Tuesday, January 13, 2004

- Marcus-Marcus 1:43:16 PM    comment []

If the media were a peasant village, they would all be descending on Howard Dean's house with torches and pitch forks by now. Jayson Blair Can Catch a Breather for a Little While In another blow to the confidence American people feel in the press, it turns out that star USA Today foreign correspondent Jack Kelley has made up at least some of his stories, prompting his exit from the paper and a massive internal investigation. Before we decide that this means we can only trust news stories we find wheat-pasted to highway underpasses, though, we should keep in mind that compared to the standard of much of the world's press, what Kelley did isn't even unethical: America still has a pretty responsible press corps. I say that even with the knowledge that Fox News exists. The Retail Store Equivalent of the Death Star An internal audit now under court seal apparently warned Wal-Mart executives 3 years ago that the company was responsible for massive violations of child labor laws and state regulations concerning break time and meals. From the depths of their underground lair, lawyers for the company insist that their own audit is meaningless, and reflects only that employees don't properly understand the timeclock procedure. Shop at Costco. The Nail That Sticks Up Gets Hammered Down Wow, how about that: the Treasury Department has launched an investigation into whether Paul O'Neill broke the law by allowing 60 Minutes to videotape a piece of paper with the words "Top Secret" stamped on it. Boy, that sure is a quicker turnaround than in the Valerie Plame affair, isn't it? Say, you don't think the fact that O'Neill has been so publicly critical of Bush has anything to do with this, do you? You cynical bastards! Secret Illegal Government to Remain Secret, Illegal The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from civil rights groups seeking access to basic data about hundreds (thousands?) of people "detained" after 9/11. The court, in a decision that will surely rank with such brilliant past rulings as Plessy vs. Ferguson, Dred Scott, and Korematsu as supreme demonstrations of judicial wisdom, agreed with the government's contention that terrorist groups can derive significant advantages from the release of information about arrestees, even if the only info released is names. This is a big victory for the Bush administration and others who would like to put you in jail forever for no reason. By the Numbers The 100th U.S. soldier to die in the Afghan war was killed in a car accident in Kabul Monday. That's 100 out of a military force of 9,000. 16 of those soldiers were killed before the collapse of the Taliban government; 84 have been killed since then. 40 people have been killed since the "Loya Jirga" ratified the country's "constitution" on Jan. 4. No one has produced an accurate count of civilian dead. - Consider Arms 11:32:22 AM    comment []

Pay Back The Debt We Got You Into, And While You're At It, Give Us The Location Of The WMDs We Supplied You With Relic of the Regan administration, James Baker III, is currently assigned the task of reducing Iraq's debt. He also gave crucial support during Bush Senior's term for continuing a billion dollar loan program to Saddam Hussein's government that accounts for most of the Iraqi debt to the US. The Army War College Gives Bush An Honorary B.S. Degree A new report by the Army War College slams the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, calling the Iraqi war "unnecessary" and the rest of the terror war "unrealistic." "The global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly . . . its parameters should be readjusted," professor Jeffrey Record writes. Currently, he adds, the anti-terrorism campaign "is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security." This Is How It Starts As soon as next month according to the Washington Post, the Bush administration is expected to begin setting up databases on all air passengers to be used to Color-code each air traveler according to their potential "threat level." Not a single airline agreed to turn over passenger data voluntarily. Red level passengers would be barred from flying, yellow passengers would need extra security screening, and green would mean only a standard level of security. It is still unclear as to what particular data would constitute a "yellow" or "red" threat level, but past actions of the TSA show that working with the Green Party could be enough to keep you grounded as part of the Red Level Party. Quixotic Context-Check If the $87 billion used for the war in Iraq was spent on windmills to generate pollution-free electricity, it would generate more than a quarter of the energy needed in the US. And Hinduism Is The Second Cousin To Power-Yoga For Abs While in Paris promoting his latest movie "The Last Samurai" Tom Cruise told reporters that "Buddhism is the grandfather of scientology." Um, no. The grandfather of Scientology was actually a mediocre science-fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard. And the Buddha never taught about bad races of space aliens. -The Sikh Geek 11:30:41 AM    comment []

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