Over the past several weeks, I have learned that:

When Andrew Sullivan spoke on CNN yesterday, the banner read "Andrew Sullivan: Openly Gay" (as if no one knew that).

http://boozhy.typepad.com/...

Now MSNBC is saying that Representative Jim Kolbe, who is retiring this year, is under investigation from the Justice Investigation for a camping trip that he took in 1996.

Their crime:  They were gay.

Graphic images below.

(Sorry this is late, but I haven't seen any diaries about this observence.) edited

Not the faux 'war on terror' declared by Commander Cuckoo Bananas, but a true terrorist war, declared in 1975 when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, and orchestrated the destruction of 1/4 of the population of Cambodia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5140032

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

This was truly a worldwide disaster, as European tourists, Tamil fishermen, Indonesian villagers and even supermodels and Thai royalty were caught up in the devestation (the grandson of His Royal Highness, King Phumiphon was killed in Phuket province).  200,000 people of dozens of nationalities were killed in over a dozen countries.

Many of these deaths could have been prevented, had there been a warning system in place.

UNESCO has announced that a warning system in the Indian Ocean basin is up and running.

Final Score England 2-0 Trinidad and Tobago

90 min Liverpool 2 - 0 Trinidad & Tobago Shaka Hislop must be sick of the sight of Steven Gerrard who turns Wise 30 yards out and... well, just picture the last minute of this year's FA Cup final, and there you have it. What an amazing goal. What an amazingly flattering result.

I won't retract my prediction, but I don't think they are going to do it. Kudos for T&T so far.

http://football.guardian.co.uk/...

My prediction:  England 3-1 Trinidad and Tobago

My prediction - US 2-1 Czech Republic (even though this is woefully wrong, I will keep it up.

Final Score.

US 0-3 Czech Republic.

Well, one prediction was met - three goals were scored.

The countries represented in the World Cup that the United States has Peace Corps volunteers:

Costa Rica
Ecuador
Ghana
Mexico
Paraguay
Togo
Trinadad & Tobago
Ukraine

(some recent Peace Corps withdrawals - Cote d'Ivoire, Poland, Czech Republic)

Final

Poland 0-2 Ecuador Ecuador wins

"THE LAPDOG"
A Chimp lookalike is walking to a chair.  Under his feet is a Shi Tzu dog walking back and forth.  Chimp sits down.

Chimp:  Calm down, Congress. ('Congress' the dog, calms down.  Chimp sits on the chair).

Chimp:  Congress, sit on my lap.  (the dog jumps onto Chimp's lap.  Meanwhile, the camera pans to a newspaper, obviously unread, with the headlines "Another Mine Explosion...", "Atlantic Seaboard not Ready for Hurricane Season", "Interest Rate Hike for Student Loans".

The dog whines.

Chimp:  Do you need to go potty.  Here you go. (as he pulls the front page of the paper on the ground.  The dog 'Congress' pees on the "Another Mine Explosion" headline.)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - If you've borrowed money from Uncle Sam to finance your education or your child's, you might be able to save yourself thousands of dollars.

The trick: consolidating your federally guaranteed, variable-rate loans between now and June 30.

Here's why: your payments will be going up on July 1 due to an increase in loan rates. Those rates are reset every year based on what the 3-month Treasury yield is at the end of May.

Since this time last year, that yield has risen nearly 2 percentage points. And it may not go down much between now and May 30, even with the recent bond market rally.

http://money.cnn.com/...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

But seriously, folks, has Congress become something of a joke?

Are these toothless lawmakers no longer capable of passing anything with bite?

Folks on the Hill were desperate to demonstrate their deep concern about gas prices. So Republicans-- Republicans !--said maybe they'd pop the oil industry with a new tax. Then the industry howled. Never mind.

then I read halfway down his column to read this:

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took on a rare role yesterday as a defender of President Bush.

http://www.cnn.com/...

The roots of the Peace Corps date back to the early part of the 20th century.  In 1904, William James thought that Americans could be drafted into a sort of peace force, instead of an army.  One of Franklin Roosevelt's shining achievements was the Civilian Conservation Corps, which did similar projects to what the Peace Corps would do overseas, and what AmeriCorps does today.  In the late 1950s, President Eisenhower contemplated an organization where young Americans could serve overseas, and in 1960 Congressman Henry Reuss and Senator Herbert Humphrey both sponsored legislation that would establish such an organization.

http://www.archives.gov/...

On October 14th, 1960 Senator John F. Kennedy spoke at the University of Michigan had this to say:

I have seen excerpts of various commentator's columns being taken out of context on this blog and on other blogs.  Everyone has their own axe to grind, and I accept that, and these columnists should have the means to be able to allow the words they actually write be seen in the context that they were actually written.

I flipped over to "The O'Reilly Factor" a little while ago, and O'Reilly went after Nicholas Kristof's Sunday column.  Kristof, who has been commentating on the genocide in Darfur, but has taken on O'Reilly's self-declared War on Christmas, by taking to task these histrionics rather talking about the real 'talking points'.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Where is his latest Threat?