Overnight Open Thread (9-2-2012)

Welcome to the official Pre-Labor Day ONT party. As always pants are optional.

Leaked: Full Secret Agenda of the Democrat National Convention

Heh. Apparently the ritual stoning of the Boy Scouts and candlelight memorial for the victims of Mitt Romney have been moved to later in the week.

2012 Democrat National Convention
Schedule of Events

7:00 pm OPENING FLAG BURNING
7:15 pm PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE UNITED NATIONS
7:20 pm Max Baucus PROPOSES A TOAST TO Barack Obama
7:25 pm OPENING PRAYER - Reverend Jeremiah Wright
7:45 pm CEREMONIAL TREE HUGGING - Darryl Hannah
7:55 pm Max Baucus PROPOSES A TOAST TO Darryl Hannah
8:00 pm GLOBAL WARMING OMFG!!!!!!!!! - Al Gore
8:30 pm WHY FOURTH TRIMESTER ABORTIONS MATTER - Barbara Boxer
8:55 pm Max Baucus PROPOSES A TOAST TO Barbara Boxer
9:00 pm CHARGING OUR TROOPS WITH WAR CRIMES - John Kerry
9:30 pm MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN AND MUAMMAR GADDAFI - Cindy Sheehan and Susan Sarandon
9:55 pm INCOHERENT RAMBLING ABOUT COWBOY POETRY, ETC. - Harry Reid
10:00 pm Max Baucus PROPOSES A TOAST TO Susan Sarandon
10:05 pm COLLECTION DRIVE FOR THE OSAMA BIN LADEN MEMORIAL FUND - Cher
10:30 pm FREE THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS FROM GUANTANAMO BAY - Sean Penn
11:00 pm OVAL OFFICE AFFAIRS - William Jefferson Clinton
11:45 pm Max Baucus PROPOSES A TOAST TO Susan Sarandon's Rack
11:50 pm A PLEA FOR MASS PARDONS OF THE OCCUPY WALL STREET RAPISTS - Howard Dean
12:15 am FREE THE MINUTEMEN IN AFGHANISTAN'S PRISONS - Michael Moore
12:25 am Max Baucus PROPOSES A TOAST TO Jessica Alba
12:30 am SATELLITE ADDRESS - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
12:45 am NOMINATION OF BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA - Nancy Pelosi
12:55 am Barack Obama ACCEPTS NOMINATION, GRAMMY, AND TONY AWARDS
1:15 am THE TRUE STORY: HOW I KILLED BIN LADEN - Barack Obama
1:25 am Max Baucus SINGS NATIONAL ANTHEM
1:30 am CORONATION OF BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
1:55 am Max Baucus PROPOSES A TOAST TO Mitt McRyan
2:00 am Bill Clinton asks Max Baucus to drive Hillary home.

Too Good to Check: The Obamas are planning to move to a modest $35million home in Hawaii in Jan 2013.

The NYT Keeps Repeating Old Lies About This Photo

Despite the fact that the plane that dropped the napalm was flown by a South Vietnamese pilot it's always America's fault somehow:

It has taken more than three months, but the New York Times today published a sort-of correction of its erroneous description about the napalm attack in Vietnam in June 1972 that preceded the famous photograph of children terrified and wounded by the bombing." Plus this: "[T]he phrasing - 'while the planes that carried out the attack were "American planes" in the sense that they were made in the United States, they were flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force, not American forces' - makes it sound like a bunch of teenagers borrowing daddy's car."

Longtime ONT readers will also know what happened to girl shown in the photo.

'Hold Down the Fort' Now Officially Racist?

Well at least according to the State Department's PC department because it might offend native americans:

How many times have you or a colleague asked if someone could "hold down the fort?" For example, "Could you hold down the fort while I go to." You were likely asking someone to watch the office while you go and do something else, but the phrase's historical connotation to some is negative and racially offensive. To "hold down the fort" originally meant to watch and protect against the vicious Native American intruders. In the territories of the West, Army soldiers or settlers saw the "fort" as their refuge from their perceived "enemy," the stereotypical "savage" Native American tribes.

Except when you actually look at the history of the phrase, there's zero evidence that it ever was used in reference to indian attacks. In fact the earliest American usage seems to have come from the Civil War when Gen. Sherman relieved a trapped Union force near Atlanta:

Ma­ny had fall­en, and the re­sult seemed to ren­der a pro­long­a­tion of the fight hop­eless. At this mo­ment an of­fi­cer caught sight of a white sig­nal flag far away across the val­ley, twen­ty miles dis­tant, up­on the top of Ken­e­saw Mount­ain. The sig­nal was an­swered, and soon the mes­sage was waved across from moun­tain to moun­tain:

“Hold the fort; I am coming. W. T. Sher­man.”

Cheers went up; every man was nerved to a full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the po­si­tion

Yet another case where administrators turn to their own inner racist for the etymology of phrases.

The Growth of Walmart

Apparently this is supposed to show the decline of America or something. But to me the growth seems steady and organic - which is a sign that Walmart is doing something right and has a winning formula.

Watch Neil Armstrong Escape Death

The LLRV (Lunar Lander Research Vehicle) was a notoriously dangerous yet effective trainer for practicing landing on the moon. Here in 1968 due to winds and a propellant leak Armstrong was forced to eject with less than a second to spare. But that was just another day for him.

In his Armstrong biography First Man, author James Hansen recounts how astronaut Alan Bean saw Armstrong that afternoon at his desk in the astronaut office. Bean then heard colleagues in the hall talking about the accident, and asked them, "When did this happen?" About an hour ago, they replied. Bean returned to Armstrong and said, "I just heard the funniest story!" Armstrong said, "What?" "I heard that you bailed out of the LLTV an hour ago." "Yeah, I did," replied Armstrong. "I lost control and had to bail out of the darn thing." "I can't think of another person," Bean recalls, "let alone another astronaut, who would have just gone back to his office after ejecting a fraction of a second before getting killed."

Plus the one thing that gave Armstrong nightmares before the mission.

So Why Can't You Wear White After Labor Day?

Short answer: To show that you aren't nouveau riche.

While no one is completely sure exactly when or why this fashion rule came into effect, our best guess is that it had to do with snobbery in the late 1800s.

The wives of the super-rich ruled high society with an iron fist after the Civil War. As more and more people became millionaires, though, it was difficult to tell the difference between old money, respectable families, and those who only had vulgar new money. By the 1880s, in order to tell who was acceptable and who wasn't, the women who were already "in" felt it necessary to create dozens of fashion rules that everyone in the know had to follow.

...But even though the rule was originally enforced by only a few hundred women, over the decades it trickled down to everyone else. By the 1950s, women's magazines made it clear to middle class America: white clothing came out on Memorial Day and went away on Labor Day.

Do NOT Taunt LeeAnn Rimes on Twitter

Or else she'll track you down and berate you over the phone.

To recap: LeAnn Rimes is an unstable lunatic who is on twitter 24 hours a day, mostly to argue with anyone who calls her names. One of those people was a teacher in California named Kimberly Smiley, who then stopped following Rimes. But Rimes had more to say, so she called Smiley at home and cursed for 20 minutes. Smiley recorded part of the call and put it online here.

And then sue you for recording her berating.

Rimes filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleging that Kimberly Smiley and her daughter Lexi Smiley secretly recorded a telephone conversation "to spitefully ensure that out-of-context excerpts of that recording would be disseminated to the public on various websites" and to portray Rimes "in an egregiously false and negative light and cause her emotional distress."

Weekly AoSHQ Commenter Standings

Top 10 commenters:
1 [1775 comments] 'sven10077' [249.05 posts/day]
2 [593 comments] 'Jane D'oh'
3 [521 comments] 'toby928?'
4 [512 comments] 'Anna Puma (+SmuD)'
5 [494 comments] 'garrett'
6 [438 comments] 'Vic'
7 [438 comments] 'Christopher Taylor'
8 [423 comments] 'Billy Bob, psuedo intellectual'
9 [410 comments] 'Nevergiveup'
10 [368 comments] 'steevy'
Honorable Mention:
17 [290 comments] 'ace'

Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [95 names] 'JParker' [13.33 unique names/day]
2 [86 names] 'The comedy spewings of Biden and Matthews'
3 [84 names] 'The Follower in Chief'
4 [68 names] 'Adam'
5 [67 names] 'Billy Bob, psuedo intellectual'
6 [60 names] 'The Political Hat'
7 [59 names] 't-bird'
8 [51 names] 'toby928?'
9 [49 names] 'Cicero'
10 [47 names] 'Islamic Rage Boy'

The group. Yeah.

Where it's at - the Twitter

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posted by Maetenloch at 09:19 PM

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