are names destiny?

weiner
variant of wiener

wie·ner noun \ˈwē-nər, ˈwē-nē also ˈwi-nē\

Definition
: frankfurter
US, informal : hot dog

Variants
wie·ner also wei·ner

Etymology
: from German Wienerwurst "Vienna sausage," from Vienna, capital of Austria
First Known Use: 1900

Destiny
to get chewed up, swallowed, digested, and...you can fill in the rest.

just two points on washington's complaints about wikileaks:

1. in spite of the freedom of information act, scholars and journalists trying to get access to overclassified material have been stonewalled by the government for years, so it was inevitable that someone would eventually resort to skulduggery.

2. diplomats and decision makers ought to know by now that "diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means." why would anyone send unencrypted strategic cables?

in other words, i agree with kevin rudd.

Use of Contractors Added to Chaos of Iraq War, Trove of Documents Shows

The Iraq Archive: The Strands of a War

Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias

A Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths in Iraq

Wikileaks Whistleblowers
yahoo
google

A Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths in Iraq

The reports in the archive disclosed by WikiLeaks offer an incomplete, yet startlingly graphic portrait of one of the most contentious issues in the Iraq war — how many Iraqi civilians have been killed and by whom.

[more]

Top Corporations Aid U.S. Chamber of Commerce Campaign

The chamber’s increasingly aggressive role — including record spending in the midterm elections that supports Republicans more than 90 percent of the time — has made it a target of critics, including a few local chamber affiliates who fear it has become too partisan and hard-nosed in its fund-raising.

[more]

Independent Tests Show Dangerous Levels of Oil, Chemicals in Gulf

A citizens group conducting its own water samples in the Gulf of Mexico released results today showing dangerous levels of oil and chemicals in Naples and St. Petersberg Florida coastal waters.

They found 1 parts per million of oil and grease.

Other test results from Cotton Bayou, near Orange Beach, Alabama, near the Alabama-Florida state line, showed 13 parts per million of 2-butoxyethanol, the chemical BP supposedly stopped using in the new Corexit 9500 formula, according to Allison Helen Hendricks, a medical adviser with TestingTheWater.org.

“Where do the people think all the millions upon millions of gallons of oil have gone?..."

[more]

meanwhile:

npr's science friday reveals BP & govt block scientists studying gulf

Are researchers being shut out of gathering valuable data in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster? Linda Hooper-Bui, an ecologist in the Gulf, says that BP and the federal government are hindering independent research into the effects of the oil spill. We'll also talk with Cary Nelson, head of the American Association of University Professors, about academic freedom and gulf oil research.

[listen]

are we pandering to people's fears?

david brooks thinks the furor over the port deal is due to politicians and "reactionaries" of the left and right playing on public ignorance and xenophobia of anything arab. after all, the dubai firm was fully vetted by an interagency panel, and nobody objected.

i'm not so sure it's really pandering, tho. we've lived in an atmosphere of fear since 9/11, and the story didn't break till after the new management arrangement was a done deal, so public anxiety was inevitable.

if the review had been completely out in the open—with full congressional involvement as suggested by the constitution's commerce clause—the ground would've been prepared gradually. the wisdom of having our ports run by a firm owned by a foreign government could've been hashed out. folk would've had ample opportunity to get informed and assured.

but no. that's not the way this administration does business. everything gets done on the sly and snuck past us, because what we don't know won't hurt us.

the monkey wrench in the works is that the truth will out. bush's crowd seems to think it won't matter if we learn what they've done after it's a fait accompli. we'll all be content to know they're watching over us and we don't have to worry our pretty little heads about a thing.

what they fail to anticipate is that when the truth comes like a bolt from the blue, all us little chickens will think the sky is falling.

it's basically the same phenomenon we just saw when ariel sharon, with g w bush's backing, ordered the israeli pullout from the gaza strip. it had to happen sooner or later, so why not do it and get it over with without any fuss, right? the master strategists totally failed to foresee the explosive palestinian reaction and hamas's ability to take credit for forcing the withdrawal. to avoid that and the hamas election win, all they needed was to strengthen abbas's hand by negotiating the pullout rather than doing it unilaterally.

like the sharon-bush decision, the port deal was made behind closed doors. bush can pass the buck as he always does by saying he knew nothing of it, but his people did it, and he hired them, so almost nobody's buying his excuses for a change—at least for now.

but the spin doctors haven't finished. we've yet to hear from big guns cheney, rummy, and rice, all of whom i'm sure will have "no doubt" about dubai, just as they had none that saddam was lying about wmd.

and if congress acts now, bush's veto threat still stands.