Month: November 2009

Pets, Photography

The Girls

Shelly

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Harriet

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Polly

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Henry

I have a whole list of stuff that I did not do today. Instead, I sat on the couch with a headache and watched horrible wedding shows on TLC. It was like one of those train wrecks that you can’t look away from. Where on earth do they find these people?!

So, anyway, I did finally empty the dish washer and sorta kinda maybe clean the kitchen, and I did take a few photos of somewhat more or less cooperative kittens. (Miss Brown, on the other hand, is always cooperative with the camera.)

Ladybusiness, News & Politics

Hypocrites and Liars

Shelly

This pisses me off royally. It doesn’t surprise me, though.

Via a Facebook contact, from Politico: RNC insurance covers abortions.

Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna. Two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.
[…]
According to several Cigna employees, the insurer offers its customers the opportunity to opt out of abortion coverage – and the RNC did not choose to opt out.

Yeah, that’s right, the folks who want to bar insurance companies from covering abortion (and most other medical procedures necessary to keep women healthy), are totally okay with making it available to their own people. And while they say it was an oversight and that they didn’t realize elective abortion was covered by their plan, I do not believe them.

Crankypantsing, Meta

Bah Humbug

Shelly

The cafeteria folks put up their Christmas tree over the weekend. Today, they’ve added Christmas music. I am appalled.

Also, there is nothing that makes me panic like not being able to get to my blog from either the front or back end. I thought it had been hacked. Aieee! But it seems to have just been a weird network glitch or maybe a temporary problem my web host was having.

There will likely be more connectivity issues tonight, because my hosts are doing some sort network maintenance. If you have trouble getting any of my pages to load after 11pm EDT, that’s why. They’re estimating that they’ll be finished by tomorrow morning.

On the bright side, I upgraded Akismet and that seems to have stopped the spam-trap problems. No spam is good spam, yes?

ETA: I’m still having intermittent outage problems. Got the dreaded “server encountered a problem” message, which makes my stomach hurt, because usually that means there has been hackage. After refreshing, though, the page loaded fine, so I’m still assuming that whatever the problem is, it’s on my host’s end, not mine.

Ladybusiness

The Asstrumpet of the Day Award Goes to…

Shelly

…Chris Brown, who thinks ex-girlfriend Rihanna should not talk publicly about how, exactly, he he beat the ever-loving crap out of her. Double-speak aside (what the hell does “I respect her right to discuss…” mean when followed by “…all of the details should remain a private matter…”?), if you beat up your partner, you forfeit the right to expect them to keep quiet about all the unflattering-to-you details of your colossal assholery.

From the Chicago Sun Times (emphasis mine):

“While I respect Rihanna’s right to discuss the specific events of Feb. 8, I maintain my position that all of the details should remain a private matter between us,” he said.

Basically, he’s saying that abused women should keep their mouths shut.

Meta

Spam Comment o’ the Day

Shelly

And I quote: “Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.” It included a link for Levitra. Ha! I think I’ll toss that one into the spam bucket, thanks.

On a related note, I don’t know what the hell is up with Akismet, but either their servers keep going down or there’s a recurring problem with my host’s firewall or something. For the last week or so, whenever I log into WordPress, I get a message saying Akismet is b0rked. Hence the SPotD. Normally I would never see comment spam, but this one got through.

Ladybusiness

Lies

Shelly

Please remind me why I bothered to vote for these spineless bozos? I’m sick to death of being threatened with the revocation of Roe v. Wade if Republicans regain power, when Democrats are willing to do the dirty work of stripping women of access to legal medical care themselves. It’s bad enough to be beaten with the stick, but when they start hitting us with the goddamn carrot, too, it starts to feel a little like Stockholm syndrome. And then they have the gall to demand that we keep voting for them? I don’t think so.

From the Democratic Party Platform:

Choice

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.

The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to comprehensive affordable family planning services and age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.

The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

Lies, lies, lies. It’s all lies.