Amy Winehouse found dead in her London home [LAT]

With the country on the brink of default and the world on the brink of collapse, The Preznit of These United States stepped to the podium yesterday afternoon to answer queries from the elite of Our Exceptional Nation’s Press Corps. AP White House correspondent Ben Feller showed why our reporters are the envy of the world by immediately drilling to the heart of the issue:

You said you want the leaders back here at 11 a.m. to give you an answer about the path forward. What is your answer about the path forward? What path do you prefer, given what’s just happened?

Aptly put, Brother Feller. Set the spin aside and get The Preznit on the record about his own priori—

Wait — you’re not done?

And also, sir, quickly, what does this say about your relationship with Speaker Boehner?

Ah. Well. Our mistake. We mistook you for a journalist. Never mind.

July 22 Press Conference [White House]

Third nipple found on woman’s foot [Yahoo Oz, via CheapBoy]

Britain’s slebs are up in arms over who’s been hacked and, even worse, who hasn’t. Even dayplayers on the Eastenders don’t want to be left out.

Being on the list might be embarrassing: not being on the list might be professional death. Luckily, one of England’s loveliest slebs, Katy Perry, is already talking to lawyers (note: the English say ‘solicitor’ so exactly what does this tell us about Miss Perry’s intended audience? E.T.?) and the pleece.

English gels were once famous for their complexions: a result of all that rain, lack of sunlight, and nanny’s habit of rubbing baby’s piss-soaked nappy (diaper) over her face before it had a chance to cool. As you can see, Miss Perry is doing her bit to bring the delicacy of the English Rose into the 21st century. And has added a charming innovation of her own: rubbing lumps of coal across her eyebrows.

As an exile, living here amid the alien corn, it brings a lump to one’s throat as Rupert Brooks’s immortal line bubbles to the surface of what’s left of one’s brain:


And is there honey still for tea?

“Dan is so dreamy!” Sigh.

If, after seeing this, anyone has the stomach to read about Rick and his BFF Dan Savage, here’s a linque to the Huffington Post.

 It took us until noon or so today before we managed to force ourself to actually read Grover Norquist’s Op. Ed. in today’s New York Times. You see, we’re so used to bubbling up and boiling over with fury every time we read a disingenuous, dishonest and mendacious opinion piece by a prominent conservative that we just weren’t sure we could take one more. In these pieces the author generally strikes a tone of deep concern for the federal debt, the solvency of Social Security and Medicare and the well being of  “average Americans,” proposes solutions that would devastate all three of those things while pretending to improve them, and then backs it up with a series of blatantly false studies, cooked statistics and fuzzy math.

But Norquist’s piece surprised us in that regard. For not only does Norquist dispense with artificial concern for the country’s debt picture, he’s quite straightforward in announcing that his entire program is built around the notion that the government must be dismantled at all costs, the deficit be damned. Read more »

Maybe it’s because we’ve lived our entire life on the Left Coast — where religion is certainly present, and just as certainly not suffocating — that we fail to see the point of something like this:

Because we represent such a small sliver of the American population and are often seen in a negative light, I believe that it is imperative that atheists make themselves known. A 2010 Gallup poll demonstrated something the LGBTQ community has recognized for some time: people are significantly more inclined to oppose gay marriage if they do not know anyone who is gay.

We weren’t aware that living La Vita Heathen was a matter of genetics, and the writer — who himself happens to be gay — should know better than to make a comparison like that. For that matter, his later comparison of atheists to Muslims, while at least categorically correct, overlooks the nasty distinction that American bigotry against Muslims is actually racist, seeing how most Muslims don’t exhibit Nordic traits.

Read more »