Palin Pregnancy Fraud

(Updated below with video)

So apparently Palin's latest child is actually the child of her daughter. Check it here. Also see this photo, allegedly from Super Tuesday in February, when Palin was supposedly six months pregnant... Wow! Clearly, if this is true, it would rank up there with the whole Eagleton fiasco back in '72... I for one hope the MSM is a little quicker on the uptake here than in recent instances, but I'm not optimistic given everything. We shall see.

(Hat tip to Dan for alerting me to this breaking news)

Update!!!

Found a possibly pregnant pick of Palin's daughter via the above link, and here it is: Possible, no? (She's the one on the right, BTW).. Apparently this is old news anyway, but now it actually might mean something.... We shall see!

Update II!!!

Matt is back with another masterpiece of comic timing germane to the topic of this blog post.

Update III!

So I was reading through some stories about the time of the baby's birth, when I came across this little bit:

In a letter she e-mailed to relatives and close friends Friday after giving birth, Palin wrote, "Many people will express sympathy, but you don't want or need that, because Trig will be a joy. You will have to trust me on this." She wrote it in the voice of and signed it as "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

So she writes letters to her friends in the "voice of" God? Does that strike anyone else as completely fucking bent, even if in the service of justifying the acceptance of a disabled child? Just saying, strikes me as pretty crazy. Plus, check out another "pregnant" picture of Palin, this one from December:


Update IV

Found this pick from March in which Palin looks pretty pregnant. Could be a suit, of course, but that would be pretty f'ing crazy in its own right, speaking of crazy... Here's the shot from this site:


Update V

Okay, check out this excerpt from the Anchorage Daily News:

Palin said she's already about seven months along, with the baby due to arrive in mid-May.

That the pregnancy is so advanced astonished all who heard the news. The governor, a runner who's always been trim, simply doesn't look pregnant.

Pretty funny to keep something like a pregnancy secret for so long... Also strange that no one suspected anything, and that all were shocked by the announcement... Very strange.

Update VI

New testimony from Alaska HD seems to indicate that again, in her 7th month of pregnancy, Palin did not, in fact, appear pregnant. Here is a video filmed in February by Alaska HD. Watch the beginning if you like local news casts or are a devoted Northern Exposure junky, but fast forward to the 4:00 mark to see the Palin segment. Note her hacking cackle as well, another possible campaign liability (I would know): Judge for yourself, I guess. Doesn't seem that pregnant to me, but who can say? (Is she maybe just a little bit pregnant? --ed.)

Update VII

More video of Palin pregnant, via Jackie & Fritz: Also check out this site for some attempt at debunking.

Familiarity as Deinducement in Music

I've noticed something. Ever since I got my fancy new phone a few months ago (before it was supplanted by the newer version), I have had two songs as my main ringtones. The first, a guitar excerpt from New Order's 1983 masterpiece "Leave Me Alone," designates that the person calling is someone to whom I actually want to talk. The second, Joy Division's "Isolation," designates either someone I don't want to talk to or someone I don't know. A third tone, My Bloody Valentine's "I Can See It, But I Can't Feel It," I use for alarm purposes as well as reminders, etc. Pretty simple system.

Except that now, whenever I hear those songs, my brain has become totally acclimated to the set of expectations delineated above, to the point where I can't enjoy any of those songs anymore. This has had a correlative effect on my music taste, and in turn, the direction of music I am working on, all of which is very interesting, and leads me to wonder: should we not use our favorite songs as our ringtones? Is this just a simple case of too much of a good thing?

(This post is dedicated to the blog posting style of Rich)

Best Dunk in a While

Check out this dunk by Rudy Fernandez of Spain over Dwight Howard... Pretty ill, no? Portland should be psyched about what this bodes...

(via TrueHoop)

New Feature: Things I Hate

It's time. I've waited long enough to express my utter derision and hatred for this band, who are legitimately overexposed, and who legitimately suck: The Hold Steady. Fuck these guys and their classic rock derivative pseudo hip garbage. The singer sounds like a fucking idiot, and guitar player is a douchebag, and the other members of the band are not even close to being tolerable, either musically or in aspect. Below find a video of one of their most truly horrible songs, "Stay Positive." I mean, look at that picture there to the left and up... First of all, that cat looks like a total dick. Second he's wearing a fucking baseball jersey. So fucking hip, your embrace of the whitest and lamest of all pro sports, baseball. Way to go dick... I could go on, but why bother? These cats suck.

A Few Things

I like the Biden call. I was calling for Chuck Hegel (deliberate misspelling), but that was just craziness on my part. Biden is much better. I think he's pretty sharp and he actually gets good lines in once in a while, which is important, if not too important:

Moving on, I don't really buy the government's case against Bruce Ivins, and neither does my new favorite blogger, Glenn Greenwald (sorry Rich!). Check out his superb anthrax posts.

I've been trying to expand my internet horizons, which had become somewhat overly routinized. If anyone has any must read blogs/sites with a political bent, please let me hear 'em.

Also, I'm so glad Rachel Maddow has her own show. I am a huge Maddow fan, as many of you know, and I know she won't let me down. That said, I was almost moved to tears by this:
We will miss you DA. I hated your show, and it was completely Court TV esque and trashy, but I'll still miss you.

Not to distract you from my slightly more playful post below, but...

Check out this article by Irving Kristol, father of my beloved... Best analysis (and prognostication) of Conservatism I've come across.

Anecdotes & Story-Telling

So word on the street is that McCain copied his oh so memorable "cross in the dirt" story from Solzhenitzyn. Will the mainstream media care? No, oh no. Just like the Edwards affair is front page news but the Vicky Iseman story gets absolutely no traction. McCain is like Gotti, and this stuff just doesn't stick.

Meanwhile we have Michael Phelps and the oft repeated story about him pretending not to recognize one of his former tormentors after he made the Olympic team back in 2000:

Long before he had the likes of Lochte and Cseh to inspire him, Phelps was motivated by his tormenters. His mother, Debbie, remembered an 11-year-old Phelps emerging in tears from the locker room at Towson University during a swim meet because two boys from another team were making merciless fun of him.

Four years later, in 2000, after Phelps qualified for the United States Olympic team in the 200 butterfly, one of those boys came up to him in the stands at the Indiana University-Purdue University natatorium to congratulate him. As Debbie Phelps remembered recently, the kid said to Phelps, “Remember me? I swim with ...”

Phelps looked him in the eyes and said, “I don’t seem to recall who you are.” After the boy left, Debbie Phelps said she turned to her son and said, incredulous, “Michael, you really didn’t remember him?” He told her: “Yes I did. But I was not going to give him that sense of satisfaction.”

Wow. You showed him Phelps. But the best part is, now that asshole undoubtedly knows that Phelps knew who he was all along! He wins! Sure, Phelps gets the eight medals and all that, but that kid now knows Phelps did know him back in 2000, in my mind an even greater prize than any number of medals.

And what do these stories teach us? The easier the moral, the more compelling the soundbite. Simple. Or is it?

SeamlessWeb

When you live in a part of New York that is not as well populated with restaurants, SeamlessWeb is really helpful, as they let you know who will deliver to your neighborhood right off the bat. Add in the fact that even for East Harlem they have about sixty restaurants willing to deliver from the UES, and you are all set.

I also, as many of you know, suffer from terrible phone-phobia, so having an internet based ordering system is just the best. No confusion about your orders, no trying to decode mysterious accents, just point and click what you want and you are good to go! SeamlessWeb is really useful and I've never had a single problem with any of my orders. What a divine service!

MSNBC

Paraphrasing here, but after the end of the "faith" nightmare on MSNBC tonight there were like two minutes of "down time" featuring Pat Buchanan and Michelle Bernard, moderated by David Shuster, who wrapped things up approximately like this:

Pat Buchanan: McCain was dynamic, forceful, decisive, and direct. Obama was intellectual, boring, dry, and hesitant, in short--

Shuster: Oh, sorry Pat, can't let you conclude that point, even though we just had a two hour exclusive. Instead, let's go to the "Doc Block," featuring "Lock Up: San Quentin." At this point, you can change the channel from the "Place for Politics" to CNN where you will find a substantive, pundit driven wrap-up...

As usual, masterful work by MSNBC. Oh, and by the way, Rick Warren is a douchebag. Way to "avoid" the gotcha moments, asshole.

The Streets--Ripping Off My Photos

So check out the new album cover by English band The Streets:

Okay, now check out this shot of Nostra circa 2006:

Notice anything? Yep, Skogarfoss, the one and only Icelandic waterfall. Absolutely the same place, people. What does this mean?

It should be pretty obvious from this that as usual, The Streets are copying everything I do. Appropriately enough, this album is called Everything is Borrowed. If only they knew how deeply borrowed that image was, borrowed from my hard drive!

(image via Pitchfork)

Least Favorite Celebrities

Who would you name, if you had to list your three least favorite celebrities? Here's my list:

#3 Terry Gross



It's hard not to hate Terry Gross, I know, so this choice should come as no surprise. Nevertheless, if one needs an additional reason to detest this despicable, abominably overexposed publicity maven, I find no better justification than that provided by Wikipedia:

...in a famous essay, Illinois State University professor Curtis White trenchantly criticized Gross and her show as the "prime example" of a certain type of cultural and intellectual rot in American culture.

Case closed. If Curtis White finds her vapid, how can anyone challenge the assertion? I mean, White is our foremost cultural critic! Foremost! I mean he teaches at Illinois State, the strongest academic program in America. The strongest!

#2 Anfernee HardawayOne of the happiest moments of my life was the day this total jerk had microfracture surgery. Ha! How's the career going, Penny? Oh right, it's like so totally over it's not even funny! Ha! That's what you get for not signing an autograph for me in 1995. You deserved every moment of your subsequent mediocrity.

#1 Kadeem HardisonAnd you thought Urkel was lame!