There’s this ad for the nation of Israel on the Max right now.  Interesting — it states that Text Messaging was invented in Israel.  And shows two early smiling 20 something years olds, phones in hand, apparently text messaging.  And here is that odd short hand manner to appeal to the Millennial generation — a display of the heavily tattooed.

It is, I would say, an improvement over the previous Max ad for Israel — “In a War between Savages and Civilization, side with Civilization”, which was part of a tit for tat between Israel and Palestine on max ad space, and seemed heavy handed for commuter passengers.  Still, I don’t know if the fact text messaging was invented in Israel is going to change many minds for the Millennial generation on, say, the building of settlements.

“The world is literally about to blow up,” Graham said, saying he completely disagrees with Obama on Iran policy.

Literally literally, or figuratively literally?

As in…

OR …

Geez.  What’s an image that would illustrate the act of figuratively blowing up?

Okay.  Never mind.  I’ve got nothing.

… and yet, none of Lindsey Graham’s Republican primary challengers are going to make an issue of it.

Is Steve Stockman “hiking the Appalachia Trail?”

Is that an irresponsible question, even as the whole controversy surrounding the old South Carolina governor and now Congress-critter began with the same question of “Where the Hell is this guy?”

Yes, probably…

Anyway, either fortunately or unfortunately, he turned up at Breitbart for a quick tweet, and that is that.

In other news… hey!  Remember when everyone was clamoring for Bill Clinton to be censured.  Well someone just censured John McCain!

Is it irresponsible to link the two “censures” when they have nothing in common?  Maybe…

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers declined to comment on the censure. But former three-term Sen. Jon Kyl told The Arizona Republic that the move was “wacky.”
“I’ve gone to dozens of these meetings and every now and then some wacky resolution gets passed,” Kyl told the newspaper on Saturday. “But most people realize it does not represent the majority of the vast numbers of Republicans.”
Kyl also said McCain’s voting record was “very conservative.”

“Severely” is the word you’re supposed to use to get back into the good graces of the activists…

Leave it to Iran’s “Press TV” to find the angle on the Superbowl, which, admittedly is something I ponder when I look at the Seahawks.

A 9/11 truth Super Bowl?

The article is slapdash in who it labels as “9/11 Truther”.  Is Michael Moore a “9/11 Truther”?  Not to my knowledge… and you have to define the term broadly to get it to fit.

We also get this here…

Normally, the Super Bowl – with its ritual militarized violence and crass, tasteless, often downright perverse advertisements – represents American culture at its worst. But this year’s Super Bowl, scheduled for February 2nd, will have one redeeming feature: It will put the national spotlight on the rise of the 9/11 truth movement.

Comedy gold.

Interesting, because when I first saw this story this is a type of comment I saw:

Reason number 136 to dislike the Seahawks and Pete Carroll.

The most recent reason I see people hating the Seahawks is, of course, Richard Sherman and his dishonorable WWE style trash talking on 49ers player Michael Crabtree.   Note to Sherman: next time the Seahawks play the 49ers, please say “Crabtree?  More like CRAP Tree!”  Because, I don’t know, why not?

But there’s a sudden “Wait.”  The Seahawks are now a Hated team?  Like, the Cowboys were once, like the Raiders were once?  That’s… weird.

On the matter of Coach Carroll and 9/11 Truth, and the political angle of who one might ever negligibly root for — I note last year in a game I did not watch I was ever negligibly rooting for the Ravens on the issue of gay marriage.  (A Ravens player was for it; 2 49ers players stated their opposition and happened to be in a “It Gets Better” video that they didn’t know what was about)…

So the question for the Seahawks… do you applaud Pete Carroll and root root root for the Seahawks for sheer chutzpah, or do you axe him for being so wrong-headed on the issue?

Interesting book… I guess?

Former President George W. Bush said he wants his institute, which Tuesday released a book featuring experts weighing in on ways for the U.S. to jumpstart the economy toward 4 percent gross domestic product growth, to be an “action-oriented” place.

“We’re very much involved in action-oriented programs,” Bush told the about 200 people gathered for the release event for the George W. Bush Institute’s first book.

Bush’s brief speech was followed by a panel discussion with several of those who contributed to “The 4 Percent Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs.”

“We believe that we can do better in growing our economy,” said Bush, who wrote the book’s foreword.

Yes.  There is such a thing as the “George W Bush Institute”.

And they put out books.

About improving the economy.

er.

huh.

From Bill Carter, the writer of two books about “late night wars” (one in the early 1990s and the other a couple years ago), in a “this and that” tv article:

When Mr. Leno took over from Johnny Carson in 1992, his producer wanted Mr. Carson to hand off a microphone to Mr. Leno in a kind of symbolic passing of the torch, but Mr. Carson wanted no part of it. Mr. Leno did not appear in any of the final weeks of Mr. Carson’s “Tonight” show, so Mr. Fallon’s visit will be a clear contrast to that more contentious transition.

There were, of course, two “passing of the torch” moments between the Carson not doing one for Leno because he was a Letterman man and the up coming Leno to Fallon.  Leno brought on Conan, where Conan put on a comedy clip which managed to forecast his up-coming problem.  (It was a focus group with an elderly audience, the joke being… er… ha ha… the older audience doesn’t get Conan).  And then there was seven months later Conan back to Leno, which… well… that passing of the torch played out on every late night talk show, as well as the daytime talk show Oprah.

But NBC has by now removed the Jay Leno Show and The Tonight Show with Conan Obrien from its historical record, ala the old Soviet Union.

There is an alternate universe where Conan wouldn’t have been so hung up on the concept of hosting something called “The Tonight Show” for some abstract lineage of mostly Carson but also Paar and Allen, and only begrudgingly Leno… and in this universe he would have signed up with Fox in 2001 or 2004.  Instead of signing up to wait for five years.  I suspect the ratings would end up where they were with his Tonight Show stint, which … I have no idea if that would satisfy the network such that that show would be on the air right now.  As it were, Conan had that attachment, and the irony here is… his audience doesn’t have that sentimental attachment.  Why would they?  Their main point of reference for “The Tonight Show” is Jay Leno, not Johnny Carson (and a Leno sharing the stage in a bifrocated entertainment world, as opposed to Johnny being at the center.)

Reading the Bill Carter book — necessarily a pastiche of everyone’s publicly held private views so it’s hard to gauge whether NBC actually viewed Conan at midnight as a going concern as they claimed — it thus becomes difficult to see if, despite the optics of a demotion, Conan still would’ve been better off doing that than the one step up from his parting Tonight Show Comment of “if we have to do a show at a 711 Parking lot, we’ll make it work” of… TBS.  But you understand what Conan was thinking here, just as I understand his perspective of “give my Tonight Show time like you did my predecessor, and I have no idea of what you want with ‘broaden’, and by the way my prime-time lead in sucks”… after all, he came from a history of starting Late Night with two years at the knife’s edge of cancellation, besieged by critics, and with nothing to do but to put his head down and bulldoze ahead.

I guess NBC got what it wanted.  Jimmy Fallon fits their role of “Tonight Show” host better than Conan.  Broad based entertainment, a more youthful Leno is Fallon, and one who knows his social networks.  Still, NBC would’ve been better off just buying off Conan’s contract and then moving Leno to 11:30…  which is more or less what they ended up doing in terms of dollars and cents.  Why Leno decided 4 more years was enough, or why NBC decided they needed to act now… well…

It is a game of diminishing returns.  My takeaway from Carter’s book comes near the end, with an NBC exec commenting on not caring that Leno now had worse numbers than Letterman did when Leno was beating him before, because… who cares?  Leno is still on top here.  It’s an odd situation these days where, for instance, I have never watched an entire episode of Jimmy Kimmel, but… have seen any number of “Lie Witness News” items.  (Which, incidentally, is more related to Jay Leno’s “Jay Walking” bit than he would ever admit.)

Mr. Greenblatt also made several other announcements, including the guest list for the final show of Jay Leno’s tenure as host of the “Tonight” show on Feb. 6. Billy Crystal, who was Mr. Leno’s first guest on his first show in 1992, will return, joined by Garth Brooks.
In the final weeks the guests will include Betty White on Feb. 3, Matthew McConaughey on Feb. 4 and Sandra Bullock on Feb. 5.

Billy Crystal spent much of that first interview trying to tee Leno up to graciously say the name “Johnny Carson”.  I recall Garth Brooks as a guest Leno touted for the first week of Letterman’s CBS show… something for a Middle America who could care less about the media circus of the moment.  I suppose Brooks is also kind of Leno’s variation of Johnny Carson’s Bette Midler — a bit of a throw-back entertainment wise… we’ll see what Fallon throws out two decades hence.  Though, by this point everyone will just be doing their own talk shows and sharing it with a dozen people each.

Sooner or later: a blog post on why Leno was the bad guy, even if not really in a business sense…

I’m a little unclear where Shia LaBeouf is going with this.  Once you get marked as stealing from Daniel Clowes, you move on to claim that your next product is … “Daniel Boring“?

That is a joke, right?  Apparently it is… But...

LaBeouf apologised to Clowes last month after a short film he made, Howard Cantour.com, was found to have lifted dialogue from a Clowes short story also about a world-weary film critic – and his apology itself was found to have been copied.

He’s since undermined the apologies with a string of arch tweets. He hired a skywriter to etch I Am Sorry Daniel Clowes across the Los Angeles sky, and tweeted “You have my apologies for offending you for thinking I was being serious instead of accurately realising I was mocking you”, a quote from a Texan politician amid an anti-abortion debate.

It misses the mark on its proper target.

Looking forward to a product about alienated teenage girls called “Ghoul World”.

The USA is now a police state. There will be a massive protest in Washington, DC starting May 16, 2014.

We are past the point of no return and must move forward with an effort to save our nation, as there is no other choice. We are asking, pleading with you, and any others that have resources, national voices, email lists, blogs, FB, Twitter, to call for a non-violent American Spring May 16, 2014 in Washington D.C. We must appeal to ten million and more American patriots to come and stay in Washington, D.C. to stop the White House and Congress from total destruction of the United States. It’s now or never. God help us.

……………..

Will this one be better than the last one organized by Larry Klayman?  Only time will tell.

Actually, no.  We don’t need time to tell.  The answer is it’ll be about the same.