Western Civilization in Flames

Hilariously Awful

Just wanted to preserve a pair of stories for posterity. First, from The Huffington Post, which got it from TMZ, a picture of that freak Nadya Suleman, the woman who had six kids she couldn't support and decided to get in vitro fertilization to have 8 more.



Sadly, she lived.

Then there is this breaking news of our degeneracy from Xinhua, who must just be laughing themselves silly (being as they are an official news agency of Communist China), a story about a 13 year old british boy who's now a father!

How wonderful!

Even creepier, crushing poverty and hopelessness has left him looking perpetually 8 years old and with the most soulless eyes outside of a prison psychward.

Take a gander:






Read the story too, it's heartbreaking, assuming you aren't already dead inside like me.

Oh well.

(Note on image use: I chose to post these images to blogger because this post needs to preserve a record of the decline of our civilization for future digital archaeologists, and newsie sites move/lose these things all the time. I'm providing citations/links to the original sources, so I think I'm on the side of the angels here. If by 'angels' you mean 'devils who laugh uproariously at the suffering of man')

War on Cursing and Other Randomess

Also, 'Cuss' Isn't a Word, You Ignorant Half-Wits

Curses!
So there's a town in California that really, really wants to feel my wrath, assuming I ever get any.

What the @$%#? This community on the edge of Los Angeles has become a cuss-free zone.

So if you're headed to South Pasadena this week, be sure to turn down the volume on that Snoop Dogg CD, and, if the little old lady from Pasadena cuts you off in traffic, don't even think about flipping her the bird.

Not that police will slap cuffs on you and haul your sorry, er, butt off to jail in light of the proclamation passed Wednesday by the City Council. But you could be shamed into better behavior by the unsettling glares of residents who take their reputation for civility seriously.

Define 'better'. Is it better to use the non-word 'cuss' than to curse, an integral part of the English language since before there WAS a proper English language?

What kind of numbskull would think that this intrusion, meaningless as it is, of government into private speech is a good idea? What sort of slope-foreheaded nitwit would waste public time and money with this tripe? What kind of inbred, demi-human, chromosomally deficient mental defective?

Oh, this one.

"That's one of the purposes of this," Mayor Michael Cacciotti said of his city's proclamation designating the first week of March as No Cussing Week. "It provides us a reminder to be more civil, to elevate the level of discourse."

The proclamation will be in effect until Friday, and then the first week of every March hereafter.

Ahh, public officials.

Sometimes they make you long for a brutal autocracy, just to teach people the value of liberty.

Speaking of people who need time to learn, we have a whole slew of these whackos. The leader in South Pasadena, in particular, should pay more attention in school.

South Pasadena, a tranquil city of tree-shaded cottages at the base of a mountain range eight miles north of downtown Los Angeles, isn't the first to try to rein in potty mouths. Earlier this year, the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, Mo., proposed banning swearing in bars. Last year, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons called for an industrywide ban on racially and sexually charged epithets.

But what's different about the latest push to stop saying in public the words that Jane Fonda and Diane Keaton recently discovered we still can't say on television is that it was proposed by a 14-year-old boy.

"My mom and dad always taught me good morals, good values, and not cussing was one of them," said McKay Hatch, the founder of South Pasadena High School's No Cussing Club, during a recent break between study hall and tennis practice.

"I've cussed before, I'm not gonna lie to you," Hatch quickly added. "But I try not to cuss any more."

I'm not gonna lie to you, kid. You're a goddamned retard.

He was in junior high school when he became fed up with all the blue language around him.

He understood why his friends use foul language: "They just want to fit in like everybody else and they don't know how. They figure if they cuss maybe it's an easy way to do that."

But it wasn't for him.

"I finally told my friends, `I don't cuss.' And I said, `If you want to hang out with me, you don't cuss.'"

It took a couple of years, but enough friends finally came around that Hatch formed a 50-member club, handed out fliers and called the group's first meeting, held June 1.

Nine months later, the No Cussing Club has a Web site, claims a membership of 10,000 and boasts chapters in several states and countries. Hatch considers his greatest achievement, though, to be getting his hometown of 25,000 to become a cuss-free zone.

Cacciotti, the mayor, isn't surprised that South Pasadena started the movement. He noted that the city broke off from its much bigger neighbor 120 years ago when residents unhappy with the saloon trade in downtown Pasadena voted 85-25 to go their own way.

This is how temperance movements start, folks. Some kid with no friends starts a movement for other kids with no friends and no lives and the next thing you know, the Mob's running Chicago because the rest of us aren't legally allowed to have a good time.

For his part, Hatch hopes his No Cussing Club will lead to cuss-free zones in other cities. He believes it could be a quality-of-life issue, and that there may be less violence if people behave better.

"You have to start with the little things," he said.

Yep. Prohibition typically brings about a reduction in violence. That's why prohibiting alcohol lead to the Golden Age, and the War on Drugs brought about the earthly nirvana we see today.

Oh, wait a second.

FUCK NO!

Source: Raw Story

Oh God, Here We Go
So the governmental body that pays out damages to people injured by vaccines has cut a check to one girl's family, after a vaccine apparently triggered a pre-existing metabolic condition and ruined her brain.

Autism anti-vaccine fanatics start raving in 3, 2, 1...

Government health officials have conceded that childhood vaccines worsened a rare, underlying disorder that ultimately led to autism-like symptoms in a Georgia girl, and that she should be paid from a federal vaccine-injury fund.

Medical and legal experts say the narrow wording and circumstances probably make the case an exception — not a precedent for thousands of other pending claims.

The government "has not conceded that vaccines cause autism," said Linda Renzi, the lawyer representing federal officials, who have consistently maintained that childhood shots are safe.

Oh, it doesn't matter what the FACTS are, Renzi. They'll say you did anyway.

Studies repeatedly have discounted any link between thimerosal and autism, but legal challenges continue. The issue even cropped up in the presidential campaign, with Republican John McCain asserting on Friday that "there's strong evidence" autism is connected to the preservative.

The girl has a disorder involving her mitochondria, the energy factories of cells. The disorder — which can be present at birth from an inherited gene or acquired later in life — impairs cells' ability to use nutrients, and often causes problems in brain functioning. It can lead to delays in walking and talking.

Federal officials say the law bars them from discussing the case or releasing documents without the family's permission. However, The Associated Press obtained a copy of the concession by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials.

According to the document, five vaccines the girl received on one day in 2000 aggravated her mitochondrial condition, predisposing her to metabolic problems that manifested as worsening brain function "with features of autism spectrum disorder." In the 1990s, the definition of autism was expanded to take in a group of milder, related conditions, which are known as autism spectrum disorders.

So the girl had some crippling condition with her mitochondria, and vaccines that are harmless to healthy people triggered them to malfunction.

Tragic. But that doesn't make the vaccines the cause of autism unless all autistic kids have this exceedingly rare condition, and even then, they're not really the cause, any more than sugar causes diabetic comas; rather, it TRIGGERS a malfunctioning system that's already in place.

The Health Resources and Services Administration, which is in charge of the fund, said: "HRSA has maintained and continues to maintain the position that vaccines do not cause autism."

A Portuguese study suggested that 7 percent of autistic children might also have the mitochondrial disorder, versus one in 5,000 people — or 0.02 percent — in the general population, said Dr. Marvin Natowicz, a Cleveland Clinic geneticist.

So what this really says is that, maybe, 7% of autistic kids aren't really autistic; they have a mitochondiral disorder. And perhaps, MAYBE, vaccines contribute to that disorder worsening.

Maybe.

The other 93%? Completely unrelated.

This is why disease definitions getting overly broad can be such a nuisance.

Reported cases of autism have been rising in the U.S., even after thimerosal was removed from most childhood vaccines. However, some experts believe the rise is due to an expansion of the definition of autism and related conditions, and a desire to diagnose children so they qualify for special services and aid.

Enough said.

Source: Raw Story

And With Strange Aeons, Even Death May Die
This story's been around a lot the last week, but for posterity:

BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that "all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish."

It added: "Offenders will be severely punished."

The really sad thing is, this officially ends the old legal riddle, 'What is the only crime for which there is no punishment?'. Until now, suicide worked as the answer.

But thanks to a small town in France, there's an exception.

Source: Yahoo News

Eat Circuitry
Nom nom.

Death of English Culture
Yes, that greatest symbol of England is under attack.

No, not the Queen.

According to the British Beer and Pubs Association, 27 pubs a week closed in 2007 – seven times faster than the previous year and 14 times faster than 2005. This means that four pubs a day are closing.

The figures have been released a week before The Budget. The Government has run out of money, and the pub industry is anxious that the Government does not put up beer taxes. "Beer sales in pubs – the backbone of the trade – are now at their lowest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s," says the BBPA. "

IT CANNOT BE!

Apparently white wine and health consciousness are doing what the Gerrys could not.

Pubs without the room to provide an attractive outside areas for smokers, and those that are not big on food have faced particular difficulties. The move towards spirits and wine has hit the beery pub. Research shows that there has been a marked trend in the rise of "pre-loading", where drinkers, young adults mostly, buy booze from a shop and down it at home before groggily wandering off to a pub or bar, thereby spending less money on binge drinking.

But perhaps the clincher is that we seem to be drinking less overall, not just in pubs but everywhere from the park bench to the House of Commons. Although the Office for National Statistics cannot be sure that people are being truthful about how much they say they drink, it thinks alcohol consumption peaked in 2000 and has fallen every year since. According to the BBPA, average consumption is down 15 per cent on 2000.

What a sad, sad state of affairs.

What is the Government doing?

With heavy drinking placing a burden on the police and hospitals, there is no early prospect of a "save our pubs" campaign from Downing Street.

Curse you, Governmental Inaction!

It's time to promote heavy beer drinking once more!

Source: The Independent

Duhhh

A message sent to all Defense Department bases and installations around the country late last week told officials to not allow the popular mapping Web site from taking panoramic views inside the facilities.

Michael Kucharek, spokesman for U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the decision was made after crews were allowed access to at least one base. He said military officials were concerned that allowing the 360-degree, street-level video could provide sensitive information to potential adversaries and endanger base personnel.

His comments came just a few days after published reports suggested that protesters used Google Earth to help plot their access to the roof of the Parliament building in London.

Yeah. You guys didn't see this coming?

Source: Raw Story

No Heat, No Justice
The hiliarious tale of what happens when getting design accolades for a building matters more than anything else.

Thomas Mayne’s new George H.W. Bush Federal Building now looms over midtown San Francisco. While people have sharply divergent reactions to its unique exterior design -- I happen to like it -- the verdict on the structure’s function as a office space for federal employees is nearly unanimous: it is a disaster.

Not that architectural critics care. Bedazzled by unusual design features and its focus on energy conservation, reviews of Mayne’s latest work seem to ignore whether it fulfills its functional role as a federal office building.

Based on what I have been told, it clearly does not.

The first fact about the building that may cause surprise is its lack of air conditioning or heat. According to Mayne, “a bike rack and air conditioning get you the same point. I’d much rather see BTU and CO2 requirements and let the professional community solve the problem.”

I apparently lack sufficient understanding of green technology, as it does not seem that a bike rack would “get you to the same point” in terms of keeping workers cool. In the real world on the 15th floor of the Federal Building, workers seek to relieve the heat by opening windows, which not only sends papers flying, but, depending on their proximity to the opening, makes creating a stable temperature for all workers near impossible.

When I spoke with a Labor Department worker at the building (who noted that she is encountering the type of bad work conditions that her agency is supposed to enforce against), she confirmed what might have been an urban legend: that some employees must use umbrellas to keep the sun out of their cubicles.

The lack of internal climate controls has left some workers too cold and others too hot. A happy medium has proved elusive. And while the managers’ offices do have heat and air conditioning -- a two-tiered approach fitting in a building named for Bush -- the “green” design apparently has messed with the effectiveness of these systems, leaving these top staff as physically uncomfortable as the line workers.

So you see, they knew it would suck. They just thought that the peons could in turn suck it up.

Riiiiight. Only managers need to have a comfortable work environment!

According to my source, architect Mayne has stated that federal office workers do not get enough exercise. To address this, he installed elevators in the building that only stop at every third floor. This requires employees to walk up or down one or two flights of metal stairs.

Persons with physical disabilities who cannot use stairs can use a separate elevator that stops at every floor. The foreseeable result is that employees seeking to avoid stairs use the disabled access elevator, leaving this car crammed with people and making the ride to the top extremely slow.

I am told that when the freight elevator is out of service, deliveries must use the disabled access elevator. It seems only a matter of time until a disabled worker sues the General Services Administration for providing inadequate disabled elevator access in the building.

Yes, that's right. He intentionally broke the elevators. To force people to use the stairs.

Instead of course, they use the elevator for the handicapped. Screwing them over royally.

I'm not sure why this idiot thinks that people should be getting their daily exercise in suits and ties in the stairwells at work anyway. That's hardly ideal clothing or timing.

Source: Beyond Chron

Waaaahmbulance!
Poor little China feels bullied by all those non-violent Tibetan Buddhists. Again.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top official in Tibet on Friday accused the Himalayan region's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of seeking to sabotage the Beijing Olympics.


The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Communist rule, told Britain's ITV network in January that during the Games Tibet supporters should protest peacefully in China against Beijing's rule.

...

Zhang's lieutenant, Qiangba Puncog, the top government official in Tibet, said the activities of the Dalai Lama "clique were the main factors of instability in Tibet."

"They will not succeed. We are fully prepared and have full confidence. We will definitely ensure the Olympics and Olympic-related events in Tibet proceed smoothly," Qiangba Puncog said, apparently referring to the Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay that is due to scale Mount Everest.

...

Critics say China continues to repress Tibetans' religious aspirations, especially their veneration for the Dalai Lama, who won Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Periodic rioting by monks has been brutally crushed.

Also, a neologism, or odd translation, out of China:

"The Beijing Olympics is the focus of world attention and the people are exalted ... but even a grand gathering like this, he is engaging in sabotage and threatening to cause trouble," Zhang Qingli, Communist Party boss of Tibet, said without elaborating.

"How can this not be called engaging in splittism?" Zhang told a news conference on the sidelines of parliament when asked by Reuters why China will not believe the Dalai Lama does not advocate independence and what he needs to do to convince China.

Easy. That's not a word. It's hard to be accused of something that doesn't exist.

Do you mean 'agitation'? 'Disruption'? 'Anarchy'? 'Chaos'? 'Insurgency'? Or perhaps the grand bugaboo of our times, 'terrorism'?

Source: Raw Story

Pirate Day
Speaking of the Beijing Olympics, it turns out that they stole content for their website from a Flash game designer.

Flash game theft is nothing new. I’m actually quite used to having my games taken without my permission, and without receiving compensation. The difference here is that this is not some crappy no-name portal. This is The Olympics.

I’d also like to point out that this is not just a clone of my game. They didn’t see my game and set out to make a similar game. They actually stole my game. I’ll say it again:
The Olympics stole my game.
They downloaded the swf file from my site, decompiled it, swapped out the little guy for the Fuwa characters, took my name off of it and republished it as their own. I can tell this is what happened because they are still using some of my original art from Snow Day (the clouds and the ice cube are exactly the same). I also took the liberty of decompiling their game and actually found it still contains the sound files from Snow Day, even though they aren’t being used in the Olympic version. It even still has the splash sound effect from The Lake (I used the engine from The Lake to make Snow Day and must have forgot to delete this file).

...

The Beijing Olympic Committee has also not been lenient with copyright infringers. Back in October the director of the State Intellectual Property Office, Tian Lipu, pledged to prevent Olympic piracy. Indeed, the Olympic web site even has a page set up where you can report infringement of intellectual property rights. Evidently, they are slightly less concerned when The Olympics infringes on the rights of others.

Well, duh. It's the Chinese government after all.

On the other hand, they HATE to be embarassed, especially in relation to the Olympics. They'll throw someone under the bus for sure if this story catches on. Maybe even execute them.

Of course, it may or may not be someone who was even involved.

Source: The Pencil Farm

Take-Down
So, under the odious DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), you can mail out so-called 'Takedown Notices' to anyone you suspect of infringing your copyright, and they have to take down the offending content or they're in trouble.

Of course, these notices are very, very frequently abused to harass critics and stifle Fair Use of copywritten materials.

Sometimes though, it just gets bizarre.

It's cyber war! Lawyers representing the Air Force's elite electronic warriors have sent YouTube a DMCA takedown notice demanding the removal of the 30-second spot the Air Force created to promote its nascent Cyber Command. We'd uploaded the video to share with THREAT LEVEL readers.

How quickly alliances shift in the murky new world of Cyberarmageddon. It was just last month that the Air Force sent us the ad, and thanked THREAT LEVEL for agreeing to run it. The spot shows earnest airmen deftly thwarting a hacker attack on the Pentagon using Minority Report-type touch-and-drag screens. I'm certain hundreds, if not thousands, of geeks have already enlisted as a result of our patriotic shilling for the Air Force.

Now, though, it seems we're just another cyber enemy to be squashed like so many Chinese DDoSers or unsanctioned blogs. Was it something I said?

But Air Force marketing chief Keith Lebling, who sent us the spot in the first place, says any intellectual property claim should have gone through his office, and none did.

U.S. Government works aren't even copyrightable. YouTube doesn't know that -- presumably because it has no lawyers -- and it's taken down the video. A spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the Google-owned service has no choice but to comply with DMCA notices. That's not quite right, though. YouTube has no legal obligation to remove non-infringing content.

Oops.

The right hand literally does not know what the left is doing.

Update: YouTube has sent along the DMCA notice (.pdf). It's signed by Meredith Pikser, an attorney with international law firm Reed Smith LLP, on behalf of the Air Force.

Kurt Opsahl at EFF notes that, notwithstanding Pikster's sworn statement, the Air Force website promoting the video contains this language in its privacy policy: "Information presented on the Air Force Recruiting website is considered public information and may be distributed or copied."

So, there you have it. Bizarrely, an ad that the Air Force sent out to media outlets, thanked them for putting up on Youtube and discussing, has now been the subject of an anti-infringement campaign, unauthorized, that it isn't even legally eligible for, and even if it had been, they already waived any rights to it in writing on their website.

Yeah. Wow.

Source: Wired (Threat Level)

The War on Stupid

Posts from the Front Lines

Grope Your Children Well
Some teachers with grab-hands.

HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. - A class of third-grade students got a lesson in civil liberties when an envelope containing $5 disappeared from their teacher's desk.

The students at Martin Luther King Elementary in Hopkinsville were asked to remove their shoes and socks during a search. Some were patted down and had their pockets checked.

Some parents were angered by the Feb. 15 searches, which did not turn up the missing money at the western Kentucky school.

Of course it didn't. Even if one of them had the money, how are you going to find an envelope, or just a five dollar bill, with a pat-down search? THEY'RE KIND OF THIN WHEN YOU LOOK AT THEM, MORONS.

(The paper/cottony paper products, not the children.)

This did take place in Kentucky. I guess that helps to explain things.

Source: AZ Central

Dissection
An El Reg military analysis article on the likelihood of robot drone insurgent weaponry. Basically: very expensive, unlikely to work as well as the stuff they do today, and beyond their capability.

Of course, you could read the longer article, but that would use up precious brain energy that can be saved for reality tv.

Source: The Register

Shocking Loss to Forces of Dumb
On Sunday, the style section of the Washington Post lobbed a stupid Weapon of Mass Destruction directly into our camps by publishing an op-ed by one Charlotte Allen, who has refined stupid to such a level that she must qualify as a Mad Scientist of Moron.

"Women 'Falling for Obama,' " the story's headline read. Elsewhere around the country, women were falling for the presidential candidate literally. Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich has counted five separate instances in which women fainted at Obama rallies since last September. And I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen.

I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women "are only children of a larger growth," wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?

In your case, I think 'children' is a bit generous. How about 'stunted twits of a larger growth'?

Alternately, the growth you're part of could be a tumor. On my brain.

Then there's Clinton's nearly all-female staff, chosen for loyalty rather than, say, brains or political savvy. Clinton finally fired her daytime-soap-watching, self-styled "Latina queena" campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, known for burning through campaign money and for her open contempt for the "white boys" in the Clinton camp. But stupidly, she did it just in time to alienate the Hispanic voters she now desperately needs to win in Texas or Ohio to have any shot at the Democratic nomination.

Mark Penn is many things. A moron. A clumsy, inept pollster. The sloppiest dresser alive.

But, err, not a woman. He's the head of her campaign, her chief strategist. And male.

Her long-time political fixer, brought in to try and salvage Penn's abortive campaign? A very well connected man named Harold Ickes.

Also, err, not a woman.

What great research!

Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.

So let me get this straight. Women have slightly over 10% more accidents per mile than men. But men have 200% more fatal accidents than women.

And this makes WOMEN the worse drivers? Come again? Could we have that in ENGLISH please?

So I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.

Please, follow your own advice. Stop writing, go home, and start making doilies. I promise to never miss you.

Source: The Washington Post

One Two Punch
Not content with merely asserting that women are stupid, the WaPo published a second op-ed in the same section, on how women are shallow and fickle.

Seriously.

And there we have one of the most puzzling conundrums of the 2008 Democratic contests. Black voters of all socioeconomic classes are voting for the black candidate. Men are voting for the male candidate regardless of race or class. But even though this is also a year with the first major female presidential candidate, women are split every way they can be. They're the only voting bloc not voting their bloc.

For the Clinton campaign, this is devastating. A year ago, chief strategist Mark Penn proclaimed that the double-X factor was going to catapult his candidate all the way to the White House. Instead, the women's vote has fragmented. The only conclusion: American women still aren't strategic enough to form a meaningful political movement directed at taking power. Will they ever be?

People fail to vote according to her predictions. This, obviously, implies a flaw with the people.

Riiight.

So many feminists' turn to solidarity with their own class is a surprise. For decades, they've been loudly proclaiming their loyalty to working-class women and criticizing reporters for writing chiefly about elite women who resemble themselves. Before the election got hot, Ellen Bravo, longtime director of 9 to 5, a national association of working women, asserted that working mothers "with more opportunities" must "take a stand with those who have fewer." I've been the target of some of the more pointed criticism myself, for writing a book about educated women quitting their jobs for motherhood. Nation writer Liza Featherstone "guessed" that my life did not look "very much like that of a Starbucks barista."

This is the part where she asserts that all feminists are wealthy.

Female too, for that matter.

Yeeesh what a tool.

Maybe Obama is the best candidate, and these highly educated women, with their greater political savvy, have recognized his value. A less charitable explanation is that college-educated women don't need the social safety net as much as their less fortunate sisters do, so Clinton's early stand on family leave or her slightly more generous health-care plan aren't as important to them.

Yes, her ever-so-slightly-earlier endorsement of one position and ever-so-slightly broader position on health care must surely be the only explanation.

There can be no other choice! The 'elite' women are gyno-traitors!

Or maybe it has to do with what Pollitt expressed in a recent blog posting: "On foreign policy Obama seems more enlightened, as in less bellicose." Educated women focusing more on foreign policy fits with what we know about women and politics. Although at every class level, women know less than men do about politics in general, they know more as their education level goes up. So it may be that foreign policy issues are more salient to women with a college degree.

Or it could just be that women with more education (and more money) relate on a subconscious level to the young and handsome Barack and Michelle Obama, with their white-porticoed mansion in one of the cooler Chicago neighborhoods and her Jimmy Choo shoes.

Hur, women are dumber than men. Nevermind that men vote for Republicans, the party OF Idiots, far more often than women.

Also, dur, Obama is wealthy. Clinton meanwhile lives a hard-scrabble life on the streets, fighting with the rats for her dinner.

Err, no wait. She's also a wealthy Senator. Huh.

When faced with a "movement," resistance is costly. And for weeks now, online and on cable news channels, almost anyone who expresses criticism of Obama or support for Clinton has elicited a firestorm of disapproval. Obama's scores of defenders -- "Obamabots," they're called -- immediately recite the anti-Clinton litany: Billary, Monica Lewinsky, Hillary's Iraq war vote, identity politics. Well-regarded activists such as Planned Parenthood's Feldt or successful writers such as Tina Fey who support Clinton are excoriated as worthless pieces of nonsense. After Steinem wrote an op-ed on Clinton's behalf in the New York Times, the New Republic published an article titled "Gloria Steinem's Awful Op Ed." Not wrong. Not misguided. But "awful."

Call me cynical, but I read a lot of political news.

A lot.

And I've never heard this "Obamabot" term.

I would remember hearing it. Retarded crap sticks in my brain.

So who precisely calls them that?

Also, GASP, people who support a candidate may have to endure slight criticism from others! "Awful"!

Has this rhetorical firestorm had an effect on the political decisions of college-educated white women?

Seriously, 'firestorm'? A firestorm is when napalm turns your village into cinders and schoolkids running around with their skin falling off.

"Awful" is not a firestorm.

Whatever the explanation, the Clinton campaign could now be stuttering to its close, and Mark Penn has been criticized for everything from short-sightedness about the primary schedule to overspending on sandwich platters. But those failures pale beside the biggest one of all: not recognizing the fickleness of the female voter.

If they're so fickle, why are these trends so hard to overcome? Surely Clinton can just bribe them with chocolates, right?

God what a twit this woman is.

Source: Again, The Washington Post.

Reyes

The House Intelligence Committee chairman expects a compromise soon on renewal of an eavesdropping law that could provide legal protections for telecommunications companies as President Bush has insisted.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, in a television interview broadcast Sunday, did not specifically say whether the House proposal would mirror the Senate's version. The Senate measure provides retroactive legal immunity to the companies that helped the government wiretap U.S. computer and phone lines after the Sept. 11 attacks without clearance from a secret court.

Hey Reyes.

Go fuck yourself.

Source: Raw Story

Gun Incident Near Bush Ranch
Now now, don't get your hopes up. Cheney only shoots *really* old men in the face.

CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) — A Danish journalist came this close to getting shot Saturday by an elderly woman packing a pistol near President Bush's ranch here in what was easily the strangest incident I've ever witnessed covering the White House.

It all started so innocently as I sat with a group of Danish journalists just down the street from Bush's ranch during a visit by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The two leaders were having lunch on the ranch, so I was waiting at a nearby historic one-room schoolhouse with White House staff to interview Rasmussen after the meal. Then the prime minister was going to do a brief press conference with the Danish press corps.

Terkel Svensson, a writer for the Danish News Agency, could not get wireless Internet access at the schoolhouse to file a story. But Svensson could get his cell phone working so he called his editor in
Copenhagen and started wandering across a quiet country road as he chatted away.

"I was just so occupied dictating my story that I didn't really see where I went," Svensson told me later. "I was just walking and talking."

What Svensson didn't realize was that he had stopped walking a couple hundred feet away, on the front lawn of an elderly woman. An elderly woman who looked through her window and didn't like that a strange man was standing outside her house. An elderly woman who had, um, a gun.

Texas, ladies and gentlemen.

That's it. That's the joke. Texas.

They don't need parody.

Source: CNN.com

Marriage
No, not in general. One in particular.

An Iranian court has ordered a man to buy his wife 124,000 roses after she filed a complaint against her "stingy" husband to claim her dowry, a press report said on Monday.

"After 10 years of marriage Hengameh had decided to claim her dowry of 124,000 red roses to punish her very stingy husband," the Etemad newspaper said.

"Shortly after marriage I realised that Shahin was very cheap. He even refused to pay for my coffee if we went to a cafe or restaurant," said the woman, identified only by her first name Hengameh.

But Shahin told the court he could only afford five roses a day and complained that it was "her billionaire friends who had put such ideas in her head."

The court has seized his apartment worth 600 million rials (64,000 dollars) until he has bought her the entire 124,000 roses. A long stemmed red rose costs 20,000 rials (about two dollars) in Tehran.

Under Iranian law, a woman can claim her dowry or mahr, which is a gift pledged by the man at the time of marriage, at any time during married life or when getting a divorce.

So she's demanded, and a court has agreed, that her husband buy her 248,000 dollars worth of roses.

Right. She's a moron, he's one for marrying her, the courts are full of morons, and.... argh. I can't stand it anymore!!

Source: Raw Story

Idealists
Isn't it fun when idealists crash on the cold, hard, merciless rocks of reality?

A British peace activist aiming to walk to India to prove a money-free world is possible has turned back at the first hurdle, after getting to France and finding he needed to speak French.

Writing on his blog Friday, 28-year-old Mark Boyle said he and two friends accompanying him ran into problems the minute they arrived in the French port of Calais.

"Not only did no one... speak the language, they also see us as just a bunch of freeloading backpackers, which is the complete opposite of what the pilgrimage is really about," he wrote.

"That really scared us, and given that we now were pretty much out of food, hadn't slept in days and were really cold, we had to reassess the whole situation.

"We spoke to a few people who were willing to talk and they said that France would not go for this unless we could speak fluent French, which none of us could."

...

"He has not given up his project," she told AFP. "He is currently walking in the southeast of England. He will tour around the UK, learn French and leave again for Porbandar."

So in a few years we'll see a repeat when he manages to mooch his way to the German border, only to discover he doesn't know the 43 syllable word for 'Help, I am a mentally deficient individual in need of food or a damn good kicking!'

Fortunately, they're German. They'll give him one anyway. It's their charitable nature.

Source: Raw Story

The Name Game
So Greece and Macedonia are having a spat.

Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis said today that his country will block Macedonia’s entrance into the EU and NATO if the country does not change its name. Macedonia expects an invite to NATO at the organization's summit in April and could possibly start EU negotiations this fall.

So what’s wrong with “Macedonia”? According to Greece, the name belongs to its northern region, an area that covers what was once ancient Macedonia back in the glory days of Alexander the Great (and they were glorious). Greece claims that use of “Republic of Macedonia,” as Macedonia calls itself in its constitution, not only violates Greece's historic cultural claim to the name, but also suggests territorial ambitions. Instead, Greece, and the U.N. by default, have continued to call Macedonia by the outdated name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” ever since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia seventeen years ago. It’s an awfully long name for a tiny country, but you can call it FYROM for short.

Greece's historical claim to the name? What? They only have an area called Macedonia because the Macedonians beat them silly!

It's just like how, apparently, there are a rather large number of towns in England with French names. BECAUSE THE FRENCH CONQUERED ENGLAND REPEATEDLY.

Honestly, Greece, don't be such prats. Nobody's looking to conquer your backward, imporverished country.

Macedonia, your Southern neighbors are being jerks. Pick a longer form of the name. Like "The Better-than-Greece-by-a-Long-Shot Republic of Macedonia.

Source: Reuters

Math Major He's Not
So Mark Halperin, the same jackass who recently said that McCain should go racist on Obama, now says that Clinton has to stay in the race because she'd be too damn old to run again in 2016, assuming Obama got two full terms.

"I think people are underestimating how badly she'd like to continue and not give up," said Halperin, who edits Time's online tip sheet The Page. "This is probably her one chance to become the Democratic nominee, given everything else going on in the world, and in her actuarial table, and Obama's chances of winning, and I think if she does not win this time she probably realizes that is it."

...

At 68, Clinton would still be younger than presumed Republican nominee John McCain is now. The 71-year-old Arizona senator has also faced questions about his age.

Clinton also would be younger in 2016 than Golda Meir was when she became Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, at age 71. Ronald Reagan, the oldest US president in history, celebrated his 70th birthday just after he was sworn in in 1981.

Combine that with the fact that McCain is already in shaky health, and that women live longer than men, and you can see why Halperin is in the running for Dumbest Man Alive (Not Named Bush Edition)

Source: Raw Story

Wiki-Love
So, let's say, and why not, that you're Jimbo Wales, one of the big muckity-mucks at Wikipedia. You've been trying for years to earn an image of legitimacy for the online news-o-rama, and constantly fighting off accusations of bias, incestuous editing, and general hamfisted amatuerism.

Surely the best course of action is to then use the site to dump your girlfriend.

On one level, it's an encyclopedia. On another, it's The Comedy of Errors.

Over the weekend, in response to a story from Valleywag, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales used the world's most popular online encyclopedia as a means of dumping his girlfriend - onetime Fox News pundit Rachel Marsden.

Marsden responded by sending Valleywag an IM conversation that indicates Wales ordered changes to her Wikipedia biography in an effort to further his, shall we say, personal agenda.

In discussing his sex life on the "free encyclopedia anyone can edit," Wales says that his sex life is not something anyone should be discussing. "Over the last few days, a few gossip websites have decided that my personal life is somehow of interest to people and, against my wishes, are publicizing details about a brief relationship I had with Rachel Marsden," explains the man who calls himself Wikipedia's Spiritual Leader. "While, typically, this would not warrant a response, because my role with Wikipedia is being dragged into it, I felt the need to set the record straight on a couple of issues."

...

But according to the IM conversation Marsden shared with Valleywag, Wales was well aware that in ordering changes to her bio, he was breaking one of Wikipedia's cardinal rules. Wikipedia bills itself as an encyclopedia with a "neutral point of view," and contributors are told not to edit articles where they have a conflict of interest.

During the IM chat, Wales asks Marsden to approve several edits to her bio, and he says that he forwarded these edits to his OTRS team. Wales also explains that in emailing the team, he told them he would be meeting Marsden to "give her advice about her website" and that it would not be appropriate for him "to directly edit the article with a conflict of interest."

Then he tells Marsden that he wasn't exactly honest with his OTRS team: "The truth is of course a much worse conflict of interest than that :) but that will do."

So, slutty ladies out there, if you want a positive Wikipedia bio, just sleep with Wales. He'll handle the rest.

lolz.

Source: The Register (your primo source for Wikipedia dirt)

Comic Strip

Eight British soldiers have been forced to return home from Norway after they reportedly stripped naked and urinated on each other in a bar during an Arctic training exercise, the defence ministry confirmed Tuesday.

"It's being taken extremely seriously," a spokesman for the defence ministry in London said.

Only an Englishman could say that, in this situation, with a straight face.

"They were drunk and there was a problem in the bar, but we are quite used to dealing with British soldiers like this," Harstad police spokesman Gair Pederson was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying.

Oooh, burn.

Source: Raw Story

One Toke Over the Line
Some marijuana legalization advocates wrote to Senator Tom Harkin, asking him why medical pot should still be illegal.

His rambling, incoherent response may go down in legend.

It's 2008, and that teenager drug marijuana is still raping our children. But why does that have to be illegal? According to The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), some person wrote to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin "asking him to justify why medicinal cannabis is still illegal" after the American College of Physicians recommended it shouldn't be. It merited a hilarious reply from Harkin, which noted many of pot's notorious doom scenarios: "the small child whose parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix." Harkin knows the routine: smoke up, eat gyro, play Legend of Zelda, sell children to pirates for more pot, repeat.

Seriously. He said that. Amongst a lot of other nonsense

Marijuana is often the drug singled out for legalization. However, marijuana is not the recreational drug that many believe it to be. In a study completed by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of marijuana related emergencies has nearly reached the level of cocaine related emergencies. As this statistic indicates, marijuana use often has fatal consequences.

Similarly, the Knitting Awareness Network, of which I am the founder, editor, President and Chairman, reports that the number of knitting emergencies in my apartment has nearly reached the number of Cthulhu related emergencies.

Accusations of a conflict of interest, or that I have a very good reason to over promote this issue as a fundraising tool, are clearly vicious lies from the Pro-Knit agenda.

The victims of the drug war are many - the small child whose parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix; the police officer's family which must now learn to cope with the loss of their loved one as a result of a violent drug bust gone awry. These are the people I think of when I say that drugs pose a significant threat to the security of this nation.

See, it's the pot that causes the damage. Not the war.

Similarly, all those civilian casualties in Iraq? Iraqis' fault. They should have known we'd carpet bomb them and become fireproof.

Source: Wonkette

Consumer News

Marketplace Powers, Activate!

Tampering
So it seems that Greenpeace has taken to tampering with Kleenex in order to get their message out.

The battle over the environment has found a new front: the inside of a Kleenex box.

"Wiping away ancient forests," warned a note found inside a box bought recently at a drug store in New York by a stuffy-nosed reporter. "Here's a little secret that Kimberly-Clark, the largest tissue maker in the world and parent company of Kleenex, does not want you to know."

I'm sorry, but this is too far. Tampering with consumer goods is low-grade terrorism. What's next, slipping white powders into Kleenex boxes?

Yeesh.

Source: The Washington Post

Gunz
So it turns out the same gun dealer sold equipment to both of the recent campus whacko shootings.

The online gun dealer who sold a weapon to the Virginia Tech shooter said it was an unnerving coincidence that he also sold handgun accessories to the man who killed five students at Northern Illinois University.



Eric Thompson said his Web site, http://www.topglock.com, sold two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster to Steven Kazmierczak on Feb. 4, just 10 days before the 27-year-old opened fire in a classroom and killed five before committing suicide.

...

"I'm still blown away by the coincidences," Thompson said Friday. "I'm shaking. I can't believe somebody would order from us again and do this."

...

Thompson said he checked his sales records after the name of the shooter was made public Friday. The records show $105.62 in items were shipped to an apartment in Champaign and signed for by someone other than Kazmierczak.

Ok, now, I won't jump on the blame bandwagon for the Virginia Tech shooting, because that was VIRGINIA's fault. Their law said that you could pass a background check despite having been recently committed against your will as a threat to other people.

This guy had no way to know that the V-Tech shooter was a whacko. He's not to blame there.

Here though, I kinda wonder.. I mean, you're shipping high-capacity magazines on short notice, directly to private addresses?

You don't, you know, wonder what they might be used for?

Source: Raw Story

Commercial Real Estate
So it seems that in a rush to keep their abnormal rate of construction going, the industry shifted from residential to commercial properties as the banking fraud scandal started to gear up.

One problem: building far more commercial space than people need will not, in fact, induce them to fill it.

So now huge amounts of square footage goes vacant, and the construction industry is starting to falter on commercial real estate as well. Charming.

Source: Sacramento Real Estate Statistics

Largest Beef Recall In U.S. History
So one of those charming huge volume meatpackers/processors has issued a recall for the largest amount of beef in U.S. history. The reason? They were grinding up cows so sick and diseased they could no longer stand. Which is a no-no after the Mad Cow disease thing.

The amount of beef -- 143 million pounds -- is roughly enough for two hamburgers for each man, woman and child in the United States.

The largest U.S. meat recall before Sunday came in 1999, when about 35 million pounds of product possibly contaminated with listeria were ordered off shelves. USDA officials said that was Class I recall, involving a known risk to human health.

Sunday's action was a Class II recall, under which authorities say there is little risk of illness.

Raymond said cattle that had lost the ability to walk since passing pre-processing inspections were slaughtered without an inspector having examined them for chronic illness -- a practice he said violated federal regulations and had been going on for at least two years.

Federal regulations are aimed at preventing the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE -- the scientific name for "mad cow" disease.

It's important to keep downed cattle out of the food supply because they also may pose a higher risk of contamination from E. coli or salmonella because the animals tend to wallow in feces and have weaker immune systems, according to AP.

One big problem: the USDA waited so long, or fell asleep at the switch so long, that most of the bad beef has already been eaten or sold.

About 37 million pounds of the meat went to school lunch programs and other federal nutrition programs since October 2006, said Ron Vogel, of the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.

The recall dates back to February 1, 2006, and Raymond said "the great majority" of the meat has probably been eaten already. USDA officials have begun tracing the products covered by the recall, he said.

"A lot of this is fresh, raw product and with ground beef, etcetera, that has a very short shelf life and refrigerator life," he said.

Joy! Thank you, incompetent regulators!

So who do we have to thank for uncovering this despicable fraud and criminal activity on behalf of Big Agribusiness? PETA?

Wrong.

In January, the Humane Society of the United States accused Hallmark/Westland of abusing "downed" cattle, releasing video that showed workers kicking cows, jabbing them near their eyes, ramming them with a forklift and shooting high-intensity water up their noses in an effort to force them to their feet for slaughter.

Federal inspectors halted operations at the plant earlier this month after finding "clear violations" of USDA regulations.

California prosecutors on Friday announced animal cruelty charges against two former employees of the plant.

I was just talking to a friend last week about how we needed a better animal-health/"rights" lobby, and that the Humane Society would be my organizational pick to head it.

Nice to see they were way ahead of me on that one.

Source: CNN.com

Buzz Off
In case you haven't heard (no pun intended), there's an age-discriminate sonic weapon that's being sold in the UK to drive kids away from the front of stores with a painful/annoying sound that older people are deaf to, due to aging in the inner ear.

The UK government looks to be stepping up to ban the device, on the grounds that, surprise, blasting loud, painful sounds at random crowds of people legally congregating on public streets might be illegal! Even if you don't like them hanging around in front of your house/store!

The creators of a pioneering device that uses high-frequency sound to stop teenagers congregating outside shops, schools and railway stations reacted angrily today to news that the government-appointed Children's Commissioner wants to see it banned.

The £500 Mosquito device has been installed at some 3,500 locations across the country since it first went on sale in January 2006. It emits an irritating, high-pitched sound that can only be heard by children and young people up into their early twenties, forcing them to move on.

But Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England appointed to represent the views of the country’s 11 million children, has set up a campaign – called Buzz Off – that is calling for the Mosquito to be banned on grounds that it infringes the rights of young people.

“These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving,” Sir Al told the BBC. “The use of measures such as these are simply demonising children and young people, creating a dangerous and widening divide between the young and the old.”

He added: "This device is a quick fix. It's not tackling the root of the problem and it's indiscriminate."

The campaign has won the support of human rights groups including Liberty, whose director, Shami Chakrabarti, described it as a "sonic weapon directed against children and young people".

What is this world coming to, when you can't fire weapons randomly into crowds of innocent people?

Source: Times Online

Our Friends and Neighbors

Continuing the Proud Tradition of US Foreign Policy Blunders

Russia and Putin (Who Has a Good Soul!)
So the Russians are hopping mad at El Presidente for his harebrained scheme to build a system of useless missile interceptors to use against so-called Rogue States, like North Korea or Iran, which, in his rather wild imagination, have the potential to assemble functional ICBM systems out of string and posterboard and launch them at the United States.

Of course, the idea that countries which can barely fashion a working fission device on the ground under ideal conditions (or in Iran's case, might be able to DREAM of such success, in twenty years...) could suddenly put one on top of a missile capable of soaring around the globe and hitting a target in the continental United States is patently stupid... and the fact that we could instantly and brutally wipe anyone who did such a sub-moronic thing off the face of the earth with a searing nuclear hellstorm would seem, to me, to be a more effective deterrent against an attack by such magical pony riding super-terrorist-states than a missle interceptor system that has never worked, not once, in any real world conditions.

Sigh.

For reasons having entirely to do with national pride, I imagine, and not the 'threat' our pitiful system poses (none), the Russians are mad. Maybe it's the fact that we pulled out of the treaty banning such systems unilaterally. Maybe it's the fact that we're building the interceptors on their doorstep, in countries they formerly controlled in the Warsaw Pact.

For whatever reason, poking them with a stick is a really bad idea... so, of course, that's what Bush is doing, trying to arrange to deploy them not just on the border of the old USSR... but inside it!

However Putin warned that if Ukraine followed the lead of ex-Soviet-bloc countries in eastern Europe and hosted missile-defense facilities "to neutralize our nuclear potential" that Russia would be forced to respond.

"It is terrible even to think that in response to this ... Russia cannot theoretically exclude aiming our offensive-missile systems at Ukraine," Putin said.

Moscow sees the expansion of NATO, as well as the deployment of a US anti-missile shield in central Europe, as threats to Russian security.

Putin last year threatened to aim missiles at European cities if elements of the anti-missile shield were deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Ahh, El Presidente... is there anything you can't turn into the threat of World War III?

Source: Raw Story

Saudi Arabia, Bush Loves Your Oil So
Ahh, Saudi Arabia. Rich with oil, though that's running low... even richer in depravity and corruption.

Home of Osama Bin Laden and the treasury for Al Qaeda, run in a chaotic and murderous fashion by an authoritarian oligarchy, barely clinging to power with the force of U.S. arms... a nightmarish theocracy, where it seems the Dark Ages are hip again. Who says history isn't cyclical?

A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.



The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the kingdom's religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih, and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of "absurd charges that have no basis in law."

Falih's case underscores shortcomings in Saudi Arabia's Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.

This must also be ok, after all -- Bush has had King Abdullah over for long romantic walks! Complete with hand-holding!

Surely that's worth a few murdered women, right?

Source: Raw Story

England
England has decided they're tired of their image, I guess, because they're trying to be the 21st century Texas, with an official ruling that tasers are ok to use on kids -- despite research showing that tasers cause heart attacks in kids.

Yeah.

It is the decision not to ban their use against minors that is likely to raise serious concerns.

Home Office Police Minister Tony McNulty said medical assessments had confirmed the risk of death or serious injury from Tasers was "low".

But he failed to mention Government advisers had also warned of a potential risk to children.

The Defence Scientific Advisory Council medical committee told the Home Office that not enough was known about the health risks of using the weapons against children.

Honestly, Texas, you should be offended. These guys are stealing your schtick! It's not much, and it's certainly not funny, but it really is all you've got.

The committee, which is made up of independent scientists and doctors, said that limited research suggested there was a risk children could suffer "a serious cardiac event".


It recommended that officers should be "particularly vigilant" for any Taser-induced adverse response and said guidance should be amended to "identify children and adults of small stature" as being at potentially greater risk from the cardiac effects of Tasers.

The Government scientists were also asked to test whether the weapons could cause a miscarriage if used on a pregnant woman.

While not saying whether police would be allowed to Taser an expectant mother, the Home Office said the DSAC committee had "specifically asked" for computer simulations to be carried out to analyse the effect on "a pregnant female".

Amnesty International claims Tasers have been responsible for 220 deaths in America since 2001. Many cities and police forces there have banned their use against minors

Just stop it, you limey punks! Leave Texas alone!

Source: The Daily Mail

Iraq and Afghanistan
For our puppet government edition, we move to Iraq and Afghanistan, where our puppet regimes are allowing health conditions to continue to deteriorate, and massive plagues to spread unchecked.

At least 275 children in southern Iraq have been infected with a disfiguring skin disease, an outbreak some health officials are blaming on the war's devastating effect on the public health system.



According to the United Nations — citing reports from Iraq's southern province of Qadissiyah — 275 children have been struck with leishmaniasis, which is spread by sand flies. Most have a form that causes skin sores, but others have a type that strikes internal organs and can be fatal.

...

Though the disease was first identified in Iraq more than a century ago, outbreaks were rare during Saddam Hussein's regime. But since the conflict began, experts say the destroyed health system has opened the way for diseases lurking in the environment.

"The war has exacerbated the problems in Iraq that are one or two decades old," said Claire Hajaj, a spokeswoman for UNICEF's Iraq office. "Their health system has been undermined by violence, insecurity and sabotage."

...

Leishmaniasis also surged in Afghanistan after decades of civil war and the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Though data about the historical number of cases are sketchy, experts say Afghanistan now has about 200,000 cases per year.

In Iraq, WHO officials estimate there are nearly 3,000 leishmaniasis cases per year. But in neighboring Jordan, there are only about 300 cases annually.

Man I just can't see why they didn't greet us as liberators. Don't they know that liberty means war, famine, pestilence and death?

Oh wait, that's the Apocalypse.

Source: Raw Story/AP News

More Iraq
Before the sanctions after the first Gulf War, Iraq had one of the best healthcare systems in the developing world. It was the crown jewel of Saddam Hussein's corrupt and murderous government, one of the ways in which he bought off his population. Nevertheless, it was real and it worked.

The sanctions, enthusiastically continued under Clinton, are often said to have resulted in 500,000 deaths over a decade. Oh, for the days when that seemed like a high number of deaths for Iraq...

So they've gone through a lot under our guidance. From world-class health care to cholera outbreaks, a plague of skin lesions, and now, apparently, there's not even money to get paralyzed kids wheelchairs.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Mothers cradle children in their arms. Fathers smile softly at the helpless bodies they hold. Other parents are bent over from the weight of their teenage kids whose legs fall limp, almost touching the ground. In the absence of basic medical equipment, these parents do this every day.

An Iraqi boy gives a thumbs up after receiving his wheelchair. Brad Blauser, center, created the program.

Khaled is a father of three. On this day, his young daughter, Mariam, is getting fitted for her new wheelchair. Her arms and legs are painfully thin, little more than skin and bone. She's 7 years old, but looks barely half that. She and both her siblings, a sister and brother, suffer from varying degrees of polio. None of them can walk.

Asked how he and his family cope, Khaled chokes up, fighting back tears.

"I am sick of life -- what can I say to you?" he says after a long pause.

One man, Brad Blauser, has vowed to try to make life a little easier for these families by organizing the distribution of wheelchairs, donated and paid for by his charity, Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids. He first came to Iraq in 2004 as a civilian contractor. Struck by the abject chaos surrounding him and seeing helpless children scooting along the ground, he pledged to find a way to help.

Remind me again, what are we spending all that money on?

Enlisting the help of generous supporters and an Iraqi humanitarian group, "Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids" was born in August of 2005. Thirty days later, its first 31 chairs were delivered. To date, more than 250 Iraqi families have received the wheelchairs.

Blauser has partnered with a nonprofit group called Reach Out and Care Wheels, which sells him the chairs at a manufacturing price of about $300.

The chairs are made by prisoners at the South Dakota State Penitentiary and ultimately delivered in Iraq by the U.S. military.

"Getting these prisoners involved, it just means the world to them," said Andrew Babcock, the executive director of Reach Out and Care Wheels. "Even the prisoners, I've been there and visited, and they're so excited. They come up with different design ideas and ways to make things better for the kids. They want to know where the chairs are going and what kids we're helping."

Blauser said it's unbelievable to be there when the chairs are delivered.

"The most affecting thing about this whole wheelchairs for children is when the parents realize the gift that is being given to their children and they reach out to hug you." he said. "The tears are running from their eyes and they say, 'We never thought that you could do this.' "

Blauser is helped on the Iraqi missions by the civil affairs division of the U.S. military, which helps organize the safe transport of the families to the distribution point and adjustment of the wheelchairs to fit each child.

He said it gives "the troops something when they go home, something good to remember where they know they have contributed, they know they have done a good thing."

Army Sgt. 1st Class Jason Jurack agrees. "It brings a smile to your face. It really gives a different image to the Army as a whole -- helping people out, putting a smile on local nationals' faces, little kids that need our help."

It's a sentiment that is echoed by Samira Al-Ali, the head of the Iraqi group that finds the children in need. On this day, she tells the soldiers she hopes that this humanitarian act will give them a different image of Iraq, not one of a gun and war, she says. Her words are simple but effective.

"I wish the world would see with their own eyes the children of Iraq and help the children of Iraq, because the children of Iraq have been deprived of everything," she said. "Even a normal child has been deprived of their childhood; a disabled child and their family is dealing with so much more."

Look, it's a good thing this guy's trying to do, there's no doubt about it. But, CNN, it might be helpful to note who's actually RESPONSIBLE for all this mess that some guy with his prison made wheelchairs is trying to clean up a few at a time.

Also, I know the article says the prisoners are happy being used as chattal labor to make wheelchairs, and I'm sure some of them are happier to do that than, say, laundry, but the fact remains, we're using convict labor at home to put a handful of wheelchairs in the hands of children abroad, whose lives we ruined and whose healthcare system we destroyed.

Wow. Go us.

Source: CNN.com

Political Update

Politicking

Olympics: No Free Speech Zone
So the problems with holding the Olympics in China continue to roll on in. This time? Free speech for athletes has to go out the window, lest they make noise about Tibet.

Or the people that China is forcing out of their homes to make room for the Olympic complex... nah, what am I saying? Athletes never complain about the damage caused by stadiums. Still, here we go:

LONDON -- British Olympic athletes must sign a new clause in their contracts prohibiting politically sensitive remarks or gestures during the Beijing Games.

"The reality is, given the level of political scrutiny of the world's media on these games and the way China will handle them, the BOA felt it was sensible and proper to flag that rule to our athletes," British Olympic Association communications director Graham Mewson said Sunday.

The International Olympic Committee already has a rule that states that "no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas."

...


Mewson said the clause will not bar British athletes from "honestly answering" questions they are asked during interviews at the Aug. 8-24 games about "politically sensitive issues."

"An athlete who decides to lift up his team shirt to show a 'Free Tibet' one below it, that's very different," Mewson said.

Hey, Mewsom. The t-shirt thing's already banned. What is this supposed to solve?

Oh that's right. They can only speak up if they're directly questioned. And I'm sure the press corps in China will be all about irritating their government during the games... riiiight.

Source: The Washington Post

Insurgency Update
The insurgents are now targeting the gas pipelines that fuel what little power generation Iraq still has with car bombs.

Yeah. No electricity, no potable water, no sewage, cholera outbreaks.. the standard of living was probably higher under the Mongols.

Source: Reuters

The Sons of Iraq!
In other insurgency news, we needed a catchier propaganda term for the Sunni militias that we arm now to act as vigilante police (who used to shoot at us, before they remembered how much they hate their Shiite rivals).

They used to be Concerned Local Citizens... now?

They're the Sons of Iraq.

Wow. Does Bush think he's Lawrence of Arabia or something?

Source: Your New Reality

Putin's Russia: Crazier By the Minute
So the Russkies are buzzing Japanese and US military forces in the Pacific with their bombers.

Yeah, they're not getting out of hand AT ALL.

A pair of Russian TU-95 Bear bombers overflew a US aircraft carrier in the western Pacific at an altitude of 2,000 feet (660 meters) over the weekend, prompting US fighter jets to scramble, a US defense official said Monday.

Four F-18 fighters jets intercepted the Russian bombers Saturday morning, but not before they had overflown the USS Nimitz, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Japanese F-15 fighters had earlier scrambled to intercept another pair of Bear bombers, and escorted them out of the area, said a US military official who asked not to be identified.

Yeesh.

Source: Raw Story

Spies Like Us
So apparently the US has been aggressively using the Peace Corps and our embassies in South America to undermine any government to the left of Mussolini... and Bolivia is not happy about it.

Sigh. Can we get any more amatuerish, please? Make any more boneheaded foreign policy mistakes?

Source: Firedoglake

Sure We Can!
By, say, starting an arms race in space!

China and Russia challenged the United States at a disarmament debate Tuesday by formally presenting a plan to ban weapons in space — a proposal that Washington has called a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament that "weapons deployment in space by one state" — a reference to the U.S. — could cause a "new spiral in the arms race both in space and on Earth."

Lavrov's call came with an implied threat, noting that the Soviet Union caught up with the U.S. after World War II by developing its own nuclear weapons.

"Let us not forget that the nuclear arms race was started with a view to preserving a monopoly of this type of weapon," Lavrov said. "But this monopoly was to last only four years."

So now the Russkies are saying that they'll develop satellite killers if we don't stop with this posturing nonsense.

Greaaaaaaat. It's not like our economy and military heavily rely on satellites or anything.

Oh wait. Crap.

Source: Raw Story