Stuff around the net

I am still catching up with headlines and news (after ten days without electricity except for a generator, meaning no TV cable and no internet...we had to rely on the Manila Bulletin, which we still get in paper form.), and the headlines continue to be the same old same old.

The most serious one is probably that Obama's policies have upset the Saudis (and the Israelis)... he backs the radical Sunnis and the Shiites, so the stable dictators are upset. Maybe someone in the State Dept needs to read "Animal farm" to realize that removing "dictators" sometimes leads to something worse.

And everyone pretends to be shocked, shocked, that the NSA is spying on the leaders of other countries (as if the Russians and Chinese weren't doing the same thing) and the health care bill needs a new computer system.


But if you complain about anything PC, you are a bigot.

And now, Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and Hamurabi's ideas of marriage are bigotry.

And as Uncle Orson found out, if you suggest that traditional forms of marriage are somehow better than promiscuity, you will be boycotted. Miley Cyrus? no problem. Madonna ridiculing Jesus? no problem. Shades of Grey? Seducing teenaged step daughters? No problem. Making drug dealers and mafia hitmen heroes? No problem...

One headline on Drudge says AlGore is blaming the usual bushfires in Australia to global warming, and another article noted that the new guy running Australia is out fighting the fire since he belongs to the local volunteer fire company.

in local news:

The typhoon here hurt us and a lot of local farmers, but the huge and terrible earthquake in Bohol pushed our minor calamity out of the headlines.

Most of the headlines here are about the "pork scandal". Since I don't know who is related to whom, I can't follow it, but PNoy is busy trying to clean house.

Good luck to him, but he is also busy passing laws to please outsiders that no one really cares about: for example: laws that allow casinos (and the associated drug/sex trade problems). And of course, changing laws to conform with the "new morality" pushed by the US State Department, not to conform with local society.

Of course, no one here obeys the law, so it doesn't make much difference, but like the RH bill, which is about population control not about supplying midwives for safe child birth, it seems more to be about pleasing Obama's state department  than helping the poor.

Speaking of laws: after the typhoon I was not surprised to see army guys going around in vans helping out, but this week I also have seen them in pairs on motorcycles (one driving, one carrying an M16) patrolling the back streets. Yup. "barangay" elections (local elections) are due.

And next weekend: All Saints day: everyone will travel home to visit their relative's graves. so the whole country will shut down for five days.