Morning Seditionists

February 14, 2013

♥

Filed under: Whatever — pjsauter @ 10:45 am

Happy Valentine’s Day all you Hallmark shareholders out there. I completely missed the fact that it was Ash Wednesday yesterday, even though I saw some ashes on the floor of the building I work in. Not sure if it was a coincidence or not. It’s been a while since I had my forehead smeared, but I don’t recall the ashes falling off on the floor. So I guess that must mean it’s Lent now. I’m not sure what to give up, so I’m thinking of maybe just giving up in general. Kind of a 40-day nap. Goodness knows I could use it.

Things at work are a strange combination of stressful, hectic, and boring. The only bright side is that, since my BlackBerry is acting up on me, I’m supposed to be getting an iPhone as a replacement. So now I get to be one of the cool kids (except I’d rather have a ‘Droid, but that’s not actually an option unless I want to get them to spring for more money which, times being what they are, I don’t think would be a good idea).

I say I’m supposed to get a new phone because it was supposed to be “today or tomorrow” on Monday, and I haven’t seen it yet. And if I don’t get it today, I won’t be back in the office until Monday. Not that I’m really in a hurry, but it’s kind of nice when working from home if the phone doesn’t just boink off in the middle of a work-related conversation. Since I don’t have a land line, that’s pretty much my only option.

Oh well, back to work.

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8 Comments

  1. :love:

    Comment by vernon — February 14, 2013 @ 10:58 am

  2. A real Valentine’s Day heart stopper

    Comment by vernon — February 14, 2013 @ 5:57 pm

  3. The State of the 4-Year-Olds
    By GAIL COLLINS

    One of the big moments of the State of the Union address was President Obama’s call for “high-quality preschool” for 4-year-olds.

    Nobody was happier at the idea than Walter Mondale, the former vice president. “This is going to be wonderful,” he said in a phone conversation. His delight was sort of inspiring. If I had been down the road Mondale has traveled, my mood would have been a little darker.

    In 1971, when he was a senator, Mondale led the Congressional drive to make quality preschool education available to every family in the United States that wanted it. Everybody. The federal government would set standards and provide backup services like meals and medical and dental checkups. Tuition would depend on the family’s ability to pay.

    And it passed! Then Richard Nixon vetoed it, claiming Congress was proposing “communal approaches to child rearing.” Now, 42 years later, working parents of every economic level scramble madly to find quality programs for their preschoolers, while the waiting lines for poor families looking for subsidized programs stretch on into infinity.

    And President Obama is trying, against great odds, to do something for 4-year-olds.

    People, think about this for a minute. We have no bigger crisis as a nation than the class barrier. We’re near the bottom of the industrialized world when it comes to upward mobility. A child born to poor parents has a pathetic chance of growing up to be anything but poor. This isn’t the way things were supposed to be in the United States. But here we are.

    Would it be different if all the children born over the last 40 years had been given access to top-quality early education — programs that not only kept them safe while their parents worked, but gave them the language and reasoning skills that wealthy families pass on as a matter of course?

    We’ll never know.

    Mondale’s Comprehensive Child Development Act was a bipartisan bill, which passed 63 to 17 in the Senate. It was an entitlement, and, if it had become law, it would have been one entitlement for little children in a world where most of the money goes to the elderly.

    “We came up with a lot of proposals, but the one we were most excited about was early childhood education. Everything we learned firmed up the view this really works,” said Mondale.

    The destruction of his bill was one of the earliest victories of the new right. “The federal government should not be in the business of raising America’s children. It was a political and ideological ideal of great importance,” Pat Buchanan once told me. He was working at the White House when the bill reached Nixon’s desk, and he helped write the veto message. He spoke about this achievement with great pride.

    The saga of the demise of the Comprehensive Child Development Act is an excellent explanation of why President Obama was prepared to go through so much political trauma to pass health care reform, even when many of his own party members were begging him to drop back, do something less earth-shaking and wait for a better moment.

    The better moment might never come.

    After Gerald Ford became president, the early childhood education bill’s supporters tried to resurrect the plan. They had hardly done anything besides agree that they probably ought to wait until after the 1976 election, when they were hit with a political tsunami. Members of Congress started getting hundreds and hundreds — sometimes thousands and thousands — of hysterical letters accusing them of plotting to destroy the American family.

    This was before constituent e-mail, when that kind of outpouring was shocking, particularly since a number of the writers seemed to believe that Congress was plotting to allow children to organize labor unions and sue their parents for making them do chores.

    “That was really the beginning of the Tea Party. The right wing started to turn on this thing viciously,” said Mondale. “They said it was a socialist scheme. They were really pounding the members of Congress and a lot of people got cold feet.”

    Nobody really knew where it was all coming from. A reporter for The Houston Chronicle traced the hysteria back to a man in Kansas who had written the leaflet, based on information he’d received from a revival in Missouri, which he told the reporter he had since learned was almost all completely wrong.

    But that was it. Later, people would begin proposing modest preschool programs, particularly for the offspring of poor women who were required to work after the repeal of welfare entitlements in the Clinton years. But there would never again be a serious attempt to guarantee all American families access to quality early education and after-school programs.

    The president proposes doing something for 4-year-olds. This is a great idea. Mondale is certainly enthusiastic. But still.

    Comment by Sue P — February 14, 2013 @ 6:33 pm

  4. I hope everyone had a nice Valentine’s Day! :love:

    Comment by Sue P — February 14, 2013 @ 6:35 pm

  5. :love:

    Comment by OKat — February 15, 2013 @ 8:07 am

  6. WATCH: Incredible Footage Captures Apparent Meteor Crash In Russia

    An apparent meteor crash over Russia’s Ural mountains that shattered windows and sent a shock to buildings left at least 500 people injured. Twenty-two of those are hospitalized, but most injuries are said to be minor, according to Russian officials.

    The incident reportedly resulted from fragments falling to Earth after a large meteor was partially burned and broken up.

    In the many videos that made their way to the Internet, a fireball is seen streaking across the sky — with a bang. One resident described the incident to the BBC:

    “It was quite extraordinary,” Chelyabinsk resident Polina Zolotarevskaya told BBC News. “We saw a very bright light and then there was a kind of a track, white and yellow in the sky.”
    “The explosion was so strong that some windows in our building and in the buildings that are across the road and in the city in general, the windows broke.”
    The resulting shock damaged about 270 buildings, according to CNN, “with hospitals, kindergartens and schools among those affected.”

    A couple videos below:

    :omg:

    Comment by vernon — February 15, 2013 @ 10:09 am

  7. More video…

    Meteor strike injures hundreds in central Russia

    A meteor crashing in the Urals of central Russia has reportedly injured at least 400 people, as the shockwave blew out windows and rocked buildings.

    Most of those hurt suffered minor cuts and bruises but some received head injuries, Russian media report.

    A fireball was seen streaking through the sky above the city of Yekaterinburg, followed by loud bangs.

    The meteor is believed to have landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a town in the neighbouring Chelyabinsk region.

    Daniel Sandford reports.

    Comment by vernon — February 15, 2013 @ 10:23 am

  8. Watch Asteroid 2012 DA14 Live As It Passes Earth

    :nana:

    Comment by vernon — February 15, 2013 @ 2:39 pm

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