The hills are alive with the sound of merciless imperialistic hegemony

Accidentally, my eye! I always suspected those Swiss were up to something. For centuries they've tried to lull the world into a false sense of security with their fondue, chocolate, cuckoo clocks and watches -- and that damn Julie Andrews movie. And all the while they've been arming terrorists, militants and malcontents around the world with military weapons, acting as banker to the world's dictators and criminals, and worst of all, yodeling.

For centuries,they have provided an army of mercenaries as personal guards to shore up the regime of the world's most notorious religious fanatic, who claims to god's infallible voice on earth and who rules over a theocratic dictatorship. And yet, they never fought the Kaiser or Hitler - they didn't even join the UN until 2002, claiming it might compromise their precious so-called neutrality. Ha! tell that to the freedom loving people of Liechtenstien, you bloodthirsty rosti-eating, tyrolean-hat wearing bastards!

Through stealth and trickery, they've already tried to make Geneva the center of their one-world government. They've successfully infiltrated Canada using a restaurant chain as a front; "Taste it once, love it forever" -- nice way of describing the addictive mind-control drugs they put in that sauce. But now it's all out in the open:

Swiss "accidentally" invade Liechtenstien

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 2, 2007

Filed at 11:13 p.m. ET

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) -- What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

Obviously nukes are the only way to deal with this threat, otherwise the next thing you know we'll all be forced to toot alpenhorns, eat musili and speak French, German and Italian. The horror.

Swiftboater on the rocks
Remember back in 2004, when "swiftboating" became shorthand for flinging enough total horseshit that some was bound to stick to a candidate? George W. Bush and his merry crew of slimeballs seem to have forgotten that while the American public has a short memory, John Kerry doesn't. The GOP saw fit to name Sam Fox as Ambassador to Belgium, a man who donated $50,000 to the lying character assassins at Swiftboat Veterans For Truth. What they also forgot is that ambassadors have to be confirmed by the Senate, of which Kerry is still a member.

Oooops.

The testimony is hilarious, with Fox trying to wheedle, flatter and squirm his way through with "the-dog-ate-my-homework" level excuses about giving them the money even though he thinks Kerry is hero because they asked for it and can't actually remember who asked him to do it. Think Jon Lovitz's Tommy Flannigan being cross-examined by Perry Mason.

Best. Lede. Ever.
The only thing missing is a politician and a domestic animal of some sort.
"A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper from Lodi."

Fresh meat
Welcome to the blogroll Kung Fu Monkey, to whom we have linked before and who has the definitive smackdown of FOX's "comedy" program, "The Half Hour News Hour" -- he links to the opening. I'm not saying I have high standards, but linking to that kinda stuff is where I draw the line.

Jake Gittes: I wouldn't extort a nickel from my worst enemy. That's where I draw the line.
Loach Jr.: Well, I'll tell you, Jake. I knew a whore once. For the right amount of money, she'd piss in a guy's face. But she wouldn't shit on his chest. You see, that's where she drew the line.
Jake Gittes: Well, Junior, all I can say is: I hope she wasn't too much of a disappointment to you.

The Age of Dumb
As ususal, we had CNN on in the newsroom today and I was, as usual, reminded just how crappy the "News Network of Record" usually is. Larry King was on, taking a break from his breathless "coverage" of Anna Nicole Smith and promotion of American Idol to lob softballs to Laura "the Joker" Bush, followed by a short interview with James Cameron about whether researchers (and I use that term in the loosest possible sense) had actually found the actual tomb of the actual Jesus.

This lead into a segment on "Mysteries of the Bible" with former MuchMusic VJ and senior CNN hair model John "JD" Roberts exploring the usual parade of long since debunked religious based scams - the shroud of Turin, the search for Noah's Ark etc etc - while a constant computer graphic scrolled the words "faith" "religion" and "Jesus" in a quasi-subliminal way in the sceen margin.

The sound was off so I can't say for sure that Roberts wasn't ridiculing the notion that Noah Ark was for real, but given the tenor of the discussion on Larry King, in which the only person he really seemed to challenge was the scientist who was rightfully contemptuous of the notion of "proving" it was Jesus and Mary Magdelene in the tomb through DNA testing, and the current fear in the media of offending any nutbar's oh-so-sacred religious sensibilities, I'll go out on a limb and guess that his was not the skeptical point of view. The King show transcript for the Jesus tomb James Cameron segment isn't available yet, but you can find his hard-hitting interview with the first lady here.

However, lest you think it is just something in the water in the USA, CNN brings us this gem from South Korea on how children are learning that Jews control the United States.

I guess my biggest complaint about CNN and the 24-hour cable news horrorshows in general is that they constantly pander to the lowest common denominator (yeah, yeah I know, it's TV -- what the hell did I expect) with mindless celebrity worship, fearmongering sensationalist crime stories, unspeakably shallow analysis of complex issues, the not so subtle reinforcement of the notion that having money makes you smart and important and the non-stop dumbing down of western culture. If the 24-hour cable news station were the irrelevant sideshow they seem to aspire to be, such a lack of serious news content would be one thing, but the problem is that they now set the public agenda in United States and to a lesser extent the Western world as a whole.

As Jon Stewart so famously said to Tucker Carlson and Paul Begalla "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America"