Month: September 2008

has posted an excellent rundown of some of the more troubling aspects of Sarah Palin, with hyperlinked sources.

Honestly? I don’t care if she’s got relatively zero experience, and was obviously only chosen by McCain in a desperate bid to grab disaffected Hillary supporters and to shore up his Evangelical cred.

My biggest problem is that I really don’t need to see another TheoCon Dominionist nutbag anywhere near the government of my country, ever again.

Lost amidst all of the bullshit surrounding Hillary Quayle Sarah Palin, the utter and complete lack of vetting by the McCain campaign, and the apparent decision (based on last night’s speeches) of the Republicans to desperately return to Rove-style culture-war election tactics, was this particular bombshell:

Biden: We might pursue criminal charges against Bush.

First reported by ABC, but lost in the noise, Joe Biden said yesterday that an Obama administration could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November:

“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued […] Not out of vengeance, not out of retribution — out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.”

Not nearly as “newsworthy” as Romney raging against “Eastern Elites”, Giuliani doing his Mussolini lisp about “cosmopolitans” and Hillary Quayle Sarah Palin braying about her experience as the mayor of an 8,000-person town, but I think it might merit some coverage…..

Thank you, everybody — for your concern and your assistance.

Here’s the skinny:

As I said — minor emergency. We got back home yesterday late afternoon from dropping the kid at college, only to discover that we had no power.

Shut off for non-payment. WTF?!? Sez we…. Y’see, about a month or so ago, I set up our electric bill to electronic-only. They’d stop mailing us bills (wasteful use of paper), and we’d take care of everything online. I had yet to receive a bill notification, though — so I assumed that it would be taking effect on the next cycle, and that Laura would still receive a paper bill in the mail. She, naturally, did not — and assumed that because she received no bill, that I had received an electronic one.

See where this is going?

What is it they say about assuming?

Turns out that my spam filter ate the notification. So, no pay, and no power.

Normally, not a problem — however, the timing: Just drove cross-country, dropped kid at college, got her all of the needed college-starting supplies, stayed at hotels, drove back across the country (with gas at $3.50 a gallon) — plus the kid (and ‘s ) birthday is this coming weekend. We rode our budget out to the fumes in the tank — Friday is payday, but also largely spoken for with September rent. The last thing we were prepared for was this power bill situation.

Boy, do I feel like an idiot.

Thanks to a bunch of good friends, however, we managed to get things sorted — and only had to wait until 11:00 this morning to get things turned back on (Last night’s emergency post was thanks to a battery-powered laptop and a nearby neighbor’s unsecured wireless network!). Spent the night in the dark, but everything is hunky-dory now.

Power’s back, we’re back, and I’ll make sure to pay you all back. You were life savers.