Author: susie

Me and my c-pap

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

mycpap

The medical supplier dropped off my c-pap machine yesterday, and last night was my first night using it away outside of a sleep lab.

And I have to say, it didn’t suck.

It took some getting used to, but when I woke up today, I didn’t have a headache and I felt — not incredible, but noticeably less sucky than usual. And as the morning wore on, I started to feel pretty good. I put a load in the dishwasher and didn’t feel like I was going to pass out after! And there’s hardly any swelling in my feet today.

I think I’m going to like this thing.

Obama seems to have found a backbone

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Who’s a thunk it?

Washington (CNN) — A defiant Barack Obama dives into what could be a defining period of his presidency this week, after repeatedly enraging Republicans from afar during his Asia tour.

Obama faces showdowns with the GOP over immigration, the Keystone XL pipeline and his drive for a nuclear deal with Iran, all of which have huge consequences for his political legacy.

Far from being chastened by the Republican capture of the Senate, Obama is setting out to prove he is no lame duck and can still set the agenda.

But the GOP insists the mid-terms gave them a share of power in Washington, and believe Obama risks usurping his authority and even the constitution with his bold new strategy.

Obama chose a highly symbolic setting to set the tone for two final White House years in which he will face a unified Republican Congress.

Side-by-side in Myanmar with the world’s most famous dissident, Obama refused to bow to what Republicans regard as the capital’s new political “reality.”
Continue reading “Obama seems to have found a backbone” →

And so it continues

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Not unexpected — the Israelis have been even more blatant in land grabs lately, several Palestinians have been seriously injured and one bus driver was found hanged in his bus. (Officials said it was a suicide.) Now we have this horrendous attack on people praying at a synagogue, and of course it will be used as a reason for more violence:

JERUSALEM — Two Palestinians armed with knives, axes and a gun stormed a synagogue in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood on Tuesday, killing three Americans — including a prominent rabbi — and a British worshiper in one of the deadliest attacks in years in Jerusalem.

The attackers — identified by Palestinian media as residents of mostly Arab East Jerusalem — were then killed by police in an aftermath that vividly showed the razor-edge tensions in Jerusalem after weeks of bloodshed and clashes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian leaders of inciting violence and promised to “respond harshly.” In the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, calls over loudspeakers praised the attackers.

In East Jerusalem, crowds hurled stones at Israeli police fanning out around the neighborhood where the attackers lived.

The Associated Press, citing Israeli police, said those killed included one Briton and three Americans — among them Rabbi Moshe Twersky, who taught at an English-speaking religious school in Jerusalem and was a member of one of the most respected families in Orthodox scholarship.

There’s a reason they call them ‘idiot lights’

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

David Cameron at the OU

And of course austerity politics sucked all the oil/disposable income out of the economy, the engine’s out of oil AND THAT’S WHY THE DASHBOARD IDIOT LIGHT IS ON, you fucking idiot!

David Cameron has issued a stark message that “red warning lights are flashing on the dashboard of the global economy” in the same way as when the financial crash brought the world to its knees six years ago.

Writing in the Guardian at the close of the G20 summit in Brisbane, Cameron says there is now “a dangerous backdrop of instability and uncertainty” that presents a real risk to the UK recovery, adding that the eurozone slowdown is already having an impact on British exports and manufacturing.

His warning comes days after the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, claimed a spectre of stagnation was haunting Europe. The International Monetary Fund managing director, Christine Lagarde, expressed fears in Brisbane that a diet of high debt, low growth and unemployment may yet become “the new normal in Europe”.

And of course the solution will involve…. more austerity!

Profit!

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

This is what we get when we run (and fund) previously public institutions as for-profit entities:

Out of California’s years-long litigation over reducing the population of prisons deemed unconstitutionally overcrowded by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, another obstacle to addressing the U.S. epidemic of mass incarceration has emerged: The utility of cheap prison labor.

In recent filings, lawyers for the state have resisted court orders that they expand parole programs, reasoning not that releasing inmates early is logistically impossible or would threaten public safety, but instead that prisons won’t have enough minimum security inmates left to perform inmate jobs.

The debate culminated Friday, when a three-judge federal panel ordered California to expand an early parole program. California now has no choice but to broaden a program known as 2-for-1 credits that gives inmates who meet certain milestones the opportunity to have their sentences reduced. But California’s objections raise troubling questions about whether prison labor creates perverse incentives to keep inmates in prison even when they don’t need to be there.