quick vid link

the daily show takes on the NSA smass spying program.

If you can't/won't play streamed video, Crooks and Liars also has the video in QT and WMP format (about 15Mb, 6 minutes long). They're a bit savage, as they should be. While it still doesn't beat their all-time peak (the week after Katrina), it's damn, damn, DAMN fine political reporting.

mordwen, if you're looking for stuff for your journalism students, you really should look at the work of these guys. For a supposed "comedy" show, they produce some of the finest coverage of issues. There's snark and jokes, sure, but there's also a sense of memory and history. They also have a definite viewpoint. This is not a bad thing.

(no subject)

A bunch of people have already hit on this, but here's some more.

From the WPost, "Forever Pregnant":

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

While most of these recommendations are well known to women who are pregnant or seeking to get pregnant, experts say it's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.

Now, encouraging people to be healthy is a fine enough goal. But the whole emphasis here is so unbelievably creepy. Not "women should stay healthy", but "bitches, we need your uteruses for breeding, so keep them in good condition!" What's next, El Salvadorean style forensic vagina inspectors to make sure women keep their plumbing ready for babies? Making having a miscarriage a type of child neglect crime?



It genuinely freaks me out. Also note that while it touches on the US's utterly appalling record on infant mortality, there is far too little made of the broken US health system. Someone on the outside looking in might think that perhaps the total lack of public health, health care options for the less than well-off, and violent attacks on women's health centres that aren't rigidly anti-abortion might, just miiight also have something to do with this. Or the appalling poverty that far too many americans suffer from. Or the obscene efforts of the right wing theocrats to block any sex education aside from "abstinence! abstinence! abstinence!" and make it as hard as possible to get birth control, no matter who you are.

On semi-regular occasions, I get vague or not so vague hints from American companies asking if I'd like a job. My answer is always "no way do I want to live in the US". I know and like a bunch of individual Americans, but the country as a whole is broken.