Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.
! JUMBO EDITION TODAY !
* Sound the alarms! Raise the shields! Batten the hatches! Swab the poop deck! Wal Mart is RAISING prices!! “32oz bottles of Windex shot up 50%, 12 oz box of Quaker oaks went up 65%, and 50oz Tide went up more than 50%.” [CONSUMERIST] and [NY POST]
* A study says gently shocking the brain improves memory and both verbal and motor skills. Cool! So Tazers are not only good for restraining bad guys, it makes them smarter too! Good to know! [NEW SCIENTIST]
* Some headlines I just can’t improve on… “Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey” [WIRED]
Zee Pope!
* Hey Hollywood. Call me! I’ve got this script for a movie called “Inferno”. Here’s the pitch : The main character, David, is a priest who was a former ex-con. (We find out mid-movie he killed a local pedophile who had molested his brother as a teenager.) David’s quiet, but has a good heart underneath all the angry exterior. David’s like a surrogate father to the local kids, and even though some adults don’t like him, the kids all do because he’s much easier to relate to. One day David finds out some of the kids he’s come to love have been killed. The autopsy shows the kids were molested then dumped in an alleyway by the church. After a little looking-into, it’s obvious that a visiting priest did it. David tries to get the visiting priest put away, but the cops say he doesn’t have enough proof, and the church does nothing about it. Eventually, both the church and cops tell David to STFU about it. The visiting priest leaves to another parish, and David finds out kids are getting killed coincidentally as the traveling priest gets to their city. David then goes off on a “and you shall know my name is the LORD” payback spree, starts with that one priest, and then proceeds to wipe out all the corrupt priests and people who covered for them, and makes his way to Rome for the big mind-blowing finale. The movie revolves on whether David is really a bad guy or just a good guy “chosen” by God to fulfill his will. The sad part is that this is actually based on what’s really going on as the Pope just REFUSED TO ACCEPT THE RESIGNATION OF A BISHOP WHO WAS COVERING FOR PEDOPHILE PRIESTS. [IRISH CENTRAL]
* You ever use those $1 coins? Me either. They’re heavy, take up too much pocket space, and I get the side-eye when I try and pay for my tacos with them down here. But the US apparently thinks they’re all kinds of 31-flavors awesome as… “the US government is building a stockpile of $1 coins. The hoard has topped $1.1bn – imagine a stack of coins reaching almost seven times higher than the International Space Station – and the piles have grown so large the US Federal Reserve is running out of storage space.” Dude! As an extra bonus, “the Fed estimates it already has enough $1 coins to last the next 10 years.” [BBC.CO.UK]
* Didja ever notice that when you’re talking with someone that has an accent, you ever so slightly speak like they do? Turns out that it’s normal! “People who interact with a person with a different accent subconsciously mimic their twang because they want to “empathise” with their conversation partner, psychologists claim.” [TELEGRAPH.CO.UK]
* On a somewhat-not-really-related note, people who speak multiple languages have different personalities depending on what language they’re speaking! It sounds nuts, but it’s apparently true! [CBC.CA]
* “A simple 15-minute brain scan could help doctors diagnose people with autism.” Science rocks. [GUARDIAN.CO.UK]
* Slightly important lead-in here that *nobody* in the mainstream media is repeating… “The IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt… we will see… dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices.” Wow. The IMF? And Bloomberg confirms we’re in deep dark cold waters now? OK, crazy thought here, but howzabout we STOP THE DAMN WARS WE DON’T NEED TO BE IN and save all of those lives and money we’re wasting on those two foreign countries we’re never going to change a damn thing in? Howzabout we start with that and go from there, yes? [BLOOMBERG]
* …oh, and by the way, the “bankrupt USA” isn’t the only bad news. Apparently there’s a little thing called a “derivatives bubble” with 1.5 quadrillion dollars tied up in the whole enchilada that’s about to pop, and when it does, “there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it”. OK, this is nuts. Is 1.5 quadrillion? Losing the cutsey abbreviation, that’s $1,500,000,000,000,000. My fingers are tired from just typing that! [SEEKINGALPHA.COM]
* Turning off the lights? In America? Seriously? [NY TIMES]
* 15 more stats that things really are getting worse. [INTEL DAILY]
* Some news articles sum up how I feel perfectly… “As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. ” The headline? “What a collapsing empire looks like”. I sincerely hope this is all NOT coming to pass. But things aren’t looking too good, and the person who was SUPPOSED to change all this crap decided to puss out. [SALON]
Speaking of….
*** WARNING : HIGHLY UPSET VOTER RANT BEGINS HERE ***
“Change you can believe in?” Ah, no. Here’s 4 reasons from this week alone as to why…
* #1 “The Obama administration is pressing Britain, Germany, Australia, and other allied Western governments to consider opening criminal investigations of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and to severely limit his nomadic travels across international borders, American officials say.” So let me get this straight. A man does the press’ job of revealing all the screw ups and clusterfucks of the never-ending war, illustrates the fallacies that happened under the BUSH regime, and OBAMA wants him arrested tried overseas? [DAILY BEAST]
* #2 “In one of the first military commissions held under the Obama administration, a US military judge has ruled that confessions obtained by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.” Wow. This is just flat out wrong. Add this to the pile. [RAWSTORY]
* #3 A federal agency confiscated a Louisiana State University sample on the BP oil spill because BP hadn’t sanctioned the study and demanded the sample’s return. And this was OK with the Obama administration? [FLORIDA OIL SPILL AW]
* #4 And finally, how much does it cost you to go to the beach? For me? Counting gas for the car, scuba gear prep, and maybe a new toy or two to dive with? Ballpark? $100. Maybe $300 on an all-day trip with some nice rental equipment. If I wanted to go NUTS and bail to Hawaii, a flight and high-end hotel package for a whole week on the main island currently runs $2k on Expedia. Now what could you do with £50,000 pounds (currently $79,480 dollars) per day? Ask Michelle Obama! That’s how much she’s spending in Spain PER DAY for her vacation. What kind of gold-plated hotel does that get you into? Is she renting James Cameron’s whole fleet to go scuba diving with? Oh, and as a extra special bonus, it’s the taxpayers who are paying for a big part of this tab! Let them eat shellfish! [DAILYMAIL.CO.UK]
It’s painfully obvious now that neither Democrat or Republicans will fulfill my deepest wish and end the “lookin’ for tarr’ists” wars, but at least the Republican party isn’t outright lying and pretending to be something they aren’t. And failing to end the wars they promised they would. And failing to stop all the illegal wiretapping they promised they would. And failing to push through the “everyone covered” healthcare bill they promised they would. And failing to Allow five days of public comment before signing bills they promised they would. And failing to keep that “no family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase” they promised they would. And failing to “negotiate health care reform in public sessions televised on C-SPAN” they promised they would. Having said all that, do I think the Republicans are any better? Nope!! It’s a douchebag and turd sandwich choice between these two parties!
*** HIGHLY UPSET VOTER RANT ENDS HERE ***
* Want an example of the legendary Apple hubris in action? The new iPhone operating system update apparently kills the iPhone in-car connection for most vehicles that have it built in. Apple’s response? Telling every car owner to go back to their vehicle’s dealer, put their car in for service, and update their vehicle’s firmware! “Apparently, devices using iOS 4 are not compatible unless the manufacturers bother to update the firmware on the head units, which seems highly irregular.” A bit! [NEOWIN]
* Speaking of Apple hubris, their latest iPhone update is 579 megabytes! 579 megabytes for a phone update? What exactly did these idiots forget at launch day that mandates a 579 megabyte update? Multi-colored numbers on the dial pad? [NEOWIN]
*** WARNING : ANGRY AT A LAW ENFORCEMENT SCREW-UP RANT BEGINS HERE ***
* So some policemen show up at a burglary, and when they enter the home to look for the burglars, they find the homeowner has a gun collection in the home and… they confiscate them all? What? The homeowner is a legally registered gun owner, and the cops seized everything because “Even if he’s a registered gun owner or not, that just seems like its too many rifles.” Seems? SEEMS? Oh, and as a bonus, “At the current time we’re taking the firearms for safe keeping as evidence until we can further investigate this,” says Deputy Chief Lindmark.” Excuse me, Deputy Fife, but that’s absolutely none of your legal or personal business how many firearms a private citizen legally owns! Absolutely! None! You don’t get to confiscate on a whim under the BS “for your safety” banner, and you sure as hell don’t get to violate the rights of an individual that is under NO suspicion of ANY crime just because his private collection is bigger than yours. The proper response would have been to secure the premise, ensure the homeowner was aware of the trespass and was satisfied his premise was no longer under any threat, and talk about the private citizen’s collection at the local coffee shop after work. If your “spider sense” went off for whatever reason, you should have gone to get a warrant from a judge. THEN you could have grabbed everything you wanted! But judges tend to hate handing out warrants for “spider sense” activity, so you would have to use facts, which I hear are really quite annoying for knee jerk reactions. I hope the homeowner sues the hell out of every cop that was part of this illegal seizure, takes a big permanent chunk of Deputy Fife’s yearly paycheck, and then pops the city with a cash KO to remind them not to hire gestapo punks who think they’re above the law. [MY STATELINE.COM]
*** ANGRY AT A LAW ENFORCEMENT SCREW-UP RANT ENDS HERE ***
* In Virginia, an illegal alien killed a nun in a DWI car crash. Now Virginia is wondering if maybe Arizona has the right idea. Not good. [YAHOO]
* A church protests at strip club, so the strip club protests outside the church! I can’t tell whether this is classic detente or a stalemate. Either way, it’s hilarious. [DISPATCH]
* And finally, Vladimir Putin HIMSELF put out TWO wildfires in Russia flying “an amphibious firefighting airplane”. Wow. This dude doesn’t even want fire to mess with his country. Why wasn’t he in “The Expendables” movie? [RIAN.RU]
That’s all I got! Back Monday!
** Actually posted late late Sunday because my internet connection was, once again, all kinds of Smurfed up this weekend. I need to be in a certain spot in my home for the Sprint wireless stick to work. Sucks? A bit.
