apple juice

I sent this today. I urge you to do the same. It is in regards to this story from Reuters.

Dear Sir,

I am seriously concerned, and frankly, appalled with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield’s push for research into low-yield nuclear weapons. As the lone superpower on the planet, we should be helping the world into directions of peace and civility. We should not be throwing away what we have worked towards for so long with regards to non-proliferation.

Please consider carefully the ramifications of pursuing a course of action that would lead to more weapons, more suspicion and more hate of the United States.

A low-yield nuclear weapon is still a nuclear weapon. Please do not turn your backs on treaties designed to bring peace to the world. Please stand up and work to stop the cycle of ever-escalating violence.

Thank you for your time,

Sincerely,

A.J. Colianni

I found this quote at the top of the weblog for Karelia Software as I was browsing around this evening.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong,is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
— Theodore Roosevelt

Kind of flies in the face of those who say dissent is un-american.

Maybe they should get Tony Scott in there to direct.

[Talking about the fact that the President is the civilian oversight to the military:]

Given that history, George Bush’s “Top Gun” act aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln ó c’mon, guys, it wasn’t about honoring the troops, it was about showing the president in a flight suit ó was as scary as it was funny.

Good one Ari:

But it does matter, enormously, for American credibility. After all, as Ari Fleischer said on April 10 about W.M.D.: “That is what this war was about.”

Crazy, Gary Hart has a weblog. And he actually responds to people’s comments on his site.

I could trackback-ping his site, and then I would show up on his site. That is just cool.

I can’t say whether or not I whether or not I agree with him on different issues, but he seems possess at least a bit of vision, which is sorely lacking in our government right now.

Yet more savvy diplomacy from our boy Bushie:

“I doubt he’ll be coming to the ranch any time soon,” was Mr Bush’s tart comment in an interview with NBC News, when asked about Jacques Chirac ñ a reference to the informal summits Mr Bush likes to hold with favoured foreign leaders at his cherished retreat in Crawford, Texas. Many in his administration ñ by implication, himself among them ñ had the impression “that the French position was anti-American”, the President said.

I’ll be very interested to see how this story develops. This the exact same crap the industries in the U.S. try to pull all the time. (Steel Tarriffs? The whole Tobacco Industry in general.)

The industry is furious at the guidelines, which say that sugar should account for no more than 10% of a healthy diet. It claims that the review by international experts which decided on the 10% limit is scientifically flawed, insisting that other evidence indicates that a quarter of our food and drink intake can safely consist of sugar.

“Taxpayers’ dollars should not be used to support misguided, non-science-based reports which do not add to the health and well-being of Americans, much less the rest of the world,” says the letter. “If necessary we will promote and encourage new laws which require future WHO funding to be provided only if the organisation accepts that all reports must be supported by the preponderance of science.”

Americans are some of the most overweight, unhealthy peoples in the world. If we can somehow reverse that trend, if it takes taxpayer money, go for it. In the long run it’ll probably save money as all the sugar-babies won’t end up in the hospital for various ailments in 30 years.