I've closed the poll and tallied the results, and our new mods are tomsyl, Jordan and M Scott Eiland. I think we all owe our gratitude to catchy, who IMO did a great job as a mod. Tomsyl and Jordan, well, some people are just gluttons for punishment. Scott has already served as moderator, so I believe for the first time we have all veteran mods. I know a major election is coming up, but let's try to make this term somewhat reasonable for these guys.

I promise I'll try to remember to hold the next elections at the end of December.

There have been complaints that this site is "too hard", so here's a chance for you to make up some points before final grades are issued.

1. Hank has to visit some friends in the city. He leaves for Jersey City (20 miles away) at a speed of 60 mph, but hits several road construction sites with detours and blocked streets along the way. Given that a. he's running late as usual, b. he hasn't driven in the Jersey City area for several decades, and c. that he's traveling at rush hour, how late will he be to meet his friends? (10 pts.)

Since some of the Republicans around here have had the vapors because people are saying that McCain is a flip flopper (I believe the term "waffle" is the current talking point to go with) and because a disagreement with the first item in a list apparently renders the entire list null and void, I've decided to reformat the master list of McCain flip flops so that no one's delicate constitution is damaged. I also hope to show that by comparison with McCain, Obama is the Rock of Gibralter when it comes to philosophical consistenty.

1. On reckless tax cuts

I've been quite busy and didn't realize that the current moderator's terms expired on 6/15 or so. Therefore this site is operating illegally pursuant to a little known codicil to the PATRIOT Act. I think we'll be OK as long as we hold the election this month and claim terminal dyslexia (or palindromia - I always get them mixed up). Therefore this thread is for you to nominate candidates for the next term, which will be either 5 or 6 months depending on whether I remember next time.

Oh wait, she's not -

John McCain has been receiving adulatory coverage from the press at least since his 2000 run for the Republican nomination. He tends to get a free pass on issues that would injure or cripple other politicians. Unfortunately, this has allowed many aspects of his politics and personality to fly under he radar to the extent that most Americans are unaware of just how dangerously unqualified he is to be President. The facts are clear: John McCain is unqualified to be President.

. . .

Just completed the update, it went pretty well. I am glad I did a dry run a week ago, Drupal is free and sometimes, like when doing upgrades, it works about as well as you'd expect something free to work.

There are a few minor issues, the Links across the top of the page don't work and the formatting in the "Recent Diaries" block on the right is a little off. You will also need to reset your default view (# of comments per page, threaded or flat, forward or reverse date order).

I wanted to post a diary about some upcoming changes here at theforvm, so that everyone can understand what's going to happen, why it's going to happen and what the effects will be.

First, we have come to the point where we really need to update the site. The version of Drupal that we are running (4.7.4) is no longer supported. I downloaded the entire site onto a test machine, went through the upgrade process (to version 5.7), and am testing the results. The only problem I've had so far is that the menu links at the top of the page ( Home Diaries Foreign Affairs Politics ...) do not work and had to be turned off. It appears that they were a customization by WetherMan that isn't supported in the current version, or at least not supported in a way that's easy to fix. Other than that it looks pretty good, really just abouyt exactly the same as it is now with the major changes being in the administration menus.

and it's just awesome!!!

In case you hadn't noticed, there seen to be a few glitches on the road to a free and democratic Iraq. Specifically, political progress is now being made at the point of a gun. This time, the boogieman is not Al Queda, or the restive Sunni tribes, but Shiite groups that have the unfortunate characteristic of being quite popular in Iraq and likely to gain substantial support in the elections scheduled for later this year - specifically Moqtada al-Sadr and his followers. There are reports of extensive fighting in Basra and Baghdad, as well as in other locations throughout Iraq. There are also reports of Iraqi Army and police defecting to Sadr's militias, but to be fair it's difficult to tell news from rumors at this point.