Entries from October 2007

Halloween ‘07

October 31st, 2007 · No Comments

Halloween, and who knew there were this many kids in the neighborhood?
The little boy went as Darth Vader, good costume though by halfway through trick-or-treating I was carrying both the mask and the lightsaber. He made out like the Frito Bandito, two full bags of stuff. I’ve already pilfered a mini-Mounds and Payday bars. The […]

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Tags: Uncategorized

Spending it on saving it

October 31st, 2007 · No Comments

Only one member of Congress earmarks money for abstinence education. Guess which state he represents?
Specter views the abstinence earmarks as a response to “a significant segment of his constituency, which he believes is entitled to implement programs most consistent with their values,” the senator’s chief of staff, Scott Hoeflich, said in a statement.
But those familiar […]

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Tags: Spending · Sex

Change the channel

October 31st, 2007 · No Comments

And by the way, to take a page from Will Bunch’s book, if you dislike Clear Channel’s “No Bruce” edict, you can always make a point of avoiding Clear Channel stations.
Local Clear Channel stations are:
FM97; WLAM-AM 1390; KISS 99.3 FM; WHP 580 Talk Radio; 1230 WKBO AM; BOB 94.9 FM; The River 97.3 FM; The […]

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Tags: Radio · Wingers

Was it worth it?

October 31st, 2007 · No Comments

Amusing little thread going on over here, in which our resident right-wingers are crowing that as casualties are down in Iraq, this is proof we’ve won.
Have we won the war in Iraq now? Is this the claim right-wingers now make? If so, let’s re-read a portion of Lt. Rice had to say:
Well, the economy is […]

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Tags: War in Iran · Wingers · War in Iraq

Prince of Queens

October 31st, 2007 · No Comments

Hilarious. Tired of your kids being indoctrinated to think homosexuality is somehow O.K.? Then rush out to purchase “Does God Love Michael’s Two Daddies?” (Answer: Hahahahahahaha. No.)
From one reader’s Amazon.com review:
Michael is depicted three times by the illustrator, in all instances alienated from his Christ-loving friends, a fearful grimace of uncertainty plastered on his face. […]

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Tags: Religious conservatism · Wingers

You better (not) listen to the radio

October 31st, 2007 · No Comments

With apologies to Mr. Costello.
We were coming back from the beach vacation when the little girl started getting fussy. Music soothes the savage baby beast, so I turned on the radio. It was the first time I had listened to the radio in quite some time; since I got the MP3 player three years ago, […]

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Tags: Radio · Music

The inevitable

October 31st, 2007 · No Comments

Didn’t watch the debate. Don’t care. Hillary is inevitable - unless Gore runs, and who knows - and it doesn’t matter how poorly Hillary did or how much she flip-flopped, it doesn’t matter how she triangulated and parsed everything. Obama seems to be fumbling, Edwards is too far behind and we are going to get […]

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Tags: Hillary · Democratic candidates

Dancing in the dark

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

Sweet. Clear Channel sends memo to stations, which are not to play any tracks from the new Bruce Springsteen album, though it’s the No. 1 album in the country.
Gee, this couldn’t have anything to do with Springsteen’s speaking out against the administration, could it?
I take solace, however, in the fact that Clear Channel’s realm, commercial […]

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Tags: Wingers

Creating them faster than we can kill them

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

Lovely.
The lead-in to the story was an incident in which U.S. forces, responding to a single rocket launched at their base which missed the base entirely and caused no casualties, rained mortar fire down on a nearby village where two men with AK-47’s allegedly fled after the failed rocket attack. After about an hour of […]

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Tags: War on terror

Cheney and the flag

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

Hey, maybe Dick Cheney can come hunting in Warwick!

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Tags: Dick Cheney

Running to stand still

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

But let’s take this a step further, because I see both Matt Yglesias and Atrios are sort of scratching their heads over the “Kunstleresque” vision of suburbia in meltdown over the price of oil. Writes Yglesias:
Hybrid cars are already available on the market, are much more fuel efficient than conventional autos, and with the “hybrid […]

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Tags: Energy · Economy

Jolt to your wallet

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

On what is shaping up to be a singularly lousy day for a variety of reasons, the New Era plops onto my desk this afternoon and the lead story staring up at me:
Future shock: With big rate hike looming,  PPL unveils plan designed to help consumers ease the pain.
“Big rate hike” as in state-mandated caps […]

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Tags: Energy · Uncategorized

Fake citizens group?

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

Hm. Some interesting responses to the story last weekend of Manheim Township tossing that “citizens” group, Lancaster for Smart Growth, because attorney William Cluck won’t identify members of the group beyond two whom he refused to make available for an interview.
The prevailing wisdom, so to speak, seems to be encapsulated over at NewsLanc, which righteously […]

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Tags: Lancaster

Iran and Hitler? No comparison

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

Josh Marshall puts his finger right on it:
Hitler has become such a throwaway reference or comparison for whatever penny-ante dictator we’re up in arms about at the moment that the reference has been drained of much of its meaning and horror. But with the Munich agreement and how ‘time is not on our side’ and […]

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Tags: War in Iran

Nowhere to go but up

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

One of those days. When, among other things, the little girl needs a bath, always a rushed proposition on days when both mom and dad work, like today. Even more of a rushed proposition when I attempt to multi-task while brushing my teeth as she plays with her Sesame Street bath toys, but… wait, something […]

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Tags: Uncategorized

Cracks in the wall

October 27th, 2007 · No Comments

Hm.
Fox, who is 47, said he saw some impatient shuffling in the pews, but he was stunned that the church’s lay leaders had turned on him. “They said they were tired of hearing about abortion 52 weeks a year, hearing about all this political stuff!” he told me on a recent Sunday afternoon. “And these […]

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Tags: Religious conservatism · Religion

Missing the Trickster

October 27th, 2007 · No Comments

You can take Pastor Dan out of Pennsylvania but you can’t take the Pennsylvania out of Pastor Dan.
C’mon, PD, don’t you have increasingly ludicrous former Congressmen writing newspaper columns out there in the cheese state?

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Tags: Wingers

Everyone Can Fly

October 27th, 2007 · No Comments

Up too late last night with the little girl coughing, coughs too large to come from her little body. You can’t sleep when that happens, you lie there worrying. And then you end up getting even less sleep than she did.
Gigolo Aunts, a sort of low-key Boston band that took its name from a Syd […]

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Tags: Uncategorized

Bringing it all back home

October 26th, 2007 · No Comments

The news of the fires was mesmerizing most of the week, I wrote about it for this week’s print edition, but there were other things, at first glance not related but, the longer you looked, the more you realized they were of a piece.

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Tags: Energy · War in Iran · Oil · War in Iraq · Environment

Where have we seen this before?

October 26th, 2007 · No Comments

You know, if I continually ingested BS like this, I’d probably be salivating for war with Iran, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-eyuFBrWHs

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Tags: War in Iran · Fox News · Wingers · War in Iraq