A Whole Buncha Stuff

Okay, so I've been a tiny bit lax in my posting this past week. (My brother probably thinks I've been deported or something - I'm okay, Vern!)

Anyway, because it's been so long, I've got a ton of stuff to post. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep the chit-chat light so you can get the idea... Let's go to the phones!

In no particular order...

• The big news from today is that Dubai Ports World has given up its quest to take over several U.S. ports, after ongoing complaints from Congress. President Bush was relieved, not having to break his streak of "Longest Time in Office Without Having to Use His Magic Veto Pen". However, news has come to light that DP World are probably not worried due to their $50 million contract to maintain U.S. naval vessels in the Middle East. DP World has said they're going to divest to a U.S. company. Guess who it is?
  


• Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff is singin' like a bird! In a new article in Vanity Fair magazine, Abramoff mentions quite a few people by name - particularly George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Funny that none of these guys can remember ever meeting him. That's okay, though. Abramoff's got a whole bunch of pictures.


• Speaking of DeLay, Tuesday night was Democratic and Republican primary night in Texas. DeLay, who is currently under indictment for money laundering, managed to still gain the Repub nod in District 22. Clearly, the "moral majority" doesn't have a problem with electing an alleged felon calling the shots for them. On the downside, Ciro Rodriguez, whose campaign got a late, but much needed shot in the arm fron the netroots (amounting to close to $300,000 raised on various left wing blogs and other sites) was unable to beat incumbent Henry Cuellar in District 28, to receive the Dem nomination. It's a sad thing because Cuellar is about as much a Democrat as I am a Republican.


• If you're a fan and customer to internet porn sites owned by a company that is serviced (no pun intended) by iBill, an internet credit card billing company, you may be one of the 170,000 whose personal information has been sold to some spammer who is going tot ry to rip you off. It turns out someone stole all of those records, and is selling them on the black market to the highest bidders.


• Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), who in January swore he would stop taking meetings with lobbyists is, in fact, meeting with many of the same lobbyists, at the same time, on the same day as he did before. Another lie. What a surprise.


• A woman in San Diego named Linda Laroca was fired because she had an a bumper sticker on her car advertising Air America Radio on a local station. (KLSD 1360.) While meeting with her boss, Beverly Fath on a Saturday afternoon, Laroca met with her at a grocery store to give her some documents she needed. When Fath spotted the sticker, she called it "that Al Franken left wing radical radio station," according to the lawsuit Laroca has filed. Fath also added, "The country is on a high state of alert. For all I know, you could be al-Qaida."


• See if you can figure out this commercial. Am I the only one who thinks that Vernon Robinson is a bit of a dickweed?


• Discount department store giant, Wal-Mart, has decided to hit the net in an attempt to bring a little shine to its tarnished image. They're only hitting up right wing blogs, because they are the ones who have no problems with Wal-Mart's treatment of its employees.


• Donald Rumsfeld continued to deny that there's anything wrong going on in Iraq. In fact, he believes everything is hunky-dory. The only problem is, the people who are actually there aren't quite so optimistic. In a recent poll, 72& of the soldiers stationed in Iraq said that the U.S. should get out of there within the next year.


• I absolutely love The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert's "spinoff" from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The guy is a genius. (Or his writers are. It doesn't matter.) In particular, I really enjoy "The Word" - a piece he does pretty much every day, where he explains a phrase one way, while the graphics people tell the truth. Here's a recent (and incredibly funny) example.


• Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is helping the White House out by completely failing in his job and not investigating the voluminous intelligence issues he should be looking into.


• South Dakota has passed legislation that bans abortions in that state, except in cases where the mother's life may be in danger. Not a word about incest. State senator Bill Napoli did address what he considered a viable candidate who might have been raped: "A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life." Rather graphic, don't you think? And a bit on the excessive side, too.


• The president signed a renewal of the Patriot Act again. However, he had to accept a few measures that were put in it to keep him under control. (If that's at all possible.) The new Act allows people who receive a subpoena under FISA for medical, library and other records, to fight it in court. It also puts strict new guidelines into effect for the sale of over-the-counter cold and alergy medicines in order to cut production of methamphetamines. How this affects national security is beyond me, but I'm just a guy with a blog.


• And finally, Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and my personal favorite, Breakfast of Champions, gave a speech at Ohio State University a few days ago, speaking to a group of about 2,000 students about a number of things, including his thoughts on Bush ("I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president”), the Democratic party ("We have no Democratic Party...[s]o we have no representatives in Washington. Working people have no leverage whatsoever"), and his philosophy ("We are here on Earth to fart around"). Read the whole article and understand why it is that I love this man's work.
  

Anyway, that wraps it up for now. Tune in next time, when we'll show you how to create your own uranium enrichment program with just a few old metal tubes.

All the best,
Derek
(DCF)