Last week, Senator Al Franken proposed an amendment that would prohibit the Pentagon from contracting with firms that force women employees to agree not to sue companies if they are raped as a result of their employment.

Thirty Republican senators voted against this amendment.

See http://current.com/items/91120110_senate-passes-amendment-to-prevent-kbr-halliburton-from-covering-up-raping-employees-literally.htm and http://www.alternet.org/blogs/healthwellness/143164/30_gop_senators_vote_to_defend_gang_rape/.

Her are those senators:

 Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

For me, it is difficult watching cultural icons slip into history.

Kodachrome seems now to be one of those.

Here’s the article
http://snipurl.com/kxhhr 

To hear the song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujhdf9_IO4w 

Just in case you want the lyrics
http://snipurl.com/kxhir 

And a simple bit of history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome_(song)

The first line has always been a favorite of mine.

James Huggins has a second child named Maria Adela Huggins with Penelope Ann Miller. You can read about it here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30087730/

Earlier today I received a terrible email from one of my best friends in Australia:

Hardened police officers have been shocked by the horrifying torture, mutilation and brutal slaying of a seven month old fox terrier puppy near Mackay at the weekend.

If found guilty, they could face up to two years in prison. Police have obtained video footage from a mobile phone which shows graphic images of the puppy yelping and howling in terrible pain as it [was] hacked to pieces with garden shears and a [pocket] knife.

They said the owners were too distressed to talk to anyone about it.

The pups nose was cut off, its front right leg and rear left leg were cut off and it was decapitated. A three-part video series on a mobile phone shows the dog being tortured.

The maximum penalty under the Animal Care and Protection Act for such an offence is $75,000 or two years in jail; however the maximum penalty ever handed out has been a four month jail term.

WE BELIEVE THESE MEN SHOULD RECIEVE THE MAXIMUN PENALTY AVAILABLE IN AUSTRALIA FOR THIS SADISTIC, DISGUSTING ACT.  

You can verify this from these news articles:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=australia+puppy+torture

I want to personally encourage you to sign the petition, by going here:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/maximum-penalty-for-the-men-who-hacked-up-a-puppy

(Depending on your browser security settings, may need to click twice to start the video. If you are receiving this via email, or want to open the YouTube page with the video, just click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs43RR7IiNU)

I offer this again for my subscribers. It is part of what I try to do for the political discourse of our current election campaign.

Disclosure: I am a Barack Obama fan.

It happened several days ago. But I just learned about it. Jerry Reed has died.

As a singer in the 1970s and early 1980s, Reed’s hits included:

• Amos Moses
• When You’re Hot, You’re Hot
• East Bound and Down
• She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft), and
• The Bird

Though I knew his songs, I met him as a person in Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds.

I’ll miss him.

ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gtCKwgisw0t7ftgEpx3zQa1gEjtQD92UROC00

www.nme.com/news/various-artists/39487

For your enjoyment
http://snipr.com/3nggw  [www_inews3_com]
(you have to click the little triangular “play” button to get this to play)

Did you know I am a presidential candidate?

Well, just because you see it on the news, doesn’t mean it is true.

(Depending on your browser security settings, may need to click twice to start the video. If you are receiving this via email, or want to open the YouTube page with the video, just click here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrG8w4bb3kg)

Sometimes when people are interviewed on camera, they assume that when the interview ends, it really ends. And sometimes when they assume that they say things they later regret.

On Wednesday, 03.Sep.2008, John McCain’s former campaign chief Mike Murphy and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan talked after an NBC interview. Their comments were caught on tape. Their comments seem to reflect their their real thoughts on McCain’s judgment in his selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Noonan asked, “The most qualified? No.” Then, she called the selection of Palin “political [B.S.].”

Murphy called McCain’s selection “gimmicky and cynical”.

The video is above. The transcript (courtesy of MoveOn.org) is below.

TRANSCRIPT (from MoveOn.org):

Mike Murphy, former McCain advisor: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor work. Engler, Whitman, Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. And these guys, this is all like how you want to (inaudible) this race. You know, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work.

Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter: It’s over.

Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

NBC’s Chuck Todd: Don’t you think the Palin pick was insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too (inaudible)

Noonan: I saw Kay this morning.

Murphy: They’re all bummed out.

Todd: I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political [B.S.] about narratives and (inaudible) the picture.

Murphy: I totally agree.

Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at and they blow it.

Murphy: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism and this is cynical.

Todd: And as you called it, gimmicky.

Disclosure: I am a Barack Obama fan.

California has a problem. Seems the governor and the legislature can’t agree on a budget. (That’s news?)

So Governator Schwarzenegger opted for an approach to try to force the issue. He decided to cut payroll.

He issued an order to temporarily reduce employee salaries to the federal minimum wage level. As Bill Snyder wrote, he tried to “cut (albeit temporarily) state employee salaries to the level of fry cooks at McDonald’s”. But wait. Seems that is impossible because state Controller John Chiang, (the Controller issues the checks) believe that all the COBOL programmers have died and that it is just impossible.

In 2003 my office tried to see if we could reconfigure our system to do such a task,” he told a State Senate committee on Monday. “And after 12 months, we stopped without a feasible solution.

Well, at least Bill Snyder knows a fairy tale when he hears one.

The story has been interpreted by the media (including the New York Times on Wednesday) to make it seem like COBOL is similar to ancient Egyptian, carved on stone walls and only read by priests in loin cloths or cloistered academics. In particular, the writer quoted some bozo at Carnegie Mellon University who likened COBOL to “a television with vacuum tubes,” and then said: “There are no COBOL programmers around anymore. They retired centuries ago.” Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Well, I don’t know about California, but this COBOL programmer is alive.

But Why in the world would you change the programs anyway?

Just write a quick and dirty file update to store the current payroll file, then update all the records with a new pay rate.

After the crisis, write a quick and dirty program to change it back to the stored value.

You don’t even need to know anything about COBOL.

Article:
weblog.infoworld.com/tech-bottom-line/archives/2008/08/calling_all_cob.html

Every now and then, government politely gives us a lesson in one of the many ways to do things that really aren’t government’s business. It is good to watch for these. After all, the United States of America exists, in part, because Mother England kept trying to do things that really weren’t any government’s business.

The 01.Aug.2008 issue of the Houston Chronicle carries this story
“State loses attempt to argue anew for sex toy ban”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5919987.html 

I wonder how many of my tax dollars we spent trying to protect me.

In the comments of that article, I was alerted to a film entitled “Dildo Diaries”. It’s for sale. It is 63 minutes long. But an 11 minute excerpt is available for free on You Tube here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYXUUsDGxkU