So, we are on ‘Standard Time’ for only around 4 months of the year, and ‘Daylight Saving Time’ the other 8 months. Wouldn’t it make more sense to call the cold months ‘Dark Time’ and the rest of the year ‘Standard Time’?

The Congressional calendar for the House in 2013 was 126 days, but that was apparently too hard on the Republican Congresscritters, because the 2014 calendar only has them working 113 days.

We pay them $174K apiece, and cover the expenses of traveling to and from their districts, and they only have to work 113 days? They only passed 15 laws in 2013, and one of those was the continuing resolution. Hell, we require 60 days from the Florida legislature and only pay them about $30k apiece.

These are the people who think that teachers need performance reviews‽

If they want the job, they should do the job. Give them National holidays and two weeks of vacation, but only one tax-payer-paid round-trip ticket between their district and DC per year. The job is in Washington. If they want to campaign, they can use their vacation time.

PZ Myers hasn’t been engaging in the ACA web site debate, and then he found out about the Cover Oregon site.

He’s annoyed that they tell people that the ‘Submit’ button won’t work unless you are using IE. That also seems a hang-up with the main Federal site, it doesn’t seem to like anything but IE.

In comments someone noted that the site was probably using javascript that only worked with IE. That is very possible, as there are a lot of tools out there that generate code designed for IE and not verified on any of the other browsers. Such sites don’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is a problem for government sites.

It was a long time before we were finally saved from the ‘BLINK’ text attribute by the HTML standards group, but some people refuse to let go and create sites that ‘sing and dance’ rather than providing you with the information you want, or allow you to fill out forms unaccompanied by back-up singers and a laser show.

Actually, I’m more annoyed by the media and Congressional reaction to problems with a web site, when compared to Defense Department disasters like the F-35 program. The problems of a web site that is a month or two behind schedule is a pittance compared to a program that cost hundreds of billions of dollars, that is constantly missing target dates, and keeps going up in price. With the rise of the drones, it isn’t even certain the things will ever be used.

How about some reasonable priorities for a change?