Good news to all the visitors of my blog! It is now OK to send all of your comments for each of my posts, and that includes the previous ones. Hope all of you will share with me not just your comments but also useful suggestions on how to make the blog more better. I am in the midst of working out how you will be able to post your similar observations of current events & pop culture in the future, as well as uploading some images.

In the meantime, 2 unrelated events which in the US occurred between yesterday (June 4) & today (June 5) somehow took me by surprise: The first occurred on Friday when a disgruntled muffle shop owner from the town of Granby, Colorado went on a rampage in a heavily-armored bulldozer (something straight out of a "Mad Max" movie) smashing buildings and firing shots as police tried to stop the chaos. Even after the authorities fired many rounds of ammunition and blasted lots of explosives in the slow-moving behemoth, the bulldozer kept on plowing. It had crashed into the town hall & library, a store, a newspaper office, a cement plant , a utility company, an excavating business, the house of a former mayor, and a bank (where the suspect's business was once located). Apparently, the suspect, identified as Marvin Heemeyer, had a bitter zoning dispute with town officials and was frequently fined for city code violations at his business. The buildings that were destroyed were somehow connected to his troubles, including the cement plant which was ironically the first to be demolished. In 2000, the Granby Zoning Commission allowed a neighbor to build a cement plant next door to his business, he had appealed the ruling but the town prevailed. As a result, his welding business went bankrupt. Despite the destruction, there were no reported injuries, as a raging Heemeyer was intentionally targeting the soon-to-be-badly damaged buildings. But just as there was no stopping it, the vehicle got wedged in a hardware store that Heemeyer had crashed through. Several hours later, police entered the bulldozer at about 2 a.m. Saturday and found Heemeyer dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Marvin Heemeyer's destructive actions kinda reminds me of last year's infamous NAIA siege wherein a disgruntled former ATO chief named Panfilo Villareal and his aide took control of the air control tower bearing his name (he supervised its construction during the Ramos administration) and spent the entire night airing his complaints and grievances regarding the government before he was gunned down by police forces, his last breath heard on the air. What made it morbidly ironic is that one of the first flights to arrive at the airport after the siege ended was piloted by Villareal's son.

The second occurred today at around 1 pm in the afternoon. It was announced that former US President Ronald Reagan, who had survived an assassination attempt, the Cold War, the Iran-Contra scandal, and cancer has died at the age of 93 after a courageous 10-year battle with Alzheimer's disease. The popular, infectiously optimistic president reshaped the Republican Party in his conservative image and devoted most of his energy to the destruction of communism abroad. Five years after leaving office, the nation's 40th president told the world in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. He said he had begun "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life." He held the record for the oldest to be elected president (69) as well as the president who lived the longest (93). Reagan became the first ex-president to die in almost a decade since Richard Nixon died in 1994. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton are the only surviving ex-presidents. On March 30, 1981 - his 70th day as president - Reagan was leaving a Washington hotel after addressing labor leaders when a young drifter, John Hinckley, fired six shots at him. A bullet lodged an inch from Reagan's heart, but he recovered. While in the hospital, he joked to his wife about the incident, saying: "Honey, I forgot to duck". He was also the first president to escape the dreaded curse which have befallen presidents who were elected in years which ended in "0" (i.e. JFK was elected in 1960, and was assassinated 3 years later). For over two terms (1981-1989), Reagan fixed his eye on the demise of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism and tripled the national debt to $3 trillion in his single-minded competition with the other superpower. His 1987 declaration to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall — "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" — was the ultimate challenge of the Cold War. In his second term, Reagan was dogged by revelations that he authorized secret arms sales to Iran while seeking Iranian aid to gain release of American hostages held in Lebanon. Some of the money was used to aid rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua. Despite the ensuing investigations, he left office in 1989 with the highest popularity rating of any retiring president in the history of modern-day public opinion polls. His populist brand of conservative politics still inspires the Republican Party. As I was channel-surfing for more on the coverage of Reagan's death, I tuned in to MSNBC wherein Bill Clinton (whose memoir is coming out soon) was asked on his reaction on the death of the former world leader. He briefly mentioned Reagan's somewhat-friendly relationship with the Marcoses, as well as the jar of jellybeans Reagan gave to him when he was first elected. Reagan had lived an almost unbelievable life, a melodrama, a rags-to-riches tale, a multi-part saga written by someone with boundless imagination and an infinite sense of the possible. Born in tiny Tampico, Ill., educated at Eureka College in nearby Dixon, Reagan was a radio sportscaster, a Hollywood B-movie star, host of a TV variety show, a soap salesman, a motivational speaker, governor of California and -- starting at age 53 -- arguably the most important American political figure since Franklin D. Roosevelt. So it was no wonder that he believed all things were possible, from the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he predicted even when the clash of superpowers seemed near its most menacing point, to the complete disarmament of all nuclear arsenals, which Reagan proposed in a stunning arms-control summit near the end of his administration. What seemed to some as naivete struck others as good old gumption. Like all forceful leaders, Reagan deeply angered some -- but his gift for communication and his bedrock optimism attracted far more supporters than critics. In 1984, he was reelected with the largest number of popular and electoral votes in U.S. history. Though the nation has added about 50 million people since then, no candidate has surpassed his record. His electoral vote landslide that year was among the most lopsided in history. Beyond that, experts argue over his record. Among the ranks of Republican conservatives who live and breathe Reagan's catechism of low taxes, small government, unregulated liberty and a strong military, he is rated one of the most important presidents in U.S. history. They credit him with winning the Cold War. "Nothing ends here, our hopes and our journeys continue", he said as he comforted a nation which was stunned by the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion. RIP, Ronald Reagan: "The Great Communicator".

Note: Some passages taken from various news accounts in Yahoo! News