Posts from — November 2005

Having been on my Grandfather’s farm at this time of year I can understand my Dad’s attitude: our meal was subject to interruption by people picking up a fresh turkey at the last minute. A sale is a sale when you are business for yourself.

Tomorrow I will be at my Mother’s for a turkey, which I’m picking up from a local supermarket already cooked. My older brother and his wife are here, so it will be busier than normal.

Enjoy your meal and try to forget about the world’s problems for a day: they’ll still be there on Friday.

[Tropical Storm Δ Delta is too far away to worry about.]

“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.

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”.

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”.

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.

During that span I’ve managed to put out 966 articles, including Friday Cat Blogging™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}, and about 2,000 people a month drop by to see what has annoyed me enough to write about, a big group apparently interested in hurricanes.

If what I do annoys you, after cursing me, you can blame Andante at Collective Sigh and Steve Bates at Yellow Doggerel Democrat for making me think I should do this rather than clogging up their comments, which I continue to do in any case.

I started to relieve the pressure of the last election, just as many started to get involved a year prior to it. Blogging is much preferred to yelling at the members of the Religious Reich who surround me in one of the reddest counties of an extremely red segment of the South.

The local puppy trainer is considered a member of the “liberal media”, which is amazing considering that the main Sunday opinion piece is usually written by a member of the Cato Institute and the paper is owned by a libertarian company.

You find more “fish” on cars and business signs than in the bayou anymore, but the local “Christians” still feel oppressed. Every time a large business goes out of business you know the building will become a “church” in time, the result of a schism in one of the other “churches”. There are eight pages for churches in the local Yellow Pages, and a separate “Christian” business directory so you can be sure that the guy who unplugs your drain is “saved”. I’m not sure what the difference would be between “Pagan” and “Christian” carpet cleaning, but some people apparently don’t want to take the chance.

I have no reason to think that things are going to get better any time soon, so I’ll probably continue.

The Saudis stepped in and paid made everyone apologize and promise to play nice.

Iraq is an artificial construct that was held together by force. The US invasion removed that force and the “nation” is breaking up just like Yugoslavia after the death of Tito. The Kurds in the North and Shi’ia in the South will have oil wealth, but there is no source of wealth for the Sunnis in the middle. Having been associated with the regime of Saddam, the Sunnis doubt that they can have a comfortable existence when they are dependent on “the kindness of strangers”.

This is why his neighbors didn’t want Saddam removed after Gulf War I. Iran is the only winner, and everyone who understands the area knows it.

Just like General Shinseki determined force requirements for the invasion.

We all know that the military is going to have to figure out how to draw down forces to boost Republican chances in the 2006 elections.

Jack Murtha is angry about going to the hospitals without being able to tell the casualties why they were wounded in Iraq and when the war will end. No one in this administration can answer Cindy Sheehan’s question.

William Jefferson Clinton speaking at the dedication of the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky on November 19^th, 2005.

Are you listening, George? That’s how popular Presidents speak.

Also, if you are going to leave in a huff [or a minute and a huff], you should first find out which doors work. [What a maroon!]

™ ^{[Talk Left]}

Wander over and congratulate her, but avoid the Dante link, you really don’t want to know.

As the BBC reports the UN rejected Guantanamo visit offer, because the US refused to allow the private visits.

More and more the US is being compared to Iraq under Saddam, and from the point of view of an outsider, we are looking worse and worse.

Having already broken the unwritten rule about partisan attacks while speaking at military bases, the Shrubbery is now doing it while on a foreign trip. The man has absolutely no class, and is an embarrassment to the country. The only thing that would help his abysmal poll numbers would be to act “Presidential”, but he has chosen to be a candidate in a non-existent campaign.

Developing…

After reading about FEMA’s pre-Christmas present to hurricane evacuees, an attempt to force them out of hotels, I think the refrigerator carton may become the new FEMA standard for housing.

While I can understand that it is much cheaper to live in a rental unit than a hotel, there are many fewer rental units available after the hurricanes, and the FEMA requirement that landlords have to accept amount of the FEMA voucher as the monthly rent doesn’t correspond to reality. FEMA’s estimate of the rental price for a market would seem to be on the low side and further restricts choices in an already tight housing market.

Cardboard cartons may well be in the future for many evacuees.

Maybe it’s something the bile does to your features, a warning sign, like the garish colors on venomous reptiles.