TODAY'S TOP FIVE: I Used to Play Superscript V-Ball on the Nintendo.
A Class Act I've taken my share at John Kerry's lackluster campaign, but I have to give him props for this. Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, Alabama was fired from her job in a factory for putting a "Kerry Edwards" sticker on her car. Her boss is an enthusiastic Bush backer who included memos urging employees to vote for Bush in the pay envelopes. All the bad press this assfuck has gotten has made him have a phoney change of heart, and he offered Gobbell her job back, but now she has a better offer: John Kerry called her and told her she could have a job working for his campaign. Awesome.
Your Tax Dollars Secretly, Illegally at Work (Shhh!) Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, valiant foe of all things Bush, has prepared a damning report showing that the Bush administration is on track to be the most secretive in U.S. history, both quantitatively and qualitatively. On the quality side, the Bush administration has so far refused to release documents regarding: Dick Cheney's slimy energy task force; the details of contracts between Halliburton and the Defense Department; a genuine cost estimate of the Republican Medicare "reform"; documents on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib; and documents on pre-war WMD intelligence. On the quant side, the number of classified documents has increased 50 percent since Bush has been in office, while the number of so-called "derivative" classifications (classifying documents that restate or paraphrase from previously classified material) has increased an astonishing 95 percent. This report is crammed full of astonishing facts, like that the CIA operates secret jails around the world with an estimated 9,000 prisoners (note: It's a PDF file).
The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business George W. Bush, in his trademark resolute and steadfast manner, has been setting a standard for productivity that I think we can all admire: he hasn't spent a full work day in Washington, D.C. since August 2. In fact, since Memorial Day, he's spent a total of 10 days in Washington. Now, how can I get a job like that?
Break Out the Hammer-and-Sickle Banners Vladimir Putin is rejecting US criticism of constitutional reforms that will move Russia even closer to being a dictatorship. Among those changes: from now on, Putin gets to choose all of Russia's regional governors himself, and will have power over who gets nominated to stand in parliamentary elections. In response to criticism from Colin Powell, the Russian foreign minister tartly noted that Russia does not criticize the electoral system that allowed a man who won the popular vote to lose the White House, nor such post-9/11 changes as the Patriot Act. You know the country's in trouble when we're ceding the moral high ground to the former head of the KGB.
The Daily Mayhem: Iraq Edition A car bomb went off in Baghdad today, killing 47 people near a police station. In a city north of the capital, gunmen ambushed a minibus carrying recent recruits to the police force, killing 12. The insurgency shows no signs of abating, and in fact seems to be spreading.
-Consider Arms
