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You suck!
Tom DeLay: If we let the Army and Navy and Marines and Air Force fight the war, and tell ‘em to go fight it and enforce the rule of law, we will win.
Colmes: Who’s stopping us from fighting it?
DeLay: The will of the American people.
—Hannity & Colmes
“President Bush bet his presidency—and America’s world leadership—on the war in Iraq. Tragically, it looks as though he bit off more than the American people were willing to chew.”
—Mort Kondracke
“American people, you should be ashamed! The president went and bit off a big piece of the Middle East and, like an eagle, brought it back to the nest and he’s regurgitating it back into your mouths! Why won’t you swallow?!!
When history looks back at the actions of this president and the decisions he made regarding this war, you will go down as the most incompetent American people of all time. Deal with it!”
—Stephen Colbert
Jihadists Read, Mock New U.S. Army Guide
[Quote:]
Jihadists and their supporters are reading and mocking the Pentagon’s new counterinsurgency field manual, which was released publicly and posted on several Department of Defense Web sites Friday even though it addresses such sensitive topics as intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting.
One Arabic-language jihadist Web site linking to the Pentagon’s 282-page counterinsurgency manual is Tajdeed.net, which routinely calls for the killing of U.S. and British forces in Iraq; praises bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the 9/11 attacks; and whose sponsor, Mohamed al Massari, has called for the assassination of George Bush and Tony Blair.
Al Massari, an expatriate Saudi dissident, and his jihadist Web site are based in Britain, where he lives despite calls by some British leaders for Al Massari’s deportation or arrest.
On the same Tajdeed Web page providing a link to the Pentagon’s new counterinsurgency manual (linked from a related Reuters story posted on the site), there is a gruesome photo of the body of a U.S. Air Force pilot whose parachute is still strapped to his back (apparently Major Troy Gilbert, whose plane went down north of Baghdad in late November).
Next to that photo is a computer-generated smiley face with these words in Arabic: “This one won’t be reading the manual.”
So, the number of attacks in Iraq is too sensitive to release, but how to attack is fine?
Cartoons
Advertisers Try New Ways to Get Into Your Head
[Quote:]
f you’re like most Americans, by the time you get to work in the morning, marketers have tried to sell you something more than 200 times.
Ads are now in places they’ve never been before — from subway turnstiles to the floors of parking garages, and from bathroom stalls to video games.
But advertising experts say the more conventional ad barrage isn’t capturing consumers’ attention.
“The fact that consumers are being bombarded by so many messages basically means that they start to tune it out,” said Jonah Blum, editor of Advertising Age Magazine. “It all becomes no more than white noise.”
Cutting through the white noise is all about finding a better way to identify customers and what they want.
Advertisers’ newest tactics include plasma screens that are being placed in shopping malls across the country. The screens analyze shoppers’ faces to determine if they’re male or female and then put up a different ad based on gender. They can even determine age and ethnicity.
So the answer to consumers tuning out because of too much advertising is more advertising? Great….
Dutch women’s breasts getting bigger
[Quote:]
Dutch women are getting bigger breasts and 32 percent of them now have a D-cup or bigger compared with 20 percent five years ago.
In Europe, Dutch women are ranked third behind British and Danish women in terms of bra size, research commissioned by Bodyfashion Promotion indicated on Wednesday.
Some 42 percent of women aged 30-39 have D-cup breasts and feel in general okay about that. Women with a large bra size are now the largest group in the Netherlands.
‘Lucky’ Iraqi translator has America and little else
[Quote:]
Omar Satar Hussein — an Iraqi working as a translator for the US army — goes by the nickname “Lucky”, having survived, by his count, 37 shootings, 30 bombings and 11 mortar strikes.
He’s also lost everything he ever cared about in the world: his family, his fiancee and his friends.
“I didn’t choose my nickname. Everyone just started to call me that,” he said. “Yeah, I’m lucky with my job. I’ve survived many attacks, but I’m very unlucky with my private life.”
The life of an interpreter for the US army in Iraq is not an easy one. From social ostracism to death at the hands of insurgents, the job is fraught with risk.
“Everybody in Baquba knows my job — I work for the Americans,” said Lucky, who, alone among his translator colleagues, does not wear a mask to conceal his identity.
“I have no family anymore. My grandfather told me that I didn’t belong anymore, so America is all I have.”
Naam negerzoen gewijzigd uit commercieel oogpunt
[Quote:]
Negerzoenfabrikant Buys heeft de naam van de lekkernij niet veranderd omdat de naam kwetsend zou zijn, maar uit commerciële overwegingen. Dat zegt een woordvoerder van Buys dinsdag in Trouw.
De naam ‘Buys zoenen’ leent zich meer voor variatie wanneer de fabrikant een ‘themazoen’ op de markt wil brengen, zoals een WK-zoen of een voorjaarszoen.
Als mensen zich door de naamswijziging minder gekwetst voelen, is dat slechts een bijkomstigheid, stelt de woordvoerder.