“I WORK FOR JOHN GOTTI. F@*! YOU!” Someone has been dressing up as Elmo and doing their best to offend anybody in their vicinity at Central Park recently — in some cases, using anti-Semitic language. Over the weekend, things got so bad that someone in an Elmo suit left on stretcher. (Key line from the article: “Sesame Street representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”) You know, compared to this, Leslie Knope’s raccoon problem doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. What do you think? (note: strong language in the video) source
EDIT: Bloomberg’s Jake Beckman points out this Wall Street Journal article that offers some context on what might be happening here.
Today in extremely meta could-be “The Onion” headlines that we’re trying to wrap our heads around.
“Well, we’ve had our brief moment of celebration, because the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is, in fact, unconstitutional. It’s what many of us argued all along,” Mourdock begins. “But don’t sit back and think the fight is over because it isn’t. Barack Obama and Congressman Joe Donnelly are already putting Obamacare 2.0 together and they’re going to try and pass it once again. We cannot let that happen.”
He continues: “The answer to America’s health care issues is not going to be big government to any reasonable solution. The answer is not going to come from having individuals lose their personal choice, lose their individual freedom. I’m Richard Mourdock and I’m running for the U.S. Senate to make sure that something like Obamacare does not happen again. If you’d like to help us wage that fight to make sure that Obamacare stays repealed, then please go to tour website, RichardMourdock.com, and contribute generously.”
This of course is awesome and hilarious because the Supreme Court has yet to rule on “Obamacare,” and are likely to do so next week. Well, at least we know what ol’ Rich is likely gonna say ahead of time.
It was a stupid thing to do and incredibly lazy and absolutely wrong.New Yorker blogger and author Jonah Lehrer • Apologizing for duplicating his material on his New Yorker blog from multiple other sources, including a post called “Why Smart People Are Stupid,” a recent post of his that went viral, which discussed why otherwise intelligent people make stupid mistakes. Spot the irony, folks.
(Source: The New York Times)
“Joe the Plumber” ties gun control to Armenian, Nazi genocides: Samuel Wurzelbacher, who made a name for himself in the 2008 election by confronting then-candidate Barack Obama before that was a hip thing to do, is now a congressional candidate in Ohio, and has a new campaign video which suggests (via a voiceover playing while Wurzelbacher shoots off a gun) that Armenians and Jews were disarmed before being killed in separate genocides. As you might guess, this kind of talk hasn’t exactly gone over with many people, and his campaign had to walk back the arguments a bit. “No one in the video said gun control CAUSED genocide,” the candidate said on Twitter. Whew. Anyway, if you’re curious, the video is over here. Try to keep your palm off your face. (photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
So here’s one of the more depressing things you’ll see today. It’s a scene outside of a NYC elementary school, in which a congressman (and Senate hopeful looking to win a primary next week) tries to lead a group of grade-schoolers in the singing of an uber-patriotic song — not the National Anthem, but that Lee Greenwood hit from the 1980s. The scene is sad at best and makes everyone look bad. So how did we get here? Read up below:
The impact of erecting a sign naming an organization which has a long-rooted history of civil disturbance would cause a significant public concern. Impacts include safety of the traveling public, potential social unrest, driver distraction or interference with the flow of traffic.Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner Keith Golden • In a letter to a Georgia DOT secretary citing why they chose not to allow a local KKK chapter to “adopt” a highway stretch in the northern part of the state. Oh, there were other reasons too — the area, with its 65mph speed limit, would’ve been an unsafe place to for KKK members to work. But here’s the kicker — the KKK chapter, which says they’re “not racists” and are doing this to “keep the mountains beautiful,” has said they plan to get legal help from the American Civil Liberties Union if their application was denied. Can you get more ironic?
… the current user of said account started asking questions about Jews about an hour ago, specifically in the context of Nazi Germany. Ouch, not good for Sweden. (ht @lheron, @buzzfeed)
I hacked in after finding the answer to the security question, ‘What is your favorite pet?’ It is [redacted] by the way. The password is now [redacted] … This is also the password for the Dropbox account. This is all I have gotten into. I have nothing to do with Anonymous and have never done something like this before. Goodbye.An anonymous hacker • Revealing to Gawker how he allegedly hacked into Mitt Romney’s e-mail Tuesday. Mitt Romney’s personal e-mail address — mittromney@hotmail.com — was allegedly hacked using the “favorite pet” question. It’d be painfully ironic if it it was Seamus. Everyone knows if you’re famous you don’t use that security question — everyone’s gonna know that!
A quick reminder of what’s at stake in Novemb … oh, who are we kidding? This is just hilarious/sad. What’s next? Kel Mitchell asking Joe Biden for an orange soda hookup?
Jay Townsend has offered, and I have accepted, his resignation from his position with my campaign. Now let’s return to talking about issues that really matter to families: job creation, spending restraint and economic development.
Townsend’s comments caused strong controversy over the weekend.
From a WSJ Mossberg/Swisher talk:
ANOTHER AUDIENCE MEMBER: You’re basically saying somebody robbed my house and they drove a car down a road to get to my house. So you have to do something about the road or something about the car.
MR. EMANUEL: That’s a stupid example, but that’s OK.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is it? It’s exactly what you’re describing. How is it AT&T, Verizon and Google’s responsibility to keep your stuff safe? They’re not policemen. They don’t police things.
MR. EMANUEL: They decide when they want to police stuff and when they don’t. Child pornography—they can actually filter that. They stop those people.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: But you can still get child pornography on the Internet.
MR. EMANUEL: Stealing is a bad thing and child pornography is a bad thing.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I agree. Where we’re not in agreement is, you can’t tear up the road so people can’t get to your house.
MR. EMANUEL: You know something? You need to sit down. That’s a bad example. Go sit down and think of something else and come back and I’ll scream at you again.
Because Ari shoots first without asking questions, he didn’t realize the guy he talked down here is Joshua Topolsky of The Verge, also known as the most famous tech journalist in the room besides Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg.
integrity won’t pay the mortgages I will ask all of u how many of u would do your job for no pay?R&B singer Brian McKnight • Discussing on Twitter why he chose to make a theme song for an adult Web site, roughly a month after another sexually-explicit song of his gave the singer some late-career notoriety. The Washington Post’s Sarah Anne Hughes smartly gets past the weirdness of a guy known for wedding songs shilling for a porn site, and instead focuses on what this means for R&B in general: “It’s hard to fault McKnight for writing explicit songs if they pay the bills and allow him to keep creating R&B,” she says, noting that McKnight’s style of R&B rarely shows up on the radio these days.
As I was reading, I came across this sentence: “It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern….” Thinking this was simply a glitch in the software, I ignored the intrusive word and continued reading. Some pages later I encountered the rogue word again. With my third encounter I decided to retrieve my hard cover book and find the original (well, the translated) text.
For the sentence above I discovered this genuine translation: “It was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern….”
Someone at Barnes and Noble (a twenty year old employee? or maybe the CEO?) had substituted every incidence of “kindled” with “Nookd!”
Apparently, the publisher did a global find and replace on the book, and possibly numerous other Nook editions of public-domain books. We’re going to see if our Kindle edition of the book mentions any “Kindles and crannies.” (ht FastCompany)
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