As some of you know, I moved to Michigan from Oregon last October.  I now live in what is (or used to be) called the Northern Midwest and it is home to a couple states like Michigan and Wisconsin which pretty much surround Lake Michigan and have proven to have surrounded it with vast and copious quantities of "teh stup

This morning my phone rang, unusual in itself, and a lady with a nice voice was on the other end.  She told me that this was my second warning that my vehicle warranty was running out.  I thought, hmmm, and looked out the window.  Sure enough, my 1974 K5 Blazer was still parked next to the house.Y

This story in the NYT about Aaron Swartz has brought into my thoughts a topic I'd really like to leave alone, suicide. I've had my own collision

In the gun issue, as in almost any sensitive one, there are two essentially radicalized positions with most people not having anything to do with either.  On one side you've got the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, and assorted loons and then on the other you've got Michael Bloomberg, Jesse Jackson, and the Bradys and taken all to

The problem with this kind of discussion it its length.  It won't fit a portion of a five minute TV presentation and it is, frankly, longer than most will tolerate in an internet posting.  It isn't full of shocking rheroric and immediate points made.  I don't give a damn about talking points and I don't give

McClatchy tells us some of what the GOP has against Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. Critics have pointed to a comment Hagel made in 2008 to author and former State Department Middle East peace negotiator A

A blog friend,Crow's Eye, is having a tough time. The site has a restricted comments policy so about the only way I can suggest showing we, as a community, give a damn when one of our talented and generous members has real life difficulties is to just click

Let's start at the beginning, it's a MOVIE and it is not a documentary.  Now that I've got that out of my system I'd like to move on to something that matters... and it isn't even if the CIA gave something classified to movie makers.How about the question of whether the CIA handed disinformation to a movie

If you've looked around your Party and noticed that certain blocks of the citizenry are voting for the other side you might want to do something like...Well, tell women that certain women need to just put up with being beaten.  Those women in particular would be Native American and immigrant (of the illegal varie

Do you suppose it might concentrate some minds in the GOPer House to point out to them that unlike the Confederate Hurricanes this one happened at the start of winter and winter in the goddam Northeast isn't The Season like it is down by the Gulf?  You know, sub-freezing and snow and shit like that?That bun

I'm going to use Business Insider for this quote so nobody can call me unfair: "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction," Romn

Just suppose now that Sandy Hook has been more than a couple days ago we talk about firearms with some kind of emphasis on facts about the guns at issue?  Make no mistake at this outset, I'm horrified by the terror inflicted on those children and I have no intention, whatever, of doing "talking points" in this discussi

I don't suppose many people have missed Gov Christie's comments regarding the House non-vote regarding Sandy relief.  Now maybe those folks who are finding him laudable have forgotten some of this dick's associates, people he enthusiastically helped.  Maybe he can't remember or chooses to forget that the Mitt he s

Now that the dysfunctional 113th has been sworn in (no, that's not being at all previous) the talk has all turned to the upcoming CLIFFS, OMFG!!!  Yep, the train is steaming down the tracks and the bridge is out (Casey Jones) [still out] giving folks something to talk about for the next couple months

So I just watched the House stand up and applaud the election of The Orange Man to be Speaker of the Ass-ylum.  Well there you go, he got there by about 3 votes from a bunch who is so impressed with him that the non-Representative loon Allen West got a couple votes.  So if you've been engaging in any welcome of a

Predictions... ahahaha ... that's a laugh.  Really this is more like "I Ask Questions."In a little while the President will be Inaugurated again thanks to minority and youth votes (and yes, women) right onto the 113th Congress (that looks enough like 112 to be a meaningless distinction) so the question

I generally do this so I went to my "Labels" and found that I've put up very few.  That might have something to do with very few posts this year.Anyhow...This boat definitely ran aground... repeatedly and the final cruise was a complete shipwreck.

I suppose I could add something... but

So now the 112th Congress passes into history and memory.  While that is a blessed event what now becomes a reality is the 113th which may very well remind us that 13 is supposed to be an unlucky number.  The 112th is a real standout in a couple respects easily summarized in the term "stupidity."  Americans h

Thanks to some mis-firing brain cells and a certain actually good reason I moved to Michigan, Rick Snyder's Michigan.  It seems that there is some buyers' remorse setting in.  Gov Rick is polli

Once, in the dark ages before Blogs, I took a six month subscription to The National Review with the idea that maybe something Buckley had a hand in wouldn't be intolerably stupid.  The writing was childish (you get better here, if that's saying anything) and Buckley's only contributions were some sort of "Emeritus Let

I've heard over the years that men tend to become more conservative with age.  I have to admit that I'm a bit more chary of some risky actions - I really don't want to go into just how crazy I was when young, my mother reads this thing (she's already past grey, but...).  Really, short of reducing the chances

This is what a patriot looks like... Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economyand this is what camera hogging partisan hacks look like

Many of you (a few) know that until mid-Oct I lived in Northeast Oregon, and then moved to Northern Michigan - Petoskey, to be exact.  For those of you not from here and know something about geography the title N MI may confuse you with that big old chunk of Michigan north of here also known as the UP - Upper

If you read this maybe you could explain to me why it is that the GOP has  Them Old Time Demographic Blues. “I see that the way we will get the Hispanics and the other groups, the Asians, as part of

Just to get people to think about just how damn difficult this tax and budget business is going to get, I'd like to propose this:Getting the GOP to agree to tax increases on the rich and not gutting social security and medicaid/medicare is like trying to get a Fundamentalist Christian to acknowledge Evolution or one o

The President-elect ran a campaign determined to mine enthusiasm for raising the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 39%.  The GOP has assured us that such behavior will mean economic Armageddon through the ruination of the people who "create" jobs.  Some sort of magic occurs at 35%.I do not and no

If you want to lead a Party on foreign policy there seem to be some pretty specialized qualifications, not easily obtained by just anybody.   You should start out by being an Admiral's son, then you can learn to crash jet airplanes without ratting out your fellow prisoners.  If that seems a bit th

Gov. Christie is running for re-election to be Governor of New Jersey - that would be Republican Governor of that Blue State of New Jersey.  That would mean that he will have to run for that re-election as a Republican governor of a blue state with policies designed to win in a blue state, a northeastern blue state.&nb

Sometimes nice things happen to you, even in Northern Michigan, on Thanksgiving. This picture isn't real good, but I was squatting on the center line of US31 on T-day with my camera phone.