Obama Rejects Iraq Invitation From McCain

What is it with John McCain and strolling through Iraq? Last year McCain went to Iraq and claimed, ““even Paris Hilton could ride a bicycle in a bikini through Anbar province.”

Maybe Paris could move around Iraq in a bikini like above and be safe, but only if she traveled as McCain did, “accompanied by 100 American soldiers, 3 Blackhawk helicopters, and 2 Apache gunships on his stroll through a Baghdad market.” He looked more like this:

I guess I shouldn’t complain. Given the choice of Paris Hilton, John McCain, a bikini, and a bullet proof vest, I’m glad that the wardrobe got distributed as it did.

Now McCain has offered to have Barack Obama join him in Iraq, but he wasn’t very polite in his invitation. MaCain said, “He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time.”

Clearly John McCain is as delusional about the meaning of the word “surrender” as he has been about his entire position of supporting this war. Obama turned him down and his campaign issued this statement:

“John McCain’s proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don’t need any more ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don’t want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer.”

Scandals Great For Comics and Blog Traffic

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Scandals and resignations have dominated the news this week. The most prominent was today’s resignation of Eliot Spitzer for having answered the the ad above from the Emperor’s Club and appreciating Kristin’s “refinements.” In addition, Geraldine Ferraro resigned from the Finance Committee of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for her recent comments on Barack Obama and Dawn Wells who played Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island was arrested for possession of marijuana. I always thought that Ginger was the bad girl.

Spitzer’s sex scandal has been great for late night comics and also great for blog traffic. Jon Swift described What Eliot Spitzer Should Say To Save His Career. The top search leading people to the site the last couple of days has been for “Spitzer Kristin.” Even though this pulled up a picture of Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars and Heroes) in a Google image search, a lot of people still clicked through to the site after seeing the thumbnail of Kristen Bell!

For the benefit of those looking for the Kristen involved in the Spitzer sex scandal, The New York Times has tracked her down and here’s her picture. You decide if it is worth spending over $4000 on her and giving up a promising political career. This just shows how much smarter Bill Clinton was. He got it for free, and remained in office.

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“Kristen” is actually Ashley Youmans, now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, and you can find out more about her at her MySpace page.

Gawker has some clips from Monday night’s jokes by David Letterman and Jay Leno. A clip from The Colbert Report is here. On Monday David Letterman presented the Top Ten Eliot Spitzer Excuses. Number one was ” I thought Bill Clinton legalized this years ago.” On Tuesday he presented the Top Ten Messages Left on Eliot Spitzer’s Answering Machine. Here’s some of the messages:

It’s Barack Obama. Remember our conversation about being my running mate? Nevermind.

Ralph Nader here, glad to hear I’m not the only politician who has to pay for it.

This is John McCain, if it makes you feel better, I once got caught having sex with Lincoln’s wife.

This is Senator Larry Craig. Do you ever go through the Minneapolis airport?

Paris Hilton here. I would have done it for free.

It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. Thanks, I’m no longer America’s creepiest governor.

Here’s a selection from some of the jokes told the last couple of days:

“You know, I’m a half-full kind of guy. I always try to put a positive spin on stuff. Sure, it’s a horrible story. On the other hand, you look at it this way, he was supporting New York’s number one industry.” –David Letterman

“He went through this call girl thing. … He was known as a regular customer. He was known as Client 9. It looks now like Client 9 will soon be looking for wife number 2.” –David Letterman

“Here’s one that is kind of cute. He would get the hookers, the call girls, the prostitutes, the whores, and he would run them down, put them on the train, Amtrak. Like they need more publicity. And he’d run them down to Washington, DC, and they’d check into a beautiful suite and have the rendezvous at a place called the Mayflower Hotel. Now that’s the difference between a Democratic and a Republican sex scandal. The Republicans have their rendezvous at an airport men’s room” –David Letterman

“Do you know what the highest paid government position in this country is? Anybody know? … It is working under New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. It pays like $5,000 an hour.” –Jay Leno

“As I’m sure you know by now, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has admitted that he was involved in a prostitution ring. Now this is the same man who when he was attorney general went after the prostitution ring. So apparently, it was for not giving him good service.” –Jay Leno

“Well, you know something, this shows you how the whole world is backwards. I mean, you got Democrats. Now, they’re supposed to be poor, right? Don’t Democrats traditionally represent the poor people? They’re paying $5,000 an hour for sex. You got the Republicans. They’re supposed to be rich, right? They’re cruising airport bathrooms trying to get it for free. What’s going on?” –Jay Leno

“The really ironic thing about this case — today, the hooker said Spitzer was done in a New York minute.” –Jay Leno

“Do you ever notice politics is the only profession when a guy gets caught with a hooker, the wife has to stand by his side. You know, if this guy was a plumber and he got caught with a prostitute, he’d have his wife’s SUV tire tracks over his head.” –Jay Leno

“It’s just mind-blowing that he spent $4,300 on a hooker. It just shows how high the cost of living is in New York. That same hooker would cost $50 in Newark.” –New York comic Lisa Landry

The New York Times reported that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was a customer of a high-end prostitution ring, that the prostitutes knew him as Client #9. Client #9, yeah. Not surprisingly, clients one through eight were Charlie Sheen.” –Conan O’Brien

“Here’s what happened, it was one of those sting deals. And they caught Eliot Spitzer, Gov. Spitzer, with a wire, recording him soliciting a prostitute. And I’m thinking, ‘Holy cow, we can’t get Bin Laden, but we got Spitzer. We got Sptizer.'” –David Letterman

“The thinking is the governor may step down now to spend less time with his family. The good thing is, he was caught soliciting a hooker, but on the bright side, it did not involve an airport men’s room.” –David Letterman

“The New York Times says that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is linked to a prostitution ring. … Gov. Spitzer, this is the latest, responded, just a few hours ago. He said, quote, ‘I violated my obligations to my family and I violated my sense of what is right and wrong.’ … Spitzer also admitted violating someone named Amber.” –Conan O’Brien

“Spitzer held a brief press conference yesterday, where he apologized to his constituents and to his family. He didn’t take any questions but retreated to the privacy of his home, where his wife repeatedly kicked him in the testicles.” –Jimmy Kimmel

“Actually, she stood right next to him in the press conference. That is always amazing to me, how these guys get their wives to stand there and support them. … I don’t know what kind of zombie chow they put in these women’s food, but it’s mind-boggling. … I don’t want to rub it in to any of you visiting from New York, but here in California, our governor doesn’t have to pay for sex. When he wants it, he takes it.” –Jimmy Kimmel

Woman of the Year

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MSNBC’s David Shuster might be suspended for his inappropriate comments on Chelsea Clinton, but this is one story where he can say whatever he wants. Paris Hilton has been named Woman of the Year by the Harvard Lampoon, as reported by the Harvard Crimson:

Paris Hilton, who can claim to be a party-girl extraordinaire, world-class socialite, and reality TV star, can now add another credential to her resume—the first ever Harvard Lampoon “Woman of the Year”, a spoof on the Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ annual “Woman of the Year”.

“You know, I’m like a lot of you Harvard students, really,” she said in a short acceptance speech on the steps of the Lampoon castle. “You have a Lamont Library. We also have a Lamont Library, except it’s a club in LA where celebs go to dance on tables and get crazy.”

Paris might not have understood that it was a spoof, but she did work hard on her acceptance speech as seen in the video below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIWgSANikp8]

Paris also had a special message for the guys at Harvard:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qn_yFst8yY]

Paris Hilton Loses Bulk of Expected Inheritance

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Paris Hilton is might not inherit as much money as she expected as The Telegraph report that her grandfather has decided to donate 97% of his fortune to charity:

Barron Hilton, 80, whose father Conrad founded the Hilton Hotel chain in 1919, will donate most of his fortune to the Conrad N Hilton Foundation. Only three per cent – $69 million – will be left to his heirs…

Paris, who had stood to inherit an estimated $100 million, will now receive about $5 million after tax.

An inheritance of $5 million will allow someone to live an upper middle class lifestyle without further resources but will not provide for the lifestyle that Paris accustomed to. It is a good thing that she has other sources of income. She did earn $5.6 million last year, so we don’t have to worry about Paris.

Barron Hilton claims to have followed his father’s example but the story does present a contradiction here:

Mr Hilton, the chairman of the foundation, said he was “proud to follow my father’s example”. On his death, in 1979, Conrad Hilton left 97 per cent of his money to the foundation he had founded in 1944. But his son challenged the will and reached an accord dividing ownership of the shares with the foundation.

Perhaps Paris or other family members will decide to follow that example and challenge the will.

SciFi Friday: Emmy Awards, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Spoilers for 24 and Sex in the City, and Does Vanessa Go Wild?

There were several Emmy nominations for genre shows, but the only winner last Sunday night was Terry O’Quinn who won as Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in Lost. While some were disappointed, the nominations themselves are also a form of recognition. I think they got it right in including Ron Moore in a group of top writers including David Chase, but it was no surprise that Chase came in first. Similarly Heroes is a good show and did well to get a nomination, but it didn’t stand a chance to win as best drama against Sopranos. While Battlestar Galactica got shut out on the main Emmy night, they did pick up a “Creative Emmy” for Outstanding Special Visual Effects. The award came for showing Galactica falling through the planet’s atmosphere in Exodus, Part 2.


TV Week reports that SciFi Channel is continuing to consider dividing up the final season of Battlestar Galactica for financial reasons:

As is often the case with the lavishly produced series, the issue is “the money people,” as one executive put it. Since “Battlestar” eats a considerable portion of the Sci Fi programming budget, the network might be forced to spread the resulting product across two seasons.

Showrunner Ron Moore shrugged off the issue. “It doesn’t affect my job either way, since we’re shooting it straight through,” he says. “It might be better to get it all done [in the same year] for the fans so they don’t have to wait.”

Waiting might be difficult:

With “Battlestar” fans already waiting about a year for the return of the series — not counting the two-hour “Razor” stand-alone movie coming this fall — returning with only 10 episodes could spark a revolt.

Moore’s storyline also could make fans demand rapid closure, one person close to the project says, since “when people see the ending of the 10th episode, they’re gonna freak out.”

The final decision might not come until January. A key factor is what new shows are in the pipeline that could be paired with “Galactica” – and how much those shows will cost.

Among the shows being considered is Caprica, the prequel to BSG. They are also considering filming the two hour pilot to sell on DVD regardless of whether they produce the entire series, especially if this fall’s BSG movie does well.

SciFi Pulse has an interview with Rod Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. He is concerned about the movie being a prequel:

I am concerned about them doing a prequel because it’s always tricky to do a prequel. There were a lot of issues with Enterprise because Enterprise was going against pre – established things and it’s always tough when you go against pre – established things. So I’m happy he’s doing it. I’d prefer them, when I say them I mean Paramount and everyone to wait a few years. I’m hesitant on the prequel. You see I have not read a script. Paramount does not have to give me a script; no one has to give me a script to read to get my approval. I would like to read it but I think they know that I speak my mind for the most part. So if I thought it were a bad script I would probably say something along the lines of, ‘Huh you know it’s a good Star Trek’ as apposed to ‘Yeah everyone has to go see it. Everyone has to go see it.’ And the fans have given my family a lot of clout and I think that to some degree has given me a lot of clout. So I think that a lot of people respect what I say to a degree and if I didn’t have anything good to say about it I think they’d be scared.

I was opposed to doing an entire prequel series as with Enterprise, but for the movie I don’t think they have much choice. As there isn’t a recent successful television show to base the next movie on, the best chance for a mass market success comes from returning to the most well known characters including Kirk and Spock. If the movie does well, I hope it leads to a new Star Trek television series, preferably taking place on a Starship and occurring after the events of Voyager and Deep Space Nine. A television show can build a new following, but a movie does not have that luxury.

A web site for the Doctor Who spin off, The Sarah Jane Adventures, is now on line and they are no longer blocking those of us outside of the UK from seeing it. There’s no word as to whether it will air on American television. Currently the SciFi Channel carries Doctor Who, BBC America caries Torchwood (as well as previous seasons of Doctor Who) and HDNet carries Torchwood nine days after the episode is seen on BBC America. Therefore, unless I get to the point where I cannot wait to see what happens next, posts on Torchwood will be postponed until after it is shown in HD. Of course if it turns out to get so good that it becomes difficult to wait, I’ll just download the first season as I did to avoid waiting to see Doctor Who this season. The consensus appears to be that the show gets much better over time.

Tonight SciFI Channel broadcasts Utopia, which leads into the final two episodes of the season on Doctor Who. I previously reviewed Utopia here. Many items from earlier in the season play a part in the season finale, including even more than I first suspected from Utopia. The episode is also notable for the return of Captain Jack for the final three episode arc, taking place after the first season of Torchwood.

Geeks of Doom has a preview of the new version of The Bionic Woman:

Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan) is having a tough time of things, but she’s making it work for her. She has to deal with her bratty little sister (Lucy Hale), a crappy job, and not much of a future, but she has a nice guy in Dr. Will Anthros (Chris Bowers), a noted professor who works in prosthetics and reconstructive surgery. Things take a turn for the worse when Jaime and Will are in a terrible accident. Will is fine, but Jaime has massive injuries, and ends up losing her legs, right arm, right ear, and right eye. That’s when the boyfriend goes to work, and gives her new body parts. Of course as happened to Steve Summers in the Venture Brothers, the government expects her to pay for her new limbs. Do you know how long it takes to pay back 50 million dollars on a government salary? But seriously, she escapes from the hospital only to run into another bionic woman (Katee Sackhoff) and becomes embroiled in a variety of mysteries. Who is her new boss (Miguel Ferrer)? What is the other bionic woman’s agenda? What do some of these other scenes mean?

What the creators have done well here is create a good mystery series. There are conspiracies within conspiracies, and a lot of things to keep the viewer coming back for more. There’s so much going on that I discovered new connections on a second viewing. The angle with Jaime working for the organization that gave her the powers sets up a decent enough storytelling engine, as long as the creators can come up with valid threats for her to fight on a weekly basis. Fights with other enhanced people could wear thin quickly though, so they’ll need to come up with various enemies that are legitimate challenges for her. But it’s the underlying mystery that really drives the drama forward. Much like BSG, the big questions make me want to watch the second episode, and if done well, will keep me on for the third and the fourth and the whole season. I’m forced to keep coming back to BSG, but the creators have borrowed so heavily from it that it’s hard not to make the comparison (especially since creator David Eick is also a producer on BSG).

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Google searches for Vanessa Hudgens are greatly surpassing Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in hits to the site following the item two weeks ago on the nude pictures of the star of the High School Musical being released on line. Disney is still sticking with her. After all, compared to former Mouseketeer Britney Spears, Vanessa still looks respectable. There are rumors floating around that Hudgens is considering posing nude in a men’s magazine and that she has been offered $500,000 to appear in a Girls Gone Wild video. I suspect there is a limit to what Disney will forgive. Besides, how much will people really pay to see what has been available on line to see for free?

Fox has issued a press release with a minor spoiler about the upcoming season of 24:

Bauer’s day gets off to a shocking start when former colleague Tony Almeida (played by Carlos Bernard), last seen in Day 5, returns after being left for dead by a terrorist conspirator in CTU’s infirmary.

The Sex and The City movie started filming this week, taking place four years after the events of the television show. Thanks to a cell phone camera we have a spoiler from the filming. The picture shows a very pregnant Charlotte talking to Big:

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Gore’s Son vs. The Bush Twins

The bad news is that Al Gore’s son appears to have a Paris Hilton-like driving problem. We’d have had examples of bad behavior from the First Family even if the Supreme Court hadn’t intervened in the 2000 election.

The good news is that Al Gore III at least learned something from his father. He was picked up for drug posession driving a hybrid Toyota Prius. He may have been endangering himself and other drivers on the road, but at least he was doing his bit for the environment.

If Kerry had pulled it out in 2004, the Presidential children would have been far more boring. Even a clothing malfunction at Cannes doesn’t compete with this or the Bush twins.

Update: From all the links to this post, it appears that conservative blogs have little understanding of snark, as well as low tolerance for knocking the Bush twins. In contrast to what a number of conservative blogs claim, this post criticizes Gore’s son for “endangering himself and other drivers on the road” and the comment on him driving a hybrid is snark, not an excuse for him. Also in contrast to what is claimed on conservative blogs, this post does not address the question of whether Gore or Bush has children with greater problems. Both obviously do, and I wasn’t addressing the question of which kids are worse. While it does appear that Gore’s son’s problems are more severe, I wouldn’t discount the behavior of the Bush twins either as many conservative blogs have.

Poodle Balling and Blogging

This began as a brief discussion in the comments on another post, but which has shifted to some interesting discussion on blog traffic, stat counters, and RSS feeds with a few bloggers by email. It raised a number of points which I though should be elevated from the comments to a main post. This began when I was alerted of a slur elsewhere. While I haven’t verified this, the points raised remain of interest even if the attack didn’t actually occur.

The discussion began with reports of a claim being made that Liberal Values gets most of its hits by searches for “poodle balling.” If so, that would be the interpretation of someone who is ignorant of both math and how search engines work.

At the time of the first comment, 84 out of the last 4000 hits came from searches for “poodle balling.” Poodle balling is mentioned on the blog due to quoting from the episode of Will and Grace with Britney Spears. Britney plays a character who acts as if she is a right winger, but then confesses: “I’m not who you think I am. My real name is Peg. And I’m a hardcore lesbian. I’m into leather play, butch white girls, skunkin’, pullin’ the blinds, and poodle balling. Whatever you got, I’ll eat it, snort it, or ride it, baby.”

As a consequence of quoting this, about 2% of the hits involved searches for poodle balling. As this is a specific phrase, those looking for it generally put ‘poodle balling’ into the search engine exactly the same way. There are also thousands of searches based on specific political questions. These account for the vast majority of searches to the blog, but each individual search was only used once or twice, so these don’t rank as high as searches for ‘poodle balling’ or for other leading searches such as Paris Hilton and Heroes.

Incidentally, one of the top searches at the blog where this claim was allegedly made is for “Ann Coulter Nude.” Before anyone gets too excited, or repulsed, it is a picture of a monster without clothes. (Literally a monster, not Ann Coulter.)

This is one of the reasons I pay more attention to RSS subscribers than hits on the blog. Those who subscribe to the RSS feed are interested in the content of the blog. With search engine hits we get primarily people searching for meaningful comments, but there’s always a fair number of other searches. That is not to say that looking for discussion of Britney’s appearance on Will and Grace isn’t a decent reason to search for the blog. After all, there is a substantial amount here on non-political topics such as television, and Britney’s appearance on Will and Grace did have its political aspects.

It’s also interesting to look at search words ranked by visit length as opposed to visit number. As people looking for non-political topics generally visit briefly, the topics on this search are generally more serious ones. Current top searches include “growing libertarianism among the liberals” and individuals such as Ron Paul, Michael Bloomberg, and Rudy Giuliani. However “poodle balling” still leads this list, indicating that people searching for “poodle balling” wound up reading much more of the blog.

The portion above was already noted in the comments, but this raised more questions regarding RSS readers as opposed to stat counters and the strategy of using RSS readers. Some argued for only placing a portion of a blog post on the RSS feed, forcing readers to click through to the main post. In contrast, I have preferred to place the entire post on the feed. My feeling is that I would rather have 3000 people reading the entire post on in their RSS reader, as opposed to stopping at the end of a brief excerpt, and it doesn’t matter whether they click through and are seen by the stat counter. Of course those who hope to maximize ad revenue by increasing hits may have reason to limit what is on the RSS feed.

Another topic of debate was the value of page loads versus unique readers, and there was really no clear answer. On the one hand, fifteen separate people who come to read the blog might be more meaningful than one person checking the comments to a post fifteen times during the day. On the other hand, one person who follows the links and reads fifteen old posts is more meaningful than fifteen people who quickly come from a search engine but wind up not reading much on the blog. Even that is difficult to determine since, as I noted above, even many of the people searching for “poodle balling” wound up sticking around to read more of the blog.

It’s almost a running joke in the blogoshere that if you put up a picture of Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan the hits will increase. We seemed to have figured out a little more as to why that sometimes happens and sometimes does not. The major variable appears to be how the picture comes up in search engines such as Google and MSN which allow searches for pictures. There are typically multiple copies of each photo on line, and some sites with the picture wind up coming up earlier and some several pages back, obviously determining whether this results in a flood of hits. Nobody involved in the discussion was clear on how this worked, but most likely it involves the usual web search karma which determines what winds up higher in a search.

Free Paris

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It’s been impossible to ignore all the publicity about Paris Hilton, and difficult to resist posting on. It was just too hard to resist blog posts entitled Paris Has Been Liberated! and Paris Burning. I’ve heard claims that Paris was being treated more harshly than others with similar offenses would, but I’ve actually only paid marginal attention to the whole affair and hadn’t seen any clear evidence either way. Today the Los Angeles Times presents an analysis,and also turns this into a real story as opposed to celebrity fluff, ensuring that we’ll always have Paris.

The analysis in the Los Angeles Times find that “Paris Hilton will end up serving more time behind bars than the vast majority of inmates sent to L.A. County Jail for similar offenses.”

The Times analyzed 2 million jail releases and found 1,500 cases since July 2002 that — like Hilton’s — involved defendants who had been arrested for drunk driving and later sentenced to jail after a probation violation or driving without a license.

Had Hilton left jail for good after four days, her stint behind bars would have been similar to those served by 60% of those inmates.

But after a judge sent her back to jail Friday, Hilton’s attorney announced that she would serve the full 23 days. That means that Hilton will end up serving more time than 80% of other people in similar situations.

Paris Hilton shouldn’t be given special treatment due to her fame and wealth, but neither should she be treated more harshly than the vast majority convicted of similar offenses.

Paris is Burning

A day after being released from jail, Paris Hilton has been sent back as she was taken out of court screaming. I bet this means a repeat of her full body cavity searches of areas most of the world has already seen pictures of. As much as we try to ignore her story, I fear we’ll always have Paris.

Paris Has been Liberated!

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Prison life just didn’t agree with Paris Hilton, who was released after only a couple of days in jail. Apparently the food sucked, and there was no where decent to shop. The party scene didn’t meet her standards either.

All those days in jail weren’t a total loss. Paris gets a new ankle bracelet–artist rendition above. She must also stay at home for another 40 days, totally messing up her party plans.