Ron Paul Fan On Malls, Radiohead

There’s an op-ed in today’s Inquirer predicting the demise of the mall; the writer seems to be under the impression that Americans are now cutting back on spending and will no longer shop-’til-they-drop at giant monuments to suburban sprawl.

Anyway, it has one of the best comments I’ve ever read on a Philly.com article, and I’d like to share it with you now. This might be my favorite comment of all time, actually, especially if it’s real.

Ron Paul fans: Tough on malls, soft on Radiohead.

Also: Oxford Valley Mall isn’t so bad. Has this person ever been to Neshaminy? While it does have Café Riviera, I can assure you the Oxford Valley Mall is much, much nicer.

A grim future for the all-American mall [Inquirer]

See?

Check out the comments on this Phillyburbs.com article. See? SEE? I don’t really know what it says about the people on the Internet from this area, but they sure do bitch and moan on every single article ever with rants about black people (and also the poor and jobless, and related groups).

I mean, I hate the world as much as anybody else, but I don’t spend all my free time complaining about… hmm, nevermind. Just go laugh at the ridiculously out-of-place comments. In case you’re wondering his article is about increased SEPTA ridership, and somehow leads to:

“SEPTA gets me to the half way house in Levittown on time”, stated a “crack head” who just visited with her Parole Officer in Philadelphia. It’s great to know that SEPTA provides free services for some who are disabled from drugs.

With all the half way homes in Bensalem, Bristol, Bristol Township and Falls Township, SEPTA gives violators of the law a place to live and sell drugs. Heck, the police can’t confiscate a bus or a train to sell it at an auction.

Go SEPTA, come and a take a ride with us!

You see, we shouldn’t have SEPTA anymore because some people use it to transport drugs. The mind reels.

Internet Comments, Summarized

Damn: Two highway police officers shot in North Philadelphia near Broad and Diamond. One is in critical condition; the gunman is dead.

Yeah. So that’s not fun. But there’s a lesson here as well: Let’s take a look at the first three comments on the Action News story:

This is pretty much the only three kinds of comments on news stories nowadays: Not-so-subtly racist ones (comment 1), oddly naive responses to previous racist ones (comment 2) and absolute nonsensical ones complaining that soap operas — in this case, One Life to Live and/or All My Children — were pre-empted for a few minutes (comment 3).

Reader Joe writes: “The article says it happened at 1:45, so the story probably went up around 2. The first comment is at 2:06. I think commenter 3 was watching TV and his program was interrupted — so he went online with the specific intention of complaining about the show being bumped.” He also notes that commenter 3 refers to a double-police shooting as a “slow news day.” Man, who needs to be shot to impress that person? “How dare they interrupt Days of Our Lives to tell me the Pope was shot!”

Update: One of the officers has died.

2 officers shot in North Philadelphia [6 ABC]

Citizens Flee Philly For Philly.com

Excellent front page, Philly.com. This is sure to attract a ton of awesome Philly hate quotes. Let’s pick one at random. No, wait. Let’s pick the first fucking comment.

Philly is filled with ignorant Democrat sheep who continue voting for the same party while the city gets worse and worse. Out of control black racism, as a white guy I’m scared to walk around at night because of high % of black racists (yes I know not all blacks are racist!!).

This guy’s username is, naturally, “utleyrules.”

Phila.’s population shrinking, though region’s is growing [Inquirer]

Philly.com Continues Baiting Its Readers

Philly.com’s current previous front is devoted to Karen Heller’s column on cheesesteaks. Heller’s column is mostly a recap of the recent hilarious Internet drama-style cheesesteak war in City Council, but veers off at the end into a discussion about why the cheesesteak is annoying. Heller proposes the city’s sandwich be a “roast pork Italian with aged provolone and broccoli rabe.” (Hmm. A bit wordy for my taste, though I do appreciate any sort of attack on cheesesteaks, the most overdone Philly thing besides Rocky.)

There isn’t any new Alycia Lane or Kidd Chris news, so Philly.com plastered this on the front page. And now there are over 100 comments. And they’re pretty typical of the website with the world’s stupidest readers; my favorite is, “Next person who tries to defend this woman will find me outside of their residence/place of business w/ a tire iron and a determination to ‘keep it real.’”

We’re coming up on even slower news days — both later this week and in the news-dry month of August. John Carroll and I came up with some future front-page topics for Philly.com, which you can read below. These are sure to attract a ton of comments.

More »

This New Daily News Eagles Blog Is Going To Have The Best Comments Ever

Reid Banner and Lurie flat out lie to the people, much like Osama and Hiller did. They all make it sound like they have the best of intentions, but, in the end, they say what you want to hear until they get what they want(money or vote), and then go on doing what they have done their whole life.

This is a bit unusual [Eagletarian]

N.J. Spared From Its Drivers, Briefly

People who needed to get a driver’s license this morning in New Jersey today were SOL, as the state’s driver’s license system was down for almost five hours for no apparent reason.

This little glitch is nicely explained in the comments of the Star-Ledger’s blog:

This is a prime example why you do NOT want the government running the health care industry. Time for my surgery today — “opps, the computers are down, come back tomorrow”, she said with a think foreign accent from behind a inch of bullet proof glass.

Opps indeed.

State resumes issuing drivers licenses after computer glitch [The Star-Ledger]
N.J. Driver’s Licenses Back In Gear [AP/CBS 3]

Ron Paul Has ‘Em Right Where He Wants

Although his website says there are now only two contenders left in the presidential race, it appears noted Internet meme Ron Paul is dropping out of the presidential race.

Despite already saying he was dropping out of the race last month, In a message to his “supporters” last night Paul essentially conceded he wasn’t going to win the presidency in a YouTube video.

Paul most likely decided to drop out not because John McCain has mathematically clinched the nomination, but because his supporters do not, in a sense, “exist.” If you’ve been following this blog for the past few months, you may have known I have been the subject of death threats, complaints to my bosses (asking me to be fired) and other forms of awesome Internet hatred. These all pretty much came from Ron Paul supporters. But after a spam attack took down the website, I posted a link to this Onion story about Paul. It got zero comments.

One doesn’t need to be a gynecologist to realize the truth: The new spam filters are catching all the Ron Paul supporters (correctly) as bots designed to post spam. At this point, I’m kind of confused, wondering if Ron Paul himself actually exists. Anyway, even though he’s dropped out, he most certainly has a shot at winning the convention after his supporting cast of mind-controlling robots turn all the superdelegates into Ron Paul supporters. At the Democratic convention. Ohh, what a story that will be!

Another Day, Another Ron Paul Post

Ron Paul — the silver standard in leadership — is quite popular on the Internet. We all know this. And if you write something mean about Ron Paul, people get really upset in the comments section of your blog. They are affectionately known as “Paultards.” Some of them get legitimately upset about this title.

RJ White runs a blog called The City Desk, which is described on the sidebar as “fictional urbanism.” A post about Ron Paul being uninvited by “Watson University” was spotted by a million Technorati Paul supporters and comments like these were left:

• “Yes I agree, your mother raised a failure…. in you.”
• “I definitely won’t recommend Watson U to my son.”
• “Well, you’ve clearly demonstrated your economic ignorance as well as your poor journalism. Here’s a challenge for you. Let’s see if you can even explain what the gold standard is, what the benefits of it could be, and why it so clearly to you is a joke.”

I do believe Ron Paul has a lot of support in the group that likes to be online 24/7, and the support of a decent amount of people in some places. That being said, if a lot of weird Ron Paul commenters were some sort of fake Internet stupids prank by some group, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Ex-Candidate Ron Paul Dis-invited [The City Desk]

Internet Comments Are A Wasteland

On the Morning Call forums — in the comments for this story — there is this plea for sanity in online comments:

Heh, good luck. My advice is to just roll with it and celebrate gay sex jokes and ridiculous conspiracy theories. George Bush did 9/11 to cover up his affair with Dick Cheney!