Passed away last night. My mom and dad are currently in New Mexico, and the rest of us kids don’t live in Indianola, Nebraska. The only person taking care of arrangements is my uncle Joey. Funeral’s scheduled for Monday, which means my parents have to run back to Nebraska on Sunday. Chances are, none of the kids will make the funeral – which sucks, but it’s Monday.

Michi has to work Monday.

I don’t know if I really want to go anyway. I loved my grandfather, but it seems they aren’t going to have even a moderate funeral for him, so it will be short and no viewing.

Remarkably, Desert Bus Pt. 3 reached a final total of $132k. Sat through them singing Desert Bus Killed the Internet Star and then they did a toast. Now they are signing the Final Countdown.

Congrats to the LRR crowd. I’ve had about 11 people go to Child’s Play from my link, so if you donated, thank you.

As Lou Dobbs brought to our attention, the GOP runs on fear.

1. This administration’s indiscretions are really indiscretions that began 30 years ago in a Republican administration, and were horribly abused in particular by the previous administration.
2. Jon Stewart purposely points out that the only reason we noticed it now during a Democratic administration (instead of during the last administration) is because the Republicans have capitalized upon reporting it now. They always point out the prolonged abused indiscretions of administrations and Congressmen during a Democratic administration, even if they are the worst abusers.
3. Logically, Republicans do such a good job of pointing out these problems because that’s their MO – to use fear to push their agenda.

You want a good example?

There’s this terrible blog called Objective Conservative. It is reporting that the Democrats in the Omaha city council plan on ousting a Republican city councilman with a medical condition using a rule that states that absent council people can be removed if they miss too much time. However, months before this blog even reported this bullshit, the mayor and fellow council people announced they plan to have a vote to KEEP Sigerson on the council. Because Sigerson has contributed to the mediation of the police and fireman complaints with the city. And tonight, the local news reported the truth.

However, the Republican idiot (or idiots) running the Objective Conservative will only report half-truths and bullshit in the hopes of spawning enough fear to create problems for the Democrats. Although this law was first used by Republicans to oust a previous sick Democrat from the City Council in Omaha. But I maintain that the OC blog will stick to calling people liars until the vote passes and Sigerson keeps his seat. I’d like to see what bullshit they spit out when Sigerson keeps his seat – perhaps some sort of moronic victory dance or ill-reported conspiracy theory.

Enough said.

Contacted Lockheed Martin. They are interested in talking to me sometime next week in an informal interview. I contact Raytheon about a LAN admin manager job.

Things are okay. I think Omaha is one of the better places in terms of jobs.

Big announcement -

Today … I was laid off from my job.

Now before everyone goes beserk, let me tell you the whole story.

Today, my business reached a point where our owners decided to break up the company and sell the parts off. Not everyone at my work knows this (and I didn’t either), but I got that dreaded call from my VP to please come to his office. I knew when I walked in that there were layoffs happening.

I got that call to come to his office around 10, and I knew at that point that we were going to lose someone. He put two folders on the desk, and my only thought was, “Oh shit, two people???“

“This is going to be a really hard decision, and I want you to think hard about it,” he told me, “I hate this – I have to let either you or this other guy go.”

Now, the other guy is presently having a lot of issues. He has five kids, a wife who’s on the edge of divorcing him due to money, and a lot of debt. The other reality is that in April, they are going to fire everyone else anyway. My VP is leaving the company in the next month or so to avoid the death of my corporation. So these two things popped into my head:

1. I could not live with my conscience if the other guy’s life imploded from losing his job now (of all times).
2. I wanted to leave with a severance package while the company has money to give severance packages.

So I took the bullet for the other guy. It was actually harder on everyone else in my team than me when I packed up my belongings and walked out the door. The lady learning how to be a manager from me told me she has no direction, no idea what to do now. My coworkers felt their morale plummet, and they now have to do everything I was doing on top of what they were doing. One lady wouldn’t stop hugging me. “You can’t go,” she said, “There’s no more happiness in the office without you here.”

I feel worse for my coworkers, honestly. I didn’t like my job much, so it won’t hurt me as much. I have 21 weeks of severance starting in December, and I’ll switch to COBRA for awhile to keep my insurance. I have friends and connections to turn to to get another job. I have a lot of fight left in me, and I want to do something different.

I’m actually free now, so I’m going to use this as a positive experience to go on and actually get a job I like better than the one I had. And hopefully get paid for the work I do.

Don’t worry about me – I’ll be fine.

Wasn’t as much as a protest as Hannity and the rest of Fox News wanted it to be. So they did what they always do – doctor footage to make the protest look bigger. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get past the scrutiny of Jon Stewart, who took time to point out that the supposed footage from the Health Care protest was actually footage from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rally. Whoops!

Depending on how you decide to spin the story, an Associated Press poll either proves one of two things:

1. In the case of Yahoo! and CNN, the majority of the public still approves of Obama, although they are unhappy with the Congressional Democrats.

OR

2. In the case of Fox News and MSNBC, Obama’s popularity slips even more and the Democrats are the most hated people on the planet.

Considering Fox News’ track record, I’m more inclined to believe the first option (and after looking at the actual data from the poll, it is true that Obama hasn’t lost much support, just the Congression Dems). Why MSNBC feels the need to hop on the Negative Nancy bandwagon, I have no idea.

This study – while rather bland and stating the obvious – just proves further that religious tolerance makes you a happier person. Unlike some unhappy groups, who claim gay people are “terrorists”. If these people don’t lighten up, they’ll die from stress fairly soon.

The GOP claims that Democrats put their agenda ahead of the country. Then, when a reporter asked, “How is this different from when the GOP put their agenda ahead of the country prior to 2006?” they stopped taking questions. It’s kinda hard to say you’re not putting your agenda ahead of the country when your religious constituents take it upon themselves to get involved in politics.  What’s interesting is that the GOP’s approval did not even budge from 29% after that statement.

Glenn Beck is on Fox News because Rupert Murdock is racist himself. No matter how “right” a remark may seem, it’s still racism. It’s only good business to avoid racism, as the 10 sponsors that bailed on Beck proved. You have to wonder what it is about pop political stars – Sarah Palin said at one of her book talks that the dollar coin is a conspiracy to integrate black people as leaders. What the fuck is that?