I’m off to Malta tomorrow. Won’t gret there until the next day though… Looking forward to a nice time in Dubai, and then some holiday cheer in Malta. My phone won’t work over there, so if you want to call me before Christmas, today is the day! Just remember that there is an 8 hour difference for you east coasters. I’m 8 hours ahead… I’m sure I’ll be posting from Malta, just don’t know when. So Merry Christmas everyone, have a good one!
Isaac
Had a quiz this morning (did very well thank you very much) and so I’m done until Jan 16th! I’ll be leaving for Malta on the 23d, will spend Christmas and New year’s there, and then my lovely and talented cousin Beth will visit me there. I am so looking forward to this. Beth is wonderful, and I cannot wait to eat something other than lamb or chicken! I think this trip will recharge my batteries. Maybe I should schedule a trip every 3 to 4 months to do that. Yeah, sounds like a good excuse:-)
Isaac
Hot on the heels of the first amendment travesty that is the Mcain-Feingold act there’s this gem from Pelosi… As reported by Mark Tapscott over at:
http://www.examiner.com/a-464413%7EMark_Tapscott__Pelosi_preparing_new_shackles_for_free_speech.html
“WASHINGTON – Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cooked up with Public Citizen’s Joan Claybrook a “lobbying reform” that actually protects rich special interests and activists millionaires while clamping new shackles on citizens’ First Amendment rights to petition Congress and speak their minds.
Pelosi tried earlier this year to move H.R. 4682, the “Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2006,” which is now cited by Public Citizen’s Web site as the vehicle it is helping the incoming speaker to craft for the new Congress. The proposal Claybrook is helping craft for introduction early in 2007 is expected to be essentially the same bill Pelosi put forth this year.
That is bad news for the First Amendment and for preserving the kind of healthy, open debate that is essential to holding politicians, bureaucrats and special interests to account for their conduct of the public business.
The key provision of the 2006 bill was its redefinition of grassroots lobbying to include small citizens groups whose messages about Congress and public policy issues are directed toward the general public, according to attorneys for the Free Speech Coalition.
All informational and educational materials produced by such groups would have to be registered and reported on a quarterly basis. Failure to report would result in severe civil penalties (likely followed soon by criminal penalties as well).
In addition, the 2006 bill created a new statutory category of First Amendment activity to be regulated by Congress. Known as “grassroots lobbying firms,” these groups would be required to register with Congress and be subject to penalties whenever they are paid $50,000 or more to communicate with the general public during any three-month period.
In other words, for the first time in American history, potentially millions of concerned citizens involved in grassroots lobbying and representing viewpoints from across the entire political spectrum would have to register with Congress in order to exercise their First Amendment rights.
There is even more bad news here, though, because the Pelosi-Claybrook proposal includes loopholes big enough to protect Big Labor, Big Corporations and Big Nonprofits, as well as guys with Big Wallets like George Soros. Big Government, you see, always takes care of its big friends.
The Pelosi-Claybrook proposal builds on the restrictions on free speech created by campaign finance reform measures like McCain-Feingold that bar criticism of congressional incumbents for 30 days prior to a primary and 60 days before a general election.”
Now I haven’t read every detail about this, but it sure doesn’t sound good. And since the M-F act (like that abbreviation?) didn’t garner any bad press despite the rather severe restrictions on criticsm of incumbents right before elections I’d say look out for this one too…
Isaac
This time Adel came with me. He helped me find a Christmas present (more about that when I get back, sorry Beth:-) and we had lunch, Yemeni style. We went to a hole in the wall that sold fasah. The tables were all full, but we were told that the “upstairs” was free. The stairs were more like a ladder with really large steps and it was really narrow, kind of like a steep set of stairs in a phone booth… We got up stairs and there was nothing there… The floor space measured around 12×12 feet, and that was all there was. We sat on the ground and ate. Another guy took a picture for us using Adel’s camera phone, I hope to get a copy of that one of these days…
For those of you that don’t know, I had developed a bit of a colonge fetish before I left. Not your run of the mill stuff of course, like everything else in my life, it was the exotic, expensive stuff. Creed was the most “common” of my favorites and I had started to buy from individual perfume makers… Anyway, I tend to like the oriental types and was psyched to actually go to the orient (yes, this is the orient that is refrenced by orientalists, and oriental perfumes) and sample what they had to offer. Man, was I disappointed at first. All the stores had all the usual department store stuff. Yesterday I got a glimmer of hope, I tried one called “Faris” and it is really nice. It starts off as a sweet/spicy mix and settles down to what I can only describe as a rootbeer/incense scent. It’s a really “soft” scent and doesn’t have any of the alcahol harshness that so many colonges do. I googled it and came up with nada, looks like it’s an actual Arab colonge. It costs the princely sum of $25 US. That’s nothing for me but it is really high for this area. I’ll probably get some, it’ll come in handy durning the summer months. It’ll keep me smelling good even when I start sweating.
Isaac
I have no idea how he did it, but my stepbrother Brian managed to pinpoint the location of where I took a picture. You can see it all here:
http://stearnsfamily.net/wheresisaac/
I live just to the north and east of the picture, off frame.
Isaac
The Washington Capitals, my favorite hockey team is making some noise this year in the Eastern confrence. All the experts predicted a last (or close to last) place finish again this year. I was impressed with the way they finished last year and thought that they would make some progress this year. Well, I was right. They are playing very well and are now in 5th place in the confrence. If they keep this up they’ll be in the playoffs! Go Caps Go!
Isaac
OK, I’ve had it. It seems like every single time a Yemeni acts as if they are befriending me, all they are really doing is trying to get money out of me. It started with Sufian before I even came here and now it’s at least two or three times a week…”Where are you from? Ahh America! That’s very good, welcome to Yemen! If you need anything, just let me know… I need 1000 Riayls for…” I bought Sufian a used laptop since he said he couldn’t find one here for the same price as I could. I agreed to get it for him, but only after refusing to give him an $1100 Apple laptop.. Anyway, when I got here, he had $250 of the $400 that he swore that he would have. I thought, “What the hell, I’ll probably never see that $150, but it’ll show the good will of Americans” or something like that… I gave it to him, knowing that that $150 will never find me. He had been bugging me for the last two weeks to get together with him and I finaly told him that I could see him for 5 or 10 min. tonight. Well, he didn’t waste any time… “I need 10,000 Riayls…” I basicly told him that he needs to hit up the people he doesn’t owe money to for more money… Besides, he chews quat and smokes, I’m sure that if he went without those luxuries he could get that 10,000 in a couple of weeks… I understand why he came back, I basicly gave him money before, so why not try again? No more, I’m done. I’m really trying to not paint all Yemenis with the same brush, but I worry about my reaction the next time someone butters me up just for some cash… I actually have more respect for the ones that just ask, I even give them some sometimes (pocket change). But the ones that pretend to be my friend annoy the hell out of me…
Isaac
The DC metro transit board (or whatever they call themselves) is considering/has decided to build a light rail system connecting parts of the suburbs to the main lines of the metro. I hope they looked at the numbers carefully… It turns out that light rail rarely does what it is supposed to do, decrease congestion and reduce polution. Proponents also say that it gives added mobility to the poor. The guy over at Coyote blog has made a bet about the current light rail project in Arizona. He thinks that for the cost of building it, you could buy every single core rider a car. Looks like he’d win that bet. The St. Louis Fed released a report that the subsidies used by the st. Louis light rail system would allow them to buy for each “poor” rider a Toyata Prius every 5 years and give them $6000 annually for maintinance. There would still be money left over after that. Enough so that the non poor riders could be given $1045 a year. That’s just the subsidies paid every year by the tax payers, that doesn’t even touch the costs of building the damn thing… You can read all about it here:
http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2004/c/pages/light_rail.html
You know damn well who is putting the most pressure on councils to build these systems, it’s the manufacturers and builders of the rail systems. I wish there was more covrage of this sort of political back scratching…
Isaac
I’ve spent the last several days hanging out with my (now gone) house mates. We went bowling friday night and ate there too. It’s funny, you are told to always be careful about eating food from street vendors and local markets. I haven’t had any trouble at all. I ate some “fast food” at the bowling alley and got sick as a dog. I won’t go into details, but I wasn’t up to going to class on Sat. I layed around all day and didn’t eat anything. Towards the end of the night I was feeling better, but really hungry. I decided to wait because we were going over to Luciano’s place for some Italian food that night. Well, we didn’t end up eating until 8:30 or so and I was literally shaking with hunger… He had some munchies put out for us including prochitto (sp?)! Oh Lord was it good… The taste exploded on my tounge, I had no idea I was craving pork that badly. Unfortunetly, my stomach had shrunk to the size of a walnut, so I was only able to eat 2/3 of my pasta. Then the next dish came out and I had to bow out, I was stuffed… Man that was good, real pasta, real ham, real tomato sauce, I wish I could have eaten more…
Luciano works at the Italian embassy and has a beautiful house. It has a wonderful mashraf, a guest house(!) and the entire place is walled in. He also has broadband internet access and a wireless system set up too… I’m hoping I can come over in the future and do my online stuff while sitting in his garden, ahhhh…
Things have been a little screwed up because of the holidays. All of my housemates are gone, Judith is leaving for India, Luciano is going back to Italy, and I’m goin to Malta for Christmas. I’ll be back in the middle of january, so will Judith (although she’s leaving in the middle of feb.) and Luciano won’t be back until Feb. So I guess I won’t have any excuse for not studying. Speaking of which, I better get something done since I haven’t done anything in 3 days….
Isaac
Christoph left yesterday, Luca and Nollaig left today. I’m by myself in the house for the time being. I doubt that there will be any other western students coming in until after the new year. I miss those guys already, they showed me where everything was and introduced me to a bunch of people. I hope to visit them in Italy, Ireland, and Germany, but who knows. When I said so long to the folks back home it was understood that it was just for a while. I’m not really sure when I’ll see these guys again. SIGH, hope the new guys are as cool as these ones were…
Isaac