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Redistricting: coming soon to your neighborhood, courtesy of big corporate money!
I noticed a small article buried in today's paper referring to a
criminal probe of corporate contibutions to the 2002 Texas legislative races. These contributions were facilitated by Tom Delay's fundraising machine. You remember Texas, don't you? Redistricting? Guaranteeing congressional seats to Republican candidates while splitting and eliminating Democratic districts?
Here's a map to show you how that turned out. Click on the map adopted on 10/13 2003. I'm especially amused by districts 49, 23, 28, 25 and 15....exactly who gets represented by a 500 mile long snake?
This is really weird. The US is going nuts over
terrorist threats on foreign air carriers, but the carriers and countries involved, although cooperative, are having a hard time understanding WTF??
Q: Is there a no-kidding terrorist threat to large commercial aircraft?
A: Yes. The bad guys hit such a major home run on 9/11 that they are bound to try it again.
Q: Is the terrorist threat on foreign carriers much higher than on domestic, US carriers?
A: This is what the DC boys would have you believe: those decadent Frenchies and ignorant Mexicans just can't figure out how to keep terrorists off of their airplanes. We however, are so amazingly competent that we can ID terrorists on US airplanes and on any airplane in the whole F...ing world! Really. Trust us.
Q: Might this have anything to do with the fact that some
very difficult questions are being asked of the White House re: The Outing Of Valerie Plame right now?
A: What a totally Unpatriotic, Communist, Saddam Loving, America Hating question to ask. This is Important Security Information-of course, we can't tell you exactly what we know. Be afraid. Watch Fox News. Pay no attention to anything other than what we tell you to.
Well, now it turns out that the Air France Christmas flight cancellations were due to "name similarities" and not any actual intelligence. Air France cancelled because they were told by the US that they wouldn't be permitted to land. They seemed to feel that they had adequately screened their passengers and disagreed with the US decision to ban the flights. The "terrorist suspects" included a
five year old child and a Welsh insurance salesman.
Feel safer yet?
Happy New Year! Michigan lost, Minnesota won...batting .500 is an OK way to start the year, especially considering the previous couple. I saw that our
New Embassy In Iraq is going to be gigantic: the largest embassy and staff (over 3000!) anywhere in the world. I guess gw expects to stay -big time- for just a little while longer than we-the-people were led to believe. More BS from DC. Is
anything these guys told us about why we went over there or what we would be doing true?
I see that
holiday sales figures for Nordstrom and Coach, as well as other high end retailers, are way up. Target and WalMart didn't do so well.
Paul Krugman claims that this is because low and middle income buyers are strapped this year, while the well-heeled are doing much better, thank you. This is typical communist, anti-american, unpatriotic, liberal nonsense. The real reason that luxury sales figures have skyrocketed is because there are no more poor people in America! Everybody is rich due to our great leader GW's economic miracles!
Hmmm. Here we are on New Years' Eve, ready to begin a Presidential election year. Perhaps we'll actually get to "elect" one this time....Anybody going to Times Square tonight? Worried about the Orange Alert? At least we know Saddam won't be taking pot-shots at the crowd; a possibility that had me quite concerned before we got him. Whew! Just talking about it makes me feel safer.
