Twitter This Commentary In The News: Just like old times... The FBI swept New Jersey (and Brooklyn NY) today rounding up a number of people involved in corruption (trafficking Gucci handbags and Israel originated human transplant Kidneys!) and money laundering for the Mob. Yesterday, despite National Rifle Association pressure, the Senate rejected the reciprocal interstate "concealed carry" law for guns. Secretary of State Clinton is in Phuket Thailand at the ASEAN meeting speaking of a "missile shield" to protect everyone in the Middle East from Iran. She also ran her presentation into overtime requesting more support for an economic boycott of North Korea The president held a press conference yesterday focused on rapid passage in the senate and house of his economic plans and health care bill. As Obama's popularity falters, some pundits think the success of his presidency is riding on these bills passage and prompt execution... They may be right. Apple Alert! Some Apple iPods have been bursting into flames and according to a reporter working on the story, Apple attempted suppression of that information... "Apple asked for Consumer Product Safety Commission reports to be exempted from the Freedom of Information Act". (NOT just ApplePods either! Da Buffalo had a three day old iRiver(Sansa) do that, sans flames, just a couple of weeks ago. It locked up while operating and proceeded to get "too hot to handle", smelled of overheated electronic parts, and 'terminated' itself.) The largest, most expensive, most securely protected, built-by-Shanghaied-labor US embassy in Baghdad is about to have it's budget and staff cut.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad -- the United States' largest and most costly overseas diplomatic mission, with 1,873 employees -- is overstaffed and must be reduced to a size more in keeping with the evolving U.S.-Iraq relationship and budget constraints, government auditors said in a report issued Wednesday. The State Department's inspector general said that although the U.S. presence in Iraq will become more civilian as the military withdraws over the next two years, the embassy "should be able to carry out all of its responsibilities with significantly fewer staff and in a much-reduced footprint." The reduction "has to begin immediately," the report said, before Foreign Service officers complete their next assignment bidding cycle and other employees are extended or hired. Nearly 30 provincial reconstruction teams, the principal U.S. vehicles for development and governance projects in Iraq, will be phased out over the next 2 1/2 years, the report said, with the overall American presence reduced to the embassy and "possibly two or more consulates." [In Full]

Meanwhile, Iraqi PM al Maliki visits Washington... Informed Comment's Juan Cole on "What al Maliki wants from his trip to Washington"

First, he wants the United Nations Security Council to remove Iraq altogether from Chapter 7 status under the UN Charter. After the Gulf War, the UNSC put Iraq into a kind of receivership, with sanctions, demands for disarmament with regard to unconventional weapons, and restrictions, in which the UNSC had a say on Iraqi policies. Also, 5% of Iraq's oil income went to pay reparations for the destruction it caused during the war. One of the reasons Iraq did bilateral status of forces agreements with the US and with the UK was that they wanted to avoid having any more UNSC resolutions authorizing foreign troops in Iraq. Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh, according to Reuters, said that Chapter 7 status "handcuffed Iraq, restricted its sovereignty and burdened it with the crimes of the former regime." On a visit to the UN HQ, al-Maliki said that "Iraq no longer poses a threat to the international community," and so the sanctions "are no longer necessary." (For a formerly colonized country, being under Chapter 7 is way too much like being recolonized, and ending that status is paramount for an Iraqi nationalist like al-Maliki). In Washington, al-Zaman says, al-Maliki also wants...[In Full]

In Junk Food News for America... An obit:

LOS ANGELES -- Gidget the Chihuahua, the bug-eyed, big-eared star of 1990s Taco Bell commercials who was a diva on and off the screen, has died. She was 15. Gidget suffered a massive stroke late Tuesday night at her trainer's home in Santa Clarita and had to be euthanized, said Karin McElhatton, owner of Studio Animal Services in Castaic, which owned the dog. Although she was hard of hearing, Gidget was otherwise in good health up to the day of her death, eating well and playing with her favorite squeaky toys... [In Full]

If you're TRULY a Junk Food News Junkie, you'll want to test your trivia knowledge about Taco Bell with these 11 Obscure Taco Bell Trivia Facts at "11 Points" (Because 'top ten' lists are for cowards...) But for a REAL heart stopping Junk Food Banquet... Try Bacon, a Weapon of Mass Destruction! Gonzo Gastronomy: How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction By Arun Gupta, AlterNet. Posted July 23, 2009 The confluence of factory farming, the boom in fast food and manipulation of consumer taste created processed foods that can hook us like drugs. By Arun Gupta, AlterNet. Posted July 23, 2009. The confluence of factory farming, the boom in fast food and manipulation of consumer taste created processed foods that can hook us like drugs. Among my fondest childhood memories is savoring a strip of perfectly cooked bacon that had just been dragged through a puddle of maple syrup. It was an illicit pleasure; varnishing the fatty, salty, smoky bacon with sweet arboreal sap felt taboo. How could such simple ingredients produce such riotous flavors? That was then. Today, you don't need to tax yourself applying syrup to bacon -- McDonald's does it for you with the McGriddle. It conveniently takes an egg, American cheese and pork and nestles it between pancakelike biscuits suffused with genuine fake-maple-syrup flavor. The McGriddle is just one moment in an era of extreme food combinations -- a moment in which bacon plays a starring role, from high cuisine to low. There is: bacon ice cream; bacon-infused vodka; deep-fried bacon; chocolate-dipped bacon; bacon-wrapped hot dogs filled with cheese (which are fried, then battered and fried again); brioche bread pudding smothered in bacon sauce; hard-boiled eggs coated in mayonnaise encased in bacon -- called, appropriately, the "heart attack snack"; bacon salt; bacon doughnuts, cupcakes and cookies; bacon mints; "baconnaise," which Jon Stewart described as "for people who want to get heart disease but [are] too lazy to actually make bacon"; Wendy's "Baconnator" -- six strips of bacon mounded atop a half-pound cheeseburger -- which sold 25 million in its first eight weeks; and the outlandish bacon explosion -- a barbecued meat brick composed of 2 pounds of bacon wrapped around 2 pounds of sausage. It's easy to dismiss this gonzo gastronomy as typical American excess best followed with a Lipitor chaser. Behind the proliferation of bacon offerings, however, is a confluence of government policy, factory farming, the boom in fast food and manipulation of consumer taste that has turned bacon into a weapon of mass destruction. ... [In Full] --30--

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Creative Commons Copyright Courtesy of Cabale News Service, KPIG Radio, and KVMR Radio. Recorded & transcribed by Razer Raygun @ Auntie Imperial's News & Blog Review Postings Auntie Imperial and Razer Raygun Have Done Lately Are [Here] The Consolidated Items Listing in RSS format [Here] Travus T. Hipp Fan Page @ Facebook (unaffiliated

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