It suddenly dawned on me a few minutes ago. If they're testing an experimental balloon, they would want video of the flight. That wouldn't be so easy to get on their own. Sure they could have chased the thing on the ground, but you can't count on constant visual contact from the ground so aerial footage like this would be invaluable. That's not something you could get on the cheap, and maybe not at all, as a private citizen. You would probably even get in trouble for launching without FAA permission. I heard they had to ground flights at a commercial airport at one point.
So voila. "Accidental" launch. Lost kid drama. Helicopter chase crews. It adds up to great documentation of your experimental craft's performance. It's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Oh well ...
No doubt, we'll be hearing more on this over the next few days
The birth of a new genre - Missing Little White Boys!
Order the coffee and cots!
No doubt MSNBC ordered - stat - a new budget for a whole series of Doc Blocs.
Turns out the Falcon Heene never left this earth.
He hid out, fearing being scolded, in a garage attic.
While the helium may have exited the weather balloon when it crashed, it was a minor bleep to the Media's deflation, listening to the air hissing out of their babbling heads.
My favorite was here, locally, in Boston, Channel 5, WCVB-TV.
Anchors Liz Brunner and Ed Harding were solemnly reporting the story, giving updates as the broadcast moved along, cutting away to the live press conference with the local sheriff, where it was reported that little Falcon was safe, that he had been hiding "in an attic, in the garage."
Cut back to Ed and Liz, visibly relieved, reporting that the boy was safe, that he was found hiding "in either an attic, or the garage."
The propaganda and fiscal arm-twisting campaign is meant to keep our allegedly exceptional nation from joining the rest of the world in acknowledging that single-payer health care is the only answer for those who prefer civilization. Unfortunately, due to the river of green that's flowed under Washington's table, single-payer is all but off it. There are still some peeps about a "vibrant public option" but what we really need is to kill the private one before it kills any more of us.
[snip]
Baucus's plan would make the purchase of health insurance mandatory for all Americans. Concerned that a program designed to force each citizen to purchase their oft useless product might not make it out of committee, the racketeers put on their villain garb to verbally body-slam the Big Sky Bagman's plan. Mind you, these hated criminals know better than to appear in public, except when they want to exploit America's inability to fathom reverse psychology. The insurance peddlers scripted remarks cautioned us that Max's bill could result in higher premium prices. There's little doubt that this increased-cost warning will soon be looked upon as prescient. But getting credit for its ability to foretell its own price-fixing is a paltry co-pay compared to the billions of extra bucks Baucus' mandatory insurance plan will steam-shovel the sticky hands people's way.
We're sorry, so sorry That you are such a fool You didn't know Buying an NFL team could be so cruel Oh, oh, oh, oh Uh, oh Oh, yes
You tell us mistakes Are part of being a Dittohead But that don't right The wrong that's been done
Spoken: (We're sorry) We're sorry (So sorry) So sorry Please accept our non-apology But Racism isn't blind And you were to blind to see Oh, oh, oh, oh Uh, oh Oh, yes
You tell us mistakes Are part of being a Dittohead But that don't right The wrong that's been done Oh, oh, oh, oh Uh, oh Oh, yes
We're sorry, so sorry Please accept our non-apology But Racism isn't blind And you were to blind to see (Sorry)
There's a certain irony, for the heralded leader of the PartyofNoicans, to have the private sector, their lauded private sector, blanch and vomit at the prospects of letting him into their party.
The NFL may be run -- at the macro level -- as the most socialistic major enterprise in American life, since every team gets an equal paycheck from the biggest pool of revenue, TV money, regardless of whether it plays in the Big Apple or tiny Jacksonville. Yet pro football players live a life that is Reaganism on steroids (it's just an expression) when it comes to embracing free-market capitalism, thanks to another "free," as in free agency. A top player lives the American Dream of freedom to pursue the highest paycheck he wants, or to spurn that top bidder for the city of his choice...or even the coach or team owner of his choice.
Oh, but the Dittoheads, and Flying Monkeys, are screeching, flinging their feces around, that this is the end of America, that the liberals are punishing Free Speech.
Precisely. The most serious free speech issue in America right now is one rich white asshole being told by other rich white assholes that he can’t join their club. On that point we must all agree.
[snip]
Not sure which is funnier, though, the right-wing idiots now threatening to boycott the NFL, or the right-wing idiots saying Limbaugh has grounds for a civil rights lawsuit. The man is toxic, and that’s his own damn screechy needy tantrum-throwing wannabe-sports-involved fault.
But sadly, all this only, to mix sports metaphors, grooves right into Rushbo's strike zone.
He can lighten up, take some pressure off of his boot on the throat of the PartyofNoicans, and go Jihad on the NFL for the next 10-weeks, plus playoffs and Superbowl.
Every fumble, every pass interception, every missed tackle, can be highlighted, complete with racial overtones, jokes, and, maybe a diddy, or two.
The NFL owners, if they don't know it, are now subject to legions of Dittoheads combing through their businesses, Googling their little paws off, maybe, even, digging through their home trash, to come up with embarrassing dirt that Mr. Drug Addict can spew out and mock (remaining, as he does, completely without any self-awareness, that he wanted to be ONE OF THEM).
No, Rushbo getting the boot isn't the end of something, it is the beginning of something else.
OCTOBER 13--Happy anniversary, Bill O'Reilly! On this date five years ago, the Fox News Channel host was named in a sexual harassment lawsuit brimming with lurid details about vibrators, phone sex, threesomes, masturbation, Caribbean shower fantasies, a Thai sex show, falafel, stewardess trysts, vehicular coupling, and Al Franken. The New York State Supreme Court lawsuit filed by Andrea Mackris, a former Fox News producer, quoted O'Reilly verbatim and at length, leaving readers to believe that the TV star's dirty soliloquies were surreptitiously recorded (an impression reinforced when the lawsuit was settled within two weeks). A copy of Mackris's complaint, drafted by lawyer Benedict Morelli, can be found below. Time has not robbed the document of any of its page-turning entertainment value.
Everyone celebrates Loofah Day in their own way, but we like to pull out the sacred text and read aloud from its most memorable and moving passage—a transcript of O'Reilly's late-night 2004 monologue to Mackris, delivered during the Republican National Convention, while he was watching a porno:
So anyway I'd be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples hard, kinda' kissing your neck from behind... and then I would take the other hand with the falafel [sic] thing and I'd put it on your pussy but you'd have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business....
And, a good zinger;
Mackris doesn't need to work, apparently, but in her free time, she is a member of the contemporary council at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis and "volunteers at Planned Parenthood." Living well is the best revenge, but helping people get abortions when the guy who kept trying to get in your pants hates abortions is awesome, too.
We'll have to check out Newshounds(They watch Fox so you don't have to) later on, to see if O'Reilly remembered, maybe have a Turquoise Loofah on the desk, or something.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s eldest daughter Liz will launch a new group aimed at rallying opposition to the “radical” foreign policy of the Obama administration which it says has succeeded only in undermining the nation’s security.
The new group, Keep America Safe, will make the case against President Barack Obama’s moves to wrench America away from Bush era foreign policy on issues from detaining alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to building a missile shield in Eastern Europe.
[snip]
The new group will add institutional heft to a scathing critique of Obama articulated first and loudest by Liz Cheney’s father, and fills a void left by a Republican Party made skittish by the Iraq War, and apparently more eager to engage the president on domestic issues like health care.
[snip]
Keep America Safe will focus on issues like troop levels, missile defense, detainees, and interrogation, according to Liz Cheney, who is heading the group along with Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Debra Burlingame, the hawkish sister of an American Airlines pilot killed in the September 11 attacks.
I suppose, with the record of eight-failed-years, he can't keep running the same failed PNAC cow chips (tell us again, Billy, how'd that "Greet us as Liberators" thing work out?)
So, they repackage it, and get the former Shadow President's daughter to carry the banner.
The truth is, Cheney/Kristol had their day. They got to do exactly what they wanted to do -- torture, preemptive war, abandoning the rule of law, abandoning democratic norms, alienating allies, ignoring the concept of international cooperation -- and they failed anyway.
[snip]
Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol have become clownish figures, so blinded by their ideology that they can't even see the dangerous ineptitude of their agenda. I don't doubt that wealthy right-wing financiers will be delighted to throw some checks at "Keep America Safe." Likewise, I can only assume that news outlets will continue to pretend that Cheney has some shred of credibility on these issues, and will have her on national television every day for the next year.
But that doesn't make this endeavor any less ridiculous.
They already have The Politico, Matt Sludge, and other Flying Monkey perches lined up to promote their drivel (which means our mainstream corporate media will instantly pick up, and run with their ball), and, no doubt, Faux News will be in the bag.
Hmmm ...
But maybe it's all just a front.
On her website, we have this, right at the top of the home page, under "Featured Resources";
Seven former CIA chiefs asked President Obama to halt the CIA investigation that damages our national security and the personal security of CIA agents. Click here to read their plea now!
I suppose they couldn't call it "Keep Daddy Out of Jail", now could they?
