The Daily Grill

Shadow Boxering

Tiny little Senator Barbara Boxer is taking on the gigantic Federal Communications Commission, looking into allegations that the FCC may have suppressed or destroyed two reports indicating that consolidating ownership of radio stations was a bad thing. "What's the big deal?" I hear you thinking. It's called "control of the airwaves", dummy. There was a 6% increase in the number of radio stations between 1996 and 2003, with a corresponding decrease of 35% in the number of station owners. The mega-scum of them all, Clear Channel Communications, during that same period went from owning 62 stations to 1,233! Oh, yeah, and in case you didn't know, we all were supposed to have been given a shot at owning those airwaves at one time. Thank god we got blogs.

Draining The Dregs

According to a report in the NYTimes, USArmy officials say they may be forced to lean more heavily on the National Guard to bolster oversea troop deployment. Those poor National Guards had no clue what they were signing up for when they fell for that "1 weekend a month, 2 weeks a year" slogan, which has since been retired. It's apparently been replaced with either "We'll see you when we see you!" or "Keep your head down!"

Crazy From The Heat

At a rally to celebrate a "divine victory" against Isreal in Beirut today, Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declared "There is no army in the world that make us drop our weapons from our hands, from our grip!" Uh...first off, Sayyad, the world basically forced both sides to call off your preliminary event in the Armageddon Bowl so there was no "winner". And secondly, that's the kind of statement that will make people come over just for the pleasure of kicking your ass.

Live And Let Live...Usually

SuperFan Goes Down

You gotta love this. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in tracking down the thief behind several stolen cars in a Vancouver suburb, arrested Shylo Kujawski. They first made him because of his "Grand Theft Auto" tattoo -- Shylo is such a huge fan of the video game that he got himself inked with the logo -- then nabbing him after a stakeout caught him boosting a car. Now he'll have lots of time to play, if he can get an Xbox in his cell.

75 Million Idiots

According to the latest NYTimes/CBS News poll, only 25% of the American people approve of the way Congress is handling their duties. The last time figures were that low, the Democrats lost control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. So you know what this means -- one quarter of the country's population is so idiotic that they actually think the Congress is doing a good job.

Sneaky Or Snarky?

According to a story in the LATimes, the National Counterterrorism Center (the agency created two years ago to prevent terrorist attacks -- I think it was put together based on the popularity of the TV show 24's fictional Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU)) has outsourced more than half of their employees. Sort of like when you call the help line for an American company and get some dude in Bangladesh named "Steve" on the phone, except this is more like the FBI turning to Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard for extra manpower. Which would be okay I guess. I mean, they are Republicans, after all

Well, Blow Me Down

By now you've probably heard the FDA warnings about tainted spinach, released as health officials worked to find the source of a multistate E. coli outbreak. Apparently even washing the suspect spinach won't kill the sometimes deadly bacteria. So far one person died and dozens of others were sickened in the eight-state outbreak, linked to bagged spinach. The person killed by spinach hasn't been publicly identified but, as seen in the illustration above, it's not hard to figure out who the first victim might have been.

Rice N' Beans

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a professor of Political Science of Stanford University and must have had, at one time, a nice little vocabulary. In speaking today about the 9/11 attacks five years ago, though, it's clear that White House Resident Bush's scattered, shattered grasp of the English language is having its affect on her: "I think it's clear that we are safe — safer — but not really yet safe," said she on CBS's Face The Nation. This is the person we're sending to negotiate peace around the world?

A Disaster Waiting To Happen (Again)

Clown Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA and the guy held most responsible for last year's Katrina disaster disaster, has been hired by the ironically-named Resilient Corporation as its director of emergency and disaster preparedness. He either left FEMA off his resumé or they failed to check Brownie's references.