In the Duke Lacrosse rape case...

For this the charges are dropped? For this the woman is called "wavering"

Yet when questioned again on Thursday afternoon by Mr. Nifong’s investigator, the woman said for the first time that she could no longer be sure what had penetrated her.

Audi's new slogan: "Young, Powerful, and Ready to Play."

Eeeyooo. That's just disgusting.

Ya Don't Say

AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the rest of the Bush administration may be undecided on whether to send more troops to Iraq. But several soldiers he met with at Camp Victory here on Thursday morning said extra forces would help.
[...]
His hour-long question-and-answer session with troops over scrambled eggs Thursday was largely spent gathering insights from those closest to the action.

When he asked them whether adding forces would help, he got a roomful of nods.

Atrios:

I'm not impugning the integrity of these people. They may believe these things sincerely. That isn't the issue. The issue is pretending that when the new Secretary of Defense shows up to talk "to the troops" that those people chosen for that talk are a representative random group.

Remember that lovely scripted Bush/Troops teleconference? Memories.

Niyazoz is Gone, but We Still Have the Memories

Now that the Turkmenistan dictator Saparmurat Niyazoz has died of a heart-attack, we can thank Tripmaster Monkey for a quick rundown of some Funny Facts of his rule.

And by Funny I mean horrifying.

Also, it's really hard for me not to wonder about the "heart attack" thing.

Froomkin:

There's been plenty of evidence for years now that Bush was living in a self-imposed bubble of non-reality, particularly when it came to the situation in Iraq.

But it wasn't until Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial," came out in September that it was definitively established, to the full satisfaction of Washington's cocktail-party circles, that the president is not to be taken seriously on Iraq.

It wasn't until November, when the voters resoundingly threw Bush's congressional enablers from power, that it became undeniably clear that Americans reject Bush's leadership.

And Bush's response to this month's report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group is making it manifestly obvious that, for all the White House's attempts to give the impression that Bush listens to people who disagree with him, he does not.

"I" Stands for "Ineffable"

The brain-deads at Blogs for Bush have really outdone themselves this time. One of today's posts is titled:

"W" Stands for "Win"

It's hard to imagine there's a real mind in there.

Goodbye, Shallow Boxer

Watched the finale of Survivor last night. One of my least favorite human beings ever to have to watch talk was thankfully booted just a couple episodes ago, some terrible person called Parvati, so luckily her involvement was limited. But I did enjoy learning two fun facts about her:

1. Her last name is Shallow. Pavarti Shallow. Uh-huh.

2. One of the odder things about her was that she was always listed as having the profession "boxer." It was never explained on the show, and it made zero sense. She was a complete party-socialite girl, and the "boxer" title seemed like a typo or a joke. Well, she was asked about it tonight, and she clarified that it's actually called "Model Boxing" that she's involved in. Uh-huh.

The Editors offer a reality-check:

I think there’s a sense among people who spend their days buried in liberal political blogs that the ideal politician is a really, really big liberal blogger. Now, I freely admit that, if Obama’s response to the latest Presidential address was to photoshop Bush’s head on Marie Antoinette’s body and spend the next few weeks referring to him as “The Dauphine of Douchebags”, I would declare him to be the Greatest Human Being Who Ever Lived and vote for him for everything, forever. That said, I read way too many blogs.

My emphasis.

CNN Synchronicity

I was this close to taking this exact screenshot and making this exact post earlier today. Saved me the trouble.

For No Reason

So there are currently no charges against anyone in the high profile "case" that introduced the "liquids limitations" in the first place?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 13 — A judge threw out terrorism charges on Wednesday against Rashid Rauf, a Briton of Pakistani descent whom prosecutors depicted as a major figure in a plot to smuggle liquid explosives onto trans-Atlantic airliners and detonate the bombs in flight.

The ruling means there are now no terrorism charges against two people once accused of being linchpins of a major bombing plot by Al Qaeda. The other is Tayib Rauf, Mr. Rauf’s younger brother, who was detained in Britain in August and was soon set free without charge.

Then there's this, oh-so-surprising tidbit.

British officials involved in the case said that American investigators had pushed for quicker arrests but that the British had wanted to wait to gather admissible evidence.

From John K's marvelous blog.

Atrios:

Why is Ken Adelman on my teevee?

More importantly, why isn't there a dirty fucking hippie on my teevee?

Totally. Atrios also notes "...he just called for a one F.U. last chance. Now that's an opinion you never hear on the teevee."

Knight Dobbs

There's little that gets on my nerves more than an asshole who thinks it's a mark of courage to talk about fighting back against "political correctness." Lou?

This mindless movement of political correctness at all costs is one of the most un-American and crazy twists in our culture as anything we've witnessed. Remember, we're Americans, and we have freedom of speech, that whole life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness thing. Or at least we did.

Lou, talking a break from the "keeping my ass on TV" nonsense about The War on the Middle Class is talking here about the War on Xmas. Keep it up, brave knight!

Angry Arab on an oddity:

But you have to admit that the New York Times knows how to discredit any critic of Israel. Notice that the article on Jimmy Carter's book concludes with a reference--out of the blue--to the "conference" of holocaust deniers in Iran.

Here is the final paragraph of today's NY Times article (in fact it's in the NY Times blog called The Lede) on Carter's book:

Meanwhile, the debate over the book unfolds, strangely, against the backdrop of the bizarre symposium in Tehran this week, which seeks to discuss whether the Holocaust actually happened.

Bizarrely, the article is posted against backdrop of Paris defending Britney's "partying ethics," and 65 years to the day since Romania and Hungary declared war on the US in WWII.

Charlotte's Web Destroys McDonald's

I've written about the so-called "Center for Consumer Freedom" before. They are a food and restaurant industry lobbyist group, constantly spreading fear about "food activists" trying to take your child's Fourth of July hot dog out of their hands.

Well, this time, apparently, they're freaked out by the promotional campaign for the new movie adaption of Charlotte's Web, for the following reasons - and I quote:

The TV commercial ends with a plea for kids to visit SaveWilbur.com, a Nickelodeon / Paramount website that encourages kids to "Say no to bacon" and print out stickers reading "Tofu Rulez."




Paramount's official website for Charlotte's Web includes "educational links" to animal-rights extremist groups including Farm Sanctuary and the Humane Society of the United States.




Last year, Paramount Pictures hosted a 25th-Anniversary gala for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) on its Hollywood studio lot. (We were there too.)




The Sydney Morning Herald reports that "Paramount Pictures made a 'significant' donation to Animals Australia" after Charlotte's Web was filmed Down Under. Paramount's contribution funded a $500,000 advertising campaign attacking the idea of eating pork. The ads include cookbook-style presentations of "Emotionally Stressed Pork Sausages" and "Traumatised Suckling Piglet."

I love the smell of industry fear. It's so....desparate. The "article" continues:

Of course, Charlotte's Web is a work of fiction. The real world, as author E.B. White's own life attested, is still the real world. (White raised and killed pigs on his own Vermont farm for decades.)

Ha! Caught. What a hypocrite. You got him.

I had no interest in seeing this movie until now, actually.

CNN: Barack = Bin Laden + Saddam + Ahmadinejad

CNN's Jeanne Moos did yet ANOTHER piece comparing Barack Obama to someone, ahem, unfavorable in the US public eye - this time it's a double-shot split screen orgy of Saddam Hussein vs Obama and Osama Bin Laden vs. Obama.

Eric Kleefeld at TPM Cafe's got it all, including video and screenshots.

See my post on Jeff Greenfeld's earlier schlock.

creamy scorpion

creamy scorpion, originally uploaded by macquet.

yeah, sure, that works.

DragonQuest 9 will be for the Nintendo DS.

The above pic trumps them all.

CNN Has Always Exposed the Diamond Industry. Really.

Warner Brothers is distributing the new film Blood Diamonds, starring DiCaprio and others. The film opened this past weekend to pretty crummy reviews and lackluster revenues.

And hey, what's the top story on CNN.com right now?



CNN is owned by Time Warner, which also owns Warner Brothers. You make your own call about whether this is ethical. The story mentions the movie a few paragraphs down (which the ownership disclaimer). The top of the page includes:

More on CNN TV: Correspondent Jeff Koinange examines Africa's diamond mines and the men and boys who work in them. Tune in to "AC 360°," tonight at 10 ET.

Media literacy is still very important.

Luke Plunkett, Kotaku, on punchline console developer Phantom Entertainment getting even more money in investment to create something, anything:

And while you're at it, I've got this foolproof plan to put a gorilla, a stripper and a Dreamcast on Mars. Thing is, it needs $132,000,000 in "infusions of capital" to get it off the ground. Just wire the cash to Kotaku's Swiss bank account, we'll talk later.