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Red Hot Chili Peppers?

Thursday, Oct. 04, 2007 2:31 AM


From London comes the latest 0MG!T3rR0r1$M!!!! scare, where residents of a neighborhood noticed a pungent odor strong enough to make one's eyes water a bit.

Fire crews donned special breathing apparatus, and hazmat crews stood by, ready to deal with the worst. After a three hour search, they found the culprit:

A Thai restaurant had been smoking dried chili peppers to create a particular recipe for a spicy dip.

The restaurant's staff had, in fact, been evacuated along with everyone else in the neighborhood, but they didn't even think about the chili peppers until they went back after the all-clear had been sounded and found the door stoved in, and firefighters holding the offending pot.


There are rumblings about a Republican-proposed 'Broadcast Fairness Act,' which has nothing to do with the Fairness Doctrine (canned by President Ronald Reagan in 1985).

Instead, it apparently seeks to uphold the right of folks like Rush Limbaugh to spew their odious nonsense as an expression of their right to free speech.

So, let's get this straight - an ad insulting a ranking officer is a major no-no, drawing condemnation from the whole of Congress ... but ol' Rush can blather about phony soldiers, make weak excuses as to what he said, and how he's being taken out of context, and it's protected speech.

Now, the majority of 'liberal' talk radio can be just as disgusting as its conservative counterpart, but I hope the Democrats aren't fooled/bamboozled into thinking this version of fairness bears even a nodding acquaintance with the actual concept of.

(Incidentally, Senator Dianne Feinstein is 'looking into the legal aspects of reviving the Fairness Doctrine,' so I've got absolutely no confidence that it will actually happen.)


And a Boot to the Head for CBS News and their Early Show, which featured a heavily-promoted, gushing piece about Jenna Bush's travels and work with underpriviliged children abroad, and her subsequent book.

Which was followed later that afternoon by her cowardly-ass father hiding behind closed doors as he vetoed the S-CHIP Funding Bill, because he thinks it's a handout.

Frankly, if 300% above poverty means you still lack the means to pay for your children's healthcare, perhaps we need to rethink what poverty actually is. (Truth is, no matter where you set the bar, there are going to be people falling above and below it. It's called a bell curve.)


Senator John McCain believes that if President Bush had asked Americans to sign up to fight after 9/11 instead of asking them to shop and travel, that we'd all have rushed off to the recruiting centers to join up.

In fact, he believes that if President Bush made that request today, people would still show up in droves.

Let's see. No mission, continued improper levels of equipment, and repeatedly broken promises as to tours of duty and leave ...

Nope.


Last weekend, a plane carrying Marines returning to their base in Hawaii was held on the tarmac at Oakland International Airport, allegedly over concerns that the Marines were carrying weapons and had not been screened. As a result, family members hoping to meet them were unable to do so.

It didn't take long for accusations to be levelled at Oakland, the Bay Area, and the whole of California as a hotbed of unpatriotic anti-war nutcases seeking to inconvenience our courageous men and women returning from combat.

Whoa. Time out, folks. It's apparently okay to surround at gunpoint a somewhat spacey college student with a circuit board on her hoodie, but it's okay to let people carrying weapons into the terminal? Though both airport management and TSA officials are spinning excuses, it should have been simple enough to arrange for families to meet their loved ones at a secure terminal or location away from the main terminal.




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