There’s one man’s veto Congress can’t override

From High Country News:

When the Bogeyman goes to sleep at night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris, on the other hand, does not sleep. He waits. He is the reason Waldo is hiding. He uses pepper spray to season his steaks. He uses 8×10 sheets of plywood as toilet paper.

And Norris, the former “Walker, Texas Ranger” star whose purported toughness has spawned an internet cottage industry of made-up factoids, is ready to deliver a roundhouse kick to the face of any Congressman standing in the way of domestic oil production. He has joined forces with Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” campaign, producing this video encouraging viewers to sign the group’s pro-domestic drilling petition:

http://blog.hcn.org/goat/2008/07/03/theres-one-mans-veto-congress-cant-override/

G8 leaders feast on 8 courses after discussing world food shortages

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4286365.ece

Food shortages and the need to double African production may dominate the G8 summit but even as they discussed the problems of the developing world yesterday, the leaders of the world’s richest nations, joined by several African leaders, ate course after course of fine food.

In a questionable public relations move, the summit’s Japanese organisers proudly displayed to the press the menus for a sumptuous eight-course banquet laid on last night and a five-course lunch a few hours earlier.

The leaders tucked into truffle soup and crab as they discussed Zimbabwe and aid to Africa’s poorest people. The evening feast of 19 separate dishes included diced fatty flesh of tuna fish and milk-fed lamb with aromatic herbs. Tomorrow, after working up an appetite discussing soaring food prices, the leaders will enjoy a £200 dinner of giant crab, £50-a-kilogram langoustine and sweet clover ice cream, prepared by Michel Bras, a Michelin three-star French chef.

It is all in keeping with a summit that has cost a total of 60 billion yen (£283 million) - enough to have bought 100 million mosquito nets to save Africans from catching malaria - and that frequently seems at odds with the Japanese hosts’ professed theme of ecology and environmentalism.