Hello Folks,
Didn't the Republicans come out, talking about Bi-Partisanship? My understanding of this, from my Party's view of taking the best of Liberal, and blending it with the best of Conservatism to make my [up-coming] Party Platform, is that cooperation and compromise is the direction we need, to heal this country's financial situation.
So what did we get today from the House? Democrats: 231 Yea, 11 Nay, 13 Not Voting? Republicans: ZERO Yea, 174 Nay, 4 Not Voting? Somebody please tell me that I'm dreaming this! (Latest update: Nope, not a chance!) Come on, now, don't the Republican members of the House of Representatives have any local constituents? Aren't some of them hobbled with sudden loss of their jobs, as well as possible foreclosures on their houses? And others, perhaps in danger of losing access to their Apartments because of the loss of ability to make rent? Aren't any of these Republican representatives worried that they might be voted out of office in the 2010 Midterm Elections? What are you looking for, Republicans? A house with 90+ percent Democrats in it?
A late, breaking update, at a subjective time of about 6:25 pm (I'm a bit behind on my TiVo, folks!) But this update came, thanks to Countdown with Keith Olbermann: The numbers have changed a bit: Now it's Democrats, 242 Yea, 12 Nay, 1 Not Voting, and Republicans, STILL ZIP on the Yea side, 177 Nay, and only one not voting!
Another late, breaking update, 9am hour (PST), January 30, 2009, Courtesy of MSNBC: Brad Blakeman defends the ZERO republican votes! Something about getting more jobs, purely via business tax cuts. (Once again, folks, if a company is in a period of loss, it won't get a penny from tax cuts (as zero tax is zero tax, regardless of tax rates). It's still free to spiral down to Chapter 11, losing its Employees, adding even more people to our unemployment rolls, as well as more people who might lose their homes and have to live under Freeway Overpasses!) Note that I haven't located a YouTube video yet.
And don't get me started on how Former Representative Dick Armey, (R) Texas, got Sexist with Joan Walsh of Salon.Com on Hardball on January 28, 2009, at about 2:42 pm PST (5:42 pm EST), after Joan Walsh asked if even one Republican gave thought to standing up and apologising to President Obama for the racist remark Rush Limbaugh spouted last week. This gets beyond partisan politics and into simple, human decency.
Note: Update posted January 29, 2009 at 2:35 pm: Links provided, to back up these stories. Thank you, Moveon.org, for providing the house.gov link to me! (Also note: Don't worry about correlation between my numbers, verses the house.gov link. That website will always provide the latest numbers, as well as who voted how. There were some late-breaking vote changes, mainly in the Democratic arena. I've still not seen any Republicans stepping forward to change their vote, however).
Latest Update posted January 30, 2009 @ 10:30 am, with mention of Brad Blakeman defending Republican rejection of Stimulus Package.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
"Bill of Rights in the Toilet" -- Double Header!
I feel the need to put two stories in one BLOG post. One of them is rather blatant, and the other, though quite a bit more subtle, actually bothers me quite a bit more, as it points out how many people can be spied on at once!
The first, blatant one will also live on in the "Google News Feed" on the right, at least until this story gets "stale", and I sure as heck hope it doesn't!
It is about an NSA Whistle Blower named Russell Tice. For a while, after he got fired from NSA for, I don't know, Whistle Blowing? ... he held his tongue, afraid of recriminations from the Bush Administration. So, now that Obama is in office, he has a two-day interview stint with Keith Olbermann. Oh well, all Journalists bugged? Or [left wing conspiracy theory] only the "liberal" journalists? Or [right wing conspiracy theory] only the populist/constitutionalist/libertarian journalists? Take your pick, it looks ugly, no matter how it's spun.
-----------------------------------------------
Second, more subtle story, but scarier to me: All 30G Zunes fail simultaneously.
Yes, I'm also a computer professional, which is why the above story scares me. But let me put this in simple English: Microsoft is blaming the simultaneous crash of however many 2006 30G Zunes on a simple Leap Year "glitch". OK. So, people thought the world would end on January 1, 2000, due to an unfortunate habit of some programmers to use only the last two digits of the year. The world didn't end, but a bunch of funny web glitches occurred, which I sure wish were still available to chuckle about. I also recall at least one state classifying the 2000 Model cars (which, of course, were on sale in 1999, as usual for a car company), as "Horseless Carriages".
An excerpt from Zune's Own Forum follows:
Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.
Why do I harp on this? Have any of you seen anything this intrusive? All multi-million owners of this device need to, in effect, force a reset to "Factory Settings" [my guess, based on the context of asking people to allow the battery to "fully run out of power"]?
But this isn't the worst part of this. The worst part of this is why this device needs to know about leap years to play MP3 Music files? Even if you're doing "Digital Rights Management", to protect files that you download to the device, do you necessarily need to know how many times, or exactly when, a particular song is being played? To the second? (These devices failed, pretty much simultaneously, suggesting that a central Satellite was the point of failure, not a bunch of individual consumer devices).
Is anybody else concerned about this, especially if we look at these stories together?
The first, blatant one will also live on in the "Google News Feed" on the right, at least until this story gets "stale", and I sure as heck hope it doesn't!
It is about an NSA Whistle Blower named Russell Tice. For a while, after he got fired from NSA for, I don't know, Whistle Blowing? ... he held his tongue, afraid of recriminations from the Bush Administration. So, now that Obama is in office, he has a two-day interview stint with Keith Olbermann. Oh well, all Journalists bugged? Or [left wing conspiracy theory] only the "liberal" journalists? Or [right wing conspiracy theory] only the populist/constitutionalist/libertarian journalists? Take your pick, it looks ugly, no matter how it's spun.
-----------------------------------------------
Second, more subtle story, but scarier to me: All 30G Zunes fail simultaneously.
Yes, I'm also a computer professional, which is why the above story scares me. But let me put this in simple English: Microsoft is blaming the simultaneous crash of however many 2006 30G Zunes on a simple Leap Year "glitch". OK. So, people thought the world would end on January 1, 2000, due to an unfortunate habit of some programmers to use only the last two digits of the year. The world didn't end, but a bunch of funny web glitches occurred, which I sure wish were still available to chuckle about. I also recall at least one state classifying the 2000 Model cars (which, of course, were on sale in 1999, as usual for a car company), as "Horseless Carriages".
An excerpt from Zune's Own Forum follows:
Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.
Why do I harp on this? Have any of you seen anything this intrusive? All multi-million owners of this device need to, in effect, force a reset to "Factory Settings" [my guess, based on the context of asking people to allow the battery to "fully run out of power"]?
But this isn't the worst part of this. The worst part of this is why this device needs to know about leap years to play MP3 Music files? Even if you're doing "Digital Rights Management", to protect files that you download to the device, do you necessarily need to know how many times, or exactly when, a particular song is being played? To the second? (These devices failed, pretty much simultaneously, suggesting that a central Satellite was the point of failure, not a bunch of individual consumer devices).
Is anybody else concerned about this, especially if we look at these stories together?
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Regime Change in Washington
Remember how many times we were told about Regime Changes in other countries, such as Iraq?
Now, we finally have Regime Change here in Washington, to Barack Obama.
I'll leave it to the others to put the details out there, but I want to acknowledge that we finally have somebody that I firmly believe will listen to the American People.
Now, we finally have Regime Change here in Washington, to Barack Obama.
I'll leave it to the others to put the details out there, but I want to acknowledge that we finally have somebody that I firmly believe will listen to the American People.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Republicans fight Obama Stimulus Plan
A group of Republicans do not appear to be happy with the Obama Stimulus package, as they are afraid that it has too much spending in it and too little of the tax cuts that the Republicans still think will save our economy.
The problem with this is that tax cuts for the most wealthy, at the same time as we were spending our country into two wars was, in my opinion, one of the reasons for our economic meltdown!
For example, according to an already obsolete March, 2008 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, we had already spent about $500 Billion on just the Iraq war, much more than the first half of the $700 Billion Wall Street bailout.
Why is it OK with the Republicans that we spend billions for destruction, but not OK with them that we spend the necessary billions on our country's crumbling Infrastructure?
The problem with this is that tax cuts for the most wealthy, at the same time as we were spending our country into two wars was, in my opinion, one of the reasons for our economic meltdown!
For example, according to an already obsolete March, 2008 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, we had already spent about $500 Billion on just the Iraq war, much more than the first half of the $700 Billion Wall Street bailout.
Why is it OK with the Republicans that we spend billions for destruction, but not OK with them that we spend the necessary billions on our country's crumbling Infrastructure?
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