The Italian government has dissolved again today.  No worries.  xxoo me

I've been trying rather unsuccessfully to watch the Olympics.  The rights were bought by Sky TV which is a pay channel.  We barely watch TV so we don't pay for anything, not even the yearly tax the one should pay in order to own a TV!  In fact the only person that I know who does pays that is my father-in-law who is must have been terribly traumatized by a police officer in his childhood because he is afraid of absolutely everything, especially "breaking the rules".  So back to the Olympics.  There is a new channel on free TV called "Cielo" which means "sky" and because this is Italy, seems to have stolen programming from SKY TV.  They've found some sort of loophole obviously because they don't show the events in their entirety.  I just watched a few minutes of jumps then it skipped to a few minutes of couples skating and it has just hopped to snowboarding.  So I've been able to catch bits and pieces of the games.  Now this is what I am pondering.  If it is illegal to be homosexual in Russia, who exactly is going to compete in the men's figure skating in these Olympics for the Russians?  Not PC?  Ah well, not my forte.  xxoo me

There's been a shooting in Torino!  And not even in one of the more disreputable areas but smack in the center where we often roam!  It happened like this.  Some thieves tried to rob a shop in Via Garibaldi, a principle shopping street.  They decided to escape by stealing an unmarked police car parked outside as, being a pedestrian street, there were no other cars to steal..  So many things wrong with this planning.  You rob a store on a pedestrian shopping street?  Hello?  Can you say "get away"?  Then steal a police car?  Tracking device anyone?  Yup.  The cops caught up with them near the river and blocked them off.  One guy came out of the car like a pistoliero with a gun in each hand and then proceeded to hold them to his own temples threatening to kill himself.  Who are these guys?  Really bad thieves evidently.  So I'm not sure who started it but an officer popped him.  There were one or two others in the car that were arrested and now there will be months of investigation and probably years of trials even though it's pretty obvious they're guilty.  The shocking thing in all this is that the police officer, a Carabinieri to be precise, actually shot somebody.  The cops here never shoot anyone.  In fact gun violence in Italy is very rare, pretty much restricted to organized crime families and their dealings.  The last time this cop probably took his gun out of the holster was to use it to scratch his head when he was trying to spell "parking violation".  The coverage has been on every news channel local and national.  Can you imagine if every crook shot by a cop were on national news in the States?  When GP was a kid there was a period of time when Torino was actually quite dangerous.  In the '70's and early '80's the Brigata Rossa, Red Brigades, were active up here.  They were a communist paramilitary group that wanted to destabilize the government.  They ran around robbing banks, blowing things up and kidnapping important people until they were all caught or killed or just ran out of steam.  But especially during the 1970's there was a lot of disruption in the city with strikes and closings brought on by this group.  The public schools were closed so often that GP's parents sent him to a private institute for high school.  Every morning his bus would have to run a gauntlet through road blocks and checks.  I think this is the main reason he joined the Carabinieri, military police, for his post school service.  He thought it would be exciting and he'd see some action.  He spent the entire time doing guard duty outside concerts and football games.  They must have seen him coming!!  xxoo me