Random News Bits

Vietnam all over again?

Civilian leadership directing the war in Iraq over the wishes of the military brass.

Not good.

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More evidence that abstenence only education is profoundly stupid.

I laughed so hard I almost cried. That's 95%, yo.

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Piecemeal nuclear talks with North Korea failing.

More evidence that this strategy isn't going to work. Of course, why would it when we're not offering any significant carrots and we're keeping our sticks in place.

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Colombian political elite in bed with the paramilitaries.

This is more of the same really. But, imagine if instead of being indicted by the FBI for bribery, that a US Senator was arrested for being directly involved in genocide.

The more things change here, the more they stay the same. I'm extremely pessimistic about the political future of this country.

One has to wonder just what sort of justice a paramilitary leader is going to receive from the Colombian judiciary. Maybe on the lines of the "amnesty" deal that the government started a few years ago. It was so great that it put away mass murderers for no more than 7 years and allowed the paramilitaries to reconstitute their forces.

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Rep Virgil Goode (R-VA) is a xenophobic racist who wants to block Muslim immigration into the US because, you know, all them Muslims be radicals and sh*t.

Get used to this. If 2008 includes Barak Obama on the Democratic ticket this is just the beginning. Dude's not even Muslim, but they're already painting him as a Muslim with the ever so fearful middle name of Hussein, as a way of stirring up fear and xenophobia. Politics makes me want to puke sometimes.

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And last but not least, sham Libyan court reconvicts 6 humanitarian aid workers and sentences them to the death penalty for intentionally infecting children with HIV.

This is so self-evidently stupid that it's shocking that Khaddafi is going through with it. There is ample evidence that the patients had HIV as far back as 3 years before the doctor and nurses arrived, not to mention that they have absolutely no motive to infect innocents with HIV. But hey, simply the best from our "great ally" in North Africa, right?

Hopefully a deal with be done so these people can return to their countries of origins. But, if I'm a prospective humanitarian worker, would I ever go to Libya after this? No way in hell. Same thing for Iraq and pretty much all of the Middle East. The politics of narcissistic stupidity only end up hurting those that need the help the most.