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From the web site of Paul Hackett running for Senator in Ohio:

“I’m a Democrat and proud of it…we are the party that wants to keep government out of the private lives of Americans and focus the government’s energy and power on creating a strong economy and a balanced budget…I don’t need Washington and its career politicians to tell me how to worship my God or to dictate to my wife the decisions she makes with her doctor anymore than I need Washington to tell my neighbors what they can do in the privacy of their own home or how many and what types of guns I can keep in my gun safe.”

“But I do need Washington to wisely manage our military might and our economic budget so that my neighbors and I can safely provide for our families.”

Mr. Hackett is the first Marine Congresscritter Jean Schmidt attacked for being less patriotic and courageous that she is.

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I did a lot of work for developers when I lived in San Diego and listened to their complaints about all of the roadblocks that interfered with ability to “rape” the landscape and build their “cracker box” houses. [As listening was billable time, I didn’t object to their rants. Some of their complaints were actually reasonable, but that didn’t make the profits earned on their “products” less obscene.]

I can imagine the reaction of some of those people if faced with the circumstances described in this Times [the real one in London] story: Fairies stop developers’ bulldozers in their tracks

Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000.

[snip]

The Planning Inspectorate has no specific guidelines on fairies but a spokesman said: “Planning guidance states that local customs and beliefs must be taken into account when a developer applies for planning permission.” Mr Salter said: “We had to redesign the entire thing from scratch.”

That’s right, the entire up-scale housing development was redesigned to accommodate the “fairies”.

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A lot of people in Britain are upset with the program, Bring Your Husband To Heel, and have written to complain.

Apparently it doesn’t occur to them that a show that copies the format of many of the popular programs about training pets, and uses this model to offer help to “wives” with problem “husbands” might be satire.

I haven’t seen this show, but having seen some the British shows on teaching pet obedience, I wasn’t always sure the “serious” pet shows weren’t a bit “Pythonesque”.

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It was late morning and I was on my way to a chemistry class. I had stopped for a drink of water when the news came over the speakers in the classrooms.

For those who weren’t alive at the time: remember what you felt on September 11, 2001 for a taste of November 22, 1963. It was a massive change for the worldview of my generation and it marked the beginning of a period of disruption and decline in the civility of American society. Arthur had died and Camelot fell.

At his inauguration John Kennedy made the point: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

The colors of my world will never be as bright as they were on November 21, 1963.

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