A Country Bumpkin Offering Sunshine

I cannot wait for that day coming. Yee Ha!!

08/30/2007
Correction:
UN actually didn't announce anything associated with "Abolishing" traditional Chinese at all. I took a second look at Jennifer Ping's online petition and read some Taiwanese bloggers' comments on internet; the rumor was obviously started with a false message from a professor in China, named Chan, Zhang Tai who casually said UN will stop use Traditional Chinese in 2008 to a reporter with a Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong, Oriental Daily in March 2006. The reporter didn't confirm with UN and just went ahead reporting what professor Chan said. Later on, UN had to announce that there is not abolishment of traditional Chinese in 2008 and UN has never used Traditional Chinese since 1971. It was my bad; there is no need to sweat since UN only officially uses 6 languages including Arabic, Chinese(simplified), English, French, Russian and Spanish. People who use languages other than those 6 ones are not sweating at all. Why should we feel upset? I had been a little paranoid.
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The trailer of Jesus Camp



N and I went to see Jesus Camp at Parkway last night. We have been very curious about this movie since we had a pretty serious discussion with my parents-in-law on this movie during a dinner while this documentary was newly released. One review written by Neva Chonin in the SF Chronicle made the Jesus summer camp sound awfully insane. Our discussion was focused on if those Evangelical Christian kids prayed to George W. Bush or not. It seems to be far out if those kids did. Christian fundamentalists can be very extreme but not crazy enough to pray to a cardboard cutout of Bush. We were so relieved to find out those Christian kids only welcomed Bush’s image to join their camp but didn't pray to his cutout. Good lord.

Does it really matter if Bush was prayed “to”? Yes, indeed. No matter which religious group did it, praying TO Bush would mean that group of people had gone wild and took him as whatever God people worship to, which would be completely screwed up. Ironically, Ted Haggard , who just resigned his position from the National Association of Evangelicals due to his religious misconducts of drug use and homosexuality, also appeared in Jesus Camp and prayed for George W. Bush. Toward the end of the film, a kid holding a sign saying “Jesus is God” walked around. The whole religion is twisted. It is sad that those home schooled kids have no better education to choose what to believe and already are trained for politicians’ nonsense wars.

I am not going to give away more details, in case you would like to see it. If you’ve already worried Christian Fundamentalism could take the country to an unbearable conservative direction, you could be worried more after seeing this one.

Photo resource: New York Times website
Nancy Pelosi has been the most hot and popular political celebrity since last Tuesday night, November 7, 2006. I hardly pay less attention to her than most American people even though I am only an immigrant with no right to vote. Not surprisingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected for his second term as the governor of California , which might interest some Californians for the better or worse. Of course, the entire Bay Area’s political attention is drawn to the first female speaker to-be of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

Before this weekend, all I could recall about Mrs. Pelosi was she had always said something against George W. Bush and the current government. People call her a liberal congresswoman, which gives me a positive impression toward her. This Democratic Party’s perfect storm sweeping both U.S. Congress and House of Representatives does force me to educate myself more about how American Congress and House of Representatives work and what the speaker of House of Representatives does. If I would like to be a cheerleader, at least I have to know what I am cheering for, right?

Thanks to YouTube.com and lots of generous people posting those news video clips, I can browse around for Nancy Pelosi’s speech and TV interviews with her. There are two parts of a video interview produced by CBS 60 Minutes, called Two Heartbeats Away part 1 and part 2, posted by a user named NancyPelosi. There is no enough reference showing that YouTube blog was not signed up by real Nancy Pelosi. However, I suspect the blogger is just a supporter of hers. Otherwise, Mrs. Pelosi is way too cool at her age and political position. What does it mean “Two Heartbeats Away” for being the Speaker of House of Representatives? I wondered. After some reading work, I found out Nancy Pelosi could be the first female president by default if George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were dead before 2008 presidency election. Wow, it means Nancy Pelosi is the third powerful person in U.S. political field now; it is huge to women’s right movement in U.S.

Right on! Mrs. Pelosi. Although I am just a California long-term resident, I still would like to express my own opinions. Hopefully, you are not like most of politicians who get power from the voters but only care about benefits of themselves. Don’t forget most of your supporters put a lot of hope on you to stop Iraq War and some other possible wars U.S. could stir up in Middle East. Don’t forget there are many people cannot afford health insurance premiums and America is one of very few high developed countries that don’t have national universal health insurance for its own citizens and children.