After experimenting with some personal stuff we get back to the NEWS

Today’s post is brought to you by Vice President Al Gore who today won the Nobel prize for sticking to your guns even in the face of irrefutable evidence that you are wrong. The research that “global warming” was based on has been proved to be fabricated, the scientist whose research provided all the projections of future catastrophes has admitted that the earth has not warmed at all since 1995 and the current winter filled with record cold and snow all over the world is not enough for Mr. Gore. On Sunday Gore had his response to all this published in the New York Times, he states that we should ignore all that “evidence stuff” and not miss the “climate change for the snow storm”, and idiotic play one the old expression “do not miss the forest for the trees”. The difference is that in the forest there are trees and in the snowstorm there is no climate change. Way to go Mr Gore, a captain should always go down with the ship ... sink away good sir.


In financial news, the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has decided that he is going to continue to throw caution to the wind and print massive amounts of money. He has joined ranks with the President on this, the two men believe that there will never be another day of reckoning, that we can just live in irresponsible bliss for eternity. Of the many ways that an economy can be stimulated, our leaders have chosen increasing the money supply and inflated government spending as the way to go. And that will probably work out just fine ... right up until the value of the dollar collapses on the world market and the government goes bankrupt. Here’s the brief overview of those two concepts ... when the rest of the world decides that our currency isn’t worth the paper it is printed on, it will “devalue”and for a country that imports EVERYTHING this is a major cause for concern. If our money becomes worthless all the stuff we used to make here (that is now made all over the third world) will be so expensive that we can’t afford it. Imagine a $400 dollar Barbie doll, or a $600 pair of Walmart shoes. The government will go bankrupt when foreign countries and private banks decide to stop lending them money ... so that’ll be fun.

In global disaster news, Haiti is still in ruins and they’re having rain induced flooding, there is massive flooding in France and there was a 8+ Richter Scale earth quake in Chile (which prompted tsunami warnings all over the pacific rim). Pinko’s World tried in vein to reach Pat Robertson for comment. I guess he was busy, but we’re assuming that LOTS of countries made deals with the devil at their founding ... maybe all of them.

And finally tonight in insane genocidal maniac news, wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, defending himself against charges of Europe's worst genocide since the Holocaust, told judges Monday he was not the barbarian depicted by U.N. prosecutors, but was protecting his people against a fundamentalist Muslim plot. He claimed that his actions (slaughtering over 100,000 Bosnian Muslims) were “holy and just”. He went on to say that the Muslims started it and so what else could he do but kill all of them to “defend his people”. Clearly he’s not a threat to anyone and is very remorseful. Wow! I hope that they don’t waste any time putting that loon to death.

Happy Monday!

Wednesday Conversation with Winky

Walking out of Lowe’s Home Improvement Mega-Super-Colossal-Wunder Store the other night after shopping for some paint. It was a damp night with a crescent moon in the sky, the clouds seemed especially low and were partially blocking the moon. Winky looked up at me and said, “Hey Dad, look at that!” while pulling on my arm.

Me- What Winks?
Winky- Up there!
Me- Where?
Winky- There! The moon.
Me- Yeah, there’s the moon. (I didn’t think much of it since spotting the moon has always been one of her favorite things)
Winky- There’s fuzz hanging off of it!
Me- (After about 20 seconds of laughing) Really?
Winky- Don’t you see it?
Me- Yeah, I see it. How do you think it got up there?
Winky- Um ... I think that somebody, um ... sent the fuzz to the north pole, you know, to Santa and then Santa put the fuzz in his sleigh and then the reindeer um ... flew it up there and Santa hung it off that pointy part.
Me- You think. (Trying not to laugh)
Winky- Is that how it got up there?
Me- I guess so. What’s the fluff made out of?
Winky- I think that it’s made out of flowers.
Me- Flowers?
Winky- Well ... like little pieces of flowers.
At this point, my lovely wife (check out her blog here ) chastised me for milking the kid to get material for a blog post ... which is NOT what I was doing ... well maybe a little, but she started the fuzz thing all by her self. My oldest daughter suggested that the fuzz might be made out of marshmallow fluff. We all laughed at that.
Winky- Yeah, it’s not flowers, it’s marshmallows! Good one Michaelia! Hey Dad?
Me- Yeah Winks?
Winky- Let’s go get ice cream!
Me- Ice cream?
Winky- Yeah, with marshmallows on it!
Me- Not tonight Winks, it’s a little cold for ice cream.
Winky- Tomorrow night?
Me- Maybe, we’ll see.

The Trail of Destrustion!

So, I went to the doctor’s today and found out that I had a sinus infection and bronchitis ... double yay! I made the appointment yesterday, he saw me today, checked me out and I was outta there with a ‘scrip in my hand in less that an hour ... I went to the pharmacy had my $120 antibiotic switched to a generic $30 antibiotic and left with 20 horse pills in less than an hour. Wow, what a terrible health care system we have.

Ok, yesterday I posted that there was a story about my daughters coming today and I’m sure you have all been on the edge of your seats for this one (at least any of you that know my children). For this particular story we will rename a certain child Sgt. Chaos and another little one Private First Class Destructo (any guesses?). Some time in the afternoon, while Mommy was busy cleaning on the other side of the house, Sgt. Chaos took Pfc. Destructo by the hand and led her into the bathroom. The heros of our story began to play a game that seemed to revolve around putting as much toilet paper as possible in to the sink (interrogations have been less than effective). Round two of the game seems to have been realizing that the sink was full at which time Sgt. Chaos decided that the thing to do was wash the T.P. down the drain. Seconds after turning on the faucet the soggy toilet paper clogged the sink and the water began overflowing onto the counter ... at which time our heros ran. A few minutes later, realizing the trouble was coming, Sgt. Chaos returned to the scene of the crime and attempted to clean up the flood with a washcloth. When the washcloth proved itself no match for Lake Bathroom, Sgt Chaos ran to Mommy and exclaimed, “Mommy, there’s been a terrible accident, come quick!” Both Sgt. Chaos and Pfc. Destructo claim that the other is entirely at fault and at press time the investigation is still on going.
Later in the afternoon the same two heros, realizing that they were thirsty (and not wanting to disturb their mother), decided to help themselves to some juice. The glasses are much too high for them to reach ... some furniture was moved ... two small children climbed up onto the kitchen counter ... a cabinet was opened ... and, thank God, it was only a glass that hurtled to the floor and shattered. The noise brought Mommy running and the guilty parties were caught red handed! Mommy then made Sgt. Chaos call her father and apologize for breaking his “favorite” glass. The ensuing phone call of hysterical tears and blubbering apology left me laughing out loud. So, with that one I’m just glad that noone died. Now I’m going to have to drive back to Washington DC to “Angelo and Maxie’s” to buy myself a new pint glass.
Tomorrow I’m back to work and I have to wonder, what in the world will my two little co-conspirators think up next?

Blogger lets down fans all over the World!

Sorry about the no friday post and the no monday post ... well, i guess this is like a monday post, except it's just an apology for there being no post ... so ... i don't know.
So here's the super quick (i'm supposed to be painting) version of what's going on. We have decided that it would be a good idea to move the kids beds all around and get some new furniture and remove wall paper and paint and clean and ... turn the house up side down. By "we decided" i mean that my lovely wife thought up this plan (which will be awesome when it's done) and pitched it to me and i said, "OK, if you want to." and it was thusly decided. It was a lot like the time "we decided" to paint horizontal stripes in the girls bathroom in three different colors and three different thicknesses (utter fiasco) and now the bathroom looks great (stripeless).
So the kids were all sick last week and are getting better (praise God), but now i have this evil sinus thing going on, and between being sick and taking care of sick kids and doing the home upgrades ... there has been no time for blogging. At some point tomorrow i will post a story about what two of my children did today ... i'm laughing just thinking about it. And on Wednesday there will be a new "Conversation with Winky". So that's my apology, my explaiation (spelled it so poorly i left it in) and my plan for the week all in one.
Happy Monday.

Liberals believe in Limited Government ... wait, it's not the 17th century, is it?

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom") is the belief in the importance of individual liberty.

So, liberals support individual liberty in the face of monarchies ...the original incarnation of liberal philosophy dates back to the time of John Locke (the guy that Jefferson ripped off with his whole “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” thing).But, as we will prove, time changes all definitions. By the beginning of the 20th century, political liberalism had become the norm throughout the West, and economic liberalism had resulted in a vast concentration of wealth, with the majority of mankind living, as it always had, in a state of poverty. The economic world was shaken by a series of depressions. Freedom, which in the past had been threatened by autocratic governments, was now threatened by the despotism of the rich. Enter communists stage left ... to which the “liberal” response was to compromise, to use government to raise the poor out of the muck that made communism look so popular in the first place. And that takes us to the present day, where liberals support the “level playing field” concept at the expense of individual liberty.

Libertarianism is a political theory that advocates the maximization of individual liberty in thought and action.

The history of this one is much cloudier than “liberalism”, but there are libertarians that support anarchy, free market capitalism, socialism ... you name it. The term appears later than liberalism and I think, was created in response to the changing definition of liberalism. The people who believed in personal liberty had to find a new word to describe themselves because their original term got hijacked. And then this one got hijacked too. There is a faction of the libertarian movement that does not believe in private property ... there might even be a faction that does not believe in individual liberty ... but I have no proof of that.

Individualism - the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own interests, whether by society, or by any other group or institution.

I think that eventually the “tea party” people are going to grab hold of this one, they will name themselves the individualists, not because it is the best word to describe their beliefs, but because in fact they are Liberals whose name was stolen by their adversaries a few generations ago.

The idea behind all this is that, although often renamed, the belief that government’s role is to protect people’s God given rights (life, liberty, property) and little else, refuses to die. There have always been people who believed in the individual’s right to self determine and the individual’s responsibility to society. This doctrine requires two basic beliefs, God created us all (otherwise there are no universal rights) and that people will make altruistic choices without being forced to (otherwise individual liberty would be utter chaos). So, I guess I’m a Liberal, and a Libertarian ... I just don’t agree with anyone else who is a “liberal” or a “libertarian”. Definitions are fun. Can you re-hijack a word? I’d like to get Marxist and Communist back too if we’re going there. In my utopia, Liberals believe in individual liberty above all else, Marxists believe in a gradual change in the global economic system that ends with workers owning the means of production, Communists believe in small communities of people working together for the good of the group without a structured government and Anarchists wouldn’t throw bricks through store front windows ... hooray future!

A Special, Tuesday Conversation with Winky

For those of you who know Winky ... this’ll probably make you laugh, for the rest of you, less fortunate souls, let this be the opportunity for you to get to know one of the great American geniuses of our generation. And some preemptive question answers:

1) Does she really talk like that? Yes.
2) Where does she come up with this stuff? I have no idea.
3) What do you say to her? Mostly, I laugh.
4) Is she really only 4? Yes.

Without further ado, this is an excerpt from a conversation with my daughter Winky while sitting in the car waiting for her baby sister to get a chest x-ray (came back negative!) Her older sister was also in the car. Winky took me on a stream of consciousness/ circular logic roller coaster ride in less than a minute.

Winky: Do you remember Valentine’s Day?
Me: Of course, it was yesterday.
Winky: You remember, at lunch, when I got to sit next to Brit-tany (that’s how she says Britany) and I really wanted to sit with Haley?
Me: You didn’t want to sit with Brit-tany? You love Brit-tany.
Winky: Daddy, I love Brit-tany more than Haley, and ... I love Haley more than Brit-tany, so ... and I love Ms. Sara more than Mr. Ron ...
Me: Is that so?
Winky: ... but I do love Mr. Ron.
Me: Oh
Winky: (without pausing from previous) Hey guys, I can go to PECI and you can’t.
Me: What?
Winky: Yeah, you can’t go there because you don’t have a name tag.
Me: What’s PECI?
Winky: You know, like ABC.
Me: What?
Winky: Daddy ... (exasperated sigh) you know your ABC’s.
Me: Yeah, I do.
Winky: Daddy?
Me: What’s up Winky?
Winky: You’re the best, daddy.
Me: Thanks Winks.
Winky: Can we go get some donuts? Not the chocolate ones, just the plain ones.

So that’s my girl ... she’s fantastic and all over the place.

Happy Tuesday!

Dresden, China and Global Warming

Today’s post is brought to you by Dresden, Germany where 12 civilians were killed when a missile missed it’s intended target in an assault on the Taliban this weekend. Ok, that’s completely false. I thought that we were fighting a war, so why is the top story on every news outlet that 12 Afghan civilians were killed by accident? If you’ve been reading this long, you know that I am opposed to the war ... but if you fight a war, people die, that’s how it works! This weekend is the 65th anniversary of the allied bombing raids on Dresden (a cultural center) where somewhere between 18,000 and 40,000 civilians died. Tens of thousands of people were burned to death on purpose as part of the military strategy, and 65 years later it is somehow unacceptable if our soldiers make any mistakes. They are well trained and well equipt and we have put them in harms way to defeat an invisible enemy and then we do not permit them to make a single error. If a bomb misses its target they are on the front page, if a 19 year old gets spooked while searching Baghdad houses in the middle of the night and pulls the trigger we drag him home, vilify him and try him for murder. War is horrendous, violent, brutal and messy ... there is nothing precise about it, there is nothing humane about it. If you want war then you must embrace the path of destruction it leaves in every village it touches, you must embrace the soldiers who come home broken and are discarded by our military, you must embrace the innocent who are killed, wounded and left homeless, fatherless, motherless ... it’s part and parcel to the war you want. If you oppose the war, then we need to end it by bringing our brave men and women home, out of harms way. What you can’t do is pretend that you are against war while waging war. You can’t be V.P. Biden and say that the Iraq war was not “managed well” and left us in danger while adding tens of thousand of troops on the ground in Afghanistan. I don’t think it was worth one of the 4,694 lives it cost, but the Iraq war was a success, our brave men and women in military defeated the enemy they were sent to defeat and a democratically elected government was left in a position to defend itself. All the objectives of that war were met and I commend our troops for the job they did there. I have watched two funeral processions already this year honoring Afghan war dead, 43 Americans have died there in less than two months ... war is horrible and we need to bring our men and women home, but short of that we need to support them in everything they do there ... we owe them that much ... we have sent them to die in a foreign nation, they are our brother’s and sisters and I love them.


And in “how do you like me now?” news, President Obama has decided to invite the Dali Lama to the White House, they will meet next week (China has demanded that the meeting not take place) and discuss how the United States can aggravate a country that holds billions of dollars of our national debt. The best way I can think of is to embrace a Tibetan in exile who travels the globe trash talking the Chinese government at every opportunity ... that ought to make them REAL happy. Lets find out what happens to our economy when China makes a margin call. We’ll become the Mortimer and Randolph Duke of the global economy ... sleeping on the street, begging Canada for some food. But at least the President will be serene after meeting “his holiness”.

Today we close with global climate change news ... yeah, we were just kidding about that whole global warming thing ... sorry. Professor Phil Jones, who is at the center of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995. “We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialization and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” Basically they put the temperature collection devices in really stupid places, like next to air conditioning units or garbage incinerators ... so, while the globe is not warming ... it is warmer right next to an incinerator, good to know!

Happy Monday!