For those of you who can remember that far back (was it really that long ago?), IE6 was a web browser that had major market penetration.

In many respects, it still does: I have plenty of clients who are still using it, much to my chagrin -- there are issues with handling some of the newer web technologies that have sprung up since its heyday.

According to CNN,

(CNN) -- More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black,
were expected to gather around a coffin Thursday night to say goodbye to
an old friend.

The deceased? Internet Explorer 6.

The
aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and
Internet Explorer 8, was to be eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek "funeral"
hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado.

Ah, well.  Times change. People -- and technologies -- age, pass away and are honored by their successors.  Ideally, the progeny learn from the trials and tribulations of the parents and ancestors, and the knowledge & wisdom of the past helps set a guidline for the future.

Or something like that.

Click the image to go to the Alten Design Group's "ie6funeral" page, and in the comments below share some of your thoughts about the browser(s) you use, and how the web has changed over the years. (How long have you been around on "teh intertubez" anyway?)

Crossposted to DailyKos.

Over the past few weeks, amid weird mishaps and unexpected issues, I've been thinking a lot about Mumsie, my mother-in-law who passed away from Alzheimer's Disease two years ago. I've been working to catch up on items I've got to finish for a special project I'm working on with another Kossack on the topic of Caregiving, so she's naturally not been far from my mind.

And perhaps we've not been far from hers.

Just sayin'.

Hat-tip to someone in Pulling to the Left, a Delphi forum. (I can't find the original thread to hat-tip appropriately. Sorry.)

Hey folks, just a quick update on why I'd suddenly gone scarce. I had a few issues crop up that directly challenged my capacity to be online for the better part of the past two weeks, both physically as well as time-wise.

Aside from a tax issue that cropped up and had to be dealt with, I'm also just completing my dealings with a minor computer revolt (mine, which is nearly resolved but which had gotten to the point where it became increasingly unusable over the past 2 1/2 weeks, to the point where it has been virtually unusable for most of the last week, plus several other family machines -- Wifey's, which was the least impaired and from which I was able to occasionally hop on to keep in touch, plus my father's and one of my brothers' machines).

On top of those fun factors, I've dealt with some client issues and -- the capper -- a recalcitrant lower back that went out right around the time my computer started to get really wonky. Two weeks ago, I could sit for short periods but -- if I sat too long -- I couldn't walk when I got up.

UPDATE: As of 5:00 PM EST -- The child has been located; the Aunt is still at large.

Via NECN (New England Cable News):

(NECN: Swansea, Mass.) - Massachusetts State Police and Swansea, Mass. police are searching for an abducted one-year-old girl.

Read more

Hat-tip to LordRag of DelphiForums

A small plane, overloaded with fuel, has crashed into a building that housed IRS, CIA and FBI offices, according to the MSNBC.

The "overloaded with fuel" part, when combined with the government building aspect, makes this a candidate for an act of terrorism, but if the act was intentional -- and initial indication by witnesses suggest that the pilot had full control -- the question this: is it an act of foreign, or domestic, terror?

At least one person has already started asking whether this might be a potential example of domestic teabagging terrorism, a.k.a. teabaggers gone over the edge and firmly establishing themselves as a dangerous and unstable new form of domestic terrorist.

More as the situation is updated throughout the day.

[UPDATE - CM1] He left a manifesto? Supposedly and below the fold. [update 2] And the crazy comments pile up:

"Here's What's Insane: LOTS Of People Are Defending Joseph Andrew Stack"

[update 3] And now Joseph Stack has a legion of insane "Don't Tread on Me!" facebook fans. Link and image capture in the comments.

Hat-tip to Lordrag of DelphiForums.

Posted without further comment:

Click image for source and larger rendering.

From Popular Mechanics Reviews:

When filmmaker Josh Fox got a lucrative offer to release his family land for natural gas drilling, he didn't sign it—instead, he went out to investigate the drilling process, known as hydraulic fracturing, and its effect on the environment. The technique, developed by Halliburton, has opened up new land in 34 U.S. states to drilling. At a time when the U.S. is dependent on foreign countries for most of its energy and the country is in the midst of a recession, the appeal and immediate benefits of the technique are obvious. But on his 24-state journey, Fox discovers that in disparate areas affected by drilling, streams have turned toxic, aquifers are ruined, livestock is dying, residents are ill—and their tap water is flammable.

Here's the clip they provided:

For those interested in more reading, there's a short list of pieces on hydraulic fracture already available on ePluribus Media over the fold.

  __________  

Yes, it fits onto a bumper sticker:

And it's pointedly accurate...the last thing the GOP would ever want to see.

Hat-tip dmhlt 66 of DailyKos, from the diary by ericlewis0.

Hat-tip to Helen of DelphiForums, and to Wikipedia for the text. The following is a studied portrait of a TeaBagger neonazi by none other than Rod Serling, circa 1963. -- GH

Portrait of a bush-league Führer named Peter Vollmer, a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors, he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. That something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon he calls it faith, strength, truth. But in just a moment, Peter Vollmer will ply his trade on another kind of corner, a strange intersection in a shadowland called the Twilight Zone.

Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare - Chicago; Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Vincennes, Indiana; Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because through these things we keep him alive.

The biggest danger to America today is the one presented by those who most loudly beat their chests to proclaim their patriotism, while trying to use it as a tool to spread hatred, fear, disillusionment and racism.

From the first episode (Challenges of Life) of the new BBC series Life. YouTube video posted by pacificwhiteside; hat-tip Jazzy720 of DelphiForums for the heads-up.

It's nice to know that there is, at least, some signs of intelligent life on this planet.

Below is the video from the White House website on President Barack Obama's question and answer session with House Republicans. President Obama accepted an invitation from the GOP to speak and participate at their annual retreat. GOP pundits and advisors later said that having cameras broadcast the session was a bad idea, admitting that their hope to embarass the President and further their agenda of opposition took a major body blow by the event.

Let's watch (85 minutes):

And the GOP reaction, via Think Progress?

Hat-tip LordRag of DelphiForums for pointing out the link to this.

Fun, eh?

James O'Keefe, Joseph Basel, Stan Dai and Robert Flanagan were arrested for their roles in a recent attempt to bug Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu's phones on Monday.

From an article in the New York Times:

Federal authorities said two of the men posed as telephone workers wearing hard hats, tool belts and flourescent vests when they walked into the senator's office inside a federal building in New Orleans on Monday. The other two were accused of helping to organize the plan.

[...snip...]

All four suspects were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

This is yet another example of Conservative extremism where it's "ok" to break the laws, provided you don't get caught.

The idea is to sow doubt and dissent about the Democrats -- standard operating fare harkening back through the Atwater school of politics and practiced heartily by such miscreants as Karl Rove, who'd once had the reputation of "master" Republican strategist and dirty trickster. This isn't O'Keefe's first attempt to manufacture a scandal:

Using a hidden camera last year, O'Keefe, posed as a pimp and brought a young woman posing as a prostitute to ACORN offices where staffers appeared to offer illegal tax advice and to support the misuse of public funds and illegal trafficking in children.

O'Keefe's "exposé" of ACORN fell apart rather quickly as it was held up for closer examination, exposing instead the history and habit of 'creative editing' in order to manufacture seemingly damning video. O'Keefe appears to fancy himself a Conservative's answer to Michael Moore, only he's more willing to manufacture situations than to fan the flames of issues that already exist.

TPM posted the affidavit for these loser's Conservative heroe's arrest. (H/T DarkSyde.)

Hat-tip Lordrag of DelphiForums.

Quoting Lordrag's seeder post,

Jon Stewart spent a segment blasting Keith Olbermann Thursday night. And right wingers had a ball getting ready to enjoy the fireworks as Olbermann was sure to respond to the skewering.

Well, Olbermann responded all right.

He played Jon Stewart's ENTIRE segment on his show Friday night.

And then, he loosed his rhetorical cannons on Stewart. Surely, the big liberal ego of Keith Olbermann was going to blast back with both barrels, and a full-scale war would be on.

And here's what Keith Olbermann said, after playing Stewart's whole segment:

"You know what, you're right. I have been a
little over the top lately. Point taken. Sorry."

...nicely played. In the original forum thread, I added -- and here reassert -- the following:

That was well done, and a great example of each at their best -- by showing their capacity to criticize and hold accountable among their own, and admit culpability when wrong.

Great example for both the news media as well as politicians and their pet punditry.

...too bad it'll be lost on all but those wild and crazy liberal progressives.

It's nice to see at least some aspect of our media as capable of self-analysis and accepting of accountability, even if it's not a predominant habit in the traditional media at this time.

The following is derived from a comment I posted as part of an ongoing conversation in a DailyKos diary.^* It's essentially my take on what the Obama Administration inherited from its predecessors, and how President Obama has had to take a triage approach in order to get a handle on the myriad of emergency situations left at his doorstep by the rapidly retreating Bush Administration.

Get some coffee, and then please add your thoughts -- I'd appreciate any feedback.

You're presuming "reckless spending" given type and consistency.

Under Bush/Cheney and the GOP majorities, "reckless spending" gutted national infrastructure and effectively pissed away money like a firehose streaming water into a hurricane.  The spending worked hand-in-glove with multiple policies and deregulations that caused much more problems, including increasing the wealth disparity and eliminating a large swath of the middle class.

The GOP and BushCo knew that the economy was going to tank by the end of Bush's term, but they miscalculated: they thought they could prevent it from showing ~before~ Bush got out of office so they could place the blame on the incoming Democratic Administration (by 2004, the GOP realized that they wouldn't likely retain the WH after Bush's term).

When Obama came into office, he was faced with what was essentially a no-brainer: either hunker down and work within the severely limited confines of financial collapse that BushCo left him, which would mean do literally nothing that cost any additional money and follow the rough rut that the BushCo debacle had effectively carved, or start spending the stimulus and redirecting it, adding and adjusting to it with additional programs and increasing debt temporarily in order to create "working capital"...

He chose the latter.  He didn't have to try hard to make that choice, either, as the economy was on a downward spiral that required at least some degree of action along the lines he took to avoid complete global collapse.

That also means, unfortunately, spending some money in ways and amounts that he didn't necessarily want to, but had to in order to quell certain potential panic reactions.

Now he's working to walk back the cat, instituting or announcing more financial regulation and program reform while working to implement a healthcare plan that extends coverage to more Americans while also BRINGING DOWN the deficit -- a twofer in terms of fiscal and social responsibility.

He's already working to get control of what was "reckless" under Bush and what he was forced into padding, and that's far more than BushCo ever did...and they left one helluva mess.  They did a lot of it on purpose, to ensure that the incoming Administration would have so much to repair, that they wouldn't likely be able to accomplish much.  And the GOP knew that it could screech that the new President was taking on too much too fast, when in reality I think Obama took on the top 3 to 5 items and is concentrating on the top 3 after triaging the wide-ranging debacle that was his predecessor's legacy.

As Obama progresses, he's also adjusting / correcting / redirecting funds, programs and policies to rebuild and support our national infrastructure -- necessary for effective progress in a variety of areas, and likely to also help increase/improve economic and job issues at the same time.

I concluded by mentioning that the habit of teabaggers and GOP shills to lump all spending together as "reckless" and ignoring the particulars of what was left to this administration and what it has to deal with to simply stabilize the situation was effective just an exercise in intellectually dishonesty.

...what do you think? Accurate or fair assessment of what was left by BushCo, initially addressed by the Obama Administration and depicting roughly where we're at now?

Let's get a discussion going in comments: is the assessment over-simplified, or could it explain some of the actions taken and backtracking now in process? What other factors do you see affecting the capacity of this Administration to make headway? What are the top ten major issues left for the incoming Administration? Inquiring minds want to know. :)