As Obama points out, it is not even an old tradition. Bush I started it. Nothing Bush I did should be carried on as a presidential tradition. And, even worse, Obama is continuing Bush Jr's tradition of sending the birds to Disneyland, to die. Because these are eating turkeys, and so they have been bred too fat to walk, and with weak hearts.

But! That is not very fun, is it? Obama's speech actually had one very funny line, about "saving or creating four turkeys," and an official White House transcript was released that includes the following:

And man those kids are adorable. Our whole factory farming rage just melted away watching this clip.

Andrea today issues her sentencing recommendations in the case of liberal lawyer Lynne Stewart: Let the fat bitch rot. That is an accurate summary!

Let her rot.

Charismatic terror monger Lynne Stewart is no beauty. But she is a great actress.

The lady ex-lawyer who loves terrorists too much lumbered into the Manhattan federal courtroom in 2006, all 200-plus pounds of fire-breathing radical.

What a terrible, fat lady. She should have gotten more time, just to do those prison workouts! Eh?

Her lawyers said — are you ready? — Stewart was too fat for the lockup.

Lawyer Elizabeth Fink said her obese client's breast cancer was sure to return in a place where women are denied the dignity of wearing bras.

"If you send her to prison, she is going to die," Fink intoned.

We should be so lucky.

You can write to Andrea at andrea.peyser@nypost.com.

When someone supposedly dies on Twitter, there are nothing but questions that aren't "Is this person actually dead?" Because who gives a shit if they're actually dead. There are issues here:

Do people actually trust Twitter?
Who do they trust?
Why? It's just someone with a Twitter.

But they do! And sometimes, that information is valid, and all it takes is one Tweet for Twitter to be the needle in a haystack screaming to be found. But Twitter, like the people who use it, is weird.

Which would explain part of the answer to the question, What do Kanye West, Lil' Wayne, Rick Astley, Britney Spears, Harrison Ford, Jeff Goldblum, Miley Cyrus have in common with Morrissey? They've all been "killed" by Twitter. But not the other questions they present:

Who starts the _____ is dead rumors? Anyone and everyone! It can be some high school junior, or, as is this case, the New York Times The Moment blog, trying to crowdsource information. If you suggest someone who isn't dead may be dead, you've started a ____ Is Dead meme.

Why did they start the _____ Is Dead memes? For all kinds of reasons! Said high school junior who, bored and stoned in his US Government Honors class, decides that John Bolton, who has a funny mustache, is dead. He can then raise his hand and start a discussion about John Bolton being dead! Or maybe someone hears something and decides that they need to know more, because they actually care about this person's impact in their lives (as is, possibly, the case with Moz and The Moment). But mostly, the impulse to declare someone dead who isn't has to come from a place of mischief. Having to explain that you're not dead, you're just waiting to be seated at Pastis, could be a serious inconvenience for you and your publicist. Or if you're not a publicist or don't have one, a "normal" person who has to go out of their way to call their parents and explain that the stress they just went through was for naught.

What would be considered a "successful" ______ is dead meme?

A+: Getting a mainstream media outlet to report on the death, or rumors of the death. Newspapers, newspaper's websites, breaking news websites or Twitter accounts (like Drudge or BNO), CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, etc. If you can get someone to say something on the air about someone who's dead that isn't dead, without it being a denial, you've done an awesome job.

B+ to B: A personal denial. Get someone to admit that they're not dead through someone who isn't their publicist, either because their publicist's credibility was called into question, or because they weren't picking up the phone when they should've.

B-: A publicist denial. Fucking up a publicist's day isn't nearly as mischievous as fucking up Miley Cyrus' day, but still equally satisfying.

C+ to C-: High-profile news-denial. If a news outlet has to report and quell the rumor, at least you got it out there to the right people.

D+ to D: High-profile gossip denial. These people sort out death rumors professionally, and if yours is smart or obscure enough to make their job tough, decent, but otherwise, you're throwing them something slow and down the middle.

D- Subversive gossip and or news crowdsourcinng for an answer (see above, also, here), but add one grade notch for every 50,000 viewers they get a day.

F: You get re-tweeted a few times. That's it.

So, how do you do it correctly?

1. Pick your target correctly. Find an obscure figure who isn't exactly "popular" amongst Twitter's celebrities. Make sure they're not on Twitter, or Twittering when you put the rumor out there. This would be an example of a "Twitter Death Meme Fail":

They can't Twitter their reaction, and they can't have people with them who could Twitter a denial. A really great pick is someone who you didn't even know was still alive. Marian Seldes would be decent, so would Kathleen Turner, because then, you can get a bunch of insane Broadway gays to start freaking out and asking questions. Which brings us to the second step:

2. Find someone to help corroborate your story. Make sure to find someone with decent cred and mix of followers with mixed interests.

You need someone to breathe on the burning embers to get a flame, right?

3. Stay silent. Don't say anything else, especially when people ask you where you heard that. Tip off a few gossip blogs, or blogs that are in the periphery of gossip and/or news blogs.

4. Wait. Teach a man to fish, he'll be set for life. But teach a man to fish without telling him that screaming "BE CAUGHT, YOU FUCKING FISH" won't help, and he's screwed. Stay calm. Wait for this thing to erupt. Once you've put it out there, unless you have multiple accounts with lots of followers to help corroborate your own story, all you can do is see what happens. You've set a line out there, enjoy the natural course it's going to take. Maybe go for a walk, work out, play with your dog. Enjoy the time you have before you get back to your computer to find out from P-Nasty himself that one of the Baldwin brothers had an aneurysm while grilling tandoori chicken skewers.

5. Celebrate correctly. Twitter provides for all. Once you've successfully "killed" someone via Twitter, you should respect and honor their not-dead-ness with a seance. A Twitter seance. Or, a Tweance.

And there you go! How to kill someone with Twitter, correctly. Now, go out there, and get your death fetish on. And please report back to us with your best results.

Oh, and by the way: Morrissey isn't dead. We think. Nice work.

LeDuff's story today on the murder of a witness to another murder unfolds like a single strand of an unceasing web of violence, drugs, and urban hopelessness; by the time LeDuff's finished, he's detailed two gun murders, a man beaten to death in a nightclub, the vagaries of Detroit's biggest crack gang, multiple crime witnesses terrified for their own lives, an old man beaten and robbed, and one informant convinced the prosecutor of the case he's informing on is going to get him killed. And vice versa!

"Me and my family's dead, know what I'm saying? I mean, the first witness got killed," he shouted. "The prosecutor's desperate for a case but they can't even use that tape. I could have been lying. It's hearsay. If they subpoena me, I ain't saying s—-. I'm taking the Fifth. Who's gonna protect me? BMF runs the streets. I'm f——— dead. I ain't going out without a gun battle. I promise. There's gonna be a war."

The prosecutor wears a bulletproof vest, btw. Detroit: Jesus Christ, what the fuck. Read the whole story. And the upshot of this piece of journalism: LeDuff tells us he's taking precautions with his family. "Let me just say they're staying elsewhere." [Pic: Flickr]

Transport Minister John Baird named his cat "Thatcher" (ugh). The cat died. Baird texted his friends. And then the Canadian government began preparing a statement on the passing of former British PM Margaret Thatcher. Once they actually called Downing Street, though, they learned that Maggie was alive and healthy (Thatcher just recently received a fresh batch of the coal miner blood that she feasts on, you see).

Whoops! Silly Canadian government, when Margaret Thatcher actually dies, you'll know it from the audible drunken cheers you'll hear from across the Atlantic.

What are the chances that any particular envelope full of unknown white powder is, in fact, full of deadly weaponized anthrax? Quite small! Exceedingly small. Vanishingly small. The original 2001 anthrax attacks were so spectacular precisely because it is so fucking hard to pull off something like that. Much easier to send bombs, really! Said bioweapons expert Richard Spertzel, "In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them." Also: "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."

Here's what that means, in practical terms: The envelope full of white powder that you just opened in your Congressional office or governmental office or media outlet office or UN office is full of flour or baking soda or maybe even cocaine, but it is almost surely not full of anthrax. So stop evacuating place and shutting everything down. For chrissake. Some nut in Texas knew he could force the UN one-world foreigners to run in fear with less flour than it takes to make a cookie, and that's exactly what he did, and now it's worldwide news. Contrast that with what these places could have done when they got that envelope: Nothing. Set it aside, let the cops come test it, and keep working in the meantime. There's at least a 99% chance that you'll be fine.

We've said this before. Anthrax! It's a ridiculous thing. Just forget it. Do you smell that? No? That's because we had our operatives fill the room you're in with sarin, a colorless, odorless nerve agent 500 times more toxic than cyanide. You better evacuate now, because it kills in less than one minute.

Kidding! But sending you an envelope full of white powder would have been only marginally more difficult than that. So, seriously. Until further notice, just put it in the trash can. At least make the crazies come get you in person.

BPA, a chemical found in like every plastic thing ever made and which you guzzle in your body every time you eat or drink from a plastic container, has been found to make men much exposed to high amounts of it much more likely to suffer erectile dysfunction.

So all those people with their fancy Sigg water bottles were right! Except Sigg water bottles were also full of BPA up until a year ago. Still, look for a dude driving a Volvo with an attached bike rack if you want a good, hard penis.
[Pic: Flickr]

Fuchs was reportedly at a party early Sunday morning when the elevator he was in stalled. Newsday reports:

As Fuchs attempted to jump out of the elevator and onto an adjacent floor, the hood of his sweatshirt got caught on a piece of the elevator, causing him to fall five stories to the bottom of the elevator shaft, according to the police report.

Fuchs—who was once in a band with Businessweek media reporter Jon Fine—was a beloved guy in the Williamsburg music scene, and has already inspired eulogies everywhere from Chunklet to the L Magazine to the New York Times.

Besides Williamsburg musicians, the following people in New York wear hoodies: Everybody. Stay safe, everyone.

[Pics: Myspace]

• Nouriel Roubini likes to rock the party.
• JFK blown away, what else did Mad Men have to say about how crazy it was that things were different in the early '60s?
• We endorsed not voting for Mike Bloomberg and, to be fair, a majority of New Yorkers took our advice, one way or another.
• Jay Leno maybe wants to go back to late night. No one knew that Tucker Max had a movie out, besides Hamilton.
• Old people at a newspaper were punching each other. It was kinda awesome. Then someone from Yelp tried to punch someone else from Yelp, and it was not as awesome.
• Sarah Palin really wanted to give a terrible speech full of "gonnas" and stuff, on election day, last year.
• Google stole maps! And they know everything about you!
• Gossip Girl and The City are shows about girls who gossip and live in the city.
• Oh no, some newspaper reporters missed out on the heartwarming story of a baseball team buying themselves a special prize.
• Dead clubs: still dead.
• Hey, an attempt to put the civil rights of a minority group to a popular vote failed, this week. Crazy.
• Whoops, we forgot to ask permission before reprinting emails between journalists and Eliot Spitzer's press office.
• Tom Cruise can control things with his mind. His mind and his arms and hands and legs and stuff. But mostly his mind.
• Are you exploiting your child enough? Or is a child exploiting you?
• Project Runway continues to suffer from boring challenges, terrible and inconsistent judging, and impossibly bland contestants. On the plus side: those ads for that movie with Ashton Kutcher and Catwoman.
• Levi Johnston is worried that his penis—which he plans on displaying in a pretend internet magazine—is not large enough to be presented in a pretend internet magazine.
• Swine flu attacked an adorable kitty cat! And also Rudy Giuliani gave it to a ferret.
• Spanx: still a thing.
• Top Chef had Fabio on it, yay!
• Oliver Zahm: he is French and he takes pictures of naked ladies and he goes to parties.
• Michele Bachmann attempted to lead a band of insurrectionists to take over the Capitol, where she is an elected legislator.
• Let's paint, exercise, and ride a private jet with a Silicon Valley performance artist/charlatan.
• Have you caught "Tardy For the Party" fever???
• Nidal Hasan, a military psychologist, shot dozens of people at an Army base, before a hero cop (a civilian and a woman) shot him. The shooter reportedly fulfilled all of the right-wing's demented deathporn fantasies.
• Glenn Beck's appendix attempted to burst from his stomach and free itself from his toxic body, but doctors kept the famous crazy person alive. Some people asked some questions about all of this!

Update: Alleged shooter Jason Rodriguez has been arrested. One person is confirmed dead, five confirmed shot, and one man was hospitalized with chest pains. Rodriguez was located at his mother's house.

The shooter is described as wearing a "blue shirt and jeans." He reportedly walked into the office of an architectural firm on the 8th floor and opened fire. And according to an unconfirmed local news report, there were bodies found on the 8th and 10th floor of the building. (This has also been reported as bodies the 4th and 12th floors—authorities have only confirmed "six victims" transported to hospitals and list the number of victims at "under ten" still.)

It has been reported that Rodriguez is a former employee of the firm he attacked.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, there were, earlier, people still barricaded in at least one office, unclear on whether or not it's safe to leave. At this point, the search for the shooter seems to have expanded to surrounding buildings and even other parts of the city.

Cops identified the shooter earlier as Jason Rodriguez. He is driving a silver Nissan SUV, and they are asking the public for help locating him. He might in a "perimeter-area building" but the authorities either don't know where he is or don't want anyone to know that they know where he is. The report of "17 victims" is apparently inaccurate: the cops still say the number of victims is "below ten."

There is a Tweeting Haitian rapper on the scene. Seriously.

The target of Rodriguez's wrath was, according to police, Renyolds, Smith & Hills, an engineering firm with offices in the building.

Rodriguez was fired last year after a year of work, and he reportedly took it hard. He has no criminal record, but he is deeply in debt and recently filed for bankruptcy. "They left me to rot,'' he told TV reporters after he was arrested.

Reporters shouted out questions as he was being led away by police. They asked if he was referring to his former employer.

"No. No. I'm angry,'' he responded.

The Washington Post's violent Style section uncovers the catragic case of Hoity, done in by the do-gooding of PETA interns repeatedly knocking on Netzer's door and telling her that keeping her cat outside was dangerous:

For six months, Netzer tried to keep Hoity inside, but he began clawing the furniture, "pooping all over things," and going, as far as Netzer could tell, completely insane. When she would put him out again, some or another intern would stop by again, implying, she says, that Hoity might be happier and safer in a shelter. Afraid that the PETA interns would take her cat, she eventually had him put to sleep.

A PETA spokesman says that the interns had seen the cat "have close calls" with cars in the neighborhood.

Purr-nicious!
[Pic via]

From: NYU President John Sexton
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 12:19 PM
Subject: The Death of an NYU Student

It is with great sorrow that I must tell you of the death of a student — a
junior in the College of Arts and Science — early this morning in Bobst
Library. While the cause of death is still being determined, indications are
that he took his own life.

Suicide among people of college age is a national problem, a leading cause of
death among the young; each year, campuses across the country must cope with
these tragedies and their aftermath — the pain, the heartbreak, the upset it
causes to those who are vulnerable, and all the terrible, persistent questions.

I have taught young people for some five decades, drawn by their energy and
their promise and by the unique bond that forms between student and
professor. The impulse for self-harm — particularly among young men and women
with so much talent and so much to live for — is incomprehensible to me.

And so I would like to speak to the NYU student community as I would speak
with a student of mine sitting and talking with me in my own office.
No matter how difficult things might seem at any particular moment, your life
is filled with promise, you belong in and are part of a community that
cherishes your presence, you are loved, and there are many people at hand
ready and willing to help you — your professors, the staff in the residence
halls, the Wellness Exchange, your family, and your friends. I am certain of
this: there are many resources to help you, and harming oneself is absolutely
the wrong choice.

We are a close knit community, a large community of small communities; we
should remind ourselves that there will always be people among us who will
need our help, and we should never hesitate to reach out and offer a hand or
an attentive ear, or to direct friends and peers to the many excellent
professionals we have at the Wellness Exchange (212-443-9999, or 999 from any
campus phone) to help students work through problems.

If you feel upset by this news or anything else in your life, do not hesitate
to call the Wellness Exchange. If you have a friend or a student or a
colleague who seems vulnerable, call on his or her behalf.

I know I speak for the entire NYU community when I say that this student's
family and loved ones are in our thoughts and our hearts and our prayers. The
family has asked that they be accorded the greatest possible degree of privacy
and sensitivity in this difficult hour, and I would hope that we all shall
strive to comply.

To each one of us — student, faculty, administrators, or staff: take care of
yourself, take care of one another.

They want you dead so they can have your money.

Writes the Times of London

At the root of the Swiss Government's initiative is a fear that the cheerful Heidi-and-cowbells image is being tarnished by suicide tourists. About 400 turned to clinics for help in committing suicide in 2007, 132 of them from abroad.

This is a legitimate fear. But what the Swiss government doesn't realize is that all the hip young suicides have for years steered clear of Dignitas because it's "where all the tourists go."

The autopsy said that Picower had a massive heart attack in his pool, then drowned as a result. And he was reportedly in poor health—thanks to Bernie Madoff!

"We always have been private people, and having all this play out in the media has taken a big toll on our health," the couple wrote in response to questions submitted earlier this month by The New York Times.

Irving Picard, the trustee for the Madoff victims, still wants to get back the $7 billion that Picower made from Madoff over the years. Hell, he can't take it with him, wherever he is. And it ended up killing him. Crime really doesn't pay.
[Pic via]

All we know so far about his death: not much.

The Palm Beach Fire Department told ABC News that Picower had no pulse when fire rescue workers arrived at his oceanfront mansion after his wife called 911. She and his housekeeper pulled his body from the pool shortly after noon.

But (not that you should read anything into this) we do know that Picower inspired a lot of hate. He reportedly made $7 billion in profit off his Madoff investments since the 1970s. That automatically makes him a villain. Irving Picard, the trustee overseeing the recovery of Madoff assets, is trying to get that money back. And, according to the WSJ, federal prosecutors "are looking into whether Mr. Picower or several other longtime Madoff associates had knowledge of or complicity in the fraud."

His $28 million mansion was known as "Casa del Sud," and is pictured above. WHAT A TALE.

[House pic via]