In Other News

Because we're so enraptured by the tension and anxiety of current events ["current events" hereby is defined as "Waiting for Fitzgerald's Plame Affair Indictments" and "Bickering over the SCOTUS replacement nominee"], it's hard to gain perspective on what else is going on with vital American values-based policy.

Let's take a look at Other News.

1. Wal-Mart:First, after the most recent fresh-kill of an increase of the federal minimum wage, by the ultra-wealthy "representative" body of the US government, one of the biggest minimum-wage abusers, Wal-Mart, has actually had representatives call out for a higher minimum wage. Why? Because it "helps business" for them, and is "out of date with the times." As good for business as it might be, of course, Wal-Mart is nowhere near actually taking the initiative and doing it- because in the free market economy, wages don't actually raise when they need to [this concept occassionally comes up as a reason not to increase minimum wage- that the corporate interests will pay the value of their employees. WRONG. They want to, but they apparently won't.]
2. Guantanamo: Many of us have basically forgotten about the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay where detainees have been held since the inception of the War on Terror. Most of us have been completely unaware of the Hunger Strike that has been going on in Guantanamo, or the 26 detainees we're currently keeping alive with feeding tubes because they have willed themselves to death in the prison. But, more importantly, very few of us are aware that one of those "activist judges" has ruled that this is completely inappropriate, and that these files must be opened; that the legal teams attempting to represent some of these detainees be allowed, at the very minimum, to be told what is happening to their clients.
   
3. Mini-Nukes: America has decided that actually building more nuclear weapons, even littler ones, probably doesn't help with a viable global promotion of non-proliferation.