First Looks category archive

Susie.

This is a magnificent post.

I am not even going to try to summarize it.

Please check it out.

The news from Pakistan today is not good.

It sort of goes with something I said a little while ago.

I’m not going to spend my time going over ground that others have gone over before me.

Instead, I’ll just point you to what digby said.

Afterthought: Oh, yeah. Our nation is led by fools.

It’s a neat list.

Check it out here.

We had to keep someone on table duty all evening.

(Look at them eyeballs. He’s going for the pepperoni and leaving the Chivas for the people.)

Dick Polman on the S(pl)urge (TM) (emphasis added):

Clearly, the troop “surge” has acted as a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding, and that has apparently calmed the millions of Americans who care about Iraq only when people (especially Americans) are being killed in unacceptably large numbers. Apparently the current death rate – 600 Iraqi civilians a month, or 20 a day – is considered acceptable.

(snip)

The U.S. troop surge has tamped down the violence quite nicely. But the purpose of the surge was to create enough space for the central Iraqi government to successfully pursue political reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis, and thus lock in the gains achieved by the surge. And it turns out – I know this will come as a shock – that the central Irqai government has done virtually nothing. Which means that the gains achieved by the surge could be reversed at some future point – probably the point at which U.S. troop levels are reduced. If they are reduced, given the dangers of the fractious failed state that Bush and his war team have created.

(snip)

So the question is, what happens next spring, when the Bush war team has to decide whether to loosen its tourniquet? Presumably, the major presidential contenders – or, by then, the presumptive nominees – will need to weigh in on that. With an election looming, there’s no way this war can stay under the radar.

The Bushie legacy. A legacy of lies and failure.

A legacy shared by the Republican Party, which faithfully follows the faithless and feckless Bushies.

A pox on the houses of all who find a war for a lie more valuable than the lives of innocents.

There is, of course, a certain bitter amusement in watching Greater Wingnuttia twist itself into pretzels to justify the Bushies’ betrayal of America, of the Constitution of the United States of America, and of the ideals of the Founders.

But the amusement is there only because the alternative is tears.

Here (though actually I can’t say that I mind the second picture all that much . . .).

. . . are a steaming pile of puppy poop. (Updated and kicked to the top.)

Phillybits has the pooper scooper.

Addendum, 12/21/2007:

More scooped poop here, here, and here.

And an editorial here.

(All the links are to Phillybits, so you can just go here and scroll down, at least until those posts crawl off the front page.)

[EDITORIAL MODE ON]

By and large, political and news blogs are in no way journalism, with the exception of a few sites, such as TPM Muckraker, which actually does have a small investigative staff.

Certainly, I make no claim to be a journalist and would not defend my shooting off my mouth as journalism or reporting in any way (except for those odd bits and pieces of life that I sometimes observe first-hand and describe here–that is actually reportage, but also generally trivial).

At best, political and news blogs are aggregators, which pull together stories and opinion pieces from professional news sources and organize them around a theme, or electronic op-ed columns, whose analyses may help the reader better interpret what’s going on around us, or a combination thereof.

At worst, they are havens for anonymous–and sometimes not so anonymous–liars.

Political and news blogs are at their best when they out the liars.

[EDITORIAL MODE OFF]

Chuckle.

State lawmakers once again are trying to block a yard-waste ban at Cherry Island Landfill that would add years to the life of the state’s largest trash site but at a higher cost to residents.

The ban has been on hold since May, when Gov. Ruth Ann Minner signed a House-Senate resolution barring enforcement until Jan. 24. Legislators claimed at the time that residents wouldn’t have a convenient and affordable way to dispose of yard waste. The resolution directed state officials to develop a plan to “simplify and economize” yard-waste recycling for residents.

How stupid is it to bag “yard waste”?

Let me count the ways.

You take something that is perfectly biodegradable, wrap it in a plastic bag and turn it into something that will last forever, and toss it in the landfill.

Furrfu!

This whole idea of having a pristine, weed-free lawn is just an invention of the fertilizer and weed-killer companies anyway. And what do they care about? Creating new markets for their noxious chemicals.

Note that I’m talking about the lawn, as opposed to the yard.

We had a yard where I grew up. Several of them, in fact. About two and a half acres of yards: front, back, and side.

My father and later my brother and I cut it. We played baseball and football on it. And none of us thought much about it it, as long as it was green.

The idea that it should be populated with a single breed of grass and have no clover was completely unknown to us. Heck, that little patch of blue grass on the north side stood out really prettily from the bull grass.

And just, pray tell, is wrong with having grass clippings or leaves in the driveway or on the pavement?

Why must legions of persons carrying un-muffled leaf-blowers disturb the morning moving those leaves and grass clippings about. Honestly, that is what wind and rain are for.

And let us not mention the energy that gets used up just to move bits of biomass around. That’s energy as in gasoline being wasted in a pointless, senseless activity. (Unlike, for example, boating, which is a noble was of communing with nature, especially if you have an open runaboat.)

I say ban yard waste, mandate common sense, and get a mulching mower.

Oh, yeah, and while we’re at it, let’s ban leaf-blowers and edgers too.

I generally like the area I live in. (Caveat: If there had been a little thing called “jobs” down home, I probably never would have left.)

It is truly deepest suburbia, with big city services readily available, but not too far from a boat ramp. My little corner of suburbia was built up in the ’40s and ’50s, so it’s pretty well settled. What you see is what you get: the traffic isn’t going to get much worse, because it’s already as worse as it can be, but, if you have the patience to nose them out, there are plenty of back roads for getting where you want to go without actually driving on the Conquered Concord Pike.

My house backs up to an abandoned quarry and, then an Office Park, giving the back yard privacy and giving us the comfort that no one’s going to come along and drop a Mickey D’s, or worse, a (Hoick! Ptui!) Walmart behind us.

There is one wart on this idyllic little suburban scene.

You can’t get a Real Ham (TM).

The kind you have to soak overnight before cooking to leach the salt.
The kind that you don’t have to refrigerate, because it’s actually been, like, you know, cured (I once had one hanging for four months in my crawl space till I got around to cooking it).
The kind you have to scrub the mold from before cooking.
The kind with a hambone.

I’m not talking about those puny Yankee “pre-cooked” attrocities that have to be refrigerated and that, when you cut a slice, the slice flops limply in your hand like a piece of balogna. I was looking at some of them in the store yesterday, and the labels said [BRANDNAME] SUGAR [or hickory or whatever] CURED HAM and water product.

Right away, you know that, if they have to add “product” to the label, folks, it ain’t real. It’s adulterated beyond recognition.

Aside: Indeed, I don’t think people in these parts even understand Real Hams (TM ). Many years ago, I went looking for one in a long-closed Super Fresh. None on display. I rang the little bell. This old guy leans out and I ask him whether he had any country hams. He said, “Sure,” and came back in a minute and held out this ham. Then he pulled it back and asked, “Where are you from?”

“Okay,” he said, and handed me the ham. I have no doubt that someone once bought a country ham from him, took it home, unwrapped it, and brought it back complaining about the mold.

(Full disclosure: Haldas Brothers does carry Real Hams (TM), but only during Eastertide. Other times of the year, they have to be special ordered, minimum order of five.)

Now, the cooling tower town is in slower lower Delaware, and lower Delaware fancies that it has some kind of Southern heritage. So, yesterday, after I finished doing the cooling tower thing, I decided to check out the local grocery stores for Real Hams (TM).

The meat manager at the Super Fresh said he didn’t have any, that for some reason he couldn’t get them this year, and finished with, “I’m going to have to drive to Virginia to pick some up.”

At least he knew what they were.

The meat person at the Save-A-Lot said she though she might have seen one once in Dover, but she wasn’t sure.

There were rumors of a Food Lion, but for some reason I couldn’t find it, even though it was right there. But I’m not sure I wanted to go there anyway.

Someone at the Cooling Tower Place had said he’d seem some in Walmart. Now, I try to avoid Walmart, because I don’t like the way they treat their employees or their suppliers, but I don’t completely blacklist it. I was desparate and it was getting late, so I checked out the local Walmart. Acres of Yankee hams, no Real Hams (TM).

I finally got lucky at the Dover Safeway. The meat manager said, “Sure, over here. . . . Whoops! Where did they go? I think I saw some in the back. Let me check.”

He disappeared into the back, and I fired up Opera Mobile while I waited for him. Five minutes later, he reappeared with a Real Ham (TM):

I’ll start soaking it tonight.

Well, they are starting to come out now.

All those end of the “Best of” and “Worst of” lists.

Here’s a good one.

Via Mithras.

Fact Check dot Org looks at Democratic candidates errors in the last Iowa debate. Score: Richardson 3, Dodd 2, Obama 1. Follow the link for a detailed analysis.

Later: Link fixed.

(Aside: None of these corresponds with this list of whoppers.)

Tuesday, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Center City, Philadelphia.

Just a block from South Street.

I’m still waiting for Brendan to explain the gift exchange thingee to me.

Despite a couple of missteps in the latest Iowa debate (more about that tomorrow):

After nearly a full day spent on the Senate floor, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) defeated an attempt to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform legislation that would grant immunity to telecommunications companies who cooperated with the Bush administration’s secret wiretapping program. Dodd objected to the motion to proceed to the bill early this morning and remained on the floor for almost ten hours, taking a stand for the rule of law and the Constitution with his statements throughout the day. At approximately 7:30 P.M. Majority Leader Reid announced the FISA reform bill would be pulled from the Senate calendar and reconsidered in January.

At last, a Democrat who stands up for, golly gosh gee, Batman, democracy.

(Taken with no flash and no lamps on in the room and with the camera set on speed priority, so the lights would stand out, then run through Paintshop Pro’s One Step Photo Fix.)

Sorry, that should have been Kellogg and Brown Rutting.

Jon Swift.

I’m not going to rewrite this.

Just please go read the post. And wonder what the heck goes on in some persons’ heads.

As the first commentor said, “Intolerant AND stupid…what a magical combination.”