Been a long time... I shouldn't a left you...

Without a dopey post to step to...

I don't know where my passion and fire went, but somewhere between there (Kerry-Edwards) and here (Obama - Biden) it went out.  Maybe marriage softened me, or a little cat and a little dog, or just being too busy to think about it, or the ever-popular what have you.  

Maybe I was mad at Nancy Pelosi for not pushing for impeachment.  It took being in the right frame of mind to understand why she did it:  order of succession.  You can't impeach Bush without impeaching Cheyney.  And who's third in line?  Pelosi.   Even if she does have presidential ambitions, she didn't want to give the impression that she was abusing her position for personal gain.  And what do we call that, boys and girls?  I call it integrity.  Would Hastert have done the same thing had he succeeded in removing Clinton from office, and if investigations proved that Al Gore was also guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors?  You bet your sweet bippy he wouldn't. 

I've been watching the Democratic National Convention this week from Denver with an anxious tingle.  I think I'm finally starting to get excited again.  It wasn't that Obama didn't resonate with me, and it wasn't that I was that excited a Hillary supporter.  Truth be told, I loved Kucinich, but being pragmatic, I voted for John Edwards in the Florida primary.  (Sidebar: thank you DNC Credentials Committee, finally counted today at the role call.  Only 7 months late, but better late than never.)  I guess I booted up the old blogger because I am really starting to consider the prospect that the Democrats have gotten it together.  One can't ignore the powerful symbolism in having Hillary announce the vote count while yielding her delegates at the exact count where it put Barack over the top, and then called for unanimnity.    Oh yeah... and picking Melissa Etheridge to sing God Bless America was a stroke of brilliance! 

Since I always do what other blogs tell me to do...

This meme was a direct order from Bone.
Find the nearest book.
Turn to page 123.
Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
Name the book and the author, and tag three more folks.

Book: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corportation whose complaints department now covers all of the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system.
Arthur drank the liquid and found it reviving. He glanced up at the screens again and watched a few more hundred miles of barren grayness slide past.

I don't think I have 3 people to tag.

Dad

My Dad is 59 years old. He works as an air conditioning mechanic. He's probably the smartest person I know. In 1979 he fell 4 stories off a building hhe was doing structural iron work on, which was the precipitant event for us to move to Miami. Last year he had surgery to replace a bad hip. As a boy, the nuns at St. Vincent de Paul brow-beat him to the point where he's unconvinced of his own intelligence. At 18, he did the right thing and answered the post card ordering him to report for basic training. He spent the next several years driving a supply truck through Vietnam, and was at a base in Khe San when the Tet Offensive began.

He's working today, and to my knowlege he's never taken had the second Friday in November off in his working life. Neither have any of his brethren. This dawned on me as I walked through the aisles at my local HomeDepot, and I wondered how many of their hourly employees are veterans, though the on duty employees seemed too young to have done active duty in Vietnam. I wonder how many of the people driving deliveries and laboring were duty bound in service to thieir country at one time or another, who are hard at work today. Too bad I get the day off and they have to work. No one's ever shot at me.

Happy Veterans Day, Dad.

Ok... Now what?

So you won the House of Representatives and have better than a near perfect split in the Senate, assuming the independents Jeffords continues voting progressively and former-DINO Lieberman starts. Now what? Do you attack the man or his policies?

I say it has to happen in this order (if not simultaneously)
1) Eliminate the friggin patriot act so we can have our first amendment back
2) Leave "No Child Left Behind" behind. Stop punishing education and fund it.
3) Examine the present tax system to find a medium where we are actually being tax-and-spend, rather than borrow-and-spend.
4) Go back to the drawing board on election reform and force municipalities to have verifiable voting.
4) eliminate the 80K cap on Social Security. That will make it permanently solvent.
5) Re-fix Medicare again... This time for real.
Do all of this while holding oversight hearings and seeking clear evidence of high-crimes and misdemeanors.
Do all this while maintaining a delicate balance and not overreaching your power, cause '08 is coming and we need the White House back so we can finish undoing the last 6 years for real.
Good luck.

Heffelumps and Donkeys

I admit it. I've spent time in my life blaming the wrong people for the anger, fear, and discomfort I felt towards myself, leading to intolerance when it was still cool to be intolerant. I cannot say that I've ever had anything in common with the belief system of the GOP. I was lucky enough to live and meet people who've done the same, and I learned that I was more afraid of myself than I was of anything that my disturbing and misshapen understanding of gay people represented. My backlash to my intolerance was to throw myself into a complete state of accepting... that everything that people do in pursuit of the BIG 3 (life, liberty, happiness...) was copecetic.

That's not to say that I've never been a registered Republican. Back in the early days of the MotorVoter, the young lady behind the counter at the DOT in North Miami asked me if I wanted to update my voter registration while changing the address on my license. She neglected to ask me my party affiliation and assumed me to be a GOP kind of guy (maybe it was the way I was dressed?) This led to an interesting position though, with Florida's closed primary system: I hold the distinct pleasure of voting against W and Jeb a combined total of 5 times, 3 times as a Republican. Counting tonight and 1992, I've been voting against the GOP for 14 years. A lot of good it's done me in this pathetic state.

I realize that the thing that the Dems are doing wrong is appealing to working people, like my wife and I. We are flat broke, and can scarcely afford to donate to the "feed-a-starving-teacher-and-his-college-student-wife fund," much less any candidate or party. The nice phone fund raiser from the DNC got a chuckle out of this and asked me to consider putting money on my credit cards, but I'm pretty sure I'm still paying off money given to the DNC and to Kerry in '04.

If Charlie Crist wins tonight, the sun will still shine tomorrow, albeit with a nasty grey haze about it. We will continue on business as usual, giving 3rd graders a test that will effect the rest of their educational lives, giving schools grades, and giving schools a pittance-like bonus that shatters the harmony of schools. Additionally, we, the idiot voters of Florida will be giving Crist the ability to revoke the class size amendment by removing majority rule, a fact we won't fully realize until we try to muster the votes necessary to revoke this amendment 3 (requiring a super-majority of at least 1 million votes to change the state constitution). Our state congress will continue to rubber stamp all of the governor's stupid policies and follow the president blindly into oblivion. We as Floridians will continue to support the wealthy corporations at the expense of ourselves. Insurance companies will run roughshod over us, raising their rates further into cost-prohibitive levels and will up and leave when the payouts get too close to their CEO's bonus thresholds.

I'm glad to be supporting the Donkey, even if I sometimes feel like a loser in the process. I'm not glad to be poor, but I'm proud to be a little guy standing up for myself.

Enough complaining. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to counting my money.

Gee. That was quick.

Werk...

I go every day and bleed out from every pore. I teach. My chosen vocation is directly connected to the future of the world. My colleagues are professionals, as hard working and dedicated as you would find in any professional environment. We truely enjoy the hands-on portion of our career and the impact we have on the world. Really, if you think about it, no other carrer would exist without teachers.

Now, however, we are embattled in a contract dispute, that starts with money and goes from there. I don't feel that I'm violating the spirit of contract negotiations by mentioning it here; if you've read before, you see this is a sounding board for things that tick me off. Lately, though, district e-mail has become everyone's sounding board. I spend no instructional time reading through peoples' rants, but I do see that my colleagues are all feeling the pinch that our current economy, coupled with our current incomes, has placed us in.

In a recent e-mail, broadcast to all users, a young lady by the name of Shawnyell Tumbling wrote the following open letter (in triplet form) to those who could ease our plight, but to date have not. It struck a chord with me and so I'm including it here:
Do you know me?
I have to know you.
From Marta to Solomon to Rudy F. Crew.

It’s a two way street,
Upon which we won’t meet,
Because you’re quite content with me under your feet.

I come and I serve,
With commitment and verve,
A profession, left dying, that I’m trying to preserve.

Do you know me?
Are you aware of my plight?
Do you think of my family as you slumber at night?

Do you know how it feels,
When you can’t pay your bills,
And you have to depend on your parents for meals?

When the car note is due,
And you haven’t a clue,
How to pay it, the insurance, and FPL, too.

Do you know me?
Are your worries like mine?
Do you feel like you’ve come to the end of your line?

When the boss doesn’t care,
Isn’t even aware,
That the job that you chose brings you pain and despair.

My Master’s Degree,
Means nothing to me,
If, with it, I still live in poverty.

Do you know me?
Can you even relate,
To the fact that I can’t afford to live in this state?

The houses are 350,000
And you deny me,
A cost of living increase?

No, you don’t know me,
It’s an obvious truth,
With you on my side,
My enemies are few.
You say you’re behind us,
But you do what you do,
I have never known supporters,
Who support like you do!

re-posted with permission

Songs and shiznit

Baby Tiger bought me my first piece of Apple hardware for Christmas last year, and I've since completely rethought my whole "friends should not let friends compute with fruit" stance, going so far as to get an iMac. In Weasle terms, I'm digging the techno, bra.

Now, as is a must for anyone with more than 10 posts, I feel the oblilgatory iPod playlist coming on, in no particular order:

1) Revolution - The Beatles
(must have... or not)
2) Little Boxes - Malvina Reynolds
(the most perfect railing against suburbinzation ever, I'm glad they picked it as the theme song for Weeds.)
3) One Tin Soldier - Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
(take a good song, play it with overdrive guitar at 160BPM and scream the lyrics. How can you miss?)
4) Overkill - Laslo Bane featuring Colin Hay
5) History is Made by Stupid People - The Arrogant Worms
Why must all honesty come from foreigners?
6) You - Bad Religion
Second best song ever used in a Tony Hawk video game
7) I'm Destroying the World - Guttermouth
The best song ever used in a Tony Hawk video game
8) Drunken Lullibys - Flogging Molly
9) We got the Power - Dropkick Murphys
"It's like a history lesson in a punk song..." - Baby Tiger
10) Got the Time - Joe Jackson
Prophetic? You decide.
11) Plastic Jesus - Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon
Great version!
12) Rondo a la Turk - Dave Brubeck
13) Volare - Al Martino
Gotta have one for the paisans!

Now that you've read this playlist, you've probably got opinions about my musical taste. I used to think myself eclectic in my listening prefrences, but now I realize that I just like crappy music, so long as it's not popular crappy music. So, feel free to completely ignore this.

You go Bill...

I've watched, generally in utter contempt and frustration, as this "administration" has spent 6 years blaming the previous administration for everything that it has royally hozed up. It's drawn my hackles on many an occasion, but it never seemed to rattle President Teflon. Until this weekend. Bubba went off with all of the ferver that the situation required, and left Chris Wallace scratching holes in his temples.

Way to go Bill. Rest of the party? Time to show the pair you have.