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Week of May 17, 2009 - May 23, 2009

Blunderdick 2: "DETAIN THAT TELEPROMPTER!!"


Blunderdick delivered his speech to the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, but it didn't all go as planned. Right before he got on stage, he had the teleprompter arrested and sent to Guantanamo for questioning. People in the audience were in utter disbelief-- a look of genuine concern descended upon everyone in the room. As a gesture of reassurance, Blunderdick reached in his pocket, pulled out seven index cards, held them up and said "No need to worry folks, I got it all written down".


This must have been on his Pentagon list of "what if" scenarios.


Armed with the quiet confidence of a man who just foiled an inanimate object's sinister plot to destroy the world, Blunderdick stood behind the lectern and began his address. He had a very captive audience-- all naked, hooded, shackled to the seats and wearing leg-irons. There was a lot of love in that room.


Blunderdick talked about how ready he was to lead on day 1. He was referring, of course, to the first day he took office as Vice President of the United States of America--September 12, 2001. (Some may remember a different day 1, which took place on January 20, 2001. While there exists footage of Blunderdick being sworn in on this day 1, he categorically denies the existence of January 20, 2001.)


Blunderdick would refer to his index cards often. You may have also noticed that when he speaks, it looks like he talks out of the side of his mouth. Don't be misled. He talks out of a completely different part of his body. I know. I know. It's deceiving because his upper lip opens crookedly, up and to the left as he speaks, then it snaps shut when he's finished. That's just a nervous tick; the result of an unfortunate snorkeling incident in the Bering sea. He was underwater, yelling at a very puzzled orca, when he noticed a piece of floating hamburger and chomped down on it, not realizing it was bait on a hook. Blunderdick was tugged all the way up to the surface. Imagine that. How does an orca even begin to process such an odd encounter?


Regarding national security, Blunderdick has had to walk back a few things he's said in the past, no need for me to repeat them all here, be captured, thrown in a secret Egyptian black ops prison and forced to share a 4'x4' cell with some vengeful hardened teleprompter.


Striking a lighter note during the speech, Blunderdick reminisced about some of the people he's met on the world stage throughout his years in public office. He shared charming anecdotes about some of his favorite conversation starters- water boarding, electrocution, eye-gouging, testicle-vicing, and others.


Before you knew it, Blunderdick had completed his remarks, the trap door beneath him opened, and he was instantly sucked 700 miles downward via the secret vacuum tunnel that bends space and opens a portal to his undisclosed location on Pluto.


The speech couldn't have lasted more than 20 minutes. I say it couldn't have lasted more than 20 minutes because Blunderdick can't include 99% of the things he did during his Vice Presidency.


Because 99% of the things he did was an unmitigated disaster.  Why harp on it in a speech?

Look to the future and let others like me dwell on your past:


Let's say you were handed one of the most critical pieces of intelligence in the history of America--that Bin Laden was determined to fly planes into buildings in major U.S. cities--how could you possibly extrapolate that Bin Laden was determined to fly planes into buildings in major U.S. Cities? The fact is that after 9/11, Blunderdick sprung into action. Singing here-I-come-to-save-the-day, he exacted revenge by invaded the wrong country, plunged our country into endless war, redacted most of the constitution, helped inspire the slowest response to a natural disaster in modern history, ushered in an unprecedented era of corporate corruption with no oversight whatsoever, sent the U.S. economy into a downward spiral, causing the insolvency of major banks, and, having crafted the least visionary energy policy for the 21st century--helped bankrupt the entire American Auto industry.


Everyone has tiny missteps, right?  


Make enough of them and you can collect your award for the most incompetent Vice President in the galaxy, get invited to the American Enterprise Institute, and deliver your acceptance speech.


Just like Blunderdick did yesterday.



How well-informed is your newspaper?


I saw a story in the paper today.  The Times writes that Iran test-fired a new mid-range surface-to-surface missile. It was a new "Sejil-2 missile", with a "reported range" of 1200 miles, according to the Times article, according to the news agency IRNA, according to a quote that news agency lifted from a speech made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  

I know.  Lots of attributions.  Not including the person who translated it into English.  I guess it's hard to know these things first hand or second hand or even third hand, because in reality, no one seems to know for sure that this actually happened.  We are not being asked to take the Time's word for it, or  the IRNA's word for it--nor the interpreter's word for it.  I guess we're being asked to take Ahmadinejad's word for it. 

We're not given actual visual evidence of this event. The cable news programs just repeat the story and run some old stock footage of some generic missile flying ominously in the sky somewhere.    It could be any missile, really.  As long as it looks, well, like a missile flying ominously in the sky.   

Fox News seems to have a lot of generic stock footage of missiles flying ominously in the sky-they run it quite a bit, and only occasionally does it correspond to a story about actual missiles being launched.  I think I remember them running missile footage while reporting on Obama's proposed health care plan.  

If the Times reports that the Pentagon confirms that a missile was launched, we still can't take their word for it, can we?  I recall the Pentagon marketing a completely unnecessary war recently, don't you?  I have a problem with the Times taking the Pentagon's word for something--because the Times has had a tendency to print the Pentagon's word for everything.  (Credit where credit is due, David Barstow of the Times reported the story about the Pentagon's marketing of the war on television--but it was years after the Times marketed that war in print.)

Someone once asked me how well-informed I was.  And I said that I guess that depends on how well informed my newspaper is.  

How well-informed is your newspaper?  How well-informed are the reporters reporting your news?

There are certain subjects, like energy and health care reform, for example, that I've really learned a lot about in the last few years.  And there are times when it seems that I'm more informed than the newspapers and news programs I used to rely on.  

But missiles and war and casualty counts?  There are so many degrees of separation all mired in political spin it's hard for me to know what's really going on.  

Further down in the aforementioned Times article, Kenneth Katzman, a specialist in Middle East affairs at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, suggests that the missile launched today did not appear to be significantly different from an earlier version of the missile Iran test-launched last November.  

And that missile was reportedly just an earlier version of an older missile Iran had launched prior to that.   I know, because I remember reading about that back in November.  

It was reported that Iran test-fired a "new Sejil-2 missile" , but later, Western officials said it was just an earlier version of an older, less advanced missile, and that Iran just gave it a new name.  Here's that story.

So to sum up, let's review what we know for sure:

Iran reportedly test-fired a new "Sejil-2 missile" which is reportedly the same as the old "Sejil-2 missile" that Iran reportedly launched last November, which was reportedly not really a "Sejil-2 missile".  

Any questions?




 




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