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So were up early to head down to Panamá. It's between 5 and 10 hours depending on who you ask, which just goes to show you, don't ask. We'll be in Chiriquí Province visiting the city of David and the Pueblos of Boquete, El Hato de Volcán and maybe a couple of other joints on the way.
MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega hopes to immediately board a plane for Panama when he is released from prison on September 9, and he plans to fight his conviction back home in the slayings of two political opponents, his attorney said.
I'm sure Panamanians are thrilled at the prospect. Substitute "Saddam Hussein" and "Iraq" and you may understand the desire of many if not most Iraqis to have been finished with their former 'dictator.'
Bush haters will have their day. This I predict from the tone of the news leading up to the State of the Union Address tonight, even from the Wall Street Journal. Not much one can do from the sidelines except watch and hope for the best.
If, after watching Nancy and Harry and Ted and the rest, 75+% of the country want them to be setting the nation's agenda, well, I'm out of the country so have at it. The lack of historical perspective vis a vis the war is stunning. The partisanship of the Mainstream Press has been nothing less than stunning as well.
Right wing talk radio, the warbloggers and the think tanks, to my mind, have won all the battles, but managed to lose the jaw-jaw part of the war; that losing group including myself. I pity George Bush at this point mainly because I think he will do the right thing and keep on fighting, and will probably face a loud chorus calling for impeachment. He may even 'be' impeached. History will have to wait to exonerate him.
When I was too young to grasp much of what he was saying my grandfather occasionally talked about Hitler and World War 2. Not much mind you, he knew I was too young but I think he wanted to get it on record as having said something. As for Hitler, he said we (or the Germans) created him. We deserved him or wanted him. A baffling thing to say to a kid, as all I knew about him was he was a bad guy and they made fun of him in cartoons.
But the bottom line is we (the rest of the West) watched him grow into power and didn't stop him. We handed him Europe. Let's not forget the Jews. Then to stop him we allied with the Communists, who after the war held a pistol to our heads until Reagan finally called their bluff.
Maybe it's this kind of rhetoric that turns people off. All this talk about 'war.' Nobody wants 'war.' The Democrats seem to have convinced the People that we can win the 'war' simply by removing ourselves from it- just like Vietnam. It looks like we'll find out.
Update From Jules Crittenden: The Speech George Bush Should Make Tuesday Night
Don’t bother standing up or clapping, any of you. I already know who won the election, and I know how you feel. I come before you tonight not to make amends, not to make it good, curry any favor or find any middle ground. I am, more or less, a lame duck. You’ve had your 100 hours of party time. I know. I won’t get any legislation passed without some major bottom-kissing….
So what is the best thing I can do tonight? I can tell you the truth. What none of you want to hear. What you’ve been stopping your ears to. The ugly truth.
The State of the Union is a disaster. I did my best, but I made mistakes, and my best wasn’t good enough.
We went to war without building up our army, and now, I am trying to make up for that.But that is not the disaster.
The disaster is that you, Congress and the American people, do not care to fight.
Just added a 'J List' graphic link over on the sidebar for your shopping pleasure. If you're a Japan-ophile as I am you will like the stuff they sell. They have a distribution center in San Diego so a lot of their items are shipped quickly inside the US.
The link will bring you to a page where you can enter the PG version of the site or choose the link that will include adult items. They have lots of seasonal stuff like calendars and various Pocky items as well as cool toys and t-shirts.
There have been plenty of "news" stories that have got me going in the past week or so. The big one that moved me was the L.A. Times story on the Gates foundation. Gates has been doling out money hand over fist to charities and has even 'hired' help in the form of Warren Buffet to assist. Well, looking a gift horse in the mouth seems to be good journalism these days, no good deed goes unpunished and all that.
Gates's sin seems to be that his charitable foundation has holdings in energy companies that have holdings in oil facilities in Nigeria, a country whose biggest export before the discovery of oil was slaves and now seems to be email spam. The article then claims that the oil production facilities are making the area people sick. "We're all smokers here, but not with cigarettes."
Gates is immunizing the local Nigerian children against polio and measles, but that's not enough. He has to do it in the right way. The Times doesn't acknowledge what it takes to get the Africans in general to accept the inoculations in the first place. Many of them think it's a plot to make them sick, or worse. The foundation is doing God's work.
For context: according to the CDC second hand smoke causes people to die around the age of 70 therefore depriving them of 7 years of life, the average lifespan in the US being 77 or so. You can check this out at 'Death Clock', just toggle between smoker and non-smoker. The average expected lifespan at birth in Nigeria is 47 years, which was the worldwide average before the Salk polio vaccine. You do the math.
I didn't get past the first page because I knew I didn't have the energy to research a six (internet)-page article. The Times has more 'dirt' on the Gates foundation in the form of dark hints about 'connections' or some such to the pharmaceutical industry. If Bill thought he had trouble with the EU regulators trying to steal the Windows operating system he ain't seen nothin' yet. When you lose the L.A. Times……
Today the Fox headline is "NASA Seeks to Reverse Youth Apathy." 18-year-old Adam Humphries is not interested in the space program and is considered typical of today's youth. That he will be a taxpayer when NASA's big bucks program finally kicks in has them worried. Considering we've been sitting on our collective thumbs for 30 plus years with the now obsolete and explosive space taxi system ferrying grade-school children's classroom experiments to orbit after we landed a freaking man on the moon in 1969, I think Adam is about right.
It's obscene that we're not growing vegetables in a truck garden on the moon at this point in time, and loading the colonists for manned flight to Mars. '30 years' is all I've got to say. Crap, if I actually do the math (hey, it's a blog) it's on 37 years now. There should be bordellos, gambling and crime to fret about on Luna and an interplanetary commission to get to the root of it all.
My message to Adam is: Don't worry kid; go play your video games. All these timid failures of vision want is your money anyway. By the time you've paid your weight in taxes Virgin Galactic will be offering joy rides for your amusement. Go on, get out of here.