From Pine View Farm

I am not a big fan of winter. I can’t say that I have a favorite season, but, if I did, winter would not be in the top three finalists.

Indeed, when I see a car with a “Think Snow” bumper sticker, I have an insane urge to shoot its headlights out.

It’s no so much the cold, nor even the heating bills (though, after this winter, it may be the heating bills).

It’s taking five more minutes to get out of the house because of having to put on umpteen more layers of clothes.

It’s not being able to move because of umpteen more layers of clothes.

It’s having to wear long handles and Gore-Tex boots to work. And I work inside!

It’s not being able to leave the doors to the screened porch open. Now I have to open and close them to let the dogs out. And the darned dogs are worse than cats. They want in. They want out. One wants in, the other wants out. Then the first one decides he doesn’t want to be in if the other one is out and wants to go out again. Open and close. Open and close. Open and close.

But most of all, I realized today, I hate having to turn on my headlights to drive home. It’s just not right.

And soon, as December approaches, I’ll have to turn on my headlights in both directions. I’ll go in the building while it’s still dark and exit the building when it’s already dark.

If you have a “Think Snow” bumper sticker, be very careful if you see a little yellow truck following you . . . .

Paulsboro, NJ, Exxon, $2.29.

Paulsboro, NJ, BP, $2.39.

Claymont, Del., Exxon, $2.29.

Claymont, Del., Sunoco $2.26.

Claymont, Del., Wawa, $2.19.

Claymont, Del, BP, $2.23.

Claymont, Del, Cumberland Farms and Getty, $2.21.

Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.35.

Holly Oak, Del., Mobil, $2.25.

(I was wondering whether I was beating this subject of public honesty, or lack thereof, to death.

Then I figured, Naaahhhhh.)

Near the end of his analysis in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer of the implications of the indictment of Mr. I. Lewis Libby on natioinal politics, Dick Polman includes a summary of the current Federal Administration’s use of the politics of character assassination as regards the Iraq War.

His analysis may be off; after all, it’s an attempt to predict the future. The history of retaliation and vindictiveness towards those willing to question the actions of the current Federal Administration is worth reviewing (and these are just the big fish–how many little fish have they stepped on)?

In the weeks and months ahead, Bush critics will argue that the Plame affair is merely the most publicized example of how the administration treats those who dissent on the war. There is a documented track record of retaliation.

After Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress that the occupation of Iraq would require “several hundred thousand” troops, he was pushed into an earlier retirement. After national security aide Richard Clarke questioned Bush’s response to al-Qaeda threats, he was assailed as a disgruntled, publicity-hungry partisan. After ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill wrote a book claiming that Bush and Cheney were obsessed with Iraq, the administration suggested that he may have shared classified documents with the press. After an ABC reporter did a story on low troop morale in Iraq, he was painted by a White House aide as an “openly gay Canadian.”

This, of course, does not include other highlights of this tactic by the same team in other areas, such as

And these are the people who promised to restore integrity to the White House.

Great line from today’s Prairie Home Companion in the message from the Ketchup Advisory Board:

“Hallowe’en is the great Republican holiday.

“You try to scare people to death. And gobble up as much as you can.”

One of the stupider claims coming from the current Federal Administration and its surrogates is that the investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame and the resulting indictment of Mr. I. Lewis Libby is somehow “criminalizing politics.” (Link courtesy of Emily Messner in the Washington Post.)

All the investigation is doing is criminalizing criminal behavior. And criminal behavior to further political ends is still criminal behavior.

The Bill of Rights nowhere says that those seeking or holding office may do anything they wish in the interests of accomplishing their political ends.

Daily Sally points out that the public seems to be disengaged from the story, and

. . . understandably so. It’s a convoluted story of lies and spies, of foreign places and not-so-public faces. Many average citizens have never heard of most of the players and don’t know the back story. How could they? The Bush administration has done everything in its considerable power to keep it out of the public eye. And the media has been, at the least, passively complicit by not shedding clearer light on the whole dirty mess.

And the American people have historically been loth to think ill of their elected officials.

I remember when push came to shove in an earlier time. I was much younger then, home with my family, watching television, watching the news report that Mr. Nixon had dismissed Archibald Cox. My father disappeared from the living room (this was before the time that there was a television in every room) for about 20 minutes.

Now, my father had voted for Mr. Nixon in 1968 and 1972, not because he was a rabid Nixon fan, but because Mr. Nixon seemed to him to be a better choice than Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern. (I voted for Shirley Chisholm in my first election.)

I realized what later what my father was doing. He was calling Western Union and sending telegrams to our elected representatives incongruously assembled: “Impeach Nixon.”

He had reached his breaking point with Mr. Nixon’s lies.

And, compared to the current Federal Administration, Mr. Nixon’s administration was upright and honest.

What they tried to do was steal an election they already had in the bag. And use the IRS and FBI to pursue their political enemies (without benefit of a Patriot Act to give their actions a gloss of legality), and then (and this is what did them in) cover up their actions when their minions got caught.

They did not sell out the treasure of this country to the rich, nor send our young to die for a lie (though one might argue that, in dragging out the Viet Namese War, they perpetuated a war for a lie, a war they inherited from their predecessor), nor did they cloak their treachery in the robes of religious belief.

Ahhh, the good old days. Give me honest political corruption over hypocritical moral corruption any day of the week.

(Discussion Question) When are you going to reach your breaking point with the greed, hypocrisy, and abuse of power of the current Federal Administration?

Hmmmmm. More on the politics of character assassination.

“We are obviously watching and the press is beginning to document the implosion of a presidency,” Bernstein said Thursday, just hours before the Plame grand jury is set to expire. “How destructive that implosion is going to be, ultimately, we don’t know yet.

“But what the Plame leak investigation has unveiled is what the press should have been focusing on long before and without let up–how we went to war, the dishonesty involved in that process in terms of what the president and vice-president told the American people and the Congress, and the routine smearing by members of the Bush administration of people who questioned their actions and motives.” Emphasis added.

Libby is indicted and the press and blogosphere will certainly be full of comments.

Here are a few items I found particularly interesting to the extent I could keep up with things while at work today:

A live chat with the Washington Post’s Associate Editor Robert Kaiser about the Libby indictment and related issues.

Witness this exchange:

Dayton, Ohio: Perhaps, this indictment will teach Republican officials a lesson not to get too cozy with the journalists who are for all intents and purposes their enemies.

Robert G. Kaiser: You know, this is a truly silly comment. At the risk of sounding self-serving and pompous, I will say as forcefully as I know how that honest reporters are not the “enemies” of any public figures other than corrupt or malfeasant ones. The idea that we are sitting in this newsroom with a political mission to undo Republican officials is just nuts. (Did Bill Clinton believe that when The Post broke the Monica Lewinsky story?)

Follow the link for the full chat.

And the effects of this whole escapade on Valerie Plame are not being reported, because she’s not speaking to the press. But it looks as if the current Federal Administration’s love for the politics of character assassination will ultimately end her career at the CIA:

Lost in the din of the leak scandal that has consumed Washington is the very personal impact on the gracious, willowy CIA operative at its center. Plame, the wife of former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and arguably the most famous spy in the world, is not likely to stay at the CIA, some acquaintances say.

With her career derailed, Plame, 42, the mother of 5-year-old twins, hasn’t publicly signaled her plans. But privately she has said that she feels she has no future at the spy agency where she has worked for 20 years.

And Senator Ted Kennedy (not one of my favorites, but he knows how to orate) reminds us of this (via Eschaton):

Today is an ominous day for the country, signifying a new low since Watergate in terms of openness and honesty in our government. This is far more than an indictment of an individual. In effect it’s an indictment of the vicious and devious tactics used by the Administration to justify a war we never should have fought. It’s an indictment of the lengths Administration officials were willing to go to cover up their failed intelligence, their distortion on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and their serious blunders on the war. It is an indictment of their vindictive efforts to discredit anyone who challenges their misrepresentations. (Emphasis added)

It’s Oz.

And the wizard is in charge (from today’s Philadelphia Inquirer):

In a new escalation of the nation’s culture war over the teaching of evolution, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association announced yesterday that they would not allow Kansas to use key science education materials developed by the two organizations.

The refusal came after the groups reviewed the latest draft of the state Department of Education’s new science education standards and concluded that they overemphasized uncertainties about the theory of evolution and failed to make clear that supernatural phenomena have no place in science.

Yesterday, I posted a short muse about Harriet Miers.

An analysis of the failure of the nomination in today’s Washington Post. Among other things, the Post reports that

. . . in perhaps the biggest misjudgment, Bush assumed that Miers would somehow shine in a Washington klieg light she had never before faced.

(snip)

“This thing never got off the launching pad very well,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because public airing of self-criticism is not encouraged in the White House.

The comment I highlighted is certainly not new news, but it is the key to why the current Federal Administration, when faced with a failing strategy, reacts, to quote Aubrey Daniels, by doing the same thing harder.

and how to accept it.

Why am I not surprised?

A need for foreign workers in Iraq — and the flood of American dollars into the country — have created a labor network that critics call misleading, illegal and even dangerous. Chicago Tribune correspondent Cam Simpson retraced the fatal journey of 12 men from Nepal.

Listen to the story for details.

Despite all the other stuff that’s going on, the current Federal Administration has demonstrated a complete lack of a sense of humor by going after The Onion for using the Great Seal of the President of the United States in its satire. (Picked up from Phillybits)

It seems appropriate to remind the current Federal Administration that the Seal is not a trademark, like the Golden Arches. The seal belongs to the United States, not to whoever happens, quite by accident (or, in this case, by act of the Supremes), to be holding the office of President. There is no trademark infringement nor copyright on items that belong to the citizenry of the United States of America.

So I post here, and tip my hat to The Onion–always biting, often funny, and, I hope and trust, never cowed:

Participating So Far
(Updated 10/28/05 8:00 a. m. courtesy Phillybits)

Pandagon
All Spin Zone
PhillyBits
Jesus General
The Poor Man Institute
Majikthise
Ablogistan
Three Bulls
Ken Ashford
Watching Washington
Dommynicius
If I Ran The Zoo
Uncle Horn Head
BCFTU
Lair Of The Blue Cat
Ang’s Weird Ideas
Bloody Knee Jerk
MsGeek.org

Others commenting:
Chaos Digest
Praxxus
KAILiPuGos
The Comfy Chair
Myopic Zeal
The Next Left

Questions of politics and qualifications aside, I feel sorry for Harriet Miers. Whatever she expected when she accepted Mr. Bush’s offer of the nomination to the Supreme Court, she certainly did not sign up for the public flailing she received. And, to my mind, most of the fault lies with the persons who put her in this situation, not with her.

From the Washington Post:

WASHINGTON — Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to be a Supreme Court justice Thursday in the face of stiff opposition and mounting criticism about her qualifications.

Bush said he reluctantly accepted her decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down. He blamed her withdrawal on calls in the Senate for the release of internal White House documents that the administration has insisted were protected by executive privilege.

Follow the link for the full story.

American League rules,

National League drools.

What a contrast.

Cast your mind back to Ken Starr. His investigation leaked like a bad roof.

Compare him with Patrick Fitzgerald, who has conducted himself as a person of integrity and a dedicated prosecutor. Why is the blogosphere and the regular press full of speculation? Because nothing is leaking. No one has a clue what he is contemplating.

This is consistent with his record. He is a prosecutor, not a politician, and certainly not the tool of politicians.

He has comported himself with complete rectitude. Any attempts on the part of the current Federal Administration to accuse him of being another Ken Starr are, I think, doomed to fail. (via Suburban Guerrilla)

Comparing Fitzgerald and Starr does nothing so much as show Starr up as the political hack he was.

But it will be amusing to watch the current Federal Administration attempt to use once more their favorite tool against Mr. Fitzgerald: not facts, not truth, not honesty, but character assassination.

Nothing I could imagine could be more powerful than this.

Still dropping. Wawa is under $2.30.

Claymont, Del., Exxon, $2.37.

Claymont, Del., Sunoco 2.34

Claymont, Del., Wawa, $2.29.

Claymont, Del, BP, $2.33.

Claymont, Del, Cumberland Farms and Getty, $2.31.

Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.41.

Holly Oak, Del., Mobil, $2.31.

The Washington Post considers Dick Cheney’s legacy. He persists in thinking that in adflictatios veritas, so the Post offers a new title: Vice President for Torture.

VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans.

(snip)

It’s not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration’s decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military.

(snip)

So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate’s earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

I work in the wilds of South Jersey. It’s probably three miles in a straight line to Center City Philadelphia, but the waves of McMansions are just starting to crash against the shore of farmland here. Portions of the industrial park are still undeveloped and overgrown with scrub forest.

Yesterday, as I worked my way through the industrial park towards the Interstate on my way home after work, I saw something I have not seen before and certainly did not expect to see here: a wild turkey ran across the road in front of me.

It was quite a treat.

The local news station, WILM-AM, today quoted an AAA press release to this effect:

Falling gas prices are finally a trend.

AAA’s Catherine Rossi says Hurricane Wilma spared the oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, which should help keep prices going down as long as another major storm doesn’t come along.

Just over the weekend, gas prices in Delaware fell by ten cents, bringing the average price for a gallon of gas to $2.57. Despite the falling prices, Delaware is still significantly more expensive the Pennsylvania. Rossi says the average for a gallon of gas in Pa. is $2.49 per gallon.

I think it’s old news. The prices I’ve been seeing in my little corner of Delaware are substantially lower than this. On the other hand, when I’ve driven the length of Delaware, I’ve seen prices rise steadily as I head towards Maryland; if this average is based on statewide prices (and Delaware is not a very wide state), they may be accurate.

Here’s what I saw this evening:

Claymont, Del., Exxon and Sunoco, $2.46.

Claymont, Del., Getty and Wawa, $2.37.

Claymont, Del, BP, $2.39.

Claymont, Del, Cumberland Farms, $2.36.

Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.47.

Holly Oak, Del., Mobil, $2.37.

Whew! That’s a load off my mind! I’m sure that terrorists were targetting Bingo Games and Poker Nights big time as a way to raise funds.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky has been awarded a federal Homeland Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from using charitable gaming to raise money.

The state Office of Charitable Gaming won the $36,300 grant and will use it to provide five investigators with laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement data base, said John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming.

(via the Huffington Post)

Guess who Kentucky voted for in 2004?

A country boy would have known better:

A 14-year-old St. Pius X High School student might lose her right arm after she was bitten by a copperhead snake taken to school by another student, Lower Pottsgrove police said yesterday.

The girl, whose name was not released, was bitten Friday afternoon inside the gymnasium during a meeting of the drama club.

A 17-year-old boy, whom police did not identify, had taken the snake to school after capturing it in Valley Forge National Historical Park on Oct. 15, police said.

He took the snake from a box, and it bit the girl’s right middle finger, police said.

Update, 10/25/2005

The girl who was bitten is home from the hospital and did not lose her arm, as was feared might happen.

Ingredients:

Six hot Italian sausages

One medium onion

One-half large bell pepper

Mushrooms (I used six medium mushrooms)

Celery (I didn’t have any, but it would have been good)

Olive oil

Garlic (I used garlic paste)

One dried Habanero pepper

One small can whole, peeled tomatoes (may certainly substitute fresh or can of diced tomatoes)

One small can tomato sauce

Other spices to taste

Procedure:

Slice onion, mushrooms, and pepper thinly.

Heat thin layer of olive oil in Dutch oven and saute vegetables until peppers are limp.

Add sausages and saute until brown on all sides (they won’t be a crisp brown because of the oil and vegetables).

Add peeled tomatoes and sauce.

Add other spices (pepper, basil, whatever you like) and bring to boil.

Simmer for an hour.

Serve over rice with cornbread on the side.

John Timpane, editor of the Commentary Section of the local rag, has just returned from participating in the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science and Religion, where evolution and Christian Fundamentalism were heavily discussed.

In reporting on his experiences, he says, in part

Despite the trial in Dover, the current American conflict is not between “science” and “religion.” It is, to quote Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God and other books, a conflict between tightly defined subsets: “those who adhere to the scientific theory of evolution and those who believe that the biblical story of the six-day creation is literally true.” As she points out, this boils down to “a struggle between two religions.” The culprit on both sides in this American standoff is the mental habit of fundamentalism itself. And it could well hobble both sides.

(snip)

The current uprising may be a harbinger of the death of religion for many people. We’ll continue to be a believing people, but more and more of us will do our believing out of doors.

Religious fundamentalism got beat up good at the Templetons, especially by religious people. Fraser Watts, who teaches theology and science at Cambridge and is co-director of the fellowship program, said: “I am a follower of Christ, not the Bible, and if I’m forced to make a choice, which I hope I am not, I will choose Christ.”

But religion is not the only fundamentalism in the room. Let us now turn to the other bad boys: the fundamentalist materialists.

I believe the article is well worth reading for anyone who wishes greater understanding of this issue as a philosophical, rather than a scientific, issue.

Observations on Friday and Sunday (still dropping):

Penny Hill, Del., BP and Exxon, $2.49 on Friday.

Penny Hill, Del., Exxon, $2.57 on Friday.

Claymont, Del., Exxon and Sunoco, $2.49 on Friday, $2.46 on Sunday.

Claymont, Del., Getty, $2.45 on Friday, $2.41 on Sunday.

Claymont, Del, BP, $2.47 on Friday, $2.41 on Sunday.

Claymont, Del, Cumberland Farms, $2.47 on Friday, $2.43 on Sunday.

Claymont, Del., Wawa, $2.43 on Friday, $2.39 on Sunday.

Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.57 on Friday, $2.55 on Sunday.

Holly Oak, Del, Mobil, $2.47 on Friday, $2.39 on Sunday.

It’s raining here.

I just went out to pick up the local rag. When it rains, the paper deliverer double-bags the paper from each end.

Nevertheless, water had gotten through the overlapping bags.

In the map on the front page, right on top of the Yucatan Peninsula, centered right on Hurricane Wilma, was a big, circular wet spot.

The rest of the paper was dry.

Coincidence?

News has been full of Avian Flu lately, as if we are all going to die tomorrow.

Wendy Orendt, in the Sunday Washington Post, says

For two years, a deadly strain of chicken flu known as H5N1 has been killing birds in Asia. While slightly more than 100 people are known to have contracted the disease, and 60 of them have died, there is still no sign that the flu has begun to spread from person to person.

That hasn’t prevented a recent outbreak of apocalyptic warnings from health officials and experts about the specter of a worldwide pandemic. In Hurricane Katrina’s wake, health officials in the United States are talking more and more about pandemic preparation. Some of these ideas — such as stockpiling vaccines — are sensible, whether or not bird flu turns into a human disease and begins to spread rapidly.

But other ideas aren’t. A few scientists have suggested “priming” people with a dose of the new vaccine against H5N1 before we even know whether a pandemic is coming. Vaccinating large numbers of people against a disease that may never appear carries its own risks. Remember the swine flu debacle of 1976? At least 25 people died from vaccine complications and no epidemic ever erupted. That should be warning enough.

This story was followed by an online chat with Ms. Orendt on Monday. I recommend both of these articles as an antidote to panic.

In today’s Washington Post. Follow the link to read the full article:

For 16 critical hours, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials, including former director Michael D. Brown, dismissed urgent eyewitness accounts by FEMA’s only staffer in New Orleans that Hurricane Katrina had broken the city’s levee system the morning of Aug. 29 and was causing catastrophic flooding, the staffer told the Senate yesterday.

Marty Bahamonde, sent to New Orleans by Brown, said he alerted Brown’s assistant shortly after 11 a.m. that Monday with the “worst possible news” for the city: The Category 4 hurricane had carved a 20-foot breach in the 17th Avenue Canal levee.

16 hours wasted.

More and more the current Federal Administration’s attempts to blame local authorities for the slow response are being shown up as lies.

Before I got my current job, I worked for the railroad.

Now, make no mistake, I love my job. I get paid to muck about with computers all day, and I get to work with some of the nicest people in the world, not only my co-workers, but also the persons who attend the training classes I conduct (I R the trainer for my division).

But it’s not the same. I loved the railroad. There is no other industry like railroading. Sometimes I liked my job there; sometimes I hated it; but I always loved the railroad.

No experience I have ever had beats standing next to an Engineer watching the world go by at 125 miles per hour between New York and Washington; or standing on the rear vestibule, in the open air, watching the New Mexico desert recede behind the train at 79 miles per hour; or being in the downstairs kitchen of a double-decker dining car as the crew prepared meals to be sent upstairs to the dining room for the passengers; or waiting for the train, not in the waiting room with the civilians, but in the crew room with the train and engine crew, waiting for the train to pull into San Antonio from New Orleans to board it for Los Angeles; or pounding through a grassfire in the Humboldt Sink at track speed; or creaking at 30 miles an hour over the Donner Pass, under miles of snow sheds, remembering what happened to the Donner Party when they were stranded there in the blizzards.

During my years with the railroad, I traveled all over the country by train (being a trainer is and always has been a traveling job–you go to them far more often than they come to you). I have seen Independence Day parades in Chicago; waded through snow in Boston; held a safey investigation in a classroom in Lancaster, Pa., when a trainee uttered those words of import, “I’m hurt” (Rule A: Safety is of the first importance in the discharge of duty); watched the sun rise over Dr. Kildare’s hospital in Los Angeles.

It reached the point that I could wake up in the sleeping car, look out the window, and tell you within 20 miles where the train was.

And, when you boarded a train wearing 20-years-of-service pin, you got respect. The crew knew you were an Old Head; they didn’t play any games and they took you in. The word spread down the line and every replacement crew knew an Old Head was on-board.

This weekend, I will be reliving those times. We were a tight-knit group, the Amtrak training department, and some of our members have organized a reunion.

Most of us are no longer with Amcrap Amtrak. Those of us who are still there are no longer in the training department. Management changes came and went, and, ultimately, the incompetents triumphed, and the competents were scattered the winds. I took the money (severance) and ran–to another company where I could continue practicing my craft of designing, developing, and delivering training courses. Some of my colleagues fled to other departments within Amtrak, but most of them are in other places now.

It will be interesting to see who shows up and fun to catch up on where we are now.

Managements come and go.

But on the railroad, a clear board will always mean proceed at track speed. “Pulling the pin” will always mean retiring. “Highball lunch” will always mean “skip lunch, finish the job, and go home early.”

And “two to go” will always mean it’s time to pull and see what lies on down the road.

During the past couple of days, when I’ve been preoccupied with my now-deceased tooth, I haven’t paid much attention to gas prices. Today I did a check, and they have continued their downward trend:

In the morning:

Penny Hill, Del., BP, $2.55.

Penny Hill, Del., Exxon, $2.57.

In the evening:

Claymont, Del., Exxon, $2.49.

Claymond, Del., Sunoco, $2.52.

Claymont, Del., Getty, BP, Cumberland Farms, and Wawa, $2.49.

Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.59.

Holly Oak, Del, Mobil, $2.49.