The wisdom of Binyam...or, let's hear it for the USA

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Indeed. It's all about expectations. Coming from Ethiopia, his expectations were, as evidenced by his comments, rather low. USA >>> Ethiopia.

The contrarian in me is required to ask if that's some sort of amazing accomplishment we should all be celebrating, though. It's a good thing, yes. So is the fact that Binyam is here in the US. Hurray for the USofA. But it's kinda like picking on the crippled kid...

-Arrian

I see your point, but it would still do us some good to get excited about these things once in a while -- not in a "yay, we're not Ethiopia" sense but in a "hey, freedom of information is actually really important" way. If everybody had Binyam's enthusiam, theer might have been more outrage over the PATRIOT Act, Cheney's secret energy commission, etc.

Seriously, I'd trade Binyam for any number of Americans I can think of.

[Arrian]

Agreed.

Like I said, sometimes I'm just contrarian.

-Arrian

[Patroklos]

Get him a poly account.

[Dauphin]

You should ask the other Binyam what he thought of his stay in the US of A.

[Victor Galis]

I see your point, but it would still do us some good to get excited about these things once in a while -- not in a "yay, we're not Ethiopia" sense but in a "hey, freedom of information is actually really important" way. If everybody had Binyam's enthusiam, theer might have been more outrage over the PATRIOT Act, Cheney's secret energy commission, etc.

Seriously, I'd trade Binyam for any number of Americans I can think of.

As I said earlier. Once you live in a few other western countries, there will be things they do a whole lot better than the US. (And things they do worse.)

[Victor Galis]

I heard an NPR story on... Friday, I think... about the protests planned to try to pressure the gummint to reinstate the chief justice of the supreme court. The ringleaders of the march were in hiding, trying to avoid being arrested. The government had "temporarily" suspended the right to protest. Sigh.

-Arrian

And now the government caved