You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
“
| — | John Wooden, Wednesday Wisdom (via themightybruins) |
Can I help you?
This is quite possibly the best screen cap I’ve ever seen in my life. Is he even wearing a cup for God’s Sake?!
I’m too busy salivating to come up with a proper response to this gem
OMG I’m dying!
Online dating, First Post
Ok, so I’m finally making my foray into the world of online dating at the recommendation of several friends. I signed up for match.com, and within a day (and without even having posted a pic) I had a wink. Good start, right? Wrong. The wrong has nothing to do with the guy-I really like him so far, but match’s emails have been giving me trouble the last few days. I responded to this guy from my phone on Friday evening while I was at a volunteer orientation session. I know I didn’t answer all of his questions, but I answered a few and it was a long email. As the day went by on Saturday, and I didn’t hear from him, I began to wonder, but blew it off as I assumed he must have been busy. Then Sunday came and went, and I logged on again, and noticed that there was no record of the email I’d sent him on Friday. So, I emailed him again, in hopes that maybe he’d get this next one. I also included my personal email and twitter account (something I wouldn’t do if I weren’t into him). So I checked again on Monday, neither email registered in sent mail. So I called the customer service people, and while they were super sweet and helpful, they couldn’t tell me when I’d be able to email other users again.
So later that night, I checked match again, only to see that the website was telling me that this guy had emailed me. There was only one problem: I never got it. This time, my previous email to him seemed to have gone through (the site says he read it) but now it won’t tell me what his email to me says. Fabulous.
I called Match customer service again yesterday, and this time they logged into my account remotely to see what was going on. We tried to clear the cookies. Still nothing. So the nice woman on the phone filled out another ticket for the IT department and gave me another credit to bring the total to 21 days, and said “I hope they fix it in those 21 days!” How reassuring.
So here it is, Wednesday, I’ve been sending emails to this guy (which I know he receives) telling him what the deal is and to email me at my personal email. What does he do? Responds to my email on Match. Seriously? And he has kept on doing it. I assumed at one point he didn’t want to email me personally. Ok so I told him to IM me on match. Sent him an email saying I was online and that I checked my settings to make sure my IM was working (since I got an IM from some random guy yesterday, I assume it must be). Do I get an IM? No. He sends me another freakin’ email, which I still can’t get! I’m sure by now I seem like some kind of scary stalker chick to him, but at this point I give up. I sent him one last email telling him I give up and he needs to email me at my personal email. If he’s going to be that much of a dumbass, I don’t care how much I liked him in the first place, he’s clearly not worth my time.
SOTU
Obama gave a fantastic speech, as always. This is my initial reaction, but I’ll need to re-watch it later to be more specific.
One of his first lines was “For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.” BOOM. I don’t remember, but I hope the Republicans applauded that one.
As for his various policy proposals (not necessarily in the order he gave):
-Economy: I’m skeptical of that 3m jobs number, but PolitiFact says that it’s true (while rating the context of the statement half-true).
-Education: Obama said that he “calls on” every state to require every kid to go to and graduate from high school. Won’t happen. He can “call on” the states as much as he likes, but doesn’t mean it’ll happen. There are a large number of people, on both sides of the aisle, who believe that such decisions should be left up to the states without federal interference, not to mention the inevitable groups (such as home-schoolers) who will hate it. This is at the root of some of the No Child Left Behind reform proposals. In addition, his proposal for merit pay will face the opposition of the teachers’ unions, a key Dem constituency.
-Energy: Obama seemed to support fracking, which will definitely anger the environmentalists. On the other hand, Republicans aren’t too keen on clean energy in the first place, and they’ll use the Solyndra fiasco to bash Obama and all clean energy proposals as much as possible between now and November.
-Defense cuts: probably one of the biggest sources of earmarks in Congress. Defense creates jobs and brings in money to almost every state and congressional district in the country, regardless of whether or not they’re actually necessary. From a Congressional perspective, defense cuts=fewer federal dollars going toward your district/state. Hence the fights over BRAC closures (a different matter entirely, but a good example nonetheless).
-DREAM Act: Obama might get some support from Democrats on the DREAM Act (in fact, I think he already has), but this is an election year. The Republicans will do everything they can to prevent its passage to please their base. Might even bring in some moderate Dems in tough re-election races as well.
-Immigration Reform: George W. Bush tried and failed to get traction from his own party (from which he normally got near-unanimous support). At a time when Republican members’ views are more extreme than ever, hell will freeze over before they let that happen on their watch. If Boehner had trouble “controlling” his freshmen during the debt ceiling fights, this will be that fight on steroids. Additionally, as mentioned above, you have Democrats running in purple-bordering-on-red states who are facing tough re-election races who are unlikely to support anything controversial in an election year. Also, I believe I’ve read in various places that illegal immigration is down because our economy sucks right now.
-Congressional Insider Trading: Yeah, right. Good luck getting them to police themselves on a directive from the president. They regularly screw up their own ethics investigations, does Obama seriously think they’re going to outlaw what he calls “insider trading”? (my guess is that Congress’ll find some other innocuous-sounding name for it, if they haven’t already)
-Piracy, etc.: Ok so he wants to appoint a commission. Politicians regularly appoint commissions when they want to look like they’re doing something but in reality want to kill it. DOA.
-Tax reform: In an election year? Good luck with that one. To the GOP noise machine these days, “fair share”=socialism. And unfortunately, too many GOP voters pay attention to it and take what it says as the God’s honest truth. And, as mentioned above, he likely won’t get the moderate Dems facing re-election.
Anyway, this is just my non-expert take. Feel free to comment.
Welcome to Congress in the Archives! This blog has been designed to give you an inside look at the Center for Legislative Archives and the historical records of Congress that we hold. We will feature documents on significant events in history as well as some of the unexpected treasures in our holdings, suggest lesson ideas for teachers, share our researchers’ experiences, and introduce our staff. We hope that you let us know what you like, and what else you would enjoy seeing featured here. We look forward to hearing from you!
“Congress Comes to Order,” by Clifford Berryman, Washington Evening Star, 12/2/1912, U.S. Senate Collection, Center for Legislative Archives (ARC 306178)
HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY ♥ LUCY ♥
August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989
Lucille Ball was so funny that she could make you laugh without saying one dirty word. She was so funny that she didn’t have to say ANY word to make you laugh. Just thinking about Lucy brings a smile to my face. She was that good.
- Madonna
One of the greatest gifts to mankind is laughter, and one of the greatest gifts to laughter is Lucille Ball. God has her now, but thanks to Television we’ll have her forever.
- Bob Hope
This is from the episode “Lucy Does the Tango”. Longest laugh in TV history-67 seconds!! Happy Birthday Lucy!!
On Congressional Sex Scandals
Let me make one thing clear: I stopped caring about the Anthony Weiner scandal about 10 minutes after it started. I am also a Democrat, as those of you who follow me on Twitter probably already know. However, I like to think of myself as pragmatic (hopefully that’s actually the case). Do I agree with everything Democrats do all the time, including the president? Nope. Republicans have good ideas and intentions, too. Do I disagree with the Republicans? Most of the time, but not always, and it certainly doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for certain ones (see: Coburn, Tom). This isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s not all-or-nothing, one or the other.
Now that Congressman (ex-Congressman?) Weiner has resigned, a lot of people on the left are screaming bloody murder because Senator David Vitter (R-LA) didn’t resign after his notorious sex scandal (I’m not going to explain it here-google it if you’re interested). Should he have resigned? Who knows. At this point, who cares? He was just re-elected, so if people think they’re going to get him to resign by sending diapers to his office (again, google it), think again. Here’s what I have to say to those who want to claim hypocrisy:
Channel your anger and indignation into working for a candidate you believe in. Volunteer for them, give money to their campaign, host fundraisers (campaigns aren’t exactly free), make phone calls, knock on doors, recruit friends and family. In short, work your tail off and do everything you can to get that person elected. Because at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. Elections have consequences, as we’ve seen time and time again.
And most importantly: VOTE.
