Iowahawk claims Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 reward and defiantly skips the anonymity offer.

KEITH OLBERMANN: I can’t tell you how shocked and appalled to hear that there may have been some kind of compromising leak of off-the-record conversations from Journolist, involving David Weigel. Is this true, David?

DAVE WEIGEL: ya i guess so

KEITH OLBERMANN: I can only imagine the career damaging consequences of such a terrible breach of journalistic confidentiality! I suspect that your job at the Post is in serious jeopardy.

DAVE WEIGEL: look man can u come back later?

KEITH OLBERMANN: I’m only here to give you my help, David. Sensing your plight I asked my producers at MSNBC to offer you a recurring job as a contributor on Countdown.

DAVE WEIGEL: srsly??

KEITH OLBERMANN: Absolutely! And at the same pay. All you have to do now is tender your resignation at the Post before they have a chance to fire you, and we’ll have you on the air as soon as we can locate a makeup technician skilled in your condition.

DAVE WEIGEL: wow keith! what can i do to thnk u?

KEITH OLBERMANN: Oh, I’m sure it will all work out splendidly. I’ll drop by in my van to pick you up tomorrow at 11 pm sharp.

EZRA KLEIN: gee Keith ur really a pretty good guy after all

KEITH OLBERMANN: Don’t mention it, lads. Say, would any of you boys care to join me over at Chatroulette tonight?
SPENCER ACKERMAN has left the room
MATTHEW YGLESIAS has left the room.
ERIC ALTERMAN has left the room.
JOSH MARSHALL has left the room.
DAVE WEIGEL has left the room.
ERIC BOEHLERT has left the room.
EZRA KLEIN has left the room.

KEITH OLBERMANN: hello?

Read the whole thing.

Newsweek is for sale. Why?

Bloomberg:

Newsweek, the magazine that Washington Post Co. said this week is for sale, reported a 31 percent decline in first-quarter revenue.

The weekly news magazine’s sales fell to $29.4 million from $42.7 million a year earlier, according to a statement today. Washington Post Chief Executive Officer Donald Graham said May 5 that Newsweek would continue to be unprofitable this year after losses from 2007 through 2009.

Washington Post hired investment bank Allen & Co. to help with a possible sale of the publication, which it’s owned since 1961. Newsweek’s advertising sales plunged 30 percent in 2009 and the magazine cut its guaranteed circulation by 42 percent to 1.5 million as part of a redesign last year.

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Iowahawk is issuing a commemorative reprinting of the satirical piece he wrote back in May of 2009 when Newsweek’s new swing left was announced.

Are they gone?

God, I thought those idiots would never leave. Finally, we can be together — just you and me baby. Do you realize how long I’ve waited for this moment, how much I’ve lusted for your beautiful hipster demographics? How long I sat there on the rack at Barnes and Noble, watching in silence while your fingers slowly caressed the pages of The America Prospect and New Republic and Mother Jones, dreaming that one day you’d actually notice me and take me over to the coffee bar? Baby, I wouldn’t even have cared if you spilled hot macchiato on my table of contents, that’s how much I am into you.

God, it’s such a relief to finally give up that stupid facade of objectivity and tell you how I really feel. It’s like I was trapped in some sort of circulation prison with that clueless 55+ slightly upscale middle America demographic. Sure, they brought home the Lipitor and Viagra accounts, but did you know they actually voted for Bush? Seriously, I’m not kidding! For the last 8 years I’ve tried sending them and you signals that I wanted out. God, I think I must have run 100 covers on Barack and Jon Stewart trying to let you know I was available.

All that’s changed, and I can finally be me. With them out of the picture, you and I can have happiness together. I know I’m not as cool as your other progressive news magazines and websites right now, but I can change. I promise! Look, I know how you like your magazines thin and opinionated. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve lost over 20 pages in the last year. And with my lower circulation, I know I can lose another 15 pages before Fall, just in advertising! Guess what? I’ve even picked out a sexy, flimsy little editorial policy that lets you see everything. (Including my boho bourgeois socialism, which I had Swedish-waxed… just for you :D).

Just wait baby, I’ll make you forget all your old magazines. I’ll be cooler and thinner and more sanctimonious and money-losing than all of them. Even Harpers. And no more awkward meetings at the dentist office! I’m done with these suburban strip mall dumps. From now on you’ll want to pull me out of your messenger bag at Intelligencia Coffee, and introduce me to all your cool friends who have crushing student loans and interesting haircuts and jobs at Kinkos. And after that, maybe we can get Thai, and…

Read the whole thing.

Iowahawk‘s latest is a Bloomberg Holmes classic detective, with Eric Holder playing the role of Watson!

“What have we here, officer?” Holmes inquired of the chief constable on the scene, pausing to alternately suck in his left and right nostrils and shudder in deep contemplative satisfaction.

“Open and shut case, you lordship,” said the man, whose badge bore the name Sainsbury. “Roight. Now if you look here, this is a late model Nissan sport utility brougham, registered to a man what goes by the name of Faisal Shahzad, and what soaped up these signs in th’ windows that says ‘death to those who insult the prophet,’ all written up in the Arabic nice-as-you-like. Now if you look, the vehicle is parked pretty-as-you-please in front of Parker & Stone’s…”

“Parker & Stone? Do you mean those ghastly men who produce the South Park penny dreadfuls that have so offended the city’s peaceful Muhammedans?” I inquired. “I thought they were to be taken in for questioning.”

“Patience, Holder. It is the next item on my agenda after shutting down the sodium dens,” said Holmes. “Go on, officer.”

“Roight. It seems our Mr. Shahzad is a member of the mosque of the cleric what read him a death fatwa against Parker & Stone. Now sir, if you look inside the brougham you’ll see what is some wires that is set up to this bomb, ready to go off with this mobile telly, and a basket of baklava and a note what says ‘Dear Faisal, good luck with the big infidel cartoonist killing, Love, Mum.’ Ah, there’s our suspect now!”

Our discussion was interrupted by another constable, an affable Chinaman by the name of Ming, accompanied by a swarthy ululating young man whom he had entrapped in handcuffs.

“Pinched ’em sarge!” enthused the man’s captor. “An’ just in th’ nick of toime. Just as you said, the scoundrel was down at the docks tryin’ to stow away on a tramp steamer to the Suez.”

“Well well well, what ‘ave we here?” said Constable Sainsbury, reaching into the man’s pocket without so much as a warrant. “A mobile telly what has the number of the bomb telly on the old speed dial. Book ‘im, lad!”

“Unhand this man at once, you incompetent fools!” exhorted Bloomberg Holmes, angrily smacking the Nissan with his magnifying glass. “He may be speaking and gesticulating in a tongue strange to our ears, but it is quite obvious he is protesting his innocence!”

“…but sir…” stuttered Sainsbury.

“But nothing, Sainsbury. Why would a guilty man so vehemently maintain his innocence, particularly one who is a devotee of the religion of peace?”

“but sir, I assumed…”

“And quite obviously assuming makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘Ming.’ With its own constabulary engaged in such blatant racialist profiling, is it any wonder our city’s peaceful Mohammedans are occasionally driven to piques of frustration? If nothing else, that cavernous hole in lower Gotham should stand as a monument to the consequences of such blithe and ignorant bigotry.”

“I… I don’t know what to say, your Lordship,” said Ming, head held low in shame.

“Say nothing more,” said Holmes. “Release this man at once, and turn in your badges. On the morrow, you shall report for mandatory diversity training. Consider yourselves fortunate if you are reassigned to the anti-sugared drink enforcement squadron. As for you, Mr. Shahzad, please accept my sincerest apologies for interrupting your evening activities, and my personal invitation to serve as Grand Marshall in the gala Macy’s parade. If you would like to file a discrimination suit over this unfortunate incident, my friend General Holder will be delighted to assist you.”

I tipped my silk hat to the young man and handed him my calling-card.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Iowahawk turns his inimitable talents to a new version of the classic holiday movie updating it a bit.

George and Clarence walk by empty welfare centers and boarded-up ACORN offices

MRS. FOSTER
Well I guess I always can skip my AARP dues.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Iowahawk offers readers “a detailed how-to-guide for replicating the climate reconstruction method used by the so-called “Climategate” scientists. Not a perfect replication, but a pretty faithful facsimile that you can do on your own computer, with some of the same data they used.”

It takes 30-60 minutes, along with modest math & spreadsheet skills, he promises.

My goal was to provide interested people with a hands-on DIY example of the basic statistical methodology underlying temperature reconstruction, at least as practiced by the leading lights of “Climate Science.”

If you’ve followed all this, it should also give you the important glossary terms that should help you decipher the Climategate emails and methodology discussions. For example “instrumental data” means observed temperature; “reconstructions” are the modeled temperatures from the past; “proxy” means the tree ring, ice core, etc. predictors; “PCs” mean the principal components.

Is there anything wrong with this methodology? Not in principle. In fact there’s a lot to recommend it. There’s a strong reason to believe that high resolution proxy variables like tree rings and ice core o-18 are related to temperature. At the very least it’s a more mathematically rigorous approach than the earlier methods for climate reconstruction, which is probably why the hockey stick / AGW conclusion received a lot of endorsements from academic High Society (including the American Statistical Association).

The devil, as they say is in the details. In each of the steps there is some leeway for, shall we say, intervention. …

(If you run a few tests,)

(C)ontrary to Mann’s assertion that the hockey stick is “robust,” you’ll find that the reconstructions tend to be sensitive to the data selection. M&M found, for example, that temperature reconstructions for the 1400s were higher or lower than today, depending on whether bristlecone pine tree rings were included in the proxies.

What the leaked emails reveal, among other things, is some of that bit of principal component sausage making. But more disturbing, they reveal that the actual data going into the reconstruction model — the instrumental temperature data and the proxy variables themselves — were rife for manipulation. In the laughable euphemism of Philip Jones, “value added homogenized data.” The data I provided here was the real, value added global temperature and proxy data, because Phil told me so. Trust me!

The ever-hilarious Iowahawk scripts a Nature documentary visiting the East Anglian habitat of the Common Climate Researcher (Pseudoscientis grantopophagus), and reaches a startling conclusion:

The climate researcher is in some sense a milestone in evolutionary biology. Ever since Darwin, we have understood that a particular species adapts to its environmental reality. Now for the first time, we are seeing evidence that environmental reality is adapting to a particular species.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Those who sow the curds of blasphemy will reap the cheddar wheel of destruction.

An oldie but a goodie from Iowahawk, in which the blogosphere’s best satirist takes a stab at imagining the cartoon controversy in a more local context: cartoons blaspheming Vince Lombardi!

Hat tip to Richard Faulkner.

Iowahawk pays a final tribute to a dynastic happy warrior.

“Lion of Leinenkugel” Norm Snitker, 62, Laid to Rest

La Crosse WI — Slowly filing past a green-and-gold casket festooned with cheese curds, lottery tickets, and bouquets of 6-pack rings, the city of La Crosse bid a tearful farewell this morning to Norman V. “Norm” Snitker, 62. Long heralded as the “Lion of Leinenkugel” for his relentless fight for free beer and shots at local taverns and supper clubs, Snitker succumbed to an exploding liver Tuesday evening during a late model modified heat at La Crosse Speedway’s $1 Jagermeister night.

“Norm left an amazing legacy, and an amazing bar tab,” said mourner Les Schreindl, 59. “La Crosse won’t see his likes again soon.”….

Like hundreds of other who came to pay their respects at First Presbyterian — some traveling from as far as Menomonie, Pewaukee, Ashwebenon, and Waunawacamapepee — Schreindl wiped a tear in remembrance of the fallen champion of universal alcohol rights. Many vowed to carry on his fight, but along with the heartfelt, staggering eulogies, there was a melancholy sense that the death of Norm Snitker marked the end of the Snitker welding supply dynasty that has for so long dominated public life in La Crosse County.

As tears and Jager shots flowed in the pews of First Presbyterian, there was a sense that Norman Snitker’s death brought to an end the long legacy of Snitker rule in La Crosse. Many La Crossians hold out hope that an heir apparent will emerge from the next generation of Snitkers, but the once white-hot inert gas flame of Snitker welding celebrity has seemingly flickered. LMS daughter Tiffani Snitker-Pflugelhoefer, the presumptive princess to the family barstool, cites career obligations at a Prairie du Chien Farm and Fleet, while other Snitker cousins cite obligations at local halfway houses and work-release programs.

“No matter how hard times were, me and my family have always had a Snitker to call on,” said grieving Clifford Albrechtson. “Now I’m worried where my next boilermaker is going to come from.”

Others vowed to carry on the fight, and said they would push the La Crosse city council to fund the planned $1.2 billion Norman V. Snitker memorial public Shnapps fountain.

At the packed memorial service, Pastor Ed Vos urged mourners to remember the full measure of their fallen friend.

“Whatever his endless shortcomings were as a human being, we cannot let a few DUIs, cheese entombments and arson episodes overshadow the many good things that Norm thought he did,” said Vos. “Let us all recognize that Norm stood up for what he thought was right. No matter whether it was really right or not, and no matter how blotto he was. I suppose we all have to respect a man who can maintain that kind of fierce moral clarity. And can hold his liquor like that.”

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Iowahawk correctly identifies Skip Gates’s arrest as a real case of profiling involving another group often the focus of majority animosity.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Iowahawk records the obsequies for the late great Golden State.

Millions of fans from around the globe gathered along Sunset Boulevard to pay final respects to California today, as a slow moving funeral procession transported the eccentric superstar state’s remains to its final resting place in a Winchell’s Donuts dumpster in Van Nuys. The self-proclaimed ‘King of Pop Culture’ died last week at 160, in what coroners ruled an accidental case of financial autoerotic asphyxiation. The death sent shock waves across the world and sparked an outpouring of grief by rabid fans.

“I don’t care what the tabloids and the Wall Street Journal say,” said a weeping Illinois. “I still love you, Cali!” …

“If it wasn’t for California, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” said Arizona of Westside 3, the popular sunbelt trio who recently benefited from the late state’s generous gift of fleeing taxpayers and businesses. As a tribute to their mentor, Arizona vowed the group would start spending money “like crack-addled hip hop stars.”

“California’s financial and musical legacy will never die,” said band mates Nevada and Oregon.

At the official funeral service at the LA Coliseum, a grief stricken Washington, who teamed with California on several hit software and wine projects, had to be physically restrained from climbing into the deceased’s gold plated casket.

Similar emotional outpourings were the rule of the day. Stories – apocryphal or not – of the late state’s bizarre self-destructive behavior and fondness for molesting children did little to dampen the the flood of tributes from fans who preferred to remember California as America’s Sweetheart.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

House members never bothered to read the Cap and Trade Bill, but Iowahawk did, providing in his latest an update on some key provisions provoking controversy.

The President’s landmark ‘Cap and Trade’ bill faces an uncertain fate this week, as congressional backers of the carbon-limiting legislation face mounting opposition from a myriad of interest groups angered by its controversial ritual virgin sacrifice provision.

“We are asking our members to send a strong message to Washington that this bill is wrong for America’s energy future, and wrong for the virgin community,” said Bret ‘Aslan’ Crawford, a spokesman for the Action Figure Collectors of America. “Power virgins, activate!”

The 87,492 page bill — official designated as the American Patriotic Renewal Act of 2009 for Carbon Reduction, Energy Independence, Heathy Climate, Sustainable Job Growth, Adorable Puppies, and Earthly Paradise — is a keystone in President Obama’s first year legislative agenda, and was originally anticipated to get swift congressional passage. Instead, it faced a unexpectedly tough vote in the House last week after coal state Democrats complained it would place an unfair economic burden on their home districts.

In order to secure the votes of wavering Democrats, House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman inserted several last minute amendments to the legislation, including provisions for national oxygen rationing, witch burnings, dousings, and phrenology research. But the one that has seemingly stoked a grassroots backlash is the controversial Sexually Inexperienced Citizen Environmental Volunteer Amendment. The wording of the amendment calls for all American virgins over the age of 21 to register with the Selective Sacrifice Board, for possible use as victims in nationally televised vivisections intended to “supplicate the Earth-Spirits.” …

“Congress and the Administration really stirred up a hornet’s nest of virgins with this bill,” said longtime Washington-watcher Michael Barone. “The response really caught them flat-footed. I don’t think they realized just how adept the virgin community is at computers, and how much time they have between ComiCons or SpaceCons or whatever-cons. Instead of calling into sports radio shows, now they’re calling the capitol switchboard.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) defended the bill, saying that “it is critical that we do something immediately to show we are serious about solving this climate crisis. Without burnt offerings of taxes and virgins, Gaia will smite us all in her angry burning wrath. So let me just say to the corporate and virgin special interest groups — don’t come crying to us in 400 years, when our temperatures are up almost 1 degree celsius.”

Pelosi denied the bill was anti-consumer, pointing out it contains specific infrastructure and job creation funds. It specifies 500,000 unionized positions to construct a planned 300-foot tall National Eco Pyramid and Virgin Sacrifice Altar in Youngstown, Ohio, as well as funds to train over 20,000 youth volunteer earth-priests in live beating heart removal.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Iowahawk has the story.

The widow of the housefly murdered by Barack Obama during a recent CNBC television interview announced this morning that she would be filing a wrongful death suit against the President in federal district court. The plaintiff brief — citing pain, suffering and loss of income — seeks a formal apology and compensatory damages, including an unspecified quantity of shit.

“Bob was a wonderful husband and provider,” said the widow, Mrs. Vivian Vvzzvzwwzzz, wiping tears from her compound eyes. “Even though he was always busy at the Rose Garden turd pile, he always flew home in time to tuck in our maggots.”

The 17-day old widow said the grieving process since the murder has taken its toll.

“Although it’s been nearly 48 hours, I still get an empty feeling in my thorax everytime I think about it,” she said. “I feel like I’ve aged an entire week. Mating season is over, and here I am, stuck trying to raise 532 larvae on my own.”

Vvzzvzwwzzz described the “abdomen-wrenching horror” she experienced while watching the President casually assassinate her husband during the live broadcast.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.