Monday, April 28, 2008

Press Release :: ADAPT Wins Meeting with HHS to Work on Medicaid Reform..

HOT off the Presses..

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock.. :wink:

For Immediate Release
April 28, 2008

For information contact:

ADAPT Activists Win Meeting with HHS Sec. Michael Leavitt to Work on Medicaid Reform :: HHS Staff Affirms that Access to Community is a Civil Right

Washington, D.C.--- 500 ADAPT activists closed off all access to the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, headquarters for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and kept it closed until HHS Sec. Michael Leavitt agreed to meet with ADAPT on the multiple policies that force people into nursing homes and other institutions, and prevent them from moving back to their own homes and communities.

75 ADAPT members entered the HHS building before security locked all the doors, and presented the ADAPT demands in the initial negotiations with HHS staff. The demands included:

  • Meet with leaders of ADAPT within 30 days, with the understanding that access to the community is a civil right that can be improved by the following measures. The meeting can clarify any of the following and identify other barriers to home and community based services in all 50 states;
  • Improve the implementation of the Money Follows the Person (MFP) Demonstration Projects by increasing the flexibility states have;
  • IMMEDIATELY eliminate any rules that cause undue burdens regarding case management;
  • Eliminate any rules that discourage small grassroots providers, like Centers for Independent Living (CILs) and other non-profits, from meeting the needs of the consumers they serve;
  • Eliminate any regulations and interpretations of "spousal impoverishment" and "risk" that promote institutionalization of persons with disabilities;
  • Work with ADAPT to pass the Community Choice Act (S 799 and HR 1621).

"People need to be able to choose to live in their own homes, near their families and friends," said Dawn Russell of Texas ADAPT. "Families shouldn't be torn apart by mean-spirited Medicaid policies and regulations that force some people into nursing homes or even to leave their home state in order to get the community-based services and supports they need."

After a six hour standoff, Philo Hall, Counselor to Sec. Leavitt, committed to Leavitt meeting with ADAPT within 30 days as he addressed the crowd in the pouring rain. He began by acknowledging that access to the community is definitely a civil right. Then Hall admitted that HHS has fallen behind in its former regular communication with ADAPT, and acknowledged that the lack of communication has contributed to HHS making some not-well-thought-out decisions that have hurt the disability community. Renewed communication will begin immediately with another meeting between ADAPT and HHS staff on Wednesday, April 30.

"You know, President Bush's first Executive Order was the New Freedom Initiative (NFI), which ordered all federal departments to remove barriers to full community participation for people with disabilities," said Bob Kafka, ADAPT National Organizer. We've been making slow but steady progress until the past couple of years when it seemed like the Medicaid folks forgot the President's order and started reinstituting policies that will push people back into institutions. We're hoping that after today ADAPT will work with us to reverse the current trend, and assure older and disabled Americans can live full lives in their community."

Friday, April 25, 2008

Dear Barack :: One Citizen's Perspective :: Cross-Disability Accommodations..

Sent from these fingertips a mere few moments ago to Betsy Borgacz with the Barack Obama presidential campaign.. Should you wish to provide her with similar feedback yourselves, email her directly at OlympiaEventPlanning [at] yahoo.com with a subject line similar maybe to "Universal Accessibility and Accommodations Of Political Campaigns"..

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Hi, Betsy..

Thank you sooo much for addressing, of late through Jake's own personal efforts, what these fingertips, too, have expressed [1] from my first venture [2] onto the My.BarackObama.com campaign website.. If I may be so bold, I am asking that you please accommodate me now cognitively by allowing the following extended impromptu response to how my Mind processed your recent request for information and feedback on accommodating universal accessibility for persons with disabilities (PWDs)..

Each United States state and some U.S. possessions have centers for independent living (CILs) that *should* be excellent, business day on-call resources for just exactly as you ask.. The Independent Living Research Utilization (ILRU) website offers an in-depth listing of many American CILs operating at this time:

If for any reason at all, you or any of those who may receive this by default of its intended audience, run into a snag trying to contact these various CILs in your quest for information regarding universal accommodations, *PLEASE* do not hesitate to call my Colleagues, Mentors, Extended Family here in Georgia at the disABILITY LINK (the LINK) of Decatur:

  • disABILITY LINK
    755 Commerce Drive, Suite 105
    Decatur, GA 30030
    (404) 687-8890 Voice
    (404) 687-9175 TTY
    (800) 239-2507 (V/TTY)
    (404) 687-8298 FAX
    Email: info@disabilitylink.org..

This particular CIL is chock *FULL* of national disability self-advocates, nay, internationally active advocates.. Not to put them on the immediate spot, but they are, among many other things, very familiar with organizing events of various sizes for persons of, again, *ALL* disabilities..

+ + + + + + +
DISCLAIMER :: Before I go *any* further, please let it be known up front that they, as I, do not openly extend public endorsements for political candidates in and of themselves.. These groups are, instead, being recommended from the Heart as resources for best practices consultations.. Additionally, as it appears that you wholeheartedly acknowledge, no one self-advocate is *ever* in a position to speak absolutely on behalf of the Whole..
+ + + + + + +

Prompting my boldness in highlighting the LINK :: With their last few years' experience in organizing Georgia Voices That Count (GVTC) disability self-advocacy training weekends, they are becoming extremely familiar with coordinating various congregational activities embracing very diverse assemblages of disabilities at any one given time.. This includes but is not limited to the fine honed art of coordinating accessible transportation, temporary housing, and disability-specific accommodations, e.g. interpretors for persons with hearing impairments and suitable quiet space for persons with mental illness..

Additionally, there are many, *many* wonderful organizations scattered across our precious United States, but these next couple of organizations are some that I also ask that you *please* acquaint yourselves with in your own efforts to accommodate all persons, not just now but forever always into that, Our Futures (with above DISCLAIMER remaining in effect here, also):

Additionally, two more things I would like to quickly *once again*, as I have already done personally and previously, address to the Barack Obama campaign camp: Website accessibility and community transportation.. My suggestions for both, as before, remain to please visit the following:

For the Barack Obama website webmaster and/or webmistress:

Validating the BarackObama.com website is a HUGE start towards its overall accessibility for *ALL PERSONS*:

Public listservs for advisement regarding implementation are available for both of the above.

Lastly, regarding transportation, if you are looking for what I personally find to be an exceptional example of community transportation for persons of all disabilities, nope, again *ALL PERSONS*, I *once again* most humbly recommend someone get a firsthand feel for the community program here in Pickens County (Jasper), Georgia:

  • Mountain Area Transportation System (MATS)
    180 W. Burton Street
    Jasper, GA 30143
    Telephone: 706-692-3252

Visiting MATS would give you an excellent feel for what you would be looking for in accommodating the transportation needs of local constituents..

In conclusion, thank you for, at this time, pro-actively addressing ongoing concerns of public citizens with disabilities in our United States.. Intermingled with the reputable preferences of others, accommodation requests fulfilled by incorporating any of the above personally-garnered factors have an overall proclivity towards being of mutual benefit for *EVERYONE*, in each our daily Lives..

Peace, Love, and Social Justice For Us All..

Cindy Sue
Six. Almost Seven..

[1] Funny how rhetoric can sidetrack a girl.. :)
my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/butterfly/gGB5JF..

[2] Butterfly's Profile @ My.BarackObama.com
my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/g5XsM..

- :: -
CindySueCausey.blogspot.com
www.ButterflyBytes.com
Georgia Voices That Count, 2005
Talking Rock, GA, USA

Thursday, April 24, 2008

HHS/CMS :: Critical New Information On Nursing Home Quality Available..

This press release from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just now hit my inbox.. Okay, so actually, the way my Mind works these days, by the time "Publish Post" is toggled, this latest from these fingertips will have been probably two hours in the making..... :grin:

The referenced websites, all from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), include:

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to note is that they reference there are currently 134 long term care facilities that are continuously making it to the CMS' naughty list.. One hundred and thirty-four facilities.. ONE is one too many because each of those 134 facilities represents the very real possibility of reprehensible, wholly preventable Human Life loss..

Should you wish to reach CMS, their contact information is as follows:

  • Department of Health & Human Services
    Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
    Room 352-G
    200 Independence Avenue, SW
    Washington, DC 20201
    Telephone: (202) 690-6145

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Critical New Information Added to Nursing Home Compare Web site :: Multi-year Plan for Improved Nursing Home Quality Also Released

Medicaid beneficiaries and families searching for top quality long-term care services can find critical new information added today to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) Web site Nursing Home Compare.

For the first time, information about nursing homes on the Compare Web site will list whether a home is or has been on CMS' special focus facility (SFF) list. The agency's SFF initiative gives heightened scrutiny to nursing homes that have a history of poor performance or repeated violations of state and federal health and safety rules.

"Today's expansion of information on Nursing Home Compare will give beneficiaries a more complete picture of a nursing home's history of providing quality care," CMS Acting Administrator Kerry Weems said.

The SFF initiative was created because a number of facilities were consistently providing poor quality of care, yet were periodically instituting enough improvement that they would pass one survey only to fail the next (for many of the same problems as before). Such facilities with a "yo-yo" compliance history rarely addressed underlying systemic problems that were giving rise to repeated cycles of serious deficiencies.

In November 2007, the agency began publishing a list of Medicare and Medicaid participating nursing homes that have a history of serious quality of care problems and had failed to show significant improvement. In February 2008, CMS took the next step and published an updated, expanded list of nursing homes in the SFF initiative and included the category they fell within such as new additions, not improved, improving, recently graduated or no longer in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

As of April 2008, there are 134 SFFs, out of about 16,000 active nursing homes. CMS works closely with states to select participants and as homes improve their quality of care and "graduate" from the program, or fail to improve and are terminated from Medicare and Medicaid, new homes are added to the list. This movement of homes off the list allows more facilities with problems to be added as the program continues.

Once a facility is selected as an SFF, the state survey agency conducts twice the number of standard surveys and will apply progressive enforcement until the nursing home either

  • significantly improves and graduates from the SFF initiative
  • is granted additional time due to promising developments
  • is terminated from Medicare and/or Medicaid

CMS and the state can more quickly terminate a facility that is placing residents in immediate jeopardy.

Nursing homes that have the SFF designation, including information about that designation, will now be noted on Nursing Home Compare, which can be accessed at www.medicare.gov. The site helps families find nursing homes in their area. Information about the homes includes performance scores on quality measures, staffing information and a three-year history of the home's health, safety and fire inspection reports. The Web site will be updated with new information quarterly.

"Today's action is the next step in our commitment to bring transparency and accountability to the process families must go through to find the care that is best for them and their family member," Weems said.

Further Actions Planned

The publication of the SFF list was the first major step in CMS' latest efforts to improve nursing home care. A comprehensive, multi-year look at future actions the agency will take was also released today.

The "2008 Action Plan for Further Improvement of Nursing Home Quality" consists of several inter-related and coordinated approaches:

  • Consumer Awareness and Assistance: to include an increasing array of information about long-term care that will be written in an easy-to-understand format and available to the public at www.medicare.gov. Already posted there is the "Guide to Nursing Homes" and the "Compare" data. These tools can be used by Medicare beneficiaries and their family members to better understand the quality and value of Medicare's nursing home benefit.
  • Survey, Standards and Enforcement Improvement: several initiatives are being developed to improve the effectiveness of the annual nursing home surveys as well as those prompted by consumer complaints. The agency also plans to work in partnership with states to improve current enforcement efforts.
  • Quality Improvement: The agency is focusing on several key areas to improve health care quality in nursing homes including a special focus from the quality improvement organization (QIO) program on prevention of bed sores, reduction in the use of physical restraints and greater emphasis on developing individualized care plans to improve a resident's quality of life.
  • Quality Through Partnerships: Through its QIOs, CMS has coordinated an unprecedented, collaborative campaign, "Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes" designed to improve both the delivery and measurement of quality care. Through its work with QIOs, state survey agencies, and the nursing home industry and consumers, CMS is well on track to achieve these goals.

A copy of the full 2008 nursing home action plan can be found at:

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Illinois H.R. 4537 :: "Voices" Sprouting Up All *OVER* The Place..

Too cool to find this just now even as, alack and a[bit of bad]luck, I could not attend the latest Georgia Voices That Count initial self-advocacy training weekend down in Atlanta.. Activities during this first weekend normally include sensitive, fragile self-disclosure along with visits to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center, his birth home, and the National Park Services' Ebenezer Baptist Church..

This remains my favorite of the Georgia Voices That Count curriculum (and why I go back whenever I can to help speed up the process for others) because I will never forget how lonely I was until that weekend.......

How still lonely feeling and by that time bordering on, hm, how about "overwhelmed" that Saturday morning as Georgia Voices #3 quietly ate breakfast at the hotel then gathered to head out on a short road trip down to the King Center.......

How still very lonely as, one by one, classmates whose Life stories I yet not knew were secured into the wheelchair lift that took them upstairs while excruciatingly silent others waited for their turn.......

How yet lonelier still as I found my solo seat in the very, very, very back of the church as others scattered themselves out each singly elsewhere around, nervously smiling at each other should our eyes all meet..

And then.......

This absolute most amazing flood of warmth, connectivity, camaraderie came over me as I looked out across all those, to that moment, strangers radiating all around before me..

From one heartbeat to the next, I realized I was finally where I was supposed to be.. That all the pain and Lifetime movie-esque Life adventures had been leading up to that very moment in Time..

And now, while I do look back and draw desperately on those so very painful experiences to drive the disability self-advocacy that empowers these fingertips, I can accept that Pain for the learning experiences it all has been..

Because I'm no longer alone in that Pain.. I will, instead, forever forward now have the strength, support, and fellowship that comes from Georgia Voices supplying the Wind beneath these Life-worn Wings..

Wow.. Hm. Where [the.......] did that all come from..? :grin, blush:

Back on track she goes: The real reason I started to type was because of savoring the moment of finding the following story out of Illinois just now while my Mind is constantly running backwards guessing what the newest Georgia Voicers are likely doing each very second today, just before they themselves find that same beyond descript flood of emotion overtake them, too:

Several self advocates from Paris joined others from around Illinois to testify before the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee on House Bill 4537 (HB4537), a bill introduced by Rep. Bob Flider (Decatur) which would require Illinois public schools to provide curriculum on Disability History.

The testimony included stories of bullying and discrimination toward persons with disabilities by school classmates.

The group involved is called.......

Illinois Voices.. Self-advocacy training for persons with developmental disabilities..

Yay.. Way to go, Fellow Voicers..!

And to my own newest up and coming group of Georgia Voices That Count colleagues, WHO LOVES YOU, BABY..?! All your fellow classmates before you, THAT'S WHO..!

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

United In Advocacy..!

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Yes, I *AM* Bitter..! :: Enough [BLEEPED] Rhetoric: Time To MoveOn, Folks..

Just got the latest MoveOn.org petition action alert in my inbox:

The "Enough Distractions" petition in part says:

"Debate moderators abuse the public trust every time they ask trivial questions about gaffes and 'gotchas' that only political insiders care about. Enough with the distractions--ABC and other networks must focus on issues that affect people's daily lives."

From these fingertips (to ABC et al[l] via MoveOn).......

I keep saying this, and no one listens, including the Barack Obama camp.. I'm fed up with hearing garbage about how everyone is manipulating 26 letters of our alphabet solely to upset the other party while having absolutely nothing to do with issues like my extended family of persons with disabilities dying in the streets of the U.S. even as big oil companies rape us for every penny they can on the price of gas.....

Run on sentence, yes..

Meant every word of it..?

Indubitably.......

And thensome.

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Monday, April 14, 2008

*OH, NO..!* Say It Ain't So..! My Ta-Da List Was, Gasp, *INACCESSIBLE*.. :blush:

Many, many thanks to "B" for very kindly contacting me just now..

In the few short weeks since I've had a 'puter back underneath these fingertips, I've been smoking the Net in search of MORE INFO along with ways to creatively share what passes through my inbox each and every day.. To that end, one of the things I created was a very quickly put together Ta-Da List of personally-garnered suggestions geared towards a beginner getting involved in disability self-advocacy..

"B" just typed a few minutes ago and said that my list required a login to the system to access.. That's totally cool if it's the hosting site's policy.. Was probably somewhere in the TOS (terms of service) for all I know.. Had tested the link, but, alack and aluck, I was most likely still logged in with active cookies so of course the link will work for me with no request for login information.. Duh.. :grin:

But... The thing is that the login for access policy's just not mine.. The days when every single second counted towards my Life survival are still too, too very fresh in Mind to not know what it is like to keep hitting road bumps of any size in one's own quest for information and answers..

THEREFORE and IN CONCLUSION....... :grin:

Special for you, "B", and anyone else who unsuccessfully tried to access my very humble advocacy list, here it is below in its still new, forever draft form..

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Disability Advocacy :: Get Involved..!

Nothing about us without us.. The *CHOICE* is *YOURS*..!
List Created By :: SixAlmostSeven.org..

United In Advocacy..!

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Station Break :: Boobies: I'm In Love..!

Oleb.net: Wide Angle Shot Of Juvenile Booby

Heeheeee.. Made you look.. Is that not a fabulous photo or what..?

'Tis another night of this geekette wandering the many highways and bi-ways of the cyber World in hungry search for.. MORE POWER for my websites.. Tonight's adventure mixed the geekette with her past in wildlife rehabilitation and her possible future of being moved to Bolivia.. Whoo..

Was roaming the expanse of the Internet in search of all things Ruby on Rails when I encountered the little fellow above, a juvenile Booby from the Galápagos Islands.. The website, Oleb.net, was being highlighted as a way that Ruby on Rails is being used across the Web these days..

Well, sigh, all good things must eventually come to an end and so shall it be with this Station Break.. Off to see what else my Gray Matter can absorb before it finally zonks for the night..

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Assisted Suicide :: "NO DISASSEMBLE..!"

Butterfly In Hand

Very tired tonight.. Very, very tired.. Been up since like noon (day before) yesterday..

Seriously. :grimace:

Durn near could call it "Happy", though and in spite, marveling at the intricacies rapidly weaving their way into my Life the last few weeks, thank you in LARGE part to that MATS themselves handpicked my "bus stop" in downtown Jasper a few short weeks ago.. Their Choice of what would help them help me mitigate this Life's routine incidentally generated an ever intensifying chain of events one Heart couldn't hope to imagine come true..

New friends, at the very least..

New friends who "get it", to boot..

Then comes the Sad..

War... Gas gouging... Precious family homes being ripped away...

And, yet again, that seemingly never-ending devil monster, assisted suicide...

Accredited to Hillary Clinton: "I commend Oregon on this count, as well, because whether I agree with it or not or think it’s a good idea or not, the fact that Oregon is breaking new ground and providing valuable information as to what does and doesn’t work when it comes to end-of-life questions, I think, is very beneficial."

So, in other words, reading into her given arrangement of 26 letters chosen just for that audience, she supports a statewide scientific medical experiment that will ultimately serve as a legalized whitewash of all community health care services rendered reprehensibly..

Whoops.. No, wait.. That was a whitewater of all community health care services rendered non-accountably, wasn't it.. :wink:

Oy, goodness, Senator Clinton, most respectfully, what were you thinking that day you said that..?

My guess is that no one knows any better than you as a lawyer-type person that endorsing, pursuing, lobbying, and implementing just one new Law begets.......

Precedence..

You know.. That nasty, minor little detail of...

Precedence..?

Precedence for some to say, "You legalized us assisting in murdering these people.. Here's a little sumpin, sumpin for your troubles.. Care to let us quietly take out a few million more..?"

Yup... Precedence.

An unforgiving...

Irreversible...

Slippery Slope.....

For sure.

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Resources: Butterfly In Hand image courtesy of: copyright-free-pictures.org.uk..

Monday, April 7, 2008

Princess Diana :: Dear Britney.. No, Make That: Dear Paparazzi.. :raises left eyebrow:

A few months back, when I did not have keyboard under hand, I shockingly witnessed your unbelievable harassment, nay, endless emotional abuse of Britney Spears as she experienced her mental health crisis so publicly before us..

Walking in the very Shoes I do, the emotions your reprehensible treatment of Britney evoked were so intense as to become a harsh trigger that set off, at the very least, an overwhelming empathetic wave reminiscent of [panic disorder].. I could naught but turn off the television and wait for said wave to pass..

Some of the more arrogant among you said we didn't have to look, just turn off the tv set.. That was "cute".. Not.

Didn't matter if we turned off the box or not, as every [bleeped] time one turned around, your own captured images of your own perversed exploitation of a young woman with mental illness purely to line your pockets were everywhere.. Supermarkets.. Drug stores.. Our radios..

From the very first moment of witnessing via cable satellite what you all were doing, so unreal as to seem surely a LifeTimeTV movie, shades of the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of our precious Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed repeatedly came to Mind.. With the breaking news just now that a jury has ruled Di and Dodi were unlawfully killed through the reckless actions of their driver and the paparazzi, apparently I have been in good company..

So I now say to you, dear Paparazzi, please, you need to step.. back..

You need to take a good.. long..... look at yourselves and your motivations along with the consequences of your actions with respect to the Lives of those you stalk..

When what you do involves a person with mental illness, as is so publicly well acknowledged in Britney's particular case, you yourselves are the ones with your forefinger on the trigger.. From this moment forth, you will, each and every one, be held personally, legally accountable for those you harm..

The abuse of even one individual, regardless of whom, will.. not.. be tolerated.. Through such ready access to the advocacy tools the Internet increasingly provides, the next wave of protecting Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Disability Rights along with the sweeping wave of Grinch-squooshing Open Compassion is upon us..

Period.

End of discussion.

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock with a special one going out to {{{Britney}}}..

Sunday, April 6, 2008

WSJ :: Aid to Make Homes 'Accessible'..

Really nice find in my inbox this morning was an article from the Wall Street Journal regarding accessible housing design:

In trying desperately to respect copyrights but wrestling with that there is so much important information in his article, am thinking here that highlighting the more prominent resources reporter Theo Francis shares is the "safer" way to go:

A couple more that IMMEDIATELY came to mind to these fingertips:

Long as I'm at it, straight from SILCGA's website to you comes their contact info:

Statewide Independent Living Council of Georgia, Inc.
755 Commerce Drive, Suite 415
Decatur, GA 30030
Voice: 770-270-6860
Toll Free: 888-288-9780
TTY: Use GA Relay, 711
Fax: 770-270-5957

Hm. While visiting them right now, my Mind just caught Concrete Change's footer there where it appears the website's information may have been provided in one form or another from some ten years ago until.......

Precisely today, April 6, 1998.. Makes it just that much more TOO cool for school that the WSJ article on accessible housing design debuted today..

Aren't you glad these fingertips have on-demand computer access once again and finally..? :wipes sweat from cyber brow as she winks:

Premature-PS.. Concrete Change should sound at least "vaguely" familiar to any seasoned veterans of the CraigsList Disabilities Forum.. :ga-WINK:

An-EE-way (and in conclusion,).......

*Please*, if you have just a few seconds, drop the reporter, Theo Francis, a very quick *thank you* because, human nature being what it is, people will *finally* start to take note of Visitibility purely because they did indeed see it in the Wall Street Journal.. If it works in your favorite email programs, I've set the email link below to fill in an email that very simply states, "Thank you so much for covering the very important subject of accessible home design. Visitibility benefits everyone!":

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Saturday, April 5, 2008

To The W3C Re Cognitive Disabilities :: XSL Recommendations.. NICE..!

Snapshot of Stacked Block-areas, W3C Recommendations

And I do mean, "WOW..!!!"

For those who are trying to grasp some Internet accessibility aspect of designing towards cognitive disabilities in addition to those [physical] in nature, the W3C's Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Recommendation (Version 1.1) is an AWESOME example of how to keep the incoming volume of your inboxes down to a dull roar.. The following is just one great example:

The use of color combined with filling the spaces through the use of the various appropriate attributes is a hit with these fingertips..

Thank you..! See you all out there on the lists..!

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Beautiful Minds :: If There's One Thing In This World That Gives A Girl Butterflies..

It surely gots to be seeing a (hanthum) man at work in the kitchen.. This priceless little treasure jumped out at me from my inbox a little bit ago.......

Jeff Goldblum tossing a salad

A beautiful Mind that cooks..

Ok, so he's tossing a salad, but still....... :giggle:

Next thing you know, he'll probably be jetsetting off to some sunset island whilst contemplating just how to save the World from itself..

Or, at the very least......

His navel.. :wink:

Cyber hugs from a very startled fan in Talking Rock....

Friday, April 4, 2008

The Cost Of One Crashed B1 Bomber.. In Ramen Noodles..

Crossposting this over from the On Butterfly Wings.. blog I started at the BarackObama.com website..

Peace, Love, and Something Warm in the Bellies for All tonight..

Not going to say much here.. Others are surely echoing my tear-stained thoughts across the cyber World..

But.......

The loss of a military B-1 bomber, above and beyond what may involve the human factor, is always outrageous in instances like today's when one starts looking at the Life survival business end of the ordeal of War..

So it works like this: Today, one B-1 bomber has been reported to have crashed over in Quatar

The cost of said lost military plane..? Not quite sure.. Tried to find something reliable and really quick in my favorite search engine.. Best I could do was it was anything from $200 million to $300 million dollars..

Give or take.......

A million or two.......

For one.......

Translated into ramen noodles at, let's say, 2 packages a day of something, anything warm in a person's belly, we get..

$200 million low ball cost for one crashed warplane..

Approximately 13 cents per package of ramen noodles (includes tax here in Georgia)..

Divided back into the aforementioned $200 million equals..

APPROXIMATELY 1,538,461,538 packages of noodles.. That's one billion, five hundred thirty-eight million, four hundred sixty-one thousand, five hundred and thirty-eight packages of ramen noodles laying smashed to smithereens on an al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar, war-involved (?) runway..

Someone check me.. This Mind doesn't always see the obvious it missed.. :wink:

Back to those two packages of something warm in someone's belly (on the high side as a fella could get away with just one), we get.......

769, 230,769 (seven hundred sixty-nine million, two hundred thirty thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine) days that one Human Life could have something warm in their belly at the expense of one less crashed military airplane.. That's two warm meals a day if a fella eats a package per sitting..

Divide that by 365 days per year, and one gets, hm, crum, that can't be right.. Divided by 365 days a year, one gets:

2,107,481 (two million, one hundred seven thousand, four hundred and eighty-one) years..

Shoot.. That just can't be right.. But, if it is, War just got a whole [bleeped] more absurd to these fingertips.......

Shock from that number still numbing the Brain, but moving on to alternatively think further, seven hundred sixty-nine million, two hundred thirty thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine people could theoretically have their Lives sustained one more day for the cost of one lost military warplane.......

Extended just one more day that could be THE one day that makes a difference in hoping Fate will land them in the Path of someone who can help guide them to the tools that will improve the quality of their Lives once and forever for all towards healthier communities everywhere..

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

ACTION ALERT :: Child with autism charged, others same age NOT..

Clueless as to why I'm surprised, but here goes..

THANKS to that I am again back at the keyboard 24/7 as of this very past weekend, I just caught the following via a post over at Georgia Childrens Network (GCN) in tandem with only the second ever WSBTV weekday news alert I've ever received.. Fate being what she has been for me of late, these came within, say, an hour of each other today..

+++

Story #1 from the Tifton Gazette :: Autistic child charged with biting teacher: Student arrested for selling bogus drugs in seperate incident:

"An eight-year-old student at Horizon Academy school bit his teacher Thursday morning and was charged with battery."

*LOVE* how they tied the two stories together there, btw, even though they are unrelated.. Not.. :frown:

+++

Story #2 from WSBTV :: 3rd-Graders Allegedly Plotted To Attack Teacher..

"The nine students are too young to be charged with a crime under Georgia law, a prosecutor told the Times-Union of Jacksonville, Fla. They include girls and boys, ages 8 and 9. Authorities withheld the Center Elementary School students' names."

+++

Cool, huh..?

Exact same ages.......

Exact same state.................

DIFFERENT laws...........................

Anyone catch my....... drift..? :raises left eyebrow:

United In Advocacy..