Category — Uncategorized

There several entries I wrote yesterday that I will never post because I was too angry and it really came through. Writing them was better than yelling at the cats or my neighbors and the effort reduced the pressure.

Let me just say that if the Congress doesn’t start doing its job regarding oversight and stop this Iran madness the immigration protests will be overwhelmed by the protests against another attempt to lie us into a war.

If you want to worry about nuclear weapons in Southwest Asia, worry about Pakistan. Iran doesn’t have any and won’t even have the ability to construct them for years.

If you want to promote democracy in the region do something about Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait.

If you want to promote stability in the region, have Israel comply with UN Security Council resolutions and disable its nuclear arsenal. It is a bit disingenuous to demand Hamas renounce violence while Israel is launching aerial assaults on Palestinians and building more settlements on occupied land.

The header graphic and the Why Now? at the bottom are links to the main page if you go wandering around the site. The links in the text and on the sidebar open in a new window. It’s a brute force approach necessitated by the way the site is structured and changes in the HTML language.

This is a handy piece of code:

<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Refresh” CONTENT=”5; URL=https://whynow.dumka.us/”>

If you stick this in with the other META tags at the top of the page it transfers the viewer automatically to a different location. If you go to my old Blogger site, after 5 seconds you will come here. Not everyone notices when you move, so it’s always nice to leave a forwarding address. Don’t forget to change the URL to your new site.

HaloScan has some great spam software, because I had a few trolls, but no spam at the old site. Now I’m having to deal with it. I have no idea what these people think posting in comments will do for them. You don’t see it because of the way commenting works in WordPress, but they are relentless.

A majority of the House of Representatives is Republican. A majority of the Senate is Republican. The current resident of the White House is a Republican. Republicans control all of the levers of power. If there are problems with the government, the problems belong to Republicans.

When the Shrubbery tries to complain about problems with his pet projects, or doesn’t like the budget bill, he needs to talk to the people in charge, who are all Republican.

Deficit spending is the result of Republican decisions. The massive expansion of government is the result of Republican decisions.

At this point all of the problems belong to Republicans, because the Democrats have been shut out of any role in the process. The Republicans changed the rules in the House and the Senate to ensure the Democrats are powerless and outside the loop. The Republicans even changed the rules for lobbyists, so Democrats can’t even share in the bribes.

All of the failure, mismanagement, cronyism, incompetence, and generally pitiful performances are covered with large elephant-shaped labels, because they belong to the Republicans.

There is an old saying:”No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” That’s why I have a storm flag with a black outline of Florida instead of a square flying in my sidebar when the legislature is in session.

This piece of travesty started at Maru’s place, which directed me to the Pensacola News Journal, and finally to the Pensacola Beach Blogger.

PBB covers the whole sordid affair of special legislation at the state level to screw Orange County out of property taxes from a religious theme park and then segues into our local whackos and their attempts to avoid taxes and regulations.

I’m willing to go along with not taxing places of worship, but theme parks, publishing empires, media facilities, rental property…this has got to stop. If it’s a profit making enterprise in competition with the private sector, it needs to pay taxes because it’s a business, not a religion.

Rook makes the very valid point about calls for Democrats to create a plan for Iran. With the intelligence as corrupt as we now know it to be, how can we be sure there is “a problem” with Iran?

Grillz are fancy ornamental overlays for teeth, the name coming from the grill on cars. They are often created from gold and precious stones.

CBS reports: Feds Want to Seize Suspects’ Grillz. The Feds were actually taking these people to a dentist to seize their fancy dental work with a forfeiture order before their attorneys intervened.

I’m sorry, but this is sick and it is being done in our name.

If you have any interest in nature photography you really should be stopping by Facing South on Fridays for bird blogging. R. Neal, formerly known as SKB, has a great eye, and consistently presents wonderful pictures.

From the BBC: Bush ‘ordered intelligence leak’.

The Libby revelation should put an end to people claiming that the Shrubbery is concerned with national security when it comes to leaks, and make plain that politically based leaks are a problem that originated with this White House.

These people use classification to silence their critics and de-classification to attack them. They could not care less about national security. Corruption, cronyism, and incompetence – the guiding principles of the Shrubbery.

Via CNN, NOAA has officially removed Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma from the rotation of tropical storm/hurricane names. The names of storms that cause significant damage or the loss of life are removed from the list to avoid future confusion.

The first name of the new season is Alberto, which was a tropical storm and major rain event when it came ashore near me in 1994. The names that are not removed are reused every six years.

In the first hour of All Things Considered their coverage of the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing hearing included an interview with Mrs. Mindy Kleinberg. Her husband, Alan, was a securities trader with Cantor Fitzgerald, working on the 104th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

I find myself is the rare position of being in total agreement with the lady: Moussaoui is an evil person who should spend the rest of his life in prison to protect society, but he was not part of the 9/11 plot and is being used as a scapegoat.

She wants to see the people who were responsible captured and tried; the FBI fixed; the CIA fixed; emergency services in NYC have a working communications system.

Consider for a moment what Moussaoui has claimed: he and Richard Reid were going to highjack an airplane and fly it into the White House. Richard Reid is best remembered as the “Shoe Bomber”, a man whose nefarious plot was foiled when he was unable to master the art of lighting a match.

They are probably not bad enough to be declared clinically insane, but I wouldn’t let either one of them outside a prison until we know a great deal more about the human psyche and can determine with certainty that they are not a threat. I think both would love to die in a horrible fashion that involves the death of many others. American street gangs are filled with this personality type, but most outgrow it, or die in the process. I am having a hard time believing either one is capable of masterminding a take-out order.

Andante of Collective Sigh has a picture of her “grandpuppy” and Karen of Peripetia has pictures of her vacation in California.

Take a break. Go. Chill. The mess will still be here tomorrow.

According to CNN Smugglers welcome tighter borders:

Barely 18, Jose belongs to Mexico’s new generation of migrant smugglers — young, savvy and happy to see Uncle Sam further tighten border security.

Why? It’s good for business, he says.

Jose figures more migrants will seek his help if the U.S. Senate approves legislation to double the Border Patrol and put up a virtual wall of unmanned vehicles, cameras and sensors to monitor the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

[Snip]

Victor Clark, a Mexican border expert in Tijuana who has studied smugglers’ patterns for decades, agrees with Jose. “This is going to have the opposite effect of what the U.S. government wants, since the demand for migrant smugglers is going to go up,” he said.

The smuggling business flourished after the U.S. Border Patrol cracked down on the busiest crossings into Texas and California in 1994.

It’s so nice of the Republicans to help out the coyotes. Only a few of them are currently making $1 million a year. Poor Jose only made $16,000 for three months work, as opposed the $53 per day he was making cutting lettuce. This project will certainly increase the income of one segment of the Mexican population.

Anne Zook pointed me to Justin Rood, and I was going to say something nasty about statutory rape being an odd requirement for working at the Department of Homeland Security, but the Pensacola Beach Blogger has already done a fine job covering the “Department of Homeland Perversity”.

The most important things you have to know to understand Katherine Harris is that the football stadium at the University of Florida is named the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and Ben Hill Griffin Jr. was her grandfather.

There is no honor more sacred in the states of the South East Conference than to have your name on the football stadium in your home state university.

Katherine Harris is intelligent and a millionaire in her own right. In addition to her BA from Agnes Scott College, an excellent liberal college for Presbyterian ladies, and MPA in International Trade from the Kennedy School at Harvard, she studied in Switzerland and Spain. She made her own money in real estate, probably about $50 million.

When she decided to go into her grandfather’s favorite hobby, politics, there was no question in her mind that she had the right to win any office she sought in the state.

Her run for Secretary of State in Florida 1998 was nasty and she steamrollered Jeb Bush’s candidate, the incumbent, Sandra Mortham to win the primary. Ms. Mortham was an inoffensive creature, overly fond of parties and tchatchkes, but not terribly fond of accounting.

The Democratic opponent was Karen Gievers, an attorney who did a lot of pro bono work for foster children, was involved in NOW and GWEN [Get Women Elected Now], pushed for tougher traffic safety laws, and opposed tort reform.

Cruella said Ms. Gievers was a liberal lobbyist and implied she was a lesbian. It was as brutal a “shock and awe” campaign as had ever been seen. It was total overkill.

Below the fold: rumors and guesses. [Read more →]