America's dumbassification

Love it. Never saw or heard that expression before. But, I'm usually behind the times.

America's dumbassification - I read that in an article by Melanie McFarland at Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I'm liking it, whomever came up with it first.

America's dumbassification.

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The nightmare that is Gaza continues to intensify.

Israel on alert as Palestinians bury civilian victims

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World welcomes shift in US Politics

Against the broad mood of satisfaction, however, there were voices of concern that a power split between Democrats and Republicans in Washington might mean uncertainty in crucial areas like global trade talks.

It's not just international relations that are apt to suffer, domestic issues will most likely not be dealt with either.

Both parties are cooing "bipartisan" to all and sundry. I think, come January (if not sooner) we're going to see a hardening of ideologies. In short, not much is going to get done in the next two years.

Italian Premier Romano Prodi said Rumsfeld's surprise resignation underscored the depth of what has happened in America.

"Even though U.S. politics had already started changing, Rumsfeld's resignation means an accentuation of this change," Prodi said. "We'll see over the next few days what the new direction will be. But certainly we have a political structure ... deeply different from that of a few days ago."

I think Rummy's resignation is a bone Bush and Co are throwing the American public. Bush's press conference yesterday was just bullshit meant to soften people up, make them think things are going to change.

They won't.

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Ah, enough doom and gloom. Let's enjoy the awesome majesty of our Universe!

This image of the Orion nebula, taken by NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and released November 7, 2006, shows an infrared and visible-light composite that indicates that a 'gang' of four monstrously massive stars at the center of the cloud may be the main culprits of mayhem in the familiar Orion constellation. The stars are collectively called the 'Trapezium' and can be communally identified as the yellow smudge near the center of the image. Swirls of green in Hubble's ultraviolet and visible-light view reveal hydrogen and sulfur gas that have been heated and ionized by intense ultraviolet radiation from the Trapezium's stars.

This image provided by NASA Thursday Nov. 2, 2006 is a recent photo from the Cassini spacecraft showing the mighty planet Saturn, and if you look very closely between its wing-like rings, upper left, revelas a faint pinprick of light. That tiny dot is Earth bustling with life as we know it. The image is the second ever taken of our world from deep space. The first was captured by the Voyager spacecraft in 1990. This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006. The mosaic images were acquired as the spacecraft drifted in the darkness of Saturn's shadow for about 12 hours, allowing a multitude of unique observations of the microscopic particles that compose Saturn's faint rings.

Comments on the pictures are from AP and Yahoo! news.