Random items

Boy starts California fires while playing with matches.
This is a sad day for everyone in California and a sader day still for the boy who will have to live with what he did for the rest of his life. I also feel bad for the parents. Imagine your kid doing something like that. What could you do for punishment? How could you face your neighbors?

Karen Hughes
These people are psychopathically delusional. She actually thinks she did a great job of diplomacy for our country. Not...

Adolf I mean George wants to rule this country himself without Congress or the Justice Dept. by administrative order. That's different than executive order or signing statements. Any constitutional scholars out there like to give us some insight on this?
Now that's a Halloween scare for you. Too bad it's for real.

War protest 6th year

I'm glad to see that protesters have increased in numbers from years past and a little more media attention was given to the protest. But then our wonderful elected leaders are still not listening and from the sounds of it there's no great plan and little mention of bringing the troops home anytime soon by any political party. So what have we gained? A whole lot of people had a walk in the park and may be hoarse on Monday. Come on people we can do better than that. Let's be creative. Unless we can fill D.C. with a half a million and clog the streets there or come up with better ideas nothing's going to change. We need to find out exactly why the Democrats will not stand up and lead and let them know that if they don't start soon they'll see someone else holding their office after the next election.

The reason middle east peace talks won't work.

hatip to AP for photo
hatip to Watertiger for format

An early Merry Christmas from George

Oil $92 a barrel

It's expected to go to $100 a barrel shortly. Thanks George and a screw you New Year to you.

More bad management

Browsing the news I see more and more examples of bad management and blunders of this misadmenistration. If George W. were your son (thank God he's not) would you hand over your wallet or credit cards to him? Our government can't account for $1.6 billion for the training of Iraqi police. See: Dyna Corp
It may take 3 to 5 years to find out where the money went? Maybe we should just send a couple of sharp I.R.S. agents over there and I'm sure there'll be an accounting in a few months not years. And what a waste of resources anyway. There was a point just after our invasion where the Iraqis could have trained police and rebuilt their own country. All of that has been lost because Iraq has suffered the greatest brain drain of any country I can imagine. In short the best have left. And yet George wants to keep pumping more money into a loosing proposition. Have any of you had a used car that just didn't work out? You know what I'm talking about. That car with a great body, nice interior, plenty of bells and whistles but the one with a bad engine. You think you can fix it but every time you take it to the mechanic he tells you something else is wrong. There is a point at which you must dump it and move on.
One point six billion dollars. That would just about cover the damage from the fires in Southern California or cover a whole bunch of uninsured children. And imagine what we could have done with the hundreds of billions already wasted. We could have rebuilt our own country.

I may be out for a while

Looks like my trusty puter is starting to give up the ghost. It's been crashing of it's own accord even after many system checks and repairs. Even this message may not make it to you as blogger is telling me that something is wrong. Wonder if the NSA has caught on to us and is preventing our revolutionary idea of taking back this country from getting out. If so (he said donning his tin foil hat) then I'll copy it and take it to another 'puter' for broadcast. You can't keep the truth down and the lies and the bs will be reveiled. I'm a great fan of Thomas Payne and the rest of the revolutionarys and not the phonys in the White House.

Update: looks like it was an innertube thing and not the computer neighbors were having problems too.

Random green ideas

Lights out America


Heard this blurb on local news last night. A grassroots movement to reduce green house gas by turning the lights off in your house for one hour from 8 to 9pm on a Saturday. I like the idea so much I think I'll try it on a monthly basis. Just installed some high pressure sodium floodlights here last weekend that will cut the outdoor power bill by 2/3. They are expensive but will pay for themselves in about a year. Don't forget to switch to CFLs when you can. Some utility cos. are giving them away. Here you can get them for $1 each.

Here's another interesting bit of research about what to do with asbestos waste. There's a company up here that's developed a process to recycle the stuff. Even though it's not economical to do it in this country (it takes massive amounts of energy). It would be a good idea for a country like Japan that has no place for landfills to take this type of waste. I never thought asbestos could be made inert by exposing it to heat but this company has figured out a way. When it's all 'cooked' it turns into something like pea gravel that can be used in roads.
ARI Technologies

Water water everywhere around here and it looks like Atlanta is dying of thirst. I only wish there was a way we could send them some of our liquid sunshine. Would a national water pipeline sound crazy? Or would that just be a pipe dream (pun intended)? I am considering putting in some rain barrels for the summer months here. Our water prices are expected to go up 15% next year.

Let's try again

OCTOBER 27

Not to give up (thank goodness our forefathers didn't) there's a new push to stop the war with protests next Saturday October 27th. Yes and I'm still waiting for the unions to get involved in all of this. A note to all the union leaders out there. Do you people remember the story about boiling the frog? It goes like this if you've forgotten. If you take a frog and try to throw him in a pot of boiling water he'll quickly jump out and run away. If you carefully place the frog in a pot of slightly warm water and very very slowly turn up the heat. The frog feeling comfy in his froggy hot tub doesn't realize what's happening, then after a while the frog is boiled. Do you get the comparison between what this administration is doing to our rights and hard fought benefits. We need to get together and start chipping away at the source of our losses. As I see it in another 5 or 10 years we'll only be getting a paycheck if our jobs haven't been outsourced. So what do we do? What we've done for nearly 100 years now... Organize, protest and strike. You may be out there delivering the goods that support this war but eventually the bill is going to come due and remember Bush and Co. financed this war on borrowed money. Simply put what happens when you can't pay your mortgage or car or truck payment? On a national level that's called a depression and it won't be a pretty picture as nearly all of the safety nets have been cut first by Reagan and what was left by George W. Don't believe me? Get injured, get sick, fall behind on some payments and see who's out there to help. It won't be George W or any of his minions. I could give you facts and statistics until I'm blue in the face but you won't believe me unless something happens in your life. I've already been through this many years ago and I really don't want to go through it again but I believe it's going to happen very soon.

Wild weather same old politics

Strange net connection last night. A bit breezy out here. Tried to post but my computer kept crashing by itself even after a system check. Can only pin it on power fluctuations. Yea everythings on surge protection but that doesn't protect against power drops.

On politics nothing seems to change. Screw the poor and middle class and give to the rich, but then I believe in a type of karma. What goes around comes around maybe not now but in the near future. Look at Afganistan. We supported who for so many years when they were fighting the Soviet Union only to kick them to the curb when the Soviets left? That was a war of principles because Afganistan had/has no major resources to exploit. And now who has returned to bite us in the rear. Once they were freedom fighters now they are terrorists. It's all about labels and a power grab. Is this much different than labeling the Jews as evil ones prior to WWII only this time the labeled ones have guns and are fighting back. The senseless waste of human life for political ideologies.

There is a call for more work stoppages. I haven't checked into it yet but I believe it's scheduled for Nov 2 and the 6th by the truckers. Have to do some more digging on this. Just heard a mention on Air America by a caller on this. Tune in later for more on this. Got to run now work calls.

What's wrong with this picture

In looking at the business news today I noted that those on Social Security will get a 2.3% increase starting in January. I then came upon an article that said the inflation rate for the year is at 3.6%. I realize that the increases for SS payments are based on the previous year, but with energy and food prices rising as much as they are I'd hate to be a retiree right now.

Ground beef safety

I guess it will be a while before I eat any hamburgers. I was fooled into thinking that if I bought the more expensive "natural" beef patties that there would somehow be a greater level of safety or more care in the preperation of the meat. How wrong I was. The first recall was for Morans. I had been buying them for several years now because they have no additives like growth hormones and the like. You can actually notice the difference between an all natural and regular meats. I try to limit the amount of red meat I eat in any given month but I still like a good steak and my favorite prime rib from time to time. Now I'm forced to find another solution to the ground beef problem. I'm wondering if there's something like a beef wash that could be used prior to grinding. And I'm considering buying a grinder and buying full beef cuts. I think that is what my mother did many years ago. She'd buy round steak when it was cheap and have it ground. Sure made for a fresh hamburger.
At any rate I'd be suspecious of any ground beef that was really cheap from Wally world or any other discount outlet. And here's the latest:
Ground beef reall

Leadership update

As I said this past week I was on a difficult job with a Bush type leader. Here's the outcome. The 'leader' not being able to handle the job whined to upper management and was transferred to another job. I landed up finishing the job by myself with a different supervisor. It seems that this will be the way of Bush to dump the mess on someone else. He's just waiting until his term ends because he's already raped us financially, destroyed the constitution, and made us the most hated nation on earth. There's your legacy Mr. Bush.

Here's some sobering news...

The number of home forclosures is nearly double over the same time last September. For more dissapointing facts...
Forclosures

Leadership

The last few days have been insane for me. Monday was up nearly 23 hours trying to get a job done that's one of those 'got to get it done' jobs or the poop will hit the fan. All might have gone well had it not been for the supervisor who is less than able to follow a process that I've been doing for well over 15 years now. I can now have a little feeling for those under Bush. Imagine working for someone who's easily distracted and constantly changing direction both his and yours. You are well aware of the basics of what needs to be done, but Mr. confusion in chief keeps changing direction from one second to the next. Needless to say the job didn't get done on time (not even close) because of the wasted time redoing things three and four times. All because someone doesn't know how to lead. I came very close to picking up my tools and walking out. Now I can appreciate those who are fleeing this misadministration. Wonder if you asked them for an honest reason they left they wouldn't say something like "this guy is such a moron he could manage his way out of a closet without help."
There I've said my rant for the week now you can return to blogging.

New blog

This isn't really a new blog, but I believe it deserves some attention. Joe of 'Cupojoe' that's a blog and a radio show, has been in the trenches of the left for some time now. He's tried to expose the hypocricys of the right for a few years and could use a few words of encouragement. I know I hit overload from time to time with the outragous antics of this misadministration.
H.O.R.N. (head on radio network) where Joe works like many of the progressive radio stations is looking for advertisers. I'm sure this is a fairly cheap way of advertising and I'd really like to hear something other than public service announcments on progressive talk radio. So to the advertisers I say: Your customers are out here waiting. Jump in and show us your stuff.

Cupojoe