( Cut because you all had similar experiencesCollapse )

 

 Yeah so Saturday March 26th, 2011 we got into a pretty nasty car wreck. Here's what happened.

I had just dropped off the Versa at the dealership to have an oil and filter change done. Danielle came later to pick me up because we had intended to run some errands before coming back so I could finish painting the office and replanting my seedlings into a proper dirtbox so they could grow. I had friends coming over around 5pm or so for gaming and I wanted to have the office put back together by then.

Danielle showed up and I could tell she was worried. She'd talk to her mother and as it turned out the MIL was in the Emergency Room at Saint Agnes Hospital complaining of vertigo. Danielle was slightly indecisive about what to do so I said "Dude, it's your mother. Lets go."

We went down to Saint Agnes but we weren't quite sure where it was or hot to get there so Danielle asked me to look it up on my phone since her car doesn't have a Nav. I used the Map application to plot a route. Most of it was self explanatory but at the end it did something weird. It routed us off Canton avenue for some reason and down a street called Benson. It then had us go on some road that ran parallele to Canton for a bit then back onto Canton, effectively making a big circle for no apparent reason.

We got onto Canton avenue and I only noticed Benson after we were mostly through the intersection. I was like "Uh.. that was Benson back there..." We continued up Canton while I looked back down at my phone to see where it was going to route us. The next intersection after Benson had a light (Wilkin's avenue I think?) and was basically the entrance to the hospital. This is where the phone was routing us. Why it didn't do that to start with I don't know. But I told Danielle to make the left and we stopped at the intersection to wait for traffic to clear.

i don't know why precisely this makes me laugh but it does. In case you didn't know there was a major progressive/liberal rally down in DC today. I'll be interested in seeing some crowd estimates by credible sources but for right now the neo-cons are claiming nobody showed up and liberals are claiming two billion people showed up. SSDD right? Here is a collection of the news stories about it. Just look at the titles:

MSNBC: Thousands gather for 'One Nation' rally in D.C
CNN: Liberal coalition rallies in D.C. for jobs, education
Reuters: Big crowd gathers for liberal rally in WashingtonCBS News: Thousands Gather in D.C. to Support Dems' Agenda
ABC News: Liberals Rally in D.C. One Month Before Midterm
Christian Science Monitor: Liberals rally in Washington: Will it help Democrats?
Associated Press: DC rally shows support for struggling Democrats
Wall Street Journal: Liberal Groups Stage D.C. Rally


All of these article titles are pretty neutral. I don't know anything about estimating crowds but based on the pictures I've seen I'd say the number is probably less than a million and more than say 50,000. But I haven't seen any of the top down photos yet and no official crowd estimates. However, saying a 'Big Crowd' or 'Thousands' is a perfectly accurate assessment just based on the pictures. Even Murdock's pet Wall Street Journal was relatively neutral (even if it was buried and I had to search for it)

Now here's the right wing crowd at Fox News.

FNC: Invoking Tea Party Anger, Thousands Rally in D.C. in Support of Dems' Agenda

Yes, that's the whole reason why the march happened. Just to piss off the Tea Party. All that crap about fixing America and decent jobs and stuff, that's just there to piss off the Koch brothers. lol. Stay classy, Fox.

Just in general. You ever have a day that's going half decent and the somebody decides you might like a cactus enema just because they're a fucking douche? Yeah that's what today was like

So now I'm sitting on the back deck waiting on a burger to chat , drinking a beer and wondering if I should just let the asteroid hit he earth rather than suiting up with Bruce Willis to save the earth. Cuz really there are far too many raving douchebags in this world. Most of them are in public office but because the universe holds us all in a very special contempt there's one in your office too.

It was nice to go back home again to the warm welcome of friends. The weather was gorgeous and fall like, unlike previous early Septembers wherein you cooked in your own juices. I did feel out of uniform in my danes and without my trusty mug but all in all it was like coming home after a long trip. With all the stress of the last several weeks it was precisely what I needed.

(Unfortunately) I've dropped a bunch though. We went through the ren garb tub and tried on everything and nothing fits me anymore. The kilt I bought in Edinburgh (the one souvenir I was really happy with) is something like 4 sizes too big for me now. I'm literally swimming in it and I've only gotten to wear it like twice since I bought the thing for like 40 pounds. I can now get into the gladiator belt that I haven't been able to wear in like six years, but almost all the rest of my garb is either old and gnarly (Dra stuff is still in good shape though) or with bits falling off.

Gonna have to put some money into it and probably bust out the sewing machine to run out a few shirts ( I hate buying shirts cuz I can rarely find something I like for a reasonable price that won't act like a basting bag in the hot weather). Moresca did have a doublet I really liked and a shirt that I liked as well but both of which were too damned big. Apparently there was a run on regular sized clothes and only the things left were too small and too big. They also had a pretty bad ass cloak that I really liked (which was surprisingly reasonable in price) but would be far too warm for this time of year.

I'm probably just already emotionally unstable from the shit going on with my mom. But the news that Jack Horkheimer (The Star Hustler), a guy who'd be on screen less than a minute once a week at like 1am on PBS.... died two days ago makes me want to start crying. I kinda grew up with him considering how much time I spent as a kid watching PBS (Dr. Who) and not sleeping I'm not surprised I have at least a little emotional attachment to him. He went on the air two years after I was born and had been doing his periodic stargazing shorts as long as I can remember. Hell he's part of the reason I wanted (and still want) a telescope. You may only know him by his tagline ("Keep looking up!") and weird techno music. But if you've watched PBS in the last thirty some years you've probably seen him.

Still, the guy made it a good 72 years. That's a pretty nice long run of things. He died on the 20th of a 'respiratory ailment'. I assume this means pneumonia or something but every story I've found about it just says respiratory ailment.

Did someone turn back the clock to 2005 when I wasn't looking?

( CNN w/Anderson CooperCollapse )

Photos of the disaster - Yeah it's from a conspiracy site, but the photos are linked from other places.

It is now apparently the policy of our government that you must maintain a 65 foot perimeter around ships or booms in the oil spill cleanup. If you get closer, you risk a felony arrest charge and $40k in fines. Instead of it just being BP's hired goons doing the intimidation with threats of arrest, it is now the very people we put into power to protect us from this sort of draconian bullshit under the Bush administration.

Why not? BP is currently spending more money running commercials about how good they're doing on the cleanup, than they are doing the cleanup. Meanwhile the gulf is being turned into one big ass dead zone and our President sits on his hands. Don't give me that bullshit about the Fed not being able to handle Oil spill clenaup either. BP can't even handle it, as their emergency plans have shown. But the President can very well nationalize that damned company and force them to do whatever it is they're not doing. Obama has the power to do whatever is needed to fix this problem and yet after 70+ days we're still leaking and now we're not even allowed to know about it. Put together a dream team, and fucking fix it. Enough excuses.

This is not what I voted for. This is what I voted against. You've heard it from me before, if this is something that bothers you - call your Congressidiots. If enough people contact them, maybe something will be done.

NOW, this is Obama's Katrina. This is fucking ridiculous.

Recent net searches on vehicles to replace the now 8 year old and half falling apart xterra or the SRSLY fubarred Elantre reveal that vehicles worth driving are vastly overpriced for what you get.

Seems as tho I am stuck between pumping thousands (on the order of 5k in the last two years) into these pos's or buying some overpriced plastic car.

I realize I am picky but for once in my life I want to own a vehicle that I like and want to drive rather than something I bought because I had to. I don't want another used vehicle because it has been my experience that you are just buying someone else's problems... And whilst I like my SUV in principal I am no longer willing to drive a vehicle that gets less than 30mpg given my 80 mile per day work commute. I'm tired of feeling guilty about how much gas the damned thing used (hummers now get better fuel Econ than me) But any monetary savings in gas would just be sucked up in a new car payment because of it.

I've still got about 9 payments left on the damn thing too, which would add another hunk onto any new vehicle I get. I hope to hold out of course but the xterra has already cost me over a grand this year and it's not even half over.

(assuming anyone still reads this lj) can anyone relate any good car experiences or recommend any reasonably priced sedan's/suv's that get decent economy?

My last posting was six months ago. That surprises me and yet not so much. I retreated from the world when it became too difficult to bear and too stressful to handle. Between work, home and politics I decided to back off and focus on home. I am so deeply disappointed with the Obama administration and the Democrats in general that I can barely stand to read the headlines and my anger and frustration was impacting my health. I'm now on anti-anxiety medication, which I take as needed. I can now understand why so many people just stick their head in the sand when it comes to politics.

Work is still work. Had some struggles. Things appear to be stable currently but who knows.

My daughter is now 3 years old and I love her even if she frustrates me. She just went on her first beach vacation with the family. About to go back to work tomorrow and had to write down (on a private filter) a summary of the major events since the last posting and thought I'd pop in a public posting to let people know I'm still alive and kicking assuming anyone cares to read it. Feeling a bit of the post vacation melancholy at the moment.

Thats all for now. I need to go shave my grizzly adams beard and attempt sleep so I'll be ready for work tomorrow. Whether or not I continue to post I am not sure.

Goodnight all and i hope you had a pleasant weekend.

The earliest they could get someone out was today. So we've been around a week or so without heat. Luckily it hasn't been that cold and we've been able to supplement with one of those electric oil radiator heaters that I bought the last time our heat blew up.

Anyway they set us up with a 12 noon to 4pm window... now because Dani is in florida I have Mia on my own from tonight till Sunday.

This makes the hour + (5 gallons of gas each way) drive to work pointless because I'd be there only a couple of hours before having to drive back. To be there for the noon window. So I stayed home and worked over the net. Personally I'd rather be in the office but whatcha gonna do?

Around 2:30 I get a call from Bluedot saying "You're next" and the technition will call me when he's on his way.

At 4 pm I start getting pissed, because now I've gotta go pick up my child from daycare and I don't want these guys showing up while I'm out and then leaving.

So I go and get back... 5 rolls around.. then 5:30...So I pick up my cellphone to call up and chew these guys out and find out that yes... their office is CLOSED.

I'm about to lose my shit by this point. I wasted a whole day waiting on these guys.

So  I call back again to leave a message when the house phone rings and it's their dispatcher again telling me that the guy will be there shortly. He just finished up a trouble call and he's en route.

530 turns into 6:05 when he finally rolls up. Two hours and five minutes PAST the bottom end of the window I was told to expect him.

I explain to him that the diagnostic light is blinking once after failure, which indicates a problem with gas flow, gas valve, the ignighter or flame sensor. I also tell him that this fits with what I've been seeing. In order to keep us at a decent temperature I've been using a BBQ lighter to light the furnace.

It goes through a predictable cycle.
1. Power up
2. Fan turns on.
3. Lots of whirring noises.
4. Big time hissing noise which is the gas flowing into the ignition area.
5. One or two clicks as the igniter fires
6. WHOOSH

The thing's actually pretty cool. It looks like a jet engine or something when it fires. The last time this happened it was the flame sensor that wasn't working. After step #6, the flame sensor heats up significantly and it's capacitance changes, thus indicating that there is in fact a flame. If this doesn't happen the system vents any gas that had been emitted and then shuts down and blinks the 'Hey dude, your heater ain't working' light.

So basically I'd wait for #4 and put a lit BBQ lighter into the back of the chamber where these trumpet looking things focus the flames through holes in the back to heat the air. WOOSH... and then after that it worked fine.

Logically this tells me that whatever is supposed to be igniting the gas isn't doing it's job.

My boss's reaction to the knowledge that I was lighting the heater with a BBQ lighter was basically "Are you out of your damned mind?" Actually he recommended wrapping the house in saran wrap so that when it reached orbit I'd have a few seconds of air to breath.

I show him where it is... flick the heater off.. and back on so it begins it's startup/diagnostic cycle.

About five minutes later he comes up with the igniter which looks all discolored and says "You were right."

then he proceeds to ask me when I called it in.

Regular time is $132 an hour. Yes you're  reading that right. Overtime is $160 something an hour. Which I suppose is better than time and a half but even so, it's FUCKING INSANE. It's not cutting open a brain and replacing the hypothamlus. It's putting a part off of heater and replacing it with another part you have in your truck.

Anyway I said "We called this in a week and a half ago and this was the first appointment they had....  you're also TWO HOURS LATE. There's no way I'm paying you overtime."

And naturally this is 'hour or fraction thereof' and not full hours. By 6:30 dude was back upstairs writing up the paperwork and when he was calling in to run my credit card number (unfortunately I had to put it on a card because we're flipping broke) it was 6:53. I checked. All told he worked for roughly 25 minutes and that's mostly because I had already done the diagnostic for him.

So now, I'm $214 poorer (which will actually end up being more since I had to put it on a freaking credit card) but at least I have heat. I should write up a bill for the 8 hours of work time I lost sitting around waiting for them because of these bozos and overtime for the extra two hours they had me waiting after they were supposed to be there.

and now I'm seriously considering doing my own HVAC from now on. $214 is a hell of a lot of money to spend on a glorified BBQ lighter.

To all my pagan peeps!

( Pirate Mia!Collapse )

A year ago today I was just waking up from a trip to Fels point and was starting to get ready....and of course two days later I was back to working 16 hours a day.

Now I'm preparing to take my kid out for her first session of trick or treating in the Pirate costume I made for her (Year 1 she was too young to know what was going on... last year she was at the Wedding)

I can't believe a year has gone by so quickly.

Happy anniversary honey.

( An angry screed against Republican partisans***Collapse )

[Wikipedia][Personal Website]

I wrote this guy an email after the last flap telling him to school his associates on what it's like to have a spine. I am pleased to see that he's keeping up with it.

Lead, follow or get out of the way indeed! Maybe there's hope for this party yet.

( Lead, follow or get out of the wayCollapse )

( The Rising - ReviewCollapse )

Edit: The contest is already over.. Bummer.

Necronomicontest

Thought you'd like to have a look.

( City of the Dead - ReviewCollapse )

Yeah so I finished 'City of the Dead' finally by Brian Keene. I'm pretty sure the first quarter of the book could be removed and not have much of an impact on the storyline. Very little exposition, mostly because it's the 2nd of two books (I thought I had the first book) so you're sort of dumped in the middle with no idea WTF is going on. I get the impression Keene's got apocalypse wood for religion and must have been beaten as a kid for masterbation or something. There's litteraly like five or six different times where people are whacking off or having particulalry messed up sexual encounters for no apparent reason. You get to 'em and it's like "Why the hell is this in the story?"

It wasn't a bad book per se, but it wasn't a great one either. It was, however, packed with action, gore and

The Belonio Stove on Make.com
The Belonio Stove

came across this on Make.com, thought you guys might like it. In that directory is a full PDF of analysis and diagrams on how to build it.

Vaguely homoerotic Star Trek TOS - "Closer" Video (Nine Inch Nails) between Spock and Kirk.


( Cut for VideoCollapse )

I think the same song needs to be used for one between Picard and Crusher. I'm pretty sure I'd drop dead from laughing so hard.

Belize is not on my list of places to visit.

( Nature Hates you - Botfly removalCollapse )

Polifact.com - The Truthometer

As seen on my facebook crap.

It's a site that monitors what the talking heads of all parties are saying, investigates and calls bullshit or verifies them. Sorta like Snopes for politicians but less early 90's styling....some of it's pretty funny too.

Check it out if you get a chance.

Not long after I got home and fed Mia dinner, Danielle came down from upstairs. She has some stomach bug that's been kicking her butt for the last couple of days. I was out in the kitchen making myself dinner while keeping an eye on Mia through the kitchen/living room pass through. Mia cried out "It's mommy!" as she always does and Danielle came over to give me a kiss. I kissed her and caught Mia out of the corner of my eye climbing up over the arm of the couch. Something she knows* she's not allowed to do.

I called to her and told her to get down. She ignored me. So I clapped my hands loudly to get her attention and she laughed. I'm not sure what she was going after on that end table.

So I went to go into the living room to get her down off the couch. but she did what she always does. Plops down on her butt so she doesn't get caught. At some point in the less than two seconds it took me to go from watching her through the passthrough to walking around the counter to get into the living room she started screaming. I wasn't really sure what had happened but I assumed she was just tired. I don't think she got a nap today and she makes a very distinct scream at times when she's really freaking out or she has a really bad dream. But thus far every time I'd heard that distinct sound it was when she was tired, upset and at her rope's end. One point a while back she made that noise for about two hours and I couldn't make her stop until she exhausted herself. It is a piercing, shrieking sound that makes my ears ring.

Well apparently she makes that sound when she's in a lot of pain too.

We surmise what happened was that she went to plot down on the couch on her butt and hit her arm or elbow or hand on something. There didn't seem to be any bruising or swelling. There was no obvious crunchy bits and just touching her arms didn't cause her to cry. However when her arm moved or turned a little bit.... she screeched...and was holding her arm like she was in pain.

We spent some time calming her down (as much as one can calm a toddler in pain down). Danielle came to the conclusion she needed to go to the ER a bit before I did but based on her behavior I agreed that we should get her checked out. I was thinking more along the lines of her spraining something.

When I moved her to the car, she wailed in pain. Dani sat in the back of the truck to comfort her and I drove over. Getting her out of the truck also generated ear piercing screams before I could get her inside and sit her down and rock her and coo to her to calm her down. The ER was largely empty so we got called pretty quick. I'm sure Mia's screams probably sped them up a bit too. They examined her and took her temp. But she wouldn't let the triage nurse touch her boo boo arm.

The ER nurse told us it was probably something called 'Nursemaid's elbow'. Basically if a kid lands hard and the wrong way the tendons pop off and slide under essentially dislocating her elbow.

yeah... ow.

The Doctor came in and the same thing happened Mia wasn't letting anybody touch her arm. The doctor examined her and came to the same conclusion. She said basically it just required some manipulation of the arm and it was going to hurt but with a little twist the tendon would pop back on it's own.... yes. Pop back.


aaaaaack!

She got it to work, and Mia screamed a bit. I turned away. I can watch people standing there with their legs half chainsawed off but seeing people I care about in pain or stuff like that bothers me.

Luckilly I didn't hear any pops... and as the Doctor predicted, Mia was fine within about ten minutes. To make sure, the Doc asked her to raise her arm over her head. But Mia wasn't having it. She was scared it was going to hurt. So the Doc went and got a coloring book and crayons....

and Mia colored, with her right arm. The one she hurt.

So yeah she's fine...and our second trip to the ER lasted all of about twenty minutes. That's the quickest I've ever gotten out of an ER for anything.  The Doc said that toddlers are prone to this sort of thing and it would likely recur until she is about 4 years old. So she showed Danielle how to fix it on her own but said she could always take Mia to the ER if need be.

ack!

I'm glad my daughter's ok. It was hard to see her in pain. With luck she'll stop jumping on the couch but i'm not gonna bet on it. So yeah, tonight sucked. But at least she's ok and that's all that matters.

* as much as any toddler 'knows' anything about the rules.

McCain speaks with angry crowd at Ariz. town hall - Yahoo! News:

Sen. John McCain met with an angry crowd at a town-hall meeting about health care reform Wednesday, sometimes having to fight to talk and telling one woman who wouldn't stop yelling that she had to leave.

The Arizona senator hadn't yet opened up the meeting at McCain's central Phoenix church to questions when one audience member continuously yelled over him.

"You're going to have to stop or you're going to have to leave," McCain told the woman. When security guards approached to escort her out, he told her "Goodbye, see ya" to a round of applause.

Let me be clear on this one. I don't agree with McCain on quite a bit. I didn't want him as President. I voted against him. I certain don't agree with him or his party on health care reform or the steps we need to take to get us out of this recession.

However, Democrats out there should fucking sit up and pay attention.

When faced with an abnoxious astroturfer at his town hall meeting about health care - McCain told her to STFU.

He did it politely, which surprised me. Normally he's a hot headed old man. I'm surprised he didn't throw his walker at the woman. But ultimately he told her that if she didn't stop being a jackass she was going to have to leave.

and when she didn't stop - He had her escorted out.

That's how you do it Democrats.

and if the fuckers outside want to cause physical problems? Break shit? Threaten people? Get into fights? Have the damned police take care of it. Don't be afraid to bust out the tasers if need be. Nobody gave a damn about beating down hippies during the 70's, or even the anti war protesters (half a million of them in NYC alone) back in March of 2003. If these people want a place at the table they're going to have to be civilized or they should get booted out on their asses.

Don't taze me bro!

Senator Edward Kennedy Dies at Age 77

I don't really put much salt into US News sources, but this is the BBC. So, i'm gonna guess it's probably correct. It's also on CNN and ABC as well.


Can't say I had any particular like or dislike of the guy. I didn't really know much about him. But from what I saw I figured he was going to beat it. I feel sorry for his loved ones.

RIP

The Colony(Wiki)
The Location(Google Earth) - Supposedly this is the site of the warehouse. Doesn't look like it though.
The Colony (Discovery Website)

For some reason Discover provides sharing and embed code for everything BUT livejournal so I've provided the links below. The Colony is basically an 'experiment' pitting 10 specialized civillians and sticking them in a simulated situation wherein a viral outbreak has decimated the planet and they are forced to survive. They have nothing but the clothes on their back - no go bags, no car, no tools and apparently a large section of Los Angels, where the warehouse they end up in is located, has been cordoned off or evacuated or something in order to give the impression that the place is deserted (either that or its' really good CGI).

Yes, it's a scripted reality show. Yes these people are actors and supposedly 'real people'. But overall it's entertaining for pseudo-survivalist nutters like me. Hell the only thing really missing is zombies and then it'd be a real party. They end up holding up in an abandoned warehouse/factory which looks as though it might have been used as an auto shop at one point. It is of course very obviously used to help them stay alive. Various challenges are presented to them to over come - not in a 'Survivor pick from the hat' sort of way, but in a 'Dude there's somebody banging on the door with a fricken battering ram' type of way.

Edit: Oh and I forgot, before being sent into the zone the survivors are supposedly kept awake for 30 hours in order to simulate the exhaustion with survival during the first critical days. Dunno how truthful that is or not.

Episode 1: Power Struggle
Episode 2: Comfort In Chaos
Episode 3: Safety and Security
Episode 4: A Stranger Among Us

Thus far they've done some pretty innovative things to survive they also do some really stupid shit that had I or most of my friends been in the group would have never happened. They acknowledge that in disaster/emergency scenarios you have certain priorities based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

1. Air
2. Water
3. Food
4. Shelter
5. Security

Once you've got the basics down, THEN you worry about other shit. You can't go worrying about whether or not you've got Cable TV and air conditioning, for example, if you don't have a safe place to bed down. You can't go worrying about a place to bed down, if you're suffocating because you don't have air. Of course all of these things except air sorta go out the window if someone's trying to bash your head in with a pipe.

That sort of thing.

They also have various sidebars by supposed crisis specialists - security, psychology, doctors and stuff who aren't directly invovled in what's going on but make commentary to let the viewer know what is going on and in some cases the 'correct' course of action in the situation might be.

It's an interesting show and it's given me quite a few ideas here and there and even shown me some things I hadn't thought about or known about. For example, apparently when you heat up wood but don't allow it to burn it produces a flamable gas called Wood Gas which can then be used to power stuff like, in their case, a pressure washer motor which they rig up to a pair of car alternatores and a bank of old car batteries to produce and store electricity.

Check it out if you haven't already. It will probably give you a few ideas too. It's an interesting show if a bit contrived in some places and one dude seriously over-reacts to the point where he's in need of a clue by four. You'll know him when you see him. You'll probably want to bust him in the face too.

What would really be interesting, but depressing, would be if 10 random people were put in this situation instead of 10 handpicked people who have important useful skillsets.

For example instead of having an engineer and a construction worker and a doctor and a fitness instructor/martial artists randomly send in with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

How about:

1. An overweight gamer skilled in electronics
2. A redneck hill billy who knows how to make his own bullets and guns, plant crops and hunt
3. A fat paranoid, security concious computer programmer zombie enthusiast who can fish
4. A trained psychologist who also happens to be a martial artist
5. A trained nurse
6. An armed police officer who was a former marine
7. A dental assistant
8. A car salesman
9. A lawyer
10. A conservative TV pundit

Now that would be an interesting pairing. I'd be curious to see which one ended up dead first. There is also the quesiton of, why arent' there children in the mix here? You want to talk about adding stress to the situation? Try taking care of a terrified,starving child while you're trying to rebuild society after something like this.

Oh, and there should be zombies.

H.R. 3200
[PDF - note 1017 pages!][GovTrack][THOMAS][OpenCongress][WashingtonWatch][Congress.org]

And for an added  bonus [OpenSecrets.Org-Heath][Opensecrets.org -Insurance][OpenSecrets.org-Pharmaceuticals] if you really want to know how the voting will go down on this bill, fire up OpenSecrets. Anyone getting more than 10k in the last year from the insurance industry will be voting no.

Apparently this bill is IMPOSSIBLE to find and is being kept secret from the public because of Democrats (NOT!).

It actually requires someone with half a brain to fire up google and type, and then wait for 14 seconds. ZOMG CONSPIRACY!

No wonder these idiots think there are death panels and we're trying to kill old people and shit.

This is basically in here for reference. I'm not sitting down and reading a 1017 page bill to give bullet points. If you're interested in doing that it's up to you. I don't think this bill will make it through the House because the Democrats are a bunch of damned cowards too afraid of what people who wouldn't vote for them anyway would think to do the right thing.

As far as my own outlook: Universal Single Payer.

That's what I want and if jackasses want to keep coming to town meeting to act like hooligans - bust out the damned tasers and handcuffs. They're entitled to their oppinons, they're not entitled to try to intimidate me or drown out mine.

For those of you missed it on Facebook, MD Senator Ben Cardin is having a meeting tonight at Towson. It's one of those town-hall meetings that Republican thugs have been disrupting in the attempt to derail not just a policy they don't agree with but all legitimate debate on the subject as well.


If you have the time, please give Senator Cardin a call and lend him your support. I just got off the phone with his office and he supports a full public option...which is good though not quite as far as I'd like him to go...but at least it's not what the opposition wants which is business as usual.

Senator Ben Cardin
410-962-4436
410-962-4156 (F)


Universal Single Payer is what I want but who the hell cares what I think.

50 million of your fellow Americans have no insurance at all. Millions more are losing their coverage because of job loss or other factors. They need this help.

( Mr Bombastic - Mr. BeanCollapse )

Got out of the birthday biz for a while as I was distracted by things. However I'd like to send some birthday wishes out to bittibuddha and jmthane who completed another trip around the sun today.

Happy birthday, ladies!

A friend of mine just asked me (the officiant at my first wedding that play I was in a few years back)for some web vendors where she can get garb for her grandkids. They are all girls ages 10, 8 and 3. She's looking to take them to faire around Labor day so this would need to be before.

She used to use renstore.com but it went up apparently. Does anyone have any recommendations? Doesn't have to be all fancy or anything. But she'd like some references to go to because most of what she's finding online is crap.

Princess stuff is ok, peasanty stuff, even lightly wenchy is fine.

Thanks in advance!

( Click to see it.Collapse )

So the foot's still hurting and bruised. But I finally heard back from the Doc. It's no broken and there is no tissue damage as far as she can tell. So basically she said to keep it elevated and ice it two or three times a day to keep the swelling down. Unfortunately the freaking flip-flips I'm wearing rest right on the bruise so I only put them on when needed.

Yeah so, today sucked balls.

The CARS (Cash for Clunkers) program ran out of money on Friday after only about two weeks, and the auto industry has sold about 24,000 cars on the program. See, THAT is the way you do stimulus. For a measly $1 billion you helped out 24,000 people and got 24,000 shitty gas guzzling cars off the road to be recycled. What did we get for the $750 billion we gave the banks? AIG executives taking spa vacations, getting facials, corporate jets on my dime. All the while tent cities are popping up with formerly middle class folks who are now homeless.

And If anybody talks about bootstraps or 'personal responsibility' for those tent city people I'll fucking punch you in the eye (once I can move again - see below) . Where's the personal responsibility for AIG? Hell, where's the PUBLIC responsibility?

But I digress.

The house just passed a bill to put another $2 billion into the program. So that's good...

However, I'm not eligible for the program anyway as I still owe $3500 on my clunker. That's right, if you owe even a dollar on your car you're ineligible. I think that's retarded so I'll be calling up Ben and Babs on Monday.

Even so, I'm still eligible for Dodge's matching incentive money. Only problem being that they only have one vehicle that even comes close to the 30mpg that I want: Dodge Caliber. Which isn't exactly a bad vehicle, but isn't exactly great either. But because I'm not eligible for the stimulus, I'd basically be getting about $3k from them which you might note won't quite pay off what I already owe.

Making my payments nonviable.

But wait. There's more.

I was half asleep on the couch earlier when my MIL mentioned that our deck umbrella was gone.

So I went hunting for it and found that it had blown off the deck, and landed point down in the neighbors yard. But because it has such a long staff on it, the end with the stand was just hanging over the railing of our deck.

So I went down the stair to where it was and pulled it up. Apparently the 15-20lb umbrella stand wasn't on tight enough because it slipped off and *BAM* landed on my left foot on the instep just behind the toes.

i figure I got at least 500 Daddy XP for not cussing a blue streak when it happened. My daughter was less than 10 feet away so I bit my lip and growled through the pain. The swelling started almost immediately and I managed to get up the three steps to the deck and another two steps to a chair before the pain started in buckets. Almost immediately a wave of nausea washed over and and it was all i could do to keep down my lunch. I got to be at least a 3rd level Daddy by now.

I could actually *see* my instep getting bigger in the sock. So I peeled it off as gently as I could to get a look at it, already a big ass bruised knot had formed. So Dani went and got me some ice for it.

I can wiggle my toes and I dont't think it's broken. But it's not exactly sunshine and rainbows. So I've got it elevated and I'm alternating ice on it. I've also taken some ibuprofin which is cutting the pain a bit.

( The Daughter SongCollapse )

( Biff From Back to the Future SingsCollapse )

Car Allowable Rebate System

President Obama signs cash for clunkers bill
Obama Signs Cash-for-Clunkers Bill

You may remember back to this post: Call to action: Cash for Clunkers Bill

Wherein I talked about a stimulus plan that gave you a voucher to buy a more fuel efficient car, thus reducing dependence on foreign oil, increasing national security and giving the auto industry a little tickle so that all those nice people out there who are two steps from the soup line can find a job.


[GovTrack][THOMAS][Congress.org][OpenCongress.org][VoteSmart.org] - House Version
[GovTrack][THOMAS][Congress.org][OpenCongress.org] - Senate Version

TITLE XIII - Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Program
[Cars.gov(PDF)][Congress.org]

It had been sitting in Senate committee for a bit, but I got a call from (of all people) MY MOTHER this weekend to ask me if I'd heard about the bill.

I figured the worst, that somehow the flouncing Democrats had yet again let the Republicans shove them around and killed the bill.

But apparently, perhaps for the first time in a while, our Legislative branch got something resembling a conscience, put down their diamond studded champaign glasses (Gift from AIG along with 10,000 bottles of Moet) looked around at the country in flames all around us and said "You know... maybe we should cut these paupers a break?"

The above site contains a faq that will answer most of your questions if you have any. The only thing I don't get, is when and where the bill passed. GovTrack hasn't been updated (and appears to be down currently) and THOMAS doesn't mention the bill's passage. None of the other tracker sites I frequent have any more recent information than last month, which is to say freaking pathetic. Even THOMAS doesn't have the most up to date information because if Obama signed it, then it had to go through the Senate therefore there should be a vote on record. Apparently my Google-fu is not strong enough to find it.

I will be going over the FAQ with a fine tooth comb in the mean time. The bill goes into effect later in the month.

However it would appear that my family is not eligable for the program (DAMNIT!) because if you go to the FAQ
and scroll down to "How do I know if my car or truck is an eligible trade-in vehicle' it says "Fuck you Ed!" right underneath the bulle point where it says : must also have been manufactured not later than model year 2001

Now, my gas guzzling POS is a 2002. It's possible that since it says "manufactured" I might still be eligable and I hope so. I mean if it was a 2002 truck it would likely be manufactured in 2001 right? Guess I'll have to find out. But I'm guessing that I don't qualify, which sucks donkey balls.

EDIT: Confirmed, the little sticker in the door says that the truck was manufactured in 02/02. DAMNIT! Oh well, at least some Americans will benefit from this even if I can't.

EDIT AGAIN: Actually from further reading, the 2001 thing is only for category 3 vehicles, which are apparently very large work trucks rating between 8500 and 10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight. Basically large pickups and cargo vans. So I might well be eligible for it after all.

However, if YOU are eligable, I suggest you get your butt over to that site and start combing through. Don't flip out and go buy the first 'cool' thing you can find either. Make sure you can afford it. New cars still come with costs you have to pay. So keep that in mind.

But that's socialism! Yeah so is having a police force paid for by the government. So is that fire department that just stopped your house from burning to the ground. So is having food inspectors give you reasonable insurance that you're not going to drop dead because you ate a burger. So is having someone create standards for that hypodermic you have used in the hospital so it doesn't break off in your arm. So is making sure that every house in America has access to electric power (power companies didn't do it - Uncle Sam did). So is that road you drove to work on - you didn't pay for 100 miles of road. In fact your taxes probably paid for less than 10 miles of roads unless you're like 150. So is the internet that you are currently reading this post from - it was a military project originally paid for by tax dollars.

You know what? Call me a Socialist. I don't give a fuck anymore. I've been voting and paying taxes since I was 16 and I'd say it's about time Uncle Sam started doing some shit for me in return besides giving all of my money to douchebag corporations and even douchbaggier religious whackos. I'm pleased to see that with the right douchebag* at the helm we're at least making progress out of this crater we've dug and we're doing it in such a way that doesn't involved another hefty tax cut for the rich fucktards that got us into this mess in the first place. If being thrilled that my government has for once taken the mega-corporate cock out of it's mouth to do what it needs to to preserve Our way of life before our corporate masters head off to pluder Dubai means I'm a socialist, then I'm a happy little socialist. Don't ask me to feel sorry for Exxon or their share holders( or any other corporation for that matter). Their world record breaking profits for the last few years were built on our backs with our resources they were built on the blood that has been shed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does that sound like I give a damn if Exxon mobile's board of directors can't afford their solid gold diamond plated digital escargot forks again this year? Fuck them.

* Wait till you see my report about Obama's legal claims about imprisoning people until you start complaining

Yeah so, I made a comment the other day when a gaming buddy of mine on Denver MU (Accelerate) had his HD blow up and lost some RP logs. I said "What's with all these people losing RP logs? Don't you guys back shit up?" This was after at least two other people I RP with had also lost logs to random fluctuations of electrons.

To paraphrase Morpheus, "Fate, it seems is not without a sense of irony"

Long story short, last night I lost ALL my gaming shit in one fell swoop. Why you ask? Cuz of a fucking typo.

Was working on a website in Joomla (an open source, easy to use freeware web content management system) and working on my windows laptop using JSAS, a program that combines Apache, MySQL and Joomla into one tidy easy to use package so you can do exacly what I was doing. Make a web page and then upload it to a server as is once you have a host.

Anyway my laptop is Vista, which you may have heard is a pain in the ass some times. I mean, who woulda had any ideat that a Microsoft product might be problemmatic in any way.

I realize when i try to login to the administrative side of the site that I'd neglected to write down the admin password. No biggie. I hadn't actually STARTED anything yet so I figured I would just delete the directory and re-install all the base stuff with JSAS. One click - done.

So I open explorer and nav to the dir in question, right click and hit 'delete'.

and Vista bitches at me. No, you can't do that... Ha ha... Screw you.

So I open the directory properties and add myself as a user with full controll. I wait for the change in rights to propagate to all the little subfiles and shit.. and I right click and delete it gain.

and Vista bitches at me. No, you can't do that... Ha ha... Screw you.

So I right click on the folder and note "Oh, it's read only! How silly of me" and FUCKING delete it.

and Vista bitches at me. No, you can't do that... Ha ha... Screw you.

This chain of events has actually happened before... which is why my Vista HD has a whole lot of extra crap on it I don't need anymore that was installed by games or other processes. I usually get to this point and say "Ah hell with it... I'll delete it later". I don't logon as Administrator as my regular user, so this is part of the problem. There's also the fact that even BEING an admin user is a joke on Vista unless of course yo logon as the default Admnistrator you're not REeEEAAaaLY an administrator. That way you don't screw things up!

Yeah... right.

So I said "Frack you Bill Gates." and nav'd to Accessories and ran a command line with the 'Run As Administrator' option. I'm old school. Console windows don't scare me. I remember the days when a DOS prompt was all you got. AND WE LIKED IT, DAMNIT! I just don't like to use them for most things cuz I'm a lazy bastard.

Anyways I pop open a command prompt... I navigate to the folder in question.

I type in: del /q /s *.*

What this translates to is this:

Delete ALL files and directories starting in this directory and in any sub directories under it. Do not prompt me for permission.

Yeah... That's right Vista Bitch! Pwned your ass! I see shit scrolling past. Then I notice something odd so I hit CTRL-BREAK to stop it. I could have sworn it just deleted my Recycler folder. WTF?

and I hit the up key to see my last command

I didn't type in: del /q /s *.*

I typed in : del /q /s \*.*

What this means is: Delete ALL files starting at THE ROOT of this drive, and in any sub directories under it. Do not prompt me for permission.

CRAP!

Ok ok... no need to panic.. I look over the command window and look at my HD and nothing serious seems be missing.

Untill about 3 hours later when Adam decided to run a Matrix plot for me. I went to try to get into my gaming folder to go hook up a log...

and for some reason...

my gaming folder...

wasn't there...

See, my gaming folder (amongst other things) was kept in a truecrypt partition in THE ROOT my drive.

DOH!

It was probably one of the first couple of files deleted too, which sucks.

But no need to panic, nothing ever gets deleted on a Windows system. Unless of course you use Eraser ( which I do ) or some other special deletion routine.

So I inform Adam of my situation: "Fuuuuuuuuuck!"

he recommands a recovery tool and I download it and I've got my fingers crossed.

and after a good two hours of whatever the recovery tool was doing.... I was able to recover...

Jack shit.

Yeah... ALL My gaming shit is gone. All of it. Ten years worth of logs. Poof. The old Ancient's website back up... gone. Characters. Character backgrounds. Programs I wrote... the whole nine.

like i said earlier: "FUuuuuuuuuuck"

But, luckilly I had just made a back up of the partition onto  portable HD in March before I went to Scotland for just such an emergency!

YAY!

Go get the drive... plug in it.... and save my... uhh.. "FUUUUUUUUUCK"

No, my wife had apparently wiped that drive at some point in may and replaced the contents with HER photo collection. Which... I remember... telling her ... to do.

*cries*

So the last hope is what may well be a year old (or longer) backup on my old desktop which doesn't have work and at least 75% of the time won't even start up. I'll yank the HD tonight and see what I can salvage. If I can find it, we also have a recovery tool here at work that might do it. But from what all little I know about computer forensics (DOD delete 4 life,yo!) i'm pretty sure the stuff is actually gone and unrecoverable.

Unfortunately this means that anyone I had runs going with... you're screwed. I'm sorry to say. I appologize profusely for being a dumbass and not backing up my shit.

So... what have I learned from this?

Moral lesson #1 - Always back up your shit. Even when you think you don't need to. Because something could happen to it.
Moral Lesson #2 - Make sure your shit is backed up. Because someone might delete the backup.
Moral Lesson #3 - All hard disks are rated for 'mean time between failures' so you know at some point your hard disk is going to fail on you.
Moral Lesson #4 - Moral Lesson #3 does not protect you from being a freaking dumbass.

I've also learned, that there are several hundred different free options for online file storage where you don't generally have to worry about failures. Dumassitude is still your own problem, nobody can completely stop that.

But one I learned about today, and thought I would share since lost RP logs seem to be a problem around here is: Dropbox
 
You can get to their site from here: https://www.getdropbox.com/home

Basically you get 2gb of storage space free and more if you pay (50gb is $9 a month). It is version controlled (so if you screw something up you can revert to previous versions). There is a mac, linux and windows client for it in addition to a web client. You can access your data from ANY computer using it. You can also share out directories and files to other people using invites, links or email addresses. Best of all it just sits there as a directory on your hard disk. It's absolutely no different in execution than using any other directory on your disk. It just has a few more properties. As far as the bandwidth of course you're limited by your connection, but since Dropbox only transmits the delta (the changes since last update) it won't be transferring nearly as much as you think.

You want to put Grandma Singing "Staying Alive" at the Karaeoke bar into it? Great. Then you can roll to your cousin Pete's computer and using the regular clients, sync and double click and watch the video you're in business. From any computer without the client you can still download the file from the web using your username/password.

They do some security and encryption on their end but recommend for the truely paranoid that if you wish you can create *drum roll* a truecrypt partition in your dropbox and sync that and just open it from any computer and use truecrypt to open it thus keeping even the Dropbox guys from seeing your shadowrun game logs, freaking out and calling the NSA on you.

So, there ya go. Public Service Message over. DL the client if you want free "FUUUUUUUUUCK" free storage space. Better yet, pester me for an invite. For every person you invite you get an Extra 250 mb of space, up to 3 gb total.

Good luck everyone.

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I can only imagine the camera operator's reaction when he saw the thing. I know sitting here behind the laptop screen I recoiled and said "What the fuck?".

They really auta send Mike Rowe down there.

Coleman Concedes, Franken Wins Seat

Republican Norm Coleman conceded his loss in a press conference Tuesday afternoon, saying he has called to congratulate the former comedian on his victory. His statement came after the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously rejected his appeal of a lower court ruling in Franken's favor.

"The Supreme Court of Minnesota has spoken," Coleman said. "I respect its decision and will abide by its result."

Coleman could have appealed the state court decision in the federal courts, though polls indicate that Minnesota voters wanted the legal battle between the onetime bitter rivals to draw to a close. The former senator said he believed that "it is time now to move forward."

"Sure, I wanted to win," he told reporters from outside his home in St. Paul. "Not just for myself but for my wonderful supporters and the important values I have always fought for. I also thought it was important to stand up for enfranchising thousands of Minnesotans whose votes weren’t counted like the others were."

But Coleman said that any "further litigation damages the unity of our state."

"I don’t reach this point with any big regrets," he said, reading from a written statement. "I ran the campaign I wanted. I conducted the legal challenge I wanted. And I have always believed you do the best you can and leave the results up to a higher authority. I’m at peace with that. As to my future plans, that’s a subject for another day."

I'd like to think that Norm's sudden concession was just him finally waking up that no matter what bullshit legal trickery or "if the glove fits" argument he was going to present he wasn't the winner of the election.

Yeah.. "further litigation". I'm guessing basically the fucker ran out of money.


I'm tempted to send a "Congratulations on Finally Realizing you Lost" card to Coleman.

Remember this guy?
Well smile when you say that. Because the SCOTUMn just ruled that Al Franken, NOT NORM COLEMAN, is the next Senator for the great state of Minnesota .

Supreme Court: Franken wins
Al Franken Wins Senate Seat

Of course then there's this:
Pawlenty: I'll certify Franken's election if there's no court order against it from a Federal Court










Ok so now that the Democrats have the much coveted 60th Seat in the Senate and a majority wherein they can tell the President to go fuck himself if he likes (something that would have been more useful five years ago than now). I'm curious about two things.

1. Who exactly will the Democrats blame now for being a bunch of ineffectual pantywaists who are more terrified of what Republicans think of them than what their own voters who put them in office in a land slide think.
   
2. How precisely are the 'states rights trump the feds', 'if we don't get our way well hold our breath and secede' 'zomg ACORN  voter fraud', 'Lets spread democracy to other countries' types in the Republican party going to justify Coleman's inevitable challenge of the election to the SCOTUS so that they too can decide that Coleman DIDN'T FUCKING WIN THE ELECTION.

Will Smalley Franken be a good Senator? Who knows. Do I care? No. I care about two things alone - that the will of the people is done and that the entrenched Republican and Democrat criminals get the boot. Coleman's lost. All he can do is continue to be a WATB and spend more money he doesn't have to lose again.

So I say, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT COLEMAN! Spend every last dime your party has to gain that last seat! It's only taxpayer money right! You're only wasting the time of your constituents! What the hell do they know anyway! You're the gift that keep on giving. Now all you need to do is go have solicit sex from a male prostitute in a airport bathroom to be the perfect Republican 'family values' candidate.

Now as far as the rest of those schmucks, you know, the ones with the (D) beside their names (and no I don't mean Sanford). Get the fuck off your asses and fix this mess. You have absolutely no excuse now. Tell the Republicans to shit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and FIX THIS COUNTRY YOU HELPED TO BREAK.

Bernard Madoff gets maximum 150 years in prison - Yahoo! News:

NEW YORK – A federal judge rejected Bernard Madoff's plea for leniency Monday, sentencing the 71-year-old swindler to spend the rest of his life in prison for an "extraordinarily evil" fraud that took a staggering toll on thousands of victims.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin cited the unprecedented nature of the multibillion-dollar fraud as he sentenced Madoff to the maximum of 150 years in prison, a term comparable only to those given in the past to terrorists, traitors and the most violent criminals. There is no parole in federal prison so Madoff will most likely die there.

"Here, the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of irresponsible manipulation of the system is not merely a bloodless financial crime that takes place just on paper, but it is instead ... one that takes a staggering human toll," Chin said.

The massive Ponzi scheme run by Madoff since at least the early 1990s demolished the life savings of thousands of people, wrecked charities and shook confidence in the U.S. financial system.

The actual loss so far has been put at $13.2 billion. But the judge said that was a conservative estimate and noted that even Madoff told his sons in December it was a $50 billion fraud.

The sentence reflected a growing tendency over the last decade to give white-collar criminals lengthy prison terms. But nothing before has come close to the time given Madoff — an outcome that prompted scattered applause and whoops from a group of burned former clients in a packed Manhattan courtroom.

We'll have to see if Bernie mysteriously dies of a heart attack in the next week and is cremated the following day. That way he can run off to whatever island Ken Lay is hiding on.

So, this fucker is 'deeply ashamed' by his actions. This is particular amusing given the testimony that he pulled his sons aside and bragged about it being a $50 billion dollar fraud and all the times I've seen footage of him being interviewed and smiling like a cheshire cat the whole time.  Regret my ass. Sociopaths don't regret things.

Besides, it's not like he's going to Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison. Rich white guys don't end up there. If he was black and accidentally stopped 5 inches past the white line at an intersection that'd be one thing. Likely he'll pull a few days at Metro and then some other rich white guy will pull some strings and get him put in a country club prison.

What I find highly amusing about it all is the following statement:

"Here, the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil"

Screwing retirees and investors out of $50 billion is an 'extraordinary evil'. Screwing 300 million Americans out of their freedom, somewhere around $3 trillion dollars and 5000 lives ... that's just politics.

In response to the news AIG executives decided to lift glasses of $2 million dollar champagne made of diamond plated diamonds to Bernie from their spas. Dick Cheney bit the head off a kitten in front of a 9 year old while Haliburton, Blackwater and Diebold had a tax exempt charity benefit serving bald eagle and danced around naked around a bonfire made of piles of copies of the US legal code and the Constitution.

Satan himself could not be reached for comment.

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive [Voltaire]:

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we’re all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."

Heard about this once before though it was in the theory stages. Like "What if the shit really hits the fan" type stuff.

Personally I think it's a good idea and it was probably inevitable. After every big boom there is a bust in this case the bust is occurring in former industrial areas. It's not like this hasn't happened before. Last time they left the crumbling old factories and power stations and rail lines to rot thus the creation of the Rust Belt. Now we live in a country that has over 300 million people, but really only needs about half that to function due to computers, automation, robots, the internet , cellphones and other technological advances.

This time they seem to be considering just bulldozing what isn't needed anymore and returning the land to nature. Seems like an interesting idea on the surface. Of course there is the question of where all the shit is gonna go. When you build a city you use a hell of a lot of toxic shit to do it. Where is it all going to go? Especially with old cities. Flint was a trading post in 1819 and incorporated as a city in 1855 and by 1860 it had over 22,000 people. So it's been around the block more than once.

It seems to me like we have finally have reached the limits of our excesses and we may well be realizing it. On one hand it's a bad thing. Less city dwellers means less city services. Less city services mean less revenue for the companies that provide them. Companies will continue to go bankrupt. People will continue to be unemployed. Unemployment puts pressure on government at all levels of society from local to county to state to federal.

But on the other than this could very well be the opening salvo of a revolution. Not 'green' in the sense where you see fucking Hummers with 'I recycle' stickers on the back. I mean where people actually start moving back to the earth. You can't help but live within your means if you your means makes you dirt poor. People could very well begin living off the land in a hopefully sustainable way again. It's already beginning too - entire city blocks of condemned buildings have been knocked down to plant community operated and community servicing farms.

Now we just need to convince those idiots we all voted for that we need to invest in renewable energy infrastructure, mass transit and yes: healthcare.

Sick people don't generally get better without help. Sick people suck up more and more resources the sicker they get. Sick people spread disease to non-sick people. Sick people suck away productivity. So, by far, it is far better and cost effective to treat them early and often before they get worse.

It would be an irony of ironies if as a result of the excess of the 20th and early 21st centuries we ended up returning to a 19th century societal model. Yes, there is SOME manufacturing and such for things that cannot easily be made by hand. But things like furniture and clothing and such can be made by hand locally with sustainable methods.

It would be an interesting Stephensonian sort of paradox if we started looking backward for a model of how to live as a society without destroying ourselves as a species. Of course we may not have a choice, given the damage we've done to our ecosystem.

Only time will tell.

Remember this post: How to make Eire go to jail for beating the shit out of a school teacher

Well apparently there is some justice left in the world after all. Now if we could just get them to extend justice to adults as well maybe we could start living up to the promises this country was founded on.

Supreme Court rejects school strip search - Yahoo! News:

A public school violated the privacy rights of a teenage girl who had to disrobe on suspicion she had ibuprofen pills, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in its first decision on student strip searches.

By an 8-1 vote, the justices upheld a ruling that the school and its officials violated the U.S. constitutional right that protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

The ruling by the nation's high court was a major defeat for school officials who had defended the strip search as necessary for student safety, school order and combating a growing drug problem.

School officials in Safford, Arizona, had ordered the strip search in 2003 of Savana Redding, who was 13 and in the eighth grade. It did not turn up any ibuprofen -- an over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medication used to treat fever, headaches and pain -- or any other drugs.

"Because there were no reasons to suspect the drugs presented a danger or were concealed in her underwear, we hold that the search did violate the Constitution," Justice David Souter wrote for the court majority.

Here's one part that sucks balls though:

In another part of the ruling, Souter said the school officials who ordered or carried out the search were entitled to immunity from liability because of uncertainty over whether the right had been clearly established at that time.

No, they're not entitled to immunity. If you fuck up you accept the consequences of your fuck up. You don't make up some random bullshit immunity to cover for yourself. AT&T wasn't entitled to any sort of immunity either. They willfully and knowingly violated the law and are likely still doing it to this day because we granted them immunity. These douchebags shouldn't get immunity for mentally scarring a pre-teen for the rest of her life over a fucking unsubstantiated accusation by another student for something that' ISN'T EVEN ILLEGAL. It's not like the other student said "Well she's got cocaine in her underware". They accused her of having ONE IBUPROPHIN.

Fuck you and your fucking bullshit Zero Tolerance nonsense. Zero Tolerance policies do not stop children who are already determined to buck authority and break laws. The only thing they do is terrify the otherwise good and law abiding children because they may get into trouble if they stand up for themselves or for someone else. We are enforcing that our children grow up as victims.

The only person who won in this situation is the little prat who decided it would be a kick to destroy this girl's life in one fell swoop. Because of this bullshit policy, essentially the same exact policy that put ordinary shepperds in Afghanistan into CIA torture rooms, the bully won.

Oh and here's another little tidbit that sucks balls:

Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the part of the ruling that Redding's privacy rights had been violated.

Thomas said the ruling "grants judges sweeping authority to second-guess the measures that these officials take to maintain discipline in their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge."

Who the fuck put this guy on the bench? Oh that's right Bush Sr.

Listen you fucking fringe. The entire purpose of the judicial system IS to second guess all those shithead tin plated dictators out there who use their positions of power and authority to abuse regular ordinary law abiding citizens. It's called the LAW. Perhaps you should give it a fucking read some time. Your job is to punish people like this, whether they be the guy who decides it's ok to murder and rape you and then steal your car or the guy who decides it's ok to strip search a 12 year old girl because she 'might have' an ibuprophin on her, so that people don't just do whatever the fuck they want to whomever the fuck they want.

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( Today We're Teaching Poodles How To FlyCollapse )

I've been suffering from outrage fatigue of late. I've got so much crap on my plate right now that I'm getting tired of eating shit sandwiches with every meal. Really I should just go back to ignoring politics like the rest of the American people. Because if people actually loved this nation like they claimed they did, criminals like Bush and Cheney would already BE in prison instead of having Obama, the supposedly 'liberal media', Republicans and general voter cowardice covering up for them.

( Olbermann - Worst Persons in the World 6/23/2009Collapse )

What I don't get though, is that this story was broke a while ago it seems. Unless of course more has been revealed why is it coming up now?

Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says - NYTimes (March 27 2006)

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

The original Downing Street memo, the Yellowcake Memo, the Manning memo and the attacks on everyone who tried to contradict the Bush war party line all spell out the fact that Bush -knowingly and willingly- lied us into war. Anything that didn't agree had to be destroyed.

My own personal theory as to motive is simple: Bush/Cheney was a fucking failure. They ignored Clinton's Al Qaeda memo and failed to stop 9/11. Their policies did absolutely nothing to keep us 'safe' or make us 'safer'. They were merely window dressing to disguise a fascist powergrab the likes of which should have had all those Teabagging assholes out there protesting but didn't. They wiped his ass with the foundational laws of this country, with the Constitution, with international law. They kidnapped and tortured people. They were raping the environment. They were ignoring the law. They invaded a country that they knew had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on our soil and put us in a situation wherein there is no -win- possible for two different wars, and flushing literally trillions of dollars and thousands of lives down the toilet in the process.

The guys who all were smart enough to figure out how to justify all of this unprecedented unconstitutional shit were also smart enough to realize that the American people would never accept any of this if they found out about it. Unless of course they were distracted by something. George W. Bush's popularity ratings going into 2003 were sitting surfing a high of the supposed Afghan victory and American nationalism and were in the mid 60's. But facts are facts. Bin Ladin was still out there and people at home on American soil (Because apparently we forgot the DC snipers, the Anthrax attacks, all the eco and anti-abortion nutjob attacks and yes attacks by foreign terrorist on American soil since 2001) and abroad were still dying in terrorist attacks anyway and we were creating an entire generation of people who had every reason opportunity and motive to continue to hate and despise us.

His handlers knew that with the Afghan war seeming like it was winding down the American people probably would not re-elect Bush in 2004 over actual decorated war veteran John Kerry. So to reinvigorate his supporters, both voters and the rich corporations, they knew he had to start another war. You don't change jockeys in the middle of the race after all. To pull off a win not only did they have to start another war to make George look like Patton, but they had to start a ridiculous propaganda campaign to make everyone else look like pussies by comparison.

62 million Americans fell for it hook line and sinker and reaped what they sowed. They should well remember that any time they try to bring up the trillions of dollars that Obama is having to spend to fix the mess that Bush left for him. If anyone should be calling for Bush and Cheney's heads for all of this - it should be the 'patriotic', 'god fearing', 'law abiding' 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' 'accept responsibility for your actions' 'government out of my life' 'Fiscal responsibility' Republicans. Instead they circle the wagons and lie and point fingers at everyone except themselves. Oh it's Nancy Pelosi's fault that Bush tortured people! But it's certainly not George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condelezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Jon Yoo, Jay Bybee or any of the Republican talking heads (O'Reilly, Beck, Scarborough, Coulter, Malkin, Savage, Limbaugh et all) who spent the better part of a decade calling Bush's torture policies a triumph, his reasons for invading Iraq justified and anyone who disagreed a traitor.

Barry Goldwater himself would be out there in the streets protesting calling for impeachments and arrests after everything that has come to light.

Our former President's agreement with Iraq says that we'd withdraw all American forces from Iraqi streets back to American bases by Tuesday. If that happens, I frankly will be amazed.

It is now Obama and the Democratic majority in both houses of Congress to END THE WAR, as they were all elected to do (and don't fool yourself that they were elected for any other reason), prosecute the guilty and fix the damage.

Stop fucking around with these traitorous criminal assholes and prosecute. Dick Cheney (Bush et all) doesn't deserve his own torturepalooza talk show on Fox. He deserves a 6x9 cell, an orange jumpsuit and 3 meals a day. And if you fucking Democrats think that we're going to just forget the fact that AFTER we put you in power you sat on your thumbs whining you'll be out of a job when your term is up too.