The Weekly News Update for 6/26/2006
This is the Weekly News Update for 6/26/2006 by Cory!! Strode, who thinks that it might be too late for an EXTREME version of the Weekly News Update since the thought of writing this while on a skateboard scares the crap out of him.
The Weekly News Update is brought to you by Superman Returns, whose filmmakers remind you that they spent over $250 million on the movie, and if you don't go see it, they may have to ask you if they can crash on your futon for a few weeks, until they get back on their feet.
Our top story this week, in the Senate debate on Iraq (covered later in this newscast) Senator Rick Santorum (R – Crazy Train) announced that he was given Top Secret proof that Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq. He even showed the Top Secret Memo that announced it to a national cable television audience, however, since it was only on C-Span, it may as well have STAYED secret, since their viewer ship is confined to Brian Lamb groupies and people who wait to see if Dennis Hastert is ever going to respond to their love letters. Santorum also decried the New York Times in his speech, claiming that they will publish Top Secret information, but not information about successes like the finding of WMD, proving what we here at the Weekly News Update have known for years: Rick Santorum was born without the “Irony” gene.
The Defense Department quickly downplayed the story, saying that the weapons found were from before the first Gulf War, were no longer dangerous, and were not the ones that they went to war with Iraq over. Santorum immediately called on the Senate to pass a resolution asking why the Department of Defense hates America so much.
More problems in the trial of Saddam Hussein as his lawyer was killed in a bombing last week. In response, an Iraqi official said that they would be combating this sort of violence by running public service ads that tell Iraqi citizens that Shakespeare's “First thing we do is kill all the lawyers” quote is just a joke and not an imperative to be carried out. They also said that they may have to work with their nascent judicial system and let accused people know that a lawyer will be appointed for them if they can't afford one, and that they had enough lawyers in case their first two or three lawyers are killed.
The judge in the case said that the trial will continue, but acknowledged that the loss of one of Saddam's lawyers may cause enough of a problem that he may have to be tried again. The judge also said that the ratings on Saddam's trial have been so high that if they do have to re-try him, they will look at make it a reality show, with three judges, people voting at the end of the trial on Saddam's guilt, and a lot of young people singing crappy pop songs to keep their attention.
President Bush met with members of the European Union last week. In the meeting, Bush asked leaders for aid for Iraq, and Bush later said that he felt he was making progress, as the leaders only laughed at his request for 20 minutes, as opposed to the 35 minutes they spent laughing the last time he asked. Bush also said that the other leaders acknowledged how hard he was working, since they all said something about making a bed and then sleeping in it.
A former White House aide has been found guilty in a campaign funding scandal connected to the Jack Abramoff scandal. The aide is said to have covered up his financial dealings with Abramoff including trips overseas, helping Abramoff in his inquiries on Government owned real estate and telling Abramoff that he looked perfectly normal wearing a fedora and trench coat as he walked around the White House. The aide has been sentenced to 200 hours of listening to Tom DeLay speeches and has to perform 200 hours of community service of shoveling crap, much like he did when he said that he, and other people involved with Abramoff did nothing wrong.
The Senate debated the War in Iraq, and the Republican Senate leadership took great pains to frame the debate saying that they would be debating if the Senate would vote to support the troops and keep America safe or vote to approve calling the troops names and hoping America gets attacked by terrorists. As with most of the high minded debate in the US government lately, it took almost a full two hours before Senators were calling each other names, kicking dirt on each other's shoes or making farting noises into their microphones when an opposing Senator would talk. The Senate has decided that for the next debate on something as important as War, they would change the vote tally from “Yay or Nay” to “Yuh-huh and Unt-uh”.
The debate fell mostly along party lines with Republicans accusing the Democrats of a “cut and run” way of thinking, and Democrats trying to think of a similar catchy phrase, and they accused the Republicans of, and this isn't the joke part, policies they called “Lie and die” and “Bait and switch,” proving that the Democrats sill haven't hired anyone who knows anything about marketing. Democrats said that they were unprepared for Republicans use of a catchy phrase during a debate on a serious issue, but as they were driving home from the debate, they thought up a number of great comebacks, and are prepared to use them if they ever get a chance again.
Despite Republicans fanning out to the cable news programs and radio talk shows to say that setting a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq is as bad as burning the flag, allowing gay people to marry and trying to curb the amount of money corporations can contribute to re-election campaigns, a poll shows that 53% of Americans want a clear withdrawal date to be set. Republican said that they would be working to show that 53% of Americans are unAmerican and should have their voting rights removed so as not to taint the next election.
Japan is the latest county in President Bush's “Coalition of the Willing” to announce that they would be withdrawing troops from Iraq by the end of 2006. That means that by the end of 2006, the only countries still in the coalition will be England, Australia, Neverland and Fantasy Island will be working with the US in Iraq.
When asked if the US would be accusing Japan of “cutting and running” for withdrawing their troops, a White House spokesman said that they reserved that phrase for Democrats, the Japanese were good at coming up with catchy slogans, and the last thing they wanted to do was to get into a war of catch phrases with the country that gave us Pokemon, Hello Kitty and most of the cars people can afford to fill with gas. A White House spokesman also said, “We feel that we have reached our quote of pissing off other countries for the week, and don't want to start reaching into next week's ration, thank you.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il announced that his country was no longer bound by the moratorium of missiles, and that he felt that since the US was not willing to enter into two party negotiations, that he should not feel bound by any previous treaties. US officials reacted with outrage, stating that only the US could unilaterally ignore previously signed treaties, and how DARE North Korea try to usurp the US's position as the world's preemient ignorer of treaties. US officials said that they were looking in to other treaties they could disavow in order to remain the world leader in the field, but that they were concerned about North Korea's attempts at taking the lead in this field.
When asked if they were concerned about North Korea's thinly veiled hints that they would soon begin missile tests, they said, “Our intelligence tells us that they are years from testing. What? Oh, yeah, it's the same intelligence gathering field that told us Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Iran was years from developing nuclear capabilities and that Osama Bin Laden was in Syria and not Afghanistan, why do you ask?”
Oil companies have gone on the offensive, running ads that attempt to explain that the fact that consumers are paying record prices at the pump has nothing to do with th fact that they are reaping record profits from selling gas at the pump. Said one oil company executive, “If they ads are good enough, people will buy it. I mean, they were able to get people to buy those potato chips that turn your toilet into a Jackson Pollack painting, frozen peanut butter and jelly sammiches and a box set from Journey, proving that people will buy ANYTHING.”
President Bush has announced that he will be directing the federal government to crack down on employers who take advantage of illegal immigrants, but also announced that he would not be seeking sanctions for those same employers. Bush said that instead of fines and the loss of government contracts, the employers would be punished with harsh words and Vice President Dick Cheney's disapproving glare. Bush further said that if employers were repeatedly caught employing illegal immigrants, they may have to contribute larger amounts of money to the Republican party to avoid being pointed out as unAmerican by the anchors on FOX News.
Doctors announced that they have developed new methods to cut the suffering of people put to death by lethal injection, but that none of the states who use that method of the death penalty had expressed no interest in the information. A spokesman for the state of Texas, which performs the most executions said, “We're sure that the doctors have the best interest of the condemned at heart, as well as wanting to make the procedure more in line with the provision in the Constitution that there be no cruel and unusual punishment...but left on our own, we'd just as soon kill these bastards live on TV by having them fight to the death in steel cages with chainsaws. YEEEE-HAW!”
A recent study shows that Americans are becoming more isolated from each other, and are spending more time and money in personal electronics, video entertainment systems and on the Internet, rather than going out and talking to their neighbors and friends. We here at the Weekly News Update would comment on this, but it would mean that we'd have to quit watching the new “Veronica Mars” dvd set, and we're only about half way through it. Besides, other people might have opinions and viewpoints different than ours, and we're just not ready for that kind of stress.
Finally, Republicans in Congress once against blocked a raise in the minimum wage while voting themselves a raise for the 6th year in a row. The minimum wage has been set at $5.15 an hour since 1997, and the reasons given for voting against are that same as they have been since then: it's an undue burden on small business, it's used as a starter wage and poor people would just spent the extra money on politically organizing and demanding we pay attention to them and their whining.
Democrats countered by saying that it is harder for people to subsist on the current minimum wage, and opponents reminded them that Americans are getting obese in record numbers, so they'll have to come up with a better argument.
That's the news! If you don't like it, make your own!
The Weekly News Update is copyright 2006, Solitaire Rose Productions. So there.
Is it possible to drink TOO much diet soda? Lord knows I'm trying to find out.