Met with my new trainer at the gym, my other trainer has a new position at the gym. Boy, do I go through trainers …..it is my 3rd one. The good thing is that my old trainer use to be her trainer and that he trained her. So she is very similiar to him on her focus, very focus on the correct technique. Which is the only way to make sure you are getting a full workout and not hurting yourself.
I had a bunch of phone calls that I needed to make when I got home, I have a ton to do tomorrow. Today was mostly work related, but tomorrow I’m going to call around to get our utilities and such ready for our new place.
Then I just tried to get some work down. I had to find my desk….it was completely buried under papers and I can’t stand that….it is as bad as nails on a chalkboard. I finally found it about an hour ago. So it will be easier so me to get work done tomorrow and once work is done it will be easier for me focus on packing.
Our weekends is our down time, so it is hard to motivated, but during the week I just want to be left alone and work. I don’t want to do a bunch of running around. Hell, even the time going to the gym grates on me, but I know that it is needed both for my health and sanity.
Justice called uncooperative on voting rights
WASHINGTON – The House Judiciary Committee chairman on Wednesday said the Justice Department is stonewalling efforts to make sure this year’s presidential voting operates fairly.
Chairman John Conyers told Attorney General Michael Mukasey there hasn’t been enough cooperation with Congress on voting rights issues. Conyers also said the work that has been done hasn’t been effective.
“As we sit here today, probably 100 days before the election, we don’t know specifically how our government will respond to the problems that made the elections of 2000 and 2004 so problematic and so controversial,” Conyers told Mukasey at the start of the panel’s oversight hearing — likely the last House appearance for the attorney general.
**This scares the hell out of me. Especially after all the crappy tactics the GOP has done to disenfranchise voters, especially minorities.
Just Democracy
Some in Washington have touted the export of democracy abroad (often with disastrous results) while they neglect our own. The terrible irony is that they would not grant unconditional funding to a country whose democratic design looks like ours. The machinery of American democracy is broken: mistakes, chicaneries, snafus and disasters debilitate almost every race everywhere, every two years, with the result that an increasing number of Americans report feeling alienated by the voting process.
There are clear signs of the decline of our democracy: registration and voter turnout lag far behind other democracies; ever larger numbers of citizens are disenfranchised; the cost of running for office is spiraling out of control, excluding citizens of average means from participating in government; and our media, the forum for the healthy debate so essential to any democracy, are increasingly incapable of acting in the public interest.
This decline predates the 2000 presidential contest. Some of its roots are found in the invidious history of racial discrimination of which Senator Obama (all too briefly) reminded us. That unresolved election focused attention on our increasingly dysfunctional electoral system and the larger problems of our democracy. The past seven years of extremist Republican rule have stymied every effort to address the flaws that the 2000 election revealed.
Pollsters tell us that “process reforms” don’t galvanize voters. Candidates slight them. Pundits often scorn them, assuming that money will always dominate and that corruption is simply a fact of nature. But the primary season just past–which saw Americans of every background and political persuasion becoming experts on superdelegates and tuning in to a live broadcast of the Democratic Party’s rules and bylaws committee meeting–suggests that Americans do care about how our elections are run, and that they want them to be fair and functional. Obama–and, for that matter, Republican John McCain, who made his reputation as an election reformer–should, in this election year, address the concerns of millions of Americans about a broken system. And in 2009 progressives should recognize that it is vital to break from cynicism and advance a vision of government that is, in fact, of the people, by the people and for the people. It’s time for Just Democracy.
**This is a very interesting article with a break down on some changes that we really should make sure that everyone’s right to vote is protected and their vote counts. It also makes me sad how far behind the US is on voter rights when we throw it to the world what a great democracy we are…..what hypocrites. We can’t even get our population to vote in the numbers that other countries do….that is just sad and shameful.
Is Impeachment Too Little, Too Late?
Less than six months before President Bush leaves office, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing today on whether he should be impeached.Â
As could be predicted, the hearing was highly partisan. Democrats said they wanted accountability. Republicans called the hearing a show trial. People on both sides showed anger and emotion.Â
The hearing was about executive power and its constitutional limitations. The Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee is concerned the Bush administration exceeded its authority in several areas including the following: improper politicization of the Justice Dept; misuse of presidential signing statements; misuse of surveillance, detention, interrogation and rendition programs; manipulation of intelligence and misuse of war powers; improper retaliation and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame CIA agent outing case; and misuse of executive privilege.Â
**Now I know that this country doesn’t need to be divided and damaged anymore then that piss of crap Rove did to us. But at the same time we have to reestablish the constraints that was placed in our Constitution for checks and balances. This administration has disrespected and trampled all over our founding fathers beliefs.
And on that note of abuse………..
Audit: Gonzales-Era DOJ Played Politics
Top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales violated federal law and Justice Department policy by considering politics in hiring career employees, according to an internal department report released today.Â
Monica Goodling, the former Justice Department White House liaison, came under particular scrutiny in the report.
“Our investigation found that Monica Goodling and others in the attorney general’s office subjected candidates for certain career positions to the same politically based evaluation she used on candidates for political positions, in violation of federal law and department policy,” Inspector General Glenn Fine said in a statement. “This resulted in high quality candidates for important department positions being rejected because of improper political considerations.”
**You can not convince me that Gonzales didn’t know! This has been the practice of this administration since day one.  Now I want that bitch Goodling in jail and debarred, but they are just using her as a scrape goat because they don’t have the guts to man up to revel what scum that they are.
Can’t you tell how pissed I am about the previous 2 articles?
FCC may punish Comcast over Web blocking
WASHINGTON – A majority of members of the Federal Communications Commission have cast votes in favor of punishing Comcast Corp. for blocking subscribers’ Internet traffic, an agency official said Friday.
Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, was accused of violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet.
Three commissioners have voted in favor of an order reaching agreement with the finding, enough for a majority on the five-member commission. But the decision will not be final until all five members have cast their votes. The commission is scheduled to take up the issue at its Aug. 1 meeting.
**I just love this! They have the worst servers when you are trying to do business, the worst dvr boxes and they won’t even offer the Big Ten Network. It sucks that I use them. I hate them and miss my brighthouse with my roadrunner. We are seriously thinking of ditching them and getting a dish just to get what we want. Do you know how many people around here avoid them and use dishes? It really makes us consider it.
Israeli paper publishes Obama’s private prayer
JERUSALEM – An Israeli newspaper’s decision to publish a handwritten prayer left by Barack Obama in the cracks of Jerusalem’s Western Wall drew criticism Friday as an invasion of his privacy and his relationship with God.
**This was disgusting! I am extremely surprised that they have not publicly released the name of the student who did this and shamed them.
World War II aviator Ringenberg dies
OSHKOSH, Wis. – Margaret Ray Ringenberg, a World War II pilot from Indiana who continued to fly into her 80s, has died. She was 87.
Ringenberg, of Fort Wayne, Ind., died Monday in Oshkosh, where she was attending an Experimental Aircraft Association event. Winnebago County Deputy Coroner Shelley Donner said Ringenberg died of natural causes.
Ringenberg ferried military planes across the country during World War II before serving as a flight instructor and competing in numerous air races, including an around-the-world race at age 72.
Her adventures earned her a chapter in Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation,” a book documenting heroes of the World War II era.
Ringenberg got the bug to fly when she was 8 years old and a barnstorming pilot landed in a field near her family’s farm in northeastern Indiana. After she graduated from high school, she was resigned to becoming a flight attendant – thinking that was the only job on airplanes available for women.
During World War II, however, flight schools suffered a shortage of students as men were drafted. She was 19 when she flew solo the first time in 1941. Then she joined the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots.
When the war wound down, she returned to the Fort Wayne area. She married banker Morris Ringenberg in 1946 and took a job answering phones at the airport. In the 1950s, she began racing and giving flying lessons.
**A trailblazer for women everywhere has passed on. May not have been famous world wide, but she did her part.
“Birth Control – It’s Prevention!”
Access to birth control for millions of women is under attack.Â
For each $10 you contribute, a symbolic “Birth Control – It’s Prevention!†pill pack will be sent to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where this egregious rule has surfaced. Our goal is 2,000 packs by July 31st so please purchase yours today and help us show the Bush administration we will not stand for this attack on reproductive freedom.
**Send the HHS a message about birth control!
