Oxendine actually emailed reporters, last night, to prepare them for this amazing clip. And:

The [event where the ad will be released] is being held at an undisclosed laser-tag facility and is closed to the public. After viewing the commercial, the volunteers will enjoy pizza and laser-tag.

Jesus. Wow. Laser-tag, pizza, new media, yes. If you laugh at this why don't you go back to Hollywood, New York, Washington, or France?

Georgia Gov. Candidate Produces ‘Citizen Kane'-esque Technical Breakthrough Of Our Time [Wonkette]

This is the victory of Political Correctness: racists across the nation have somehow vaguely internalized the lesson that racism is bad. But all that means is that they don't think anything they ever do is racist, because that would make them bad people.

CBS Atlanta's Michelle Marsh asked Lanzo why he put up the sign.

"I've been putting up signs for 22 years and I've put up all kinds of political signs," said Lanzo.

"Why did you use the N word?" Marsh asked.

"Well, I've used it most of my life. There are different ways to put your opinion up, but that's just the words I choose," Lanzo answered.

That's just the word he chose. "Nigger." He has used the word "nigger" all his life. You know, whatever. It's just his opinion. Once again: he is not a racist.

It is weird, right? That this man understands that it is a Bad Thing to be A Racist, but doesn't really get the rest of it?

Other self-avowed non-racists include all of these people and this guy and this winner.

In southeast Georgia, a police chief was quoted by the New York Times as calling it "a record for us. We've never had such an incident with so many victims...It's not a scene that I would want anybody to see.''

Here's the strange thing: nowhere are there any details about who—or what—was involved. At the very least, it sounds disturbing. The management of the trailer park supposedly actively tried to keep unsavory people or incidents out of their lots, too:

Lisa Vizcaino, who has lived at New Hope for three years, said the management works hard to keep troublemakers out of the mobile home park and that it tends to be quiet. ''New Hope isn't rundown or trashy at all,'' Vizcaino said. ''It's the kind of place where you can actually leave your keys in the car and not worry about anything.'' Vizcaino said she didn't know the victims and heard nothing unusual when she woke up at 7 a.m. Saturday morning. After word of the slayings spread, she said, the park was quieter than usual.

Stereotype reinforced? Or just the nature of arbitrary, extreme violence rearing its head at a usual suspect? Probably: a little bit of both.

Martin has Barack Obama's awesome turnout machine going in his favor, but he doesn't have the draw of Obama's name on the ballot. Saxby Chambliss, who's really a colossal prick, was 100% right when he said his chances were great, now that the black people won't be turning out in record numbers. Martin's never polled above Chambliss to begin with, and the Republicans raised way more money. This one's a longshot.

Meanwhile in Minnesota, odds are marginally better for the challenging Democrat. Al Franken is 73 votes (or less!) behind Coleman, according to his own numbers, with ten percent left to recount still. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, though, is pessimistic about his chances. Their vote count has Franken still behind by 340, and their own numbers say Franken can't make up the difference unless none of Norm's challenges are upheld and more than 6 percent of Franken's are accepted. It's unlikely, though Coleman's challenges have been greater in number and marginally more frivolous as the recount's dragged on.

Still, Franken's last, best hope may be to sue to get a couple thousand rejected absentee ballots actually counted. Which would be a mess, and more or less guarantee that he'd serve one unpopular term.

So the Dems are probably stuck at 58. Maybe they'll hit 59, but 60 seems almost impossible. Of course the magic 60 seats actually wouldn't help or hurt their ability to get legislation forced through all that much (we're still dealing with Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins and other party renegades, remember), it was more like a fun thing for pundits to talk about when they got bored talking about how McCain was going to lose.

What is odd is not so much the awkward granddaughter-groping as the fact that he and his campaign happily allowed this take of this particular commercial to be released to the public, without someone, at some point, saying, "hey, Saxby, it looks like you're copping a feel on your granddaughter, there. Might want to retake that." But then the tone of the commercial was already so fucking creepy that no one probably noticed, huh. Vote for our big daddy or he'll continue touching us!

Despite this Saxby will still probably win tomorrow, because it's Georgia, and because Obama's not on the ticket.

[Via Videogum]

Three of these meetings actually happened, according to the Times website. Three just happened the way I imagined they would were I a reporter assigned to watch various other foreign dignitaries harmlessly shaking hands and exchanging niceties with Sarah Palin before being ushered off to exchange more niceties and possibly a game recipe or two. Guess which is which!

1. Talking Georgia With Kissinger

Gov. Sarah Palin wrapped her first day of motorcade diplomacy with a 90-minute meeting with Henry Kissinger, where they spoke about Georgia. Ms. Palin and Mr. Kissinger sat on blue couches, separated by an end table with photographs of President Nixon and President Reagan on it.

As photographers were led in, Mr. Kissinger could be heard saying that he gave someone “a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia,” according to a reporter who was allowed to watch.

“Good, good,’’ Ms. Palin said. “And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.”

The photographers were ushered out. When Ms. Palin emerged from the building, a news producer asked her how it went, and she mouthed the words, “It was great.”

2. Palin meets her old "Sister" Mayor.

One familiar face in what would be a long string of otherwise new acquaintances was Sergey Alexandrov, the mayor of Mirny, a town of about 40,000 in Russia's mineral-rich far east that is Wasilla's partner in the international "citizen diplomacy" network program Sister Cities International. A McCain staffer told a reporter had visited Alaska in 1998 or 1999.

A tall, ruddy man who appears to be in his mid-fifties, Mr. Alexandrov greeted Ms. Palin with a small bow and a handshake, then made a hand gesture that was an apparent comment on the vice presidential nominee's height. Ms. Palin pointed to the heel of her black pump.

A staffer said the pair had engaged in a "spirited" debate following Mr. Kissinger's remarks.

3. Palin and Karzai Bond Over Children

When Gov. Sarah Palin sat down with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Tuesday afternoon, the polite preliminaries to their conversation centered around children, as Mr. Karzai spoke of the birth of his first child last year.

“What is his name?” Ms. Palin was heard to ask, as she met with Mr. Karzai in the suite of a midtown hotel, according to a pool report.

“Mirwais,” Mr. Karzai replied. “Mirwais, which means, ‘The Light of the House.’”

“Oh nice,” Palin responded.

“He is the only one we have,” Mr. Karzai said.

4. Palin and Sundaravej talk cooks and cuisine.

For lunch, a security detail whisked Ms. Palin to her next appointment at the Royal Thai Consulate, where she was slated to dine over a briefing on a recent Thai-South Korean trade dispute from former prime minister Samak Sundaravej.

The two entered a dining room through an entrance flanked by gold Bhudda statues and sat at a table set with meat skewers and spring rolls.

"Did you cook all this yourself?" Ms. Palin asked Mr. Sundaravej, according to a photographer, who said the former prime minister explained that the embassy retained a cook on staff for such events.

Ms. Palin jotted notes in a spiral steno pad.

5. Meeting Uribe

The next stop on Governor Palin’s whirlwind diplomatic tour was a meeting with President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. Mr. Uribe has a warm relationship with Senator John McCain, who paid him a visit during extremely unusual campaign trip to Colombia over the summer where he expressed support for a free trade agreement.

The meeting was held in the residence of the Colombian Mission on the Upper East Side in an ornate room with a pink stuffed chair and a chandelier, according to an account provided by the reporter allowed to accompany her into the event, Ms. Palin was overheard telling Mr. Uribe, “Thank you for your work.’’
Then the motorcade left for a sit-down at Kissinger Associates.

6. A Visitor Ponders The Implications Of A Palin Vice-Presidency

A reporter stationed at another side of the Kissinger Associates building saw Kissinger briefly emerge from a back exit to heartily greet a tall slim man of apparent Arab descent. Mr. Kissinger was overheard wishing the man a happy birthday before apologizing that a surprise guest would be "keeping me all day."

"Like your father, only I am allowed to go to the bathroom," Mr. Kissinger told the guest.

"A woman then!" the man replied. "Let me meet her!"

Mr. Kissinger paused. "Well, you two are about the same age, but she you would never know," he said with a faint chuckle. "Her youth is — in many respects — quite well-preserved."

"Inshallah," the man muttered in response. "Leave it to you, Henry. The one thing Bibi and I agree about…well let's just say this false Jew 'Levi' is on both our do-not-fly lists!"

"Well, you know what I say: even the paranoid have real enemies. And if the enemy of your enemy is your friend…"

"Fuck you."

Both satellite photos and topography would be just the thing for planning, say, an armored column advance or in identifying industrial and civilian targets for sabotage and terror, respectively. While the photos aren't current enough to track enemy movements, the detail at the lowest scale is certainly good enough for a sniper to find a roost near Josef Stalin's birthplace for instance. And if anyone needed road maps, then they could have just used Microsoft's more Caucasus-complete Live Maps. Just imagine what separatist guerrillas could have done with Street View!

If the adolescent groupthink of Diggers could be summed up, it's this: whatever Bush says is wrong, whatever the MSM says is wronger, and if the two are in agreement it's clearly the wrongest idea ever.

Contrarianism Digg is made up mostly of angry young white male nerds. That particular group is naturally contrary and anti-social. If the NORMALS want them to CONFORM, too bad! They're going to go watch V For Vendetta again because only $54 million dollar movies distributed by Time Warner subsidiaries truly understand their anti-authoritarian struggle! So if the powers that be say "Georgia Good, Russia Bad," Diggers will be inclined to specifically seek out contrary opinions, and promote them.

Anti-MSM Crusading Part of the contrarianism is their innate distrust of the Mainstream Media. This is a terribly commonplace Internet Attitude that combines the well-funded war against press credibility waged against journalism by conservatives since the Nixon days with its not-that-odd bedfellow, leftist fear-mongering about corporate consolidation of all forms of media and its result on the message fed to willing consumers. Diggers will probably not read the front-page Times story on the crisis, but they will read a blog post denouncing and debunking it.

Bush Lied The web feeds on Bush-hatred. Diggers are a libertarian-leaning bunch with pockets of radical liberalism, so hated of the entire Bush regime is deep and vitriolic. This spills over even to situations that Bush is not actually personally responsible for. So if you can mange to blame this entire situation on Bush, somehow (he PROPPED UP THE GEORGIAN MILITARY [when we trained them to help us in Iraq and Pakistan]), you've hit on the magic formula for getting Diggers to actually read something about the conflict in Georgia. Congrats! Good luck with that feeling of odd emptiness you'll experience when your personal hell demon retires to Kennebunkport.

The reasonable (or maybe mealy-mouthed concerned helpless liberal) read of the situation is that the Russians are seizing on a Georgian aggression they basically provoked and planned for in order to effect regime change, and the Georgians just pushed the Russians a little too far banking on non-existent support from NATO (sorry guys!). Unless you're on Digg, in which case the BBC and George Bush propped up a tinpan dictator in Georgia and Putin is maybe bad but he drives a totally awesome killing machine and he's not as evil as Chimpy McHitler over here.

Russia's intention just might be to actually topple the democratically elected, adorably pro-American government of Georgia. (They say they won't go to Tbilisi, but they also said that about Gori!) George W. Bush's intention is to not get involved and hope a ceasefire happens soon. That funny little dance he did is not so cute anymore! If it spreads to Ukraine, what then? NATO gets involved at some point. That's a big problem. A big problem called the Cold War!

Then what? Then we get President McCain. Because he's still stuck in the Cold War. And Obama dithered and hemmed and hawed in his response to this mess, while McCain said he would personally go to Moscow and deck that paper-hanging sonuvabitch Putin (more or less). Which is dangerous crazy rhetoric. And what does America like to hear during times of international instability in far-off places? Dangerous crazy rhetoric!

Also fun to ponder right now: Russia's growing friendship with Iran, Georgia's oil reserves. Surprisingly, Dealbreaker of all things has a terribly informative roundtable on the entire situation that will allow you to sound reasonably intelligent at a cocktail party until you finish your third cocktail and find yourself unable to pronounce any of the names involved.

And finally, if the John Edwards scandal had been reported on by the MSM back in 2007, none of this would've happened.

That's an understatement. The Russian Business Network is infamous for operating botnets, distributing malware, and stealing private information. But its usual targets are businesses, not nation-states. A year ago, Brian Krebs wrote in the Washington Post about RBN's exploits, which included an attack on the Bank of India. The Estonian government blamed the RBN for three days of attacks on its Web sites in April.

Armin, the security researcher says Georgia's hacked sites are now routed them through servers in Russia and Turkey that are "well known to be under the control of Russian Business Network and influenced by the Russian Government." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia has moved its website to Google's Blogger — itself a notorious hotbed of spam, but at least one that's hosted on a theoretically more secure network.

"A top Russian diplomat accused foreign media on Sunday of pro-Georgian bias in their coverage of the ongoing conflict.

"Russia says Georgian forces have killed around 2,000 South Ossetian civilians, mainly Russian nationals, since the start of the offensive, and that 34,000 locals have been forced to flee to Russia. In response to the Georgian attacks, Russia sent tanks and troops into the province, and carried out a series of air strikes on Georgian military targets." [en.rian.ru]

[via AJC]