Walk the walk

Monday, September 29th, 2008 | pro-choice | No Comments

Father leaves nine children at Nebraska hospital
Children left at Nebraska hospitals: more details

I can only assume that being a parent of a mentally disturbed child is the most difficult, painful job you can have. And when you say “help me” there should be somewhere to turn. However, due to the Reagan administration, mentally disturbed people have been mainstreamed for years – read: “stuck out in public to fend for themselves.” So, I feel for all these parents who have come to the end of their rope and taken Nebraska at its word that they will give the help they’ve promised to their children.

Being a parent of more kids than you can handle (the “father of nine” mentioned has a history of unemployment and “no common sense”) is also just as hard, and when your spouse dies and you’re left to handle the children you couldn’t handle in the first place, yes, you need help.

But again, there’s nowhere to turn – and why the hell not? If all these pro-life groups are serious, shouldn’t there be centers, groups, programs for all these kids that are being born? Shouldn’t there be help for parents that feel overwhelmed by their children? Shouldn’t we have better support for families? Health care for children? Pre-natal programs for mothers?

(Oh wait, I forgot. The pro-life groups are too busy sitting outside of abortion clinics on all their free time. Maybe more of them should be foster parents.)

If the government is going to make laws over what access women do and don’t have to birth control and abortion, then the government should be prepared to deal with the consequences – a whole lot of children that won’t get the care they need from their parents, because their parents didn’t have access to the knowledge or materials to prevent unwanted children.

Uh… homeland mission?

Thursday, September 25th, 2008 | political | No Comments

[info]oddball79 made me aware of this:

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/
The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

So… we have, for the first time, military patrols assigned to North America?

Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.

So much for resetting and regenerating.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Does it make anyone else nervous that they’re starting this a month before elections? ‘Cause I am.

Last Chance to speak out against Bush’s new reproductive rights rule

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | political | No Comments

“The Bush administration has issued a rule that would limit the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate reproductive health information when they visit a health care provider. It’s more of the Bush administration’s bad medicine, and this is our last chance to stop it.

This new rule could allow individual health care providers to redefine abortion to include the most common forms of birth control — and then refuse to provide these basic services. A woman’s ability to manage her own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology. We have until September 25 at midnight to voice our opposition.”

http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/frcp08_adv1

Setting the PHP path in OS X

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

So this will be obvious to you unix/linux geeks, but it took me a while to remember, so I’m putting it here.

I was trying to use the new install of PHP (on the command line) that I’d added instead of the default 4.4.7 install that comes with OS X 10.4. But nobody really says how to do that anywhere.

When I ran “which php” it said I was using /usr/bin/php. I wanted to be using usr/local/php5.

So, in .bash_profile for my user, I added the line:
# Set PATH for php (override default /usr/bin/php)
export PATH=/usr/local/php5/bin/:$PATH

then I saved that and ran “source .bash_profile”.

Now when I run “which php” it says /usr/local/php5/bin//php.

Yay!

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A rose by any other cupcake…

Saturday, September 20th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Or something. Anyway, today I made cupcakes for Linda & Jered’s engagement party, and here they are…

I’m not sure why my buttercream does that rough thing at the edges. I’ll have to work on that.

I wouldn’t do that if I were you…

Friday, September 19th, 2008 | political | No Comments

Thinking about voting for McCain?

http://blog.thehill.com/2008/09/16/mccain-secretly-plans-new-tax-on-middle-class

McCain wants to add the employer’s cost [of health insurance] — an additional $8,824 [on average] — to that middle class family’s income, then tax it. The hit to the average family is 15 percent of the McCain-added income — $1,323 more in income taxes.

…

Here’s the way the New York Times put it in an April 30 story, in which there was only straight talk: “Mr. McCain’s health care plan would shift the emphasis from insurance provided by employers to insurance bought by individuals.” Since 2000, the percentage of employers offering health insurance has declined from 69 percent to 60 percent.

Could you get health insurance on your own? Are you overweight? Diabetic? A smoker? Ever been admitted to the hospital for anything? Depression? High blood pressure? Or something really expensive – cancer, MS, HIV? Yeah, good luck.

If you’re hoping that voting for McCain means that the government will promote a sane health care policy, please read the comparison of the actual proposed policies.

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on the Anniversary of 9/11/01

Thursday, September 11th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

He is as outraged as all of us should be.
If I am ever this eloquent, I’ll die happy.

Sadly, I have done this.

Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

This is entirely true.

This is entirely true.

Renfair – going to have to pass

Thursday, August 21st, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I’m sorry, guys, I’m just too busy getting ready for Dragon*Con to go to renfair this weekend. I thought maybe I could handle it, but I know it’d be biting off more than I could chew to go *and* try and finish the projects I want to finish before the 28th.

Kinda bummed it means I will be missing faire this year. I’ll try and catch it next year earlier in the summer.

SaraTrice.com revamp

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

After … 3? 4 years? Oh, I forget. However long it’s been, I revamped my personal site. That is, I stuck wordpress on it, so that I might actually do things with it, and not just post on LiveJournal.

Hence, this crosspost. Ta-da!

What’s nifty is with this crossposter I can also specify a post friends-only or private, so I don’t have to use LJ’s grumpy little post form anymore. Sweet.

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