Obama has ordered the appearance of taffy unicorns that defecate healthcare coverage, dwarves that mine candy canes, and rainbows made of cotton candy. It's not all bad, the Obama Presidency is exactly like a happy Disney cartoon! Now sing a jaunty tune while you look for work.

I douse your dreams of secret bigfoots

The Sasquatch. The Abominable Snowman. The Yeti. The Stink Ape. Bigfoot.

All still fake you childish motherfuckers. Remember those guys that said they found a bigfoot, but wouldn't let anyone look at it? Get the fainting couch Bertha, they're fakers. I know, I know, how could something that looked like a gorilla suit smeared with entrails not turn out to really be Bigfoot. They got what they wanted, 15 minutes of fame and some dumb bastard to buy it off them.

The claimed recent discovery of Bigfoot in the US state of Georgia has turned out to be a hoax - it was a rubber gorilla suit in a block of ice.

Two men said last week they had found a 2.3m-tall (7ft 7in), 226kg (500lb) corpse of the legendary ape-like creature in a wood in June.

Two researchers bought the "carcass", encased in ice, for an undisclosed sum.

But as it thawed it turned out to be a rubber monkey outfit. Bigfoot has been the subject of decades of hoaxes.

I like that last phrase "Bigfoot has been the subject of decades of hoaxes", as if he's some old pensioner who keeps getting scammed by slick con artists. So cry tears of sadness into your Harry and the Hendersons pillow, Bigfoot isn't real, the aliens picked them all up and moved them to a safe game reserve for galactic endangered species. They ride unicorns with the Transformers now.

Of final note, two things popped out from the article. One, there's a guy who runs a site called squatchdetective.com. That is a great idea for a cartoon or comic book or something. Not a guy who carves a career out of investigating inevitable fakes, but an actual Sasquatch detective who has to solve crimes and hide his identity. I COPYRIGHTED THAT SHIT! IT'S MINE!!! STAY AWAY!!

Secondly, these hoaxers have a Bigfoot Tip Line wherein they admit they search for leprechauns and the Loch Ness monster. How did these guys get on the national news again? Darfur can't get on the news, but rubber ape suits from the leprechaun detectives get coverage. All hail our media betters.