Reuters Wire | 09/16/2002 | WTO Rules Against U.S. on Anti-Dumping Payments Law
Guess who’s violating free trade agreements again! However, I can’t blame it on Bush this time; this one’s on the heads of Robert Byrd and the rest of Congress. On the other hand, Clinton was against the Byrd Amendment and Bush supports it. So I guess I can still blame him, especially since both houses were Republican then. Whew.
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Miss America Contest Proves Diverse
Miss Alaska Peggy Willman is an Inupiaq Eskimo. Miss South Dakota Vanessa Shortbull is a Lakota Sioux. Miss Delaware Shoha Kirti Parekh is of Indian descent. Six contestants are black, and for the first time, the pageant has an African-American host _ comedian Wayne Brady.
Showing that, as ever, the Miss America pageant is thirty years behind, and they’ve finally caught up with 1972. Though Wayne Brady is funny.
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Yahoo! News - Roxette Singer in Hospital with Brain Tumor
Remember Roxette? I’ve been trying not to, personally. Anyway, too bad for her, but the real story is that Roxette was still around. I thought they’d been exiled to the Island of Misfit Eighties/Nineties Pop years ago.
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CNN.com - Same-sex schools plan comes under fire - September 16, 2002
The Bush Adminstration apparently thinks it’s not important for children to be acquainted with members of the opposite sex. Who says we don’t have anything in common with Saudi Arabia? Next up: single-race schools!
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You know, I never used to reflexively disbelieve anything the government said. Not even when Reagan was President. (I’m too young to really remember Nixon’s presidency.) But after the “dirty bomber” and the attempts to tie unrelated issues to 9-11, the raging dishonesty about Social Security and the Bush economic theory that holds cutting taxes on rich people is the answer to all problems and what you do when there are no problems…
Well, they lost me. I’m in reflexively-disagree mode and I will be until they prove they can be trusted. I don’t mind disinformation in a war — I’d be upset if they didn’t do that. But what I see is a pattern of lying and obfuscation for domestic political consumption. Nothing going on in the War on Terror? Well, announce the capture of the guy we’ve been holding for six months! We want to cooperate with our allies, but here are some tariffs on European goods! Fidel Castro is building weapons of mass destruction!
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Baby found in downtown parking lot
Some people shouldn’t be allowed to live, yet alone reproduce:
It was a newborn girl, about 7 pounds, with about a foot of umbilical chord still dangling and treated with gauze bandage. The baby was wrapped in two dirty towels matted with dog hair and placed on a 4-foot-high, 30-inch wide cement ledge in a parking lot behind Franklin’s Printing, at 135 International Boulevard, across from Centennial Olympic Park.
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Source: Killer in apperent murder-suicide near NYC’s Times Square is former FBI agent
First, it’s not a Great Moment, but the headline includes a typo: it should be “apparent”, obviously.
Second, fine folks the FBI hires, isn’t it? The former agent turned Blue Cross VP shot and killed a couple of his co-workers and then himself.
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Awkward Moments in Headline Writing
Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Hijack Suspect Asked to Be Held
Sept. 16, 2002: The Grauniad’s attempt at a clipped headline style only makes it sound like the suspected hijacker is a lonely young man who wanted some human contact. Heck, they may think that. In fact, the prosecutor asked the court to hold Kerim Chatty in custody until the investigation is concluded.
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Stocks Decline at Midmorning Amid Earnings Warnings, War Jitters
And presumably fear that President Bush will give another speech.
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NEWS.com.au | ‘People smuggler’ faces justice (August 27, 2002)
And what do they call people smugglers in Southeast Asia? “Snakeheads”! (Dead link, unfortunately. I’ll try to find another. This was posted to the wrong site and I didn’t notice it until just now.)
UPDATE: Here’s a story that refers to a people smuggler known only by his nickname: “Snakehead”.
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