On a lighter note: Britney. Apparently she sings, too?
According to this gossip site (which I click on now and then for kicks, since it's linked from my hotmail account for some reason), Britney Spears wants people to "focus on her music" and not her body.

Hey...I've got an idea, Britney! If you want people to take you seriously as a musician, why not PUT SOME PANTS ON when you appear live? Just a thought.

Tis the Season to be Trampled...
Attention Wal-Mart shoppers. Please do not step on other customers.

--Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.--

Okay...seriously...we can laugh about this now, because the woman didn't die, but sheesh! Come on, people. Hey, and kudos to Wal-Mart for acting responsibly and sensibly afterward.

--Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her. --

Bush's "Suprise" Campaign Stop in Iraq
I was going to write something about this, but I just checked over at Counterspin, and Hesiod said it best with this and this.

The only thing I can add is "Oh CRAP." I had a vision of the future while watching Bush playing dress-up in Army clothes yet again and smiling his goofy "hey everybody...look at me...I'm a moviestar!" smile. He's going to win the next election and actually be ELECTED President, and this is how he's going to do it. He's going to keep lying the same lies "we WILL find those WMD. There is democracy in Iraq." and smiling vapidly into the cameras. And he's going to play dress-up and make some flashy but substanceless photo-op appearances at key times, and the public is going to swallow it up just like the swallowed the WMD bull$h*t.

NRA's "Sportsman of the Week" Award
He (we can assume it's a he) hasn't had the success of Malvo, but the as-yet-anonymous shooter in Ohio is this week's Sportsman of the Week.

Notice how the gun-hating, liberal media focuses the above-linked article on the "victim", showing us her smiling face as if we're supposed to feel sorry for her!

The Truth about those Chicken Nuggets
I had a real eye-opener a few weeks ago, when I read about the methods used by chicken "farming" corperations. It wasn't even in any PETA pamphlet or radical book, but in a philosophy book as a side note. It was really horrifying. Yesterday I found this: The Meatrix. It's a great little piece that tells a tiny part of the story. Do check it out.

Bush Interrupts Campaign to Mingle with Troops
If you thought Bush's stop-off at Fort Carson earlier this week was a break from his practice of going to fundraisers and photo-ops and avoiding soldiers' funerals or meetings with their families, well: think again.

These two articles give good insight into what these visits really were: a pep rally for a presidential candidate. Not just that, but a presidential candidate who is petrified that the press will interview any of his supposed supporters.

As Mike Littwin of The Rocky Mountain News wrote: "Before the press was herded into the giant hangar in advance of George W. Bush's pep rally/photo op with the Fort Carson troops, we were given the rules.

No talking to the troops before the rally.

No talking to the troops during the rally.

No talking to the troops after the rally.

In other words, if I've done the math right, that means no conversation at all - at least, while on base - with any soldiers. After all, who knows where that kind of thing could lead?

Just as an example: It could lead to a discussion about why the president has time to get to so many fund-raisers and no time to attend a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq."

And, from the same article (the second one I linked above):
"In his speech, Bush didn't mention Elaine Johnson, whose son Darius Jennings was one of four Fort Carson soldiers on the Chinook helicopter that was shot down Nov. 2.

When Johnson was at the Fort Carson chapel a week ago for her son's memorial service, she wondered aloud why the president had visited South Carolina in the week of her son's funeral but had not bothered to attend or to send any message to her or her family.

"Evidently my son wasn't important enough to him dead for him to visit the family or call the family," she said then. "As long as my son was alive he was important, because he sent him over there to fight a war.""

The "President"'s message is clear: "God Bless America, especially everyone who gives my campaign money...oh yeah, and you guys dying in Iraq...good job, or something. USA USA USA!"

Another choice quote from the first article linked, by Jim Spencer at the Denver Post:

"Monday's Ground Rule 6 - "no roaming" - amounted to a heavy-handed smack at the First Amendment. But it was an insult to the intelligence of military men and women and their families as much as it was an indictment of the media.

Bush and his lieutenants believe newspapers, television and radio focus on the negative events of Iraq. The president, vice president and the secretary of defense have all accused the media of filtering out good news.

Well, Monday was a chance to get some good press for people who deserve it. Instead, White House and Army officials went to great lengths to make sure it wouldn't happen."

Because George and his handlers don't want a bunch of "grunts" muddling up his campaign appearances by saying anything other than "USA USA USA".

An actual terrorist is on trail in the US...
and you can be sure Johnny Ashcroft is pissed about this one. One of his faithful followers--a self-described memeber of the "Army of God" who sent hundreds of anthrax-threat letters to womens' clinics around the country--is on trial in Pennsylvania. Of course, he did make the mistake of sending one letter to a "christian" group that "councils women against abortion", so maybe that's why the feds actually caught him.

One more bites the dust in Iraq...
One more freedom, I mean. Freedom of the press is no as much a fantasy in Iraq as the freedom of speech or the freedom from being blown up by a car bomb...or the freedom of speech or the freedom of being gunned down by an NRA nutbag is in the US.

Sticking to her guns...
Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks continues to show she's far more intelligent than the average Bush admin official.

Tony's Humor...Homer's Tony.
Well, he may be W's lackey, and he may have "led" his country into a war of occupation that most of the people there didn't support, but there's one thing I can appreciate about Tony Blair: he's got enough of a sense of humor to appear on The Simpsons.