Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!

Aside from some last minute arm twisting going on right now while the last remaining Republican witholds his vote, HR 3997 is going to fail.  The American Tax Payer is safe for at least another few days while the lowest rated Congress in U.S. History tries another scheme to steal our money.

Thank you for all those who voted NO on this landslide into socialism.

Source

The Mon-Fayette Expressway, first conceived of in 1970 by, among others, the Democratic dinosaur Barry Stout, was a great idea.

In 19 freaking 70!

Forty years later it is nothing but an obsolete chunk of pork kept on artificial life support as a pet project from a long forgotten era.

When Clairton was King of Coke and the Duquesne Works and other Mon Valley steel mills built the world, an expressway from the southern communities to the places were thousands of mill workers were employed was a great idea.

Today, with Clairton Works a tiny fraction of its former size and the Duquesne Works all but demolished, the Mon-Fayette Expressway is an embarrassment for Southwestern Pennsylvania and yet another reason why it is obvious the economic vitality of a region is inversely proportional to the amount of democrats in charge of government.

The Mon-Fayette Expressway is a fitting monument to democratic malfeasance.  A long stretch of empty promises starting nowhere and never ending, never going anywhere or moving anyone forward.

And at a whopping $1.2 Billion dollars, with another $850 Million currently wasted on a connector between the massive metropolises of Uniontown and Brownsville, the 57 miles stretch of highway will cost over $2 Billion dollars to tax payers.  That is a whopping $35,087,719.30 per mile!

Yes, that is $35 MILLION DOLLARS PER MILE!

In Arkansas, a 2005 report showed an estimated cost of roughly $7 million dollars per mile for a 4 lane expressway.

In South Dakota, a 2003 report estimated the cost of a 4 lane highway to be only $1.9 million dollars per mile.

In Pennsylvania can it really COST $35 millions dollars per mile to construct a 4 lane highway?  Can the corruption of this Democratic controlled region be so expensive as to balloon the cost of basic infrastructure by a factor of 10?

You betcha!

And if Barry Stout gets his way, it will cost $2 BILLION dollars more to “finish” this project.  From nowhere to nowhere, because let’s face it, Pittsburgh and Oakland and Monroeville aren’t the places they were in 1970.

No matter how you try to spin it, no matter your George Bush Derangement Syndrome, no matter your political bent, the United States of America has not seen another 9-11 in the last 7 years.

I remember 9-11-01.  I remember seeing on television the second hit on the towers.  I remember hearing of the Pentagon.  I remember leaving my office and walking down to the church on the corner of 5th and Thackeray in Oakland.

I remember it being empty.  The doors were open and students walking past.  Most were talking about the news.  None were entering the church to pray.  “Where two or three are gathered in my name…” I could not find one.

I walked to Heinz Memorial Chapel.  There were several elderly ladies in there praying the rosary.  Oblivious to everything except their chants.  “Where two or three are gathered in my name…” They were gathered, but Jesus was not there.

I remember searching for someone to help me search for God in all of this.

No one else was searching for me.  Or God.

I went back to the Bellefield Church.  It was still empty. I prayed.  I was alone, but I knew there were those trapped in the rubble of the towers.

Alive.  And more alone than I could ever imagine.  But they were not alone.  As long as my prayers, and the prayers of the millions of others could reach the Ear of the Lord, they would not be alone.

I wish I did not have to be alone on a campus full of thousands of students, staff, faculty, doctors, nurses.

Some friends of mine make movies. Not just any movies mind you, these are fan movies. Star Trek fan movies.

Now, don’t jump to any conclusions just yet. These aren’t pimply-faced 20 or 30 somethings running around their parent’s basement pointing television remotes at each other and yelling, “Got ya!”

These folks have scripts. And sets. And some serious camera equipment. And a F/X department. And some awesome sound and musical score. These aren’t professionals but they have been compared to the pros.

They produce DVD quality motion pictures, and they are good. Farragut Films is a production company made up of fans and devotees to Gene Roddenberry’s original masterpiece Star Trek (in Trekkie circles known as TOS [The Original Series]).

Visit their site, download a movie and burn it to DVD and watch it. You will be surprised. You will be impressed. And you will appreciate that there are folks in the world who seek to continue the original vision of Gene Roddenberry faithfully and enthusiastically.

http://www.starshipfarragut.com

If you are like me, and have been moaning and groaning about Microsoft not releasing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, you probably downloaded and tried RC2 Refresh. And if you are not like me, it probably installed a-okay. But if you did have a problem, this is the one I had and maybe you did as well.

A BSOD flashes on the screen just at the end of the install and when Windows tries to restart it appears again. And again. And again. I finally got it to stay on the screen long enough to get this text:

STOP ERROR 0xc0000139 Ending Point Not Found
Gdigetbitmapbitsize not loaded in dynamic link library GDI32.DLL

FUN! But don’t fret, there is an easy fix. Using either your Windows Install CD or Bart-PE you can get the problem taken care of.

In either case (Windows Install CD or Bart-PE) you need to copy one file. Here are the steps I used to get the GDI32.DLL back to working order.

• Once in a CMD screen switch to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ and rename GDI32.DLL to GDI32.DLL.OLD
• And then COPY C:\WINDOWS\SERVICEPACKFILES\GDI32.DLL GDI32.DLL
• Reboot

And there you have it. The problem is that the old GDI32.DLL file was not allowed to be replaced with the new one. Once you get it replaced everything should work fine.