- Tonight’s 24 was a prime example of why the show is a) sometimes predictable but b) almost always awesome (how ya like my alliteration?). TO start off the hour Joseph Bazhaev arrives with the enriched uranium fuel rods to sell to Fahrad Hassan, brother of Islamic Kingdom president Omar Hassan and leader of a rebel faction seeking to overthrow the president and prevent him from signing a peace treaty facilitated by the U.S. While Joseph waits for Fahrad and his men to arrive, Jack and Joseph’s father Sergei get him on the phone from the family’s restaurant, where Jack and CTU have taken control and are attempting the locate the fuel rods from. They try to convince him to turn self in with the promise of immunity, but as he waits in central Queens near Flushing Meadows, Joseph is shot by Fahrad’s men just as he agrees to Jack’s final plea to turn himself in. Fahrad and his crew seize the fuel rods and get away while Jack, who has heard the shooting over the phone, speeds back to CTU. On the way, he calls Renee Walker, who is in the medical bay of CTU. Jack reiterates her need to stick to her story of killing her contact in the Russian mob, Vladimir Lehtanen, in self defense. Before hanging up, Jack also seems to imply that they are more than friends and that he wants to be together when this is all over. “When you say I have you….” Renee asks, to which Jack replies, “It means what it sounds like.” Elsewhere at CTU, director Bryan Hastings receives a call from White House chief of staff Rob Weiss, who has an interesting solution for the problem currently on their hands, i.e. the missing fuel rods. Now that things appear to have gone south, Weiss wants to put blame on Renee for entire situation, implying that she murdered Lehtanen and was the key problem in things getting out of control. To that end, he informs Hastings that he is sending Kristen Smith from the Justice Department to interrogate Renee. We then switch back to Fahrad, who is in a truck with a compatriot named Samir, transporting the nuclear rods to a warehouse for the time being. When they arrive, Fahrad learns that Samir has recruited a team of radicals ands they want to use the uranium rods as a weapon inside the U.S. because there is no way to transport them out of the country without the American government finding them. Fahrad is uncertain of this course of action, but eventually he capitulates and agrees to go along with the plan. Then, in bringing up the single most annoying, irrelevant and pointless storyline in 24 history, it’s time to check in on Dana Walsh, the ex-con from Arkansas who fibbed her identity to score a job at CTU and is now having her past come back to bite her in the ass. Her fiancé, CTU agent Cole Ortiz, has caught wind of her shady activity and receives her current coordinates from CTU data analyst Arlo, the pervy dork we’ve all come to know and hate this season. Cole commandeers a CTU vehicle from the scene where he and his tac team went in an attempt to find the nuclear rods and goes to find Dana. She’s out in the woods, having followed her ex-con, ex-boyfriend Kevin, his loser friend Nick and the two skanks they met at the strip club. Kevin and Nick continue to blackmail her to stay a part of the criminal activity they’ve dragged her into by threatening to reveal her past and rather than fess up to who she is, Dana decides that murder is a better option. Back at CTU, Jack arrives and discovers that Renee is being interrogated by Justice. Hastings, having been directed by Smith to cut all monitoring to the room except for a single camera for Justice Department records, is looking on. Smith presses Renee to admit that she didn’t kill Lehtanen in self-defense, as she said in her statement. Jack is furious because he knows what the Justice Department is trying to do. He takes out a guard, busts into the room where Renee is being interrogated and attempts to break her out. Instead, a second guard shows up to hit him with a Taser blast and both he and Renee are captured. Over at the warehouse, Fahrad says he can recruit a professor at a university in New York City to help with the bomb, but when one of Samir’s men walks him across the warehouse to use the phone, Fahrad attacks the man and tries to make a run for it. He is slightly wounded in the melee, but manages to get away and hide long enough to get a call through to CTU. He talks to Hastings and offers to turn himself in and share all he knows if CTU will come rescue him. The call comes in as Jack is sitting in Hastings’ office to be chewed out for his actions and told he’s being processed and must leave the building immediately. Cut to Cole finding Dana in the woods, gun in hand as she prepares to approach Kevin’s van and shoot both he and Nick. Cole intercepts her and demands that she explain what she’s been up to. She admits that her real name is Jenny Scott and that she is an ex-con from Arkansas. Meanwhile, with Cole AWOL, an agent named Owen is tasked by Hastings to lead the tac team headed to rescue Fahrad Hassan. At the same time, Jack is leaving and makes a caustic remark to Hastings about the mission. When Hastings challenges him on it, Jack offers to bring Fahrad in and help with rest of mission if all charges against Renee are dropped. He goes on to tell Hastings that he knows pressures of running CTU, but that Hastings has more power than he thinks even when it comes to working with the White House. Hastings and Jack strike a deal for Jack to stay with the mission to the end in exchange for the dropping of all charges against Renee. Back in woods, Dana tells Cole her whole story and he approaches the van to confront Kevin and Nick. Cole informs them that they can go to prison or go away for good. They agree, but when Cole and Dana turn to leave and Kevin starts to pack up and prepare to leace, Nick stabs Kevin because he still wants to kill Cole and continue their burgeoning criminal enterprise with Dana. Kevin’s last act is to lean out of the van and scream out to warn Dana/Jenny as Nick sneaks up from behind to kill Cole, Cole ducks for cover behind his SUV and blasts Nick with shotgun. Nick dies on the spot and Kevin dies too, leaving Dana and Cole alone in the woods with two dead bodies as the hour comes to and end. Quite an episode and oddly enough, the president of the United States didn’t get a single second of screen time. So until next time……………
- I have found a new favorite mayor, everyone, and he may be my favorite-est mayor (pro tem) in the whole, wide world. That would be Olympia (Wash.) Mayor Pro Tem and incoming Thurston County Treasurer Joe Hyer. Why Joe Hyer, you ask? To which I ask: Would your city’s mayor look to raise some extra personal income by selling the hippie lettuce? Didn’t think so. One word: owned. Hyer was arrested following a months-long investigation on charges of selling marijuana. He left jail Thursday night after posting $20,000 bail and when asked him if he had any response to the allegations. Hyer said, "No, certainly not yet. No ... Don't even understand them yet ... I haven't been read them." Don’t understand them? My man, you are a politician. One thing you need to be smart enough to do is understand criminal charges against you, even if they are totally bogus. Yes, I said totally bogus. Weed should be legal in this country and if it were, we would not have problems like this. As it is, the chronic is illegal for non-medicinal uses (and even for medicinal purposes in some backwards-thinking places) and the Thurston County Narcotics Task Force launched a two-month investigation that ultimately led to them busting Hyer. They base their “findings” on claims that an informant twice purchased tree from Hyer and that detectives found small amounts of packaged marijuana at Hyer's home. What’s scary is that after Hyer was first appointed to the Olympia city council in August 2004, voters re-elected him in both 2005 and 2009. Heck, earlier this week, Thurston County commissioners chose Hyer to succeed Robin Hunt as county treasurer. That appointment is scheduled to take effect March 1 and to hear Hyer, he absolutely plans to take that gig while also holding onto his spot on the city council. However, in light of the pending charges against him, he has asked Olympia mayor Doug Mah if he could have some time away. “Councilmember Hyer has expressed an interest in taking a leave of absence from his council duties and I'm going to respect that and encourage him to take care of his personal business,” Mah said. My support for Hyer is clearly not shared by some of his colleagues, including Thurston County Republican Party Chairman Scott Roberts, who released a written statement saying Hyer should resign his seat on the city council. No, I think it’s you who should resign, Scotty. Times are tough, money is tight and if Joe Hyer can raise some cash by selling pot, then he should do it and you should leave him the heck alone…………
- How’s this for irony: Niger's constitution has been suspended and all governmental institutions were suspended by the government itself and these actions were undertaken by a body known as the Superior Council for the Restoration of Democracy. That’s right, a council for THE RESTORATION OF DEMOCRACY is shutting down the very institutions that are supposed to make democracy go. Col. Goukoye Abdul Karimou, a top Niger military official, announced the decision Thursday night on the nation's three television channels. As a quick aside, do you think people in other countries get as pissed when their normal television programming is announced by some sort of presidential or government speech? Or is it only here in the United States that we’re that shallow, superficial and spoiled? But I digress……Col. Karimou called on the nation for calm and on the international community for support. While the country is in a state of unrest, President Mamadou Tandja and his ministers are being held in a military camp. Well, that’s the story the government is selling. Some media in Niger are reporting that Tandja is missing, although having your president go AWOL would be quite a feat to accomplish and I can see why the government would want to cover up the truth if that were the case. As of yet, no curfew has been ordered, but look for that to change soon if things don’t improve substantially. With a coup d’etat raging, improving conditions aren’t exactly easy to attain. The coup reportedly went into motion members of the military surrounded the presidential palace, where a ministerial meeting was taking place, about 1 p.m. The military stormed the meeting, shots were fired and from there, it’s anyone’s guess. "Indications are, it could be an attempted coup," Assistant U.S. Secretary of State P.J. Crowley stated. "There was evidently an attempt at assassination of President Tandja." All the Americans reading this will be glad to know that while the U.S. Embassy is monitoring the situation, Crowley confirmed that embassy staff were safe. For some reason, Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, is also in Niger and was also safe at the embassy. I have to wonder how Grayson’s presence in Niger, of all places, is serving his constituents back in Florida or helping address key issues in the U.S. right now like health care, the economy and national security. But again, I digress. The ongoing sh*tstorm in Niger has been a while in the making. Tandja, who has been in office since December 1999, has recently been trying to channel his inner Manuel Zelaya and force through a bid for a third term. "This is a difficult situation," Crowley said. "President Tandja has been trying to extend his mandate in office." By so doing, Tandja has attempted to push off planned elections. If you’re asking why you should give a crap about what’s going on politically in Niger, just know that although it is one of the poorest countries in Africa, Niger does possess about 8 percent of the world's uranium, and has had some lucrative uranium contracts, particularly with China. Aside from making it a potential candidate for being part of a plot on an upcoming season of 24, that uranium stockpile makes it a definite factor in the world of terrorism. I’m not saying, I’m just saying…………
- And the beast that is Facebook continues to grow unchecked. According to data released earlier today by web analytics firm Compete.com, Facebook is now larger than Yahoo in the U.S. For years and years, Yahoo was perched atop the standings as America’s most popular Web site, be it as a search engine, for news or other uses. That reign ended two years ago when Google blew right past Yahoo and became the Internet’s most popular destination. That left Yahoo at No. 2 until now, when Facebook stepped up to knock it down a notched. In December, Yahoo brought in 133.45 million visitors in the U.S., narrowly besting Facebook with 132,130,000 million unique visitors (i.e. if you visit multiple times, you only count once). Those stats flip-flopped in January, when Facebook’s traffic increased to 133,620,000 million visitors while Yahoo dropped down to 132 million. Now that Facebook has added its 400 millionth user (eclipsed only by the number of lame, pointless, moronic and wasteful groups that those 400 million users create on Facebook), only Google stands between Mark Zuckerberg and the top of the online mountain. Of course, with Google rolling out Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google smartphones and zillion other Google-related products and gadgets the past few months, don’t expect Google to surrender the top spot any time soon. Also, as previously revealed here, Google is engaged in a sinister plot for overall world domination, so there is also that to consider……………
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