Bush stayed on vacation. On Monday he went to Arizona to cut a birthday cake with John McCain and play politics on Medicare. On Tuesday -- as the flood waters were rising and the death toll mounted -- Bush played politics again, heading out to California to make a speech offering another excuse for staying the course in Iraq (oil!) and jamming on a guitar. He knew he had to end his vacation early (sigh) but couldn't bring himself to head straight to Washington DC. So Bush went BACK to Crawford for one more cozy night of rest before finally heading back to Washington DC on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Condi Rice is in the midst of a THREE DAY vacation that began AFTER the hurricane struck New Orleans. She's gone to a Broadway show, played tennis with Monica Seles and reportedly bought really expensive Ferragamo shoes.

And DICK CHENEY HAS BEEN HANGING OUT IN JACKSON, WYOMING ALL THIS TIME!!!!

Every damn reporter in this country better insist on asking again and again and again exactly what Cheney and Rice have been doing these last few days and why the HELL THEY WEREN'T BACK IN WASHINGTON DC DEALING WITH THE WORST DISASTER IN OUR NATION'S HISTORY.

This guy is nuts!
Pat Robertson: sharply criticized the decision to withdraw from Gaza, saying that, 'God says 'I am going to judge the nations who have parted my land.' He said 'I am going to bring judgment against them.'

Katrina’s affect on Gulf oil production and fuel refining has caused a ruckus in the oil market.

Health News Article | Reuters.com: "Have a headache? No aspirin or ibuprofen handy? Try some olive oil -- actually, freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil would be best, according to a group of chemists, who've discovered that it contains a compound that mimics the pain-relieving action of ibuprofen.
The compound, called oleocanthal, blocks the same pain pathway as ibuprofen, a member of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, Paul A. S. Breslin from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and colleagues report in the journal Nature this week.
According to Breslin and colleagues, oleocanthal in newly pressed extra-virgin olive oil and ibuprofen (in solution) both produce a strong stinging sensation in the throat, an indicator of a 'shared pharmacological activity, with oleocanthal acting as a natural anti-inflammatory compound that has a potency and profile strikingly similar to that of ibuprofen.'
In tests conducted on different premium olive oils, the chemists found a strong positive link between levels of oleocanthal and its intensity as a throat irritant. Similar results were achieved in tests of a synthetic version of oleocanthal they created, confirming that this compound is in fact the active ingredient in olive oil.
According to the chemists, oleocanthal, like ibuprofen, inhibits so-called COX enzymes in a dose-dependent fashion -- the higher the dose the greater the inhibition.
By their calculations, a 50-gram daily dose of olive oil is equal to about 10 percent of the ibuprofen dose recommended for pain relief in an adult. "

The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives here at home, and yet -- after moving billions of domestic dollars to the Persian Gulf -- there are bodies floating through the streets of Louisiana. What does George W. Bush have to say for himself now?

While millions of Americans have lost their homes or lives in the devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina, Bush not only goes about business as usual, he plays the guitar.

President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Bush visited the base to deliver remarks on V-J Commemoration Day. (AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz)




the only image of President Bush I can think of that's
more egregiously wrong is this one:








Besides, Bush has finally decided that he might need to pay a little attention to the WORST NATURAL DISASTER IN AMERICAN HISTORY and head back to Washington. The mainstream media, however, just doesn't seem to get it -- seeming to care more that Bush is going to miss those extra two days of vacation!

Amen Cindy...: "'I know that the Camp Casey movement is going to end the war in Iraq,' Sheehan said, adding that no other families should have to suffer the loss of a relative. She led the crowd in chanting 'Not one more!'"

Obedience is the test of Faith

Who is Cindy Sheehan: "Before the war in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan was no rebel. The mother of four was a youth minister at St. Mary's Catholic Church, in quiet, conservative Vacaville.
But when Sheehan's son Casey, 24, was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, her world lurched out of orbit. In the sleepless days and nights that followed, Sheehan tapped into the anti-war movement on the Internet, looking for answers.
'Sometimes I get up in the mornings and I turn on my computer,'' she told me when I met her in February at a peace vigil in Benicia, 'and my husband comes home at 5, and I'm still there in my pajamas.''
Back then, it would have been impossible to imagine that the quiet mother from Vacaville would be challenging President Bush in a quixotic vigil outside his ranch in Crawford, Texas. She wants the commander in chief to explain the 'noble cause' for which her son died. "

GooOS, the Google Operating System (kottke.org): "Google isn't worried about Yahoo! or Microsoft's search efforts...although the media's focus on that is probably to their advantage. Their real target is Windows. Who needs Windows when anyone can have free unlimited access to the world's fastest computer running the smartest operating system? Mobile devices don't need big, bloated OSes...they'll be perfect platforms for accessing the GooOS. Using Gnome and Linux as a starting point, Google should design an OS for desktop computers that's modified to use the GooOS and sell it right alongside Windows ($200) at CompUSA for $10/apiece (available free online of course). Google Office (Goffice?) will be built in, with all your data stored locally, backed up remotely, and available to whomever it needs to be (SubEthaEdit-style collaboration on Word/Excel/PowerPoint-esque documents is only the beginning). Email, shopping, games, music, news, personal publishing, etc.; all the stuff that people use their computers for, it's all there."

EPFL NEWS :: Service Presse et Information: "A team of researchers from the Ecole
Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) has successfully demonstrated, for
the first time, that it is possible to control the speed of light both
slowing it down and speeding it up in an optical fiber, using off-the-shelf
instrumentation in normal environmental conditions. Their results, to be
published in the August 22 issue of Applied Physics Letters, could have
implications that range from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications
industry. "

We should all need one.
"Bill Moyer, 73, wears a 'Bullshit Protector' flap over his ear while President George W. Bush, on screen at rear, addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars at their 106th convention Monday, Aug. 22, 2005, in Salt Lake City. Moyer served during WWII, Korea and Vietnam. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)"

SLAPP... Have you never heard of such an acrhonimus?
We'd better know what it means because our freedom of thinking is at odd.
SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
So it means that if I say that my last 7 cats died because I live next to nuclear plant I can be sued by the big company and surelly enough (I don't have money) I will pay.
Some examples
here or keep reading: "In Las Vegas, a local doctor was sued for his allegation that a city hospital violated the state's cost-containment law.
In Baltimore, members of a community group faced a $252 million lawsuit after circulating a letter questioning the property-buying practices of a local housing developer.
In West Virginia, an environmental activist was sued for $200,000 for criticizing a coal-mining company for activities that were poisoning a local river.
In Pennsylvania, a farmer was sued after testifying to his township supervisors that a low-flying helicopter owned by a local landfill operator caused a stampede that killed several of his cows.
In Washington state, a homeowner found that she couldn't get a mortgage because her real-estate company had failed to pay taxes owed on her house. She uncovered hundreds of similar cases, and the company was forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. In retaliation, it sued the woman for slander and dragged her through six years of legal harassment before a jury found her innocent.
In Missouri, a high-school English teacher was sued for $1 million after complaining to a weekly newspaper that an incinerator burning hospital waste was a health hazard."

The situation of drafting the Costitution for Iraq looks pretty shacky.
A friend sent me a draft of the Costitution.

I found this new web site that is very cool.
You can share your videos with others and I found even a video of the bridge that collaspe under vibrations.
You can find the website here
and the video of the bridge here

Rome, August 14, 2005 – The scandal exploded only during the 2003
summer when the US daily Worcester Telegram & Gazette obtained a copy
of a document that for 40 years had been kept as "strictly
confidential" in the secret archives of the Holy See that
describes
the story of a lawyer from Boston, Carmen Durso, who filed a complain
with the Prosecutor Michel J. Sullivan containing a copy of the 1962
Instruction "Crimen Sollicitationis" and asking to verify if,
within
the federal jurisdiction, would have been possible to prosecute the
Vatican hierarchies that he claimed were guilty of deliberately
covering from the US authorities the sexual abuses committed by
members of the clergy.

At the same time, another letter signed by Daniel Shea, a lawyer and
former seminarist who discovered the 1962 document and gave a copy of
it to the Boston daily and to Mr. Durso, reached the desk of the
Prosecutor. The document, said Shea in the letter, is quoted as still
applicable in a note of the epistle "De Delictis Gravioribus" of 18
May 2001 that the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, delivered to the bishops and other
ordained and members of the ecclesiastic hierarchy.

This episode was brought to the attention of the international public
opinion by the US Television CBSand the Vatican hierarchies replied
by stating that the norms contained in the 1962 document could not be
anymore considered as binding after the entry into force of the 1983
reform of the Codice di Diritto Canonico, despite the fact that the
Ratzinger letter did not support this; in fact, the current Pope
Benedict XVI in such letter not only recalled the instruction
"Crimen
Sollicitationis", but concerning the "crimes under the
jurisdiction
of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" states that
"In the
Tribunals set up upon the ordained or the members of the Catholic
hierarchies only priests can validly carry out the function of judge,
justice promoter, notary and counsel for the defence" and it
restates
that "the trials of this kind are the subject of papal
secret".

Over the last two years the US judiciary has continued the
investigations and since January 2005, a prosecution against Joseph
Ratzinger is taking place at the District Court of Harris County
(Texas).

Mr. Daniel Shea, the lawyer who brought this case before the District
Court of Harris County, will join the demonstration entitled "For
sexual freedom and freedom of conscience, against the causes of the
deviations and sufferings, starting with those of the phedofile
priests and the phedofobic organizations" convened by the
association
anticlericale.net on Tuesday 16 August at 8 p.m. in S. Peter Square,
the exact time of the opening of the World Youth Day in Cologne,
Germany.

AWEA News Release >> Energy Bill Extends Wind Power Incentive through 2007: "Up to 2,500 megawatts of wind energy capacity are scheduled to come on line in the U.S. this year, bringing new power to the equivalent of 700,000 homes and injecting over $3 billion of investment into the power generation sector. With the timely extension of the PTC, the American Wind Energy Association anticipates that strong growth momentum will continue in 2006 and 2007. "

Entropy Production: The Feebate: "The best way I know of to encourage more efficient automobile buying habits is called a feebate. A feebate is a zero-sum tax-slash-rebate on motor vehicle fuel economy. Car buyers with fuel economy above the mean get a cash rebate, while gas guzzlers must pay an additional tax. The government simply acts as the creditor in the exchange -- it gains no net tax revenue. E.g. it is a very socialist concept. The nature of the feebate helps offset the higher capital investment of a hybrid vehicle. Increased mileage is, of course, a built-in reduction in operating costs."

A U.S. Navy photographer with lightning-fast reflexes captured this image of a fighter plane blasting through a "sonic boom cloud" as the jet broke the sound barrier. Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan Chandler shot the picture as the F/A-18F Super Hornet blew past the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk in the Philippine Sea on July 27.

Finding warez using Google | The days start here: "Finding pirated software is surprisingly easy with Google. Yes, we have astalavista to find the serial numbers and key generators, but it might take you a little more time to find the original setup files, and software that do not use serial numbers to validate the license."