Ugghh

Okay, this is messed up. The thunderstorm happened yesterday -- i should have had the headache from hell then. Instead I wake up w/ it today (which is even more annoying becausse after all the sleep I had I was looking forward to working out).

It's actually bad enough that I let my boss know i'll be late since I have to wait to take the excedrin..stupid corn in my frigging allegra.

it actually hurts to blink.

Democracy, Mr. President? How about that for everyone?

Tom Watson blogs about Mukhtaran Bibi , the Pakistani woman who has been placed on the "no-exit" list at the order of President Musharraf following her invitation to speak in the US about women's rights.

Nothing has been said from the Oval Office with regard to this. No rebuke, nothing.

Watson also includes quotes from the British press (wow, a media that actually reports) and other sources:

Here's what the Independent reported about the inner politics of the Pakistani government and President Musharraf's real attitude toward Ms. Bibi - disgraceful, and yet President Bush leads him down the Rose Garden path:

The case has indeed embarrassed President Musharraf, a "modern" general who is keen to play down the religious extremism in backward parts of his country. He has been promoting "an enlightened Islam" but activists say that this vision seems to exclude women. Privately, General Musharraf is enraged at how Ms Mai's case has brought infamy to Pakistan. Instead of promoting justice in the case, his reaction, along with a group of newspaper editors, has been to suppress information about the case. The President even threatened to "slap" a reporter "in the face" for publishing details in an international magazine about Mr Mai's defiance. The reporter in question was Pakistan's leading women's rights activist, Ms Jehangir, who is also a UN special rapporteur on human rights.

General Musharraf incurred the wrath of women's rights activists earlier this year. A tribe in Baluchistan began a revolt after an army captain allegedly raped a woman doctor working for the state-run gas company at its desert installations. The tribal chieftain, Nawab Bugti insisted that the suspected rapist be tried by tribal custom - walking across burning coals to prove his innocence.

Instead, the suspected rapist, who had powerful family connections within the military, has so far never been tried. Nor is he likely to ever face justice, after General Musharraf publicly declared he thought that the captain was innocent. The woman doctor was encouraged by the authorities to leave the country - not a choice for the defiant village schoolteacher.

The ruling party has vilified Ms Mai's supporters as unpatriotic. The State Interior Minister, Shahzad Wasim, said: "People in NGOs are ready to say anything for one dinner with Johnny Walker and eat innocent people like vultures."

Twin Regrets Chapter 4

Disclaimer and previous parts found here

Farscape/Firefly crossover. Spoilers for Farscape S3 through Infinite Possiblities. Rated T.


( Chapter 4 )

On to Ch 5

Love Meme

gakked from luridmuse. Posted because I'm scared of how the shower will feel to my head right now. And I finally found a position that doesn't hurt.

Open to All
Reply to this post, and I'll tell you one reason why I like/love/adore you.
Then put this in your own journal, and spread the love.

art goddesses, this is for you

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,1072933_1_0_,00.html

Umm...wow, how do I get invited to that ranch????

*claps for moderate republicans*

From www.dailykos.com

Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.
But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.

When, on television, we see a person in a persistent vegetative state, one who will never recover, we believe that allowing the natural and merciful end to her ordeal is more loving than imposing government power to keep her hooked up to a feeding tube.

When we see an opportunity to save our neighbors' lives through stem cell research, we believe that it is our duty to pursue that research, and to oppose legislation that would impede us from doing so.

We think that efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.

Following a Lord who reached out in compassion to all human beings, we oppose amending the Constitution in a way that would humiliate homosexuals.

For us, living the Love Commandment may be at odds with efforts to encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of religion in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our conservative colleagues.

It is very nice to hear a politician make a speech that should be common sense to anyone above the age of 10. I stand by my belief that the moderate democrats and republicans should secede from their parties to form a third party dedicated to actually representing the quashed moderates of our populace. Sanity should be represented in government as well.

Random Words

gakked from szandara and just a little too odd not to post
( LJ haiku )

Holy crap!!

From www.dailykos.com

by Hunter
Fri Jun 17th, 2005 at 15:52:19 PDT

Via The American Street, a Bob Woodward 60 Minutes interview from April, 2004:

Woodward reports that just five days after Sept. 11, President Bush indicated to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that while he had to do Afghanistan first, he was also determined to do something about Saddam Hussein.
"There's some pressure to go after Saddam Hussein. Don Rumsfeld has said, `This is an opportunity to take out Saddam Hussein, perhaps. We should consider it.' And the president says to Condi Rice meeting head to head, 'We won't do Iraq now.' But it is a question we're gonna have to return to,'" says Woodward.

"And there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 21, 2001. This is 72 days after 9/11. This is part of this secret history. President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"

Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam - and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.

"Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible," says Woodward.

"Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ...Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."

The Downing Street Minutes were written on July 23, 2002:


C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
This isn't going away. It may be a slow build, but the danger to the Bush administration is that there really is a break in the dam, at this point -- on a wide variety of fronts, previous snippets and stories are being merged together to finally reveal the larger storyline. Bolton, the DSM, ElBaradei, the movement of funds and troops away from the active search for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in preparation for the Iraq action, the heightened bombings being carried out against Iraq in the period before the involvement of the U.N. -- rather than a collection of discrete stories, the overall plot is coming together. And it is damning.

Wow!! Just wow!! Too bad the Bush administration hasn't had a more effective Deepthroat. That or too bad that the Republican censorship media machine hadn't silenced any whistleblowers so effectively.

Just wow. Imagine what that 700 million could have done in Afghanistan? The infrastructure would be substantially better off, we might have actually gotten more of Al Quaeda's command structure, and we wouldn't have destroyed the entire infrastructure of another country and completely destabilized the region.

Wow!