Altivo

So the stock markets went nuts over a "great" employment report. Guess what, morons. To get back all the jobs that have been lost since the real estate bubble burst, we'd need that much improvement every month for about a year and a half. Do you really think that's going to happen? I don't. What I want to know is, with all this talk about "job creation," what kind of jobs were created? Part time with no benefits? Minimum wage burger slinging? That sort of thing is what I suspect. But just watch. This probably half-phony report will be used as an excuse to try to cancel the payroll tax reduction, and the GOP will continue to push for more tax cuts for the richest Americans.

I see the Susan G. Komen Foundation is now back-pedaling on their decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. No, I don't believe for one minute that they were not influenced in that original decision by the political and religious right. Those groups hate Planned Parenthood passionately. And I can see no reason at all for Komen to cut off funding grants to the group unless it was being influenced by anti-abortion groups in some way. Nothing they say now can erase that doubt. They've lost their credibility with me and also lost the hope of any future support from me.

I'll spare you the political rant. I'm just utterly disgusted.

Going to go to bed, I think.

Sneeze, sniffle, sneeze...

Feels like allergy mostly, not a cold, but this time of year I think allergy is unlikely. Oh well.

I will do the Nanowrimo thing again this year. Mostly because an idea did hit me this morning and i like it. More about that in a day or two after it gets rolling...

Meanwhile, here's a photo of the dog and cat sleeping together.



Oh, and some "traders" (by which I mean "dirty thieves") at CBOT dropped leaflets onto the Occupy Chicago demonstrators that clearly show just who is waging class warfare on whom, and what the arrogant and self-conceited assumptions really are.

Read it here if you can stomach it.

Tea Party Congressman complains that his $600,000 net income isn't enough and that it costs $200,000 "just to feed his family" each year.

No wonder people like this have no understanding and no sympathy at all for those who are unemployed or lack health insurance. I'm 61 years old, have two advanced degrees, and have worked full time in advanced technical and educational fields for 39 years now. Never once in all that time have I even made a gross annual income in the six figure range. Of course, I have some ethics that you tea party guys lack. I won't steal from people in order to get more for myself, for instance, the way bankers and politicians have been doing for years now.

So, Congressman John Fleming (R-LA,) don't expect me to break out my violin for you. That is, unless you expect me to break it over your head, which is clearly full of rocks so you won't feel it anyway, and run you through with the bow. It is vampires like you who have created this miserable economic situation. You'll get no sympathy from me, and if your constituents have even half a brain, you won't be re-elected either.

Listen up, folks. Voting for these people is not doing you any good and will do you even more harm in the long run. They do NOT care about you. All they care about is their own greed. Quit electing millionaires to office, will you? It's as if the chickens voted for Col. Sanders, it really is.

And not just the weather, either. The BS from Washington has piled up so deeply that I can smell it from here. And though they've announced a last minute "settlement" I notice that no details are being released to the press and the supposed "agreement" calls for a joint congressional committee to work out the details of a huge spending cut "later". If you believe that won't lead to more acrimony and brinksmanship, you're living in a mousehole somewhere.

I suspect what finally happened is that some of the morons in the Capitol realized that a default would mean THEIR heads on the chopping block as fast as voters could sharpen the axes. I have more news for those guys, too. Any changes that mean Social Security payments or military salaries are not met will assuredly produce fast response from the population.

We know perfectly well that there's a huge amount of waste in the federal budget. But we also know that Social Security, schools, and health care do NOT have to be the targets of the budget cutting axe. We expect instead to see tax credits for big corporations stopped, and we expect that to happen NOW. There is no excuse for huge corporations, operating in the black, to get away with paying no federal taxes which is what many of them do.

Likewise, we want the Bush tax cuts for America's wealthiest to be dropped. The majority of US voters have no sympathy whatsoever for these guys who earn seven or eight figure incomes (or more) every year. No one needs that much money for personal finance, and I do mean no one. Most of us are struggling now to keep things balanced. The ongoing real estate foreclosure and unemployment levels are proof of that. We are not going to sympathize with millionaires. You can be very sure of that, and you'd better pay attention to what I'm saying here.

In other news, I wasted much of the day trying to port an old program of mine. Finally I figured out that it uses a function that is broken in the latest version of AmigaOS. There must be a workaround, but I'm waiting for someone to give me a hint.

Yesterday's bread turned out really well. It had cornmeal and coarse black pepper added, and the flavors blended to make a real hit.

It's time to tell these moronic politicians to shit or get off the pot, as my Dad used to say. And shit is what they're full of. Drastic cuts to spending as proposed by the Republicans would certainly trigger another bout of recession or worse. Historically that's what has happened every time it was tried as a "solution" when the economy was already in the dumps.

It would be amusing if it weren't so disgusting. Hyper-wealthy men, or their minions who are beholden to them, proposing to take away social support programs that help to make life at least tolerable for those who are less fortunate than they are. Actually, it's much worse than that. What we are seeing is the extremely wealthy trying their damnedest to move us backward to the economic conditions of the 1700s. The golden age when poor people were left to die on the street if they couldn't get a job or pay for medical care, and when wage slaves had no rights at all and had to work 50 or more hours a week for a pittance, while their employers lived the comfortable and idle life of leisure. Women had no rights at all, children were fit only to serve as slave labor in factories and mills, and woe unto anyone who questioned the social situation. This is what the Republicans stand for, make no mistake about it. The comfortable life for rich white men, and to hell with everyone else.

I hope at least that the Rupert Murdoch empire is about to crumble. He's abused his wealth and power long enough, it's time he was shut down. And I hope he takes Fox News and the tabloid press along with him to hell where he belongs.

Yes, very convenient for CommEd to have two bow echo storms pass through the Chicago area within a year (plus a tornado last month,) allowing shallow minded people to believe their story that the "smart grid" would improve service.

In reality, the "smart grid" is yet another scam by the utility company as it seeks to make taxpayers fund the maintenance and repairs that it has been postponing and avoiding for half a century. Deferred maintenance is the reason that there are so many electric power failures in CommEd territory, and one of the reasons that their profitability continues to rise even as their quality of service continues to decline.

If the "smart grid" is such a great idea, they should have been funding it themselves over the past twenty years, rather than trying to make taxpayers fund it for them. Unfortunately, American management has long been dedicated to maximizing short term profits without any investment in the future. We would have a "smart grid" today if utility execs had been planning sensibly and taking only modest profits over the past 20 years.

Still without power, no estimated time of recovery...

Y'know, I was born on a Wednesday, for all the good it did me.

Farrier was here this morning, vet late in the afternoon. Worked late shift as usual for Wednesday, boss called a meeting at 4:30 to tell us that due to a budget shortfall of 25K (decline in tax revenue due to the recession, increase in insurance costs) there will be no raises this year and staffing will continue to be paper thin. Not that the usual raises are that good. The last two years mine hasn't even covered the increases in state income tax and health care insurance. My check shrinks even when I get a raise.

The Fed once again demonstrates its incompetence and lack of vision, so the stock markets rise and so does inflation. Savings and CDs are earning rock bottom rates, but the wealthy Republicans want to take away retirement benefits and medicare as well. Then they'll tell us we aren't saving enough for retirement, since they've made it all but impossible to save anything anyway.

Obama talks Hawaii into handing over his full birth record, but of course the "Birthers" aren't satisfied and just consider it a fraud. Peabrain Trump demands that the President turn over his college transcripts as well. Is he willing to hand out copies of his own, I wonder?

Hummingbirds were still hanging around today, maybe they'll stick around and nest here.

Forecast: more rain, rain, and rain possible. There might be a moment of sunshine on Friday, if you don't blink and miss it.

Enough. I'm going to bed.

On this date exactly 100 years ago, a factory fire in a New York City high rise building took the lives of 146 workers. Most were young women, in their teens or early twenties, Jewish or Italian immigrants struggling to help their families. Factory work at that time was the sort of thing from which the term "sweatshop" is derived. A working day was ten or twelve hours long, and the work week was six days, though Saturday might be shortened a bit. A few places gave Jewish employees Saturday off but demanded that they work on Sunday to make up for it.

Anyway, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was one such sweatshop. Employees operated sewing or cutting machines to make ladies' blouses ("shirtwaists") and occupied the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the building. It was a Saturday, between 4 and 5 pm, and the workers were just finishing up their day when a fire broke out. The exact cause was never determined, but it spread quickly through all three floors. In the panic, the outside fire escape collapsed, dumping many to their deaths. Two inside stairwells failed to save lives because the doors were kept locked. Ostensibly this was to keep union organizers from entering the shop, and to keep workers from leaving the area during the day. By the time a supervisor with the key was located, the stairwell thus opened was already filled with smoke and unusable. Some sought to escape the flames by jumping to their deaths from broken windows. Most suffocated or were trampled without ever getting to the roof or a window.

The city fire department arrived too late, and had no ladders to reach above the sixth floor in any case. The tragic aftermath left New York stunned and grieving for weeks, and some of the bodies were not officially identified until nearly a hundred years later, but were buried as "unknown" under a memorial to the workers who died that day.

It's a terrible story. The factory owners were fined for locking the stairwells (all of $75 or so) and ultimately a court awarded some money to the families of each identified victim, but nothing really large.

The emotional and political impact of this event, however, turned around legal attitudes toward unions and collective bargaining in the US. ILGWU, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, came into its own after that and was quickly followed by other worker negotiating groups and legal representative groups. Laws were passed recognizing the right of workers to join unions and to delegate negotiating rights to such unions. The courts eventually recognized the right of workers to bargain and to go on strike against an employer who violated contractual agreements or refused to negotiate in good faith.

For most of the 20th century, labor rights were accepted and recognized, though sometimes grudgingly. Workers received fair wages, profit sharing benefits, leave time with pay, and more reasonable work weeks. Yes, you can thank the labor unions for the concept of the "weekend." There was no such thing in the 19th century or earlier. (Just Sunday, which was often only a half day off to attend church.)

Now, on the hundredth anniversary of that ugly fire, we see politicians, employers, and even working voters trying to take away collective bargaining rights and void the contracts of public workers in an increasing number of states. They have forgotten the lessons of history, and seek to return to the old ways, when it was "every man for himself" and "dog eat dog" in the workplace, and employers could demand whatever they chose and kick an employee out without justification if she dared to question them. Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and New Hampshire are all trying to invalidate state employees' work agreements and bargaining rights.

OK, you assholes who voted for these tea party goons, sit there and feel smug about it. But guess what? When they're done stripping the public employees of their bargaining rights, benefits, and pensions, they won't stop there. Remember that the tea party doesn't stand for individual freedom from taxes so much as it stands for reduced regulation and taxation of corporate business. Private sector workers will be next, and no amount of union contract or representation will help. When they come for you, there will be no one left to complain. Just remember that when it happens, morons. You asked for it. You begged to be trampled into the mud and treated like manure for the benefit of capitalist profit that goes to the hyperwealthy and stays with them.

Economic recovery? There's no recovery. Sure retail sales are up. But did you check to see what's selling? Luxury goods, that's what. Nieman-Marcus is doing fine. Walmart is losing money because rich people don't shop there, and the rest of us can't afford to buy much. About 20% of the US population accounts for 70% or more of the discretionary spending. Those people are the wealthy, who have felt little pinch in this recession because they still got their million dollar bonuses and other perks, even after running their corporate asses right into the ground. These are the people the tea party really represents. They don't want to pay taxes. They don't want a government that might actually regulate their greed or business practices, or catch them in their frauds. They want to be able to rob their customers and employees with impunity. Think about this before you vote again for one of these so-called Republicans who are really nothing but carpet baggers. They haven't even as much heart as Ebenezer Scrooge had before he was visited by those three ghosts.

Tonight is the perigee full moon. The moon is at it's closest point to the earth and also full. These two conditions coincide only about once every 19 or 20 years. The moon will look about 14% larger and appear 30% brighter than it does when at its greatest distance. It was certainly bright enough last night to cast shadows and read by. I can't say about tonight, because we are overcast. If you have a clear sky be sure to take a look.

After repeated experiments with CHKDSK, none of which ran to completion, I gave up. Every sure-fire cure offered by web pages and individuals made no difference at all. CHKDSK on Gary's drive simply stalls near the start of phase 2 and sits there. I let it sit for more than eight hours on the last attempt, with no sign of progress. The task was using no CPU cycles and a fixed amount of memory when I killed it.

Instead, I went into the Windows Registry and altered the autocheck invocation on boot up so that it will no longer try to check that drive. Gary was finally able to retrieve his files from the drive, and so far all have been intact and usable. Once he has all the files he needs off, we'll try formatting the drive. It's a 1.5 TB SATA drive, so I expect a low level format will take many hours too. It's under warranty, so if it won't format, we'll get it replaced.

Not as springlike today as I'd hoped, but at least it was sunny. Birds are coming to life: cardinals and robins singing, blackbirds calling, woodpeckers drumming. I saw a huge hawk late this afternoon, circling and circling overhead. Probably hoping for a try at one of the neighbors' kids...

Oh, and I see we now have Obama's war to add to Bush's wars that are not yet resolved. While I agree it is time for Qaddafi to give up his power in Libya, the hypocrisy of the US accusations and behaviors in this are just too overwhelming for words.