narrating kayoz

Yes we can.

Have you see this yet?

As I said to Trish, on the day when we have an Labor government sitting in Parliament House again, on the day that opened, finally, with the long awaited Apology - Yes we can is really pretty exciting. Can we? Can they? God I hope so. 

I'm Sorry

There's a group on Facebook called "I'm Changing My Facebook Status to "is Sorry" on February 13". It gave me goosebumps to see so many of my friend's status messages all saying 'I'm sorry'. Today is really an important day for this country.

"The journey to live a simpler...more sustainable existence"

In searching for information on golden nugget pumpkins* this morning I came across two interesting sites. One is the blog of a woman who describes it as a "diary of her home and family on a journey to live a simpler, more thoughtful and more sustainable existence". It's called The Tin House. The second was a SMH article by Jackie French called "Self Sufficiency on a Balcony" (though she covers a back yard as well).

I haven't finished reading either of them (not that you ever really finish reading a blog, but I've really only skimmed a few posts so far), but the idea, particularly of the blog, got me thinking. Maybe I should do a similar thing here. Not that I don't still use this blog as a baby book, memory dump, soap box, etc, but maybe I should also use it to document our efforts to move towards a more sustainable, ethical life.

Because documenting things can often be enough to motivate one to do them better. It works for me anyway (that's how I've lost 12+ kilos in the past seven months, bringing back to my several-years-pre-pregnancy weight).

The thing is, as soon as I came up with the idea I started getting cold feet. Why? Because of all the things we could be doing but aren't, or are doing but could be doing more or better. It's frankly embarrassing.

Things we are doing to some people seem great, to others seem token. Things we aren't doing to some people seem over the top and to others seem essential.

For instance, we decided to buy a freezer last year, so we could buy in bulk and cook in bulk and have somewhere to put it all. But we spent many months over the project because we wanted to buy a second hand one, for environmental as well as economic reasons, and we didn't want it to be too old or the lack of energy efficiency would make the whole exercise a little pointless (we figured). So that's good right? We're trying to teach Liam that to reduce or reuse is better than to recycle. But in the past year we also bought (new) an iPod dock, various picture frames, large plastic boxes (for storing hand-me-down clothes till the kids grow into them), a plastic drawers thingy for storing stationary, a plastic water jug, a toy pram for Mikaela, a baby monitor and no doubt a thousand other little things that I don't happen to be able to see from where I'm sitting. Oh, and this laptop upon which I am typing.

Whereas my sister and her husband made a pact at the beginning of last year to buy nothing new but groceries and underwear. I don't know for sure how well they've done, but I know they are still doing it.

Does that mean they don't buy cling wrap? I don't know, but I know we do - I try to minimise it's use (eg using containers with lids to store things in the fridge), but I suppose if I were trying sufficiently hard we wouldn't need to buy it any more.

Also we've changed most of our lightglobes over to the long life fluro ones, we've got water saver shower heads, and small tanks on each down pipe (and a big one to feed water into the toilets and laundry is in the pipeline), which this year are supplying most of the water for our garden. But we also have an evaporative cooler which we use frequently in the summer. And three computers! (One is pretty old, and one is not very new and was bought for us by Chris's dad, but still.)

And we buy some organic produce, but lots of not organic (and some imported), simply because of the money. But of course if we didn't buy laptops and iPod docks maybe we could afford more organic produce. Then again we are doing out best to grow our own. And our chickens are supplying us with all our eggs, but of course, their food isn't all organic either.

 

See what I'm saying? To document our journey towards a more sustainable existence I have to admit to where we are on that journey now.

Anyway, The Tin House has a list of blogs she likes to read with titles like 'Aussies Living Simply' and 'Down to Earth', so I'm off to browse the web for more inspiration.

 

__________
*Because the zucchini plants we bought from Liam's school fair turned out to be some kind of pumpkin - I *think* golden nuggets, or maybe minikins - and I am trying to figure out how to tell, and also how to tell when they're ready to pick.

Today is Human Rights Day

Human Rights Day, from Amnesty International Australia:

Today on Monday 10 December we celebrate Human Rights Day.

This date commemorates the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

At a time when millions of Amnesty International Australia supporters around the world are writing letters of support, hope, inspiration and expressing their opinions about human rights -  it is an especially pertinent time to think of those who are not permitted to freely express their opinions.

Still happy, but a bit frustrated too...

So who were all the idiotic people who voted for ALP in the house of reps, but still voted for the Libs in the Senate? In Canberra for instance?!

Yippee!!!

Woohoo! Yay Australia (and about bloody time).

But seriously, Canberra, Gary Humphries for the Senate again? Have we learned nothing from the past three years?

Edited to add: Howard has apparently conceded defeat by phone to Rudd and left Kiribilli House. :)

Edited again to add: meanwhile I feel like I must be the only left wing voter sitting at home alone, without even my husband (who's in Sydney) to celebrate with. This is the first election in my adult life where the government has changed for the better (IMHO) and therefore the first time I really would like to be at a party somewhere.

Still, I'm pretty damn relieved. Even though I really thought Kerry Tucker would get that Senate seat, or that it would at least be close.

Federal government sticks its nose in other people's business again

The federal minister for education, Julie Bishop, has asked the ACT to institute HSC-like end-of-year-12 exams within two years, or risk losing federal funding.

Here in the ACT we have had a system of continuous assessment through year 11 & 12 for 30 odd years, and we like it just fine, thank you very much. There is a single scaling test that students take towards the end of year 12, which allows grades to be standardised across schools, but students' individual results in that test do not impact them.

There is no evidence that an HSC style exam is better. None. The ACT supports the move to a national curriculum. But that doesn't mean everyone has to sit the same test.

Andrew Barr, ACT education minister, has reportedly said that we will not be moving to the exam system, but please show your support. You can email Andrew Barr expressing your support, or send  a message to Julie Bishop or th PM expressing your outrage at their typically meddlesome pigheadedness and bully boy tactics dismay at their shortsighted policy.   

To challange ebay on their new policy...

The best I've been able to find at this point is this page http://pages.ebay.com/help/newtoebay/suggest.html from which you can Send us your suggestion to improve the eBay site.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to come up with something to say, but for now you could just say, bring back second-hand cloth nappies.

Did you know disposable nappies take something like 3000 years to fully break down?

Fitted cloth nappies cost something in the region of $25 each, which is still way cheaper than years of disposables, but a lot in one hit. And why should we waste resources growing more cotton/hemp/bamboo when there are lots of nappies out there not being used any more?

Okay, I gotta go to bed. Everyone in my house has a cold which means no one is sleeping well. Please go email ebay for me.

Second hand nappies 'too gross' to sell on ebay

Apparently ebay has decided second hand nappies are too gross to sell. More details on how to protest later. Gotta run to a kid's bithday party now...

Who voted for that man?

How embarrassing it is to be Australian right now.
(thanks to Susoz for the link.)

Too little too late?

Liz Minchin wrote in The Age yesterday that

...the Prime Minister's newly announced industry taskforce on emissions trading has echoes of the past... Environment Business Australia chief executive Fiona Wain was part of the Climate Change Dialogue four years ago, and says it 'was full of people wanting to block any action, who couldn't see how important climate change was'... 'I'm very supportive of this new initiative … but it's important to bear in mind there has to be a tangible, practical outcome at the end of it,' she said. 'We can't afford another report that just sits on the shelf.' (Liz Minchin, "Howard Blows Hot and Cold on Emissions" The Age, 15 Sept 2006)

I do hope that that this time it will be different, and that something will come of this latest taskforce, and that it will be in time, but I am truly worried that in years to come we will look back on the present government (and not only ours) as grossly negligent on this issue - that even if something does happen this time, it will simply be too little too late. And future generations will wonder how we could have allowed it to happen.

An assessment by the World Health Organization concluded that the effects of climate change since the mid-1970s likely caused more than 150,000 deaths in the year 2000. Other analyses estimate 160,000 deaths a year since then. In contrast, terrorism caused 56 American deaths in 2005, the same year [they] spent about $100 billion fighting it and its shadow oil war—even as these investments fantastically increased the real threats to [their] homeland security. (Julia Whitty, "The Thirteenth Tipping Point" in Mother Jones, Nov/Dec 2006)

Kids and Consumerism

Does anyone have any tips or reading suggestions on how to educate young children about the connection between "our personal behaviour and our environment" (see below for full quote)?

We try to talk to Liam about not wasting water, in particular, but of course he doesn't really get it. And I don't actually want to scare him about the state of the planet (according to the Steiner education principles the first life phase - until about age 7 - should have the theme "the world is safe"), but I do want him to get a sense of the importance of not over-consuming - water, electricity, packaging, toys... (And yet I just gave Chris the go ahead to buy an iPod - am I a complete hypocrite?)

"[A] study... from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, found an ominous silence when it comes to educating American K-12 students on the relationship between our personal behavior and our environment: that the size and inefficiency of our cars, homes, and appliances, our profligate fuels, our love of disposables, and the effects of buying more than we need actually undermine our prospects on earth. Slightly more time is spent teaching kids how the environment can affect us, overpowering humanity with floods, droughts, storms, earthquakes, climate change. But in our overall failure to illuminate the interdependence between Homo sapiens and earth we withhold critical knowledge from those whose lives depend upon it most.

"Many of today's kids recreate in the unwilderness of the shopping mall, where messages of prudence and wisdom are overwhelmed by the consumerism that feeds global warming. We send our kids to the mall because we fear the dangers outside. We could hardly be more wrong in our assessment of risk."

Thanks to Suzoz for the link to The 12 tipping points of global warming, by Julia Whitty in Mother Jones.

Liam's famous!

He made the paper after the Walk Against Warming the other week. Except the caption said "A young girl stands among the placards from yesterday's Canberra rally to demand government action on climate change." It doesn't matter what else he's wearing, the hat and the hair get that response every time.

(BTW, I am very excited about and grateful to the American people for the outcome of their latest elections - just haven't had the time or energy for much political blogging lately. Or much other blogging for that matter, clearly.)

Nigerian anti-gay legislation to be introduced

From an Amnesty Internation notice I got today:

The Nigerian Federal government is introducing legislation, containing broad and sweeping provisions that, if passed, would not only introduce criminal penalties for relationships and marriage ceremonies between persons of the same sex but also for public advocacy of lesbian and gay rights.

The proposed legislation not only contravenes internationally recognized protections against discrimination, rights to freedom of expression, conscience, association, and assembly, but also undermines Nigeria's struggle to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Join Amnesty in urging the Nigerian authorities to withdraw this bill.

taking responsibility for managing climate change

In an article today in The Age,  'A real plan for warming',  Kenneth Davidson writes:

[Kim] Beazley listed the implications that have been calculated by various authorities of doing nothing to reverse greenhouse gas emissions, these being temperature-related deaths to double to 2500 a year by 2020, dengue fever to spread to Sydney, water supplies to Melbourne and Sydney to drop by 25 per cent by 2030, and rainfall in the Murray-Darling basin expected to fall by 25 per cent and evaporation rates to rise, threatening the viability of Adelaide.

Scary estimates, though not new. He also says that

[a]ccording to Beazley, the debate about whether climate change is real and man-made is over. "And once you accept climate change is real you have to accept responsibility to act."

This seems like a bit of a 'duh!' doesn't it? - who cares whether we caused/are causing it or not. The point is it's happening, and there will be real and nasty consequences. So if we can do something about it (and it seems we can) then we need to act. But we need to act NOW, not in 25 years time.

I was reading a book the other day called Don't bother me Mom-I'm learning, by Marc Prensky, founder of Games2train. I haven't read enough of it yet to make an informed comment about it, except to say that I heard him speak at a conference last week, and some of his ideas were challenging to someone planning to send their kids to a Steiner school. Interesting though.

Anyway, early in this book he tells an anecdote about a 4 or 5 year old who, walking past a school playground with his mother, is able to estimate that it would cost around $20,000 to build, and that it would take a lot of people working for a lot of days to be able to make it. This was based on his experience playing The Sims.

I thought - this is impressive. A pre-schooler who can understand some of the time and effort that goes into creating something.* But you know what I'd really like to see? I'd like to see that child having some understanding of the natural resources involved. I try to talk to Liam about this a little bit too (it's easiest with water) but he doesn't really get it yet. Does The Sims include stuff like carbon taxes? I have no idea, but wouldn't it be great if it could somehow provide that sort of understanding?

*An aside: It's impressive, but is it desirable? On one level, I think certainly it is - I try to impress on Liam that things cost money and getting that money involves me and Daddy working away from him. But do they need - is it really beneficial to have - that level of understanding at that point? I'm not saying it's bad, just questioning whether it's necessarily a Good Thing, something that we should aim for just because it's possible - or was for that child.

Rally

Just before I go to bed, I wanted to state, for the record that I did attend the rally on Tuesday, despite my department sending out the same sort of bullying emails (admittedly based on DEWR's shonky advice) that Loadedog refers to, telling us we wouldn't be granted leave, pre-approved flex leave was to be revoked, any unplanned leave that morning had to be proved to be for something other than the rally etc. or our pay would be docked and presumably we'd be in other, unspecified, trouble, as we'd be deemed to be absent without permission (couldn't take leave without pay either). (wow, that was a long sentence)

Well, since we don't have core hours, according to our certified agreement, just a bandwidth of 7 to 7, I arrived after the rally and still completely my normal hours for a tuesday. And I dare them to try and dock my pay! (Not that my manager would be in the least worried - better not say anything else though for fear of my blog being found out and getting her into trouble too.)

The funny thing is I wasn't 100% committed to going to the rally until I got that email, but that just pushed all my buttons - I will not be bullied. Chris got the same sort of email in his department and was cursing his luck that he doesn't work Tuesday anyway so he couldn't snub his nose at them. But I did hear of people who were intimidated into not going, which completely sux.

Anyway, the rally was heartening - it was nice to be among such a crowd of people who care about the pain this government is inflicting on our country. Let's just hope it makes a difference at the next election.

Dead chickens and new legislation

During the day lots of things to blog about come up, but then by night time I'm so tired I can't even think straight, let alone type straight.

For instance I've been wanted to blog about one of our chickens dying (of coccidiosis, which we think she'd had since before we got her, although she seemed to be getting better until the recent rain) and Liam's reaction. We buried her and planted a grevilla over the top (it's going to be a she, Liam said of the plant) on Wednesday morning. Since then Liam has asked over and over again why she died, and less often why we buried her under the ground. Then today he asked if Grandpop buried his wife under the ground when she died (she was my grandmother, but died a few years before Liam was born so he knows her only from photos, and only as Grandpop's wife).

Then I was also going to blog about the fact that Toxoplasma is a coccidia, and although not the most common one to infect chickens, it can infect them. Everyone knows (well most pregnant women know) not to have any dealing with cat litter, to wash their hands after patting cats and so on, because of the risk Toxoplasmosis presents to the baby. But worrying about chickens for the same reason is less common. While I was reading about this on the web yesterday I read that pregnant women should also avoid dirt for the same reason. My enthusiasm for gardening suddenly took a nose dive. Anyway, we're going to ask the vet tomorrow whether he can tell us what sort of coccidia Little Brown was infected with (he took a 'stool' sample to diagnose her) and whether we should be worried. But needless to say this did all shoot my worry factor up a bit.

And then I have also been wanting to blog about the government's anti-terrorism legislation, anti-sedition laws and this site, which has the text of a letter sent to Members of Parliament which you can use as a basis for your own letter, as well as a full list of fax numbers and email addresses from the House of Representatives. Of course they were really hoping that faxes and emails could be sent by COB Tuesday, since the government is trying to ram this legislation through in record time. The letter is making a case for their recommendation that

...the sedition provisions in the Anti-Terror Bill should be removed in their entirety now, and the whole issue of sedition be considered separately at a later date with proper scrutiny. We have taken legal advice on this now from two different lawyers who both agree that the sedition provisions (Schedule 7 of the Bill), can easily be removed without impacting on the rest of the bill.

This would allow the significant human rights and civil liberties issues in the rest of the Bill to be the subject of much needed scrutiny at the Senate Inquiry in the coming weeks, without being overshadowed by the attention given the sedition provisions.

It would also guarantee that any review of the sedition provisions  happened BEFORE they are made law.

And then I've been wanting to blog about the IR legislation, equally depressing, and the National Day Of Community Protest with an Australia-wide hook-up that the CPSU is promoting as part of its Rights at Work campaign (although this is not specifically a CPSU thing). It's next Tuesday morning. We're planning to be there.

But now I have to go get dinner for my family (Chris is currently bathing Liam). So no more blogging.

Australia - the new police state

Malcolm Fraser, ex-Prime Minister of Australia, has written an article looking at the ways the UK, the USA and Australia have responded to terrorism in recent years. Here's some of what he has to say about Australia:

We are the only democratic country, I am advised, to legislate for the detention of people whom the authorities do not suspect of any wrong doing or even of any wrong thought.

In Australia, any of us can be detained merely because authorities believe we might know something that we don't even know we know. The authorities do not have to believe we are guilty of any crime, or are planning any crime, or have consorted with any suspicious persons. How could such a law be drafted by the Government and supported by the Labor opposition? You can be detained for one week but then on a new warrant, another and another and another week. Unless it is approved in the original warrant, and why would ASIO do that? - you are not allowed to contact your wife, your husband, your child, your mother, your father and of course not a lawyer.

If you don't answer ASIO's questions satisfactorily, you can be charged and subject to 5 years in jail. But the law is reasonable, it goes on to say that if you don't know anything, then it's not an offence not to tell ASIO anything!!! But you have to prove you didn't know anything and so the "onus of proof" is reversed.

You can be asked to produce a paper and if you don't, you also go to jail on prosecution for 5 years but the law goes on to say, being fair-minded again, if you don't have such a paper, it's not an offence not to produce it but you have to prove that you didn't have it. How do you prove that you do not have something that you do not even know exists!!! Again, the "onus of proof" is reversed.

If a journalist heard that you had been detained and sought to report it, he would go to jail for 5 years. If a detained person were released and talked to anyone about his or her experiences, subject to prosecution, five years in jail.

This seems to be a law for secret behaviour by authorities, for making somebody disappear. It is a law that one would expect in tyrannical countries and not in Australia. Do we do nothing about it because we believe it will not apply to ourselves? Do we believe it is only going to apply to people of a different religion who look a bit different?

(Malcolm Fraser, 'Laws for a secret state without any safeguards,' SMH, 20 October 2005)

How can this be happening? And now the Government is ramming through a new Anti-Terrorism bill, not only rushing it through parliament to reduce the chance of debate, but not wanting the Australian people to see the contents of it until it gets to parliament. Jon Stanhope posting it to his website* may have broken the convention of keeping things given to you marked 'draft in-confidence' in confidence, but I'm relieved he did. Fraser talks about some of the details, vaguenesses and implications of this bill in his article also.

Who would have thought I'd ever be quoting an article by an ex 'big-L' Liberal** Prime Minister of Australia positively? But I am liking Malcolm Fraser more and more. Too bad I'm liking those currently in power less and less. Won't some senator cross the floor on this one? Please?

*Stanhope's website also has copies of papers he has requested and received on both the human rights implications of the bill and the implications for fair trial (the later from the DPP). Worth a look.

**As opposed to 'small l' liberal, since the Liberal party in Australia is the right wing/conservative party.

Earthquake

Over 4 million people are affected by the Earthquake in Pakistan, and 1.5 million are in acute need.

Does Bush even care?

I'm reproducing a whole post here from This is Not Over because there's no way I can capture the power of it in just a quote or paraphrase, and Miss Alli gave her permission for 'reprints' so to speak.

Here's What Gets Me

People are going around and around about who should have done what at what time to get food and water to the victims of Katrina, and to get the buses there to evacuate people from the city who didn't get out on their own, and to get medical care to the elderly so they wouldn't die, and to get control of the shelter areas so that people wouldn't be beaten, raped, and murdered at the convention center and the Superdome. Let's assume we're not deciding who should have done what at what time.

My problem with Bush -- and here, I do indeed address Bush individually, as a guy -- is that during the time that the crisis was developing, from Monday to Friday, he never seemed to experience any actual sense of urgency as a result of the simple fact that people were, minute by minute and hour by hour, dying.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he was being prevented from acting by bureaucracy and the sheer magnitude of the situation. Where are the stories of how he was in his office freaking the fuck out because there were tens of thousands of Americans trapped without food and water? Where's the story of how he ripped a strip off of somebody, demanding to know what the holy hell the holdup is getting water and food to those people?

I want to hear about how he was demanding that extraordinary steps be taken. I want to hear about how he sent his lawyers into a room -- he had four days, you know -- and demanded that they come back in an hour with a plan for him to send the Marines into New Orleans with 100 trucks of food and water, posse comitatus or not. I want to hear that he was panicked. Because I was panicked. Everyone I know was panicked. Everyone I know was gnashing their teeth with helpless rage because they couldn't get in a car, drive down there, and drive a load of homeless Louisiana residents back home with them for soup and a goddamn hot bath. I want to hear that he acted at some point out of genuine despondency about the fact that citizens of the country he is supposed to be running were being starved and dehydrated in a hellish, fetid prison. We are dancing around now about whether it is his failure or not his failure. Where is the decency that would tell him that he is the president, and FEMA is part of his administration, and this failure is his to own and apologize for, whether other people also were wrong or not?

Why is he even trying to shift blame to anyone else? Why isn't he wracked with such guilt, justified or not, that he can't stand up straight? How is it possible that late in the week, when it was so obvious that every safeguard meant to guard against just this kind of catastrophe had failed and he had failed every citizen of that city, he had the joviality to make jokes about his partying days in New Orleans? I'm not talking here about appropriateness or sensitivity, although both were obviously lacking, and there's been no apology for that, either. I'm wondering how it's possible that he felt that way. How was he not tormented? Because he wasn't. You can see that he wasn't. I would feel better if there were some report that he seemed, at some point... shaken. Upset. Angry. Desperate. Something. Something other than "on vacation" and then "lecturing emptily about how much help everyone's going to get, provided they haven't already died of dehydration, drowned, or committed suicide."

The state has the primary responsibility, you say? Okay, fine. Then I want to hear how Bush offered the governor whatever she wanted on whatever terms he could legally get it to her, because it made absolutely no difference who got credit. I want to hear how he couldn't concentrate like the rest of us couldn't concentrate, because he was so consumed by images on television of old women in wheelchairs slowly dying.

Prevented from going into the city by the criminals? Are you telling me that armed thugs could take over a suburban neighborhood and surround it, and law enforcement would stand back until the thugs decided to go away? The people at the Superdome who were following all the rules were being, in a sense, held hostage by the relatively small number who chose to be violent -- to shoot at planes and whatnot. Since when do we leave good citizens to die because we don't want to get dirty doing law enforcement?

Say what you want about the mayor and governor -- those people were in pain. They saw people suffering and dying and took it as a given that it couldn't go on that way, and that if it did, government's response would be a failure. The mayor cried at the top of his lungs for help. I want to hear that Bush cried at the top of his lungs for help. I want to hear that he called every corporate hotshot he's befriended in the last twenty years and told them that if they ever wanted another invitation to the White House for dinner, they were going to pony up a fat wad of cash to the Red Cross, and they were going to do it yesterday.

I want him to have reacted like a person who happened to also be the president. I want him to have felt the same bone-deep sense of shock that I felt at the thought that this could happen in a large city, easily accessible by trucks, in a wealthy country. I want him to have gotten on the damn phone and told somebody that if there wasn't water for every person at the Superdome within eight hours, that person's head was going to roll, and he didn't care how it got done, it had better get done. I want him not to have sat around on his ass on vacation while people's children were being taken from their arms to be rescued.

I want Bush not to have spent four days dicking around while the conditions deteriorated. I want him to have acted sooner, not because it was his obligation as president and it would reflect badly on him if he didn't, but because people were dying, and everyone I know who could think of something to do did it. There were a million things he could have done besides sit around making happy speeches about how everything would be fine. The stupid comment about Trent Lott's porch doesn't infuriate me because Trent Lott can't miss his porch. He has as much right to be sad over his losses as anyone. But the lighthearted way in which Bush delivered those remarks was absolutely chilling.

I want him to have been consumed with grief and sorrow at the dying that was ongoing, and he wasn't. I want him to have felt like a profound failure because an entire segment of the population of one of America's greatest cities was suffering and was at risk of starving to death, but he didn't. I want him to have been embarrassed when the FEMA director gave up the information that FEMA knew less about the convention center than CNN, but he wasn't. I want him not to have smirked his way through the entire experience, and he did.

No matter whose fault the slow relief effort was, the fact of the matter is that these are Americans, and this is their president, and the fact that they were homeless, starving, dying of thirst, and deprived of medication never once seemed to actually bother him.

Posted by Miss Alli at September  6, 2005 11:06 PM