Thursday, August 10th, 2006

Lamont Defeats Lieberman
The big news from Tuesday night and yesterday morning was that Lamont defeated Lieberman in the Connecticut primary. Alas, he did not beat him by enough to dissuade Lieberman from declaring himself an independent in the general election. And the silliness begins. Cheney et. al. say that this will be construed by terrorists as a weakening of American resolve and invitation for another 9/11. Others are saying this does not bode well, the democrats abandoning their beloved Joe-- which misses the point entirely, and is woefully inaccurate, since it's voters who make the decision in the primary, and leading democrats like Hillary Clinton have already announced their backing of Lamont now that he's won the primary. And that's as it should be. Hannity and Coulter say they support Lieberman, which is just stupid, not to mention hypocritical. I think all of the neocons are just nervous because the shockwaves from this election are spilling over into House races, and republicans are losing their grip on a majority.

Afterall, Lamont won because voters didn't like how close Lieberman was to Bush. The primary race for the Republican nomination in New York between Spencer and MacFarland has seen each trying to use Clinton-era GoP smear tactics against one another. MacFarland figured it was more important to talk about Spencer's extramarital affair, and Spencer's could only rebut that MacFarland is a has been and a woman. The gist of the midterm elections seems to me that partisan spinning aside, the people are going to vote for those who represent their will, who talk about issues, and who will make an effort to actual do something. We're tired of politicians turning DC into an extended episode of Jerry Springer.

Busted Pipes, Bring in the Reserves
British Petroleum announced that they'd been shutting down a big field in Alaska while they fix one of their pipes, which has been leaking and show evidence of extensive rusting damage. So, to defray the shortage, the US is going to release of our oil reserves. But that doesn't matter. Any time, every time there is a change in oil flow in this country, for any reason, Big Oil profits go up. Watch and see. When we have an oil boom, when we have a natural disaster. Gas prices went up when Katrina hit, when the tech market busted, when Bush was elected, when Tom jumped up and down on Oprah's couch. We live in a world of increasingly easy communication-- many of the very reasons to drive a car or a boat or a plane have been eliminated by cell phones, video teleconferencing, the internet, and just good old fashioned increased business efficiency. Are we driving more than before? Is it linked to population booms somehow? Then why do gas prices keep going up? Because they can. Because, like with our out-of-touch politicians, people will complain for a day, and then go back to their lattes, Nascar races, tabloids and iPods.

Israel to Increase Groundtroops
Man, I need to go hang out with some conspiracy theorists, some really super-intelligent whackos, because this stuff keeps getting better and better. On the same day that Lamont defeated Lieberman in Connecticut, Israel announced a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. They've agreed to pause for a few days, while the UN and the permanent members of the security council debate about it in air conditioned rooms several thousand miles way, but Israel is ready to go. There has to be a connection, right? Lamont wins, terrorists jump for joy since that's proof we want them to kill us (Right, Mr. Cheney?) and so Israel's actual literal war on terror greenlights itself. BP announces a busted pipe, McDonald's puts toy Hummers in Happy Meals, those latte-sippin' yuppies have ousted Lieberman, whats'a red-stater to think? That's right, it's time to wade in and nuke 'em all. Just nuke the whole damn region, turn it into a parking lot, and bring us the oil. Where's my damned tin foil hat?

The Nicotine Appeal
In Ohio a man on death row has had another appeal turned-down, and now his lawyers want another appeal-- they say the jurors where not given enough smoke-breaks, and so made a too-quick decision so they could get their fix in. I don't know who to vilify on this one. Maybe they were too hasty, maybe they did put Marlboro above state-sanction murder. Maybe it’s a bunch of hooey, and the lawyers are just being lawyers. If I where a better journalist, or a journalist at all for that matter, I'd go look for precedent, other cases where lawyers said the jurors couldn't make the right decision because the pillows in the sequestering hotel where too hard. Or soft. Or perfumed from detergent. I mean, aren't there rules about this stuff? Shouldn't the lawyer ask after a potential juror's personal habits during the vetting process? Here's the bigger question-- how much is this appeal going to cost taxpayers?

China Hates Dogs
Saddest story of the day. A few regions in china have seen rabies out breaks, and so the order has come down: kill all the dogs. And this is not a place where there are Paris Hiltons and Pamela Lee Anderson Rocks to make a big stink and bring the good fight. This is a place where people are walking out to the town square and literally hanging their dogs from trees. Nor are they happy about! Except for the roving gangs that are attacking dogs on sight, of course. Rabies is bad in China, with more deaths than anything we see in the west, due in no small part to the expense of vaccinations. So the little emperors, more or less removed from the people they lord over, have decreed: kill all the dogs. Let's see how this one gets spun by those who willfully ignore Chinese human rights violations in favor of maintaining our trade deficit.

China Loves Wal-Mart
You know how they say: sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Well, sometimes what seems strange on the surface is just a façade for business as usual. Wal-Mart has announced they are actually going to help workers to unionize in stores in China. What what what? Wal-Mart? The ones who have a dedicated team of union-busters, with their own union-busting jet, to fly around in, busting nascent union rumors from coast to coast? Yes. So what's the catch? In China, the unions are federalized: if it's not a government run union, it's illegal. And we've seen how they deal with subtlety in China (see above). And Chinese unions have no history of negotiating power with management. Rather, their purpose is to promote worker community, especially with outside-of-work fellowship, and to foster an air of peer pressure to get fellow workers to actual work harder. So there you have it; no wonder Wal-Mart supports this.