Posts tagged: Idiots
Outgoing New York Times CEO Janet Robinson received an exit package worth $23.7 million after presiding over an eight year tenure that saw the company’s share price fall by 80 percent. The company’s net earnings over the past four years were $3 million. In addition to her exit package, Robinson earned a $1 million annual salary.
Proving once again how much more efficient private industry is than the government…
47-year-old Suzanne Basham of Springfield, Missouri called police to report that she had paid $40 for crack cocaine that turned out to be sugar, and wanted her dealer arrested. She is now in jail.
We are definitely winning the War on Drugs!
The Friedman, or Friedman Unit (F.U.), is a tongue-in-cheek neologism coined by blogger Atrios (Duncan Black) on May 21, 2006.
A Friedman is a unit of time equal to six months in the future. The Huffington Post cited it as the “Best New Phrase” of 2006.
The term is in reference to a May 16, 2006 article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) detailing columnist Thomas Friedman’s repeated use of “the next six months” as the period in which, according to Friedman, “we’re going to find out…whether a decent outcome is possible” in the Iraq War. As documented by FAIR, Friedman had been making such six-month predictions for a period of two and a half years, on at least fourteen different occasions, starting with a column in the November 30, 2003 edition of The New York Times, in which he stated: “The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time.”
The term has been used in general to describe any pronouncement of a critical period for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Such pronouncements have been made by numerous politicians and military officials involved in the war.
More generally, the concept can refer to any event or “critical period” which is repeatedly expected to happen in the near future, but repeatedly fails to occur.
The logic of the TSA in comic form.
Via BoingBoing
Missed in the brouhaha over Sarah Palin’s verbal flub about our North Korean “allies,” and much more telling:
According to host Glenn Beck’s own transcript, Beck’s very next utterance was to proclaim that the “mystery” jet contrail recently seen in California (explained weeks ago (even by Fox News online) as almost certainly an optical illusion created by still air and a jet contrail from a known UPS delivery flight) was in fact a secret two-stage missile launch by the Chinese government to assert their power over America, “sending a signal that the world has changed.”
Beck then went on to state that the Chinese “control the world.”
Did Sarah Palin, would-be leader of the United States, disagree with any of this? Nope.
Palin’s verbatim response: “Well, that’s right.”
Thomas Friedman points out the idiocy inherent in the positions and policies of Netenyahu in Israel, climate change deniers, and many Republican party leaders.
Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived.
Now the authorization bill that would direct how the aid is delivered remains sidelined by a senator who anonymously pulled it for further study. Through calls to dozens of senators’ offices, the AP learned it was Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma.
Republican senatorial candidate in Nevada makes it clear that if Republicans don’t win the election there, her followers should take up arms and overthrow the government (per “the second amendment,” she says).
I think if this was happening in Afghanistan (and similar things are), these same hypocritical idiots would call it “terrorism.”
United Airlines threw nine high-ranking Pakistani military officers off a Washington-Tampa flight on Sunday and turned them over to Dulles security, who detained and grilled the men. The officers were on a junket in the USA, and had been travelling extensively; one of them said words to the effect of, “I hope this is my last flight.” This was interpreted as a terrorist threat by a flight attendant. Dulles security did not let the men contact their embassy or the US military officials who were hosting them.The Pakistanis were finally released after police at Dulles determined they did not pose a threat. But instead of proceeding to Tampa, the delegation was ordered to return to Pakistan by their military superiors in Islamabad, in protest of their treatment, the Pakistani official said, adding that they were “verbally abused.” The group of officers spent the next 48 hours in Washington, waiting for the next available flight home, and were scheduled to depart the United States on Tuesday evening. The Pakistani officers were originally en route to U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa to attend the annual conference of the U.S.-Pakistan Military Consultative Committee, said Maj. David Nevers, a Central Command spokesman. He said Centcom officials hoped to reschedule the conference.More wonderful work by the TSA — doing their best to obstruct any progress
(That is: $16M of payments to lawyers netted $391K of file-sharing lawsuit settlements.)
