Tsunami Kills 23K

Yesterday, a 9.0 earthquake in the Bay of Bengal triggered massive tsunamis killing more than 23,000 from Indonesia to Somalia to India and Bangladesh. A massive tragedy impacting some of the most impoverished places in the world. Just awful.
The ICRC has set up an aid website. Donate.
The local news here in Atlanta saw this story so important it ran it 15 minutes into the broadcast, the last story before weather. The lead story being after Christmas sales, of course. God our media sucks.

Rome

Is this what we’ve come to just to make people act civilized?

ATLANTA (AP) — Airlines have offered more legroom, televisions and even martinis on flights to draw customers in a highly competitive market. In the latest unusual effort, Delta’s low-fare carrier, Song, will give free tickets to passengers who are nice to one another.

Help another passenger carry a bag, stay upbeat during a difficult situation or assist a flight attendant and you could earn one of 5,000 roundtrip tickets Song will give away in June for redemption between September and November.

Earth to Dan

Why is Dan Savage writing articles for Salon about Howard Stern and his battles with the FCC?

His sex “advice” columns are often entertaining, but he never goes more than a paragraph or two without some self-aggrandizing stroking. Here, he aludes to being the “Gay Howard Stern,” actually considers himself big enough to be “next on the list” (while denying doing it), and then plugs his own website all by the end of the 2nd paragraph. Nauseating.

Dan: stick to the weenies, poo-eating, and boybutt. Don’t try to legitimize yourself, and I think I hear the phone… yep, it’s the Rikki show again…

Karl Rove Re-election Plan On Track: Saddam Captured Alive

Seriously, is anyone really surprised by this?
Bush verbally masturbated for 45 minutes declaring “a dark era is over.” The streets of Bagdad erupt in jubilation. “Operation Red Dawn!” Natch, CNN’s sucking up the spin like a wet sponge. Lordy.
OK, so am I the only one who thinks we’ve had ol’ Saddam all along and he’d been shoved in some dank dark hole until the Bushies deemed it most “newsworthy?”
The unibomber-look is a nice touch, though.
Now, about that pesky democracy thing…

Fucking PG&E

Think utility corruption ended with Enron and Dynergy? Oh, it SOOO did not.
It’s bad enough we’re already paying inflated energy prices from the 2000 crisis that left California with rolling blackouts and led to the eventual bankruptcy of PG&E. Not my fault (try Enron), but I sure am paying for it.
But now it looks like PG&E will get away with screwing Californians out of an additional $9.3B in inflated energy prices through 2012. In the meantime, they’ll pocket and extra $326M by raising natural gas rates. Now, it’s not like PG&E was a nice, generous utility before the crisis. Known for it’s unparalleled greediness and poor management, it had the gaul to pay out mondo bonus packages to management days before it filed for bankruptcy. It made Erin Brockovich famous thanks to poisoning her entire town, and it was even involved in a cover-up following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, almost 100 years ago.
I feel dirty.

Rootin’-Tootin’ Round Up

Several other rousin’ bits or things pissing me off today (mostly the latter):

• Amazing Hubble photos of Mars [kickapoo.stsci.edu]
• They can’t go home again [Salon.com]
  Poisonous politics in Texas. And seriously, if you’ve ever voted for Tom DeLay, send me an email. I want to meet you. You’ve danced with the devil.
• EPA Eases Pollution Rule at Power Plants [yahoo.com]
  “Jane, Tommy, Mommy’s only 29 but she’s dying of cancer so the CEO of FirstEnergy can buy another S600. Send my regards to George W. Bush.”
• We’re loosing the war in Afghanistan, too [Salon.com]
• The Aladdin on the Vegas strip will be turned into a Planet Hollywood themed resort [yahoo.com]
  Ugh. This SOOO won’t work.