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Our cable internet was down most of the day so we went to the zoo.
The indoor penguin and puffin house is the best. They swim by really fast and jump in the air and splash.
Grady the African turtle was great too.
Petting goats was great.
But the best, just the best, was the penguins. You just have to go there.
Oh, and Connor the little brother was there too.
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A must read column by Peggy Noonan. NBC's Brian Williams went so far as to say on his blog,"Peggy is doing the work of her career and must be considered an early favorite for the next cycle's Pulitzer for commentary."
I don't know if I'd go that far, but this column touches very close to home. While waiting at the airport yesterday CNN was playing on the monitors at the gate and no one was watching, just as Noonan said in her piece. Oh, wait, one thing that got any of us to turn to the TV was a clip of Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright speaking to some group. He was animated, sort of loud, funny, and not helping Obama at all.
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Almost unusable. According to Rich Miller at Capitol Fax, anyone trying to work through the Illinois State Board of Elections website searching for "candidate filings" or "campaign contributions", will find mostly error messages.
Miller: "I am constantly getting this message on my Firefox browser. The error page claims that the Board has been “automatically notified of these errors,” yet the webmaster claims all is hunky dory.
Wrong.
They broke their site. Plain and simple."
I've always found this search site incomprehensible and during an election year when many people and journalists are attempting to find this information, the impossibility of getting to the information in a timely manner or even getting it at all, is pretty much a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.
Illinois Pundit who commented on Miller's blog says this:
"One of the big problems with campaign finance in Illinos is that the State Board of Elections collects a bunch of data, but they make it as inconvenient as possible for the public and press to access the data and pass it around.
More ease of use and convenience and greater public and media access to the data would do more to clean up Illinois politics than an ineffective feel-good measure like a contribution ban, yet nobody talks about how badly the State Board of Elections is screwing this up.
Their site is so broken that they’re basically hiding campaign finance data from the very people they’re supposed to be working for."
Amen
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Christian found the Collinsville Farmer's Market drum I bought last summer five minutes after he walked in the door. He's a natural. Just a bit too natural for the rest of us.
So I took him out for some fresh air and exercise. He found a soccer goal and used it as an obstacle course.
One of our neighbors has two young Beagles who loved the idea of playing ball with a two year old. Perfect.
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The Supreme Court ruled this morning by a vote of 6-3 that states requiring a photo ID in order to vote does not violate the voter's constitutional rights.
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The MAtH (man about the house) and I laughed so hard at Dianne Isbell's Monday Etiquette column in the Belleville News-Democrat this morning we could hardly hold our coffee cups.
Me: It's that time of year again.
MAtH: Time to call the exterminator to get rid of the ants?
Me: That too, but no...prom time.
MAtH: Oh no.
Me: Yep and also neighbors who crank up their lawn equipment too early on weekends.
MAtH: I've never cranked up lawn equipment in my life. That's why I got married, so I wouldn't have to do that kind of work.
Me:
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According to the Post-Dispatch this morning local communities which have gone to the large, 64 gallon recycling bins, have seen a huge up-swing in the amount of trash which is being recycled. Many households are now recycling 50 percent of their disposables compared to ten percent before the large containers became available.
In the Metro East these large recycle bins are not being used as yet. Come on Madison and St. Clair Counties, don't be left behind, it's time to catch up.
Like any other program the recycling has its critics. There are residents of some parts of St. Louis County which resent having to pay for the extra pickup (bah) and some environmental types believe the single stream recycling (co-mingling) means the much of the product will be contaminated and end up in the landfill anyway (bah).
However, according to the people at Resource Management in Earth City, the place much of the area's recyling ends up, about 8 percent is too contaminated to use and approximately 200 out of 1000 pounds will be unusable. But, they are working diligently to bring the number down to almost zero. Anyway, isn't 800 pounds of re-usable recyling better than nothing? Give RM another year and things will be even better.
I toured the Resource Management recyling plant about a year ago and the people who work there are truly enthusiastic about what they do and are doing everything they can to encourage more recycling. I put up a photo essay from that day, the staff, especially Gary Gilliam who is quoted in the P-D's story are energized by their jobs and could talk all day.
In Clayton, the amount of recycling collected in 2007 when they switched over to the large home bins, went from 162 tons to 913 tons.
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Madison County Clerk, Mark Von Nida and Troy alderman, Allen Adomite, have joined forces and created a blog they named Partisan Discourse. Von Nida is a democrat and Adomite is a republican.
Working together! How cool is that?
According to the Collinsville Herald Journal, "their position on opposite ends of the
liberal-conservative spectrum is serving as the jumping off point for a
new online venture both hope will foster bipartisan spirit and spark
discussions about policy and politics in the region. "We really want to
take the politics out of policy," said Adomite, who with Von Nida
earlier this month launched "Partisan Discourse," a blog the creators
are optimistic will serve as a kind town square for observers and
players of the Madison County political scene."
Taking politics out of policy in Madison County, long in coming, but very welcome and I anticipate looking in there everyday to see what these two have to say.
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