Watch coverage of the Just $6 event at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Former Senators Bill Bradley (D-NJ) and Alan Simpson (R-WY) reached across the aisle to take an inside look at the impact of big money on our political system.
http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=1124
This reported today:
INTERNATIONAL / AFRICA | June 18, 2007
In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
At the epicenter of a war pitting nomads against one of the biggest armies in Africa, villagers said they had been brutalized by government troops.
Despite horrific rapes, torture, murder, cruelty, and terror by government troops, despite mass annihilation of political opposition and demonstrators, the Bush and Cheney adminstration openly supports the Ethiopian government, writing them blank checks for NON-HUMANITARIAN aid — miliatry support. That means, folks, that Bush and Cheney are using your tax dollars to underwrite the atrocities perpetuated by the Ethiopian military, its troops and leaders, sanctioned by the Ethiopian government. And, by using your tax dollars to do this (billions of dollars per year, by the way), that means YOU (and I) are actually responsible for this perpetration of evil.
Journalists who report these atrocities are jailed, run out of the country and permanently banned.
Republican’s, you WONDER why the American people are angry with you who do nothing to stop Bush and Cheney, you who simply rubber stamp their any arrogant demand?
This is NOT the America of my father and his father. This is NOT my America. My America stands for justice and right, not depravity as perpetrated by this sadistically corrupt administration.
Here’s the link in case the other one fails:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/world/africa/18ethiopia.html?ex=1182830400&en=8994ece855654c49&ei=5070&emc=eta1
I haven’t had any sleep…well, a nap of minutes, but that doesn’t count. Today is quiet — blissfully quiet. Whenver it rains, the world turns quiet, and it’s GREAT. I love the rain. I love that people stay in their homes sulking, allowing me to enjoy quietude. It’s wonderful.
Of course, I’m a little depressed, too. I just got wind of some more very ugly, ugly plans for the area and the neighborhood. I need to move far, far away where no human, only nature, moves the landscape. I absolutely abhor development of any kind. We’re just marring the planet. Ugly.
Know what we need? A world-wide virus to sterilize the entire human race and another one to attack any clones or in vitro fertilization attempts. Until we’re down to a stable population under 1 billion world wide. Then we need something to make sure we keep it at that level forever.
Husband gets wild hair. Let’s put all the CDs inside a stereo unit. In fact, let’s get two or three of these things and put the stuff we mostly listen to on them.
Ah, honey? Let’s try one. First. If it works, we’ll think about running them in series. Okay?
Awwwww. Yeah. Okay. You’re probably right.
I roll eyes. He gets so enthusiastic, then, when you suggest just a tad bit of self-restraint, it’s like you dashed cold water on him. But he dries off fast. Good thing.
But. This is going to be a P-R-O-J-E-C-T. With a super capital P.
Hubs BUYS Sony CDP-CX445. It arrives, 2nd day air UPS. I groan when I see, then HEFT, the box.
Okaaaaaay, I think, brace yourself, knowing that means that I’m going to spend all night, all day, all night, all day again, and probably another all day, helping. There goes the weekend!
He’s so excited when he hears it actually got here. On time. In Podunk, Idaho, no less. He races home. He unpacks it. He pulls 400 CD’s, stashing the jewel cases in a box. He dumps the Styrofoam packing into the garbage. He hasn’t yet broken the box down, though, and I have to keep walking around it to help him when he smartly commands, “Hand me that wire. Hand me that flashlight. Hold this.”
P-R-O-J-E-C-T.
He’s in bliss.
So I finally crash. He stays up till 4AM loading the CD’s into it. Morning comes. He’s out of bed in a flash, four hours earlier than usual.
P-R-O-J-E-C-T.
“Will you type the artists, album names, and slot numbers for me into an Excel spreadsheet?”
Right. “Okay,” I say, hoping it will only take maybe an hour to do. I mean 400 slots is a piece of cake to type. Should only take a little bit of time, right? Because how bad can a piece of electronics slow something down.
HINT: It takes almost a full minute for the machine to read the Artist and Album label because it first has to laboriously load the CD, taste it, think about it, then decide if it wants to show you the answer. (I start twitching after the first five. I’ll be a basket case after fifty, never mind you might as well call the men in white coats after the full four-hundred.)
We start doing a comedy show to ease the pain as he presses next and I wait patiently like dutiful wife, fingers hovering over keys.
…We get through 200 of them…in two hours. I’m about buggy. And…and…and…we’re halfway through. He does a rah-rah arm pump. I just want to GET DONE. “And 201?” I ask.
“It’s not reading it,” says he, which means he has to hit play so we can listen to it to identify artist/album. And….
THE MACHINE IS SKIPPING.
We check again. Nope, disc is fine. Change the CD to somewhere else. Nope, disc is fine. Load something else into slot 201. Skips. Ummmm. Go backwards and forwards from 200. Skip. Stops skipping when it is at 189. Everything back of 189 is fine. Everything forward of 189 skips.
Now what?
Call electronic stores.
Call everybody.
And….
I-Pod.
No. Not. Never.
And….
…And he’s still researching “another solution.”
So, what are we going to be doing? Tearing this entire house apart again, laboriously loading CD’s back into their jewel cases, and….
And…I don’t know.
I think I’ll put on some Dokken on the five CD changer and try to ease my migraine.
…I HATE Sony. Have since they started that proprietary nonsense. Then they started that invasive crap. Sony = contemptible. And their electronics SUX a bad egg.
CSS that’s “W3 compliant” sucks. Why? Because any script, like those doing previews at snap.com takes it and makes it look like SHIT. My “partial remodel” job of this very old site, using div containers instead of tables, everything mapped out on a pixel grid, wound up looking GREAT in all popular browsers, from opera to firefox to IE. It even looked good on older browsers…and on Macs. Then I had snap.com do a “preview” of it.
GASP! Quick, get the OLD index back up there!
*sigh*
Back to tables.