On behalf of a nation of bloggers, thank you Flying Spag—

Hold on… What? Who?

Former NFL player Damon Dunn has won the Republican nomination for California secretary of state.

Dunn defeated Orange County lawyer Orly Taitz in Tuesday’s primary, and will face incumbent Democrat Debra Bowen in the general election in November.

Dunn is a self-described “recovering nonvoter” who hadn’t cast a ballot in an election until 2009. He had said his failure to vote would help him reach out to other nonvoters and inspire them to get involved.

Well, folks, this is what it’s come to: Any other year, we’d be creaming our jeans for a candidate like that.

Dunn to face Bowen for Calif secretary of state [AP/San Jose Mercury-News]

Will the new iPhone get me laid?

No.

Will the new iPhone make my enemies’ heads explode with the touch of a button?

No.

If I hold the new iPhone up to a mirror while using video chat, will I be zapped into a cosmic vortex?

Singularity Transposition is only available in Europe; standard data rates apply.

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OneEyedJess [Yfrog, via PourMeCoffee]

Our favorite moment in Network is not the Mad As Hell Chorus, not the Black Nationalists arguing contract points with the network execs, not even Faye Dunaway literally having an orgasm over demographics.

No, our favorite moment is when Howard Beale is summoned to the office of Ned Beatty’s conglomerate chairman because he went too far:

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Screw the physics. This is magic.

[via Kottke]

President Obama finally announces plans to investigate and prosecute those who led our nation into a criminal war with Iraq and violated the Geneva Conventions in our handling of prisoners:

But our responsibility doesn’t end there. We have an obligation to investigate what went wrong and to determine what reforms are needed so that we never have to experience a crisis like this again. If the laws on our books are insufficient… the laws must change. If oversight was inadequate to enforce these laws, oversight has to be reformed. If our laws were broken, leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice on behalf of the victims…

What? Oh. Fuck. Never mind.

Remarks by the President After Meeting with BP Oil Spill Commission Co-Chairs [White House]

We spent a few hours Monday night trying to nail down a few facts — any facts— about Israel’s raid on the “Freedom Flotilla” heading for Gaza.

We gave up.

It’s not just that every fact is disputed — it’s that every fact is part of a larger politically charged narrative, and part of an immediate land rush following the incident. Whoever wins the facts, wins the story.

How bad is it? Well, there are disputed facts about the raid itself. There are disputed facts about Israel’s right to conduct the raid in international waters. There are disputed facts about Israel’s right to blockade Gaza, and disputed facts about Israel’s conduct of that blockade.

Hell, there are even disputed facts about the ships in the flotilla.

We thought we’d spare ourselves a long detour into post-Ottoman Middle East history by focusing on that last fact — the flotilla’s provenance — but even that led us back to Turkey.

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