I can't tell you the number of times I've said, "Let's not talk about politics" and had it met with even more offensive bullshit than whatever offensive bullshit provoked my demur in the first place. Far as I'm concerned, you get warned off the subject twice, and if you persist, you deserve the mental and verbal ass-kicking you receive. You're a grownup, talking to another grownup, you want to be rude ain't my place to stop you but you'd better bring your A-game.
...
Like I say to Mrs. F's idiot wingnut brother (another one of those conservative Jews who thinks Israel is the 51st State and should be allowed to turn Gaza and the West Bank into the world's largest concentration camp), "I don't talk sex, politics, or religion with your dumb ass". Anybody who thinks Ralph Reed is "one of the smartest guys in the country" ain't worth arguing with.
But listen to me. It's all nice to want Barry to take over early but changing the rules to suit the players (or the ends justifying the means) is what got us into this big economic mess to begin with.
Sorry, but we all gotta wait until January. You don't think my investments look good, do ya? But we all gotta feel some pain. Unfortunately for some of us, some serious pain. But we gotta remember this for a generation or two, like the parents of my generation.
My folks, Mrs. F's folks, were the children of the Great Depression. She and I grew up with the frugality, the worry that the 'hard times' would return, and the constant reminders to 'save for a rainy day'. I remember and Mrs. F remembers, and so do the rest of my generation.
We just never believed it would happen in our lifetimes.
It's about time the rules of the game were followed and not amended as needs arise. The days of "livin' large on Master Charge" are over.
I got a zillion little things to do today so we can get out of town tomorrow for Thanksgiving, You know - find the garage keys which have been lost since June so I had to leave the garage unlocked the last time we left town, cleaning the puppy nose print off the windshield right in front of the driver that's been there for two weeks, you know, that kind of thing, but there's a bunch of 'em.
Fixer did a lovely post on dreams. Here's one by Gail Collins (NYT).
Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning.
[...] Dick Cheney, obviously, would have to quit as well as Bush. In fact, just to be on the safe side, the vice president ought to turn in his resignation first. (We’re desperate, but not crazy.) Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would become president until Jan. 20. [...]
As a bonus, the Pelosi presidency would put a woman in the White House this year after all. On the downside, a few right-wing talk-show hosts might succumb to apoplexy. That would, of course, be terrible, but I’m afraid we might have to take the risk in the name of a greater good.
Now there's a risk I'm willing to take! The prospect of seeing their faces turn red and their heads explode is strangely arousing.
Can I see a show of hands? How many people want George W. out and Barack in?
I hope you all didn't spill your coffee on yourselves when your hands reflexively shot up.
If Bush gives up doing nothing by giving up his job, it’s possible that someday history might elevate him to the ranks of the below average. Better than Franklin Pierce! Smarter than Warren Harding! And healthier than William Henry Harrison!
The person who would like this plan least probably would be Barack Obama. [...]
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Suspend Foreclosures During Holiday Season However, homeowners advised not to give one another home furnishings.
1,800-Year-Old Chariot Unearthed in Bulgaria It had been destroyed by Thracian chariot builders because it was too efficient.
Unions Announce Major Concessions to Keep Big Three From Bankruptcy Workers agree to give up their private jets, bonuses, golden parachutes.
Former Sen. Gramm Blames Housing Crisis on “Predatory Borrowers” Honest, naive bankers easy prey for unscrupulous first-time buyers, many of them high school graduates.
If there's one description of me I wholeheartedly endorse is that I'm a dreamer. Been one since I've been a little kid and it's a part of my personality that I hope never changes. Big dreams, little dreams, doesn't matter. I've dreamt up all the architectural changes to our house, 14 novels, countless hotrods and race cars; I would not be the man I am (the man I've always wanted to be) without my dreams.
It's nice to see a tenured professional in his field giving young folks the all-clear to dream:
That's really what I think, and I suppose what worries me as well. The problem is not that students don't dream - they do. The problem is that students too often fail to dream big. If you are going to dream, why waste it on something small?
I'm not sure students are to blame for this. I suspect this is something we, their parents and teachers have done to them. Our intent was to protect them from hurt. We forgot there are things far worse than disappointment.
So my advice to students (and that includes my 20-year-old daughter) is this: Find the biggest, coolest most audacious dream you can and own it. Make that crazy dream yours and go get it.
Your parents will worry, your teachers will patiently explain how hard it is, and you can just smile knowingly. You will understand that the dream, your dream, is not the place where you end up, but the road you will spend your life traveling. You'll understand that while everyone falls down, dreamers always get up and that disappointment, as uncomfortable as it is sometimes, is not nearly as uncomfortable as never having reached. [my em]
Failure in itself is a learning experience (the lesson might be more than you want to pay, however, but that's what makes life interesting) but everyone fails. Everyone has a dream dashed or an attempt foiled, but if fear of failure prevents you from trying to realize your dreams, you'll find, evenutally and when it's too late, life will seem unfulfilled.
Some of my best memories in life were of attempts that crashed and burned, but it was the 'getting there' that was so exciting and fulfilling (not the 'kill' but 'the thrill of the chase'). I agree with Mr. Brown. Dream, dream big, and try to live those dreams. 'Mundane' for me would be a fate worse than death.
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Sorry for being scarce this weekend, but somehow Thanksgiving went from dad-in-law Fixer spending the day with us to him staying until Sunday and company on top of it to boot. Murder crossed my mind but Mrs. F hasn't been able to entertain since before we went to Germany last Christmas and she's been going nuts (Me and dad-in-law F have been getting more and more elaborate, gourmet meals over the last 6 months and she's hung another 10 lbs. on our asses). She deserves the chance to show off. That said, the house is a hard hat zone and I'm scrambling to make it somewhat safe for everybody before Thursday. I don't need to test my homeowner's policy.
Weekend whorage will happen this evening.
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And, lastly but most certainly not leastly, 18 years ago today I married Mrs. F which was, by far, the single best decision I ever made in my life. Thank god my con job, browbeating, begging, whining, pleading, proposal was accepted.
She's my best friend, lover, companion, and confidant all wrapped up in one and I couldn't picture my life without her in it.
[...] If I had my druthers right now we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day. Forget the inaugural balls; we can’t afford them. Forget the grandstands; we don’t need them. Just get me a Supreme Court justice and a Bible, and let’s swear in Barack Obama right now — by choice — with the same haste we did — by necessity — with L.B.J. in the back of Air Force One.
Mrs. F and I were out Christmas shopping for all the rugrats in the family this morning and we're heading out later for dinner with our cruise pals Annie and Joe (it's Annie's birthday) to plan more piracy and debauchery on our February cruise (they're going with us again). Heh ... Probably see yas tomorrow or some incoherent drunken ranting later when I get home.
For you Saturday evening listening pleasure, an excellent version of one of my favorite Glenn Miller tunes:
Nothing makes me angrier or more frustrated than when companies and corporations, especially those in the service sector, make it virtually impossible to reach and talk to a real person on the phone. Well now, there's help. It's a website called Get Human. Go to this site and you'll get the tricks of the trade -- the buttons on your phone to hit to automatically bypass voicemail hell and computer-generated voice prompts to nowhere and go right to a real human being. How cool is that? Whether it's the cable company, the Sears repair folks, or an airline, this is an indispensable website.
... I just want to Frosty™ please, the guy standing next to me, who, by the way, I may point out. Had food in his hair, is a truck driver and he turned around. He looked at me and the recognition was immediate and he said, You racist bigot! And I just said -- I wanted to say, I think you have me mistaken for someone else, but I knew he knew who I was and he just hated me for who I was. You conservatives that have destroyed this country! And the hatred was so deep, it was breath taking. Luckily the swat team was there and I just separated myself from him and he just shouted through other people and there were children in the restaurant and he blamed me for everything, I believe including the Holocaust, and the hatred was palpable. The guy screamed at the restaurant, you better not let me see you in the parking lot because I've got a truck and I'll run your ass over!
...
Poor baby, has to hide behind his security. In my neck o' the woods, you take responsibility for what you say, even if it means standing up to an angry trucker. That's the problem with these conservative assholes. Got a lot to say when they have a couple goons to give 'em cover.
Responsibility and accountability has become a thing of the past. From the pundits, to the corporations, to the White House, it's the same shit. It's the attitude that has CEOs demanding public money when they're not willing to take a pay cut. It's about starting two wars with no clue of how to fight them. It's fomenting hate and division from the pulpit and the studio while side-stepping the pile of shit they've created.
It's time people like Beck, Lintball, and all the others to take responsibility for the mess they've helped make of this country. Whether it's getting your ass handed to you by a pissed-off trucker who's seen his business take a big hit over the past year to having protesters sitting in front of your 'churches' for your sponsorship of a plan to deny a group of Americans their rights.
So, to recap the [International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists] award winners: we have a reporter persecuted by the Ugandan Government; another imprisoned by the Castro regime; a journalist-defending lawyer who faced down the intimidation and threats of Robert Mugabe; two journalists who work at great risk of being attacked by the Taliban; and one who was arrested by the U.S. military and then imprisoned for two years without any charges or due process of any kind by the United States Government. As happens so frequently now, that is the company we keep.
"Americans won't leave," said Mazin Ali, 30, a coach driver. "They are the decision makers in all Iraq. The decision is theirs."
He and others on 14th Ramadan Street, a commercial strip in Baghdad's Mansour district, see too many signs of a long-term American commitment to believe that the U.S. will withdraw on the timetable in the so-called status of forces agreement.
...
After all these years of being shit upon by U.S. leadership, just as we were, the average guy on the street over there doesn't believe shit until he sees it with his own two eyes.
Tomorrow is Santa Paws Pet Photo day to help raise funds for the Humane Society of Truckee-Tahoe. Here's Mrs. G in between administering doggie baths. I'm in here doing important work like embarrassing the shit outta her so I get to skate. Heh.
It's the ultimate argument, the final bastion against withdrawal, and over these last years, the Bush administration has made sure it would have plenty of heft. Ironically, its strength lies in the fact that it has nothing to do with the vicissitudes of Iraqi politics, the relative power of Shiites or Sunnis, the influence of Iran, or even the riptides of war. It really doesn't matter what Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki or oppositional cleric Muqtada al-Sadr think about it. In fact, it's an argument that has nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with us, with the American way of war (and life), which makes it almost unassailable.
In a nutshell, the Pentagon's argument couldn't be simpler or more red-bloodedly American: We have too much stuff to leave Iraq any time soon. In war, as in peace, we're trapped by our own profligacy. We are the Neiman Marcus and the Wal-Mart of combat. Where we go, our "stuff" goes with us -- in such prodigious quantities that removing it is going to prove more daunting than invading in the first place. After all, it took less than a year to put in place the 130,000-plus invasion force, and all its equipment and support outfits from bases all around the world, as well as the air power and naval power to match.
Some have estimated, however, that simply getting each of the 14 combat brigades still stationed in Iraq on January 20, 2009, out with all their equipment might take up to 75 days per brigade. (If you do the math, that's 36 months, and even that wouldn't suffice if you wanted to remove everything else we now have in that California-sized country.)
Getting out? Don't dream of it.
[...] As the Pentagon's budget soared, its civilians and the high command went on an imperial spending spree the likes of which may never have been seen on this planet.
For them, Iraq has been war as cornucopia, war as a consumer's paradise. Arguably, on a per-soldier basis, no military has ever occupied a country with a bigger baggage train. On taking Iraq, they promptly began constructing a series of gigantic military bases, American ziggurats meant to outlast them. These were full-scale "American towns," well guarded, 15-20 miles around, with multiple PXes, fitness clubs, brand fast-food outlets, traffic lights, the works. (This, in a country where, for years after the invasion, nothing worked.)
In other words, abroad, we weren't the Spartans, we were the Athenians on steroids. [...]
Now, back in the days when we had less experience fighting losing wars, Americans in retreat simply shoved those extra helicopters off the decks of aircraft carriers in chaos, burned free-floating cash in tin drums, and left tons of expensive equipment and massive bases behind for the enemy to turn into future industrial parks. At the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in April 1975, while everything in sight was being burned or destroyed including precious advanced electronic equipment, money actually rained down from the Embassy incinerator on the roof upon amazed Vietnamese allies huddled below, waiting for a promised airlift to safety that, for most, never came.
Withdrawal then was unsightly, unseemly, and environmentally unsound. But, as we know, the lessons of Vietnam were subsequently learned.
And don't forget the shrink-wrapping of those helicopters -- who knows how many -- for that long, salt-free sea voyage home.
All our shit's worn out from years of operation in sand. Protecting sand-scoured shit from salt air makes no sense at all. "No sense at all" is the Pentagon's main operating principle.
[...] When it comes to withdrawal, the most militarily profligate administration in memory has seemingly ensured that the highest military priority in 2009 will be frugality -- that is, saving all American "stuff" in Iraq.
Irony hardly covers this one. [...]
Every last piece of equipment over there is worn out and tore up from the floor up, or as good as, and will need to be rebuilt anyway, which is more expensive than buying new.
First, blow all the stockpiled ordnance in place. I think Fixer would be glad to come help. Heh.
Second, treat the breeches and barrels of every artillery piece larger than an 81mm mortar to some thermite grenades to render them into unusable lumps. Keep the mortars lest the mortarmen have nothing heavy to carry and feel unloved.
Third, fly out everything flyable. For the rest, see "blow in place" and "thermite grenades".
Fourth, use every available vehicle to transport troops. Use the best vehicles to take them to Kuwait for transport home. The balance of vehicles take them to airfields and ports. The last man out of each vehicle will be the driver, who will drain the oil, restart the engine, and board outbound ships or planes.
Call this "Operation We Need All New Shit Anyway". It'll be good for our economy, not to mention a burgeoning Iraqi scrap-metal industry. Win-win!
All non-combatant civilians will have been evacuated first, of course. The mercenaries can find their own goddam way out.
After more than 30 years, those comic poets of dope, Cheech and Chong, have reunited for their Light Up America tour, which arrives this weekend in the Bay Area. We caught up with the pair earlier in the week from a hotel room on the road and started by asking them why they've hit the road again.
Cheech: Actually, this is for his felony and my alimony, so it's the Felimony tour.
Cheech: Stoner culture transcends every group, just like Cheech and Chong. There's no group that doesn't like Cheech and Chong, whether it's young, old, black, white, Chicano, biker, straight, gay, Republican, Democrat. It's like butter. Everybody likes butter.
Chong: It's like pot, too.
Cheech: Yeah.
Chong: 'Cause pot got into all the culture. When I was in jail, I was invited into all the groups - from the white supremacists who liked cowboy music to the rappers and Arabs - every culture, the Hawaiians. Every culture in prison would have me as their guest of honor when they had going-away dinners for people.
Cheech: We're thinking of starting a religion next.
This is what Home Depot's founder Bernie Marcus said on a conference call yesterday:
If a retailer has not gotten involved with this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to Norm Coleman and these other guys," Mr. Marcus said, apparently referring to Republican senators facing tough re-election fights, then those retailers "should be shot; should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs.
It's nice to know Home Depot supports the death penalty for not contributing to their favored political causes.
