It feels so good to be able to say "President Obama" now. Here's an article about him from 1990 when he became head of the law review. One friend said, "This guy sounds like he's president of the country already."

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/1990/02/15/a_law_review_breakthrough/?s_campaign=8315

The club website is up at http://www.dtccu.net/ . This would be the one I volunteered to help with for free a few months ago. It turns out that others also offered to do this, but they ended up paying over $1000 for someone to do it. There was some traffic on the list about the site's issues, and a board member responded:

First I have to agree with the many comments regarding the new website's design and usability. However, in defense of the Board, though people volunteered to help, no one really stepped forward and took ownership. The Board, facing a deadline, made a choice so that we do still have a presence on the web.

I think those who have web expertise have an opportunity to take some leadership at this point in time. Develop a prototype. Show the board and the members what you can do that would be more useful. I believe a contract has been signed but it does not have to be renewed. Why not have something new ready to go for the future?

BTW, there wasn't really a deadline, since Prairienet had only discontinued their mailing lists. The original website is still online.

Via University Diaries, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity apparently had all of its $40 million invested with Bernard Madoff (as in multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme).

Last weekend was pretty busy. Saturday, I volunteered for a couple of hours at the local dog training club, and then went to a potluck with some high school classmates. It was small but fun, so I was glad I drove over.

Sunday was a little more complicated. The original plan had been that somebody was going to call me around 10 and we'd go out with our dogs. But she didn't call until 11:45, when I was in the middle of eating lunch. I said OK, we can go, but I'd like some time to finish eating and take care of the dishes in the sink. She said that she GAVE me time and she wanted to go early so it wouldn't break up her day. I said OK, OK and figured that my cell phone might get at least partially charged by the time she arrived. The neighbor's energetic dog, Bogart, likes to go along with us, so I went over and got him. ( Read more... )

Someone who'd worked in the financial sector told me that the mortgage industry had basically been a house of cards, where institutions tried to predict when a buyer would default and sell the loan to someone else before that point. There was an interesting article in Business Week that talked about other sleazy things that went on in the mortgage business: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_47/b4109070638235.htm

People in favor of deregulation argue that corporations should be allowed to make decisions and suffer the consequences. The problem I have with this is that the executives who make the decisions aren't the only ones who suffer the consequences.

A representative from Discover Card called recently and told me that they were legally required to tell me about Discover Card's protection policy for "life events" - unemployment, illness. I should have hung up then, but I stayed on the line and acknowledged that they'd read it to me. Big mistake. Today, I got a letter informing me that I'd chosen to enroll in Discover Card's "payment protection" plan. It turns out that this involves a surcharge based on balance that gets tacked on each month. I immediately called Discover and the customer service representative was very apologetic and said that they'd received numerous complaints about the marketing company they'd used. One transfer later, I was told that it had been cancelled. So we shall see.

Current Mood: irate

The first dog may be a rescue dog:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2008/10/obamas-to-adopt.html

Current Mood: hopeful

According to HuffPo (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/27/gop-rep-roskam-why-can-wo_n_138352.html), Peter Roskam appeared to equate execution of rapists with abortion during a recent interview.

Roskam: “You know, my position is the same as Henry Hyde’s. And Henry Hyde put it best when he said, when somebody is the victim of a crime, the law currently says that a rapist can’t be put to death. That’s the law. A rapist under the court doctrines can’t be put to death. He said, why is it that the baby who is the result of that criminal behavior can be put to death? He said, isn’t that a sad, sad thing. So my feeling is, look, in the case of that, that’s the hard case, right? That’s the ultimate painful and difficult case. And what we need to do is love that person and encourage them and support them. But once people are categorized by how they were conceived and the circumstances of their conception, you end up going down a route that ultimately I don’t think we want to be.”

Roskam's campaign really turned me off in 2006 when the GOP made a lot of extremely annoying robocalls that initially appeared to be from his opponent (Tammy Duckworth).

nekosensei has a YouTube of "Rainbow High" from the movie on her blog for reference.