If you’ve been watching the news today, you’ve been treated to hour after hour of soggy reporters dodging flying plywood in the midst of Hurricane Isabel. That’s pretty much it. Today’s news network game-plan is to cut between various correspondents, each of whom is experiencing more or less the same amount of Nature’s Fury. It’s not as dangerous as you might think - any reporter that gets blown off his feet is all but assured of having his fall broken by another reporter or two.
Sad, then, that it falls to silly websites like mine to rise up and shoulder the burden of reporting hard news that’s being ignored while CNN, MSNBC, and FOX splash around in windswept mud puddles. But that’s the way it is. I’ll try to update this entry periodically to keep you informed of what’s happening besides the breezy conditions in the American southeast.
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The 28th Amendment
Yesterday, a bunch of Republican senators began lobbying for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Critics say that this is just another “flag-burning” amendment; a political move that rallies support from conservatives while counting on them to be too ignorant of our government’s workings to understand the near-impossibility of amending the Constitution over such an issue. When asked about this, Sen. John Cornyn (R., TX) said, “Absolutely. The dumbasses we’re reaching out to won’t even have the patience to read this far into this article! So I can say anything I want down here and I’ll still pick up votes. Eat me, rednecks! Ha! See?”
Weapons of Mass Destruction Found
… to be complete bullshit. In the past 24 hours, American scientists have found that Saddam was probably never stockpiling smallpox, and Hans Blix has made it known that he believes that Iraq destroyed its weapons programs ten years ago and that the US and Britain’s charges were “spin and hype.”
The White House pointed to how severely US intelligence was misled as “further evidence of Saddam’s duplicity, and more reassurance that we did the right thing in removing him.”
Fanny Roborat
18 comments
Linkmeister
September 18, 2003 at 4:04 pm
1To go back to the original subject, we had a story on local news last night telling us that home prices were going to go up by $2,500 due to skyrocketing plywood prices. Apparently Isabel and the US Army are both requiring lots of the stuff (the Army uses it for flooring in Iraq).
John Isbell
September 18, 2003 at 5:24 pm
2Very nice. Two stories regrettably lost in the shuffle, after network news’s whimsical decision to devote 24 hours to weather reporting:
1. The President yesterday hung the VP out to dry by announcing that despite the beliefs of 69% of the American people, and the claims the VP made this weekend, there is no link between Saddam and 9/11.
2. Yesterday eight GIs were killed in one day in the worst attack on US troops since the taking of Baghdad.
Evidently Judy Woodruff couldn’t make it in today to further report on the hurricane for her show, “Inside Politics.” She missed a golden opportunity to cut live to further reporters getting rained on. I can’t understand her absence.
John Isbell
September 18, 2003 at 5:26 pm
3NB as far as I can tell, every other reporter at CNN is passionately interested in this subject. I emailed the lot of them to speculate about Judy Woodruff. How is the old gal doing?
Mike Z
September 18, 2003 at 9:40 pm
4Some constitutional amendments under consideration:
“No flag burning”
“No same-sex marriage”
“No gay people, period”
“No farting and blaming it on someone else”
“No unibrows”
“No little tacks that stick up in the carpet and poke me when I walk around in bare feet”
“No pickles on that, please”
“No art where I can’t tell what it’s supposed to be a picture of”
“No more Gerard Depardue movies, girls with hairy armpits, or berets with blue and white striped shirts”
“Dammit, I said No Pickles!”
“No whining”
“No no oil drilling in ANWR”
“No blurting out the answer without raising your hand”
“No No-No’s”
“No free will”
“No saying the Lord’s name in vain”
“No sunny side up eggs”
I’m pretty sure there’s more, but that’s all I can remember right now.
None
September 18, 2003 at 10:33 pm
5And the following:
First
“I am The Lord your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.”
Second
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I The Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My Commandments.”
Third
“You shall not take The Name of The Lord your God in vain; for The Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His Name in vain.”
Fourth
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to The Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”
Fifth
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which The Lord your God gives you.”
Sixth
“You shall not kill.”
Seventh
“You shall not commit adultery.”
Eighth
“You shall not steal.”
Ninth
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
Tenth
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Mike Z
September 18, 2003 at 10:45 pm
6Aren’t those, like, the Ten Commandments or something? Didn’t some state supreme court judge make those up and force people to read ‘em?
Anyway, I pretty much follow them all, except that tenth one. I totally covet my neighbor’s ass (and I’m willing to go to hell for it, too).
Steve Jones
September 18, 2003 at 11:43 pm
7Has anyone else noticed that the Alabama courthouse monument is a graven image?
Steve G.
September 19, 2003 at 2:03 am
8As we learn that the whole WMD in Iraq thing is totally bogus, at least we can’t accuse Former Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, General Wesley K. Clark, Presidential Candidate of having 20/20 hindsight.
Hunter
September 19, 2003 at 2:06 pm
9In related Isabel news:
The White House revealed today that, in preparation for the storm, Dick Cheney was fully laminated so that he wouldn’t get wet.
tess
September 19, 2003 at 2:22 pm
10i don’t quite understand the reason behind including a paste of the 10 commandments. is it saying that just because not all of us agree with the gov’t at large that we’re evil and must be purged?
btw, why can’t some of the more evangelical christians around these parts be more like the danes and become calvinists and let us go to hell on our own?
Hunter
September 19, 2003 at 4:02 pm
11(Tess — The paste of the Ten Commandments was intended as addendum to the list of other possible Constitutional amendments people were proposing. Since, you know, that seems to be the direction we’re headed…)
Anonymous
September 19, 2003 at 4:26 pm
12I’m amused at how many of you are complaining about the excessive Isabel coverage–when clearly you would have had to be WATCHING said coverage to make comment. Turn off the TV now and then. Read a book or newspaper. Try talking with a family member. Go outside.
John Isbell
September 19, 2003 at 5:20 pm
13I still have Isabel coverage on. The TV’s on mute. CNN today is about 50% the Weather Channel. They also seems to be discussing this guy named Kobe Bryant, a Swiss dude who looks a bit shifty. I like the list of new amendments, especially “Dammit! I said no pickles.” That’s a good one.
Murray
September 20, 2003 at 5:28 pm
14I just got my power back (thanks to Isabel) and the one good thing is that you can’t get sucked into the news, whirling vortex, bottomless pit, never ending coverage of the storm. I know that the Baltimore stations will preempt everything for several days at a time if it snows (which it does every few weeks per winter). There are only so many ways to say that it’s snowing and only so many reporters to say “yup, it’s still snowing”. I assume that this storm was not much different.
Why don’t the republicans just come clean and put in a “Capitol punishment for any one who disagrees with me at the moment, especially all you liberal, flag burning, gay loving, oath of allegiance resisting, put everyone on welfare, weenies, democrats” amendment?
Once all dissent is terminated with extreme prejudice, America will be the great nation it should be.
Katie
September 20, 2003 at 9:44 pm
15I lived in Southern Maryland for several years (originally from Minnesota). If it was even THREATENING to snow down there, they’d close school. We had a 9″ snow my first year there, closed school for a week. I got up, dusted off my car and drove the 109 miles to Baltimore (where I worked) and was amazed at the lack of traffic. Arrived at work, only to find out there was a State of Emergency, no unnessecary travel, and they offered to put me up in a hotel until it was safe to travel. I said, “call me when it is ’safe’ to come back to work, and drove home.
The other warning I loved out there was the “dangerously cold temperatures” warning they’d broadcast if the mercury dipped below 25 degrees. In 4 1/2 years out there, I never wore anything heavier than a sweatshirt. oy.
You’d think the Weather Channel was controlled by Republicans the way they pole-vault over mouse shit.
Pat R.
September 21, 2003 at 11:56 am
16An addendum to Mike Z’s comprehensive list of potential amendments:
No more dumping on Gerard Depardieu until you learn how to spell his name correctly.
Mike Z
September 21, 2003 at 2:15 pm
17Crap…I’m busted. I was afraid that might come back to haunt me.
Mr_Grant
September 23, 2003 at 4:49 pm
18I’m just waiting for the day when Constitutional amendments are sponsored, in order to get people interested via co-promotions. Imagine: “The Defense of Marriage Amendment, brought to you by the American Spinsters Committee.” Or how about naming rights: “The Academy of Country Music Flag Protection Amendment”.
Put some marketing experts on it, and I’m certain that the Constitution can be made more consumer-oriented, and therefore more popular. Take the area of product differentiation. Right now we have a plain, old-fashioned, it’s your father’s First Amendment. Add a little Madison Avenue magic, and you could have the “New Improved John Ashcroft First Amendment (now with built-in National Security protection!)”