- Great episode of 24 for Jack Bauer and friends, solving the mysterious conspiracy plaguing all branches of the American government and saving the day…..but you knew it was too good to be true. I’m not sure if the show’s producers expect us to really buy into the good times when we’re in the tenth episode of a 24-episode season and plenty more twists are surely ahead, but let’s go ahead and rehash the good news anyhow. The hour kicked off with Jack and FBI Agent Renee Wheeler released from police custody to continue their pursuit of Sangalan terrorist Col. Ike Dubaku. Dubaku was supposedly planning to kill his girlfriend Marika because she had turned on him and was working with the FBI now, but he elected to keep her alive once she agreed to still come with him to Belize. They set out on the road with Jack and Agent Walker in pursuit and the chase turned high speed when Dubaku’s driver realized they were being followed. A traffic accident in front of them kept Jack and Renee from continuing their pursuit, but Marika took matters into her own hands by assaulting Dubaku’s driver, causing a horrific crash that killed her and left Dubaku badly injured. Before Dubaku could leave in the ambulance, the EMTs picked up a weird electromagnetic force from his body preventing their defibrillator from working properly. That came after Jack forced them to revive Dubaku so Jack could question him. Thinking over Dubaku’s words about the list he had of names of people involved in the conspiracy, Jack had the paramedics pinpoint the source of the electromagnetic energy and slice open a spot on Dubaku’s right side, near the middle of his ribcage. There, Jack found some type of flash memory device containing the list. He sent it to Larry Moss and Chloe O’Brien at the FBI field office via helicopter, with Chloe copying the data once it arrived. The caveat was that the memory device had a self-erase function that meant its contents could only be downloaded once, then they were wiped out. That doesn’t appear to be a problem until Dubaku mole and all-around douche bag/FBI analyst Sean Hillinger hears about the files through the bugs he’s set up around the office and meets in the women’s restroom (good comedy) with Erin, the woman with whom he both having an affair and taking part in an international espionage scheme. He explains his plan to cover their asses (their names are in Dubaku’s file) by initiating a total reformat of the entire server and data base in the office, which would erase all of the files Chloe downloaded from the chip. The plan works, with Sean and Erin working their magic in the server room and starting the reformat. However, once the program is up and running, Sean shows his true weasel-ly colors by shooting and killing Erin, then shooting himself in the arm and putting the gun by her body to make it appear that she was the one who was involved in the wrongdoing and he was the one who tried to stop her. Larry Moss is first on the scene and believes Sean’s story….until Chloe is able to recover the lost files from some sort of system mirroring program she had used many times to safeguard data when working on projects for other agencies or organizations. Once she recovers the file, fingering those involved in the conspiracy takes no time at all. Sean knows this and tries to flee, only to by caught by security and slammed up against a wall by Moss. He refuses to talk and demands his lawyer, a weasel to the bitter end. President Allison Taylor is dealing with drama of her own, waiting for her husband Henry to get out of surgery for the gunshot wound he sustained during his rescue by Jack last week. With surgery slated to go on several more hours, Bill Buchanan convinces her to return to the White House to keep working while she waits. There, she meets her daughter Olivia, who we met last week and who is estranged from her family. Olivia is eager ot hear details of who shot her dad, but because of national security concerns, the president can’t tell herr much and actually bans her from going to the hospital, confining her to the White House for her own safety. President Taylor then is briefed again by Bill, who tells her about the discovery of the list and the arrests already being made. He also urges her to speak to Sen. Blaine Meyer on Jack’s behalf, as Jack is to resume testimony before Meyer’s Senate committee the next day and likely be prosecuted as the scapegoat for the misdeeds of CTU in his prior life and time there. President Taylor agrees to consider the request, but Jack has much more on his plate than a Senate hearing. As he sits on the steps of a plaza near the hospital where Dubaku was taken and is in critical condition, Tony Almeida approaches and informs Jack that even with Dubaku out of the picture, Gen. Benjamin Juma’s crusade against the U.S. continues. With American forces now in Sangala and quickly taking control of the country, Juma has plans to set off a bomb somewhere in D.C. His point man for the attack appears to by Ryan Burnett, Sen. Meyer’s chief of staff and the man we saw last week making arrangements for Dubaku to exit the country. The senator has no idea what Burnett is up to, but as Meyer prepares to leave his office for meeting with the president at the White House, he orders Burnett to join him. As they leave, Burnett receives a text message telling him that everything is in place and the mission is a go. The last bit of information from this show is Agent Walker’s trouble in coping with Marika’s death after promising to keep her safe while she helped lead the FBI to Dubaku. The devastated reaction of Marika’s sister Rosa, which included angrily blaming Renee for Marika’s death, hit Agent Walker hard. She in turn berates Jack for being able to easily shrug off the loss of life as being part of the job. Jack suggests she either learn how to do the same or quit. Walker is becoming annoying very quickly, but sadly I think she’s going to make it through the season alive. Tune back in next week and we’ll learn a little more on that matter and everything else…….
- I don’t care if the Denver police department has reviewed the alleged street fighting incident involving Tennessee Titans running back LenDale White and decided that the case "is closed." Nor do I give a crap that Denver police lieutenant Matt Murray said of White, "He has not been charged and will not be charged." Why don’t I care? Because the details of the alleged assault are just too good to let go of. According to a police report, White and another man were involved in a minor traffic accident and when they got out of hteir respective vehicles, a verbal altercation occurred. White then allegedly turned things physical and according to the report, White, listed as an unknown suspect, "began striking the victim with a belt and belt buckle" before the parties got in their vehicle and fled. Yes, dude went all drunk, abusive stepfather and broke out his belt on the other guy (allegedly). I don’t care if it’s true or not, the thought of 275-pound LenDale White jumping out of his whip and beating some random dude with a belt is awesome. What I really want to know is whether White was yelling, “Boy, I’m gonna give you a whipping! Don’t make me take my belt off!” before breaking it out. According to the report, the man White (allegedly) beat required hospitalization for lacerations. However, evidence found at the scene seemed to contradict some of the statements made by the involved parties, so the case is sadly over. Good thing for White, I suppose, as he is currently on probation after pleading guilty to disturbing the peace during an incident in Denver last March. As part of his probation he was required to attend an anger management class and stay out of trouble for 12 months to be dismissed as part of a deferred judgment, which any sort of charges in this case would have violated. The March incident originally led to charges of municipal code violations of interference, resistance, refusal of an officer and destruction of property. LenDale, I don’t know what your connection is to Denver, but bro, you may want to find somewhere else to spend your offseason, some place like the gym, a fat camp, that sort of place……….
- The United States isn’t the only country where gun control is a major issue. No, our gun whackos might be the most vocal and crazy, but the debate over the right to have a gun is also raging on in Switzerland, where the country’s part-time soldiers could lose their famous right to store their weapons at home. A petition drive spearheaded by a coalition of by the country's Social Democrat party, the Greens and 72 other groups has collected nearly 120,000 signatures to force a national referendum on whether the weapons should be stored at military bases. The coalition claims that the weapons are involved in too many suicides and murders in the country and tighter controls are needed. Agreed and agreed. You gun rights whackos can argue all you want about self-defense, your rights to strap and what you do with your guns, but the fact is that the world would be better off with much stricter controls on who can have guns, when and where. Besides, the Swiss are a neutral people, so why do so many of them need to pack heat? Their armed forces consist of just a few thousand permanent full-time for men aged between 19 and 31. In between call-ups, these men store their weapons at home. Right now, there are around 220,000 conscripts, which means about 220,000 weapons in home from these men alone. Already, the anti-gun coalition has been able to affect significant change in regards for firearms in the country, driving a 2007 law change that banned the storage of ammunition in homes. With their latest effort, the coalition is looking to extend the law to control the purchase of military weapons and set up a national gun register. Here’s hoping this new law is put in place and Switzerland becomes a safer place for all its citizens……
- Jeez, seems that the Turks are awfully sensitive about what language people speak in when addressing their parliament. At a parliament session in Istanbul, the head of a Kurdish nationalist party in Turkey addressed parliament Tuesday in the Kurdish language -- which is illegal -- which led the national broadcaster to pull the plug on the live broadcast. Democratic Society Party leader Ahmet Turk kicked off his speech in Turkish, addressing the value of a "multilingual culture" and also lamenting the fact that the Kurdish language is not protected under Turkey's constitution. "We have no objection to Turkish being the official language, yet we want our demands for the lifting of the ban on Kurdish language to be understood as a humanitarian demand," he said. In that spirit, Turk then announced he would deliver the rest of his speech in Kurdish. Rather than allow such a “rebellious” act to go on, state broadcaster TRT cut the broadcast. “Since no language other than Turkish can be used in the parliament meetings according to the constitution of the Turkish Republic and the Political Parties Law, we had to stop our broadcast,” the TRT announcer stated. "We apologize to our viewers for this and continue our broadcast with the next news item scheduled.” This issue has been at the forefront of the national consciousness in recent months, as Turkey began a new Kurdish language state television channel, TRT6, on January 1. Turk pointed out a double standard in the law, nothing that “(Politicians) get punished for speaking Kurdish while Prime Minister (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan speaks Kurdish during rallies. Therefore, Kurdish is forbidden to Kurds yet free for (the ruling party) and the state.” Oh, and if you think this issue isn’t going to be a big one heading into the intense, hotly contested elections scheduled to be held on March 29, you’re kidding yourself. Yanking this speech from the air isn’t going to help Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish acronym AKP, in its quest to gain votes in the Kurdish southeast, the strongest base for the Democratic Society Party, or DTP. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one, but any time someone’s right to speak out is abridged, be it in the U.S. where free speech is protected, or abroad, count me in for the fight……..
- Some people (largely women, sorry for that ladies) will subject themselves to damn near anything in the name of beauty. Whether it’s chemical peels, slamming yourself into a cancer box, er, tanning booth, mud baths, facial wraps or one of the other scores of disgusting procedures designed to beautify various parts of the body, these methods are sometimes effective but almost always revolting. Perhaps nowhere is this truer than in the state of Florida, where the state’s Cosmetology has put a stop to one of the more bizarre and nasty beauty procedures to date. Ladies have been lining up for fish pedicures, but no more. Yes, you read that right. Pedicures by fish, consisting of women dipping their feet into tanks filled with tiny crap that would eat away the dead skin on their feet. Customers swore by the method, saying their feet were very smooth afterward. I’ll take their word on that, but that won’t stop me from getting with the Florida Board of Cosmetology’s decision to ban the pedicures. At issue is a mandate of cleaning utensils used in any procedure between customers, something the board felt wasn’t possible with animals. Also, there's a state rule that prohibits animals or pets in cosmetology salons. Whatever it takes to keep people from paying $35 to have fish eat off their feet is fine with me. Not that I stop into any beauty parlors, but if I happened to be in one any time, ever, I don’t want any sea creatures in there with me, I’m just weird like that. Find some other way to revitalize the skin on your feet, freaks. Heck, buy some carp of your own, slam them in your bathtub at home and do your own procedures, just keep it behind closed doors……
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