President Bush said Castro’s decision ought to spark “a democratic transition” for Cuba.
“The international community should work with the Cuban people to begin to build institutions that are necessary for democracy and eventually this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections,” Bush said Tuesday in Rwanda. “The United States will help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty.”
I understand that George Bush screwed up in Iraq, but does he think that he can make everyone think like the United States. I know that a democracy is a lot better than a Socialist Republic, but I hate George Bush so I will find any way to verbally bash him. Sorry Bushy, but you screwed up a lot in my opinion and you don’t deserve any bit of positive recognition.
On February 24th, Raúl Castro (Fidel’s younger brother) will officially become the new President of Cuba.
I have to say that she is an amazing singer and also really beautiful. Not sure if she is the absolute best, but a really good singer. The fact that she loves camping and kick boxing, that is pretty sweet. People have said that she sounds like Carrie Underwood, but Kristy Lee Cook seems normal. I was talking with someone who knows Carrie and they said that she can be very mean. That is one person’s opinion, but I can sense some anger in her voice. However, good luck Kristy Lee Cook and I hope you win. (or top 3)
I know this is very late, but I have never had time to sit down to write it out. About a month ago was the final State of the Union address for George W. Bush and thank the lord for that. In this speech he talked about many different aspects of our lives as Americans, but the sad realization is that no one in this country supports him anymore. Well, that’s not entirely true, he has a 28% approval rating. He is the biggest idiot and will go down (most likely) as the worst President ever. I think that “Charles Logan” of 24 will go down as a better President than George Bush.
The State of the Union address is one of the most annoying speeches to watch because they of how they go about it. They give him a standing ovation, which he doesn’t deserve, after each topic he discusses. He was interrupted 70 times throughout his speech by applause and standing ovations. That is an absolute ridiculous amount of interruptions which is why most people do not watch the address. After some of his statements, some people were yawning and others you can hear people in the crowd scream “Jerry! Jerry!”. Alright, they weren’t screaming Jerry, but the sounded like the idiots on Jerry Springer.
His first real discussion was about the economy and how bad it is doing, but he never said we were in a recession and it was just a slump. Professional athletes go into slumps, the economy needs help. In sports, you can’t really do anything about a player in a slump, you just need to let them work out of it. With the economy, the government needs to stop spending useless money on programs and other items that require over 18 billion dollars in wasteful money. Bush stated that the government must trust people with their own money. One of the most idiotic comments all night was when he said that the American people need to trust that the government is spending their tax dollars wisely. “American families need to balance their checkbooks, so should the American government.” Isn’t that something that is a given, not to waste money during a time with a bad economy. He also said that Americans will see their taxes go up over $1,000 which will cripple some people, but others are happy to pay it. He made a joke on this that was quite funny, but don’t get the wrong idea, he didn’t write it, he doesn’t know what a sense of humor is. He also wants to make the tax relief permanent. Finally he said that the US in on track for a surplus in 2012, but then a few weeks ago he put a budget through to congress of 3.1 Trillion dollars with a sizable increase in military funding. So that surplus of 2012 went down hill and put us deeper in debt. So much for balancing the checkbook. Sweeping it under the carpet doesn’t count as cleaning.
On the topic of health care, he wants to help doctors and patients make the right decision and have better information making health care more affordable. Well that’s good, because their are people in this country who don’t have health care and can’t afford the prescriptions they need to stay healthy/alive. He asks congress to pass it this year, why not 5 years ago?
He also talked about Education, Fare Trade and wanted to prove to other others that Democracy is a better way to live. He said that it is the government’s “Responsibility to help” citizens and find new jobs {Fake Clapping}. Allowing researchers to comes up with innovative ways of suppling energy, other than nuclear power. We need to eliminate green house gases and confront global issues, but it only took him 7 years to figure that out. The green house effect has gotten substantially worse over the past 5 years and Bush has done nothing about it.
He states that America is the most “Dynamic nation on earth”, but we are not the only country in the world. Try getting along with other countries instead of trying to fight them in war. Bush said that images abroad have inspired us, but the men in uniform at the address didn’t give him a standing ovation or even clap. That shows the country that not even the military is behind him on this war. Bush wants to spread the hope of freedom which is all well and good, but how much did it cost us in dollars and lives. He should be spreading love not hate. Even though he said that 20,00 troops are coming home since Iraqi’s are trying to rebuild their life, I don’t believe him since he put more funding into military support with the new budget. Bush told Americans that we owe thanks to people who have stopped other attacks, which I agree with, but no one wants to risk their life for something that they don’t believe in. The only statement that I agree with him on is increasing funding for military families and allowing education benefits to be passed on to the families of soldiers.
After what he did to Armenian-Americans with the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide, I have hated him even more than before, however, he made a statement in the address that ticked me off to no end. He stated “America opposes genocide in Sudan”. What about Armenia and how you denied that bill so that you could have your precious Turkish airspace. Since he has no ties to anything to do with the Genocide in Sudan, why not oppose it. He went on to say that the US leads the world in food aid to other countries. What about the starving people in your own country. Stop trying to deal your way into allies for the war and ignore the people in this country.
This must have been a field day for him with everyone clapping for him since no one actually likes him every other day. Some people don’t like him any day, like me. For his last State of the Union address, it wasn’t very memorable. He read his speech, but didn’t WOW anyone. They said he made eye contact, he didn’t, he was reading his speech off the teleprompter.
After his speech, they went to talk to the governor of Kansas Kathleen Sebelius for the Democratic response. They are saying that if Obama is on the ticket, she could quite possibly be his Vice President.
Posted at: 11:40 pm by Timothy Haroutunian Categories: Sports and Leisure
Has it been 4 months (+/- 20..) since the Red Sox won the world series? Apparently it has since yesterday was the day that pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training. Which is only 6 weeks away from the most wonderful time of the year. Baseball season is the greatest season because it takes up three different seasons (Spring, Summer, Fall). This season will be amazing, since Boston is the team to beat now and we have an amazing group of guys that are going to be fighting to claim the division and bring home another World Championship.
I was lucky enough to get tickets to see 7 games at home and hopefully 3 games on the road in Baltimore in May. I wish I had the money and the inheritance to get season tickets, but since I don’t, I am happy to go to any games. I love that Dirty Water and I love that Green Monster. Go Boston!
A plane carrying 21 people crashed on takeoff from Armenia’s capital early Thursday, injuring at least 10 people, the head of the country’s civil aviation authority said.
The plane, a Canadair CRJ-100, was heading for Minsk, Belarus, when it flipped over on the runway at Zvartnots Airport and burst into flames, Artiom Movsesian said.
He said there were 18 passengers and three crew members aboard. Ten people were hospitalized with injuries. A spokesman for the airport, Gevorg Abramian, said none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening.
After the crash, it lay upside-down at the airport, much of the fuselage blackened and gutted by fire.
This morning at 10am, Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee showed up to capitol hill today to meet with Congress to figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth. It was a very rough day for both parties who were stuck there from 10am until 3:30pm. They were asked question after question from congressmen/women who tried to figure out all the stories and put them back into a comleted puzzle.
McNamee was grilled hard on why he lied earlier and why he didn’t turn in “evidence” against Clemens. They also questioned his motives for trying to ruin an icons reputation. However, they asked Clemens why he was taking B-12 injections if he wasn’t anemic, a vegan or a vegetarian, when there was no medical diagnosis that calls for that solution.
“Was Clemens at Jose Conceco’s party that night….how did you see him if everyone else says he wasn’t there…Did you tell Andy Petite that you took HGH and why would his wife know about that conversation…You are very convincing, but why do your fact not match up with Andy Petite’s (who’s honesty is higher than anyone’s that is in the public eye)”. These were all questions (paraphrased) that were asked to both McNamee and Clemens under oath.
Some were on Clemens side and some were on McNamee’s, but there is not enough evidence to prove anything right now. In the show numbers, there was a calculation that was done to figure out if a player was using steroids or not. I’m telling you that there is some formula out there that could do this. The government should use it and save all the time and money on this case.
I am still unsure of who is to blame. Before this hearing, I thought Clemens was guilty, but now I am not sure. He was very strong with his answers and McNamee was flaking out throughout. However, Clemens is a clever man and I am sure he will find his way out of this situation. He does so much to help young kids out, I think that should be brought into consideration (only a little).
After watching/listening to the whole broadcast live while at work, I realized that nothing is known and there are still more investigations to be done. I do however, think that was way to much money spent on this case and it could have gone into helping kids/families who need it and on education young children about how bad HGH is for an athlete (or anyone).
Posted at: 11:57 pm by Timothy Haroutunian Categories: Sports and Leisure
After going into overtime tied 5-5, the Boston College Eagles and the Harvard University Crimson fought for the Beanpot Championship. If you have no clue what the beanpot is, here is a brief summary. The top four schools in the Boston Area, Boston College, Boston University, Harvard and Northeastern face off in playoff style tournament every year. Since Boston is called “Beantown”, it made sense.
After 7:07 into overtime, freshman Nick Petrecki scored the game winning goal on a rebound in front of the net. Going into this game, Petrecki did not have a collegiate goal, but he scored 2 goals including the game winning one. He’s going to be popular tomorrow
Congratulations to the 2008 Beanpot Champions, Boston College Eagles!
Posted at: 2:39 pm by Timothy Haroutunian Categories: Tech and Web
After my first article about Flickr APIs, I needed to upload photos to flickr which was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I did some more research on Flickr Libraries for PHP and found one created by Carl of lerdorf.com (Download Flickr library source code). This is a very easy wrapper class that makes the flickr API easy to use.
After you include the flickr wrapper class, you can begin setting up the pages. When setting up your api key, you might want to make the callback_url to be your main page and not what you are posting to. I tried calling everything from one file and posting to that same file, but I ran into the issue with the token. On the initial page, you need to create a token which would give you access to the API and allow for the application to write to flickr. $secrets is just an array with your API key and your API secret.
Next, you want to setup a form that posts to another page, lets call it “upload.php”. The form should have at least a file input that you can choose your photo. On upload.php, you need to first create a new instance of the Flickr class and then you need to call the token check again to make sure the tokens match. All of the variables are coming from the previous page in which I ask for some information about the photo (title, description, tags). As you can see on line 10, I append a tag of “unapproved” onto every photo that is uploaded by a user so it doesn’t display. Once an administrator approves the photo, I will call a flickr photo method to remove the tag from the photo.
