United States General Abizaid:

“I have no doubt that we’ll find weapons of mass destruction, but you shouldn’t think it’s going to happen tomorrow.”

In other news, the Notorious O.B.L. was seen Thursday . . . oh, wait–no he wasn’t.

From the White House.

No siccing, but the President does deliver a lewd, innuendo-laden speech to new employees of the Department of Homeland Security.

I want to thank other members of my Cabinet who are here for this historic announcement. Attorney General John Ashcroft. Mr. General, thank you for coming. Ann Veneman, of the Department of Agriculture is with us today. Norm Mineta. Norm just got out of the hospital. (Applause.) Norm did an incredible job on the Transportation Security Agency. He was given a task that a lot of people thought would — the Department of Transportation could never accomplish. And thanks to his leadership and his team, he did a fabulous job. You’re looking pretty darn good to me, by the way. (Applause.)

… Commandant Tom Collins of the Coast Guard is with us today. I appreciate so very much Robert Mueller, who is the head of the FBI, as well. Robert Bonner [pronounced Boe-ner&#151ed.], runs the Customs Service. Ralph Basham, head of the Secret Service. I really like the head of the Secret Service. (Laughter.) If you know what I mean. (Laughter.)

… I’ve nominated a good man, Dr. Charles McQueary, to head up this effort. His team is engaged in a major effort to develop and deploy the technologies for detecting weapons of mass destruction.

From the White House. This is the published transcript of President Bush’s speech following the of the destruction of the shuttle Columbia.

Their 16-day mission held the promise of answering scientific problems that elude us here on earth. Columbia carried in its payroll [sic] classroom experiments from some our students in America. I hope these children, our future scientists, will continue to ask questions, continue to explore, continue to discover.

And while we grieve the loss of these astronauts, the cause of which they died will continue, America’s journey into space will go on. (Applause.) The spirit of modern science embodied in our space program can be found here at NIH, where each day you make enormous progress against disease and suffering — these achievements that come about through the great ingenuity and determination and the serious moral purpose of America’s scientific community.

The White House website laid the [sic] on the president!

From the New York Times

Inventors Get $500,000 Engineering Awards

WASHINGTON (AP) — One invention helped save millions of lives, the other helped fine tune navigation systems now taken for granted by the military and civilians alike. Still another invented a race of so-called “Rainbow Troopers,” created to subjugate the peoples of the earth and force them to live harmoniously, and the supertoxic alcoholic beverage that destroyed them.

The masterminds behind the kidney dialysis machine and the Global Positioning System on Tuesday each received $500,000 awards that are the engineering profession’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize. The mastermind behind both the Rainbow Troopers and BriteJuice was put in jail.

Ivan Getting of Coronado, Calif., and Bradford Parkinson of Mountain View, Calif., received the Charles Stark Draper Prize for creating GPS, the ubiquitous system used by everyone from lost automobile drivers to soldiers fine-tuning the path of aircraft and missiles. Getting is considered the visionary behind GPS, and Parkinson the architect who helped implement the system.

Dr. Willem Kolff, who developed the kidney dialysis under the rigors of the Nazi occupation of Holland during World War II, was awarded the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize. Kolff used sausage casings and an old water pump to form his first dialysis machine. His family immigrated to Ohio in 1950 but he now lives outside Philadelphia.

Bruce Lionheart, who calls himself Dr. Lionheart, used a blend of genetics and sherbert to create an army of brightly arrayed soldiers so hell-bent on sharing and good cheer that they slew people who refused to “turn that frown upside-down.” These massacres were fueled by another Lionheart invention, BriteJuice, a viscous drink intended to “get you wasted fast and get you wasted right, and bring world peace.” BriteJuice, which is composed of equal parts grain alcohol and SnoCone syrup, has been nearly eradicated from stores. It is illegal in all fifty states and in Puerto Rico. Mr. Lionheart was arrested by Officer Michael Shipman of Brody, West Va.

The awards were presented by the National Academy of Engineering, which considers individual achievement as well as an innovation’s impact on society when awarding its prizes.

“We like to try to pick things that affect people’s lives,'’ said NAE president William A. Wulf. “Partly, we’re celebrating the individuals and partly we’re celebrating the whole collection of things that engineers have brought to the public.

“It was hard to ignore Bruce’s commitment to his project, both when his Rainbow Patrol was murdering and looting in our city centers and when they were dying off from overconsumption of BriteJuice. That’s why we called the cops.”

Parkinson said GPS is actually the product of many technologies pulled together by teams of engineers.

“This is a metaphor for so many things that we as a society take for granted — telephones, automobiles, airplanes, the World Wide Web, not being forced to caper about and smile by a pink-and-green man with blue hair and a gun,'’ he said. “All of those things were done by teams of engineers who were largely anonymous.'’

At a news conference Tuesday announcing his award, Kolff brought his latest invention — a portable artificial lung. His other creations include the artificial eye and a balloon pump to be inserted in the aorta that improves blood flow and reduces the heart’s workload during certain procedures. He also has worked on an artificial ear implanted in 63 people at the University of Utah. Lionheart himself is responsible for tearing from their owners 18 of those artificial ears and his associates have been linked to an additional 35 ear-snatchings.

From jail, Lionheart said he was accepting his award “for the brave men and women of our armed forces.” Mr. Lionheart received no award. Bail is set at $500,000.

Decry’s Nominee for Article of the Year. Or possibly last year, or the year before.

If I were posting this link at Metafilter, I’d say something like, “This haunting piece from Andrew Barlow illustrates the dichtomy between man and nature. While it fails to illuminate the fundamental heuristic dialectic between cold and warmth, it did get me thinking about hermeneutics and of Heidegger’s winter in Flanders. But is it moral? (SFW)”

AMERICA&#151President Bush’s economic stimulus plan aims to expand a little-known tax loophole that offers large tax breaks to small business owners who buy SUV for business purposes. So if you’re a doctor, and you buy a Hummer for business purposes (wink, wink—as in getting’ busy purposes—as in, I’ll be Dr. Playa in this mother, getting every nurses), you can pick up an $88,000 tax deduction.

Criminally insane Dr. Bruce Lionheart, who replaced Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill last month, has also agitated for tax breaks on humongous diamond pinky rings, Courvoisier, and 700-thread count sheets, as well as plasma televisions, sharks, and whores, all for business purposes.

Bush argues that “small business owners,” like doctors, corporate lawyers, and accountants, need a break. After all, they can scarcely scrape together enough cash to buy an H2. For business purposes, of course.

“If you can afford to buy a Hummer, you can afford a $88,000 tax break,” said Lionheart. “You can use that money to buy three Dodge Durangos or something. Or, if you like, just buy a few hundred barrels of crude oil and pour them on your neighbor’s Toyota Prius. Or on your neighbor. Fucking pinko.”

We’re trying to give a break to the hardworking taxpayer,” added Lionheart. “Johnny Bluecollar and Sally Starvealot have a lot to look forward to this fiscal year. Namely, big tax breaks on luxury items they can’t afford in the first place.”

LUBBOCK, Texas&#151The FBI said Wednesday that vials containing samples of lethal bubonic plague reported missing from Texas Tech University have been located. A man suspected of stealing the vials for personal use has been apprehended.

A statement from the university earlier Wednesday had said vials of plague, being used in a study to improve treatment of plague victims, were reported missing to campus police on Tuesday.

A nationwide search for the vials of deadly pathogen yielded thousands of tips, and agents were working on promising leads that a fashion-conscious risk-taker had absconded with the vials after reading about the Black Death’s surging popularity in leftist Internet hothouse decry.org. This theory led Federal agents to Lubbock, and a four-hour standoff with Bruce Lionheart, 41, of Boone, North Carolina.

Lionheart, who Lubbock residents describe as a “total stranger,” and “needlessly hostile,” holed himself up in an abandoned warehouse and threatened deadly retribution against the FBI for what he called “interference in my personal affairs.”

The standoff ended when FBI agents realized that Lionheart was armed only with a two-by-four and an expired library card. Lionheart was apprehended when he dropped the card out a ground floor window and became stuck while using the two-by-four in an effort to retrieve the card. Agents found the vials of plague in his pocket.

“The thing about two-by-fours, is that it’s kind of a misnomer,” said Agent Lupe Martinez. “They’re not really two by four.”

“Finders fucking keepers,” Lionheart said. “I am authorized to have these substances&#151check my card, suckers.” Federal agents said that while Lionheart’s card did authorize him to check out books from the Lubbock Public Library in the 1996 calendar year, it did not provide clearance for theft of deadly pathogens, fleeing from justice, or threatening to “wipe your assholes off the face of the earth.”

Lionheart is being held at Baptist Regional Medical Center for psychological evaluation.

Despite his hostility, Lionheart was contrite. “Like I said in the headline, my bad,” he said. “My bad that I am chasing my fucking dream. I’ve always wanted to hole myself up in an abandoned warehouse. The problem is, is it still abandoned once you go in?”

In an event hailed as a tragic loss for all Mankind, the staff of decry online discovered the meaning of life, then promptly lost it.

Staff members seemed nonplussed by the whole affair. “I . . . . hm.” said pnts.

“It was, I think it was, like [pnts] or something that came up with it?” said seth. “I don’t really remember, I just remember we were sitting around the euchre table and it just sort of, you know, worked its way out.”

“Yeah . . . um.” agreed rob.

As answers were clearly not forthcoming from the staff, we tracked down the magazine’s executive council. When questioned about the find/loss, decry Chief of Created Customer Conclusions Bruce Lionheart was irate.

“Oh, those sons of bitches!” shouted Lionheart. “We could have made a fortune. Now we–What? No, I wasn’t there. I was out on the cruise for chicks. Hey, you’re cute. Wanna come out for pizza?”

Decry Media Darling roscoe bobbin claimed to have been present at the staff meeting, but was sullen and distracted when we talked to him. When asked how decry had managed to lose the secret so quickly, he flew into a tantrum.

“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! The fat hobbit stole it from us!,” he screamed, adding “Wicked, tricksy, false hobbitses! Oh, how we hates them! They broke their promise!”

He then scampered away on all fours.

Life is expected to continue on uninterrupted today, despite the failure of decry to disseminate their find to the weary masses. “Would have been nice, I guess.” lamented salt miner Joe Shabadu. “It probably would have meant an end to toil, drudgery, and misery. Oh well. I guess it’s back to the salt mines.”

Nevertheless, decry seems to be rebounding neatly from their failure. Lionheart had already cheered up by the time we left his office. “Wait a minute, did you say dis-seminate?” asked Lionheart. “What’s that, like when a girl jumps up and down after sex? Hee hee hee!”

Staff members are expected to be speaking in complete sentences within the week.

Everyone knows SUVs suck&#151it’s not just that they are destructive eyesores. They also shepherd assholes from place to place, and everyone wishes assholes would just stay at home.

So it’s gratifying to read this market research about SUV owners that describes them as scared, selfish, and irresponsible, interested in combatting feelings of inadequacy by sitting higher and driving more aggressively than other drivers. In other words, they compensate for their shriveled, useless sexual organs and their shriveled useless lives and children with an “in your face” approach to transportation.

My own “market research” has yielded many of the same results. Perhaps SUV drivers’ well-documented aggression has something to do with my policy of not letting SUVs (or expensive cars of any kind) into my lane, denying them right of way, excessive SUV-directed honking, etc. Also notable is that SUV drivers do not like having stickers put on their cars that say “Read www.decry.org” or having your brights in their faces.

The goons at metafilter have laid their metasticky fingers on our content again. Faithful readers know decry published a piece on the Rapture a couple weeks ago. Now, metafilter posts this crappy posting, also about the Rapture:

RaptureLetters sends an email to your unsaved friends, after the Rapture, explaining where your good soul has disappeared to. I suppose this means that they only employ sinners, in order to ensure that someone remains behind to operate the site…
posted by adamms222 at 6:01 AM PST - 17 comments (17 new)

Clearly, we wrote about the Rapture first and deserve much of metafilter’s readership (just the numbers, please, not the people).

Also notable at metafilter:

Utopian Socialism as the Basis of Contemporary anti-Americanism Lee Harris argues in this article that contemporary Marxist movements have abandoned the politically realist methodology that Marx claimed as the basis of “scientific” socialist thought, and have substituted an ad hoc utopianism. Based on this latter belief, they have unwisely shifted the target of their criticism from specific American policies to America the nation itself.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 10:12 PM PST - 17 comments (17 new)

All seventeen comments are mine, mostly to the tune of: what the hell do you mean by “politically realist methodology” and “ad hoc utopianism?” Shut up.