- When you hear the words “beef recall,” one thought immediately jumps to mind: is Oprah mad at beef again? You might remember a few years ago when the daytime talk-show diva went on her campaign against beef because she had a beef (pun intended) with the health and safety of the industry’s operations. Beef was in trouble with Oprah fighting against it, but I thought she had moved on to better causes, like helping America for generations to come by supporting Barack Obama in his bid to defeat Sen. Hank Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. So when I hear that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is recalling 143 million pounds of beef from a California slaughterhouse, I have to wonder if it’s the work of O. Winfrey. The recall, which is being hailed as the largest in U.S. history, stems from alleged animal abuse of a facility that provided lunch meat to many school lunch programs across the country. Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. of Chino (yes, the home of Ryan Atwood on everyone’s favorite teen drama of all-time, The O.C.) is the company under fire because it allegedly did not contact its veterinarians when cattle became nonambulatory after passing inspection. The FDA has decided that because the cattle did not receive what the agency deems a complete and thorough inspection, the meat from them is not fit for human consumption. They do caution that the health risk is small, which I’m sure does a lot to allay the concerns of parents in those school districts which received the suspect meat to serve to students. Keep this up, beef industry, and having Oprah Winfrey all over you’re a** will be the least of your concerns....
- When your government officials are warning you about massive voting fraud before an election, that doesn’t say good things about your election process, Pakistan. Pakistan voters have to feel great about the process as they prepare for parliamentary elections that will likely determine the political fate of dictator Pervez Musharraf. Opinion polls are pointing to an opposition victory, which could set the wheels in motion for an exit from office for P. Musharraf, who has been a key ally in America’s war on terrorism. Of course, he also declared emergency rule to seize more power last year, gutted the country’s judiciary system and has tried to suppress independent media that have dared to oppose his iron rule. The guy is a despot, plain and simple, and it’s one of those elections where the opposition should win handily. It’s also the exact type of election where fishy ballot counting and sketchy election procedures tend to hand “miraculous” victories to those already in power. Best of success in getting a fair, non-rigged election, Pakistani voters, but don’t count on it....
- Whaddya know, One Tree Hill was actually good and not at all tied to every single character experiencing the exact same theme this week. Eschewing the thematic structure of your average Saturday morning teen show worked well for OTH, amazingly. We started off with a trip back in time a few minutes to the closing moments of last week’s episode. There was the Lucas-Peyton kiss, followed by the Lucas-Lindsey engagement and revelation of the engagement to a stunned Peyton. That led to an episode where Peyton went from weeping, insonsolable mess crying on the shoulder of her best friend Brooke to being chastised by Hayley for kissing Lucas to Peyton learning to move on. But that’s skipping quite a bit, so here goes. Peyton first went full-on emotional wreck after learning about the engagement, but after encouragement from Brooke, she did a symbolic burning of a copy of Lucas’ book and then got back to work on her record label’s only artist, Mia. That’s when the ripping from Hayley took place. Also contributing to Peyton’s journey to get past Lucas was Molly, the girl she met an episode or two ago who now lives in her old house and room, has read Lucas’ book a dozen times and bumped into Peyton as she left a meeting with Lucas at the high school and told Peyton how much she idolizes her life. Despite repeated visits from Peyton and stern talks with Hayley, Lucas insists he’s in love with Lindesy and wants to marry her - immediately. Peyton finally starts to get ok with that and actually leaves a gift basket on Molly’s front porch containing a can of paint and a letter, telling Molly to paint over the words already painted on Peyton’s old closet door about her and Lucas because it’s time for Molly to write her own story there. Mouth McFadden had an emotional roller coaster of his own to ride this week. His cougar of a boss Alice, who informed Mouth last episode that he was fired because he ended their relationship, was fired. Mouth got the news just as he was cleaning out his own desk, but he was then stunned as he learned that Alice, clearly the biggest whore in the history of network shows, was fired for sleeping with one of the TV station’s news anchors. Worse yet, she was apparently sleeping with every other guy at the station. Can anyone say nympho? But Mouth’s relationship with Alice wasn’t discovered and as a result, the man taking over for Alice handed Mouth an on-air role and promise for more and bigger opportunities if he worked hard. Mouth also has a tough time convincing Millicent, Brooke’s assistant at her clothing store, to go out with him once she learns he was sleeping with his boss. She thinks he’s a morally bankrupt jerk and it’s up to him to convince her otherwise, which of course he does, by showing her why he loves sports and taking an interest in why she loves ballet. Also working hard is Carrie, the nanny/skank taking care of Nathan and Hayley’s household and their son Jamie. Of course, Carrie is working hard to seduce Nathan and finally gives up the subtle stuff and kisses him after getting him to close his eyes under the ruse of cleaning paint off of his face after spending time painting with Jamie. However, even after warning Carrie to knock off the flirting prior to the kiss, Nathan doesn’t tell Hayley about the kiss when she gets home from working with Mia in the studio. That just about covers it, and as I said at the top, this was actually one of the show’s better episodes of the season. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll continue next week. Unlikely, but here’s hoping.
- The verdict is in: Kelvin Sampson is a lying piece of crap. Wait....wait...I’m being told we already knew that. Ok, now the verdict is that Sampson has coached his final game as the coach of the Indiana Hoosiers men’s basketball team. With the administration at IU set to finish their investigation into Sampson’s (alleged) NCAA rules violations, five in total, on Friday, the announcement about K. Sampson’s fate as IU coach will be made at that time. He wont actually be fired at that point because the university doesn’t want to f’up the process and give Sampson a loophole to come back and sue them for wrongful termination. Friday is all but assured of ushering in an indefinite suspension for the cheating coach, meaning he wont be fired but he also won’t be on the sidelines for IU going forward. The administration will then be able to build its case against Sampson so that when they do actually fire him, they will have done it according to the rules. A guy with any sort of integrity and dignity would step down before this all plays out to save himself and his university a lot of embarrassment, but who are we kidding here? Sampson has neither honor nor dignity, so he’ll make the university fire him and then whine about how unfair it is and try to squeeze as much money out of this as possible. Every time I talk about this, I become angrier and sicker about Sampson’s act, so I sincerely hope he never coaches another basketball game again. College basketball will be a better place without a scumbag like him around.....
- I appreciate Amtrak’s thoughts about security and its taking of measures to keep passengers safe, I really do. News the Amtrak will soon begin random searches of passengers’ carry-on bags is great. However, if I were running Amtrak, an equally big concern to making sure no weapons or incendiary devices are being smuggled on in luggage would be making sure that my own trains didn’t routinely become weapons themselves by derailing and causing massive damage to the crash sites and to passengers. Amtrak trains crash more than Bill Clinton lies, which is saying something. If we go a week without an Amtrak crash in this country, it’s a rarity. In speaking about the new bag search procedures, Bill Rooney, Amtrak’s vice president for security strategy and special operations (perhaps it would also be a good time to implement procedures to shorten the über-long titles of your executives, Amtrak), said the following: “On-time performance is a key element of Amtrak service,” (yes, he presumably said this with a straight face), “We are mindful of that. This is not about train delays.” Yeah, you’re all about on-time service, Rooney. Assuming by on-time you mean likely to fly off the tracks and cause a major crash, then yes, you are all about on-time. But props to Amtrak for upping security measures, regardless. I just wish they were more focused on securing their trains to the track.
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