World Malaria Day

Today is World Malaria Day, a day designed to publicize international efforts to combat one of the world's leading (non-man made) causes of death.

Click here to learn more.

On a personal note, I fortunately never contracted malaria when I lived in West Africa but I knew many people who did. Fortunately none of them died, but it's a very debilitating condition and pretty much renders you useless. Even if it doesn't kill the infected, it can severe brain damage if untreated.

I'm not touching this one!

I wonder what it says that the top two most emailed stories at this moment on Yahoo News are... Penis theft panic hits city and Masturbation may prevent cancer.

I guess we have a pretty good idea of the predominant demographic of readers of Yahoo News.

Liberté, égalité, racisme

I'm not sure if it's reassuring or troubling that small-minded anti-Islamic bigotry isn't unique to the United States. The French daily Le Monde reports on the case of a 9 year old boy who was denied a place on a children's game show solely because of his first name: Islam.

"You must understand that the name of your child makes reference to a religion that the French don't like very much," the casting director told the boy's mother. "It could shock people."

The show even urged them to have the boy use a pseudonym instead, which the family refused.

Naturally, after the story went public, the show called invited the boy back on the show and 'apologized' (the usual 'this goes against the values of the production company bla bla bla'). The family declined, seeing through this transparent attempt at PR damage control.

Rejecting a child because of something as trivial as his first name is something you might expect on an elementary school playground. Imagine this boy's parents having to explain why so-called adults would do such a thing.

Fanatics: they're not just for Republicans anymore

Hillary Clinton has decided to prop up her floundering coronation march by trying to out-Bush John McCain. The New York senator recently promised to 'obliterate' Iran if they tried 'launching an attack on Israel.'

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," AFP quoted the senator.

No, she doesn't specify what kind of attack would meet her standard. Would bombing raids on Tel Aviv and, say, kidnapping an Israeli sailor at sea both meet Clinton's threshold for launching a nuclear holocaust?

And yes, that's the same Israel that has a nuclear arsenal of its own as well as the region's most powerful and well-funded military.

But heaven forbid you criticize Clinton's militarism or anything else about her slimy campaign. It's okay to attack McCain's fetish for perpetual war as reckless and a frightening trait in someone in charge of this country's nuclear arsenal. But apparently it's sexist to ask the same question of Clinton.

Guess where I'm NOT spending my summer vacation

While visitors to the upcoming Beijing Olympics might not be subjected to official state repression (providing they're not wearing a monk's robe), but they may not be immune to lynch mobs.

Way to dispel the criticisms about brutality in China!

This is the country that's been tapped to propogate the supposedly enlightened, enobling values of the Olympic "movement."


I'm sure we'll be doing this all over again in a few years when the 2014 Winter Olympics are held in Russia.

Well isn't that special

IRS audits of large corporations is down to its lowest levels in 20 years, according to The Syracuse Post-Standard and other sources.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse said only 26 percent of corporations with $250 million or more in assets were audited in fiscal year 2007. That's less than half the 64 percent audit rate for large corporations in 1988, the report added.

It noted that the audit rate of smaller corporations has skyrocketed.

For each hour spent auditing large corporations, the IRS uncovered on average ten times more in unpaid additional taxes than for smaller corporations.

It pays to have friends in high places. Literally.

Scumbag of the week

Given that this award is named after Dick Cheney, it's appropriate that this week's winner is our vice-president's ideological twin.

Benjamin Netanyahu, long one of the most despicable characters in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, made headlines recently. The former Israeli prime minister and current opposition leader talked about how fantastic the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been for his country.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," he said, noting that events had "swung American public opinion in our favor."

I'm really glad for the always opportunistic Netanyahu that not only has the mass murder of American civilians has given such a fantastic boost to his political career but that he's comfortable publically bragging about it.

Then again, this is a man who's made his career by exploiting for his own political benefit the murder of Israeli civilians, so I suppose this isn't such a great leap.

Why is Obama dodging questions about his refusal to use American flag-embossed salad forks?

I know most 'serious' political junkies don't care for Jon Stewart. He's a funny man so obviously he has nothing serious to say. 'Serious' types like to mock people who watch Stewart as unsophisticated consumers of infotainment. Of course, the corporate establishment media trivializes news far more than Stewart, The Onion or other satirists.

Stewart's The Daily Show is without doubt one of the most informative shows on television. The reason is because Stewart connects the dots in a way that you don't get from mainstream media journalists obsessed with access and schmoozing. The most damning pieces on The Daily Show are almost always snipets of politicians or journalists IN THEIR OWN WORDS.

Stewart was first that I saw, but not the only, media observer to to rip ABC News for their disgraceful handling of the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama debate a few days ago.

The moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous wasted the first 50 (FIFTY) minutes of the debate on inane questions about pastors, lapel pins, elitism, old friends, sniper fire and other contrived non-issues of zero interest to most Americans with real problems to worry about. They were so silly that Stewart even chided them for stealing his material!

It took nearly an hour into the 'debate' before the Fourth Estate representatives got around to asking a question that non-elitists might actually care about. And Stephanopolus started that question, "Number one on people's minds is the economy..."

If it was number one on people's minds, Stewart wondered, why the heck did he wait until the 16th question to ask it?!!

I perfectly understand why Ralph Nader and running mate Matt Gonzalez want to get into the presidential and vice-presidential debates. They know that their vote total would sky rocket if people were made aware of their progressive agenda, if people could hear the two in their own words. This is why the Democrat- and Republican-controlled corporate debate commission won't let them.

But I'm left to wonder... even if they were allowed into the debates, would they actually get a chance to talk about their solutions for the serious issues facing Americans or would they be bombarded with questions about their steadfast refusal to wear American flag boxer shorts?


Recommended reading: 'Merchants of Trivia'