As to the title, I'm not convinced I should bother mincing words about this.

About a week ago, FOXNews.com ran a story involving a former member of the Wikipedia staff who was making claims that Wikipedia is literally rife with all kinds of dreadful pornography.

That article was, in a word, bullshit.

Sure, there's some porn on Wikipedia because anyone can upload anything to it at any time. To that extent saying so is not a whole lot different than making claims that there's pictures of thimbles in Wikipedia. Both statements contain varying degrees of truth, but how long the porn stays is another matter entirely. A large amount of the porn "on Wikipedia" is simply the act of internet vandals looking to shock people--in reality this is not much different from a miscreant slipping snippets of nudie magazines into random books at your local public library. The only difference here is that it's a lot easier for people all over the world to engage in the prank, but it's still just as easy for it to be undone by librarians (and anyone else who knows that shouldn't be there). The rest appears to be by people who genuinely think that there needs to be categorized porn on Wikipedia--but where Wikipedia is concerned, there's many other places on the Internet dedicated to just porn so there's little point in them keeping it around.

Much of the porn only survives for mere minutes (if not seconds) as automation software run by it's administrators triage the information about new edits and bring anything that appears out of place to someone's attention almost immediately. Everything else (and I mean everything else) gets scrutinized by someone the "old-fashioned way"--by a Wikipedia editor logging in and looking at the list of changes in their favorite little section of the system. So... as fast as someone can upload some porn to Wikipedia, it gets deleted by someone else.

This is the way it is now, this is the way it has been in the past, and is likely the exact same way it will continue to be in the future--yet FOX has been waving this particular baton for about a week now, hoping to provoke a reaction from Wikipedia, and since that didn't happen they have simply declared an "EXCLUSIVE" story that Wikipedia has started to purge porn from the site.

That is, in another word, a lie. To use two words (or three words and a hyphen if you're a potential Wikipedia editor) it's a bold-faced lie. Wikipedia cannot start purging porn from the site now because it has never stopped purging the porn from the site. The entire article hinges on the reader not being smart enough to see the fallacy in the following compound question:

"When did the FOXNews.com editors stop molesting children for better ratings?"

Probably the only thing protecting FOX at this point is that Wikipedia isn't really in a good position to sue them for publishing phony stories.

Fox floats another load of nonsense

I am a little surprised that I didn't see anything about this in the media yet. I can somewhat understand why it's being kept low-key at the moment but still...

NINE TRILLION DOLLARS.

Someone going to get soooo fired.

Federal Reserve Inspector General says they've lost HOW MUCH?

So, there's text on an alternate tab for this story, but it doesn't really put the "flavor" into things like hearing this woman breathe fire and brimstone about the hideous pillaging that financial executives have been engaging in. Literally skimming the bailout money while people are still being foreclosed on with no change in policies...

Wow. If you ever needed a reason to be mad enough to take up shoving rags into bottles of flammable liquids...

Pitchforks and Torches: STRONG BUY

Whew.

Maybe we're not f**ked after all.

OBAMA WINS!

Well, here's quite a "bomb" to drop in the news, invasions of Georgia notwithstanding. Apparently a new book out by Ron Suskind alleges that the CIA, under direction from the White House forged the letter that was used to link Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

...and the laughs don't stop there! The administration also apparently suppressed information that they was very sure that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Our people were telling us this, their people were telling us this. It literally was only Bush and Cheney saying there were WMDs there. No damn wonder we didn't find any.

For those who want to dig further, there's also this Politico article with more details:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12308.html

The magic words for Google at the moment are "Cheney" and "Habbush".

...and just to spell it out in boldface for those who haven't caught on yet, these things would be impeachment material if anyone in Congress had the balls to stand up and do something about it. Of course, that's not going to happen, because this is far from the first thing that's broken that could cause such a process to begin.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it... Impeachment is not a dirty word. It's not "bad for America" by any means. What's bad for America is sticking your head in the sand and pretending everything is okay in order to "present a strong face to the world". Personally, I would like for denial to go back to being a river in Egypt, as opposed to being America's 51st state.

Of fabricated letters and manufactured consent

Apparently the man primarily responsible for getting sex toys outlawed in Georgia (not because they might or might not be effective for making people orgasm, but on moral grounds no less) has been caught f**king one of his aides, in his wife's bed, by his wife.

You know, it's just a wonder that with all the evidence we've gotten, both anecdotally and scientifically, about what's really going on in the minds of extreme homophobes and conservatives, that people just don't immediately point a finger and say "YOU SIR, ARE QUEER AS PINK INK" whenever anyone pops up acting like this.

Frankly, I'd like to see the man sentenced under the law he tried to pass to outlaw homosexuality just to make a point.

Georgia Attorney General Troy King Is Apparently A Homosexual After All

When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Op-Ed Columnist - The Truth Commission - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

So, what of this claim Bush has made about there are no plans for a permanent occupation of Iraq?

It seems they were (drumroll please) YET MORE LIES!

Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

I think they'd be right about that.

Bush is a LIAR (part $large_number)

This is basically some video footage of the guy from the New Yorker talking about his findings with respect to the US performing covert ops on Iran.

Covert ops that have actually affirmed Iran's statement that nuclear weapons weren't doing them any good, so now they're trying to make electricity.

...except that Bush and Cheney are disregarding the evidence at hand and looking to further destabilize the region before leaving office by invading or at least attacking Iran. My guess is that they're aiming to generate an excuse to call off the elections.

This madness must end.

Seymour Hersh exposes US covert operations in Iran

This article is mainly all about the picture. It's not gory, but it is rather gruesome. You have been warned.

Apparently, a 28-year-old American was drunk and passed out at the wheel and drove right into the middle of a bunch of cyclists.

It seems the American Consulate is handling this about as diligently as the Mexican Consulate does when an illegal alien kills a family of four in a DUI. Oh well.

1 dead as car plows into Mexican bike race