How low can he get?

I can't believe some of the claims coming out of the mouth of John Kerry as the election gets closer. I wonder just who believes these things and just how afraid Kerry must be that he won't win to pull out these kinds of lies.

-Bush knew that the flu vaccine was in trouble 3 years ago and did nothing. Oh sure, he had a crystal ball and saw that the English vaccine supply was going to be contaminated in 3 years and sat on his hands over it.

-Bush is planning to reinstate the draft. How many times has he virtually said "Read my lips, there will be no military draft!" Kerry is trying to scare younger voters with this.

-Bush is planning to privatize Social Security. Kerry is using this to scare the senior citizen voters that their money will disappear if Bush is re-elected. First, Kerry took this quote from a source that's been unreliable in the past who said that Bush made this statement in a private meeting. Second, nothing in Bush's plan will affect those receiving social security today, or the baby boomer generation. It will affect my generation more than likely, and it will be a choice, not a complete privatization of SS.

-Out of the mouth of John Edwards came a claim that under John Kerry, they will find a cure for spinal cord injuries so that people like the late Christopher Reeve will be able to walk again. I concede he probably meant that Kerry would fund stem cell research to work towards that goal, but he should have said it that way instead of sounding like he was promising all the spinal cord injury patients they would be able to walk by the end of the Kerry administration should he be elected. Stem cell research, no matter how much funding they throw behind it, is in infancy and will probably take many years to yield those kinds of results.

-And finally, the incredibly inappropriate remarks both of them have made about Mary Cheney. That was just wrong and low.

OK, enough from me on that for today. For those of you tired of reading about my politics, I promise it won't last forever! ;)

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A job update - Erica, this is for you, so listen up! I got an email yesterday (Saturday night of all things) from a management job I applied for. She sent me a further description of the job and said to let her know if I was still interested after reading it and we'd schedule an interview. I am still interested, so I'm expecting to have an interview this week. It's funny, because probably a year ago, I wouldn't have even considered applying for a management job, but after some things that I've done this past year and some of the things I had started doing at my job at Child Support, I think I can handle it. Watch this space and wish me luck!

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Chessboard update - I've been going full force on the chessboard for 2 weeks or so, doing about a square a day in order to finish on time. But I kind of hit the wall on that this past Wednesday and have done very little on it since then. So I picked up my current RR ornament and I'll get back to the chessboard in a few days. But here are the numbers after the frenzy -

Squares complete - 55 of 64
Patterns complete - 24 of 33
Patterns partially complete - 3

I'm about 81% done now, with about 2 weeks to go. I'm pretty confident I can finish with little problem. Watch for the major dancing here and all around the internet, lol.