FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH --

We're down here in Effingham -- and as Brian Drees  says (the plumbing contractor who came buy to give us an estimate for bringing a line from the gas meter to the kitchen), we will be southerners officially on July 16. That's the day Two Men and a Truck show up at our office in Tinley Park to remove all furniture and any whispers of our ever having been there.

I've worked through all my anxiety attacks of giving up the counseling practice in Tinley Park. This was helped enormously by insurance company provider relations people calling to get the phone number in Effingham (217-690-8870).

Today, Quint is going to change the primary address for all the insurance providers from Tinley Park to our Effingham address.

Yesterday I was kind of laid low by a sinus thingy. I'm better today. I'd better be. We have a full week in Effingham. First thing I plan to do is -- what else -- paint, of course. This is going to be the wall that will be behind the deep freeze in the basement.

I have to get ready for the canning season. A garbage disposal is one of the requirements for my refurbishing the kitchen, or, The Food Lab. So is a ceiling fan. So is a gas range with a turbo charged burner that will heat up my 21 gallon water bath/canner, as well as a dishwasher. None of these items were in the house when we made our purchase. But then, it's a 50-year-old house and we expected to bring improvements into the picture.

So my Food Lab will be up and running eventually. Probably sooner than later, since Quint enjoys my culinary contributions to his lifestyle.

We're off to Wal-Mart here shortly. We have a Super Wal-Mart here in Effingham. That's great because a Jasmine bush is on my list, as well as everything I need for this week's menus.

For the meat, I like to go to Kroger. There's the nicest butcher there who will cut me off some meat from something hanging in the back. I need pork chops and I do not the thin cut variety, so I'm guessing he'll go back there where he has a pig hanging on a hook. Same for steaks from a side of beef.

But first, I have to tell you -- if you didn't hear about it already -- the immigration bill was roundly defeated in the senate yesterday. I don't have all the details yet but I'll check it out after lunch.

Quint also tells me that Russia has laid claim to the North Pole. And all the gas, oil, and diamonds that might be underneath it.

Can they do that? Well, I guess so. Who would stop them? Harkens back to the days many years ago when Great Britain laid claim to the land now called the United States. Did they ask the American Indians if they'd give the Brits the land?

Not really. The Brits had guns. No match for the American Indians. And since my people on my father's side were Cherokee, I don't get into land disputes with people who have big guns. Even now.

Germans are on my mother's side. My great-great-great grandfather Leopold Stubbe hailed from Pottsdam, Germany, in 1846. There's a story there but I never heard what it was and anyone who did know is now pushing up daisies.

But on our grave-tending trip to Paducah recently, I did learn that my grandfather, Arthur Stubbe, was a medic in World War I. I knew he was a most brave, honored veteran, but I did not know he was a medic until I really down close and looked at his headstone as I was cleaning it before the flowers were "installed."

Well, I'm off for a whirlwind shopping trip. Be back later.

##

FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH -- I hear thunder rumbling overhead. It's going to be a rainy day in the Chicago area.

That's a good thing. We are surrounded by a belt of green -- forest preserves -- around the city and suburban boundaries. So we don't want a drought because so many homes in the suburban areas scoot right on up to the forest lines.

That would be about as dangerous as what's happened in the Lake Tahoe area if our forest preserves ever caught fire.

The big gurus at the Forest Land Management Department -- or whatever they call themselves -- do not thin out the underbrush from the forest preserves. They do not clear out dead wood from the forest preserves. In other words, they just let things lay around. Fully natural, you know.

Fire is natural too. Like lightning that can quickly ignite tender little twigs and dead trees that lie about.

So I'm hoping that all the environmentalists that espouse all this natural dead stuff lying around in the forest preserves will just quit getting all those court orders that protect dead and dying trees.

The owners of some 275 homes that were utterly destroyed by the Lake Tahoe fires are thinking of doing just that. Take the Sierra Club to court because they got an injunction against the land management people in the Lake Tahoe area to prohibit the forest people from cleaning up the scrub and other natural weeds.

Same thing happened in New Orleans back in the late 90s. The Army Corps of Engineers was going to upgrade the levee system in New Orleans all the way up to at least a Cat 3 hurricane, the Sierra Club went to court and got an injunction on the premise that the lowlands and wetlands would be ruined forever.

Well, Sierra Club, so were the lives of all those people who died. And the survivors who were left behind were changed forever too.

And they'll be rebuilding New Orleans for ten years. It may never get back to where it had been before Hurricane Katrina.

A whole lot of death and destruction came out of that bit of wild nonsense sponsored by the Sierra Club.
 
The Sierra Club used to have these court proceedings on their web site. Don't know if they still do or not. But I downloaded it right after Katrina went on a murderous rampage through the south. It's packed away somewhere in my research type belongings that's going south.

##


MADE IN CHINA -- FOODS COULD BE DANGEROUS

Formaldehyde, illegal dyes, and industrial wax were used in candy bars, pickles and God only knows what else.

That's why China decided it would be a good idea just to go ahead and shut the food factories down.

It's in an article that CNN released. Han Yi, a mucky muck who works in the Quality  Supervision, pre-empted the overseas sale of a whole bunch of food and hygiene items -- toothpaste most recently. Seems that the Chinese manufacturers were using a secret ingredient that really belonged in the manufacture of antifreeze.

Han Yi investigated when lots of people got sick, and worse yet, some died.

Not to mention the pets that died because of Chinese gluten being contaminated.

But get this -- China shut down 180 food factories.

In the CNN article under today's date (which was really copyrighted by the Associated Press) says that another regulating agency, China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce, said it closed 152,000 unlicensed food manufacturers and retailers last year for making fake and low-quality products.

This would be a really good time to stick with American made products. Especially when it comes to what you're eating.

If you want to read the entire article, go to this web site: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/27/china.tainted.food.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

##


TOM DELAY'S CHARGE DISMISSED 

In a statement made by Tom DeLay, the former congressman from Texas who stepped down when indictments were brought against him, had this to say in response to his appeal in criminal court being dismissed: "The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today ruled that I was wrongfully indicted by Ronnie Earle, the Mike Nifong of Texas, on laws that didn’t even exist. The court affirmed the decision to throw out the conspiracy indictments because they were based on laws that weren’t even on the books."

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2741633120070627?feedType=RSS&rpc=22&sp=true

http://www.tomdelay.com/

##





 

FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH -- It's going to be a long hot summer -- today. Hot, steamy, sweaty. The kind of a day that builds into a thunderstorm late in the afternoon, possibly.

For those of you in the southern hemisphere, that's not your worry today. You'll be bundling up and looking for sweaters and mittens for the kiddos before they head out the door.

It is truly amazing to me that so many of you from lots of different places around the world click in every day -- and throughout the day. I guess the antics of our politicians are laughable the world 'round.

If they weren't such do-nothings, it would be funny here too. But they are a pretty expensive lot to support with tax dollars and pretty arrogant at that. I think some of them are trying to bring a ruling class back to the American political landscape. Maybe they figure if they have enough money they can buy their way into a pseudo-monarchy.

I pray that your day will be blessed with peace and joy.

##


OH GREAT! NOW WE HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SECURITY AT O'HARE AGAIN

It's about security badges that belonged to employees of Mesa Airlines. More than 3,000 are supposed to be missing, according to a CBS investigation -- 2 Investigation. Details are on today's web site:

http://cbs2chicago.com/homepage/local_story_176224625.html

According to the to the 2 Investigation report, the Department of Aviation fined Mesa from $47,000 because of the missing badges.

Fined?

I have a better idea. Make the airline -- any airline that has these kinds of security breaches -- recall and replace all access badges for current employees. And fire whoever is not retrieving access badges from employees when they either quit or are fired.

This is not that hard to do. Time consuming? Maybe? But isn't security breach always a possibility with a disgruntled former employee. Retrieving those security badges usually falls into the Human Resource area in big companies like airlines.

Too bad if the turnover keeps the HR people busy. High turnover, in itself, says something about how great it is to work for a company. Or not so great, as the case may be.

I've worked for a couple of big, multi-national corporations that had pretty streamlined procedures for getting all the company property, including security badges, back when I left their employ. It's called the Exit Interview. Turn your stuff in.

Then you get your final check and you sign your 401(k) or Savings Plan documents. After you turn company property in.

In the meantime, O'Hare is at risk because there is a possibility that someone sitting in Human Resources at an airline isn't doing his or her job by getting company property back from former employees -- like their secure area access badges.

Where'd the badges go? Who has them? Who knows?

##


NEW SUPREME COURT RULING LETS THE "OCTOBER SURPRISE" BACK INTO PLAY FOR POLITICAL CANDIDATES

Muzzling political ads within 30 days of an election is unconstitutional, so says the United States Supreme Court.

It was called the McCain-Feingold Act. It was passed in 2002. In a recap of the act in The Hill this morning, "...it banned corporate- and union-funded ads that mentioned a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary and 60 days of a general election."

Now corporations and unions can spend millions of dollars alerting the general public about bills that are pending before congress that may or may not be sponsored or supported by a particular candidate.

What the ads can't do is use advertising that calls for the defeat of an elected official.

Okay, so we can figure that out just by the tone of the ad. Especially now that corporations and unions can openly criticize candidates.

And why shouldn't these organizations be allowed to criticize candidates? Voters need to know what their elected representatives have been doing or not doing.

Maybe -- just maybe -- this proviso will make elected officios more accountable. Do you think?

Should make for some pretty interesting viewing come election time.

##

FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH -- It was a misty, hot and humid drive north this morning. But I'll tell you -- the farmers needed the rain.

So if you like your corn on the cob in the summertime, be glad that Mother Nature saved the corn crop. Some of the corn has alredy tassled out down south. That is, around the Charleston area. That seems early to me. But then, I'm not a farmer.

My little "farm patch" of four tomato plants and green bell peppers and sugar snap peas is doing very well. We ate our first harvest of sugar snap peas this weekend. Was really good. Combined the juice of mandarin orange sections (canned) with the peas. After the peas were done cooking, I added a few mandarin orange sections, then sprinkled some chopped peanuts on them. Yum yum!

So we're about ready to pull up stakes here in northern Illinois. Two more trips south and one of those will be with the moving truck -- Two Men and a Truck. If you ever need to move, consider these movers. They are excellent.

We had gotten bids from four movers. It is sooooooo important to check with the state where you live and run the Department of Transportation license number through state agencies. The other three movers had long lists of complaints filed against their licenses -- from everything to low balling the estimates to unresolved claims from broken items.

Two Men and a Truck, on the other hand, did not have a single complaint filed against them in the State of Illinois. And the price quoted was the price we paid. And it was the same price as the one mover that had a low ball complaint against its license.

I am looking forward to being able to spend more time with the writing after we move. Especially the devotionals which take a bit more time to develop than my reactions to what's going on in the news. I am really looking forward to bringing devotionals to our Christian friends from China who log on regularly. Thank you so much for being so patient.

My first devotional will focus on Ephesians 2:10.

##


INTERESTING ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES ABOUT RUPERT MURDOCH

He's the guy who wants to buy Dow Jones, the parent publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Some people are getting nervous. They're wondering how apolitical this guy can be. Especially with a tricky election coming up in 2008.

I mean, there are about a third of the Democrat's strength who would vote for a Democratic candidate if it were some lame dogcatcher who, through the miracles of fate, rose meteorically to national acclaim.

Same is true of Republicans.

It's that tricky little 1/3 remainder that presidential candidates really go after. Oh for sure, they want to keep their voters-in-the-bag happy, but they also want to get the biggest chunk of that 33% group.

So if you were a presidential candidate, it would behoove you to buddy-up next to a bigwig publisher who would be in a position to grab onto voters and magnetize them to your point of view.

Well, not so fast here. That 1/3 voting block that's left over isn't all that gullible. That's the group -- I like to think -- that does a lot of research before going to the polls.

That's the group that reads underneath the headlines.

That's the group that researches biographies of the candidates.

I mean, on election night, the candidates can stand around and wonder "wha' hoppen?" all they like, but the informed voters were not fooled by all the political rhetoric. Or promises of things that candidates cannot deliver -- even if they wanted to.

So it doesn't really matter so much who publishes a bigshot newspaper, or what political persuasion he or she is. It isn't all that much different than national radio.

That's another issue that's got the liberals really steaming. Supposedly, talk show radio is too conservative.

That just will never do, you see.

So radio is conservative. TV is liberal. Wouldn't you think the one would balance the other out? Or do the piggy liberals want to hog all the air waves?

No, that's not it. The problem for the liberals is that the TV news shows are losing viewership. Radio talk shows are growing profusely.

But back to Rupert Murdoch. The Democrats supposedly don't like him because he owns Fox News. Democrats are reported to have once said that they can't get their story out because of Fox News.

Yet he has deep pocket ties to the Clintons and Trent Lott, whose book about herding cats they published. Herding cats? Well, it sold 12,000 copies. There's probably that many political workers in Lott's army in Mississippi, so big deal.

If you want to read a really good article about Murdoch's rush to fame and fortune in America, go to this web site: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/business/media/25murdoch.html?ei=5123&en=237782063a1ecd54&ex=1183348800&partner=BREITBART&pagewanted=print

##


HOLLYWOODIES SAY WE (OUT HERE IN THE HEARTLAND) DON'T GET IT, BUT WHEN ARE THEY EVER GOING TO LEARN?

A Mighty Heart came in 10th place for its debut weekend, with a really anemic $4 million box office.

And Sicko, the newest offering of untruths, near truths and inconvenient truths by Michael Moore, gleaned a grand total of $70,000 for its debut weekend.

Check out these titles and others in the top 39 at Box Office Mojo: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2007&wknd=25&p=.htm

What to make of two films that just plain old got trashed. Someone on the radio said it was just a dumb idea to release Truth in June instead of September. Who would make such a dumb decision? The production company is owned by Angelina Jolie's husband, so you'd think that he wouldn't allow such a decision if it weren't sterling.

After all, they share houses and babies and probably money too. So if she loses, it touches him.

Maybe there's another reason.

So what do these two people have in common: Jolie graduated from high school. Michael Moore dropped out of college. And these two people think they can espouse political opinions to learned folks?

I don't think so. Hollywoodies, for the most part, are shallow attention magnets. One of these days they're going to get the idea that people are interested in them in the same way as they are interested in watching a train wreck.

Then maybe they'll slink off to the Hollywood Hills in a state of embarrassment and perhaps -- just perhaps -- reconsider the idea that it would be a good idea if you married your partner before you started having babies.

##


"CHEMICAL ALI" SENTENCED TO HANG

Ali Hassan al-Majeed, cousin of Saddam Hussein, was sentenced to death by hanging for the part he played in the genocide of some 182,000 Kurds in 1988, according to this article in Reuters:

(http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L2479072.htm)

For all the naysayers who insist that Saddam never had weapons of mass destruction, this nerve gas was more than just nauseating.

Also sentenced to death in the part he played in this genocide was Sultan Hashim who was commander of the Task Force Anfal and Iraqi Army First Corps and later defence minister in Saddam's regime.

##


GET READY FOR MORE AND MORE RIDICULOUS POLITICAL RHETORIC

Political speeches used to be abundant in what was called "the silly season."

But now the silly season is not just a season. It's two years.

And who do the greedies think they are kidding? If you run for office for two years, you get to collect more money since political campaign donations cap out at a "per annum" amount.

And with a two year campaign we can get sick and tired of all the candidates over an extended period of time.

They may have started out with fresh debate material, but they've used all the good stuff up. Now they are resorting to stuff that's way far out there.

Like this quote from Obama: "Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us," the Illinois senator said.

So who hijacked his faith?

See what's happening. If you happen to disagree with any of these candidates, you are going to get branded with doing something despicable. You can't just disagree with them. Oh no. If you do that, you're going to be branded and labeled.

So watch out. I guess you ought to be especially careful if you go to church and worship regularly once a week. Now you're a hijacker.

And Obama thinks this may endear him politically to whom?

In fact, I'm going to ask some people at church if they know they are considered hijackers. And if they look at me like they don't know what I'm talking about, then I'm going to explain that our senator from Illinois thinks we've hijacked our faith.

I hope they get the idea that this nincompoop senator has become as big a political blowhard as the person he replaced. That's okay. His term will be finished someday. Maybe we'll replace him with someone who won't accuse us of hijacking our faith just because we worship regularly.

As if we could hijack anything!

Read the Obama article on MyWay: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070623/D8PUOPQ80.html

##

FOR AN INCREDIBLE SET OF PHOTOS STRAIGHT FROM THE FRONT IN IRAQ, GO TO THIS WEB SITE TO SEE WHAT OUR BRAVE HEROES ARE DOING:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1853906/posts




FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH -- We finished the last of the painting in the office late yesterday afternoon. So the condo is freshly painted for the new owners, and the office is freshly painted.

That only leaves the house. Tonight, after we arrive at the paw paw place, I am going to paint -- of course. I have made a room divider out of a lattice half wall. That separates my laundromat in the basement from Quint's hardware store and screwdriver collection.

He was taking a shelf down in the office yesterday so that we could finish up the painting and -- guess what -- he didn't have a screwdriver the size that he wanted, so off to Ace again for a screwdriver. I immediately called them. They are mine. He does not need one more screwdriver. Besides, these are a nice electric orange handled set. I'll be able to spot them very easy. I have very few screwdrivers and the ones I do have are the female variety. That is, they are nice little flower handled things that aren't built for actually making things. So I need them, Quint.

Seriously, I do have a nice Black and Decker battery operated screwdriver. I think every woman should have one. And I got a turbocharged Dremmel a month or so ago. It has a zillion little tool attachments that I haven't even started to wonder about.

But I do have an attachment for a drill bit. I use that for making pilot holes in wood and the screwdriver to finish the job.

That's about as mechanically independent as I care to become.

So we're heading out after I finish the morning schedule. And since we now have lightning speed internet at the house, I'll be able to check out the news over the weekend.

##


UH OH -- LADY BIRD JOHNSON IN HOSPITAL

She's 94 years old. Not a stroke this time, her doctors say.

In a CNN report, the former first lady is in the hospital for tests. (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/22/lady.bird.hospitalized.ap/index.html)

Some of you may remember that Lady Bird practically single-handedly formulated the Highway Beautification Act that says advertisers can't clutter up the landscape with all those billboards. Billboards are allowed, but they have to be within a designated mileage of a commercial area.

I want to say it's fifteen miles, but my memory has trouble stretching back to last week, much less back to the early 70s when all these ugle clutter debates were taking place.

Anyway, prayers lifted for you Lady Bird. I may have disagreed with you on a few political points, but I still pray for your health and healing and comfort.

Besides, your grandchildren still need you around to tell them all those interesting family stories that are part of their family history.

God bless you, Lady Bird.

##


BRITISH PILOT SPOTS A HUGE UFO

Forget the Mile High Club. This UFO is what British pilot Ray Bower of Aurigny Airlines is calling the "Mile Wide Club."

He, along with other members of the crew and the passengers,  spotted the UFO that hovered for about nine minutes. The pilot says he also saw another UFO, identical in shape, but it appeared smaller. He reckoned that it was because it was farther away.

Interesting story in the London Daily Mail at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=463637&in_page_id=1770

##


AH, NEW TAX HANDLERS SAY THEY ARE LOOKING FOR EQUITY; THEY AREN'T TRYING TO SOAK THE RICH

And they say they aren't trying to penalize success.

Charles Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is bringing a new plan forward. His bill is co-sponsored by Sander Levin of Michigan and 12 other Democrats to tax the income earned by private equity funds and hedge funds at the ordinary income rate (35%) rather than at the capital gains rate (15%).

Hey, congressionals: this kind of news doesn't make Wall Street happy. The Dow fell 185 points after hearing this news.

The full article is offered by JENNY ANDERSON and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN at the New York times. For more details, read: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/business/23tax.html?ex=1340251200&en=1c27fdc437b3ceed&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

##


PARIS HILTON GETS OUT OF JAIL NEXT TUESDAY

June 26 will mark the end of her serving out the 23 days in jail.

And guess what? None of the broadcast stations -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- have any interest in interviewing her. They've all denied the rumors floating around that there was a bid war starting at $1 million.

For what? To interview a criminal who's getting our of jail?

Not interested.

I think all the celebrities who complain about news people ought to be left out there in the middle of nowhere with no interest expressed in their silly, spoiled antics.

I read somewhere yesterday -- don't remember where -- that her Mercedes has been repossessed.

Oops, supposedly she "forgot" to make two payments, so the repo man came and got her car. What's a Mercedes SRL worth? $200,000? $500,000? Don't know.

Wouldn't that be curious if it's true. So she was in jail for only 23 days. That only explains 23 days not 60. 

Here's where I heard about the repo man: http://people.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1320963.php/Paris_Hiltons_car_repossessed


##

FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH -- We sat sipping our coffee ever so quietly this morning, watching for the Mommy Deer and Bambi to nibble their way through the area downstairs.

But they didn't come.

Maybe the mom sensed that they were being watched. Animals are wary, after all, and somehow they know when they've been spotted.

I'd like to get a picture of this beautiful twosome -- mom and baby deer -- then print and frame it and leave it as a welcome present for the woman who bought our condo.

Well, so much for that. We won't give up. Tomorrow morning starts another day, after all.

I like mornings. The days are fresh and don't have mistakes in them. It's like God comes along during the night and erases all the mistakes from the blackboard of my life when I sleep.

##


CIA IS ABOUT TO DECLASSIFY DECADES OF DOCUMENTS

You just know that reports are going to land on these reports that have not been available to them even under the Freedom of Information Act.

Next week. On your mark ...

If you really hurry on over, you can get enough of the good stuff to rush a book just in time for the Christmas shopping rush.

In a Washington Post article this morning by Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus, the most treasured and sought after record of CIA spying abuses are known as the "family jewels."

These documents wrap up twenty-five years of assassination attempts, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups, and break-ins and thefts, and all sorts of government agency nonsense.

So now we're probably going to find out what really happened behind closed doors in Washington.

It will all get digested by news reporters and authors who will, most likely, camp out at whatever government office is going to host the papering process, then regurgitate it back to the general public for us to read in more comfortable settings (like our easy chairs).

Here's the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/21/AR2007062102434.html?hpid=topnews

##


JUST A FOOTNOTE ABOUT MEDIA BIAS

It may have been yesterday when I posted a column about media bias. Bias leaning toward the left of center.

This was an updated piece of research that pretty much parallels other stories and polls that delivered similar conclusions from previous decades. You can read the entire story from an Investors Business Daily editorial cited below.

One quote that jumped off the page at me, though, was this one:

This bias infects coverage top to bottom — from Iraq stories dwelling only on U.S. casualties and allegations of atrocities and torture to the abysmal coverage of the economy in which the media studiously avoid any mention of the fact that we are in the middle of an extraordinary boom.

So what's the big deal?

Bias infects our points of view. Biased reporting is not journalism. It's not news reporting. It's column writing, or editorializing.

Now, don't get me wrong here. There's nothing wrong with editorials. All newspapers have them. But editorials should not parade around disguised as news reports.

Some people actually can't tell the difference.

They believe the editorials as if they were facts. They are not. Editorials are points of view that are filtered through a person's political points of view.

Here's the article: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=267317841195838

##


SO IF WE DON'T TRUST CONGRESS, WHO DO WE TRUST?

Fortunately that question gets answered.

The United States Armed Services gets an approval rating of 69% according to a recent Gallup Poll.

Following that, small businesses come in at 59%. These are the employers of mainstream Americans -- the mom and pop operations -- owned by people who work 50+ hours a week, six days a week or more, and hire your sons and daughters during school breaks. If you use whatever they are selling and you aren't satisfied, they alone can make it right. They don't need to get permission from a board of directors or a committee, etc. They are the trustworthy shopowners on Main Street and they do the job right because they know that one unsatisfactory customer can undo all the advertising they did in the last six months. We trust these business owners.

What surprises me is that banks only got an approval of 41%. Could that be because banks are getting bigger and bigger and gobbling up little banks? Don't know. Used to be that banks were the cornerstones of a community. Maybe we don't trust them as much because we see them building all those little buildings that never seem to be busy. Why do they need all those buildings? Isn't that an expensive way to do business? Why do we need an Amalgamated Bank on every corner. They're starting to resemble Walgreens -- everywhere you look.

The Surpreme Court, public schools, and medical care deliverers/the medical system didn't do well at all. Americans don't trust them. A 30% approval rating is bad. That means 70% of Americans don't trust them. Tsk tsk tsk. This group has a lot of fence-mending work to do.

This last group is right down there with congressionals. We don't trust them either. Mainly because they lie.

Presidential candidates are running around promising all sorts of things. Like lowering taxes. Or changing this or that. They're promising do so things as if they could. None of those changes they're talking about actually start in the Oval Office.

The president of the United States cannot legislate a tax reduction. Even if the president requests that the congressionals reduce taxes, it triggers a debate that gets kicked up one aisle of congress and down another, but it has to come from the House Ways and Means Committee.

So if any candidate promises you that he/she is going to lower taxes, they're lying. They just can't do it. It's not within their constitutional province.

The editorial that runs in today's Investors Business Daily also outlines some really icky instances of some congressional's corruptive behaviors.

Here's the editorial cite: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=267317682853109

##
 

FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH -- We have not had any rain since I don't remember when.

I'm curious how the corn crop is doing along I-57. If it gets any worse, we won't have to worry about corn shortages because of ethanol production. There just won't be any nice juice kernels -- just old dried up corn cobs hanging on the stalks.

So let's pray for rain. For the flowers. For the farmers and for the good of the earth.

We got an offer on our condominium. The clock begins for the countdown to closing. That's scheduled for July 13, tentatively. If not then, July 20 for sure.

Fortunately we have an excellent attorney who can represent us on July 20 whether we're there or not. The movers are coming to take our office furniture on July 16 whether I'm ready to depart or not. Quint says they'll roll me out sitting on my chair, or I can get in the car.

He was just kidding. I think. I'll be ready to go. My petunias are calling me. Maybe the tomatoes will be ripe by then. I have to get my food lab finished before canning season.

Then all will be in the paw paw patch.

##


RECIPROCITY -- A $10 WORD BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Reach back to your high school days when you had all that fun with algebra. Do you remember the teacher talking about reciprocal, that is, what you do to one side, you have to do to the other to keep everything equal.

Life is often like that -- a study in reciprocals. That is, if you want me to do something for you, you run a better chance of getting your expectations met if you also are willing to do something for me.

For instance, ask me about the lecture Quint and I went to at Fermi Lab several years ago. The topic was quarks and leptons. The lecturer was none other than Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman. With his wry sense of humor and his knowledge of his subject matter, it was actually kind of interesting. But by the time I got to the car I couldn't have explained what the difference between the two were, much less define either one.

But no matter. The tradeoff was an evening at Grant Park for the opening season of the outdoor symphony. It featured Beethoven's Ninth Sympthy -- my all-time favorite, especially the chorale at the end which has been popularized by the song Ode to Joy.

That's reciprocity.

Married couples do well when they practice reciprocity in some way or another.

My point -- and the reason I even bring it up this morning -- is two separate headlines that made the news.

The first headline is from an MSNBC article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485

This article discusses how much newspaper reporters donate to congressional candidates, particularly Democrat candidates.

The article says: "Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties."

So what, you may ask. This is America. I can donate to any candidate or cause I want.

That's true. Indeed you can. It's certainly your right to state your political preference, or not, by donating your money.

So the liberal left lets go of their political campaign budgeted money more frequently than the conservative right, it appears. Like about 9 to 1.

Then there's this other headline from Think Progress. The actual headline says The Right Wing Domination of Talk Radio and How to End It. The lead paragraph in this report says, "The Center for American Progress and Free Press today released the first-of-its-kind statistical analysis of the political make-up of talk radio in the United States. It confirms that talk radio, one of the most widely used media formats in America, is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives."

Hmmm. The article goes on to wonder about whether talk-radio is America is serving the listening needs of all Americans.

According to the story, 91% of talk radio is conservative, and 9% is liberal. That's 10 to 1.

And what conclusion did this report draw: "The report recommends that national radio ownership not be allowed to exceed 5 percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast stations, and local ownership should not exceed more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market."

So the conservatives support their candidates ideologically, but not financially.

It's one thing to listen to the radio and support the ideals of the candidates.

It's another thing entirely to support the candidates with their campaigns. Ideologies are puff patterns in the wind if you don't register to vote and make plans to go to the polls on election day.

Life is a participatory sport, not an observational one. If you don't vote, you are just an observer.

Here's an article about journalists who donated: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113455

##


REPLACEMENT SENATOR IN WYOMING TO BE NAMED

Wyoming state treasurer Cynthia Lummis, is one of the three persons named as possible replacements for Sen. Craig Thomas (R), who died earlier this month after losing a battle with leukemia. The other two named to be considered are state Sen. John Barrasso and former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Tom Sansonetti.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal wrote the three candidates a letter and asked them to come on over for a chat. He also gave them a list of issues that he wants to discuss with them individually.

He has five days to make up his mind about which candidate he'll send to Washington as a replacement for the late Senator Thomas.

read the whole story in this article in The Hill: http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/personal-politics-surface-as-three-names-head-to-wyoming-governor-freudenthal-2007-06-21.html

##


WELL WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT? HOUSE REPUBLICANS WANT TO RESTRICT NANCY PELOSI'S TRAVEL TO TERRORIST STATES

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) brings an amendment to the $34 billion State and Foreign Operations bill that would prohibit Nancy Pelosi from traveling to nations that support terrorism, specifically Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria.

In an article published today in The Hill, Jackie Kucinich says that King believed Pelosi was in violation of the Logan Act, a 1799 law signed by President John Adams that prohibits unauthorized U.S. citizens from interfering with relations between the United States and foreign governments.

King says that Pelosi overreached her role as Speaker of the House when she traveled to Syria recently, despite President Bush's request that she not travel to a terrorist state.

So what do you think Pelosi's reaction to this might have been?

Well, she kind of blew it off. Her spokesperson, Nadeam Elshami, said “This amendment is a cheap political stunt that just won’t fly."

And this is just one of the reasons why the congressional disaproval rating is soaring. It's at 71% now. That's nearly three quarters of Americans who disapprove of the way the congressionals are handling things.

read the entire story at: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/house-republican-wants-to-restrict-pelosis-travel-2007-06-21.html


##

FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH -- Actually, this note comes to you from northern Illinois today. We won't be heading south to the pawpaw patch until the weekend.

But I have to tell you that even in a condo -- on the second floor, mind you -- we saw a beautiful mommy deer this morning. And trotting along very close behind her was a fawn. Looked like Bambi, for sure.

Mommy Deer and Baby Fawn were taking their good old ever-lovin' when they got the the little copse of trees between our building and the one that is about a hundred feet south of us. I think Mommy Deer has decided she likes to nibble on the hostas that the ladies downstairs have so tenderly nourished with their gardening projects.

When the deer get to the safety between our buildings, the mom nurses Little Bambi, after which they go galloping off toward the woods about three blocks away. Ah, the joy of living in a condo.

Earlier this spring, right after the swimming pool had been filled up, a Mommy Duck decided that water was a nice, clean place to take her little brood of babies for a swim. Problem is, once they were in, they couldn't get out.

Rescuing ducks from the swimming pool must come under "other duties as requested" for the maintenance guys. The two guys, Steve and Rick, very quickly built a little ramp with several cross pieces for easier footing. The little wet web footed duckies eventually figured out how to get out of the water. It took some nudging from Mommy Duck though.

Now, you'd think we all had something more exciting to do than stand around and watch this duck rescue project. But no, it was quite a little adventure to watch.

##


71% OF AMERICANS DISAPPROVE OF HOW CONGRESS IS DOING ITS JOB

In a new Gallup Poll that was conducted from June 11 - 14, 2007 by telephone to 1,007 adults aged 18 or over, the approval rating of congress continues to sink lower and lower.

In fact, it's lower now than just before the election in 2006, when the disapproval rating was 63%.

The media is quick to point blame on the president and the economy. And the political rhetoric continues to ramp up to near-shrill levels as Hillary says, "We need to fix that."

So unemployment is getting lower and lower. What needs fixing?

Inflation is way under control. I think it's resting between 2 and 3%. (Don't have the exact figure in front of me.) What needs fixing?

The economy continues to grow, although the rate of growth is slowing down. It would seem to me that this would mean the economy is not overheating to inflationary levels. So what needs fixing?

Another indication of how the economy is doing can be gauged by the stock market, particularly the Dow. It's heading for 14,000, folks. And with inflation under control and the economy continuing to grow through the Gross National Product, tell me what needs fixing!

In my view, I think the political rhetoric is getting boring. The Democrats and their mouthpiece cousins, the mainstream media, are not proposing solutions that are favorable to the American people. Instead, they sit in their elitist ivory towers and point fingers at George Bush and the economy.

Well, saying it doesn't make it so. The economy is not in dire straits as they are claiming. And George Bush can't entirely be blamed for the war in Iraq. He cannot declare war on another country without the approval of congress.

Congress passed all the approvals necessary to go to war based on a report provided by the National Intelligence Estimate -- it was a 92-page report. Only 22 senators say they read the report in its entirety prior to voting. That's according to an article from The Hill, which you can read in its entirey by clicking on the link below.

But wait. Isn't this part of their job? How can they make informed decisions if they don't read the backup information? 

The American taxpayers are paying each of them $162,500 to make such decisions and handle affairs of governing for us! At the very least, we expect congress to show up for work every day and do their jobs.

http://galluppoll.com/content/?ci=27937

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/few-senators-read-iraq-nie-report-2007-06-19.html 

##

FROM THE PAW PAW PATCH -- This is the continuing story of a box turtle that lives somewhere near our backyard.

Actually Mrs. B. (as I call her) might be living somewhere in the yard for all I know.

I first met Mrs. B. a few weeks ago when I found her sitting on a new clematis I had planted. It was to be a brilliant purple flowered vine, so I planted it close to a new trellis purchased for just such a plant. I even put a couple of bricks in front of it to protect the fragile new plant from marauding lawnmowers.

Imagine my surprise when I went to water the clematis and found Mrs. B. sitting squarely on top of the now defunct clematis. Couldn't tell if she was trying to encubate the plant or kill it.

Didn't matter. I moved the turtle -- which is about six inches long -- way down to the back of the yard.

I thought that would be the end of it.

Then last weekend I was backing out of the driveway. My rear wheel rolled over something. "What was that?" I asked Quint.

Don't know why I would do such a thing but I pulled forward to where I had been parked. Rolled over whatever it was a second time.

You guessed it. Mrs. B. had shown up again.

I got out of the car, feeling pretty bad that I had rolled over her not once, but twice.

We stood there in the driveway trying to figure out if she had been damaged. There was no way she was going to poke her head out at me to give me an all clear sign.

So Quint gingerly set her down at the edge of the driveway. We watched for a while, hoping to see scrawny wrinkled up little legs pop out and carry her away, but nothing happened.

"How tough are those shells," I asked.

"Don't know. But it doesn't look like anything is broken," Quint said.

So we went on our way. When we returned from our shopping trip, Mrs. B. was gone.

Apparently she's still out there, maybe in the ravine that runs along the back of the property. Maybe she has a headache. Hope not.

I expect to find her again one day. In the middle of a flower bed.

##


READING NONSENSE INTO POLLS AND HOW HEADLINES CAN FOOL YOU

Okay, listen up. Everybody knows that 100% is a number that represents all of something.

If we start with that teensy little piece of logic, then maybe we can have a conversation with the rest of this particular blog.

An article showed up in Editor & Publisher today that headlined "7 in 10 Americans Say Economy is 'Getting Worse.'"

How could that be, I wondered.

Unemployment is low. Inflation is under control. The stock market is on the rise. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a $14,000 Dow before the next election.

So I figured that somebody must be reading a different cup of tea leaves than I'm reading.

I read further into the article and here is where I part company with the focus of article.

What were people (there were just 1,000 respondents in the poll) citing as their reasons for a gloomy report card on the economy.

According to the poll, 16% said health care costs were mentioned. So 100 minus 16 equals what? 84% of the people being polled did not mention health care costs.

The poll also says that 13% of the people polled also mentioned low wages. Wow. Now we've got 87% of the people who didn't mention low wages as a concern.

And how about the price of gas and oil? Well, 11% mentioned that topic as a cause of concern. Then that must mean that 89% didn't mention it as a concern.

It reminded me of my first day in an undergrad statistics class. The prof warned us to be wary of how we read statistical data. He said, for instance, that we could say that suburbanites own more automatic washing machines than their city cousins. 

And in another survey, a report said that suburbanites had more marital sex than people who live in the city.

But, he said, you could not conclude that suburbanites had more marital sex than city people because they who owned automatic washing machines.

Right away I figured that statistics was going to be an interesting class. It was.

So the headline in the magazine says that 70% of Americans think the economy is getting worse. Yet the examples cited in the article don't say why.

I'm not sure 1,000 surveyed people can give a clear picture of what the 300,000,000 people in the United States really think about the economy. But then, if the survey is truly random, it does provide a legitimate statistic.

My concern is that the items cited were positive even though the cites were stated as negatives. 

For instance, what are 70% of the people in the United States concerned about?

There's too much information missing about what people's concerns are that would support the headline.

read more: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003600551

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SEN. REID CRACKS THE WHIP -- THERE'S WORK TO DO AND WE MIGHT HAVE TO CANCEL THE 4TH OF JULY RECESS

Oh really? The senators might be asking. Well, I'm not going to be here. I have a bunch of picnics that I'm supposed to speak at, not to mention campaign fundraising watermelon munching photo ops that my presidential volunteers have signed me up for. So, sorry. I won't be here.

Then Reid says if you miss out you may luck out (my words, not an exact quote.)

When it comes to ultra important issues like immigration and energy issues, the holiday recess is going to be cancelled if the senators don't get all their work done.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the first time I have ever agreed with anything that Harry Reid has ever said.

So we'll just see if he cancels the holiday. And if he does, how many super-important senators will duck out of Washington, D.C. and head for the barbecue pits of Iowa.

We shall see.

source: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/reid-wields-july-4-threat-2007-06-19.html

##

FROM THE PAWPAW PATCH -- The gypsy winds are calling us. Boy, are we ready to hit the old dusty trail -- otherwise known as the interstates. Guess you could say we're getting white line fever.

So we headed for Paducah, Kentucky, over the weekend. Beautiful days for traveling -- just going hither and thither. 

We had two purposes in mind. The first was to put flowers on family graves at Maplelawn Cemeter in Paducah. 

Then we went for a nice long visit in the afternoon with our good friend Antoinette, who is celebrating her birthday on June 19th. 

The trip is only 165 miles from our house in the middle of Illinois. So about 3 p.m., we headed on back toward home.

Didn't even care that the northbound interstate was being resurfaced. After all, we were on an adventure. We were directed to a detour, unless we wanted to stay and sit in the middle of a 60 minute delay while the asphalt trucks unloaded and wait for those big squishy wheeled things to spread out the hot steaming street tops.

That has to be a killer job when it's 92 degrees out there. 

We just kind of ambled our way through towns that had populations of 2000 or less. Saw a lot of gazebos and downtown centers. In one town, we noticed three Italian restaurants and a pizza place on one city block. And that was in a town of 1200. You'd think they could all get together and make on big Italian restaurant. 

We're going to head out onto the open road again right after we retire. Might stay out a week or so. Might not. Might wait until my great big crop of three tomato plants produce their bounty. That means making tomato sauce and canning. 

First thing we're going to do in the house is get the food lab up and running. I've had the used furniture man come get the electric range, so the plumbing contractor needs to come in and run a line from our gas meter to the kitchen. Then a new range. 

But first, new flooring. We had some water damage from the sink last winter. Quint says he knows how to fix that.

Then a deep freeze that will go in the basement for the rest of nature's bounty, much of which will be purchased at farm stands. I do have a couple of sugar snap bean bushes. What we don't eat will get frozen.

We have very generous neighbors who live across the street. Their garden looks like it could supply a truck farm. It's huge.

When we were headed out of the driveway this morning, Don came over with a bag of freshly harvested green beans. Hit reverse. Back in the house. This won't take an hour, I said to Quint. 

By the time we left, we had packaged six baggies with two services each of our neighbor's bounty. So they're in the refrigerator freezer for now.

I planted yellow summer squash. It's in a hanging pot on the clothesline that I inherited with the house. The dainty little tendrils are hanging onto the clothesline and blooming to beat the band. Plus, there are already three squash. They're tiny little babies for now.

On the other clothesline are pickles. I am going to get a recipe for sugar free bread-and-butter pickles. Maybe from Splenda.

We already scarfed up one green bell pepper in a salad. I'm growing the lettuce in 6" pots. Every Sunday afternoon I plant another pot of lettuce. They grow indoors on the window sill. Have fresh lettuce all year round that way.

Now back to my other life of seeing counseling clients -- until July 16th. That's the day the movers arrive to take us and our furniture for one last trip to southern/central Illinois, however you want to designate Effingham.

## 


AL GORE SEEMS TO THINK HIS TOPIC IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PARIS'

About all I can say for either Al Gore or Paris Hilton is that they would evaporate into nonessential ingredients if the flashbulbs stopped popping.

Gore is still trying to convince anybody who'll listen that the earth is in distress and it's all man's fault.

He still can't explain why the planet Mars' polar icecaps are thawing also. Is he suggesting that earthlings to all the way to Mars and brought global warming to the Martians as a Welcome Wagon gift?

Then in an interview with Victoria Newton he tries to make the threat that the earth only has ten years before something horrible starts to happen. See, if he can keep all this hocus pocus going -- and all these little mysteries that only he knows the answers to -- he can just sit down there in Tennessee and pump out all the diatribes his heart can muster.

It's kind of like Stephen King sitting somewhere out there on the east coast type type typing away with one bestseller after another.

All they need is a typewriter and paper so they can empty out their heads. And why not? They're both geniuses at writing fiction.

Oh I have no doubt that there's something going on with global warming. But no one has convinced me yet that it's man's doing.

My bet is that there are solar storms. Our heat source comes from the sun. Anything that man does is pretty insignificant. Al Gore just wants more money. He needs a nervous public who buy into his snake oil theories about global warming.

As far as Stephen King is concerned, he never claimed to write anything but fiction. I think I did read somewhere once that his plots are gifted from his nightmares.

If that's the case, I hope he never writes an autobiography.

Where Paris Hilton is concerned, I think she ought to spend every cotton picking second of her sentence in jail. Take her cell phone away from her. Make her wear the same scratchy undergarments that other jail inhabitants have to wear and most of all, get her into those little pumpking colored jumpsuits. Her hair is yellow. Goes good with pumpkin colors.

I shudder to think that she's supposed to be a role model for 5th grade girls in this country. What do you suppose they're learning from this dingaling?

Read more of Victoria's article in The Sun:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2007280084,00.html

##


YOU DIDN'T REALLY BELIEVE THE POLITICANS, DID YOU?

If there's anything that cows and chickens really like in Washington, D.C., it's the safe haven for them, because this is a pork-craved town.

In total, there are $23 billion worth of pork -- those little slabs of political bacon that got slatered onto legislation that might or might not have had anything to do with what the pork project was all about.

Donald Lambo writes in an article in The Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20070617-080234-4516r.htm) that there are 32,000 slabs of bacon on new legislation -- that amounts to about 74 pork projects for each of the 435 members of congress.

For the first time, Democrats are getting worried about their porky little seats getting taken away from them.

Gee, do you think they might wish they could go back to right after the election when it was time to make good on campaign promises of reform and transparency about those old pork barrel earmarks that Nancy Pelosi now wants to call "legislative requests?"

That didn't happen. There is no transparency. It's the same old policitally hacked-up story. David Obey of Wisconsin (He's the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.) has reneged on any transparency promises about earmarks. He now says that all pork projects are going to be kept secret until the appropriations bill passes through the House.

Hey, it's not just the Democrats, folks. Republican lawmakers have earmarks too. Problem is, that appropriations bill is sitting out there in all the political heat just blooming. You'd think it was a big dough ball bloating over with a yeast infection, for crying out loud. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

President Bush may just veto the bill. It's got $23 billion more than he requested. And he just may not sign a bill that gives him no clue of what he's approving payments for.

That's one of the really big reasons why congress doesn't like our president.

For some reason, they seem to think he's one of their employees.

They need to go back and re-read the U.S. Constitution if they believe that.

Read more:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20070617-080234-4516r.htm

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I THOUGHT THEY JUST WANTED TO WORK HERE!!

There was something like 34 illegals arrested in New Haven, Connecticut.

So all the protest marchers came out in full force.

About a thousand of them.

Now they're gonna tell me that the illegals are here to do the job that Americans don't want to do. Like protest marching? But that seems to be the long-lost hippies' favorite way to spend an afternoon.

They, the protesters, were carrying signs that said, "No human being is illegal."

What a bunch of baloney. In the first place, every sovereign nation on the planet has the right to determine who and how many immigrants live within its borders.

It's not a question of whether you're a legal person or not. If you weren't born in the United States, you aren't a citizen.

If you aren't a citizen, you can't stay here and eat all our beans. And corn. And steak. And hot dogs.

If you aren't a citizen, you can't waltz into my kitchen and sit down at my dinner table and demand food. I decide who can come and go in my house.

We, the people of the United States, also decide who gets to come and go in and out of our country. We do that by employing border patrol agents.

And if the patrol agents get overrun, then I think we ought to go on ahead and let the national guard in the border states help out the border patrol.

And build the biggest, tallest fence we can.

No, that is not like the iron curtain. The intention of the iron curtain was to keep citizens in the country. Not keep immigrants out.

Big difference.

The citizens of the United States are not risking life and limb to try to escape from this country.

Everybody in every country in the world would love to live in the United States. There isn't another country like it on the planet.

That's because we're good.

And yes, we are a Christian sovereign. And don't you forget it for one minute. I don't care what your religion is or how you practice it, you will never take Christianity away from the people of the United States.

And if you are an illegal alien, you have no right to be here. But you are a legal person who ought to be living somewhere -- like in the country where you were born. That's where you are a citizen. Not here. Not until you wait until you're maybe 68 years old and have filled out reams and reams of forms and requests for admission.

##

FROM THE PAWPAW PATCH--

Oh the joy of finally getting our computers back up and running. Quint and I both have wireless computers and we had the cable/tv/dsl installed in the house today. Quint's been tweaking the system for a bit here, so here I am.

Tomorrow morning we are heading to Paducah, Kentucky, the town where I grew up. We are taking a dear friend out to lunch for her birthday. Then we'll come back home and by that time my poor little flowers will need another drink. They get so thirsty when the temperature is in the 90s.

Boy, I'll tell. We've been out of touch for less than twelve hours and what a day it's been. I can't leave things alone for a single day.

First there was Angolina banning Fox News from the premiere of the movie she's in about the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed early on in the war. From what I read rather quickly, when the Associated Press and one other big news organization (I think it was USA Today) learned of Jolie's antics, they complained about how the press was being treated. Jolie relented and Fox News got to cover the premiere.

Boy, I'll tell you. These arrogant Hollywood types really forget how they got to be so popular in the first place. I think it would do them good if all the media just ignored them for about a month. No coverage of any of their arrogant temper tantrums. See how they'd like that. They forgot how to be nice, but I guess they figure they don't need to be nice since they're so rich.

But the news that's disturbing to me is that there apparently is a military coup in progress at this very moment. Abbas dissolved the government, calling for a state of emergency. Hamas says it's taken over. Sure hope thing settle down over there.

In the meantime, a couple of very tired people are going to try to find a decent movie, then go to bed early.

But I'll be back tomorrow.

##

STRAIGHT FROM THE PAWPAW PATCH --

The first rule of behavior modification is to reinforce/reward the behavior you want to continue.

"Finally," I thought. This blonde bombshell who shall remain nameless except for a hint that her last name is a huge hotel chain manages to get herself and her brainless antics into the headlines all the time.

Yet we watch. And we talk. And it's dumb. Each headline is a reinforcer for behavior that begs for attention. No matter if it's negative or positive. A headline is a headline.

I mean, who else would have her cosmetic artist come over an do her makeup for a court appearance?

I, for one, am tired of watching a perpetual trainwreck so until she decides to do something useful with her life, you won't see her name on my web site anymore.

We should, instead, applaud those people who make the world a better place. Who give of themselves by volunteering with countless organizations that are richer because of them. There are so many organizations that, frankly, just could not exist without volunteers.

Can you spare just four hours a week? If so, give an agency a call. It may be something you'd need training for -- like working a hotline at a crisis shelter, or even a suicide hotline.

Or maybe you could work at an agency's resale shop. Or an animal shelter, if little animals grab at your heart.

Whatever it is, get out there and do something for the rest of humanity. You'll feel so much better for it. Your self-esteem will improve and you'll have the satisfaction of doing what you can to make the world a better place.

For starters, get in touch with someone at your church. Churches can always use volunteer help.

Some new research says that people who go about the task of caring show great improvements in their feelings of worth. Mind you, I'm not saying "taking care of" someone -- but rather, caring about someone. You can do this in a number of ways. Being a part of a prayer circle is a good place to start. We all know the beneficial aspects of being prayed for.

But you may be surprised to know that the pray-or gets a benefit too. The research says a person's body chemistry responds changes when they care about somebody or something.

Hmmm. Maybe even gardening? I like taking care of my little pretties. I think they bloom better. And goodness knows, they make me smile.

Time to get started. Time to get out of yourself and get into caring and being concerned about someone or something else.

##


CONGRESSIONAL DAYS OF DO-NOTHING

It's just not good enough to say "that's the way it's always been done."

This new congress -- the 110th congress -- promised that they were going to put an end to cronyism. But they didn't. Maybe they couldn't. Apparently they don't have all this power that they thought they had.

Power that they bragged about. Nancy Pelosi herself said, "I'm the most powerful woman in America." Well, she lied. She isn't.

Congress can't seem to muster up enough votes, either from the Republican side or the Democrat side of the aisle to get any legislation passed. What they have passed have been a whole bunch of resolutions.

Oh, wait. They finally did do something about the Iraq spending bill. Probably because they were besieged by phone calls from back home giving them their marching orders.

They rejected a proposal that would allow expansion of much-needed refineries in the United States while, at the same, criticizing refineries for not having enough capacity to meet the energy needs of the taxpayers. But wait. This was exactly what the proposal would have solved. You know -- the one you rejected.

You can read about all the resolutions that this illustrious body of well-paid do-nothings do to earn a salary of $162,500 (times 435 members of the House) equals $70,687,500, or about $35,343.75 a day. That does not include their expensive aides who actually read all those bills and draft them. Some legislators have admitted that they don't even get around to reading the bills before voting for them.

Guess they don't need to read all those pages of typed words if the party boss says vote for this or vote for that. It's a partisan world if you live under the dome.

If you want to read more about what the congress does all day, check out this site:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/dailydigest

They spend days and days and days passing lots of resolutions, none of which amounts to legislation.

##


6.9 EARTHQUAKE OFF THE COAST OF GUATEMALA

Fortunately no one was injured. But you have to know that buildings were rattling around in Guatemala and El Salvador. Buildings swayed in Guatemala City and authorities asked people to stay out of tall buildings.

The region has scary memories of earthquakes. It hasn't been all that long ago when twin earthquakes a month apart killed more than 1,000 people in El Salvador in 2001. Most of the dead were in the mudslide that followed the earthquakes.

In 1976, a 7.5 in Guatemala killed over 23,000 people. Many of the dead in this quake were killed under the crush of adobe houses.

read more at: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N13387972.htm
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php

##


EARMARKS -- THEY JUST WON'T GO AWAY

Remember Nancy Pelosi saying she was going to reform the House ethics and sweep away all that unethical behavior?

And she was going to start with doing earmarks different -- make them more transparent -- make the representatives actually put their name on the pet pork projects?

Well, it didn't happen folks. Are you surprised?

There are no less than 32,000 earmarks in the Homeland Security spending bill.

Let's see -- we used to call them pork projects. But that got to be nasty sounding and riddled with hints of corruption.

So the pork projects were renamed as earmarks. It's the same thing, folks. They just tried to make it sound cleaner.

Now Ms. Nancy wants to call earmarks "legislative directives." Still smells like bacon, though.

She was going to drain the swamp. She was going to change the climate of corruption.

She didn't.

read more: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1849792/posts

##

STRAIGHT FROM THE PAWPAW PATCH

According to the senate website (www.senate.gov), here are the Republicans who voted with the Democrats for a no-confidence vote against Attorney General Gonzales: Coleman, Collins, Hagel, Smith, Snowe, Specter and Sununu.

Hmmmm. McCain didn't vote. Nor did Brownback. I think if I were running for president, I'd make lots more efforts to be in the chambers when votes are called.

It's just a thought. Makes a person look like they're serious about being a productive employee of the people. And if they aren't productive senators, what kind of president would they be?

Maybe they'd just like to tiptoe through the rose garden or skip across the lawn to board Marine One, the helicopter that takes the president and first lady to Camp David on weekends.

In some ways, it seems to be like politics has become an industry all unto itself in this country. It is absolutely ridiculous to start a presidential campaign two years prior to the election. That means the senators, who get elected for six-year terms end up being pretty nonproductive for 1/3 of their terms.

And for all the hoopla about the funding bill for Iraq, I read somewhere and I wish I could remember where I saw this, but most of the senators didn't even read the funding bill before they voted! Seems to me that if the senators are relying on their aides and assistants to read the bills for them, and draft the bills for them, then maybe we ought to be electing their assistants. Give them the $162,500 instead of the politicians who are senators in name only.

##


THIS OUGHT TO BE A SCREAMING BANNER HEADLINE!

So I'm moving it to the top of today's column.

The good news is that the federal deficit is 34.6% lower than it was this time last year, according to the U.S. Treasury. The original article was written by Martin Crutsinger, an Associated Press Economics Writer that was carried in a feature story on Breitbart.com.

There, now I got all the credits out of the way.

The treasury department is saying that the improvement came about because the IRS is getting better (more efficient) at collecting taxes.

So the federal budget year ends on September 30. The Congressional Budget Office is projecting a total deficit of $177 billion. That figure would be down from last year's number of $248.2 billion.

Oh there are the naysayers who are quick to point out that President Bush isn't counting big ticket items like the war in Iraq. And all those baby boomers -- 78 million of them -- are going to push Social Security into bankrupt oblivion.

But who says the baby boomers are going to collect Social Security? Many boomers are paper millionaires who tend to be super-achieving workalots. (Notice that this like-to-workalot person didn't use the "workaholic" term.) What would they do if they retired? Probably start up something entreprenurial and make even more money.

But be careful out there. Senator Hillary Clinton wants 4.3% of your income if you make more than $500,000 a year.

Anyway, the economy is rolling along. If FDR were here, he'd strike up the band and start singing, "Happy days are here again..."

We have a Dow at $13,400+ and it will probably go to $14,000 by the time the election gets here. Unemployment is at a giant record low, inflation is tamed down. In short, I have a lot of more confidence in the American economy with a Yale educated MBA than I do all the lawyers in congress piled on top of one another.

Then we could spray paint them green and pretend they're a pile of money.

Just kidding.

Read more about the serious article at: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8PNF8600&show_article=1

##


UH OH -- HERE COMES TROUBLE TO PARADISE

Chavez, in an article that CNN picked up from Reuters this morning, is urging his faithful followers to start giving up the "extra" that they don't need. Things like that second refrigerator, or TV, or maybe even a car.

He wants a purely socialist regime down there.

Doesn't it kind of remind you a little of Hillary Clinton's urging that the rich in this country ought to pay a surtax of 4.3%? For once, I'm actually glad I don't make $500,000.

But then, once the principle of the rich paying an extra tax on their wealth passes -- if it passes, which I doubt -- then the threshold can be toyed with. Could even go as low as $200,000. It would depend on what the legislators define as "rich."

And since they have their income sheltered to avoid paying taxes, their income will probably be exempt.

I think this surtax proposal by Clinton is going to be part of her undoing. There are a couple of reasons that I believe that. Mainly because it sounds way too Marxist to ever get past the majority of the voters in this country.

##


MORATORIUM ON ETHANOL PRODUCTION (IN CHINA, THAT IS)

Well, yeah.

I cold have figured out that if we were going to take huge amounts of corn production and funnel the corn into fuel production, it would cause a shortage in something.

I figured that out all by myself and I don't even have a big rocket science size big brain.

So an article in The Times out of the UK says that Beijing is realizing that the costs of food supplies is going up because the amount of corn and grain is going into short supply because of increased demand for alternative fuels.

Well, I figured things would get bad. But how bad?

The article says that just to sustain the present demand in the United States, that is, an additional 129,000 square miles of really good grain land the size of Kansas and Iowa would be needed.

Maybe, now this is just another thought from my not so giant sized brain, it would be a good time for either one of two things to happen.

First of all, maybe there could be a lot of people working at home and sending their work product over the information superhighway's fast lane rather than the interstate highways that are overburdened already.

Or, another thought that gets very little push, go back to car-pooling and give up this notion that each and every one of us has to drive our own separate vehicle to work. We could immediately reduce the demand on new road construction and fuel by 75% if we have four people in a car instead of one.

Here's another statistic that you don't hear about. It's a piece of datum that I used when I was doing road rage workshops. In the last decade in the United States, there has been an increase of 3x in the number of drivers. How many new lanes of roads have been added in that same time period? 10%. That's all, folks.

But that's road rage. If we take that statistic and say that there are three times more drivers in the last ten years, I'd be willing to bet that there hasn't been an increase of 3x in the amount of fuel.

So quit using my corn on the cob for your gas tanks. It's one of my favorite summertime treats. Green Giant already knows this. The Giant has nibblers all year long now. But if I have to pay more for the nibblers than I do for the steak, I'm going to be really mad at the politicians. Probably will sue them for $10 million.

Here's the whole story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article1917927.ece

##


TOP OF BUILDING BLOWS OFF IN LONDON -- CLOSE TO SCOTLAND YARD

It was part of a renovation project.






Fortunately only one person has been taken to the hospital.

A spokesman said it was an office building with different kinds of offices in the building.

Good thing there weren't a lot of people milling about, huh?

Read more at: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23400308-details/Building+collapses+after+'explosion'+in+central+London/article.do


AWESOME PHOTOS



Space shuttle launch as seen from the International Space Station from 220 miles up. Somebody on one of the blogs says the altitude is too low; that the photo was from a chase plane. I certainly do not know, but I can tell you that the photo of the launch is stupendous all by itself. You can read blogs at this site:

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=3183

photo credit to Warren Ellis




Uh oh. The thermal blanket is ripped. Now what?  It's a four inch tear. The rip occurred when the shuttle launched. NASA engineers say they aren't concerned at this point. Well, I guess now. The shuttle is in space. But wouldn't friction from re-entry be a problem? Just asking.

Below is the shuttle launched at the International Space Station with the earth in the background. Amazing! I love science. Thank you NASA for super dooper photos.

Okay. So I have a question. Where was the photographer standing when he took this picture?




http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6738923.stm


See other fascinating photos of earth from this site:

http://earth.jsc.nasa.gov/

##

JUST IN -- The senate vote of no confidence regarding Attorney General Gonzales failed. The vote of 53-38 failed to meet the 60 votes needed. Read the whole story at breitbart.com: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8PMSMMG0&show_article=1 


STRAIGHT FROM THE PAWPAW PATCH -- So it wasn't just former president Bill Clinton who got in on the million dollar giveaway by Mr. Gupta, president of Info USA. Word now surfaces that none other than Nancy Pelosi's son also got in on the political perks. Paul Pelosi, Jr. is now sitting at a desk that will pay him $180,000 for developing strategic planning for the name/mailing label giant.

Supposedly, if you're an elderly person, your name just might be on a list of elderly people who are easy to fleece. That is, you might be identified as a person who has little or no sales resistance.

Bill Clinton is a consultant for Info USA -- to the tune of more than $3 million in the last five years. Now what in the world could he possibly tell Gupta and his ilk about fleecing anybody?

And strategic planning -- doesn't that have something to do with growing future sales and market share? Do they really need to find more gullible old folks who can be easily fleeced?

So next time you are asked to fill in one of those information registrations on the internet before you'll be able to get onto a web site, just remember -- Clinton and Pelosi are getting big bucks when you add your name to InfoUSA's mailing lists.

As far as I'm concerned, they already have enough money.

Seems like all they have to do is spit into the wind and it comes back to them as loose change.

##


YOU COULD SAY THAT THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES HAD A BRIEF SESSION-- EXCEPT FOR COMMITTEE WORK

They met at 4:00 pm on Friday and adjourned at 4:05 pm.

What a job! And they get $162,500 a year.

Talk about a do-nothing congress. Over at http://thomas.loc.gov where they keep track of such things, it appears that "there were no nay-and-year votes, and there were no recorded votes. There were no quorum calls."

I'd be just a little bit curious to know if there even was a quorum. Bet not. That's how they could finish counting what was supposed to be a pretty good crowd of legislators in five minutes.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (subcommittee on domestic policy) did host a phot-op hearing to discuss Big Oil's Double Standard for Measuring Gasoline. Now that ought to be a hotbed of interest.

I have another suggestion for everybody out there traveling the information superhighway -- check with your local taxing bodies to see how much tax gets added on your gallon of gasoline every time taxing jurisdictions change. Like federal, then down to state, then down to county, and maybe even township, then down to local.

For instance, in our new hometown in downstate Illinois, we paid $3.17 a gallon for the same brand that we will pay $3.61 for here in the Chicago area.

If you ask someone in the know -- supposedly -- you get an answer like, "Things cost more in Chicago."

I knew that.

And why is that? Remember, I'm probably not on Clinton's/Pelosi's InfoUSA's list of gullible old folks. Let me hazard a guest. Things cost more in Chicago because taxes are higher.

That's the simplified version. The gas doesn't cost anymore. BP is BP is BP is BP. Same company. Same summertime additives added. That's because of the EPA regulations that force the summertime switchover.  For whatever reason the EPA foisted off on the American consumer, the end result is higher gas costs.

And over in the senate today, this august body is going to try to float a "no confidence" vote for Attorney General Gonzales. They're still mad at him because 8 of his associate attorney generals -- or whatever their job title is -- were fired. But never you mind that when Bill Clinton first became president, he somehow managed to see the overwhelming need to fire all 93 assistant lawyers or at the Attorney General's office.

So Gonzalez got rid of 8. Out of how many? 93? That's less than 10%. There's probably that many incompetent people running around in any organization. So what's the big deal. It's not like he fired all of them like Billyboy did.

Can't the senate find anything else to work on since the immigration bill got pushed out to oblivion. Most of you know by now that the vote to stop debate on the immigration bill failed last week.

I have an idea. It's a real simple idea. That's probably why it hasn't occurred to anyone else but us taxpayers. That is, let's enforce the laws that are on the books.

There's already a law on the books that says illegal aliens can't come into this country illegally.

There, that wasn't hard, was it? And we didn't even have to waste the time of 100 senators who are also making $162,500 a year. Each.

It's not just Mexicans who are sneaking into the country across the border. There are terrorists among them. They get into the country in El Salvador and make their way north to the good old Rio Grande. From there, it's one illegal hop-skip-and-a-jump to the southernmost climes of the United States.

As for the other illegals who have been here for a long time, like 12 million supposedly, let's deport them and make them start all over. They should have to go to the back of the line and get behind all those other people who applied for visa status and have been waiting.

Remember what you learned in kindergarten? It's not nice to jump in line.

But don't you think that if we know enough to say there are 12 million illegals already here, somebody must have counted them. I'll bet that person knows where the illegals area. Let's make that guy tell where they are.

My solution is to send them back to whatever country they are citizened at. No jail time. Just send them home. But get a DNA sample first.

Then if you sneak across the border on your hot little stealthy feet again, you go to jail.

In Maricopa County, Arizona,  where you get to sleep in a tent out in the desert and all you get to wear is a pair of pink boxer shorts. Day and night. That's what Sheriff Joe does to his lawbreakers. Try that for ninety days. Then get deported again.

Then, if you come back for the third time, it's three times and you're out. You go to jail for life. It's cheaper to keep you healthy in jail than to let you roam around the streets of our big cities getting shot.

Neurosurgeons are not cheap and when you take a bullet to the head, we're kind of obligated to be humanitarian and help you heal.

We are a Christian country, you know. Regardless of all that garbage you may have read in the mainstream media about Americans losing their religiosity. Don't you believe it. There are 85% of us who very definitely have a place for God in our lives. And He fits in very nicely. And we keep Him very close to us, in our hearts.

##

STRAIGHT FROM THE PAWPAW PATCH: We don't have special treatment of the rich in the United States, do we?

And poor little rich girl, Paris Hilton, didn't get out of jail because she was all that fragile. Never you mind, folks. This little chicky is as tough as nails. She always gets what she wants and she has tricks she's probably never used yet.

So what was her fragile mental state that prompted the Los Angles Sheriff to allow her to go home and hook her up to an ankle bracelet for the rest of her jail term?

Well, first of all, she was so upset that she had to be in jail that she cried herself to sleep every single night -- all three of them -- as she started to serve her 45 day sentence (that had been reduced to twenty-five days). And she just couldn't abide that jail chow. Yuk. That stuff must have been just absolutely horrible. Not exactly the gourmet food the little celebutante is obviously used to. And it's not one of those humongous Hardees cheeseburgers that she got paid to endorse.

Instead, she gets to go home. She gets to sit around her nice cool, refreshing pool in Southern California sipping wine with her friends from crystal stemware. Now that's wha I call a jail term, don't you?

Last I heard, the judge and the prosecuting attorney are furious. The judge wants Paris to show herself back to court.

If she's all that fragile and in danger of suicide, then she needs to be in a hospital where she'll be safe and get the psychiatric care that she needs.

That is, if she truly is suicidal.

Otherwise, go back to jail, serve your term, and quit whining.

I can fully understand why anyone would not want to be in jail. In fact, just the thought of having to serve time in jail or prison is what keeps a lot of people on the straight and narrow. The prospect of jail helps a lot with the good choice/bad choice selection.

For instance, if you are drunk and you get behind the wheel of your $200,000 Christmas present that you bought for yourself and go charging about the public thoroughfares, then you can expect bad news when Mr. Policeman pulls you over.

##


THE SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL IS DEAD

It's designation is S1348. It would have been the biggest boondoggle foisted off on the U.S. taxpayers since I don't remember when.

But late last night, the senate failed to muster enough votes to close debate and get a vote going. (Called cloture)

The senate needed 60 votes (super majority) to close debate. They could only get 45. There had been a call for cloture earlier yesterday but it failed too.

Oh, there were lots of amendments to try to make the bill more palatable. But, like melting pork fat, they couldn't get enough votes either, so they were rejected.

Even Clinton and Obama tried to get into the act and do some lifesaving amendments for the immigration bill.

Obama's amendment had to do with a merit-based evaluation system. He also wanted to put a date into S1348 about a date for terminating American competitiveness. Amendment was rejected. Guess we won't hear him crowing about his amendment during campaign speeches.

Clinton tried to tag on an amendment about reclassifying spouses and children of legal immigrants as immediate relatives. Amendment was rejected. Guess she doesn't get bragging rights for this either.

Bingaman's amendment to limit the allowable visas for entry 200,000 a year did pass.

You can read more about what the senators are up to by going to their very own web site and see for yourself what senators tried to tag onto S1348:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_110_1.htm

S1348 is dead for now. It's been banished to the land above the north pole, or whereever the Senate Majority Leader sends embarrassing legislation that didn't have a prayer.

This, though, was one mean mess of political rhetoric. The U.S. taxpayers got behind a real push to let their senators know about a huge discontent rumbling around out here in the red states. Phone lines, fax lines, and mail messages bombarded the senators. Especially when it became known that the senators had installed an 800 "helpline" for illegal aliens to call. When taxpayers couldn't get through on the senate "taxpayer" lines (that is, lines for the public), the taxpayers started using the "emergency line" that had been installed for the illegals.

##


NEW PROPOSAL FOR A SUR TAX OF 4.3% ON THE RICH

And how is the rich defined? Well, at least in this bill that's being proposed by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass) it's families with income of more than $500,000. There are about a million families who fall into that category in the United States.

By the time the bill gets down to a $250,000 definition of "rich," there would be about 90 million households.

So this will be an interesting House bill to watch. It's still in the proposal state, and hasn't made its way up to the House Ways and Means Committee yet. You do remember that it's the House Ways and Means Committee where tax money issues must come from don't you?

Tax matters don't start out in the senate, and they certainly don't come from the White House. So when you hear all these political candidates running around promising to lower taxes, don't you believe them. They do not have the authority to do that.

In fact, the good old senators couldn't even rustle up enough votes to stop the debate on the immigration bill and call it to the floor for a vote. Even if they had the constitutional authority to start the tax matter process, they'd probably amend it to death and it wouldn't look anything like a tax appropriations bill.

Now I'm not saying the senate doesn't get a chance to pork up a tax appropriations bill. You can bet your bottom dollar they do. And by the time an appropriations bill gets out of the House Ways and Means Committee in the House, goes over to the Senate, then gets to a joint resolution committee, it has so many little piggies attached to it by way of pork projects, that a $10 billion package can swell up to a $100 billion just because all the lawmakers add their favorite little earmarks to the original bill.

We absolutely need to get rid of the earmarks. No doubt about it.

By way of justification, you hear the lawmakers say that there are too many items that need to be considered. They couldn't vote on just one at a time.

And why not?

That's how the senate votes on federal judges. One judge at a time. A motion comes to the floor and gets a vote. Yes or not.

So why not a matter of -- say, building a $3 million power plant in Peoria, Illinois. Bring a resolution to the floor and get a vote. Yes or no.

There, now did that take so much time? 

Time. Let's see -- that's one of the things you're being paid for out there in Washington, D.C. If you had to spend a lot of time in the House or Senate chambers, you wouldn't have time to do what?

So get rid of the earmarks. And let's have some more transparency in how you are spending the taxpayers money. Let's have motions for your projects and get them on the floor for debate if need be. 

I think it's time that the lawmakers realize just whose money they're spending. It certainly isn't theirs.

##

THE IMMIGRATION BILL IS DEAD, AND I'M GLAD TO HEAR THAT

Well, maybe not DOA -- but certainly on life support.

Oh, the mighty, august ones in the senate are still acting surprised up on Capitol Hill. Thought they'd slip a fast one past the taxpayers in this country, but it didn't work.

Then there was the 800 number that congress installed for the use of illegal aliens. Once that number was made public, taxpayers loaded up the phone lines with "vote no" instructions to anyone who answered the phone.

The Senate is trying to muster up enough votes but it's not working. The Republicans are trying to find at least 41 votes so that they can announce that the bill is going down and is beyond repair.

A trial, test-run vote to stop debate already failed earlier today. And Mr. Himself Harry Reid says there's going to be another vote at 5:30 this afternoon. If that one fails, then who knows what will happen. Either the Senate will go into a fillibuster mode or Reid will move the bill off to a committee that meets twice a year up near the north pole.

But for now, the senators are trying to sweeten the pie for each other by adding amendments that will make the bill more tasty. Although there was an amendment by Mr. None Other Obama that failed.

Minority Whip Trent Lott is not very happy about all the proposed amendments that haven't hit the floor yet. His point of view: just get the vote done or let's all go home.

##



ABOUT ALL THAT CICADA RACKET IN YOUR BACKYARD

The 17 year variety is known as Brood X.

They begin to emerge when the soil temperatue reaches 64 degrees.

Different species have different life cycles. Some come out in smaller numbers every year. This variety usually pops up out of the soil at the end of summer.

According to Gene Kritsky, biology professor at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Dehli Township (Ohio), all of Kentucky, two-thirds of Indiana and the southwest corner of Ohio will have some of the heaviest concentrations. A small portion of West Virginia, Illinois, Tennessee and southern Michigan, as well as a pocket in the East that includes Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Long Island, New Jersey, parts of the Carolinas and northern Georgia.

So let me see. If you took the area east of the Mississippi River and pretty much eliminated the southern portion, and made a kind of convertible of the rest of the area, you'd have Cicadaville. Kind of.

Both varieties have emerged where we live in Palos Hills, Illinois. There's that low hum that sounds like a yoga call. And there's another kind that sounds like someone has a loose fanbelt.

The cicada season lasts about 6 weeks. So from about the end of May would mean that we're in for it until mid-July, or thereabouts.

They don't bite, but they have little bitty claws on their legs that can pinch pretty good.

And yes, they do fly. But if you've ever watched them, it's more like a reluctant training exercise flying bug. Very slow and quite awkward. Nothing like the dive-bombing blackbird flight. Those birds must have sonar!

Cicadas are not locusts. Locusts belong to the grasshopper family. Cicadas are more closely related to aphids, says Kritsky.

Cicadas don't kill flowers or bushes. They may do minimal damage to little trees that aren't yet six feet tall. Kritsky recommends putting a net around the crown of baby trees and tie it at the bottom so that the cicadas can't get up in the branches.

Other than that, enjoy the songfests of summer. You're not going to hear the Brood X melody for 17 more years. But then, by the time mid-July rolls around, you'll be glad to be rid of them.

Thanks Fireman Bill for the information.

##


YOU PROBABLY WON'T SEE THIS IN THE NEWS ABOUT FORD

Remember the slogan for Ford? "Built Ford Tough."

Quint and I have driven Fords for nearly thirty years now. We like Ford engineering and we have come to trust Ford's products. I do wish they'd spend more money on advertising though. They have good news to tell.

For instance, the 2007 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study placed 5 Ford products at the top of their quality categories.

In case you missed it in your local newspaper, here's where Ford placed as the best:

Ford Mustang -- most problem-free "Midsize sports car"
Lincoln Mark LT -- top-ranked SUV
Mazda MX-5 Miata -- top-ranked "compact spors car" -- Ford owns a controlling interest in Mazda
Mercury Milan -- highest ranked midsized car
Lincoln MKZ -- top-ranked "entry premium car"

Ford's Jaguar placed 6th in the Ruropean luxury car brand -- tied with Toyota

The overall top brand, though, was the Porsche with 91 problems per 100 vehicles. The average car in this J.D. Power survey had 125 problems per vehicle.

To be fair, I have to mention GM products, since they claim to be the "Heartbeat of America." GM's best-ranking brand was the Buick with 127 problems per 100 vehicles.

And there's Ford's Land Rover. Didn't perform worth squat -- with 170 problems per 100 vehicles.

##

WHAT IN THE WORLD DOES A FAMILY OF 3 DO IN A 28,000 SQFT HOUSE?

Clearly, it's none of my cotton pickin' business. Just curious though. Let's see, two adults and one kiddo. And 28,000 square feet of North Carolina roaming brick and mortar estate.

Sorry, but I don't like to dust all that much.

I thought Michael Jordan was a bit ostentatious with 25,000 square feet, but that included a basketball court -- of course -- and no doubt a swimming pool. Heck, with that much square footage, you could put in a bowling ally too.

I wonder -- if you have a house that big, does that include servant quarters? Maids do get their own rooms, don't they.

I wouldn't know. Never made enough money to hire a maid.

But with a house that big, I could have a separate room for each of my hobby types. And a gardening library room. And a writing room with my favorite books at arms length. The other books would be in the library.

Let's see, neither Quint nor I smoke, so we wouldn't need a salon to repair to after dinner for a brandy and a smoke. I suppose we could put a TV in that room but neither of us watch all that much TV. Don't know. I'd have to leave that room empty until I decide.

Actually, in a 28,000 square foot house, there would probably be a lot of empty rooms.

I guess we'd just have to start traveling more. Maybe a trip around the world. Then I could buy stuff and make a room for each country we visit.

But that's the problem. Americans are so boring, going overseas and throwing all that money around. No wonder nobody likes us. We're so boring. Just spend, spend, spend.

Incidentally, Buckingham Palace has 828,818 square feet. But The Queen needs all those extra rooms for her ladies in waiting. She needs them to serve her whims and stuff.

And Windsor Castle is 484,000 square feet. But there's a big church in Windsor Castle. And a gift shop and stuff like that. I suppose there's a right grand horse barn too, but I wouldn't think the square footage for that would be added in with the people footage.

So back to the Edward's rather humble manor house, by Elizabethan standards. Madam Edwards is just going to have to truck it along with her paltry 28,000 square feet, I guess.

Meanwhile, Mr. Jonathan is running around the country on the campaign trail talking about how horrible it is that there are poor people in this country who have to suffer because they have little more than two nickels to rub together.

Here's a clue, Mr. Edwards: give them some of your nickels. And quit promising them the sun, moon and stars if you get elected. You're just running for president. We don't have a king in this country so you wouldn't get to do whatever you like just because you want to.

##


TURKEY SAYS IT WAS IN HOT PURSUIT OF KURDS WHO TAKE POTSHOTS AT THEM

Well, okay, the Turks didn't use the word "potshots." But they did say "hot pursuit."

According to the Turkey people in Ankara, the Kurds have strike bases just across the border in northern Iraq. From these strike bases, the Kurds take their potshots at the Turks.

But wait. Turkey says it's not an invasion. Or an incursion.

But if the Kurds are attacking from their strike bases, aren't they inside Iraq? That's where they live. In their little villages in the hills of northern Iraq.

"Hot pursuit" would suggest that the Kurds had gone into Turkey, taken their potshots at the Turks, then were headed back across the border into Iraq. That would make it a hot pursuit, wouldn't it?

This web site will give you more details: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TURKEY_IRAQ?SITE=COBOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

All the major news agencies are reporting the Turkish move into Kurdish territory, but they're basically culling the information from the Associated Press. So you can go straight to the news source and read for yourself.

##


AL QUAEDA IN IRAQ? SAY IT ISN'T SO! OH YES IT IS AND THEY ARE USING CHLORINE GAS

According to the Department of Defence, the first documented use of chlorine gas in Iraq by the terrorist group Al Quaeda was Octber 21, 2006 in Ramadi. That involved two 100-pound chlorine tanks.

Then another in Taji where terrorists detonated a 5-ton truck packed with 100 pounds of high explosives and two 1-ton chlorine tanks.

Other chlorine attacks occurred in Fallujah, Balad and Ramadi.

The most recent was June 3 against Forward Operating Base Warhorse in the Diyala province. This involved a homicide bomber who used two tanks of chlorine and 1,000 pounds of explosive. Service personnel got sick with this one but they were later released and returned to duty.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that the car bombs themselves are designed to target innocent civilians. It reflects the brutality of the enemy we are facing and the total disregard of life to use [chlorine] in such an indiscriminate nature.

For more details about how chlorine gas is used in Iraq, read the DoD article here: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=46311

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WILLIAM JEFFERSON, THE INDICTED ONE, SAYS HE'S TAKING A "TEMPORARY LEAVE" FROM HOUSE BANKING COMMITTEE

And according to The Hill, he already got his walking papers from the House Ways and Means Committee. He'll be giving up his other 16 committee assignments too.

Guess he'll need to be focusing on his defense. He's probably going to just about move into his law firm's office and camp out at the end of the conference room table.

I know, I know, he's innocent until he's proven guilty, but it's really hard to think of him being innocent when there's a 94 page indictment stuck to the middle of his forehead. And the FBI says his money scams were global.

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UH OH -- BUSH HAS FOUND HIS VETO PEN

And according to Gerald Warburg, an appropriations lobbyist, we can expect more vetoes (article in The Hill by Jim Snyder = http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-now-has-taste-for-vetoes-lobbyist-2007-06-05.html. )

So it's going to be like this, folks. Whenever congress sends over a spending bill that's more than the president has asked for, he'll probably veto it.

Somewhere along the line -- and this is just suspicious conjecture on my part -- but it seems like congress has the idea that the president of the United States is one of their employees. This, of course, is not the case, since it's the American people who elected the president, not congress.

It's going to be interesting. I hope you all remember how it's supposed to work from your civics, or humanities, or political science courses.

It's the President of the United States of America who is the most powerful person in the world, not Nancy Pelosi, the wannabee king.

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BIG CYCLONE (HURRICANE) HEADED FOR IRAN AS WE SPEAK

There is one big huge cyclone -- or hurricane as we say in this hemisphere -- headed for Oman as we speak. Sustained winds are 160 mph, with gusts up to 195. See the storm track at this web site: http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/na200702_flashtool.html?extraprod=flashtool#a_topad -- It looks pretty organized from where I sit, not that I'm a weather expert, mind you. But we can be thankful for any temperature cool down in that area of the world. And I'm sure our soldiers wouldn't mind a bit of rain either. It's a Cat 3 now, but landfall usually slows a cyclone down somewhat. 

Or you can go to this site: http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/tc_pages/tc_home.html then click on Tropical Cyclones. This one that's headed for Iran is called Gonu.



And for all of you who are interested, this map was posted on www.freerepublic.com. This map may be helpful if you use it in conjunction with the Wunderground track of the hurricane.

So what's the big deal? Well, we don't exactly buy our oil from Iran, but they do put it on the open global market. Any shortage of oil in Iran could spike the price of already high gasoline costs here in the United States.

Does anybody remember when the last time in history there was a cyclone/hurricane in this area of the world? I'm thinking maybe back to the time of Noah?

Here's an updated tracking from www.theoildrum.com -- with credits also to Chuck Watson of KAC/UCF.

Exclusive--Must credit THE OIL DRUM and Chuck Watson of KAC/UCF.

KAC/UCF and Chuck Watson are forecasting, based on their damage models, that the Qalhat (Sur) LNG terminal will be out for 20-30 days and the Mina al Fahal oil terminal will be down for 10-15 days--all of this assuming they are built to US standards.

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FDA SAYS TO THROW OUT THE CHINESE TOOTHPASTE

At first the FDA was reluctant to do anything harsh like actually just come out and say that Chinese toothpaste had too much diethylene glycol in it.

The FDA said it was going to check a whole bunch of Chinese toothpaste. And until it was absolutely determined, 100% true, that the Chinese toothpaste sold in the U.S. was contaminated, like it was in other countries, we -- the American consumer -- was just supposed to keep our cool and keep on brushing.

And then, in Miami at a Dollar Plus store, there it was. Just sitting there on the shelf trying to behave like all the other toothpastes. Cooldent Fluoride, Cooldent Spearmint and Cooldent ICE. But these toothpastes were manufactured by the Goldcredit International Trading Company from China.

Quint says the diethylene glycol (DEG) would most likely be used as a sweetener, not for anything sinister like intentionally killing anybody.

That may be, but just last year, there were some 40 deaths in Panama because DEG was found in cough medicines, syrups and sedatives.

Here's a tip for all you out-of-the-country travelers: there are reasons why you aren't allowed to bring foreign stuff back into the U.S. There's probably better reasons why you shouldn't be taking the medicines in the first place.

Okay, so yeah it's cheaper to buy the medicines out of the country. Other countries can't compare with the FDA in the United States. It's an agency that does a pretty good job looking out for all of us citizens who chomp on things like food and medicines.

There's not another country in the world that has anything that rivals the FDA. And yes, it's costly. And yes, the consumer absorbs a lot of the costs. And yes, it's worth it because it's our lives and our lifestyles that the FDA protects in the balance.

If you're running around Mexico or Panama or anywhere else you're going in Latin America, and you have a big list of drugs you want to get so you head off to the local drugstorio, just hold off for a moment. What you get could well be cheaper but it won't be deducted from the cost of your funeral.

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THIS WHOLE IMMIGRATION STORY IS REALLY HEATING UP

Politicians are lining up on both sides of this question.

If it matters to you -- and hopefully it will matter to all of you for one reason of other -- like your tax dollars are work. Or, if not, then down the drain.

You really need to find out which one of the candidates running for president has a similar voting record as you do. Don't be misguided by what they promise either. Look up their voting records.

Hate to say it but the American taxpayers get taken all the time. It's mainly because, in my view, they believe the promises of politicians as if they were currencies that could be put in the bank.

It does not work that way, my friends. Go to the records. Find out how your candidates voted in the past. That will give you a pretty clear idea of what they believe.

When you run into presidential candidates at their little hand-shaking soirees, ask them hard questions. See if you get a straight answer or if you get a talking point.

I vote for conversational candidates who have voting records I can check. And I can assure you that any presidential candidate has voting records somewhere that can be checked. I do not vote for talking-point-heads.

But back to the immigration question. Here's a web site that you can go to that will give you up-to-the-second information as far as how many illegal immigrants are in the United States, how much money is wired back to Mexico, how much is wired back to Latin America, the cost of social services for illegal immigrants since 1996, the number of children of illegals in public schools, the cost of illegals in K-12 since 1996, how many illegals are currently incarcerated and the cost of that, how many illegal immigrants are fugitives, how many anchor babies have been born since 2002, and how many skilled jobs have been taken by illegal immigrants.

Anchor babies are children born in the United States to illegal immgrants. They are citizens of the U.S. because they were born here, regardless of whether their parents are here legally or not.

The very last statistic is about skilled jobs. It's an important number because we hear the argument tossed around that we ought to let the illegals stay here because they are doing jobs that American workers either don't want to do or won't do. This figure talks about skilled jobs that illegals are doing -- not the brussel sprout pickers.

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CONGRESSMAN JEFFERSON HAS TO EXPLAIN A BIG PILE OF COLD CASH

The indictment is in. According to a FoxNews story, sixteen counts have been handed down against the congressman from Louisiana. The indictments involve racketeering, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.

He could deny the charges all he wanted but his biggest problems are a couple of guys who are in prison as we speak who testified against Jefferson. They said that they solicited bribes on Jefferson's behalf.

Oops.

Now, if you had $90,000 in ill-gotten gains, couldn't you think of a more creative place to put it than your deep freeze?

Gives a whole new meaning to "cold cash."

And Jefferson wants the documents that were seized from his congressional office returned to him? Sorry, guy. Some of this stuff could be good for evidence. Most of it is probably boring, though. At any rate, you can't have the documents back.

So just go on over to the prison store and get yourself measured for your new suit.

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IN THE LAND OF THE NEW POLITICS, THERE APPARENTLY IS NO RECIPROCITY

I have to admit that I was shocked when I learned that the Smartest Woman in the World, aka Hillary, did not pass the bar exam in Washington, D.C. in the70s. It's not that I care all that much. If you took a survey of all the lawmakers in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, there'd probably be more who didn't than those who did.

Fortunately President Bush is not a lawyer. But I can tell you one thing -- getting an MBA from Yale doesn't put him at the bottom of the potato pile in the root cellar.

John Kerry may have tried to make George Bush sound dumber than a box of rocks, but when the truth came out and military entry records were compared, it was John Kerry who had an IQ of 120 and George Bush bested him with 128.

Isn't it amazing that the IQ story just kind of died down after that.

Now, mind you, both Kerry and Bush have IQs that are outside the range of "normal." The standard deviation for IQ is 15 points. They are both 120+. So all of you who are trying to make George Bush into a dummy, just sit down and be quiet. That is, unless you'd like to show us your IQ card -- if you even know what your IQ is.

My point is, there's no reciprocity in the new age politics.

When I was teaching psychology at both Moraine Valley College and Joliet Junior College -- and only Psy101 at that -- one of the things I made sure that my students all got a good grasp of was reciprocity, dialectical thinking and perspective taking.

Politics used to be about how good government springs up out of good compromises. Compromise has a lot to do with reciprocity. And seeing perspective from the other point of view is the precursor to compromise.
 
In the new age politics, we can't let George Bush make a mistake. Each time he does anything that even looks like an error, it's a banner headline.

Yet, the MSM chooses to gloss over the fact that the Smartest Woman in the World failed the bar exam. She apparently did pass the Arkansas bar because she was a working attorney in a lawfirm down there.

In its purest form, that certainly does not qualify as a reciprocal attitude.

The new age politicians are just getting meaner and meaner. No reciprocity. No attempt at seeing the other side's point of view.

That's the reason why there's no ability or attempt to work with the colleagues across the aisle.

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