Via El Reg.

Excerpt:

. . . I’m calling on the Republican leaders in the Senate to stop holding America’s small businesses hostage to politics, and allow an up-or-down vote on this small business jobs bill.

At a time when America is just starting to move forward again, we can’t afford the do-nothing policies and partisan maneuvering that will only take us backward. I won’t stand here and pretend everything’s wonderful. I know that times are tough. But what I also know is that we’ve made it through tough times before. And we’ll make it through again. The men and women hard at work in this plant make me absolutely confident of that.

Afterthought:

Sadly, those who call themselves “Christian” (and whom Andrew Sullivan calls “Christianists“) are the often the strongest argument against the teachings and example Jesus Christ.

Where he was gentle, they are harsh.

Where he was kind, they are cruel.

Where he was forgiving, they condemn.

Where he loved, they hate.

They cause me shame to profess my faith.

In a related vein, I listened to this interview Friday.

It is worth your while, if not to listen, to read the excerpts from the transcript; the subject of the interview gets the difference between Chrisitianism and Christianity, and it cost him his job.

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

LibertyBank, Eugene, Oregon

The Cowlitz Bank, Longview, Washington

Coastal Community Bank, Panama City, Florida

Bayside Savings Bank, Port Saint Joe, Florida

NorthWest Bank & Trust, Acworth, Georgia

The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks may have blood on its hands, the Pentagon said on Thursday, warning its unprecedented leak of secret U.S. military files could cost lives and damage trust of allies.

As if any thinking person doesn’t realize that persons in Afghanistan or Pakistan already know what’s going on there on both, or on all three, or on however-the-hell-many sides there are in that mess.

There are few similiarities between the Wiki-Leaks leak and the Pentagon Papers, but there are two. Both include stuff that

• the Pentagon and the government and even the allied governments already knew, and
• the Pentagon and the government and even the allied governments did not want their citizenry (citizenries?) to know.

Until Wiki-Leaks is caught offing wedding parties with drones, I shall keep calling bullshit.

________________________

*I am equivocal.

I am on record here as saying many times that we should have finished there–finished defined as destroying the Al Qaeda leadership completely and totally–rather than wasting time, blood, and treasure on the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq. I am nevertheless more and more fearing that the Bushies’ wasting all that time on the Great and Glorious Patriotic etc. allowed the Afghanistan effort to become unmanageable and–unwinnable is not the right word–beyond the reach of a satisfactory conclusion.

And in doing so they have placed my son (and other persons’ sons and daughters and husbands and wives and fathers and mothers) in harm’s way for three tours of duty for what?

“Because we are there” is neither a moral nor a strategic reason.

Someone snuck (sic) into Gibson’s front lawn and snatched close to 150 (lawn gnomes–ed.).

“I had them all along the flower bed here and then I had them on the brick,” Gibson said as she pointed toward her fence. “I had them all out in front of my flower pots.”

Gibson figures the thief or thieves stole close to $2,000 worth of lawn gnomes.

I’m trying to visualize a yard with 200 gnomes.

To my relief, I am unable to.

Video at the link.

The team took water samples before and after significant rainfall at seven beaches and recreation spots along five rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay. Their goal was to gauge the impact of stormwater — one of the fastest-growing pollution sources in the Chesapeake Bay — on bacteria levels in the water.

For comparison, the team also took two water samples from a household toilet: one while it was clean, and another after human feces had sat in it for four hours.

After rain on July 15, the tests showed that three of the seven sites had bacteria levels far higher than Maryland and Virginia standards for safe recreation, and five were above the level for safe swimming. Two — Savage Park in Howard County and Middle Branch Park in Baltimore — had bacteria levels much higher than the dirty toilet.

Deregulation will undoubtedly fix this.

Also, you may already have won.