Newsfront: Shades of Twitter

The Twitter Color Wheel

Have you shaded your Twitter avatar a lovely shade of green today? If not, for shame.

No it’s not meant to look like your photo is on a dollar dollar bill y’all. It is through this enthralling and meaningful demonstration of political solidarity that thousands of Twitterers have declared their commitment to the protesters in Iran. It is inspirational.

But green isn’t the only shade of political statement available to Twitter users. Here are some other colors available to indicate your solidarity.

Gray—I support Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Red—I’m not sure what I think, but I sure as hell don’t support anything Obama has to say about the issue.

Green, with beard—Whatever Andrew Sullivan says about Iran.

Green, with cocktail—Whatever Christopher Hitchens says about Iran.

Yellow—I have no idea what in the hell is going on. I was following the NBA Finals.

Purple—Glambert!

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Lies, Damn Lies…

It’s a dark time for the Obama administration. And thankfully Matt Drudge has been there to document it.

Last week, the inimitable Drudge Report touted the suspiciously quick growth of Michelle Obama’s White House garden. And this weekend, Drudge celebrated the nation’s cooling enthusiasm for President Obama.

Gallup is reporting that Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 58%, the lowest rating Obama has received while in office. That’s more than one-in-two Americans who approve of the President’s job—imagine if he were up for reelection! And then of course, there’s the fact that Obama has already hit 59% four times in the last five months—it would almost seem as if there weren’t a story there.

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The War with Space is Near!

And here we thought that between the Nixon and Bush administrations, pretty much any and every law the United States could have broken were broken. How wrong we were. It turns out that a planned bombing of the Moon, scheduled for October 9th of this year, might violate space law. The best part? It’s not a joke, although it does come dangerously close to a Mr. Show sketch.

First of all, there really are space laws, adapted by the United Nations in 1966 at the height of the Space Race. Secondly, NASA has already launched LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) in a mission intended to:

excavate the permanently dark floor of one of the Moon’s polar craters with two heavy impactors in 2009 to test the theory that ancient ice lies buried there. The impact will eject material from the crater’s surface to create a plume that specialized instruments will be able to analyze for the presence of water (ice and vapor), hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.

In short, America is going to blow up the moon (well, just the South Pole for now).

At least one commentator is suggesting we might start “a conflict with lunar ET/UFO civilizations.” And he actually struck us as fairly convincing until he started talking about the secret base on the dark side of the Moon.

Again, we are not making any of this up. Ah, brave new world….
 

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Who Knew Jews Were Funny?

The always up for a good time Street Boners and TV Carnage directs us to these funny videos from Yossi Atia and Itamar Rose, two filmmakers from Tel Aviv who work a kind of Ali G routine, revealing both Israelis and Palestinians to be as brain-dead as Americans and the British. (One note—the videos cannot compare to footage from the upcoming Brüno, in which Sacha Baron Cohen meets with representatives of Hamas.) One of the better videos involves the two comedians soliciting Palestinians for new scapegoats, should a united Jewish-Arab state ever emerge. Suggestions include the United States, Iran, migrant workers and lesbians.



“Missiles in Ramat Gan”