auld acquaintance

We spent wonderful time this morning with long-time friends. 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot,' I hope these are not among them.

A new evil foothold: Michigan

I heard on Republican Saginaw Radio - WSGW - this morning a very interesting report. A few years ago, the Republican Party could not be happy until it had pushed through an important government reform. Bad mouthing the efforts of seasoned Michigan office holders, the Republican Party insisted on term limits and, with ample money to oil the works, it pounded through just such a change with the voters who amended the Constitution.

Now, having won both the House and Senate in the Michigan legislature as well as the governorship, the same party is talking about doing way with term limits.

There is nothing much in America more evil than the Republican Party. Child molesters would have to be considered worse, I think.

We have had a very nice Christmas here under the BIRCHES. With two children in the house and a lot of people giving gifts and sharing jokes and good conversation, it's been the best Christmas in a long time.

This personal note, bereft of any political significance, is brought to you by a grandfather who is happy as can be just now. Bear with me. I went toy shopping for the first time in 25 years or more. I didn't recognize most of the gadgets, and was amazed by a lot of the offerings.

pistolero

While this sounds just like the gun nuts want life to be, it turns out to be wrong on many levels. In the first place, running after the guy and shooting uselessly into society is dangerous to everyone but the criminal. In the second place, if the armed citizen had actually shot the fleeing felon, he would himself have committed a crime. In the third place, this is a perfect example of the uselessness of armed citizens trying to stop crime. This is something that ought to be left to the pros.

Armed customer tries to stop bank robber

Turns out the customer with the gun waited for the crook to leave the bank before trying to shoot him in the back as he fled. Not a good choice. CLICK

3 questions

Talking over coffee, we wonder about these things:

What in the world induces Senators to not want to vote for the 7 million dollar amount for critical health care for the 9/11 responders? None of us understands that.

Now that the "lame-duck" Congress is getting things done, will it turn out that this Term of Congress (that we have scorned) will actually be considered a highly successful one?

Is Mitch McConnell nuts?

Congress and Santa

It is so nice to see the Congress acting on so many delayed matters. The logjam has been, to some extent, cleared away. It used to be called "log-rolling" and may still be called that in the back rooms of the Capitol. However, this time around, all it took was an agreement to the TRILLION DOLLAR BRIBE (or thereabouts, these things being so speculative, as they play out over the years.) called the "tax extension" which handed the next generation another colossal debt.

Merry Christmas to all-y'all taxpayers, and "Sleep In Heavenly Peace."

It's Caturday

The Best Gift under the tree

ME!

sometimes it's hard to know who's getting screwed

I don't know whether Julian Assange ever committed rape, and neither do you. Sweden wants him for those charges, and the British have him and plan to let him go. Probably he should stand trial for this and then we'll all know if he did or he didn't.

He did, however, publish for all the world to read, documents which the U.S. government considered secret. This he cheerfully admits. As far as I can deduce, most of those are harmless to U.S. interests and many of them are not really secrets, they're just embarrassing. I am judging by what I've read and heard about them, because I am not going to wade through a hundred thousand documents. My ignorance, however, is no block to my ability to form an opinion.

During the Nixon Administration, we got used to hearing news like this. Information was revealed that was intended to be kept secret, but the only people apparently left in the dark were American voters. A good example was the news about the bombing the Nixon government was doing in Cambodia. Turns out the Cambodians knew about it (duh-h), the enemy (North Vietnamese) knew about it because they saw the bombs falling on them, and the American government knew about it, naturally. But the American people did not, and we got angry when we did find out. It became an item in the impeachment process.

Being familiar with the tendency of the American government to fabricate itself into wars (Vietnam and Iraq, for instance) I think we Americans have a right to know what the hell the government is doing. We shouldn't let the bastards hide behind their "confidential" and "top secret" stamps any more. The burden of sorting out what the democratically inspired people of our nation should be protected from ought not to be in the hands of the liars and cheats.

In the matter of the Wikileaks papers, I know that the Saudis and other Middle Easterners would like to keep secret the fact they want the U.S. to whack Iran. This is NOT a secret that should be kept from the American people. I, for one, and I hope I speak for gazillions of Americans, don't care if they're embarrassed by their own phony sanctimoniousness.

So, yes, I hope Assange goes free on the "leaking" changes, and I hope he keeps up his good works.

A Theft in Process

Add me to the list of people who oppose the Social Security payroll reduction. I see it as a fraud, an attempt to begin the process of dismantling the entire program. It's what the conservatives have been wanting and it's the foot-in-the-door towards converting the program into a travesty. Then they will kill it altogether.

Leave it alone! To think that Obama would support this scheme is horrifying.

I've made a discovery. Obama is a Republican. He's like those other Republicans who have run and won as Democrats. They're the "Blue Dogs" and they exist right here in my own community.

Start filling your Social Security card with zeros, if this passes, because that's what the program will be worth.

Thursday Morning Smile-Maker

The controversy being created by the government of China over whether Liu Xiaobo should receive a Nobel Peace Prize, is interesting but not very urgent. There are other Peace Prize winners - and winners of other of the prizes, such as th Literature Prize - who have met with lots of disapproval. Barack Obama was one of those. So was Henry Kissinger in his day.

Obama and his Party

SPARTY has sent an editorial comment from Paul Krugman, of the New York Times in which he criticizes Obama for his mean words towards the progressives in his party. He calls them "purists" and lectures them as if they were irresponsible and naive. This makes him self -pitying and self-centered.

Read it here and let us know what you think. Click on this link:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/the-sorrow-and-the-self-pity-2/

Obama's "deal"

The so-called compromise which Obama has made concerning tax cuts and extension of unemployment benefits seems to me to be nothing other than a surrender. A surrender is not a compromise.

What did Congressional Progressives get for their gift to rich people? Nothing. Is there any promise that Republicans will cooperate in any other area the Democrats want to work on? Not that I've heard of. Who can doubt that the poor and middle class are now at the mercy of the "malefactors of great wealth" as President Roosevelt said 70 years ago? Not I.

It's Caturday

MARSHA'S cats,

BUDDY and BABOO

enjoy a good fire.

Wacko of the Day

Representative Thomas Hackbarth of Minnesota:

OH, GO LOOK FOR YOURSELF, CLICK

Salvation in a Happy Meal.

For sensitive people, this is A SARCASM ALERT !!!!!

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McDonald's is a Christian Junk Food store. As I was sitting there chewing on my Big Mac and listening to the the Hallelujah Chorus, followed by the First Noel and then by Away in the Manger, I heard someone dare to complain that this was Christian music blasting away among the gnawing sounds of the fries eaters and the screaming children in the play area. I told him this was a Christian eatery and that if he didn't like it, he could move back to Athea with all the other atheists. Then he told me he was a Shinto. Where the hell do they get their nerve coming to our country and trying to mess stuff up?

shape shifters.

Some Democratic Party office holders, particularly in the South, are abandoning the Democratic Party, and switching to the Republican. For two years, these people have been demanding this and that, most especially simply to be catered to, and now that they find it politically expedient to become Republicans, off they go. There is nothing they stand for, in particular, just their own political convenience. These are the vagaries of democracy. We are well on our way to a bitter future, one in which black men will not be elected to the Presidency, and one in which self will triumph over cause.

We will all do well to look to our own interests and give up thinking universally, because that will be the route to survival. I am really not surprised. The Democrats were handed an opportunity to govern wisely. Leaderless, they threw away that chance, in no small part due to the fact that too many Republicans have been misplaced in this party anyway.

QUOTE:

ATLANTA – Staggering Election Day losses are not the Democratic Party's final indignity this year. At least 13 state lawmakers in five states have defected to Republican ranks since the Nov. 2 election, adding to already huge GOP gains in state legislatures. And that number could grow as next year's legislative sessions draw near.

The defections underscore dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party — particularly in the South — and will give Republicans a stronger hand in everything from pushing a conservative fiscal and social agenda to redrawing political maps.

In Alabama, four Democrats announced last week they were joining the GOP, giving Republicans a supermajority in the House that allows them to pass legislation without any support from the other party. The party switch of a Democratic lawmaker from New Orleans handed control of Louisiana's House to Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.

quiz update Dec 2

The quiz has been solved! Click on Comments to see.

some things done --- Moved Forward

Yesterday, after many people had gone from coffee club, those of us remaining were discussing what victories the liberals have had over our lifetimes. Here is a list of things liberals accomplished, and which now even most conservatives accept as settled:

1. An end to legal segregation of the "races" and also, to a great extent (not complete) an end to de facto segregation.

2. Guaranteed voting rights for minorities.

3. Medicare and Medicaid.

4. Legal equality for women.

5. Rights of access for handicapped people.

6. Forcing an end to the Vietnam War, and the draft.

7. (from IRISH MIKE) -- Social Security and minimum wage.

8. (From Bud:): Cleaner air. I can remember the pollution.

9.( FromSPARTY) Federally mandated 40 hour workweek.

10. 11. 12. 13. (From SCOT) - Endangered Species Act, Freedom of Information Act, ending "in loco parentis" at universities, bottle deposits (where they exist).

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FEEL FREE to add to this list. In fact, it should be lengthened.

Some recent snapshots

"Cat and the Pat"

Wyatt: Now that was a championship quality belch!

Marsha and new friend, Darius Rucker.

Bill from WNNCO and his sons, Erick and Chris. Will race anything on wheels.

Matt, son of Gigi and Sparty, holds talk with high school kids. He is a top mover and shaker with the State Republican Party.

This red-bellied woodpecker hit our window and showed every sign of having a broken wing. But when I picked him up to check him out, he flew out of my hands. Now, every day, he comes to our peanut feeder. He's as welcome as wealth.

Friend, Cal.

Our beautiful bar tenderess, Rachelle!

Oct. 20, 2010: Flourishing greenery on our back deck, weeks after it should have frozen out. Thank you Ma Nature for the beautiful fall.

Fall colors at the woods by Steve and Brenda's house.

Stop signs at Allendale and Brockway. What is the reasoning? Everyone should stop twice? Someone in the County Road Commission got a great deal on new stop signs? Or has an investment in the company? Or the jobs are so intricately defined that the same people who put in a sign can't take the other one out?

Bud and his new Dodge Calibre