Month: November 2008

I want robots to decorate my Christmas tree – wait, I want to decorate it, the robots can protect it from Mishka.

WellMedicated

As a child, I truly believed that at this point in my life I would be living in a space-dome community with a flying car and a robot maid. I can even remember the utter disappointment of realizing that most of the things I read in my dad’s back issues of Popular Science magazine would never see the light of day.

11th-Hour Rush to Enact a Rule That Obama Fought – NYTimes.com

The Labor Department proposal is one of about 20 highly contentious rules the Bush administration is planning to issue in its final weeks. The rules deal with issues as diverse as abortion, auto safety and the environment. One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in deciding whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered species.

Or, as my friend said:

I love President Bush. Always willing to stick to principals and fuck over the little guy.

Well, this sucks – via Cute Overload

ABC News: Bush on His Legacy: I ‘Liberated’ Iraqis

In a personal and wide-ranging interview conducted by his sister about his legacy, his faith and the influence of his father, President George W. Bush said he hopes to be remembered as a liberator of the Iraqi people.

…

“I surrounded myself with good people,” Bush said. “I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions.”

…

“The promise of No Child Left Behind has been fulfilled,” Bush said.

Wal-Mart worker dies in apparent shopping stampede – International Herald Tribune

A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York was trampled to death by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy.

At 4:55 a.m., just five minutes before the doors were set to open, a crowd of 2,000 anxious shoppers started pushing, shoving and piling against the locked sliding glass doors of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, Nassau County police said. The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges and surged in, toppling a 34-year-old temporary employee who had been waiting with other workers in the store’s entryway.

People did not stop to help the employee as he lay on the ground, and they pushed against other Wal-Mart workers who were trying to aid the man. The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said.

Op-Ed Columnist – ROGER COHEN – NYTimes.com

Of the 770 detainees grabbed here and there and flown to Guantánamo, only 23 have ever been charged with a crime. Of the more than 500 so far released, many traumatized by those “enhanced” techniques, not one has received an apology or compensation for their season in hell.

What they got on release was a single piece of paper from the American government. A U.S. official met one of the dozens of Afghans now released from Guantánamo and was so appalled by this document that he forwarded me a copy.

Dated Oct. 7, 2006, it reads as follows:

“An Administrative Review Board has reviewed the information about you that was talked about at the meeting on 02 December 2005 and the deciding official in the United States has made a decision about what will happen to you. You will be sent to the country of Afghanistan. Your departure will occur as soon as possible.”

That’s it, the one and only record on paper of protracted U.S. incarceration: three sentences for four years of a young Afghan’s life, written in language Orwell would have recognized.