Wednesday, January 28, 2004

 
Several people around our office have received the W's reelection campaign photo and letter. Of course, it says very cleary "Not Printed at Taxpayers' Expense." Well, maybe it's not printed at taxpayers' expense, but getting W to all of his fundraisers is definitely paid by the taxpayers because he takes Air Force One. They accused Clinton of fundraising at the White House, I think this administration is just as bad if not worse. At least Clinton seemed to be open about the fact that he was running for reelection and not using little "policy" stops as a way to get to his fundraiser. I love the text of the letter - "Will you become one of the first to join the Bush-Cheney '04 Team as a Charter Member in Illinois? I would be thrilled to tell the President you are with us." As if Bush cares about the charter members! Also "The Democrats will be relentless in attacking the President, distorting his record and trying to mislead the voters." Mmm, I don't know how much the Democrats need distort the President's record to make it look any worse than it already does. "Some left wing activists are even using outrageous charges and outright distortions in attacking and vilifying President Bush and Vice President Cheney." Oh, you mean by telling the truth about what W and his friends have been up to for the last three years. We can't afford financially, economically or environmentally another four years of W and his friends.

If the No Child Left Behind Act was so great for schools why are states starting to consider not taking federal funding!?! This was on misleader.org yesterday. W is funding 27% of what he's requiring of schools. This makes NO sense! I don't think the Democrats have to do too much to show how bad this president has been for our country. Let's just hope they don't screw it up. You know that the Bushies will paint whoever the Democratic nominee as a big tax & spend liberal. I don't think anyone can spend more than this administration has and people not see any effect of it. It's like - wait they are spending all of this money that's appearing in the budget, where is it going? It's obviously not creating jobs - I don't see how 1,000 jobs created is an economic expansion! That's about 1/6 of the number of people at Kraft who will lose their jobs in the future.

One thing that I would like to hear more about in this campaign is jobs getting shipped overseas. Yeah, we can train all of the people we want, but it doesn't help if the people already trained can't get jobs. It's really sick when you hear about how many computer programmers' jobs have been shipped overseas. They were more than adequately trained! It's an insult to the people who have college degrees that they need training - what so they can deliver pizzas?

Don't forget to check out Fair.org's weekly program - Counterspin!
Also Fair.org had a great article about Dennis Miller and journalistic ethics.
A few other articles that I found interesting!

• Corporations Waging War on Biotech Critics, Independent Science


• Energy Policy


• What the World is Saying...About David Kay’s Statements on WMD in Iraq


• FDA Partially Tightens Up Feed Rules to Stop Spread of Mad Cow


• And a really interesting report on NPR's All Things Considered on Monday about Conflicting Roles in Mad Cow Scare for USDA.

posted by erica Wednesday, January 28, 2004 []

  Thursday, January 22, 2004

 
More websites that I must recommend checking out.
Organic Consumers Association
PR Watch
Center for American Progress

And don't forget Utne magazine, Molly Ivins and Maureen Dowd.

Oh and my favorite recent Bush Administration move - their effort to stop an anti-obesity initiative because bad food doesn't make you fat! :) It's along the lines as guns don't kill people, people kill people. I never got that because how can you kill someone by shooting them if you don't use a gun? They say that there isn't enough evidence. Are they insane? Well, this is the Bush Administration we're talking about.

As I've just found Commerical Alert has a lot of good info on it too!


posted by erica Thursday, January 22, 2004 []

  Wednesday, January 21, 2004

 
Oh goodness, the State of the Union Address. Ugh! I wasn't surprised how smug the President looked and how arrogantly he came across, what I was surprised about where the people that were talked to after the address when they say they liked the speech. I guess it's a matter of personal taste, but don't people see through him. One girl at work commented that he's the best president we've ever had. I don't know what planet she's living on! I read this article this morning. Finally someone is mentioning that we've sold America to the corporations. Corporations have their place, but not if they are the ones running the country. We can't let the drug and insurance companies make the health care policies or the oil companies make the energy policies, which is what this administration is doing, because of course the policies will serve the companies most. This administration seems to think that normal people don't matter in this country, he's very good at exploiting them, acting like they do matter. Our country has become a fast-(put your favorite word here) nation. We like our fast-food, fast-religion and fast-politics. We don't want to have to think for ourselves and that's just the way this administration wants it because if you start to question what they are really doing to this country, then you won't vote for them. They are a lot like the Wizard of Oz, pay no attention to what is happening behind closed-doors. If we start to question what they are doing and start making decisions for ourselves then we can change this country. I think if enough people demanded that they weren't going to put up with selling the country and exploiting our natural resources for profit then we could change things, but until we do that we're going to continue to have a president who cares about nothing but helping his friends make money.

The best thing you can do is to start thinking for yourself, not just as far as politics, but also food - think about what you are putting in your mouth. We don't think about what is on or in the foods we eat. We assume that if they are on the shelf, they are safe. Many of the easy foods are laden with chemicals and are made from foods that are genetically modified. We don't know what all of the effects of the chemicals and GMO's are going to do to our bodies 10, 20 years down the line. So the next time you want to stuff an Oreo in your mouth, stop and think could this be made without a lot of chemicals and processing?? Probably not!

Btw, you must see the Bush in 30 seconds ad that was picked!! It's not blatant Bush bashing, but it's definitely very effective and should be required viewing for every American!!
posted by erica Wednesday, January 21, 2004 []

  Monday, January 19, 2004

 
It was a somewhat relaxing weekend, which was nice. I taught a knitting class at the library on Saturday morning. Yesterday, I balanced the checkbook, worked on scrapbooking and just relaxed. Bryan and I watched Down With Love last night. It was cute and entertaining. :)

Today is the Iowa Caucuses. I'll probably be glued to the tv around 8pm as returns start to come in. It's going to be a very interesting election year - hopefully with a change in the White House at the end! George W. Bush has made this country into exactly what he wanted - a scared country living under his and his friends' control. They've wrecked so many of our civil liberties in the name of Homeland Security, they've destroyed the environmental policies and have made plans to start destroying other planets. Yeah, if we trash our own planet, let's just go to Mars, it's not trashed yet. (An article about it.) And as usual, the Republicans have decided that they know what is best for all of us. They get so angry about people expressing their opinions, but they are worse because they force their agenda on us. Like a group of middle aged men know what's best for women, the men will never know what it's like to be pregnant (not that I have first-hand knowledge). The Republicans seem to be so much talk - "hey lets talk about education" and then they cut funding in education. What's up with that?

I'm so looking forward to all of the trash that the Bush Administration has been hiding from the American people to start coming out! Like how they didn't warn the public about threats prior to 9/11 - John Ashcroft had quit flying commercial airlines. People need to know. I read misleader.org nearly every day to see what exactly W. has lied about today. I also listen to Counterspin (a different look at the normal spin you get from Bush and his friends) on the fair.org website. If I could give all of my money to moveon.org or fair.org, I would! They kept talking about regime change in Iraq - how about regime change in the White House? This White House has sold our country to all of their friends!!

Don't get run over by the political process this year - get out and vote and voice your opinion! If you don't, it's a vote for the other side and we can't have another 4 years of W., every one on the planet will hate the U.S. and we will have created so many enemies, the Republicans may have to create a Homeland Security department to keep all of the angry Americans in the country.

Then there are the pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and chemical companies killing us! The chemical companies put nasty herbicides and pesticides on our food and they create genetically modified foods (a very scary thing that is happening, we don't know the effects on our bodies), so that when you eat these foods, you will get sick with something as an adverse reaction to the chemicals on the foods building up in your body or a reaction to the genetically modified food, then you have to go to the doctor to get drugs, which keeps the pharmaceutical companies in business. Oh and then the oil industry, well, they will make sure that hybrid cars or cleaner fuel cars never work out because they think they be out of business. Maybe they need to embrace some of the cleaner fuels because they could still make money and not be killing us off the planet in the process. But if we use cleaner fuels, we won't have pollution which means you won't have to go to the doctor because your lungs are slowly dying from the toxins from fuels.

It's along the same lines that you eat bad food, you get fat, you go to the weight loss center owned by one of the food companies, you loose weight, start eating normally again, get back into eating the bad food again and the whole process continues. We talk about nutrition but the chain grocery stores are so full of junk that there seems to be very little normal food in sight!

And god forbid you say any particular food is bad for you or scares you or you may be in line for a lawsuit - Oprah's Free -- Are We? A book that every food consumer must read is Fast Food Nation. The Secretary of Agriculture (Ann Veneman) is a former lobbyist for the cattle industry, so of course they are going to say that beef is safe to eat!
Okay, so I rambled a bit, but at least I got it off my chest!
posted by erica Monday, January 19, 2004 []

  Friday, January 16, 2004

 
I am slowly but surely getting my cards up on my site. The newest one is the Leopard birthday card. It was one of those that just didn't come together and finally an idea struck that made it look great. It's now one of my favorite cards! :)

I finished the Time Traveler's Wife on Saturday. It was such an amazing book. That night I had a dream about time-traveling, it was a wild dream.

I've been busy working on cards the last several nights. I'm making thank you cards for my wedding shower that's in April or May. I started to make one as a thank you for Christmas and then decided that it would be really cute for thank you cards for the shower, so I've made 25 of them so far. I need to emboss the vellum and do the ribbons, I'm about 1/3 of the way finished with them. When they are done they will be SO cute! I'm also going to be making the invitations for the wedding shower, which my aunt is hosting. I want to make as many of the cards related to my wedding as possible! :)
posted by erica Friday, January 16, 2004 []

  Sunday, January 11, 2004

 
I posted this on my knitting blog, but had to post it here too. :)

I had the craziest thing happen to me today! I was in Chicago making a quick visit to my sister's. Meredith, Bryan and I were in the car stopped at the intersection of Damen, Milwaukee and North Avenue and all of a sudden a girl runs out into the cross-walk and takes a photo of my car. I had no idea what to think of that, my sister asked why she took the photo and I said, I don't know. Then as we're looking over to the left, where the girl had ran back to be with her friends, they were holding up knitting needles. It all made sense then, since my license plate is KNIT GRL.

It was the craziest thing I think I've ever had happen to me. It was all a bit surreal! :)

If you took my car's photo, please leave me a message!!
posted by erica Sunday, January 11, 2004 []

  Tuesday, January 06, 2004

 
A very long day yesterday. Bryan's dad had surgery that left him in a lot of pain, which is to be expected, I guess. I felt so bad for his dad last night.

I took off the afternoon from work to be with Bryan while he waited for his dad while in surgery. Hospital waiting rooms takes a big toll on the waiting parties, which aren't really parties at all, but groups of people not wanting to speak too loudly because they don't want to disturb the others. The looks on everyone's face in the waiting area is that of concern, but they don't want to look scared, even though they are very worried. It was an eerie quiet around the waiting area, the quiet was library-quiet but not the same sort of quiet that you experience at a library. More a quiet that no one wants to give away too much of themselves to the others. Everyone is very aware of their own space in the waiting area and expects others to respect their space choices. His dad came through surgery just fine, after three and a half hours of us waiting. His dad had a his gallbadder removed and a tumor in his stomach. I'm sure the stomach pains are the worst he's ever experienced in his life! I can't imagine the pain. We saw him after they brought him to his room from recovery. He was still very out of it and seemed to be worried about things that shouldn't even be thought of after surgery, such as dirty clothes. Bryan said that's typical of his dad. I imagine he's long tired of the hospital, after being there a week already. I think they'll get him into shape by the time he leaves and he'll have some recovery time at home that will be frustrating for him. He's in very good hands and I know that they people he volunteers with in the emergency room of the hospital he's currently in will pay him many visits.

So now it's the time of getting Bryan's dad put back together and introducing him to the world of eating in a new way. I'm sure he'll be on a restricted diet for several weeks.

I came back to work last week after a week in Kansas. Thank goodness it was a short week. This week will be long, but full of ups and downs. It's started off rough, but it can only get better. I'm teaching a beginning knitting class at the library in Mundelein tomorrow evening. It will be interesting and very challenging as it's the largest class I've ever taught. I know it will go well and hopefully will open up a lot of new doors for me, as well as opening knitting doors for the students!

I received a very nice email from Kaye Gibbons herself! She has a new book coming out and will be visiting Chicago to promote her new book. I will definitely have to go meet her and get a book signed. Of course, I'll have to get a photo with her so that I can add it to my Kaye Gibbons page. This is an incentive to get that page updated! :)

I'm nearly finished with The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It's an amazing book. I HIGHLY recommend it. Don't let the 518 pages scare you! It goes quickly. I can't believe that I'm nearly 450 pages into it!

posted by erica Tuesday, January 06, 2004 []