Bush prepares to veto children's healthcare

According to this NY Times article (plenty of other media outlets have also reported this), Bush will most likely veto a biparisan-supported bill that would renew and expand healthcare coverage for millions of our nation's children. What a schmuck.

It is time for nationalized healthcare. It is time to get away from these stopgap measures that end up being political battles with people's lives hanging in the balance. It is ridiculous that ANYONE in this nation would have to worry about how they will pay their medical bills. My dad (who died broke one year ago) went bankrupt from medical bills, and he was, by no stretch, a rare case.

Shameful. Thank you, Mr Bush, for again turning your back on the nation.

IMPEACH!

There are many reasons why it is time to impeach Cheney and Bush. The main one is to save our Constitution and retain the United States as a democracy! My gosh, these guys have no shame. One of the latest in a long, long, line of disgraceful activity, was Bush admitting that his administration leaked Valerie Plame's CIA status, and then Bush states that it's "time to move on". NO!!! It is NOT time to just keep letting Bush and Cheney do whatever they please, ignoring the LAW, callously sending so many thousands to their deaths in Iraq for a war of choice based on lies, and increasingly building their false case for military action against Iran.

There are many web sites stating arguments for impeachment. AfterDowningStreet is one of them. Many of the sites are a mix of emotion and reason. For a reasoned argument with proper supporting documentation making the case for the impeachment of Cheney, please see Congressman Kucinich's page regarding House Resolution 333. You can also read the full text of HR 333.

It's not too late to save our nation. Not yet.

I've registered with the Green Party

For the past 32 years I've been a Democrat. The majority of those years was in Washington state. I've represented my neighbors at the precinct caucus, at the county convention, at the congressional district caucus, and at the state convention. I've worked on a number of campaigns (the first was Mo Udall's presidential bid - a 'few' years back). For at least 5 years - maybe more - I've considered switching to the Green Party. I had high hopes when the Democrats won 'control' of the US House and Senate this last November, but have been dismayed at the lack of progress on very serious issues. There is a definite difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. And there is even more difference between these parties and the Green Party.

I've read the Ten Key Values over and over and it just fits. I decided it was time to follow my gut, to do what I know is right, and to register with a party whose values match my own.

The very unfortunate part is that, now that I have registered with the Green Party of Florida, I can no longer vote for any Democratic candidates in the state primary elections. In Florida, as in many states, we have a closed primary; in the primary election one can only vote for candidates within one's own party. In the General election, of course, one may vote for whomever one wishes.

It's time for us all to think about what is really important. What's important is healing the Earth, helping to take care of people's basic needs in so many places (including right here in our home towns), being honest - always. I see more of these values with the Green Party.

Smart reserved...

We've talked about it for some time. And today we took the first step. We have reserved a Smart Car. Pictured on the left (click to see it larger ...although even full size, it's only 5 feet 1 inch high ...that's shorter than I am, so it's pretty short!) ...pictured on the left is what we've reserved. A yellow Smart. We first saw these little guys in Paris 5 or 6 years ago (and then elsewhere in Europe). In Spain last month, we saw 4-door models -- which almost seems like sacrilege, but still far better than the lone-occupant behemoths we see so often around the US.

It's unknown yet what the mileage will be, but it should get over 40mph. Hopefully it will be well over. We've considered hybrids, but the battery technology is not yet where it needs to be. There are (in our minds) too many issues with the recycling of the batteries and with the composite materials at the end of the product life. And the Smart car is quite safe, as this YouTube crash video will demonstrate. Of course, as they mention in the video, while slamming into concrete at 70mph will leave the Smart in better condition than many cars, the human occupant would still have a challenge surviving such sudden deceleration.

So for now, we'll stay abreast of the developments and will definitely plan to attend the street smart road show in Tampa in October. Our US$99 deposit is fully refundable at any time. The tentative plan is that we would sell Shirley's car next year, which should leave us needing about US$9,000 to cover the cost of the Smart. Given that I typically work from home a day or two a week, and Shirley typically does not work on Fridays, and her lab may be moving close to my office, there's even a possibility that we could do some or all of our commuting together in the Smart. That'd be cool.

We've switched to Verizon FiOS

After plenty of debate (all inside my bald little head), I finally signed up for Verizon FiOS on Wednesday the week before last. David from Verizon came out on Friday of that week and got us up and running. Here are a few pics showing (from left to right - click a thumbnail to see larger image) the line to the house (it was buried on the following Monday), the box on outside of the house, additions inside the garage, and the modem/router (an Actiontec MI424-WR).

Being a control freak, I asked David to just get the connection working (he was able to use our existing internal coax, and our BrightHouse connection for TV still works fine, since it's different bandwidths). I was then able to turn off broadcast of the SSID, enable MAC address filtering, and turn off WEP and turn on WPA encryption. On the PC side, the speed initially was rather poor (better than it had been before, but not by much - except on upload which was now 4Mbps+). But after downloading and running TCPOptimizer, I am now seeing between 14Mbps and 18Mbps download ...from Verizon's test site. Here's the result from Verizon's speedtest:

Suh-weet!