What's Going On: Evening Round-up

Being on-call for trauma on a Friday night is always a weird feeling. You know that you are going to get called, but why and when is the mystery.

  • The Taliban are encircling the capital city of Kabul to disrupt and terrorize. Can we destroy these guys once and for all?
  • Senator John McCain has altered his web site. There was an article on this web site that described him as a political celebrity. Oops.
  • The Judge from the Jena 6 case has been removed. Judge JP Mauffray describe the teenagers as “trouble makers” and as “a violent bunch.”
  • A Maryland scientist, Dr. Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide this week was the key suspect in the Anthrax investigation. We all remember the anthrax scare of 2001. My question: Why was the investigation taking so long?
  • I know that the Bush administration has told us that the economy is going through tough times and McCain’s quasi-former economic adviser called us whiners. But look at this: The U.S. economy lost 51 thousand jobs. That’s is almost the population of Asheville. The U.S. job market has lost 463 thousand jobs this year alone. The rate of unemployment is 5.7 percent. Yuck.
  • A huge article in Newsweek discussed how the Saudi government pressured Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, to kill a corruption investigation into British Aerospace Systems and Saudi contracts. Basically, the Saudi’s blackmailed Tony Blair. They stated that if he didn’t shut down the investigation then they would not cooperate with counter-terrorism investigations. This kind of stuff really can’t happen. The democratic nations of the west have to stand up and demand that Saudi Arabia formally apologize and remove any government official connected with this terrible behavior.

    From the article:
    “This shows how the Saudis can get foreign governments to disregard their own justice system,” said Ali Al-Ahmed, the director of the Gulf Institute, a Washington-based think tank that is critical of the Saudi government. “Terrorism is being used to blackmail the West. You watch, it is only a matter of time before they do this in the U.S.”