|
wilson_li
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Brooke
Country: United States
State: New Jersey
Birthday: 3/3/1981
Gender: Female
Interests: Basketball. Reading. Rock climbing. Movies. Making movies. Music. Tim. Being Tim's wife. Taking photos. Sketching logos for my fictitious coffee shop. Desktop pictures. Icons. Macs. My iPod Shuffle. Get Fuzzy. Nintendo. Candles. Zebra pens. Making worship slides with Powerpoint. NPR. Moose. Family. Backpacks. Jackets. Designing Nike iD shoes that I never buy. The color orange. My truck. Cats--animals, not the musical. Friends. And oh so much more...
Expertise: making messes in the kitchen while breaking world speed records for data entry
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  wilson_li@mac.com
Member Since:
7/17/2004
|
|
| yay for new musicIf a song could be president
We’d hum on Election Day
The gospel choir would start to sway
And we’d all have a part to play
The first lady would free her hips
Pull a microphone to her lips
Break our hearts with Rhythm and Blues
Steve Earle would anchor the news
We’d vote for a melody
Pass it around on an MP3
All our best foreign policy
Would be built on harmony
If a song could be president
We’d fly a jukebox to the moon
All our founding fathers’ 45’s
Lightnin’ Hopkins and Patsy Cline
If a song could be president
If a song could be president
We could all add another verse
Life would teach us to rehearse
Till we found a key change
Break out of this minor key
Half-truths and hypocrisy
We wouldn’t need an underachiever-in-chief
If a song could be president
We’d make Neil Young a Senator
Even though he came from Canada
Emmylou would be Ambassador
World leaders would listen to her
They would show us where our country went wrong
Strum their guitars on the White House lawn
John Prine would run the FBI
All the criminals would laugh and cry
If a song could be president
| | |
| surprise, surpriseFrom the UK:
Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, was yesterday criticised by a high court judge who highlighted what he said were "nine scientific errors" in the film.
Mr Justice Barton yesterday said that while the film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change, he identified nine significant errors in the film, some of which, he said, had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration" to support the former US vice-president's views on climate change.The nine points: fact or fallacy?
> The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring
> It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down
> Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts"
> Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established
> The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability"
> Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that"
> Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm"
> The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult
> The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist" and part of Mr Gore's 'wake-up call'." He accepted that melting of the ice would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia."
Some of them more concisely from the man, Rush Limbaugh:
(1) Gore presents Mt. Kilimanjaro's melting snows as proof of global warming. In fact, the snows are vanishing thanks to local factors, including deforestation. (2) Gore suggests Antarctica's ice cover is melting. Most studies say it is increasing or stable. Gore shows scary graphics of cities drowning in seas that rise 7m, causing millions of refugees. But the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the seas will rise at worst by 59cm this century. (3) Gore uses images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests it was caused by global warming. The Government's expert in this case admitted such one-off events can't be blamed on warming." And, by the way, if it's blamed on warming and warming is happening, where the hell are the hurricanes this year? I mean, in order to make it look like we're having a tropical storm season, they're naming subtropical systems! Systems that never used to get named are now being named.... If global warming is going on, why aren't we being devastated by Katrina after Katrina after Katrina?....
(4) Gore suggests ice-core evidence shows rising CO2 caused temperature rises, which ended the past seven ice ages. In fact, the CO2 rises followed temperature rises by 800 to 2000 years. (5) Gore claims global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, causing an ice age in Europe. Recent studies deny it." We told you about the most recent study. The Gulf Stream is like... Imagine a conveyor belt, and the Gulf Stream takes warm water from right here in Florida and this part of the world across the Atlantic, and it gets up and gets cooler as it goes. But it warms some of the water that it interacts with. It keeps a veritably mild temperate climate over Great Britain, and Gore's movie says it's dying. It's dying! The Gulf Stream is dying out. It isn't dying out. They find that it fluctuates many times during the course of every year.... (6) Gore blames global warming for species losses in coral reef bleaching. The government couldn't show evidence to back this claim.
and yet, and yet... Gore and UN panel win Nobel prize
Where's the "peace" in this? Why wasn't President Bush being considered for his work to disarm North Korea? Or the coalition forces in Iraq for tirelessly working to promote and create peace within that portion of the world?
GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK. | | |
| couch anyone?the couches we bought this summer showed up with a slight nick in the one of the legs. i decided we paid enough for them so i wanted to leg replaced. i couldn't have them taking the couch back and giving us a replacement because my mom was coming to stay the day after and needed the pullout to sleep on. after numerous attempts to send out a service guy, but always scheduling it at a completely inconvenient time or calling to say he was on the way while we were at work, they called last week and said they were canceling the service order. instead, they were going to give us a new couch.
yep. a new couch.
so we got 4 months usage out of the couch and a new one came today. not too shabby. | | |
| good ol' DHSYesterday, my dad asked our coffee roaster why she had suddenly started putting stickers on the bottom of our coffee bags that identify her company and where she is located. She said she had been paid a visit by Homeland Security and was told she had to do it or face fines or worse if she did not comply.
DHS told her they are "cracking down" on people/companies like hers (she is a single proprietor that roasts coffee weekly and sells in online and locally).
Further into his exchange, she indicated that it was easier to comply than argue because she had just had to spend$30,000 on something the EPA made her do or they would have shut her down.
Yup.
| | |
| dodgeballtalk about bob and weave. gag me. see especially the bolded section at bottom. kudos to Melissa Block for trying to get her to answer the question twice. Also notice the part where she says, "when I'm president..."
All Things Considered, September 18, 2007 - Health care is a prime topic on the presidential campaign trail this week, since Sen. Hillary Clinton rolled out her plan for universal coverage on Monday.
She estimates her plan would cost $110 billion. And she'd roll back President Bush's tax cuts on the wealthiest to help pay for it.
Clinton has joked that she still bears "scars" from her disastrous attempt to overhaul the health-care system when she was first lady.
When she spoke with Melissa Block Tuesday, she said her new plan reflects what she learned from those mistakes. She said the "skepticism and resistance" about changing the health-care system has "dissipated considerably" since the early 1990s.
The New York Democrat also spoke about the return of $850,000 by her presidential campaign of money raised by embattled fundraiser Norman Hsu, calling the matter "a rude awakening" to her campaign and others.
And she repeated her view that the United States is "on the wrong track in Iraq," saying that Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, has been given an assignment that "cannot succeed."
The following is a transcript of the interview.
Sen. Hillary Clinton: What I've tried to do in this plan is to reassure people who have insurance that if they like what they have, they can keep it, no questions asked. They can keep their doctor. They can keep whatever hospital they prefer. But if they're among the 47 million uninsured, or the millions of underinsured Americans who think that they could get better coverage at a lower cost, then they're going to have new options.
We're also providing tax credits so that people will be able to afford it because even with better choices, it is expensive for most middle-income families. And we're also going to give tax credits to small businesses, because fewer than half of all small businesses provide insurance to their employees because they can't afford it.
Melissa Block: How do you reassure businesses, though, because even with those tax credits, businesses will have to help pay? They will pay more.
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Yes, they will. If they're large businesses, they have to pay. But 99 percent of large businesses already pay. We believe that we're going to give them options that will get their costs down. Because if you're having to pay for your own insurance because you're self-insured, or you are employing a lot of people in your large corporation to deal with insurance companies, you're going to have fewer costs than you do now, in order to deal with the insurance needs of your employees.
Melissa Block: But if I'm a small-business owner and I haven't paid anything before, even with the tax credit, I'm going to be feeling this.
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Well, a lot of small businesses have said over the years: They would like to be able to afford it. If they got a tax credit of 50 percent, that would make it affordable for many of them. Now, some of them will still not be able to afford it, but we will provide the tax credits then to the individual. So I think this provides a good balance, where we're going to ask for shared responsibility. Individuals will have to contribute. Businesses will have responsibilities. Drug and insurance companies will have to change the way they do business. And of course, the government will have to play a role as well.
Melissa Block: One of your Democratic rivals, Sen. Chris Dodd, says that the mistakes you made on reform back in the '90s set back the ability to move toward universal health care, in his words, "immeasurably." How do you respond to that criticism, that you're just too polarizing a figure to lead on this issue?
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Well, I believe that my experience and what I have learned from the efforts before led me to work very hard, as first lady, to help pass the Children's Health Insurance Program, to get vaccines for children, to get health care for our first responders and our veterans. So I have a unique perspective, being on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as I have. I also believe that the country has changed. You know, there was a lot of skepticism and resistance in the early '90s. I think that has dissipated considerably. More and more people now understand why we have to take action than did back then.
Melissa Block: You've heard the reaction coming from the Republican side. Rudolph Giuliani, one of your Republican rivals, calls your plan "a pretty clear march to socialized medicine."
Sen. Hillary Clinton: (Laughter.) Well, this is not a government-run plan. It doesn't create any new bureaucracies. And it is really premised on building on what's best in the American system and fixing what's wrong. And my question for the critics is: Well what will you do? What will you do to try to get costs down, and improve quality, and cover anyone? I'm proud that, on our side, all the Democrats believe we've got to move toward universal coverage. Many of their ideas are drawn from the work that I did back in the early '90s and I am so happy to have more allies in this effort. And I'm ready to, you know, carry that banner against the Republicans in the general election.
Melissa Block: I want to turn to another topic. Senator, your campaign recently returned $850,000 that was collected by the fundraiser Norman Hsu who, it turned out, was a fugitive from a felony fraud conviction. How embarrassing do you think that is to your campaign?
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Well, I think it was a rude awakening to all of us. I mean, not only in my campaign, but the dozens of campaigns going back to, I guess, 2003 and [2004], who took contributions. None of us caught this and we all ran searches. Every one of us does a vetting process and my campaign certainly did it. And this did not turn up. And as soon as we found out, we took action. And that's one of the reasons why I think we should be moving toward public financing. And when I'm president, I'm going to see if there is a way to do just that.
Melissa Block: Does it raise questions about the dangers of bundling? A lot of people who gave him money apparently didn't know that they were giving to your campaign at all, wouldn't have given money to your campaign if they had known.
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Well, that's why we returned all of the contributions. Obviously, we didn't want any questions asked about any of them and took that rather drastic action, but I thought it was exactly the right thing to do.
Melissa Block: Also, you told Gen. David Petraeus that his report, when he came before you in Congress, that his report on progress on the war in Iraq required, what you called, "a willing suspension of disbelief." Did you mean that he was misleading Congress?
Sen. Hillary Clinton: You know, if you look at everything that I said, I not only praised his service, I have the deepest admiration for him and I think he's been dealt a very hard hand. He's been made, along with Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker, the de facto spokesman for President Bush's policy. And it isn't any surprise to anyone that I disagree with that policy. I think we are on the wrong track in Iraq. I regret that the president apparently is going to continue this war until the last day he's in office, leaving it to his successor. But I believe that Gen. Petraeus, and the brave young men and women who are serving under him, are doing everything they possibly can to fulfill their mission.
Melissa Block: But were you saying that you didn't think Gen. Petraeus believed in what he was telling you?
Sen. Hillary Clinton: I believe that Gen. Petraeus is fulfilling a very narrow mission, but you have to look at the entire context in which that mission takes place. I have no doubt that Gen. Petraeus is doing everything he humanly can. He is a great soldier and he is a great leader, but he's been given an assignment that, by its very nature, cannot succeed.
Melissa Block: And if he's a great leader, why not repudiate the ad run in The New York Times by Moveon.org that called Gen. Petraeus, General Betray-us? People say that's a low blow.
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Well, I speak for myself. And I have spoken for myself on numerous occasions, just finished speaking with you about my high admiration and respect for Gen. Petraeus and I will continue to do so.
A special prize for the person who points out how many times she began her answer with "well".
| | |
|
