[auralpoison]

bump

[girltrouble]

yay! rachel maddow, liberal smarty-pants and one of my fave talkshow host on air america is gonna be getting a show on msnbc following countdown in sept. whooooooo!

the best, kon, is d.l. hughley's take on america being ready for a black president.


aural the thing that gets me is that mccain seems to be jockeying for a return of the cold war, if not outright war with russia. long before this current dust up, he was suggesting kicking the ruskies out of the g8 for no good reason. it's like both he and bush want to stick their fingers in russia's eye, and then wonder why they are pissed off. and it's hilarious that mccain talks big about things america can do to russia, when essentially we've been neutered. most european countries get their gas from them so they've got them by the balls, and we're stretched to our limit fighting two stupid useless wars in the middle east. i've said it before, when russia went broke and privatized all of their assets, it's only a matter of time before the pendulum swings the other way and it's the us goes broke and we have our own oligarchs(if we don't already).

[konphusion26]

Attention all busties, in case anyone ever doubted that Pres. Bush was an idiot who wrongfully and regularly misrepresents the USA - Here's further proof he's the dumbest person on the planet. I hope that people don't look at him and think all Americans are like him. It's shameful that he's been chosen (twice) to lead this country.

Yet people worry whether Obama will be a good leader, due to his "lack of experience", or his "judgement". **shaking my head**

[auralpoison]

Russia/Georgia. Oy vey. Where to begin?

I have a very good friend that has been living off/on in Georgia for the past three years. He's kind of important. Like, he's dined with the president & Minister of Defense (Whom he said was BONKERS.) type of important. The past forty-eight hours he's been acting as an American switchboard of sorts for friends of his in Georgia trying to contact friends/family elsewhere. He's normally twitchy, but today he was downright agitated.

Georgia is a VERY DANGEROUS place to live. Civil unrest out the wazoo. The whole area is a clusterfuck. There is the main Georgian Republic, but there are three autonomous provinces within Georgia, Ajara, South Ossetia & Abkhazia. The Russians helped them get a foothold on their independence from Georgia & made a lot of them Russian citizens. This pissed off the Georgians, who in turn pissed off the Russians by trying to regain the area back in '04. The Russians chose to hang around in a "peace keeping" capacity after that. So this tension has built & built over time. About a month or so ago, there was some kind of incident in S. Ossetia that left some Russian "peace keepers", um, dead. So the Russians started flying bombers over S. Ossetia. A few days ago the Georgians went in & tried to seize control, leading the Russians to, well, overreact & bomb the fuck out of some places on the interior of Georgia itself, not just in the autonomous region.

My friend said this isn't so much about Georgia's natural resources as Russia's attempt to regain footing they lost (Hey, if they can take Georgia, who says they won't go after Azerbaijan next?), so they are hitting Georgia where it hurts: in the pocket. Factories, oil facilities, a port on the Black Sea, etc. The Russians also struck near the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, thankfully no leakage has been reported. Today they bombed Tblisi, the capital, taking out an aircraft factory. Something like 2000 civilians reported dead since Friday, but tallies vary.

Basically, your average Georgian on the street is pertrified. Remember the Russians & Chechnya? Yeah, EIGHT years & the Russians bombed them back into the stone age. They are even more petrified about receiving American aid (The Georgians have been helping us in Iraq.) because that will REALLY REALLY REALLY piss the Russians off, likely getting them bombed into the stone age as well.

[girltrouble]

*blushes*

[culturehandy]

Teehee, GT you liked it.

[persimmon_grrrl]

thanks, anarch! reading it now...

[girltrouble]

damn. somebody's in a dommy mood. *snickers*



....could be worse,
no matter what you do, polly, never play 'simon says' or 'mother may i' with culture.
i did once and she claims that under canadian rules she can use a riding crop...

and she uses it.... a lot.



^{(...ok, it was kinda fun...)}

[pollystyrene]

Polly, did I say you could talk? *snorts*

No, ma'am.....

[anarch]

This metafilter post was illuminating: pipelines and petroleum in and around Georgia

[persimmon_grrrl]

What's this NYTimes scuttlebutt about Georgia (the country) and Russia engaging in war? Does anybody know the background to this?

[auralpoison]

" . . . brutes in Canada".

[erinjane]

Culture, I was just coming to post that. I have to admit it almost brought a tear to my eye when they said they feared for their safety due to the scary Winnipegers.

[culturehandy]

Well, the funeral went on, without the freaks there.

[culturehandy]

Christine, I did immediately think mental health, and I've heard people who think lock him up blah blah blah. that will accomplish nothing. Do I feel for the family, absolutely, but if mental health plays into this (which I really think it does) he needs help and treatment. Throwing him in jail will ccomplish nothing. I fear to see what would happen had this occurred in Texas.

Polly, did I say you could talk? *snorts*

[pollystyrene]

Clearly you Canadians just want to oppress their free speech rights....ugh.

They make me so sick.

[Christine Nectar...]

my 2cents about the greyhound bus incident...

aural, thanks for making your point. i work in the mental health field with people who have all sorts of diagnoses, and undiagnosed. when something like this happens, i think "schizophrenic" gets thrown around alot because it is a familiar term for people. he could have an ABI, could have been raised by a cult and got triggered to do this, could be borderline, could be affected by substances etc, or had some other thing happening in his brain that we just can't explain.
undoubtably there is a severe problem with this man, but the psychiatric evaluation could have any number of conclusions, and still may not truly explain what's going on with this guy. it was a sick disgusting thing that happened to be sure. the problem is that when the focus instantly shifts to "mental health" it reinforces the stigma that people with mental illness are violent or dangerous, which is no more true for them than for any other part of the population.
we give the perpetrator more than he deserves by trying to figure out who he is and why he did it, instead of sympathizing with the victim's family. i also feel for the perpetrators family, and wonder how they will cope.
there will never be a way to entirely avoid an event such as this, it's just too random.

[culturehandy]

Awwww looks like they are afraid of a bunch of Brute Canadians. linky linky.

[missjoy]

I was actually coming in here to post about this Westboro church bunch and the idiots protesting at the funeral.

Can you imagine being this family, with such an awful, random tragedy - with so much press coverage - and then you have fucking religious freaks protesting at his funeral. Talk about insult to injury for a poor boy and family that did *nothing* wrong.

I am not a person prone to violence, but if I lived in Winnipeg (I'm in Ontario) I think I would go there as a show of support for the family and form some kind of human wall between the protesters and the funeral... then I might kick one of the protesters in the balls.

Plus, they aren't even from this country. Leave us the fuck alone. Save your own town/state/country... Fuck off.

[treehugger]

Fuckhead Phelps is a great example of someone with a clear mental illness whom I have no sympathies for. He is a total waste of oxygen and flesh that all Americans should apologize for.

I apologize for him.

A COMPLETE waste of oxygen.