News Roundup for 7/6/10

The new face of the Red Menace

-Headline of the day-
"There is no 'free' lemonade."

Except it turns out that there is and it's crushing American entrepreneurial spirit. Chicago Sun-Times business columnist Terry Savage writes about heading off to celebrate the Fourth of July by watching stuff explode in the sky, as the founders intended. On the way there, he saw some little girls with a lemonade stand, just like in the funny papers, so he had to pull over and get himself some, because that's like a rule with him. It was then that he was beset by demonic socialism!

See, he asked what it cost for a glass and the little girls told him they were giving it away. This did not compute. "But you have to charge something? What should I pay for a lemonade? I'm really thirsty!" his brother said and they told him again it was free. This still did not compute.

"Isn't that cute?" his brother's fiance said. "They have the spirit of giving." The spirit of whoozzit now? Computing did not happen.

"No!" Savage shrieked with wingnut rage from the backseat of the car. "That's not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They're giving away their parents' things -- the lemonade, cups, candy. It's not theirs to give." Well, it's all theirs if their parents gave them to them -- that's called a gift -- but I'm starting to detect a trend here and am guessing this came nowhere near computing.

"I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight," he writes. This must've been delightful for the three little girls giving away lemonade to passersby; look kids, your first encounter with a Grade-A asswipe!

"You must charge something for the lemonade," he told them. "That's the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs -- how much the lemonade costs, and the cups -- and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money." Well, unless the whole idea was to do something nice for other Americans on Independence Day, but I doubt that idea would've computed.

But the little girls were hardcore commies and refused to take his money. And so, Terry Savage -- world champion asshole -- decided to write a column in the Chicago Sun-Times (free on their website, BTW) about how giving away free lemonade is destroying America.

Can you imagine what this psycho is like at birthday parties? (Chicago Sun-Time)


-Journalistic ethics at work-
Glenn Greenwald is this guy who's a lawyer, but actually believes in the law -- which means he can't get a lawyer job and he does pundit stuff for Salon.com. Anyway, one of the things Greenwald yells about on his blog is torture -- all the time with the torture. In Greenwald's world, waterboarding isn't an "aggressive interrogation technique" and a punching someone in the face until they collapse isn't a "proactive vertical posture realignment." You know, a real kook.

So Glenn's reading the newspapers because that's what pundits do and he came across an AP story about an American geologist who was held in China and tortured with cigarette burns. "Ah, ah, ah," he said. "That ain't torture. Well, it is, but you reporter guys always pretend it's not when Americans do it." This all tongue-in-cheek, mind you, because Greenwald's got a crazy definition of torture that includes things like inflicting pain -- which the Bush administration didn't share. And since the Bushies didn't share it, neither does the press -- because calling burning someone with cigs "torture" would be terrible liberal bias.

Well, Associated Press learned their lesson from Glenn Greenwald and no two ways about it. He checked the story later and made sure. "Strangely, at some point after I wrote this, the above-linked AP article was re-written so as to edit out the word 'torture' in the two places that word appeared to describe what the Chinese did," he wrote later in an update to his post.

I think someone at AP needs a proactive vertical posture realignment. (Salon)


-Bonus HotD-
"Arizona veterans group bans celebration of Cinco de Mayo."

I think Arizona is in a competition with Terry Savage over who can be the biggest prick. (Think Progress)