This just in: Ronald Reagan still dead. I swear, I’m more sick of the man now than I was after dealing with having him for my President for eight years. To counterbalance all the knee-jerk, “the man is dead now, so we must praise him” press that’s going on, here are a few things to think about:

Although AIDS was first reported in the medical and popular press in 1981, it was only in October of 1987 that President Reagan publicly spoke about the epidemic. By the end of that year 59,572 AIDS cases had been reported and 27,909 of those women and men had died.

(Source)

Reagan and his close political advisers also successfully prevented his surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, from discussing AIDS publicly until Reagan’s second term.

(Source)

To not kick a man when he’s down, I’ll skip the exploding US debt, his lack of a stance against Apartheid and that whole Iran-Contra thing.

Hee! Actually, there’s a lot of fun stuff at that site – you might want to click around.

Vintage chairs, even those with fabric in good shape, are apparently not meant to have double sided sticky tape put on them in an attempt to stop cats from scratching them. I think the tape’s done more damage than the cats have.

This site is fun in a “why am I still clicking and looking at this, but I can’t seem to stop” kind of way.

I think I’m going to end up giving Mishka a complex. Whenever he sleeps on me, I wait until he’s in a pretty deep sleep and then I grab the clippers and start trying to clip his nails before he wakes up too much. It’s not a perfect system, but so far, it’s kept his nails a decent length without too much biting and scratching.

I have no idea why, but I like this photo:

Be sure to click through to the audio interview on NPR: Rape Rooms: A Chronology. (Am I the only one who finds it more than a little creepy how often Bush uses the phrase “rape rooms” in his speeches?)

Another good article: The Misunderestimated Man

As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he’s something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.

Well, that wasn’t cheap Mishka chewed through the cord to my powerbook. Looks like you can’t just buy a cord, you have to buy a whole adaptor – for $85 w/tax. Grrrrrrr!

An interesting read: The Price of Arrogance

On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington’s assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.

I think Mishka has an unhealthy attraction to David Letterman. He licks the TV screen whenever Letterman’s on.