Politics
Fourth of July Fireworks
[In better days…Albright and Kim Jong-il]
It’s been a busy holiday weekend…
- North Korea test fired its massive Taep-O-Dong II missile — rumored to have the staying power to reach Alaska — but the projectile suffered premature payload delivery, fizzling into the Sea of Japan
a minute and a half42 seconds after liftoff. - Adding to the whiff of space-race nostalgia in the upper atmosphere, Space Shuttle Discovery made a star spangled liftoff, but that damn foam may again have dinged the wing.
- All of this excitement was seemingly too much for economic terrorist Ken Lay, whose holiday travels took an unexpected detour to the special rung of hell reserved for men who make a profit from “jamming” Grandma Millie “right up her asshole for fucking $250 a megawatt hour.”
- Breaking new ground on Plamegate, the indispensable Murray Waas reported that Bush directed Dick Cheney “to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit [Joe] Wilson.”
- Mexico descended into strangely familiar electoral chaos, when longshot right-wing candidate Felipe Calderon appeared to squeak by lefty populist Manuel Lopez Obrador, until the late emergence of 3 million previously uncounted ballots threw the race into Florida 2000 territory.
- The CIA has unaccountably closed shop on the crack unit that was heading the search for Osama bin Laden, according to a New York Times report. Let me repeat that: The Bush Administration has shut down the team of intelligence agents who were looking for the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. The mind reels.