News Roundup for 4/30/09

Carrie Prejean

-Headline of the day-
"Group paid for breast implants of beauty queen on gay marriage rampage."

I ask you, how could it not be the HotD?

The newest incarnation of Joe the Plumber, opposite marriage advocate and Miss California Carrie Prejean, is a chemo-babe. According to the report, the "Miss California organization has confirmed that it paid for the 21-year-old Prejean to receive breast implants weeks before the [Miss America] pageant."

No word on whether big fake tits are a family value. Seriously, they don't write these things down. You'd think that family values would be easy to list off anywhere, anytime, since they were handed down by the hand of God to Ronald Reagan on Mt. Sinai. But it seems that what is or isn't a family value depends on what serves the religious right's political agenda at any moment. So big fake tits are probably as wholesome and moral as Wonderbread now.

There's also no word on whether the original Joe the Plumber -- Samuel Wurzelhooper -- is considering breast implants to reinvigorate his sagging career. We can only pray he doesn't. (Raw Story)


-Classy!-
Here's a fun game. Click on this link to the Hamilton County [Ohio] Republican Party's blog. What do you get? An error page saying, "Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog Hamilton County GOP does not exist."

Now, check out the Google cache for the page and see what you see. Not surprisingly, HCRP head Alex Triantafilou seems pretty pissed that Arlen Specter has left the Republican party. The post is a little insulting maybe, but nothing out of the ordinary for a Republican party head -- being an asshole is part of the job description. So why pull the post?

Maybe this, which appeared at the top of the post, might explain it:



Hahaha! Arlen Specter's all bald and he looks like Dr. Evil! You got burned Arlen! w00t! Chromedome!

But wait, why is Arlen Specter bald in that photo? Because he almost died of freakin' cancer!

Wow. That takes a lot of the funny out of it, doesn't it? So down the memory hole goes Alex Triantafilou's post.

Remember way back when George W. Bush talked about "compassionate conservatism?" Yeah, turns out there's no such thing. (Google Cache, via reddit)


-Bonus HotD-
"What's in a name?"

That depends on whether you're just some average person on the street or the PR head of industry group who's way too paranoid about the way people use words. Said PR head is Tammy Vaasenn, Director of Operations for the Wisconsin Pork Producers Association and the words she's freaked out over are "swine" and "flu," I guess in that order.

According to the report, Vaasenn "says it's an unfortunate choice of words because there's no indication a pig gave the virus to a human. She says the 'Swine Flu' term is a bit misleading and could impact sales of pork products, even though there's no connection between the virus and pork." So WPPA wants everyone to stop saying "swine flu," because it'll get everyone thinking that bacon or pork chops are bad for you.

Yeah, think about that for a sec. It'll come to you.

Vaasenn suggests the media call it "North American influenza" or "Hybrid Influenza." I guess you could also go with H1N1 -- seeing how that's actually what it's called. But I'm guess that you can put this request in that big, long list of things that are just never going to happen. Still, if Wolf Blitzer or Bill O'Reilly start talking about the "North American influenza," you'll know they buckled under the pressure of the huge Washington powerhouse lobby that is the Wisconsin Pork Producers Association. (Wisconsin Radio Network)