A memory on mother's day

Some may not know that I have a few blogs (most of which are on Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com). Blogger was my first blog, though I don't post here as often as on the other blogs. Anyway, all that is to say that my Mother's Day post is on Whispers. Hope you get a chance to read it.

Thanks again to Enigma4Ever and her post titled Moonriver... for triggering the memory.

Harper's Magazine: Worst President Ever

Scott Horton has written an article for Harpers.org entitled Worst. President. Ever. Apparently, historians were surveyed and that is the conclusion they arrived at. Check out the article for graphs and great quotes. This is one of my favorites:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

It's good to see that those who record history may record this disastrous presidency accurately.

kinda weird

This woman has been following the cursor with her eyes for so long, that she seems to be in need of some Visine or other eye care product (wait, it may take a while to load).

Thanks (Via Seeing the Forest.)

Earth Hour Saturday

I received the following email from the Center for American Progress Fund:

This Saturday [29 March 2008], a global "lights out" event called Earth Hour is being held to call for immediate action on climate change. Nearly 200 cities and millions of people worldwide are expected to participate by turning off home and building lights from 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm local time. Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and Phoenix are hosting city-wide events, and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, Niagara Falls, the Sears Tower and Wrigley Field will turn off nonessential lights for the hour. Our friends at the World Wildlife Fund, who are organizing this event, expect it to be "among the largest global calls for climate change action ever."

(Via Center for American Progress Fund.)

Click the emblem to go to a cool website. Being in the dark can be enlightening and it's easy to do! Tell your friends.

37 minutes

Barack Obama, gave a speech today that was supposed to deal with the comments made by Reverend Wright. And it did. And more. It was one of the most important speeches in American history, because it opened the door for dialog about race, between races. Not only that, it was about more than race.

My biggest concern is that people will only hear the short cuts that news programs decide to air based on their bias and POV. Do yourself a favor and go over to Watergate Summer and click on the title. Enigma4Ever has a link to the entire 37 minutes of history.

Moving to strike Iran

From Radio Free Europe

Commentary: Why Fallon Resigned: "The White House has formally denied that U.S. President George W. Bush forced the premature retirement this week of Admiral William Fallon as head of Central Command, after the publication of a magazine article which depicted the admiral as a lone voice against a U.S. military strike on Iran."

Doesn't this sound vaguely familiar? Doesn't it remind you of General Eric Shinseki who argued against invading Iraq?

Meanwhile, if you think the right wing has learned anything, you'd be in for a surprise. A small clip from Michael Barone at the U.S. News & World Report, suggests that Fallon is guilty of insubordination. What does that make the adminstration guilty of?

Clinton destroying Democrats

Apparently, I'm not the only one who feels that Clinton's campaign behavior is divisive and could destroy the Democratic Party. She started with the Rove-like response on 60 Minutes to feed fear:



And from Caffeinated Politics:

When the New York Senator did not denounce the ‘religion issue’ on “60 Minutes” this past weekend concerning Obama when offered the chance to do so, she chose her path. Last week when Clinton said that both she and John McCain were qualified to lead the country, but that Obama only knew how to make speeches, she not only gave an endorsement to the GOP nominee, but also bloodied Obama who will most likely be the eventual nominee. It was a shameful move on her part.

Enigma4Ever has a suggestion that we contact the Democratic Party, and let them know that we think Clinton is busting up the party, and that may explain the decrease in donations.

HouseCleaning

I've been doing a little housecleaning. By that I mean I've been changing the look and feel of this blog.

I got tired of the darker colors even though they looked kinda forestry, so I made the blog white. Added a voting widget, put the archives in a drop down menu, and added a news scrolling widget at the bottom. I may remove this last one because it just doesn't function the way I would like.

There's a possibility that I may add Snap, which is a link preview, but I'll see how this present configuration works first.

Oh, I also changed my kicker for the blog title to "the invisible blog" from something like "daily views and observations".

The last thing I need to do is add a counter. I used to have a counter for this page, but somewhere along the way, while changing templates, I lost it. I'll need to reinstall it.

testing YouTube

Does this work?

open letter

Michael Moore has written an open letter to the Treasury Secretary in response to an investigation into him about a trip to Cuba as part of a documentary he is doing on health care in the United States.

real serious

I should know better.

How could I base my opinion on anything from television reporting. It wasn't until I actually read the story today that I found out that they were, indeed, pretty serious about causing harm/death. If all that is reported is true, then my thanks and gratitude goes to the government.

how serious?

Is it just me, or does anyone else see this most recent terrorists discovery as a little overwrought? I mean how serious could these people have been, if they had to take the video tape to a store to have it put on a DVD? How serious could they be, if they were playing "war games" with paintballs?

I just want to know, how serious was this threat?

new blog

Whispers is shaping up. It's still not ready for prime time, but it's getting there.

testing "links to this post"

As I See It: learning trackbacks
I did look up back links, and though it does not present as being a closed system, logistically that seems to be what it works out as.

This link back should appear in the learning trackbacks article, and should create another posting... I think.

Yep, that's how it worked out but the back link did not show up yet. According to the help files, it may take a while before showing up.

learning trackbacks

So, apparently, trackbacks and comments both have to be moderated unless that is changed. It appears the same is true for trackbacks on TypePad. The trackbacks here on Blogger are called something else, and I believe it is a closed system... that is, you can only trackback on other Blogger sites.

Haloscan code removed

I was able to get the new comments and trackback features working by reassigning my template. When I tried to remove the Haloscan stuff, I ended up with no comments at all. Even though I've eliminated Haloscan, I still have a premium membership and may consider using it with WordPress.

Now I just have to figure out how to get my profile up to date on this blog.

I'm new blogger now

Here I was, ready to abandon Blogger with my thoughts on how to word it, floating lazily at the forefront of my brain when... Blogger takes my old blogger login and then walks me through the new Blogger log in.

So, Now it's just a matter of testing out the functions.

Wow! This changes everything. I was planning on leaving Blogger or TypePad and switching over to WordPress. WordPress is free, and I have my own hosting service that I'm paying for yearly. It also gives you a lot more control which means a lot more responsibility. Hell, I just may add it to my blog collection.

Q:Why would anyone need three blogs?
A: They don't.

First note to self... remove Haloscan code from the template.

Here's Bold

Here's italic

Google Blogger

Since I'm making a effort to revitalize my Blogger site, I figured I might as well upgrade to the Google Blogger, but it doen't seem that I can. I can only log in as an old blogger. When I try using my google account to log in, I get the message that I will be walked through to start a new site - not what I want. I did searches but the only thing that comes up with switching talks about a blue box in my Dashboard, that is not there (the blue box, that is).

Mother and Father

Okay,... I have a question. When did "Mother" and "Father" lose favor with the general public. The words, I mean. I was watching one of the morning shows (not that it matters because they're all bad, but probably the Today show if you need a reference point) and there was the typical interviewer, and two interviewees. And they were talking about sickness or death or something and they kept referring to the parents as mom or dad. Not once did they use mother or father. I know "mom" and "dad" are an easier and softer way, but jeez.

So, I obviously missed the memo. Can someone give me a short update?

weather report: more snow

new snow
Originally uploaded by voltos.

I can't believe it is snowing again today. What a long winter this is.

Everytime it seems it's all going to melt, more comes.