Probably for the best...

Probably for the best...

It is probably for the best that I'll be out of town Saturday morning. According to this report of the county commissioner's meeting:

Joe Guerrero, Goshen Republican secretary, asked for permission to hold a Sarah Palin rally Saturday, from 10 to 11 a.m., at the county courthouse. He explained a group of 20 to 30 people are expected to walk from city Republican headquarters at 115 E. Lincoln Ave., to the courthouse, where speakers will give addresses. He said a Palin “look-alike” is scheduled to appear.

The commissioners approved the Saturday rally and asked the sponsor to notify the sheriff’s office.

Where in America but my hometown could this happen?

More...

More...

Since I don't own a TV, I hear about stuff like the Couric / Palin interview second hand. Thanks to Google, however, it is no great feat to get a live transcript and get the primary source.

Can you believe this?

Couric: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

Sarah Palin:That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a comment like that was kinda made to … I don’t know, you know … reporters.

Couric: Mocked?

Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.

Couric: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.

Palin: Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there…

Couric: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

Palin: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

Trade missions = negotations? Hell, I've been on a trade mission. The difference is that I actually left the US, but regardless I can tell you there was very little negotiation going on.

Rears his head? As Joe asked, what is he, a serpent?

Comes into US airspace? Huh...?

Are we sending people out across the Bering Strait to keep an eye on the Ruskies?

I, too, am tempted to mock - except this is so scary.

Or this...

Couric: But he's (McCain) been in Congress for 26 years. He's been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

Palin: He's also known as the maverick though, taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he's been talking about - the need to reform government.

Couric: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you've said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?

Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.

Thank you, Governor. We're waiting to hear from you.

Surprisingly, it isn't just the liberal press that is after her. Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker says it this way:

"Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

Or this line:

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

At this point I'm hoping that she pulls herself out, or, better yet, she stays in, and scares those in the center even a little to the left. Hope dies hard.

Do we still really have five weeks to the election?

By the way...

By the way...

Great quote from a friend: "You can draw your own conclusions, but I'd like to point out that Jesus was a community organizer, and Pilate was a Governor."

Remember...

Remember...

In a world where there are probably already too many mottoes, one of my all time favorites is "Remember - to the bee it is all about the honey."

That came to mind tonight as I ate dinner on my patio. I have a large flowering something - I would say it is cornflower, but it is pink, not blue, and it is about 4' + tall - that is crawling with bees. Tonight, in the middle of this beautiful shrub, I saw this wonderful Monarch doing whatever Monarchs do in the middle of a bunch of flowers.

I love that motto because it captures such an enormous truth about life. A bee has no idea of the importance he plays in the entire life cycle of our little planet. Maybe it is the same for us humans who oscillate between believing we are the center of the universe and wondering if our individual lives have any significance at all.

The other photo is a celebration of simple pleasures. I figure if friends making exotic trips across the continent can post photos of a dinner they eat in, say, Reno, Nevada, I can post my home made pesto, with the home grown tomato and green beans, with a salad decorated with a home grown black pepper with a class of Cab Sauv from Pelee Island.

Changing Skyline...

Changing Skyline...

In the last post I mentioned that I'm working on a new project. My home's prior owner seemed to like straight lines. The yard was defined by 3' wide flowerbeds that circumnavigate the entire back yard and edged with paving bricks.

Everything looked like it had been laid out with a ruler and a straight edge. It was OK, but besides being too much to keep up with I did not like the rigid, right angle boundaries.

One centerpiece was a little windmill set due East of my patio. (Top photo - taken earlier this summer.) It had a gorgeous clematis over-running it, but I felt like it was more of a barrier than a invitation. But over the last year I've become quite fond of it - rust and all.

So yesterday I finally bit the bullet and moved it. It now resides (temporarily) on the south side of my yard. I transplanted the clematis as best as I could (severely reduced in size). That was the big step.

I laid paving brick in a little sidewalk leading into the yard, and my next step is to redefine the little flowerbed to the south of the brick. There are some great lilies in it and I want to add some other stuff from some of the other flowerbeds - or maybe even buy some new stuff. The bottom photo shows the new view out into the yard. If you look closely you'll see I took out the weeping cherry in the background, and you can see the brickwork in the front.

Ultimately I'm wanting to cut all the beds by at least a third, and have the rest of it stuff I can more easily care for.

Signs of our times...

Signs of our times...

Yesterday I ran out to Menards to pick up a few things for a project I'm working on in my back yard. More on the project later. As I pulled away I passed the payday loan store on 33 and was astonished at their sign: "Bring in your unemployment check to arrange your loan".

I guess these people have to do what they can to keep their business going, but hello? should you really be loaning money to people who have been laid off? And if you've been laid off is now the time to be taking out a loan?

OK - maybe they're offering debt consolidation or something like that. But I doubt it. We're entitled to that big screen tv and we have the keep the economy moving.

Is anybody home? I'm going to get saddled with my share of a half a trillion - TRILLION - dollars in bad debt from stupid loans made by greedy bankers. And the payday loan sharks want to loan money to people who are out of work.

Minutes later I stopped at the Save-A-Lot to pick up some milk. On the way out I noticed this sign jammed in the median a couple of places around the entry like an election sign: "There's a fish stick dinner in your gas tank".

Huh?

And speaking of election signs, my neighbor has an "Eight is Enough/Obama - Biden 2008" sign. I find myself wanting to deface it with a can of spray paint: cross out "enough" and paint "too much".

What a great country.

Another perspective...

Another perspective...

My brother forwarded this essay with the comment that "we all know this stuff but it is still pretty tough when you see it in print."

If you follow that link you'll find that it has generated heated debate since it was first posted. Interesting stuff, and the discussion doesn't degenerate into name calling nearly as fast as one normally finds on discussion boards.

More...

More...

SomeBird posted an extensive OpEd piece from Eve Ensler on Palin. Read it now.

If you're getting sick of me posting about Sarah Palin stop reading my blog until after November 5. The more I read about her the more frightened I am. If you are an American citizen, I want you to get out and vote and send this woman packing.

Have you been following TrooperGate? Or the accounts of her First Dude's involvement in Alaskan government business? Or her lawsuit to stop federal protection of Polar Bears under the endangered species act? I love the quote from this article: "The lawsuit puts the state of Alaska, and particularly the Palin administration, to the political right of the Bush-Cheney administration, and that’s a rarified land where few venture."

Last year I followed John Niremberg's walk to Washington to demand impeachment of Bush and Cheney. John's website is still up, and you can follow links on the sidebar about the case for impeachment and what's at stake. (John has turned cynical and seems to have opted completely out of the political process, to which I say 'Yeah, but the world would be a different place if cynics hadn't split Gore / Nadar votes in 2000. The upcoming election does matter.)

Take time now to this video of Bill Moyer's Journal.

And then watch this video:


Then watch Sarah Palin and realize that she can finish what Bush, Cheney and Rove have started.

Cynical...?

Cynical...?

This week's New Yorker TOTT lead bashes Palin and McCain and references a supposed-to-be off-mic comment by Mike Murphy, once McCain's top political aide. You can hear the comment here.

Of course, without a TV I missed SNL, but thanks to the wonder of You Tube I was able to watch this great spoof:

[Update - YouTube pulled the link.]

Copyright violation?...

Copyright violation?...

Posting this is probably a violation of copyright, but it has such a great opening paragraph that I'm posting it anyhow. The rest of it is worth reading too. It comes from Salon.com via a friend in NY.

George Bush with big hair

The hustling Evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder could be our first woman president.
By Garrison Keillor

Sep. 10, 2008 | So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.

They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 (or pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door. Hello? Do you see us out here? We are not fruit flies, we are voters, we can read and write, we didn't just fall off the coal truck.

It is a bold move on the Republicans' part -- forget about the past, it's only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be -- and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the Thirty-Second, the rightful heir to the Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis. They will cure neuralgia and gout and restore marital vigor.

Mr. McCain has decided to run as a former POW and a maverick, a maverick's maverick, rather than Mr. Bush's best friend, and that's understandable, but how can he not address the $3 trillion that got burned up in Iraq so far? It's real money, it could've paid for a lot of windmills, a high-speed rail line in Ohio, some serious R&D. The Chinese, who have avoided foreign wars for 50 years, are taking enormous leaps forward, investing in their economy, and we are falling behind. We're wasting our chances. The Republican culture of corruption in Washington hasn't helped.

And a former mayor of a town of 7,000 who hired a lobbyist to get $26 million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec center and other good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla. Stunning. And if you question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an elitist. This is a beautiful maneuver. I wish I had thought of it back in school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson, "I am a Christian and when you gave me a D, you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly hardworking people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battle ax you."

In school, you couldn't get away with that garbage because the taxpayers know that if we don't uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers lest they gain power and hurt us, but in politics we bring forth phonies and love them to death.

I must say, it was fun having the Republicans in St. Paul and to see it all up close and firsthand. Security was, as one might expect, thin-lipped and gimlet-eyed, but once you got through it, you found the folks you went to high school with -- farm kids, jocks, the townies who ran the student council, the cheerleaders, some of the bullies -- and they are as cohesive now as they were back then, dedicated to school spirit, intolerant of outsiders, able to jump up and down and holler for something they don't actually believe. But oh Lord, what they brought forth this year. When you check the actuarial tables on a 72-year-old guy who's had three bouts with cancer, you guess you may be looking at the first woman president, a hustling Evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder who, not counting Canada, has set foot outside the country once -- a trip to Germany, Iraq and Kuwait in 2007 to visit Alaskans in the armed service. And who listed a refueling stop in Ireland as a fourth country visited. She's like the Current Occupant but with big hair. If you want inexperience, there were better choices.

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)

© 2008 by Garrison Keillor

I'll sleep better tonight...

I'll sleep better tonight...

It is such a relief to know that global warming is a sham and that once america starts extracting oil from the continental shelf, all our problems will be solved.

I know this because my barber told me.

Sigh.

He learned it from Fox News.

It is also such a relief to know that there is still one remaining bastion of truth in the news media.

Catch that knee!

Drat - I couldn't stop it.

So now I have no one to blame but myself if I have a streak of bad hair days for the next few weeks. Never argue with your barber until you're out of the chair.

He conceded that there are gas guzzling cars out there and that we could do more to conserve what we have. I told him that I'd agree to off-shore drilling when the new car standard was 40 mpg. He couldn't go there: "We'll just have to agree to disagree because I'm not going to change my mind."

Which is, I guess, the same thing I said.

What I don't get is his theology. He says "He" won't let us destroy the earth.

What happened to man's free will? Isn't that the cornerstone of the religious right ...er wrong? (I saw a button on a liberal's hat tonight that read 'The religious right is neither'.) Aren't we free to choose sin or morality? Life or Death? Salvation or Damnation? Isn't it possible ....

S#*$ - don't get me started.

Cedar Creek Luthiers...

Cedar Creek Luthiers...

Check out my cousin in this news story, or read the transcript here.

Actually Charlie has been building guitars for 33 years. I know because he and I built the first one together in my basement at 15 Hilda Place in the winter of 1975. He's gone on and actually gotten quite good at it.

Fridge art...

Fridge art...

I don't own a TV, so when I'm worn out at the end of a stressful week and it is drizzling rain, the closest thing I have to sitting blankly in front of the TV is to sit on my porch swing and watch the world go by.

Eventually that wears thin and I figure I can handle a little more excitement, so I go inside and warm up some left overs - and return to the porch swing and watch some more cars.

After an hour or so of this kind of behavior I'm ready to turn it up another notch. So I drag my fiddle and a chair out and play quietly with the practice mute on so I don't draw neighborhood ire.

After a while, my neighbor returns to her house, spots me on the front porch, and the next thing I know, Sophie Comet is running up. "I didn't know you play the violin!" So I play a little for her and then ask her if she played. "I'm not old enough yet," she informs me. I had to ask her again how old she is. "I turned six on May 30."

OK. Now we have that straight.

Anyhow, Lizzie Comet isn't far behind. She shows up with the cool art work at the top of this page. "This is for you," she says. I ask her to tell me about it, and I hear all about how this part was cut out of this other piece, and her friend gave this part to her, and this yellow thing goes in here... I'm very excited to have it and say I'll put it right up on my fridge.

The Comets are troubled by my status in life. They want to know if I'm lonely living by myself, and they don't know what to make of the idea that I'm not married. They want to know why I'm not married any more. "Its a long story," I explain. "Tell me the long story." Oh my.

Fortunately they don't stay on any one topic too long. They are surprised to hear I have kids and when I show them a picture of me with B&L they think L looks sort of familiar. But that other boy - they think maybe I am just a year or two older than him. Sorry B - I'm just telling you what they said.

Meanwhile, Lizzie is using my porch railing as a balance beam and I'm a little nervous but she can reach the porch ceiling and uses it to steady herself.

And Sophie is ready to try out the violin, so we play Twinkle Twinkle. Both of them say they are going to start violin when they get to second grade. (I'm really not trying to corrupt them - it just happens.)

And then it is almost 7:30 and they realize they had better get home because 7:30 is bed time, and they're gone almost as fast as they showed up.

Front porches beat TV every time because you never get Fridge Art from a TV.

7 1/2 hrs...

7 1/2 hrs...

Home was right where I left it. The drive was long and uneventful, if a little dull.

Be it ever so humble...

Safe arrival...

Safe arrival...

I made good time from Goshen to Waterloo yesterday, arriving shortly after 7pm.

Campaign...

Campaign...

I've been thinking about how to comment on McCain's choice for a vice president. As usual, Angry Black Bitch found the words I was looking for when she said that Palin's track record is "...enough to make this bitch wonder whether Phyllis fucking Schlafly got a face lift and moved her hateful ass to Alaska. Read the whole post.

In other news I leave in a couple hours with a van load of stuff for a college student's apartment. I'll be back late Sunday - maybe with some 6 year old cheddar from the Waterloo Farmer's Market.