And yet Republicans everywhere are all a-quiver, certain that they have the killer candidate that will bring them to victory. There was a caller on the Randi Rhodes show this morning declaiming that the Democrats had their chance to put a woman in office and blew it. Now the Republicans have a woman, and she's their winning ticket. "You guys are gonna lose!" the caller crowed repeatedly.
They really, truly think that Hillary's supporters, or perhaps women in general, are so stupid and sexist that they'll vote for anyone with two X chromosomes.
McCain has revealed himself the hypocrite that he his when, after repeatedly slamming Obama for being "inexperienced," now slams the media for questioning -- "attacking" in McCain's words -- Palin's experience.
I cringe at the very thought of this country ending up in the hands of this madman and his nutjob running mate. But somehow this choice of his has caused him to rise in the polls.
Suddenly I feel like pricing real estate in New Zealand.
Her experience consists of 1 1/2 years as governor of a state with a population smaller than San Diego, time served as a mayor of a city with a population under 10,000, and ethics investigations of her abuse of power in both positions.
Is she channeling Spiro Agnew?
There's also talk that she's associated somehow with the Alaska Independence Party, a group that wants Alaska to secede from the union, but her people aren't saying yes or no on that. I hope it's true, good America-loving patriot that she's supposed to be.
In his autobiography, McCain notes that he's a quick decision-maker, much faster than "the other guy," and while that sometimes gets him in trouble, well, he just faces the consequences. He fails to understand in this case that it could be the entire nation that faces the consequences. He's selected Ms. Palin entirely for the purpose of his campaign, not for the country, under the premise that Hillary's supporters are such stupid sexists that they'll vote for to put her in office because she's female. Her lust for Alaska's oil is an added plus.
And now, after pointing fingers at Obama and saying he has no experience, that he's all talk and no substance, McPain has the gall to be miffed at anyone who questions Ms. Pallid's lack of national experience.
Self-absorbed hypocrite.
That, and of course, hubris. The ship was believed to be unsinkable, but the Fates have a morbid sense of humor about such things.
I was hoping for Bill Richardson. Why the old white dude when he could have had the dynamic, youngish, somewhat Hispanic dude? Biden's not a bad guy, though he has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth (wasn't he the one who did the articulate black guy gaffe when he was talking about Obama?), but... I was hoping for something more interesting.
On the other hand, if it had been Richardson, I can just see all the far right white guys turning purple and screaming, "Look! Blacks and Hispanics! They ARE taking over!" Maybe that's why Biden was the safe choice, I dunno.
There's one woman I'd love to see in that office, and that's our own Darlene Hooley, representative from Oregon. She's dynamite, but she's also retiring, dagnabit.
As for Hillary, where I want to see her is on the Supreme Court.
Oh, you're just too reality-based and hate America and want the terrorists to win and junk. Put on your flag pin like a real patriot.
Did I miss any right-wing cliches in there?
I listened to the Audio version of The Ghost Map downloaded from Audible.com. It should be required reading for all microbiology and health profession students. The story of John Snow often turns up in the health curriculum, but seldom in such detail, and seldom with the kind of drama that surrounded the events of 1854.
The reason proposed in the book that the well sometimes had cholera and sometimes didn't wasn't just the water temperature -- it was also the flow of groundwater that fed the well. The mother who rinsed her choleric baby's diaper in the little-used cesspool in her basement tainted the groundwater that flowed into the well. When that tainted stream of water had gone by, the well was clean again. When she cleaned up after her husband, who also contracted cholera, the well was poisoned again. At least that's what the data from the time suggest. Whitehead never did tell her that she was the probable source. Can you imagine what she would have felt? What the neighbors would have done?
Miasma theory actually led to an increase in cholera, as well-meaning people, in an effort to reduce odors in London, piped sewage out of the city and into the Thames.
In a reverse of that theme, social reformers in the U.S. were reluctant to embrace germ theory, since miasma theory spurred cities into doing city-wide cleanups, establishing sanitary services, and improving sewer and water service. These clean-up efforts reduced disease and infant deaths, and reformers were afraid that an acceptance of germ theory would lead people to believe that cleaning up cities was unnecessary.
And no, neither the heat nor tannins in brewing tea and coffee will necessarily kill the cholera bacteria. One of the victims of the 1854 outbreak was an elderly woman whose sons brought her water from the Broadstreet pump for making her tea, because she preferred the Broadstreet water over water available closer to her house. Had she boiled the water for a good 30 minutes she could have killed the bacterium, but of course no one knew that in her time. And what tea lover would want to boil the water to death, anyway?
Oh, for pity's sake, Mr. McCain! My aunt is 90 and loves her computer. She's got a webcam fixed up so she can chat with family members on Skype.
So he's "aware of the Internet." Well, that's just peachy. I'm "aware" of foreign policy, even if I don't really understand it. Can I run for president, too?
Hillary Clinton for Supreme Court!
Oh, what she could do there to restore some real balance.
I was in this world when JFK was shot, but too little to have any memory of it. The first big news event that I was aware of and watched the TV eagerly to see what the moon landings. I remember the Weekly Reader when I was in kindergarten had a cartoon picture of astronauts on the moon and little moon men peeking out from behind rocks to look at them. I was sorely disappointed that there weren't any little creatures on the moon, but watching the astronauts bounce around in low gravity was pretty cool.
We've got a Garmin windshield-mounted GPS and while it's useful in most cities, it's gotten us gloriously lost in the mountains and on country roads. Tall buildings also confuse it. And when you don't drive the way it expects you to go, it says, "re CAL culating" with the sort of snide sigh you'd expect from Marvin the depressed robot.
The sad thing is, elementary school teachers see this kind of parental escalation of girl fights all the time, though not generally on this scale. Usually it goes something like this:
Megan and Brittany have a tiff at school over some perceived slight. Megan gets all her friends to gang up on Brittany. Brittany is in tears.
Brittany goes home and tells her mother all about it. The story may or may not be embellished, but Brittany is, of course, entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.
In the meantime, Megan goes home and tells her mother the story. In this version, she is innocent of any wrongdoing, and Brittany is an evil witch who deserves what she got.
Brittany's mother calls Megan's mother and demands that Megan apologize to Brittany. Megan's mother is incensed. Why should her innocent daughter apologize to that awful child who started it all? The phone conversation ends in a screaming match.
Both mothers, unable to let go of their own fifth-grade girl fight mentality, encourage their daughters to snub one another, and coach them on mean things to do to each other. They both call the school and insist that their daughters be removed from the classroom they are in because, "I don't want my daughter exposed to THAT child!"
The outcome varies. Sometimes everyone makes up. Sometimes the girls make up, and their mothers carry on the battle. Sometimes the battle continues for years. It's all very sad. You just want to smack them all and yell, "Grow up!"
If the attorney general has any doubts about whether a certain procedure is torture or not, there's one very simple way he can find out. Simply submit to the procedure for several minutes. He should be able to make a judgement forthwith. If he is unwilling to submit to the procedure, that by itself should be information enough to make a firm decision regarding the matter.
Let me see if I have this straight:
A woman hires a ghostwriter at $400 per month to write a book...
Hires a fee-charging agent to sell the book...
And said agent "sells" the book to a vanity publisher...
Damn, if I weren't so honest, I could make a killing by posing as all three scammers at once.
Lania, honey, if you're still following this thread, please, please, PLEASE go to the library and bring home an armload of books on how to write a novel, how to get published by a real publisher, and how the publishing industry works. I wish someone would have given you that advice several years ago. It would have saved you tens of thousands of dollars and a mountain of heartache.
And Ms. Pillsbury -- for pity's sake, can you honestly look your clients in the eye and tell them that you'll be their agent in a deal with a VANITY PUBLISHER?!?! Like they can't deal with the vanity themselves? Like there's anything to negotiate? "Agent," my Aunt Fanny!
Interesting how she refers to "women" as though they were another species.
As though she's not one of them.
Just sayin'.
It was an amazing roller coaster ride from start to finish. I was half-tempted to put it down when it got thoroughly bleak in the middle, after Ron left Harry and Hermione, but I slogged on through, and was glad I did.
I had a feeling that Lupin was marked for death -- all of the Marauders are gone now. Seems like the characters that are about to die kind of fade away for a while, and/or show themselves to be less than spotlessly clean. But did Tonks have to die, too, leaving an orphan behind?
I felt that Snape was marked for death after all that he'd done and appeared to have done. But I was hoping he'd have a more heroic send-off than that. I guess he had to keep his secrets from the Dark Lord right until the end, when Harry collected his thoughts, and knowing Harry's connection with Voldemort, he couldn't even reveal them to Harry before then.
Hoorah for Neville! I knew the kid had it in him. The Sorting Hat didn't put him in Gryffindor for nothing, after all those years that fans thought he should have been in Hufflepuff.
Boo, hiss to Luna's father for caving in and betraying Harry.
Ironic, I thought, that after years of trying to overcome people's reluctance to say the Dark Lord's name, that in the end, it turns out that the people who refused to say it were right all along.
I thought Wormtail's death was way too much of a throwaway. He owed Harry his life, and payback should have been more than a mere moment's hesitation.
Draco's role was played just right. He learned real quick that being a Death Eater isn't a glamorous thing, and hateful though the little niblick is, I'm glad that he wasn't a killer after all. But even though Harry saved his life, he never became Harry's best bud. That would have been too saccharine.
Making up with Dudley was a bit, well, almost-but-not-quite believable. We never saw the Dursleys again, and I wonder if it was even necessary to put them in the story at all?
I was sure we'd see the Department of Mysteries again. There are so many unanswered questions from Book 5. What IS the veil, where does it lead to, and why is it there? How did it kill Sirius, yet leave no body behind? What is behind the locked door that Harry couldn't open? And what was up with the brains, the hummingbird belljar, and some of the other goodies we saw?
The epilogue was kind of cute, a sigh of relief, and you KNOW that young fans would be demanding to know what happened to the character afterwards. I don't know why people get all cheesed that a handful of heterosexual couples found happiness in each other. Besides, it puts closure on the series, vastly reduces the possibility that there will be a "Harry Potter Book 8," and even if there's temptation to write a story about the next generation (which doesn't seem likely at this point), it won't be Voldemort who rises again. It also puts all the Harry-Hermione vs Harry-Ginny vs Ginny-Draco "shippers" to rest.
Two books I hope JKR writes just for her fans:
1) Hogwarts, a History
2) The Mysteries of the Department of Mysteries, Exposed
If I remember my history correctly (and that's a big "if"), part of the deal that France was contemplating at the time was trading aid to the Confederacy in exchange for large parts of the former Louisiana Purchase. And let us recall that the French army of the early to mid 19th century was the most formidable army in Europe.
Yes, there are excellent reasons for red-blooded American patriots to stop trash-talking "immigrants" and celebrate the Battle of Puebla.
Funny how immigration is only an "issue" when it brings in groups of people other than our own ancestors. Of course, it was an "issue" when it brought some of my ancestors in, too: Bohemians, Irish, and Scots.
Yes, give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, unless they talk funny and have names we can't pronounce and eat different food and take all our jobs we don't really want but will still grouse about, yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah.
And I hope folks don't start with the "My ancestors came here legally" arguments if they don't distinguish between legal and illegal immigration in their own rants to begin with. Doubly so if their ancestors came here before there were any immigration laws at all imposed by people of European descent (who came here with no regard to what the indigenous people thought of their arrival).
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