Category: Grave

Yesterday, as Adobe Systems announced the acquisition of Macromedia, the primary reason for the merger of these onetime-rival multimedia software titans soon became clear: terrorism. Yes, terrorterrorterrorterroreconomyterror.
News reports clarified this stance:

“After 9/11, we both realized that being enemies didn’t make sense,” Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen said in a conference call on Monday, referring to his discussions with Macromedia’s then-CEO Rob Burgess. “We were no longer competing.”

And in other coverage of the merger/acqusition, Chizen continued with his moving paean to an American tragedy, but this one a bit more “economic” in nature:

He acknowledged that combining the companies will lead to some lost jobs, but would not provide details.
“There will be some areas of redundancies, and that’s where there will be some layoffs,” Chizen said. “It will be difficult to quantify that until we get in and look at the integration.”

A loss of lives, a loss of jobs…what’s the big deal? We’re all good people here. Working to overcome tyranny by making web-safe graphics. Annihilating the enemies of freedom by distributing American propaganda as Flash-based short films.
And your pink slips? Now available in the ever-popular PDF document format.

Via the Associated Press: “President Bush, lower left, sits in the Presidential Box with members of his family and guests at RFK for the home opener Washington Nationals and the Arizona Diamondbacks Thursday, April 14, 2005 in Washington. Also sitting with Bush are Sue Selig wife of Commissioner of Major League Baseball Bud Selig, Tony Tavares, President, Washington Nationals, center, first lady Laura Bush, lower right, and daughter Jenna Bush, top right, leaning her head on the shoulders of an unidentifiable male friend. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)”
EARLIER: Young Love, Republican Style

As French citizens prepare to vote in their May 29th referendum on whether or not to approve the European Union’s new constitutional charter, President Jacques Chirac took to the populace yesterday to stake his claim that it was imperative for the measure to pass. His driving point, effectively, being that for Europe to be unified and powerful (when translated from his native leftist French, this reads as “able to exist as a counterbalance to Bush’s United States of Imperialism”), it was vital for France to support this burgeoning European Union, lest one of its biggest players be seen as stepping away from the table, thereby leaving a weak and disconnected shell of a coalition in its wake.
So, if that doesn’t make sense, try this metaphor put forth by the French Interior Minister:

French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said Europe would end up being driven by a “tricycle” rather than a “hot rod” if the French vote the treaty down.
“With a ‘no’, there won’t be anything left in the garage… At best, there will be a tricycle,” de Villepin said. “With a ‘yes’, there will be a hot rod… It has to be admitted that it’s better to get around with that.”

The Renault sitting in my garage, by the way, has a meager 40 horsepower, for what it’s worth.

Donald Rumsfeld and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Tuesday, April 12, 2005. [via Reuters/NYT]

Via the Associated Press: “In this photo released by The White House, President Bush gives Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a tour of his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Monday, April 11, 2005. (AP Photo/The White House, Eric Draper)”
RELATED: Sharon Dismisses Bush on Settlement Growth, the Associated Press, April 12, 2004

From Maggie “Mo’ Money” Gallagher’s syndicated column, THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM, April 6, 2005, A.D.:

Pope John Paul the Great is not yet buried, but the divisions among American Catholics have already taken center stage on cable television: Will the next pope be Catholic?

Of course, JP II’s critics don’t put it that way. But the long-deferred hopes of this group (call them sexual liberals) — that the Catholic Church is about to abandon its ancient teachings on premarital sex, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and, above all, birth control — have burst out anew in the 24-hour coverage of the pope’s death.

Sexual liberalism has a lot of powerful things going for it in terms of attracting adherents: passion, for instance, the difficulty of self-restraint, the attractiveness of choice as the highest moral good. But sexual liberalism’s most powerful ally is the myth of progress. Sexual liberals, like Marxists of old, see themselves as the inevitable wave of the future. The Catholic Church is “out of step” with the future, they believe, and must eventually get in line with the poll numbers, or fade into irrelevance.

Ooooh, Marxists! Gay Marxists! Also, it’s cute how she jumps the gun and calls him Pope John Paul the Great. (Okay, bad word choice.)

Cracked: A car bombing near Abu Ghraib, March 30, 2005 (via Reuters).
Related: Fixing “Broken Windows”

Paging Mr. Eisenstein: The world mourns the the passing of the Pope and record high oil prices. (via Reuters Pictures)