Okay, I’ve been pretty well behaved for awhile, so I figure that’s about enough of that. So…

Why I am so opposed to President Bush, Part I.

There are a lot of reasons why I don’t like Bush, but the list starts at the way our troops have been treated by the current administration. I don’t want to get into the right or wrong of our actions in Iraq, that is the past and there is nothing that can be done about it now, what concerns me now is the cavalier manner with which the health, safety, and lives of our soldiers have been treated.

Let me give some examples:

We can look at pay rates for soldiers, including imminent-danger pay, the way Bush did not extend tax cuts to low-income military personnel, and the funding for programs for soldiers families.

“The White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary — including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.
Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones.
The chintz even extends to basic pay. While Bush’s proposed 2004 defense budget would continue higher targeted raises for some ranks, he also proposed capping raises for E-1s, E-2s and O-1s at 2 percent, well below the average raise of 4.1 percent.”
from the Army Times (July 02, 2003)

“Bush’s signature on the latest tax cut…failed to extend a child tax credit to nearly 200,000 low-income military personnel; a $1.5 billion reduction in his 2004 budget, to $9.2 billion from $10.7 billion, for military housing and the like; and a cut of $14.6 billion over 10 years in benefits paid through the Veterans Administration.”
from the Wasthington Post (June 17, 2003)

“Commissaries and the Defense Department’s stateside schools are in the crosshairs of Pentagon budget cutters…The two initiatives are the latest in a string of actions by the Bush administration to cut or hold down growth in pay and benefits, including basic pay, combat pay, health-care benefits and the death gratuity paid to survivors of troops who die on active duty.”
from the Army Times (November 03, 2003)

Then there is the outfitting of troops who are in harm’s way in Iraq. Througout the war, the pictures that came back from Iraq showed soldiers dressed not in desert fatigues, but in the green jungle fatigues. And it wasn’t just one or two soldiers, but a high precentage. (This you can easily check for yourself by going to any on-line news source and looking at war pictures from March and April.). More seriously however, is the lack of armor, a problem that continue even now.

Lack of uniforms and armor I have mentioned before, but concern about lack of armor extends even to the House.

“Army Reserve and National Guard troops getting shot at in Iraq sometimes wait for new bulletproof body armor while active duty Army soldiers get it first, according to Reserve and Guard soldiers.”
from The Washington Times (Dec 3, 2003)

“The Pentagon confirms that at least 40,000 of the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq don’t have basic Kevlar Interceptor vests or the ceramic plates needed for full protection.”
from USA Today (2003)

Then there is the issue of troops, especially Reserve and National Guard troops, being kept away from home for so long. Yes, one can argue that regular troops and ever reservists should have known what they are signing up for, but I do not think that the same argument can be extended to National Guard troops. The National Guard is the group that helps states recover from flooding, and snowstorms, and wild fires, and that is precisely the association that civilians have of those troops–they help us during disasters. I would never have expected National Guard troops to be sent overseas for a year, but I suppose that could just be naivate on my part.

Senator Byrd has spoken on the issue of National Guard being kept overseas for extended periods of time and the treatement of those troops.

The point is that US troops are dying, they are sacrificing their lives for their country, there have been around 9000 soldiers wounded in Iraq, but our country does not seem to be giving our troops anything beyond flag waving, yellow ribbons, and “support our troops” signs. If we really supported our troops, we’d pay them better, bring home the National Guard Troops, stop cutting funding for base schools and comisaries, and increase Veteran’s benefits.

In a search for the name of the feather in a Cavalier hat, I discovered the Hat DIctionary.

Much to my surprise, I discover that I have worn a chaplet.

I need more hats!

(No, I didn’t find the answer to my question, but as it wasn’t my question originally, I’m not certain there is an answer.)

Regarding WV being up for sale on E-Bay, I invite you to read this post from Hillbilly Sophisticate.

If you search Google for “They’re happy because they eat lard” my website is the first to come up.

At least I get to be first in something.

Oh, here’s the picture.

My favorite thing about that picture is the memory of attempting to explain it to my Chinese friends… This is why the only Chinese word I know is “pig fat”.

I really like language hat. And this post is no exception.

For those of you who missed the news, someone attempted to sell the WV on e-bay.

I heard the news yesterday morning as we were leaving for work, which worked out very well, as I used it in my Internet Explorer class as an example of “Yes, you can find just about anything for sale on E-Bay.”

Even better, the bidding was just short of the projected state defecit…perhaps they’re on to something?

(This news was also covered by S. at Hillbilly Sophisticate.)

The Braxtonian has also weighed in on the sale of the state.

New research found that Transition to Adulthood Delayed, Marriage and Family Postponed.

Okay, how can I get a grant to study stuff that everyone already knows?

There has long been intense debate over the role that alcohol plays in human health. Obviously, severe alcoholism is unhealthy, but research has found that light alcohol intake (drinking a little on a regular basis, not drinking lite beer) seems to have a health promoting effect on people.

A new study done on rats, found that rats who are genetically predisposed to drink alcohol actually live longer than rats who are genetically predisposed to avoid alcohol, regardless of alcohol intake, and they also discovered that in rats drinking did not effect longevity.

Now as rats are different from humans, this research does not mean that binge drinking and alcoholism are, in fact healthy, for research has show that they are now, but it does reinforce the view that moderate intake of alcohol is not only not harmful, but may in fact be healthy.

It also, unfortunately, may mean that the reason the French are healthier may have less to do with lifestyle and more to do with genetics.

But only time and research will tell.

And more from the “duh” category, research has found that there is a link between skin cancer and sunbeds.

I’ve said for years that tanning is a stupid idea, but living and working in a college town makes it readily apparent that I am in a minority. But with this reasearch, and more to follow, it’s possible that the ultra pale look that was popular and a sign of wealth and affluence prior to the 20th century will be making a comeback.

Not sure how I feel about being fashionable, however….

For those of you who don’t read a lot of weblogs, and who don’t use Movable Type, there has been a second rash of comment spammers hitting Motable Type weblogs. One of the comments suggested over at Making Light was to removed the Post button and force those who posted comments to Preview their comments first.

Having written my share of regrettable posts to BBSes (lo those manyyears ago) and having sent more than my share of regrettable e-mail messages(!) this seemed like a Very Good Idea.

So, as of now, to post a comment you must first preview the comment. It’s just one extra step, but it is slightly different.

The only drawback is that I am not a MT guru, so if you come across a problem caused by this, please let me know so I can fix things!

There is a collection of photographs of Russia, taken in the early 1900s. They are colorized through a technique developed by the photographer.

This is absolutely fascinating, as there are many photographs of people, as well as architecture and landscape.

The website describes the process of how the photographs were taken, and how they were viewed in color at the time.

Not to be obvious, but if you run into any problems, broken links, broken weblog, broken whatever, please let me know so I can fix it.

Thanks!

So, it looks like I may have things worked out, and MT may now be fully functional.

From as best we can figure, it looks like when I was having server problems in November, my Movable Type files became corrupted, and this snowballed until the entire thing broke completely in December.

Ugh.

I still have all the old posts, but they are no longer linked directly to MT–in essence they are just regular web pages and are no longer dynamic MT pages. Mostly this will not matter in the slightest, unless I want to go back and search for something I posted previously. The good thing is that I have saved the old structure, so any previous permalinks will still work, I just can not search old posts, or easily make changes to them.

Could be a lot worse.

Good news from all this, however, is that I have moved to a new webhost, which more responsive customer support, and I have to say that the web interface is a LOT better. I can delete, move and rename files and folders from a web based control panel, which is pretty fantastic since to delete folders using my FTP program, I must first delete all the files in the folder–and all the sub folders and the files in those sub folders… I’m sure you can see how this would get tedious quickly. So, it was a good move, and at least this happened over the break, and things are mostly fixed–before classes get into full swing.

Did I learn any lessons from this?

Nah….

Yup. Things are still broken, but you can read my current posts here.