20081105
Kit Bond's Carrier is OVER!
The election is over, now it is safe to say that even though Kit Bond (R-MO) still has two years left in his term IT WILL BE HIS LAST!Last week at a McCain-Palin rally, run by America's most clueless Hockey Mom in Cape Girardeau, MO, the crowd was fired up when he warned them about his view of Obama's judicial philosophy.
"Just this past week, we saw what Barack Obama said about judges," Bond said. "He said, 'I'm tired of these judges who want to follow what the Founding Fathers said and the Constitution. I want judges who have a heart, have an empathy for the teenage mom, the minority, the gay, the disabled. We want them to show empathy. We want them to show compassion.'"
--source CBS News
To which various disabilities advacates were not at all impressed.
Certainly, Lt. Governor Peter Kinder (R-MO) should distance himself from such individuals, especially people like Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) who whould rather do nothing about her youngest child's Down Syndrome or any other child with ANY disabiltiy except group them in a PROVEN FAILED government program, the Individuals with Disabilties Education Act,and kill important research projects at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.
Needless to say, the doctors at UNC were not impressed with "Doctor Palin".
I guess this is probably why she didn't say a whole lot last night after John McCain's concession speech. If Kit Bond was wise, it would probably be in his best interest to do likewise.
Labels: disabilities, honeybees, missouri, stupidity
posted by Bushido Hacks 11/05/2008 11:01:00 AM (0) comments top
20081027
The coming tsunami of Change
With just nine days to go until the election, the forces of status quo are in panic mode. They are trying to find some way to enact martial law so that the election on November 4th does not happen.A couple of months ago, it was the crisis in the former Soviet repbublic of Georgia. The past couple of month, it has been the crashing economy. (Burn baby burn!) And this afternoon, the provoking of Syria.
It appears that whatever is going on in Washington right now seems to be about as logical as using a baseball bat to smack a hornet's nest in an attempt to not go to work it seems.
What I am waiting for at this point is for Miss Alaska to do something really stupid and support an organization that she probably should not support. Apparently, someone went to Plaza Frontenac recently and splurged $150,000 at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus on a wardrobe and a spa treatment. (I went down to Plaza Frontenac to check out the Neiman Marcus. They wanted $100 for a tie! Expensive!) For someone who claims to be a hockey mom rooting for the Walmart crowd, Sarah Palin definitely did NOT shop at Walmart for her attire.
Reguarless of what this poser is doing, the fact is there are alot of scared white people out there right now. I am not one of them. And it is of no shame that BushidoHacks.com endorses Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. However, I would like to remind the many minority supporters that Barack Obama is not Jesus Christ reincarnated. While he does have a great and positive influence, this "he's a cadidate for 'our' (black) people" is slightly off the mark and not to metion adds to the hostility that many white people have against him as president.
When you run for president, you don't run for one particular race or party. Barack Obama sees that. But if both Black voter and White voters, and Democractic supporters and Republican supporters see him in polar opposite points of view, that also doesn't help.
Remember, vice president is just a heart beat away from being president. So if you don't like McCain or Obama, you have to keep in mind that you are actually voting for Palin or Biden.
Palin want to continue funding the failing IDEA program which is very partial and does not work but she wants Congress to stop funding an effective research project that has helped identify many autism spectrum disorders using fruit flies. If this was a program to help resolve Colony Collapse Disorder and it had democratic support, she would probably support killing that project too.
As a person with disabilities, Palin does not have the best interset of the disabled at heart. If anything, her support is emotionally and politically driven. She is basically tossing her own newborn son with Downs Syndrome under the Straight Talk Express bus.
Palin seems to think that there is a one-size-fits-all approch to people with disabilites when the truth is that people with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and people with Downs Sydrome are NOT at all alike. While these are disabilites, many people with HFA (espeically people with a form of HFA called Aspergers' Syndrome) can function and support themselves in life, where as many people with Downs Syndrome need constant care and monitoring. By putting the constrains of a program like Down Syndrome on people with HFA, the HFA individuals feel constrained as they have to prove to employeers that their disability shouldn't really have too much of an effect on their work aside from probably needing an extension on some deadlines.
But programs like the ones Palin supports assume that the person with HFA should work as a Walmart greeter. As a person who has spent six years at a private university to aquire a computer science degree, I sure as hell am not working at Walmart, not even as a manager!
So why is there all this hate agains Barack Obama? Recently, a guy name Sirkowski (kind of NSFW) pointed out that racial hatred continues to be pumped into this campaign. (Protip: Puting a Barack Obama sticker on a Curious George doll and calling it "Barack Obama" DOES make you a racist.)
It is my personal belief that racists, much like the current adminstration, are in panic mode. Right now, I see them as the people who go out onto a beach just before a massive tsunami is about to strike. The momentum of the Obama campaign has become so large that the breakers can not stop it at this point. And on November 4th, the massive wave will crash into the shore, changing the lives of the people living near the coast. Some will fight in vain to stop the wave and in their defense may try to drown themselves. Others will be on the high ground, watching in horror the people who will kill themselves because of the fear.
But on November 5, 2008, the world will be a much different place, and the countdown to January 20, 2009 will begin. The fight to stop a lame duck president and his corporate constituants from unravalling a 232 year old instition that during the past eight years has been abused and taken advantage of by the people who lulled us into believing that what they were doing was right.
Now comes the age of democracy restored.
Labels: disabilities, government, honeybees, politics, science
posted by Bushido Hacks 10/27/2008 12:19:00 AM (0) comments top
20080605
Follow up: Honeybees sighted in St. Louis!
It is with cautious elation that I report that honeybees have been sighted in my neighborhood for the second day in a row in North St. Louis County, Missouri. Though their numbers are not as numerious at they should be, it is a postive sign that Colony Collapse Disorder has not stopped the honeybee from doing her work!I would like to find out where her (surprizingly, all the worker bees are female) hive is so that I can check--from a safe distance obviously--that her hive is healthy and in good spirits.
Maybe her sudden appearance is the result of something that the local beekeeping group did. But their group picnic isn't until this weekend.
Maybe this is a small group of wildbees. About two weeks ago, a swarm of wild honeybees invaded an elementary school. No one was hurt, and the school turned turned their unexpected strife into an educational learning experience. If only my highschool did that every year in biology class when part of our school was infested with ladybugs!
The honeybees that I saw were docile enough (though it is probably never a good idea to pick them up, especially when they are working) that I could examine them for Varroa. Though the mites are very small, their brown bodies would stand out from the bees black and gold. The few bees that I observed had no varroa on them. Despite the varroa's devistating effects on bee colonies, locally they could have an alibi, at least from my limited observations.
Labels: environment, gardening, honeybees, manbearpig, stlouis
posted by Bushido Hacks 6/05/2008 09:54:00 AM (0) comments top
