Monday, January 26, 2009

aaaaoooooh

i'll post pics later

yesterday:
beach +1 hour ocean kayak trip = me and monkeys on an island


today:
rented scooter + 1 crash + 1 flat tire = national park
hours of hiking, crawling through a cave with a faulty lamp, and

as write this man ladies singing west virginia and johnny cash tunes

man i love this place

late

Saturday, January 24, 2009

greetings from the fuecher


well day 2 was great fun got to skate around a bit
stayed at a great guest house that feels like a treehouse
went to a market that was3x3 blocks big(or bigger)
they had everything there, everything

some gross, some cool, some old, some new
but e3verything was cheap and loud
i think this pic encapsulates the feeling there

went to a street nearby that gets really crazy at night
it's like a circus, pretty great and stupid at the same time

i'm off to the beach today

Friday, January 23, 2009

1st day in



Last night we were on an Israeli cooking show. It was at a vegetarian Thai restaurant and they filmed us making Tom Yum soup and then we had a big feast while they filmed us eating. It was weird, but cool. Not sure what the show is called or how we'll get to see it, but maybe we will someday. Then we will be famous.

Getting down to business

Officials: Obama to reverse abortion policy

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortions, officials told The Associated Press on Friday.

The move, long expected in the Democratic president's first week in office, will be welcomed by liberals and criticized by abortion rights foes.

The policy bans U.S. taxpayer money, usually in the form of U.S. Agency for International Development funds, from going to international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion. It is also known as the "global gag rule," because it prohibits taxpayer funding for groups that even talk about abortion if there is an unplanned pregnancy.

Also known as the "Mexico City policy," it has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since GOP President Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. President Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but President George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.

The Democratic official and senior U.S. official who disclosed the plans did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to pre-empt Obama's announcement.

Obama was expected to sign the executive order at a low-key event, one day after the 36th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.

The move was not a surprise as both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will oversee foreign aid, had promised to do away with the gag rule during the presidential campaign. Clinton is to visit the U.S. Agency for International Development, through which much U.S. foreign aid is disbursed, later on Friday.

Obama has spent his first days in office systematically signing executive orders reversing Bush administration policies on issues ranging from foreign policy to government operations. But, save for ending the ban, Obama has largely refrained from wading into ideological issues, perhaps to avoid being tagged a traditional partisan from the outset after his campaign promises to change "business as usual" in the often partisan-gridlocked capital.

Rather, Obama has chosen to focus initially on issues in which there is consensus across the political spectrum and support from the public, such as closing the prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to making government documents more accessible.

Organizations that had pressed Obama to make the abortion-ban change were jubilant.

"Women's health has been severely impacted by the cutoff of assistance. President Obama's actions will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, abortions and women dying from high-risk pregnancies because they don't have access to family planning," said Tod Preston, a spokesman for Population Action International, an advocacy group.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

well guys...

i'm in bangkok eating a spicy red curry for lunch

wow the trip was 20hrs long

crazy

i'm headed to a beach tomorrow

yay

thank you guys from everything

i'll post some pics after the beach

Monday, January 19, 2009

It's good to be the president

Oscar winner, Grammy winner; meet election winnter. Bono, give it a rest with the rose-colored glasses on an overcast day look. Who do you think you are, Jim McMahon?

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Remeber that show we played outside Find N Grind and Miguel stole Austin's brain with his bare hand?


Gone in 60 seconds



This cringe inducing advert left me feeling like I had embarked on a bad acid trip...At any rate, this program is being billed as a GarageBand killer for Windows. Yet, peculiarly, this girl is using a Macbook Pro--nice one Microsoft, you win the jackass card for today.

I especially like this quote from the comments thread:

If I was a CEO and had some dude singing at me, I'd have him drugtested

Monday, January 05, 2009

Franken up now...

from a Washington Post article:

Although Franken trailed Coleman on election night, the Democrat -- thanks in part to the ace work of election lawyer Marc Elias -- has gained steadily ever since. A hand recount of the nearly 3 million ballots cast turned the race into a dead heat, and the recent counting of 933 wrongly rejected absentee ballots (don't ask) yielded a 225-vote edge for Franken heading into today's meeting of the state Canvassing Board, in which a winner -- presumably Franken -- will be named.

So, why won't Franken be a senator later today? Because of pending legal challenges that the incumbent's campaign thinks can sway the outcome -- the most important of which, dealing with the inclusion of 654 allegedly wrongly rejected absentee ballots (from largely pro-Coleman territory), will be decided by the Minnesota Supreme Court.

"We remain convinced that this process is broken and, as a result, the numbers being reported will not be accurate or valid," said Coleman's campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Friday, January 02, 2009

Thursday, January 01, 2009