And we thought Bluetooth would be the death of us.

Engineer in Deadly LA Train Crash Was Texting [WaPo]

Chuck Jones gets all the attention — for Bugs, for Road Runner, for the Grinch — but our unsung childhood hero is Bill Melendez, the animator who brought Peanuts to life.

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And to honor him, one of our favorite videos ever.

Don LaFontaine, voice of movie trailers, dies [AP]

Terrified of the prospect of an Obama Administration, the RNC and its collaborators are hard at work organizing disinformation campaigns, crusades of hate and paramilitary resistance groups to throw America into total chaos and, ideally from their point of view, armed civil war mobilizing Jesus-crazed, mouth-breathing psychopaths who are being taught their lives, their gods and their alleged culture are threatened by anything less than the full-blown medieval theocracy the GOP has been promising them since 1980.

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What to say? He was an accomplished liar and a Bush enabler of the first order. Remember this gem?

Snow was asked about former CIA Director George Tenet’s remarks from 60 Minutes:

TENET: We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction, and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period.

Snow responded, “Wait a minute, Chris. The president has been saying exactly that all along. I don’t know what the headline is.” He insisted “there has been no attempt to try to link Saddam to September 11.”

Of course, that was a lie.

And now he’s gone down below to join Jesse and Lee Atwater at that big neverending cross-burning. Our sympathies to his wife and kids.

And bands of Angels sing thee to thy rest. O, Lord, could you not have taken Chris Matthews?

NBC’s Tim Russert Dead at 58 [MSNBC]
Tim Russert is Dead at 58 [New York Times]
Newsman Tim Russert Dies at 58 [CNN]
Tim Russert Dies of Heart Attack at Age 58 [Huffington Post] 

I’m as excited as anyone about our nation having it’s first half-white Presidential Nominee, but I have nothing to contribute on that topic right now. I also have an unhealthy obsession with the misdeeds of Catholic priests stemming from a childhood spent in a Boston-area Catholic School. Anyway, Father Michael Pfleger, who recently mocked Hillary Clinton for crying because it’s humiliating to get beat by a black person, is taking a leave from his Priesting on the order of Chicago’s Cardinal. The Archdioceses ordered him to “step back from his obligations,” which I assume means he can’t preach, pray, kneel, make other people kneel, go to heaven, send people to hell, or hold inquisitions. I’m guessing he is still able to make fun of white women, as this is a God-given right of all Americans, since it was put in the Constitution after John Adams livened up Philadelphia with jokes about Abigail’s fat ass and terrible driving. Anyway, I did some reading on Pfleger’s past, and it turns out he is the best and should be Pope. Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »

You may now have heard, but fashion icon and pantsuit-for-women inventor Yves Saint Laurent passed away today. As my friend Steve texted me, “Bad sign for Hillary: Yves St Laurent, inventor of the pantsuit, is dead.” RIP, Yves.

Yves Saint Laurent, fashion icon, dies at 71 [International Herald Tribune]

The mortgage lending crisis now upon us has produced lots of fun new terms - “jingle mail”, “trash-out”, and “moral hazard” are just a few. Lenders demand that buyers ignore logic and continue to make payments on homes that are worth less than the loans on them (”buried alive - face down”). It’s a “moral hazard” when buyers “walk away” instead of behaving like good little capitalists.

Of course, dirty fucking hippies like you (and cheerful godless heathens like me) aren’t really all that moral. Faced with a $450,000 house that had $625,000 in liens, we’d probably mail in the keys and take the washer, dryer, and refrigerator to boot. But you’d expect our friends in Jesusland to keep paying because not honoring your contracts makes the Baby Jesus cry, wouldn’t you? Not so fast:

Next up is 5015 Meadowlark Court in the Foxwood Forest neighborhood in northern Albemarle County. Here, the owner owes $500,000 on the first deed of trust. But this time there are two additional liens on the property– $150,000 on a second deed of trust and $75,000 on a third note, a credit line, according to Albemarle County records. . . .

Lenders have allowed the owner to pile more than $725,000 in debt on a property assessed by the county at only $691,200. But the real shocker is the owner’s vocation: he’s Chris Prang, a mortgage broker.

“It was really bad timing for us,” says Prang. “We had bought a house a Wintergreen and dumped a lot money in it. Then there was the news about mortgages–” news that affected Prang’s own business.

Prang works out of his house for Carteret Mortgage; he says his mortgage consulting is geared toward the Christian community and home schoolers, which is what his wife does with their three children.

More morality after the jump.

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Is it just me or does this Pope thing strike you as totally fucking crazy? Maybe it’s because I’m down here in Florida getting my Jew on for Passover. But I don’t think so.