Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
I saw this at Roth’s Curiosity Corner this past Tuesday evening. I knew I needed the reminder in my complaining moments…and in others as well. So I chose it as my Christmas gift (purchased on a gift certificate from my folks).
I received the mug below from Trenton (our youngest grandson) as another Christmas gift:
Thanks for the mugs!
I was acquainting myself with some of what’s new at the White House. Virtually, that is. On their Web site. And I came across this gem:
Well, that seemed kinda tacky and tactless and hardly in keeping with any kind of reconciliation and civility and statesmanship and bipartisanship and postpartisanship and blah, blah, blah. 🙄
So I got curious about what other promises (current or broken) I might turn up there using their search feature. Well, a search for the term promises turned up this:
What’s with that?! That’s not a very helpful search feature. Well, I decided to see if Google could do better:
Maybe the techno gurus who run whitehouse.gov need to use the powered by Google option, if nothing else. 😀
Then I remembered seeing a headline that might explain the faulty search feature on the White House site:
Oh, “it’s all Bush’s fault.”
Well, that’s just how the game is played I guess. Nothing seems to have changed in that regard. 🙂
I know, I know. There are weightier things going on there. But a little low-key levity seems in order. 😆
And if the BDS2-afflicted conspiracy cooks want to use my discovery as proof of less-than-the-promised-transparency…too bad I helped. 
Seriously, though, an appeal to President Obama: More magnanimity, please. Sow it, reap it — sounds like a good deal to me, sir.
On this day in 2009, America’s 44th President (Barack Hussein Obama) awoke as President for the first time. Now, as midnight strikes on the East Coast, his first full day as the only sitting President of the United States of America ends. Sleep well, Mr. President.
On other January 21’s in US and world history…
1525 — The Swiss Anabaptist Movement is born when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and about a dozen others baptize each other in Zürich.
1793 — Louis XVI of France is guillotined.
1924 — Vladimir Lenin dies; Joseph Stalin begins purge of his rivals to clear the way for his leadership.
1954 — The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched.
1973 — Tomorrow the US Supreme Court will precipitate America’s new civil war (pitting the born against the unborn) by delivering its Roe v. Wade decision, striking down laws restricting abortion during the first six to seven months of pregnancy. Thus America’s own genocide will kick into high gear.
1976 — Commercial service of Concorde begins.
1977 — New President Jimmy Carter pardons nearly all American Vietnam War draft evaders.
1981 — Iran releases US hostages after 444 days (as a gift to new President Ronald Reagan?).
1985 — Ronald Reagan’s second-term public inaugural ceremony is today because January 20 was Sunday.
2003 — The US Census Bureau announces that Hispanics have surpassed blacks as America’s largest minority group.
2008 — This turns out to be Black Monday in worldwide stock markets.
In other US political events on this day in 2009:
Compass Direct News is reporting that Christian deaths are mounting in Eritrean prisons.
| Three Christians incarcerated in military prisons for their faith have died in the past four months in Eritrea, including the death on Friday (Jan. 16) of a 42-year-old man in solitary confinement, according to a Christian support organization.
Sources told Open Doors that Mehari Gebreneguse Asgedom died at the Mitire Military Confinement center from torture and complications from diabetes. Asgedom was a member of the Church of the Living God in Mendefera. His death followed the revelation this month of another death in the same prison. Mogos Hagos Kiflom, 37, was said to have died as a result of torture he endured for refusing to recant his faith, according to Open Doors, but the exact date of his death was unknown. |
Nasty worm wriggles…into your computer?
| A nasty worm has wriggled into millions of computers and continues to spread, leaving security experts wondering whether the attack is a harbinger of evil deeds to come.
US software protection firm F-Secure says a computer worm known as “Conficker” or “Downadup” had infected more than nine million computers by Tuesday and was spreading at a rate of one million machines daily. The malicious software had yet to do any noticeable damage, prompting debate as to whether it is impotent, waiting to detonate, or a test run by cybercriminals intent on profiting from the weakness in the future. “This is enormous; possibly the biggest virus we have ever seen,” said software security specialist David Perry of Trend Micro. […] Perry urges people to harden passwords by mixing in numbers, punctuation marks, and upper-case letters. Doing so makes it millions of times harder for passwords to be deduced, according to Perry. |
OK, it’s time for me to start methodically (or is it methodicly?) changing and hardening more of my passwords…starting the with the one in my browser.
OK, some of my scattered thoughts while listening to inauguration coverage on the radio for a while earlier this morning.
President Obama is no great orator, but then neither is President Bush. It’s OK.
President Obama’s inaugural speech included plenty of statements that sounded as though President Bush hadn’t been doing a bunch of things President Obama mentioned were now going to happen.
I wonder what will be President Obama’s first Executive Order.
And what about his birth certificate?
Kudos to Rick Warren for mentioning the God of Israel and excluding Allah of the Muslims. And for praying in Jesus’ Name. I must confess to being surprised by both. Seems like there was something else, but I don’t recall.
Who messed up the administering of the Presidential oath of office: Chief Justice Roberts or President Obama?
That was quite the “poem” that gal had!
And the prayer after it had more rhyming in it. (Yep, I still say real poetry rhymes!) And that prayer! Well, never mind. I’m white…and I’ll let it rest at that. 😀
So what was with letting some music trump the United States Constitution? Or perhaps the Constitution doesn’t require that the Presidential oath of office be administered by noon. Because if it does, and since the oath was a few minutes after noon, is George W. Bush still President? 😯
And speaking of that music — I thought it sounded like funeral music! Which struck me as somewhat ominous given it was “forcing” the oath to wait til after noon.
Oh, and did I hear a news commentator actually refer to one of the Obama girls as, “Cute as a bug”?! 😯 I hope that doesn’t get branded as racist.
Well, let me close with some positives and some good news:
President Bush, bless God.
President Obama, bless God.
America, bless God.
And may it please God to bless America and President Obama and President Bush.
Amen.
So President Bush left a note for President-elect Obama:
Continuing a White House ritual, President George W. Bush left a note in the Oval Office for President-elect Barack Obama, wishing him well as he takes the reins of the executive branch.
The White House on Tuesday declined to provide intimate details of the message the two-term Republican left for the incoming Democrat, saying only that Bush wrote it on Monday and left it in the top drawer of his desk.
What does it say?
I had another one, but I can’t remember it, so that’s enough of that. 🙄