• Hot Off The Presses - Politics, Schmolitics

    Mythbusters Needed: Al Qaeda in Iraq (not so much)

    McClatchy: Bush Wrong to Blame Iraq Woes Mainly on Al-Qaeda NEW YORK For the past week, E&P has noted the Bush administration’s rising use of blaming much of the insurgency in Iraq on al-Qaeda operatives. Some news outlets have gone all along with this, others not. We pointed out that McClatchy Newspapers seemed to be questioning this trend.”We cannot attribute all the violence in Iraq to al Qaida,” retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq before becoming an opponent of Bush’s strategy there, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. “Al Qaida…

  • Hot Off The Presses - Only in Utah... - Politics, Schmolitics

    Blue State: Life is Good. Red State: Life Sucks. Why?

    I’ve wondered about this before, but OneUtah.org’s post pointed out some recent studies that were collected about the huge disparity in health care, income, education, and plain old quality of life between “Blue” states and “Red” states, and offers an interesting analysis. First, some examples, none of which are going to be all that surprising, really. PERRspectives Blog: Health Care the Latest Red State Failure The same dismal pattern applies to a wide array of measures of social dysfunction and pathology. 8 of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates are squarely in Red America. 7 of the…

  • Hot Off The Presses

    Baby Stroger Kept Cancer Secret For Election

    What do voters need to know? | Chicago Tribune Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, who zealously guarded details of his father’s crippling stroke last year, kept his own cancer diagnosis secret as he campaigned to succeed him, his administration acknowledged Tuesday.Todd Stroger, who learned about 10 months ago that he had an early stage of prostate cancer, had his prostate gland removed Monday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, county spokeswoman Ibis Antongiorgi said. “The doctor expects a full and speedy recovery,” she said. More B.S. from the Stroger political clan, and of course as I thought, he didn’t have the…

  • Hot Off The Presses

    The “Opposites Detract” Theory of Political Appointees

    HRC | Holsinger’s Anti-Gay Views Make Him ‘Unworthy’ of Surgeon General Post WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign spoke out today in opposition to President Bush’s nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to the position of surgeon general. Among other things, the U.S. surgeon general is charged with educating Americans about public health.“Dr. Holsinger has a record that is unworthy of America’s doctor,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “His writings suggest a scientific view rooted in anti-gay beliefs that are incompatible with the job of serving the medical health of all Americans. It is essential that America’s top doctor…

  • Hot Off The Presses

    Only in Boston: Bad Fax, No Bomb Threat

    Local businesses in the strip mall adjoining the Ashland, MA Bank of America are grumbling about lost revenue and disruption because the bank overreacted to some bad clip art on an internal memo that was, unfortunately, truncated so that it looked like a “bomb threat” and not like a “corporate countdown” team-building document.  Also, no children were harmed in the evacuation of the strip mall. Faulty fax, mistaken as threat, prompts evacuation of stores – The Boston Globe A day-care center with about 30 children and more than a dozen small businesses in Ledgemere Plaza on Eliot Street were evacuated for…

  • Home Improvement - Hot Off The Presses

    Cicada Madness

    Chicago Tribune | The Chicago Gardener Chicago and the surrounding suburbs are going a little crazy waiting for the 17-year cicadas to emerge. I’ve lived here 11 years, and apparently the noisy buggers that annoy the shit out of me every summer are nothing compared to the much larger swarms of noisy buggers that emerge on the 17-year cycle. As I was leaving work, there was a “puff” piece on the local news with a lady newscaster and a whole bunch of schoolkids dressed up in pink construction paper cicada hats. They were all mighty disappointed, because the cicadas failed…

  • Hot Off The Presses

    3400th Killed… on Mother’s Day

    All Things Considered, May 15, 2007 · First Lt. Andrew Bacevich Jr. was killed in Iraq on Mother's Day. His mother and father received the news when two uniformed officers rang their doorbell in Walpole, Mass. Bacevich is the 3,400th U.S. serviceman to die in Iraq. His father, a professor of international relations at Boston University, is one of the most prominent critics of the Iraq war in America. Professor Andrew Bacevich is a retired Army colonel and a veteran of the Vietnam War. [tags]Iraq, 3400, Mother's Day[/tags] 

  • Hot Off The Presses - Mini-Posts

    Headline Editors Are Funny

    Former Hawkeye Pierce moves to Illinois | Chicago Tribune At first I thought "What? Alan Alda is moving here?" Then I realized a basketball player named Pierce, from the University of Iowa was on his way, and a Chicago Trib headline writer was having a little fun with the item.