Tuesday, June 15, 2004

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: We Are Beautiful, No Matter What They Say.

Beware Our Starship Troopers The Army has announced that, starting in 2005, all combat uniforms will look like this:



Are the Dudley Boys going to get royalties on this?

War-Profiteering the Halliburton Way According to a Pentagon audit, Destro Cheney's "former" company has mismanaged more than $8 billion in taxpayers' money in Iraq, overcharging for such items as laundry (they charge $100 per load) and squandering expensive resources (apparently it was company policy to abandon $85,000 trucks when they got flat tires). This info was released by Democratic Henry Waxman, who also broke the story about the State Department's fraudulent report touting the success of the Bush administration's war on terror. Is Henry Waxman the only guy paying attention in Congress or what?

AShining Moment for TV Journalism Fox News, everybody's favorite arm of the Bush election campaign, has been censured by a UK regulatory agency for a tirade against the BBC, which Fox airhead John Gibson accused of "frothing-at-the-mouth-anti-Americanism." Apparently, Gibson's contention that the BBC had given journalists carte blanche to lie was not, in fact, true. Wait a minute. Fox News broadcasting something untrue? Now I believe in nothing!

Family Values, Rush-Style Pill-gobbling Rightist propaganda whale Rush Limbaugh has announced Divorce Number Three, always a milestone in the life of any exemplar of old-fashioned values. Normally, of course, I don't really care about the personal lives of public figures, but in the case of Limbaugh - who has already been revealed as a hypocrite for his illegal drug addiction - I make an exception. This is a guy who bloviated day in and day out for years about how Bill Clinton was unfit to be president because of his marital difficulties. Further hypocrite note: Limbaugh's third marriage was performed by none other than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Surely Justice Thomas, a Roman Catholic and alleged member of Opus Dei, realizes that, according to his church, Limbaugh's third marriage is totally invalid, and that what Thomas was doing was merely lending an official gloss to a non-binding union of fornicators. But what do you expect from a fan of Long Dong Silver?

The Passion of Michael Moore Can't people learn from even recent history these days? There's a conservative group out there consisting in part of the people who got the Reagan mini-series banned from network TV and in part of the people who brought you the California recall, and this group wants to stop you from watching Michael Moore's movie about George Bush, "Fahrenheit 911." If these people had paid any attention to the controversy over Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion," they would have seen how this is going to turn out. For their benefit, though, I'll lay it out. Step One: A maverick filmmaker embarks on a project unlikely to appeal to anyone beyond a small, niche audience. Step Two: Groups that are opposed to the message of the movie begin organizing against it, thus drawing tons of free publicity. Step Three: The maverick filmmaker portrays himself as a victim of censorship, pointing to his failure to get a distribution deal. Step Four: After rave reviews from carefully selected audiences bring even more publicity to the film, a distribution deal is secured. Step Five: Groups opposed to the movie redouble their efforts. The movie goes on to become a huge hit. Keep up the good work, ya crumbs.

-Consider Arms