If you haven’t heard by now that Michael Jackson died, you’ve gotta be making some kind of effort to avoid human interaction. But think for a second about how you found out that he died. A stat was released that 15% of all twitter statuses yesterday evening were dedicated to Michael Jackson. If you have a facebook account, chances are you saw that everyone and their mother used their status feature to acknowledge MJ’s passing. I even saw statuses of people who are not currently in the US saying “thanks to so-and-so’s status, I don’t still think MJ is alive”. Certainly the younger population tends to check their facebook/twitter accounts more frequently than say a CNN.com. Who knew Twitter and Facebook could out-info (simply by volume) major news sources?
UPDATE:
I love Paul McCartney. MSNBC quoted him speaking about MJ: “A massively talented boy-man.”
A shrinking Tori Spelling hit the beach recently and terrified passersby with her body, which has transformed into skeletal remains and two silicone balloons. How do you even get to this point? You’d think her husband, at the very least, could force feed her a burger or two once in a while. Good Lord.
It’s no secret that the GOP has not looked good from the American public’s perspective lately: far-right and super conservative politicians and their beliefs (eh em, Prop 8..) are unpopular at best. Well, the party has a certain debacle right now; they are strategically determining how to respond, collectively, to Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. America’s first Hispanic justice, Sotomayor received gracious welcoming from Democrats and the media alike. As for the Republican reaction? For starters, we’ve got Rush Limbaugh calling Sotomayor a “reverse racist”. Other right-wing politicians kept their opinions to themselves, making the overall reaction of the party fairly subdued–many news sources note the party’s incapacity to oppose the nomination due to its minority status. US News reports
Republicans are also “saying privately that” this “first Latino nominee…will be very difficult, politically, to oppose.” Also on ABC World News, George Stephanopoulos said of possible GOP opposition to Sotomayor, “As one White House official told me today, he said, ‘I dare them to.’”
Looks like the GOP needs to reevaluate their execution plan, and perhaps re-learn how to cater to potential voters. Sewing Limbaugh’s mouth shut would be step one.
Demi Moore voluntarily “twittered” pictures of herself with missing teeth at her dentist’s office. Not quite sure why the world needed to see this, but the photos do confirm the importance of teeth, since a usually gorgeous woman is so easily transformed into Hickville USA. Ashton, your girlfriend…woof.
The government passed a bill last week which prevents credit card and other credit companies from misleading practices. You know those “free credit report.com, tell you friends, tell your dad, tell your mom…” jingles on TV? Well, they’re lying, and now they can’t do that anymore. The new bill will make any advertisement that’s NOT from Annualcreditreport.com (which is the only free credit report, by the way) say this:
“This is not the free credit report provided for by Federal law.”
So apparently this freecreditreport.com is a huge rip off and a lot of people fell for its “free” claim because of their incessant marketing campaign. Cheers to ending those songs that are always stuck in my head.
That's Christine Marinoni in the middle.
The Republican party, or whats left of it, has apparently moved so far to the right (read: extreme) that party members are jumping ship. Case in point–Senator Arlen Specter has declared that he is “switching parties” and will run for re-election as a Democrat in 2010. While it is clear that both parties have been moving towards their respective ends, it strikes me that at 79, Sen. Specter changes his party after 29 years in the Senate. I don’t want to imply that senility is at fault here but…maybe senility is playing a part here.
Remember the criticism a presidential candidate would get if they “flip-flopped” on an issue? How will we deal with flip-flopping parties? Clearly, Washington needs to get things in order–an Oprah sponsored Dr. Phil session for each government official seems very necessary.
Blogger Perez Hilton has been all over the news recently due to his question at the Miss USA pageant about gay marriage, and his subsequent reaction to Miss California’s answer. Yes, he’s been overly annoying and excessively prevalent in the media lately, but MSNBC is more than irritated with the blogger. Listed among top headlines is the following story:
OMG Perez Hilton! Won’t you please shut up?
Who died and made this gossip blogger official spokesperson of everything?
While I agree with the news site, it seems kind of trivial considering the current economic and political environment. Slow news day, guys?
This is not news, but since this is my blog, I get to post whatever I want. So, this post is dedicated to acknowledging my birthday over Earth Day. The past 23 months have been consecutive Earth Days; Go Green, Recycle, Hybrid Cars, yada yada yada. We get it. Move over Earth, it’s my turn.
*this is not a declaration of war per say, but rather a bold warning to Earth Day celebratory activities to yield to birthday celebrations in nearly every instance*
Something is campaigning unknowingly for this website. And I love it.
Paula Abdul went on Nightline and may have fibbed a little bit. After denying abusing drugs, she goes as far as saying “I’ve never been drunk in my life.”
Please refer to the following video.
CIA officials have confirmed that the use of waterboarding, specifically on the al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (“KSM”), led to the admission information which the US used to prevent a 9/11 style attack on Los Angeles.
Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”
Much to the relief of the CIA, however, they were able to “know” before the attack was executed. Do the ends justify the means? I have a hard time understanding the argument for “no”.
Some Americans outraged by torturing terrorists; I nominate that group to seek mental evaluation
Obama decided it would be a good idea to publicize previous torture techniques used on members of Al Qaeda, terrorists, and other dangerous criminals. Certain actions performed by the CIA and other high-level government and military officials are typically kept top-secret, since the average American would view such behaviors out of context and potential chaos could occur.
For example, a woman reads that CIA officials kept a man in a small cement cell, deprived him of sleep for up to 5 days, and “waterboarded” him, and is disgusted that our country could treat a human being this way. The context? This man went by the name of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; he is thought to have been behind the September 11 attacks that killed innocent people and scarred our country permanently. So, not only did the current president publicize previously secret memos, but he also has outlawed such techniques.
CNN reports:
The memos include details on terrorist suspect interrogations such as waterboarding, a technique used to simulate drowning. Obama has called the method torture. One memo showed that CIA interrogators used waterboarding at least 266 times on two top al Qaeda suspects.
I’m wondering what the people appalled by these “torturous techniques” would prefer we do to such criminals. Perhaps rent a room at a motel but take away the TV? Or ground them from the phone and internet? Maybe a simple scowl of disappointment would suffice. Clearly, I’m not too happy that Obama has removed America’s balls.
