Yes They Can!

Yum. I’m ready to eat.
Only, I don’t think we can cook that Change Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Can we?

And now for something completely different - Have you ever wondered why those thick browed, knuckle walking chaps from the Neander River valley lost the evolutionary race for survival. Could it be because they threw like a girl? All right, all right, taking it easy. I was just joking. (Well, sort of joking.)

http://www.physorg.com/news151326825.html

He’s “having at folks who are expecting others to change” (because they’re already the good guys), Chris.
That would be us. The gang here,

We have to do more, too. Even if it’s not quite fair and all that …

Good shot, Adam.

siobhan, I just checked dee’s website. Her countdown clock says 2 days, 0 hours and 32 minutes, just to give you an update. For all intents and purposes, the Connecticut Cowboy is gone, out of our lives except for that dart board with his face printed on it that we keep in the basement rec room. That ain’t going nowhere!

As the old saying goes … you’ve got to break a few eggs to make a good omelet …

so you always hope that they’re not your eggs that have to get broken.

Oh, well …

That’s the way life goes.

Here’s one of our smug bits: We use free roaming chicken eggs for our omelettes and chile rellenos coatings and such, but I guess vegans trump lacto-ovo vegetarians in keeping up with the change Joneses.

“And we can’t sit back and let President Wonderful do it for us.” But we are going to sit back and savor Inauguration Day. It’s the first time that someone I enthusiastcally voted for won! Carter won, voted for him as a lesser evil, too conservative. Mildly liked Mondale; he lost. Really liked Dukkakis; he lost. Clinton won, voted for him as a lesser evil, too conservative. Gore won but lost. Kerry had a fine liberal voting record, he lost (or won). Gloat, gloat, gloat for just this week.

Zeeman says: (Buck up, boy - is Southern California making you soft? Maybe what you need to get grounded again is another Nor’easter…

Now Z, you do not know what we face out here. Right now, I’m bracing myself to walk out the door. It’s 77 out there, and breezy. I have to wear shorts.

Actually, what you folks never quite understand about us is that our dangerous weather comes in the summer, and that it is getting increasingly worse. Inland temperatures can get up to 120, and that with some humidity. I’m not talking remote desert, either. My hometown of Woodland Hills has managed to make it up to 119 a couple of times in the last two years. The heat spells are actually lasting longer, too. This year, all the way into November. Three years ago, I was almost bitten by a rattlesnake in November, which is unheard of. They are usually well below ground, mid October. I must tell you, the fact that it is almost 80 mid January is a little disturbing, even though it is pleasant.

Dale!! Get real! You’re a valley girl?!! I grew up on the Tarzana border, so I went to WHT, and Portola before that. Parkman for you? Wow! Email me, Conquistador, and we’ll exchange news.

Dale, you went to El Camino Real? Nooo kidding?!! It is indeed a small world. I would have gone to High School there myself, but we moved east when I was about a year old. OK, I guess that’s not such a coincidence, huh?

Chris, 119F and it’s not even a dry heat? Geez, that sucks. If the weather keeps scorching the earth like that and the fire storms continue roaring through the valleys, Woodland Hills may be a desert before long. Let’s hope not.

Adam, if you have a cat, of this thread’s great quibblly fame (So, like, cat food cans maybe don’t get recycled so much.) why can’t you placate us with cat pix as well as lovely family pix?
Though perhaps the cat food cans are clean, or perhaps they are not, we do not know, because the bin is closed.
ZeeM, I loved McGov–a Historian, a WWII hero, a principled Presbyterian, but I was just too young to do anything but wear a campaign button, which I sill have and treasure.

EncinoDan! Dude! Some of my best friends went to Birmingham! Lovely ex-army hospital, as I remember, with the ever-present rumor that the old morgue was located at the site of the present kitchen.

Do you remember Alpha Books on Ventura Blvd.? I used to spend many hours there, going through old life magazines and discovering cheap lit. I don’t know how many years ago it closed, but when I drive down that stretch of Blvd., I still miss it.

Speaking of stretches of Ventura Blvd., I had to drive the length of it because of a fwy closure the other day, and the number of closed and boarded shops is beginning to rival the mid 80’s. Of course, we are ahead of the curb here, because we had serious strike fallout before the beginning of the recession. Locally, we are well into our second year of this mess.

Adam, I just wanted to say thank you. I found your blog originally because of Wait Wait. I googled you, after years of listening, because I thought you were not only really funny, but also insightful, and well, incite-full. I started asking questions on the site because I wanted help coming to terms with last year’s election. I found here a whole group of people who I have come to respect, even when I disagree with them.

I know the demands of business you are in, and I know what it is like to be a father, so I am all the more grateful that you keep this site going. Thank you so much, not only for your on-the-air pith, but for putting this place here.

Hey patriots, it’s me, Samuel, back with my new alias as Mickey. Marlene will be Sophia for the foreseeable future. We flew over DC this morning and my God!!!! What a crowd!! We landed in Baltimore and quickly got a rental car and drove east, away from DC to the Maryland shore. Not so crowded here. We went to lunch and were delighted to see that the prices here have not tripled in honor of the Inauguration.

I saw the weirdest thing at the Baltimore airport. A skycap was pushing a guy in a wheelchair who looked very familiar. He had both ankles and wrists wrapped in ace bandages and seemed to be skinned up pretty good. He had a 5 gallon Stetson pulled low over his face. Whoever he was, the lady with him seemed to be mighty steamed and was ripping him a new a–hole about ruined vacation plans. Then she caught a breath and looked up. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t Patricia Kempthorne. Sophia saw her at the same time and we both turned away in unison and walked off towards the concourse to our left. Both of our outward appearances have changed greatly since the Palin/McCain 2008 Campaign - I have red hair and Sophia’s a blond this time - but no use taking a chance on being recognized. If that was Dirk, he’s in a world of hurt. I hope he got good drugs at the clinic.

Ok Adam, now you have to cook food for your cats. No more buying processed stuff packaged in a can that uses such precious resources that could be better used feeding the hungry (like me, when I lose my job). So there.
And do something about those tar pits.
And my spouse drives a Honda Fit.
I see people riding bikes in this cold weather, and I am not judgemental (other than thinking they are nuts).
So no one can say I’m NOT doing my part.

Break a leg, Auntie Sam. MLS? Would that be Master of Library Science? Or Master of Legal Studies? I’m guessing it is not real estate or major league soccer. If it is soccer, forget about the broken leg, and just go with g@@d luck.

Aunt Sam, I went back for my Master’s degree at age 40, and was generally the oldest person in my classes. The professors loved me, because I got their allusions, knew a lot more history and could actually write a coherent paper. You’ll do just fine. Those young whippersnappers will be in awe of your intellect. Just don’t let on that it’s common sense gained from 20 extra years of life.

Zee Man~ My daughters will be happy to tell you just how often I drift off in the middle of my own sentence, or ask them the same question 2 or 3 times in a ten minute span– I am very aware of how many steps I have lost.

Therefore, Dee, I am depending on the love of the professors to get me through.

Wait, that sounds wrong.

Our textbooks aren’t in yet for the first class. I’m hoping he decides to just have us watch the inauguration.

Aunt Sam,

Congratulations and best wishes in your studies. I went back to college at 40 to get a second bachelor’s degree to help support a career change. I decided I was the same age I was the first time round, but was astonished at how much younger every one else had gotten. The only time I felt old was when I realized that my undergraduate advisor got his bachelor’s degree the same year I got my first one.

Cheers,
Jay

Thanks, everyone, for your good wishes. I’m younger than one professor, the same as the second, and older than the third. Not that anyone’s keeping track….

I’m gonna *LOVE* the first class. The prof was trying to get MSNBC up on his computer so we could watch the inauguration, but the system was overloaded. He sent us all down to the commons to watch it there, saying, “Come back in half an hour.” It’s a team taught class– his partner was in DC, with tickets.

And yeah, Jay, my biggest problem is going to be stop comparing the other students to my children.

Still, very excited.

I guess Fanny made a sumptuous supper of my post last night, so I’ve taken out the reference to certain corporations and I’m trying again:

waterfowler, I followed your link to the NRO article and I gotta say the author, Chris Horner, is not really all that convincing.

He does make a good point about the Zimmerman survey - “Any details about what was actually asked would be enlightening…” The Zimmerman survey that Horner refers to does come to a conclusion that most scientists believe that global warming is real and human activities contribute to global warming. He’s right, it would be “enlightening” to see the questions asked on the survey and how they were worded. But then he tries to debunk the results of this Zimmerman survey by referring to other less positive surveys without showing the questions used on them or who paid for the surveys.

He scoffs that one of the leading advocates of global warming, NASA’s Jim Hansen, is an astronomer, not a climatologist. So is the author, Chris Horner, a scientist? Well, no actually, Mr. Horner is a lawyer and a senior fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. CEI is a think tank funded by the Scaife Foundations and corporations that are involved in heavy industries - petroleum, aluminum, uraninium extraction. And don’t get me started on Richard Mellon Scaife and the Scaife Foundations.

Plus, Chris Horner has written a book he’s currently shilling - “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism”. This hardly makes him an unbiased observer, since he has skin in the game, as it were. Horner is a regular talking head on Fixed News (again not unbiased) and often has claimed that Greenpeace is stealing his trash so they can find out who he’s talking to.

I did, however, like your link to the bird count.

Testing, testing…
Somebody, please kill the rat.

Hi guys. I wish I could claim in all honesty that I arranged to have that cardboard box in Cheney’s office filled with bar bell weights and set him up for his time in the wheelchair, but in all honesty, I cannot. Of course, I could lie and say it was my doing, though. Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.

The nation’s capital was closer to normal today, with many of the celebrants heading back home on the bus, train, or airplane. I usually try to project an image of cynicism and jaded indifference to this sort of thing, but I have to admit that more than one tear rolled down my cheek during the Inauguration ceremony. Now maybe all Americans will want to grab onto the rope and pull in the same direction, for a while anyway. America will be a stronger country for having broken through this barrier. There’s a ways to go yet, but I have - hope.

Damn. Why didn’t we think of doing this during the Bush Inauguration?

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/obama_inauguration_speech_ruined

Thanks, Mr. Cooper. Regards. I guess you’re right about the firepower.
Roger, see drroyspencer dot com.
I think the rat doesn’t like the link I sent 5 TIMES!
Mainly, we should all be careful about “ungreen” legislation in disguise.

Since many of us seem to enjoy GYWO, here’s something humorous by the author:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-rees/breaking-bush-pardons-osa_b_1 59272.html

waterfowler,

Yes it does. You cannot drill for oil in ANWR and not degrade its ecology. The only possible argument for drilling is that the degradation is acceptable. But one of the points regarding a wilderness area is that no degradation is acceptable, not if one thinks true wilderness areas have a vital role to play in earth’s ecosystems.

Also, for your children’s sake, you need to come to grips with this reality. Unfortunately, James Hansen does know what he’s talking about. Al Gore’s personal habits have nothing to do with the point.

‘Only Four Years Left to Act on Climate Change,’ Jim Hansen Warns
Jim Hansen is the ‘grandfather of climate change’ and one of the
world’s leading climatologists. In this rare interview in New York, he
explains why President Obama’s administration is the last chance to
avoid flooded cities, species extinction and climate catastrophe.
http://webmail.earthlink.net/wam/msg.jsp?msgid=16188&folder=INBOX&isSe en=true&x=712061439#Only_Four_Years_Left_to_Act_on_Climate_Change_Jim_ Hansen_Warns

Glad you’re back. The FA neighborhood feels just a touch more complete when you drop by. If you’d use steel shot, I would thoroughly enjoy sitting down to eat some duck with you and your gang (nothing like inviting myself).

Ah yes, waterfowler, Dr. Roy Spencer, promoter of intelligent design and in the pocket of the George C. Marshall Institute. GMI is known for its skepticism toward the mainstream scientific opinion on climate change, and its strong support for the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The institute has, in order to resist and delay regulation, lobbied politically to create a false public perception of scientific uncertainty over the negative health effects of second-hand smoke, the carcinogenic nature of tobacco smoking, and on the evidence between CFCs and ozone depletion.

Got anybody else, wf? Anyone who’s not a wacko?

Actually, waterfowler, I very much agree with you on the ethanol subsidies - unabashed pork that benefits agribusiness, raises our food prices and is a wash (or a negative) as far as energy in vs. energy out. Whatever ends up being the replacement for petroleum (and it may be the combination of six or twelve different methods, who knows?), we’re definitely on the back side of the oil peak. No matter what, cheap petroleum is a thing of the past, it is only going to get more expensive. Ten, maybe twenty years from now, most Americans will not be buying new internal combustion powered automobiles.

The other side on this coin is that burning all of these hydrocarbons, for all these decades, is ruining people’s health and warming the planet. I’m not particularly in favor of large government programs being launched to combat these ills, but what is the free market system doing to address the problem? They are flogging us to keep going the way we are going and don’t pay any attention to the rising sea levels or global temperatures.

I don’t think we are so far apart on this issue, waterfowler. You are a pretty good sport, BTW.

“You snipe the messenger well.

Yes I do, waterfowler. But I never could have done it, if Al Gore hadn’t invented the internets and the Google. There’s all manner of information out there. BTW, I hope this doesn’t give you another reason to hate our popularly elected president from the 2000 election. But my psychiatrist keeps telling me to let go of it. “Don’t go there, think happy thoughts”, she says…

Oops. “but that 2000 election still burns me, too.” My New Year’s resolution was to start using the spell check and to re-read comments carefully before hitting the “Submit” button. Oh, weel.

Boy does that tell you how long it’s been since I’ve hunted. I knew steel shot was in the offing back then. Does the law apply only to migratory waterfowl?

I too share your thoughts regarding ethanol. But I think federal government subsidized greening is required by the immediacy of the crisis and the inability of the private sector to respond in a timely manner, or for that matter to even think proactively enough. Part of the problem, I think, is the tyranny of the quarterly bottom line over the private sector, at least as regards the kind of innovation and redirection the salvaging of spaceship earth requires.

Sorry about your having to confess to being up late already, but I’m always willing to cut you some slack. You have children - that trumps pretty much everything.

Told you it had been a while, waterfowler.

I was sort of aware of that irony, since I know people who hunt dove, and they use lead shot, even though they are migratory (the dove, not the hunters, at least not in this case) as well. Not sure why lead is allowed for any scattershot. A puddle in a dove field is toxic. Don’t know the statistics for degree of lead poisoning of areas like dove fields, but down here people pump a lot of lead shot into a relatively small area.

Make that the feds can all too often be idiots, and I’m with you. James Lee Witt was anything but.

“Corruption, Greed and Incompetence.” That just happens to be my state’s motto …

At least Blago’s sorry ass is now gone from the governor’s mansion. The demented bastard apparently suffers from megalo-you-name-it-ia. The media loved his tour-de-feces, of course.

Only in his dememted dreams can Blago even begin to approach Huey Long. Adios, pendaho (sp?)

And to all you embarrassed Illini, you gave us the Obamas. A grateful nation thanks you. Rod who?

Which is not to say I give the business-end-of-a-rat about Rod Freakin’ Blagojevich; believe me, I hope the door hit him good and hard on the way out. It’s just that, if there were anything remotely like “justice” in the wild-west frontier town known as Springfield — and no, I don’t mean the good Springfield, the one with Bart and Homer — Blagojevich’s getting the axe would only be the start. If anybody down there really gave a good goddam about ending corruption, they’d tee-up Michael Freakin’ Madigan next, to be followed by the entirety of the Republican delegation in both houses of the General Assembly. And we’d just be gettin’ warmed up …

Well, Aunt Sam, sometimes ya just gotta get yer Mike Royko on, know what I mean?

In other shocking news, a predator priest from New Jersey was actually sentenced to 7 years in prison yesterday for taking liberties with a local 14 year old altar boy. No remorse, no apology, so hopefully, no parole.

The war of northern aggression was fought over states rights. Lincoln used slavery as a wedge. I do agree, however, that the stars & bars have become so bastardized that the “wannabes” of today are merely provoking. And Dave, they weren’t conned, they were conscripted.

Damn, waterfowler, it looks like Mr. von Ebers has the South completely figured out - we’re an unruly mob of crackers. And here I thought we were doing a better job of finessing our heritage and using subterfuge and nuance to cover our tracks. My grandpappy sure had fooled them, that’s fo’ sure. I suddenly feel very inadequate.

By the way, Mr. Lawyer sir, shouldn’t you be working on billable hours?

Now calm down, Mr. College Educated Lawyer Man. I don’t think any of us falsely chivalrous, Bible-thumpin’, shovel-leanin’ lint heads down here have cast even a single aspersion your way. You see, that’s a small part of our charm. So can’t ya just hush-up now and be sweet, sugar? Don’t be causing no trouble, ya’ hear?

The Orlando Weekly had an interesting commentary on the “Confederate Heritage” license plate, and included a picture of a set of truck nutz to hang below it.

I am actually a son of the confederacy in that my great-grandfather Simeon Spencer fought with a confederate regiment from Kentucky at the Battle of Lookout Mountain - his name is on the register at the battlefield memorial. They would just love me at one of those meetings of what waterfowler correctly calls the bastardizing of a history, but I don’t think it’s just by wannabees. It is descendants of the confederacy who are creating a myth to which they can cling. The rest of us children of the South Carolina-ignited war to preserve slavery think reality matters most, and as the Old Ball Coach said of the stars-and-bars (which I did think of as an appropriate part of Southern history until I realized that the KKK had hijacked it and that with integration immediately became the battle flag for racism), it’s time to take the damned thing down off the South Carolina statehouse.

Odd that somebody else here called the Civil War “The War of Northern Aggression” and you’re telling me to get over it.

For my part, I was just responding to what David wrote about the issue, and I was the one who was attacked — inaccurately, as it turns out — by at least two separate posters for my response to David. Look, you don’t post comments in public places using your real name unless you’re prepared to defend what you have to say. And so I defended my comments. No big deal.

By the same token, when somebody says the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, no, I’m not going to hold my tongue. That’s only a few rungs on the depravity ladder above people who deny, shall we say, other historical facts, if you catch my drift. Now, I’m willing to believe that waterfowler was just tweeking me, which is fine (but not particularly funny in this context; the context being neo-Confederate racist dickheads, which I’m sure no one here is) … but the other responses to my comments were just poorly played and misplaced sarcasm.

As to which I’m not particularly inclined to kiss anybody’s behind.

Can’t we all just get along?

Who’s not getting along? “We are family…”