GeekPol's evil twin

Could someone throw "Boris the Spider" on the skillet?

Here's hoping these products catch on.

From the article, ExxonMobil claims that the 'resemblance' (my scare quotes) to the Nazi army unit will "drive consumers away from its brand."

a - Free clue: driving consumers away from your brand might be the goal.
b - you mean dumping millions of gallons of oily gunk in Prince William Sound didn't do its part?

Anyways, you be the judge.

Bonus points if you can tell me what Greenpeace had to do with 'WKRP in Cincinnati'.

Additional question posed: What player over 7'4" has had a decent career? Hint: Chuck Nevitt is definitely the wrong answer.

60 Minutes II just did a rerun of a piece done last fall on Richard Jewell, the Atlanta Olympics security officer that was a real hero in getting several hundred people out of Centennial Park when he found something suspicious that turned out to be a bomb. He then got publicly fingered as a suspect in that same bombing, even though he was rightly cleared of any suspicion later. The headline in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announcing that he was a suspect was a prime example of Media Whoredom. It blared in huge type, "FBI suspects 'hero' guard may have planted bomb." (The scare quotes around 'hero' were theirs.) With that headline, Jewell was already judged guilty in the media when the Louis Freeh-run FBI leaked the story. The obligatory Media Whore feeding frenzy followed, with the press and FBI following Jewell everywhere. Eventually the story went away very quietly when Jewell was dropped as a suspect, because, well, HE WASN'T A F$#@ING TERRORIST (and still isn't). No apologies, no nothing from the FBI. Just stories buried far in the back of the papers, a pattern the media whores still repeat today.

Most of the story (they got big gun Mike Wallace for the interview) centered around what has been the effect on Jewell's life 5+ years later. Thanks to the MW (media whore, not Mike Wallace) feeding frenzy, Jewell still gets pointed at by people as the Olympic Bomber.He still has to deal wih the J-C, whose irresponsible whoring got Jewell in this mess in the first place. It was a lesson that media whoring has real consequences, a lesson that the media really has no desire to learn.

Since this was a rerun from some time back, there were other things that have happened where one can look back and ask, "What if?" As in, "What if George W. Bush designated Richard Jewell as an enemy combatant? What if Ashcroft's Justice Department had gotten their filthy mitts on Jewell and used the USA PATRIOT Act against him?" These are questions with some frightening answers, thanks to the sheep Congress' passing the FBI/CIA/NSA wish list with nary a word of debate. It's too bad Mike Wallace didn't ask those questions when he did this story originally. It's really too bad that he didn't think of mentioning the USA PATRIOT Act in his little update segment at the end.

And out of the other side of his mouth, he's blaming environmentalists for "contributing to raging forest fires such as the ones in Arizona and Colorado by blocking the federal government's effort to remove dangerous underbrush."

To make this more accurate, an extra clause is needed, "...as part of a clearcutting operation contracted to timber companies."

Never mind that 80% of what's been burning in Arizona isn't forested in the first place. Wouldn't want facts to get in the way of this administration. No sirree.

This quote is a bit of a setup for the changes in the tax code that are leading to the new rise of dynasties in America, but it should be repeated anyway: "Progressive taxation--only a memory for most--died in the 1980s as regressive FICA taxes replaced income levies as the heaviest tax paid by a majority of American families." [emphasis mine]

Well, it's melting.

The Rittenhouse Review has a pretty thorough analysis of the accusations against KaMe-apART's domesticity diva Martha Stewart involving insider trading at soon-to-be-dead pharmaceutical company ImClone. It convinced me of two things: 1) Martha Stewart did nothing wrong, having given a sell order when it reached a certain lower limit weeks before the sale took place; 2) the Media Whores are holding true to form, running with this story solely on the basis of Stewart's celebrity as opposed to the merits of the case or the possible wrongdoing by Samuel Waksal.

In fact, the sweaty punditry and late-night jokes regarding this case are just recycled from when Hillary made $100K in the volatile commodities market. Who says conservative crackpots don't like recycling?

6/21-23 R- 42%, D- 50%, Undecided- 8%

5/28-29 R- 46%, D- 45%, Undecided- 9%


I guess Rover's powerpoint presentation was right. Mheh.

I can't say as I'm in total agreement with him, though. First of all, it seems likely that the Shrubbery will get what it wants and have the legislative commission meet secretly, which is no way to get anything but a whitewash. But regarding independent commissions from more recent times, the independent commission for the Branch Davidian conflagration headed up by Jack Danforth showed that you can get answers based on the evidence available, and not on wishful conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately, the lesson from these two examples appears to be that for an independent commission to be successful, you need someone whose rectitude is strong enough to annoy members of the Senate. Jack Danforth is definitely of that class, while John Tower would have made a sailor on shore leave blush.

It would seem that the most ideal way would be the open hearings where we could see goodies like Ollie North getting lit up, or Lauch Faircloth imploding. And quite naturally for the wannabe secret police that is the Administration, they'll fight to the death to keep open anything from happening.