{"id":274,"date":"2007-10-26T23:55:02","date_gmt":"2007-10-27T06:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=274"},"modified":"2007-11-04T07:56:12","modified_gmt":"2007-11-04T14:56:12","slug":"prevailing-dearth-punctuated-by-brief-rants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=274","title":{"rendered":"Prevailing Dearth, Punctuated by Brief Rants"},"content":{"rendered":"

The blogiverse managed to\u00a0survive October without much input from me.\u00a0\u00a0I’ve been hashing<\/a>, and what little I’ve written lately’s over at\u00a0the other blog<\/a>.\u00a0 But I feel I owe this blog something, even if\u00a0only a summary of events and a\u00a0couple of cheap shots at our betters.<\/p>\n

So far this month I’ve set two hash trails, one the traditional way and the other by bicycle.\u00a0 Donna and I took a county-sponsored bicycle safety class, and I bought a new road bike for my birthday.\u00a0 Tomorrow I’m going to a hash set, for a change,\u00a0by someone else; Sunday a few friends and I are riding up to Phoenix for a motorcycle trade show.\u00a0 My actual birthday is next Wednesday – Hallowe’en – and I can finally start riding that new bicycle.<\/p>\n

And then there’s been work, but enough said about that.\u00a0 One more year, baby, and (barring unforeseen events of a cataclysmic nature) Donna and I can both retire!<\/p>\n

Arrgh, politics . . . another driver uses my work van sometimes, so we share the radio presets.\u00a0\u00a0FM1 is mine.\u00a0 He owns\u00a0FM2 and AM, which\u00a0he’s programmed with right-wing hate talk.\u00a0 Sometimes, when NPR gets boring, I\u00a0listen to his stuff.\u00a0 I can’t take it for very long: about five minutes each of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Dennis Miller; less than 30 seconds of\u00a0Sean Hannity.<\/p>\n

I seem to recall Dick Durbin apologizing<\/a>, on national TV and with tears in his eyes, for saying that what we were doing to prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo made him think of how prisoners were once treated in Germany, Russia,\u00a0and Cambodia.\u00a0 But every time his name comes up, the haters reflexively condemn him for comparing\u00a0our troops to Hitler, Stalin,\u00a0and Pol Pot.\u00a0 I thought I remembered Democrats in the House and Senate passing a resolution condemning MoveOn.org’s “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?<\/a>”\u00a0ad.\u00a0 My memory must be playing tricks on me, because right-wing radio hosts now routinely call members of my party “MoveOn.org Democrats.”\u00a0 God only knows what they’ll call us now that Representative Pete Stark has backed down and apologized<\/a>\u00a0for his crack about troops dying for George W. Bush’s amusement.<\/p>\n

MoveOn.org-They-Compare-Our-Troops-to-Hitler-PeteStarkocrats?<\/p>\n

When the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton I vowed never to vote for a Republican again.\u00a0 If anything, my resolve is stronger today.\u00a0 People worry about whether Hillary Clinton is electable.\u00a0 You know what?\u00a0\u00a0I don’t care.\u00a0 She or he – whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be – has already got my vote.\u00a0 And Hillary, I happily note, is not one to cravenly apologize to appease assholes who’ll just go on hating her anyway.<\/p>\n

Which doesn’t mean I’m wholly enamored with Democrats.\u00a0 Democratic Congressional leadership\u00a0sucks.\u00a0 Is there a stronger word than “sucks”?\u00a0 Because if there is, that still wouldn’t begin to describe\u00a0how bad\u00a0Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are.\u00a0 If there were the slightest possibility that a third party could succeed in this country, I’d jump over in a minute.<\/p>\n

I know the House and Senate have strict rules governing\u00a0seniority and party position, but, like, isn’t Ted Kennedy way senior to Harry Reid?\u00a0\u00a0Hasn’t Henry\u00a0Waxman been a congressman\u00a0far longer than\u00a0Nancy Pelosi?\u00a0 So why isn’t Ted Kennedy majority leader of the Senate, and why isn’t Henry Waxman Speaker of the House?\u00a0 Now that<\/em> would make a difference.<\/p>\n

And God knows, we need for someone to start making a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blogiverse managed to\u00a0survive October without much input from me.\u00a0\u00a0I’ve been hashing, and what little I’ve written lately’s over at\u00a0the other blog.\u00a0 But I feel I owe this blog something, even if\u00a0only a summary of events and a\u00a0couple of cheap shots at our betters. So far this month I’ve set two hash trails, one the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bicycling","category-personal","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}