I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

ananda8

Tell him to watch for the bats at sundown.  They are something to see. 

CherrylH

The bartender is packing her shaker and strainer and going on a vacation that will have others  pouring for her. I trust that you wonderful independent and resourseful women can fend for yourselves. I get home Sunday night and will be on duty Monday. Have a great week and weekend.

1Athena1

Holding the fort for you, bartender. Only hoping I can fill your shoes.....Enjoy your time away!

CherrylH

Oh, great Lioness, you'll probablly put me out of a job! Thanks for picing up the slack.

1Athena1

Not at all! No better bartender than our Pastor.

Aside: Rick Santorum is a liar! If fibbing were a crime, that man would get the death penalty!

The GOP relies on lies to get elected. The Rovian strategy for when you are ideologically bankrupt.

AnneW

And what a good strategy it has been, Athena. Keep pounding the lies, and soon they become reality. Sickening.

I agree, that David Brooks is the face of the "old" Republican party. Yes, I miss that party, but not as much as I miss the old Democrats.

Chickadee

Jon Stewart is hilarious tonight

Anonymous

Congratulations, Riley, on finding a new home for BOTH of you.  Thursday, yikes, that's tomorrow.  Really excited for you to be having this new beginning, such a good feeling to be starting in a new place.  Really feels GOOD to be doing something good for yourself.

Pastor - will try to keep it going while you're on "holiday" - tho will certainly miss learning all those new words you've been teaching us.  Tealibans still one of my favorites, lotsa email friends now using it too.

Oohhhh...water OVER the levees...yikes, those are 12 foot levees, not to mention the BILLIONS of $$$ in building them. People on the rooftops, again, and more rain to come.  Hope those who PLANNED the levees are going to be held accountable.

Somebody said there was some kind of a "convention" going on...really???

What AnneW said.

Hope all are well, and having a good day...

Anonymous

Another tribute to what AnneW said:

http://keller.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/lies-damn-lies-and-gop-video/?hp

Good idea to help others read President Obama's words IN CONTEXT. Same theme in Nick's words.

Nick Kristoff too:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/opinion/kristof-the-secret-weapon-all-of-us.html?_r=1&hp

IllinoisLady

Sunflowers....I enjoyed reading both of those articles.  Some lessons are hard to learn -- especially those I did it myself ones.  Every time I go for a 'cancer' check-up I think of what so many women willingly did so I could have an easier time.  So, those comments made me furious.   Hate to admit.....out of a rather large family on dh's side, we are the only Dem's.  Of course, it is how we are registered.....we would vote ( always have done so ) for the person we thought best qualified.  The Rep's have made that a pretty easy choice for us these last few elections.  At least we don't hear all the rah-rah we used to hear from our family.....in fact, we have almost gotten them to where they don't even talk about it much anymore.  Just the way I like it so I can enjoy a  family barbecue without leaving early.

Hope it is a good day for all.  I'll have a Margarita, thanks. 

Jackie

Wabbit

Riley ... wishing you a smooth move!  Good timing to get it done before the storms get here.  Can't remember if I already told you how happy I am to hear that Lovey found a good home ... and can be top cat and have kids to play with too!  Nice that the lady has promised to update you.  I adopted out a rescue cat to a family that I only 'knew' through work connections and was thrilled when they sent me pictures and a note about how much they loved her a year later.

Politicans know that most people don't have the time to follow it all closely and check up on everything they say.  So they just make stuff up and lie freely.  We used to have a news media that helped with that but not any more.

I miss the days when we usually had 2 reasonable candidates to choose from.  I look at Rs like Jerry Ford and Richard Lugar and wonder WTH happened to statesmen like them. 

Have a good time bartender!  We'll probably make a mess of your bar and deplete your stock while you're gone    

gardengumby

Great articles, Sunflower.  Thanks. 

CLC

Sunflowers...thanks for sharing the op-ed pieces!  You are awesome!

Anonymous

mea culpa - just got BLASTED in an email from a friend - the levees which WERE rebuilt have held ( so far) it's the "other ones" that were breached - wanna bet the "other ones" were in even poorer neighborhoods?  Ah, darn, when did I get so cynical...must be all the red dresses with the big gold buttons...

45 degrees this am....are we ready for FALL? So hard to believe kids are back in school - and how come even 1st graders now have to carry those HUGE backbacks????  Their poor little backs....

CLC

They have to carry those huge backpacks...and then sit STILL for many many hours (way more than in years of old)...after eating lots of processed food...

Anonymous

What could be IN all those backpacks?  And how come 1st graders have homework?  Yikes - what happened to play.  I remember I loved play, still do ;-) 

CLC

And what happened to OUTSIDE?  My students (high school) don't see OUTSIDE all day long.  Not even during lunch period.  Sigh...

gardengumby

My gd already hates school - she is just starting 2nd grade - because every single blessed day there is homework - and she HATES it.  I remember when my big sister was in school, I was really excited to start school.  Her little brother will start kindergarten next year and is definitely not interested.  I think it's a pity.  When I was in grade school we didn't have any homework until 4th or 5th grade.  It doesn't make any sense to load down kindergarten through 3rd with homework.  It doesn't teach them "good study habits" (which is I believe, the goal).  It only teaches them to hate school.

CLC

gardengumby...  I am with you.

My son was slow to show interest in reading.  He was and is very bright, but no desire to read.  I never pushed him.  I asked a reading specialist I knew at work for suggestions.  She said just don't push him.  All you ever can do as a parent is expose him to how wonderful books can be.  I just kept reading to him frequently and we enjoyed books together.  One day, he just found a book he loved.  A series.  And he has been avidly reading ever since...well beyond his grade level. 

One of the things I work at as a science teacher is to offer as many choices as I can, because I don't think thinking should be forced.  It is just too much fun all on its own.

I wish the rest of the world enjoyed thinking.  (Especially the conservative right).

crazy4carrots

CLC -- To paraphrase someone else's thought (can't remember who!):  Learn to think before you learn to believe, else you'll start to believe you don't have to think.

gardengumby

What a GREAT saying!!  Can I borrow it?

otter

Warning: this is more than you ever wanted to know about Plaquemines Parish, LA:

Visualize an outline of the state of Louisiana. Remember that little appendage on the southeast side that sticks out into the Gulf like a finger? That's Plaquemines Parish. Here's a map of LA showing Placquemines Parish (courtesy of Wikipedia):

Here's a closeup (courtesy of NOAA.gov) showing that Plaquemines Parish consists pretty much of the east and west banks of the Mississippi River as it crawls out into the Gulf of Mexico. Wiki says 65.2% of the surface area of the parish is water. Not surprisingly, much of the elevation of the land in Plaquemines Parish is below sea level:

Demographically, Plaquemines Parish is very different from the city of New Orleans. The population of the entire parish is about 1/15th that of NOLA (23,628 compared with 360,740 in 2011); and the population density of the parish is approx. 1/100th that of the city (29 people/sq. mi. vs. 2,029 people/sq. mi.). (Source: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/22/22075.html )

Plaquemines Parish is wealthier than NOLA (median household income $54,730 vs. $37,468), whiter than NOLA (67.0% white non-Hispanic in the parish vs. 30.5% in NOLA); and on average, better-educated than NOLA (80.3% high school grads vs. 63.4%). The home ownership rate in Plaquemines Parish is 71.4%, vs. 49.3% in NOLA. (These are all census data collected since Katrina.) In Plaquemines Parish, 11.6% of the population is below the poverty level, vs. 24.4% in NOLA.

So... no, the people living in Plaquemines Parish are not what you might think. It's sad but not surprising that some of them would want to ride out the storm in their homes, despite a mandatory evacuation order giving them plenty of time to leave.

The levee that was overtopped (not washed out) was an earthen levee - a "local" structure that was not part of the federal ACE system. The local levees had been improved since Katrina, but obviously not enough.

otter

[Edited to add source of demographic info.]

Anonymous

wow, otter, great lesson.  Thank you - must be a lovely plae to live, when it's not flooded.

crazy4carrots

I feel so badly for them.  Was listening to NPR yesterday in the car, and one LA resident said she didn't WANT to evacuate, but when she considered that power lines would be down for who knows how long, that fact alone decided it for her.  She was on her way up river to St. Louis.

The devastation (fires, tornadoes, hurricanes) that has hit the North American continent this year has been mind-boggling.

I've only lived through one Hurricane (Hazel) that surprisingly made its way up to southern Ontario in 1954 (I was a wee young'un but remember it well).  Scared me silly, with so much wind and rain and water in the basement up to the top steps and my older sisters and brother (parents were away) frantically bailing out the basement.  I thought the whole house was going to float away.  And many homes in certain areas of Toronto were destroyed.

 Can't imagine the terror and heartache those folks must be experiencing. 

Chickadee

I have been a FEMA Reservist for several years and I just got the call to be on hold for deployment. I didn't resign because holding onto the reserve job while being unavailable seemed the best of both worlds, like denying this damn disease from taking everything from me. Physically I'm in a good place so I told them I would take a shot at 30 days deployment and see how I can do. I provide administrative backup so I won't be in harms way as others may be. Once the situation settles down they'll start sending us to work.



So sorry the people of La. have to suffer this catastrophe yet again.

RetiredLibby

Chickadee, you are a WONDERFUL human being!  My dream job used to be to do public affairs for FEMA, but that was many years ago and since it was so politicized and gutted under "heckuva job Brownie," I let that dream job go.  You have my deepest admiration!

Otter, you always have the best posts!

The CONvention.  umph.  Not watching, reading some articles, absolutely BESIDE myself with rage about peanut-throwing .... would love to post links here but not sure I could restrain myself.

On a happy note, DH booked a cruise to Bermuda for our vacation next week -- last minute surprise for me.  He is trying to get me to relax and sit down and get some strength and stamina back.  We'll see if that does the trick! 

XOXO to all!

Libertroll

1Athena1

Chickadee, that's very impressive. Good luck if you do end up deployed.

Had to share this - NYT editorial about the convention:

"It was a day late, but the Republicans' parade of truth-twisting, distortions and plain falsehoods arrived on the podium of their national convention on Tuesday. Following in the footsteps of Mitt Romney's campaign, rarely have so many convention speeches been based on such shaky foundations....

Full text: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/opinion/how-the-republicans-built-it.html?_r=1&hp

RetiredLibby

I saw the editorial, Athena.  Cheering!  There is also a spot-on column by Charles P. Pierce in his blog in Esquire which made me cheer too.

CLC

HL...oooh  Bermuda!  You've got some guy there!

Chickadee...You have my respect and admiration, as well!

I feel for the people in LA.  They have been through so much.

The rnc is depressing.

Chickadee

Thank you for the kind words. FEMA gets lambasted all the time but you should meet the frontline reservists. You will never meet more compassionate caring people. They really do want to help everyone in need to navigate the miserably complex govt programs to get help.



And they check on me regularly to see how I am, more than friends and family do.