Paradigms...where shift happens!

First Snow!

It's here, our first snowfall for the winter of 2007-2008 started a couple of hours ago. Judging by the traffic reports from the Northern Virginia/Washington DC area this is the first time some of these drivers have seen snow!

I haven't looked at the TV yet today. I know I'm not missing anything there except the young and pert assignment reporters delivering breathless video cutaways every 10 minutes as their camera crews focus on the same sign post or bush as in the last cutaway to impress us with the accumulation which as best I can see right now is close to zero. But I know the reporters are out there just in case this becomes a real event and not an imagined one.

Bottom line is if you read about anything at all happening in my area of the republic as a result of this snowfall you can rest easy that it was the ultimate slow news day around these parts.

Border security

Many of you may have missed this little news gem from upstate New York. There was a fire Sunday night at the Anchorage Restaurant in Rouses Point, New York. Rouses Point is about 1.5 miles south of the Canadian border. Many of the fire departments along the Canadian border have mutual aid agreements with their Canadian counterparts and have had them for years. When the units that responded to this fire from Rouses Point radioed for a mutual aid fire company they fully expected the relief manpower and additional equipment to arrive within the usual time frame. They did not count on the reported eight to 15 minute delay at the border while American customs officials checked them for passports of all things. The responding firefighters had their ID cards but were told that they were not good enough since they didn't show dates of birth or an expiration date.

"I've been crossing this border for 30 years, and the only question we were ever asked was: Where's the fire?'" Lacolle Fire Chief Jean-Pierre Hebert told the Toronto Globe and Mail this week. (From The Plattsburgh Press Republican 11/16/07 See the entire text of the article cited below. )

What is it about a firetruck with red lights and siren that is so difficult to understand? It would appear that the Feds training regimen does not include a unit on using common sense. The restaurant was reportedly a total loss.

MONTREAL (CP) -- The Lacolle, Quebec, fire chief is concerned about cross-border Mutual Aid efforts after six of his volunteer firefighters were delayed at U.S. Customs this week.

The fire crews were on their way to help with a Rouses Point fire at the Anchorage restaurant, which was destroyed by fire overnight Sunday.

In the past, officers at the Rouses Point crossing have waved the Canadian fire trucks through.

This time, a customs official delayed them by between eight and 15 minutes, according to differing accounts.

The firefighters were rushing to Rouses Point as part of the long-standing Clinton County Mutual Aid agreement.

"I've been crossing this border for 30 years, and the only question we were ever asked was: Where's the fire?'" Lacolle Fire Chief Jean-Pierre Hebert told the Toronto Globe and Mail this week.

"This time, we got someone zealous. He told us we'd need our passports next time."

Tightly bound border communities have bailed out one another in emergencies for decades, with first-responders crisscrossing the boundary hundreds of times with minimal scrutiny.

Now fire officials wonder whether increased border security cost the firefighters precious minutes. Hebert said fires double in intensity about every minute.

The six Quebecers showed their firefighter photo ID, but were told it wasn't good enough because it didn't have a date of birth or expiration date, Hebert said.

"It's gotten harder since 9/11. We don't blame the United States -- they say they've got to protect their borders -- but we were going over there to help.

"When you're answering a call at midnight, all you think about is putting on your pants. You don't think about taking your wallet."

See also the related story on CNN: Rouses Point Restaurant Fire

Barry Bonds

I have read a bunch of editorials and sports commentary about Barry Bonds claiming Hank Aaron's home run record. The aim of subjecting myself to all that redundant sports punditry was, I suppose, to find some rationale for being excited about his "achievement". It's just not there for me though. I love baseball even though it is slow and many will say it's boring. If all you are looking for is action like those little slivers of energy you see on the football field between the snap of the ball and the ref's whistle I suppose it can be called boring. Maybe it's as boring to you as soccer is to me.

I grew up playing baseball, sometimes fairly well for my age and sometimes not so well as illustrated by my high school sports career where I spent a lot of time on the bench because I was a terrible hitter. There is a precision and grace to a baseball diamond filled with players at their positions. There is  a mental dimension to the spectacle of a well played game regardless of who wins. It speaks of summer, it speaks of kids imagining themselves to be the next baseball legend. It is a feeling as much as anything I think and perhaps that is why so many people seem so ambivalent about it as "America's National Pastime".

How many of the kids who watch the game and play it will aspire to become the next
"Barry Bonds"? Not many I think. It's true that allegations about Bonds using performance enhancing drugs remain unproven and it's also true that at the time that he allegedly used them, there were no rules in baseball against them. The baseball fans like me though will always place a mental asterisk by Bonds' record and that's truly a shame for such an achievement, a shame but an appropriate reaction nevertheless because if he did use them the record should be erased. Even if he did not, the blemish is the same and that asterisk will still be there. 

I remember the night I saw Cal Ripken break Lou Gehrig's consecutive game record. That night I felt elated to have witnessed such a milestone, even on TV. I knew I would feel that way but I am still reading, trying to find some reason to care about this new record. 

Virginia Tech Shootings

Thirty-two are dead so far at Virginia Tech after today's shooting rampage by an as yet unidentified gunman. Kids, just kids, who were there to try and get an education. So far there is no breakdown between students and faculty deaths. This is being reported as the largest mass shooting incident ever in this country. If you do a Google search on "school shootings" you will find a time line of school shooting incidents since 1996. I ran the numbers and there have been 67 killed and 111 wounded since February, 1996. That doesn't count today's toll in Blacksburg.

The TV talking heads are already taking the aftermath reporting into the realm of the question of gun control and and going after the Virginia Tech officials about what they did or did not do. It's a natural enough part of the reporting I suppose but it seems a lot like hair trigger head hunting to me to be doing it so quickly while the authorities are still trying to sort out what happened. I wonder how many lawyers are out there training their cross hairs  on the Commonwealth of Virginia. 

Not 5 minutes but a microslice of time

Yesterday evening on The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge near Washington DC.
Headed outbound towards the Virginia side of the Potomac River.
I had missed the turn for the Kennedy Center where we had tickets for the 7:30 PM performance of Romeo & Juliet by the Kirov Ballet and we were stuck going across the bridge, looking for a place where we could loop around and head back into the city to try again, like a missed approach while landing a plane.
It was only a moment, a slice of time with no real significance to every car on the bridge but one.
I heard a metallic sound behind my van.

For some reason I looked out my rear view mirror and saw a moment of real significance for whoever was in the SUV I saw cartwheeling in the traffic behind me. That's the first time I have ever seen a moment like that as it happened. It's frozen there in my memory...no, it wasn't in slow motion like the moviemakers would have us think. This vehicle was rolling, no spinning is more like it...spinning time after time along it's long axis and even bouncing a bit as the side of the car hit the pavement. I'm sure I could hear the sound of it, even the crunching sound of the glass as the windshield and side windows disintegrated with the impact of each contact with the roadway.

By the time we had turned and come back inbound on the bridge there were emergency vehicles everywhere. I'm so glad I wasn't behind that vehicle. We surely would have been involved in the wreck just because the spectacle would have frozen our attention on what was happening.

I can see it now as I write this and I wonder about the people in that SUV. Did anyone just walk away?

Happy New year, ya'll

It's on us yet again...that most special time of the year when we make promises to ourselves and others about turning over a new leaf for yet another year. It's also the time when those promises that are made may outnumber but will certainly not outlive the flood of campaign promises made during last year's the mid-term elections.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could somehow compare the two? Who will be more successful, you with your promise to exercise or Congressman Blatherbutt from Possum Breath, Missouri with his promise to honestly see to the voters interests? I'm betting on you to outlast him.

That's right folks...lock up your children and your money because in a few more days a whole bunch of new kids on The Hill will be lining up at the trough to try to earmark your money to fund the construction of a teapot museum back home or to pay for the paving of the road to Lawrence Welk's boyhood home. Makes you giddy with anticipation does it not?

Oh, and by the way...sorry about that "Ya'll" business in the title...I'm a big Paula Deen fan....

Is it curling season yet?

Maybe it's just my twisted view of life but I found it more than passing strange to be standing among a bunch of Americans, while celebrating Independence Day, the day that marks our revolt against England, glued to the tube watching soccer...one hundred twenty minutes of sweat soaked anesthesia. The only way the irony could have been greater would have been if England had been playing France. (You can figure that one out on your own if you'll just assign anyone of the traditional English/French stereotypes to each country.)

I have been trying to think of an analogy for the boring part but the only things that have come to mind are speeches by Senator Lieberman or a Joe Biden interview on Meet the Press.

Now don't get me wrong, soccer has its moments. Both of my daughters played youth soccer for a couple of years and there was drama and excitement. "Will she actually kick the ball or miss it altogether?"  But this? 

And while we (OK, I) are at it, what's up with those guys who take a hit from another player, writhe on the ground in agony for a few minutes and then all of a sudden pop up and bounce back to their position? This is Oscar material folks. They would be nominated for sure if anyone could pronounce their names.

The good news is that after the championship game between Italy and France there will be four more years until another World Cup, during which time maybe the soccer guru's will do something about the stupid off sides rule and we can have some NFL size scores so as to make it  more like a real sport.

Oh, and as for the championship game...Viva Italia!!!!

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it....

AT&T, Verizon and Bell South...

...turning over your telephone records to the National Security agency? The National Security Agency tapping phones in violation of the provisions of the FISA act? Google being pressured to turn over net browsing records to the feds? What is next?

What would you have said if someone had presented this to you as a hypothetical scenario 10 years ago? Talk about a paradigm shift.

Footnote: Good on Qwest Communications for not caving in to President Joe Isuzu's efforts (remember the car commercials with the guy with the cheesy smile saying "You have my word on it!") to end run the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

If our mail is next, you can help! Start sending all your correspondence on either post cards or in open envelopes to help the government watch for mail from the "evil doers". If you seal your envelopes, you may soon be considered unpatriotic.

Osama has got to be laughing his ass off!

Censorship, Theocracy and other creepy things!

Senator Bill Frist, R-TN, is increasing his efforts to push a bill through the Senate that would increase the fines levied against broadcasters for violations of decency standards. Quoting from today’s Washington Post, the bill would increase the fine for broadcasting “obscene, indecent or profane material” from $32,500 to $500,000.

Sounds reasonable on the surface of it but consider this; even the Supreme Court has historically been very cautious about defining obscenity. Now with a potentially power shifting mid-term election comes this Senate and this House of Representatives which want to give the authority to decide what broadcast material is “obscene, indecent or profane” to five political appointees of a sitting president who may or may not know their a**  from a hole in the ground about what they are doing.

This bill is nothing but opportunistic pandering to a political faction and pandering at its worst. Think the talk of a creeping theocracy is crazy? Think again…this is just one more step down that slippery slope. I’ll bet James Dobson and Brent Bozell are waltzing with glee to their “Lawrence Welk’s Greatest Hits” CD.

Next may be censorship of your e-mails, web sites or blogs. Improbable you say? Maybe but who would have though Janet Jackson’s nipple flash would have been worth a half million dollars. It was indeed unfortunate that children saw that during a sporting program but let’s get a grip on reality here.

Politicians & Polls

I’m sure most of you have flirted with the theory that most politicians, on the state and national scene at least, have the occasional lapse in being forthright about their views. As the mid-term elections grow near people like John McCain (who I like for the most part) are scrambling to mend fences even with people like Jerry Falwell. If the senator from Arizona shows up as a guest host on the “700 Club” with Pat Robertson I won’t be real surprised.

I point out only an example of the Republicans because it looks as if the Democrats can’t figure out which way to turn. Al Gore seems to have become “Earth Daddy” and Miss Congeniality, Hillary Clinton is trying to un-piss the people she has alienated. Joe Biden might make a statement but with his verbosity it’s touch and go as to whether or not he would even be finished by Election Day.

The point of this ”equal opportunity”, “a pox on both their houses” rant is that politicians seem to not be able to state their views until the public opinion polls have told them what views the majority of the public wants to hear.

So, what if everyone in America refused to answer any polling questions at all between now and November?  When the phone rings right in between your last bite of pot roast and your first bite of apple pie at dinner time, either don’t answer the phone or ask if you can call them back after the dishwasher is loaded or better yet tell them you are taking a poll yourself and want to know what they think.  Imagine all the candidates come October, scurrying around like cockroaches on a hot griddle , trying to figure out what to say when the voters won’t tell them what they want to hear. See Hillary scurry...

Just say no to pollsters!

The Anvil Chorus

I said I wasn't going to get involved with political postings anymore but this is too curious to pass up.

Everytime I let myself get drawn into a discussion of this fiasco in Iraq it seems the supporters of the war say we are doing well over there and that all is well with President Bush at the helm. To me that means they are supporting the Secretary of Defense as well because the Commander In Chief hired him and is the only one Secretary Rumsfeld reports to. As with all appointees, Secretary Rumsfeld serves at the pleasure of the President.

Now suddenly a whole fistful of retired Generals are speaking out to the effect that the President's next in line in the chain of command,  Rumsfeld needs to go. It's true enough that Bush and Rumsfeld are two different people in two different positions but there is something terribly wrong with this picture.

These guys didn't get those stars for ignorance and their experience certainly lends substantial credibility to their voices but will the President listen to anything dissonant in his own echo chamber?

Film at eleven boys and girls....

What's in your news?

One of the many points made in Kovach and Rosenstiel's book, The Elements of Journalism was that there is no occasion where a journalist reporting a story does not change it in some way. Furthermore, it is almost axiomatic that a journalist must not become a part of the story.

 

In today's Washington Post, a thought provoking article in the Style section discusses the journalistic ethics issues raised by NBC's pedophile sting operations that have been televised on their news magazine show, Dateline. The network hired a group called Perverted Justice to organize and advise on the sting and in one instance the group's members were even deputized by the local sheriff.

 

All well and good it might seem at first glance….nothing much lower than a child molester, right? Local law enforcement joining forces with the media to protect our children seems like a positive step towards a safer world. Maybe it is…in this case. Where, though, is the dividing line between this and more invasive concepts like a phony web site set up in partnership between a media organization, an internet site and the Feds to gather other sorts of information for whatever purposes the government thinks appropriate.

 

In 1920 Walter Lippmann wrote "There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies." If our information to detect lies comes via a press that hires consultants to set up stings in consort with the government, how will we know that information is not itself false or flawed due to the methods used to gather it.

The New York Daily News...

...said it but I wish I had. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/393408p-333578c.html

Bush has finally made good on his promise to be a uniter with this port sale business....both sides of the aisle think he's nuts...

If this really is "The Love Boat"...

...three guesses as to which one is "Gopher", the dim-witted crew member.

I heard this morning on the radio that the President didn't even know about the port deal until it had already been given a go ahead at the Cabinet level. Best not to open this can of worms, I thought, until there is a second report on it. Now it's on MSNBC so I feel safer asking, "What the hell were they thinking about?" Did it not occur to any of those drones that something like selling six major ports to the Arabs was Oval Office worthy? Do we actually pay them for this kind of thinking? 

Don't be surprised if Bush sends Chertoff and the crew of for a relaxing weekend...of quail hunting with the VP. Heck I'll bet he'll even spring for the keg!

The Love Boat!!

You really can’t make this stuff up!

I know I should let this one alone but it’s just too easy…let an Arab firm run our ports!!! Since 9/11/2001 one of the continuing themes of the national debate on the threat of terrorism has been the vulnerability of our ports. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of containerized cargo coming into the country annually and we aren’t even close to being able to inspect anything other than a small fraction of them and now the President wants to let a bunch from Dubai run the ports?

Isn’t this a bit like:

Dropping your kids off at the Michael Jackson Daycare Center or

The NRA naming Vice President Cheney as their new spokesperson for gun safety or 

Registering for a slot at a retirement planning conference sponsored by Enron or

Naming Bill Clinton as a chaperone for next year’s Miss America Pageant?

It is funny though, watching the neo-cons scrambling to try to spin this plan that the Speaker of the House isn’t on board with and the Secretary of Defense only found out about this past weekend, probably during a break in NBC’s broom-to-broom coverage of the Moroccan curling team’s “quest for the gold” in Torino.

Personal note to Michael Brown: I hear Mayor Ray Nagin is hiring a new Emergency Services Planner in New Orleans. Polish up that resume Brownie, looks like it could happen.....

State of The Union

Talk about paradigms and shift happening...

Let me see if I have this straight. On Tuesday night in the State of the Union the President expounds on his desire for affordable health care and improvements in our educational system.

Within 24 hours, the Republican controlled House of Representatives is moved to pass a $40 billion deficit reduction measure covering, among other things, Medicaid and student loan guarantees which the President is expected to sign.

Note to Senator John Kerry:
Senator, file this one away under responses to future accusations of flip flopping.

Note to voters:
File this one under things to remember when the mid term elections come around this year.

Note to Accounting Department:
Make the check for $40 billion payable to Halliburton Corp.

Ann Coulter

I cringe every time I see something on line about Ann Coulter because I know I’m about to read yet another outrageous comment by this hack that has managed to crawl to the top of some web page. Her comment during a recent appearance at Philander Smith College in Little Rock about the necessity to poison Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," was followed by, "That's just a joke, for you in the media." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060127/ap_on_re_us/brf_coulter_stevens )I guess I’m just naïve but I fail to see the humor in that. If you said that about the President, the Secret Service would be on your doorstep faster than a lobbyist picks up a dinner tab. Since when is an attempt to murder a public official a joking matter?

Do the folks who allow her into the public forum not realize how much credibility they lose by giving voice to this hate spewing idealogue? I even hesitate to mention her here because someone will surely go charging off to Google her.

Impeachment? Maybe not so much...

Here's a question for those who are making the occasional comments urging impeachment of the President. Which of you is ready for an oval office occupied by President Cheney?

In defense of Christmas...

Well folks, tomorrow is the day, the day I wait for every year. It’s like Christmas morning only better. It’s the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Yeah I know that the day is still 24 hours long but the meaning here is that the day of the winter solstice is the day when the time period between sunrise and sunset is the shortest.

Starting on the 23^rd the days actually begin to get longer. We get only about 1 more minute per day but that rate of increase means that by February 26^th 2006 we will have sunset at 6 PM instead of the 5 PM hour we are currently suffering with.

I really dislike the smaller amount of daylight. Getting home after dark makes me feel as if I have worked longer for some reason, even to the point of it feeling as if I have worked overtime.

That said, the winter solstice has added another little twist to our popular culture. It’s given us a societal cop out to avoid offending anyone by using the term Merry Christmas and calling our, you should pardon the expression ‘holiday happenings’ Christmas parties.

I just don’t get it! What has happened to tolerance? How is it that those of us who celebrate Christmas are the only ones from whom sensitivity to our multi-cultural society is required?

When I get home tonight (after dark ) I’m going to turn on my CHRISTMAS lights, light my CHRISTMAS candles, listen to a few CHRISTMAS carols and do as I bloody well please…even if it does put me in the same category as the Kool-Aid sucking ideologues at Fox News. 

Oh and as a footnote, I would be pleased, no, honored to respectfully attend any and all celebrations or observations of Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Chanukah or if the Druids do anything, their celebrations too.  That’s what makes America  the “melting pot” of the world, not the Zip Locked, Glad Bagged, Tupperwared, shrink wrapped society our paranoid PC-ness seems to demand.

That's my story and I am, by God, stickin' to it...

Wouldn't it be nice...

Wouldn’t it be nice if the folks who so vociferously defend the Constitutional right to “keep and bear arms” were as energetic in defense of the Constitutional freedoms compromised by the Patriot Act.

If a camel can put his nose in my tent, why can't he put his nose in the NRA's tent?

Further on a parent's grief

 A follow up on the Sheehan Post:

 

I receive the following from an old friend who has buried a son. I asked her permission to use it and she agreed: 

"An interesting post about Cindy Sheehan.  I too am a mother who has lost a son and it is possibly the worse thing that can occur to anyone.  We are meant to die before them.  I guess what bothers me most about her approach is that she has totally overlooked her living children and her marriage. Those remaining children are experiencing a huge amount of pain--I saw this with my own kids-------and I am always a bit wary of protestors.  My viewpoint on protesting is---fine go and do it---but there isn't enough time put into solving the problem.  Am I making sense?  I hope I am. But, do I understand her pain?  Yes, most definitely.  When B was home for Thanksgiving she went through old family photos and cried----we visit those times so infrequently due to the pain that comes forth." 

 

And then after I asked her permission to use her thoughts she followed with this:

 

"I re-read what I wrote and I feel every bit of her pain-----but to totally make your life around one child is so unfair to the rest of her family.  When [my son] died----[his dad} and I made a very pointed decision to live well in his memory.  The last thing he would have wanted us to do would be to disfigure the family landscape over zealot thoughts.  I guess the same thing also goes to being a cancer survivor----I am [who I am]-----not all about my cancer or my child that died and when one faces such horrendous tragedy------I think it should be faced with faith----and an understanding that I do not live with tragedy-----but rather try to learn and go on."

 

There you have it, another mother’s thoughts.

Cindy Sheehan

I've been thinking a lot about kindness recently. Back near the first of this year, I posted a piece here about New Year's resolutions. This year my intended resolve, I said, would focus on trying to be kinder. This is not going to be a confession of failure at that although there is plenty of room for personal improvement. In the last month or so I've witnessed two instances of un-kindness that really didn't need to happen at all let alone in the personal way they did.

In one, a young woman was brought to tears in a public place and in the other a young man (also in a public place) already upset was goaded into deeper anger by totally unnecessary additional confrontation. How little understanding it would have taken to keep these hurtful actions from happening. Only a few people witnessed these two moments; millions have seen the unkind and emotional brutalization of Cindy Sheehan.

The right wing of our political spectrum calls her a shill for the anti-war movement and there are parts of the left who see her activism as a rallying point for their views. She is probably some of both. She is also a mother who has buried her son, the child who came home almost daily with another wrinkled kindergarten masterpiece destined for the refrigerator door, the same little one who was bursting with anticipation at seeing the look on his mother's face when she unwrapped the first Mother's Day present he ever made himself.

Her baby boy is dead. There will be no more Mother's Day presents, homemade or store bought with a few crumpled dollars dredged from the depths of a little boy's pocket. She will never hear his "Hi, Mom!" greeting on the phone again.  Her present reminder of his life will be his name and dates of birth and death etched into a piece of cold stone. We don't have to agree with her but we are bound as fellow humans to honor her grief without judgment.

Have we become so polarized in our views that we can only view a mother's grief in terms of our own political agenda?  Do we really live, as it is beginning to appear, in a zero sum world?

Robertson redux

Pat Robertson has heard another message from God. The folks in the Dover school district in Pennsylvania are in God's crosshairs because they voted out their school board over the intelligent design issue. If it made the news on "Buenas Dias Caracas", Hugo Chaves' approval rating will go through the roof.

This comment from my friend Mike at coffee this morning proves the Dover voters were right:

Pat Robertson's very existence proves there is nothing to the theory of "intelligent design".

An election choice in Virginia

Today is Election Day here in

Virginia. I did my part and waded through the one person in line in front of me in order to cast my ballot.  The candidate who had, in my perception, done the least amount of mud slinging got my vote.

 

That’s the first time I have ever voted on that issue alone…it felt good.

The Rock & The Hard Place

Has there ever been a time in America when we have had so many contentious issues in the news, so many demands on our attention? It would be so easy, perhaps even inviting to throw up ones hands and retreat into apathy.

It reminds me of a forest fire scenario. Just when it appears that a spot fire may be under control, two more ignite near by.

Politically we are so severly polarized we are virtually paralyzed.

Apathy and withdrawal are inviting but altogether too easy.

For the record...

and before the "just another Liberal" bullets start flying, I applaud and support the confirmation of Judge Roberts as Chief Justice. He, by almost all accounts except those of the extreme Left, is highly qualified.

That's my story and I am stickin' to it...

The Nuclear Option Back On The Table?

An interesting speculation came up at the coffee table this morning….what if Harriet Miers’ Supreme Court nomination is a straw man set up to agitate the left and capture the news cycle?  This nomination could demote other stories like Senator Frist’s stock deal, Congressman DeLay’s indictment and possible Rove-Libby-Cheney blunders on the Plame outing back to the second page while leading Op-Ed voices refocus on the ‘sturm und drang’ surrounding the confirmation process.

If you think Senators Biden, Kennedy and Feinstein were in high dudgeon over the Chief Justice nomination, imagine their paroxysms of righteous indignation over a Supreme Court nominee with less experience on the bench than Judge Judy!

Hey, it could work! After all, the hurricane season is over after next month and the Administration won’t have Mother Nature to kick around anymore.

 

What's in your wallet?

Apparently the New Orleans evacuees were not the only ones to whom the Feds wanted to give debit cards. According to the New York Times and numerous other sources,  Halliburton, The Shaw Group, Bechtel Corp and Boh Brothers Construction have all received their own ‘corporate debit cards’ in the form of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for hurricane recovery and reconstruction work.

In some cases the no-bid awards have been fast tracked because of the urgency of the work and in other cases there are long standing contracts that apparently were awarded on a ‘when and if needed’ basis. All of this sounds logical enough and is the kind of thing I would suspect the government must incorporate in any disaster recovery planning.

However, this becomes an olfactory reminiscence of a week old bull carcass in the summer sun in light of the proclamation signed last Thursday by our ‘Re-constructor-In-Chief’ which suspends the core provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. That act requires government contractors to pay construction labor wages equivalent to the prevailing local rate. Now by Presidential fiat, Bechtel, Halliburton and the like can reduce their labor costs on the backs of what are most likely already the lowest paid and most numerous workers in the very neighborhoods that will be struggling to recover.

There are two really juicy twists to this action. One is that there are no provisions in the proclamation that would require the contractors to pass the savings through to the government. It looks as if their biggest problem could be how to shift the difference (savings) over to contract categories other than cost of labor so they can still use up that available balance on their federally issued debit cards. The second is that the suspension just applies to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

It is surprising to me that the President did not include Central Texas in the suspension area.  With all the brush he had to leave uncut when he shortened his vacation by 72 hours to return to Washington, he’ll probably award a FEMA contract claiming that the cost of hiring a crew to cut bush is a hurricane related expense.

Government contracting usually takes the form of a fixed cost contract or a cost plus contract. If these contracts are the cost plus variety it will take a little more work for a contractor bent on hosing the public to fatten their own balance sheet. Fear not though; remember that where there's a will,  there's a way.

Finally, for those of you who plan to vote in 2006 mid terms, the suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act allegedly followed a letter to the President asking for the suspension and signed by 35 Republican House members ….might be an interesting question to ask your representative in next year's election run-up. Given the administration’s penchant for retribution towards heretics though, it might be best to use an assumed name, especially if you have a relative that works for the CIA.

First Things First!

The temptation has been great to take advantage of the freedom the blogging phenomenon creates by posting my own thoughts about Hurricane Katrina . If I didn’t have an opinion about all the issues surrounding the disaster in New Orleans I would probably be the only person in the country without one. The fact is that I do have some very strong thoughts on this but at this point mine are surely no better informed than anyone elses. It’s just too easy to shoot from the hip at a time like this. 

The true scope of this disaster will only be revealed in retrospect as will the culpability for the mistakes. That’s not to say that there are not questions that demand answers. The questions, though, ought to be honest ones that are truly looking for answers, not political booby traps. Those answers should then govern what is to be done and what heads must roll to prevent this kind of domestic meltdown from happening again.

Extreme reactions and political cheap shots are too easy right now. The first issue is relief for the people at Ground Zero. Let us see to that and ultimately the other political chips will fall where they may.

You did too say it!

He said he was misquoted before he apologized for saying what he was misquoted as saying...huh? He might just be a Democrat....

If you hear a rising crescendo of hoof beats, relax it's not stampeding zebras. It's just the sound of every Republican with any body temperature at all except Tom Delay trying to distance themselves from Pat (Rambo) Robertson. I'll bet that Rush Limbaugh isn't even taking his calls.

 

You remember Robertson don't you? He's the guy from down in Virginia Beach who has his Bluetooth device permanently linked to God's, so he won't miss the next set of instructions.  According to CNN "He has suggested in the past that a meteor could strike Florida because of unofficial "Gay Days" at Disney World and that feminism caused women to kill their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians."

If it weren't for the age issue I would bet money he is the illegitimate brain damaged love child of Gordon Liddy and Ann Coulter.

 

His latest flight of fancy has us "taking out" the President of Venezuela. And all this time I thought that the stories about a new Marvel Comics version of the Bible was just rumor. Looks like it may be true and Robertson wants to be the new creative consultant for story lines. Pat, keep your day job; even Marvel Comics requires a double digit IQ and that you be house broken.

 

Today he says he didn't mean that we should kill the man, just kidnap him. It's comforting to know that he's not an extremist. I'll bet he just wanted a few small meteorites to hit Florida too, not a whole comet.

 

This man ran for President; can you imagine what we would have been dealing with had he been elected?

More blood in the water!!

No matter whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent or a political cynic like me, you have to love this. Right on the heels of Sanctimonious Super Sunday II in Tennessee where Dr. James “It's Not Really A Comb Over” Dobson compared Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s position on embryonic stem cell research to Nazi death camp experiments we have yet another brewing brou-ha-ha. Trent Lott is pissed at Bill Frist because he feels Frist sold him down the river out of ambition to become Senate Majority Leader. Hey, it could even be a new bumper sticker: “Honk if you’re pissed at Frist!” It’s worth printing it just for the onomatopoeia.

The old joke was that the difference between the United States Congress and the Cub Scouts was that the Cub Scouts have adult supervision. Here’s another: What’s the difference between Congress and a 7th grade lunch room? The 7th graders get a fruit cup! Ba-dump-bump.

Call  me nuts but I’m seeing the Gipper looking down from up yonder saying “Hey you kids! Don’t make me pull this car over!”

Of course Senator Lott feels used and abused here. Colin Powell didn’t love him anymore and the President spoke sharply about him. He even got dissed by an Independent, Senator Jeffords of Vermont and tossed a couple of political stink bombs towards the Green Mountain State by complaining that Jeffords was constantly trying to get programs approved that would benefit the state of Vermont. Man, if he's racked up about Jeffords, wait until he gets started on the Senators from West Virginia and Alaska.

Senator, get over it! Nobody was holding a gun to your head to make you talk like a racist at Senator Thurmond’s picnic. You could probably have congratulated him for his work with the NAACP and he wouldn’t have known the difference; he might not have even known you were there…or that he was there for that matter.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it….

There's blood in the water...

From the commentary coming out of this year’s “Justice Sunday ” held in Tennessee this past weekend it appears that nothing stirs up the Right Wing like a couple of issues that actually require thought.

The President announced a relatively non-controversial nomination for a Supreme Court vacancy and Senator Bill Frist modified his views on stem cell research. Suddenly the Right is schooling like piranhas, ready to begin feasting on their own young. The eminent political scientist James Dobson weighed in on the role of the Supreme Court and compared Frist’s position on embryonic stem cell research to Nazi experimentation on human subjects.

It’s going to be interesting to watch the Right get gored by their own zero sum political ox.

That was then, this is now...

One night in the late fall of 1957 when I was 12 years old I stood, probably barefoot, on the dry sharp St. Augustine grass in our back yard in Waco Texas, staring up into the central Texas sky. My friends and I would have been barefoot because the central Texas summer is late to fade. It was usually a weather front blowing in off the Texas panhandle that would drop the temperature by 20 degrees in a matter of minutes and force us back into shoes during non-school hours.

The Russians had launched Sputnik on October 4th and we were trying to watch for it as it went overhead. I tell my self that I saw it go over but I really can’t be sure. Things I have read since then imply that it would not have been bright enough to see. I’m pretty sure I recall something, more than likely the booster rocket but we were in Texas after all and everything is bigger and brighter there, right?

No matter; the point of this is that today, less than 50 years later, I sat in a place called Camille’s Sidewalk Café and connected to the Internet through their Wi-Fi link and a laptop computer. One of the headline stories on CNN.com was about Opportunity getting out of the sand that had it bogged down for the last 6 weeks.

You’re thinking you don’t recognize that name, “Opportunity”, right? It’s one of the two Mars rovers and it was manipulated out of the sand by remote controls operated by scientists here on earth. The article included pictures of its own wheel tracks stretching out behind it as it moved away from where it had been stuck.

In 1957 we watched black and white TV and heard them play through the static a beep, beep, beep from a silvery sphere that would have looked like a chromed basketball with whiskers and then went outside to try and see it as it orbited over the flat land of Central Texas. Today I sat in a café in a Virginia shopping center as the screen of my laptop computer displayed pictures of man made wheel marks from 65,000,000 miles away in the deep dust of the Mars.

Now if that’s not a paradigm shift, I don’t know what is…

Red Lake Minnesota

The story was there in the white pine forests of Northern Minnesota before March 21st.

Before Jeff Weise shot and killed his grandfather and 8 other people at Red Lake High School around 3:00 PM Monday, there was a story...it was about a community of about 5,000 souls with an unemployment rate estimated to be as high as 65 percent, a high school graduation rate near 60% and 40% of families living below the Federal Poverty Guidelines.

Few of us knew or cared until people died. It took children’s blood on the floor to attract the press piranhas who have descended on that small community of 5,000 as they scramble for 30 second film clips and sound bites that will be the core of their coverage of the deaths in the remote and reclusive Red Lake community. Certainly, unemployment numbers, poverty levels and drop out rates will be squeezed into the reports but they are numbers you and I would never see if people had not died.

Long after the 3 day wakes are over, long after the grass has started to grow again on new graves, those numerical signs of our failure as a nation to care about the well being of all, will still be there. A year from now, will we even remember what the term “Red Lake” means? Columbine is frozen in our minds, maybe even the stand off at Wounded Knee but what will become of “Red Lake”? Will we remember the unemployment and the people living below the federal poverty level there in Red Lake?

Astonishingly, the Oval Office has thus far been silent on the Red Lake tragedy. I wonder if that silence has something to do with the Administration’s proposed 2006 budget which includes $100,000,000 in cuts for Indian programs including health and education. The sincerity of a hand held out in consolation is a tough sell when the other hand is cutting money from programs designed to help the very people being consoled.

Maybe I just don’t understand what “compassionate conservatism” really means. Is it code for something else?

It's about time!

The speed of light….really quick, right? Consider this. The space probe, Huygens landed at about 7:45 AM EST on the surface of a moon of Saturn named Titan. Titan is about 2.2 billion miles from us. The data sent back from the probe’s instruments will, of course travel at the speed of light, approximately 183,000 miles per second. It will still take the data 3 ½ hours to get here or in other words 1/3 the time it takes for the cable repair guy to make it from the cable shop to your home.
Let’s look at some other comparisons. Three and one/half hours also equals the length of time that passes

While your dog decides to take care of business on a frigid day
While water comes to a boil if you look at it
While you sit behind the car in front of you at a green light
While you are on hold for technical assistance on your computer
While Al Gore answers a question
While a heat pump raises the temperature of a room by 1 degree Fahrenheit
While you wait for your meal at Denny’s
While waiting to be seen in the average emergency room if and only if you are the only patient (Your results may vary)

Some other things are incredibly quick though. Researchers in California have defined the shortest recognizable period of time the as the ‘honkon’ which describes the interval between the traffic light in front of you turning green and the car behind you blowing its horn. You can look it up!

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it….