Subtle as a flying mallet, Karl:

Government skeptical of threat against NFL stadiums

A Web site is claiming that seven National Football League gridiron stadiums will be attacked with radiological dirty bombs this weekend, but the U.S. government on Wednesday expressed doubts about the threat.

The threat, posted Oct. 12, was part of an ongoing Internet conversation titled "New Attack on America Be Afraid." It mentioned NFL stadiums in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland and Cleveland, where games are scheduled to be held this weekend.

The Homeland Security Department alerted authorities and stadium owners in those cities, as well as the NFL, of the Web message but said the threat was being viewed "with strong skepticism." ...

Here are the results of Google and Yahoo searches for this thread. The thread itself is down, but a Yahoo cache version of the relevant page is here. The scary prediction is posted by someone named "javness," who seems to have joined the discussion board on October 12, presumably just to post this.

I guess trying to light a fire under white male couch potatoes in the run-up to November 7 wasn't even a full day's work for one of Rove's underlings.

(Just so I'm clear: The post is in an obscure corner of the Web, but the story linked above is at the International Herald Tribune site via AP, and the AP story is also at the Sports Illustrated site. Somebody spotted this and made sure the press knew about it, and now the story's mainstream news. Mission accomplished.)

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UPDATE: I don't even want to copy and paste javness's text for fear of winding up in Guantanamo, but here's a screen capture if you care (click to enlarge):



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UPDATE: If you want a slightly less paranoid reading of this situation, let me offer this: Maybe the post was the work of an ordinary citizen. (AP is reporting that a "young adult" in the Milwaukee area is being questioned about it.) But it sure became a huge news story at an awfully convenient time. How did that happen?

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UPDATE: A twenty-year-old's prank. Never mind.