The Honor Roll

On July 20th, the House voted on a resolution that 'commends the President of the United States for fully supporting Israel' and has all the rest of the usual kinds of things these resolutions have.

There were 410 'yea' votes, 8 'nay', 4 'present', and 10 not voting.

Here is the honor roll of those who dared to not vote yes:

NAY:
Abercrombie
Conyers
Dingell
Kilpatrick (MI)
McDermott
Paul
Rahall
Stark

PRESENT:
Kaptur
Kucinich
Lee
Waters

NOT VOTING:
Davis (FL)
Davis, Jo Ann
Duncan
Evans
Fortenberry
McKinney
Northup
Nussle
Sanchez, Loretta
Westmoreland

Make it Rain!

"Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." -Mark Twain

(actually, he never said that or anything much like it, but whatever).

Anyhow, my sister recently wrote from Chengdu ("think of it as the Chicago of China"), where it was really hot (no, like, way hotter than it is in New York), but then it rained a lot and it cooled down:

In the most interesting news of the day, yesterday's torrential rain showers were man-made. Apparantly the Chengdu government decided that it had been too hot for too many days. They tracked a cloud by satellite, and at the precise moment it moved over Chengdu, they fired 48 cannons spread around the city with rain-seeding chemicals, and started the monsoon. It was all over the newspapers and TV, though of course we couldn't read it and heard through others. Apparantly this is common practice in China.

Well holy shite. Cloud seeding technology has actually been around for decades, though it's not used that much in the US (China is the biggest user). Using chemicals, you can make a cloud rain before it otherwise would have rained. Good to know.

For all the Hillary Clinton fans

She was the star of the Israel-should-bomb-lots-of-people rally outside the UN on Monday.

Re Hamas and Hezbollah, she says:

“They do not believe in human rights, they do not believe in democracy. They are totalitarians, they are the new totalitarians of the 21st century.”

WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO?

When even sweigle has cell-ed out??

(and I end titles of blog posts with prepositions?)

Farewell to Action Pants

"I could try sewing these up again, but they'll still just rip. You should throw out your pants." -mom
"I suppose." -me

And so it was. I wasn't happy, but I recognized the reality that it was time for Action Pants to go.

Here, one last shot before they met their fate:



Action Pants, it's been a good time, and I'm sorry we had to part. We went to protests, parties, hiking -- we went everywhere! Your upstart successors from Sears are being broken in now, but you won't be forgotten.