I found this article, PATRIOT ACT: Law’s use causing concerns where the FBI is using parts of the Patriot Act to investigate a strip club owner and some politicians. I am sure there are already laws on the books to use against this gang, but why they used the Patriot Act is a big question.

I have already spoken on this subject here. The Permalink is not working at the moment, but you can scroll down about 60-70% of the way, it’s the post for 9/20.

Sources said the FBI sought the records under Section 314 of the act. That section allows federal investigators to obtain information from any financial institution regarding the accounts of people “engaged in or reasonably suspected, based on credible evidence, of engaging in terrorist acts or money laundering activities.”

If you make it, they will use it.

I happened across this article, Iraq ‘Fundamentally Different’ From Vietnam, Analysts Say and I am proud that at least some of my commentary about my last post is verified.

“We’re at war, and it’s essential that the people of America not forget the lessons of September the 11th, 2001. We are vulnerable to attack. There are people who hate us and there are people who are willing to take thousands of lives in acts of tremendous violence, and the United States must understand that and adjust to the new reality,” Bush told reporters while inspecting damage caused by wildfires in California.

While the author still talks about an ASAP withdrawal, Unless US forces are there for the long haul, as soon as we start withdrawing, Saddam will show up and sweep the fledgling government aside, and the atrocities we have learned about will start again, this time exponentially worse.

I’ve been told that the Marines have a counter-insurgency manual. If they do, it’s time for them to take a crack at the Sunni triangle. It is the Marines who told Iraqis, “No better friend, no worse enemy."

Just to show that I don’t read just what agrees with me, I found this: Cut Losses: Leave Iraq

I can see how this makes perfect sense to the author, but he’s 100% wrong on this.

Back in the days of the crusades, Christians would torture Jews and Muslims until they accepted Christ. There was no “religious tolerance.” It took the Reformation and people like Martin Luther to change Christianity into what we recognize today.

Today, it is the Muslim faith that has no religious tolerance. To them, any infidel (non-Muslim) is worth less than the dirt under the Muslim shoes. Of course, the vast majority do not heavily invest into this view, but there are enough that do.

Now is the time for this to change. Either this change must come about internally or externally. Since there is no equivalent Muslim Martin Luther to preach moderation and acceptance, we must bring change about externally. If we do not force change, there are but three alternatives:

• Everybody convert to Islam
• Christians accept the constant terroristic attacks
• All out war. Christianity wipes out every last Muslim.

I do not find any of these alternatives attractive. Bringing about a Islamic Reformation is the only reasonable choice if the Christianity and Islamic religions are ever going to exist together.

To do that, we must win in Iraq. We must show Muslims across the world that freedom and religious tolerance works. The only way to win this battle is to win in Iraq. There is no other choice. There is no exit strategy because there can be no exit strategy. Just like we spent 50+ years in post WWII Germany and Japan, so must we spend 50+ years in Iraq.

If we pull out at all, Saddam Hussein will be back in power before the last American soldier leaves. It doesn’t matter if we set up a democracy or not. It cannot survive on its own for years yet. The butchery that Hussein would inflict on the people of Iraq in response to the invasion will make the Holocaust look like a garden party. We would lose so much prestige across the world it isn’t funny. If you thought 9/11 was horrible, don’t worry, you’ll get used to having something like that every month or so, because every terrorist group will be so emboldened by our cowardice that they will make the West Bank look like a day at the beach.

Now that I’ve explained all of this, let me Fisk a bit of this article.

Even if such a plan did not work, stability in Iraq never has been vital to U.S. security interests. The threat from Saddam Hussein’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction was overstated. And economists from across the political spectrum always have been skeptical that Persian Gulf oil needs to be secured militarily. Yet their views have been ignored by vested interests in U.S. national security bureaucracies.

Stability in Iraq is essential to not only the US, but to the rest of the non-Muslim world as well. We must stabilize Iraq to produce instability in the rest of the Muslim world. We must show the Muslim world that this can work. Once that is proven, change will come to the rest of the Islamic world. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. And the more change is accomplished, the faster the rate of change will be.

Saddam’s WMD program was only one of several reasons President Bush stated. What stockpiles he had may have been destroyed by others in his regime, but he still believed he had them, and he has used them before. While details about exact things may have been very sketchy, there were three undeniable facts:

• 1. He had had chemical weapons at one time.
• 2. He has used them before.
• 3. He was trying to develop more WMD.

Now I must Fisk a bit of this article.

To preserve U.S. “credibility” nearly 40 years ago, American policymakers pursued an escalated war in Vietnam — when cutting their losses and getting out sooner would have ultimately salvaged more world esteem. The same is likely to be true in Iraq.

There was no way to “win” the war in Vietnam. The best that could have been hoped for was a Korea-like stalemate. Political control over targets and strategies produced the catastrophe that we all remember.

But we must win in Iraq. This foe will not stop at Iraq’s borders if we pull out. These people we fight will fight us wherever we are, be it in Baghdad or Boston. We are in a fight to the death with radical, fundamentalist Islam and the course of that war will be decided in Iraq. If we cannot win there, beat them on their home ground, then the next battle will be here in America. And that will likely involve a mushroom cloud.

Are you still in favor of withdrawing?

For some reason, I am peaking out at 8 on the depression scale. No reason, but I am contending with thoughts of hurting myself. I am cowering in the closet hoping this will pass soon. Until it does, no posting.

Today pulled the wind out of my sails and I’m not up for my normal witty analysis. I promise to make up for it tomorrow before my case manager shows up.

CBS got their hand caught in the blender over this, and it looks like they’ve taken the right step. CBS Considers Selling ‘The Reagans’

“This is censorship,” one source told Newsweek. “A pressure group has had a major network rip this movie to shreds.”

No, this is responding to market forces. The only thing that happened was the script was leaked to the internet and when people saw how destructive it was, people responded. When CBS realized how polarized the audience was over this, they saw a threat to advertising income. They are, after all, in business to make money and can’t do it if they can’t get advertisers for the show.

This was a bad decision on CBS’s part. Sure, the writers, producers and director might be good at what they do, but in such a circumstance, you need to examine their political ideologies as well. I’m pretty sure it was a foregone conclusion to anybody who looked at these people politically would have seen right away that there was no chance of this being an accurate portrayal.

Now CBS is trying to dump this albatross off on another network. The result will be poor at best. Even if there are massive edits and reshoots, the best Lifetime could hope for is nobody (except the liberal Left) watches it. At worst they can go through the wringer just like CBS is doing now.

Fox News has a compilation of stories in this article, Dangerous Drawings, Calendar Conundrums, but the one I wanted to point out is “The G-Word” one. Michael Newdow is expanding his rail against God. I have written about him before here. The tags aren’t working right, you must scroll down to the article “UNDER GOD.”

Future targets, Newdow promises, include the national motto “In God We Trust,” its inscription on money and singing songs such as “God Bless America” at any event on government property or at government-sponsored events.

This guy is a poster child for “loser pays court costs” in lawsuits. We as a nation can be irreparably harmed if he prevails. Our founding documents declare that we recognize the Creator and everything comes from Him. We cannot afford to lose against this man.

I spent 13 years in the Navy, and picked up the fine art of creative swearing. When you use the phrase ‘swear like a sailor’ you’re setting the bar pretty high. Every other word was the f-word. I used it, depending on the suffix and where it was in the sentence, as a noun, pronoun, verb, adverb and adjective.

I have since expanded my vocabulary, and my abilities to express myself. I no longer need to use such words. I do not put myself in the company of people who use such words. When I do use the f-word, I guarantee that it is a special occasion.

Along comes this article, FCC: You Can Say That on Television and I am perturbed over it.

“The word ‘f***ing’ may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory activities or functions. Rather, the performer used the word f***ing as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activity or organs is not within the scope of the Commission’s prohibition of indecent program content.”

We are already upset and enraged over the amount of time children watch television and how they emulate what they see. To add this into the mix does no good whatsoever. Just imagine your two or three year old learning such a word, and how difficult it is to get them to stop using it. As long as the TV is on and shows that use such language rerun in the afternoon, your children are at risk. Don’t let them do this.

I happened across this article, California Fires Reignite Forest Thinning Debate and I have to cry a little bit.

In Genesis 1:26, God gave man the responsibility to rule over the earth. That means we are supposed to take care of all the animals and all living things. The eco-terrorists are working against that responsibility, thinking that nature is better off being “untouched by man.”

Over 700,000 acres have burned so far this year in California alone, along with the loss of 20 lives and more than 2,600 homes destroyed. Last year, wildfires burned nearly 7 million acres, killed 23 firefighters, destroyed more than 800 homes and cost taxpayers more than $1.5 billion.

No good has come of this policy. The loss of life, both animal and human is appalling. The financial cost is staggering. And for the most part, if we manage the forests like we were told to the costs would be much less, both financially and in lives lost.

We are faced with a decision. Do we cut down 50 trees to save a hundred, or do we lose all 150 to a forest fire. What good is it to “protect” the breeding grounds of the curly-tailed gecko if it gets burned out every five years? How many times must they have to rebuild their population? How many endangered species are lost altogether because their environment was burned down around them? The eco-terrorists have made a decision to lose everything to fire. And their precious forests go up in flames when they don’t have to.

The timber companies realize the importance of “renewable resources.” They plant more trees than they cut down. There are more trees in the US now then there were a hundred years ago by a large margin, because of proper management of renewable resources. Sure it looks bad when you see several acres clear cut at a time, but you need to come back a year later when there are thousands of seedlings planted and happily growing there.

It truly is a sad state of affairs, because the eco-terrorists see the results of their work and ignore it. Or they blame it on us because we didn’t do anything about it when they prevent us from doing anything about it.

Sheesh.

Here is an enlightening article, Tax Laws Protect Illegal Workers, and proof that illegal immigration cannot be solved without a major paradigm shift.

Everybody must be fully involved and committed to kicking illegal immigrants out. If one agency does not cooperate, the efforts of the rest are undone. As long as they can find jobs, obtain assistance and other services, we cannot stop the flood. And that is a bad thing. We must starve them out, and we must start now. Confiscatory fines for employers, drop the illegal Mexican immigrants off on the south side of Mexico, immediate deportation for the rest. No respite in the court system, no mercy from the Executive branch. It must be done this way, and it must start today, because it is unfair to those who followed the rules and are here legally. It is the legal immigrants we should be kind to, for they are following the legal American Dream.

…is bashing liberals. They are so two faced you never know which one you’re talking to. Jonah Goldberg has a wonderful article, Walk of Shame and fairly skewers the left side of the line.

Rarely has the intellectual rot of liberalism been more evident. Both at home and abroad, the honorable tradition of liberalism – and there is one – has been hollowed out by its own appetite for power and vengeance. Indeed, it is exceedingly difficult to see how liberalism, at the national level, stands for anything but appetite – undirected, inarticulate, unprincipled, ravenous appetite. Truly it has become Bill Clinton’s party.

I guess I can start calling them sharks now, because that is what a shark is. A predatory, implacable appetite that seeks out the weak and then devours them.

I can’t sum it up any better than this article, so I won’t even try. Read and enjoy!

There is an important difference between broke and poor. If you’re broke, you have a temporary cash flow problem. You anticipate having money flowing again in very short order and you are willing to do anything legal to do so. Being poor is a mental state that says you can’t do any better. So, you don’t try to change the situation because you believe there is nothing you can do to make things better.

This article, HUD Orders Public Housing Tenants to Volunteer asks for eight hours a month in community service.

“This is not volunteer,” Tanner said. “This is mandatory work and we really shouldn’t try to confuse the two. This is very much like workfare.”

I have always held the belief that you should be worked like a dog if you’re on welfare.

If you have a job, you’re working as hard as you can and still can’t make ends meet, that’s one thing. I commend you for it and don’t mind supplementing your income to help out. That should be the definition of welfare.

If you are physically or mentally disabled (myself included) and are unable to work, I have no problem with my tax dollars supporting you. * (see note below)

If you’re stupid on purpose because you dropped out of school, or you didn’t pass your classes, if you have had two kids before you turned 18, I want to work you like there is no tomorrow. I want to work you 60-80 hours a week so you think a regular job is easy.

Once you apply for welfare, you have 6 months of no work, because your job will be to find a job. If you don’t have at least a GED, you get 6 months of intense schooling before that, and/or job training. If you are still on assistance at the end of your free time, then you start working for welfare, 40 hours a week. Heavy, menial, backbreaking work. You work on the weekends so you have two days off during the week to look for a job. After a year of that, you start working 60 hour weeks, wearing an orange jumpsuit. If that isn’t enough, you start pulling 80 hour weeks. If you aren’t going to work for yourself, you’re going to work off what you owe the taxpayers. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Period.

I don’t mind welfare being a safety net, but I do mind it being a safety hammock. To get paid for not working when you can work just boils my blood. It runs counter of everything I was brought up to believe in. Between my military and civilian job careers, I put in 20 years of hard work. I was never unemployed for more than 3 weeks, because when I looked for a job, I went through the want ads like Godzilla did Tokyo.

When I got out of the military, I actually made the Navy Times. That’s a weekly military newspaper. They had an insert on transiting to the civilian sector, with several people and their stories profiled. I made the cut because I told them exactly what I told you with the Godzilla crack. When I looked for a job here in Memphis, I went through the Yellow Pages and wrote down the name and address of every computer related company in town. I made a resume for each of my listings. I then started at the top and worked my way down. It just so happens the third place on my list hired me on the spot.

I have always been extremely aggressive when it comes to job searches, and I will never understand anybody who isn’t. If you don’t want to invest in yourself so you can get better jobs with more pay, then you’re exactly where you deserve to be. I plan on starting to take advanced computer classes in the near future so I can solidify my resume. I got most of my jobs because I was already working at those levels, so the lack of training was made up for by real-world experience.

* I wanted to explain this without interrupting the flow of what I was saying. I receive a fair amount of Social Security Disability, because of what I made before I was sick, the fact that I’m married, and that I have a child. I work as much as I can, because if I got paid any more than what I get paid now, I lose my disability. In order to have the same amount of take home pay as I do now, I would have to have a job that pays about $48,000 a year, about what I made before I got sick. I can’t just jump into such a high level job like that, not with a 5 year gap in my resume. So, I am stuck in my situation with very little options. I know that $48K sounds like a lot, but remember that’s pre-tax, plus health care and supporting two households. There is very little fat in our budgets.

UPDATE: I am sorry to say that while I included my income from my part time job, I didn’t tell you I did. I realize it sounds like I am getting paid an obscene amount of disability, but it really isn’t.

This article will leave you chuckling. Blood-sucking Leeches talks about out ever-present, professional politicians. This can even apply to the long-term men and women who are truly dedicated to the country’s business.

This is an anomaly of the way our founding fathers intended our system of government to work. They wanted the House of Representatives to be composed of citizen politicians who left their farms, stores and small businesses for a few years to serve their fellow Americans in the House – after which they would return home to continue their professions, living and working under the very laws they enacted.

The Senate was to be composed of distinguished citizens chosen by each state to serve longer terms as stewards of states’ rights against the encroachment of the larger federal government powers.

I cannot sum up my thoughts and feelings better than this quote. I was actually going to use paragraph #3, but upon reflection, I think this sums it up pretty well.

I’m sorry that I don’t have anything today. It started out with a power outage, then a 90 minute trip to get to an important doctors appointment for the wife. Then I had to invest time in a family crisis. The crowning moment was on the way back, the transmission died. I have a mechanic friend who will do it for a lot less than if I had it done at a dealership, but that doesn’t mean it will be cheap.

As if my life doesn’t already have a lot of excitement.

Well, further evidence that the Wellbutrin XL is working. I actually fired up my Usenet reader and got caught up to date with rec.models.rockets. Which is something that I haven’t done in months.

Which leaves me in a quandary of sorts. I am beginning to see a crunch on my time. There are 5 major things that I want to do at the moment, each of which can absorb several hours a day.

They are:

1. Reading Mechwarrior message boards.
2. Reading other blogs
3. Reading news sites and posting on this blog.
4. Working on rocketry projects.
5. Reading Usenet boards.

This is the order in which I have expanded myself. I have moved from one to the next, and it seems the time between expansions is shrinking.

Thinking about the quantity of these things and the speed in which they are piling on is staring to scare me. If I am not careful I could go manic, and that would be very bad. I can’t tell you how doubleplusungood me being manic is. Dangerous bad.

Come to think about it, I have had to fight down some rather annoying impulses to spend money. The fact of me wanting to go next door and buy a soda for 80 cents is nothing next to the urge to do it. I also bought $45 worth of rocket motors Sunday. It doesn’t matter that I had enough rocketry cash to do it. The fact that I did do it without my normal second and third thought is. The budget I live on is tight enough to use it as a trampoline. Most of the spending money I get is from incidental purchases from my family. I break a $20 to buy dinner or something and I get to keep the change.

This is a rather disconcerting development, one that I must watch like a hawk. Every action must be double checked, every motive scrutinized. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. If it wasn’t for this blog, I would not have recognized this change in behavior until much later, if at all.

This made me chuckle. Device Allows Motorists To Control Stoplights proves that there is a sucker born every minute.

Here in Memphis, we don’t use the MIRT, but rather a flashing strobe mounted on the dashboard. The strobe has to be flashing in a particular pattern to trigger the light change. Sure, even if the code is detected, it is no major malfunction to change the code. Then the pirates are stuck with $300 boxes that don’t work. Plus, even if you did get it to work, our system has a red beacon light that activates when it detects a valid code. Go through an intersection like that and if there’s a cop there and he notices the beacons, you have a good chance of being pulled over and having to explain yourself. That I’d pay money to listen to.

I haven’t been commenting on Rush and his condition on purpose. I figured there was already a couple of terabytes out there and my little 2 cents wasn’t going to do much. Then this article came along, Rush and Hypocrisy.

I guess I’m a hypocrite as well. I hold high moral standards for myself, and try to inspire the same in the people around me. To do the right thing, as it were. But we are all imperfect beings, and as such there are a lot of times we cannot hit what we aim for. To have standards at all puts us ahead of the game. It is the blood, sweat and tears we expend in the name of achieving those goals that we should be proud of. To actually achieve them is but a distant second to the effort we put into trying.

I am familiar with the level of pain that Rush is in. In early 1997 I ruptured my L5S1 disk. The details are unimportant. The pain I felt was immense. I experienced a deep burning from my tailbone up to my kidneys, then a fierce sharp pain reaching from my tailbone all the way down my right leg to my paralyzed foot. I only had to put up with it for a week or two. After the operation, the doctor didn’t prescribe me any postop painkillers, because the relief I felt from what I put up with before the operation made the postop pain feel like a hangnail.

Rush put up with this kind of pain for what, five years? I’d have been popping pain pills like they were M&M’s too. If Rush has been able to operate on the level he did with that kind of pain and doped up, his level after rehab and with pain control will be nothing short of phenomenal.

To be imperfect is the norm. To expect someone to obtain perfection is crazy, and I don’t mean mental illness crazy. It is okay to have high moral values, as long as you try to live up to them. The effort makes all the difference.

FOX carried this opinion piece, A War Casualty We Can’t Afford.

In this post 9/11 world, the last thing we can afford is a ‘measured, proportionate response.’ We had two buildings destroyed, we brought down two countries as payback. If we get a city destroyed, all the world should be scared shitless awaiting our response.

In order to do that, we need intelligence. Clinton gutted the CIA, then hamstrung what was left, forcing it into something like police procedures. There are times that we can only guess at what is going on. I would rather guess that a foreign hostile country had something when they don’t rather than guess they don’t when they do. And you can never tell either way until it’s too late. To wait for confirmed, incontrovertible evidence will be two days too late, and we no longer have that luxury. We are going to lose a city in the next five years, one way or another. The question is, what are we going to do about it, before and after the fact.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and to Tuesday Morning Quarterback the President and his administration is grandstanding at its worst.

Preemption must not become another Washington casualty of the blame game. Yet the doctrine remains on an artificial respirator so long as our pre-war intelligence on Iraq seems so faulty.

I remember a comic, where this one kid sat next to another kid, a bully. The bully was minding his own business for once, but the first kid was so worried about being picked on, he up and knocked the bully flat, unprovoked. To the teacher, he then proclaimed, “I HIT HIM BACK FIRST!”

That is what we must do for now on, until all of the terrorists are dead, play whack-a-mole. Every time a terrorist pops up, we flatten him. No waiting around for a political statement, no response to an attack, kill them before they kill us. That’s the rules the terrorists taught us, how long we are willing to live by those rules is up to us, because we get to choose our leaders. Will we pick one that will take the fight to them, or one that will let them bring the fight to us? Right now we have a man in charge how is taking the fight to them. Yes, we are taking casualties. Yes, it is an expensive war. But the choice is either a) Attacks on our soldiers in Baghdad, or b) suicide attacks on civilians in Boston. There is no inbetween, no grey area, no room for negotiations. One or the other and you, my dear readers, get to choose.

Choose. And choose wisely.

I am sickened by this, New Jersey Fires ‘Incompetent’ Social Workers for Letting Boys Starve.

These people may be overworked, but it is by their own design. It also proves that there is money to be made in the foster care industry. The sacrifice these children are giving is intolerable.

“I had staff that were either incompetent, uncaring or who had falsified records,” said Department of Human Services Commissioner Gwendolyn Harris. “I have members of this division who have failed children almost to the cost of their very lives.”

I am shocked beyond words to describe this situation. On top of the trauma of having to endure the abuse of their parents, then forced separation from their family, then unimaginable abuse at the hands of the system that is supposed to care for them, these children have been through hell several times.

This article, FDA Warns of Possible Suicide Risk With Children’s Anti-depressants was a red flag to me.

As someone who has been and is on antidepressants, you do not use them lightly. My current condition is because of a severe side effect of the first antidepressant that I tried. I remember the doctor almost chuckling about how “classic” my symptoms were as she wrote my Prescription of Death. I say it that way because my life, who I was, everything about me, died when I started taking Effexor.

I have listed those antidepressants that came in the article, and next to them I gave the brand name, because that will be the name the doctor uses with you. They are: citalopram (Celexa), fluoxetine (Prozac), fluvoxamine (LUVOX), mirtazapine (REMERON), nefazodone (Serzone), paroxetine (Paxil), sertraline (Zoloft), venlafaxine (Effexor).

Be careful with these. They can change your life either way.

I found this on Drudge, High school senior came ‘out’ – and was expelled and wanted to comment on it.

The fact that the student was gay is to my comments is unimportant. The fact that I wanted to bring up was the fact that he was asked a very personal and private question by an authority figure. The student told the truth and suffered serious consequences for it.

I for one have learned through my life experiences that you admit to nothing when it comes to authority figures. I don’t mean to lie, and there are times when admitting your guilt is the proper thing to do. In instances where your butt is on the line for some serious consequences, you should keep your mouth shut. I have never been interrogated, nor have I ever done anything that would warrant such a treatment. But if faced with such a situation, I have come to realize that you do more damage to yourself by talking in such a situation, even about the smallest things. The interrogator is not your friend, he is not there to help you, he wants you to admit to something so they can use it against you. Period.

Always remember that.

CBS stepped over a very clearly marked line when they decided to show “The Reagans.” With all of the firestorm created so far, they might give it up, but I doubt it. It is sweeps week after all. I have links to articles here, here, here, and here.

NewsMax.com throws up.

This pretty much sums it all up.

Ah, yes. The great New York Times strikes again. In this article, Hit-and-Run Pesticide News has another pro-ecoterrorist piece.

Telling only half the story and not revealing conflict of interest tidbits seems right up their alley.

The New York Times famously boasts on its banner, “All the news that’s fit to print.” I guess that sounds better than, “Only the news that we want to you to know.”

That pretty much sums it all up.

I know I haven’t made any personal updates for a while, I just haven’t been up to it. Plus there really hasn’t been anything new to report. My sleep time is still skewed at the 1am-9am slot. I’m awake by 7:30-8:00am, but I cower until 9 or so.

I’m 2 weeks into taking Wellbutrin XL, an anti-depressant. I’ve taken “plain” Wellbutrin before, without effect. I don’t know what they do to make XL different from the regular stuff, but they tout XL as having less sexual side effects. A couple of side effects that I am concerned about is loss of appetite and weight loss. I used to weigh 230, but I’m under 200 and still losing. It seems that I can’t drill holes in my belt fast enough.

The good news is I think this stuff is starting to work. The last time I commented on my Depression Scale, I was at a 6. I think I’m up to a 4 now. What I think is helping is I wasn’t very consistent with a morning Trileptal dose. I’m 100% compliant now, because I must take the Wellbutrin.

I think it’s working because I’ve done a lot today. I visited with a rocketry friend, did some rocketry shopping, then came back and did some rocketry stuff that I’ve put off for months. I’ve done more rocketry stuff today than I have done for almost the entire past year. I also cleaned a bird cage and swept up in the apartment. Normally I’d be having some closet time about now, but after finishing this entry I’m going to continue puttering with my rocketry stuff.

I can’t say I’m feeling good, but I’m feeling okay, and that’s good enough for today. I’ll go for good tomorrow.

The president of NOW is throwing a hissy fit that Patricia Ireland got fired from the YWCA. This article, NOW Blames ‘Ultra-Conservatives’ For Ireland YWCA Ouster clearly shows that this woman is not right in the head.

“Ultraconservative groups slammed the YWCA for hiring a strong supporter of women’s rights,” Gandy alleged. She also blasted the Bush Administration as acting “in concert” with “these bullies” at the conservative Traditional Values Coalition to remove Ireland.

If you don’t like what is going on, scream and hold your breath until your face turns blue.

I don’t know which side of this issue the reporter is on. Only one and a half paragraphs directly quote portions of the YWCA press release concerning the issue, which are the only facts that I can tell. The rest of it is unsubstantiated rants and cries of conspiracy.

Paul Nowack has a political cartoon that addresses this issue. Scroll down to Wednesday, and you better hurry. I can’t permalink to this cartoon and it will be rotated off on the 29th of October. My blog account won’t let me post images.