More on TSA Mom and Balloon Boy

Just a quick followup to yesterday’s post about Balloon Boy and TSA Mom. Stories about Falcon Heene’s ordeal seeming faked grew louder and louder as the weekend progressed. Gawker posted a weird interview with Robert Thomas, a student who helped the boy’s father, Richard Heene, with his balloon stuff earlier this year. It’s not definitive proof of a hoax on the part of the Heenes (as it’s billed), but it shows how much of a messed up famewhore Richard Heene. As I said yesterday, that’s nothing that couldn’t have been determined by his two appearances on the reality show Wife Swap. Just an hour ago, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden, who earlier in the weekend said that this was not being considered a hoax, reversed that, and announced the following possible charges against the Heene parents:

Conspiracy
Contributing to the delinquency of a minor (Class 4 felony)
False reporting to authorities (Class 3 Misdemeanor)
Attempting to influence a public servant (Class 4 Felony)

Nic, the woman who wrote of being detained and having her child taken from her by the TSA, has posted a response to those who have questioned her story in light of the release of CCTV footage by the TSA. The post is entitled “My Apologies,” although it seems more defensive than apologetic. She maintains that the video does not show everything that happens, and that at some point, her son was separated from her by the TSA. She says that she doesn’t know why the video doesn’t show things that she stated happened, and I hate to speculate, but I have a theory, and it rhymes with frying….mmmm, frying. I am so hungry right now.

Stupid hackers!

The Gawker Media blogs are back up. Word on the street – and by on the street, I mean Gawker – is that hackers trying to block access to Consumerist (which isn’t even a Gawker Media blog anymore, but is still hosted on the company’s servers) effectively prevented people from accessing anything. Although I missed checking these sites while I was at work yesterday, I feel even worse for the many Gawker Media bloggers, who I believe still get paid on a page view model. This cannot be good for them. Bummer all around.

Sounds like some shady company is trying to prevent people from learning of their suckitude.

A day without Gawker

I visit various Gawker Media blogs multiple times during the day on weekdays, and usually at least once every weekend. This morning, upon starting my workday, I fired up my personal and work email accounts, the interlibrary loans window, Metafilter, Jezebel, and Gawker.  Those last two didn’t work. I gave it ten minutes, and tried again. Same deal. I googled Jezebel.com and saw the beginning of a post  from yesterday that mentioned technical difficulties. So I waited a couple of hours, and checked again. Still not working. I remember that this once happened before and I was able to find a backdoor link to Gawker, but that’s been years and now I don’t remember how I found that link (possibly Jossip, but since that site is now dead, that’s no help to me).

It’s kind of sad how much I missed these blogs. It’s not just the gossip or the ridiculous content; I actually like the people who post on threads and appreciate learning about things I would otherwise not know.

Right now it is 3 pm EDT, and these web sites, as well as Lifehacker and Gizmodo, are still not working. I never realized how much time I spent checking these blogs until I couldn’t look at them.

Bummer.

Oh please, oh please, oh please…

My buddy, Sarah Palin, has decided to step down from her post as governor of Alaska. Initially, people thought that this might be to give her time to get her act together, so that she could run for president in 2012. And, seriously: how sweet would that be? With Palin as the Republican nominee, Obama could introduce Hookers and Blow Tuesdays in the Oval Office and still beat her handily.

The timing of this announcement can only be called curious; much like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey’s announcement of their divorce immediately prior to Thanksgiving, Ms. Palin’s July 3 press conference seems like nothing so much as an attempt to dodge as much of the media as possible during this holiday break. The Mudflats, a web site from Alaska that I visited a few times during the presidential election, linked to a transcript of Ms. Palin’s speech and provided some speculation as to why she would step down as governor (rhymes with “skimbezzlement”).

I wonder, too, if this has anything to do with the tell-all book about Ms. Palin that is being written by Steve Schmidt, her former campaign strategist (and the guy who picked her to run with John McCain; do we really trust his judgment anymore??); Gawker had a juicy tidbit from it the other day, and if the rest of it is as forehead-slappingly stupid as this bit, no wonder the woman wants out before publication. Gawker also speculates as to why the Alaska governor decided to resign her post.

Doing a quick look around the tubes and twitter, it seems that trouble with the IRS is the most prevalent theory. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Well shoot

I’m home sick, and as is my wont when I have free time and the weather’s crappy, I’ve been roaming around the Internet. Since I called out of work, I don’t want to be posting on Facebook or Twitter, even though, realistically, sneezing and coughing shouldn’t mean that I can’t type, right? But better not to do anything that could be misinterpreted later. So here’s the article that I would have posted on Facebook if I was posting there today.

Here’s a Gawker article about how very screwed John Edwards is. Like a lot of people, I really thought that he might have had a chance to do something great for this country, and was really disappointed at how badly he messed things up. What is it with these politicians who cannot keep it in their freaking pants long enough to make good on the myriad promises that they’ve made to us? Why do they believe that they won’t get caught? Didn’t anybody learn anything from Gary Hart?

Now, though, instead of just losing all credibility with pretty much everybody and seeing his political career die a really ugly public death, he also has to be concerned that he’s being accused of fraud for payouts made to Rielle Hunter, the woman with whom he had the affair. What a dummy. Hunter received over $100,000 from the Edwards campaign for videos that look like what my 13 yo nephew could do with a camera and iMovie. Once again, The National Enquirer was there with the story before any of the big boys deigned
to report it.