Daffodil Lane: March 2007 Archives

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March 31, 2007

Cherry Blossoms Ala Alexis

Alexis took a few really good pictures today with her camera when we were in DC. This was one of them

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DC Cherry Blossom Adventure

This morning we set off on one of our adventures. The plan was to drive into DC early, let Alexis see the cherry blossoms, take some pictures and then get out of there before lunch, which in reality we did, but a bit faster than we had expected!

When we arrived around 7:45 am this morning there were already NO PARKING SPACES ANYWHERE AROUND THE TIDAL BASIN!! Apparently we weren't the only ones with the bright idea to get in early. I have never in my life seen anything like it! Jamison and I went in to DC before Alexis was born to see the cherry blossoms and drove in early on a Saturday morning and it was nearly deserted! But today was much different.

We finally found an empty spot, that wasn't really a spot given it was a permit only space, next to the tidal basin and we parked for about 20 minutes and snapped some pictures. Then we high tailed it out of there! The estimated crowd today was supposed to be somewhere between 900,000 and 1,000,000 people! So given we aren't crowd people we knew we wouldn't be hanging around all day, but still!

Alexis enjoyed our little jaunt, we got some good pictures and we had a wonderful, if abbreviated time. You can't ask for more than that! Next time we'll take the train in! ;o)

Happy Saturday everyone!

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Spring In DC

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March 30, 2007

Daffodils, Daffodils, Daffodils!

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Moon And Branches

Posted by Dianne at 8:03 PM

Bush Prepares to De-Fund Troops

The president wants to have his endless war without restriction or accountability, and the Congress has said "enough is enough". When President Bush defunds his own War, he will have only himself to blame. This is his temper tantrum, and Americans are no longer willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

As the Senate resumed debate Wednesday on a bill containing a spring 2008 timetable for bringing American troops home, Bush argued again that such a step would result in a needless delay of funds for troops. But Democrats are insisting that he'll have to accept some sort of timeline to get the money.

The quotes on this story are priceless. The Republicans choose to veto the funding for the troops and it's the fault of the Democrats?? What's even more priceless is when Bush screams that the American people will blame the Democrats for him being the ones who is actually defunding the troops? Really now? With 60% of Americans supporting scaling back our participation in this Republican war of aggression, the American people are going to hold Democrats responsible for doing what they were elected to do? Not quite. I know for the Republican voter electing someone that doesn't fulfill any of their campaign promises is sort of the norm, but the rest of America sort of elects people to do the job they promised to do. It's a wild concept that is catching on after 12 years of utter Republican mismanagement of Congress. In the next election cycle, we are going to roll it out again. It's just become all the rage with voters, actually having representation in Congress, I know wild who could have ever guessed that it would catch on?? Not Republicans evidently, but such is life. We've seen the best that conservative thinking can do for America, I think we are all ready for a new direction for the country now.

Read more over at Raising Kaine, Nightbird's Fountain, TalkLeft and MyDD.

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March 29, 2007

Final Four Psychic Prediction for tomorrow

Georgetown Wins!!!

I have no real interest in the game, I'm just trying to think positively so that justice can be served for rest of the planet because of past transgressions by their opponent. I wrote up a scathing piece on them, but it didn't make it by the editor because of the negative tone. So you'll just have to trust me they are vile.

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6 Weird Things About You Meme

Cheri tagged me for the 6 Weird Things About You meme. So here it goes:

1. I like mustard on my grilled cheese sandwiches. I don't know how or where I ever started this habit, or even got the idea that mustard would be good, but I tried it, I liked it and it stuck!

2. I don't think skunks stink. How's that for weird?

3. I like for all of the knives in my knife block in the kitchen to be pointed toward the wall. When Jamison puts them away he usually points them toward the refrigerator instead. This used to irk me, but I realized that just because I'm OCD, doesn't mean he has to be too. I am now just thankful that he helps me in the kitchen because many of my friends husbands do not, but I do sometimes go behind him and point them the other way! ;o)

4. The toilet paper roll has to be hung with the paper coming over the top, instead of under the bottom. When we have company and they hang it the other way, I go behind them after they leave and switch it back the other way. OCD yet again! ;o)

5. All of the light switches on a plate need to be going in the same direction when off. Unfortunately there is one set in my house that always has one light switch going the opposite direction due to the way the builder wired the house when it was built and the fact that it shares light duty with another plate for the same light fixture. I've come to terms with it, but I still don't like it when I see it pointing the other way! OCD anyone? Do you see a pattern forming here? ;o)

6. The way I knit, is not the way that most people knit, but the end result looks the same. I taught myself to knit from a book and somehow it translated differently in my brain. I do my stitches in a different direction/way. It's hard to explain, but if you're a knitter and you watched me knit, you'd see it immediately.

Well there are six sorts of weird things about me. I'm not sure who to tag, but if you want to jump in them feel free! :o)

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Thought For The Day

Thank Heaven for little girls! They grow up in the most delightful ways! - Alan Jay Lerner

Another thought from one of My Bag Ladies tea bags. How true! :o)

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March 28, 2007

One Of These Days

It's coming along. One of these days (and hopefully soon!) I'll finally finish this quilt!

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Bush is the symptom, conservativism the disease

Republicans are in a bind -- they want to disown Bush and throw him to the wolves. They want to blame him for all the problems they've had the past few years governing the country and save their own hides, but they still can't find the strength to oppose his Iraq efforts. They are attached to his hip, yet they want to pretend that Bush is the cause of all the nation's problems. Complicating things, they've had a governmental trifecta, so they don't have their usual Democratic Party foils to blame. They're on their own and isolated on this one.
But ultimately, Bush is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The cause is conservatism. How can an ideology that holds as a truism that government can't work, work? If Republicans ran the country smoothly and ably, it would lay waste to their claims that government is the enemy and can't make people's lives better. In that regards, Bush hasn't been incompetent. He's been wildly successful.

So yes, what we have just witnessed is the logical conclusion of effective conservative governance, and things would look the same way today whether we had President McCain, President Lott, President Jeb, President Romney, President Thompson, or whichever other anti-government Republican we slotted in.

This is what conservatives want for America. We're seeing it in the most vivid of colors. Blaming Bush for doing exactly what conservatives wanted to the country would be like, well, blaming Gonzales for doing exactly what Bush ordered him to do.

Markos is on fire this morning! OK it was yesterday, but I didn't catch wind of it till this morning. It's absolutely so true, the radical right is trying to say that the problem isn't conservatism, but it's just the people in charge. The reality is that it's a natural result of conservative ideology, this is where you will always end up, thousands of Americans dead, the country faltering at every turn and conservatives screaming if they could just give the wealth one more tax cut that this would all turn around. Yeah right! Failure is the ultimate end of conservative ideology, it's the only place it can go because it's built on a fundamentally unsustainable set of precepts. Take a good look America this is the best the conservatives can do, this is their finest hour, the realization of all their dreams and ambitions. As you watch scandal after scandal unfold, remember this is what they consider Utopia and remember that the next time you're alone in the voting booth. If you vote for a conservative, this is what you want for America.

[via America Blog]

Happy Third Blogaversary To Us!

Three years, 7,343 entries, 8,971 comments and several million visitors later we're still going strong! What started out as a way to share news about Alexis, discuss things that mattered to us and generally blow off steam, has evolved into what you see today, which some like and others don't, but as the years have passed I've learned that you can't please everyone 100% of the time and there is no point in trying. What you see is what you get. You have to be true to yourself and if people don't like you for who you are then it's their loss.

Anyway, all of this to say that over the past few years we've made some very good friends because of this blog (especially, but not limited to, Monica, Kathy, the folks over at Night Bird's Fountain, Ebony Mommy, Shana, Tanyetta, Qusan, Cheri and family, RedHat and London Southern Belle, as well as various non-blogging commenters, people we already knew, etc.) and I want each of you to know that we have really enjoyed getting to know you and hope to continue to get to know you more as the years go by!

Here's to 3 more wonderful years! *<:o)

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March 27, 2007

And While You're At It Check Out The Movie Too!

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Dandies By Alexis

We got Alexis a new Kid's Tough digital camera because she has been fascinated with taking pictures as of late. Obviously we weren't going to let her use my camera, but over the past several months she'll grab one of our cell phones and just take picture after picture. With our upcoming trip to Ireland in the fall we decided she needed a way to document her trip as well.

I found this camera before Christmas and Alexis liked the look of it, so we decided to give it a go. Obviously it doesn't make stellar quality images, but it works just fine for a child and Alexis is completely enthralled with the little thing! She immediately wanted to take pictures of the "Dandies" and proceeded to take quite a few. What's a 2 gig SD card for anyway! ;o)

Now we'll see what she ends up taking pictures of. So far she's taken a bunch of pictures of me and the wall and the celiling! ;o)

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"Dumbo"

This is a sculpture that is in Jamison's office complex. Alexis adores "Dumbo" and today we had a little time to kill, so I let her actually get out of the car and take a look at him. Usually we just wave to him as we drive by. He's a water sculpture, but he wasn't spouting water today.

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Dandies

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Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home

Posted by Dianne at 3:28 PM

White House spokesman's cancer returns

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Doctors have removed a small, malignant growth from presidential spokesman Tony Snow's abdomen, but they determined the cancer had spread to his liver, the White House said Tuesday.
Snow underwent surgery to have the growth -- about the size of his pinky fingertip -- removed from his pelvic area, and doctors found that his cancer had metastasized, or spread, to his liver, said Snow's deputy, Dana Perino.

I had hoped that the initial scans would prove to be true, but it looks like Mr. Snow's cancer has returned and has also metastasized. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Snow and his family.

Found via CNN.

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March 26, 2007

Happy Birthday Nancy!!!

Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi (born March 26, 1940) is currently the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and is the first woman to hold that position. She is also the first Californian and the first person of Italian descent to become Speaker. She is also the second person from west of the Rocky Mountains to hold the post, after fellow Democrat Tom Foley of Washington. Before becoming Speaker, she was the House Minority Leader from 2002 to 2007, holding the post during the 107th, 108th, and 109th Congresses of the United States. She is the first Democratic Speaker of the 21st Century.
Since 1987, she has represented the 8th Congressional District of California, which includes four-fifths of the City and County of San Francisco. The district was numbered as the 5th during Pelosi's first three terms in the House.

Pelosi ranks second in the line of presidential succession, following Vice President Dick Cheney. She is the highest ranking woman in the history of the U.S. Government; no woman has ever been closer in line to the U.S. presidency.

One of the most powerful women on the planet, plus a former Maryland Resident and I didn't even know it was her birthday. And yes, I put the excessively long block quote in just to include the happy news that she's second in line to the presidency. I know every time Bush gets in more trouble for one or another of his criminal schemes that I know responsible leadership is just a heartbeat away. And she's become quite the blogger lately! If you haven't checked out her blog The Gavel you should. Anyway, she sure does prove that 60 is the new 40, my goodness, I would have never guessed she was 67!

[via BobGeiger]

Read more over at Wikipedia and Speaker of the House's website.

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Yesterday was Maryland Day!!!

Maryland Day is a legal holiday in the U.S. state of Maryland. It is observed on the anniversary of the March 25, 1634 landing of settlers in the Province of Maryland.
On this day settlers from The Ark and The Dove first stepped foot onto Maryland soil, at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River. The colony was granted to Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore two years prior by Charles I of England. In thanksgiving for the safe landing, Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated mass for the colonists, perhaps for the first time ever in this part of the world. The landing coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation, a holy day honoring Mary, and the start of the new year in England's legal calendar (prior to 1752).

The holiday began in 1903, the date chosen by the state board of education to honor Maryland history. In 1916, the legislature authorized Maryland Day as a legal holiday (Chapter 633, Acts of 1916).

Well you learn something new everyday I guess. Usually these kinds of things would be covered in an elementary civics class, but I had Arkansas and Georgia Civics, I wasn't in school when I came to Maryland. I'm not sure what the appropriate celebration is for Maryland Day, somehow it seems a little ouster for drunken debauchery or anything fun like that. I suspect a moment of silence will suffice. ;)

Read more over at Wikipedia and Maryland State Archives.

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What's the big deal?

One of the entries that I've been trying to think up a good write up about is the Attorney General scandal. As each new bit of information about the criminal activities of the AG has leaked out, it's become more and more apparent that something really needs to be said about it, but I was grasping about for the right words to say. I hadn't settled on anything and then I read this piece by Josh Marshall and it was perfect and eliminated the need for me to blog about it. I hate to copy other people's work in their entirety, but this is just too critical to leave it to chance that some people will go find the truth on their own:

Given the amount of attention we've given to the US Attorney Purge, there's been no end of right-wing nutjobs who've written in asking just what the big deal is. In most cases, these are just attacks dressed up as questions. And I do my best -- not always successfully -- to ignore them. But interspersed in that mess of emails are a few who seem to be asking, genuinely, what the big deal is. Perhaps they're critics of the president or conservatives who genuinely don't see it. So here's how I'd answer that question.
For all the intensity and hostility awash in our politics, there are some lines we just assume aren't going to be crossed, lines that are so basic that the civil compact itself can't easily survive if they're not respected.

One of those is the vote. Whoever's in power and however intense things get, most of us assume that the party in power won't interfere with the vote count. We also assume that the administration won't use the IRS to harrass or imprison political opponents. And we assume that criminal prosecutions will be undertaken or not undertaken on the facts.

Yes, there's prosecutorial discretion. And the grandstanding, press-hungry DA is almost a cliche. But when a politician gets indicted for corruption we basically all assume it's because they're corrupt -- or, given the assumption of innocence, that the prosecution is undertaken because the prosecutor believes their case is strong and that the defendent committed the crime.

Now, again, life is made of grey areas. And our laws and regulations often take into account that even people of good faith may not be able to impartially investigate their own. That's why we had the Independent Counsel statute. The partisan affiliation of prosecutors and judges often hangs in the background of cases. And probably most Democrats and Republicans feel a bit better when a member of their party is brought down by a prosecutor of the same party because then you can assume -- whatever fairness or unfairness may have been involved -- that partisanship wasn't a factor.

So, all of this is to say that no system is perfect and partisan affiliation may distort the justice system at the margins.

But none of what we're seeing here is at the margins. What we seem to see are repeated cases in which US Attorneys were fired for not pursuing bogus prosecutions of persons of the opposite party. Or vice versa. There's little doubt that that is why McKay and Iglesias were fired and there's mounting evidence that this was the case in other firings as well. The idea that a senator calls a US Attorney at home just weeks before a federal elections and tries to jawbone him into indicting someone to help a friend get reelected is shocking. Think about it for a second. It's genuinely shocking. At a minimum one would imagine such bad acts take place with more indirection and deniability. And yet the Domenici-Iglesias call has now been relegated to the status of a footnote in the expanding scandal, notwithstanding the fact that there's now documentary evidence showing that Domenici's substantial calls to the White House and Justice Department played a direct role in getting Iglesias fired.

So what you have here is this basic line being breached. But not only that. What is equally threatening is the systematic nature of the offense. This isn't one US Attorney out to get Democrats or one rogue senator trying to monkey around with the justice system. The same thing happened in Washington state and New Mexico -- with the same sort of complaints being received and acted upon at the White House and the Department of Justice. Indeed, there appears to have been a whole process in place to root out prosecutors who wouldn't prostitute their offices for partisan goals.

We all understand that politics and the law aren't two hermetically sealed domains. And we understand that partisanship may come into play at the margins. But we expect it to be the exception to the rule and a rare one. But here it appears to have become the rule rather than the exception, a systematic effort at the highest levels to hijack the Justice Department and use it to advance the interest of one party over the other by use of selective prosecution.
-- Josh Marshall

Simple and direct. It probably won't help our confused friends on the radical right, but it will clarify things for the rest of us.

The Scopes Monkey Trial of new century

When I heard the comparison the other morning on the radio I had to laugh out loud. That's the prefect analogy to what the Republican party attempted in Congress against Al Gore last week. And predictably the results were exactly the same for them. The modern face of the conservative movement launched into their bitter oil company sponsored counter attack against Gore, and were utterly defeated. The attacks were pitiful and despite the massive amount of planning by the climate skeptics, they crumbled before Gore anyway. It was like watching children getting disciplined by an adult. And ultimately that's what's going on in the world right now. The conservatives are running about like children trying to pretend away the problems that face this planet, as well as this country, and the now the moderates and liberals are having to be the responsible parents and start getting the work done that needs to be done to save us all. Gore's quote is priceless "If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame-retardant. You take action" and you listen to the conservatives, they are afraid to take action. This is the difference between parents and children here...Parents make choices based on the best information they have. I don't let my kid walk next to a cliff and just hope that she won't fall off, I err on the side of caution like every other responsible adult does. Conservatives don't care if the kid falls off, they just want nothing to change. And yet the only thing that is certain in this world is change. Good work Al!

Read more over at The Washington Post and Think Progress.

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Republicans kill DC voting rights

Another big thing that happened last week was the Republican party's move to kill DC voting rights. There are many people that have written extensively on the subject at this point, but I wanted to give my general thoughts. I hate to admit it, but I think they may actually right on this one, the way they are doing it is unconstitutional. Luckily I already wrote up a solution to that problem a long time ago, so just put this up instead. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) makes me bust a gut, every time she says that the American people will be outraged to learn what the GOP is doing. They've been victimizing the entire country, you think that anyone is going to be startled to learn that they've disenfranchised everyone in DC?? Please, we weren't all born yesterday, we know what the GOP is up to, we just can't do anything about it at the moment. When "No taxation without Representation" was coined by Reverend Jonathan Mayhew we were under the boot of a tyrannical king, conservatives should remember that Americans don't have much stomach for tyrants and get out of the way, making sure that they don't end up under the foot of history. Americans are awakening to the reality that their principals have been trampled on by fools and cowards. We are going to return our principals no matter how conservatives want things to go.

Gossip Site TMZ Focuses on Washington

For those of you that don't know TMZ is like the Enquirer of the Internet. If you want to see a star doing something crazy, this is the place you go. Not really my cup of tea, but according to NPR it's all the rage among men, which I was going to dispute and then I remembered all the pictures of the wardrobe malfunctions on the site and when put in that prospective I guess I could buy that argument. Anyway, I digress.

TMZ has decided to expand their operations from the West Coast to the nations capital. That's right folks the same kind of "impeccable" journalism will now be applied to our nations most powerful group. Not sure there is going to be the same draw for wardrobe malfunctions when dealing with the oldest Congress in American history, but it might be useful if the people back home got to see some of the rampant misbehaviors of their politicos. They claim that they are going to be including their staff members as well in their investigations and if you happen to catch a politico in some sort of misconduct make sure you ship them the video. You get how this goes I suspect.

In the end, I think this will probably be most devastating to the Republicans, who have been used to their friends in the right wing media covering up all their missteps for them, but it will provide endless fodder for bloggers and the likes of Wonkette. We shall see how it works out.

Listen over at NPR.

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Read it!

You won't be sorry! ;o)

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"The Great Global Warming Swindle"

I finally got around to watching this latest show piece of the radical rights climate change deniers. I have to say the oil companies sure got their money's worth out of this one!

Alright, if you were dim witted and uneducated it would have been their money's worth. Standard conservative style thinking, one exception makes a rule. I'm baffled how that works in the conservative mind. Basically there are a handful of scientists out there that can't accept the possibility that we are dooming ourselves. I have to admit that it's hard to accept, but you have to put all the science together and then you see the vision of where you're going. Psychology tells us that when faced with something so terrifying and seemingly inevitable, that some people just don't have the mental ability to accept it and take action to avoid it. These are the kind of people that end up on a train track seeing the train coming at them and just standing there transfixed by the horror of it all. This is how the conservative mind seems to work. They see the same horror that everyone else sees, but they just can't deal with it, so they drop into some altered reality and try to ignore it, which I guess if it were something like a train where the side effects of their poor decision making ability would be resolved very quickly, but in the case of something as complicated as global warming, they actually have the potential of making things worse for everyone. Intelligent people on the other hand can debate details of timing and time frames, but in the end they don't abandon reason and just pretend that it isn't happening at all. Conservatives instead get lost in the details and loose the vision of the future. If the train coming at you is blue or green really doesn't change the fact that it's still a train coming at you now does it? You still know to get off the tracks, a conservative screams after you, "you're wrong it's a green train, not blue at all" and then gets hit by the train itself, which in retrospect may have been true, but it didn't change the fact that it was a train at all.

Anyway, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is a lot of that kind of thinking and the desperate grasping at straws that have become the hallmark of conservative "intellectual" thinking. I really love them bringing up of theories that have long since been proven to be based on bad data or poor science as "proof" that there is a vast conspiracy to make the world into a better place. I mean really that's the horror the conservatives are trying to protect us against...A sustainable existence. Living on only what we need, ending our lives of pointless consumerism, to be better more responsible people. Oh the horror!??? Once again the conservative movement proves it has nothing of value to add to the conversation about the future of the world.

Pew Study: Democrats Open Up Huge Gap Over Republicans

Few things made me snicker more last week than Pew research releasing the poll that said that people couldn't identify with the radical ideology of the Republican party much anymore. On one level this was completely predictable to me, I've pretty much said all along that America's brush with radical conservative ideology was a doomed exercise. There is just something fundamental about being an American that makes it impossible for us to accept that our founding principals should be abandoned to turn America into a cheap third world dictatorship. I know a lot of Republicans have screamed at me for years that I was wrong and they were going to establish a thousand year empire of imperial Republican rule of this planet. Yet here we are once again, with me being proven correct and the American people seeing the Republican party for the godless monsters I've always said they were.

For me the exciting part is starting to happen, the real Republicans, not the monsters like Delay and Bush, are starting to reestablish themselves and instead of trying to destroy America they are starting to stand up for our country again. They are resisting the radical ideology that has strangled the Republican party for the last decade and are starting to do what Republicans did when I was a child, they are starting to represent honest hardworking Americans for the first time in a very long time. It's really a new concept for them, so it will take a while before they get back into the groove, but I'm starting to see it and it makes me happy. As for the radicals, they will be increasingly marginalized and ignored, which is good for America.

NYC Police Spied Broadly Before GOP Convention

On one level this is neither surprising or overly concerning. The job of the police force is to maintain law and order. So the fact that they worked to figure out who had plans to be violent and collected information about them isn't a matter for concern. But then you read something like this.

From these operations, run by the department's "R.N.C. Intelligence Squad," the police identified a handful of groups and individuals who expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, as well as some who used Web sites to urge or predict violence.
But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the files. In hundreds of reports stamped "N.Y.P.D. Secret," the Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law, the records show.

What??? RNC Intelligence Squad??? I think I need some clarification now if this was a temporary working group or a permanent extension of the police force that is still alive today. We've heard for years that the GOP has abused it's political power to manipulate the justice system into being an extension of the Republican party, but this borders on just being criminal!

I know this may sound strange to the Republican readers out there, but we have this thing called a constitution...I know wild concept there, but it guarantees certain inalienable rights to American citizens and one of them is the "the right of the people peaceably to assemble". That means protesters no matter how annoying or misguided have the right to protest your convention no matter how it will make you look in the media. Trust me a few protesters would look a lot less scary to the world than an RNC Intelligence division spying on Americans trying to exercise their constitutionally protected rights of assembly.

Sorry about the slacking

Last week was our spring break, so we spent most of our free time goofing off and hanging out together rather than paying attention to blogging. So posting last week was light and unfocused. This week I plan to get back on schedule and start talking about the important stuff that's been going on in the world. I have to finish some homework that was assigned during my spring break by my ruthlessly out of touch professors, but after that I'm golden for more than a little while.

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March 23, 2007

White House spokesman Snow faces surgery

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Friday he will undergo surgery Monday to remove a growth in his lower abdomen.
He said the procedure was being done "out of an aggressive sense of caution" because he had colon cancer two years ago.

He said Friday that tests since the growth was discovered in his lower right pelvic area have been negative for cancer, but that doctors decided to remove it to be sure.

Regardless of political persuasion this type of thing is never good. I hope that Mr. Snow's surgery goes well and that the mass does indeed end up being benign as preliminary tests show.

Found via CNN.

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While I Wasn't Looking

While I wasn't looking Al Gore started a blog. For years I've thought he needed one.

Check it out here.

Thanks to Jamison for leading me in the right direction. :O)

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March 22, 2007

I Guess They'll Market Anything!

We ran to Home Depot this morning to get some spring planting stuff. We got a couple of Concord grape vines, a blueberry bush, some lettuce, cabbage, spinach, rosemary, a trellis and some compost. We also got some seeds. When Alexis saw they had VeggieTales seeds she wanted to get some. Given we needed pea seeds and sunflower seeds I decided to let her have them. I guess it's true...They'll market anything! ;o)

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Elizabeth Edwards Cancer Has Moved From Her Tissue To Her Bones

John Edwards said tests this week had shown his wife, Elizabeth, had cancer in a rib on her right side. He said the cancer is treatable but not curable.
"We are very optimistic about this," he said, noting that the tumor is small in size and has a "relatively minimal presence."

Elizabeth Edwards said she was "incredibly optimistic" and said her expectations about the future were unchanged.

"You can go cower in the corner and hide or you can go out there and stand up for what you believe in," John Edwards said. "We have no intentions of cowering in the corner."

Elizabeth Edwards said she was fortunate that she felt pain from a cracked rib and got X-rays for that which revealed the cancer.

Elizabeth Edwards underwent treatment for breast cancer after the 2004 campaign, in which her husband was the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

Elizabeth Edwards' breast cancer, invasive ductal cancer, is the most common form of the disease, accounting for 70 percent to 80 percent of cases, according to the American Cancer Society.

Her cancer is treatable, not curable. That's not good, but apparently some people live with this for a very long time, and live normally at that. She's still in our thoughts and prayers.

Found via CNN.

Posted by Dianne at 12:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Edwards to hold news conference on wife's health

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina (CNN) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, have scheduled a news conference for Thursday to discuss what sources close to Edwards described as possible developments with her health.
The sources would not disclose the exact nature of Thursday's announcement, but they did say that the couple is not going before the press to say that "everything is OK."

Elizabeth Edwards underwent treatment for breast cancer after the 2004 campaign, in which her husband was the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

The sources close to Edwards said his wife had a routine follow-up appointment on Monday to check her breast cancer, which was believed to be in remission. According to sources, the doctor called back on Tuesday and asked her to come in again on Wednesday.

Edwards, who was campaigning in Iowa, cut short the rest of his schedule on Tuesday to fly back to be with her. The two of them went to see the doctor together on Wednesday, the sources said.

It appears that Elizabeth Edwards' cancer may not be in remission after all! Our thoughts and prayers go out to her today. I hope that everything will turn out ok. I'm such an admirer of hers!

Found via CNN.

Posted by Dianne at 8:26 AM

March 21, 2007

Daffodils

Or "Dandys" as Alexis calls them!

Oh how I love thee!

Posted by Dianne at 6:09 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

An 18 day gap???

Shades of Rose Mary Woods? An 18 day gap?
I think a commenter in our document dump research thread may have been the first to notice that the emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year.

(Our commenter saw it late on the evening of the dump itself -- see the comment date-stamped March 20, 2007 02:19 AM in the research thread)

The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th. So those eighteen days are pretty key ones.

For those of you that don't know, Rose Mary Woods was the secretary of Richard Nixon that was blamed for erasing portions of the Nixon tapes. So appears the Republican cover-up is in full force, you can see why Bush is willing to take this matter to the Republican controlled Supreme court. I love the breathless hysteria of the radical right that you can't ask the President's staff to testify about anything before Congress, yet 47 different times, Clinton's staff was called to testify before Congress on matters related to Republican investigations. Evidently we are back to the old Republican stand by of two legal systems, one for them and one for everyone that disagrees with them. The Republican party is trying to top their Nixon era criminality and it appears that they've made Nixon look like a rank amateur.

March 20, 2007

Hualapai Tribe Set to Open Grand Canyon Skywalk

Have you ever asked yourself, wouldn't it be cool to stand a piece of glass over the edge of cliff to see 4000 feet down? If the answer is yes, here's your chance after March 28th!

HUALAPAI INDIAN RESERVATION, Ariz. — Visitors who have marveled at the Grand Canyon's vistas will now have a dizzying new option: a glass-bottom observation deck allowing them to gaze into the chasm beneath their feet.
The Skywalk, officially being unveiled Tuesday, is being touted as an engineering marvel. The glass-and-steel horseshoe extends 70 feet beyond the canyon's edge with no visible supports above or below.

For $25 plus other fees, up to 120 people at a time will be able to look down to the canyon floor 4,000 feet below, a vantage point more than twice as high as the world's tallest buildings.

Hualapai Indians, whose reservation is about 90 miles west of Grand Canyon National Park, allowed a Las Vegas developer to build the $30 million Skywalk in hopes of creating a unique attraction on their side of the canyon.

I just don't know about this one. I'm betting it will be an attraction for sure. The whole standing on glass looking down nearly 3/4's of a mile just doesn't feel like my cup of tea.

March 19, 2007

It's Spring Break...Pull Out The Sewing Machine!

I haven't had time to sit down and do anything crafts or quilting wise since last fall, especially after I had the bright idea to go back to school. This week is my Spring Break and after finishing two midterms from hell in the past couple of days I was more than ready to do something crafty, so today I made up a quilt block:

I actually designed this block before we went to the beach in September and had hoped to work on a quilt while we were there, but I got side tracked with beachy things instead. Today I cut out one block and sewed it together to see how it looked together. I like it!

Click on the extended entry below to see some pictures of it coming together, a rough outline block I made on the computer last September and some fabric "swatches"!

This week I'm hoping to finally finish Alexis travel quilt this week and then cut out more of these blocks!

Each small block has nine patches, which are sewn into 3 strips:

The strips are then sewn together to make one of the smaller blocks:

On each side there are two small blocks that are sewn together with a strip:

And then the two sides are joined with a couple of strips and a square to make the final block:

And just for fun here is the computerized block I made up as a rough idea of how this would come together back in September of 2006:

I took a picture of each fabric and roughly pieced it together using paint. It's a nice way to get a very rough idea of how the block will turn out and as you can see it did give a nice idea.

Photos swatches of the fabrics below:

More to come, but who knows when! ;O)

Posted by Dianne at 3:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Oh the story of my life!

All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
- Harry S Truman

People have asked me why I don't blog about the inside of Maryland Democratic politics from my front row seat. This quotation right here sums it up for me, and tragically it doesn't apply to just Presidents, it applies to all politicians. As you can probably guess, I'm a fan of the kicking people to do their jobs option, but I'm told the others work as well I just don't have the patience for it. Ah the frivolity of youth.

Posted by Jamison at 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2007

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!

Posted by Dianne at 8:00 AM

March 16, 2007

What's Your Irish Name?

Your Irish Name Is...

Zoe O'Donovan

What's your Irish Name?

Via Count It All Joy.

Posted by Dianne at 9:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Full Circle - political roundtable this weekend

I got an email from the local station manager here in Anne Arundel County asking me to inform my readers of a program running tomorrow morning on WRYR-LP 97.5 FM. It's a great political round table program that they've decided to run every third weekend of the month. I expect that it will be an interesting program, you should check it out.

Robb Tufts Producer, Full Circle Station Manager, WRYR-LP 97.5 FM
The panelists for the political round table this Saturday are:

Mike Collins - Chair of the Republican Central Committee
Ray Naughton - President of the South County Democratic Club
Rob Savidge - Treasurer, Anne Arundel Green Party
Spear Lancaster - Former Libertarian gubernatorial candidate
David Whitney - Constitution Party candidate in D30

The political round table is hosted by Erik Michelsen. Erik is a member of the Franklin Manor Community Association and serves on the board of the South River Federation.

Full Circle -- Saturdays @ 9am: Full Circle is WRYR's new weekly program discussing the topics that affect us here in South County and the Chesapeake Region. Each Saturday, Full Circle features a different panel of guests to talk about our watersheds, gardening & farming, arts & culture, and politics. Our political round table is featured the third Saturday of each month. Political pundits from across the political spectrum will discuss the local issues and take calls and answer emails from the listeners. Listen to it locally or if you live outside of South County listen to it online at http://www.wryr.org Call and email us at 410-867-9677 or
fullcircle@wryr.org

_________________________________
WRYR-LP 97.5 FM
"We aRe Your Radio"
www.wryr.org
A Project of the South Arundel
Citizens for Responsible
Development (SACReD)

If you have some time tomorrow morning, you should check it out.

Listen to WRYR.

Posted by Jamison at 5:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Technical Difficulties

Ran into a few DNS problems over the last couple of days. Amusingly it was totally unrelated to the technical difficulties we were having before. Once again the Media Temple support folks went above and beyond to get everything back up and running in a short time frame. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Daffodil Lane programming already in progress. ;)

Posted by Jamison at 8:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 15, 2007

What's Your Celtic Horoscope?

You Are A Rowan Tree

You are full of charm and cheer. You light up a room.
And while you crave attention, you do it without ego.
You are an interesting mix of contradictions - and very unpredictable.
You are both dependent and independent, calm and restless.
You are passionate, emotional, gregarious, and (at times) unforgiving.

What's Your Celtic Horoscope?

Posted by Dianne at 4:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Winter Warmest on Record Worldwide

WASHINGTON (AP) -- This winter was the warmest on record worldwide, the government said Thursday in the latest worrisome report focusing on changing climate.
The report comes just over a month after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global warming is very likely caused by human actions and is so severe it will continue for centuries.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the combined land and ocean temperatures for December through February were 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the period since record keeping began in 1880.

Of course those on the radical right will go into mad convulsions and hysteria over this one yet again. Interestingly to me that the Northern Hemisphere actually was a lot warmer than the Southern Hemisphere. Since the Southern Hemisphere has more water you'd figure the opposite would be true, which doesn't bode well for our overuse of greenhouse gases causing our problems to stay close to home. Now the radical right wing will likely only focus on the following paragraphs:

For the United States, meanwhile, the winter temperature was near average. The season got off to a late start and spring-like temperatures covered most of the eastern half of the country in January, but cold conditions set in in February, which was the third coldest on record.
For winter, statewide temperatures were warmer than average from Florida to Maine and from Michigan to Montana while cooler-than-average temperatures occurred in the southern Plains and areas of the Southwest.

For Alaska, both February and winter were warmer than average but far from the record warmth of 2003 and 2001, respectively.

I've noticed a trend with them to be America centric in their view of everything. With little consideration that their neighbor's problems will be their own problems in a little while, but it's all about the stick your head in the sand mentality that defines the radical right. It's like playing hide and seek with a three year old...Just because you cover your eyes doesn't mean that I can't see you. The sad part is that most three year olds will someday figure it out, the Republicans not so much.

March 14, 2007

Jefferson Appointment May Be on Permanent Hold

I was following this story and then we went to Tennessee and I lost it while I was traveling, so this information is a couple of weeks old. I hate to give the Republican party its due, but it's nice to see for the first time in their culture of corruption cycle someone on that side of the aisle actually did the right thing in spite of themselves. It's disgraceful that the Democrats would allow themselves to be tainted like this because of a subgroup within the party. If there was a shadow of a doubt about his guilt, I might give them a pass, but there is no doubt that he is guilty and should be treated as such until he can prove his innocence. Hell for the good of the party he should have refused to take a position that would put the party in danger. I'm not sure what the hell was going through the CBC's head on this one, personally I suspect that this was just an effort by the Blue Dog coalition to undermine the Democratic party in hopes a reestablishing a Republican majority in the House, which seems to be their only focus in existing.

On the CBC front there is good news that they haven't totally lost grasp of reality and the Jefferson thing may just have been a momentary lapse. Today they announced that they would not be hosting another Presidential Debate on the Republican propaganda outlet FoxNews. You will recall back in 2004 the CBC worked with Fox News, which used the occasion to run continuous attacks on the Democratic Presidential candidates with prepackaged GOP talking points. This year the CBC saw the light of not seeking to destroy Democratic candidates, who seem to have sort of figured out that they need to attack the right wing noise machine because it will be attacking them. You ask most Democrats what has demotivated them about the party as of late and they will tell you the utter surrender to the radical right wing extremists in the corporate media. They are sick and tired of Democrats being cowardly in the face of people who hate America, so it's time for Democrats to stand up and put the GOP on notice that their time is up, it's time for the adults to take over and get this country back on the right track before their stupidity destroys what we hold dear.

Read more over at CQ Politics, Think Progress and Daily Kos.

Posted by Jamison at 5:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NOW It's Spring!

To me it's not really spring until the daffodils start blooming. My first two opened up this afternoon:

NOW it's spring, even if the calendar doesn't say so yet! ;o)

Posted by Dianne at 4:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Debunking the NYT's sloppy hit piece on Gore

I've been increasingly amused by people in the corporate media over the last few months as they try desperately to keep the Republican party in absolute power and control of the United States. They grasp desperately at straws hoping if they can just tell one more lie or make one more false accusation that they can bail out their buddies on the radical right. Amusingly by the very same token you have the radical right screaming to the heavens that the media is against them on everything. You can't read this hit piece from the New York Times and not come to the conclusion that the corporate media and the Republican party are one continous entity. The notion of a left wing media is nothing more than Republican mythology. From one end of this country to the other there is one massive push by the corporate media to cover-up, or at least rationalize the radical right wing Republican party's actions at every single turn. These kinds of hit pieces are the flavor dejour for the corporate media these days, actually it harkens back to an early time in corporate media when it was referred to as yellow journalism.

Read more over at Grist and Think Progress.

Posted by Jamison at 7:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 13, 2007

Thought For The Day

When I was in Tennessee last week Darlene gave me some tea from a company called Bag Ladies Tea that has inspirational quotes on each bag, because well she knows me better than the back of her hand, but that's what best friends are for! ;o)

Anyway, this quote when I made some tea this morning was especially poignant:

Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Truer words have never been spoken. I knew I always liked Eleanor. ;o)

Posted by Dianne at 1:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 12, 2007

Braun Thermoscan C to F instructions

So I'm trying to move our thermometer back to Fahrenheit after it mysteriously got changed to Celsius. There is only one button so I sit there and guess all the possible combinations based on previous computer experience. No luck, so I broke down and read the online manual, which has an actual section on the problem. I tried the instructions and they immediately fail. I give up and just figure I'm going to have to convert it in my head. I kept trying variations of the instructions given. Finally I accidentally came upon a combination that works. Here's how it actually works for my own future reference:

Turn off the units power. Hold the power down until the C turns to a F. Let go of the power button when the F appears on the display.

It was all fixed after that. The company instructions make it out that you can do it from inside the display when it's on, but every time I held down the power button it turned the unit off or put it in memory mode. I have no idea why the instructions were written incorrectly, but they were.

Posted by Jamison at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

BSG: Season # 3

Have Battlestar Galactica taping on TiVo, and honestly don't really even care if I watch it. Is it just me, or have they destroyed that show this season. I suspect because they're preparing for the spin-off, and as they always do, they steal the good writers, or make them work double-time, but the thing has become one big, long, boring, overwrought soap opera. Best damn show on TV, and they've gone and ruined it. Again, just me?
UPDATE: Just watched tonight's episode. There's an hour of my life I'll never get back. I actually fast-forwarded through part of it, it was that bad.

I thought it was just me! I've found myself more and more fast forwarding through the long drawn out boring parts to find something interesting in BSG lately. Honestly, does anyone really have more than a remote passing interest in the stories of the love lives of the people on the ship? This is Science Fiction, no body cares at all. It's not important to the storyline in any shape, form or fashion. I really don't understand why people just can't use the Babylon 5 model for Sci-Fi shows, lay out the entire plot and execute it from day one. Of course I hated the last season of that show, more for the fact that yet again humanity left lose ends that would doom us for the rest of time sort of thing. I know it always happens that way, but it's freaking fantasy not every ending has to look like the Republican party's Iraq war "victory".