Reality gets a bit ‘Stranger’ with new Fox show

Network developing series in which brides-to-be meet husbands on big day

LOS ANGELES - Fox is developing "I Married a Stranger," a matrimonial reality series in which brides-to-be don't meet their husbands until they exchange vows.

The premise of the show is that a woman frustrated by the dating scene agrees to wed a man she's never met. While she prepares for her blind wedding, friends and family select a spouse from a pool of six eligible suitors offered by the show's producers. The men are eliminated one by one until only two candidates remain. Both finalists walk down the aisle, but only one makes it to the altar to reveal himself to his new wife.

"She never meets him until the actual moment when they say 'I do,'" a source close to the project said. "It's like the big scene that comes after an entire season of 'The Bachelor,' only this is in every episode."

There are couples in California who have been together for 20 or 30 years or more who can't legally get married, and these idiots are marrying a complete stranger for a television show. Where are the National Organization for Marriage protesters on this one?

Hey, looks like I'm back! All I needed was something substantive to voice my opinion on.

And today it's Edmund Andrews of the NY Times again. ( Clipped for length )

Hubby sent me this NY Times magazine article, which will appear in Sunday's paper. It's written by one of their economic reporters.

If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.

But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds. We all had our reasons. The brokers and dealmakers were scoring huge commissions. Ordinary homebuyers were stretching to get into first houses, or bigger houses, or better neighborhoods. Some were greedy, some were desperate and some were deceived.

As for me, I had two utterly compelling reasons for taking the plunge: the money was there, and I was in love. It was August 2004, just as the mortgage party was getting really good. I was 48 years old and eager to start a new chapter in my life with Patricia Barreiro, who was then my fiancée.

Or in other words, "I was stupid, and I was stupid."( The stupidity, it hurts my eyes )

Via Balloon Juice, Mark Halperin's "witty" comment on potential Supreme Court Justice nominees in an Obama Presidency:

White Men Need Not Apply

As the commenters say better than I could:

beltane: I have long despaired over the stunning lack of white men in positions of power. Out of nine Supreme Court justices, for example, only seven are white men. Alas and alack.

Ricky Bobby: Amazing to see this latent underlying racism start to bubble to the surface just after the first minority POTUS is elected. I am shocked I tell you, SHOCKED!

Hunter Gathers: I don’t know about the rest of you, but as as a member of the oppressed white male majority, I will pitch a fit if Obama doesn’t choose David Duke. Or the ghost of Lee Atwater.

I know the right is infamously irony-deficient, but seriously? From the HuffPo:

...This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion....

So when he says gay people should not only not be allowed to marry, but shouldn't be allowed to have drivers' licenses, they don't get that it's a joke? Or that he really means it?

Wow.

From NY Magazine, the article everyone's talking -- and spitting bricks -- about: The Wail of the 1%:

“No offense to Middle America, but if someone went to Columbia or Wharton, [even if] their company is a fumbling, mismanaged bank, why should they all of a sudden be paid the same as the guy down the block who delivers restaurant supplies for Sysco out of a huge, shiny truck?” e-mails an irate Citigroup executive to a colleague.

Um, how about because the Sysco delivery guy can actually do his job? Do you hear this? The Citigroup exec shouldn't be paid more because he actually meets his targets or exceeds them. He went to a pricey school, therefore he's better than you and me, therefore he should be paid more! For doing..... what exactly? Running the country's financial system into the ground?

There is rage at Obama for pushing to raise taxes (“The government wants me to be a slave!” says one hedge-fund analyst);

Oh yes, by all means, explain to the African-American president how this makes you a slave. You ass.

“There’s this perception that the people on the Street were making money for nothing,” says a mortgage-investment banker.

YES. YOU WERE. You created "derivative securities" based on nothing, and managed to sell them to make a profit, and ran us into the ground!!!

During the campaign, Obama was never shy about his promise to undo the Bush tax policies. But it was easy to ignore his occasional lapses into populist rhetoric and focus on his intense intelligence and Ivy League education. Now, in the wake of the crisis, Wall Street’s politics are shifting rightward. “All the rich people I know took George Bush for granted,” says an analyst at a midtown hedge fund. “I’m a Democrat, but I agree with Rush Limbaugh on a lot of this stuff,” rails the wife of a former AIG executive.

I... just... You think Rush Limbaugh does that show for minimum wage?

“You can’t live in New York and have kids and send them to school on $75,000,” he continues. “And you have the Obama administration suggesting that. That was a very populist thing that Obama said. He’s being disingenuous. He knows that you can’t live in New York on $75,000.”

Oh, poor you. Do you know how lucky some people would be to earn $75K a year? One of my good friends lives in a 3-bedroom apartment with her husband and 4 kids, because they still can't afford a house.

If you're a movie reviewer for the Fox media conglomerate, don't pirate your own corporation, then write about how you downloaded the movie in your review! From NYTimes:

Roger Friedman, an entertainment columnist for FoxNews.com, discovered over the weekend just what Rupert Murdoch means by “zero tolerance” when it comes to movie piracy.

On Friday, the film studio 20th Century Fox — owned by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate ruled by Mr. Murdoch — became angry after reading Mr. Friedman’s latest column. (Movie bloggers had started opining about it late Thursday, alerting the studio.) The subject was “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” a big-budget movie that was leaked in unfinished form on the Web last week.

Mr. Friedman posted a minireview, adding, “It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer.”

The film studio, which enlisted the F.B.I. last week to hunt the pirate, put out a statement calling Mr. Friedman’s column “reprehensible,” among other things. Then the News Corporation weighed in with its own statement, saying it asked had Fox News to remove the column from its Web site. (It did.)

Over the weekend, the Web site Deadline Hollywood Daily reported that Mr. Friedman had been dismissed. Sure enough, on Sunday came a revised statement from the News Corporation. “When we advised Fox News of the facts,” the statement said, “they promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.”

Interestingly, Fox News has been relatively silent. In a statement released on Sunday, the network said, “This is an internal matter that we aren’t prepared to discuss at this time.”

Efforts to reach Mr. Friedman were unsuccessful.

Interestingly, Fox has been silent? Of course they have. When faced with either being silent or admitting they were wrong, they clam up.

In conclusion: dumbass.

Adolf Hitler, Sisters Taken from Parents' Home

Now there has to be more to the story than this. I've seen Ku Klux Klan members on Jerry Springer with their little Ku Klux Klan Kids on television. Just being a white supremacist isn't enough reason to have your kids taken away.

Although with a father who insists on national television that -- even though his kids are named Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell -- there's nothing racist about it, something was going to get this guy.

I bet it was the girly hairdo on Adolf. That must have been the trigger.

I saw this story last night, but even I couldn't post this on Christmas Day. If you want to keep your happy holiday glow, feel free to skip this. Oh, look, puppies!

( *boggle* )

Who's stupider: the idiot who named his child Adolf Hitler Campbell but says that doesn't make him a racist, or the idiot who sent an anonymous death threat to the wrong Campbell family?

Threat over Hitler cake sent to wrong family

The Associated Press
HOLLAND TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Police in Holland Township are investigating a death threat mailed to a family mistaken for residents who named their son Adolf Hitler Campbell.

Melanie Campbell is not related to Heath and Deborah Campbell, who complained when a supermarket refused to spell out their 3-year-old son's name, Adolf Hitler, on a birthday cake.

However, her daughter's name is Heather and was listed in the phone directory under Campbell, H.

The typed, unsigned letter said her children would die and "you will all end up like your Nazi friends: dead."

Police tell The Easton Express-Times if they can find the person who wrote the letter, he would be charged with making terroristic threats.

The couple who wanted the birthday cake got it inscribed at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania.

Wow, there's actually more than one Campbell family in the phone book? Stunning.

You may have heard about this already on the Intertubes, but I have to share. It is simultaneously one of the grossest AND most hilarious things I've ever seen. ( Tucking away for sensitive viewers )

So wait, Barack Obama isn't just Jeebus anymore, he's Moses, too?

He has a host of relatives in exotic locations from Hawaii to Kenya, and during his run for the American presidency he discovered that he had an aunt living in Boston.

Now Barack Obama is being claimed by not one but as many as 8,000 Beduin tribesmen in northern Israel.

Although the spokesman for the lost tribe of Obama has yet to reveal the documentary evidence that he says he possesses to support his claim, people are flocking from across the region to pay their respects to the “Bedu Obama”, whose social standing has gone through the roof.

“We knew about it years ago but we were afraid to talk about it because we didn’t want to influence the election,” Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, a 53-year-old local council member, told The Times in the small Beduin village of Bir al-Maksour in the Israeli region of Galilee. “We wrote a letter to him explaining the family connection.”

Mr Obama’s team have not responded to the letter so far but that has not dampened Sheikh Abdullah’s festivities.

He has been handing out sweets and huge dishes of baklava traditional honey-sweetened pastries to all and sundry, and plans to hold a large party next week at which he will slaughter a dozen goats to feed the village.

Warning: This is a nasty story. Readers of tender dispositions may want to skip this one. But I find it so hard to believe I almost have to post it.

Boy, 7, breaks into zoo, feeds animals to croc

Rampage at Australian facility was caught on camera; parents face lawsuit

SYDNEY, Australia - A 7-year-old boy broke into a popular Outback zoo, fed a string of animals to the resident crocodile and bashed several lizards to death with a rock, the zoo's director said Friday.

The 30-minute rampage, caught on the zoo's security camera, happened early Wednesday after the boy jumped a security fence at the Alice Springs Reptile Center in central Australia, said zoo director Rex Neindorf.

The child then went on a killing spree, bashing three lizards to death with a rock, including the zoo's beloved, 20-year-old goanna, which he then fed to "Terry," an 11-foot, 440-pound saltwater crocodile, said Neindorf.

The boy also fed several live animals to Terry by throwing them over the two fences surrounding the crocodile's enclosure, at one point climbing over the outer fence to get closer to the giant reptile.

In the footage, the boy's face remains largely blank, Neindorf said, adding: "It was like he was playing a game."

By the time he was done, 13 animals worth around $5,500 had been killed, including a turtle, bearded dragons and thorny devil lizards, Neindorf said. Although none were considered rare, some are difficult to replace, he said.

"We're horrified that anyone can do this and saddened by the age of the child," Neindorf said.

Alice Springs police said they are unable to press charges against the boy because of his age. Children under age 10 can't be charged with criminal offenses in the Northern Territory. His name was not released because of his age.

Neindorf said he plans to sue the boy's parents.

The boy's small size is probably the reason he didn't trip the zoo's security system, which relies on sensors to detect intruders, Neindorf said.

"I just want people to learn that they can't let their children go and run amok," Neindorf said. "If we can't put the blame onto the child, then someone has to accept the responsibility."

And some psychiatric observation would be nice. Jesus.

The homersexshuls, of course. Found via the beautiful new Balloon Juice:

Fundamentalists blame Wall Street's woes on gays

by On Top Magazine

Christian fundamentalists are suggesting gays and lesbians are to blame for Wall Street's woes, a frequently made charge in the wake of national calamities.

In a September 25th blog post titled 'The Nation Will Right Itself If It Fixes Sex', Christian Civil League of Maine Executive Director Michael Heath writes that the financial crisis facing Wall Street is a symptom of America's sinful sexual culture, including the acceptance of gay unions.

“Our crisis is a symptom, not the cause,” writes Michael Heath. “I am not saying I know whether this financial crisis is God's judgment or not. It is not for me to know that definitively.”

It's funny, cuz it's pathetic.

Why wasn't this guy in jail already??? From UPI:

'Habitual' DUI killer driver gets jail

MILTON, Ontario, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- A Canadian man with a history of impaired driving charges was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for a Toronto-area accident that killed two people.

In sentencing, Ontario Court Justice Richard LeDressay called 29-year-old Ingram Bakhsh a "habitual drunk driver" who had killed two people after an "egregious" driving spree in July 2007, the Hamilton Spectator reported.

The accident and trial in Milton, northwest of Toronto heard Bakhsh had almost four times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood when he rear-ended a car with a senior couple in it at a railroad crossing.

The seniors' car was pushed in front of a speeding commuter train, and the husband and wife were killed instantly, court was told.

After the train passed, Bakhsh's car proceeded and struck another vehicle on the opposite side of the tracks, the report said.

At the time, Bakhsh was scheduled for trial for two previous drunk-driving related incidents, including a collision with a tractor-trailer, and was prohibited from driving and consuming alcohol under bail conditions, the newspaper said.

Oh come on, seven years for killing two people? This is sickening.

From the NY Times:

THE mysterious calls were baffling at first. A woman, who said she was the bride, canceled the vintage automobile that was supposed to drive her and her bridegroom to their reception. The caterer, apparently contacted by the same woman, was told that far more guests would be attending the reception than had been arranged. And the bridal salon was told to ship the wedding gown to what turned out to be a wrong address.

“No one could figure out who was masterminding it,” said Ana Cruz, who was planning the Miami wedding. Then she recalled something the bride had said about the bridegroom’s embittered former girlfriend. After some detective work, she became Ms. Cruz’s prime suspect.

When told of a former boyfriend or girlfriend’s wedding plans, anyone might experience pangs of engagement and wedding envy. But according to Ms. Cruz, this was a case of jealousy in the extreme.

“No one could figure how she knew so many of the planning details,” Ms. Cruz said. (Eventually it was learned that a cousin of the bride had inadvertently leaked the information.) Ms. Cruz was alarmed and began warning all the vendors to be on alert. She even hired security guards for the wedding and gave them blown-up photographs of the woman.

Ms. Cruz said she was standing in the foyer after the reception had begun when a guard murmured, “I think that’s her.” Sure enough, it was the former girlfriend, who was then politely but firmly turned away....

I think these stories exist solely to make the reader feel better about his/her own mental health.

But if you're putting these ideas on your "to do" list? PSY. CHO!

Lansdale couple accused of hundreds of eggings

(Yes, seriously.)

A crime spree swept through Lansdale between November 2006 and this January, leaving behind hundreds of victims. Residents of this small borough, though, were hardly terrified when they woke in the morning to see the havoc wrought in their driveways.

Mostly, they were just annoyed.

That's because they had to wash egg yolk from their cars, several times in some cases, during a bizarre campaign of eggings allegedly carried out by a vengeful Lansdale couple.

Heather Jane Darcy, 20, and her boyfriend, Phillip Lee Fleck, 28, egged about 400 cars throughout town and could face a third-degree felony charge of criminal mischief should the property damage exceed $5,000, as is expected, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said Thursday.

"It's juvenile," Ferman said. "Really, it's the kind of thing you expect kids to do. . . . It's very unusual to see adults behaving in as ridiculous a manner."

Darcy and Fleck could not be reached for comment, and Darcy's mother, Cynthia, said they were seeking a public defender to represent them. She said the couple were themselves victims of multiple eggings and vandalism from a former boyfriend of Darcy's, so they decided to get their due.

Fleck told police the eggings were so severe that he needed to repaint his Ford Focus. Darcy's mother said her daughter had to replace two cars over three years because they could no longer afford repairs.

But they didn't just go after their enemies. Fleck told police they targeted several cars besides the former boyfriend's, to throw authorities off the track....

Man frustrated by late notices torches himself

BLOOMFIELD, N.J. - Police say a man upset by late payment notices set himself on fire in a Bloomfield Rent-A-Center.

Emilio Saladriagas is in critical condition in the burn unit at St. Barnabas Medical Center.

Police say the 62-year-old went to the store to speak to a manager Tuesday. Police say the Newark resident pulled out a bottle of lighter fluid and a cigarette lighter when he was told the manager wasn't available.

Rent-A-Center spokesman Dwight Dumler tells The Star-Ledger of Newark the company is concerned about the man.

Information from: The Star-Ledger, http://www.nj.com/starledger

Now the guy is going to have hospital bills he probably can't afford either...

Not sure I understand why the parents were in the car for 3 hours? From UPI:

Elderly couple left alone in hot car

PEEKSKILL, N.Y., July 9 (UPI) -- A bus driver in the New York suburbs, has been charged with reckless endangerment for leaving his parents inside a hot car, causing his father's death.

Police in Peekskill, N.Y., say Theodore Pressman could face a homicide charge, the New York Post reported.

Pressman left his parents in the car Monday for three hours while he drove his bus route, police said. The car had its windows closed and was in direct sunlight that sent the temperature inside over 100 degrees.

Joyce Pressman, 75, was able to get out of the vehicle but was not strong enough to move her husband, who had passed out. Joseph Pressman, 85, died in the car.

A judge set bail at $10,000 Tuesday. Pressman argued that he should be released to care for his mother.

"I know what she needs," he said. "I have to make sure she has food."

Pressman lived with his parents in Beacon, north of Peekskill.

Gotta salute the amount of huevos it took to actually claim he can't go to jail because he needs to take care of his mother. The one he left in a car for three hours in the 100-degree heat. I'm sure the lady is much much better off.

From UPI:

Claim: Kids who say 'yuck' may be racist

LONDON, July 7 (UPI) -- Toddlers who say "yuck" when given flavorful foreign food may be exhibiting racist behavior, a British government-sponsored organization says.

The London-based National Children's Bureau released a 366-page guide counseling adults on recognizing racist behavior in young children, The Telegraph reported Monday.

The guide, titled Young Children and Racial Justice, warns adults that babies must also be included in the effort to eliminate racism because they have the ability to "recognize different people in their lives."

The bureau says to be aware of children who "react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying 'yuck'."

"Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships," the guide says.

Staff members are advised not to ignore racist actions and to condemn them when they occur.

COME ON.

I'm all for teaching tolerance and working to eliminate racism. But some kids will say yuck to any food they've never seen before! Some kids will say yuck just to be a pain in the ass!

If your kid calls another kid a name because they look different, then that has to stop. But this is ridiculous.