rebootied

Octuplets stun doctors at California hospital | Reuters:

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California woman shocked doctors by giving birth on Monday to octuplets, believed to be only the second set of eight babies born in the United States.

The six boys and two girls were doing well and were in stable condition in the neonatal intensive care unit, said Dr. Karen Maples at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Bellflower.

But two needed some help to breath with ventilators, she told a press conference.

The eight babies were born nine weeks prematurely by Caesarean section over a five-minute period, stunning a 46-member medical team that was expecting only seven babies.

They weighed between 1 pound 8 ounces (680 grams) and 3 pounds 4 ounces (1.47 kg) and doctors initially identified them by the letters A through H as they were born.

"We decided to proceed with the delivery in anticipation of seven babies. We had done some drills, some preliminary dry runs," Maples said.
( Read more... )

UFC 91 Video: Brock Lesnar, Randy Couture Talk to ESPN's Mike and Mike (via MMA FanHouse)

I was honestly hoping to be graceful in victory, even with as little faith as I'd had that victory was possible, much less assured.

Now that Obama has won, I suddenly find that I want to subject all of the Neocons and all of the republicans who, even though they might not have agreed with Bush and Cheney, have spent the last eight years either smugly confident and supportive of all their crap, or even worse -- silent despite feeling an unease about the course our government has taken -- and subject them to the same behavior.

I remember when the Shrub got up in front of the nation and said something along the lines of, "I'm the President now. I'm the President of America; I'm even the President of those of you who didn't vote for me." That smug, petty, revealing remark about what a power-hungry, selfish President he would become has been ringing in my head for 8 years. Cheney trying to cast the Vice Presidency as some kind of exercise in quantum state logic problem, claiming whatever suits him when he should have been convicted for contempt of court. Rummy. Man, just... Rumsfield. And Rove perhaps more than anyone else: "The Architect." These lying scum had been in charge of the country for too long, and so proud about hijacking our grief over 9/11 and trotting it out whenever we needed to be scared into submission enough to agree to their agenda.

I've grown so sick of it over the last eight years I had no idea how much I've been bottling up. I've been in despair, been angry, and been ashamed over the course of things. And part of me wants to be as graceless in victory as the opposition has been now, for 1/5th of my years on this planet, for a third of my time as a voter. Part of me wants to get all testosterone-poisoned jock on the losing players, and humiliate them. Rub their face in the mess they've made, and put them outside. Begin shouting "America, love it or leave it!" back in their faces. Someone once told me that anger is just another face that fear takes. I'm not sure I agree, but I've been angry for awhile, and afraid that we would not recover, that perhaps the more reasonable among us, those with enough common sense to be conflicted on complex issues, might never have the power in our own hands again. That fear nearly allowed me to become as shrill and intolerant as those that have been in power for the last 8 years.

In the end, people taking the high road are setting enough of an example that I'll try and refrain from teabagging anyone crying into their McCain/Palin commemorative hankies. This article, in particular makes me more hopeful than vengeful: eastside93's Blog | Talking Points Memo | I Didn't Vote For Obama Today

I have a confession to make.

I did not vote for Barack Obama today.

I've openly supported Obama since March. But I didn't vote for him today.

Note to Next President: Modern-Day WPA Will Save the Economy | Autopia from Wired.com:

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have been all but silent when it comes to repairing America's failing infrastructure, and with all that's going on in the world right now, they might be forgiven for it. They shouldn't be. Investing heavily in our infrastructure is just the thing for reinvigorating our tanking economy.

The candidates can talk all they want about shoveling money into alternative fuels, electric cars and high-speed rail, but none of that will mean much if our roads, bridges and rails can't support them. The next president must commit to fixing our infrastructure. Such an investment will create jobs, strengthen our economy and make America more competitive.

"(Congress) should invest in the more than 3,000 ready-to-go highway projects that could be under contract within the next 30 to 90 days," says John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. "Funding these ready to go projects offers Congress a tremendous opportunity to put Americans to work and help cash-strapped states repair and replace our crumbling infrastructure."

History shows us the time to act is now.

I'm bookmarking this for a later read-through, but I've seriously been wondering about the WPA as a solution for the past few weeks as the news about the economy continues to worsen. Looking at the bailout, it is at its core a means of turning private debt into a public burden. There has to be some way to have the government invest in America itself, not just hand money to the banks which has come directly from our taxes. Then again, I'm a closet socialist with strong capitalist leanings.

Reuters: North Korea said to be deploying missiles
VIENNA/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea deployed more than 10 missiles on its west coast apparently for an imminent test launch, a South Korean newspaper said on Thursday, and Pyongyang halted U.N. monitoring of its nuclear complex.

The potentially destabilizing moves followed reports that the United States had offered to remove North Korea from its terrorism blacklist this month in an effort to keep a nuclear disarmament pact from falling apart.

It would be an unprecedented test if North Korea fired all 10 of the surface-to-ship and ship-to-ship missiles. Intelligence sources quoted by the Chosun Ilbo paper said they thought the North may launch five to seven of them.

North Korea has forbidden ships to sail in an area in the Yellow Sea until October 15 in preparation for the launch, an intelligence source told the paper.

A South Korean defense ministry official declined to comment on the report but said the government had no indication of unusual activity in the North. remainder of article at website

I really dislike Kim Jong Il; the little shit and his puffball hairdo seem really out of touch with reality. I mean, like CRAZY. He's either crazy, or wants to be perceived as crazy, which is in itself potentially worse than being crazy. If the world were a big neighborhood, USA would be the big, rich house with the loud jackass in charge of the local neighborhood association who always told everyone else how to keep their lawn straight, and when they needed to rake their leaves or repaint their porch -- but North Korea would be the lonely shack at the end of the block with the batshit guy who is rumored to have a shotgun, and may or may not have been killing the neighborhood pets.

Here, we really have something of a terrorist nation; a government which seeks to use fear as a means of being allowed to participate in the world theater, to shape other nations policies and plans.

They've test fired rockets toward Japan. Shit-howdy, wasn't The Bay of Pigs more or less about keeping a test firing from even being feasible?

Bush warns of serious risks to U.S. economy, forgets to mention himself.

I'm so out of touch with what's going on in America, I didn't know that the Writer's Guild strike has been over since February.

I just assumed my copy of "TV Shows.app" was no longer downloading because the strike was still going on. And now apparently there's an actors guild strike?

Listening to The Savage Lovecast again today, and remembered chernobylred condemning Loveline's Dr. Drew. Driving home late at night during crunchtime, I really used to enjoy Loveline when it was Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla. The two of them were a great pair, because Adam is hilarious and Drew always seemed very insightful in terms of being able to identify trauma in someone's past that they'd not brought up in the question. And they were always at each other's throats, Drew largely through scathing silences, and Adam coming down on Drew for not loosening up a little.

( surprize! buttsecks! )