Jan 31 2008
Thanks for stopping in, so glad You’re here …. (yes, YOU!)
this is an open thread… relax.. Hang out and chit chat awhile…
& when you’re done check out some of the excellent offerings on our recent & rec’d list.
O &… Please don’t rec the pony party, another will trot up in a few hours.(^.^)
Soundtrack {h/t roy reed for the great idea (tnx Roy)}
Jan 31 2008
(cross posted from DailyKos)
In my series on congressional races, I hit a lot of candidate websites. Some are fantastic, some are so-so, some look like they were done by a person who read “Web sites for dummies” but didn’t understand it. And some candidates have no website at all.
I know nothing about web site construction. But I bet some of you do. Maybe we can do something?
Also, I am not trying to insOK, I’ve not looked at every website, but I’ve looked at a lot.
One of the best I’ve seen is from the 2006 campaign in GA-06: Steve Sinton . This looks like one produced by a big corporation. Clean, flashy, good buttons, voice over….
Or look at this one for Bobby Saxon in GA-10. There are lots of good ones.
I don’t think they all need to be that good, and they certainly shouldn’t all be the same. But they should all be written in grammatical English, shouldn’t they?
Look at this one . There’s a capital letter at the beginning of each sentence, not after every comma.
In VA-02, Glenn Nye has announced, and filed with the FEC, but has no website.
In NJ-04 Amy Vazquez has a website, but it’s old (it has a fundraising goal whose deadline has passed) and Josh Zeitz has no site at all.
In MO-02 George Weber is running again – his website doesn’t really inspire confidence
In FL-05, Dave Werder has no web site at all.
In FL-18, 21, and 25, there are three new challengers who have good shots.
ult anyone’s campaign. I’m just trying to help.
Jan 31 2008
I have two children, but I’ve had more than my share of proud mommy moments. This week was a banner one for me though…
The oldest, who’s 19, but seriously impaired from a car accident and resulting brain injury, has been making progress on the treadmill. She still isnt able to move her legs intentionally, but she is making fantastic progress at ‘letting go’ of the tone in her legs to allow her therapist to move her legs through steps on the treadmill.
But ‘thing 2’ really brought it home this week….
Jan 31 2008
This is an Open Thread: I make my living off the evening news
Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women’s rights
A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.
Jan 31 2008
I am all for running everywhere, and the 50 state strategy.
But neither we nor the Republicans are running everywhere (at least not yet!) In this series, I will look at where we are not running (I am not going to look at where Republicans are not running, as I have no desire to help Republicans, however modestly)
This diary is partly inspired by the great work done by BENAWU.
crossposted to dailyKos
Jan 31 2008
I am all for running everywhere, and the 50 state strategy.
But neither we nor the Republicans are running everywhere (at least not yet!) In this series, I will look at where we are not running (I am not going to look at where Republicans are not running, as I have no desire to help Republicans, however modestly)
This diary is partly inspired by the great work done by BENAWU.
crossposted to dailyKos
Jan 31 2008
 Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
Jan 31 2008
Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST
“The warm air is very active this year.” So says Li Weijing, deputy director-general of China’s National Climate Center, in reference to the massive snowstorm that has paralyzed his country.
The cause for the Chinese storms has been ascribed to the La Niña weather pattern, as forecast by the British Met (Meteorological) Office. La Niña is a cooling pattern that is influenced and enhanced by warming trends.
More below the jump…
Jan 31 2008
I step into the elevator of Lisa’s dorm, which happens to be the tallest building in California north of Sacramento, and float down the six floors to solid ground. Outside, the already-stifling heat of the longest morning-after in my life hits me like a garbage truck. I walk the few blocks to the station, but there are no trains til around noon. I need to get the fuck out of here now, though, so I settle for the Chico-to-Sacramento bus that’s an hour away and tell myself that I’ll figure out where to go from the end of that line. I collapse into a sweaty heap on a bench, and open up my bag to dig around for the Walkman. I find it and push play and immediately the Jesus and Mary Chain assault my fragile early-morning ears, so I flip over the tape to their acoustic album and close my eyes.
Fuck with me and I’ll fuck with you/Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?
Jan 31 2008
This is an Open Thread: I make my living off the evening news
Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women’s rights
A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.
Jan 31 2008
Across wwwLand and out in the other world, many people said goodbye to John Edwards Wednesday. Some had a tear in their eye. Some had glee in their hearts. Judging by most of what I saw and read, it must have been about the best press John has received since he started his campaign.
His two rivals were gracious in their farewells. Some people who had done their very best to ignore him while he was actually in the campaign said how important his message had been now that he is no longer a candidate. No surprise. As the advocacy-journalist I.F. Stone once said: “Funerals are times for pious lying.” And that was how everybody – including many of Edwards’s supporters – seemed to view the candidate’s announcement, as an obituary, not merely the end of a campaign but the death knell to all the issues he spoke so eloquently and passionately about.
That’s not, I think, how John Edwards saw his speech, as a funeral oration, a-goodbye-so-long-nice-knowing-you-thanks-for-your-efforts-we- fought-the-good-fight-but-now-it’s-somebody-else’s-job kind of speech. Maybe it’s just the superannuated dirty f’n hippie in me, but what he said sounded more like a call to action.
Do not turn away from these great struggles before us. Do not give up on the causes that we have fought for. Do not walk away from what’s possible, because it’s time for all of us, all of us together, to make the two Americas one.
That doesn’t sound like what John was saying meant merely to get behind whichever candidate ultimately wins the Democratic nomination, although he obviously meant that too. And he’s right. Anybody who really truly believes that President John McCain would be better than President Hillary Clinton or President Barack Obama can ignore that part of John’s advice and stay at home or vote for a third-party candidate come November 4. You would think that we’d had enough of this sow-the-wind, reap-the-whirlwind behavior at the ballot box, but there’ll always be some people who just don’t get it.
Jan 31 2008
It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race…
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel. I will drink life to the lees! All times I have enjoy’d greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those that loved me and alone, on shore; and when thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades vext the dim sea…
I am become a name for always roaming with a hungry heart!
Much have I seen and known- cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments. Myself not least, but honour’d of them all. And drunk delight of battle with my peers far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades for ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use.
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life were all too little, and of one to me little remains; but every hour is saved from that eternal silence, something more…
A bringer of new things; and vile it were for some three suns to store and hoard myself and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle. Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil this labour, by slow prudence to make mild a rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness, and pay meet adoration to my household gods when I am gone.
He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port. The vessel puffs her sail. There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me- that ever with a frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine, and opposed free hearts, free foreheads…
You and I are old.
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil. Death closes all, but something ere the end, some work of noble note may yet be done; not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks. The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs, the deep moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows, for my purpose holds- to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides and tho’ we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are- One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.