Wipe Your Tears Away (News)

Blame Autovaughn for the lyrical title, if you like.

Harry Potter and the Search for More Money
So J.K. Rowling is now hinting that she might write another book in the Potter universe, though it wouldn't necessarily be about him.

I guess those new writing projects of hers aren't going so well, huh?

Source: The Daily Mail

Is There Anyplace Safe From These Annoying Fucktards?
So Ron Paul, endorsed by prominent US Nazis, fundraiser from Stormfront, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, he has the wacky supporters. True nutjobs.

His only real problem is that, outside of the ones who wear the armbands and pointy white hats, they're all internet people who never leave their homes. So where can he hold a rally?

World of Warcraft!

No, seriously. His supporters are going to have a march. In World of Warcraft.

Source: Raw Story

He Held His Breath Until Poor Kids Turned Blue
So I guess by stamping his feet and whining long enough, El Presidente forced the whimpering, useless tools that make up our Congress to send him the SCHIP bill that doesn't expand the program to cover additional poor kids.

What an ass.

Source: Raw Story

Out Damn Spot
So it seems that an hour after the Bhutto assassination, the government was already trying to wash away the evidence. Literally; they took a high pressure fire hose to the crime scene.

That's hardly suspicious at all.

Also, apparently, despite their claims that 'nobody asked', under Pakistani law autopsies are mandatory for criminal cases. So that turned out to be a rather transparent lie as well. The question is whether her family will exhume her at this point, I suppose.

Source: Raw Story

It Couldn't Be Another Corrupt Republican
So I think I've written about the very suspicious and obviously political prosecution of a guy named Siegelman, former governor of Alabama, who faces all sorts of bizarre legal hurdles and whose case is being absurdly manipulated by an unfriendly judge and a prosecution willing to free convicts so they can flee being witnesses in his appeal, and the like.

Turns out the guy he narrowly 'lost' to in the 2002 election (where apparently the victory was handed to the Republican when a few thousand votes 'suddenly' changed columns and the Republican secretary of state blocked a recount) is, err, corrupt. He's been caught taking illegal political contributions from corporations.

Republicans sure do project their sins on others, don't they?

Source: Raw Story

Protests Planned for Rose Parade
People are all upset that anti-Endless War activists and victims of China's, err, 'vigorous' approach to government are going to protest at the Rose Bowl. In particular, the Chinese Americans are upset by the huge float China has in the parade this year to promote the Olympics they're holding in lovely, smog-filled Beijing.

Oh Noes! Democracy might ruin our pretty flower parade!

Won't somebody think of the children?

Source: Raw Story

It's Long Past Time to Face Reality, Folks
Listen, Americans. Hamas may be a violent organization. But they're also the legitimate, fairly elected head of (half, anyway) the Palestinian state. They got where they are today in terms of popularity not so much by hating Israel (which in Palestinian politics is like going to Sunday church in American Presidential camapaigns), but by humanitarian outreach, things like feeding their starving people even as the Israeli government tries to bleed them out by denying fuel for hospital generators and the like.

So, yeah. It's time we dealt with this reality on the ground and stopped stamping our petulant feet over how not every election turns out the way we want.

Hence the good news to be found in a massive lawsuit against various Muslim charities being overturned. The suit operated on the grounds that, since an American was killed in Palestine, it must have been Hamas, and giving money to Hamas to feed starving people means you're in bed with the murder.

By that logic, when I pay my taxes, since the same body that collects those taxes pays Blackwater, I'm legally liable for the murder of Iraqi civilians.

Somebody sue me already.

(This is opposed to being MORALLY liable, of course)

Source: Raw Story

Fox-Hunting Continues; British Still Look Like Goits
So the fox-hunting people are all upset over not being able to use dogs to tear a fox into little bloody chunks anymore. Boo frickin hoo.

They consider the ban on siccing a pack of ravenous animals on a wild creature to be 'stupid' and 'prejudiced', and will continue to kill the foxes any legal way they can.

Geebus, what did the little fur coats ever do to these idiots?

Source: The Telegraph

By the way, Telegraph, nice job not having ONE opposing viewpoint in that article.

Comcast Sucks
So the same company that can't afford to get enough cable installers to actually make their appointments can afford to ink an agreement to pay their CEO's family five years of his salary if he dies on the job.

They literally put dead men ahead of customer service.

Lovely.

Source: Raw Story

Advertising Hijinks
So it seems McCain had an ad made a while back that attacks Romney for being a flip-flopper. Which he is. Said ad never aired, and the people who made it now work, ironicaly, for Romney. It has been conveniently leaked now, though.

Republicans are just odd.

Source: TPM EElection Central

Huge Sundry News Post

I'm going to get around to a big post about the Bhutto assassination, but the story over there seems to be changing by the hour, so there's not a lot of point. I had just finished my post on Afghanistan when she was killed and I saw the rumors floating down the newsie sites to that effect, but the same rumors came out a month ago at the last attempt on her life, so I just sort of shrugged and went ahead.

Oops. At any rate, have some regular news in the meantime.

Those Scientists are Real Good at Fightin', Tuggah!
So a couple of researchers at one of our Antarctic bases got drunk and into a brawl. One of them was hurt badly enough that he had to be flown to New Zealand for treatment with badly busted jaw.

Fellows, honestly, it might be a good idea to keep your tempers in check if the nearest hospital is on another continent. Just a hint.

Source: The Guardian

Uruguay Is Ahead of Us in Civil Rights
It's nice when South America joins the civilized world in making us look bad on gay rights. In this case, Uruguay has passed a national civil union law, which is a good first step.

Personally I think the government should be out of the idiot marriage business entirely, but if you're going to give tax breaks to one set of couples it's not fair to deny them to others.

Source: Page One Q

Huckabee Makes Some Hay
Bhutto's dead, so he thinks we have to clamp down the border against all those 'unusual' Pakistanis that must be headed here to assassinate OUR Pakistani politicians.

Which we have an abundance of.

This thinly veiled call for pointless racist profiling comes along with a statement about how much he respected the late politician for, well, being a woman and not a religious crazy.

Huckabee called Bhutto's death is a tragedy, but he suggested she had been a threat to Islamic fundamentalists. "An educated, sophisticated, strong, capable woman leader -- that does pose a threat to those who don't believe that women should be given that platform and that level of equality," Huckabee said.

Hmm, people who don't believe women should be given an equal platform in life... I wonder...

In August of 1998, Huckabee was one of 131 signatories to a full page USA Today Ad which declared: "I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention." What was in the family statement from the SBC? "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ

Wow. Pot, meet Kettle.

Sources: Radio Iowa (for the Huckabee haymaking)
The Daily Kos (for the woman-hating)

Cost of War in Iraq
This Firedoglake entry is a handy rundown of how your money is being spent, and how the death is being distributed. Short answer: 15 billion a month, and there's a handy geographical breakdown of the Lancet study showing the way we've killed 650k Iraqis in this war.

Fifteen billion per month. More dead in Iraq than died from our Civil War.

Great job, El Presidente!

Source: Firedoglake

Kucinich Mad Over Pizza Ad
His supporters are tired of him being made fun of for believing in UFOs, or refusing to say he doesn't.

Guys, seriously. I know he's got solid positions on most of the issues, but the man is a flake. Nobody's going to stop making fun of his flakiness.

Source: Plain Dealer Blog

Bush Cronies Everywhere
So there's a big kerfluffle at the Fish and Wildlife service because their top political appointee for a while was, err, sabotaging her agency's work in favor of big business. Since she got shitcanned for improperly influencing a decision to remove an animal from the Threatened species list (said animal happened to live on land she owned), they've had to reverse a ton of similarly tainted rulings, and the whole institution is in a humiliating state. Wildlife groups are now suing the administration to get records of just how corrupt she was and asesss the damage.

Aside from the all too typical Bush administration story here, you have a bit of life's unintentional humor.

"This is a lawsuit we've been forced to file to receive documents that we're entitled to that demonstrate the severity of Julie MacDonald's involvement in overturning endangered species and habitat decisions," said William Snape, the group's senior counsel. Snape filed the suit under the Freedom of Information Act.

When a guy named Snape says you're overdoing the villainy, you might want to listen.

Source: Raw Story

What a Great Venue
Beijing's legendary air pollution is still astoundingly bad, despite their draconian efforts to clear the air.

Beijingers were warned to stay indoors on Thursday as pollution levels across the capital hit the top of the scale, despite repeated assurances by the government that air quality was improving.

"This is as bad as it can get," a spokeswoman for the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau told AFP.

This isn't a fluke either, by any means.

Beijing's air quality is routinely rated among the worst in the world by international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, with rampant coal burning, regular dust storms and a growing number of cars cited as the main reasons.

Heckuva job, whoever made the call to hold the Olympics there, lol.

Source: Raw Story

You Don't Need Health Care If You're Old, You Just Need A Tar Pit To Jump In
New ruling says that once you're eligible for what's left of Medicare, your employer can reneg on your health benefits and leave you out in the cold.

What a wonderful country we live in.

Source: The New York Times

"Terrorist" Walks
So there was once a guy named David Hicks. Still is, if you want to get technical. The US's mercenary allies, the drug-dealing Northern Alliance, picked him up in Afghanistan. The military said he was aiding Al-Queda, and after a sham trial, 'proved' it. He was sentenced to a long term, but allowed to serve only 9 months of it, the last of which he could serve in his home country of Australia. He's about to go free.

You have to read between the lines on this one, but if you do, the real story is readily apparent.

Hicks became the first person convicted at a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II when he pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida.

The former Outback cowboy was captured in December 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, where he had been fighting with the Taliban. A month later, he was sent to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he spent more than five years without trial.

A U.S. military tribunal sentenced Hicks — a Muslim convert who has since renounced the faith — to seven years in prison, with all but nine months being suspended, after he confessed to aiding al-Qaida during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following Sept. 11, 2001.

Under a plea bargain, Hicks was allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence at Yatala prison in his hometown of Adelaide in South Australia state, but was ordered to remain silent about any alleged abuse he suffered while in custody.

So, here's how it goes. This man was picked up in Afghanistan by the NA at a time we offered bounties on anyone from Al-Queda. We didn't check those claims very carefully, or at all, because the more we caught, the better it looked on paper. We sent this guy around our world tour of torture sites and did some monstrously heinous things to him, things so bad that they're still terrified he'll talk. Having not actually done anything or been a terrorist, after they beat a confession out of the man and broke him, they sent him home, to live out the rest of his days as a shell of a human being.

This is life in the American Empire, folks. Don't turn your backs.

Source: Raw Story

Wall Street Weighs In On Writer's Strike
Bear Sterns, a large investment firm, has concluded that if the writers were given absolutely everything they want it would amount to less than 1% of the annual revenue of the major studios.

Basically, the big institutional investors are starting to get pissy about how badly the studios are handling this, and I imagine this is the first in a slew of leaks designed to pressure them to settle already, before the bottom falls out of the market.

Source: Firedoglake

Denturist: A Non-Dentist Who Makes Dentures
The things you learn reading about the appalling state of dental care in Kentucky and West Virginia.

A sickening article in some respects; in others, well... if you lose all your teeth because you do meth or chew tobacco, I feel less sympathetic.

Also, the evil bastard in me can't help but joke: People in Kentucky have teeth?

Source: The New York Times

Think About This When You See One of Those Annoying Whopper Commercials
In an article about the appalling and inhuman slavery that fuels our fresh fruit industry in the US, it's nice to know that some people will go the extra mile to be dicks. Burger King is fighting an effort to slightly increase the pay given to tomato pickers because it won't 'solve' the problem. No shit. But doing nothing is better? Meanwhile, Whole Foods has been getting their tasty yuppie tomatoes from some of the more notorious slaver operations.

Ahh, corporate greed. Is there nothing they won't do for a dollar?

Jimmy Carter has been doing his usual exemplary work, trying to help these poor people. He may have been a week chief executive, but honestly, he has to have been the best human being to serve in the White House in the last century.

Source: The Independent

Lit Majors Need Help
A short article about how I Am Legend is supposedly some kind of grand symbol for the War on Terror era.

Riiight. Or, alternately, and this is just a theory: it's a shitty mediocre action movie based on a mediocre action movie based on a Vincent Price scare-flick based on a mediocre Matheson story. Written almost a half century ago. Having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.

Source: NPR