This is some of the funniest social commentary we’ve seen in a while [Thanks Noah]:
“I printed 50,000 of these speech bubble stickers. I place them on top of movie posters, ads and signs all over New York City. Passers are invited to fill them in. I go back and photograph the results.”

“Perhaps the most encouraging early indication that Judge Alito will make a great justice is that liberal senators such as Harry Reid and Charles Schumer and leftist pressure groups such as People for the American Way and Planned Parenthood have been lining up all day to scream that the sky is falling. Any nominee who so worries the radical left is worthy of serious consideration.
“Based on what is now known about Judge Alito, we applaud the president for this outstanding nomination.” [read the article]

People for the American Way – one of the core Jesus freak watchdog organizations – has put together a great summary of what to expect from Alito.

Hostile to basic reproductive privacy rights: Alito wants government to be able to interfere in personal decisions on reproductive rights. In Casey, Alito stated that he would have upheld a provision of Pennsylvania’s restrictive anti-abortion law requiring a woman in certain circumstances to notify her husband before obtaining an abortion. His colleagues on the Third Circuit and the Supreme Court majority disagreed and overturned the provision.
Rejects basic protections for workers: In a number of dissenting opinions, Alito has taken positions that, if adopted, would have made it more difficult for victims of race and sex discrimination to prove their claims. In one case involving claims of race discrimination, the court majority sharply criticized Alito’s dissent, stating that Alito’s “position would immunize an employer from the reach of Title VII” in certain circumstances.
Leads revolution against federal laws protecting individual and other rights: According to one of Alito’s opinions, Congress had no authority to require state employers to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act, a ruling that was repudiated by the Supreme Court in a later case in which conservative Chief Justice Rehnquist, no friend of civil rights, wrote the Court’s decision. Alito also dissented from a ruling by the Third Circuit that Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause to restrict the transfer and possession of machine guns at gun shows.
Fails to consider racial discrimination in capital punishment: An African American had been convicted of felony murder by an all white jury from which black jurors had been impermissibly struck because of their race. Alito cast the deciding vote and wrote the majority opinion in a 2-1 ruling rejecting the defendant’s claims. The full Third Circuit, in a split decision, reversed Alito’s ruling, and the majority specifically criticized him for having compared statistical evidence about the prosecution’s exclusion of blacks from juries in capital cases to an explanation of why a disproportionate number of recent U.S. Presidents have been left-handed. According to the majority, “[t]o suggest any comparability to the striking of jurors based on their race is to minimize the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants . . .”

Check out the full list here.
By the way, Happy Halloween. Be safe and celebrate Satan’s holiday the Dobson way:

Discover how you can transform a jack-o’-lantern into a faith lesson with your children by simply carving a happy-faced pumpkin.
Dress your children in costumes that focus on history, pretend or fantasy, rather than on the macabre or occult –– Bible heroes, Abraham Lincoln, the American flag, sailors, cowboys, Indians, ballerinas, princesses, doctors, firefighters.

Or better yet, have the kids dress up like the real boogeyman, James Dobson.

B Real has posted almost the entire, blunt-smoking catalog. Click here. [Via Brooklyn Vegan]

CBS News chief White House correspondent John Roberts reports the prosecutor has informed targets of the investigation of his intentions – and that can only mean indictments are coming. [read it all]

We couldn’t resist. We picked up the New York Times on both Saturday and Sunday, despite an enormous sense of guilt. We feel unethical giving them our money, since they still haven’t fired Judith Miller, but we must confess, it’s been fun watching Keller and Miller squirm. But since Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich cannot be accessed online anymore, we’ll sullenly continue to shell out our hard earned dollars to read their words of wisdom. Dowd’s Saturday column on Miller was a jewel. Here’s a highlight:

Once when I was covering the first Bush White House, I was in The Times’ seat in the crowded White House press room, listening to an administration official’s background briefing. Judy had moved on from her tempestuous tenure as a Washington editor to be a reporter based in New York, but she showed up at this national security affairs briefing.
At first she leaned against the wall near where I was sitting, but I noticed that she seemed agitated about something. Midway through the briefing, she came over and whispered to me, “I think I should be sitting in the Times seat.”
It was such an outrageous move, I could only laugh. I got up and stood in the back of the room, while Judy claimed what she felt was her rightful power perch.

And on Sunday, we learned that wonder boy Dave Eggers and meta-director poster boy Spike Jonze are in pre-production of Where the Wild Things Are. (Which could either be genius or a train wreck).

Pre-production is well under way. Animatronic “wild things” – six- and eight-foot-tall monsters that are operated from the inside by actors, and which will eventually be given computer-generated faces – have been tested for cinematic impact. So have exotic locations in New Zealand and Australia. Pending approval by Mr. Sendak and Universal executives of a screenplay draft due within a week or two, a 2006 start date is likely. A budget of “well under $100 million” has been roughly agreed upon…
The pair have also brought to the material a fresh twist on Max’s relationships with the “wild things,” in particular one of them…
“I don’t know what to make of it, exactly, but I am so for it,” said Mr. Sendak [author of the children's book].

We don’t know what to make of it either. This “fresh take on Max’s relationships with the ‘wild things,’” sounds HOT. We especially don’t know what to make of this closing quote from Sendek:

Mr. Jonze and Mr. Eggers have remained in close contact. “They call, they write, they send postcards, they show me script changes, they send me pornographic pictures and models of the monsters,” Mr. Sendak said. “They’re very attentive.

Eggers and Jonze are sending a 77 year-old children’s author pornographic pictures? WTF? That is attentive indeed. Forget the movie, we want to know what Eggers is into. Our guess is low budget, Seventies, FFM MILF porn. He’s campy like that.
See you next week, we’re taking a little vacation from blogging this week to celebrate the impending indictments and to tie up loose deadlines.

Hipster Zombies Nerds in Montreal
Zombiecon sounds kinda retarded, but it could be fun to watch, despite the warning that “spectators will be eaten.” We’re down with anything that begins with Bloody Maries.

On, Saturday, October 22 Kostume Kult presents a 12 hour zombie rampage including a bloody mary brunch, a midtown shopping spree and late night debauch. Come as a reanimated corpse, a dead celebrity or any seasonal spook.
* Participation required, spectators will be eaten *

Click here for more info.

Check ‘em out here.

While many of these songs were most likely recorded before the “Basement” era, the leak includes a variety of unreleased songs
(& one live song “Another Standard Folk Song”). The key songs to download are “Abused” (with lyrics), Riot Coming, High Times,
New Disaster, The Worst Part is Almost Over, & Untitled (being called “Sticks & Stones” by the fans). These were previously
unavailable and were most likely some of later songs that Elliott worked on. Some of the songs sound like the same versions
seen from the Either/Or Demos, but others are better sounding (especially “Going Nowhere”). [via BrooklynVegan]

Even Merle Haggard wants out:

Haggard is not afraid to speak his mind. And he does so again, very frankly, in the song, “Rebuild America First.”
“That’s the News,” his 2003 song commenting on Iraq, pretty much chastised the government and the media for swallowing the administration’s spin that the war was over and won. Now he moves on to the matter of the U.S. being in Iraq, period. “Rebuild America First” is pretty honest and blunt. In part, he sings:
“Yea, men in position but backing away/Freedom is stuck in reverse/Let’s get out of Iraq and get back on the track/And let’s rebuild America first.”

Read the whole article here.

How does this not embolden the enemy?

[from BBC]
an Australian TV station ran footage of what appeared to be US soldiers burning the remains [of Taleban soldiers]…
footage [also] shows two US soldiers reading from a notebook messages which they said had already been broadcast to villagers.
“Attention Taleban you are cowardly dogs,” the message reads. “You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing West and burnt.
“You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be.”
…the incident could be in violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of enemy remains, which states that the dead should be honourably interred.