Just Not Enough Time

It seems as if I just don't have enough time to do what I want to do and to sleep to.

Taking care of the quadrupeds and thinking about riding the bike again today. Perhaps not today its already after 3:00 p.m.

Once again my congressman, Zack Space, voted for the Republicans even though he has a (D) after his name. He voted to condemn moveon.org for its Peterus ad. I sent him an email today asking him if he would also condemn Fox for running its piece today by Hunt attacking various unnamed generals as betraying the troops. (Look it up, I don't feel like linking to the scum.)

I am fully confident that he will either not respond, or whine that it is different IOKIFYAAR. It is amazing that the Democrats seem more than willing to cut their most impassioned supporters off at the knees while getting nothing in return. I guess I could sort of grudgingly understand a politician who attacked their supporters in order to gain a larger base of support. Also, I might have a certain admiration for a politician who attacked his base because he thought that his base was simply wrong on the facts. But in the latter case I would hope that politician would step out and be honest.

But in the case of the House and Senate votes to condemn moveon.org that is simply not the case. These votes simply attack a group because they strongly call into question a general's statements. Moveon.org points out that the guy has been consistently wrong and has consistently been wrong in the same way. That is he has always been wrong in a way that benefits Chaney/Bush. Also, that his timing is more than a little suspect.

The votes, while they do not violate the First Amendment certainly show that this democratic congress has little respect for the ideal of a healthy debate on political issues. They keep throwing up (I think that would be the correct phrase) WWII, but of course that analogy simply falls away. There we were in a truly existential conflict (I've desperately wanted to use that phrase for a long time), here we are in a neo-colonial conflict and we are the neo-colonialists. We are in no danger of being over whelmed by radical Muslims. Anyone who really thinks so is simply nuts.

I simply cannot understand where we are in our country at this point. Since the end of WWII we don't seem to be able to argue the real merits of any foreign conflict, those who oppose these foreign entanglements have always been attacked as being unpatriotic and as being actively in league with those are government chooses to fight. As a poster at another web site said wishing for the destruction of our country.

Defination

Terrorist: One who has not yet obtained control of a government we approve of, but blows people up anyway.

Oops

Got to thinking after the last post and realized that once again I did just what people complained about. Here is the web page I was talking about. http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2007/09/rudy-giuliani-ad-in-new-york-times.html

There all better now.

Interesting (to me) stuff

Well I've not been posting, sometimes because I didn't have anything to say [one hand clapping]. Other times because I've just felt too busy.

In the last couple of days I had an interesting experience. I went to a site that had the Giuliani ad opposing the moveon ad attacking Petraus.

I pointed out that their ad was fact free and that Petraus has in fact been saying the same thing about Iraq for several years and been wrong. I was slammed because I provided no links to my claim that Petraus has been wrong. Fair enough. Although no one responded to the fact free part of my email.

I went back and found Petraus' op ed from 2004 in the Washington Post and posted a link to that. Unfortunately, the link wasn't working. That is you couldn't just click on it and it would take you there. I didn't realize that when I posted. However, you could copy it and post it in the browser and it would take you there.

I came back to the thread and they were all high fiving themselves that I had merely directed them to a newspaper article, and the link didn't work. So I tried copying it and pasting it and what do you know, there we were at the (unfortunately for him) enduring words of Petraus from 2004.

Are they just that stupid do you suppose, that they can't copy and post? I don't know. I might have made fun of my not posting a live link, but I would certainly have tried to go back to that location to make sure that factually the article was or wasn't there. Also, before I made fun of someone for citing to an article I would have been damn sure that I knew for sure what I was making fun of. And that I was right.

It was a true "fact free zone." They were so sure they were right (Right?) that they didn't need to check. Of course, their demand for a link was simply BS because they knew or should have known what Petraus had said in the past before they wrote about it. How scary.

Of course the other part of that is that no one has ever responded to my allegation that the Giuliani ad was fact free. In fact, as a sort of aside, the Giuliani ad was kind of creepy. It was saying (as I translate it) that this here guy is our "man on horseback." Essentially, it is saying that we must not criticise a general because he is a general and for no other reason.

That used to be called fascism.

The last

One of the things I do is represent both criminals and just people who are accused of committing a crime.

A recent client is making me crazy. I do not have a problem with people committing crimes, nor do I have a problem with people who commit stupid crimes (after all if there weren't stupid criminals, who would stupid cops arrest, but I digress).

At any rate my client entered a plea to a reduced charge. She was then sentenced to a lock down rehab facility. The reason for the rehab, was that the "crime" (I put crime in quotes because I'm not sure that she was really guilty. However, the deal was so good, what could have happened to her if she went to trial and lost, so bad. That by comparison the deal was quite sweet.)

At any rate she is in a rehab facility for about a month. This is a place where she can wear her own clothes and after a short time have weekend home visits. You need to know that when she was charged, she had no home of her own, her four children were all living with other people, and she had no job. Further, although 30 she had never finished high school. Finally, she reported to me that she was doing a case of beer a day and smoking a lot of dope.

She gets to the rehab and immediately phones me and tells me that she must get out. Both her counselor and I tell her that there is only one other place she can go, that is prison. After a long discussion she seems to get the idea.

A month later I pick up the paper and read that she had climbed the fence and run away. She turned herself in probably less than 24 hours later. We appeared in court on a bond hearing yesterday and she requested that she get out on house arrest. Needless to say the judge was not amused and refused.

She will in all probability now go to prison, in addition there will probably be a new charge of felony escape filed against her and she will probably be convicted of that. I can kind of understand why she escaped, and almost understand why she turned herself in. What I cannot understand is why she seems to think that this entire episode will not nearly automatically result in her going to jail and why she thinks that she will get a different non lock down sentence.