After work, I bought few supplies for my cat, including a cosmic country catnip pouch. So I threw the pouch to my cat, Belle and she went cat-crazy with it! So hilarious to see her hissing, clawing at it, crouching around it as if there’s a live mouse struggling to escape the clutches of a house cat. Heh.
Anyhoo, Mike McConnell have a great blog expounding the actual facts surrounding the myths that all Republicans and the current President Bush are against ADA, people with disabilities and the deaf. *eyes rolled up* I remembered the time when ADA was introduced in Congress while I was a student at Gallaudet and we had a great, lively discussion in the classrooms and the Gallaudet VAX message board system whether ADA was going to benefit the deaf and the hard-of-hearing people people or not. When Pres. George H. W. Bush signed the act into law, it was the highlight of his Presidency. Really.
Read it all and be informed of the facts and stop perpetuating the myths for partisan ends.
Rob’s Brief no. 1:
Romney won Michigan, the state where the Republican Party all began in 1854. His father was the governor of Michigan for one term. Although, Ripon, Wisconsin claimed the mantle as the birthplace of the Republican Party, yet the historians’ jury’s still out on that. The establishment of the Republican Party was brought about by the strong opposition to the political ventures and expansion of slavery into the new American territories by the powerful slaveholders in the South, though ambiguously backed by the powerful Jacksonian Democratic Party. Ironically, those who formed the Republican Party at the time were largely ex-Whigs and Democrats, with some from the third parties.
Rob’s Brief no 2:
China and the U.S. Navy had a 28 hour confrontation at the Taiwan Strait. That was a dumb move for China for challenging the USS Kitty Hawk and its battle group trying to make a free passage through the strait toward Japan. Between China and Taiwan, there is approximately 110 miles, give or take, of international water in the strait and China is claiming the entire strait is within China’s water on account of Taiwan? Sorry but that’s like saying England can claim France’s coasts by the very proximity of the English Channel. Nice dumb move, China.
Rob’s Brief no. 3:
Cool movie trailer! SEAMONSTERS! If you have live more than 70 millions years ago, sailing down the high sea above the future American Plains, you would be quaking in fear of being swallowed up by a giant, dreadful mosasaur coming up fast from the deep. Even a giant white shark doesn’t stand a chance against it.
01/17/2008 at 10:47 AM
Officially, China regards Taiwan as a renegade province. The US treats Taiwan like a de-facto independent country, but officially humors China and publicly goes along with China’s view.
Normally, the US Navy would send China some paperwork that basically says, “We’re going to send a ship through the Straits”, and China returns a rubber-stamped document officially granting permission. China knows its permission is irrelevant, and the US will pass through regardless, but it lets China save face and pretend the US actually cares. In this case, the Navy didn’t do it. It was probably an oversight, and happens all the time, but when it does China throws a tantrum, and the US feigns concern.
Anyway, China’s official rationale for asserting control over the Straits is that it’s an inland waterway of China (like the Intracoastal Waterway off the US East Coast), by virtue of Taiwan theoretically being a legal part of China. Canada makes the same claims up in the arctic, and bitches whenever it catches the US or Russia running ships through the northwest passage. Had Cuba ended up becoming a US territory after the Spanish-American War, the US would almost certainly assert the same right to control the Florida Straits.
01/17/2008 at 5:03 PM
Your assessment is correct, however, China’s claim to the strait is only theoretical, not political. The only real reason with China’s “grievance” with Taiwan is that the government of Taiwan is actually the successor entity to the former national government of China before the Reds takeover in 1949, albeit, there are few significant geo-strategic factors involved. One glance at the map of the areas north and south of Taiwan: Japan and the South China Sea, the latter being where the vast deposits of oil are founded underwater. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan is one step closer to Japan’s dominion, through a string of Japanese-claimed islands leading up to the land of the Rising Sun. It’s not only the interests of the United States to “defend” Taiwan, but it’s also the interests of Japan to ensure a takeover of Taiwan doesn’t threaten Japan’s dominion.
While all the world media and the Pentagon are focusing on the rapid build-up of China’s military and naval arsenal, Japan have been quietly building up its naval forces, being a part of a joint US-Japan’s global response initiatives formulated in the 1990s, with contingency plans to counter China’s “red dragon” expansion.
Nevertheless, it is still a dumb move by China. The Brit Navy passed the same strait many times, with or without permissions.
01/27/2008 at 1:17 PM
The freeworld, it appears, underestimates China’s military nuclear strength, and military logistics capabilities. The distances are no longer great, except in the minds of those who have the most to loose.
01/27/2008 at 10:17 PM
It’s not the “free world” China should worry about. It’s Japan.