This is disturbing… for various reasons. This man was a member of a kind-hearted and trusting population of Illinois residents, and it’s outrageous that the people responsible for his care are also responsible for his death. Just last year Paul McCann was contemplating moving from his group home in Charleston to one in Crest Hill to be closer to his family in the south suburbs, his sister said. But even after spending a weekend at a residency facility blocks away from his elderly mother, McCann decided he wanted to stay downstate, where he knew more people and enjoyed the scenery.…
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It’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit here and snowing. We were going to go out with the cameras but so far it’s a coffee-in-bed day. The new heated mattress pad has been getting heavy use; David leaves it on all day during the week so Riley can stay cozy under the covers while the automatic thermostat lowers the temp til we get home. Here’s a wonderful blog I found following Chris’ recent kind comment; it’s a collection of wartime love letters. It is still most stringently cold here. Last night we had a heavy fall of snow; today the temperature is very…
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http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_fire/2011/01/try-to-be-nice-and-look-what-it-gets-you.HTML Yes, wingnut rhetoric is dangerous and irresponsible and loony. But worrying about whether or not wingnut rhetoric is responsible for the Tucson nutjob, well, that’s like worrying about shutting the barn door after the horse has been shot and fucked and sold for glue. Surely: this shooting was horrific. But then, wingnut rhetoric has directly led to mind-boggling numbers of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan; it’s ruined the American economy; it’s made torture routine; it has succeeded in preventing the nation from taking effective action to prevent environmental catastrophe.
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Confusion at Daily Kos today in the swirling aftermath of the Giffords shooting – the right-wing commenters at Palin’s Facebook page, on Twitter, and on many, many blogs have pounced on the curious case of a Daily Kos diary that criticized Rep Giffords was deleted earlier today. They were quick to howl that the diarist, a low-level member named BlueBoy whose diary didn’t get very many comments or “recs,” must be the same person as Jared Lee Loughner, the accused shooter. Well, it appears he’s not, as he’s been posting in comments threads on Daily Kos tonight. He took the…
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Wow, I actually got a comment that isn’t spam, a request for a washing machine part, or looking for Fry Sauce. It’s from a recent post called “My God is the God of the Poor,” which was just a link to a awesome recent post by Pastor Dan that ***Dave passed along. In it, I said as I quoted pastordan Something else I believe as a liberal Episcopalian, put a little more aggressively: My God is the God of the poor. You can be for the poor or you can go to hell. A month later, I get this rather…
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The following may or may not be helpful if you know someone who’s struggling to stay positive or to stay on an even keel emotionally. I’m totally stealing it as a tactic, because the Midwestern Change-The-Subject Discomfort doesn’t really offer viable options for talking to someone about problems they may have, where Southern In-Your-Face Comfort does. Not that we’re talking anything about anything specific here, just taking note of a useful tactic. I don’t want to embarrass anyone, so I’m not going into specifics, but I also want to write about this, because I’m totally stealing it as a tactic.…
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The following may or may not be helpful if you know someone who’s struggling to stay positive or to stay on an even keel emotionally. I’m totally stealing it as a tactic, because the Midwestern Change-The-Subject Discomfort doesn’t really offer viable options for talking to someone about problems they may have, where Southern In-Your-Face Comfort does. Not that we’re talking anything about anything specific here, just taking note of a useful tactic. I don’t want to embarrass anyone, so I’m not going into specifics, but I also want to write about this, because I’m totally stealing it as a tactic.…
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In other news, I recently moved to Bend, Oregon because it is quite possibly the best place on earth and just breathing the air here is like huffing joy and celebration. The bad news is that I’ve been busy using my shriveled, little t-rex arms in a mismatched battle with heavy boxes and furniture. And her friend Colin made an incredibly manly video about shower products based on one of her old posts that must be seen in fully, gory Techno-color to be appreciated. via Hyperbole and a Half: A News Update, a Dramatic Montage and a Video Animation.
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Cathleen Falsani’s piece in Huffington Post on the recent kerfuffle concerning the religion of cartoon characters struck a chord with me.
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Testing an image URL now…. thinking I may be able to wrap images with the DIV classes to give borders/drop shadows… UPDATE: Also didn’t work; had to add image URL so I went ahead and added the link to the origin page and the drop shadow DIVs. David will have to take a look at what’s going on with images. UPDATE: Working, but need to figure out how to apply at least minimal CSS with border and white margin to images.