Friday, November 25, 2005

Vitto & I are in Bucksport, ME on our road trip and after a week in the States he hasn't blogged about any of it yet!!

Friday, November 18, 2005

Technology to our rescue

I personally love technology. I can't imagine not having my computer, my car's navigation system, or my cell phone. There are, however, many people who do not like technology, and this CNN article is for them:
A Web camera in a Norwegian artist's living room in California allowed her sons in Norway and the Philippines to see that she had collapsed and call for help, one of the sons said Friday.
...
He said the family was on the verge of tears when they watched on the Web camera as ambulance personnel assisted their diabetic mother, who is recovering in the Desert Valley Hospital in California.

"I thank that camera and my sons for my life," Karin Jordal told the Norwegian newspaper Bergens Tidende by telephone from her hospital bed. She has lived in the U.S. and Spain on and off for the past 15 years.
...
He said the family set up Web cameras in their homes because of the high cost of staying in touch by telephone when they live so far apart.

"But now I see the Internet as a way to save lives. It's also a wonderful tool for people who live alone in some remote area, and might need help," he said.
A nice ending to a good story. Don't we all need to read stuff like that from time to time? :-)

Greenhouse effect: the big killer

The Washington Post reports on a WHO (World Health Organization) study according to which Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, and these numbers could double by 2030.

Climate change is apparently driving up rates of malaria, malnutrition and diarrhea throughout the world, but especially in developing countries where the problem has not been addressed and where existing conditions make it worse.
"Those most vulnerable to climate change are not the ones responsible for causing it," said the study's lead author, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the university's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and its department of population health sciences. "Our energy-consumptive lifestyles are having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor."
The regions most at risk from climate change include the Asian and South American Pacific coasts, as well as the Indian Ocean coast and sub-Saharan Africa. That's because climate-sensitive diseases are more prevalent there and because those regions are most vulnerable to abrupt shifts in climate.
"Climate change makes it even more important to combat diseases of the poor, many of which are highly climate-sensitive," said Campbell-Lendrum, who wrote the Nature paper with Patz. "We already have good evidence that there are a series of significant risks to health, which makes it even more important to curb greenhouse gas emissions in a short period of time."
Much remains uncertain about the impact of climate change:
Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment issued a report this month outlining two possible scenarios with varying degrees of extreme weather events. In one, warming would simply strain the world's resources; the second "would involve blows to the world economy sufficiently severe to cripple the resilience that enables affluent countries to respond to catastrophes."
But what does Bush care about that? It's not like he's in a position of power that would allow him to help fix the problem of global warming (we all know he's not the real president, just a placeholder,) especially since he doesn't believe it even exists. And he'll be long gone from the White House when the economy starts suffering from the global effects on public health of the greenhouse effect.

Worst president. Ever.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Plamegate thickens, against White House's wishes

By now, with sacrificial-lamb-Libby indicted and out of the White House and with Rove still by his side, Bush was hoping the scandal would just die out. Not so fast Junior, not so fast.

One of the most famous American journalists of all time, one-half of the team of journalists who brought down Nixon's administration by fiercely and unrelentingly reporting on the Watergate scandal, Bob Woodward, has revealed that he was told about Valerie Plame's identity a whole month before Robert Novak's column first outed her.

He seems to support the administration's take that it was only mentioned to him casually and he, shockingly, holds that the outing of an undercover CIA spy in charge of WMDs during wartime isn't a big deal, and that no big consequences followed the revelation.

I beg to disagree. If he was told around the same time as other reporters were, and by a third high-level official in the White House, then the conspiracy charges pursued by special prosecutor Fitzgerald in his case against Libby are very well funded. Why? Because now we know that there were several administration officials engaged in divulging top secret information to reporters from widely distributed publications.

Furthermore, now we have a third White House official who endangered national security during a time of war. Woodward, in fact, said it wasn't Libby and it wasn't Rove, and he hasn't said who yet, although it looks like it's Hadley, the current National Security Adviser to Bush and former deputy of Rice when she held that position. This is certainly more problematic and damaging for the administration, since another one of the leakers is constantly by the president's side, advises him on national security (while having absolutely no respect for it) and enjoys the top-most level of clearance.

We'll see if he now gets subpoenaed by Fitzgerald (he stated he didn't come clean earlier because he didn't want to be subpoenaed or go to jail -- wait, I thought he said it was a casual conversation, if there was nothing serious about it, why worry? Why hide?)

In the end, this dark cloud is still hovering over the White House and it doesn't look like it will dissipate anytime soon, for our good luck (I hope at least it stays there until next year's midterm elections.)

Bush lied again

So the Pentagon admitted yesterday that, yes, they did use the lethal chemical white phosphorous as a weapon in Iraq, as they've been accused of doing, but not against civilians.
Pentagon officials acknowledged Tuesday that U.S. troops used white phosphorous as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle of Falluja last November.

At the same time, they denied an Italian television news report that the spontaneously flammable material had been used against civilians.

Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, said that while white phosphorous is used most frequently to mark targets or obscure positions, it was used at times in Falluja as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.

"It was not used against civilians," Venable said.
Now, let's analyze this. The Italian state-run television RAI's documentary that aired a couple weeks ago accused the American military of using this chemical agent in the Fallujah battle in Iraq indiscriminately, killing men, women, children, insurgents, and innocents.

As you would expect, the Pentagon denied the allegation as long as it could, until, faced with the evidence and mounting criticism and rage, it had to admit that they did use it, but not against civilians. Now, if you've been accused of something which you deny, then admit to it, but only partially, what are the chances that the part to which you're not admitting is also true and you're just trying to cover up your tracks a little longer?
Italy's state-run RAI24 news television aired a documentary last week that alleged the United States used white phosphorous shells in a "massive and indiscriminate way" against civilians during the Falluja offensive.

The State Department initially denied that U.S. troops had used white phosphorous against enemy forces. "They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters," a department Web site said.

The department later said the statement had been incorrect.
I mean, at this point, is there really anyone left in this country (or the world) who believes anything at all that comes out of these people's mouths?

Vittorio's visit

This is it, tomorrow night my very best friend, Vittorio, will be here for almost two full weeks of laughing, talking, bitching, and gossiping!!

I can't wait. If you don't count a few hours last year, it's been 2 years since we've had the chance to spend some time together. So much has happened in these two years... He hasn't even seen the kids yet! I miss him all the time and really wish we lived closer.

He actually just told me he started smoking again, which disappointed and saddened me considerably. I hope that soon he'll find the will and the strength to quit again. It's a nasty vice that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Tomorrow around 7.30 pm, America get ready, a hurricane will make landfall in New York City!!

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Shouldn't we be prepared to face the threat of an asteroid hitting the planet?

After all, it has happened countless times in Earth's geological past, and it will happen again. That's a mathematical certainty. And that's what a group of astronauts has realized and they decided to raise public awareness on the issue. They said:
Imagine last year's tsunami, last month's earthquake in Pakistan, and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma all rolled into one -- and then some. If nations can't handle those calamities, what's going to happen when an asteroid collides with Earth?
Apparently, there is a small asteroid already on a possible collision course with Earth, and the small discrepancy that right now puts it passing just to the side of the planet could easily be wiped out by unforeseen events:
In 30 years, there is a 1-in-5,500 chance that a smallish asteroid will land a bull's eye on our planet. At 360 yards wide, it could take out New York City and much of the surrounding area.

Fortunately, experts believe further observations of the asteroid, 99942 Apophis, will almost certainly rule out an impact in 2036. Nevertheless, it's precisely that kind of predictable and preventable threat -- and the thought of being ill-prepared for it -- that alarms the world's normally intrepid spacefarers who are calling for action.
The scientists are saying that the current technology is far enough along that an asteroid could be deflected before hitting Earth, so why not get ready? Do we really want to wait until it's too late?
"The possible consequences are way worse than your run-of-the-mill natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes. As bad as they may be, this can dwarf them."
The association created by the scientists wants NASA to expand its Spaceguard Survey, a program that discovers and tracks near-Earth objects -- asteroids and comets -- that are at least two-thirds of a mile across. So far, 807 of an estimated 1,100 of these big rocky asteroids have been discovered in the inner solar system along with 57 comets; California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is plotting their future tracks, hoping to rule out any impact, since:
An asteroid two-thirds of a mile wide, at impact, would be enough to easily take out a good-sized European country. By comparison, an asteroid or comet believed to be six to seven miles across wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
The asteroid that could potentially pose a threat to us is called Apophis and will whiz by Earth in 2029, passing within an unnerving 18,640 miles. That's a few thousand miles closer than many communications satellites and 220,000 miles closer than the moon. Worse news is that in 2036 it will move in even closer, leading to the 1-in-5,500 chance it will strike.

Even though the asteroid will probably not hit the planet, the question is, at what point do you begin to spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in order to do something? Furthermore, are some places on the planet more dispensable than others?
The point of impact, for instance, could be inadvertently shifted from one part of the world to another by an intervening spacecraft, jeopardizing one country instead of another. Who's liable if an asteroid-deflecting mission goes awry? Indeed, who decides if such a mission is needed and how far in advance should that decision be made?
One way of solving the potential problem of an incoming asteroid would be a nuclear-powered (to quickly get to the asteroid) spacecraft that could either land on the asteroid and apply a small but continuous force over months in order to alter its Earth-smashing course, or hover above the asteroid and use its gravity to push it aside. Any sensational last-minute asteroid crackups "Armageddon" style wouldn't work, since the pieces could wind up on a collision course with Earth themselves. The only problem with this scenario is that the technology for such an "asteroid tugboat" is on hold because of budget cuts.

One thing is certain. It's only a matter of time before planet Earth is hit again by an asteroid and I don't think we can even remotely imagine the amount of devastation it could cause to the human species and every other on this world.

New York to lose 9/11 funds

Well this sure is the right way to get those poll numbers sinking even faster, George. From Associated Press:
Congressional budget negotiators have decided to take back $125 million in Sept. 11 aid from New York, which had fought to keep the money to treat sick and injured ground zero workers, lawmakers said Tuesday.
...
The tug-of-war over the $125 million began earlier this year when the White House proposed taking the money back because the state had not yet spent it.

New York protested, saying the money was part of the $20 billion pledged by President Bush to help rebuild after the Sept. 11 attacks. Health advocates said the money is needed to treat current and future illnesses among ground zero workers.
...
Top New York fire officials recently lobbied Congress to keep the funding. Fire and police officials say they worry that many people will develop long-term lung and mental health problems from their time working on the burning pile of toxic debris at ground zero and they want to use the money to help them.
How crazy is that?! Does Bush like behind hated by the country and being considered a failure of a president? Does he actually enjoy being a lame duck less than a year into the first year of his second stolen term?

It's already reckless that Congress decided to assign the funds for terrorism prevention measures to the states evenly instead of based on a per-capita basis or on the risks of a specific state to actually be a target of terrorists. As a result, a state like Montana that would probably never even see the shadow of a terrorist within its borders, gets as much money as the state of New York, chock full of world renown landmarks that are the primary targets of any terrorist cell.

Now, however, Bush is telling the city of New York, the worst hit on 9/11, that he wants his money back. And why? Because they haven't spent it yet? That's just sick. And as usual, the news comes out just after election day, so that the Republican candidate's chances of winning aren't hurt. And Bush doesn't have to run for anything anymore, so he can rescind any promise made, screw any other Republican running in the future.

Yes, because this shines even more light on the pack of lies that this president is willing to tell his constituency in order to get what he wants. Bush promised $20 billion dollars to the city of New York and now wants them back because he doesn't agree with how they're spending the money. Sick and slimy.

This administration, and its cronies over at the Hill, are dangerous for America. Period.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Box Office still sputtering

After the end of the summer box office, the most lucrative for Hollywood, I stopped following its performance as much, because I figured movies of higher quality were certainly going to start to come out given the approaching awards season.

Think again. It's the middle of November and, although I have never been so absent from movie theaters as I've been this year in at least two decades, I know I haven't missed much. The movies offered up by the movie capital of the world have been, to put it gently, subpar. Even compared to the usual overblown and overrated blockbusters.

This past weekend, overall receipts were down 15 percent from the same weekend last year. That's a lot of money people, and it could turn 2005 into the absolute worst year on record for Hollywood.

The big question is, will the studio moguls learn anything from it? Unlikely. There is already talk of considering this year like a bump on the road, and wait and see for 2006's performance before deciding if there really is anything to worry about. That will translate into more of the same for the audience next year, and probably the one after that, since it does take at least a couple of years for a picture to go from concept to projection booth.

I wonder how many bad years in a row it will take for movies to become enthralling again. And to think that it isn't long ago that I've seen one of the most beautiful and overwhelming pictures ever, The Hours, by Stephen Daldry.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Bad news for Bush and the GOP

Robert Novak is a very conservative journalist (the one that first outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to the world) and this is his take on last Tuesday's election results:
This morning, columnist Bob Novak wrote of congressional Republicans fearing for next year's elections after Tuesday's losses, "The antidote to avoid that fate is to keep as far away from President Bush as possible, a lesson underlined by the president's failed election rescue mission for former Virginia state Attorney General Kilgore. The consequences may be profound. As his approval rating dipped, Bush increasingly has been treated in Congress as a lame duck. Tuesday's Virginia outcome increases the propensity of Republican senators and House members not only to avoid their president on the campaign trail but also to ignore his legislative proposals." [Chicago Sun-Times, Novak Column, 11/10/05]
Schadenfreude.

Friday, November 11, 2005

Bush disregarded CIA warnings that there were no Al Qaeda-Iraq links

Now that the Democrats have forced the GOP's hand in the Senate to finish the so-called Part II of their investigation into whether the Bush administration lied to the Congress and the country to go to war in Iraq, more and more evidence of Bush's deceptions are coming out.

This is from today's CNN:
A January 2003 CIA report raised doubts about claims that al Qaeda sent operatives to Iraq to acquire chemical and biological weapons -- dramatic assertions that were repeated weeks later by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in making the case for the invasion of Iraq.
...
The CIA report appears to support a recently declassified document that revealed the Defense Intelligence Agency thought in February 2002 that the source, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was lying to interrogators.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, this week released the DIA report in alleging the administration cited faulty intelligence to argue for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
...
The document obtained by CNN was provided recently to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have been pressing for an investigation into the ways in which the Bush administration used intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the war.

In January and February 2003 President Bush and Powell each made dramatic assertions that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda and argued for military action to prevent Baghdad from providing its suspected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
I'd like to know what Powell thinks of this evidence now surfacing that implicates him as well as the president, even though he was probably just reluctantly following orders. One thing is sure, he lost all his credibility here. It would have been smarter of him to quit, rather than go in front of the UN and lie for Bush and his minions, especially since he probably knew (or suspected) that the intelligence was faulty, and he could have used his sources in the Pentagon to find out if he was right.

This doesn't look good for Bush or the GOP at large. If more evidence comes out that he lied, next year the Democrats might really take back Congress, and then, what's going to stop them from impeaching Bush and Cheney?

The White House lied to the public according to the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee

Former Senator Bob Graham, who was still in office when the war preparation was undergoing, has come out publicly with his criticism of the White House saying:
"This was one of the most reprehensible and damaging breaches of American security in modern times," said Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the fall of 2002, when the administration made its case for war against Iraq.
...
Asked directly if White House officials lied to the public about Iraq intelligence, Graham said "yes."

He said the administration suppressed "all the nuance" and internal disagreement among intelligence agencies over whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, then exaggerated the threat and covered up their activities.
...
Graham said Friday he was "suspicious" about the intelligence reports on the Iraqi threat he saw during the fall of 2002.

He voted against the war resolution, saying Iraq would drain resources from the war on terrorism.

"The administration did not want the best judgment of the intelligence community," Graham said.

"This was an administration that wanted to be blind going into this war. They did not want to have the most credible assessment of what was the reality of the case for war and the consequences of war."
Since he voted not to give the president the authority to go to war in Iraq I tend to believe him and his version of the facts, also because in the end, he was right.

And not having voted to authorize the current oil-war, he has even more credibility then, say, Hillary Clinton, for a 2008 presidential run, for which he's considered a potential candidate.

He also had this to say about the Plame-scandal:
"It's impossible to believe that Scooter Libby would have done this on his own, but rather this was part of a larger conspiracy to attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson," Graham said.

Graham called on Cheney to "defend and explain himself" in the wake of the indictment of Cheney's top aide, Lewis Libby, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case.
So Mr. Vice President, what did you know and when, and what was your role in the leak?

PS: it looks like the Democrats have finally realized that the public is fed up with the Iraq debacle and that it is finally waking up to this administration's shrewdness when it comes to getting what they want. The public is with us and, hopefully, we'll be able to take Congress back next year and the White House in 3 more. Keep your fingers crossed...

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Welcome to Kansas, ca. 1200 AD

Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back in time to the state of Kansas, USA. Yes, the religious right has succeeded in its goal to take over that state's board of education and change what's being taught to kids from scientific material to faith-based material.

Not only that, they also rewrote the definition of science.
Revisiting a topic that exposed Kansas to nationwide ridicule six years ago, the state Board of Education approved science standards for public schools Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

The 6-4 vote was a victory for intelligent design advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Critics of the new language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools in violation of the separation of church and state.

"This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh, a Democrat.
She's so right. Right now, the whole world laughs and pities them.
The new standards say high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.
Incredible. I feel bad for all the sane parents still in the state of Kansas who will see their kids' brains sullied by these insane theories. Their only chance to make things right is to go vote next year and vote Democrat, kick those morons out of office, and change everything back to what it was (and what it should be,) once and for all.

Another school shooting

It happened Tuesday and involved a student shooter and a dead assistant principal. Another assistant principal and the principal himself were taken to a hospital.

So sad. The level of violence in this country is amazing, and the fact that there are so many guns around makes it all that much worse. I understand that it's a constitutional right to bear arms, but I don't see why there can't be more safeguards, especially when so many of these accidents have already happened and continue to happen.

It just goes to show that if you have a good enough lobbyist and enough money to throw at politicians, you can get whatever you want.

And innocent people pay the price for it. As usual.

US Army proves Bush a liar

A couple days ago, I posted about the accusation Italian public television RAI made that the US had used illegal chemical weapons (White Phosphorous) against innocent and unarmed Iraqi civilians, INDISCRIMINATELY (notice the irony here, since chemical weapons were one of the many reasons given by Bush for attacking Iraq.)

Well, now there is hard evidence that the accusation, although denied (GET OUT!!) by the Bush administration, is in fact true. And the proof comes from the Army itself, so it will be quite hard for Bush to disprove it (is he gonna start smearing the US military like he does with everyone who doesn't agree with him?)

Check out this link at Daily Kos:
"WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
...
there is no way you can use white phosphorus like that without forming a deadly chemical cloud that kills everything within a tenth of a mile in all directions from where it hits. Obviously, the effect of such deadly clouds weren't just psychological in nature.
...
Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused.
SHAKE AND BAKE!! Absolutely appalling. Let's see how the administration pulls itself out of this sticky mess and how much more America will be hated now in the Middle East.

President Bush. Worst President Ever.

France's riots

It's been two weeks now that France has been rattled by civil unrest that has caused a lot of property damage and plenty of political turmoil. The spark for the violence was the accidental death by electrocution of two teens of North African descent, while they were hiding from the police in an electricity sub-station in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

The violence has spread to Paris and several other cities in France, and was feared it could spread to other European cities as well. The underlying problem is racism.

Racism exists and is a problem on both sides of the Atlantic (actually, everywhere in the world,) but it's been mostly ignored in Europe for decades. Immigrants (legal and illegal) pour into just about any European country from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe. They perform the lowest paying jobs and duties that Europeans don't want to do anymore, and are regarded as inferior to the countries' "real" citizens.

Naturally, it was only a matter of time before we would see in Europe the same kind of riots and violence America witnessed in the past decades, before and after the Civil Rights Act was added to the US Constitution.

The 'rioters' demand to be treated fairly and equally, especially if they are legal immigrants or citizens themselves, a request that is more than reasonable, if you ask me.

From CNN:
Violence in France appeared to be on the decline as officials toughened their stance against rioters and threatened to deport any foreigners convicted of involvement.

Vehicle torchings continued overnight as the unrest stretched into a 14th night. But the number of arson attacks dropped.
...
Vandals set several cars on fire in Toulouse, including one they pushed into a school courtyard, setting the facility on fire.

Another school was torched in the eastern city of Belfort, and vandalism at power stations in Lyon, France's second-largest city, caused blackouts. The night before, Lyon's subway system was shut down after a petrol bomb was thrown in a train station, French media reported.
...
Although France's national unemployment rate is about 10 percent, in areas hit by rioting the level is nearer 40 percent.

France has no affirmative action; an official French study found that youths with Arab-sounding names have their job applications rejected up to five times as often as those with traditional French names.
I'm Italian, so I can speak for experience. Immigrants come in, take up some job no one else wants to do, and try to insert themselves in the local society. Problem is, they look and sound different. Everybody knows they are immigrants, and are viewed with suspicion and diffidence, no matter their situation or behavior.

The citizens tolerate them, as long as they stay 'invisible.' As soon as they try to affirm their rights, to which they should be entitled, especially after living in a country for years, they are put back in their place, and told not to make a stink.

That's not right, and can't keep them quiet forever, especially when their population grows in number at a faster pace than the citizenry itself.

Large minority pockets can be found everywhere across the Old Continent, but they are seldom viewed or treated as the so-called 'locals.'

I'm curious to see if the latest unrest will finally bring about some much needed expansion of civil rights and full acceptance on the part of the European countries that, just like the US, can't keep on ignoring the problem of immigrants as if they didn't exist or were undeserving, since Europe's economy depends on them just as much as it depends on its 'real' citizens.

Democrats score in off-year elections

Well, well, well. Finally some good news for us liberal (= smart) thinkers.

I know that Tuesday's elections weren't for the White House or the Congress, but still, there were two governorships (New Jersey and Virginia) up for grabs, and one race was really close, but we won both.

Above all, Bush tried to help the Republican candidate by showing up Monday night in Virginia, and it totally backfired on him, since the guy lost anyway. And this will have repercussions next year during the midterm election races. Bush might be viewed as poison (just as Bill Clinton was after the Lewinsky debacle) instead of an advantage:
The loss in Virginia was a personal setback for Bush, who put his declining political capital on the line with an election-eve visit on behalf of Republican former attorney general Jerry Kilgore -- only to see him soundly defeated by Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine.

With Bush's popularity at the lowest level of his presidency, the results helped giddy Democrats claim momentum one year before elections to decide control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress and 36 governorships.
...
Kilgore's poor showing could give pause to Republicans considering calling on the president for help in the 2006 elections.

"I think it would have been closer if the president hadn't gone in there," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told reporters.

"It really is a disaster for Bush," said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, who called the results "the logical consequence of Bush's growing unpopularity."

"Virginia is Southern and conservative and that's the Republican base," Sabato said. "If they start losing their base, it's easy to imagine both houses of Congress going Democratic."
What a nice mental image :-)

Furthermore, all the ballot initiatives championed by the once-rising-star of the Republican party, Arnold Schwarzenegger, were defeated, hence (re)positioning California solidly on the Democratic side of the electoral spectrum and dimming the prospects of the Terminator to win a full term next year.

As for gay initiatives, it was a mixed bag. A state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was approved in Texas, as expected, but an attempt to repeal an anti-discrimination law in Maine failed, and this was the only real contest that mattered (nobody thought Texas would endorse gay-rights at this juncture in time.) From MaineToday.com:
Maine voters decided Tuesday to keep the state's gay rights law on the books, making Maine the last New England state to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.
All in all, a good showing for the Democrats everywhere. Now let's just hope this is a good omen for next year's midterm elections. Wouldn't it be nice to take back Congress and then impeach the lying scumbags in the White House?

Monday, November 07, 2005

Another black eye for Bush and America

A documentary about the use last year of internationally prohibited chemical weapons on innocent civilians by US military forces in Fallujah, Iraq, will be broadcast tomorrow night in Italy by state-owned TV channel RAI:
The documentary - 'Fallujah - the hidden massacre' - uses witness accounts from former US soldiers, Fallujah residents, video footage and photographs, to support its claim that contrary to US State Department denials, white phosphorous was used indiscriminately on the city, causing terrible injuries to civilians, including women and children.

"I heard the order being issued to be careful because white phosphorous was being used on Fallujah. In military slang this is known as Willy Pete. Phosphorous burns bodies, melting the flesh right down to the bone," says one former US soldier, interviewed by the documentary's director, Sigfrido Ranucci.

"I saw the burned bodies of women and children. The phosphorous explodes and forms a plume. Who ever is within a 150 meter radius has no hope," the former soldier adds.
...
The evidence in 'Fallujah - the hidden massacre' claims to show the US forces did not use phosphorous in the legitimate way - to highlight enemy positions - but dropped the substance indiscriminately on the city, and on a massive scale. The documentary also shows the terrible damage wrought by the US bombardment of Fallujah, and the carnage to civilians, some of whom lay sleeping.

Equally disturbingly, a document in the report claims to prove that the U.S. forces have used the MK77 form of Napalm - the chemical used with devastating effect on civilians during the Vietnam war - on civilians in Iraq.
Naturally, the use of white phosphorous and Napalm is prohibited by UN conventions and the US signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, but c'mon, it's just an international agreement.

No wonder nobody respects the US in the world anymore. I wonder if the media will report about this story this side of the Atlantic.

Nice work, George. You're doing a heck of a job.

Back

I'm back at work from my business-learning-trip to Ohio. It was a very tough week, and I learned a lot. Now I'll have to practice as much as possible with the material, in order to learn even more and get better at my job.

All in all, I'm not looking forward to the next classes (sometime next year.) But like I said before, I don't have a choice and will have to attend them.

I'm still tired from the past couple of weeks. First, there was the anxiety for my midterm, then, the anxiety for the trip, then the stress of the class, then the anxiety for the test on Friday (which went very well,) and then the trip back. Friday night I was tired, but nothing compared to how I felt on Saturday. I really felt like I got beat up or something. I'm still not fully recovered.

Anyway, it's good to be back.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Rove is guilty. Why is he still working at the White House?

In this ABCNews article, Matthew Cooper, one of the reporters involved in the Valerie Plame scandal had this to say when asked who his source was:
One of the reporters at the center of the investigation into the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, says he first learned the agent's name from President Bush's top political advisor, Karl Rove.

Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper also said today in an interview with "Good Morning America," that the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, confirmed to him that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
...
There is no question. I first learned about Valerie Plame working at the CIA from Karl Rove," Cooper said.

Libby has since claimed that he heard the Plame rumors from other reporters. Cooper disputed that version of events. "I don't remember it happening that way," he said. "I was taking notes at the time and I feel confident."

If a trial goes ahead, Cooper said he would name Rove as his source of the information.

"Before I spoke to Karl Rove I didn't know Mr. Wilson had a wife and that she had been involved in sending him to Africa."
Why is Karl Rove still working in the White House? His name has been linked to a CIA agent outing scandal time and again, but he still has his top level post in the most powerful government in the world during a time of war, and still has access to national-security-level classified information.

Where is the outrage?! Can we think of any other president so spineless, ineffectual, arrogant, and dangerous that he keeps a traitor on his side during wartime? I believe even Reagan and Nixon weren't so stupid, insane, or crazy.

You're doing a heck of a job George. Curious to see what your legacy is going to look like in a few years.

OnBase training - Day 3

Oh my God, I'm so tired. Today was by far the worst day, so chock full of information I felt like I wanted to scream. I'm starting to really worry about the following classes, which everyone says are MUCH harder than this one. And I have no choice but attend them. Unless of course, I find another job (yeah right, like that's ever gonna happen!!) Anyway, one more lecture day and then the test. Can't wait for this whole thing to be over. I miss my family, my routine, my house. I'm homesick at this point, and I really just want to go home. I don't know how people who are always on the road do it. I guess you must be cut out for it.