Thursday, March 20, 2003

Vatican Expresses 'Deep Pain' Over War. The Vatican expressed "deep pain" Thursday over the start of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, faulting both sides for failing to find a peaceful solution. Pope John Paul II dedicated a dawn Mass in his private chapel to peace. [Associated Press war headlines via GoUpstate.com] While I am not Catholic, I agree with the Vatican's statement. War is morally offensive. All sides failed to stop this war and all sides share the blame for it. 2:55:33 PM     Comment []

Jon Carrol (SF Chronical) wonders, once Bush has taken Bagdhad, if he will do the 'Shock and Awe' on California. [More Like This WebLog] A wonderful piece of satire. It reminds me of a column (published in the SJ Mercury, I think) following the invasion of Grenada in 1983. It described an invasion of Santa Cruz to remove its (then) Socialist government. I wish I could find a copy of it. 10:20:38 AM     Comment []

Fluid Flow Comments I have had trouble tracking comments that come to Fluid Flow because I rarely visit the weblog. I don't usually visit the weblog, because I don't want to inflate the referer numbers (this is probably stupid, but...). This morning, however, I realized that I can track comments by subscribing to the comment sites rss feed. I am slowly getting the hang of this. Update - It turns out that this won't work, because Manila's rss feeds are only generated for the home page. Oh well. 9:55:49 AM     Comment []

Coverage of the ANWR vote focused on the 8 Republican Senators that voted for the amendment to remove ANWR funding from the budget. I haven't seen any coverage of the 5 Democrat Senators who voted against it. The roll call for the vote shows that the Democrat Senators from Louisiana (Breaux, Landrieu) and Hawaii (Akaka, Inouye) voted against the amendment along Georgia Senator Miller. It is easy to understand Louisiana's opposition to the budget amendment. Louisiana is an oil producing state. In addition most of the southern states voted against the amendment (possibly explaining Senator Miller's vote). I don't, however, understand the votes by Hawaii's Senators. 2:23:33 AM     Comment []