Displeasure 3x!

Three things have really, really disturbed me today:

1. Bush, making a tour of the Middle East with an apparant aim of starting World War Three
2. Obama, Clinton, and Edwards wasting time on a ridiculous point of history
3. Blogger not letting me into my account all day for unknown reasons.

First of all, I had to shut off NPR's Morning Edition this morning because of a speech the President made while on his Middle East tour. I couldn't listen to it. He was saying bad things about Iran, and calling on our allies in the area to help stop Iran from doing bad things. Sounds a lot like the run up to a recent unnecessary war. Does Iran sponsor terrorism? Yes. Why? Who cares; it's unacceptable. Is the proper way to deal with it by pissing them off more and instigating war? No. I'd love to see our country try to use actual diplomacy, instead of justifying war in advance. I'll be writing letters over this.

I again killed the radio a couple hours later after listening to coverage on the tiff between Obama and Clinton over who deserves credit for the Civil Rights Act. As soon as I realized Obama was accusing Clinton of downplaying MLK's role in the civil rights act, I shut the radio off. The clip I heard of Hillary's statement praised LBJ, yes. For passing a piece of legislation, which . I didn't hear praise for being the father of the whole movement. Even if she HAD said words to that effect...why would Obama debate such a ridiculous point? Dr. King is the undisputed father of that Act, of the whole movement no less.

I learned in high school that when someone made a ludicrous statement, you ignored it. This would have served both candidates well.

As for Edwards trying to put in his two cents on the issue, I'm not going to touch that. Politicians...really do disgust me.

At this rate, I'll be voting for John McCain.

Blogger? Whatever. I got in at last, and really...it's small potatoes compared to the rest of this.

It Always Happens...

A happy New Year to anyone still checking this rather boring-of-late blog. Life has gotten in the way a little bit of even my sacred NPR listening, between holidays and vacations and sudden, life altering decisions of close family.

But I'm not going anywhere, figuratively speaking, although I need to start gearing up for a move or two outside the blogosphere.

So changes are afoot. Changes in the personal life, the career, and very probably even in this blog as I figure out the best way to use my skills and interests to help polish the diamond that is informed democracy.

Stay tuned to this space over the next week for more previews...

Thursday, Thursday, Thursday...

...are busy days, all three.

My paying job is being awfully needy the next four business days or so...gearing up for a vacation and trying to beat end of year deadlines. So...no thoughtful post today, and some reduced headlines!

Now for Some News...

Mitchell Report on baseball doping to be released 2pm today. Judging from what I heard on the radio, no one is expecting this to hurt the game any...at least not financially.

New EU treaty is signed, designed to radically alter how the EU operates. It looks like the treaty is going to make it more like a nation state instead of a loose conglomeration...creating a Union president, a ruling council, and eliminating veto power in many cases...could get interesting.

Liberty Township starts an interchange project that will connect it to I-75. As if there's not enough development going on out there anyway (I used to live in West Chester), the locally funded project aims to open up huge tracts of land for commericial development by extending Cox Road to the highway in the 1st phase, widening Hamilton-Mason Road in the 2nd, and adding an interchange at Hamilton-Mason Rd in the final phase.

Now I'm just grumpy. I kinda liked how there wasn't much of anything out there...pretty soon I AM going to have to live in Montana.

Wednesday

I actually slept this morning, and the BBC wasn't airing on WVXU last night for some reason. After Echoes went off the air, it was just...silence. Very odd. I'm willing to bet it's tied into a plea for money, but that's the risk you take with not-for-profit news.

I'll send them money as long as they don't behave like Fox News. It's a good trade.

Yesterday's post came up this morning because...I had it sort of in my head to write it all up, then edit and revise the next day. Sort of like a newspaper. But then it dawned on me last night I don't operate on anywhere near the same schedule as a newspaper...and all holding back the publishing of my posts would do is date my material.

So forget that. Besides, why should I behave less like a blogger and more like a respectable person?

Pretty soon, I'm gonna post about the primary system...but I need to research a little bit first. I'm not 100% sure I get it myself, which is frustrating when people ask me about it.

Now For Some News...

Huckabee Ahead Before GOP Debate. This disturbs me because while I don't really believe in the LDS' teachings, I care even less for Baptist teachings. The same conservative Christians who think the nation should be run according to the Bible support Huckabee, and I am NOT comfortable with that.

What's wrong with a nation run by the Bible? Take a hard look at Iran and then you can tell me.

DNA Ethics Debate. When you leave DNA behind (think spit in a coffee cup, or hair, or dandruff), it's been traditionally fair game. The courts have said little so far, and NPR is investigating into this legal gray zone.

The Arctic ice caps could be totally ice free during the summer by 2013. Does that make anyone else a little sad, and a lot frightened? When exactly do we as a nation pull our heads out of the sand and start running damage control on the environment?

True to their word at Annapolis, Israel and Palestine have started peace talks for the first time in seven years. The same old routine, Palestinians demanded a halt to all settlement growth, and the Israelis declared not enough was being done to crack down on militants. They did, however, agree to meet again and that's very nice.

Cincinnati could start using red light cameras, just like Columbus and Dayton. The city almost started using this technology in 2005, but Charlie Luken vetoed the plan. Mark Mallory, current mayor, is trying to postpone the debate on this issue until the formal, two year budget is discussed next year. Also mentioned by council members was the use of cameras to catch speeders.

So It's Tuesday

I've spent the last couple mornings listening to Morning Edition from NPR. Driving home from Sarah's on Monday was pretty nice, I got to fill up on the usual NPR plus the news from two ends of the state. Then this morning, I got up at 6am with the sole purpose of listening to the radio and waking up slowly...which kinda backfired, but hey. It's all good.



The issue tho, is it's almost depressing to get to hear all that news. Not in the usual, "Oh the world's going to hell" sort of way, but in the "Man, I wish I had time to lookup the Cincinnati budget" or "I wish I had the time to go to the County Comissioner's meeting and see if they say anything else about the zoo levy." I wish I had the time to just...spend, doing this blog, for one thing. As it is, I've had to cut back drastically because once I start blogging in the morning, it's VERY difficult to stop...and that's just bad for business.



So I'll be trying to figure out how best to work around this time management crisis. Stay tuned, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.



Now for Some News...



The CIA interrogation tape scandal is just gearing up. NPR had a chat with a former Senate Intelligence Comittee Chairman Bob Graham. It was a little chilling to hear how difficult oversight can actually be when it comes to things like this, and how much like a rogue operation the CIA can still be.



The gunman in Colorado was an interesting story, considering I lived in Colorado Springs for a while and think I know where the New Life church is. It's a sad story, with the guy apparantly wanting revenge...but he seemed more than a little unsettled upstairs. I think the only lucky thing about this is only 4 people were killed. While it had appeared the security guard killed the criminal, it turns out he had killed himself.



Algeria had a couple of bombings...no one claiming responsibility, no apparant cause. The MO is apparantly consistent with the local branch of al-Qaeda, and the explosions took place near the Supreme Court and UN offices, respectively. 13 UN workers missing, 62 counted dead so far on the whole.



Cincinnati Schools approved 2 levies that could be placed on the March ballot. They had to approve them now to keep their options open, and so could still decide to put both or none on the ballot. One is an operating levy worth nearly $8 million, and the other a permanent improvement levy worth $3 million. The district needs money, badly, and after the last levy was shot down so thoroughly...I worry. If the citizens aren't willing to pay for education, where is the future going to come from?



Police Chief Streicher and the City Manager say they will follow the council's directive to spend $1.5 million on overtime for extra, high visibility police patrols. Streicher maintains he was able to provide the patrols last year without using overtime, and complained about not being able to stay flexible enough to react to trends.



The public hearing on the City's budget for the upcoming year took place Monday night. 80 citizens spoke their mind on a variety of issues, from desiring the city to keep funding humanitarian projects to asking the city to help fund sheriff patrols in OTR. Another large issue was the proposal to eliminate the building and inspections department, splitting up its duties among other departments. Council is expected to finalize a budget by December 19th.

The Day That Will Live on in Infamy...

Um...no. Actually, no. Good political line...but...not so much. Sorry Frank.

I just ran a little experiment, shooting a text message to everyone I knew wishing them a "happy day that will live on in infamy." The more intelligent among my friends and family assumed I had just finished my classes for the quarter. Ah well. Hopefully we can accelerate this process with 9/11...but wait, I'm not allowed to say that, since it's a fresh wound.

2333 killed and 1139 wounded and all those beautiful battleships destroyed is a deep enough wound for me to keep Pearl Harbor in mind every year. Maybe it's the Navy man I was in a past life...

Now for Some News...

It fits that the CIA would make tapes of questionable interrogation tactics, destroy those tapes, and then the public find out about it. It's a little bizarre to me, the whole thing...but another sign of one seriously dysfunctional executive branch. I do not envy the next President.

Developers want to put a huge casino resort in Wilmington, OH. The veritable middle of nowhere, and I'm torn on whether or not it'd be a good thing to have something between Columbus and Cincinnati. Either way, the state government is not making it easy for the developers to get approval from the voters.

Say what you want about nuclear power, but a large chunk of the medical field is in a panic about one of the Canadian reactors being shut down. It stops the flow of radioactive isotopes that are needed for a variety of tests and treatments, possibly dealing a catastrophic blow to the health industry.