Schwarzenegger's double take

California governor and likely steroid abuser Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an $8 Million endorsement deal with the publisher of bodybuilding magazines two days before being sworn into office, and there wouldn’t ordinarily be anything wrong with that — except that the funds come from 1% of magazine ad revenue, many of which are health supplements.

And, oops, Arnold vetoed legislation last year that would have imposed government regulations on… the health supplements industry! Talk about things that make you go “holy shit!”

Elected officals can keep their outside jobs by law, and in his defense his office said he vetoed the bill because it focused on the wrong thing, namely banning certain substances that haven’t proven harmful (or, for that matter, effective) rather than focusing on steroid abuse. In his veto, he said most dietary supplements are safe (and, he did not add, highly profitable) and that the bill would have been difficult to implement.

Plus, $8 million out of his pocket.

800 a month. 26 every day.

You hear about how many people were killed on a daily basis in Iraq by the insurgency, but have you ever actually added them all up? Luckily for you, the New York Times has people who’ll do that for you, and the total they’ve come up with is 800 civilians per month have been killed between August, 2004 and May, 2005.

According to the Iraqi Interior Minister, approximately 12,000 Iraqis are not leading better lives since the American occupation — because they’re dead. That’s an approximation. A study last year upped the number of civilian dead to as many as 100,000.

This number doesn’t include deaths caused by American and Iraqi soldiers in military offenses, at checkpoints or on raids. The Bush administration and the Pentagon have deliberately avoided posting body counts, and another online resource puts the numbers between 22,000 and 25,000 civilian dead.

Problem Solved!

You love pornography, you’ve got no shame. But everyone else is so damn uptight. I mean, who doesn’t want to enjoy hot barely legal girl on girl action at Starbucks, while sipping a triple lowfat soy latte with a shot of caramel and nibbling on a cranberry scone? Now you can watch girls (and boys) go wild anywhere you are so that even the guy sitting next to you in the cheap seats on your LaGuardia to Denver flight won’t know what you’re up to — unless you do something disgusting to give yourself away. New Sharp monitors now will not only project in both left and right directions, you can control how wide the viewing angle of your screen is - narrow if you’re being secretive, wide if you want to share. Now instead of watching Blues Brothers 2000 on your flight, feel free to watch the Paris Hilton video, but make sure you’ve got your headphones on, the part where she stops riding Rick to catch a cell phone call will be a dead giveaway to your seat mates you’re up to no good.