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Here are some stories that I've unearthed that I feel deserve a lot more attention than they were given. Most were buried deep in the bowels of my many newspapers and are ignored by nearly everyone. Since I love when my friend Andre over at The Unmitigated Word does news snippets, I've decided to give it a short try myself with my own spin on it. I'm sure some of them will leave you wondering, as I was, how the mainstream media managed to bury them.

Arson at Sarah Palin's church

For reasons that I am unable to fully understand, people on the left side of the political spectrum hate Sarah Palin beyond words. I find this odd because Sarah hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, done anything to any of them except have a point of view, culture and lifestyle that is different from their own. The supposedly tolerant left can't seem to control themselves from attacking her children, her hometown, her looks and even her accent. However, it now appears to have reached a brand new level, when someone, or several someones, burned down the Wasilla Bible Church in Alaska. Authorities believe it may be connected to the church's outreach program for homosexuals that has been recently criticized by several Gay organizations. Governor Palin herself has apologized to the church and people of Wasilla for bringing this vile hatred back home from the lower 48. Move over KKK, it appears you now have some competition on the left.

Bush swings open the border

In the middle of the night G.W. gave a parting kiss to farmers across the country. Bush rewrote the rules for immigrant farm hands in a way the makes it easier for farmers to get low wage workers without having to prove that they at least tried to get labor through conventional means. Bruce Goldstein of the advocate group Farmworker Justice had this to say, "The changes in the posted version would drop a requirement that an employer get the Labor Department to certify it faces a worker shortage before it can get visas for foreign workers; instead, employers would be allowed to simply attest in writing to a shortage. That version of the new rule also would change the method for calculating wage minimums for workers and relieve employers of a requirement to recruit in states or communities where other employers already are hiring farm workers." With the GOP fighting for cheap labor and the DNC fighting for the illegal vote, soon we won't have to ship jobs overseas to lose them.

Riots across Europe

One of the many reasons that I oppose Socialism is that it doesn't absorb hard times very well (due to the majority of the jobs being public) and instills in it's populous the inability to function without the government holding their hands. I call these people "Bridge Sitters" after the people stranded on the infamous bridge in New Orleans waiting for the government to save them. An unfortunate result of disappointed "Bridge Sitters" is that they blame the government for not solving every problem in life that they face. Self reliant people are far better at surviving hard times since they immediately go about helping themselves and others. This is now playing itself out in several European countries as the bad economy spreads. As more and more people lose their jobs, and with no other job source to turn to, angry youths are hitting the streets to vent on their "parent". The government's only option is to create work programs funded by printing money. Any first year economics student will tell you that only leads to devaluing your currency and hyper-inflation. The riots started in Greece but have now spread to France, Germany, Spain, Denmark and Italy. This could turn into a far bigger story later.

Lending money to fools

Lastly, but not least, is the story of a swindler of epic proportions. Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme is being pretty well covered by the mainstream media. Mr. Madoff managed to run off with over 50 billion dollars of investors money. That's 50 Billion with a "B". What wasn't, and isn't, being covered is who was among the burned. J. Ezra Merkin, GMAC chairman. That's right, the chairman of the financial arm of General Motors Corporation that is, as we speak, begging for taxpayer money. Is it too much to ask that before we bail out these losers, they at least shed people that fall for one of the oldest schemes known to man? It's easy to see why this isn't being well publicized. Who would give more money to people who can't even be trusted to hold on to what they have? What's next, we cover their track losses too?

Well, that's it for now. Maybe this helps explain why I walk around mumbling to myself a lot lately. H.C.