The details are here.
B-2 Spirit: 1
One former buzzard: 0
Yes, you have been trolled over a bird strike.
A buzzard is a form of raptor, after all, so the headline is technically accurate.
Click the images for a larger size slide show.
Category: Snark
God Bless The Onion
Nostradamus has nothing on the good folks at America’s Finest News Source.
Canada is a Couple of Hundred Pounds Smarter Today
The great Charlie Pierce made the above comment in response to the news that Senator Ted Cruz has formally renounced his Canadian citizenship, and he follows up with this:
Now, if they don’t build our old friend the Keystone XL pipeline, America will be completely free of noxious imports from Alberta.
Rofl!
The Onion to Shut Down and Lay off All Staff
In a joint press conference today, editor Cole Bolton and CEO Steve Hannah have announced that The Onion will be ceasing publication immediately immediately, with all staff made redundant, and all assets put up for sale.
Bolton, shaking his head sadly, announced that following the in response to the declaration by the campaign for former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown for New Hampshire (this time) Senate that his opponent is, “A Senator from Massachusetts,” said that satire has been rendered obsolete by reality.
“I knew that it would be John Sununu who would destroy us,” said Bolton, the now former editor. “His continuous innovation in the area of unintentional self parody have always threatened us with obsolescence, and now he has finally made us completely irrelevant.”
John Sununu’s statement introducing Scott Brown at a campaign rally left the staff dumbstruck, with many in tears, even before the announced layoffs.
“We just gotta remind people that he’s coming back to his roots,” former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu told me after the Portsmouth rally. Sununu, in case you have forgotten, was one of Romney’s most ubiquitous and delightfully crotchety fsurrogates during the presidential campaign in 2012. In true Sununu fashion, he not only defended Brown’s alleged Live Free or Die bona fides; he’s gone on the attack. To him, it is Shaheen, not Brown, who’s the real outsider.
“She votes with Elizabeth Warren. She votes with [Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed] Markey. She is the third senator from Massachusetts,” Sununu told supporters at the Portsmouth rally before introducing Brown. “Scott’s happiest days as a young man were in New Hampshire. … So it’s going to be great to have a senator that was born virtually in the state of New Hampshire. Jean Shaheen, by the way, was born in Missouri!”
Did you catch how Sununu cleverly described Brown as “virtually” born in New Hampshire? He was actually born in Maine, which for Brown’s campaign is close enough for government work and has the great advantage of being closer than Missouri and not being Massachusetts. It is also rather audacious to paint Shaheen as a “senator from Massachusetts,” since Brown quite literally was, and very much wanted to remain, a senator from Massachusetts.
In related news, the General Manager and Editor-In-Chief of The Onion‘s AV Club, Josh Modell has announced, “I got nothing,” that they will shut down their studio, and cease producing satirical films, and simply re-broadcast cable news stories.
I Love this Wifi ID Ever
CITIZEN’S ARREST! A person who controls a wifi near the “combination hair salon and toy store on the increasingly stylish Fifth Avenue strip of Park Slope” called LuLu’s has given his or her network a positively vulgar name. It is a name that threatens to sully the posh and sophisticated reputation of a shop that charges $26 to give your child a new lease on life via his or her tresses ($10 for just a bangs job). It is a name that is not good for kids.
On the Google Group bergenbtwn4and5, LuLu’s owner Brigitte Prat (or someone posing as her using the handle brigittelpratt) shares the story of how her brand is being attacked (probably by a high person who thought it would be funny to satirize the presumed bourgieness of the children’s salon): ………
That is f%$#ing brilliant!!!!
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Too True
The results of a new parenting study are reporting that, “If American parents read one more long-form think piece about parenting they will go f%$#ing ape sh%$.
Word.
Click on the link, and read the rest.
Rupert Murdoch is Insane
I am not referring to Murdoch’s recent meltdown over the sponsors dropping the St. Patrick’s day parade for their gay ban. (The fact that the quintessential Irish brewer, Guinness, has dropped the parade amuses me.)
Rather I am referring to the fact that Matt Groening has revealed that Murdoch was considering suing the producers of The Simpsons over their parody of a Fox News crawl:
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel threatened to sue the makers of the Simpsons over a spoof news ticker, the show’s creator Matt Groening has claimed.
Mr Groening said Fox News raised the unlikely prospect of suing a show broadcast by its sister channel, Fox Entertainment, because it wanted to stop the Simpsons parodying its famously anti-Democratic party agenda.
The alleged row centred on a parody of Fox News’ rolling news ticker, which included headlines such as “Do Democrats cause cancer?”
Mr Groening said the news channel backed down because it would have caused Fox to bring a lawsuit against itself.
“Fox said they would sue the show and we called their bluff because we didn’t think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. We got away with it,” Mr Groening told National Public Radio in the US.
“But now Fox has a new rule that we can’t do those little fake news crawls [tickers] on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it’s real news,” he added on NPR’s Fresh Air programme.
I am so reassured that a media magnate billionaire who is one white Persian cat away from being a Bond villain is wasting his time on this sh%$.
Tweet of the Millennium So Far………
Say what you will about George W Bush, but he wouldn’t have stood for Russian aggression in Ukraine. He’d have invaded New Zealand by now.
— Donal O’Keeffe (@Donal_OKeeffe) March 1, 2014
Brilliant!!!
I Wish that This Was True
In response to Georgia’s issuing a vanity plate featuring the Klu Klux Klan Confederate Battle Flag, John Perr comes up with a parody that is pure genius.
The only thing that could make this better would be if this were true:
The state of Georgia this week began offering a new version of its vehicle license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag. Sponsored by the Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (to whom a portion of the purchase price and annual registration fees will go), the revised design has many people inside the state and out howling mad.
In response to the outcry, Georgia SCV commander Jack Bridwell asked, “What’s the big deal?” Echoing Bridwell’s explanation that “the design is just people trying to show who they are and trying to be proud of their heritage,” Sons of Confederate Veterans spokesman Ray McBerry invited other groups to do the same:“We believe that all people ought to be able to celebrate their history and their heritage, and that includes Southerners. We did anticipate that there could be some folks who would not like that, but we encourage them to go and make application for their own specialty plates.”
Now, a little known organization is taking him up on the offer. The group, calling itself The American People, is sponsoring a license plate to mark the 150th anniversary of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea.
After capturing the South’s vital manufacturing center and rail hub at Atlanta, Sherman’s troops marched southeast to Savannah leaving a swath of ruin in their wake. Between November 15th and December 21st, 1864, Sherman more than accomplished his objective to “create havoc and destruction of all resources that would be beneficial to the enemy.” Sherman’s brilliant campaign (or what the Sons of Confederate Veterans brand “atrocities and war crimes“) hastened the end of the Confederacy and with it the enslavement of four million Americans.
Read the rest, it’s brilliant, and if you know anyone in Georgia, have them petition for a vanity plate.
This is f%$3ing brilliant!
Not a Photoshop, Not The Onion
This is where the spill occurred
Look at the detail on the billboard
If you do a Google maps of 2237 Pennsylvania Ave, Charleston, WV 25302, and then you do a Street View, you will see that it is right across from Freedumb Industries, the company that tainted water for 300,000 people in West Virginia.
If you do a street view, you will notice that there is a billboard which says, “The President talks about creating jobs, but his EPA is destroying jobs.”
Irony, you are soaking in it!
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS
God Bless The Onion
This is prize:
My Fellow Americans, Look At Me: Do I Look Like A Corrupt, Vengeful Bully?
Commentary • Opinion • ISSUE 50•01 • Jan 9, 2014
By Chris Christie, New Jersey Governor
I must admit, the past two days have been the most humbling of my entire career. I was shocked and disgusted to learn of the deplorable conduct of a member of my staff, who, without my knowledge, orchestrated lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, deliberately causing major traffic congestion in order to exact political vengeance against a local mayor who didn’t endorse me for reelection. Though I promptly fired the aide in question and repeatedly stressed that I had no prior knowledge of her actions, many have continued to accuse me of being complicit in this incident. And to those who do, I can only ask that you simply look at me, right now, and just ask yourself one question: Do I look like a corrupt, vengeful, openly antagonistic bully to you?
………
Read the reat.
It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Have a nautical video.
This is the Best Political Slam I’ve Ever Heard
That’s Gotta Hurt!And yes, I’m including Winston Churchill’s best slams* in my calling this the best.
Even more surprising is that it comes from a woman, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is running against Mitch McConnell for Senate in 2014, as women are frequently subjected to a double standard on such thing. (A man is assertive, and a woman is a bitch, etc.)
At a political staple of Kentucky politics, a barbecue at a small hamlet known as Fancy Farm, Grimes let fly:
But in her speech, Grimes didn’t shy from attacking McConnell directly, painting him as an obstructionist who’s been in Washington too long, as her own supporters chanted, “Ditch Mitch.”
“If the doctors told Sen. McConnell that he had a kidney stone, he’d refuse to pass it,” Grimes said, in her most memorable zinger of her six-minute speech.
While McConnell left after his likely Democratic opponents’ speech, not staying to hear his GOP primary opponent at the end of the program, Grimes welcomed Bevin to the race, joking that he was glad to see the “GOP nominee had shown up.”
That is going to leave a mark!
*A couple of Churchill’s more famous insults:
One day shortly after the Second World War ended, Winston Churchill and Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee encountered one another at the urinal trough in the House of Common’s men’s washroom. Attlee arrived first. When Churchill arrived, he stood as far away from him as possible. Attlee said, “Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?” Churchill said: “That’s right. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.”
………
Lady Astor: Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink.
Churchill: Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.
Linkage
- From the annals of unsurprising news, we discover that Rich people cheat more than poor people. (Naked Capitalism)
- What is worse than Larry Summers as Fed Chair? Tim Geithner. (Huffpo)
- Robert Khuzami, who studiously refused to enforce the law against big banks, gets a plush job from a law firm that represents the big banks. (POGO)
- Lawmakers who voted against restricting NSA spying got twice as much in campaign contributions than those who voted for the amendment.
Libertarian Paradise:
Things that Pundits do Not Understand
To paraphrase Paul Krugman, it’s not all about them.
He’s right, of course, but I think that he misses the dynamic: Pundits are supposed to be narcissistic sociopaths. It’s the nature of the medium:
Brad DeLong and Dan Drezner wearily continue the policing of Michael Kinsley. I’ll leave it in their hands. But may I say that there is a serious pundit lesson here — namely, that it’s not about you.
Basically, Kinsley has been on a jihad against Krugman because other people took apart Kinsley’s essay on austerity, which was both wrong on the basic history, and fetishized other people’s suffering.
I’m not sure why patron saint of dumb-f%$# mindless contrarianism is upset with Paul Krugman, but being wrong is what Michael Kinsley does best.
Academe Would Be So Much Better if This Were True
FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion Of Your Thesis Defense
A sample:
Q: What does it mean if I get a small snake that is also very strong?
A: Snake-picking is not an exact science. The size of the snake is the main factor. The snake may be very strong, or it may be very weak. It may be of Asian, African, or South American origin. It may constrict its victims and then swallow them whole, or it may use venom to blind and/or paralyze its prey. You shouldn’t read too much into these other characteristics. Although if you get a poisonous snake, it often means that there was a problem with the formatting of your bibliography.
Go read.
H/t Lindsay Beyerstein.
But of Course
Senate Minority Leader Fooled by Report in Military Version of The Onion
Well turtles are not known for their intellect.
Heh.
At the start of a new Congress, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out teabagger membership cards to the Republican Representatives:
As new members of Congress are sworn in on Thursday, Democrats are looking to brand the incoming Republican class early on. The DCCC is sending out the above “Tea Party membership cards” to the offices of 35 freshman Republicans.
Press releases in their individual districts identify each member as “the newest Tea Party House Republican who will put millionaires ahead of the middle class and dysfunction ahead of progress,” according to DCCC communications director Jesse Ferguson.
This is really what I call “immature College Republican agitprop,” but I still chuckled.
I guess that a lot depends on whose ox is gored.
Quote of the Day
H/t Bluegal at C&L.
God Bless The Onion
I Misspoke—What I Meant To Say Is ‘I Am Dumb As Dog Sh%$ And I Am A Terrible Human Being’
By Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) August 20, 2012
As a politician, I often find myself in situations where, unfortunately, I express a certain thought or idea poorly, or find my words taken out of context. Indeed, that is what happened this weekend. Upon reviewing the impromptu remarks I made Sunday afternoon, I can now see that I used the wrong words in the wrong way. I would now like to set the record straight with the American people and clear up some confusion about what it was I intended to convey.
You see, what I said was, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” But what I meant to say was, “I am a worthless, moronic sack of sh%$ and an utterly irredeemable human being who needs to shut up and go away forever.”
(%$ mine)
They owe me a screen cleaner.