It's morning somewhere

...President Bush repeated his call for a "sustainable peace" in the Middle East and said: America mourns the loss of innocent life, those tragic occasions when innocent people are killed."...

...He is opposed to abortion and thinks homosexuality is not God’s ideal...

...West Nile virus does not impose too much of a danger on most of people. Most people or more than 80 percent who are infected by the WNV experience no symptoms or mild, flu-like symptoms. About 20% of people who become infected with WNV will develop West Nile fever. Symptoms include fever, headache, tiredness, and body aches, occasionally with a skin rash (on the trunk of the body) and swollen lymph glands. While the illness can be as short as a few days, even healthy people have reported being sick for several weeks.

Severe symptoms associated with West Nile Viral infections include high fever, severe headache, stiff neck, disorientation, tremors, muscle weakness, paralysis and coma. Symptoms from infection generally appear within 2-14 days after the bite of the mosquito...

Seems embryos lose their protected status once they become actual human beings.

...Specially made Tupperware seed-containers will be signed out of his office by Mrs. Watkins who will be keeping a record to guard against overuse. The sinner must catch his mistake in his numbered container before it reaches the ground. All containers are to be returned to Mrs. Watkins within one hour of check-out...

...In St. Louis, the weather has flip-flopped between sweltering heat and violent storms. As many as 500,000 Ameren Corp. customers in the area lost power Wednesday, making Thursday's heat that much more unbearable.

Progress in restoring power had been made, but Ameren said the number of customers without power rose even higher Friday, to 570,000, as a new wave of storms passed through...

...Implanon is the name of this implantable contraceptive. It's designed to prevent pregnancy for three full years after a doctor places it under the skin of a woman's arm. That means three years of not worrying about taking birth control pills daily, or changing Ortho-Evra patches weekly, or replacing Nuva-rings monthly...

But, on the plus side, it's been found to be more than 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy...

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish officials signaled Tuesday they are prepared to send the army into northern Iraq if U.S. and Iraqi forces do not take steps to combat Turkish Kurdish guerrillas there — a move that could put Turkey on a collision course with the United States...

...Turkey's NTV television and Hurriyet newspaper reported the government has told the military to draw up plans for a push into northern Iraq and to advise on the possibilities such an incursion could lead to a clash with Iraqi Kurds or U.S. troops...

...And the real news in Iraq is that the number of American troops who are fighting and dying in that place has fallen to 127,000 from a high of more than 160,000 late in 2005...

...The politicians are cutting and running from their war even as they doggedly deny that the thought has ever crossed their minds. They're now as feverish to get out of Iraq as once they were feverish to get in...

...The ownership of a war that's being abandoned by the politicians who launched it and fouled it up beyond repair now falls to the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, who never had orders to put enough boots on the ground to get the job done. Now they'll be called upon to do even more with even less...

...Nearly 2,600 Americans have died in Iraq so far, and 18,000 more have been wounded. How many more will die before the last of them board trucks and helicopters and depart this detour in the war on global terrorism?...

...Oil analyst John Kilduff of Fimat USA in New York said there would be a “painful runup” in gasoline prices as summer approaches, and he said oil prices could rise as high as $80 a barrel by the end of June. Purchased today, crude for June delivery costs $74 a barrel...

The Army is discontinuing a controversial multibillion-dollar deal with oil services giant Halliburton for logistical support to U.S. troops worldwide, a decision that could cut deeply into the firm's dominance of government contracting in Iraq...

...Government audits turned up more than $1 billion in questionable costs. Whistle-blowers told how the company charged $45 per case of soda, double-billed on meals and allowed troops to bathe in contaminated water...

...King agreed Tuesday. "Halliburton has done an outstanding job, under the circumstances," he said. But he added that Pentagon leaders ultimately decided they did not want to have "all our eggs in one basket" because multiple contractors will give them better prices, more accountability and greater protection if one contractor fails to perform...

...The authority, saying that it wants to improve school attendance and the academic performance of children who live in public housing, made the proposal at a meeting in April and discussed it again last month. Under the plan, families would be evicted after a child had 10 unexcused absences.

...Just remember that with the Bush administration, disinformation is standard operating procedure, along with secrecy. It clearly sees the American people as a mass of unwashed peasants who are too dumb to understand what the elite is doing.

Some thoughts about homeless Veterans, and a cartoon you absolutely must see. Today's "must read".

The Fourth of July has ended, the fireworks are over, the bands have gone home, the politicians have finished their campaign rounds, the tragedy of homeless American veterans remains unconscionably with us today.

Whether we support or oppose the policy in Iraq, can we agree on this? It is morally and patriotically wrong to have homeless and hungry American veterans in the hundreds of thousands, whom we walk past so casually on the street...

It's not the soldiers or the cops who defend our freedoms. It is our laws and our courts, starting with the Constitution and going downwards from there.

How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."

..."The Navy will continue to employ stringent mitigation measures to protect marine mammals during all sonar activities, to include habitat controls, safety zones around ships, trained lookouts, extra precautions during chokepoint exercises, in coordination with National Marine Fisheries Service," said Rear Adm. James Symonds, director of environmental readiness...

... The House approved a bill Thursday that could dramatically boost offshore drilling across the nation by offering coastal states a huge slice of billions of dollars in federal royalties if they allow oil and gas rigs off their shores...

...But Democrats, in turn, accused the bill's sponsors of crafting a massive giveaway of federal money that will primarily benefit four coastal states that already produce oil and gas offshore -- Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama...