Up until last year's Cedar Revolution, Syria basically owned Lebanon. The revolution was sparked by the assasination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Lebanese citizens banded together and demanded Syrian forces leave lebanon. They (officially) eventually did.
Hezbollah held a pro-Syrian counterprotest, which gathered hundreds of thousands of its shiite supporters.
Recently, Hezbollah has resigned from the Lebanese Cabinet. Today, Pierre Gemayel, a Lebanese Cabinetmember, was assassinated. Michel Pharaon was also targeted for assassination, but he escaped.
By the way, Gemayel was a Christian. His supporters are taking to the streets:
Word on the street is if one more member of the Lebanese Cabinet dies or resigns, the current Cabinet will be declared illegitimate. Funny how Hezbollah just declared that it would topple the current goverment by any means necessary.
I love democracy: http://www.fec.gov/press/press2006/2006iesummaries.html
Last night, I phonebanked till 9, then went to the Hyatt for the Democratic Victory Party. It was pretty fun, all in all. I was invited because of my aid to the Massa-ites. They all stayed in their suite and were glued to CNN all night. It was a very somber mood.
Down in the grand ballroom, however, the tone was very different. They paraded winning Democratic nominees and had victory speeches and live-broadcast Spitzer's speech. That was fun.
For those at home, at the time of this writing, the post-election situation looks like this: House: Dems win for sure Senate: 50D - 49R, if you count Lieberman and Sanders as Democrats. Virginia race is left. Looks like Webb will win. NY: Dem's Sweep State Goverment Massa: Kuhl won 51-49%, with about a 5000 vote lead. 9000 absentee votes left to be counted. Massa won't concede till all votes are counted. Doesn't look very hopeful though...
So basically the script wasn't too hot, but the actors pulled it off. Mad props to my main man Nick for being so awesome. As for Claire, Shelly gets it totally right "Oh my god why are you totally amazing at everything?"
Gotta say that I was rooting for my homies Costi and Jen, and they DID NOT DISAPPOINT!
What
else? Evan Jones, I was amazed. Like, he pulled off his role so well,
esp since he's only a sophomore. And Kate Leonard just fit her role so
well. Like, I didn't catch a moment when she wasn't absolutely
hilarious and you could tell she was very comfortable and in command of
herself.
