ARRRRGH! The President's Plane! The President's Plane!

Apparently some numskull in the FAA decided that it was a good idea to have a massive 747, painted in the colors of Air Force One, fly around lower Manhattan for a photo op, followed by an Air Force F-16, somehow forgetting that Manhattanites are terrified by the sight of ANY airliner flying relatively close to the ground these days, thinking of 9/11. People left their jobs, panicking as they wandered the streets, using their cellphone cameras and videos to get a shot of the next terrorist target being impacted.

The usual recriminations are going on and someone at the FAA will probably lose their head over it. Of course, this whole mess begs more than a few questions, like:

1. Why didn't someone simply make an announcement to the various media in NYC telling them about the photo op well in advance and make it sound like a good time to be had by all instead of saying "Surprise!"? They might as well have painted Osama Bin Laden's picture on the side of the 747 with the words "You're Next!" for all the good it did.

2. I get that New Yorkers are a bit on the sensitive side about the appearance of an airliner flying around their burg seemingly being chased by a fighter but, on the other hand, it WAS Air Force One (well, a look-alike, anyway) after all. You think they'd have looked just a LITTLE closer to figure that one out.

A few years ago one of the Space Shuttles was returning from a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California on the back of a NASA 747 and arrangements were made for it to use up a bit of avgas by flying over our fair city. I was coming home from work and saw folks pulling over on an Interstate overpass and realized what was coming, so I pulled over and gazed at the massive beast (which does look rather like something prehistoric mating in mid-air) and really wished I'd remembered to bring my camera that day.

It's too bad such a sight has become something so fearful instead of something wonderous.

Not That Anyone Asked Me, But...

1. Since I live in the Republican wet dream of a "low tax" state, one that Sean Hannity has praised as just an absolutely wonderful place to live, I'll try to remember that when our Legislature has gotten done with its Neo-Con cum Libertarian/Grover Norquist-aping stupidity that masquerades as an excuse for law-making which will probably gut our universities and other public schools, when all us sorry-excuses for "public servants" have to PAY the State to work instead of the other way around, make all of us swim in the next good-sized oil spill on our formerly pristine beaches because one of the Big Elephant mucky-mucks slipped in a "Drill, Baby, Drill" proposal to put oil wells three miles off the coast AND when we all start driving on the hundreds of thousands of miles of new toll roads once those morons have decided to privitize EVERYTHING in the name of "no new taxes". Sheesh. When are they going to remember that they work for the PEOPLE, not for their ideology?

2. I was fascinated to read about one of those poor families making OVER $250,000 a year, the parental units of which claimed that they'd be HARD-PRESSED to pay the little bit extra that the Obama Administration will make them pay in income taxes next year. Yup, they might have to forego that couple of weeks a year they spend in the extended family beach condo, cut back on their subscription to The NRA Today, or whatever that rag is called and, heaven forbid, maybe even cut back on their $13,000.00 a year contribution to their church. Wow. The President is SO unfair.

3. Speaking of Sean Hannity, I'd probably pay good money to see him waterboarded. He apparently claimed in some spot last week that he'd volunteer to be waterboarded for charity to show how "harmless" it really was to be strapped to a wooden board, blindfolded, have a wet rag put over your nose and mouth and have water poured over your face to realistically simulate drowning. I'm surprised that all of the interrogators at Guantanamo and the terrorists being questioned weren't just falling all over themselves laughing every session. Keith Olbermann has offered to pay a charity $1,000.00 for every MINUTE Hannity, assuming he ever gets around to putting his smirking face where his mouth offered to put it, lasts under the tortu...wait, FUN of being waterboarded. Another website apparently gives us average folks the opportunity to donate another $1.00 a minute OR, even better, ups the ante by offering to pay only IF Hannity is denied sleep for 48 hours beforehand AND/OR is slapped around AND/OR has to stand in the same position for hours AND/OR is naked when it is administered (well, I might have made up the last one). Yup, I'd be willing to have it televised, maybe even pay-per-view. It would certainly beat any WCW Westlemania event.

On Being An Old Fart

It's official: I'm an Old Fart.

I'm finding myself more and more thinking and talking out loud about "the good old days", the days when "things were done right" and when lamebrains didn't walk the earth in the massive numbers that they seem to presently. I'm probably going to start wearing Burmuda shorts and flip-flops with black socks.

Well, maybe not that far. But I've been doing what I do for nearly twenty-five years now and I'm driven crazy by others who can't be bothered to follow law and procedures that have been in place for many years, by those in authority who use it to feather their own nests instead of the common good and the seeming inability of elected officials on the State level to realize that those of us who work for the People need a proper salary to live on as well instead of being treated like slave labor.

Of course, I realize that every generation, growing long in the tooth, has said exactly the same thing, particularly about the next generation whom they look at as being mouth-breathing morons, unable to maintain the wealth and safety of the nation. Yet, every generation seems to get by and succeed, despite the whining of their elders. It isn't that I don't think that the next generation won't be able to keep things at the high level we've come to expect from Americans--rather, I think that it's MY generation that's doing its dead-level best to screw things up and leave little for our kids to enjoy.

Oh well, maybe the Republicans will put us back in the Fifties when it was safe to be white, privileged and elite, putting all those minorities (racial, sexual and economic) back in their place. Lord knows they're trying hard enough to.

Crackberry Addicts Unite!

Well, we've gone and become part of that great, unwashed horde of humanity that has surrendered to the electronic addiction known as the Blackberry. Who knows where our lives will end up?

It started when Littlest Blue started sniffing around about when our cellphones were eligible for upgrade under our Sprint contract. That puzzled me a bit, since she's always expressed great affection for her cellphone/connection to the world at large. We did go look at one of the kiosks in the local mall to see what was currently in the Sprint line-up, but I was wanting to hold out until their IPhone-killer, the Pre, came out, since there was nothing wrong with our current units. Of course, Littlest Blue's phone started having problems a week or so afterwards (I meant to examine it for signs of tampering and/or dropping repeatedly on dormroom floors), so that forced my hand and we went to the local Sprint shop over the weekend.

I know lots of people don't care for Sprint, given the postings on the Web I've read over the years, but we've really never had a problem with them or their cellphones over the years. The local yokel in the store this time was no exception, probably seeing Papa, Mama and Baby Bear walk in the door together causing him to lick his chops in anticipation of another kill...I mean sale.
Of course, I started looking at the Blackberry phones because of the bigger screen (and my obsessive need to have the newest, shiniest and generally useless technology available to me). We all ended up getting the Blackberry 8330, aka "The Curve". I happen to like the full (well, for a cellphone, anyway) keyboard and the large screen, along with the Internet access. Mrs. Blue opted for it, well, probably as much because there just wasn't a whole lot else out there to choose from, while Littlest Blue just happens to like the bling aspect of it.

Anyway, it's been a few days and I'm still trying to figure everything out about it. Reception isn't quite as good as my old flip phone that could be dropped off a cliff and still work, but the screen is still really nice and there just isn't much substitute for being able to watch an entire episode of "Battlestar Galactica" on Sprint TV while I'm sitting somewhere waiting for something to happen. I don't know if I'll be like the President and cannot live without mine, but it'll do until the next upgrade.

Random Musings

Not a lot on my mind these days, but here's some stuff going on:

1. Littlest Blue has been making plans to go to Europe this summer with a friend (and some of HER friends). As the friend has been there before and others in the group have as well, we are fairly confident that our little one won't find herself in a White Slave market being auctioned off to the highest bidder just after landing in London in mid-July. Of course, some of the prep work for this rather long excursion is falling on yours truly. I'm looking into airline fares, unlocked GSM cellphones and prepaid SIM chips and trying to figure out what she'll use for money over there. Fortunately, she's not the only person who has ever traveled over across the pond, so we do have some resources to fall back upon. She's excited, Momma Blue is worried and I'm envious.

2. Meanwhile, Mrs. Blue and I are contemplating taking Littlest Blue to Miami to see her off and then walking down to another concourse and flying off somewhere for OUR vacation. Bigger Blue is taking classes this summer at the local community college and will dog and cat-sit for us, so we can actually enjoy a vacation on our own (all the while worrying about our two out-of-pocket daughters). Maybe NYC, maybe somewhere else, time and money permitting. It'll be interesting to see how it all works out, as we've been used to having kids in tow all these years--to have our vacation all to ourselves would be, well, strange.

3. I have yet to figure out the Republican strategy so far; apparently they can't either. It sounds like Dr. Doolittle's "Pushme-pullyou" that had heads on both ends of a llama-like creature that didn't know if it was coming or going. They're always whining about the spending of the stimulus packages (yet were willing to spend like drunken sailors the previous eight years), accuse the President and his administration of being socialists (yet helped pass the most egregious parts of the bailout last year, including the AIG bonus package) and can't figure out who's actually leading them (Limbaugh, Steele or the late, lamented Bozo the Clown).

4. Our local politicians here in the Sunshine State have apparently declared war on their own employees. A prominent state senator (scion of a prominent family whose money came out of the citrus industry) talked about cutting state employees' salaries by 5% across the board, saying that "nothing was off the table" at one point, while being part of the cabal that DOESN'T want to address our many and varied tax loopholes that mainly benefit the rich and powerful who either live here or come to play, like skybox purchases, yacht purchases or feed for ostriches (well, maybe NOT the latter). Then they started talking about graduating it so that only the really well-paid lard bricks would get hit with the 5% (guys like me, supposedly). And yet, just a few weeks ago, I heard that paragon of witty political commentary, Hannity, talking on his radio show about what a WONDERFUL tax paradise Florida was, since we had low property taxes and no income tax. Yeah, and we're going to make sure that our kids all grow up ignorant and crime runs rampant in the streets while the rich and powerful can feed their ostriches on their yachts without getting popped with all those unfair taxes the liberals want to impose on them.

5. The Idiot of the Week Award, I suppose (hard to make a decision since there are SO MANY to choose from), goes to the Florida State Senator from the Miami area who, during a committed hearing concerning a law against bestiality (i.e., sex with animals) apparently didn't know what that term meant and, when the term "animal husbandry" came up, further made herself look incredibly stupid when she started babbling about someone marrying a dog or some such. Unfortunately, the good Senator is a Democrat; at least she's from Miami, meaning the infection won't necessarily get here for a few years.

My Nomination For Cretin Of The Week

Yes, my first Weekly Cretin Of the Week Award goes to (drumroll)...GLENN BECK!

I've been listening to this guy for a while, both on TV and now on his radio show, at least in the snippets that I can stand without a vein in my brain exploding. His consistantly smarmy, "aren't us neo-cons so much smarter than the rest of you" approach has been bugging me for a while, but a clip from his radio show this last Saturday is what finally put him over the top for the Weekly Cretin Award.

When I tuned in, Beck and some unidentified sidekick were discussing the prospect of dividing the country along ideological lines, with the neo-cons taking 25 and the "liberals" taking the others; Beck's theory, assuming I understood it correctly through his babbling style, was that once all of "his people" moved to the new Neo-Con part of America, they'd beat the economic stuffin's out of the Liberal States because, of course, "Free Americans" can do a lot more than those supposedly hampered by all those nasty rules, regulations and taxes. He made his first cretinous point by saying that the Neo-Cons would even take Yellowstone National Park, you know, that place that all the "tree-huggers" won't allow building and, I suppose, "freedom". Of course, Mr. Beck, who apparently was asleep during that part of High School history class, forgot that it was a REPUBLICAN President, Teddy Roosevelt, who created the National Park system, of which Yellowstone is, fortunately for the rest of us non-freedom loving types, still a part of.

By itself, the Yellowstone reference probably would have gotten him the coveted Cretin of the Week Award, but THEN Beck went a little bit further, babbling some more about how "progressives and liberals" would probably use "force" to bring the Neo-Cons back into the fold and somehow linked the "liberals and progressives" to Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and, last but not least, Adolf Hitler! How exactly was Hitler a "progressive"? Well, as Beck pointed out, wasn't Hitler's political party called the "National Socialists"? It was at that point that old Blue, seeking to prevent the vein from popping off in his skull like a 4th of July fireworks presentation, switched back over the to Oldies station.

You see, Beck, having apparently not only slept through his history classes but possibly being either (a) drunk or (b) high during them, should go back and read some of 20th Century German history. The so-called "National Socialists" were called that BEFORE Hitler even joined up with them; when he did join up with this bunch of losers, still sore about "losing" WWI supposedly because of being "stabbed in the back" by the folks at home, particularly those of the Jewish persuasion, his speaking skills managed to push him to to forefront, NOT because he was advocating "socialism" in any real manner, shape or form. In fact, a number of Germany's prominent industrialists supported Hitler because of his opposition to the burgeoning Socialist movement during the Weimar Republic AND because of Communist agitators taking some advantage of the power vacuum after the war. There is little or no evidence that Adolf Hitler ever planned on a "European-style" socialism like the Far Right is trumpeting about these days, unless you count the slave labor camps where Jews, gypsies, political opponents and gays were worked to death building V-2s and other secret weapons.

There may be plenty of possible complaints to make about the political direction the Current Resident of the White House may be taking us, but Beck's approach is exactly why the Far Right has essentially lost its collective mind and is simply throwing out mindless attack after mindless attack, preaching only to the already converted instead of attracking new followers. Even worse, the demogaugic dribble coming out of the mouths of Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity and Beck is getting dangerously close to calling for treason (remember the poll on Hannity's website the other week about which form of revolution his fans might prefer?) and may result in some some real whacko-fanatics to start shooting and bombing in this country in a misguided and ill-informed attempt to create the Neo-Con Nirvana of "freedom" that their radio-head leaders supposedly want.

What the "entertainers" of the Right Wing REALLY want is a country where THEY don't have to pay taxes on their swollen earnings, where they can lead their minions without benefit of election to follow their whims and feed their massive egos on a daily basis. "Freedom", as far as I can tell from their rhetoric, is an America that has never really existed; one where government doesn't really do anything, taxes aren't collected for anything and laws, rules and regulations (except for those supporting their so-called "Christian" theology and banning gays, abortions, immigration, etc.) are banned. They've forgotten that taxes are what has made this a civilized society, paying for schools, roads, public safety and education--getting rid of them will put it back into the Third World faster than Limbaugh could find another doctor to fill his pain-killer prescriptions--and the recent peanut-salmonella scare has reminded us again that some of those rules and regulations are there for a very, very good reason. What we need is not to abolish taxes, rules and regulations, but to go through them with a scalpel and get rid of the ones that make no sense, that do not serve the public good or that are there simply to pad someone's wallet in a special interest.

But, I digress from my initial purpose to recognize Mr. Beck as the Cretin of the Week, for he richly deserves it. I suspect it won't be the last time he gets it, but he's got a LOT of competition.

Just Doin' My Part To Stimulate The Economy

It's funny how times change so quickly. Not all that long ago, we, Americans in general, were being excoriated by financial commentators because we weren't saving anything; now, we're being excoriated for saving TOO much. Apparently the President wants us to whip out our wallets, checkbooks and piggy banks to help everyone stay in business by spending here, there and everywhere.

Well, I'm here to tell you that the Blue family has been doing more than its part over the last few months to put a little "oommmph" back into the national economy. First, we had our kitchen cabinets, countertops and three of our four major kitchen appliances replaced; then we had the Christmas of the juice-sucking 52" Sony LCD and stylish lowboy media center; next, our floors were replaced and finally (though not by a long shot) we bought odds and ends of furniture at a local Scandinavian furniture store that's going out of business. Of course, now that we've modernized and polished up a good chunk of the Blue house, we've GOT to do the rest of the place, at least according to the plans I hear Mrs. Blue muttering about in her sleep and because of how things look in comparison between the new and shiny and old and decrepit. Paint, backsplashes and other necessary renovations are in our future (and out of our savings).

The way things are going, however, I may have to put in for our part of the Stimulus Package ourselves. Now, how exactly do I go about becoming an earmark?

Things To Be Thankful For

In this age of Doom and Gloom (not helped any at all by the constant flow of bad news from every pore of the media on a hourly basis), there are a few things to be, if not happy about, then at least somewhat encouraged by here in the Blue Household:

1. I've still got a job, as does Mrs. Blue and as does Littlest Blue. Yes, we grouch and complain about the lack of raises, working conditions or individuals we're forced to deal with on a daily basis, but having a job sure beats NOT having one by a mile.

2. We're healthy. Sure, there's high blood pressure, creaky bones, sore muscles and incipient baldness (me) but nothing major that cannot be medicated or dealt with fairly easily. There's all sorts of people getting hammered with major stuff that we've been fortunate to avoid for now.

3. Everyone is pretty mellow, no mental disorders, chemical addictions or abusive personalities to speak of. We do occasionally get into arguments about minor things or fuss about household chores, but the Blues are a fairly laid-back bunch, all in all.

4. We're pretty solvent; no gigantic adjustable-rate mortgage to worry about, just a few things we've bought that get paid off pretty quickly. We did have some investments in the stock market, but we've been hammered like everyone else, so now everything pretty much goes into cash under the mattress.

Yup, things could be a lot worse. Of course, I always think that things COULD be better, but I'll take what I can get nowadays.

Last Night on TV

I actually watched a Presidential speech all the way through--about the first time that's happened in, oh, about eight years or so. Our last President's speeches made my spleen hurt after the first five or six minutes. Even the neo-con scree-merchants (Limbaugh, Hannity and their ilk) admit that President Obama can give a good speech, better than just about anyone in recent memory, even if they don't like his ideas too much.

Of course, there were those moments--like when the President said that Americans "invented" the automobile, something which gave all the scree-merchants something to cackle about, that the "Anointed One" made a mistake. Sure, Americans didn't invent the automobile, but we sure made it practical and developed the system of mass-production that made them affordable, so he wasn't too far off. I could have done without all of the jumping up and down of the Speaker of the House like a jack-in-the-box every few seconds.

Over the whole, however, the President did a good job pushing his policies and explaining the need for the Stimulus package. It didn't help that the President said that the spending would be "transparent" and that there would be no "earmarks" and that today it was pointed out that there were, in fact, lots 'o earmarks, probably in the eight billion dollar range, a small percentage of the total bill, of course, but enough to give the scree-merchants something to talk about today.

Then there was the Big Elephant "response", such as it was, by their new up-and-coming "star", Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. Why is Jindal the up-and-commer? Because most everyone else has flamed out. The Governor of Alaska has retreated to her wintry home to lick her wounds, pay a $7,000.00 settlement of an ethics complaint regarding her kids traveling on the public's tax dollar (how mavericky of her!) and make a "documentary" about how she's really not nearly as stupid as the "mainstream media" supposedly portrayed her during the campaign and, had McCain's people not "muzzled" her, things really would have been different. Rev. Huckabee's got his own talk show now and McCain is back being the grouchy old guy he always wanted to be. Nope, the Big Elephants are trying really hard to be relevant and with it, I mean, hip, I mean...well, I don't have any idea what I mean and neither do they. Their new black head of the RNC, Steele, talked the other day about the Big Elephants getting into the "hip-hop" market somehow--I doubt he's ever used the phrase before, since it was quite obvious that the hip-hop community was probably laughing its collective derriere off when they heard it.

Nope, Jindal is the Next Reagan, to hear Hannity and Limbaugh drooling over him during their radio shows today, notwithstanding the almost universal panning of Jindal's speech, even by those who like the guy. He obviously thought the President was going to do a "malaise" speech, as he alluded to such, but Obama blindsided him with a FDR-style Fireside chat in front of the Joint Session. Jindal really hit a low point when whining about how effective "Government" is by talking about Louisiana's experience with Katrina. Rachel Maddow on MSNBC literally was struck dumb by it, since he was as much admitting that his own former President and his policies were absolutely incompetent. Yup, no one knows incompetence like a Republican, especially when he's looking at his own party.

Of course, the scree-merchants all complained about how their new favorite was being mistreated by the media and how he really did a great job and...you get the picture. Look, I realize they hate the President, especially now that they and the Big Elephants are essentially irrelevant, but the amount of fertilizer they're shoveling to make Gov. Jindal look good is absolutely incredible. Get used to it, it'll be going on for the next four years.

Tonight on TV

It's the President's big address on national TV tonight and, quite frankly, I wouldn't blame him if he looked straight into the eyes of the joint session of Congress and told them where they could put all their whiny complaints and petty bickering. Then he'd turn around and belt Pelosi, kick Reid where it hurts and then go out into the aisles, find Boehner and do the airplane spin with him, throwing him into the Republican side of the room.

Really, he's been on the job for about a month and he's gotten little cooperation from the Right, but not a whole lot more from his supposed allies on the Left, since they've seen fit to load up the Stimulus Package with fodder for Limbaugh and Hannity. Of course, those two bozos, with the rest of the lunatic fringe on the Right, would have been whining even if the President had cut back every single entitlement program to nothing, cut taxes on the rich so that only the lower and middle classes ever paid anything and dropped nukes on both Tehran and Pyongyang.

It's hard to tell if anything is going to go right for us as a country anytime soon, but give the guy a chance, will ya? Lefties are saying the President isn't spending enough, Righties are complaining that he's spending too much and the folks in the Middle are simply trying to keep everyone happy long enough to let the ink dry.

Oh well; I've got to go get some groceries for the Blue clan. They'll probably include some snacks to munch on for the fun part of the evening; channel surfing MSNBC and Fox for the post-game commentary. MSNBC will probably take the Prez's side and Fox will show more clips from Gov. Jindal's response than they do of Obama since, according to one commenator, this is Jindal's "coming out party"--though wouldn't it be funny if he really did "come out"? If Jindal did that as a joke, half of the GOP would probably drop dead of apoplexy.

Random Thoughts on Oscar

I'm sitting here watching the Oscars, giving rise to some random thoughts:

1. Americans are getting their butts kicked by them dadgum Furriners in a lot of categories; why, even the host, Hugh Jackman, is an Aussie! Actually, this is probably a good thing, since most of our native stuff seems to be ripoffs of old movies and TV shows, while our foreign friends seem to be thinking broadly and creatively.

2. When these folks get up on the stage or during their interviews on the Red Carpet, they all seem to be rather normal, except for all the legions of screaming fans, the borrowed jewelry and clothing and, of course, the free swag they get that amounts to the annual GDP of some Third World countries.

3. So many movies are dependant on makeup, set design or special effects instead of good writing and acting.

4. I'm not all that keen on the SemiCircle of Five method of giving acting awards. It's rather pretentious and sounds like something from a rather pitiful Sci-Fi Channel made for TV movie about a little kid getting an award from a circle of alien elders.

5. I did like Ben Stiller doing his Joaquin Phoenix impression.

What Is It With Cats, Anyway?

Someone once described Man's relationship with dogs as a friendship, as we needed dogs as hunting partners (and the occasional shish-ke-bab) and they needed us as protectors; our relationship with cats, however, was a bit more one sided, like the cats deigned to be associated with us on a day-to-day basis.

Each cat seems to interpret their contract with humans differently. I had a big orange Persian growing up that just walked in the back door of my home when my father was coming in from bowling one night and just decided to stay. Tiger, as my mother called him (I preferred Fritz, after the X-rated cartoon cat) liked to sit in a dining room chair under cover and whip out a razor-packed paw on the unsuspecting bypassing pedestrian. He'd jump up into my bed at night to sleep with me--this in an un-air conditioned house in Sarasota, FL during the summer. It was rather like having a furry heating pad with me during the 90+ degree, 100% humidity nights. Persians, of course, shed their weight fur just about every day--did I mention that I'm allergic to cat dander?--making everything in the house both furry and sneeze-inducing. If I rubbed my eyes after petting Tiger/Fritz, I'd swell up like a prize-fighter after going the distance with Ali.
I even accidentally ran the poor cat over one day when I was going to my job at a movie theatre; Tiger/Fritz had gotten in the bad habit of sleeping under the back tire of our Pontiac and I backed over the poor thing one night when I didnt' see him. He survived, fortunately, though he always seemed to hold it against me after that.

Cats seem to also realize who doesn't like them and immediately make a beeline to torture them. My grandmother hated cats. She was with us one Thanksgiving and, in a livingroom full of cat lovers, Tiger/Fritz made a beeline for her on the couch and started rubbing up against her leg. She looked down at him with a look of pure disgust, but since Tiger/Fritz was about half her size, what was she going to do?

We were "given" a cat about fifteen years ago. Kitty, who also goes by the name of Stinker, was in a box on our porch one morning when I went out to get the newspaper. There was a note attached indicating that some poor family just couldn't afford to raise her and that they'd been "watching" us for a while and had concluded that we were "kind people" who would give her a good home. Now, being stalked by someone as the subject of an involuntary cat adoption isn't high on my list of life goals, but we couldn't just toss her into the then-empty back lot for her to become a feral kitty, so we kept the poor waif.

Now, Kitty had managed to make it appear that she's finally accepted us under certain conditions: we have to make sure that there is always plenty of "wet" food whenever she wants it, the kitty litter cannot be allowed to get too nasty and there'd better be a lap available when she wants it. Of course, your petting cannot be too affectionate, as Kitty tends to decide on a whim to take a bite and a swipe out of you without any warning, stalking off with an angry look in her eyes. She's never really forgiven us for bringing our border collie mix, Emily, home one day from a rescue society sale; she took one sniff and did her best "Bride of Frankenstein" hiss and stalked off.

At least we seem to have it better than my wife's youngest sister's family. They've got a huge black cat that's a pint-sized panther. I've only seen Midnight in passing (and I do mean passing--he runs off whenever anyone not in the family comes into a room), but my wife tells me that he likes to come into my sister-in-law's bedroom, hop up into the bed and walk around making trilling noises, but that if they are very, very quiet, he'll leave them in peace.

Kitty, on the other hand, has abandoned the idea of sleeping with us (probably because Emily sleeps in our room and likes to exercise her herding instinct), but will sit outside our door at 4 or 5 in the morning, either yowling for food or, even worse, scratching lightly on the door to tell me that it's her feeding time. Of course, my wife never hears any of this, which I suppose is her revenge for breast-feeding our two girls all those years ago.

Anyway, cats have made it pretty evident that they want us to need them but that they don't want to seem to needy--except, of course, when a lap is empty.

Will The Last One To Leave Please Turn Off The Lights?

Watching the news, right, left or middle of the road, is getting downright depressing these days. Nothing, but nothing seems to be going right for the home team anymore. Iraq is just a powderkeg with a very long fuse, timed to go off right after we take the last train out; Afghanistan is a powderkeg with a much shorter fuse; Pakistan is just about the same, but with nukes; the economy has already gone down the toilet and is headed for the sewage treatment plant and a new season of NY Housewives started up on Bravo.

I'm still trying to figure out how it all went so wrong, so fast. There's plenty of blame to go around to all the parties, but just like Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us. At some point, I suppose, it'll turn around, but just when and how many people will be hurt is still to be determined. It's bad when GM wants a pile of money from the taxpayers AND is still going to fire a bunch of workers, which seems to be rather contradictory. Beats me what the answer is.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm in pretty good shape, at least for now. Old Blue is 2.7 years away from technical retirement, 7.7 away from real retirement (assuming, of course, that the State's Pension fund wasn't all invested in Bernie Madoff and this Stanford guy out of Texas). I worry more about my daughters and their futures, but there isn't much I can do about that except to teach them about good money management (excuse me for a minute---I had to pick myself off the floor after laughing for a while) and maybe get them both AK-47s for personal protection like the NRA keeps telling us we need.

Somethin's gotta change.

The Global Threat of DIY

Yes, there's yet another danger out there, one that threatens everyone of us, particularly married men. I speak, of course, of the sirens' lure of DIY, otherwise known as "Do It Yourself".

DIY sounds so seductive; save money, show the little woman in your life how much of a man you are by DOING IT YOURSELF! No plumbers with sagging jeans showing you parts of their rearward anatomy that you could easily have done without and will now never forget; no "handymen" promising to do the job for something only slightly less than the GDP of some small 3rd-world country. You yourself can do it, says the sultry voice sotto voce, and afterwards you will bask in the glow of the admiration of your spouse, your children, your extended family and those neighbors who called in some lamebrain to complete a project that you could easily handle if you weren't busy saving the world (or working at your day job).

Well, I'm here to tell you that, unless you are that rare being who actually CAN do it yourself, save yourself time, money, sore muscles and the scorn of all who know you by letting someone who knows what they are doing, who do it for a living, do what you foolishly thought you could do on your own. You'll keep your sanity and possibly your health--though your wallet will suffer somewhat.

I know of what I speak. A couple of years ago I managed to fall off a ladder in my backyard doing something to my roof and managed to bruise both my body and my pschye, barely setting foot on a ladder since. When we had some cherry trees taken out a while back, I asked the tree service to cut the trunks into "manageable" sections for me to split and saw for firewood later; they are still sitting in my back yard, mocking me even as we speak.

This weekend I spent trying to put together a media cart for my daughter. It looked reasonable enough and I fell prey to the sirens' voice again; Sure, you can save yourself the $50.00 it would cost to have someone else put it together, but YOU ARE A MAN! YOU have been given hands and have bought TOOLS over the years! Put them to good use!

Oh yes, I have finally prevailed, but at what cost? I've got a headache, my back hurts and I hope I haven't put something together that'll fall apart at the first bit of stress put upon it (like a DVD in a DVD player, for example). I thought I had learned my lesson from this last couple of weeks where we paid out good money to have professionals install our flooring and new toilets and marveled at the good job they did and how we didn't have to spend weeks or possibly months trying to duplicate what they did in less than a fortnight. But NOOOOOO, I had to save a little money, so I also now have a bookcase to put together (which I lead Mrs. Blue to think would be done by the time she got back tonight from an out of town funeral, but it ain't happening), which will have to be done over the next week or so.

Learn, oh foolish ones, from my example.

Loggerheads Over Lincoln

It's the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest, if not the greatest President in American history. He is as much myth as man any more because of all that he accomplished and, I suppose fortunately for his posterity, his death before the problems of the post-Civil War period could become manifest.

There are times I wonder what old Abe would think if he could come back for a day in the present and look around at all he managed to save; would he recognize any of it or think that his personal sacrifices had been worth it? Would he look at the descendants of his Party, the Big Elephants, and wonder what in the world happened, how his ideals became the narrow-minded meanness of the present, the hateful biting of the hand of the Current Resident who has reached out to them.

Don't get me wrong; I know enough about history to know that Abe wasn't a saint. He famously suspended the right of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War, supressed dissent and used force to enforce the draft. His racial views would not be politically correct now, though they did apparently change and evolve as the war progressed. Still, few Presidents in our history have managed to inspire us as Lincoln did in his short time as the national leader. I'm hopeful that our current President can manage to inspire us in these tough times. He's not a saint, but then neither was Ronald Reagan, the current Republican saint, and Obama is going to be dealing with a lot more trouble than Reagan ever did, so his inspiring oratory will be needed more than ever.

I just wish the Big Elephants and their mouthpieces in the right-wing media would back off a bit and remember that they are NOT the only patriots, NOT the only Americans. They lost an election but NOT their responsibility to make this country work the way the Framers of the Constitution intended. Will the bigger minds, the better angels of their nature, elevate the debate from the Right? I doubt it, but maybe they'll surprise us all when the shit begins to hit the fan.

Dead Party Walking

While driving home to have some lunch, I tuned into our local conservative talk radio station (which would be a good substitute for a pair of paddles hooked up to a car battery in case my heart ever stopped) and listened for a couple of minutes to Glenn Beck, lately of CNN, now of Fox and his own radio show every day.

Now Beck seems to be a fairly nice guy, though the former DJ/drug abuser and/or alcoholic/Mormon convert's politics and logic escape me. He was going on and on about how the Big Elephants are going to "stay the course" against the Democratic masses over the next 12-24 months and then have to "clean up their own act and throw out the bums" from the party who apparently caused their recent troubles (I guess he's talking about the big spenders and "moderates" who snuggled up to the Dems too closely over the years, though he COULD have been talking about the crooks, the corrupt ones or the out-and-out racists who seem to still populate their ranks here and there). Then he had to go and start ranting about how if only the Republican party would get "back" to it's "conservative principles" and elect ONLY those to office who will stick with that version of their ideological purity, that they'll finally convince the vast majority of Americans to vote their way next time and bring about a new version of the old America, originally envisioned by those God-fearing Framers of the Constitution.

Which, of course, is a bunch of hogwash. The Framers could barely stand each other as it was, but at least they knew how to compromise and make deals, which is what got us the Constitution that we have, which was their real genius, NOT the made up, so-called "Christian" America that Beck, Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh and the other neo-con radio show jocks seem to think they created. It's strange to me that the Big Elephants keep thinking that if they'll only purge their ranks of the less-than-pure ideologically, they'll win all the elections; it's rather like the old Communist version of the New Man. Once all the old capitalistic urges were purged out, the New Man would be a Communist like Karl Marx envisioned--pure of heart, willing to share his all with his comrades on the commune, not having any impure motives or thoughts.

But human nature, being what it is, keeps getting in the way. Being responsible, self-reliant and paying your own way would be nice, but it isn't the way things have ever worked in this country. We'll always have those who cannot do for themselves, many times through no fault of their own, and we'll always have the venal and cruel, who are out only for themselves, who need to have someone riding heard on them to keep them bottled up so they won't hurt the society as a whole. Beck and the neo-con's faulty logic is that they can create the New Conservative Man and take over everything, when their own lives and greed show clearly that they'll never do it.

Where's a Techie When You Need One?

It's gotta be something related to age.

I've found that, the older I get, the less inclined I am to remember how to plug in the wires and fiddle with the do-dads that make the bright and shiny things in my house whirr and buzz and show the pretty pictures. After getting our flooring redone last week, I had to put back together stuff like my bright-and-shiny new Sony 52" juice-sucking behemoth (not hard, since I made NOTES about where all the plugs for the Blu-Ray and Home Theatre went) and my Dell desktop (which I did NOT make notes about or, as I should've done, taken a digital picture of the backside--the CPU, not mine--for a visual representation), so now my Dell's sound is inexplicably out, leaving Bigger Blue to complain to me nightly about it, since she cannot listen to Rhapsody while reading fan fiction for hours on end instead of working a part-time job or, heaven forbid, study, study, study for college. I tried again at lunch today to figure the sucker out and still can't come up with a solution, which means NOW I have to actually find the original instructions (buried somewhere in the Goodwill-dropoff-style-piles we have scattered in and about here and there) and READ them, then get on my back under the makeshift computer table we have, down amongst the tumbleweeds of dog hair, kitty fur and dust that's been making me sneeze a lot lately.

I used to really enjoy technology. It is still fun to LOOK at the bright and shiny buttons and lights, but trying to figure out how to set them all up is a royal pain. I had to have the Sony installed by the Geek Squad guys because the very thought of trying to put wires here and there started giving me the vapors, as they used to say many years ago.

Too many options, too many labels and too many doohickeys to keep up with. Pretty soon, I'll be back to wanting to write everything on paper and use snail mail to keep up with the increasingly small circle of folks I keep up with (sorta-kinda). It'll just be too much trouble to keep up with the pressing of buttons. Think I'll order myself a Jitterbug cellphone and curl up in my Snuglie on the couch.

Bwaah-Ha-Ha-Ha!

According to the latest news hot off the Internet, the President's stimulus package bill was passed by the Senate with a better-than-60-vote majority, meaning the Big Elephants can't do anything about it.

Of course, now all the NCYMs (Neo-Con Yahoo Mouthpieces) like Hannity and Limbaugh will probably start complaining about nothing is working the day after tomorrow and how their beloved tax-cuts woulda, shoulda and coulda been much, much better. Given that the Big Elephants had their chances since the Reagan days to make that work AND they blew a balanced budget AND a budget surplus after the Clinton days, I don't think they've got much traction anymore.

It sure won't stop 'em from whining about it, however.

Bailout Fatigue

One good thing about having been off for a week and a half getting my flooring redone is that I'm without a TV at the office and unable to watch the news shows (there being a dearth of anything else worth watching during the daytime) and having to listen to talking heads go on and on about the Economic Stimulus Package (the ESP, for short). It's getting uglier by the minute, at least according to the talking heads on all the various channels.

I'm just a poorly paid prosecutor, so I really don't understand all this mess other than it seems the Dems want to spend lots of money we don't really have and the Big Elephants would rather see rioting in the streets and the collapse of our economy rather than see Obama "win" one. It's gotten so bad that Andy Card, W's former Chief of Staff, was whining on Fox News about how shameful it is that Obama (gasp!) ISN'T WEARING A JACKET IN THE OVAL OFFICE! A sure sign of the decline of our society; terrorists and Vlad Putin saw that and, I'm sure, have been emboldened to test our young President even further.

While I don't necessarily like ALL the pork that the House Dems put into the ESP, I think Obama was right the other day to rather laughingly say, "You know, it IS a stimulus package; you HAVE to spend money to have a stimulus, don't you?". Lord knows we've got enough crappy roads and bridges, enough lousy schools and other programs that have been laid waste these last eight years, to warrant the spending on them to help things out a bit. The Big Elephant answer is, of course, to cut taxes, cut taxes and, yes, cut taxes. That'll get things moving...oh, wait...that's what they've been doing over the last few years which didn't exactly help our infrastructure much, isn't it?

I think any tax cuts or rebates will simply be put into savings and not spent on fripperies like new kitchens and flooring (as I've been doing lately) to help the economy. The high end of the tax base needs another tax cut like I need another chin and the middle to lower end of the base need something more than a cut--they need jobs and cannot wait for the Big Elephant dream of everything trickling down to help them.

Me? I've done my part to stimulate the economy; I'm waiting for everyone else to get off their butts.

Yeeeehaaaaaa!

Well, we've just spent the last week and a half getting new floors installed in the abode of the Blues. I've lost count of how many times I moved various piles from one room to another, from one side of a room to another and from the house to the storage shed. Everything in the house has been covered at one time or another with a fine white (and probably carcinogenic) powder from the guys making wavy things flatter and solid things not so solid so that wood and ceramic products could fit under them. So, now the floors look absolutely wonderful; it's the rest of the place that now looks like a drop-off for Goodwill.

We are trying to sort through all the stuff we've accumulated over the last twenty-five years of happy married life. It really is amazing to pick up the odd magazine, clipping, Christmas card or warranty for a long-gone piece of electronics and say to yourself, "Just why the hell am I keeping this? What ever possessed me to put this on a pile of similar crap and never look at any of it again until today?". So, we are trying to donate what can be donated, recycle what can be recycled and shit-can the shit-cannable as fast as possible. It'll still be a month before the place is worth inviting the relatives over to see.

Meanwhile, I'm at work, trying to keep my job until the Day--retirement, that is (as Foghorn Leghorn would put it). With about 700,000 of my fellow Americans out of work, I'd like to keep me from becoming one of their number anytime soon, particularly since it'll take until my retirement possibly to save up what I've had to take out of saving to pay for all the recent renovations. Being off for a week and a half, however, has given me the time to catch up on the various episodes of a show on HGTV about bathroom renovations, none of which, as I can tell, cost less than $19,000.00 and most in the $25,000.00 range; given that we've renovated our kitchen, all of our flooring and got a couple of new toilets (guaranteed to flush a "pail of golfballs") in the bargain for less than it took those poor saps on TV to renovate ONE bathroom (at least they can probably use their new toilets to entertain and amuse their guests by flushing a pail of golfballs), I'm pretty satisfied, all in all.

It's back to work in a couple of days, however, so it's a dull Saturday night for ole Blue. Wish me luck.

Good Times

Well, it's REALLY been a long time since I last posted. Since then we've had the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression (and might end up surpassing it) and elected a new President (I don't care WHAT Rush Limbaugh says--ANYONE would have been better than W, possibly even the reincarnation of Millard Fillmore). Lots of other stuff has happened in our lives here in the Center of the Known Universe, most of which would pass as significant events in the lives of mere mortals but are actually rather mundane in ours.

Let's see--we vacationed on the West Coast this past summer, flying out of Atlanta to Seattle, where we stayed a week in the Pacific Northwest's glorious greyness (ONE clear day out of a week, don'tcha know) with a side trip to Vancouver, BC. We then drove down to see Mount St. Helens (well, at least the clouds covering Mount St. Helens), drove down the Pacific Highway through Oregon and Northern California to San Francisco, where we collectively improved our cardiovascular systems by walking up and down the hills of that fair city. Lots 'o fun was had by all.

I had all sorts of excitement watching my savings and investments drop like the proverbial lead ballon over the last year or so because of the absolute greed of a few folks who really didn't need the extra money. Looks like Big Blue will be having to work all the way through to his 30 years for his pension (assuming the State didn't invest it all in the derivatives market) and then five more years to earn a bit more in the "get of of Dodge" retirement plan our fair State offers its massively underpaid employees. There's been a big hue and cry here about those folks who have "double-dipped" (that is, they've technically retired under our "get out of Dodge" system, waited a month, went back to their old job at probably their old pay, but with a huge lump sum deposited to their retirement account AND getting monthly retirement benefits given them). All the outraged citizenry complained to the local newspaper, but it took a fairly Republican-leaning local columnist to remind them that (a) the Legislature set this program up and (b) the so-called "double-dippers" (including a number of folks I work with) are getting paid to do the job the same as anyone else, just getting the money that they are legally entitled to. Oh well, it's probably screwed it up for the rest of us in the future, so I wasn't exactly planning to do it myself anyway.

Besides, the longer I'm at my job, the more likely it is that I don't want to stay any longer than the 7.7 years I have left to get my full benefits. I've brought in a LOT of money to my home state doing what I do, but not exactly getting rewarded in kind (and probably couldn't be anyway) and the stress level is getting a lot higher because of certain decisions being made that I don't have any control over. Gonna be LOTS of fun over the next few years and I'll be happy to be gone, I suspect.

We got our kitchen redone (refaced cabinets, new countertops) and this week we're getting the floors redone throughout the entire house, tile and wood. It's gonna be hell moving everything around, but hopefully it'll be worth it. It had to be done, I keep telling myself, it had to be done. The trouble is, there's all sorts of OTHER things that need to be done too, but we'll probably have to put those off in these tough economic times. At least we've gotten a couple of new toilets in the deal, both of which promise that we'll be able to flush "a bucket of golf balls", NOT that I'm planning on putting my gastrointestinal system through something like that anytime soon, but it's good to know that, should I so chose, our toilet will be able to handle the load.

Littlest Blue is still riding herd on the inhabitants of her "residence hall" at the local University as an RA, getting paid for the experience. She told us about the suicide of a student at a neighboring residence hall (they really don't like the term "dorm" anymore, though I certainly don't understand why) last week. It sounded like he was having problems when he transferred here recently and being away from friends and family here in our fair burg probably didn't help.

Bigger Blue is still at the local community college. She did well last semester, which is always helpful. She spends way too much time reading "fan fiction" on the computer, but as long as she's doing better in her grades, I can't complain too much.

Mrs. Blue is still in her job, still as beautiful as ever and worrying about me and my occasional stress-induced ranting. Can't say as I blame her.

Since my last posts I've discovered a couple of good sci-fi authors, Jack Campbell (a nom-de-plume) and his Black Jack Geary series and John Scalzi (Old Man's War series, Agent to the Stars, his Whatever blog, etc.). I read Scalzi's blog as much to enjoy the occasional troll (a dimwit who likes to just irritate everyone for no readily ascertainable reason other than that they are a dimwit) who comments to Scalzi's positions on things. Someone today decided to get mad simply because Scalzi asked her a couple of times to put her website URL in the proper place in the comment section and she refused, essentially because she wanted to advertise her blog.

Now, I would like someone to read this mess of a blog I publish and today's blog was inspired by my going to the site and noticing that someone actually read my last entry (way back when) and wanted to know why I wasn't updating more). You cannot imagine how that gladdened the cockles of my heart (whatever the HELL those are!). I write, of course, more for myself than anyone else, so folks NOT reading doesn't necessarily bother me, but folks who DO read it are my heros, even if you think I'm a loon.

I'll try to post more often, at least when I have something to say and can remember my Blogspot login name and password. Any comments are appreciated (well, maybe those from trolls not so much...).

Once More Into The Breach, Dear Friends

As usual, I've fooled around for about five months without posting anything.

Nice Christmas. Was able to totally freak-out Mrs. Blue by giving her a new wedding ring, cannibalizing a diamond from the wedding ring of one of my great-aunts that wasn't too out of date in cut and quite nice in and of itself and putting it into a new platinum setting with two new diamonds. She still moves it around, back and forth, in the right lighting to see the fireworks.

Budget crisis in this State exists because (a) too few tourists are coming OR (b) us greedy State employees are too busy sucking at the Public Teat OR (c) the dimwitted Republican majority in the Legislature is too afraid to do anything to the tax structure for fear of offending the folks out there who voted them in who seem to think that services (roads, libraries, law enforcement, etc.) grows on trees that the illegal immigrants harvest, relieving them of any responsibility in paying for said services.

Going on vacation at the end of May, hopefully to be gone for nearly a month out to the West Coast. With any luck and good planning, we'll be in Seattle and San Francisco and points in between during that time. I've never been on the Pacific side of our great nation, so recently illustrated in a widely-pilloried ad by Absolute Vodka for Mexican consumption as "shoulda been still Mexican". Might as well go now, since either (a) the BIG ONE will hit sometime, sooner or later, and all of what I want to see will be at the bottom of the Pacific OR (b) gas prices will be such that no one will be able to afford to travel any more.

Dear Diary

I started keeping a diary about ten years ago after previous attempts to maintain one back in my college days of the Seventies were derailed by church activities and, to be honest, plain laziness. It's a lot of work to keep one of those things up with the kind of detail you think should be in it to keep future historians busy.

Of course, nowadays, blogs seem to be in vogue and shorter, less meaty sentences, keeping pace with our TV-addled, media-shortened attention span. I actually had someone a couple of years ago respond to one of my shorter self-analyzing entries by saying that people probably didn't read my stuff because it was rather long. God knows what we would do if we all had to read and write like some of our ancestors. In the old days, long sentences (that would probably be an entire chapter in a contemporary novel) were the norm and words with more than three syllables were not unusual.

Sometimes, however, being detailed in a diary isn't a good thing. I was reading last night in my first volume, running from 1997 until 2002, about happy times like vacations with my family and getting our dog, Emily, but also about sad and emotionally wrenching times like my father's by-pass operation, the notations about his left lung filling up with fluid from time to time afterwards that wasn't supposed to be serious until they went in and found that he was suffering from mesothelioma, the asbestos-induced, invariably fatal cancer that would take his life four months later and my mother's contemporaneous suffering from a cracked pelvis that was treated by the quack of a doctor who only prescribed aspirin and Tylenol for the intense pain it caused her. I wrote in my diary about the day I ran into my Dad's surgeon at the hospital and he told me about the prognosis and I essentially collapsed on a wall and put my hand over my mouth to keep myself from screaming; reading that refreshed the pain that I felt that day and didn't do a whole lot for my sunny disposition.

I guess that's the reason we write things down, for good or bad, to relive the experience and remember the persons and the times we went through so that later, when our ever-decreasing number of brain cells start taking those memories with them into the neverworld of forgetfulness, we'll have something to fall back on.

Of course, I could just wait for the movie version.

Chili Today, Hot Tamale

We're having a chili cookoff in my office today, the first one we've had in the twenty-three years I've worked here. It may signal the end of Civilization as we know it.

Why? Well, to paraphrase the late H. Allen Smith, whose book, "The Great Chili Confrontation" has been one of my favorites since high school, a true Chilihead believes that HIS chili is the only one worth eating and that the chili of all others is slop that a coyote would turn away from. As I've looked around the various crockpots with bubbling concoctions from clericals and others lawyers in the office, I've already seen ingredients that I'd never even think about putting into MY chili (which is, of course, the best ever made by Man).

Chili has, for some reason or another, somewhat like BBQ, engendered all sorts of controversy and, occasionally, fistfights over which is the best. Texans, of course, rebel at the very idea of putting any kind of beans INTO the chili, preferring to have it, if at all, on the side. Others don't mind the beans, but will eschew all but the basics (meat, chili powder, onions, garlic and perhaps tomatoes), sticking up their noses at the wild concept of ingredients like bell peppers, mushrooms, truffles and even chocolate.

Me? I'm more of a purist, wanting to stick with the tried and true basics, though I do like beans in my chili. I don't generally use cubed meat (which would probably have me drummed out of the International Chili Appreciation Society), preferring hamburger for the most part. I used to like Two or Four Alarm Chili, which usually required one to blow his nose after taking one bite and was considered for many years as a good cure for sinus infections. However, as I've gotten older, I've discovered that my body has become less accepting of the nuclear option, so I've gone the route of the less hot, but more flavorful style. This time I've used a dried ancho chili, boiled and pureed, as part of my sauce, along with ancho chili powder and the usual hot stuff.

We'll see if the judges have the good sense and intelligence to make my chili the undisputed #1 after the tasting has been completed. If they don't, that will say a lot about their upbringing and general education in all things culinary. I may have to hunt them down.

Blue's Updates

Even more months have gone by without a rant or gentle observation; no excuses, just busy with work and family, vacation and illnesses.

Littlest Blue has left the family nest for the Fall Semester at our local State University, just a few miles down the road and in the same town. We get to see her once a week or so, particularly when she needs to do her laundry. She's enjoying herself, being semi-independant, probably a lot like I did when I first came to this burg back in 1973 to go to the same school.

Her big sister is still at home, though finally starting the local Community College (again) next semester. She's got issues, that one, and maybe, just maybe, some day she'll shake them off like a bad cold and start making some progress with herself.

Mrs. Blue had a scare with cancer over the summer. She had surgery and it appears all is well, no chemo or radiation therapy needed (or wanted). She's finally back at work, which may explain the increase in her blood pressure over the last week.

We took a family vacation in August to Maine, Quebec and Vermont for three weeks. We flew to Maine and rented a car, driving up the coast to Bar Harbor eventually. I had my first taste of fresh Maine lobster and wild blueberry pie and took the opportunity to tour a potato vodka distillery and sampled the wares of various microbreweries.

After getting a short view of Maine, we drove through the middle of the state up to Quebec, staying first in Quebec City, then the little town of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Perade and finally Montreal. We enjoyed our stay, trying out the new foods (and more beer) and learning a little French here and there.

We finally dropped back into the States by going to Vermont and seeing where Ben & Jerry's ice cream is made (by a large multinational conglomerate now), celebrating Mrs. Blue's birthday at at nice Chinese restaurant in a nearby college town and finding a mom-and-pop soda company that we ordered unusual soft drinks from. We also had dinner at a microbrewery that we were glad we found, almost by accident.

Me? I've been back at my job, nailing people to the wall again and counting the years until I can (and probably should) retire. I periodically listen to politics and get disgusted, listen to the drumbeats from the chicken hawks in the Administration about nuking Iran because they won't comply with our eminently reasonable demands that they obey us in all things and feel sad that my girls will probably live in a world where the U.S. will probably be a lesser-power in the not-too-distant future.

As the late, lamented Kurt Vonnegut used to say in his novels (or rather, had the Tralfamadorians say), "So it goes".

Dead Tired

Yeah, I know, I know; months have gone by with no posts, so whoever was reading it before has probably forgotten to look anymore.

Lessee...old home finally sold.

I'm still working with even less time to go before retirement.

Less hair than I had six months ago.

Less money in my investments than I had last week because of those dadgum Chinese...

So it goes.

Happy Birthday, Daddy

It's August 30, 2006. My father would have been 88 today and might still be around but for the asbestos-induced cancer he contracted in the automobile repair business.

The older I get, the more I understand my dad. He wasn't exactly an intellectual--it took him a couple of years to get through high school and he didn't bother with college--but he had a wit about him and was a genius with mechanical things. The smartest thing he ever did was marrying my mother, who should have gone to college and would have done well if she had, but she was the financial brains of the family and did really well with what little an auto mechanic brought in. With two kids of my own, I realize more now how hard a job being a parent is, something I didn't get as a child in the old days. He wasn't a big one for hugs or telling me all the time how much he loved me, his generation wasn't always that demonstrative, but he was there when I needed him.

I miss both my folks every day and wish they were still around to talk to. Happy 88th, Daddy.

The Usual

Well, Mrs. Blue, Littlest Blue and I had a good time in Atlanta. We survived the traffic, the multiple streets called "Peachtree" and the financial drain called Lenox Square Mall. Lots of pretty things, odd people and fairly good food were part of our experience during our stay in the hub of the South.

Life, upon our return to our fair city, has returned to what passes for normal for us. I did come back to my office and was told I'd gotten a raise on top of the one we'll all get in October, so I was pretty happy. I'm still underpaid for what I do, but it was a nice start.

Littlest Blue has left the fields of our local big public university (sniff) and gone back for the sorry excuse of what our School Board calls a "high school". No wonder the kid wants to dual enroll ASAP, even the so-called "magnet" program at her current place is so poorly run as to make the kids bored to tears. I'm not a big fan of the voucher program, so highly touted by the neo-cons as the answer to all our educational problems (since it is really just an excuse for the taxpayers to fund religious schools--"Rah, rah, GO BIG TALIBAN!"), I just want my daughter to get the education I'm helping to pay for. Lots of kids less well off intellectually than she will never learn much from the way things are currently going.

Meanwhile, Israel has stopped bombing the bejeezus out of Lebanon (at least for a little while), North Korea says it might preemptively strike at the South Korean and American troops running maneuvers in the South, Iran says it's ready for "serious talks" about its nuclear program (as long as the West kowtows to its demands, of course) and the Big W has said in a news conference that Iraq has damaged America's "psyche" (which to him probably means something like Tai Chi). Yup, life goes on.

Mrs. Blue turned....uh....39 on Saturday. She doesn't look a day over 38 if you ask me.

More Random Updates

Well, I've managed to let another sizeable block of time pass since updating this-blog-that-no-one-else-reads-anymore, so here's another entry into the blogosphere...

Went down for a conference in Hurricane Country (no, not the university, the place that's like Florida's glass jaw during hurricane season) and Mrs. Blue and I had a good time. Enjoyed a short stay in my old hometown, seeing the old homestead that not owned by us anymore, visiting my grandparents and parents at the Memorial Park and having good food downtown. We got a nice room in the hotel a bit further south with a beautiful view of the beach and the sunsets (when they weren't hiding behind rainclouds), which makes up somewhat for last November, when they put us next to the laundry room. I lost out on an annual award, but no big deal there. Came back through Tampa and visited with my brother and his wife, who showed off their new coffee house/art gallery--nice.

Bigger Blue seems to be enjoying school up in Thomasville (thank GOD!), making the increased fuel costs bearable. Littlest Blue is moving into her last week of a class at FSU, giving her her first college credits while still in high school. She wants to early enroll in the worst way and I think she's more than capable. Mrs. Blue is still working part-time and looking forward to her youngest sister's moving here (if she can ever sell their house down south).

We're leaving weekend after next for a few days in Atlanta, staying next door to the Lenox Square Mall and looking forward to touring some of the sights in the old heart of the Confederacy. I just hope I don't blow a vein dealing with the traffic up in Rhett Butler's old haunts. I need the relaxation; too many nutcases lately to deal with.

Maybe I'll start writing more creative stuff again one of these days. Just gotta get in the mood for it.

Random Updates

Another couple of months have gone by without my updating the oh-so-important aspects of my life to the by-now-not-reading-anymore public.

My parents' house in Sarasota finally sold.

Bigger Blue decided to go back to school, this time a small college in Thomasville, GA, just up the road (and beaucoup gasoline in the tank).

Littlest Blue is enjoying her time off from high school. Good grades as usual. She's gotten her standard Driver's License finally, though Momma Blue and I don't plan on her driving anywhere solo just yet.

We survived Tropical Storm Alberto with no damage, although the winds that made the trees creak woke me up at 1:39 A.M. and kept me up worrying about fragile limbs coming down all over the place most of the night. Of course, last night, with nary a breeze to worry about, a cherry tree limb came crashing down into the back yard. At this rate, I told Mrs. Blue, we won't have to pay the tree service that's coming out next week a dime.

I've been nominated for a new annual award at our annual Conference, due to take place next month at a nice resort in South Florida. Some of the great honor of it all has worn off since I found out that just about no one else has been nominated so far. Maybe the lobbying group that's sponsoring it will attach a cash prize to it. I should be so lucky.

We've hit the 2,500 mark in U.S. casualties in Iraq and the U.S. Congress seems to be more worried about gay marriage.

I finally figured out last night why my DVDs were playing in black and white instead of color.

Father's Day is coming up Sunday. I still miss my father, who died in December, 2000 of mesothelioma, and wish he were still here. I think he would have been if the SOBs who knew of the dangers of asbestos had given guys like him proper warning.

Well, at least now I don't feel so guilty about not updating things for so long.

Fond Fairwell

Well, it's apparently over with. The house I grew up in finally sold today, my brother calling to confirm the signing of the papers this afternoon. I'm pretty sure that the three lots that made up our property will be split up, the old 1926 house and the detached garage demolished and most of the old orange, avocado, mango and other trees will be pulled up and thrown into the landfill.

It's a bittersweet event for me, but then most events are. I've always tended to get emotional over inanimate objects with no perceivable soul. I've said goodbye to a 1971 Ford Maverick, a 1978 Pontiac Grand Prix and our 1998 Toyota Sienna over the years and gotten misty-eyed each time when I bade them fairwell. The house is a little different, granted, having been in our family since 1944, first purchased by my grandfather, then my parents after his death in 1948, then sitting silent and empty since my mother was moved out to a home up in Tampa after my father's death. Still, perhaps it is a bit foolish for me to get sentimental over a tiny (by today's standards), un-air conditioned, dusty old relic with jalousy windows and a single bathroom that was certainly not soundproofed.

I'll certainly enjoy the half of the sale proceeds (after taxes, of course) that I'll be getting soon. I'm sure my parents never would have guessed that the old place, in a run-down, ungentrified neighborhood in Sarasota, would ever have sold for what it did today, but I think that, wherever they are, they're happy that it did, just about the last asset they can pass along to their two sons to help with their financial security. After all, they were the soul of the old place.

Eating Out

Oldest Blue shocked us all last night by asking for us to go eat out "as a family". Of course, it was a ruse to simply eat out as opposed to eating something I might throw together, which lately has been tomato soup or some such concoction, since I've been under the weather for the last week or so. Anyway, we decided to honor the request and hit the road.

We went to a local Italian eatery which we've enjoyed now for a while and seated ourselves at a booth. The waiter was a very nice young man who took our orders promptly and brought them back pretty quickly. In the meanwhile, we did our family bonding thing, talking about odds and ends of things.

The food came and was rather here and there in terms of quality. It all LOOKED good at least. Littlest Blue had gotten manicotti, taken a couple of bites and declared that something was not to her liking. Mrs. Blue took a bite and agreed with her, so I took the next bite and figured out that there was a bit more than the usual amount of fresh parsley in the cheese stuffing. It was, I agreed, a bit off-putting.

My meat lasagna was just about that; ground beef and lasagna noodles, not much in the way of cheese (except on top) or sauce (not even as much as they've usually put around the perimeter of the noodles). Usually lasagna has layers of sauce, cheese, meat and noodles repeated three or four times. This one seemed to be noodles, some meat, noodles, some more meat and finally topped with some cheese. It was OK, but for the money we paid it should have been a lot better. My garlic bread (little pizza rounds with cheese and garlic) was much better, as was my salad. Mrs. Blue's salad and bread sticks (same thing, just no cheese) was also quite good, as was Oldest Blue's calzone.

Oh well, at least I'll get some money back for college expenses, since this place contributes to UPromise, which puts a percentage of the bill into a college savings account. We're probably over $160.00 by now; that'll pay for a book (maybe) by the time one of the girls goes to school.

Back Again

I seem to keep taking time off from updating the narrative, but things just keep getting in the way. Everytime I think about doing something, either my ADD kicks in and I shift gears to some other thought or I just keep thinking that I don't need to be doing another long rant about how stupid some situations around me continue to be. Maybe this time I'll break it down into smaller, more digestible parts.

I like jellybeans...but why, oh why in God's name do they persist in making licorice ones?

Tom Delay is gone...at least from the current political scene, but I'm sure we'll get more than enough of him when his cases finally come to trial and his crookedness is finally revealed in all its glory.

I haven't been to Utah since I was a kid...but I'd like to travel there if for no other reason that to get myself a six-pack of "Polygamy Beer" with the best tag line I've seen in a while; "Why stop at just one?".

Some of the best political commentary is on bumper stickers...like the one I saw the other day that said "Don't blame me, I didn't vote for him, his daddy or his brother!".

Just because you find it on the Internet doesn't mean its true...as someone in my office found out recently when they posted something purporting to be a "1895 8th grade test" that they downloaded, printed out and posted in the Men's Room bulletin board (I'll let you figure out just where THAT is!). The test was supposed to be from Salinas, KS and was so hard that someone with three or four doctorates today probably couldn't finish it. Fortunately, someone else looked up a site that deals with "urban legends" and found out that the "1895 test" post is almost certainly faked by someone with either a sense of humor or an agenda about "Why Johnny Can't Read".

Personal updates: Littlest Blue is sick as a dog with the stomach flu, Bigger Blue is still looking for a job, Mrs. Blue loves the new van and is looking ever forward to her youngest sister's return to town and I'm still waiting for my parents' house to sell and waiting to get over my current bout with sinusitis or just plain old Tallahassee pollen. Had to pay for a new capacitor for our heat pump (I looked "capacitor" up in an Internet dictionary--seems it comes from a Latin word for "costs an arm and a leg") and looking forward to paying for our TV to be repaired, which I'm sure will be quite reasonable (i.e., more than I want to pay, less than it would cost to buy a new one).

Until next time...

I Owe, I Owe, It's Off To Work I Go...

We got our new Toyota Sienna last week (finally). It's beautiful and our garage has that new car (i.e., chemical) smell in the morning. It's amazing to see the differences in design eight years have made from our original Sienna. This one handles better, supposedly has better gas mileage despite having a bigger engine and a lot more cupholders and assorted gewgaws thrown in for our convenience. Of course, now we've got to start paying for the remaining two-thirds that the insurance didn't cover.

Youngest Blue is on Spring Break with the family of one of her school friends. She left Friday and won't be back until the end of this week. She's staying at a Marriott time-share community down in Orlando that we had to sit through a ninety minute (and more) sales pitch years ago in order to get free tickets to Universal's theme park. Nice place; we just didn't have the money all those years ago to fund our "vacation lifestyle" in the manner they wanted us to.

Speaking of vacations, we're thinking about going to Montreal this year. I've started looking at websites and books about the cultural center of French-speaking Quebec. When I was very young my parents took my brother and I up there one summer on vacation--there was a family they'd known shortly after their wedding who'd been nice to them, so we went to visit. I vaguely remember some things, mainly the cathedral, wooden slides at a playground and a very cold swimming pool. Maybe this trip, if we go, will be a bit more memorable.

Mrs. Blue and I talked this weekend about what we're going to do with all the pictures and memorabilia we (mostly I) have in the hopefully distant future. It's unlikely our daughters will want to inherit and lug stuff around from place to place in their futures, which begs the question of why take photos of vacations anyway, if they are just going to be tossed someday into the trash heap post-funeral? Some stuff is undeniably historical and will get donated to a deserving museum or university, but most of it is of people and places that my girls have no memory or interest in, except to see their old man when he had hair and their grandparents when they were young. A photograph does freeze a moment in time, but I suppose all moments in time must melt eventually into the liquid of the past.

Boiled Down

The current political debate (if you can really call it that) in this country has stagnated to the point that nothing is really being discussed.

On the one hand you have the Republicans who, because of Karl Rove, have both a great strength and a great weakness in their present style of distilling everything into a literal "Good/Bad" terminology. For example, Taxes BAD! Small Government GOOD! Abortion BAD! Iraq War GOOD! Gays BAD! Well, you get the idea. It's a strong technique because it simplifies the discussion for those folks out there who really don't want to think much about anything. It's also a great weakness because it has reduced the discussion to the lowest level, a level that doesn't allow any real expansion of thought or maturity in dealing with the very real problems this society faces.

Do I like paying taxes? No more than then next guy. But taxes pay for the military, for the infrastructure (roads, sewage systems, etc.) and services that we've all come to depend upon. Get rid of all taxes and yes, we'll all be the richer for it for a short time, then we'll be complaining about having to pay a patchwork of private companies to do all the things that local, State and Federal governments do now (of course, maybe that's the real goal--privatize EVERYTHING!). Abortion also isn't my preferred way of keeping down the population and preventing unwanted pregnancies, but to simply say that no woman should ever have the right to abort a pregnancy for any reason is unrealistic and will simply create the same back-alley trade that existed before Roe v. Wade. The Iraq War did get rid of a brutal dictator, but it also created a power vacuum in Iraq that has allowed the growth of sectarian violence that will probably lead to a civil war, the way things are going lately. And NO, giving gays some rights in society to common ownership of property, among other things, will not cause the traditional family structure to fall apart.

But our Big Elephant friends will usually call anyone saying anything different either a LIBERAL or will say someone dissenting from the party line a "coward" or a "traitor". Our country was built on vigorous and lively debate, both verbal and in print, and any attempt to stifle that kind of discussion is both foolish and short-sighted. Rove and his disciples (and believe me, even in local elections, his style is being used by Republican candidates) have only succeeded in keeping Republicans, particularly the moderates, from presenting common-sense approaches to problems that might be acceptable to all sides.

But again, has my party, the Democrats, got anything better to present? Not lately, given the level of rhetoric. As most commentators point out, who knows exactly what the Democrats stand for? It's simple; they don't, because they are really two or three parties disguised as one that no longer has a single direction. You've got the traditional Northern Liberals with their positions, the Southern Conservatives with their positions and then the slightly muddle-headed Moderates like me who'd love to have a seperate party to run to if there was a chance in hell that someone with any national reputation would lead it. Nope, until the Dems either kiss and make up and let new leadership move the Party in one direction or split up and let the various factions go their own way, nothing much will happen.

Somehow, someway, the debate has got to move from the Republican side of the board.

I'd Give My Right Arm To Be Ambidextrous

It's Monday. No van yet

My brother-in-law (actually, Mrs. Blue's brother-in-law, since he's married to her sister; I guess that makes him my brother-in-law-in-law?) and I went to a local "pub" last week for a beer. He's back in town, working for a State agency as a lawyer after a private practice in the Orlando area, and living with the in-laws for a while before my sister-in-law and one of the nieces move back up here in the summer. He's been into beer quite a bit longer than I have and I can truthfully say that I've learned a lot about both the beer world and that of stronger spirits by having known him.

Anyway, this place is quite literally a hole in the wall. Apparently it shares business space with a used car lot (well, not exactly a lot, more like a postage-stamped sized parking lot in front of the pub, so there isn't a lot of parking for us patrons). You wouldn't be going there for the ambiance, as there is none to speak of, unless you call the odd mix of bar and used car parts ambiance. Most of it has been there for quite a while and not well maintained. But, it does have a huge selection of beers and ales, probably about as big as anyone in town and more than most. Anyway, we ended up having one of his favorites, Fuller's ESB, an English ale. It was quite good and had quite a bit more flavor than most of what Americans settle for in such things. One glass was quite enough for me.

I noticed that Ann Coulter was coming to speak to some campus organization at the local big university sometime soon. I've half a mind to go just to feel my blood pressure go up. She is one of those uber-cons (folks way to the right of the Neo-Cons) who are making money out of polarizing the political landscape with their intense hypocrisy. There was a big deal in South Florida a few weeks ago when they found out that she'd put her realtor's address on her voter's registration (which just happens to be in a different district than her house) and she ended up voting in a local election in the wrong district. Oddly enough, the Republican Election Supervisor for the area decided that Coulter didn't break the law, so he didn't file any complaint against her with law enforcement. I noticed our friends at FOX News didn't bother to pick up THAT little news item. So much for fair and balanced...

Yup, the Republicans are running scared these days, since George W. is a lame duck and very unpopular outside of the lunatic "base" of right-wing church goers and their well-paid preacher parasites. They are terrified of the November mid-term elections and fear that their stranglehold on the Congress might be lost. I'm not sure, however, that they should be afraid, since the Democrats apparently cannot punch their way out of a wet paper-bag these days. All they have any more is "Screamin'" Howard Dean, "Alky" Teddy Kennedy and "I'm Really a Conservative" Hiliary Clinton doing their talking for them and, believe me, even I'm not impressed. The Big Elephants have done such a good job of leaving the Donkeys punch drunk over the last few years that the Northern Liberal side and the Conservative Southerners cannot communicate any more and, therefore, cannot put out any kind of coherent message to the masses (who are apparently more scared of gay marraige and Arabs blowing up the local City Hall than they are of losing their basic constitutional rights, their dignity on an international scale and essential services that only a government can provide, so they've been siding with the Elephants).

Me? I just keep doing my job (and pretty well, lately), keep my head down and post the occasional anti-Republican jibe on the men's bathroom wall in our office. Someone's gotta let them know us Dems are still around...

Same-O, Same-O

I haven't posted for about a month; things are generally the same except for the fact that our beloved 1998 Toyota Sienna got totalled in a wreck with a 90-year old lady driving a Ford Focus wagon. Mrs. Blue got a little black-n-blue over it and littlest Blue got sorta-kinda traumatized by it (kept telling me over the telephone that "It wasn't that bad" and "We were able to pull over to the side of the road" when, in actuality, the van was literally pushed over into a culvert!).

My insurance company paid out roughly $9,000 for our pristeen eight-year old van, that had kept us safe to Washington D.C., Colorado and Chicago. We've got a new one on order, which should be quite nice, though I'm having to start paying for it a little bit ahead of schedule (of when I wanted to be paying for a new car). Well, at least about a third of it is already paid for.

The Legislature's in session and, of course, any consideration of guys like me getting a pay increase to make up for the lower-end guys getting bumped up a few years back is already DOA, according to the Speaker of the House (who managed to get HIS local boy a bump-up in budget outside of our Organization's pay plan, making him the 2nd-highest overbudgeted agency in the bunch). Politics as usual. Ain't America great?

Just One Of Those Days...

My work has good hours and bad hours...

I was on the telephone yesterday afternoon for a good half hour with a frantic daddy of a soon-to-graduate student who I'm in the process for prosecuting, trying to explain how easy it would be for the case to go far, far away. Today, the son comes in and starts nearly hyperventilating, trying to decide what do to. I have to basically hold his hand and explain the facts of life to him three or four times before the glimmer of understanding pops into his eyes.

My brother, handling the sale of our parents' home, called this morning to tell me that the deal was off because the prospective buyer couldn't get his financing in order. This afternoon, he calls and tells me that the deal is back on because the bank was concerned about environmental impact of an old propane tank and an old oil fuel tank in the yard; the buyer is apparently so eager to buy the old place that he's willing to take the tanks out at his own expense and resubmit the deal to his bank. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, since mentally I've been figuring out fun and exciting ways to spend (and invest) my half of the proceeds.

My process server won lunch for twenty from a local barbeque place. My fingers still smell like the ribs I had for my portion and it reminds me that I really have to go work out tonight at the gym. Mea culpa, mea culpa....

Long Time, No See

Time flies, particularly during holidays. I, master of procrastination that I am, kept putting off updating my usual verbose commentary on life around me from November 2, 2005 until today. Guess I just didn't have anything screaming to get out of me to say.

Not much has changed. We're still in Iraq, soldiers and innocent civilians are getting blown up by roadside bombs (IEDs in military vernacular); the President is still telling us that all the money and lives we're expending in Iraq will "keep us from getting hit here" (to quote him from last night's State of the Union speach) and that anyone who questions his policies "has no strategy" (again, to quote him directly). Of course, now the NSA is listening in to our telephone calls without recourse to obtaining a warrant through a special court established for that specific reason (because, to listen to the Bushies, it takes too long to follow the law and the bad guys will hang up first), the Palestinians exercised their democratic right to elect Hamas into power, a group that really hates Israel and has been devoted to terrorist activities over the last twenty years or so and Iran has decided that it's going to have nukes whether we or the Europeans like it or not. On the home front, Katrina victims are still trying to figure out how to rebuild their lives without much help from FEMA and the radical right has finally gotten one of their own on the Supreme Court, Sam Alito, who'll probably vote to OK torture and warrantless wiretaps the first chance he gets after helping put the screws to Roe v. Wade.

Like I said, nothing much has changed.

Me? I and Mrs. Blue have been going to a local gym for the last six months, trying to get healthy. It's gotten really crowded there, however, since January 1, with all the guilt-tripping New Years resolutionists trying to lose fifty pounds by Spring Break. I've had to just about abandon the weight machines in favor of elliptical workout machines and the track. At least I've managed to work my way up to five or six miles a night, three or four times or more a week. Don't know that it's done me any real good, but at least I'm not sitting around the house feeling guilty about NOT doing it.

It looks like my late parents' house is finally about to sell. My brother is handling all of that mess. It's only been three years since our mother died and we cleared the place out, but the delay seems to have really helped the final price tag because of the real estate bubble. It'll be sad knowing that the old place, which has been in our family since 1944, won't be there any more. No one in their right mind would try to refurbish it and it isn't exactly a Frank Lloyd Wrightish-looking place that someone would haul off for preservation purposes. Nope, it was built in 1925 and has probably been rode hard and put away wet. It survived hurricanes and termites. As uncomfortable a place as it was, particularly during the summer and winter (no air conditioning or central heat), it was home to me for my first seventeen years and will always be in my memory.

As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes".

We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us

It's rather fun reading about how the Republican leadership of the Senate was shocked and dismayed that Harry Reid would invoke a rule requiring a closed session over the "investigation" of whether or not the Bush Administration manipulated (i.e., LIED) about the information used to justify the invasion of Iraq. According to Dr. Bill, the Republican Majority Leader (probably soon to be indicted himself for a Martha Stewart-style insider stock trading, then lying about it scheme), this was just a grandstanding act by Reid and he'll NEVER be able to trust Reid again.

I guess what's fun about it is to see the utter hypocrisy of the Big Elephants as they are in crisis mode. Harriett ("George Bush is the most intelligent man I ever met") Meirs got eaten alive the by extreme right wing of the party (aka the American Taliban), "Scooter" Libby's been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for perjury (and NOW the Elephants are talking about "presumption of innocence"--where was that during Whitewater and Clinton's impeachment?) and now the Democrats have decided to play hardball, kicking the Elephants right where it hurts as a means of getting them moving on looking into things they obviously don't want coming to light. On top of all of this mess, now we find out that the CIA has got "secret" prisons around the world where they keep high-end terror suspects and, even worse, have official sanction to use interrogation techniques that we would probably scream and yell about if someone else used them on our troops captured in wartime.

Yeah, I know, these guys are bad, they're evil, they like blowing up innocent civilians along with our troops, but why are we turning our heads to legalized torture? That's why the recent scandals in Iraq and Guantanimo are so shocking, because the world looks at us and EXPECTS us to follow the rules that we want followed with our guys; when we don't follow the rules and it gets out, we look even more hypocritical and foolish than usual. The Big W blew his, and our, chance to look good in the world after 9/11 by using the World Trade Center disaster as an excuse to take out Saddam Hussein and get a toehold in the Arab world. First it was WMDs, then it was to "liberate" the Iraqi people and set up and spread "democracy" in the Middle East, now the rationale seems to be about fighting all these terrorists that have magically popped up in Iraq (who weren't there before we invaded, by the way, no matter what W and his cronies have said).

Now right-wingers are saying that the recent statements by the new Iranian hard-liner President (yes, he WAS elected, believe it or not) that Israel needs to be "wiped off the map" is yet ANOTHER reason for us to have gone into and stayed in Iraq, so that we can eventually encourage democracy there (i.e., a government a bit more friendly to us). How about this scenario, that Iran, faced with an openly hostile and bellicose U.S. on its border, with hard-liners talking about invading Iran to prevent the spread of nuclear material and weapons (sound familiar?), decided to elect someone who wanted to stand up and let the infidels know where they stood? Is it possible that, had we NOT invaded Iraq and opened an outpost there, that the Iranians MIGHT have moved more and more towards the center? That maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't feel so threatened?

According to W and Condi, the answer to that is NAAAHHHH.