This place was created near the end of the twentieth century just for the heck of it..
Thursday June 29, 2000
Alright, I have lost two of my issues. The rest of the media and even the politicians are now talking about the Supreme Court and Elian Gonzalez is back in Cuba and the Miami madmen have been, or soon will, be forgotten.
So now what. I don't know. I think I will declare June to have finished bustin' out all over and wait for July. Look at this in the meanwhile.
Wednesday June 28. 2000
Even as I am sitting here today, The Court is making my case. Just a few minutes ago, they struck down (by the 5-4 count that is becoming so important these days) a Nebraska law that prohibited a certain kind of late term abortion. Now the national debate will really get shrill and who knows, maybe everyone will soon say"...it's the Supreme Court stupid!"
Later today, perhaps in minutes, they will rule on the gays vs Boy Scouts issue and later yet will show if they are reasonable or not in the Elian Gonzalez matter. They did just a second ago, decide that public money could be used to by teaching materials for parochial schools. That seems to me to be reasonable enough but some of the left who I usually agree with will get all bent over that one. Fun day. huh!!
But on the Red Sox front, not fun at all. Aiieeeeeee!!!
Tuesday June 27, 2000
Just sitting around waiting for the the final round of the Elian Gonzalez matter to happen and while I was doing that, I decided to post this. This Olasky character first hit the general public scene after Gingrich( you remember him) gave his book a prominent place after the GOP sweep of the hpouse back in 1994. The media want ga-ga over Gingrich and anything that he claimed to be "the truth". C-SPAN had Olansky on all the time for a while. He is a very serious and not to bright nut-case who rank's Cotton Mather as one of the greatest Americans. He is one very scary dude. He teaches at some sort of college down there in Texas and if you ever have a chance, catch him on one of his C-SPAN appearances as I am sure they will start featuring him again as a network that is getting all tingly over the thought of George W as president. By the way, I am sure that ther e are more definative sites devoted to Mather, so look them up. Hint! hint! see the Alta Vista click on ad below. So far I have only earned $0.81 from this and I had hoped to get rich.
So the philosophies of Mather, the reactionary thoughts of Scalia, the numbing blindness of Thomas, the narrowness of Robinson and Falwell, the anti-logic of Limbaugh, the absurdity of DeLay and Burton, the greed of Daddy Bush, the silly stupidity of Reagan will all be combined in informing the opinions of Shrub. Won't that be fun?
This little move is only the first of many more to follow soon, I hope. Drop the embargo altogether.
Once again I have to admit that the science and meaning of all this is beyond my full understanding, but if nothing else, doesn't it once and for all establish evolution and kill the wackos extreme notion of creationism. ? I guess we'll find out.
Monday June 26, 2000
So I forgot to put the actual day in for the past few issues. Sue me.
Today and for the rest of the week, The Supreme Court should be interesting to watch. First of all they will have a chance to end the Elian saga. That ought to be a slam dunk. Remember my hope for his return on the 4th of July as a marvelous scata. Then they have to rule on the pending Miranda case, another gay rights issue, an abortion issue...here is a brief summary. Keep a watch and remember "...it's the Supreme Court stupid"
EXTRA. 7 to 2, and you can guess which two, the court upholds Miranda. The nutcases Scalia and Thomas were dissenters. An you know who wants to model his nominees after these guys. added today at 11:25 AM
Speaking of stupid, I think it's time for the good guys to take off the gloves and start biting, kicking and gouging at the GOP and the press for all the newspeak that is going on. Stuff like Travelgate being nothing but reported as she lied but we can't prove it. Al Gore wasn't investigated so he is probably guilty....of something. Forget about being calm and cool and especially about being fair. Let's get tough or we will lose. Imagine Barbara Bush as First Mother. That should do it.
June 22, 2000
So here we are in an election year and the politicians are once again talking about less than important stuff and the pundits who are even worse (including me) talking about baseball blah blah blah, missing "secret" disk drives blah blah blah, Bush and the death penalty, blah blah blah, Hillary wants to rule the world and must be stopped, blah blah blah, Clinton is the devil, blah blah blah, the war on drugs, blah blah blah, the gay agenda, blah blah blah, price of gas, blah blah blah and on and on and on and on and on. Then, yesterday there is a report published by The World Health Organization that should be bannered all over the place in our press, and it takes a search to even find it mentioned Here is CNN's version. and here is more summary information.
While Bush wants to have huge tax cuts and Gore wants to do a bunch of nickle and dime stuff and everyone agrees that there may be enough surplus money at the federal level to do just about anything, no one wants to address the fact that even little Costa Rica and poor Cuba either beat the US or are even with the US in delivering health care to it's citizens. We spend the most by orders of magnitude and deliver the 37th best. That tells me that the money is being gobbled up in profits for the insurers, the providers, the drug companies, and the entire health care system. It is time to use the prosperity for the people and once and for all create a true single payer National Health Care System. In a country wher screaming "were number one" about everything trivial is so important, having to scream "were number 37" about important stuff is really stupid.
Places to see before it's too late. Grand Tetons, The Everglades. I don't know why, but I have been revisiting these places in my mind lately.
June 21, 2000
Summertime and the living is easy......yeah, right! Here is one story that makes that just a little less than true. First they lose a kazillion to one then Pettite, ERA about 5 point something outpitches Pedro, ERA about point 98 or something and they lose 3 to nothing. I don't know.
Well, it ain't over until ..................... and that ain't for a while yet.
June 19, 2000
added 6/19/00 10:49 PM
EXTRA! Supremes rule against Texas Praying at Public School Football Games. How about that.
All the news over the past few days has been, well, lousy. The Red Sox have been playing like a team heading for mediocraty. The idiot son of the ex-president Bush seems to be way ahead in the polls. The fools in the press are trying to make a big deal out of the so-called lost nuclear secrets. The weather has been, and still is, dreadful. I ran out of propane while trying to cook something on the grill in the rain yesterday, and on and on and on.
So today, I came across a column by ---and here is that guy again---George Will. Another of his that I find myself saying "that's right" to. Now is this bad news too?. Am I about to turn into a sort of right winger? No, probably not. George and I are just a little old fashioned socially.
Now there is another possible worry this week. The Supreme Court will probably rule on a challenge to the Miranda case. I talked about this when the case was argued a while back.
Here is a quote from an article in a the Washington Post that appeared on June 5th, that talks about remaining rulings in 2000.
"Only one of the highest-profile cases involves criminal law, but its outcome could upend more than three decades of law enforcement practice, not to mention the scripts of countless television and movie police dramas. Dickerson v. United States represents a direct challenge to the high court's landmark 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona, which held that criminal suspects must be told of their right to remain silent, that anything they say can be used against them and that they have the right to have a lawyer present during questioning.
The case comes from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, which ruled last year that a law passed by Congress in 1968--but never enforced--effectively nullified Miranda."
Lets hope they keep the familiar, "...you have the right to remain silent" phrase in place.
And this story, for some strange and probably warped reason, makes me laugh. Think about it!
June 15, 2000
Not only do most folks not even get the "morning in America" reference here, the content of the article, while fairly accurate and even a pretty good comment on the utter absurdity of the soft vs. hard money distinctions in political ads, interests no one except for political junkies all of whom have made up their minds about who and what thay will vote for even before there are any candidates.
What is needed from the press are statements about what the politicians of either party are really advocating. For instance, Bush wants to scrap some of the Social Security Safety net and let people invest some money on their own into the market. Since we all have that option anyway, all he is saying is lets "save" Social Security by reducing it. His version of let 'em eat cake. Period, end of story.
On taxes Bush is saying, lets cut federal income taxes taxes for everyone except the saps who are poor. They don't pay any federal taxes anyway. He forgets FICA and all the other little federal taxes and fees that all of us pay; for the poor they are a substantial measurable percentage of income and for the rest of us are nada. The jerk ( just want to have a chance to address issue 1 here) also is a reactionary who thinks things were just fine back in the good old days of the 18th and 19th century.
And here we go again? Hope not. And most of the smart guys think this approach is doomed. I think a good day for Elian and Juan to go home would be July 4th. That would be a great scata for the cuban-americans and all the other right wing wackos.
Here are the new falcon chicks pictures. Hope you have been keeping up.
. June 14, 2000
For the record and believe me, I know I am right, I do not want us to do this. I like Sammy Sosa. But the expectatations with the guy would soar and, well you know we might actually win it all and, what if we did. The world would end as most of us know it, that's what will happen. And what will happen to "wait until next year", what will happen to suffering through those loooong winters while we are waiting to next year. I for one, do not want to find out. And anyway, when we do finally win, I want us to win when it is not expected. When some phenom comes along and does what he is not expected to do. Sigh..............
Ah. the heck with it; go for it.
June 12, 2000
The Red Sox salvaged one from Atlanta and now confrontation number two(and last of the season) against the devil in Yankee Stadium. What idiot is doing the schedule these days. Games against teams like The Phillies and Marlins, whoever they are, and finishing up in Yankee Stadium in mid-June. As that idiot-congressman Traficant likes to say "...beam me up".
In case we have drifted from message number one lately lets get back on track. Here is an article from The Washington Times of all places that summarizes what could happen to the everyday thread of our lives in the next couple of weeks. Now in case you think I am being too dramatic, give it some more thought. Sure, some of the cases that the Suremes will decide are kind of technical and don't have much of an impact unless your a lawyer or business man or other kind of robber. But look at these remaining cases and some that have already been decided. Here is a pretty good summary. Now tell me that the issue of who gets put on the court is not the number one issue in the election. Never forget what "states rights" really was and would be again if George W's supporterpuppeteers have their way.
On Saturday last, and at last, I got a day of sailing in, out on the sound, aboard my friend's boat, CHIMAERA. It was nice.
June 9/10, 2000
Houe of Representatives, (representing lords I guess) has just passed a bill that should be entitled An Act to create an American Aristocracy. These idiots aong with some Democrats who must know that it will never get thgrough the Senate, love to call it a repeal of the death tax. What it is, is one of democracys smallest inheritance taxes and derives over 90 % of its revenues from the super rich and pratically none from the small farmers and mom and pop businesses that it purports to protect. I am so sick of this baloney.
And this too. Where is this all going?
June9, 2000
Ok, so this one may be a bit gushy for a baseball game story but here goes anyway.
No politics today; no baloney-fat today; no whiney stuff today; not much else today. Here are a couple of links to places I visit once in a while.
One. Try some of the stuff here if you feel like it.
Two. Just for the fun of it.
Three. No reason.
June 7, 2000
Now here is an important story . But what's going to happen to all the newly sophisticated wine drinkers who know that the cork smelling ritual is a sure sign of their arrival?
The guys who work for this company Sirocco Systems, will probably be out buying some of those screw capped bottles of fizzy wine today. They have a company that is less than 18 months old, haven't even got a product, let alone any sales and someone buys it for a few billion dollars. Boy oh boy.
Anyway, I do not really have anything to say today either, so I will play this little Space Invader game for a while and then go have lunch, and then come home and then...
June 6, 2000
June 6, 1944 Thats all that is important today.
later in the day I decided to visit here and the new D-Day Museum.
June 5, 2000
What a lousy weekend! Saturday morning and I find that one of the tires on my car is slashed along with about 19 or twenty other tires on cars parked in my housing complex. Someone theorizes that it was probably a high school prank. I have no theory. All I know is that it cost me several hours getting it changed and replaced and on a weekend when all the worker bees are out and about, what would have taken an hour or less on a Tuesday or a Thursday took nnearly six.. And then there are the headlines "Five in a Row " and "Ten out of the last Fourteen" and I don't mean wins. You know who I am talking about don't you?
Alright, I know that neither of these two items is the end of the world. Neither is even much of a big deal. But...this ?
Is this a great little car or not? I want one. Either shale green or patriot blue.
June 2. 2000
It is still June, june june. And I wanted to talk about the first place Red Sox, but after last nights game where they gave up 9 runs in a very weird inning I'd rather not. But on the other hand, how about this baseball story. Not bad huh?
And by making an almost perfect ruling on the ( let's see what was that kids name) the 11th circuit has suceeded on finally putting this story more or less to rest. Except in Miami. I listened and watched C-SPAN this morning for more than two hours and not one single call about the story. As they say, not only are La Donna est mobile, so are the rest of us . Cambio comma la salsa to put it another way. Look, I have a hard enough time spelling English so don't hold me to the spelling of any of this affected attempt at literacy in a foreign tongue.
My paper has an interesting piece on what passes for it's style section thes morning. Here it is,( a ha they won't let me link so just go to their main page and read the story called "the Friendly Black Box) an artilce about snapshots and their influence on modern advertising photography and photography in general. One of the places they mention is this site about Kodak Brownie cameras. I have a bunch of old Brownies so I decided to have a look. Now if only old snapshots could convince advertisers and photographers to stop taking pictures of jerky looking young men in their underwear with their tee shirts pulled up and putting them in the paper. No examples here, but you know what I mean.
June 1, 2000
June is busting out all over.....or so they say in song, as they are wont to do So in keeping with that and just because it's June, June June---I am over my mull time and back at the job. And what do you know. The 11th Circuit is going to make their Elian Gonzalez ruling public today. This is according to various reports including this one and others in more right wing radical places like www.newsmax.com . It is possible that they may just let this finally end. I hope so.We will soon see.
Now a personal note. This morning, I opened a fresh bottle of my shampoo of choice and saw a scary word on the lable. the word was "NEW". And it was. It was not good. Now I am compelled to either accept this as progress, or switch. Why do they keep doing this to me? A note to you business guys out there. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Next thing they may do is to try to make my 99&44/100ths percent pure stuff "new". Sorry if this personal glimpse is offensive, but don't mess with my mornings!!
Tito Puente died yesterday. Do your self a favor and find some of his music somewhere and listen to it tonight. Use Napster. My guess is that there will be plenty there.