Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Things I Notice
Monday
June 26, 2006
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
-Thomas Jefferson
Is the United States slowly turning into China in the way the federal government is working to silence the media? First there was anger from the Bush administration about the release of information about the secret domestic spying program... with attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales hinting that journalists who broke the story might be prosecuted for their actions. Now President Bush is talking about taking action against the New York Times for its article which revealed the federal government's secret surveillance of confidential banking records.
A more pressing question: why is there not outrage about this on the cable news networks? I've seen ten times more coverage about Ozzie Guillen calling Jay Mariotti a fag (the biggest non-story story of the year), which should tell you everything you need to know about the state of the contemporary American news culture.
Where did the Republican party take a 180 degree turn? Don't mistake me as some blind-to-reality, bleeding heart type who wants to tell others how to live their lives, sounding like Gloria Allred did in her soundbytes on Howard Stern this morning. But the neocon mindset of taking away the liberties of Americans in the name of fighting terror is complete bullshit, and it's in no small part a piece of the reason why President Bush's approval rating is so low.
We have a separation of church and state in this country, right? Churches don't have to pay property taxes (which is a sham, but another topic for another time.) So why is it that one of the many tiny churches around here has a sign up saying "Vote No for zoning on Tuesday" on their marquee? How is this even remotely acceptable on any level?
|  | For some reason, this picture (from the school where my sister is visiting in Japan) cracks me up.
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I'm not the type to say I told you so... but to everyone who thought that Vince McMahon was actually going to let ECW be a significantly different product than what WWE is, how did you actually believe that would happen once it was announced that ECW was going to be just another WWE brand? It's not even Extreme Championship Wrestling anymore, since "wrestling" to McMahon is a term he'd prefer not using. His counter-brand (that promotes the wrestling vs. the entertainment) can't even refer to itself as wrestling. McMahon has a miopic view of what the product should be, and deviating from that just isn't in the cards, even though it would be very profitable for him to do that with the so-called ECW brand.
There's a picture from the school where my sister Mary Beth is visiting that I had to share with you on here. It's from the auditorium area, which isn't particularly notable... except that it shows an English Speech Contest complete with a sign, written (appropriately enough in English) designating what the event is.
I'm proud to say that my sister finished seventh runner up in it. Good job! Only joking... That would be funny, though, to lose an English speaking contest in a school in Japan. It'd be the biggest U.S. upset in Japan since the Mike Tyson/Buster Douglas boxing match in early 1990...
It's humorous to read the translation on the school's site about Mary Beth's visit. Here's the Google wording: "From today a little more than 3 weeks, Mary [besu] everyone of class and studies together with high 2B group. Homestay to pupil's house of this school as a short-term foreign student. When it wears the uniform, completely it is Seishin raw." That's nice and all, but my sister is not an it, nor is she Seishin raw, whatever that means.
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