From Pine View Farm

2008 archive

Ghouls 0

In Illinois.

H/T Karen for the link.

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One Bright Spot 0

I get to flip over my girly calendar today.

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Another One Bites the Dust 0

A new victim of Bushonomics has, as Duncan would say, been eated (emphasis added):

Regulators on Friday shut down Freedom Bank, a small bank located in Bradenton, Fla. It was the 17th failure this year of a federally insured bank.

(snip)

The FDIC said the bank’s deposits will be assumed by Fifth Third Bank of Grand Rapids, Mich. Its four branches will reopen Monday as offices of Fifth Third Bank.

Aside: What the heck kind of name is “Fifth Third Bank”? It sounds like the name of a bank in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

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Joe 0

Glomarization on Joe Biden:

Sure, Joe Biden is known for putting his foot in his mouth. But it’s a foot in the mouth that we can believe in.

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The Broken Crystal Ball 0

Over at Brendan’s.

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Three More Days 0

For all those folks who think they can tell a Real American(tm) from a–whyaddya call em?–Fake American:

Via Adam Felber.

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Disgruntled 0

Oh, man, this is a hoot. I suggest you read it if you need a chuckle.

See what a Good Joe thinks about a bad Joe.

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Why Are Republicans So Afraid of Voters? 6

Clearly, they fear that the voters might actually, like, you know, vote. Can’t have that, now, can we? The will of the people might get expressed, after all. Gasp. Horrors. (emphasis added)

U.S. District Court Judge Kane wasted no time ordering Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman to stop removing names for the Colorado voter lists on the eve of the election, an act that violates federal law.

H/T Karen for the link.

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Red Eye Gravy 4

I’m edumacatin’ Karen on red eye gravy, so I figured I would share the knowledge.

You put your grits on the stove to cook. Don’t use “instant grits.” They are so full of salt that they are evil. Probably invented by a Republican. Quick grits are okay, but cook them slow. The package says five minutes. Make it half an hour.

Fry up a couple of slices of real ham(tm) in the skillet (cast iron skillet, preferably–worth the cost, but I inherited mine; they hold the heat and spread it evenly).

After taking the ham off, put a little bit of water in the skillet, scrap any stickins off the bottom of the skillet, add a bit of pepper, and cook it up for a mite.

It’s called “red eye” gravy because it has a reddish tint from the ham.

Pour the grits over the ham. Pour the gravy over the whole thing.

If you have a low cholesterol count, add an egg fried in butter over medium at the bottom of the pile.

Eat and die happy.

Damn Yankees don’t know a blessed thing about cooking. As my cousin once said after a sojourn in Boston, “Them Yankees think peas and carrots grow on the same damn plant.”

Note that the greatest cookbook author in the history of mankind was from Mississippi.

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This Would Make Me Consider a Career in Law Enforcement 0

‘cept I’m too old.

Via NN.

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The First Batch of Ghouls 0

just came by here tonight.

I need more ghouls. I’ve already eaten four Snickers bars.

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Man, That Was Quick 0

The new server is now online. I just pointed the router at it.

Now I think I’ll go try out Debian on the old one.

If you notice any freaky stuff, please use the email link at the top of the page to notify me.

Addendum:

Oh my. This is so much faster than the P3. Nothing like RAMs to improve perfomance.

The new server reboots cleanly with no glitches now. I’ve cleaned up my mispellings in

/etc/rc.d/rc.local

and will stop playing sysadmin and start annoying persons in public for a while.

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New Server Coming 0

My server has been dragging. I’ve had to reboot it three times today for non-responsiveness.

This box is a Pentium 3 with 256 MP RAM. I think I’ve stretched it as far as I can.

Since I have a Pentium 4 with 3.5 GB RAM available, I’m working on setting up the website on it. By tomorrow afternoon, it should be on line.

In the meantime, if you notice the site slowing to a crawl, know that I am working on it.

Then I’ll set up this box as a test machine.

Where I’ll put it, I haven’t figured out yet. If I put it in the server room, I’ll have to get a new KVM switch capable of handling more than two computers.

Everywhere you turn in this house there seems to be some old broken-down used computer that I’m managed to bring back to life.

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Fix Ted’s Car 0

More here.

(Aside: I still haven’t identified the juncture at which celebration became an excuse for vandalism.)

Via Glomarization.

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Here’s the Church, There’s the Steeple 0

Steeple Repair

(I know it’s not a great picture. I accidently hit the “settings” wheel on my camera and moved it off “auto,” but it’s too strange to pass up. I doctored it up as best as I could in Paintshop Pro.)

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The Best $24 I Ever Spent 0

Well, we won’t talk about that, but it was a great week.

The second best $24 I ever spent was my trial subscription to The Nation.

The magazine takes no prisoners.

I both anticipate and dread its arrival every week, because I know that, when it arrives, I must put my mind to work.

I fell behind reading it this month, so I took four issues with me on my trip the past two days and ploughed through them at the various restaurants where I dined (if you can call “Popeye’s” dining, but the “Captain’s Deck” sure throws a mean breakfast).

It is well-writen, tightly reasoned, based on facts, and easily the most intellectually challenging magazine I have ever read.

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Four More Days 0

It’s not over till it’s over.

TPM Tracking Poll

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McHack Ejects His Supporters from Event 0

Because his goons didn’t like their looks.

As one of my old friends would have said, R22Dumb.

Jeez oh man, you can’t make this stuff up.

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John McCain Is a Conservative Hack 0

The Nation (emphasis added):

. . . The administration’s guiding ideology was explained by the famous but anonymous Bush aide who informed reporter Ron Suskind of the impotence of the “reality-based community”–defined by said aide as individuals who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he explained. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality–judiciously, as you will–we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” The net consequences of this philosophy can be seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, New Orleans, the Justice Department, the budget deficit, the housing crisis, the banking crisis, etc. And yet it retains a certain salience in the Alice in Wonderland atmosphere of our political system–particularly with what remains of the Republican base.

The McCain campaign is doubling down on this bet. Each new day brings a revelation that the candidate has lied, flip-flopped, appeared dazed and confused or has hypocritically contradicted himself from the day before, and the campaign’s response is always the same: “Liberalmedia, liberalmedia, liberalmedia.” When questioned by Politico.com about the naked lies the campaign has been peddling, spokesman Brian Rogers was explicit: “We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.” GOP strategist John Feehery was no less reticent about his disrespect for reporters and for reality: “The more the New York Times and the Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent…. As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter.”

In other words, as far as Republicans are concerned, truth is not a defense. If lies work, they lie.

When I was at the home today visiting my mother and attending the semi-annual care meeting (a routine review of treatment and progress), I also looked up my aunt. She was playing bridge–she is actually quite the cardshark–with three other old ladies.

One of them was the mother of a classmate of mine. The conversation slid into politics (as many of my conversations do) after I mentioned that First Son has seen combat in George Bush’s Glorious and Patriotic War for a Lie, and she said, “I can’t wait for Obama to win.”

The other old Southern white ladies looked at her a little funny.

Now, this is an old Southern white lady who, 40 years ago, had she been driving her “household help” home after a day’s work, might have expected her “household help” to sit in the back seat.

There was a little bit of discussion, because my Aunt said of Senator Obama, “Well, not him.”

I pointed out that elections are about who’s running, not about who we wished were running.

General agreement.

And I said, “Frankly, I would be happy just to see someone in the White House who is honest.”

More General Agreement, in spades.

I gave out an Obama sticker–the lady who was a mother of a classmate of mine said that she would put it on her door. (The world becomes very small in the home.)

Anyhoo–back the the quotation from The Nation:

Look at the record.

Republicans lie like cheap whores

Early and often.

Why persons of good will persist in believing them is beyond me.

Oh, yeah. Can anyone say, “Keating Five“?

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Family Values 0

From US News and World Report:

University of Kentucky police cut down a likeness of Sen. Barack Obama that had been hanged in effigy Wednesday morning, the Kentucky Kernel reports. The likeness, which was found hanging from a tree between a parking lot and a school building between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., wore khaki pants, a blue sports coat, and a mask of a black man, according to one of the students who first saw the figure. “I was disgusted and hurt someone would deface the university and put something up of this magnitude,” student A. J. Mertz said.

There’s really nothing more to say.

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