Tuesday, October 31, 2006

For The Love Of All That Washes Up Onto The South Shore Of Lake Superior

Bu$hCo speaks. & I use the term extremely loosely. Here's a tidbit. Go read the rest. Via First Draft.
In the meantime, there are societies where people are so hopeless that they're desperate for, you know, something. In other words, imagine the type of society in which a 16-year-old kid agrees that maybe the best thing for him is to listen to an elder and strap a suicide — you know, conduct a suicide operation.

Your President actually said the above. Feeling safer yet?

Bonecrusher

No, not a wrassler, but a great bird. I watched a PBS special that had this video of this bird dropping bones onto the rocks & then retrieving them for the marrow. It was one of those moments that joined many others in a file that showed humans are not the only thinking creatures on this planet. A tool using bird, I thought at the time, very cool.
Europe's immense bearded vulture, sometimes called the "bone crusher," boasts a wingspan of nearly 10 feet, plucks meals from avalanche debris, and breeds its chicks in the subzero temperatures of the wintertime Alps. Its gastric juices register a "1" on the pH scale, nearly pure acid. Seething belly bile is a necessity for a creature that subsists mainly on weather-bleached bones.
....
Bone crushers are not especially amorous birds. The vultures are even more finicky about sex than food. They don't reach breeding age until age 5 or older, late for most bird species. They don't care much for one another's company, preferring lives of extreme solitude. They wheel in search of death over aggressively defended individual territories that typically cover 200 square miles of rugged range.
....
"It's amazing to see these birds swallowing the big vertebrae of a cow, almost like people eating popcorn," Frey said.
....
The bearded vultures lays eggs in mid winter in nests high above the tree line and densely insulated with tufts of wool plucked from the carcasses of mountain goats. The chicks hatch in March, just as receding drifts in Alpine meadows yield an abundance of winter's victims "packed in the snow like so many raisins in a pudding," as Frey put it. "This time of death for so many species is the time of plenty for the vulture."

Northland College Falls Behind

Here's a college that's taking it's environmental ethos seriously. Here in America's Dairyland, aka Wisco, Northland College apparently can't even imagine this sort of energy production. It does have a windmill that produces, frankly, not much, energy. But what do I know? I don't have a PhD. My loss, I guess. Granted, the farmers & energy company took the lead in manure electricity. Since we don't have that sort of thing going on here, Northland ought to be pushing hard for just such a facility. They would be walking the walk, as they like to say, when they are not re-inventing the curriculum

Full Disclosure: I'm an alumnus & mostly disgruntled ex-employee of said college. Once in a while I gruntle, but not that seriously.

Earl Audet stands with one of two generators on the Audet's Blue Spruce Farm in this June 23, 2006, file photo in Bridport, Vt. Cow manure is not often thought of as a fount of higher learning, but for students at tiny Green Mountain College, it's lighting the way. The 760-student school in Poultney, on Vermont's border with New York, signed up Thursday to get half its electricity from farms that extract methane from manure and use it to generate electricity for their local utility. The farm is the site of the electric company's first cow power generator, which its owners, the Audet family, fired up nearly two years ago. (AP Photo/Alden Pellett, File)

Monday, October 30, 2006

Values

Via The General.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7972/3086/1600/American-Values-e.jpg

Polls

All Good. Via MyDD.
Now 10/14 9/21
Ford 48% 46% 48%
Corker 43 45 41
other/und. 9 9 11

Webb 43% 47%
Allen 38 43
Other/undec 19 10

All W/Lnrs
Webb 48% 51%
Allen 46 46

Here We Go

Oh, boy. Deja vu all over again.
He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

More Buzz

The SideKick must be in heaven, two bee posts in less than a week.
We both live in groups and snuggle with others when cold. We both know that staying clean helps prevent disease. We both prepare food for others and leave home to get it even when we aren't hungry. We both can communicate through dancing.

Of course, there are differences.

Bees are an inch long. They copulate while flying. Each winter, the females kick the males out of the house to die.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Come On!

Hey, you Golden Golphers, get it in gear.
MN-06 (SurveyUSA) Oct. 25
Bachmann (R) 49%, Wetterling (DFL) 43%

Bee News

An old, old buzz.


Melittosphex burmensis  Image: Science

Racist ReThugs

& I don't care how many black grandchildren a person has. Again, via TPM.
Again, let's be honest with ourselves. Racism is one of the key building blocks of Republican politics in the United States. Don't look at me with a straight face and tell me you don't realize that's true. That doesn't mean that all Republicans are racists. Far from it. It doesn't mean that a lot of Republicans don't wish the stain wasn't part of their party's recent political heritage. They do. But racism and race-baiting is the hold card Republicans take into every election. When times are good, guys like Mehlman 'reach out' to blacks and Latinos to try to take the edge off their opposition to the Republican officeholders. But when things get rough the card gets played. And pretty much every time.
....
The point is that as vile as this race-hucksterism is, for my part I welcome the opportunity that Republican desperation provides, to show these guys for who they really are. Scratch the surface of 'outreach' Mehlman and he's a Southern strategy man after all. So, fine, bring it on. Cut away the veil and the mask. Let everyone come out from under their rock and be who they really are.

Let them lose their majorities and their souls.

Freedom

Altercation.
This is a democracy of dollars, not votes.

Polls

I wonder how the racist add from the ReThugs that played in TN will affect the numbers? Thanks to that moron Lieberman, Shays is afloat. That's bad. KY-04 looks promising.

VA-Sen (L.A. Times) Oct. 24
Webb (D) 47%, Allen (R) 44%

MO-Sen (L.A. Times) Oct. 24
Talent (R) 48%, McCaskill (D) 45%

MN-Sen (SurveyUSA) Oct. 24
Klobuchar (DFL) 55%, Kennedy (R) 39%

RI-Sen (Rasmussen) Oct. 24
Whitehouse (D) 50%, Chafee (R) 42%

KY-04 (SurveyUSA) Oct. 24
Davis (R) 46%, Lucas (D) 44%

TN-Sen (Mason-Dixon) Oct. 24
Corker (R) 45%, Ford (D) 43%

CT-04 (Hartford Courant) Oct. 24
Shays (R) 43%, Farrell (D) 43%

Via TPM.

Sandy West, R.I.P.

http://www.rocketcityrecords.com/chiller/SP27.jpg


Obit here.

The Economy

Molly Ivins adds up the numbers. Not so good.
Bush's version of "doing remarkably well" includes a trade gap--a record $69.9 billion in August--up 2.7 percent since July. "Short of a big correction in consumer spending, the best we can hope for is that the trade deficit stabilizes," Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital, told Bloomberg.com.

Meanwhile, what we see in the economy as a whole is an immense shift of wealth from the poor and middle class to the very rich. It seems a little painful to have to point this out yet again after six solid years of it, but these are lies, damn lies and statistics.

Just to give you an idea of how dependable the Bush numbers are, the Department of Health and Human Services put out a news release a few weeks ago telling senior citizens they will have "new options with low costs" and that monthly premiums in '07 will be the same as in '06.

"The Medicare prescription drug benefit ... just keeps getting better," burbled HHS. They seem to have been taking too much in the way of prescription drugs. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), one of the most singularly useful members of Congress, found that average premiums will actually increase by more than 10 percent next year. And for the lowest-priced plans, average premiums will be up more than 44 percent. "It is not merely confusing arithmetic, it is deceptive advertising," said Waxman.

While lightening the tax burden for the rich, other parts of the Bush economic program continue to undermine the middle class in this country. As you may recall, in 2005 the credit industry successfully rammed a disgraceful bankruptcy reform bill through Congress. It's working out just the way we expected it to: Middle-class families are borrowing more than ever to make ends meet. Most families go under if: (a) they lose a job or (b) they have a health crisis.

One attorney sums up the legislation's impact: "It's designed to make life miserable for anybody who owes money. It's a help-the-banks, squish-the-little-guy law."

Football Food

From New Orleans.

Hop, Hop, Hopping Along

Good news for bunnies.

This undated image provided by the Oregon Zoo in Portland shows a Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit.

Let's See

We're a modern nation, interested in developing the human potential. Or not. We keeping locking up people for minor crimes against no one, but lock people out of libraries. The future looks dimmer.
The board did act, however, on a vote of 6-2 to close the Roosevelt, Southeast and Webber-Camden branches, and to close the new downtown Central Library on Mondays.

Same Old

Same Old

Mr. Froomkin.

Just In Time...




...for Halloween.

About Time

It's good these lovely morons moved out of the lab & into the fray. Good for them.

Good For Hearts Everywhere

The next step in understanding the stability of love.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

I Can't Help It




Call me shrill, call me angry, but killing without provocation seems to run in the family.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Amur Tiger Time

Cutest Babies Ever


Good

I'm not a great Hillary fan, but at least she's putting a big dent in that snake McCain's veil of sainted inevitability. He is just a national embarrassment, much like Colin Powell.

Asked if they preferred Hillary Rodham Clinton to McCain, respondents gave the Democratic New York senator and former first lady a 51 percent to 44 percent advantage over the Republican Senator from Arizona. Remove "Rodham" and McCain had a 1 percentage point advantage, 48 percent to 47 percent.

Chris Rose, Times-Picayune Columnist

Just go read Chris Rose. Thanks Bu$hCo, thanks for absolutely, fucking nothing.

I pulled into the Shell station on Magazine Street, my car running on fumes. I turned off the motor. And then I just sat there.

There were other people pumping gas at the island I had pulled into and I didn't want them to see me, didn't want to see them, didn't want to nod hello, didn't want to interact in any fashion.

Outside the window, they looked like characters in a movie. But not my movie.

I tried to wait them out, but others would follow, get out of their cars and pump and pay and drive off, always followed by more cars, more people. How can they do this, like everything is normal, I wondered. Where do they go? What do they do?

It was early August and two minutes in my car with the windows up and the air conditioner off was insufferable. I was trapped, in my car and in my head.

So I drove off with an empty tank rather than face strangers at a gas station.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Just Great

Enjoy your Cheetos.
Today - 2 1/2 years later - the man, who didn't want his name or his company's name published for fear he would be fired, has grocery bags full of prescription medications and a garbage bag packed with documents detailing his many doctor visits and dealings with his employer.
....
It has been tied to three deaths and serious illness in at least 200 people.
....
...remains unregulated by the government and under the radar of doctors.
....
And workers - mostly non-unionized - are largely uninformed of the ... dangers.
....
The damage is irreversible....
....
Rats exposed to ... at levels similar to those in factories suffered major lung injuries, according to 2001 reports by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Half died within six hours.
....
"This is just an example of the regulatory system falling on its face,....
....
In Wisconsin, the workers rely solely on OSHA and are not unionized.
....
"The data we look at is often industry-developed," he said. "That doesn't mean it's not subjected to rigorous review." (Utter fucking bullshit. [ed.])

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Busy

I've been busy with stuff & I've not been particularly inspired. I did listen a bit to Bu$hCo's radio address this a.m. You know all the dead Americans & Iraqis? The latest surge of violence? Well, according to lamebrain, dumbass Bu$hCo, these are signs that we are winning. & the 4th of July occurs in November. I promise to post more tomorrow.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Oh, Gee

Now what do we do?
The American-led crackdown in Baghdad has not succeeded in quelling violence across the capital and a new approach is needed, a military spokesman said today.

Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the senior spokesman for the American military in Iraq, said that the strategy of concentrating on a limited number of highly troubled neighborhoods had not slowed sectarian violence in the city as a whole.

Attacks in the Baghdad area went up 22 percent during the first three weeks of Ramadan in comparison with the three weeks before, an increase General Caldwell called “disheartening.”

I'd use stronger language than "disheartening." But what do I know?

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Idea?

Not here.












But three years later, electricity levels in Baghdad are at an all-time low. Residents of Baghdad are receiving just 2.4 hours of electricity this month, compared to an average of 16-24 hours of electricity before the U.S. invasion. The lowest level prior to this month was 3.9 hours/day.




OH Senate

Via Americablog.

CBS/New York Times Poll

OHIO SENATE VOTE
(Among
Likely Voters)
Brown: 49%
DeWine: 35
Don’t know: 9

Feeling Safer Yet?


Feel the Bu$hCo love. This is so stupid.

President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone "hostile to U.S. interests."

Baby Buffalo


Cool find.

Not all water buffaloes weigh a ton and grow to heights of six feet at the shoulders. Some are dwarfs.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Death Be Not Proud


The son-of-a-bitch escapes justice by dying. In a Bu$hCo world, it figures.

Patting Myself On The Back

http://www.deltabilly.com/friends/images/wwoz.jpg

So I just did a good thing - I made a donation to WWOZ. It's the best radio station in the land. OK, one of the greatest radio stations in the land. & it's from New Orleans. Call 1-800-768-2414 & make a donation.



Their pledge drive is coming to an end & they need an influx of dollars. Do it.

I did it as a pledge for the future, the future of The Twins, Marigny & Lucy.


I hoped The Kid would grow up to be a fish biologist in Montana. She didn't. So now I hope The Twins will grow up to be New Orleanian musicians. If they don't, big deal, whatever they do will be great, just like The Kid. Oh, & the Son-in-law is pretty much OK as well. Good going Dad.

http://www.wmpg.org/newsimages/station_sm.jpg

Mapping The Future?

This great, interactive map on U.S. Senate races comes to BillyCreek thanks to a loyal reader, Scott. You should go read him.

Dumbass Alert

For crying out loud. Via The Raw Story.

More Polls

Via TPM.
OH-Sen (Oct. 17) Quinnipiac
Brown (D) 53%,
DeWine (R) 41%

Bush (Oct. 16) Zogby
Approve 37%, Disapprove 63%

Bush (CNN) Oct. 16
Approve 36%, Disapprove 61%

CA-50
(SurveyUSA) Oct. 16
Bilbray (R) 49%, Busby (D) 46%

NM-01 (SurveyUSA)
Oct. 16
Madrid (D) 53%, Wilson (R) 45%

PA-08 (Grove Insight-D) Oct.
16
Murphy (D) 44%, Fitzpatrick (R) 40%

CT-04 (Bennett, Petts,
Blumenthal-D) Oct. 16
Farrell (D) 44%, Shays (R) 41%

Monday, October 16, 2006

I wonder...

... if the MI Board of Education has at least one important thing to do, rather than this?

With this unanimous vote, the board sent the clearest message yet that Michigan is going to base its science curricula on scientific inquiry, not on the ideological beliefs of politicians.

The Twins

Cute baby pics here.

New Polls

Via TPM we get the following poll results. Looking good. Need some help in VA, however.
VA-Sen (Wash. Post) Oct. 15
Allen (R) 49%, Webb (D) 47%

FL-16 (Sun-Sentinel) Oct. 15
Mahoney (D) 48%, Negron (R) 41%

MN-Sen (Star Tribune) Oct. 15
Klobuchar (DFL) 55%, Kennedy (R) 34%

IN-08 (Evansville Courier & Press) Oct. 15
Ellsworth (D) 55%, Hostettler (R) 32%)

MI-Sen (Detroit Free Press) Oct. 14
Stabenow (D) 48%, Bouchard (R) 35%

NJ-Sen (Rasmussen) Oct. 14
Menendez (D) 42%, Kean (R) 39%

Good News

Square knot this, you morons.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Slow Blogging

...the last couple of days. The Twins room trim was/is calling. It is almost all scraped now. I'm proud of The Kid & son-in-law for redoing the room with the original trim, but how did I get in the picture? Oh, yeah, The Twins. They went to their first doctor's appt. last Friday. They did well. They had gained weight in the time they were home, so that was a big relief. Another reason for the slow blogging is that this is the time of milkweed. More on that later.

UPDATE: I must have made the big time - on the email acct. for this blog, I just had over 500 spam emails. Makes me all warm all over, no, get your mind out of the gutter, I did NOT, respond to the, oh, just forget it.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Well, Sure


NYT Editorial.
The Iraq war and President Bush’s with-us-or-against-us war on terrorism was supposed to frighten the bad guys so much that they wouldn’t dare cross the United States. But the opposite has happened. President Bush has squandered so much of America’s moral authority — not to mention our military resources — that efforts to shame or bully the right behavior from adversaries (and allies) sound hollow.

Broom Time?

Great numbers.

Except, of course, Lieberman(loser). Come on Ned!
Minnesota: Klobuchar (D) 51%--40% Kennedy (R)
Washington: Cantwell (D) 50%--41% McGavick (R)
Pennsylvania: Casey (D) 48%--39% Santorum (R)
Maryland: Cardin (D) 47%--40% Steele (R)
Montana: Tester (D) 49%--43% Burns (R)
Rhode Island: Whitehouse (D) 46%--40% Chafee (R)
Ohio: Brown (D) 47%--42% DeWine (R). Note: this average reflects the new Survey USA poll on the race.
New Jersey: Menendez (D) 45%--41% Kean (R)
Tennessee: Ford (D) 47%--44% Corker (R)
Missouri: McCaskill (D) 46%--44% Talent (R). Note: this average reflects the new Survey USA poll on the race.
Virginia: Allen (R) 48%--42% Webb (D)
Arizona: Kyl (R) 49%--40% Pederson (D)
Connecticut: Lieberman (CfL) 50%--39% Lamont (D)

Cornered

& still extremely dangerous. Bu$hCo is lashing out, let's hope he doesn't lash out with the bomb.
Bush's decision to lay down blunt new markers about the things he deems intolerable comes at an odd time, a phase of his presidency in which all manner of circumstances are not bending to his will: national security setbacks in North Korea and Iraq, a Congress that has shrugged its shoulders at his top domestic initiatives, a favorability rating mired below 40 percent.

But a survey of transcripts from Bush's public remarks over the past seven years shows the president's worsening political predicament has actually stoked, rather than diminished, his desire to proclaim what he cannot abide. Some presidential scholars and psychologists describe the trend as a signpost of Bush's rising frustration with his declining influence.

In the first nine months of this year, Bush declared more than twice as many events or outcomes "unacceptable" or "not acceptable" as he did in all of 2005, and nearly four times as many as he did in 2004. He is, in fact, at a presidential career high in denouncing events he considers intolerable. They number 37 so far this year, as opposed to five in 2003, 18 in 2002 and 14 in 2001.

No Surprise

Don't throw a life line to these morons.
Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, "appear to have perpetrated a fraud" on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued yesterday.

The report includes previously unreleased e-mails between the now-disgraced lobbyist and officers of the nonprofit groups, showing that Abramoff funneled money from his clients to the groups. In exchange, the groups, among other things, produced ostensibly independent newspaper op-ed columns or news releases that favored the clients' positions.
....
The Senate report released yesterday states that the nonprofit groups probably violated their tax-exempt status "by laundering payments and then disbursing funds at Mr. Abramoff's direction; taking payments in exchange for writing newspaper columns or press releases that put Mr. Abramoff's clients in a favorable light; introducing Mr. Abramoff's clients to government officials in exchange for payment; and agreeing to act as a front organization for congressional trips paid for by Mr. Abramoff's clients."
....
The groups named in the report are Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, which was co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became secretary of the interior; Citizens Against Government Waste; the National Center for Public Policy Research, a spinoff of the Heritage Foundation; and Toward Tradition, a Seattle-based religious group founded by Rabbi Daniel Lapin.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Polls

This poll is good news for those of us with brains & who've had enough. Of particular interest to us Badgers is this:
WI-08: Kagen (D) 48%--46% Gard (R)
Man, beating that vicious ReThug Gard would be sweet. Any ideas on how we can assist?

We're Winning

& Bu$hCo's strategy is really working.

Funny

Yes, I think this is funny. I do, I really do.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

The Twins Are Home

First, they came to this home:

http://www.solstation.com/stars/earth.jpg

Then to a home like this:

The image “http://www.memorialcare.org/miller/services/neonatal.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Then just like a dorm room, only with two babies:

http://www.umaine.edu/viewbook/images/dorm.jpg

Finally, The Twins are home, to something like this:

Interior home construction scene, Fulda.

with plenty of this in the ceiling, ask The Twins' Dad about it:


Chamberlin Rock Wool Home Insulation truck parked on a residential street, Minneapolis

To this room, which is almost finished:

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Even Barney's Getting Pissed

Interesting post from a Marine in Iraq. Here's a tidbit. Go read the whole thing.
Worst Case of Déjà Vu - I thought I was familiar with the feeling of déjà vu until I arrived back here in Fallujah in February. The moment I stepped off of the helicopter, just as dawn broke, and saw the camp just as I had left it ten months before - that was déjà vu. Kind of unnerving. It was as if I had never left. Same work area, same busted desk, same chair, same computer, same room, same creaky rack, same . . . everything. Same everything for the next year. It was like entering a parallel universe. Home wasn't 10,000 miles away, it was a different lifetime.
....
Most Surreal Moment - Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. I had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.
....
Most Profound Man in Iraq - an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines (searching for Syrians) if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied "Yes, you."

Pretty Birds

This undated photo shows a new bird that has been discovered in a previously unexplored Andean cloud forest, conservation groups have announced, Bogota, Colombia, Monday, Oct. 9, 2006. The bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-finch was named for the indigenous tribe that once inhabited the mountainous area where it was discovered and which committed mass suicide instead of submitting to Spanish colonial rule.

Pretty bird found in Columbia.

We used to have a pretty bird in America, the
Carolina Parakeet.

March In A Parade

This is what the military fought for? Freedom, ha.
Maine's biggest Veterans Day parade won't feature the group Maine Veterans for Peace if organizers get their way.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Feeling Safer?

Oh, sure, just a coincidence. There is no too low for Rumsfeld, et.al.
The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration’s military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.
Oh, yeah, there's also this tidbit.
North Korea today announced it had carried out a successful underground nuclear test, following through on a threat issued last week and defying repeated calls from around the world to stand down.
As Atrios says Heckuva job, Bushie.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Blog Highlights

Shutterwi has a couple of bald eagle pics. They are, as usual, great.

The Minnesota Twins have a couple of pics of The Twins in their carseats.

Mixter from Milwaukee has a good piece on Darth Cheney's visit to the region. She also loves cows.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

The Criminality Continues

Two heads exploding are better than one? When will Congress wake up?
Why conduct months of hearings to investigate how our federal government could have stumbled and bungled as a region of this country awash in destruction waited for help...so as to determine what needs to be done to prevent it from happening again?
Why bother?
Why spend weeks and months hammering out legislation and compromise to that legislation only to have it surreptitiousy signed away by one man now drunk on power and God because he wouldn’t go to rehab like it’s expected of every other normal-Joe-drunk-coke-head-American? Yeah that guy, the vacant idiot tool for Cheney and Addington's quest to expand excutive powers.
Why?
Why should one member of Congress even continue in this charade any longer?

They should all just do a Foley and spend their days in their offices, at their computers and hammer away one-handed at their keyboards engaging in internet sex. At least then they’d be getting fucked on their own terms and get something in return for their efforts.

Buck O'Neil, R.I.P.

Obit here.
Buck O’Neil, a star first baseman and manager in the Negro leagues and a pioneering scout and coach in the major leagues who devoted the final decade of his life to chronicling the lost world of black baseball, died last night in Kansas City, Mo. He was 94.





Friday, October 06, 2006

We're Winning

Here's a pic of the United States' Secretary of State arriving in Bagdhad, Iraq, for a meeting with the Iraqi leadership. Notice the flak jacket she's wearing. I thought thinks were going so swimmingly in Bu$hCo's vanity war? WTF?


According to this report, she was also wearing a helmet.
Wearing a helmet and a flak jacket and flanked by machine-gun-toting bodyguards to defend against insurgents, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came here Thursday, insisting that there were new signs of progress in Iraq and that the Bush administration had never sugarcoated its news about the American occupation.

Reminder

This is one more reason to impeach Bu$hCo, that criminal son-of-a-bitch. It won't happen until the Dems take back Congress & grow a spine.
President Bush this week asserted that he has the executive authority to disobey a new law in which Congress has set minimum qualifications for future heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Congress passed the law last week as a response to FEMA's poor handling of Hurricane Katrina. The agency's slow response to flood victims exposed the fact that Michael Brown, Bush's choice to lead the agency, had been a politically connected hire with no prior experience in emergency management.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

The Twins

Marigny in her car seat. She passed the car seat test. The Kid wants everyone to notice the long, long eyelashes.



This is Lucy, after a bath & with weirdo bunny slippers on.



Aren't they just the cutest kids in the world? Y'all had better be nodding your heads in agreement.

Complete

Stupidity. This is exactly what a person ought to expect from a ReThug state representative. &, of course, this is in the wake of a principal's murder last week.
In the aftermath of recent school shootings, a state representative has proposed giving principals and teachers the right to arm themselves with handguns.

Frank Lasee (R-Green Bay) announced Wednesday that he plans to introduce legislation early next year that would give teachers and other school personnel the option of carrying concealed weapons. The action was largely prompted by the school shootings in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Weston Schools principal was killed last week.

Photo of Representative Lasee

Another face of evil in Wisco.

You can contact this moron here:
Madison Office
Room 105 West
State Capitol
P.O. Box 8952
Madison 53708

Telephone
(608) 266-9870

Fax
(608) 282-3602

Voting Address
2380 Bluestone Place
Green Bay 54311

District Telephone
(920) 406-9488

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Slow Day

Well, not really. Worked with some kids in the a.m. Then went to Duluth, MN, with The SideKick for some stuff. He had a few errands & I bought a new teevee. I got a 34" Sony flat screen HDTV ready huge tube teevee. It weighs in at 190 pounds. Got it hooked up & running this evening. It looks great. There is, however, a pool on how long it will stay on the floor. The idea being that I have to build a stand for it. See how much support I have out there? Later. Oh I also bought a CD by Tab Benoit & one by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Help Needed

The SideKick, aka Shutterwi, sent along this link. It pays to have friends who are fellow bloggers & good thinkers. Senselessebrenner has been a major embarrassment to my fine state. As my loyal four readers will recall, he represents the hometown of Mrs. coldH2O, that's almost as tough to live down as, ...., well, we won't go there right now. Back to getting rid of a racist s.o.b. - go to Mr. Kennedy's campaign website & donate $10 or$20 dollars or a whole lot more if you're so inclined. We need to rid the great state of Wisco, as well as the nation, of this poisonous piece of human detritus. $10 or $20 dollars is less than you'll spend in the food coop. Or, let's face it, it's Wisco, a couple of hours in the bar.

Another Drowning Victim

This is the kind of thing that Ashland, WI, needs to think about when some on the city council want to cut the fire department. The desire by ReThugs to cut taxes led directly to the death of this woman. I hope they & the sheep that followed them are happy.
Gloucester firefighters took more than 11 minutes to reach a burning house late Sunday, only to find a 42-year-old woman dead inside, 1 mile from a fire station that had been closed recently because of budget cuts
.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Now Wait Just A Minute

I thought that we are fighting a global war on terror? Right? & that we need to defeat the enemy of freedom, namely the radical Islamists. Right? Like a lot of progressives, I support(ed) our efforts in Afganistan, after all, they provided sanctuary to al Qaeda & Osama bin Laden. Boy, was I ever wrong & apparently stupid. Here's what Senator Doctor Bill Frist had to say while visiting Afghanistan:
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government.
....
"We're going to need to stay here a long time," Frist said.

The senator said he was warned to expect attacks to increase. There appears to be an "unlimited flow" of Afghans and foreigners "willing to pick up arms and integrate themselves with the Taliban," he said.

He said the only way to win in places like the volatile southern part of the country is to "assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government."

"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer," Frist said. "Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won. It sounds to me ... that the Taliban is everywhere."
Emphasis added.

Happy Birthday

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Shutterwi turns one year old today. Photo blogging at its best, except for the damn little kids.

Whiskey River

& not Willie Nelson's. These ReThugs are giving gin & bourbon really bad names. First, we have this, then secondly, the boy-lover goes to rehab. Man, I drink, but have never taken a bribe or propositioned an underage male.

Now, I don't know if this quote attributed to Willie is true, but it sure makes sense to me.
”It's a good thing I had a bag of Marijuana instead of a bag of spinach. Otherwise, I'd be dead by now."

Had Enough?

Will this finally be the wake-up call Wal-Mart workers will answer? I sure hope so. Wal-Mart is a great example of the evil side of a market economy. & yet Wall Street approves & cheers them on.
But some Wal-Mart workers say the changes are further reducing their already modest incomes and putting a serious strain on their child-rearing and personal lives. Current and former Wal-Mart workers say some managers have insisted that they make themselves available around the clock, and assert that the company is making changes with an eye to forcing out longtime higher-wage workers to make way for lower-wage part-time employees.

Investment analysts and store managers say Wal-Mart executives have told them the company wants to transform its work force to 40 percent part-time from 20 percent. Wal-Mart denies it has a goal of 40 percent part-time workers, although company officials say that part-timers now make up 25 percent to 30 percent of workers, up from 20 percent last October.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Begining To Eat Their Own

& I am loving it. Hat tip to The SideKick, aka, Shutterwi. Via Atrios.
KRISTOL: Well, I hope not because it really wouldn't be the right thing to do and I think President Bush wants to do the right thing and I think he knows there's a problem. He can't probably do anything until election day. I very much hope after election day he takes a fresh look at Iraq, sends enough troops, surges the...goes on the offensive there and plays for victory because..

SMITH: Bill..

KRISTOL: it's just too important to just, you know...

SMITH: It's horrifying that you just said he can't do anything until after the election. We've got men and women over there who are dying every day and you just said that the man who you support can't do anything even though you believe he knows it's wrong.

KRISTOL: I...I...urged him...

SMITH: OK, but what is worse that? What is worse than that, Bill Kristol? This isn't working. Well, isn't that what you are saying?
....
SMITH: That's a disgusting and repulsive reality Bill you have to admit that. That we can't do anything about something that is not working and where people are dying until after our elections are over...

Watch the whole thing.

Well, Well

Seems like silence does have a price. A golden price, at that.
During the same period Rep. Tom Reynolds was keeping Mark Foley's inappropriate emails with minors secret, his campaign committee coffers received a $100,000 donation from Foley, it was revealed today. Reynolds has come under fire for knowing about the inappropriate emails for many months and covering it up to protect his colleague who has since been forced to resign.

The ReThugs = the party of torture, of adolescent sexual exploitation.