from boingboing

When asked at today's press conference about Amnesty International's report criticizing America's treatment of detainees, President Bush called the claims "absurd." According to the White House transcript, he also said:

"It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth."

My brother Bob Pescovitz comments, "I always thought 'disassemble' meant 'to take apart,' but maybe that's 'dissemble.' But his wife is a librarian so I guess I'm wrong."

Even more ridiculous than Bush using the wrong word is the fact that the Chicago Tribune had the nerve to kindly correct his mistake when quoting him! Link to White House transcript, Link to Chicago Tribune article (republished at KansasCity.com, BugMeNot's login worked for me. Email: icantkick@mailinator.com, Password: oregon1)

Oddly enough, dissemble was yesterday's dictionary.com word of the day.

link

Poem my neice posted to her Xanga

no war?
No broken hearts? No lost hopes?
What if there was such things
As gangs?
What if there was no homeless?
What if there was no poors?
No sadness? No fright?
What if there was no such thing
As suicide?
What if there was no racism?
What if there was no sins?
No gays? No bisexuals?
Where would we go when we died?
We'd already be in heaven...
Right?

~Stevie N. Ferguson

Unfortunately every single one of those things is here to stay. Every last one is something that has existed since the beginning of time; Not to be depressing or anything.

Some of the above can be helped, so let's start with the ones that effect people's ability to live first... war, the poor, suicide/depression, drug addiction, violence...

Deep Throat Revealed

On June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard working at the office complex of the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. noticed a piece of tape on the door between the basement stairwell and the parking garage. It was holding the door unlocked, so Wills removed it, assuming the cleaning crew had put it there. Later on, he returned to discover the tape had been replaced. Upon seeing this, Wills contacted the D.C. police.

After the police arrived, five men — Bernard Barker, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez, James W. McCord, Jr. and Frank Sturgis — were discovered and arrested for breaking into the office of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The men had broken into the office three weeks earlier as well, and they had returned to fix wiretaps (made of chapstick) that were not working and, according to some suggestions, photograph documentation.

President Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. "Bob" Haldeman were tape-recorded (a standard, but secret, Nixon practice) on June 23 discussing use of the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the FBI's investigation of the Watergate break-ins. Nixon followed through by asking the CIA to slow the FBI's investigation of the crime—claiming, speciously, that national security would be put at risk.

This later lead to the resignation of Richard Nixon... and left the Republican party with tarnished credibility. Nixon accepted a pardon from his own former-vice-president, but still claimed he was innocent. But accepting a presidential pardon is voluntary and constitutes a legal admission of guilt.

Today the Washington Post confirmed that former FBI associate director W. Mark Felt was the then-anonymous source of the scandal. For three decades, the ex-FBI official lived with one of the greatest secrets in journalism history.

Read more:
WaPo: Deep Throat Revealed
Wikipedia: Watergate Scandal
Wikipedia: Deep Throat

New Wal-Mart documentary

Marion, Indiana is a town 40 miles north of here. With a population of 30,000, its largest employer was Thomson Electronics' picture tube plant.

The plant closed in March of last year, axing 990 jobs.

The plant closed because Wal-Mart used their typical business practices and forced Thomson to lower their prices for them. Since Wal-Mart undoubtedly sells more of their televisions than any other retailer (they're number 1 in almost everything due to bargaining power), Thompson gave in, closed the plant, moved it overseas, and effectively killed yet another American town. And this time it wasn't by effectively putting the mom-and-pop stores out of business.

Stories like this happen all the time. Wal-Mart's buying power is almost that of a monopoly. In October of last year, Wal-Mart demanded that the music industry lower their prices or they, being the #1 music retailer that makes up 20% of major label sales, will stop selling their (edited) product.

Have you ever seen Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism?
You may be interested in knowing that the maker of Outfoxed will be releasing a new documentary in a few months entitled Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

Note: In January Wal-Mart built a distribution center in Marion's next door neighbor, Gas City (pop. 6,000), which employs 600.