Daniel Cody - “Left on the Lake”

There’s a Big time Kerry fundraiser taking place next Wednesday July 7th here in Milwaukee I’d like to pass along.

The Kerry Victory 2004 will be held next Wednesday at the Italian Community Center between 7:00 and 9:30PM with Gov. Doyle, Sen. Feingold, Sen. Kohl, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and I’m sure just about every other Democratic name in the state in attendance. To attend the ‘party’, a $75 donation is asked ($35 for students) for, and to attend the ‘party’ and the reception that follows, it’s the typical $2,000 / $1,000 per plate fundraiser. That kind of cash lets you shake hands and even get a few words in with Sen. Kerry. If anyone is interested in going (To the $75 portion at least), drop me a line!

Then:

“Governor Bush and I are also absolutely determined that [we] will restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington” - Dick Cheney, 2000 presidential campaign

Now:

“F— off.” - Vice President Dick Cheney to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy 06/24/2004

So much for civility. Sounds like someone needs a nap to me!

Just when I think politics can’t become any more counter-intuitive or un-productive (see the last post), the Milwaukee Common Council proves me wrong by passing some legislation that benefits citizens and the City.

They’ve just passed a resuolution that will establish a web page on the milwaukee.gov site dedicated to tracking and soliciting employee and citizen concerns regarding fraud, waste, and abuse within City government.

…the City Comptroller is authorized and directed to oversee a pilot program using a page on the City’s website to solicit employee and citizen concerns regarding fraud, waste and abuse within City government operations - Resolution 040063

Ald. Michael Murphy (from my district) deserves some credit as well for amending the orignal resolution to utilize the Internet instead of a toll-free hotline as originally planned. That will make the program about 100 times as useful than originally planned, and guarantee more participate from citizens who want to report or view wasteful acts the City is commiting.

When I find out about the actual URL for the web site, I’ll make sure to pass it along.

Nothing says political bullshit more than GOP Senators purposely delaying a vote on Veterans health care benefits simply because the Democratic Presidential candidate cancelled a campaign event in order to make the vote.

John Kerry canceled a campaign event in New Mexico to cast a vote as Senator on an important Vetrans health care benefits bill which had been scheduled for weeks. Sensing the chance to score brownie points with the GOP leadership, Senate Majority leader Bill Frist decided to postpone the vote after Kerry arrived because he didn’t think Kerry should ‘just be able to parachute in and cast a vote’!

He may have scored point with his party, but I think the GOP lost some points with hundreds of thousands of veterans who see the silly, childish, and stupid move for what it is. Obviously it’s more important for GOP Senators to pull middle-schoolish pranks like this than pass important legislation.

Obviously, as their own argument goes, they must not support our troops!

The national convention for the Green Party kicks off in Milwaukee today, running through Sunday. Local coverage is going to be pretty weak, which isn’t a huge surprise - after all, who besides the local media will inform parents of the hidden dangers that merry-go-rounds pose to their children (Could your child DIE from riding a merry-go-round? Find out tonite on WTMJ 4 @ 10) - despite the importance the Green’s, and spoiler of the century Ralph Nader in particular, will have on the upcoming 2004 Presidential election.

Wisconsin is home to 20 Green party elected officials, the second highest number in the country, and the highest per capita in the U.S. so it’s no surprise that the Green’s choose our fair city for their national convention. I’m going to try to hit a few events today and tomorrow to see what they’re talking about, and how they think they’re going to impact the 2004 election, with Nader or without.

Looks like the old Webmonkey.com web site is back online, after a much publicized shutdown back in February.

Looks like they’re back with even more advertisments (and more intrusive ones at that) than before, which is saying a lot, for a website who’s managers sole measure of success was the number of banner ads it was shelling out a day. We’ll wait to see if they actually have new content up more than once a week, which is better than some web-dev sites sadly, or if this is just another ploy for a short term bump in site traffic to increase the number of banner ad rotations…

Jenny and I picked up a puppy almost 2 weeks now ago from the Fond Du Lac humane society. Her name is Maya, she’s a black lab, and almost 10 weeks old now. Our sleep patterns have been radically altered, but everyone - even Tux, who’s taken the intoduction of a hyper four legged sibling very well - is adjusting fairly well :)

Big coup today for Novell’s Linux division.. They convinced McDonalds Germany to switch to Linux for their IT ‘Infrastructure’.

“SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server enables us to deliver a functional, flexible, efficient, and yet efficient infrastructure”

The press release is a bit PR’ish naturally, which is to be expected, but this is a huge win for Novell’s new Linux division, which includes recently aquired SUSE Linux. The SUSE distribution also originates from Germany, which I’m sure isn’t coincidental… All in all, more good news for Linux in the corporate world!

I’m on jury duty today and tomorrow, so the posting might be a bit thin, especially when it comes to current events since the jury waiting room basically functions like an early 1900’s social club, where all the news is at best two weeks old.

After one day on the job - the very low paying job @ $8/day I might add - I can say without a single doubt that the people also serving as potential jurors with me truely represent a cross section of Miwaukee’s socio-economic status better than anything I’ve ever seen.

If I had choosen Sociology as a graduate school program, this my friends would be the primary source for my thesis.

It’s too bad that former President Ronald Reagan passed away this week, but the way a lot of the media organizations and especially many on the right are placing this guy on a pedestal above all others is really getting sickening.

It didn’t take three days after him passing away before certain conservative groups were calling for a national holiday in honor of our 40th President, certain other GOP lawmakers are insinuating that he single-handedly brought down communism, and among other things, a poll on the front page of cnn.com asking, “Should Ronald Reagan’s image replace Alexander Hamilton’s on the $10 bill?” has 31% of respondants saying yes. Worse, there’s serious consideration for just that from the GOP.

Before we go plastering his name on all the remaining airports, highways, currency, schools, and federal buildings that we haven’t already “Reaganized”, people should put a little perspective on the whole thing and relax.

He wasn’t the greatest president ever. He wasn’t soley responsible for ending communism in the USSR. He was anti-gay at best and homophobic at worst. He sold weapons to Iran and was buddy buddy with a guy who’s first name is Saddam, last name begins with an H. He supported CIA sponsored coups of more than a few Mid-American countries. He supported apartheid in South Africa and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on defense pork barrel spending (helllllo ‘Star Wars’!). And on and on…

I’m not saying he was a bad guy, or even a terrible president. I’m just saying people should take a balanced look at things instead of sweeping all the bad things under the carpet ‘out of respect’ for the man.

I recently re-aquired my brothers Les Paul Classic with the intention of reviving what were once - many years ago - my pretty decent guitar skills. In high school and the first few years of college, I used to play quite a bit, and there was even a time I did a very respectful ‘Even Flow’ cover for a large crowd.

Now that we’re in our house that has enough room for a setup, and you don’t have to worry about blowing out the paper walls of an apartment, it’s been kind of fun to get back into it a bit. The best way for me to practice had always been to play along with songs I knew.. Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Green Day, even a little Allman Brothers were some favorites back in the day. And a helpful way to learn the songs that you can’t quite pick up has always been tablature (tabs). Tabs are a graphical representation of where your fingers should go on the fretboard of a guitar, and are helpful for those of us who aren’t full time musicians willing to learn how to read ‘real’ sheet music.

So, today’s cool software of the day, web edition, is an online tab generator. The tab generator at olga.net is a nice javascript application that allows you to easily and quickly tab out guitar music through a web based interface. Just make sure your browser is using a monospaced font!