Category: Media

Can you pick The Onion without hovering your mouse over the links? Another easy one with a 50 / 50 shot at being correct. GOP Warns Refugees Likely To Be Driven To Terrorism By Way America Would Treat Them CHARLESTON, SC—Declaring that opening the nation’s doors to displaced Syrians posed a major security threat, GOP …

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Can you pick The Onion without hovering your mouse over the links?



Not much of a challenge really, but if you just looked at the headlines you’d have an easy 50 / 50 shot at being wrong.

Woman stops intruder with medieval combat skills, sword

An Indiana woman says her training in medieval combat helped her corner a home intruder.

The Indianapolis Star reports 43-year-old Karen Dolley of Indianapolis threw punches until she had the man cornered during the Thursday night break-in. She then kept him subdued with a Japanese sword she keeps near her bed.

Dolley says she learned to fight as a teenager in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that recreates skills of the Middle Ages. She also skates with roller derby team Naptown Roller Girls.

Police responding to Dolley’s 911 call arrested 30-year-old Jacob Wessel of Greenwood, charging him with residential entry. Police say he forced open the home’s back door. Police reports say he was taken to a hospital because he was high on an unknown substance.

Popular New Exercise App Just Tells Users They Ran 5 Miles A Day No Matter What

LOS ALTOS, CA-Having reached nearly 2 million downloads within its first month of release, the new smartphone app ProMiler has quickly become one of the nation’s most popular exercise tools by informing users that they ran five miles each day no matter what, the app’s creators told reporters Friday. “With ProMiler, achieving your exercise goals is as simple as turning on your device in the morning and being notified that you’ve already run five miles,”

ProMiler spokesman John Lyons said while demonstrating the app, which uses advanced GPS technology to display a new, randomly generated five-mile running route near the user’s location every day. “The more you take advantage of ProMiler, the better runner you become, as the app automatically reduces your running time by several seconds per day. And with our ‘Calories Burned’ counter staying fixed at the number 1,000 each day, 100 percent of our users report hitting their fitness targets.

The results speak for themselves.” Officials added that the app comes pre-synced with Facebook, allowing users to automatically post their time and running route on their feed for all their friends to see.

Eddie Redmayne, who won an Oscar playing Stephen Hawking in Theory of Everything, will try to make it two in a row by portraying pioneer transgender woman Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl.

I began my transition in 1992.  Part of what came with that was the meed for a hair stylist.  I found mine at the Pink House in Conway, Arkansas.  It was owned by John Schenck and Robert Lloyd,  Their story is here at Freedom to Marry.

John used to tell me stories from the old days.  He was well positioned to do so since he worked as a bar back (i.e. bartending assistant) at the Stonewall back in the day.  He told me about the night of June 28, 1969, when the police raided (not such a common occurrence at the Stonewall since there were payoffs) and especially began to hassle a Puerto Rican drag queen John only knew as José.

On that night there was a private party going on at the Stonewall.  Regular patron Marsha P. (Pay it No Mind) Johnson was turning 25.  Guests included other drag queens and some “girls who were serious” (in John’s terminology; he means “transgender women”)  Some of the transwomen also did drag in order to make a buck…like Ms. Johnson.

Can you pick The Onion without hovering your mouse over the links.



I know I know, not much of a challenge.

But these are fun for me and you still have a 50 / 50 shot of being wrong.

Bernie Sanders Clearly In Pocket Of High-Rolling Teacher Who Donated $300 To His Campaign

BURLINGTON, VT-After accepting a check sent to his campaign office by a local elementary school teacher, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was roundly criticized Monday as being firmly in the pocket of the high-rolling educator who had donated $300.

“He might have the reputation of being the people’s candidate, but when your candidacy is effectively bankrolled by the multi-hundred-dollar donation of a fourth-grade teacher, it’s clear who’s really pulling the strings,” said political analyst Peter Mathews, who noted that when a check arrives with a handwritten note that says “Behind you 100 percent, Bernie!” it comes with certain expectations.

“He’s already spouting off talking points about supporting unions and increasing funding for education. Where do you think he got those ideas? He might think he’s not influenced by that money, but when someone has deep enough pockets to drop $300, you pick up the phone when they call.”

Mathews went on to say he wouldn’t be surprised if Sanders’ strong support for a living wage could be directly traced to the fat $20 contribution he got from a fast-food worker.

Michigan township draws more people to meeting with hot dogs

VICTORY TOWNSHIP, MI – Here’s a way to boost interest in local government: potato salad.

A township board in northern Michigan held a lakeside picnic Monday before its regular meeting. After an hour of hot dogs and side dishes, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and the Victory Township board meeting was officially in order.

The Ludington Daily News says about two dozen people attended the picnic and meeting at Upper Hamlin Lake in Mason County. Only three people attended the June meeting at the township hall.

There were reports from law enforcement and a lake preservation group. The board also discussed a junk ordinance.

Get the waffles! Maple syrup spills on New Hampshire highway

AP July 27, 2015

KEENE, N.H. (AP) – The only thing missing was the waffles.

Authorities in Keene, New Hampshire, were in for some sticky times when a load of maple syrup shifted in a tractor trailer and leaked very slowly all over a main highway.

Police Sgt. Thaddeus Derendal says about 220 gallons of the sweet-smelling pancake-topper from a Vermont producer oozed onto Route 101 on Monday afternoon.

Firefighters used squeegees to corral the mess and poured something like kitty litter on it to speed the drying process. The two eastbound lanes were reduced to one lane while the cleanup was underway.

By Annieli

                    Artwork in Iraq gets destroyed by Daesh/ISIS-ISIL (Video)

Polytheistic idolatry is the only thing that gets destroyed, says Daesh, which somehow rationalizes the destruction of historical antiquities, as though there can only be one history, apparently a Sunni and/or Ba’athist one. Only statues that are deemed idolatrous would get destroyed or apparently as originals resold with copies destroyed for social media documentation. But what counts as idolatrous in a modern commodity economy.

Daesh is only controlling the mythology reproduced by the media in order to further not the goals of actual religious beliefs, as they are simply looters maximizing accumulatable wealth. One can say that they are even projecting a pre-modern accumulation of dominance and subjugation returning West Asia and North Africa to some pre-capitalist mode of production. Of course the ideological contradictions will flourish as Daesh elites will keep their modern networked social media and slick magazines as well as their modern weapons in an attempt to reduce all other variants of Islam to their hegemony. Daesh are not the Sentinelese or the Auvergnats – they are common crooks, the lowest form of banditry tarted up when they refer to their genocidal barbarism as a “management of savagery“.

ISIS’ efforts to erase pre-Islamic pictorial art successfully communicates their brand image. What ISIS fails to mention is that they are destroying fakes. Blouin Art Info reports that upon the release of the Mosul Museum video, experts determined that “most, if not all’ of the statuary on view were plaster fakes. The officials at the Mosul Museum had previously transported the originals to the Baghdad Museum. The New York Times reported that many of these sculptures were replicas of ancient objects and a portion of the sculptures on display were reconstructed from fragments which included original shards of ancient sculptures.

Fox News’ misreading is that this is something more immoral than the actual activity of the market in art forgery, made complicit often in human history by an entire discipline of art history and archaeology so that Fox’s headline “How ISIS created a terrorist art market“, is simply that they are following practices of pillaging going back even before the period to which Daesh wishes to return if only symbolically.

Of course the killing of suspected homosexuals will deprive Daesh of many of the population from which the making of such artwork come. These are the premodern warlord-despots of an imagination-free fundamentalist world of gender, class, and ethnic subjugation. They predictably lack the civility of the Greeks upon losing their (Elgin) Marbles.

Footage released by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) showed the ruins of Syria’s Palmyra untouched as the militant group claimed it only destroy statues which it deems polytheistic, the Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Palmyra is home to a massive Roman theatre where ISIS reportedly executed 20 foreign fighters earlier this week who had been fighting alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

ISIS militants have reportedly executed at least 400 people in Palmyra since capturing the ancient Syrian city, Syrian state media said earlier this week.

ISIS captured Palmyra – and Iraq’s Ramadi – earlier this month despite months of U.S.-led airstrikes.

A YouTube account believed to be affiliated with ISIS posted a video on May 26 showing parts of the city’s ancient ruins and colonnades. It was not clear when the video was shot.

An activist with an anti-regime group in Palmyra said the ruins have not been damaged adding that ISIS said they would only destroy statues they deem idolatrous.

“They haven’t been damaged and members of the organization [ISIS] told residents that they will not damage the city’s antiquities, but will destroy the idols,” the activist with the anti-regime Local Coordination Committee for Tadmur, was quoted by the Guardian as saying.

“Perhaps it’s because the Palmyra antiquities are mostly columns and large buildings and not statues of people, which they consider idols that must be destroyed, and they have no problem with the other antiquities.”

The ideologically-driven destruction of priceless Iraqi artifacts by Islamic State may be a ruse that actually hides a much more cynical operation, in which fakes are smashed to pieces while real treasures are smuggled out of the country and sold on the black market to fund the terrorist army…

Whether worthless or priceless the verdict for destruction is the same. The current terrorist art and antiquities market is dictated by two factors: (1) can an item be transported to a location where a buyer exists for it, and (2) can the artwork be passed off as legitimate once it arrives.  

(Re:  the title

I swear, I couldn’t help myself.  We all know someone was going to use it.  I just thought I’d avoid the rush.

It’s a play on the CNN story from yesterday, America’s transgender moment.)

The LA Times put the following byte under their lead photo:

Bruce Jenner’s interview with Diane Sawyer will be so widely watched Friday night it could prove a tipping point, further normalizing Americans’ perceptions of the nation’s transgender population.

Or, you know, not.  It could also be a huge disaster for us public-relations-wise.

Rescue me!  I got stuck over at E! Online.

Jazz Jennings recently appeared on NBC’s Meredith Vieira Show.

While I’m certain that she was there to promote the fact that she is the newest face of the Clean and Clear #SeetheRealMe Campaign, some other things came up as well.

First of all, there is the response the campaign has generated

When I first saw Jazz Jennings, nothing struck me as peculiar. She looked like any other vibrant, charming and charismatic teenage girl. I assumed that her age and on-camera presence made her an ideal candidate as a representative of Clean and Clear. She fit the mold of what you see for something targeted at younger audiences. Teenagers get pimples and she’s a teenager – it works.

It’s not until it’s mentioned that Jennings is transgender that people start to stir, debate and wonder why a brand of face wash tries to “force” our youth to accept something so perverse. The backlash from parents is horrifying. I was used to seeing opponents attack adults on the Internet, but Jennings is a child. “Concerned parents” were saying that we should burn “it” at the stake, that she is wearing dresses to get attention or that she should just admit that she is a homosexual boy.  Teaching children that saying these hurtful things about others will influence them far more than a commercial will.

—Elizabeth Legget

Recently MSNBC announced that it was making major programming changes to counter its ratings slide. It cancelled two afternoon programs, “The Reid Report” and “The Ronan Farrow Daily” which were replaced by two hours of news programming hosted by Thomas Roberts. A source at MSNBC said that the goal was to “move away from left wing TV.” If anyone ever thought that MSNBC was “left wing TV” than they were paying attention. Three hours of disgraced Republican has-been Joe Scarborough and the other programming throughout the day and into prime time that spouted DNC talking points is not left wing. Never was. And that is why MSNBC is falling in its ratings, as the left wing host of Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, points out he has two million viewers every day.

Maybe, MSNBC should hire Cenk and get Keith Olbermann back and fire Joe Scarborough who is more suited for Fox News.