Jim

They have one. It's the Republican Caucus room

My housemate had a great dog when we were out on 40 acres and had two rivers nearby to go swimming in the summer. Never had a cat until I got married and lived in the city. Gotta say I'd feel a bit guilty leaving a pooch all day in the house and it would be a pain to do the scooping thing or have to DRIVE somewhere to let them have a good run. I really like dogs, just don't want one in the city. The cat - very mellow. Fill up its food bowl and give it water for 4 days and its good. I'd feel guilty leaving a dog that long and would hate to see what home smelled like after that.

.....and Orson Wells. Gotta rent that one soon.

I never read Moby Dick in high school or college, and remember all my class mates who read it, hated it, and bitched about it, so I never tried it. I finally picked it up two years ago, and absolutely LOVED it. Melville is a genius, and packs that novel with so much dense symbolism and references it is unbelievable. I especially enjoyed his sense of humor. It's probably my favorite classic - right up there with the Iliad and Heart of Darkness. Have to agree. I was impressed with the complex metaphors and the many, many references to art, history, music, and literature. Without the footnotes I would have been lost on many of those references. The original did not have these. I guess those who were reading back then were very good scholars.

Moby Dick - a great book. I put lots of pencil notes in that one. Came away with the impression that folks are not quite as literate as they used to be back then. The Wild Trees - very interesting, some crazy tree climbers. The Odyssey - Fagels interpretion

How come only KK gets a beer?

We have to go in because it's, a, well, TERRORIST HAVEN! ........roll blunder tape We can't leave because,well, it's a, TERRORIST HAVEN! Repeat ad nausem.

No good answer to this simple question: What good has been done by the invasion?

What fantsy land does this guy inhabit? Has he been reading the newspaper? I also like the "leave it to the historians" remark. Let bygones be bygones. So every assumption that the Bushies had were wrong - and because everyone got a purple ink mark on their finger then democracy is ruling - what a joke. I think the question is how much longer do we remain in the quagmire. According to the Bushies their role model is South Korea. Given that we're building the world's largest embassy compound and quite a few permanant looking air bases - I'd say 30 yrs or so. There is no elegant solution to this mess Bush and Cheney made. There is little sign that things are stable enough to hold together if we pull out, Iran is ingrained in the political process, and there is no sign of a strong colalition government. So how long can we afford to be pouring 200 billion a year into this rathole? Likely the foreign policy blunder of the century.

Patriotism is the last refuge for lack of an argument.

yea - the training is expensive, and the US taxpayer has paid it! BW are all ex-military, all trained at US expense, but BW reaps the profit. Another excellent example of the efficiency of the marketplace. 8D

It's called a windfall for the "private" sector don't ya know. It is also the price of not having to institute a draft. KBR provides all the logistics support, food service, etc, and Blackwater the security, at 8 times the cost the military could do it. But we've stretched the armed forces as much as possible, have the backdoor draft with the reserve and stop orders, and that keeps the public happy because they don't have to cough up their sons.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/02/blackwater.witness/index.html The police officer, whom CNN is identifying only as Sarhan, said the Blackwater guards "seemed nervous" as they entered the square, throwing water bottles at the Iraqi police posted there and driving in the wrong direction. He said traffic police halted civilian traffic to clear the way for the Blackwater team. Then, he said, the guards fired five or six shots in an apparent attempt to scare people away, but one of the rounds struck a car and killed a young man who was sitting next to his mother, a doctor. Sarhan said he and an undercover Iraqi police officer ran to the car but they were unable to stop it from rolling forward toward the Blackwater convoy. "I wanted to get his mother out, but could not because she was holding her son tight and did not want to let him go," Sarhan said. "They immediately opened heavy fire at us." "Each of their four vehicles opened heavy fire in all directions, they shot and killed everyone in cars facing them and people standing on the street," Sarhan said. The shooting lasted about 20 minutes, he said. "When it was over we were looking around and about 15 cars had been destroyed, the bodies of the killed were strewn on the pavements and road." Sarhan said no one ever fired at the Blackwater team. "They became the terrorists, not attacked by the terrorists," he said. "I saw parts of the woman's head flying in front of me, blow up and then her entire body was charred," he said. "What do you expect my reaction to be? Are they protecting the country? No. If I had a weapon I would have shot at them."

I ride minimum 24 mi RT every day, longer if it's dry. So-- 1) If it's wet I just think how uncomfortable I'd be on the bus. WTF - on rare occassions when I ride I feel like I'm suffocating and with the heat on STUN setting. I look around and no one is sweating, just reading their books or dozing. 2) Stress relief. Better to unwind on the way home. 3) Getting older but not fatter. Think pulling the plastic is hard in the winter, just add 5 lbs or so. 4) Your minor contribution to eco-commuting. 5) Remind youself of Kathryn Hepburn. When she was interviewed by Diane Sawyer late in her career she was asked about her swimming in her pond at her Conn. home in winter. Did she enjoy it? No -- Then why do you do it? Her reply was "To make my neighbors feel weak".

Friend of mine on Queen Ann had put some small stone lions on his wall last month. They lasted two weeks. He used a minor amount of mortar but that didn't stop them.

As ususal, no rebuttal. Do you let your ego sit by the computer or just lean over your shoulder? I'll bow out now and you two can continue your conversation.

That's like trying to prove a non-event. Rather I would point to the results. Judith Miller's reporting was not scrutinized because she was blowing in the right direction. Go back and look at the reporting at that time. Every article started with "the administration claims..." but no where was a sentence added "...but there appear to be no facts to bolster this claim" Given the lack of any critical analysis in the mainstream media it's fair to say that a reality check was squashed. You're really not that naive to say everyone was fooled. That's not reporting. That's cheerleading. The role of the press is to "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable". During the lead up to the Iraq war the press was merely a conduit. I know, you're going to say everyone had it wrong, blah, blah. Bullshit. The facts were out there. Within an hour of Powell's UN speech it was known that some of his graphics were lifted from a Master's thesis and that he conviently left out the fact that the International Atomic Energy Commission had been on the ground on these sites and nothing was there. Reporters learn the internal rules pretty readily. There is no need have the wrong story even approach the front page.

I would argue that there is no liberal press in the US, or none that is widely distributed anyway. Look at the rah-rah leading up to the Iraq War. The NYT, LA Times, Washington Post, were no different than the Wall St. Journal. Only Knight-Ridder was standing in the back of the room calling bullshit, and now they are defunct. Even rather conservative countries, Israel for instance, have a decent range of political discourse in their media. In the US the advertising dollar rules. If you're a cub reporter and you stray too far from the mainstream you get your knuckles rapped early and often. They learn the trade well that way.

Couldn't help the comparison while watching it and thinking about the current waste of lives, money, and world standing.

All that's needed is the black glove worn by John Long.

Building democracy one mercenary at a time. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/09/19/iraq.fateful.day/index.html This is the direct outfall of Rumsfield and Cheney's idea to minimize the armed forces and have private companies profit from their war. Rather than have the military do many of the nuts and bolts things they used to, maintenance, logistics, food service, and now guarding facilities and people, they have put this out to bid. BW recently won a $800 million contract. So what used to be done by a soldier is now being done by someone making $250k. Now that's efficiency. It also avoids the necessity of building up the armed forces via a draft. If that was done then there would be an uproar from the public, most of which is relatively untouched by the war. One general put it well when asked about the country being at war "The country's not at war, the army is at war. The country is at the mall".

The Games Climbers Play. Good collection of short stories. One of my favorites: The Douche - "oh there's a chance, there's a chance"

There may be some minor variations in pricing but no bargins thats for sure. I saw another John Stossel report on how the poor in this country were really not that poor compared to the poor in Africa or Asia because they had refigerators and their apartments had central heating and such. So I guess if they stopped by food they could afford a minmal health insurance policy. Reminds me of the Reagan motto for solving homelessness - "Just get a house"

My main point was to counter FW's assertion that no one wants universal coverage. Certainly some of the 25 million people w/o health care are doing this by choice, but it's fair to say that a good amount of them have no health coverage because it is too expensive. Yes, you can get a cheap policy that covers a major accident, with a major deductable, but that does nothing for any type of preventive, wellness care like taking your kid in for odds and ends. The current private sector model is not working. Given the evidence of how Medicare and the VA can provide a more efficient delivery system compared to the privately run, profit and advertisement driven model, and with ample success stories in all other industralized countries, I have faith that we could work out a good single payer system. So far the only argument against such a system I've heard is that people just don't trust the government to run it well. Given the track record of the private insurers I say it's time to give it a try.

You must have a smart Dad. On the other hand your Mariners are killing me! I have lost another bet to my east coast sister regarding the Yankees and will be obligated to send a pair of Dungness crabs her way.