Representative George Miller, Democrat of California

You sir are awesome
From TPM Cafe

The President suspended wage standards for workers on the Gulf Coast before he declared a national emergency. That means he was so focused on cutting the wages of people who’d be returning to the Gulf Coast to rebuild their lives and their communities that, in order to hasten the suspension, he failed to follow the law. And at the same time the White House was cutting workers’ wages, it was busy awarding no-bid contracts. The President has proven once again that he’s more interested in governing for the few than in governing for all of us.

The President’s pay cut affects tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of Americans who desperately need a decent income to rebuild their lives. People working construction jobs in the Gulf Coast might only have earned $7 or $8 in the first place; now, the only protection left for them is the federal minimum wage, which is a disgraceful $5.15 an hour because Republicans repeatedly refuse to increase it.

What the President has done is immoral.

Sep 16, 2005 — 08:06:51 PM EST

what the hell happened to Orkut?

It has become the best Portuguese language social networking service on the internet.

As someone who used to work on virtual worlds software, I’ve followed the internet communities sites with some interest. It has been interesting to see each new one emerge become the leader and then recede as another site takes it place. There was friendster then orkut now myspace. I just visited orkut again for the first time in many months to see many of the communities abandoned, without a post in the last 6 or 8 months. The only recent posts seem to be in Portuguese. Even in the Seattle group, there are events for Sao Paulo listed! The Brazilians have overrun every forum and group and claimed it as their own. I wonder if Google is planning to do anything about it, because otherwise, it is certain that Orkut will continue to decline until it isn’t worth the support costs.

Old School DVD burning

Nothing like burning bad after bad disc when the discs are pricey

Switching to burning DVD+R DLs for backup has brought me back to the old days when CD-Rs cost $8 and it could take a couple duds to get a good one.

I’ve been using the Lacie Dual Layer DVD burner with Toast 6 Titanium OS X 10.3.9 and Memorex DVD+R DL discs and an external firewire drive. I had pretty good success at first, but now I’ve just burned 4 duds in a row (two getting errors during writing the lead-out and two hanging the writing right in the middle).

It is amazing how cavalier I’d gotten about burning DVDs, having a 99% success rate had just become the usual. Compound this with the fact that DVD-Rs are now down to under a dollar each in bulk while Dual Layer discs are still up around $4 each.

I’m not sure if this is a firewire issue, a media issue or a software issue. Just like the good ol’ days.

Yay Frank Rich!

Frank Rich’s op-ed piece “Falluja Floods the Superdome” in yesterday’s New York Times is spot-on

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/opinion/04rich.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Maureen Dowd’s Op-ed “United States Of Shame” in Friday’s New York Times had this little gem:

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Bob Herbert is pissed off, closer to the way I feel. His op-ed today had this excellent sentiment:

Mr. Bush flew south on Friday and proved (as if more proof were needed) that he didn’t get it. Instead of urgently focusing on the people who were stranded, hungry, sick and dying, he engaged in small talk, reminiscing at one point about the days when he used to party in New Orleans, and mentioning that Trent Lott had lost one of his houses but that it would be replaced with “a fantastic house – and I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.

Dear Bumbershoot…

I don’t like you anymore

I haven’t been to a Bumbershoot in the last 6 years, mostly because we’re usually out of town on labor day weekend, but this year we were in town and so we decided to check it out. We had a couple things that we were interested in seeing and we had a short walk to get there. Perfect! We arrive and then we notice the prices $28/adult! That might be ok if Bumbershoot is your only source of culture ’cause you are under 21 or live in the stix or Idaho or something, but 70% of the bands playing at Bumbershoot play a couple times a month in more intimate venues for $5 and the other 30% are pretty much in the washed-up-has-beens or the I’d-like-to-see-but-not-in-a-stadium kind of acts. Or even if there were more acts I really wanted to see, I’m not sure how excited I’d be to wait an hour in the sun surrounded by 16 years olds from Enumclaw in order to see them.

Sorry Bumbershoot, its not you, it’s me. We’ve grown apart and I just don’t like hanging around you anymore.

Marjorie

a disappointment for the price

I can’t remember what the previous name of this restaurant was, but I do remember that the food and atmosphere were good. The atmosphere is still good, the charming outdoor patio, the dark interior. The service was mostly good, once the place got a little crowded, our waitress forgot we existed and we sat at a table with our finished meal for 20 minutes before we gave up and stood up so that we could get our check. The food itself was a disappointment, but only because of the prices. For $35+/person, you expect a reasonable level of cuisine that was missing here. The pizza was unfavorably compared to american cheese baked on a saltine. My Canneloni with pork was unimpressive.

For the money, there are many better choices within a block or two…

GWB sets a record!

Congrats you uncaring bastard
From The Daily Pick

On August 19th, George W Bush broke the record for all-time most vacation days while President, beating Ronald Reagan’s old record in nearly half the time!

This man has spend nearly 20% of his time in office not working. Think your boss would give you 10.4 weeks of vacation a year if you were doing an amazing job? What if you were doing a crappy job? What if your company was losing money at a prodigious amount while your competitors were actively trying to destroy you?

He cut his current 5 week vacation a couple days short to start addressing the damage that Katrina caused. Of course this was the day AFTER Katrina caused the damage. Of course this was several days AFTER Katrina was identified as a risk.

I can’t believe that his approval rating is even 40%. He is destroying this country.

Republicans are not fiscal conservatives

at least not the neocons

charts are from the budget explorer

Take a look here: See the deficits decreasing over the course of Bill Clinton’s presidency and then increase dramatically over George Bush’s presidency? 9/11 isn’t the reason for this. President Bush signed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 on 6/7/01 and then refused to roll it back as the costs for 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required more and more money.

At what point is he going to admit that his plan is wrong? At what point are the American people going to say ENOUGH?

You know where George Bush has cut government expenses? Well one significant area was in flood prevention funds for the gulf coast states. Freaking genius George. Now we’ve had our US production of oil put into danger and we are going spend billions to fix the problems created because GWB would rather give more money to billionaires then save the lives and livelihoods of poor southerners (a big part of the republican base).

George W. Bush is without question the worst president in American history at this point.deficit.gif

debt.gif