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Greetings from North Carolina

Monday, April 5, 2010

As I threatened or promised (take your pick) on Friday, this week will be given over to pictures, since I’m on vacation and sort of cut off from the world, although I did get the story that the Red Sox beat the hated ones, and John McCain was never a maverick and not only that, never said he was. Look for Wolf Blitzer and the gang to buy right into that.

Anyway, we spent most of Saturday and Sunday on Amtrak, with a brief stopover in DC. I didn’t take any pictures there, but herewith some pictures of our present location, Fayetteville, North Carolina, where we are visiting my brother in law, who lives in nearby Hope Mills.

This, I am told, is military country, as the local economy is dependent on a nearby military base. I didn’t see any more sign of it than I see of the sub base presence in Groton, but then, I’ve only been here for a day. Downtown Fayetteville certainly compares favorably to downtown New London (it actually has a bookstore, which doesn’t sell porn), and it was a pleasure sitting outside at an outdoor cafe to eat, something that is perhaps still a few weeks away in our neck of the woods.

Below is a picture from the Cape Fear Botanical Gardens. Fayetteville is inland, but the Cape Fear river, which runs through it, drains into (no surprise here) Cape Fear.

This is downtown Fayetteville. The building in the middle is the old market which, unfortunately, is no longer used for that purpose (or so I am informed).

No pictures of the South taken by a Yankee would be complete without some proof that this is in many respects a foreign country. Let’s start off slow with this, a picture from an exhibition of high school art, much of which was quite good, by the way. Is this patriotic, or sacrilegious? Maybe it depends on whose ass sits on the Stars and Stripes.

Proof that paranoia is alive and well down here:

The gun merchants must have been overjoyed when Obama was elected. It’s been a bonanza for them.

Lastly, as it was Easter, this sign informing us that it changed everything, just like 9/11.

Another church sign, which we weren’t quick enough to stop for, proclaimed that Jesus had changed the world with two boards and 3 nails. Thank God (or the Roman system of justice) they didn’t hang the man; people would be wearing nooses around their necks. No matter where you stand around here, there’s a Church within spitting distance, one of the reasons there really is no long range hope for this country. Just by way of contrast, here is a picture I took in Boston that I meant to post last week.

We’ll be spending one more day in this God drenched land, and then return to Washington, where many pay him tribute, but no one really believes in him.


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Friday Night Music

Friday, April 2, 2010

This being Good Friday I was once again toying with the idea of posting “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” from The Life of Brian. However, starting with that song, I began playing the links on youtube. I can’t begin to reconstruct the stream of consciousness that led me to this, but I thought it was great, so Monty Python, as well as any religious reference (snarky or otherwise) will have to wait until next year.

There are probably a thousand versions of the House of the Rising Sun out there, but I think you’d have a hard time finding one better than this version by Odetta.

Speaking of the rising sun, shortly after it rises tomorrow my wife and I will be hitting the road for a weeks vacation to visit our son in DC and my wife’s brother in North Carolina. We just found out that the train we were supposed to take from New London is cancelled, so we have to leave early for New Haven to get a substitute. For the next week or so this blog will probably be non-political. I’ll probably be posting pictures and little else.


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Drinking Liberally-the Hangover Report

Friday, April 2, 2010

Last night we had a two-fer at Drinking Liberally. Kevin Lembo joined us at around 6:30 and left around 8:15. Denise Merrill joined us a few minutes later and stayed until after 10:00.

Lembo does the near impossible: he makes a compelling case for running for the office of Lieutenant Governor. As reported here earlier, he has been endorsed by the GDTC and is apparently picking up individual commitments state wide.

Now, an aside. Below a picture of each, with state Reps Betsy Ritter and Elissa Wright. Taking pictures of politicians is an entirely different experience than taking snaps of ordinary people. With a group of three such as this someone is usually bound to have their eyes closed, or their mouth open and looking ridiculous, etc. With politicians that never happens. They always seem to be able to smile directly at the camera. I was speculating to my wife this morning that maybe there is some sort of gene for that talent associated with the gene that predisposes people to be politicians.

Now, getting back to the politicians. Denise Merrill was on the verge of getting an official CTBlue endorsement, but she may have blown it when, to my shock and chagrin, she rejected my idea for a JJB Dinner goody bag (dark chocolate covered almonds, if I recall correctly) and said she was going to commit the cardinal sin of diverting the funds she would otherwise use for these small scale bribes to some charitable organization with a suspiciously Catholic sounding name. Well, naturally I was taken aback, shocked in fact. Here she was, shamelessly admitting to an intent to break with sacred tradition just to accomplish something worthwhile. What if every politician did that?

Speaking of the JJB Dinner, we liberal drinkers will have a whole table at the dinner, stocked exclusively with DL regulars.


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Best comment ever?

Friday, April 2, 2010

Yesterday, for reasons both too complicated and boring to explain, one of my posts, without my knowledge, ended up being posted twice. The subject of the post was Obama’s repetition on the energy front of the search for “bi-partisanship” that worked out so well (snark) on the health care front. So the post was repetitive and about repetition.

The comment reads: “Deja Vu all over again”.

True and true.

By the way, my wife points out that there may have been method in Obama’s oil drilling madness. He may have given up less than meets the eye, and he made sure that the oil story was the top story of the day, knowing full well that both the press and the Republicans (and me too, I guess) will always concentrate on whatever they are hand fed. Meanwhile, he announced (in a far less public way) stringent new mileage standards, which have real impact. The hounds, Republicans and press alike, were following the wrong scent, and so the truly significant move went unnoticed and uncriticized.


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What was that definition of “crazy” again?

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Obama’s more extreme supporters often claim (or are alleged to claim) that he is a little like a chessmaster, thinking 20 moves ahead while his opponents can only see the board in its current state. Thus, we are asked to believe that he somehow mapped out his strategy for health care reform, anticipated all major developments and emerged with a victory.

The problem with that analysis is that he appears to have emerged with far less of a victory than he could have gotten, had he not tried so hard to be “bi-partisan”, for despite his fabled ability to see so many moves down the road, he felt it necessary to make fruitless concessions in order to gain zero Republican votes in the Senate.

I would suggest that chess is not a good metaphor for the game of politics. Chess is an open game; each side starts out from a position of equality and each knows where the other stands at each point in the game. Poker might be a better choice. I don’t claim to be even a good poker player, but I know one thing you should never do: show the other guy your hand. That’s what Obama did on health care, and that’s why he came away with a bill just slightly better than no bill. If we must stick with chess, then it makes no sense to sacrifice even a pawn with no clear reason for doing so.

Now we come to energy legislation, and in order to gain the support of the slimeball from South Carolina, Obama has allowed drilling along large sections of the American coast. (Why one man should have that much power is another question). For this, which he surely knows is both environmentally dangerous and bad energy policy, he has gotten exactly nothing, exactly what he got when he pre-emptively compromised health care policy.

Here we must depart from metaphor and go for the real thing: if you are negotiating with someone you don’t give away your bargaining chips. Obama has done that yet again, and the result will be the same. Does he really expect the Republicans to behave different, particularly on energy policy?

Now, it can be argued that this time he really needs 60 votes all the way, because you can’t achieve good energy/climate legislation via reconciliation. That may be true. So, here’s what you do. You have Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer announce that the rules are going to change come January, and the extent of the change is going to depend on how Republicans behave between now and then. I’m betting the Democrats will have a reduced majority, but still a majority, in January. At that point, the rules are up for grabs, with only 50 votes needed and no filibuster. The Democrats can only succeed by effecting change; Republicans succeed by blocking change. The filibuster favors the forces of reaction. If the Democrats want to both survive and thrive, they need to restore majority rule in this country. The mere threat will likely bring the Republicans around now. If not, then you simply say you will wait until January and then follow through. It’s what they would do, were it in their interest. It’s what they almost did, when it was in their very short term interest.

In the meantime, and if they really do come to the table, if you want to give them a sop wait until they have given you something.


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Drinking Liberally-April Fools Edition

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Some might say we are fools every month, but lets put that aside. Tomorrow we’ll have a special guest: Kevin Lembo, candidate for Lieutenant Governor. As usual, the festivities are at the Bulkeley House, Bank Street, New London, starting at 6:30. Everyone and anyone who tilts left is invited.


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Water, water everywhere

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

We live across the street from a brook that empties into a cove on Long Island Sound. The brook drains what is reputed to be the highest (or at least the steepest) hill on Route 1, so at times like this we get a lot of water flowing by. Our house is the oldest house on the street; in fact I think most of the street was once part of the parcel which my ancestors by purchase owned, so we are comfortably ensconced on the highest point in the immediate area. Our basement remains dry (knock on wood).

Our neighbors across the street are not so lucky. Their driveway crosses a bridge to their houses, and this was the scene when I got home from work at around 3:00.

They had parked their cars on the street last night, but I’m guessing they couldn’t get to them this morning, when the flooding was almost this bad.

This is a view in the other direction. This is normally all dry ground, except to the extreme right hand side.


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This will come as a surprise to my wife

Monday, March 29, 2010

“Serious Dem”, the Merrick Alpert supporter, has written again. I find from his or her comments that I am-a woman. Or perhaps a girl. In any event, a female.

I’m not sure what to make of this revelation. Naturally, I’ll need a whole new wardrobe, and my wife will need to make some adjustments. On the other hand, I’ll no longer have to make half hearted defenses of the male sex when she points out yet another of the ways in which men are ruining the world. And of course I’ll have to change my name, which Serious Dem could have discovered by clicking on the “About Me” link on the upper right side of the main page.

I always thought that “university affiliated” folks did some basic research before jumping to conclusions, but I guess I was wrong about that. Why, this “egregious lapse of [Serious Dem’s] own incites me to discredit the entirety” of his or her rebuttal of my rebuttal!


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A bit of a disconnect

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Someone named Victoria Jackson, who I assume is a singer of some renown, apparently recently serenaded some tea party yokels with a song that includes lyrics to the effect that Obama is a communist dictator who is taking us all to hell.

Obama must surely be the sorriest dictator in the entire history of dictators, since the first caveman with a club started pushing his fellows around. He’s a fine fellow, in my opinion, but he doesn’t seem to be cut out to be a dictator, since he can’t seem to get anyone to listen to his dictates. He can’t even get his appointees confirmed, much less get a vote on most legislation he proposes. Come to think of it, he’s the only dictator I know of who even allows votes. Isn’t that a sort of sine qua non, of being a dictator-not allowing votes?

Of course, as Frank Rich points out today, all of these names they call Obama have but one translation: Obama is a n……


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Hey, what happened to my tax increase?

Sunday, March 28, 2010

I spent most of my day at the keyboard, punching numbers into Turbo Tax. Last year we ended up paying both state and federal, so my wife and I increased our withholding, by about enough where we figured we would get a modest refund. Well, it’s higher than we thought, thanks in part to Obama and the Democrats. Last year we bought a wood stove to take the chill, and the expense out of the cold winter days. The installation of that stove is a story in itself, but I’ll let that pass. We got a tax credit for buying the stove, courtesy of the stimulus program. I was pleased also, to see that the programmers made a point of letting the user know that s/he had received another tax credit-the Making Work Pay credit. That was a bit confusing, since I never claimed it and had never heard of it. However, it turns out that you get it automatically, in the form of reduced withholding. The program lets you know how much you received.

It’s nice that the Turbo folks have let their users know that their taxes have been cut, since the Democrats managed to keep that fact well hidden. In fact, a large percentage thinks their taxes have gone up. We can’t wholly blame the Republicans or the press for the widespread ignorance about these tax cuts. It’s up to the Democrats to get their message out.

On a personal level, we are getting enough to salve my conscience about my recent Ipad order, and then some. In any event, that chore is over for another year.


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