I Raq N Roll

Our T-shirt of the month (hattip to Atrios):




Clint will be the featured singer for the DoD's jinoistic May Day Parade...I mean "America Supports Freedom Walk" on the 4th Anniversary of 9.11.01. Freedom, according to the Neo-Con chicken hawks, means giving your full name and telephone number to the government to do a background check to walk with others from the Pentagon to the National Mall to hear right-wing country music star Clint Black.

You can count me out. I walked for Freedom when I strolled into my polling location on November 2, 2004. I guess not enough of us did because now we have four more years of these jokers in charge.

Deja-Vu all over again

It's the dead of August. The DC press is bored because there is nothing to do in the District, and the President's "ranch" is in the middle of nowhere in a dry town. He is taking the longest vacation in over 30-some-odd years.

Bush's poll numbers are well below 50%, people are wonder why they voted for the guy. They don't believe the guy more and more. Democrats are talking about regaining Congress in the mid-term elections next year.

Really it could be the year 2001 or the year 2005. The only difference is this year, we have a woman camped outside his compound whose lost her son in Bush's war that has gone increasingly South. With no end in sight and nothing to do, the press talk to Cindy Sheehan. The right wing noise machine attempted their tried and true Swift Boating. But it seems cheep and biter on your average citizen, and not a public servant or a candidate for office.

Maybe I really can buy into all the talk of the implosion of the Bush-Cheney machine. They have indictments on one of their biggest assests on K Street, whose linked to several powerful members of Congress, including the House Majority Leader. You have the likely indictments of Bush's "brain" and Cheney's "right hand man" in the fall, and it all circling back to the increasingly unpopular War in Iraq. Their are hints that the Plame investigation links back the temporary U.N. Ambassador and the manufactured causus belli for the War.

I can only dream of a Cheney '08 campaign. Almost any Democratic Nominee (maybe even the hapless Kerry) would stomp him into a Dukakis-like drubbing, by running against the Bush-Cheney record the VP's amazing ability to be on the wrong side of a policy decision almost every time throughout Bush's presidency. A close second dream GOP nominee for me would be Bill Frist, the Senate Majority leader tied to indicted vote suppressor in New Hampshire. Frist is also famous for flip-flopping on which GOP interest group he panders to most, the business lobby or the religious extremists. Dr. Bill has also been a terrible Majority Leader in terms of actually getting the president's agenda through the Senate and making his GOP collegues look good. Tied for third place would be Sen. Brownback and Rep. Tancredo, who represent the extreme Right-to-Life and anti-Immigrant wings of the GOP, respectively.

NARAL is NA-wrong

There is something about Roberts that spooks me. Maybe it is deep blue eyes, his smile, his youth, and his hidden ideology. In his 2.5 years on the DC circuit bench, he has done a great job of keeping his head down and following in Reinquist's footsteps as GOP political hack to Supreme Court Justice.

Even though I am basically pro-choice (because I believe in the right to privacy), there are many things I disagree with NARAL. This TV ad is one of them. First of all, on style: it features a lady who was bombed at an abortion clinic talking about how her life has changed etc. but her quotes say nothing about John Roberts. The whole thing is super tenuous.

Why is NARAL making such a ridiculous ad? They figure if the religious right is so excited about Roberts, he must be radically pro-life. And him preparing an Amicus Brief for Operation Rescue makes one rightfully think there is something to NARAL's guess.

We would all be better served if the White House would just release these papers and we could get a better picture of what Roberts really stands for, rather than just guessing based on associations (Federalist Society, Operation Rescue) and side legal work (LAMBA Defense League). Because right now, it looks like he is pro-Corporation, wildly pro-life, and yet pro-gay rights.

On J. Golden Pond

Well reality drove home Saturday afternoon when my parents arrived home from their weeklong vacation. Now it is clear that we have 4 people living in the house with 3 cars and 3 jobs.

We took my mom with us on Sunday to look at a place. I have to say that we are good detectives. First some one told us the previous owner died of brain cancer. But on our second tour of the condo, I noticed a Rx bottle on the floor. On it was the person's name and what used to be in the bottle. When we got home, we learned that the medication was for depression and that the previous owner died of non-Hodgkins Lyphoma about a year ago (we found the obituary). We also now know she had two cats, which to the renovator's credit, you can't smell. She sounds like a great lady.

Overall we like the actual unit, with a nice location, good size (1530 sq. ft.), 2 beds , 2 baths, and over all nice appliances etc. The major downsides are that the HOA fees are high for seemingly no purpose (nearly $200 with no pool etc.) and that the exterior of the building needs lots of work. My bet is that the two are related. So it is still in the running, but we have some serious doubts.


Why the title? Utahns and LDS church members will know that J. Golden Kimball was the "swearing elder" who lived in Utah from the day the Mormon Pioneers came into the Salt Lake Valley until 1938. On Sunday night, my wife and I volunteered at KUED for those telethons. I was one of those schucks answering the phones. It was actually quite fun because we were placed with irreverant Barnes and Noble employees and friends and we got a free dinner and tour of the studio. But the show "On the Road with J. Golden Kimball" was the last one to play and it brought the money pouring into KUED. People love the folk stories of "Uncle Golden" as told by his grandnephew Jim Kimball, who died last May of brain cancer (see how it ties together with the condo?). If even half the stories are true, Uncle Golden was quite a funny man and good figure for the church that has a reputation for taking itself too seriously.

I hereby gladly accept any and all J. Golden Kimball stories in this comment thread.