We of The Scallion sincerely thank BLOGGER SUCKS!!! for temporarily hosting this week's submission while Blogger was busy ... SUCKING! Our gentle Readers can thank Blogger for the delay in this week's post ... as well as for deigning to allow this post to occur at all. Better late than never? Or, perhaps, why do it right the first time when there's always someone else's time and money to spend fixing it later?

Enough Blogger-bashing—with no further ado, here are The Scallion's words of wit and wisdom for this woeful week!

For news you can use, remember to check out this short list of fine sources for news stories almost surely absent from the nation's mainstream commercial media:

http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.jimhightower.com/ and the weblog http://hightower.fmp.com/weblog.php
http://www.prwatch.org/ and its archives http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/index.html
http://gregpalast.com/
http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?bid=6

From this week's “we hate it when satire becomes this prophetic” department ...

www.whitehouse.org recently had an article on its Landover Baptist Church sister site in which a pregnant woman who fell on her stomach during step exercises at the ladies' gym was convicted of murder and summarily condemned for failing to observe nine months of total bed rest during her pregnancy. In the great American tradition of truth stranger than fiction, a South Carolina court has convicted a woman of murder for delivering a stillborn child. See AlterNet for details on this all-too-frightening women-as-vessels precedent.

And now, for the week's top stories ...

It's Official: Americans Have Too Much Stuff

December 8, 2003. When a piece of news filters down to the reality-TV shows on the cable channels, you can bet what it shows is just the tip of the iceberg. Just as cable channels like Discovery Health have finally acknowledged America's alarming rise in obesity, others have finally acknowledged the fact that Americans just plain have too much stuff.

While the household clutter issue has been hinted at in cable home improvement shows, like “Changing Rooms,” “Trading Spaces,” and “While You Were Out,” it has finally come to a head in shows like “Clean Sweep,” a new program being shown on The Learning Channel, and “The Life Laundry,” its sister show on BBC America. In such programs, a team of decorators and professional organizers help families desperate enough to embarrass themselves on television cull piles of belongings that litter homes to the point that multiple rooms have become unusable. The belongings are sorted into “keep,” “trash,” and “sell” piles. Items to be sold are put up for sale in a televised yard sale in which family members compete for higher receipts in order to win a prize: the winner gets to keep a treasured item that other family members have put into the trash pile. Items not sold in the yard sale are donated to charity. While the homeowners are engaged in this flurry of activity outside the house, decorators are busy inside adding style, flair, storage, and organization to three of the previously unusable rooms. All in all, a positive, upbeat idea presented in a positive, upbeat program.

However, the fact that America needs programs like these is indicative of a deeper, more disturbing problem: why do Americans (and Brits) have so much stuff, anyway? Is it the culture of rabid advertising that exhorts young and old alike to buy-buy-buy without first checking that they can afford to spend the money or that they really need what the sellers are hawking? Is there an underculture of hoarding that tacitly encourages people to hold onto every item they buy because, heck, they paid good money for it? Have the societies that need these programs become so insular that the idea of sharing with the less fortunate by regularly giving unused items to charity has become anathema to them?

Despite the showboating glamor and glitz Hollywood provides in shows like “Clean Sweep,” the positive message of clearing out unused items and simplifying life is sure to get through to viewers at least on some subliminal level. Hopefully, in the process, viewers will also infer that it's better to bank their earnings and think more carefully about what they buy, perhaps adopting the rule of thumb that, for every item that comes into the home, an old one must be thrown or given away.

Perhaps, in the give-and-take between profit and propaganda, the corporate powers-that-be that own and operate America will tolerate the implied don't-buy-everything-you-see messages of these shows long enough for it to do some good ...

U.S. Studies Israeli Anti-Palestinian Tactics, Employs Against Iraqis

December 5, 2003. The Bush administration and its military minions have been studying the tactics Israel has historically used against Palestinians with the intent of applying them to the civilian Iraqi population. These strategies include liberally and indiscriminately bombing and shooting civilians and using bulldozers and other weapons to separate the target population from homes, family members, employment, farming and food gathering opportunities, and many other vestiges of human necessity and dignity. One keystone of the approach is to capture and detain family members—including small children—of individuals that the military wishes to capture in order to encourage wanted individuals to turn themselves in. In tacit praise of America's no-holds-barred strategy to piss off as many civilians in its own personal occupied territory as possible, Donald Rumsfeld quipped, “If it's good enough for our dear friend Ariel Sharon, then it's good enough for America.”

Americans Seek the Ultimate Commuting Experience

December 3, 2003. Not satisfied with mere shit ugly vans (SUVs), maxivans, and Hummers, Americans are seeking the ultimate single-passenger commuting experience.

“My Hummer gets eight miles to the gallon, and that's just plain excessive,” complained Virginia resident Chuck Pebrane. “Besides, it just doesn't have enough room inside to carry me and my 3” briefcase the twenty miles to and from work in what I'd consider to be sufficient comfort.”

He's far from alone in his complaints. The solution? A stunning new trend in single-passenger commuter vehicles that has dealers and consumers alike revving their motors: buses. The “big three” American automakers have introduced new lines of single-commuter buses that offer two to three times as much internal room as a Hummer and get a whopping three to four miles to the gallon—criteria for space and mileage much more in line with the demands of consumers like Mr. Pebrane.

An additional benefit equally touted by vendors and appreciated by consumers is the increased safety of the larger vehicles. “Damn straight,” confirmed Mr. Pebrane, “With all the other SUVs out there, I'm not the biggest thing on the road any more. I just don't feel safe because there are so many other cars out there as big as me—how can I stare down all those maxivan soccer moms if they're already sizing me up and planning to take me on for that choice spot in the exit lane?

“It's also nice to know that I'm doing my part for my beloved President's Clean Air Act and helping him and The Party reach their noble environment-o-clastic goals,” he added.

This bigger-is-better attitude begs a question that clearly hasn't yet occurred to the Pebranes of the world: what happens when the single-passenger commuter bus is no longer the biggest, baddest thing on the road? Enter the single-passenger commuter eighteen wheeler ...

Access of Evil: What Americans Probably Don't Know About Bush's Manipulation of a Willing Media

December 1, 2003. With the all-too-expected exception of Fox, America's journalists have proven themselves all too willing to ho' themselves out to the illegitimate regime that has hijacked the White House. Instead of asking the hard questions—instead of putting up a fight—America's media continually fail to put up their dukes ... or even to put up their hands. Rather, they all too gladly put up their legs and let Bush have his way with them. He winks; they roll over and give him everything he asks for and more.

Case in point: for a wild-and-crazy—not to mention foolhardily reckless—two hour Thanksgiving campaign photo op stopover in Iraq, Bush effectively kidnapped handpicked members of the media and forbade them to contact their editors until he gave the nod. This was a golden chance for those journalists to resist en masse—to say to the boy-who-would-be-king, “Go ahead. Have your little secret jaunt. Let Fox be the only outlet that covers it and see how that perks up your credibility and theirs. See if we care. We refuse to play ball with you because you are a bully: you lie and cheat, and we've had enough. We don't give a rat's ass about the American public, but, hell, WE deserve better. WE'RE professionals.” Alas, this course—a course that only barely qualifies as marginally brave—was not the course that the American public's brave and loyal watchdog took: rather, fearing they'd be denied future access, they went along for the ride and gave America's faux-president the exact heartwarming (not! -unless said heart was warmed by rising gorge) photo op that he sought.

The irony? When Bush grabbed that big fancy platter laden with delicious-looking food and pretended to serve some of the few hundred handpicked, loudly cheering troops, it was immediately apparent to those who had staged the photo shoot that the plastic turkey they'd just flown into Baghdad was pretending to serve a plastic turkey (presumably to other plastic turkeys?). And some people have the nerve to complain about being served tofu for Thanksgiving ... (See http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?bid=6 for details on both plastic turkeys in Baghdad.)