Title: When We Touch
Part: 5: Artie & Emma
Author: Squeeka Cuomo
Rating: PG
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Artie Abrams , Emma Pillsbury, Artie/Tina, Will/Emma
Author Notes: A series of one shots, this project was inspired by, and started for story_lottery.
Warning: This part contains spoilers for 1x09, “Wheels”.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Random moments. Simple touches. Unforgettable encounters.


When We Touch: Artie & Emma


When We Touch
1: Kurt & Mercedes
2: Tina & Quinn
3: Puck & Rachel
4: Will & Finn

Making Tea for 2010: Tea Partiers Fight For The Right to Robocall

If you thought the Tea Partiers screaming on your television set over the summer were obnoxious, wait until they're screaming into your phone in 2010 via robocalls -- that is, if the Federal Election Commission sides with Tea Partiers' bigwig beltway lawyers. Conservative operatives who helped organize the summertime protests want to change the way elections are fought nationwide in perhaps the most irksome way possible -- by strong-arming the FEC to overrule state-level restrictions on political robocalls.

Political nonprofit American Future Fund and its associated PAC, led largely by former GOP staffers and operatives, made news this year primarily for its role in facilitating summertime anti-health care reform town hall protests. But the Fund has also been working largely under the radar to lay the groundwork for 2010 elections by discreetly helping Tea Partiers fight for the right to robocall.

Political robocalls are mostly exempt from federal regulations. Federal law requires only that they identify the party responsible for making the calls along with a phone number or snail mail address where the responsible party can be reached. There are no requirements for an expensive live operator, which is a boon to smaller, scrappier organizations with little money. But states often have stricter regulations that keep robocallers in check. For instance, Minnesota has one of the toughest anti-robocalling laws in the country. It requires that calls playing an automated recording either be accepted by the voter to indicate consent (good luck with that) or be preceded by a live operator who must get verbal consent before playing the recording.

The Fund's PAC is asking the FEC to override portions of the Minnesota law, the loss of which would ease requirements significantly for political robocalls. The Fund's lawyers are arguing that the Minnesota law unduly expands campaign finance restrictions (normally the domain of the FEC) by requiring political robocalls to incur the expense of a live operator. While the cost of a robocall averages only five to 15 cents, depending on the state, a live operator can cost anywhere from one dollar to more than two dollars.

A favorable FEC ruling would give federal law precedence over not only Minnesota law, but those of all states whose state-level robocalling restrictions are currently stronger than federal regulations.

A legal document filed last year by the Minnesota Democratic-Farm-Labor Party alleged that the Fund violated election law; the document describes the Fund as "a shadowy nonprofit organization" that "purports to be exempt from tax under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. But its notion of 'promoting the social welfare' is to send valentines to electorally troubled Republican Senate candidates." Indeed, "shadowy" may be an apt description. When the media began asking the Fund questions last year about who was in charge, the Fund was not forthcoming with answers.

Most observers have speculated that Jill Holtzman Vogel is behind the group, a charge difficult to prove, since 501(c)(4) nonprofits aren't required to disclose information to the public. A reporter at TPM investigated the Fund last year, tracing an address of the organization to the address of Holtzman Vogel's law firm, Holtzman Vogel PLLC. A TPM blogger called the Holtzman Vogel firm and asked if they were behind the Fund, but a representative refused to comment. At the very least, Holtzman Vogel's law firm provides legal representation to the Fund.
( Read more )

Army Mom Confined To Base After Skipping Deployment To Care For Baby

Single-mother Alexis Hutchinson refused to deploy to Afghanistan on Nov. 5, she said, because she didn't have anyone to take care of her infant son. Now she's confined to the Georgia base where she is stationed, facing criminal prosecution by the Army.

Hutchinson's civilian lawyer told the Huffington Post that Hutchinson, 21, initially planned for her 10-month-old son to stay with his grandmother in California, but that the plan went awry when the grandmother realized that she didn't have the resources to take care of him. Military police arrested Hutchinson on Nov. 6, when she returned to the base after skipping her deployment.

On Thursday, Hutchinson's lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, said she was told by an officer that the Army planned to ship her client to Afghanistan on Sunday for a special court-martial and that she could spend a year in jail there. But Sunday came and went, and Hutchinson remains at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield outside of Savannah, Ga.

"That's only because I took it to the press," said Sussman. The Oakland Tribune jumped on the story on Friday, and others followed.
( Read more )

HEY TRANSFAGS! I wanna watch the G1 episodes with Omega Supreme's flashback, and also any episodes with Alpha Trion in them. Can anyone possibly tell me which eps those are? 8/

I just made this dress, my first real tshirt surgery (I don't think adjusting oversize shirts to be smaller really counts):

More photos and instructions on my livejournal.

My question is: how I can I do this again only better? I have a big bag of very large mens shirts to experiment with.

I was thinking a waistband and some gathering on the skirt would help, kind of like this dress only without the halterneck, or this skirt.

The seam where I sewed past the arm holes on the skirt looks crap, anyone have suggestion for how to do it better so it still fits past my giant hips? The only option I can think of is sewing a straight diagonal to make an A-line skirt and pulling it up until it fits looser so I can add some gathering. Or I could use two shirts per skirt, making it very flowy.

Other suggestions for very oversize shirts (some of which are button up) appreciated. Obviously I could just use the tutorials for slightly-too-big shirts and throw away more material but that seems a waste.

I've been going through the posts on this community, it's very inspiring!

Senate Bill Would Allow "Mentally Incapacitated" Vets to Buy Guns

Major Nidal Hasan, accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood Army base, has been described by former colleagues as "psychotic." As more details emerge about Hasan's troubled state, gun safety advocates are launching fresh attacks on a Senate bill they say would make it easier for mentally unstable veterans to buy firearms.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) says his "Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act" will protect veterans' gun rights. But the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence calls it a "dangerous" proposal that could allow "over 100,000 mentally incapacitated or incompetent persons" to buy guns—people who would previously have been barred from doing so by the Veterans Administration (VA).

With debate over Fort Hood still raging on cable news, one might think that Burr might try to quietly shelve the measure, whose co-sponsors include Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). Instead, Burr fired back at the Brady Campaign in an interview with Fox News, accusing its president, Paul Helmke, of using the tragedy to "exploit the senseless murder of American soldiers in the quest to secure personal triumph."
( Read more )

Very image heavy, not dial up friendly. :)

Located here at iluv2dance93.

This is from last week, but I thought it was cute.

For some reason I'm having trouble embedding the video, so go here

And here's a Wikipedia entry for Fabian. Before this clip I had never heard of him!

ETA: Tried to add Hillary Clinton tag but couldn't. (?)

Chemicals used in plastics feminise the brains of little boys 'so that they avoid rough and tumble games'



Chemicals used in plastics are 'feminising' the brains of baby boys, a disturbing study shows.

Those exposed to high doses in the womb are less likely to play with 'male' toys such as cars. They are also less willing to join 'rough and tumble' games.

The research adds to growing evidence that hormone-disrupting chemicals in thousands of household-products are interfering with the development of children.

Environmental campaigners called the study 'extremely worrying' and called for a crackdown.

The study looked at phthalates, chemicals which can mimic the female sex hormone oestrogen.

Some experts believe they are partly to blame for the increase in genital defects in boys and lower sperm counts in men over recent decades.

But the new research is the first to link hormone-mimicking chemicals to behaviour.

There are fears of further effects as the young children in the study grow up.

Although the plastics industry insists phthalates are safe, the EU has banned many of them from cosmetics, teething rings and children's toys.

But pregnant women are still exposed to phthalates, which are used to soften plastics in household items such as plastic furniture, shoes, PVC flooring and shower curtains.

They can also be transferred to food and drink from plastic packaging. The new study, published in the International Journal of Andrology, was led by Dr Shanna Swan, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Rochester in New York State.

( Read more... )

40 Glee icons from 'Wheels'
1 Vampire Diaries (Damon/Elena) wallpaper
1 Supernatural (Dean Winchester) wallpaper
1 Gossip Girl (Blair Waldorf) wallpaper
1 James Franco wallpaper
30 Actresses (Leighton Meester, Kaya Scodelario) icons
HERE @ wednesdaydreams

Cory Monteith is scheduled to be on the Q Radio show on Wednesday.
I think they post the episode for streaming later that day and sometimes you can catch the video on QTV on youtube.
I can update with those links later, or you can keep an eye for it.

Work went by a little faster today. Sofia showed me how to do validate some new documents, and they took a bit more work and time to get through, so that kept me from yawning and nodding off in the afternoon. Which was exactly what she planned, sneaky Sofie! 8P

My back is achy throughout the day, and it's pretty fucking annoying by the time I go home. I'm gonna have to start taking aleve every day like dad. 8(((((

I can't run the .msi file to install Maya 2009, for some reason. It's giving me this stupid error... not sure if I should edit the registry or what. Fucking Windows, I'm getting so sick of this crap. >8((((

I've written emails to my senators and representives, so that means I'm on their mailing lists. Today Senator Evan Bayh spoke out about the federal deficit and voting against several spending bills this year.

( Email, not too long, to the point. )

He doesn't really go into specifics about what can be done to rein in the deficit, but whatever happens will be met with a lot of resistance from those who are unwilling to change or make a difficult decision. For a second in the video I thought he was going to refer to his colleagues as superiors. :(

Source: my gmail and Senator Bayh's website


Senator Bayh thanks you for...uh...your time.

this is sort of an absurd question, but... it's getting cold here, and I really want to get a hat, but I hate wearing them. they never look good or stay on my head properly. but I would love to wear one of those floppy crocheted berets to keep my head warm this winter... like one of these:



my only question is: HOW the hell do I wear one? I have thick, curly/frizzy hair (this is what it looks like on a good day). I tried on one of those hats, and it immediately fell flat and looked like I was wearing a wool pancake on my head, and then it just fell off every time. it seems the only way I can get it to stay on is if I pile my hair under it, but then I look bald and the hat still looks ridiculous.

how do you girls do it? do you bobby-pin it in place? I feel like I would need about 40 bobby pins to make it stay. and how do you wear it so it doesn't look flat? could it be that I'm just one of those people who will never look good in hats?

What's your favourite eyeshadow palette of all time & why? How well does it hold up with a primer? Without? Is it matte? Shimmery? Tell me why it's your favourite! I'd love to hear about it!

I've been buussyy( Read more... )