If the Olympic torch relay is any indication, China faces a political firestorm as host of the 2008 Summer Games. The torch relay carriers were confronted by protesters in London Sunday and in Paris Monday, where police had to extinguish the flame several times to safeguard it from crowds protesting China’s invasion of Tibet and its human rights abuses.
China hopes the Olympics will burnish its rising stature as a world power, but the games already are turning into a public relations nightmare for China by showcasing the country’s human rights abuses.
True, the games should be about sports, but they’re also unavoidably wrapped up in global politics and prestige.
China is richly deserving of the protests.
Charlton Heston, who died Saturday at age 84, was not only one of the great movie icons but also an extremely effective spokeperson for the National Rifle Association, which he headed from 1998 to 2003.
The NRA benefited from his star power and dramatic, uncompromising stands for gun rights. In fact, his galvanizing attacks on Al Gore over gun control laws is credited by some with tipping the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000.
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There’s endless talk about reforming earmarks, although in truth, they represent a fraction of the federal budget. In 2007, Congress approved 12,884 earmarks totaling more than $18 billion in spending in lawmakers’ districts.
By contrast, the Government Accountability Office just released a report blasting the Pentagon for cost overruns and waste in major weapons systems totaling $295 billion. The report also said that none of the projects had met best-management standards and most were years behind schedule.
Moreover, it’s unclear whether some of the weapons, such as a new $81 billion submarine, are even useful in a war on terror dominated by improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers.
Why aren’t candidates or the media talking more about reining in runaway defense spending?
Amid all the talk about what students don’t know, there was a news item last week that gives me hope: Michigan fifth-grader Kenton Stufflebeam, on a recent trip to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., noticed a mistake in a display about prehistoric time.
The exhibit identified the Precambrian as an “era,†but Stufflebeam remembered that his teacher had told him that the Precambrian was a dimensionless unit of time.
Did you know that? Of course you did.
Museum officials admitted the error and are correcting the display. At least some students, it seems, are paying attention in class.
The following satirical headlines come from borowitzreport.com:
MARKET TUMBLES ON NEWS THAT BUSH IS STILL PRESIDENT; White House Appearance ‘A Painful Reminder,’ Experts Say
HILLARY SAYS 8-YEAR-OLD BOSNIAN GIRL WAS ACTUALLY SNIPER; Bouquet of Flowers Hid Semiautomatic Weapon
NADER TELLS GRAVEL TO GET OUT OF RACE; Making a Fool of Himself, Ralph Warns
HILLARY VOWS TO STAY IN RACE 100 YEARS; Nixes Exit Strategy
BUSH TO PHASE OUT ENVIRONMENT BY 2009; Declares War on Prairie Dogs
HILLARY SAYS SHE ‘MISSPOKE’ ABOUT WRESTLING BIN LADEN; Was Greeting Students in Orlando, Clinton Admits
If the Olympic torch relay is any indication, China faces a political firestorm as host of the 2008 Summer Games. The torch relay carriers were confronted by protesters in London Sunday and in Paris Monday, where police had to extinguish the flame several times to safeguard it from crowds protesting China’s invasion of Tibet and its human rights abuses.
