I'm very pleased to say that my Congressman, John Duncan voted no to a bill that would fund continued US occupation of Iraq.

Apparently he was one of only two Republicans to do so.

I just called his office to thank him, and his staffer assured me that he would also vote against the bill when it comes up again next week.

Well, I thought this was funny. YMMV, of course.

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I suppose nothing should surprise me about presidential politics in this country. But I can't help but be appalled at the media's treatment of Obama's association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright ( Read more... )

I was happily working away this afternoon when I noticed that the City had come by with one of those big orange trucks to pick up brush and whatnot from the side of the road - the kind of truck with a sort of crane that can pick things up from the ground and put them into the back of the truck. As the truck drove off I heard a "whump" sound. A ( Read more... )

It should be obvious by now to any sane American that W is by far the biggest criminal this country has ever known, and so I keep holding out hope that he will be charged, tried, found guilty, and a suitable punishment administered. The real trick is choosing a suitable punishment when there are so many that seem fitting ( Read more... )

I keep thinking about this comic.

One of the things that strikes me about it is that the malice (assumed or intended) is pretty much irrelevant. More than anything else, it's a statement about what it's like to try to live by the rules that make sense to you instead of trying to fit into others' assumptions.

This weekend was Knoxville's annual contra dance festival. I hadn't intended on going. But the out of town event that I had hoped to attend didn't materialize. And in exchange for loaning my drum set to the drummer for the festival band, I was offered free admission. So I went over there on Saturday night, thinking that I might run into a few old ( Read more... )

I decided this afternoon to abandon most of the Google services I use ( Read more... )

About a week ago, I started working on the booklet for KLX. This is the book that we give to all of the attendees so that they'll know the schedule, where the venues are, how to get there, where to eat, who is DJing, and so forth. KLX was last weekend so the booklet got off to a late start. I agreed to take on the booklet at the last minute when ( Read more... )

"...all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most easily (and) adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a ( Read more... )