Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

Army Standards Dropping Like It’s Hot

• Life’s not so good for the Army these days. Manpower shortages, sagging recruitment and retention rates, overextension of troops are all taking their toll.
• Apparently, the Army is so desperate that they’re now granting felony waivers for those accused of terrorist and bomb threats. [CNN]
• As of 2007, the challenged Army recruiters had already taken drastic measures, though none this drastic. Let us remind you of the standards in 2007. [Mic Check]
• 79% of Army recruits hold HS diplomas, down from 91% in 2001.
• Age restrictions are more lax, with 2,000 new recruits in their 40’s (the Army had to raise the age for enlistees from 35 to 42).
• Twice as many scored below average on the armed services qualification test as the year before.
• With these standards already at a low, the next logical step was to extend felony waivers to recruits with shady backgrounds.
• “Recruits were allowed to enlist after having been convicted of crimes including assault, burglary, drug possession and making terrorist threats.” Wait, what?
• You read that correctly. Two individuals convicted of making terrorist or bomb threats were granted felony waivers in 2007, and one was granted a felony waiver in 2006.
• Bottom Line: There are current Army soldiers who have been convicted of making terrorist threats, in addition to 509 soldiers receiving felony waivers granted in 2007 for crimes from drug possession to assault. Our force is in trouble. [CNN]

Hmm...maybe we should restrict our fighting to wars that actually make us safer.

Christie Todd (cough) Whitman (cough cough) Off The (HACK) Hook

• The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan yesterday ruled that former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman could *not* be held personally responsible for her “misstatements” about the safety of the air around Ground Zero in the days after the terror attacks. [NY Times]
• The Court said Whitman didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and she was simply relying on information given to her by the White House. Misinformation, that is.
• A judge in 2006 made the opposite decision, ruling that Whitman’s falsely positive statements “increased, and may in fact have created the danger” to people living and working in the area.
• A new study released last year by the New York City Department of Health shows Ground Zero workers are twelve times more likely than normal to have asthma. [CBS News]
• Similar studies showed 70% of everyone who worked at Ground Zero contracted lung problems. [NY Times]
• Then-EPA head Christine Todd Whitman has said that while she pushed for workers to wear respiratory protection at Ground Zero, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani fought her on it, blocking her efforts. [NY Daily News]
• Grain of salt time: Just 7 days after the attacks, Whitman told America “I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that the air is safe to breathe.”
• Also, in the days after the attacks, the White House stripped danger warnings and pressured the EPA to add falsely reassuring language to reports about the safety of air and water quality around the site. [CBS News]
• In 2003, a report from the EPA inspector general Nikki L. Tinsley found the White House “convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.” For example, the “EPA was convinced to omit from its early public statements guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete.” [CBS News]

Somehow, this doesn’t seem to do much good for the workers who contracted the respiratory infections.

In America, Female Life Expectancy Drops...What The Heck?

• Some ominous news: life expectancy has dropped for a “significant number of American women.” [Washington Post]
• The last time this happened? “...The Spanish influenza of 1918.”
• According to a study by researchers at the University of Washington, in almost 1,000 counties in America, home to about 12% of America’s women, female “life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s.”
• Where are the counties? All over, but most evident in rural areas “in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine.”
• The most extreme examples are “two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women’s life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.”
• The reasons? “Increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.”
• It also has to do with obesity: “33 percent of women are now obese, compared with 31 percent of men. Extreme obesity is twice as common in women (7 percent) as in men (3 percent).”
• “I think this is a harbinger. This is not going to be isolated to this set of counties, is my guess,” said Christopher J.L. Murray, a physician and epidemiologist who led the study.
• And, it’s very American. “If you look in Western Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, we don’t see this,” Murray said.

Isn’t the future supposed to bring *longer* lives?

Good News, Bad News

Look Ma, the Escalator Ate My Shoes!

News about Crocs getting caught in escalators and causing harm to their wearers is nothing new. For months now, the news has shown pictures of mangled shoes, toenails, and even toes of children hurt in these incidents. Here in D.C., the Metro even warns against wearing the shoes on escalators. But one government is finally willing to do something about it. Japan is calling for a redesign of the popular shoes after news that 65 injuries took place between June and November of last year, mostly involving small children.[ABC]

GOOD NEWS

Fewer injured children is a good thing — and think of the permanent emotional scarring that comes with a escalator eating your favorite pair of shoes.

BAD NEWS

Does this mean people will keep wearing those hideous plastic clogs?

Quote Of The Day

Going to a high school dance, having to listen to loud music, to me that’s torture. I was on the Daily Show once. I was interviewed by Jon Stewart. That was torture.

— Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, joking about torture at St. John’s University. [Think Progress]

Speed Round

PENNSYLVANIA

Hillary wins. Political commentators spend 238 collective hours explaining they don’t know what that means. [ABC News]

DEATH IN DARFUR

We knew Darfur was bad; now we know it’s even worse than that. The U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs announced on Tuesday that the number of deaths in Sudan’s Darfur region since 2006 may have been underestimated by as much as 50 percent.[CNN]

BUSH “THRILLED TO BE ANYWHERE WITH HIGH RATINGS”

President Bush, obviously a little jealous that the 08 Candidates get to go on American Idol and Monday Night RAW, stopped by the show “Deal Or No Deal” Monday night.

CONAN’S RESPONSE

Conan O’Brien responded to Bush’s Deal Or No Deal appearance, saying, “Afterwards, Bush said, ‘I like this show because randomly pointing at boxes is how I make decisions, too.”

“I’M CALLING TO FIND OUT IF YOU’RE HAPPY WITH YOUR CELL PHONE SERVICE”

Barack Obama stopped by the Daily Show Monday night where he “hoped up” some common phrases for Jon Stewart.

“I’M NOT THAT GLAMOROUS”

Jenna Bush opens up on the Today Show about why she’s getting married on the Crawford Ranch and not in the White House.

GRUMPY OLD MEN WHO DON’T WANT TO BE WITH THEIR WIVES

Chris Matthews uncorks another bottle of sexism on Bill Maher’s show this weekend, talking about diners filled with “grumpy old men are hanging around because they don’t want to be at home with their wives for an hour a morning.” Sounds like someone’s been sleeping on the couch lately, Chris. (And thanks for the find, Media Matters!)

IF I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS

...I’d worry more about the so-called “millionaire’s amendment” being debated by the Supreme Court today. The campaign finance law allows candidates to recieve larger contributions when their wealthy opponents spend heavily from their personal fortunes. [AP]

WATCH YOUR FOOTPRINT

Events have been held all over the country this past week in honor of Earth Day- but are they doing more harm than good? Many of these events leave a huge carbon footprint, leaving us questioning the wisdom of festival planners and venders. [USA Today]

WHO IS THE GREENEST OF THEM ALL?

On Earth Day, Los Angeles and San Fransisco fight to see who can build the greenest buildings and cut their carbon footprints. [LA Times]

HOME SWEET HOME

We hope you weren’t serious about trying to sell that home. Existing home sales fell 2% in March, down 19.3% from a year ago. Median prices are down 7.7% from a year ago. Oh, and the housing stock on the market is the highest its been in years. [USA Today]

LOSING LUGGAGE EASIER THAN LOSING WEIGHT

To combat rising fuel prices and increasing American obesity, five of the nation’s six major air carriers have announced they will begin charging $25 for a second piece of luggage in May. [CNBC]

SADR SLUM

“Even as American and Iraqi troops are fighting to establish control of the Sadr City section of this capital, the Iraqi government’s program to restore basic services like electricity, sewage and trash collection is lagging, jeopardizing the effort to win over the area’s wary residents.” [NY Times]

#1

The rank of Modesto, CA in auto theft per capita: 1,048 automobiles stolen per 100,000 people. Coming in second? Las Vegas, NV. [McClatchy]

DRUGS, CRIME, AND KIDNAPPINGS

Drug gags are shifting away from selling drugs as Mexico cracks down. What are they up to now? “...Drug gangs are now responsible for 30 to 50 kidnappings a day in Mexico and that ransoms often run to $300,000 if the victim is returned alive.” [McClatchy]

OPEN ENDED WAR

In Iraq, Muqtada al’Sadr calls for “open ended war” against the Maliki government. It’s a civil war, folks, and we’re trapped in the middle. [McClatchy]

IRAN

“Are the Iranians extraordinarily clever, or are we extraordinarily dim? Certainly, when it comes to pursuing our respective interests in Iraq, they seem to be thinking and acting strategically, while we seem not to be.” [Slate]

HIGHWAYS VS. TRAINS

“Under current law, the federal government usually covers about 80-90 percent of the costs for a new highway project, compared with only 50 percent of the costs for a transit system. Local communities have to pick up most of the rest of the tab for public transportation, with state governments chipping in what’s left. Since doing that usually requires raising property taxes, most local governments just prefer to build highways.” [TNR]