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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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January 20, 2005
Congratulations Mr President
Not that he's likely to read these words, but I want to publicly congratulate President Bush on the occasion of his second inaugaration. He fought hard and fairly clean in his re-election campaign. It was a sterling effort, and his whole team can be proud of their achievement. You won fair and square.
Note also that he really did run on issues and his record. He didn't slip in with nice meaningless blather about it being morning in America, as did the last Republican to get re-elected. Having been the first president in awhile to get an actual majority of votes, and having run on some hard issues, he's got more right to claim a mandate for his agenda than anyone since Reagan's first election.
This does not mean that I necessarily support the president's agenda. I did not vote for him. Indeed, after about a dozen chances in primaries and general elections, I have never ever voted for anyone named Bush. I will give him some qualified support in the war on terrorism, but I never for a second bought the "compassionate conservative" business.
Indeed, I've been known to cuss the president up on side and down the other. I can and have gone on about the many ways W and his people have screwed up.
However, precisely because I count myself an opponent of the president, I want to publicly recognize his legitimacy and wish him good luck. I have been particularly unimpressed with the inaugaral protesters, and the whining losers complaining about the cost of the inaugaration, and even the cost of Laura Bush's dress. That's just cheap, petty resentment.
I'm even less impressed with all the schmucks (including Kerry) who have been carrying on with cheap demagoguery about how Bush somehow supposedly didn't legitimately win. This nonsense is factually false, and it's really bad for the whole country, undermining the whole democratic system. If their guy can't be president of the club, they'd rather tear down the whole clubhouse.
I'll give the president a fair amount of personal level credit. President Bush impresses me as being a sober and responsible adult, pretty consistently doing what he thinks is best for the interests of the American people. You may or may not agree with his decision to go into Iraq, but you can feel confident that he's not going to be bombing aspirin factories just to distract attention from his own legal problems.
Even more significantly, W has shown a clear will and intent to deal with some big issues with an eye to the longterm, rather than just whatever will get him the easiest path through the next news cycle. Again, you may disagree with going into Iraq, but he certainly didn't do it because he thought it would make him popular or seal his re-election. He knew how little good it did daddy- and that was when everything went smoothly.
Tomorrow I'll be back to taking W apart. Hey, he's on OUR payroll, so he can expect his 300,000,000 bosses to rag him out. He's got it coming.
Today, however, is HIS day. It's also OUR day to recognize the continuing success of the American experiment in self-government. We had a big election, and the president won a modest but clear majority. Therefore, he gets to run things for four more years.
Really, President Bush isn't so bad- considering who's doing the hiring. Every ignorant red state redneck, every dysfunctional ghetto dweller, every hateful pinko college professor- they all get to vote. Most especially, every jerk bureaucrat and greedy welfare rat (particularly the rich ones) with a hand in the public till gets to vote.
As per Mencken's famous quote, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it- good and hard." Really, President Bush is probably better than we deserve.
posted by Al at 1/20/2005 06:20:00 AM
January 19, 2005
Should Nancy Hopkins be driving?
Lawrence Summers is the president of Harvard University and an evil misogynist SOB who victimizes women and causes physical suffering. Somebody needs to do something.
Specifically, while speaking at an academic conference Friday (1-14-2004), this pig suggested that (along with other things) innate biological differences between men and women may be one reason for the paucity of women math and science professors.
MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins pointedly walked out during Summers' talk. [Read Jonah Goldberg's summary and analysis.] According to the Boston Globe, she explained that if she hadn't left, ''I would've either blacked out or thrown up."
Damn that Lawrence Summers! What kind of monster is he, making this poor gal ill? How can he go around just talking logically, without regard to how the facts might make women feel?
"When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," Dr. Hopkins said. "Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive an automobile."
So, I think we're all agreed that Lawrence Summers is an evil knuckle-dragging neanderthal with no place in polite society. He probably thinks that she's just a demagogue, faking a cheesy hysterical female reaction in order to intimidate into silence people who disagree with her. Hell, I bet he even voted for Bush.
Still, that's no reason to get other people hurt. Somebody in the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles needs to look into suspending Dr Hopkins driver's license. She obviously doesn't need to be driving.
Now, I'm not saying that women can't drive, nor am I implying that Ms Hopkins' remarks are evidence in that direction. Republican women mostly seem to do ok at it, anyway.
However, given her self-reported reactions to Summers remarks, what would happen if she were driving down the street and accidentally punched up Rush Limbaugh on the radio, for example? Rush makes one of his "feminazi" jokes, and she throws up and blacks out.
When she then plows into a busload of innocent children, the blood will be on Rush's hands, obviously. Still, that doesn't help The Children.
So, then, until we civilize neanderthal conservatives, Ms Hopkins needs to stay off the road- for The Children.
I'll be forwarding these remarks to the proper Massachusetts BMV authorities.
posted by Al at 1/19/2005 03:31:00 PM
January 18, 2005
New album releases, week of 1-18-2004
It's the dead of winter, and there doesn't seem to be even one vaguely interesting new album.
One thing that would be halfway worthwhile is the Rhino Handmade Sweet Patootie collection of Fats Domino's late 60s recordings for Reprise. He had a minor hit covering "Lady Madonna," which is only fair as it was apparently written as something of a Fats tribute in the first place. This set also includes a recording of "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey." I'd be interested in hearing that.
CLICK HERE for the complete list of this week's new releases.Labels: new_album_releases
posted by Al at 1/18/2005 07:08:00 PM
January 17, 2005
What exactly SHOULD Sharon do?
So the Palestinians have had at least a technically very successful, legitimate election. That's great. Mahmoud Abbas was elected as their new leader.
So what, though? So far, it pretty much looks like "meet the old boss, same as the new boss." Terrorist attempts against Israel are increasing, and the new guy doesn't seem to even be attempting to restrain them.
So Sharon has cut off contact with Abbas, and the Israelis are calibrating a tough response. READ THE STORY Ugh, does it never end?
But what else can Sharon do? They're withdrawing unilaterally from Gaza, trying to give the Palestinians a state, and they keep getting attacked for their efforts. You're not going to get anywhere with these people by just laying down in the hope that they'll get tired of killing your women and children.
Trying to see the glass as half full though, there may be one more positive benefit to these Israeli actions condemning the Abbas government and so on: These moves should help solidify Abbas' reputation amongst his own people.
If the Israelis can let on like this Abbas is as bad as Arafat without overreacting militarily, this should tend to increase his prestige and legitimacy among Palestinians. This could reasonably give him more leeway to step down on Al Aqsa et al- if he is in fact so inclined. Is he?
That's the $64,000 question, isn't it?
posted by Al at 1/17/2005 01:50:00 AM
January 16, 2005
Vinegar is good food- no, really!
I came up with a small but useful new trick.
Plain old apple cider vinegar has a big reputation going back at least to Hippocrates for having many beneficial effects for the body. It has important anti-bacterial properties, it's good for your blood pressure and Ph, and will even help people on diuretics maintain their potassium balance. A teaspoon or two a day will do you a lot of good. I'm told that Heinz brand is said to have a particularly good chemistry. It's the cheapest medicine you can buy.
The problem is that it doesn't do ANY good if you don't take it, and vinegar generally rates as pretty nasty tasting to me. A few drops in a salad dressing now and again is ok, but I ain't swigging this stuff from the bottle. It is usually recommended to dilute it in a glass of water. However, this just means drinking a whole cup of really nasty tasting stuff. That just doesn't get it for me.
Here's my new trick: plain old tomato juice. A teaspoon of apple cider vinegar mixed with as little as four ounces of tomato juice becomes FAR more palatable. That's still a little strong, but that's about enough that it tastes halfway decent. You may wish to use a whole glass of juice. I'm guessing that V8 will do just as well.
I wouldn't think that I'm the first person ever to come up with this simple trick, but I see no such recommendations scouting around the web. Maybe I'm just a genius.
Anyhow, mixed as a tomato juice/vinegar tonic, I might actually manage to regularly enough consume vinegar to get the benefit. Perhaps you might find this useful as well.
posted by Al at 1/16/2005 10:14:00 PM
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