Good Morning, Everyone. After a very nice weather week we now have rain and clouds. Temperatures are supposed to get into the mid-50s. Most of the weather people have been making comments about how nice and mild November has been so far especially after the crappy October. I told Mom that I would be very amused (like laughing my head off amused) if at the end of the year we had had a normal to warmer than normal year. This one has been incredibly schizophrenic.

Well, President Obama asked Congress to hold off on any 'investigations' of the Fort Hood shootings--and they, essentially, told him where to stuff it. Did anyone expect anything else given that we have a minority party (Republicans) who desperately want to damage the administration in time for next year's off-year elections? Or that we have some Democrats who are Democrats in name only with the same motivations? Or that most of us are highly skeptical, given eight long years of Executive Branch manipulation and malfeasance, of any investigation by the Administration into the failings of the Administration? I am also incredibly sick of the standard rhetoric about 'making sure THIS (whatever this is) doesn't happen again.' The only difference between Fort Hood and Columbine High School or that idiot who opened fire on the employees of the company that fired him two years ago is the site. What does that say about any government's ability to prevent these outbursts?

I found this article on MSNBC this morning. We are already spending a horrendous amount of money on this debacle and now they want to send in an additional 40k soldiers at a cost of $1 million PER SOLDIER. Here is another idiocy we should all give the middle finger salute to. We can't find the money to fix our infrastructure. We can't find the money to fix our social programs. We can't find the money to fix health care. But we CAN find the money for THIS. Those sanctimonious conservative idiots don't want to burden our children and grandchildren with the costs of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, or health care reform but they don't mind passing this cost on to them????

Talk about hypocrisy and playing both sides against the middle--this item from the New York Times by way of Huffington Post takes the cake. Evidently lobbyists for Genentech and two law firms wrote health care reform related statements for 42 Republicans and Democrats. The article says they statements were about evenly divided between the two parties. I will let you read the dirty details. If I had come across this pattern when I was teaching I would have flunked the bunch--for plagiarism.

And thanks to Huffington Post for another entry. I hadn't heard that there was a deal developing that would result, when completed, in Comcast owning a majority stake in NBC. I like Comcast. We have both cable and internet service through them. But I think the operative question is the one at the end of the article: what are they going to do with it. I have been totally bummed out by what has been on tv for some time. We are overwhelmed with situation comedies that I fail to see the humor in. We have a plethora of 'reality' shows that leave me asking 'why in the hell would they put that crap on tv?' We have news shows that are more entertainment than news. I don't think Comcast taking over NBC will make things worse but I am not optimistic that they will make things better.

Then there is this New York Times article (again by way of Huffington Post) that should be put in the "why we are to totally f****d" folder. Everyone who helped precipitate this recession and made out like bandits in the run up are now getting more breaks than the poor b******s caught up in it. Sorry if I am turning the air blue today but I can't vomit far enough to get their pretty suits messed up.

On that note I will continue straightening up the sewing/computer room. I am always amazed at what I find that I forgot I had. See everyone tomorrow.