Three Cats and a Roast

I swear that the following testimony is true!

Many, many years ago I was living in a small cinder block house on what were then the western outskirts of Bloomington, Indiana. I had three large house cats, Damao, a large, dark grey, tiger-striped cat; Heizi, a black cat with white boots (sweetest cat in the world); and Xiaomao, a tri-color female with six toes on each of her front paws.

I was having company for dinner and was defrosting a Boston pork roast into which I was going to insert pieces of garlic, then roll it in salt and pepper, roast, and serve with scalloped apples, etc.

I had to run out to the store and was behind on defrosting the roast. I decided to set it on a plate in the sink and to invert a mixing bowl over it to keep the cats from getting at it. Just before I went out the door, I was overcome with a wave of caution and filled another, slightly smaller, mixing bowl most of the way with water and set it on top of the inverted bowl to insure its protection from the cats.

When I got back from the store about 45 minutes later (I'm a sucker for grocery stores), I found a partially chewed, semi-defrosted pork roast on my kitchen floor. Amazed, I went to the sink to try to ascertain where I had gone wrong. In the sink was the plate with an inverted mixing bowl on it and with a bowl of water on top of that.

'Tis a puzzlement, a mystery, a pork enigma wrapped in dander which I've never been able to fathom, but I have an image in my mind of two cats holding up some bowls while a third wrestles a pork roast to the ground for all to share.

Tragedy in Huntsville

Once again the liars and spin merchants at NTSB and in the school bus industry will tell us that school buses are safe without restraints when three kids are dead and most of the other 40+ are injured. It is plainly clear that if they had been wearing shoulder harness seat belts, injuries would have been minimalized and deaths probably avoided. We just don't value children enough to spend money on their safety!!!! Moreover, how do we expect them to learn that safety belts should be worn, when we send them to school daily with the implicit message that they are not needed???? Shame, shame, shame!

Very Low Food Security, Very Low Food Security Hippos!

From the valley of New Speak that brought us "Patriot Act" and "No Child Left Behind" comes the latest mangling of meaning--the substitution of "very low food security" for "hungry." I guess we'll have to re-edit Kafka's title to the "Very Low Food Security Artist." I wonder what the codeword for "shame" might be in Washington? Oh, wait, there is no word for that now is there!

Did your kids ever play Very Low Food Security, Very Low Food Security Hippos?

Manipulated Gas Prices?

Anyone notice what's happening to the price of gas at the pump now that the election campaign is over???? Prices at the pump have jumped a good 10 cents+ in the last week, but there was no attempt to manipulate the voters was there?

What We Want

Oversight!

We want a Congress that carries out its Constitutional responsibilities to tax, fund, and oversee the execution of the laws of the land. We are tired of a Congress with blinders on, without the courage of its conviction (if any).

We want full and complete transparency in earmarking!

We demand a real ethics process with bulldogs and teeth in both the House and the Senate.

We want legislation that passes both the House and Senate and is not rewritten by the majority in camera after conference subverting the will of Congress.

We want an end to K Street bribery, including trips, comps, and we want the offer, delivery, and/or acceptance of favors to be felonies!

We want everyone to have the same health plans as Congress (with contributions from workers and employers like that for government employees) with the government as the payer-of-last-resort for those without work or with low incomes.

We want the United States to renounce forever preemptive war.

We want habeas corpus reinstated for all!

We demand due process and equality before the law for all!

We must end torturing prisoners, including waterboarding which, in the past, we have prosecuted others for doing as a war crime!

We demand that the United States accord with international law and honor its treaty obligations.

Take one for the Team

In baseball when a batter doesn't back away from a pitch to advance his team's cause, we say, "He took one for the team." I think that that was old Rush's intent when he attacked Michael J. Fox the other day over his support for Ben Cardin, inter alia. I believe that this was a deliberate and calculated attack designed not so much to affect the stem cell debate as to follow up the media's stupid obsession with Madonna's adoption with a callous segueway designed to completely push the Foley-Reynolds-Hastert debacle from the public's view. And it's worked! Rush is a little more tarred, but he's taken one for the team and the patrons won't forget his sacrifice.

Doc Rock
Beginning my 66th year

France: North Korea nuclear test was a failure

According to the Associated Press, French authorities claimed that North Korea's test was so low yield, it must have been a failure. Other analysts tried to shoosh the French, worrying that North Korea might conduct another test. What???? Is everything knee jerk? Does anyone think these things through?

The whole Western world is tap dancing as fast as a frog on a frying pan to Kim Chong-il's tune. John Bolton, the most personable diplomat since Ghengis Khan is screaming for sanctions and wingnuts are coming out of the woodwork arguing we should put all the North Koreans out of their misery to get Kim. The Japanese want to starve the North Koreans into submission. China's afraid they'll all stream across the Yalu and eat the bark off their trees.

I say encourage Kim to run eight or nine tests to start! We estimate Kim only has enough plutonium for eight bombs, don't we? Kim can't pedal what he blows up under the Korean mountains to Al Qaeda or Iran!

But if we make things ever worse for North Korea with sanctions--cut of access to Japanese markets and blolckade shipping, we can almost GUARANTEE a high-priced sale of a nuclear device to some wealthy non-state actor or state-sponsored terror organization.

Negotiate with the jerk! Let him humiliate you from time to time. Make him look good with his people with food, health care, fertilizer, equipment, and energy. Make him dependent on and glad for inclusivity in the community of nations.

Encirclement/isolation didn't convert China and it won't convert North Korea.

Beating the crap out of kids doesn't improve their behavior. Starving and kicking dogs doesn't bring them to obedience. Ignoring their tantrums and rewarding their occasional good behaviors appears to be the way to go.

Chicken Littling is not the answer. Let's act like adults for a change. And let's rein in the bully boys.

Doc Rock

Paper Tigers: North Korea a Future or Weapons?

Chris Hill the State Department's latest empty threat-monger has put us in the enviable position of either being paper tigers (once again) or having to flex muscles we've wasted and bled away on the Bush-Cheney-Rumfeld triumph in Iraq--at least Congress has ponied up $20 mill to celebrate mission accomplished in 2007!

Kim Chong-il, the bouffanted rock-star Dear Leader of North Korea, must be cowering in his bunker waiting for our bunker buster to end his cowardice!

The Bush bully boys need to learn not to throw aound threats that we can't deliver on, don't have the stones to deliver on, don't have the friends to help us deliver on. There were those who argued that the Bush's planned misadventure in Iraq would leave us in just this state. And it has.

Korea specialists such as myself argued in the run up to Iraq, that North Korea and Iran were much more important and threatening states and Iraq, piled on top of Afghanistan would leave us impotent to deal with these threats! Ironic, isn't it, that in bringing about Iraqi regime change, we removed the only countervailing force/challenge to Iran in the region.

Then we sent that arrogant loose cannon, Bolton, to P'yongyang to insult Kim Chong-il out of dealing with us and it's been all down hill from there.

The queston prior to our invasion of Iraq which I raised then is the same I raise now--is Iraq or North Korea more likely to sell missiles and/or WMD's to non-state actors such as Al Qaeda?

Doc Rock

John

Between my high school freshman and sophomore year, I was spending the summer at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, working as an assistant to my uncle Morris who was doing research to determne if the terminal pigment spots (so-called "eyespots") on the tips of the arms/rays of the common Atlantic starfish, Asterias forbesi, were, indeed, photosensitive.

In addition to various chores around my uncle's main lab which included a large tank with running seawater, I also had to do an extensive search of various biological and chemical abstracts for information adenosinetriphosphotase (ATP) another research interest for physiologist uncle. Finally I regularly did counts on the starfish in a second lab with running seawater whih was in a darkroom. Half the starfish in the tank had had the "eyespots" removed. A light was shone into one end of the tank and counts of the starfish in the lighted half of the tank were made hourly to see if there were any difference in the attraction to the light by the starfish with eyespots and those without.

I first became aware of John F. Kennedy in 1956 when he ran for the Vice Presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention and almost succeeded in wresting the nomination from Estes Kefauver who, ultimately, was selected as Adlai E. Stevenson's running mate. Kennedy's speech caught the attention of many young people who rallied to his cause when he later ran for the presidency.

Monomania vs Single-minded vs Idee Fix_ated???

Kokedera (Saihoji) Temple in Kyoto, Japan, has a world-famous garden comprised of a "carpet" of 22 species (one source says 120 species) of mosses. This idée fixe, this monomania, this single-mindedness of moss gardening has created a unique 4.5 acre patch of earth. It has become such a popular place to visit that, even though it is open to the public, one must write and coordinate a date for his visit.

Idée fixe, monomania, single-mindedness is not solely the provenance of Japanese Zen gardeners. A certain kind of idée fixe has been in operation here in America the last few years. It seems as though Osama (Usama) Bin Laden appears ever in his Saddam costume.

The 19 names of suspected hijackers released by the FBI don't point to Iraq. They come from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates; however, most of the actual identities and nationalities remain controversial.

"President Bush had wondered immediately after the 9/11 attack whether Saddam Hussein’s regime might have had a hand in it. Iraq had been an enemy of the United States for 11 years, and was the only place in the world where the United States was engaged in ongoing combat operations. As a former pilot, the President was struck by the apparent sophistication of the operation and some of the piloting, especially Hanjour’s high-speed dive into the Pentagon. He told us he recalled Iraqi support for Palestinian suicide terrorists as well. Speculating about other possible states that could be involved, the President told us he also thought about Iran. " [The 9/11 Commission Report: 10.3 “PHASE TWO”AND THE QUESTION OF IRAQ] This "might" became the idée fixe of the so-called "war on terror."

Was Iraq Dubya's idee fixe? Was it rather an Oedipal manifestation of some urge to best H.W. and to complete the job he thought dad had left unfinished? Or was it, again, rather, about the reelction coupled with Cheney's guilt about Halliburton's asbestos settlemnet?

It wasn't about WMD that they tried against al odds to convince us were there. It wasn't because of Saddam's being connected with Osama despite how many times they said otherwise as they finally admitted.

It certainly has cost America a ton of treasure and provided an incredible opportunity for graft and corruption.

But, then again, maybe it was just to steal the Iraqis' oil?

Doc Rock

Are We Responsible? The Jihadist Movement & Talibanization

An epiphany: Could it be that our "covert" support for the Mujahadeen against the Marxist regime in Afghanistan 1978-1990 helped to fuel the growth of the fundamentalist Islamic worldwide Jihadist movement and of the repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan--both of which so plague us today? Could it be that our former ideological obsession with the Soviets and the "Red Menace" has returned to us seven fold? Do I smell an irony here?

Doc Rock

Bush Push for Nukeyoulear Option

Our Respected and Beloved Leader, Dubya, the Uniter not Divider, the Compassionate Conservative, and the Crown Prince of Crony Capitalism, is now urging that the US seek security in the cheap power allure of nukeyoulear power.

Nuclear power appears cheap only because major costs are unloaded on future generations--sound familiar--like any wars you know???? The clean up and disposal of nuclear wastes is an unresolved, unsolved problem. The real costs of nuclear energy need to be accounted up front and not at the end, and the price needs to be paid as you go.

Bush points to our dear allies, the French, as the wise developers and users of nuclear power--ironic isn't it? If we had been as wise as the French and stayed out of Iraq, we might better be able to afford to invest in solving energy problems, but the Bush starve-the-beast, destroy all entitlements, shift-tax-burden-to-the-middle-class policies will leave us broke and behind for generations.

I favor a different nuclear option known as "throw the bums out!"

Doc Rock