Sunday, November 25, 2007

I hate these things!

Ultimate 2008 Presidential Candidate Matcher
Your Result: Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney was the governor of Massachusetts, where he was known as a centrist. He reformed the state healthcare system, and would pursue reforms at the national level as well. Romney supports oil drilling in Alaska, but also alternative energy sources. He claims to be conservative on issues like abortion and gay civil unions, and he supports the Iraq war. Romney supports fair trade, as well as a greater focus on math and science in our schools.

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Bill Quick suspects this quiz just might be rigged.

Click on over and let me know if your initial response -- even before answering any questions -- was the same as mine: Ron Paul.

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Saturday, November 24, 2007

Poor baby

I hadda pee and poop werry werry bad and you were late but I was a werry werry good boy and held it ‘til you got here ...

nibble-nibble-nibble

... and didn't hide when the yappingratdog over there ...

gobble-gobble-gobble

... or yappingfuzzzzydogs over THERE ...

chomp-chomp-chomp

... made noises at me.

AND I'm cute and ... and, what do you mean your pocket's empty. I already ate all the treat's you brought.

But, but ...

(Let's see what happens if I look pathetic.)

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Scratch one

From Fox News Sunday yesterday:

[CHRIS] WALLACE: Now, Thompson and McCain both talk about leaving abortion and gay marriage to the states, the way, in the case of abortion, it was before Roe vs. Wade ever became the law of the land in the first place.

Why isn't that good enough, basically making this a federal issue and leaving it up to each state?

HUCKABEE: Well, it's the logic of the Civil War. If morality is the point here, and if it's right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can't have 50 different versions of what's right and what's wrong.

Again, that's what the whole Civil War was about. Can you have states saying slavery is OK, other states saying it's not?

If abortion is a moral issue — and for many of us it is, and I know for others it's not. So if you decide that it's just a political issue, then that's a perfectly acceptable, logical conclusion.

But for those of us for whom this is a moral question, you can't simply have 50 different versions of what's right.
I like Huckabee and agree with him on several issues, particularly his support of the FairTax. While, in my humble opinion, he isn't ready to be Prez, I've been thinking of him as a good choice for VP. After eight year's seasoning in that position -- especially since it's going to take quite a while for the FairTax -- maybe, then, consideration for Prez.

Then came the portion of yesterday's interview I quoted above.

Abortion is a no-win argument and not the reason I've scratched Huckabee completely from consideration.

I'm neither a Constitutional expert nor a lawyer, but I actually did try to read the Roe v Wade decision years ago. Because of a penumbra of an illumination (or some such), abortion became a Federal right based the Constitution.

Reading and understanding legal stuff is not my strong suit, but the impression it left with me was that the Justice who wrote that mumbo-jumbo was stretching as hard as he could to make his personal preferences into law, forcing it on all of us.

I'd just as soon the Feds leave us all the hell alone as much as possible. Let each state handle what's important to the people living within its boundaries, and that includes abortion.

(Another issue in which Fred Thompson agrees with ME!)

Not Huckabee. Because abortion is morally offensive to HIM, if elected he promises to use the powers of the Federal government to force his beliefs on everyone. To me, that makes him no better than the judge who crafted Roe v. Wade.

Or, any of the Dem candidates who believe we are all nothing more than puppets dancing to the strings the Feds pull.

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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Shhhh! It's a secret!

I guess rich folk like Warren Buffet, Bill and Hillary and others who keep saying we should all pay more taxes because the government really needs the money and they can afford to, don't know that if it's really THAT important, they can take a big chunk of their wealth and make it a Gift to the United States.

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Ca-RUNCH

A few weeks ago Sheila, my neighbor, telling me the pecans at her father's place had gone completely nuts this year, said her father had asked if "that Yankee neighbor" of hers would like some.

Not just yes but HELL YES! Not that I'd say the word hell around her father.

Sheila's parents and I have always gotten along, especially "Mister" and me after he decided somewhere along the way I'm not too bad for a Yankee. I think it may have started when I was picking okra in his garden.

For as long as Sheila can remember her father has always planted a huge garden. Growing up that's how his family fed themselves and 80 years later, he's still doing it each and every year. After Mister and his wife, "Lady," can or freeze whatever they figure they'll need for the year, he opens the garden up to Sheila first and then other family members. (Then his neighbors and after that, members of the church they attend. Yes, the garden's that big.) Somewhere along the way he began -- when he calls Sheila -- including me.

Sheila and I had already been "swapping food" for years. If the garden Hubby and I used to keep produced an overage of something, I'd take it over to Sheila. If she had more of something than she thought she needed, she'd bring her overage to me. Over the years it's even evolved to ... like, whenever she makes potato salad she sends a container over to me, or chocolate cake.

Mister wasn't feeling well one year when his garden was coming in, so I went over with Sheila to help pick ... whut.ever he told us to. Which was field peas, okra and peanuts that go 'round. He got the biggest kick out of my discovery that peanuts don't grow on the plants leaves (which is where I'd been looking), but are underground attached to its roots.

("I was born a Yankee! What do I know?")

Anyway, it's pecan time. Sheila will bring me some. No, I suggested. Why not let me help you shell yours . . . and then we'll work on mine together! Nothing new there. We've worked together shelling bushels of field peas from Mister's garden. (For the uninitiated, this is something that should only be done with plenty of cold beer available). Worked together on other massive quantities of vegetables, too. But I'm dreading the pecans.

Picking the meat from the shell isn't too bad, it's cracking the nuts I learned long ago that's the real bitch. After even just a few minutes your hands start getting sore. They only get worse, and then the fingers start in. Next, wrists.

It's agony, with my hands frozen in place like claws long after.

But there's this ... this thing I've seen once or twice that I've been looking for for years. I didn't know what it was called but as soon as I began describing it, several people knew exactly what I was talking about. Few had one and had, themselves, been futilely looking for it for years. Those that did it said they'd finally stumbled across one at a flea market (Sheila) or garage sale, or had gotten theirs from a now deceased family member.

I doubted they -- whut.ever they were -- were even made any longer.

To cut to the chase in this already too-long saga, it turns out they are. Not that I ordered it directly from its manufacturer.

(If I had I would have saved a few bucks.)

Instead, I gasped when the cashier in a store that routinely stocks cherry- and olive-pit-popper-outers and hot pepper seed-taker-outers, but didn't have any "nutcrackers" except one that you can also use on lobster claws -- not believing that what I described even existed --pulled up on the computer screen the images of the chain's entire stock of nutcrackers.

And I saw IT. Thee one I've been looking for for years.

IT REALLY DOES EXIST!

UPS delivered my "Reed's Rocket Nutcracker" Tuesday.


~~~~~



I showed it to Herself Wednesday, making her promise that one day -- when I'm gone and she's through using it -- that she'll pass it on to one my grandchildren.

"Sis" has one," she said nonchalantly.

"And where did she get it from," I asked.

"From Mama . . . who got it from Grannie."

Uh-huh!

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Saturday, November 10, 2007

A bit more than an "OUCH"

It was around 11:30 and I'd just gone to bed, covering Starbuck up with his blanket so that lying beside me, his shivering didn't keep waking me up during the night. His far more sensitive ears must have picked up the sound just before mine did. I felt him tense, then I heard a noise I've come to know very well over the years: SCREEEEEEEECH.

It went on and on, or more probably is only seemed that way. I remember thinking, somebody took the curve too fast again . . . probably another drunk . . . wonder if he'll pull it out . . . while waiting for the WHUMP of an inpact that often follows.

The screech of brakes stopped, and I had just started thinking somebody was pretty darned lucky when . . . WHUMP, followed immediately by a second.

Just to be on the safe side, the vehicle's sole occupant — its drunken driver— although there wasn't a mark on him, was transported to the hospital for observation. Once released (probably this morning) his next stop is jail until he has his court appearance.

Poor guy. Bad timing, with Monday being a national holiday and all the courts closed.

There was one "fatality." This time, it was obviously a bit more than an OUCH.

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Thursday, November 08, 2007

It's a "ruff" life

Cooler weather has arrived in Northeast Florida. The weatherjerks don't have to remind me of that constantly. Starbuck's shivers last night were more than enough.



~~~~~


Zoe, the hostest with the mostest, invites you to join her and a few of her closest friends at Canine Carnival 2!

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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

He's reporting for duty . . . early

I realize most of the candidates hoping to become their party's nominee in the 2008 presidental elections all started their campaigns earlier than normal, but I think this is a tad on the silly side:

"[John] Kerry said Monday that he might run for president again, perhaps in 2012. -- The Patriot Ledger
John-Boy won't be concerned about the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth disagreeing with his tales about his own heroism in Vietnam this time neither! Nope!

"Kerry, whose service as a U.S. Navy Swift boat skipper during the Vietnam War came under attack in his race against President Bush, said he has compiled a dossier on his war record critics that he wishes he had as the Democratic presidential nominee." (emphasis ed.) -- The Patriot Ledger

That sounds like a plan!

The heck with Kerry finally releasing his full military records for public inspection like he said he would but still has failed to do.

No need!

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