] Tests by Danish and American experts indicate there is no
] chemical warfare agent in mortar shells unearthed last
] week in southern Iraq

So, just to make sure I have this right, we haven't found any WMDs, the inspectors didn't find any WMDs and in fact, we've even pulled the people LOOKING for the WMDs out of Iraq?

I'm not going to dispute the fact that Saddam was a bad guy and that his kids were total psychos, but the purported reason we blew this stuff up is bullshit. That being the case, why did we REALLY go to war there?

Yahoo! News - Tests Show No Agent in Iraq Mortar Shells

I came across this after seeing that the QM2 had set sail on it's maiden voyage. It seems the best known of the three wasn't the only one to end up on the sea bottom, just the best known.

] Titanic was the middle ship of the three new
] super-liners. Her older sister, Olympic, served as a
] reliable member of the White Star fleet until she was
] scrapped in 1935 after striking and sinking the famous
] Nantucket lightship off the eastern cost of the United
] States. Her younger sister, Britannic, met a fate similar
] to that of Titanic during World War I when she struck a
] German mine off the coast of Greece and sank in less than
] an hour. Britannic was originally to be named Gigantic,
] but further reference to size in the wake of the Titanic
] disaster was thought by White Star to go against public
] sentiment.

Titanic.com - The ship

] O'Neill charged that Bush entered office in January 2001
] intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go
] about it.

WMDs? 9/11? Seems that's just the excuse. I think I want to see the rest of this one.

Revenge!

] President Bush "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf
] people" during Cabinet meetings, his former Treasury
] secretary, Paul O'Neill, told CBS News' "60 Minutes" in
] what the network said was his first interview about his
] work for the administration.

Lets start confirming some of Nick's worst fears!

] Describing his first such meeting with Bush, O'Neill said,
] "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I
] thought, to engage [him] on. ... I was surprised it turned
] out me talking and the president just listening. ... It was
] mostly a monologue."

He was thinking. I wonder what's for dinner? The economy.. Yummy. The economy is good for my teeth. Chomp Chomp..

] White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan dismissed
] the characterization of Bush's style. "It's well known the
] way the president approaches governing and setting
] priorities," he told reporters. "The president is someone
] that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities,
] and that is exactly what he'll continue to do."

Its well known? We don't know shit about this administration that they have not wanted us to know, aside from when someone comes out and says "he is really an idiot." That remains very scary and occurs regularly.

It's all part of his strategery!

CNN.com - O'Neill: Bush 'like a blind man' - Jan. 9, 2004

] Is it coincidence, or could there be a connection to
] DVD's phenomenal success?
]
] Of course, there are circumstances specific to each
] industry: Internet music swapping has hit the record
] labels hard, and broadcast networks are losing share to
] cable. Nonetheless, there are only so many hours in a day
] and so many dollars in a wallet. Though few in the
] industries will come out and say it directly, DVD is
] unquestionably siphoning off time and money available for
] other activities.

Here's another little thing that RIAA seems to forget, CD sales didn't start going down until they started cracking down on people trading songs on Napster. Part of that is probably backlash from people seeing news articles about a 14 year old getting sued by RIAA, but how about this idea, "If you don't hear it, you won't buy it."

I know I bought more cd's when Napster was alive because I wanted to hear more than just the one song on Napster for some albums. I know it also got me to avoid some turkeys.

The model in the 70's and 80's was, hear song on radio or in movie, go buy record. That stopped when talk radio started to dominate the airwaves. People are listening to Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh or Dan Rome and Dan Patrick. They don't hear what is coming out anymore, and with the domination of Clear Channel on the airwaves, you don't hear anything even if you ARE listening on the radio.

Hey RIAA? If you want to sell CD's try two things. First, ENCOURAGE music trading! Most car stereos don't play MP3, but they do play CD's. Second, while you're doing that, release everything in MP3 format for the traders, but do in a bad but acceptable bit rate. The selling point for CDs was always better sound. If I can hear three or four songs off an album and go, "this album sounds pretty good," I might go buy it. If I only hear one song and it sucks, I'm going to take my $15 and get a copy of The Matrix and to hell with RIAA.

DVD's success steals the show

Once upon a time, the government created the Labor Department because there seemed to be an issue with employers taking advantage of their workers (see notes on the Pullman riots, or read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair for a little idea on how this used to work). So the Labor Department came into being to make sure that some pretty basic guidelines were followed. You know, little things like, no 12 year olds working 14 hours a day in sweatshops. The kind of thing we hear about Nike doing in Asia and moan about until we go buy the latest version of AirJordans, although I guess they're LeBron's now, sort of like LeCars except not French.

Now if you've ever looked at things I write, it's pretty obvious I don't think much of the current shrub that lost the last election but ended up running the country anyway, but if you look at the last few links on my list, you'll see, the Labor Deapartment putting out a list of ways to SHAFT labor, and a note about changes to the immigration policy.

Now either this is a really unfortunate piece of timing, or the Shrub Administration just explained HOW TO BUILD A THIRD WORLD SWEATSHOP IN THE US FOR FUN AND PROFIT. Hence the title of this. Let's take a job that pays nothing, and has extremely long hours and is already designed with overtime costs built in for the employees to work like dogs and not have anything at the end of the day. How do we do that? Immigrant labor of course.

The highlight of America is that we have gotten ahead not because we had any built in advantage, it was because we worked harder and better and more creatively than the next guy. Collectively we did that better than the next country too.

Now we've decided that smarter isn't good enough, we have to copy how they do things in the worst parts of the world. We grew out of that 100 years ago.

There was a big joke in the 2000 Presidential campaign about "building a bridge to the future." Instead the joke is on us because this President wants to drag the 19th century back into daily life. Life in the middle ages was nasty brutish and short. It was better but still bad in the 19th, and call me an elitist snob, but I like running water.

] But the AFL-CIO labor federation said Bush's proposals
] would create an "underclass" of foreign workers and
] "exacerbate the decline in job quality and job security
] for all workers."

Hmmm... sounds about right to me...

Yahoo! News - Bush Asks Congress for New Immigration Rules

Rather funny.. :)

Quite funny actually :)

Crash Different

] Raising the threat level serves as a deterrent and the
] increased security can disrupt potential terrorist
] operations, Ridge said, adding that it could be weeks or
] months before authorities determine whether any attacks
] were actually prevented.

I've got a better headline, "Ridge Cries Wolf Again!"

CNN.com - Terror threat lowered to yellow - Jan. 9, 2004

For all you Civ 3 players out there, this will be self explanatory... :)

] Iraqi Information minister as modern military advisor

Gotta Love Bagdhad Bob!