cats and dogs, living together

Growing up, my family always raised cattle. It was a hobby, never really relied on it for money, but still, everything I and my family knows about farming has to do with beef cattle.

So, here we are, years later, and our farm has been idle for a while. Mainly because: once I left home, my dad didn't have cheap labor anymore. He sold all the cows, got a riding lawn mower, and got really lazy. Along comes my brother-in-law, who decides he wants to raise sheep.

Now, for those of you who don't know this, it's a historical fact: cattle ranchers and sheep herders don't get along. In the old west, they used to shoot at each other. Shepherds like fences, cowboys like open range, etc, etc. So, not only is my brother-in-law brazenly acting in opposition to family tradition, but he's also dragged my dad into it. Neither of them know anything about raising sheep, they are buying books on Amazon to try and learn, and sheep keep doing dumb things that cows would never do. Stupid sheep.

Anyway, my point is this. I try to be an optimist. The only good thing we've gotten out of this is a really great sheep dog named Rosco. I'm a dog lover in general, but this guy has really won me over. Two pics coming, one of him with my nephew, and one of him taking my mom's dog Molly for a walk. He's apparently going to be 140 pounds some day, God help us...

weird things I like...

I love quotes by famous people that basically make me say "I wish I had said that". Here are a couple for today.

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."

--Mark Twain

“It's the Olympics. If you can't get up to swim in the morning, don't go.”

--Michael Phelps

Financing

Things will get worse before they get better:

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSSP21695020080819

i.e. wait a few more months before buying that new house. Prices are going down, and mortgages will get easier. Try 2009.

Informed readers

Interesting article about informed readers. Atlantic readers rate the highest.

http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1356

Another interesting tidbit, people who listen to Rush are a) better informed and b) better educated than people who watch John Stewart. Maybe that's because John gets more viewers who are still in college, and thus don't count as grads yet, but still. Very interesting.

McCain wasn't tortured...

.. if you believe Bush/Cheney's definition of the word. All the things John McCain endured in prison camp are techniques that this administration uses against detainees. Oh, and John McCain, by supporting the Military Commissions act, in effect says that you should respect him because he endured torture for his country, but that it's ok for us to torture detainees. Huh?

The various ways in which Republican logic breaks down with even the smallest amount of scrutiny is really just beyond what a rational individual can tolerate. Trust us with the budget, although we've doubled the national debt in 8 years. Trust us on national security, although we are clearly incompetent at finding guys like Bin Laden and rebuilding Afghanistan.

No rational person should be able to buy into all this, which means that Republican messages have to be about emotion, and not reason. Symbolism helps too. Things like patriotism, winning wars, freedom, etc are all things that everybody likes, but that everybody defines differently. So there's no downside to wrapping yourself in those and hoping that it works in terms of getting people to vote for you.

Interestingly, Obama does the same thing, with words like hope and change. But he also provides enough depth to his policy discussions so that there's something in his message for everybody.

Bikinis are not torture

Ah, I'm back from the beach, sporting a nice tan. Let me tell you, California beach towns (from Santa Barbara south) are really monuments to immodesty. The number of men and women I saw strutting around in almost nothing, in places like grocery stores, was almost silly. Almost.

Gotta love Laguna Beach!

And if that's not enough, here's another reason why California rocks. It's the only state to threaten people who participate in torture with legal action.

http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0814-15.htm

Yet another reason why Michael Phelps is my hero

Check out what this guy eats!

"For breakfast that includes 3 fried-egg sandwiches, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions, and mayonnaise, an omelette, a bowl of grits, and three slices of french toast with powdered sugar, all washed down with 3 chocolate chip pancakes."

Oh my god this is my version of heaven! Eat like that and go out and win gold medals! If this guy starts dating Penelope Cruz, he will have my perfect life.

Hypocrites-R-US

Obama has gotten flack in recent days for saying things that seem to suggest that he's not "proud" to be an American. Essentially, what Obama has said, is that in some ways, America used to be better. We used to have a voice in world affairs that was respected, and that people could trust came from good intentions, even when we screwed up.

The Bushies have taken that away from us. After 8 years, nobody in the world is drinking the kool-aid anymore. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we have no credibility, and we have a president who doesn't seem to be self-aware enough to know that people see us differently now.

Here's Andrew Sullivan talking about this in the context of the Russia v. Georgia conflict, and comparing it to our invasion of Iraq.

"The point here is not that the invasions are obviously morally equivalent. The point is that the line between American actions in the world and Russia's are no longer as stark as they once were. Once you trash the international system, declare yourself above the law and even the most basic of international conventions against war crimes, you have forfeited the kind of moral authority that the US once had. Bush and his cronies speak as if none of this has happened. Their rigid, absolutist denial even of the bleeding obvious allows them to preach to the world about international norms that, when they would have constrained American actions, were derided as quaint and irrelevant. You really cannot have it both ways."

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/everyones-a-cri.html

This is very bad for us, but very bad for the Western world too. Which is one of the major reasons why Europeans are so excited about Obama. He gets it, while all McCain wants to do is bomb, bomb, bomb somebody, no matter who it is. Just to make sure they know who's boss.

Death by INS

It is hard to read things like this and not suspect that America has lost its soul.

This guy was in the US for 16 years, got married had kids, but then got swept up in an immigration sweep. He languishes in jail for months, complaining of back pain, before dying of cancer that had gone untreated for months.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/nyregion/13detain.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=login&pagewanted=all

Are we still a good country? Can we blame all the craziness on the Bushies, or do we, as I suspect, have a lot to answer for as citizens who are too busy playing with our new Iphones to bother rioting in the streets?

Taxes? We don't need no stinking taxes...

This is either fascinating or the most flawed study in history.

The basic gist is that most companies, foreign and domestic, operating in the US don’t pay taxes.

http://www.truthout.org/article/most-corporations-dont-pay-income-taxes

I'm very open to crazy Martian conspiracy theories, and even I'm having trouble with this one.

Latest TV game show: Fact or Conspiracy Theory?

I mentioned in an earlier post that the truth about the Bush Administration is sometimes so bizarre that you couldn't actually make it up, since people would dismiss it as "crazy conspiracy theory" out of hand.

One story I mentioned (I think, bourbon fog...) was that Ron Suskind reports that the Bushies forged a letter linking Iraq to Al Qaeda and uranium in Niger. Oddly, it mentions both facts in the same letter.

So anyway, the news here is that the conservatives outside the White House aren't really challenging the story, they just say Suskind got details wrong. It wasn't the CIA that did the letter, it was Feith in the Pentagons "Office of Special Plans", which sounds so Orwellian as to be laughable. By the way, the writer here is himself an ex-CIA guy.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2008/08/07/suskind-revisited/

The story looks more and more like it's true, and John Conyers has promised (finally) to have his staff look into it.

More background here, including links to transcripts released by Suskind proving that he quoted his sources accurately:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/suskinds_report_about_forged.php

America's lack of self-awareness

I'm going to blame this on the president too, because, I just like to blame him for everything.

In recent days, we've seen Bush criticize China for their human rights record, using the same language that some use to criticize the US over our torture policies. We've also seen Bush complain about Russia invading a sovereign country (which didn't stop us in Iraq or the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza) but never mind. My key problem is this: Bush might be the least self-aware person on the planet.

This guy might not even know the definition of the word hypocrisy, and it seems like it's a disease, spreading to all parts of American culture and media to some degree.

So take this story. People are all freaked out because China had one little girl sing (because she had a great voice) and had another little girl lip sync the song and pretend to the be singer.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news?slug=ap-china-lip-synchedsong&prov=ap&type=lgns

The author seems outraged, but do you think for one second that Americans wouldn't do something like this for, say, the SuperBowl? Heck, we would have given the pretty seven year old child a face lift just to make sure that she was up to our standard of beauty.

Bush in Beijing revisited

Almost as good. It's like she just finished a 90 second keg stand, and he's giving her props.

Bush in Beijing

UPDATE: I've been told that this post objectifies women. So, my apologies to whoever might feel that way. I thought I was making fun of our idiot president.

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Oh my god this is the greatest thing I've ever seen.

Did you think Bush is really slapping her butt?

Russia vs. Georgia

Here is a ludicrously simple question. If the US military cannot be used to defend a democratically elected government in Georgia, against a Russian invasion, then please, do tell me, just what the fuck is it for?

From a Georgian soldier, retreating: “Write exactly what I say,” he said. “Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us.”

This is a country that had a democracy! We're not trying to build one there like in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it already exists! And we were going to let them join NATO. So we are in the enviable position of having the Russian invasion happen before they joined NATO. Because if it happened after we joined, we'd be obligated to go help them. Now we can throw them to the wolves, I mean bears.