Tuesday, January 31, 2006




From The Huffington Post:

State of the Union: 9/11 Beat the Clock

Guessing how long it will take before President Bush invokes 9/11 in a speech is one of our favorite diversions at the Huffington Post. The over/under is usually around 90 seconds. Will he best that during his upcoming State of the Union address? Given all the pomp and circumstance, it's not likely. But you never know. We'll have our stopwatches handy.


As far as the Huffington Post 9/11 Beat the Clock game goes, I'll give him 3 minutes.

However, every time I see Dubya on TV, I want to kick my television in, so I probably won't get through the whole SOTU speech.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Coward Roll Call

WASHINGTON (BP)--U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito cleared his final hurdle Monday before confirmation by the Senate.

With 19 Democrats joining 53 Republicans, the Senate voted 72-25 to end debate on President Bush’s nominee to the high court and move to a confirmation vote, which is scheduled for Tuesday at 11 a.m. (EST). The successful vote, known as invoking cloture, ended the possibility of a filibuster and virtually assured Alito would be confirmed to succeed retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The 19 Democrats who voted against the filibuster were:

  1. Daniel Akaka (Hawaii)
  2. Max Baucus (Mont)
  3. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.)
  4. Robert Byrd (W. Va.)
  5. Maria Cantwell (Wash.)
  6. Thomas Carper (Del.)
  7. Kent Conrad (N.D.)
  8. Byron Dorgan (N.D.)
  9. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii)
  10. Tim Johnson (S.D.)
  11. Herb Kohl (Wis.)
  12. Mary Landrieu (La.)
  13. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.)
  14. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.)
  15. Bill Nelson (Fla.)
  16. Ben Nelson (Neb.)
  17. Mark Pryor (Ark.)
  18. John D. Rockefeller (W. Va.)
  19. Ken Salazar (Colo.)

It's Democrats like these that make me think that we'll never be in power again. Spineless wimps.

Saturday, January 28, 2006



I quit smoking 2 years ago today!

Friday, January 27, 2006

At least he tried

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry has urged his Democratic colleagues to unite and filibuster Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.

"Judge Alito's confirmation would be an ideological coup on the Supreme Court," Kerry said in a written statement. "We can't afford to see the court's swing vote, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, replaced with a far-right ideologue like Samuel Alito."


From Lizzy:
Unfortunately, the few (sometimes) brave Democrats like Kerry, Hillary, Kennedy and Feinstein aren't going to be enough to stop the Alito machine. But, for today, at least I can say...

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Thinking about the weather


My brother, Paul.
Circa: Early 70's


There is something very wrong with the weather. I have lived in Minnesota since I was 2 years old and I cannot remember a winter this mild.

To be able to walk my dogs outside during the last week of January is unheard of here, yet I've done it every day this week. Tomorrow is going to be even warmer -- almost 50 degrees.

Normally, at this time of year we are in the deep freeze. 20 below would not be abnormal. We should also have at least a foot of snow on the ground, yet all we have is an inch.

I'm not complaining - I hate winter. However, if I had a choice between a normal MN winter and global climate change, I'd take the former.


Scientists have said that in 30 years Minnesota will be more like Missouri -- but there is no such thing as global warming, right George?

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

For my GenX, Baby Boomer (& up) friends...

(Courtesy of Brian, a wonderful Baby Boomer)



TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's,

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on (or when dad whistled.) No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chatrooms ..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.(And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.)

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Alito Supreme



Here is my prediction on the Alito confirmation...

Several Democrats and some moderate Republicans will do the (very) wrong thing and vote yes on his confirmation. He will sail through.

However, I do not think the Supreme Court will reverse Roe vs Wade. I believe the Repubs have been using this issue for a very long time to keep their true believers in tow. It works very well for them. If abortion were to become illegal, they would lose their best carrot.

But, I could be wrong...

Thursday, January 19, 2006

A Tale of Two MN Senators

Guess which one is the Republican....

At the halfway point of his first term and at a time when privately paid travel for Congress is coming under intense scrutiny, Minnesota's Norm Coleman has emerged as one of the Senate's top travelers, according to a review of Senate records.

Coleman has accepted 46 privately financed trips since January 2003.

Coleman's trips range from retreats in Mexico and Spain paid for by the Aspen Institute to speaking engagements in Las Vegas and Miami paid for by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He has taken a total of 122 trips, including 23 out-of-state or international trips at government expense. Those have included fact-finding committee trips to such places as Cuba, Brazil and Jordan.

The rest were political trips, paid for by his campaign or political action committee or by other sources, such as the Republican National Committee. Six of his privately financed trips also included some government funding.




While Coleman has accepted 46 privately financed trips in the past three years, Sen. Mark Dayton had none.

Dayton, who supports a ban on private travel, said that travel in general is invaluable for a senator but that Congress provides committee and office budgets to pay for it.

"It's possible to do all that traveling ... and do it at public expense," Dayton said. "You've got to justify to the taxpayer why it's worth the dollar, but that's a different matter. Then I'm not obligated to anybody and I'm truly independent."

He said privately financed trips amount to influence peddling: "When they invite us somewhere, it's because they're looking for a return on their investment. ... We should be beholden only to the people we represent."

(StarTribune.com)

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Gore & Hillary, Keep it up!

Former vice-president Al Gore called for an independent investigation of Bush's domestic spying program, saying the president "repeatedly and insistently" broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval, and that the anti-terrorism program is "a threat to the very structure of our government."

Hillary Clinton told a mostly black audience at a Harlem church that Republican leaders have run the House "like a plantation" and the Bush administration will go down as "one of the worst" in U.S. history."


When you heard this, did you get out of your chair, do a little dance and cheer loudly? And if you did, do you think our Democratic leaders realized that all over the land, their peeps are yelling "YES, FINALLY!"

Monday, January 16, 2006

"Nonviolence is the answer..." MLK




"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority."

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Detroit, Michigan, June 23, 1963.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Support Our Troops, Impeach Bush

The empty gesture of the yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbon magnets on people's cars still continues to bug me. If it's coupled with a W '04 sticker, then it really gets me going. I swear I'm going to start peeling them off soon.

Of course we support our troops, however unlike the Republicans, we support them enough to want to bring them home alive and well - now.

This is the sticker on my car:




And this is the sticker that's going up next:

Thursday, January 12, 2006

'nuff said

Both of these are courtesy of my friend, Brian...another proud liberal.




President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Methodist Church outside Washington, D.C. as part of his campaign. Bush's campaign manager made a visit to the Bishop, and said to him,

"We've been getting a lot of bad publicity among Methodists because of Bush's position on stem cell research and the like. We'd gladly make a contribution to the church of $100,000 if during your sermon you'd say the President is a saint."

The Bishop thinks it over for a few moments and finally says, "The Church is in desperate need of funds and I will agree to do it."

Bush pompously shows up looking especially smug today and as the sermon progresses the Bishop begins his homily:

"George Bush is petty, a self-absorbed hypocrite and a nitwit. He is a liar, a cheat, and a low-intelligence weasel. He has lied about his military record and had the gall to put himself in a jet plane landing on a carrier posing before a banner stating 'Mission Accomplished.' He invaded a country for oil and money, and is using it to lie to the American people. He is the worst example of a Methodist I've ever personally known. But compared to Dick Cheney and the rest of his cabinet, George Bush is a saint."

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

I'VE BEEN TAGGED

I've been meme-tagged, or whatever it's called, by Snave of Various Miseries. I am supposed to list five weird things about myself.

This was a tough one. I could easily list 5 weird OCD habits, but I wanted this to be more mainstream (if you can call it that,) so I limited the OCD weird stuff to the first 2.

1) I rotate stuff. I am constantly rotating silverware, glasses, dishes, towels, canned food, and as Tom can attest to, socks & underwear. I do this so everything gets evenly worn. For instance, I don't want the same 3 spoons getting used all the time, so I make sure to put those on the bottom of the stack when they come out of the dishwasher. Freshly cleaned socks & underwear (and t-shirts) go to the back of the drawer so they can become part of the rotation.

Recently, Tom noticed that his underwear had numbers written on them. I did this because I wanted to make sure that he wasn't pulling underwear from the bottom of the pile (out of rotation.) I kept a chart in the laundry room to keep track of what was being worn. Due to this brilliant detective work of mine, I discovered that he WAS pulling them from the bottom! This has been an issue for us ever since. (He doesn't understand the importance of rotation.)

2) Certain foods, especially desserts, have to be eaten a certain way. Hostess Snowballs get eaten from the bottom side up. Lofthouse cookies are eaten from the top side (frosting side) down.

3) When I was little I didn't play with dolls, however, I had tons of stuffed animals. Now, as an adult, I don't have children...but I have 2 dogs and a parrot.

4) I don't like to leave my house very often. When I do, it isn't easy getting me to go over 5 miles beyond my comfort zone. In the rare occasion that I have to go to St. Paul, it sends shivers up my spine. Not only because it's far, but because their streets aren't numbered correctly.

5) And last, but not least, I can proudly stand up and say, I have NEVER set foot in a Walmart. Ok, that's not really weird per se, but it's a good thing.

That's my list.

Motomama, if you have time, you're it!

Sunday, January 08, 2006


Everyone loves pretzels.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Letterman to O'Reilly: "60% of what you say is crap"



Of all the nights to miss Letterman, I had to miss this. Fortunately, it's going around the Web like mad.

See it here: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/01/04.html#a6571


Dave, I love you.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Happy New Year

Happy New Year, blogger friends!

Let's start the new year with something fun. Not surprisingly, one of my favorite shows is Monk.
The new season starts this month (yay)



Quiz: Are you Monkish?

My result: Totally Monkish

"No wonder you're a Monk fan - you're practically twins! Just like this brave and brilliant detective, the thought of human contact is enough to make you break out in hives, which you will then obsess about endlessly. Brace yourself for a life like Monk's. Stock up on latex gloves, hand sanitizer and air purifiers, although you probably have a hefty supply. "


Tom and my nephew, Noah, think I'm more neurotic than OCD, but they just don't know. I'm sure Snave understands.