Watering Hole: August 22, 2011 – Some Pig

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Words matter.  E. B. White was well aware of the power of words.  His novel, Charlotte’s Web, uses words to generate change.

It seems that today’s media and politicians either aren’t aware of the harm that they can cause by words or they are aware and their intention is to cause harm.

Sharron Angle promoted Second Amendment solution to what she perceived as the “Harry Reid problem”.  Looks like someone took her up on using this solution only they used it on Gabrielle Giffords, instead.

Senator Coburn claims that it is a good thing that he can’t carry a gun on the Senate floor.  His comment could be enticing to some crazy to do harm to a Senator.

Rush Limbaugh wants Obama to fail which means he wants America to fail.  The GOP obstructionists are doing their best to tear apart our democracy and destroy our economy.

John McCain and Sarah Palin kept quiet when members in their rally shouted, “Kill him”.  Their silence could be construed as tacit approval.

One more…

Rick Perry wants to be President of the United States of America although he said that Texas should secede from the union. How exactly does that work?   Which USA would he govern if elected President?  His action and his words just don’t jive.

Now for some words of kindness.  Words that changed the life of a little pig.

This is our Open Thread.  Do you want to add to this list?  Harmful words?  Kind words?  Or just words?   :)   Speak Up!

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165 thoughts on “Watering Hole: August 22, 2011 – Some Pig”

  1. Yes, words matter, and so do names. Let’s spell these correctly please: Sharron and Gabrielle.

  2. With words comes responsibility. The left may have been hard on George W. Bush but I don’t recall anyone saying that they hoped he failed, or that we should secede from the Union or yelling “liar” during a SOTU speech. What we see are a bunch of brainwashed right wing puppets who have drunk the corporate kool aid.

    • I never heard or read where anyone “hoped” Bust would fail. But I do admit that when news of his ‘appointment’ became a headline, my gut told me the odds were strongly in favor of the premise that yes, he WOULD fail. And he did. And with his failure came America’s failure. Funny how that works. Beginning in 2009 there were many who expressly WANTED Obama to fail. They weren’t afraid to say it out loud, and they did all in their power to ensure that he would. And for some very odd reason, America’s failure rate as a nation has picked up a whole lot of speed, and we seem to have reached the point where the ultimate failure implicit in national collapse is within easy reach.

      Back around the time that the once-failed Bush was “elected” (thanks, Diebold in Ohio) to a second term I wrote in an essay I titled The Death of a Nation the following excerpt:

      Imagine a modern society which is ignorant of science, of history, of the arts, of literature, poetry, and drama. Imagine a society that doesn’t care about its ignorance because it’s been taught, instead, that all there is of value in this life can be measured in dollars and cents and the goods which can be purchased therewith. Imagine a society which believes wealth refers only to the accumulation of money and/or assets which carry a price tag. Imagine a society which collectively is not well-informed enough to locate any particular nation on a globe, but which cheers when its leaders order invasions and occupations, a society which yawns at revelations that its leaders have ordered both torture and mass murder as a matter of policy. Imagine a society once seen by its fellows around the world as a grand and glowing bastion of liberty and justice for everyone, no matter the accident of their birth, but now – suddenly – become feared, mistrusted, and even loathed; a society now emerged and perceived as untrustworthy and a danger to all of civilization, and in fact to Gaia – the very soul of Earth herself. Imagine a society – a nation – so rife with political and corporate corruption that lies are now spoken as if truths, that what was once good is now bad, where right is wrong and wrong is right, where dreams are now become nightmares.

      If imagination fails, simply stand forth and take a close look at the United States of America, circa 2005 A.D.: Land of the Free and Home of the Brave now become Land of the Tyrant and Home of the Scoundrel.

      And here we stand today deeper in that same mire than ever before, facing yet another election where a seemingly ever-larger portion of a misinformed and intellectually unstable electorate again finds itself enthralled with a list of candidates that make George W. Bush appear to be the very model of super intellect, an electorate urged ever forward by a totally unprincipled mass propaganda media. And then take a quick look around.

      These are not the best of times, though they may well prove rather quickly to be the worst of times.

      • The Soviet Union mired itself in a war in Afghanistan which brought its economy to its knees. Is there anything to be gained from understanding history?

  3. Epic Smackdown

    Jonathan Chait rips apart Stephen Moore’s anti-intellectual attack on Obama’s economic policy. It’s truly embarassing. Chait’s amusing conclusion:

    “I have been following Moore for years, and I have met him — yes, it was awkward — and I can assure you that this is not just some oddball rhetorical game he’s playing. He genuinely has no idea what he’s talking about. And I’m sorry to be mean to what seems to be a fairly nice guy, but it does matter that there are completely ignorant people wielding great influence over the policy debate.”

    Bill Maher frequently has Moore on his show because, I think, he’s such an affable wingnut idiot.

    http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/93942/in-which-i-try-restrain-my-nasty-impulses-limited-success

    • “completely ignorant people wielding great influence over the policy debate” – and that sums up Sunday news programming on American television.

  4. Wilbur had a great PR person in Charlotte.

    Yes, words matter. The Republicans learned this in the 90′s and I would say that Frank Luntz has taken it to the extreme by manipulating people to vote against their own best interests. How else can one explain middle class people being for the “estate tax” but against the “death tax” when they are the exact same thing?

    Yes, words matter. How else can one explain the use of carefully chosen words to scare and manipulate a country to start an unnecessary war?

    Yes, words matter. why else would the words politicians use be put through focus groups to see if there is a way to sell the American people a bill of goods or the new and improved toothpaste or car or the next President?

      • Wilbur the pig — from Charlotte’s web… from the video/book….Wilbur was “some pig” before Babe.

        • I see. I read that as Charlotte, North Carolina, so I didn’t even get the reference to the video above. I never had any contact with that story. I don’t think my stepsons ever watched the movie. They went nuts for video games by that age.

    • When Bush was being confronted about how his lies about Iraq led people to believe they were somehow involved in the attacks of 9/11, Bush answered, “I was very careful not to say Iraq had anything to do with the attacks.” A very telling statement because it was literally true – he was very careful not to say that.

      But he did deliberately talk about the terrorists who attacked us and the evil Saddam Hussein in, quite often literally, the next sentence. It would be like me saying, “I hate my next-door neighbor. Republicans piss me off.” Now, could you be blamed for thinking my next-door neighbor was a Republican? I never said it, but I made it sound that way. That’s the kind of rhetoric Bush and his Iraq War Group engaged in and it was done deliberately to deceive people into thinking something that wasn’t true. Which makes it a lie.

      • Good points, Wayne and the proof of that lie is the number of people that believe to this day that Iraq attacked us….

        They got us there with imagined mushroom clouds and heightened threat levels. While at the same time, imploring us to “go shopping.”

    • Estate Tax,from Wikipedia:
      For deaths occurring in 2011, up to $5,000,000 can be passed from an individual (for married couples, the applicable amount is $10,000,000) upon his or her death without incurring estate tax.

      What “middle class” people does this apply to? Call it an “Estate Tax”, or a “Death Tax”, this is an attempt to stop tremendous wealth from being transferred from generation to generation. A albeit weak attempt to shuffle the deck.

      How many of you guys have a $10 million estate?

      • That Wiki entry must be out of date, parx. I thought the Republicans managed to make the estate tax go away completely. When George Steinbrenner died, his sons inherited billions without paying any estate tax at all. Dems wanted to re-instate it starting at $5 million, but Republicans refused. Claimed some lie about how it would hurt small businesses and families would lose their farms. I hears of one family who might lose their “farm”, and that’s because they grew crops on a really expensive piece of land on Long Island.

        At least, that was how I understood it. I could, of course, as always, be wrong.

  6. GADHAFI FOUND RUNNING …

    … for Republican Nomination
    Libyan Madman Turns Up in New Hampshire

    CONCORD, NH (The Borowitz Report) – The mystery surrounding Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s whereabouts was resolved today as the dictator announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in a town hall meeting in Concord, New Hampshire.

    In announcing his candidacy, the Libyan madman joins a Republican field which is believed to number in excess of seven hundred candidates.

    While some New Hampshire Republicans seemed surprised to see Col. Gaddafi shaking hands and kissing babies at the Concord town hall, an aide to the Libyan strongman said his transformation to GOP candidate made perfect sense.

    “In those final days in Tripoli he was becoming increasingly disconnected from reality,” said the aide. “So I think he’ll fit right in.”

    Mr. Gaddafi, dressed in his trademark yellow turban and matching robe, got mixed reviews in his first appearance on the campaign trail, with some New Hampshire citizens saying that his six-hour stump speech was badly in need of pruning.

    Additionally, some felt that his rhetoric needed to be toned down, especially his closing line about fighting for the Republican nomination “until the last drop of blood.”

    But others gave him high marks for his grasp of history and geography, which most agreed was stronger than Michele Bachmann’s.

    Perhaps underscoring the challenges that lie ahead for Mr. Gaddafi in his quest for the GOP nod, current polls show him in the back of the pack, leading former Senator Rick Santorum but trailing the pizza guy.

    “Unfortunately for Muammar Gaddafi, he might be out of step with the current crop of Republican candidates,” one pollster said. “There’s a perception that he’s too moderate.”

  7. Borowitz skewers it!

    I think Gaddafi could win the nomination – he might have to ditch the flowing robe and the Ay-rab name….

    OK Zoo-poll, what name should Gaddafi change it to in order to be a shoe-in for the nomination? Go!

  9. .
    TtT, you’re relatives have been around a bit longer than thought:

    “Two fossils discovered in 1994 in Hakusan were confirmed recently as being that of a new genus and species of the Trionychidae family of soft-shell turtles, and about 20 million years older than what had been the oldest turtle fossil of that family discovered until now.”

    • If it wasn’t for the lack of opposable thumbs, we’d have invented the can-opener *and* the flush toilet a long time before you lot too. Damn flippers.

      • Oh now TtT is going to be all full of himself telling us how his people were on the planet before the rest of us. “Oh my folks discovered green, leafy vegetables blah, blah, blah.” :)

    • To Amurka’s great and everlasting fortune, we had George W. Bush in the Oval Office for eight years during which time and via Herculean effort plus roughly three trillion dollars he very cleverly set up the demise of both bin Laden and Qaddafi while at the same time he conquered both Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby ridding the world of at least one dude named Hussein plus Mullah Omar.

      “Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Qaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower.”

      I.O.W.,if only W. Bush had remained in power Qaddafi would have no more than ten years remaining in his rule. … Oh, wait a minute. Hmmm.

      Next question.

      /barf

        • Only if Perry is selected by the corporatocracy to be the next SPOTUS (sock-puppet-of-the-United-States)…. Chimpy is going to look positively Truman-esque in post-presidential adulation.

        • I think that I remember Bush wanting to let history decide about the efficacy of his Presidency. I think that history has decided against.

  11. Wikipedia: (Chris) Christie is of Irish and Sicilian descent.

    My money says that’s a lie. The name is decidedly Greek and I think he knows that Greek Orthodox would not cut it for the born again Christians. A Sicilian would claim to be Italian if he wasn’t trying to cover for being Greek. And he doesn’t have his religion listed.

  13. A report from Michele’s homestate paper:

    “Bachmann appears to have represented the IRS only twice in cases tried in U.S. Tax Court — both small cases — according to a search of judicial records by attorney Melissa Wexler, a research expert at Westlaw, a major provider of computerized records. One was a win against a White Earth Indian Reservation resident named Marvin Manypenny, who contended that part of his modest income was not taxable under treaty rights. [... The other] was a 1990 IRS win against a blue-collar Gateway Foods worker from La Crosse, Wis., who didn’t file a tax return for several years. The most he ever made during those years was $23,470 and his six-year tax deficiency was estimated by the IRS at $13,500, records show. The taxpayer, who lived with his parents for lack of money after a divorce, represented himself in court.”

    The WaPo denounces Bachmann’s most recent rhetoric against her former employer:

    “I went to work in that system because the first rule of war is ‘know your enemy,’” Ms. Bachmann told a crowd in South Carolina on Thursday.

    As Post blogger Greg Sargent pointed out, this was a change from the explanation that Ms. Bachmann normally offers for her résumé. In the past, she has said that her four years as an attorney representing the IRS gave her insights into the tax code and why it must be reformed. The notion that from the start she was infiltrating a system she considered to be “the enemy” seems to be a new spin.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line

  15. Rick Perry Throws Himself Under The Bus

    Rick Perry is walking away from unpopular parts of his book, Fed Up, which was published under a year ago. Ezra Klein suspects this won’t work:

    “There is no chance that the Perry campaign is going to convince anyone that his book is not a useful guide to his thinking. What will happen if they try is that they will draw attention to its most radical passages, make their candidate look insincere, and signal to the other campaigns and to Republican elites that even Perry’s advisers think Perry’s book makes him vulnerable. Fed up with ‘Fed Up!’ as they may be, they’re stuck with it.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/perry-campaign-fed-up-with-fed-up/2011/08/12/gIQAHUdNWJ_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein

    Perry’s Romneyesque flip:

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0811/Perry_Nevermind.html

      • Where did you wander off to? Usually you tell us when you go to the grocery store…much less disappear for a couple days.

        • I thought I said bye to all y’all? Maybe I only thought about it. Sorry.

          I went to Boise with some old friends for a shopping trip. Man, do those women know how to shop! I mostly enjoyed the company. :)

          • I see what happened. I remember you telling about it, but I thought you had already been to Boise and come back, before you actually went. Friday you didn’t say anything about it, then you weren’t around after your last comment And didn’t show up for Music Night. Sorry I didn’t keep up better. :oops:

      • .
        It’s in the Repugnant Party handbook (never be caught with the facts)

        From April 2011:

        During the government shutdown debate, Kyl said that abortion was “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”

        CNN reported on a statement from Kyl’s office.

        “[H]is remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions.”

        .
        May 2011

        Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says that anyone that uses direct quotes from his Sunday interview about Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to dismantle Medicare is lying.

  16. Has anyone ever heard of something I’ve always thought of as the Break Point? This is the dollar amount needed (not desired or dreamed about) for a person or family to live without sweating the next paycheck? I’m sure it varies all over the country due to cost of living. And I can’t help but wonder why this isn’t more important in our tax discussions.

  18. Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi is still alive, in a wheelchair but well enough to have been shown on Libyan television attending a pro-Qaddafi rally just last month.

    So, doesn’t Navy Seal Team 6 have something to do now?

    • Mitt Romney Calls On New Libyan Government To Extradite Pam Am 103 Bomber

      Mitt Romney responded to news of the impending fall of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in Libya by calling on the incoming leaders of the country to allow one of the world’s most notorious terrorists to face the music. Again.

      “It is my hope that Libya will now move toward a representative form of government that supports freedom, human rights, and the rule of law,” Romney said in a statement Monday. “As a first step, I call on this new government to arrest and extradite the mastermind behind the bombing of Pan Am 103, Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi, so justice can finally be done.”
      [...]

        • .
          Why are you taking the spotlight away from Mittens?
          He’s sounding so “presidential” – Rom’s wants al-Megrahi arrested for not having died from prostrate cancer in a timely manner.

          (Mittens has forgotten al-M was tried and convicted for murder)

          • al-Megrahi is going to die seeing that everything he did and everything he thought he was doing was for nothing and full of sh*te. I might hope for a shortage of Aleve in his local pharmacy too… but sometimes I’m a vindictive bastard,

      • Sort of like how the US should arrest and try the masterminds behind the Iraq war and the American use of torture?

        • They were responsible for 100,000 times the unwarranted deaths as was Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi in his wildest dreams, and yet NO ONE is even pursuing them. Why is that, I wonder?

          • Prolly for the same reason that the US has not backed or built a single democracy since the end of the Marshall Plan. Cuts into the bottom line.

    • He’d have to show up at a rally or fundraiser and face some inconvenient questions. No chance of that happening now.

      • And his supporters would have to pay to attend the rallies. Ryan knows that he is a loser. He may very well lose his House seat in the next election. All that is needed is a strong Democrat to run against him. This Democrat would need some financing.

  20. I’m not exactly sure this accurate but it seems to me that the US (and by proxies around the world) has managed to consume probably better than 90% of the available resources for the benefit and entertainment of maybe 10% of the population in the last 150 years.

  21. The corporations DO NOT want us to know the real breakdown between jobs here and abroad.

    So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.

    • You won’t find Procter & Gamble’s U.S. head count in its filings, either. When initially asked for the number, company spokesman Paul Fox wrote in an e-mail: “We do not track nor report U.S.-specific jobs numbers vs. jobs overseas.” After it was pointed out that P&G’s chief executive, Bob McDonald, had cited such figures in a Cincinnati Enquirer op-ed piece, Fox acknowledged the company did track that data. The number of U.S. employees is 35,000 out of 127,000 total, or 28 percent.

    • That should correlate nicely with the 40,000 to 50,000 factories that closed in the USA between 2000 and 2009 as well.

  22. Confusion. For the better part of the 20th century the US chose to lead the way. It stood for things that benefited the people. Our rhetoric said we wanted the world to enjoy and participate in the benefits of a democratic society. Our Golden Age was the 60′s, sort of. America was booming.

    Fifty years later we are being told that was a lie. A fever dream. A fantasy. Today, everything America has built is being torn down. Never happened. Strange what can happen in 30 years.

    • Make that 48 years. The downhill slope was pretty much held in abeyance until late November 1963 when an event in Dallas turned the downhill slope free once and for all and for good. There have been a few perturbations since, times when the downhill paused for moment or two, but generally speaking it’s been pretty steady. It picked up speed in 1981 with the official emergence of the conservative movement, and gained tremendous momentum with the appointment of W. Bush to the presidency effective January, 2001. Today one wonders if what was once a nation with great potential will persist in any recognizable form beyond the fiftieth anniversary of its official decline-defining moment.

      Not unless the Democratic Party and the Progressive Left should suddenly stumble upon a treasure trove of guts and balls coupled with the will to do something right for once rather that simply aiming for something conciliatory. I’m not holding my breath, that’s for sure.

  24. Ron Reagan is filling in for Chris Matthews today. He is awesome and should be a regular. I also saw Nora O’Donnell a progressive thinker when on Bill Maher’s show formerly on MSNBC is now at CBS. But Pat Buchanan is still on MSNBC.

  25. And I know I’m alone but I do like the way Al Sharpton has no filter and when he catches somebody lying just goes for it.

    • I do appreciate Al’s directness — it’s refreshing. I just don’t like the way he mangles the language.

      I know, I’m a snotty elitist.

        • Well said frugal. That’s just how I feel. Zooey is such a snob. :)
          Anyway I have this recurring dream that I’m confronted by some teabagger and suddenly find myself tongue-tied. It’s my worst nightmare. Most people who know me know they better not go there or I will take them out.

    • I haven’t seen his show, but when I’ve seen him on other things I was surprised that he is also very funny when he wants to be.

  26. JUST TO REVISIT……a statement i made a few months ago.

    ~Rick Perry would announce his candidacy for POTUS and after winning the nomination, would select his love interest $arah Payola as his running mate.~

    i actually said this tongue-in-cheek, but i’m telling you, it’s frightening, freakish and corrupt out there. baggers are like zombies walking around scaring old people and bigots.

    • Not so sure. Fat ankles and all, Crazy Shelly has everything Caribou Barbie has without the greed.

      • No one takes a job in Congress and then doesn’t actually DO the job, unless there is greed involved. She’s just not as transparent as the Quitter.

        • Possibly. But the difference I see between the Tundra Twat and Crazy Shelly is commitment. Shelly is all about playing Joan. Sarah is all about cashing checks. Shelly is much more dangerous than Sarah.

          • Still the question, though: does Stillwater run deep? Not in this case it doesn’t. Palin and Bachmann are two parallel examples of how a marginal IQ can express itself, and that’s about it. I still can’t comprehend the fascination with either one of them, though. Of course, I could never see what a bull sees in a cow either. Sotospeak.

          • Cenk had the breakdown:

            1. Bible Spice – money
            2. Batshit – she’s in it for for Baby Jesus
            3. Governor Jeff Davis of Texas – he’s just a regular slimeball politician – you can tell because Fat Boy Rove hates him.

          • Very true. Batshit is freakin’ COMMITTED to her agenda. The money is the cherry on top.

            The Quitter is just in it for the money and attention.

  27. With a Perry/Palin ticket I think even Karl Rove would vote for Obama. Besides Palin would never go for being second banana again.

  28. DUH

    “What are the four primary characteristics most associated with those Americans sympathetic to the Tea Party? “Authoritarianism, ontological insecurity (fear of change), libertarianism and nativism.” So says one of the many findings in a study presented to the American Sociological Association on Monday.”

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/study-tea-party-members-cultural-dispositions-authoritarianism-ontological-insecurity-libertarianism.php?ref=fpblg

    • I had just brought this up to read. Without having read it, it appears that they’re all a bunch of fearful fucking racists and bigots.

      In other words — dangerous.

    • Nativism? More like delusional nativism. There isn’t a Caucasian in America that can claim nativism. Anti-immigration is as close as one can come.

  29. Don’t you think a religious person would find it insulting (to God) to liken a man-made creation (the corporation) to God’s creation (humans)?

    It certainly cheapens what it means to be a person.

    • .
      Hey now, now – the corp. are made in the image of that God.
      Said politician followed the logic all the way through: corporations are made up of people – therefore the SCOTUS was correct in calling them people/

  30. Rick Perry’s back surgery used adult stem cells:

    “The treatment carries potential risks ranging from blood clots to infection to cancer and may even run afoul of federal rules, doctors say. At least one patient died of a clot hours after an infusion of fat-derived stem cells outside the United States. It’s not clear how much of this Perry might have known.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/22/rick-perry-back-surgery-stem-cells_n_932942.html

    • Someone should force Perry to watch an ultrasound of the procedure prior to the operation and have it described in exacting details before he should be allowed to have this operation. Clearly the patient needs to be more full informed about what this procedure might mean to him.

  31. Watching what’s going down politically in the US today reminds me SO MUCH of histories I’ve read of the emergence of Nazi Germany. What does the point of no return look like?

    group believes MoveOn.org is a communist front and … would not stand for America becoming a fascist nation.

    A small political gathering of about 18 liberal thinkers at River Forks Park Sunday afternoon erupted in conflict when about 35 members of the conservative tea party intruded upon the meeting, waving flags and holding signs accusing the rival group of being communists, Marxists and socialists.

    The liberal group — organized by MoveOn.org — decided to leave the park and move its potluck to a nearby home. Members of the conservative group followed, parking at the entrance of a private lane leading to the home to continue their protest.

    Roseburg Democrats Dean and Sara Byers said Monday they told tea party members who followed that they were not welcome to drive down the lane to their home.

    The Byerses said they got out of their car to stop vehicles from entering the driveway and one tea party member almost ran them over.

    Sara Byers said she was so shaken she called 911. She said a Douglas County deputy called about an hour and a half later and said he had been unable to respond because of other incidents. Byers said she was still considering filing a criminal complaint against members of the tea party for harassment.

    A leader of the tea party group, Rich Raynor of Roseburg, disputed the liberal group’s version of events.

    “They are liars,” said Raynor, director of Douglas County Americans for Prosperity. “That is what communists do.” [...]

    • Raynor said the group believes MoveOn.org is a communist front and said he would not stand for America becoming a fascist nation.

      Fucking morons.

  33. The main difference between the Tea Party today and Weimar Germany is they can’t focus their hate on any one group. Liberals, Gays, Jews, Coloreds, Muslims…so many people to hate, so little focus.

    • The Weimar period ended in 1933 with the rise of the Third Reich. If you are standing by the comparison of the Tea Party to the Weimar Republic, then do you mean to imply that something worse is coming? Because I will accept the idea that there is something worse than the Tea Party that could come next.

    • To them, that’s all one group that falls under the “Anybody who don’t think zactly same as I think” banner.

      I use the word “think” advisedly.

  34. I had to shave today for a job interview. Never has my neck itched as bad as now. This is the first time I’ve shaved since my Mom’s funeral in 2003.

    • Are you serious, House?

      How are you going to get into ZZ Top if you shaved your beard?

      Fingers crossed for good interview results!

    • .
      All positive energy you’ll get a job that allows for you to grow back that sexy beard!

      On a serious note – you’ll impress them and get the job!

    • Thanks y’all. This is an unusually high quality place. They do some military work, but also some Delta IV and Atlas V parts. The work moving to Decatur is adding jobs here. I interviewed for a CNC position, but they also have openings for quality control and purchasing.

  37. Hi, gang.

    Tomorrow will bring several hours of, probably useless, medical tests to confirm that the medication, I’ve been taking for years, is still necessary. My “socialist” Medicare hasn’t batted an eye but my private supplemental insurance company wants me to use a cheaper alternative.

    Today I have been struck, once again, by a very disturbing fact. None of the presidential candidates of the opposition party can bring themselves to say; “the solar system is roughly 4.5 billion years old” nor will they admit the fact that the solar system, not to mention the universe, was formed by cosmic forces that don’t require their God.

    They are so grounded in a Belief system that suspends disbelief that it’s not really possible to sway them with arguments based in the cause and effect universe we sane people inhabit. They may not make sense to us but we aren’t even real to them. We can’t reach them. We can’t convince them. We can’t negotiate with them.

    All that we can really do is outnumber them.

    • pete, I’m sorry you have to go through testing just to satisfy some bureaucrat. I hope things go the way you’d like them to go.

      You’re right, there is no sense wasting time trying to convince the delusional that reality exists. We need to show up at the polls in epic numbers.

      • Nope. No baby fish. The eggs grew fungus and died the other day. I’m not very disappointed because lots of others have tried and failed. Still; not everyone can raise “Scooter Blennies” to the point where they produce fertilized eggs so I figure each spawning is another success. The fish in question are healthy and happy and that’s my main focus.

  38. Re: Zooey’s earlier link to McCain and Graham’s statement about Libya. Did I read this right that they apologized to Muslims for the actions of the US?

    Didn’t we hear no end to the protestations about Obama doing the same thing?

    • The first thing that must be considered is that President Obama, according to rumor, is not entirely Caucasian. I knew that a few diehard freaks would maintain their rage but I didn’t think that all of them would. Carter and Clinton were reviled by the Reichwhiners but I never imagined anything like the embarrassing display we have seen since President Obama was elected..

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