When I was a kid, and now

When I was a kid, a Republican president proposed and got passed the Interstate Highway system. This was passed as a non-partisan issue, and has been the backbone of the rise of the modern United States.

Now, under a Democratic president, his tiny (by comparison) American Jobs bill can't even get a hearing.

Before I was born, a Democratic president decided that the long-postponed racial integration of the US Armed Forces would take place, whether his generals and the people of the United States agreed with it, or not. Simply because it was the right thing to do. And it worked.

Just this year, another Democratic president finally ended official discrimination against gay and lesbian soldiers and sailors. While it seems to be a non-issue in the services, he's catching hell for it on the right-wing airwaves.

When I was a kid, a whole generation of young Americans were going to college, courtesy of the GI Bill. This was mostly men, but even so, American business was propelled ahead by the brightest and most-educated workforce ever. Even poor folks, however, were able to get to college if they really wanted to attend.

Now, we are burdening all but the richest and poorest with enormous debt to attend college. What the hell is wrong with us? The rest of the world has figured out how to do this better. So can we, if we want to.

When I was a kid, people didn't complain about their taxes. People knew that taxes paid for not just government, but also the armed forces, and the nation's infrastructure. They were proud to be able to contribute. The taxes on the rich were very high, and yet the US prospered and grew.


Now, the rich control most of the wealth and power in this country, and have the lowest tax rates in fifty years. Many corporations pay NO tax, using not only sleazy tax-dodges, but also off-shoring American jobs, impoverishing the country but still posting record profits. And now they are allowed, as "legal persons," to make unlimited political contributions. And our jobless rate hovers around 9%. The Republicans in Congress have almost all signed a pledge to NEVER raise taxes.

And the American Jobs bill still gets no hearing.

I grew up Republican, proud of the Party of Lincoln. President Lincoln kept the Union together, won the Civil War, which ended the horrible stain upon US honor, the agony of slavery. But I grew up to see Republicans vote against the Civil Rights Act, and oppose school desegregation.

I honored Teddy Roosevelt, who created the National Park System, forever protecting our most beautiful and pristine public lands. Now I see the Republicans try to sully the environment, yelling "drill baby drill!" My goodness, the Environmental Protection Agency was proposed and created by the Republican President Nixon! Now most of the Republican presidential candidates want to hobble or even disband it!

When the Republican Bob Dole was running for president, he proposed a near-universal healthcare plan, which was nearly identical to President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Yet NO Republicans supported or voted for it.

Republican President Ulysses S Grant established the Civil Service, to get graft out of government jobs. Now the Republicans are the ones attacking government employees, and trying to "privatize" as many government services as possible. What was different in 1872 and now? People have forgotten what graft is, and what it means. How many people know what Blackwater, Halliburton and Xie have done to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United States?

To be fair, Rupert Murdoch's FOX News and many years of one-sided (and dishonest) media pounding on the American public has had its effect. The Republican Party has responded by speaking up ONLY for the richest Americans. The Democrats have often retreated from support for the poor and middle class, minorities, children, as they lost power to the rich. But for the most part, they have done their part to protect the middle class. They have spoken up for health care for all, protection of the environment, repair of the US infrastructure, women's rights, education for all who want it.

But the money in politics is destroying us. I've signed the petition at getmoneyout.com/ and I hope it does some good. I worked for Pres. Obama and most of the local Democrats, and will do so again. But until we get the money our of the system, it will be much less than perfect. I've lobbied my local Congresspeople, and write and call all of them sometimes. But until we get the money out of politics, we aren't going to make the progress we really need to. I think the Occupy Wall Street movement shows that I'm not the only one who notices that something is wrong, and we need to get this turned around.

This Week in Links - April and May

Exciting to do this! This was supposed to be weekly, but time slid away from me. But there are so many tabs open FF is hardly working, so it's TIME.

Amazing article, highly recommended: 150 Years After Fort Sumter: Why We're Still Fighting the Civil War: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2063679-1,00.html. 150 years later, it is high time to look back and learn the lessons of that horrible war, and the scourge of slavery which stained this country for so long. The racism which remains shows that we have NOT owned up to that full history, but have continued to ignore all the causes. We nearly lost our Union then, yet talk of secession still simmers now.

OMG, want: http://www.moccamaster.com/uk/. Freaking all-flash site, but that coffee-maker looks amazing!

Interesting old slideshow (2004), history of the beginning of KDE: http://events.kde.org/info/kastle/presentations/kastle-history/index.html

If ever I do write a thesis, this might come in handy! http://www.cs.umd.edu/~nspring/software/style-check-readme.html

Lots of cool videos of ants in action: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/25/fire-ants-assemble-into-living-waterproof-rafts/#more-4381

Amazing track by Johnny Cash. If only the radio preacher and all his suckered believers had listened to this, instead of to the radio: The Man Comes Around.

Yay, I had lost this link until someone posted it! Great online comic: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

For those who are having Flash problems recently in Linux, this is supposed to help: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flash-aid/. What helped ME in Natty was removing and purging flashplugin-nonfree, then reinstalling flashplugin-installer.

Best reply to the idiots in the Tennessee Legislature who recently passed a bill banning the use of the word "gay" or "homosexual" by teachers in school: http://geeks.thedailywh.at/2011/05/19/george-takei-psa-of-the-day/. That is SO Takei!

A series of links I've found concerning my dead mic and headphone jack: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3116917.0, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1755827&highlight=headphones&page=2, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/184314, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449, http://colin.guthr.ie/2010/02/this-is-the-route-to-hell/

The great Bill Withers, Ain't No Sunshine While She's Gone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIdIqbv7SPo.

John McCain regains his integrity? A bit late, but better late than never: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/john-mccain-to-bush-apologists-stop-lying-about-bin-laden-and-torture/2011/03/03/AF10AnzG_blog.html.

The cost of cowardice. I used to support Sojourners, but they have let me down, they have let gay Christians down, and in doing so, lost their integrity and value: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/4605/tainted_love%3A_the_cost_of_sojourners%E2%80%99_refusal_to_take_sides_on_lgbt_issues.

Nice explanation of Kubuntu repositories: http://dohbuoy.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/kubuntu-and-its-repositories/.

Eric Clapton, Tears in Heaven, live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscPOozwYA8.

Cool project! Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It's safe, secure, and easy: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/. Thanks for the link, Himanshu.

Possible use for Alsachat? http://www.crawltrack.net/, http://loadimpact.com/.

Fun link - my first computer! The Coleco ADAM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam.

Fascinating discussion of How Robber Barons hijacked the "Victorian Internet: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/how-the-robber-barons-hijacked-the-victorian-internet.ars/.

Discussion on reddit about how teams best manage artwork: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/h6pku/teams_how_do_you_manage_your_artwork/.

Quite funny, and a bit mind-bending for Americans, maybe: http://www.galacticempiretimes.com/2011/05/09/galaxy/outer-rim/obi-wan-kenobi-is-killed.html.

Interesting discussion of religion and atheism (anti-religion?): https://profiles.google.com/u/0/anirbit.mukherjee/posts/8BQ8Cgh3vxC

Obviously I like *this link, since I tried to raise my kids this way: Let Kids Play With Fire, and Other Rules for Good Parenting.

God Help The Girl is a story written by Stuart Murdoch, which is in the process of being turned into a film, and which has already yielded a self-titled album, an EP (‘Stills’) and a handful of live shows.

So cute! Animals with Stuffed Animals. And http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2011/05/australias-newest-bundle-of-baby-rhino-joy-1.html

Important to remember: http://xkcd.com/896/. Also, after reading a biography of Marie Curie when I was young, I admired her so much. But I didn't want to BE her! The reason we are here on Earth, is to be our Selves, as much as possible. In my opinion.

Bizarre, and so opposite from the xkcd message, is: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/05/09/removing-women-from-situation-room-photo/. This might cheer you up, though: http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/12/6634301-best-new-thing-how-dyou-like-that-situation. Clickety-click!

Interesting article about Nokia and open source.

World IPv6 Day. Get ready, people! Unlike the End of the World, this is actually happening.

Open Source Sewing? Yeah, including this Teddy Pig pattern.

Why are there so many engineers in India? Interesting article about higher education in India, some of which is true in China too. http://thenextweb.com/in/2011/05/08/why-there-so-many-engineers-in-india/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hackernewsyc+%28Hacker+News+YC%29.

I had a blog with links about helpful travel sites, but I think it's way outdated. Easier to link to Hypatia's blog: http://hypatia.ca/2010/08/travel-tricks/.

This sucks, but doesn't surprise me: http://thedailywh.at/2011/05/22/this-is-all-kinds-of-wrong-of-the-day-4/. It would discourage me, but I just got a nice card from Sen. Fayn as a response to an email I sent him. And he's a Republican. One of the good guys.

No idea if this works, is practical, etc. But it is interesting: Android, Chrome OS, and Ubuntu United in One Platform: A new option from Always Innovating adds a fourth Linux-based operating system for a quad-boot alternative. I don't have a Beagle board, but who knows the future?

Spreadsheet with Google Summer of Code students, and their distribution around the world: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgL4N-OdGxhQcDZEdW9BMmxKVG9LbVV6b1NxNnJhWlE&gid=5.

If you didn't see it, President Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner - now is as good a time as any!

From NPR: Size Matters: The Hidden Mathematics of Life.

That's quite enough, don't you think? I do too. More later, of course!

Original Documents Online

The up-to-date version of this post will be maintained at: http://genweblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/making-of-america-university-of.html

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Making of America

University of Michican: http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/

Cornell: http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/
  Education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology

Berkeley: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/MOA2/Help/

Wildly cool - The American Colonist's Library: Primary Source Documents Pertaining to Early American History: http://www2.pitnet.net/primarysources/

Yale Law's Avalon Project: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

Federal Land Patents: http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/

Search the Missouri Digital Library: http://tinyurl.com/ytkxj

Documents of Tennessee History, 1796-1850: http://diglib.lib.utk.edu/dlc/tdh/index.html

Repositories of Primary Sources, Eastern United States and Canada: http://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/east1.html#usga

Hundreds of links to Primary Sources, USA & Worldwide: http://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/other.html

Online Collections at BYU - Family History Archive: http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/


Ecclesiastical Sources for Slave Societies, digitized images of Cuban church records, especially concerning slavery: http://lib11.library.vanderbilt.edu/diglib/esss.pl


No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. - John Donne, 1572-1631 "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions"

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