Sid's Fishbowl
A proud member of the reality-based community (aquatic division)
Monday, June 26, 2006

Please, God. Just have him fire Bill O’Reilly and I’ll be happy:

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes is on the warpath following his network’s recent ratings slump, and he won’t hesitate to clean house to turn things around.

So far during the second quarter, the No. 1 cable news channel’s primetime schedule has dropped 22% in its core 25-54 demo and 8% in total viewers. The first quarter was even worse.

(Via First Draft)

Via Think Progress comes this doozy from a blow-dried cable newser:

CNBC anchor Joe Kernen used Richard Lindzen’s grossly inaccurate column in today’s WSJ to repeatedly claim there is “no consensus” on whether global warming exists. Kernen suggests that “as old as the planet is” there is no way “puny, gnawing little humans” could change the climate in “70 years.”

Yes, it’s unimaginable to think that us puny humans could actually undo in a short period of time what nature has spent millennia building. This, for instance, obviously couldn’t happen:

Hiroshima, 1945:

Within a mile, most people were dead, most buildings destroyed.
The survivors waited for death as emergency services were minimal.
The cremation fires burned day and night,
Mixing with the fallout.

Puny humans indeed.

"Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful." – Robert J. Oppenheimer

Friday, June 23, 2006

I spotted this Google ad over at Newshounds today:


Now, I have no idea what this sounds like (I clicked through to investigate but they want a phone number to go any further and the whole thing smelled bad). Anyhoo, I ask you, who - I say, who - in their right mind would want such a thing?

Thursday, June 22, 2006

I get nervous when my server logs tell me that someone from the United States Department of State was Googling New York Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar and ran across this post of mine.

42 is the new 21:

The U.S. Army, aiming to make its recruiting goals amid the Iraq war, raised its maximum enlistment age by another two years on Wednesday, while the Army Reserve predicted it will miss its recruiting target for a second straight year.

Now, if they start lowering the enlistment age, I’ll really begin worrying.

Uh-oh. Jonathan Schwarz reads a transcript of remarks from Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Coma) announcing the “discovery” of WMD in Iraq and says Today Is The Day My Head Finally Explodes:

You know, at this point any American who scoffs at Iran for electing a Holocaust-denying president has no basis for being smug. Because this is exactly the same level of nuts. It's one thing for weirdos with websites to talk like this, but it's really something else when prominent politicians jump into the pool of crazy.

Read the whole thing.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Tony Snow is trying to crack the elite list of Fucking Stupidest People on the Planet. Andrew Tobias has the details:

Thus spake Tony Snow, as reported in yesterday’s New York Times:

“The president understands people's impatience — not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation,” Mr. Snow said on the CNN program “Late Edition.”  “He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, ‘Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?’  But you cannot conduct a war based on polls.”

Yeah, Tony.  “Hitler, Schmitler” was the general attitude back then.  Less than five months before the German surrender, few Americans believed in the war and most were wondering, “Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?”

Or wait.  It was exactly the opposite. 

I do think that if, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, we had invaded Iraq, people might well have wondered, “Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?” But back then, we struck back at the countries that were striking us and our allies.

Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudi, none was Iraqi, and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.  Yet we rushed to invade Iraq without adequate planning or strength, at disastrous cost to our nation – and, yes, Tony, people are wondering, “Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?”

Almost makes you miss Ari Fleischer.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Now:

Military officials on Saturday suggested that the three suicides [of prisoners at Guantanamo] were a form of a coordinated protest.

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Then:

Your [terrorist] has no regard for human life, not even his own. And for this reason, men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come individually, or he may come in strength. He may even come in the uniform of our own troops. But however he comes, we must stop him.

General Jack D. Ripper, in Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

It is really, really difficult to be a satirist in these times.

(via A Tiny Revolution)