- If life wasn’t tense enough for Libya right now, Israel is piling on the embattled nation by claiming that Palestinians in Gaza have acquired anti-aircraft and anti-tank rockets from Libya during its six-month civil war. Israeli officials said that while the procurement of these weapons has enlarged but not significantly improved the Palestinians’ arsenal, they nonetheless have a problem with Libya getting involved. The announcement struck many as odd because the primary concern when it comes to Libya and weapons during its conflict has been the fate of the country’s aging chemical weapons stockpiles. Israel admitted it has no indication Hamas or other Palestinian factions have sought these weapons. However, officials did say they have detected an influx of SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) across an overland supply route that opened up between eastern Libya -- after it fell to the rebels -- and the Gaza Strip via Egypt. "We've been seeing more SA-7s and RPGs coming across," said an unidentified Israeli official. "It's not a major qualitative enhancement for them." The non-weapons savvy may not know much about the SA-7, so here are the basics: It is a Soviet-designed, shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile which Israel said Palestinians had previously smuggled into Gaza. Rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are designed to penetrate armor and extremely common in the region, which makes it unsurprising that a second Israeli official said "thousands" of the weapons had reached Gaza in recent months. Egypt's Sinai peninsula, which borders both Israel and Gaza, has been a prime weapons transportation route for arms headed to Palestinians. Weapons are shipped by land through Sudan or by sea over the Mediterranean. Egyptian state media seemed to provide some credence for Israel’s allegations when it reported Monday that Egyptian border guards had discovered "a large quantity" of weapons at the border with Libya. It remains unclear who in Libya might be shipping weapons out, but given the country’s own current strife, now would be an excellent time to keep all guns, missiles and grenades in house and use them to win the war within…………
- While it has no redeeming social or cultural value, Jersey Shore can still teach us valuable lessons. For example, it has been said that the only things separating man from animals are being civilized and having laws we follow. The most recent episode of the Shore reminded us that statement isn't entirely true. Having laws does not prevent sheer stupidity of the sort that ensued when the Shore’s two top meat heads, Ronnie and The Situation, continued their battle of low IQ’s an elevated steroid and testosterone levels in a battle that may have been one for the ages if a wall had not intervened. See, the long-simmering tensions between the massive wall of muscle that is Ronnie and the vapid, self-styled “guido” (his words, not anyone else’s) ways of the Sitch finally boiled over and left the Sitch bellowing, "You wanna hit me?! You wanna hit me, tough guy?! Let's do it!" at his adversary. However, the adversary turned out to be not the short, squat, ‘roided-up Ronnie, but the wall the Sitch proceeded to head-butt, knocking himself to the ground. No word on what the wall ever did to the Sitch, but clearly there was hostility there and the wall won the battle decisively. One of the other Shore cast members, J-Woww, muttered "This isn't funny anymore," as if it ever was. With a dazed Sitch on the floor and with a possible self-inflicted concussion, it might seem that the exercise in stupidity was over and the actual rumble of Sitch v. Ronnie wasn’t going to happen. But no sooner than the Miz roused himself from his stupor than he decided to start talking junk to Ronnie again and then it was on. Well…..on as long as actual fights between skilled combatants aren’t your thing. The scuffle barely got going before show staffers stepped in to break it up without either participant landing a single punch. "I waited for a long time to f*ck you up!" Ronnie screamed while being restrained. He continued to rage at the Sitch with the show’s in-house hired muscle between them, which is understandable because of the amount of ‘roids that have to be coursing through his body at any given moment. So thanks to both Ronnie and the Sitch for proving that some of us aren’t separated from the animals at all and are probably more animalistic and simple-minded than any beast roaming any forest or plain…………
- While she is currently considered among the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination for next year’s election, Michelle Bachmann might not remain in that role for long if she can’t think and speak a bit more intelligently in the face of massive natural disasters striking an entire region of the United States. As Hurricane Irene menaced the East Coast and made life miserable for millions, Bachmann made the ill-advised decision to claim that Irene was a political message from God. “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” she told voters during a rally in Sarasota. “We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.” Okay……so God is intently concerned with how the U.S. is spending its money and government excess? He’s taking time away from focusing on famine and unrest around the globe and worrying that the U.S. government is including too much pork in the bills it passes…..leading the Almighty to send an earthquake and a hurricane as punishment? No credit to Bachmann for running her spokesman out Sunday to say the remark was in jest. Nice try, M. Yes, she is an evangelical Christian who has no reservations about speaking on her religious views and how they influence her life and career. She has been talking about those views on the campaign trail as she tries to raise support from religious conservative Christians in key voting states such as Iowa and South Carolina. Moving on to invoking the Lord’s name during natural disasters is merely the latest of Bachmann’s controversial postulations and probably her most imbecilic to date. By comparison, her comments during a recent debate in Iowa about her view that the Bible obliged her to “be submissive” to her husband seem bland. What would be interesting to hear is her plan for stopping all natural disasters from striking the United States merely by ensuring that God is happy with how the government runs the economy and copes with its mounting debt. What plan does Yahweh endorse for fixing America’s broken economy and restoring its AAA credit rating with all of the major credit agencies? If Bachmann knows that answer, then she clearly is the right choice to be this nation’s next president. For proof that her comments have placed her somewhere she definitely does not want to be (assuming she really does want to be president), look no further than the presence of televangelist Pat Robertson in the same group of clowns blaming natural disasters and destruction on America’s wayward path and God’s wrath because of it. It is okay not to say everything that comes to your mind, M. Bachmann…………..
- Tell you what, Texas A&M officials, you let the rest of us know when you’ve made up your damn mind and we’ll see if we can pretend to care when that happens. A few weeks ago, news broke that A&M was a virtual lock to exit the 10-team Big 12 conference and join the SEC……except that invitation from the SEC never came. After meeting to discuss the issue, SEC presidents decided not to extend an invite for the Aggies to join their shadowy cabal of college athletics. Left in an awkward place by the announcement, A&M officials apparently kept churning on the issue and as of this weekend, have reportedly settled on leaving the Big 12 with or without a definite offer from the SEC. Sources said that A&M officials talked about their anticipated departure during a conference call of the Big 12 board of directors Saturday and informed the league that they intend to announce within the next week that plans to leave the conference. Without officially declaring their intention to leave, A&M officials reportedly made it clear what they plan to do. Oddly enough, a source said the one thing that could prevent the move would be if the SEC determines it is not ready to add any more teams at this point, something it seemed to have done earlier this month when University of Florida president Bernie Machen said the conference was content with its current 12-team alignment. Texas A&M is clearly more interested in the SEC than the SEC is in the Aggies, who have
publicly expressed interest in joining the conference. Big 12 officials spent much of their conference call Saturday discussing how much money Texas A&M would forfeit for leaving the conference and likely negotiations of that amount, which could be $20 million or more. Should the move finally happen, it could trigger a second wave of change in conference alignments across college sports similar to the one that happened when Nebraska (Big Ten) and Colorado (Pac-12) left the Big 12 in July. A&M must settle its membership with the Big 12 before it could apply for membership into the Southeastern Conference and could enter the SEC no sooner than the 2012-13 school year. Oh, and there is also the fitting irony that a possible replacement for Texas A&M should it leave would be SMU, which just happens to be the opponent for the Aggies’ season opener at home Sunday…………
- Yawn. So there will soon be another company offering a new mobile messaging service, big deal. Samsung is that company and is desperately trying to hype its new messaging service, ChatON, despite a general indifference toward the project from the tech world. But to placate Samsung, a brief overview of the service’s features is in order. ChatOn is basicallly a group chat app that combines texts, images and video messaging from Samsung’s Bada OS, iOS, Android and BlackBerry. It is scheduled to debut at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin next week with all of the requisite fanfare. Oh, and the fact that Samsung introducing the app in Germany and not at a major tech expo in the United States should in no way indicate that this app is not nearly as a big a deal as Samsung would want everyone to believe. ChatOn will actually have two versions: one geared toward feature phones and a second, more complex on that allows smartphone users to do things like commenting profiles, send animated messages and display the contacts they message the most. Samsung also announced plans to release a ChatON version for the web, which would bring similar group chatting functionality to PCs. A demo video posted on Samsung’s official blog shows the new app in more detail, but with a wealth of other group messaging options already available to users, it is worth asking if ChatON has any chance to gain any foothold in the market, let alone compete with some of the bigger names in the field. Not to be cynical, but this seems like a project destined for failure before it even gets fully off the ground…………
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