On another, unrelated note to my previous entry: Rest In Peace Khhhhhhaaaannnnnn!

Better posts tomorrow. I've got something to say about oil prices, Venezuela, Europe's gas crisis, Sarah Palin and the future of the GOP and the merciful end of don't ask don't tell.

Cheers!

[A]s mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

From Time

Remeber folks, this woman could be one heartbeat away from the presidency, so use your heads.

As chronicled in a pervious post, I'm something of an Olympics junkie, and with the closing ceremonies tonight, I'm a little sad to see it all end. Sad, and a bit outraged that China was even allowed to host the Olympics in the first place. A few interesting thoughts from various media outlets:

That’s what this country is about. Here, the government, not the people, controls what you say, what you read, what you do and how many babies you can have (one).

A million and a half residents expelled. Free speech strangled. Elderly women jailed. That's what it means when a police state like China hosts the Olympics... That's what happens when the free world cons itself into believing that China's Communist rulers, who sustain genocide in Sudan and torture nuns in Tibet, will refrain from doing whatever it takes to turn the Olympics into a vehicle for totalitarian self-glorification.

Along the way, government critics were pre-emptively rounded up and jailed, domestic news outlets tightly controlled, foreign journalists denied full access to the Internet and thousands of Beijing’s least telegenic residents were evicted from their homes and out of camera range. On Friday, the Chinese police confirmed that six Americans protesting China’s rule in Tibet had been sentenced to 10 days of detention.

So now that our fellow countrymen (and presumably women) are the ones being trampled on, do we care? Probably not. There are many Americans being deprived of basic human rights in our own country and no one cares; why would we care now? It's nice to hear about how much people want to change the way things are in China, but by giving them the Olympics, haven't we just validated their actions? That is what makes me really sad.