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07 Jun 2010 10:53

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Politics: Helen Thomas may be getting too old for this line of work

  • This controversy is not going away. After Thomas said in the above clip that the Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back to Germany or Poland, she was dropped by her speaking agency. While she’s still got her position as dean of the White House Press Corps, she’s lost a number of connections as a result of this statement. Journalist Craig Crawford, who recently worked on a book with Thomas, won’t work on any others. Former reps from both the Clinton and Bush administrations (including Ari Fleischer, who’s Jewish and “used to like her”) have thrown her under the bus. Yikes. We can’t support this, either. Bad move, Helen. source

07 Jun 2010 10:42

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World: Israel attacks a bunch of Palestinian divers off of Gaza

  • 4 divers were killed; Israel says they were plotting an attack source

07 Jun 2010 10:36

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U.S.: The reported source of that crazy Wikileaks video is in custody

  • Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public.
  • SPC Bradley Manning • Regarding some of the documents he sent to Wikileaks. Manning was arrested two weeks ago for reportedly leaking a number of documents to the site, most notably this video, in which a number of innocent civilians are killed in a helicopter attack. Manning was turned in by a hacker, and has not been charged yet. But holy crap. This guy gave Julian Assange and his boys a lot of classified info. source

07 Jun 2010 10:25

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Politics: Democrats realize that town halls not best way to reach constituents

A year ago, this dude yelled at Arlen Specter. Now he’s out of the Senate race, and Democrats aren’t holding town hall meetings anymore. Coincidence? We think not. source

07 Jun 2010 10:19

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Tech: “Magic Trackpad”: Do you have room in your life for such a device?

  • This is where it’d fit in your life. You know, next to your keyboard and mouse. Let’s face it – Apple’s MacBook Pro trackpad is one of the greatest mousing devices ever created, and at today’s WWDC conference (which Gizmodo hasn’t been invited to), they’ve reportedly separated the trackpad from the laptop. As long as you didn’t hurt the MacBook Pro, guys. We’re not sure we could even imagine such a thing. (Photo by Dan Berte) source

06 Jun 2010 22:58

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Politics: Max Headroom: We just played “We Didn’t Start the Fire” backwards


  • Thad Allen just scared usWant to feel something hit the pit of your stomach? Watch this clip, where Thad “this oil spill needs a hero” Allen says in very plain terms that the spill is going to be with us well into the fall. Let’s hope a hurricane doesn’t plow through in the meantime. *fingers crossed*

  • Obama the GOP’s “Enemy”? On “Fox News Sunday,” Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who has a reasonable beef with Obama over the response to the oil spill, compared him to a Napoleon quote about watching your enemy self-destruct. The key phrase there is not “self-destruct.” It’s “enemy.”

  • He only wrote the lyricsWhether or not the news cycle has just gotten faster or what, comedian Bruce Fine was able to take Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and focus it on everything that’s happened during the Obama administration. The Joel version covered 50 years. Whoa.

06 Jun 2010 22:05

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Biz, U.S.: Real reason we should fear 2012: Our growing national debt

  • $13 trillion in total debt; it could outpace GDP by 2012 source
 

06 Jun 2010 21:40

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Biz: Bernie’s in the slammah, swagga like a ROCK STAR

  • Their impression almost unanimously was that he landed like a rock star. He was a celebrity, he had groupies, he had people clamoring for his advice, and his autograph.
  • New York magazine reporter Steve Fishman • Talking about his profile piece on Bernie Madoff, which seems to portray him like a Jay-Z like super-celeb for bilking all those rich people out of their money. Madoff reveled in his newfound infamy, and one inmate puts like so: “If I’d lived that well for 70 years, I wouldn’t care that I ended up in prison.” Let’s face it. Is he wrong? source

06 Jun 2010 21:23

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World: Afghan shake-up: Hamid Karzai sacks two dudes from his cabinet

Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and Chief of Intelligence Amrullah Saleh were well-respected but couldn’t stop a Taliban rocket attack on a meeting of 1,600 national leaders. source

06 Jun 2010 20:58

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Tech: Yahoo pretty much lets Facebook take over their lumbering corpse

  • You know, because Yahoo doesn’t have any infrastructure like Facebook. Between Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Chat, MyBlogLog, Flickr, and Delicious – all widely-used services that directly compete with various parts of Facebook – Yahoo could create a really awesome social network with the scale of Facebook’s offerings. But instead, Yahoo is going to integrate these sites directly with Facebook. Why? Because they’re a horribly-disorganized company and they don’t realize that they were sitting on all of the parts long before Facebook stumbled upon them. source