With a tip-o-the-hat and deepest gratitude to D'oh... although everyone knows his name, although it's not his real name.
Dateline: Santa Verde, a time and place to be determined
In case any of you were wondering, it is virtually impossible to escape news. Here your intrepid reporter is, in Santa (Park Your Butt On Our Toilets) Verde, sipping drinks made from insects the likes of which have never made it north of the border, and still they cascade their stupid news on us as if we were merely rocks and they were a big balloon full of water drawn from a cesspool.
Whew. An example, you demand.
Doing the Potomac Shuffle file: Okay, we know that when someone screws up in the Bush administration — or in most administrations, to be fair — they get great new jobs. But who needs The New York Times to play the game. "The No. 2 job in the State Department is technically a step down from John Negroponte’s present post of director of national intelligence. But the reported return to the foreign policy fold of this former ambassador to Baghdad, and, before that, to the United Nations, has a certain logic to it."
Euthanasia has a certain logic to it as well if you just pronounce it, "Youth In Asia." I mean you may have no idea what it means, but, at the same time, who knew what Negroponte was doing either? And how is going to do any better that the current crop when the best the president can say is "hey, we may not be winning, but that's a lot better than losing." So it fits. One man not accomplishing one job shifted to an area where the administration hasn't a clue what to do. This is why America is great. There are no losers — only bad puns.
The Good Lord Made Me Do It file: Okay, anyone can make a mistake, and it's simply a sign of the arrogance and irresponsibility of the liberal elite in this country that when one of the chosen stumble, they act like it's the end of the world. So a white supremacist is caught with child porn and discovered to be tampering with witnesses (all of whom we believe were older than 21 and therefore not children). Excuse me. There are no liberal white supremacists — strike that, there are no liberal kiddie porners?
Article comments
1 - D'oh
Well now, more news, more news, and even more news...
What shall we shine the intrepid spotlight of searing suspicion and stunning soliloquies sounding sirens of strife and scintillating sundries so satisfaction can be sustained and substantiated?
From the Weird Affairs Desk:
New Yorkers have the fastest reflexes
Face it folks, Baghdad is a mess
We seem to have forgotten there are problems in India too!
Depressing, ain't it?
2 - Matthew T. Sussman
CNN, those subtle bastards.
3 - D'oh
OK, this one just bugs the hell out of me. It seems that even a harmless postal bill is the subject of signing statements that say the President thinks it's ok by him to open mail without a warrant!
4 - Bliffle
Modern business and government have superseded the old Peter Principle "A person rises to his level of incompetence, and stays there" to a new principle "Failing at any management job entitles one to be promoted to a bigger job because of the experience gained." So failure, not success, becomes the road to promotion.
Think about that next time you are inclined to drop to your knees and kiss the feet of a Great Man.
5 - Dave Nalle
No, it's even better than that, Bliffle. Based on what I've observed with college coaches and CEOs, you now rise to your level of competence, then rise beyond it, then they pay you an enormous amount of money in a severance package to go away.
Dave
6 - Bliffle
But the severance package is just a Parthian shot. Exercised after all the assets, including Blue Sky, have been exhausted by collusion between the CEO/Coach and the Bord Of Directors or Board Of Regents. Witness the last gasp of the Enron fiasco, even in the throes of bankruptcy, marshalling $700million for "retention bonuses" for 150 of the execs who doomed the company. Zombies! They come back from beyond the grave to haunt us, while the innocent and luckless suffer for it. Again! What kind of stake can we drive thru the hearts of these monsters?
7 - Mark Schannon
It's really quite remarkable what we'll tolerate, isn't it. Individually, there's nothing we can do about execs destroying a company and getting mountains of money in return...but does anyone remember my plea to join me in some kind of revolution (that won't hurt anybody because I won't want to go to jail someplace where I won't be able to see my wife or my lawyer for years and years and soon I'll be forgotten and swept under the rug...honest.)
In Jameson Veritas
8 - D'oh
I thought that was what we were doing here, Mark?
I never get the right memo!
9 - Mark Schannon
D'oh, here we talk and develop very broad strategy, like, "Let's do something." And we kvetch, which is good for the blood pressure.
But remember there are "those" people watching and recording everything we say--people like that Commie, NeoCon, Redwing blackbird, DN...hint, hint.
We could start our own WIKI but we'll have to wait until I get more than 4 or 5 waking hours.
Cha.
In Jameson Veritas
10 - D'oh
Working on it Mark, will keep you posted.
Now, drink a nice double for the Giants...they need it.
11 - D'oh
OK..halftime, and this little puppy is too much a Weird story to pass up.
It seems that the whole "let there be Light" thing is really important, for obvious reasons to us carbon based life forms, but it turns out that the Dark matter(s)!
12 - Clavos
D'oh,
A friend of mine whose hobby (yes, HOBBY) is astrophysics just explained (sort of; but my fault, not his) dark matter to me a couple of weeks ago.
He told me that dark matter was like a blob of jelly in which everything in the universe is embedded, and the whole thing is moving; I think he also said that this discovery disproves the theory that the universe is expanding, but I won't swear to that part.
13 - D'oh
Clavos, the guy to talk to on these matters is duane, since he IS a real astrophysicist. Scope out the article for some good info.
The big thing about dark matter is the explanation it gives to a lot of the issues surrounding gravity and the question of expansion/contraction in the Universe.
14 - Your Wrong!
You are a constitutional authority who can tell us what the 'founding fathers' meant when they wrote the Constitution? Oh Please!
The menat "no religious test as long as you are a Christian?!?!?! Then why didn't they write it like that?
Maybe because Thomas Jefferson himself was not a Christian.
15 - Mark Schannon
I'm wrong??? Me, the intrepid reporter? Well, I guess it's possible, but you're going to have to learn English or French or Italian or Japanese before I can respond intelligently to your point.
Actually, I'm not a constitutional authority, but I do have a helluva time machine so I can sneak back and listen to every word. It ain't easy, I'll tell you -- "thou" this and "canst" that. No wonder it took so long to write the damn thing.
In Jameson Veritas