Pretty ugly, becoming worse ...

Looks like the whole Korea mess is getting kicked up a notch:

After weeks of feints and indecision, the USS George Washington will make an appearance on the Korean Peninsula this week, according to the Pentagon.

...

U.S. and South Korean officials said in June that they would organize additional joint war-fighting exercises in the region as a show of force. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters Monday that the George Washington would participate in joint exercises with South Korean forces as soon as it departs Pusan on Sunday.

...

Hmmmm ... Wonder what's gonna happen if the North Korean Navy takes a hostile stance with a U.S. Navy carrier battle group? Can't be good.

Now it's official ...

I realize the Mrs. and I partied our asses off a couple months ago, celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary, but today is the actual day she said "I do". We're just going for a quiet lunch to mark the day. I still can't believe she said "yes" ... twice. Heh ...

'Winning' ...

Oh yeah, the war is going so well:

KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

...

When it comes to winning a war, the last guy who got it right was FDR. This one's going the way of Korea and Vietnam. The current bunch looks as if they'll be as successful as the previous bunch. Idiots ...

It's gonna be a long day...

We're headin' out to the coast today. It's snowing about an inch an hour and I have to go clear the driveway and knock the snow off the truck and hope I don't have to do it again once we get the whole travellin' salvation show loaded up. Not that I can't get out of the driveway, but I'd like a chance, however slight, that I can get back in on Saturday. Believe me, clearing the driveway after a 400 mile drive just to get the truck off the street is worse than doing it before the drive. I've done it before and may have to do it again.

Then there's the drive itself. Right now, I-80 is closed in at least the eastbound direction, but this changes from minute to minute depending on how many idiots come to a 'circular misunderstanding' and park it in the snowbank or end up on their roof. It's looking like at least fifty miles in four wheel drive at 30 mph. If the road is open when I get there. Been there, done that, doing it again.

It's the price I pay to live in Paradise. Without the 72 virgins. Hell, there ain't 72 of those within a hundred miles. But I digress...

Signin' off now. Things to do. See ya when I see ya.

Update:

Discretion being the better part of of valor, we cancelled our trip.

I cut one swath down the criveway to the street and the 'thrower broke its drive wheel in three pieces and threw a track. Snow thwow no go no mo'. There was a plow clearing our neighbor's driveway and the operator agreed to plow me out for a Jackson, which is dirt cheap. Me 'n my broken snowthrower rode up the driveway in the loader bucket. Whee! He was runnin' on the edge of late like all private plows and took off before I could pay him. I'm sure he'll be back.

Somewhere, and I can't remember exactly where, I slipped on a fresh-plowed place and landed on the back of my head. Rang my bell pretty good. It hurts from that little knob down my neck and out to my shoulders. The 800mg Ibu is kickin' in but I don't want to be out on the road and realize I'm hurt to the point where I need a doctor.

That and the fact that I can't plow myself back in if I need to convinced me to suggest we go for Christmas instead. Mrs. G agreed and that was it.

I'm damn glad I don't have to deal with the non-inclement-weather-drivin'-pukes public as well.

It just wasn't in the cards. The omens were not good. The way de bones landed was not encouraging.

This snowthrower, like Fixer's range, served me well for many (16) years and doesn't owe me a damn thing. Mrs, G has been after me to get a new one anyway and we're arguing about whether to get the $900 Craftsman 357cc 33-inch cut job with wheels or the 928 Honda tracked rig for $2900. She wants me to get the Honda, which is the ne plus ultra of snowthrowers, and says we're not getting any younger and it'll probably be the last one we need. Since I'm the el cheapo around here, I counter with we're not getting any richer either. We will see, and husbands know how that goes. I guess when I slam it sideways for the last time and brakeslide up to the Pearly Gates I might as well be broke too. Heh.

I'll fix the 'thrower of course, but a new one would be nice.

All you folks take it real easy out there. Read the comments.

Headline of the Day

Tea Party threatens '2nd Amendment remedies' if Palin doesn't win 'Dancing with the Stars'

Where are we going? And why are we in this handbasket?

Told ya ...

I had a bad feeling about the situation in North Korea. So, what do I see as soon as I put on the news this morning? This can't be good:

Following shelling in disputed waters off Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea in August, North Korea has made an attack on the Island itself, causing damage to homes and injuring residents and military personnel according to reports this morning.

...

If this is some sort of negotiating ploy by the insane midget, he's stepped over the line. There are hawks in South Korea who look forward to refighting the Korean War and the more the North provokes, the more leverage they'll have. This could get really messy, really quick.

Benedict's Trial Balloon

Thanks to YubaNet.

Gobble 'til ya wobble

Do not miss Will Durst on Thanksgiving!

The fourth Thursday of November is definitely the bestest holiday. Food, Family, Friends and Football. Four of the five F's. I most fondly remember the Thanksgivings of yesteryear. The big, old family reunions, which I looked forward to, until about five seconds after I hit the driveway, then it all comes back… why I left home. And they always made me sit at that stupid fold-up cardboard kids' table. Never got to graduate to the wooden table because none of them would die. Darn medical advances.

There are enough kids in Mrs. G's family these days that we got moved to the big table a coupla years ago. It's a blessing - less of a reach to nephew Sean's famous "three pounds each of butter and cheese, a quart of sour cream and a potato" mashed potatoes! To die for! Literally. And dressing. And yams. And...

Thirteen-bean salad. No, I wish I were making this up. I had no idea there were 13 different types of edible beans. I had no desire to eat them all at one sitting. I certainly would not have chosen to be in a houseful of 23 other people who had eaten 13 types of edible beans. "Crack a window, Billy. Well, break it then." Candle flames turning blue all over the house. "Methane is our friend."

Heh.

The evening ends with two matriarchs locked in a mortal death clinch, bumping bellies on the back porch with 100 mm. menthols dangling from their mouths while their spouses trade wild, drunken blows on the driveway and the kids pelt them with greasy poultry bones from behind raked piles of leaves. Aah, memories. And that was way back in 2009. Some traditions never die. This year, I'm bringing the Dupamouche.

Much more.

"Mystery dishes" at Thanksgiving are a tradition. So are screw-ups. Mrs. G's niece Tracy is most famous for making a pumpkin pie without removing the paper from the pie crust. She has a photo of that on a T-shirt and wears it every year whilst looking busy by rearranging things in the kitchen and waiting for her husband to bring dinner from the supermarket he owns.

Well, it had to happen, didn't it?

X-ray-proof underwear.

Buske of Las Vegas, Nev.-Rocky Flats Gear says the underwear's inserts are thin and conform to the body's contours, making it difficult to hide anything beneath them. The mix of tungsten and other metals do not set off metal detectors.

The men's design has the fig leaf, while the one for women comes in the shape of clasped hands.

It's unclear whether it would lead to an automatic, more intrusive pat down by federal Transportation Security Administration officials.

Necessity, thou art the mutha of invention, but I think if TSA wants to get to your junk they'll find a way.

I carry my metal VFW membership card outermost in my wallet for similar reasons.

Headlines of the Day

First Olbermann, Then Scarborough, Now MSNBC Suspends Star of ‘Lockup’

GOP on START Treaty: Combust and Vilify

Stove update ...

Can't get a new one (that the Mrs. wants) until Saturday. Contingency plans for Thanksgiving are already in the works. Fuck if I know what they are but I'll get a memo when my assistance is needed. Heh ...

The Party of National Security?

The first sentence in this NYTimes editorial is also a Quote of the Day:

The world’s nuclear wannabes, starting with Iran, should send a thank you note to Senator Jon Kyl. After months of negotiations with the White House, he has decided to try to block the lame-duck Senate from ratifying the New Start arms control treaty.

The treaty is so central to this country’s national security, and the objections from Mr. Kyl — and apparently the whole Republican leadership — are so absurd that the only explanation is their limitless desire to deny President Obama any legislative success.

The Republicans like to claim that they are the party of national security. We can only hope that other senators in the party will decide that the nation’s security interests must trump political maneuvering.

I'm sure they will claim that reducing our nuclear arms from 2,200 to 1,550 and allowing the Russkies to verify is a Kenyan Muslim Communist plot.

And since when do the nation's security interests trump political maneuvering? It's a quaint idea but not Repug policy.

'Toon from YubaNet.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Stonehenge Gets Multimillion-Dollar Grant
It will pay for removal of large, unsightly rocks at historic site.

Ending Estate Tax Would Save Walton Family $30 Billion
Enough to buy rest of Congress, elect John-Boy President.

??? - News Quiz - ???

What is wrong with the Fox News headline, “Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General?”
A ) Obama did not praise Indian Chief who killed U.S. General.
B ) It was Crazy Horse who defeated Custer at Little Bighorn, not Sitting Bull.
C ) Custer died at Little Bighorn, but nobody knows who killed him.
Hint: you can choose “all of the above.”

I wonder ...

If McCain/Lieberman/Republicans still insist that bombing Iran ASAP is the way to go?

WASHINGTON — North Korea showed a visiting American nuclear scientist last week a vast new facility it secretly and rapidly built to enrich uranium, confronting the Obama administration with the prospect that the country is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal or build a far more powerful type of atomic bomb.

...

Personally, after having spent time in that part of the world, I'd take the North Korean idiot a bit more seriously than the Iranian idiot. Then again, I'm not paid to pormote Israeli foreign policy.

Firsts ...

Having lived an ... interesting life, I don't get many "firsts" anymore. This afternoon I got one. Never have I had a glass cooktop blow up in my face before.

Click to make big

The Mrs. has been saying that one of the burners had been acting up so, at halftime in the Napoli-Bologna match I went in the kitchen and turned it on, fiddled with the knob a bit, and watched it work. Not 15 seconds later she blew like a grenade. Fortunately, the Mrs. was standing behind me and the dogs were behind her. Also fortunately, the blast went straight up. We were showered with glass but it didn't come at us. Also fortunately, I got the most of it, a cut above my right eye and the Mrs., Chooch, and Ziva walked away unscathed. Thank god the Mrs. wasn't cooking with a hot pan of grease when it happened. By the way, that steak was supposed to be my dinner. Pizza guy has already been called.

Oh well, interesting day ...

1st Snow, Day 2

Here's yesterday:
Here's today:

Mrs. G took the pups on their morning walk and got just out of the yard and turned around and they were nowhere to be seen. They had already gone back to the house and were waiting by the front door. Here they are investigating the path of least resistance when I stepped out to take the photos:



The kickoff of the Annual Winter Games yesterday went reasonably well. The snowthrower fired right up, but developed a little water in the float bowl at the end, not uncommon after sitting with an empty gas tank for six months.

New snowthrowers all seem to come these days with a nice manufactured stick to clear the discharge chute when it clogs. I just put a large screwdriver or tire iron in my boot for handy access. I'm just hopelessly Old School, I guess.

I just happened to be standing looking out the bathroom window about 3 o'clock this morning. The sky had cleared and the moon was nearly full and it was light as day and absolutely peaceful and beautiful.

The Games will continue...

Tools For Tools

Eugene Robinson

For what it's worth, my advice for Obama is to forget the Republicans. Not literally, of course -- the new House leadership is going to make itself hard to ignore. But ultimately, it's the president who sets the agenda, and who ultimately is held accountable for America's successes and failures. Obama's focus should be on using all the tools at his disposal to move the country in the direction he believes it must go.

Including Gitmo.

Progressives are right when they complain that the White House must do a much better job of making the case for its policies. But the challenge goes well beyond communications. Judging by the way they snubbed Obama's invitation to break bread together, Republicans seem eager for gridlock -- and the chance to blame the president for not getting anything done.

If I were President and those assholes had snubbed me like that, they would have arrived for lunch in the company of a couple large MPs each, whereupon they would have been served a nice lunch and been informed politely in my best drill field voice that an 'invitation' from the President is a summons, not an option.

Dessert would then be served along with a nice slide show of their future accommodations in a lovely sunny clime with gentle tropical breezes should they transgress again, with a gentle voice-over explaining how the Bush rule that the President decides who is an 'enemy of the people' is still very much in effect. Maybe just a coupla slides of a CIA Gulfstream with a nice, er, rendition of "They're Coming To Take Me Away".

Bipartisanship, much less capitulation as compromise, my ass.

Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha

Not only did I wake up to another foot-and-a-half of snow this morning, Daddy Frank's column is not exactly cheery either:

f logic applied to Palin’s career trajectory, this month might have been judged dreadful for her. In an otherwise great year for Republicans she endorsed a “Star Wars” bar gaggle of anomalous and wacky losers — the former witch, Christine O’Donnell; the raging nativist, Tom Tancredo; and at least two candidates who called for armed insurrection against the government, Sharron Angle and a would-be Texas congressman, Stephen Broden, who lost by over 50 percentage points. Last week voters in Palin’s home state humiliatingly “refudiated” her protégé, Joe Miller, overturning his victory in the G.O.P. Senate primary with a write-in campaign.

But logic doesn’t apply to Palin. What might bring down other politicians only seems to make her stronger: the malapropisms and gaffes, the cut-and-run half-term governorship, family scandals, shameless lying and rapacious self-merchandising. In an angry time when America’s experts and elites all seem to have failed, her amateurism and liabilities are badges of honor. She has turned fallibility into a formula for success.

With Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity on her side, Palin hardly needs the grandees of the so-called Republican establishment. They know it and flail at her constantly. Politico reported just before Election Day that unnamed “party elders” were nearly united in wanting to stop her, out of fear that she’d win the nomination and then be crushed by Obama. Their complaints are seconded daily by Bush White House alumni like Karl Rove, Michael Gerson, and Mark McKinnon, who said recently that Palin’s “stock is falling and pretty rapidly now” and that “if she’s smart, she does not run.”

This is either denial or wishful thinking. The same criticisms that the Bushies fling at Palin were those once aimed at Bush: a slender résumé, a lack of intellectual curiosity and foreign travel, a lazy inclination to favor from-the-gut improvisation over cracking the briefing books. These spitballs are no more likely to derail Palin within the G.O.P. than they did him.

Revealingly, Sarah Palin’s potential rivals for the 2012 nomination have not joined the party establishment in publicly criticizing her. They are afraid of crossing Palin and the 80 percent of the party that admires her. So how do they stop her? Not by feeding their contempt in blind quotes to the press — as a Romney aide did by telling Time’s Mark Halperin she isn’t “a serious human being.” Not by hoping against hope that Murdoch might turn off the media oxygen that feeds both Palin’s viability and News Corporation’s bottom line. Sooner or later Palin’s opponents will instead have to man up — as Palin might say — and actually summon the courage to take her on mano-a-maverick in broad daylight.

Short of that, there’s little reason to believe now that she cannot dance to the top of the Republican ticket when and if she wants to.

I don't think she could win but, deep down, I could never be sure that our electorate wouldn't ride the crazy train off the rails and our nation with it. The time between her nomination and the election results would be the most fear and apprehension for the longest time I've ever felt. Victory for me would be simply surviving it.

More moral hypocrisy ...

You know, maybe these idiots might get the hint one day. When I hear one of god's mouthpieces getting all verschimmelt over the morality of something or another, I immediately think they're projecting their own insecurities or failings upon their flock and, ultimately, upon all of us. This latest weenie who just got his '15 Minutes' told his congregation to delete their Facebook accounts or they'd be excommunicated (or whatever his flavor of Xtians call it). "So, he's fucking one of the church ladies he met on FB, or got caught at it," was my first thought. I wasn't far off:

A pastor who said Facebook was a 'portal to infidelity' has admitted to having threesome sex with his wife and a male church assistant.

The Rev. Cedric Miller's secret past was exposed after he ordered church leaders to delete their Facebook accounts or resign.

He blamed the social networking website for causing married couples to have illicit affairs and igniting 'old passions'.

...

All of you, from now on, please just shut the fuck up.

American idiots ...

And we wonder why this country has turned into Bizarro World?

There are a lot of rather depressing findings in this latest Pew knowledge poll, including the fact the while 75% of the public knows that the Republicans 'won" the last election, only 46% know they only won the House of Representatives. I joked before election day that a lot of Tea Partiers were going to be upset to find out that Barack Obama was still president on the day after, but I didn't think it might actually be true.

...

The Republican Party and conservative groups have been quite successful over the past 30 years in dumbing down the population. The ignorant are easily led.

Anybody who actually thinks is demonized as an 'elite' and an 'intellectual', one whose 'subversive comments' are dangerous to the country. When I was young they were called 'bleeding hearts', people with a social conscience who believed in the betterment of all Americans not just those who could afford it. People who believed unnecessary wars in far off places were detrimental to the American way of life. People who believed polluting the environment would come back to bite us in the ass.

All that was true 40 years ago is still true today (as we've seen over the past 10 years), and still the ignorant vote against their own interests. In these days of instant communication and easy access to the knowledge of the world, you'd think we'd have become a smarter society but instead we've become even more clueless. A population who believes voting in an election is equivalent to the audience participation on American Idol or Dancing With The Stars.

I believe, at this point, we've crested the hill and are on the down side. The America we knew in the 20th Century will be no longer and we are well on our way to mediocrity or worse. I suggest an epitaph for our national gravestone: "Keep your government hands off my Medicare". It explains it all.