--- I've got two words

--- I've got two words for the IRS: FLAT TAX!
Goody goody gumpdrops for the IRS. They're going after those evil
people who dodge the tax man with questionable loopholes and
deductions. Wooooooh. They're really getting tough! I'm SO impressed
with their dominatrix-style enforcement. Whips and chains for everyone!
Not. Abolish the IRS. Eliminate the need for enforcement. Set up a tax
system where everyone pays 15% of their income---no matter how big
their income is---and watch the money roll in. Watch the multinationals
set up shop in the U.S. instead of in Bermuda. Flowers will bloom.
People will dance happy dances. Jobs will be created and the economy
will boom. This says nothing, of course, of the fact that we won't have
a deficit anymore, and we'll be able to pay down the national debt.

And of course, think of all the accountants and tax lawyers who'll go broke. That ought to put a smile on everyone's face.

--- And speaking of your tax dollars at work.
Presented to you, my Cake Eater readers, without commentary. Not
because I don't have anything to say about it, but because if I do say
something, I'll probably give myself an aneurysm. No one needs that.
--- The NHL did the right thing.
I'm relatively new to hockey. I haven't been watching all my life. We
didn't have hockey in Omaha when I was growing up---I knew one kid who
played. One kid. So, I will admit I'm no pro in judging what is and is
not acceptable when it comes to fighting, but Bertuzzi has always
struck me as being a tad more violent than necessary. Thug. Enforcer.
Whatever you want to call him. He was brought to my attention during
the Wild/Canuck playoff series last year. I noticed that if there was
any sort of altercation, Bertuzzi was generally in on it, if not
instigating it in the first place. But the Canucks are a physical team.
It's one of their attributes. Some teams are renowned for their speed
or their stick work. Vancouver is known for its physicality. I hate to
say I wasn't surprised when I saw that footage from Monday's game---but
honestly, I wasn't. It was only a matter of time, in my opinion, before
this guy crossed the line. And he did so---and broke Steve Moore's neck
in the process. Bertuzzi should be thanking his lucky stars that he
didn't put Moore into a wheelchair and got off with suspension for the
rest of the year. He'll also be really lucky if he doesn't wind up
having his ass handed to him by the British Columbia legal system. With
the players union threatening a strike for next year, weelll---this
could conceivably mean the end of Bertuzzi's career. All for one
retaliatory sucker punch. It makes you wonder, however. Players get
into skirmishes in hockey. It's one of the reasons why people like it
so much. More blood! Less hockey!
Whether the NHL would like to admit it or not, fighting is one of those
things that puts paying butts into the seats and keeps the league
profitable. So, knowing this, where exactly do you draw the line? The
refs aren't exactly on the same page when it comes to fighting. Some
knock this kind of crap off quickly; some just let it go on and then
when there's less of a chance of them losing their teeth, they throw
people in the penalty box. If the people who are on the ice, and who
are in charge of stopping this sort of behavior, don't want to get
involved and have different definitions of what is acceptable and what
isn't---where does this leave hockey on the whole? Bertuzzi's a hot
head. Did he just put the whole game into jeopardy? --- Michele over at A Small Victory gets it right.

U.S. coverage should be better. They should react to this story the
way they do to Scott Peterson type stories. Gather some experts. Give
us information. Send some reporters. Tell us about ETA, explore the
al-Qaida connection and hey, how about just spending some time talking
to witnesses and expressing some outrage and sadness?
The world stopped for us on 9/11. It amazes me how our major news
channels seem to brush international news aside. They did the same with
the coup in Georgia and the Chechnyan rebels and they do it all the
time with Israel. Five minutes of breaking news time and then back to
celebrity secrets and fashion advice.
We will never win the war on terror if we go on thinking that the only
terror that matters is what happens here.
I'll bet you the reason none of the American stations have covered it
is because they don't have any reporters in Spain. Amazingly enough,
though, I can't tell you how many stories CNN covered on the German
Cannibal case, with the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in the background. I
hate to go into the whole bias thing here, but Germany and Spain are
pretty much on the same level, internationally speaking. Why does CNN
have a Berlin bureau, and not one in Madrid? Could
it be because Germany was anti-war? That they aligned themselves with
the French and hence it's a cooler, more media-hip type place to set up
a bureau? Spain, after all, supported the U.S. in ousting Saddam.
They're not cool.
Look at it rationally: how much German news does CNN actually report on
its U.S. system? Not much. We got an awful lot about the cannibalism
trial, but as far as the political strife Schroeder has been enduring
lately? Pffft. Very little. On DirecTV we get CNNfn during the
workweek, but on the weekends it switches to CNN International. Yes,
you get German news, but not enough to justify a bureau. But Spain,
Madrid in particular, has been suffering terrorist attacks at the hands
of ETA and others often over the past few years. You'd think that
simply by working the odds of newsworthy events, if a network were to
put a bureau anywhere in Europe, it would be in Spain. But they didn't.
They used European-network filmed coverage this morning. And because of
their lack of resources in Madrid, they couldn't focus very much on the
story. It's simply a lack of resources issue---but, as hesitant as I am
to point the bias finger, it seems to be the logical answer to why they
don't have reporters there in the first place. I wonder if it is
Al-Qaeda. We don't know. No one's stepped up to take responsibility and
that in itself is a hallmark of Al-Qaeda. ETA is pretty quick to claim
responsibility---Al Qaeda likes to let everyone wait. Remember 9/11. We
had to wait to find out who was behind the attacks, and when we did
find out, the conclusion was reached by the government---not because
Al-Qaeda shot out communiques to the networks, claiming responsibility.
But right now I don't know that we'll ever know, or if it will be as
big a deal as 9/11 simply because the media coverage isn't in place to
ensure it. Michele's right: we won't ever win the war if the media
doesn't start treating all acts of terrorism as if they happened on our
own soil. It simply can't be a matter of our people died, it's important; their people died, it's not.