Oct 112011
 

Yesterday I spent most of the day at appointments, so I’m running short of sleep.  I’m current on replies.  Today I have housework to do and sleep to catch up.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:14 (average 4:30).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Reuters: Democrat Elizabeth Warren raised $3.15 million in the first stage of her bid for the Senate from Massachusetts, the former Obama administration official’s campaign said on Monday.

More than 11,000 individuals in Massachusetts alone gave to Warren’s campaign, and the vast majority of the contributions were $100 or less.

Way to go!

From CBS: California Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday signed a bill banning the open carrying of handguns in public, making California the fifth U.S. state to do so.

When I lived in Arizona, that had an open carry law, and I saw weapons used in threats on more than one occasion.  I see nothing in the Second Amendment that guarantees open carry.

From Crooks and Liars: SNL spoofs Fox and Friends.

A refreshing break!

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Oct 102011
 

Yesterday I meditated on the Ellipsoid Orb, but the Orb did not bless me.  On a positive note, Pastor Orton of the Denver congregation may have be defrocked.  I’m current on replies.  Tomorrow, I’ll be spending much of the day at an appointment.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:30 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Agony:

1009-Broncos24-Chargers29

Short Takes:

From AP/Google: Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann said Sunday that her unsuccessful fight against raising the federal debt ceiling kept her away from New Hampshire for nearly four months, but she’s still committed to winning over voters in the key early primary state.

How absurd!  I’ll have a load of that for the front lawn!

From Raw Story: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) suggested Sunday that the Occupy Wall Street protests were the fault of President Barack Obama for “sowing class envy and social unrest.”

How absurd!  I’ll have a load of that for the front lawn too!

From Crooks and Liars: Nancy Pelosi defends OWS demonstrators.

It sounds like Nancy had a load of that for the front lawn!

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Oct 092011
 

Yesterday I rested.  I did a few chores, but spent most of the day relaxing and catching up on some research. I’m current on replies.  Today is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, and I will be meditating on the Chargers’ visit to the Broncos’ cathedral.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 4:10 (average 4:50).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: A Texas pastor introduced Rick Perry at a major conference of Christian conservatives here on Friday as “a genuine follower of Jesus Christ” and then walked outside and attacked Mitt Romney’s religion, calling the Mormon Church a cult and stating that Mr. Romney “is not a Christian.”

The comments by the pastor, Robert Jeffress of Dallas, injected a potentially explosive issue into the presidential campaign: the belief held by many evangelicals that Mormons are not Christians.

I was wondering how long it would take for Perry to play the Mormon card.  Those Republicans do love to hate.

From LA Times: Declaring the need to expand educational opportunity, Gov. Jerry Brown announced Saturday that he has signed legislation making illegal immigrants eligible to receive state financial aid to attend California universities and community colleges.

Brown said he signed the California Dream Act because it makes sense to allow high-achieving students access to college financial aid.

I support the Dream Act.  Kids that have lived here virtually all their lives have benefited from having an education.  That benefit should be developed and used here.

From Crooks and Liars: Alan Grayson explains OWS.

As usual, Alan is spot on.

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Oct 082011
 

Yesterday, feeling quite tired, I ran some errands, and tried to connect with the Occupy Portland march, but without success.  I’m still running a sleep deficit. I’m current with replies.  Today I’m going to rest as much as I can.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:06 (average 4:05).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From AP/Google: The federal government asked an appeals court Friday to stop Alabama officials from enforcing a strict immigration measure that has already driven Hispanic students from public schools and migrant workers from towns, warning that it opens the door to discrimination against even legal residents.

The Department of Justice’s filing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said the law, considered by many to be the most stringent immigration rules in the country, could cause considerable fallout as immigrants flee to other states or their native countries.

Alabama Republicans actually made it a class C felony (up to 10 years) for undocumented people to buy water service.  I’m pleased to see Holder doing the right thing, for a change.

From Politico: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Friday decried the “growing mobs” of protesters flooding Wall Street, charging that the activists were creating a divisive atmosphere that pit Americans against one another.

Bull!  It is the 1% who have set Americans at each others’ throats by taking so much that far to many struggle for the scraps they leave behind for the 99%.

From Countdown: Worst Persons in the World!

Bill O’Lielly – Mooseolini – Neal Bootz

These are the cream of the Republican Party.

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Oct 072011
 

Yesterday  I got up early.  First I went through a backlog of almost 400 email items.  Then I attacked a pile of paperwork do seep that, somewhere near the bottom, I found junk mail from a guy named Noah who wanted donations to build a boat.  Then I tried to get some sleep, but as soon as I lay down,  helicopters showed up overhead and stayed there for several hours.  I feel exhausted.  I’m current on replies.  Today I have errands to run, but mostly I’ll try to rest.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:01 (average 4:37).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Houston Chronicle: Talk about your Monday from hell. Not only did Bridgett Nickerson Boyd’s car break down on her way to work, but when she pulled over to the side of the freeway, a sheriff’s deputy named Mark Goad pulled behind her, wrote her a ticket for driving on the shoulder, decided to arrest her, followed her to the hospital when her suddenly racing heart prompted a call to paramedics, then took her into custody again after she was treated by doctors and finally drove her to jail.

To make matters worse, Boyd claims in a lawsuit that the handcuffs were put on her wrists painfully tight and that she was forced to listen to conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh "make derogatory comments about black people" all the way to the jail. Boyd is African-American.

That certainly meets the definition for torture in my book!

From Think Progress: Faced with their worst budget crises since the Great Depression, states, and cities have resorted to increasingly desperate measures to cut costs. State and local governments have laid off teachers, slashed Medicaid funding, and even started unpaving roads and turning off streetlights.

But perhaps the most shocking idea to save money is being debated right now by the City Council of Topeka, Kansas. The city could repeal an ordinance banning domestic violence because some say the cost of prosecuting those cases is just too high.

This defines the importance that Republicans place on women’s rights.

From Alternet: This October marks the 20th anniversary of the infamous confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in which he almost didn’t make it to the high court due to allegations that he’d sexually harassed Anita Hill at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. House Democrats would apparently like to commemorate this event by subjecting Thomas to a new round of hearings on the Hill. On the steps of the Supreme Court this morning, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and others held a press conference calling on the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings investigating some of Thomas’s alleged ethical lapses.

This will not happen, because House Republicans celebrate Thomas’ abuse of power on their behalf, but it is good that that their blocking it will be an issue.

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Oct 062011
 

Yesterday I went bug hunting.  While sleuthing the mystery of the missing smileys, I decided to look at other themes as well.  I stripped the blog down to a bare bones installation and reinstalled plugins one at a time.  I opted not to reinstall wp-social blogroll, because reloading its info every time any page is refreshed was cumbersome.  I opted not to reinstall sendlove.to, because nobody was using it.  I tried to reinstall the old smiley toolbar, but it still does not work with our graphical comment editor.  I tested several different themes, but none met my needs like Suffusion, so I reinstalled and reconfigured that.   After all that, smileys still did not work, so I dug deeper and found that one of the smiley toolbars, that I had tested had tested, corrupted the smiley source graphics on the server.  I replaced them and smileys are back.  🙂 I missed sleep.  I got nothing else done.  I’m current on replies.  Today I gave three days of tasks to do.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 4:39 (average 5:04).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Wired: Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc., passed away Wednesday.

A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, it would be impossible to overstate Steve Jobs’ impact on technology and how we use it. Apple’s mercurial, mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he completely changed how we interact with technology. He made gadgets easy to use, gorgeous to behold and essential to own. He made things we absolutely wanted, long before we even knew we wanted them. Jobs’ utter dedication to how people think, touch, feel and interact with machines dictated even the smallest detail of the computers Apple built and the software it wrote.

He did help change the face of computing.  Condolences to those who loved him.

From Reuters: Labor unions including nurses, and transit workers were set to join the growing anti-Wall Street movement march on Wednesday through New York’s financial district, and some college students walked out of classes in solidarity.

Sadly. I have heard reports of violence, but nothing definitive as yet.

From Washington Post: A House committee vote Wednesday set in motion the final act of the long drama of approving free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.

The Ways and Means Committee votes for the three agreements set the stage for full House approval next week and Senate votes in the near future.

See today’s cartoon.

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Oct 052011
 

Yesterday I must have been more tired than I thought.  I slept late in the morning and took a long unplanned nap in the afternoon.  I’m current on replies.  Today I have all yesterday’s work to do plus a big pile of paper work.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:58 (average 4:52).  To do it, click here.  How did you so?

Fantasy Football Report:

Here’s the latest from Lefty Blog Friends, out fantasy football league.

Scores:

TomCat Teabag Trashers

ManOnDogSantorum

125.58

146.64

Texans Will Rise Again

hugos renegades

104.34

126.14

Progressive Underdogs

Playing without a helmet

139.80

127.02

Standings:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Points

 

Rank

Team Name

W-L-T

Pct

Streak

Waiver

For

Against

1 (1)

Progressive Underdogs

4-0-0

1.000

W4

6

515.86

425.66

2 (2)

hugos renegades

3-1-0

.750

W2

5

526.40

486.32

3 (3)

ManOnDogSantorum

3-1-0

.750

W3

4

523.82

483.60

4 (4)

TomCat Teabag Trashers

1-3-0

.250

L2

3

503.74

477.14

5 (5)

Playing without a helmet

1-3-0

.250

L3

2

431.90

515.08

6 (6)

Texans Will Rise Again

0-4-0

.000

L4

1

381.64

495.56

The guy I helped for half a day, when the league site trashed his ID,  thanked me by kicking my butt. 🙁

Short Takes:

From Christian Science Monitor: The New Jersey governor has been saying as much for months. He argued he wasn’t ready and his heart wasn’t in it. And as time marched on, many analysts said, it was just too late to mount a credible campaign. But when push came to shove, and ardent supporters and donors got Governor Christie to step back and reconsider, the final decision centered on his home state.

“Now is not my time,” Christie said at a news conference in the New Jersey capital, Trenton. “I have a commitment to New Jersey that I simply will not abandon.”

I strongly suspect that toilet paper use is way up among the ABR (anyone but Romney) crowd in Goperville.

From USA Today: The House has passed a short-term spending bill that keeps the government running for six weeks and buys time for future budget negotiations.

The 352-66 vote sends the measure to President Obama in time to avert a government shutdown at midnight…

…The vote also ends a fight over whether some aid for victims of Hurricane Irene and other natural disasters should have been offset by cuts elsewhere.

Lawmakers decided to drop $1 billion in disaster relief and cuts to a loan guarantee program that helps automakers retool factories to meet new fuel economy standards.

We won one for a change.  The Republican economic terrorism of blackmailing America will be back.

From Politico: The U.S. Supreme Court appears likely rule in favor of a death row inmate in Alabama who missed a deadline for appeal when a court notice sent to his lawyers at a top New York City firm was returned to sender because both lawyers had left the company.

Liberal and conservative justices alike, with the exception of Justice Antonin Scalia, signaled on Tuesday that they would throw out a federal appeals court ruling on Cory Maples that was based on the missed deadline.

It amazes me that even Scalia could be such a bastard, but I bet Teabag Thomas is goose-stepping right behind him.

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Oct 042011
 

Yesterday I slept late, because I got to bed late.  I puttered most of the day, answered my email backlog, tested several smiley toolbars without finding one compatible with our graphic comment editing plugin, designed a smiley instruction page, and looked for cartoon graphics.  Then a good  friend, who has suffered some personal difficulties called, we talked for a long time, and that I missed my sleep doesn’t matter.  I’m current with replies. Tomorrow is paperwork day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:14 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Using Smileys:

I created a new page of instructions for using WordPress smileys today.  Look at the top of the left sidebar, right-click the link and open the page in a new tab.  It lists the different smileys and the keyboard shortcuts to insert them into a comment.  It is also a picture that you can download and print.

Short Takes:

From Boston Globe: Elizabeth Warren holds a commanding lead over her rivals for next year’s Democratic US Senate nomination and would be in a dead heat with Republican Scott Brown in the 2012 general election, according to a poll released last night.

Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who recently left the Obama administration, would get 36 percent of the vote among Democratic primary voters while none of her five opponents would get more than 5 percent, according to the UMass Lowell-Boston Herald Poll.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters reached randomly by landline and cell phone said Brown would lead Warren 41 percent to 38 percent, which is within the margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

She’s doing well, considering that she just entered the race, but not well enough for us to become complacent.

From Reuters: From the traditional "swing" states of Florida and Ohio to a typically Republican-leaning state like Arizona, Democrat Obama’s political supporters are opening offices, engaging voters and rallying volunteers to create a nationwide network, even in areas unfriendly to their candidate’s cause.

The strategy is similar to Obama’s successful 2008 campaign, but it is still unorthodox.

To win the White House, traditional presidential campaigns focus their attention on a handful of states that typically swing between Republican and Democratic candidates, working to earn at least 270 of the states’ 538 "electoral votes" that determine the ultimate winner.

I prefer the 50 state strategy that he is using.  Voters in non-swing states will not become engaged, if they believe their votes do not matter enough to warrant attention.  Turnout is critical for matters down the ballot other than the Presidential race.

From News Hounds: Fox Nation never wastes an opportunity to showcase what they feel are blacks behaving badly as it appeals to their racist readers who still hold to Jim Crow family values which feature the belief that blacks can’t control themselves. Good Christian Republican whites who transgress are not seen on Fox Nation which, I guess, believes that said transgressions are just good Christian man needs. One of the lede "culture" threads on today’s Fox Nation is a link [Murdoch delinked] to a TMZ article about a sex tape done by the deceased black rapper Tupac. Who cares? Tupac isn’t a political figure like Steve Stevlic, head of the Chicago Tea Party whom right wing radio host Mark Levin referred to as "terrific." Information has surfaced about last Steve Stevlic’s arrest, last year, for soliciting a prostitute. The charges were dropped after Stevlic agreed to go to a rehab program for "johns." As a result of the report, broken by Gawker, family values guy Stevlic didn’t show up at a big Illinois Tea Party conference which he helped organize.

On Faux Noise, peccadillos of a black rapper outweigh scandals of Republican hypocrites every time.

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