Pacific Views

Party of Linkin'

The news today and all things fit to blog about that I only just got around to adding to a post:

Another batch of Abu Ghraib pictures has hit the international press. The new-to-the-public images show further torture, sexual abuse, humiliation and apparently murder victims. Who needs to believe in Hell when there is such behavior here on Earth? Body and Soul has the torturiffic link roundup.

When CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson was outed by the Bush administration, she was working on Iranian nuclear proliferation. The outing, of course, would have burned all her contacts abroad and the CIA determined some time ago that significant damage was done to their operation. Plame's name wasn't the only thing outed, though. Cheney authorized Libby to disclose a flawed, classified intelligence estimate to the press as a way to counteract the truth about the war.

Bird flu invades European flocks. Having spread through the mideast, Russia and Africa, the flu is a menace to poultry and is being exposed to ever larger numbers of humans.

The Bush administration has proposed selling off 309,000 acres of public land, though they expect for that amount to go down to about 200,000 acres. Which is to say that any acreage that people know and care enough about to fight for may be taken off the list, but the rest of that future inheritance of our nation is headed off to the care of the highest bidder.

The Slacktivist: How to procrastinate your way to an immaculate home and sharp pencils. The magazine Christianity Today explains why torture is always wrong, in a biblical sense.

Feministe: The Bush administration has cut $100 million from international family planning, NYT permalink. How long has DuPont known that Teflon contains a likely carcinogen?

Bitch PhD: The pharmacy board from the great state of Massachussetts, whose residents are the least likely people in the country to get divorced, has ruled that WalMart pharmacies have to stock contraceptives. Meanwhile, the Texas justice system demonstrates what happens there when a nobody accidentally shoots someone.

Wampum has a series of posts on the Indian Trust Fund corruption, along with a backgrounder diary on dKos that highlights Jack Abramoff's involvement in stealing from the tribes.

MyDD: Other things Bush is trimming out of the budget include help for nuclear workers with cancer from Cold-War era exposure, which makes sense because those guys and their powerful lobbyists have really been sticking it to us all these years. CT Republicans like Lieberman more than CT Democrats do.

Confined Space: Anti-union ads from the US Chamber of Commerce, the people who want you to ignore all the mercury in your fish. Congressional Democrats hear from the families of the dead miners. An award for a guy whose fighting back against the war on science.

Steve Gilliard: Hurricane Katrina's victims are getting kicked out of their hotels because our government just can't afford to be soft on people whose entire city was destroyed in a watery cataclysm. Introducing the Texas aristocracy, some of the Bush and Cheney families' Gepettos, as it were. In Iraq, al Sadr gains influence while the West's handpicked henchmen wane, which is like, oh my gosh, such a Big Frakking Surprise.

MediaMatters: Joe "The Ladykiller" Scarborough calls Sen. Clinton very shrill and I can only say to her, Sen. Clinton, stay out of that man's office on the weekends. Media Matters has taken the effort to quantify just how much more attention the media pays to sex over illegal wiretapping. And oh, another big surprise, conservatives outnumber liberals on the Sunday gabfests.

dKos: Another Bush budget trim could include widows' $255 spousal death benefit, 'cause those guys have been sticking it to us even more than third world women, hurricane victims and people that our government exposed to radiation. DarkSyde posts a Darwin day illustrated tour of evolution to remind all of us that we come from stardust. A VA nurse is accused of sedition for criticizing the president in a letter to a local paper and people, this is not how 'it' starts, this is how 'it' has been getting for some time now. A CIA chief was just fired for opposing torture. The corporations are a threat to us all and it isn't just college kids on that bandwagon anymore.

From The Onion, Bush hides U.S. Report Card in Sock Drawer:

CRAWFORD, TX—According to White House sources, following yet another disappointing grading period for the nation he leads, President Bush hid the national report card in his bedroom sock drawer Monday. "We, as a nation, got a D in international relations, a D in economics, and an F in military history," Bush reportedly said. "We must work hard to make sure no one finds out about this." Critics say the report-card-hiding effort is immature, and point out that the sock drawer is the first place The New York Times will look.

That's rapidly moving beyond satire.

Posted by natasha at February 16, 2006 07:02 AM | Recommended Reading | Technorati links |