Gone Fishin'

...it's always good to have a plan and it never hurts, once you have that plan, to make sure to draw up a backup plan. According to documents that have come into the hands of Congressional investigators, Toyota may have had a plan to deal with unfavorable Congressional testimony regarding that little unintended accel

...throughout the Executive Branch of the Government of the United States, there are thousands of employees who earn their daily bread by honorably defending the interests of the American people through the administration of contracts that deliver services, supplies, and the construction and maintenance of real proper

...I was going to make some idle sport of Sarah Palin most recent comments when I first read the AP report; you know, test out some other potential moves Obama would make if only he could, such as:Obama would allow people to eat Christian babies if he thought he and his Democratic allie

...it is snowing outside. By which I mean "again". The Winter That Would Never Be has slowly morphed into the Spring That Won't Ever Come. In the larger context of the outside world, this doesn't amount to much; it's doesn't hold a candle to the reality of sitting along the Gulf Coast knowing that there is a vast s

...it was to be expected, and it was delivered just about on time. Texas Governor Rick Perry, a man whose "best if used by" date is rapidly approaching as far as any of his desperate hopes for further political advancement are concerned, has decided to add to his already bulging Democratic oppo-research files by sugg

...anyone can be a pundit at some level. You can write a letter to The Editor, start a blog, comment at major league websites and blogs, or in other ways fling your thoughts into the vast electronic river that flows through all of our lives...That's Ground Level Punditry.You can become a capti

...for Tony Montana (aka "Scarface"), it was an M203 grenade launcher attachment to his M16. For me, it has been KillDisk burned to a CD and launched from the boot menu. There is, it turns out, one surefire way to deal with a W

...as it turns out, there are people out there who want to steal my life, or at least the parts of it that can bring them either profit or some strange emotional benefit that I will never understand in a million years. These people, who deserve nothing better than burial in a shallow unmarked grave alongside any one

...after a week of pitched battles with various bits and pieces of both human and computer illnesses - the latter of which having caused me to revisit my opinions about application of the death penalty - I find myself tonight pondering the speed with which our current reality can pump its fat little legs to far outdis

...it has been a tough last several days for the Bald Eagle Stars of Odell Lake. They have been pummeled by ceaseless waves of late-season snow storms, including two that were preceded by official Winter Storm Warnings. The male disappeared for one stretch of over 30 hours, leading various watchers to fear a two-pro

...I haven't been posting much recently because I have been simply fried when I get home in the evening. It has been hard to work up even the most half-hearted outrage about all of the crazy things going down all around us and, I have to admit, I find myself almost limp with relief that the health care bill finally p

...OK, so we know that there are a couple of certain mindsets at work deep in the heart of the US military that can argue against the idea that a person's sexual orientation shouldn't matter when it comes to the point of being willing to serve - and perhaps die - on behalf of our nation. In the first place, any effor

...this little story caught my eye today because it seems to me that it captures the raw essence of the hopelessness of ever seeing peace in what was once called Palestine. In fact, the story made me even chuckle a l

Dear Fellow American, You have been selected from a sample of political leaders in your area to take part in a Nationwide Survey on the Obama Agenda called ASK AMERICA....this is how a letter I found in the mail

...there ere are a very few special things that make my mind threaten to just simply shut down. This has become one of them:"Brett Favre said Thursday he still hasn't decided whether he'll play again next season — and

...as the Vancouver Olympics draw to a close, I find my one last moment of frustration: some strangely tall woman wandering the streets of a Canadian city on the other side of the continent seeking the core of Canada's comedic contribution to this great country of ours. This apparently was more important that any nu

...that there is a strong attraction to the idealistic dream of living out in those high, wild open spaces of the intermountain West - far from the Maddening Crowd, as it were - is a well-established fact. It isn't actually all that great all the time for us regular folks who really do live out here, of course, but ne

...I don't care about Ti

...I would be on the first flight out of Detroit tomorrow morning, on my way to Lake Mary, Florida, to meet with the members of the local school board to make them an offer that they could not refuse. They are in a bit of a bind right now because, as it so

...it could have been an epiphanal moment as I listened to this story on Orygun Public Broadcasting just a little while ago. It wasn't, but it could have been, because I have spent this work holiday surrounded by various elements o

...it was always a stupid idea, frankly, that the government of the United States was jumping all over the Haiti earthquake in a effort to exercise the opportunity to invade and occupy that star-crossed nation. "Invasion" and "Occupation" were charges raised by various individual observers from the left here in the U

...first time things are amazing, exciting, even occasionally wondrous for the power of the emotions that they fire up deep in our guts. The first bike ride without training wheels; the first time staying over night at a friend's house; the first time driving a car; the first time driving a car alone without parents

...several days locked in "Death Match" head-to-head combat with a particularly nasty little piece of malware called "Internet Security 2010"...Countless hours, including the better of nine hours just today...Installation of a new anti-virus program (downloading the newest definitions, under t

...I am watching the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address right now, which is being delivered by the newly elected Republican Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell. It is a truly painful experience on a couple of levels...First - for those of us who may not have been sufficien

...much is being made about the reported comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid concerning Barack Obama that is found in the Mark Halperin/John Heilemann book about the 2008 presidential campaign. On the face of it, his notation of Oba

...and you're still wondering if finishing up that "honey-do" list is a legitimate Christmas gift...

-- For those of us who do not play golf, who have no interest in learning to play golf unless retirement affords the time to do so, and who have watched PGA telecasts about as much as we have watched episodes of "Lost" or "American Idol" (in other words, not at all), there is one question: Is there some emotion we sh

...and sometimes, as Satchel Page so famously said, sometimes I just sits. There's a framed poster-sized version of this quote displayed over a luridly-drawn poster of a red bar stool that has hung in the master bathroom of every place I've lived over the l

...imagine my surprise...no, check that; imagine my horror at watching snow pour down from the skies yesterday and today. Realized Winter Storm Warnings producing heavy, wet, sloppy stuff, occasionally as light showers and sometimes as full-on blizzards, until there were four inches on the ground. Now, don't get me w