Garci for Congressman?

• There's a report that Virgilio Garcillano will challenge Rep. Neric Acosta's House seat in the next election. I hope this is just a joke.



• Malaya Editorial: Bolante says he's victim of persecution, seeks asylum
  
  

  What a laugh, Joc Joc Bolante seeking asylum in the United States because of purported threats to his life from the New People’s Army. If being targeted by the NPA is now sufficient ground for securing political asylum, the United States should be prepared to welcome a daily stream of B747s packed to the overhead bins with people fleeing the wrath of communist rebels.
  
  As we understand it, political persecution can only come from the hands of the government in power, not from a shadow government, however extensive the latter’s reach may be. Joc Joc certainly has nothing to fear from this government.

  
  Jok Time.



• Ricky Carandang says Joelle pelaez's accusations of Money Laundering against Erap is bogus. He also said na magwawala si Chavit kung i-acquit ni Arroyo si Erap. Marami raw alam na "secrets" si Chavit laban kay Arroyo.



• Human Rights commission warns that the Philippines may be blacklisted by the UN.



• De Quiros on Arroyo's SONA:
  
  

  My first impression was hearing all over again the "Hello, Garci" tape. That was so not just because it was the same unique DNA-imprinted voice being conscripted for pretty much the same reason, which was to put the wool over the public's eyes. It was also because the speaker showed the same passion for micro-management. It answers the question of why she personally called up then-election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano with a persistence that tried the patience of Garci himself, rather than had a minion do it for her, thus giving her space for deniability. She just had to sink to that level.

  
  More reaction from Neal Cruz, MLQ3, and the PDI editorial.
  
  As for me naman, I was hoping for a SONA that is more reality-based.
  
  Lito Banayo says that it was not a SONA but a SANA.



• Bishop Tobias is the man!



• A "Hello Garci" video. And a "V for Vendetta" spoof video starring GMA and Raul Gonzalez.



• Election officials jailed -- in Thailand. MLQ3 has a good roundup.



• Kawawa naman si "Nicole" at ang pamilya niya. Nauubos na ang pera nila dahil sa trial na ito.
  
  

  TOWNS said that although the family is not indigent, the cost of litigation is draining the family's finances. Family members have to travel from the southern city of Zamboanga to Manila to give her support. One brother has even stopped schooling.
  
  "Just the daily transcript costs P2,000, or P8,000 a week. In the last hearing, they could not get the transcript anymore because they owed the clerk P12,000 already, hence, TOWNS is raising a 'Justice for Nicole' fund," the group said in a press release.




• May dayaan sa nursing board licensure examination.
  
  

  THE BOARD exam leakage is but the latest scandal to erupt around nursing licensing and education. Some months ago, senior officials of the Commission on Higher Education resigned their posts in protest of alleged interference in their work. There had been reports that "influential" owners of nursing schools, which have mushroomed around the country, were using their political muscle to get the CHED to back off from enforcing the appropriate standards and qualifications.
  
  Deteriorating standards of nursing education has been noted even as foreign demand for Filipino nurses began rising. A study on the "brain drain" of Filipino health personnel noted that even as enrollment in nursing schools has risen tremendously, the number of their graduates able to pass the nursing boards has been steadily falling.
  
  If we continue to send unqualified and unskilled nurses abroad, demand for Filipino nurses in these countries could very well dry up.

  
  Comment ni Ellen Tordesillas:
  
  

  Bakit ba kailangan mandaya ang isang kukuha ng board exam? Siyempre, malaki ang posibilidad na hindi siya makapasa. Bakit siya hindi makapasa? Dahil hindi niya alam sagutin ang mga tanong sa exam.
  
  Kung hindi niya alam sagutin ang mga tanong sa exam, paano ngayon ang gagawin niya sa pasyente. Paano ngayon yan kung sa loob siya ng operating room at hindi niya alam ang gagawin?
  
  Malaking negosyo ang nursing education ngayon dahilan sa malaking demand sa ibang bansa. Mayroon mga 470 na nursing schools sa buong bansa at marami pa ang nagsusulputan na parang kabute.
  
  Sa maraming bansa, ang nursing na kurso ay hindi popular. Mahirap naman talaga ang trabaho ng nurse. Marami ngayon sa mga nag-aaral ng nursing dito sa atin ay wala naman talagang hilig mag-nurse. Gusto lang mag-abroad dahil nga walang makuhang trabaho dito sa Pilipinas.
  
  Sa pagdami ng mga nursing schools, mabilis rin bumaba and kalidad ng nursing education. Marami ang hindi nakakapasa sa board exam. Kaya mandadaya na lang. Kamakailan lang, sinabi na ng United Kingdom na hindi na sila kukuha ng nurses sa Pilipinas.
  
  Ngayon, paano parusahan ang nandaya? Paano yun kung sasabihin ng nandaya na, bakit si Gloria Arroyo nandaya noong eleksyon, hindi naman naparusahan? Nakaupo pa sa Malacañang.




• Paano naubos ang millions na OWWA funds kaya walang pera para sa Lebanon evacuation?
  
  Conrad de Quiros has an idea:
  
  

  Which brings us back to Father Advincula's plaintive and thundering question: Where have all the OFW millions gone? Advincula wasn't being accusatory when he asked that, as the reports clarified, but his question itself remains a finger pointing at the crooks in furious indictment.
  
  There are many answers to that question, but one of them is the transfer of funds of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa) to the government's PhilHealth Insurance Corp. some years ago. The mandate of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, as its name suggests, is to give welfare assistance to OFWs and their families. But on Nov. 24, 2002, PhilHealth president Francisco Duque proposed another use for its funds. He wrote a memo to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo saying that the diversion of Owwa Medicare funds to PhilHealth would bear significantly on the 2004 elections. Arroyo believed him and issued Executive Order 182, transferring the Medicare Funds of the Medical Functions of Owwa amounting to P530,382,446 to PhilHealth.
  
  The transfer was approved by the labor department, with the exception of Corazon P. Carsola, whom the OFWs may truly thank even if she fought for a lost cause. She refused to sign, objecting to the use of medical funds badly needed by the OFWs for patent electoral purposes. The very design of the new PhilHealth card proclaimed it to be so: It metamorphosed from a simple one bearing the picture of the beneficiary to one showing Arroyo cradling an infant. The infant was not its beneficiary.
  
  Subsequently, Labor Secretary Patricia Santo Tomas declared that OFWs who had incurred medical expenses would no longer be reimbursed by Owwa.
  
  The ironic note here is that Arroyo did not win even with that ploy. She still needed to call up Garci no less than 15 times to do so -- if one may call the result winning.
  
  Where did the OFW millions go? That was one of its destinations. The others, well, as Franklin Drilon, a former labor secretary, points out, the Owwa has cash reserves amounting to a mind-boggling P7.6 billion. Why Arroyo should choose to allocate only P150 million to rescue the Filipinos in Lebanon from dire straits, only she can say. It is so much less than the amount she took from the Owwa, funds meant to keep OFWs alive and healthy, just so she could remain politically alive, never mind healthy, or indeed just so she could rescue herself from her desperate plight. Which didn't work anyway; she still needed the sea-unworthy vessel MV Garci to get her out of her Hezbollah.




• Filipino students hurt by overcrowded classrooms, underfunding



• Eight impeachment bid filed by the Black and White movement



• Lusot si Dennis Roldan sa kidnapping charges, and Teresita Ang See is angry (rightly so).



• Na-ospital na naman si Arroyo because of the FLU. gosh. i hope it’s nothing serious. i want her to resign not because she’s sick, but because the presidency doesn’t belong to her and she is morally unfit to govern this country. The first time she was rushed to St. Luke was for diarrhea.



• from Michael Totten, an American who spent seven months in Lebanon before the war started. He said a second war -- a civil war -- in Lebanon might erupt once the war with Israel is over. from Ashraf Ismail, Why Israel Can't Win the War. Worth Reading. Wretchard speculates on what the Israelis are trying to do.



• peking duck: does the dalai lama work for the CIA?