Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Sharon Not Such a Big Jerk After All?

Sharon Says He Won’t Stop Gaza Pullout (washingtonpost.com): “About 8,200 settlers live in 21 Gaza settlements among 1.3 million Palestinians. Sharon decided the settlers cannot remain in the hostile, poverty-stricken seaside territory. His plan also calls for evacuating four tiny enclaves in the northern part of the West Bank next summer.”

Good for Sharon. It’s, at least, a start.

I recently read some screed somewhere–I don’t remember where–where the guy’s argument was that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is all fair-and-square, essentially because the Israeli army won the battles necessary for taking those territories. Although the guy who wrote the thing didn’t seem to realize it, his conclusion was nothing less than that old favorite: Might Makes Right.

Americans (North, South, and Middle) ought to recognize that argument. It is, after all, how we justified our “expansion” into the territories of the Sioux and Ojibwe and other native nations. (Well, that and the ridiculous notion that we were going to bring culture to the impoverished savages. Hmm….seems like we’re still using that excuse in the “Third World” countries only now we use McDonalds and Coca-Cola and television instead of guns and small pox.)

Well, anyway. I’ll give Sharon some credit for wanting to carry out this limited withdrawal from the Palestinian lands.

Cheneys Ashamed of Their Own Daughter

Cheneys Steamed at Kerry Reference to Daughter (washingtonpost.com): “Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Kerry’s running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), took a less conciliatory tack than Kerry, telling ABC Radio that Lynne V. Cheney ‘overreacted to this and treated it as if it’s shameful to have this discussion. (…) I think that it indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter’s sexual preferences.’”

Exactly. What? Like nobody knew Mary Cheney is a lesbian? Kerry was asked a question about gay rights. In his response, he mentioned VP Cheney’s daughter. It may not have been the point Kerry intended to make, but it made me think ‘yeah, you’d think the Bush/Cheney administration would be more sympathetic towards gay rights considering that Cheney’s own kid is gay’ and I believe that’s a reasonable response.

What’s really weird about the whole Mary Cheney thing is how she’s working to re-elect a guy who believes she and her partner don’t deserve the same rights straight couples have. It’s one thing to love your parents (no matter how misguided they may be) but to actively promote their homophobic political agenda. That’s just weird. And sick. Maybe she’s got some kind of self-hate thing going on. Who knows.

Bill O’Reilly. Yuck.

O’Reilly Hit With Sex Harass Suit – October 13, 2004

Okay, okay…I know. “Bill O’Reilly” and “Sex” in the same sentence is enough to make pretty much anyone feel queasy. This is pretty entertaining, though.

If you’re not familiar with The Smoking Gun web site, their thing is collecting real documents of various sorts. What we have here is the text of the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by one of O’Reilly’s female coworkers (named Mackris).

I’m struck by a couple of things:

Mackris states that on several occasions she became “frightened” or “disturbed” or “repulsed” by O’Reilly’s behavior yet she never hung up on him when when he called, never reported him to his superiors. She stayed in the job (and even returned to it after having quit for a while to work at CNN.) She kept going out for dinners with him. She kept taking his phone calls.

O’Reilly really does hate Al Franken.

O’Reilly apparently doesn’t know the difference between a loofah and a falafel. All I can say to that is…keep him away from my pita bread!

Seriously, I can’t feel at all sorry for this Mackris woman. I mean, yeah, O’Reilly is creepy– but she’s the one who stayed working for him. There are victims and there are victims. This woman is pretty clearly a climber of some sort. She was willing to put up with O’Reilly’s sleazoid behavior as long as her career goals were being served.

Hey, It Could Happen…

The Onion | Cheney Vows To Attack U.S. If Kerry Elected: “‘If the wrong man is elected in November, the nation will come under a devastating armed attack of an unimaginable magnitude, one planned and executed by none other than myself,’ Cheney said, speaking at a rally in Greensboro, NC. ‘When they go to the polls, Americans must weigh this fact and decide if our nation can ignore such a grave threat.’”

A REALLY EXPENSIVE Man in My House, With a Wrench

I’m going to hold off on identifying the company that hooked up my new bar sink—for now. We’re going to give them a chance to make this thing right. If they don’t, I’ll identify them. Boy oh boy…will I ever identify them!

I finished tiling the bar and countertop and called the company to have them come out to hook up the new sink and fawcet I’d bought. They were providing labor only (okay and also some sink putty and adhesive for connecting the plumbing). It took the guy a half an hour to do the job.

The bill for the job: $302.00.

That’s right. $302.00. For those of you for whom math is not a forte, that amounts to a labor charge of over $600 per hour. Remember, we supplied the sink and fawcet. All the guy had to do is hook it up.

Okay…now you have to understand a little about how this outfit works. They’re a fairly big company and among their selling points are that they show up quickly, they’re willing to do relatively small jobs, they have a set fee that they tell you in advance, and they don’t charge overtime if the job takes longer than expected.

It’s completely true that the guy told me the fee up front and I okayed it before he began work. It seemed awfully high to me but I thought maybe the job was a lot more complicated than I’d thought. Maybe it really did take 2 or 3 hours to do. Plus, to be perfectly honest, since the guy was already at the house I just wanted to get the damn thing installed and be done with it. (I have no doubt that this company counts on people having just that reaction.)

Understand that I’m not completely clueless. I do understand that you’re going to pay more for the convenience of having a guy show up promptly to do a small job like installing a sink. You’d have a hard time getting a plumber from a local company to come out for such a job, I suspect.

But still…. $600 per hour???

So, half an hour after he’d arrived, as the guy headed out the door, I realized: I’ve just been charged waaaaay more than seems reasonable. The guy had left a little customer satisfaction survey for me to complete and mail back. I did so. A bit later in the afternoon a woman from the company called to do a routine customer satisfaction follow-up. (I dunno…maybe the guy told her how unhappy I was about the fee. I didn’t yell at him or anything but I let him know it was WAY more than I’d expected considering how long it took him.) I explained my dissatisfaction to the customer service lady and she promised she’d investigate the situation. It might be that the guy just read the wrong price out of the big book they use. She said I would hear back from her by next Wednesday.

So…we’re giving them a chance to fix this. Stay tuned!

Keep Your Religion Out of My Government!

High Court to Weigh 10 Commandments Displays (washingtonpost.com): “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ultimately ruled that the Texas legislature, when it put up the monument donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, had a secular rather than religious purpose in mind. The monument, the appeals court noted, was part of a long-standing larger display of monuments in the building. In that context, the ruling said, it did not constitute an endorsement of religion.”

Nonsense. Or, shall I say it?… Bullshit.

The mere presence of a display with religious origins is a de facto endorsement of that religion. I’d even go as far as to say that when religious displays (like the 10 Commandments) are combined with displays of governmental documents (like the Declaration of Independence or the Magna Carta) the intentional implication is that the government(s) producing the latter documents have the approval of the religion(s) producing the former documents—and vice versa.

If these schools and courthouses and other government buildings wanted to just post the last 7 of the 10 Commandments, I’d probably not bother to make a fuss about it. Those are the rules about not lying or stealing or killing people–along with everyone’s all-time favorite rule about not coveting your neighbor’s wife or his ass or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. All good advice, no doubt about it. It’s those first 3 Commandments that are problematic. There are some variations among the different religions, but basically they are:

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.

Those are pretty specifically religious in nature and, as such, they have no place in a publicly funded facility like a school or a courtroom.

If you read this article you’ll see that the Supreme Court is going to revisit the issue of whether the Ten Commandments should appear in/on public buildings. In 1980 they ruled that the Commandments shouldn’t be posted in public school classrooms because “children in the classroom are a malleable as well as a captive audience susceptible to adult and peer pressure.” [from the Washington Post article]

Frankly, I think the malleability of children is pretty much irrelevant to the larger issue. That being the appearance of governmental endorsement by or of a particular religious tradition.

Recipe: Kitty Litter Cake

Kitty Litter Cake

[Posted recently on the Flutenet yahoo groups list]

1 pkg. Spice Cake Mix
1 pkg. White Cake Mix
1 pkg. White Sandwich Cookies
Green Food Coloring
12 small Tootsie Rolls
1 box Vanilla Pudding Mix (NOT instant)

Prepare cake mixes and bake according to directions.

Prepare pudding mix and chill until ready to assemble.
Crumble the white sandwich cookies in small batches in blender; they tend to stick, so scrape often.
Set aside all but about ¼ cup.
To the ¼ cup of cookie crumbs, add a few drops of green food coloring and mix with a fork.

When cakes are cooled to room temperature, crumble into a large bowl.
Toss with half of the remaining cookie crumbs and the chilled pudding.
Gently combine.
Line new, clean kitty litter box.
Put mixture into litter box.
Put three unwrapped Tootsie Rolls in a microwave safe dish and heat until they are soft and pliable. Shape the ends so they are no longer blunt and make them curve slightly.

Repeat with 3 more Tootsie Rolls and bury them in the mixture.
Sprinkle the other half of the cookie crumbs over the top.
Scatter the green cookie crumbs lightly over the top; this is supposed to look like the chlorophyll in kitty litter.

Heat the remaining Tootsie Rolls, 3 at a time in a microwave until almost melted. Scrape them on top of cake and sprinkle with cookie crumbs.

Serve with a new “pooper scooper”.

From Sacramento Union newspaper 9/16/92:elw

Deluded? Or Just A Hypocrite?

Salon.com News | Kerry, Bush have trouble wooing Catholics: “Kerry offers himself as a practicing and believing Catholic who nonetheless holds positions contrary to the church’s on abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.”

I’m astonished at the man’s nerve, really. That anyone could fashion themselves as a “practicing and believing Catholic” and yet support abortion truly strains the bounds of gall.

I suppose a person could say the same about me, seeing as how I support the right of gay people to marry. Still, I truly believe that the gay marriage thing is in keeping with the Church’s basic teachings on the sanctity of human life. I think it’s just a matter of time before the Church recognizes that people who are gay aren’t that way because of sin. They’re gay because of biology. Denying them the legal benefits of marriage is no less wrong than denying rights to black-skinned people because of their race.

So, what’s a person to do? Bush is a war-mongering jerk. Kerry’s either deluded or a hypocrite. Not much of a choice.

“And the answer is…..”

Salon.com News | Bush defends Iraq invasion despite report: “Duelfer found no formal plan by Saddam to resume WMD production, but the inspector surmised that Saddam intended to do so if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Bush seized upon that inference, using the word ‘intent’ three times in reference to Saddam’s plans to resume making weapons.”

I have a strong image of Bush in a goofy turban holding a sealed envelope to his brow–a ‘la Johnny Carson on the old Tonight Show–saying “And the answer is….”

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not….?

FederalNewsRadio.com: “On the campaign trail, Cheney has often boasted of how the Bush administration helped shut down an underground network supplying nuclear technology to Iran, which he called one of ‘the world’s most dangerous regimes’ in an August campaign speech in Davenport, Iowa. Halliburton, meanwhile, has defended the business deals with Iran that intensified under Cheney.”