Random Thoughts of Mine...

Read more...

Microsoft chucks vomit ad

Update at 8:50 a.m. PDT: The video has now disappeared from the ad agency's site as well.

Earlier this week, we were all rather intrigued by the appearance of a Microsoft ad, in which a wife borrows her husband's laptop and suffers a technicolor nightmare when she espies a site that he has been, um, enjoying.

By Wednesday night, however, Microsoft had second thoughts about the pulling power of puke.

The ad has been pulled from the IE8videos channel on YouTube. It's also has been removed from the BrowsefortheBetter.com site, which is part of the ad campaign. The vomit ad's slot has been replaced by a tag that says "coming soon."

This could have meant that a new ad is coming soon, or that the upchuck was uploaded too soon.

Ted Rall: It’s increasingly evident that Obama should resign

MIAMI — We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama’s plan for “preventive detentions.” If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in “prolonged detention.” Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama’s shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people’s lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can’t control, what George Orwell called “thoughtcrime” — contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

Locking up people who haven’t done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to “preventive detention” is an outrage. That the president of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.

White House 'dialogue' site scrubbed of eligibility posts
Many Obama birth certificate queries yanked from 'transparency' debate

With more than 200 individual threads and thousands of comments on the eligibility issue alone, moderators of the White House website on "open government dialogue" have been working tirelessly to edit the dialogue about Barack Obama's elusive "long-form" birth certificate.

Many of the top-rated threads are from citizens calling on Obama to release his birth certificate. The postings in the "top rated" category have received the most "looks promising" votes from users. New threads on the topic of Obama's constitutional eligibility to serve as president are appearing by the minute.

WND observed the "Making Data More Accessible" section for several hours as more suggestions appeared and at least 60 were subsequently deleted on the first page alone – all requests for the president to submit proof of citizenship.

One deleted post echoed many others in asking President Obama to "Prove that you are a U.S. citizen and valid president."

The post asks why Obama doesn't simply release his "real birth certificate and end all of this controversy."

"Are you a fraud?" it asks. "Is your election to the highest office in the land the largest scam ever pulled on the American people? Are you really not eligible for office? End the speculation and prove who you are."