Well, apparently Hell has frozen over...

Or perhaps the opposite has occurred. I came home tonight and it appears (at least as far as I could see) that my street has, indeed, been ploughed. Kudos to Lexington for adding contractors to help this year. It was a very pleasant surprise, anyway.

It was nice to be back at work today, and I caught up pretty quickly. One of the ladies at work who is subbing for a co-worker out on maternity leave came in and asked me if I’d seen the Sarah Palin endorsement of Donald Trump. I’d seen the ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit, but she told me that the original was far more surreal. So on my break I watched that and the Stephen Colbert take on it. Oh, my goodness. It was worse than I thought. What scares me? Americans actually pay attention to these two self-absorbed egomaniac blowhards. Only Sarah Palin would make a political endorsement in a showy blouse and talk a lot about herself, rambling on and on saying crude things about the current President and looking like she’s laughing at the very people she’s talking to at the same time. Both she and Trump sicken me.

Granted, I’m the one with a Bernie Sanders sticker on her car, but the man has something these people don’t have (or Hillary Clinton either, in my opinion)—integrity and consistency. The only thing that I have any doubts on Bernie about is foreign policy, but on the one thing, he’s smart enough, as my co-worker said, to surround himself with experts on it, and compared to people like Trump—who has the capability to pretty much undermine any foreign policy and alienate virtually any sane country on the planet, and who has been the subject of a debate in the UK Parliament concerning a ban on his visiting, Bernie looks damn good in comparison. It’s horrible that he’s making gains on fear-mongering, as well. On the other hand, I don’t trust Hillary Clinton one bit, and the whole e-mail server thing frankly causes me to question her intelligence. It’s simply common sense to handle sensitive material—of importance to governmental operations—on secure government servers. I don’t transact my company’s business on my personal e-mail—and I work for a non-profit with no real trade secrets, much less government security secrets. Even if there were no real sensitive information—and it does not look like that’s the case—it was colossally dumb, and even if she were that naïve, someone on her staff should have had a clue. That’s my opinion, anyway.

I thought that it was horrible that the stupid in our country actually elected George W. Bush twice. Now I’m beginning to think that it’s going to be far worse.

Okay, I’ll leave my political musings to that for now. I think I’m going to go find something fun to do, now that I’m home, and take some of my medicine. Good night, just in case I don’t write any more tonight.

Speaking of loonies...

someone let one get up and speak in front of the United Nations today...

9/11 words by Iran leader lead to U.S. walkout at U.N.: U.S.: Ahmadinejad 'delusional' for citing those who believe U.S. was behind attacks

The U.S. and several European delegations walked out of the U.N. speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday after he said most people believe the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks in order to assure Israel's survival.

That's as crazy as believing the Holocaust didn't happen, either. Oh, yeah. He does, doesn't he?

I know a lot of people have a lot of beef with the United States, and in many cases it's rightly so, but I am so glad to be an American. (Even that bozo...uh...President George W. was better than that guy, in my opinion.) And that comes from someone who is pro-Jewish but not-particularly-pro-Israel who thought George W. Bush was the worst President in living memory. But you know what? At least in my country I could say George W. Bush is a bozo and that's okay. I love that whole free speech bit. Other countries should try it. Believe it or not, it sows less unrest than you would think.

What he said

T. Scott, a librarian I admire, has an excellent entry on his opinions of the Bush Administration and his hope that the damage done may be repaired, called Truth and Reconciliation. Check it out.

A proposed commission to investigate activities of the Bush Administration

According to Librarian, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) has introduced legislation to create the National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties. The purpose is to investigate policies of the administration and potentially 'rolling back its expansion of executive power'. Yay for Representative Conyers.

Here's the draft.

I find it telling

that when McCain was talking about Obama, his supporters booed, but when Obama talked about McCain, his supporters cheered.

Anyone else notice that?

Of course, McCain clearly didn't approve of the booing, because he's a classy guy. In other days I might have voted for him--certainly against George W. Bush.

I was temporarily offline for a day

thanks to a security patch from Microsoft for Windows XP that wasn't compatible with my firewall. Said patch has been removed, and I'm back.

Things I want to share with you quickly as I must get up in three hours...

1) I found a really nice, free food diary/weight tracker/exercise tracker at FitDay. You can view my report at: http://www.fitday.com/WebFit/PublicJournals.html?Owner=eilir.

2) A video that YKWIA found...

Bush & Cheney - Plenty Of Time!


It's hilarious. Actually, they're very talented at the Monkey Box. You should check them out.

Okay, gotta get up soon. I've ironed out Internet issues and soaked my foot. Time to go.

Great quote from NYC Mayor Bloomberg

No matter who wins the presidency in November, 'at least we'll have an adult in office who can lead and accomplish something.'

Take that, Bush!

Of course, Bloomberg refused to say he was criticising President Bush. Instead he said his focus was not on the past, but on the future.

What this country has to do is not judge George W. Bush on the last eight years. The public voted him into office twice and then he governed for eight years. What is before us now is a very important decision: who do we want to lead for the next four years ... that's what we should be focusing on.

Bloomberg: Next president will be 'adult'

RIF (Reading is Fundamental) is in danger of losing federal funding

Bush Budget Would Eliminate RIF

Founded in 1966, RIF:

has been funded by Congress and six Administrations without interruption since 1975. It is the oldest and largest children’s and family nonprofit literacy organisation in the U.S.

Not the greatest thing for the administration of a husband of a librarian to be doing, hmm? I love the last thing on the above news snippet that Birdie wrote:

WWLauraD?

Save RIF's funding by contacting your representatives in the Senate and House. I sent a message to: Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Representative Ben Chandler (D-KY 6th).

The power of librarians

The medical librarian community has been buzzing for days about a discovery that POPLINE, a reproductive health site which bills itself as 'the world's largest bibliographic database on population, family planning, and related health issues' had made the term 'abortion' a stop word. For those of you unfamiliar with search jargon, a stop word is a word that is ignored by a search engine. They're normally common words such as 'a', 'an', and 'the'.

This upset virtually anyone concerned with censorship who heard about it, and POPLINE was suddenly facing the ire of librarians and researchers who contacted them, wrote in blogs, and publicised the move. Apparently this had effect; the dean of the school where it was developed has ordered it restored and is investigating why it happened in the first place. Now it's made it into the general media:

Web Site Restores "Abortion" Search Term: Reproductive Health Site Funded By Gov't Was Slammed For Restricting Use Of Word In Searches

When asked by one librarian why this happened, POPLINE administrator Debra L Dickson wrote: 'Yes, we did make a change to POPLINE. We recently made all abortion words stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.'

You see, POPLINE is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Due to an order by President Bush resurrecting a Reagan-era practice, the agency 'denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations', as the article put it. This is effectively a gag order preventing federally-funded organisations from discussing abortion. Of course, by making it a stop word it meant throwing out 'spontaneous abortion' (miscarriage) and the alternatives suggested were too broad for meaningful results. So, it's good to see 'abortion' as a term back.

Yay for Dr Michael J Klag, who restored the term.

Here, here

Poll: 81 Percent Think US on Wrong Track

Two gems from YKWIA

Chute Find Rekindles D.B. Cooper Legend

For some reason I thought the money came from a bank robbery, but it was ransom for the passengers he'd taken hostage in the hijacking. This parachute that they're looking at may have been one given to the man who identified himself as Dan Cooper (not DB as it has come down in the legend).

Obama Related to Pitt, Clinton to Jolie

My theory is that if you go back far enough, you're related to someone famous. I'm related to Ty Cobb, for instance. But it's funny when you've got Obama related to both Bush AND Cheney. :)

A sad milestone

Four U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, death toll 4,000

President Bush has a good deal of blood on his hands.

He would have fit right in with the Bush Administration

Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950

They both seem to think the concept of habeas corpus should be thrown out in the name of whatever menace to national security they can think up.

Oh, good grief

It's bad when FEMA has to resort to fake news conferences to make itself look good.

FEMA blasted for 'news' conference

Someone's going to get grief over that one. It's just another thing that makes the Bush Administration look like a bunch Keystone Cops running around in all directions. I notice they have nothing like a retraction or apology on their website, at least when I looked at it tonight.

Bush doesn't get it

The Battle over SCHIP

Congress' reauthorisation of the State Children's Health Insurance Programme (SCHIP), which has had great success in expanding coverage to children of the working poor, seemed like a no-brainer, until President Bush threatened to veto it. Maybe Bush should try living on a low-income whilst raising children.

We couldn't possibly cover the health care of children whose parents make below a certain income level, right? Because that would put us on the road to socialised medicine? If the SCHIP bills refuse to go into law, reauthorising the monies required to continue the states' health care programmes, many families are going to see their children's health care go down the tubes. And we all know that preventative health care is less costly than when things get acute.

Except President Bush.

Reason #582 for me to dislike George Bush

He's considering vetoing a law that would expand the definition of 'hate crime' to include not only those based on race, religion, colour, national origin, but expand it to include those targeting sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability. A House bill recently passed budgets $10 million over the next two years to supplement local authorities in the prosecution of hate crimes. It will also allow federal officials to participate in investigations (I'm assuming to keep down local cover-ups or disinterest that may hender resolution of a case). The Senate is expected to pass a similar bill shortly.

Not surprisingly, religious right groups are opposing the bill and crying foul, saying that it violates free speech (read, 'hate speech').

House passes expanded hate crime bill