Pooh's Blustery Ale

Odd how the mind wanders about some days...

"If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee."

Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey."
And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it." So he began to climb the tree.

OK... So I really like that strong American ale I made about a month ago. I want to make another batch, but part of the "secret sauce" is the ginormous starter I pitched the beer onto. Last time, I used an unhopped wort from DME to make a big starter. I racked off the resulting unhopped beer and I set aside about a gallon in a vented jar. I poured a little vinegar with live acetobacter in it and now it's turning into malt vinegar. I don't need another gallon of the stuff, so why not make an actual beer instead?!

So today's recipe started out as an excuse to grow some more Wyeast 1272 American Ale II yeast. However, I also got a hanckering to make a pale ale. Thus far I've been making darker beers; nothing really appropriate for summer. So I decided to make an American Pale Ale with a twist. I decided to add some honey for a bit of spice and aroma. This is a recipe that's come straight outta my own oddyknocky. If it doesn't pan out, I have no one to blame but myself!

So today's brew day and I wake up to the sound of the wind blowing. What goes thought my mind? The phrase "Blustery day"; an occupational hazard of being a parent I suppose. So what comes next? Well, it's a blustery day and I'm making a golden bear colored yellow ale with honey in it. This must be "Pooh's Blustery Ale".

From Beersmith...

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.00 gal      
Boil Size: 6.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 5.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 44.5 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount        Item                                      Type         % or IBU      
8.00 lb       Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)            Grain        78.05 %       
0.75 lb       Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)                     Grain        7.32 %        
0.50 lb       Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)              Grain        4.88 %        
0.75 oz       Chinook [13.00 %]  (60 min)               Hops         35.4 IBU      
0.25 oz       Chinook [13.00 %]  (30 min)               Hops         9.1 IBU       
0.25 oz       Willamette [5.50 %]  (0 min)              Hops          -            
0.25 tsp      Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)                Misc             
1.00 lb       Honey (1.0 SRM)                           Sugar        9.76 %
(Added at the end of the boil)                     

1 Pkgs        American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272)       Yeast-Ale                  


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 9.25 lb
----------------------------
Single Infusion, Light Body
Step Time     Name               Description                         Step Temp     
75 min        Mash In            Add 11.56 qt of water at 164.9 F    150.0 F       
10 min        Mash Out           Add 7.40 qt of water at 201.6 F     168.0 F  

I've been writing this as I go. The software predicted the mash temperatures very closely. I like this program. I've been trying out Promash, but I think that I like Beersmith better. For those of you using Linux, Beersmith, like Promash, runs well under Wine.

An addendum: Beersmith also nailed the estimated starting gravity. The estimate was 1.057; I measured 1.056. I can't be sure with all of the foam kicked up in the fermentor, but it also looks like the program nailed the post-boil volume as well.

Wow... That keg's almost empty!

I didn't think that I could go through that much beer so quickly!

I just bottled some of that AB clone using a homemade beer gun; about 2½ 6-packs worth. I picked up the keg and it almost flew out of my hands. I guess it's time to make more!

The beer was well received at last Sunday's meeting of the Maltose Falcons. I used Wyeast 1272 American Ale II which doesn't attenuate as much as the dry English ale yeasts that most people seem to use for a beer like this. I ended up with a beer with more residual sweetness that played well with the hoppiness of all that Chinook.

Have I mentioned how cool this is having beer on tap? OK... I may have.

Beer on tap...

OK... It's only been 24 20 hours, but I really like the way that beer turned out. And did I mention how cool this is having beer on tap?

Kegging time

And by that title, you ought to be able to guess that I took the plunge and bought kegging gear.

I took that AB(-ish) clone and racked it off into the keg. There's roughly 4.5 gallons. I'm playing a trick that I read about to speed things up a bit. I've got the keg on its side and I'm shacking it until it stops loudly taking gas. This exposes more of the beer's surface area to the gas and speeds up absorption. The ideal keg, from a carbonation standpoint, would be one that's very broad and shallow such that a thin film of beer would cover the bottom. In that case, all of the beer would be exposed to the gas. In a real keg, however, the beer at the bottom of the keg is, in essence, protected from the gas by what's on top.

Have I ever mentioned that I'm an engineer?

If I do this right, the beer should be ready to go by Sunday.

Mmmmm... Beer.

That AB clone is turning out nice. I just transfered it to the secondary. The ABV is ~7%, the color is good, and the balance of hops and sweetness is good...



I know... AB isn't really an all-Chinook recipe. But I had a freezer full of the little lovelies from my over achieving plant.

And now, let's get back to the beer

Enough mocking the Church of Warmingtology... Let's talk about beer! (OK... so the COW will have a cow over my CO₂ footprint, but that can't be helped.)

After way too long a pause, I've started another batch of homebrew. This time I'm going for an American Strong Ale (an Arrogant Bastard clone). Tonight, I got the yeast started and I plan to pitch the brew onto that yeast cake this weekend. I brewed up a gallon and a half of unhopped wort to get the wee yeasties going. After I rack off the liquid, I may try my hand at making a malt vinegar. The recipe I'm using is...

• Grain
• 12 lb. two-row malt
• 1.25 lb. Crystal (120L)
• .75 lb DME (I added this when the SG didn't end up as high as I wanted)
• Hops
• 1.5 Oz. Chinook (whole), 60 min.
• 1.0 Oz. Chinook (whole), 30 min.
• 1.0 Oz. Chinook (whole), flame out (I added a wee bit more that was left in the bag.)
• Irish moss at 15 min.
  

EPIC FAIL!

This week, the gurus of glorrible warming were forced to cancel a hearing before a U.S. Senate committee due to "inclement weather"...

UPDATE: The following Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearings have been postponed due to inclement weather this week:

- The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife, will hold a hearing entitled, "Collaborative Solutions to Wildlife and Habitat Management."

- The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a hearing entitled, "Global Warming Impacts, Including Public Health, in the United States."

(Yes, I bolded that last part.)

This makes no sense...

Sure, the Dems have wished for decades to impose universal health care. Each of them since Franklin Roosevelt has recognized that they'd have every American by the short and curlies if they could just pull this off. Obama is no different. He says that he's not giving up on health reform; even after the drubbings the Party has taken in elections where Republicans made health care an, or the, issue. One would think that at some point they'd realize that this is a suicide mission. I guess not.

I really ought to update this more often...

No, I haven't forgotten the password or something stupid like that. I've just been lazy.

I guess the teleprompter called "BS"...

TOTUS' favorite electronic device has finally had enough...

Why do we "cling" to our guns?

So what is it that motivates us clingy gun owners? Why the obsession with guns? This clip from Iran (Be forewarned: This is extremely graphic and disturbing. Do not click the link if you are easily offended.) shows what happens when the government holds a monopoly on violence.

Across Iran, the people have been protesting an obviously fraudulent election. Government thugs, the Basij, have felt free to employ whatever violence they please to put down this growing insurrection. This includes firing on unarmed civilians, such as poor Neda. Reports say that she and her father weren't even involved in the protests, but were merely observing from some distance when she was shot by a sniper. Neda, whose name means "voice" in Farsi, was silenced by her own government.

There are those who will say that "this can never happen here". No, it can't. But why can't it happen here? It can't happen here because our government doesn't hold a monopoly on violence or the means by which one can do violence. More importantly, it knows this and has known it for over 200 years. No American leader would even think of suppressing protests the way that a foreign dictator would. The dictator knows that his subjects are unarmed and can be beaten down in whatever fashion pleases him. In the US, any politician aspiring to similar oppression knows from the start that we aren't unarmed subjects; we're armed citizens. He knows that against even a fraction of the nation's 100,000,000 gun owners, he doesn't stand a chance; thus he wouldn't even try.

Hence the obsession.

But this can change. Gun owners won a major victory in Heller, however that victory can be lost through apathy. If we allow our rights to slip away a little at a time, there may come a time when an American father will have to watch his 16-year old daughter die before his eyes; unable to defend her, fight back, or do anymore than wail in grief for his Neda.

Speaking of beer...

My hops plants have sprouted. The Willamette in the front yard is really a happy camper this year. It's already putting out bines and it's begun looking for places to climb. The Chinook in the back yard has just come up. Pics to follow.

It's either a tribute to my patience...

...or my laziness.

Remember this batch? I brewed it on New Year's Day. Well... I finally got around to bottling it.

Obamanomics...

DOW Loves the Stimulus..Down 258

...-260 as I write this.

Crude analogies come to mind...

...about doing something "just a little", but I'll pass.

Kevin Yamamura, Steve Wiegand and Jim Sanders of the Sacramento Bee characterized the Democrats' planned $14,300,000,000 worth of tax hikes in the current budget scheme as "temporary". There is no such thing as a temporary tax increase. Do you remember the Spanish-American War Tax? That was supposed to be temporary too. It's like a frickin' zombie! It keeps coming back!!

America held hostage: Day 1

His Obammyness hasn't even been in his new crib for 24 hours and the market's taken a big crap. Off 332.13 on Obammyday.

Once more, with feeling

Yup... That last batch went down the drain. I was nothing but brownish-red hoppy water.

So upward and onward!

Or... Bash my head against that wall one more time!

I prefer to be optimistic. I started a new all-grain batch on New Year's Day. This is an Irish Red Ale; this one again, but all-grain instead.

More later.

OK... It's later. (i.e. 24 is over.)

This time I was a lot pickier about the OG of the wort before I sealed things up in the fermenter. The last all-grain attempt gave my an OG of only 1.036 or so. A nice finishing gravity, perhaps, but not a good place to start! This time I was still a little light, but 1.045ish isn't bad. I just racked to the secondary and the SG was 1.008ish. The finishing gravity should have been 1.011 or so, but this should be fine. A little light, but still drinkable. A nice "session" beer.

(Of course, the question really is: Why aren't I getting more efficiency? I think that I'm simply not using enough grain and not giving it enough time in the tun. Easy problems to fix.)

I guess you call this the learning curve

I'm not too happy with this first all-grain batch. I think that I messed up the sparge. The OG was wa-a-a-ay too low. I just racked off to the secondary and measured the SG. Again, way too low. I took a sip and it's pretty watery. It's going to sit in the secondary for several weeks. (It will be that long until I can do anything with it.) We'll see... Maybe it will make a nice light beer.

(Of course the beauty of home brewing is that it's pretty cheap. I won't be out much at all if this goes down the drain.)

OK... Time to try an all-grain brew

I'm trying an all grain recipe for the first time. This is an ale called "Raucous Red".

I've been slowly building up the stuff I need for a mash tun. I've got an Igloo water cooler and I've replaced the valve with a 1/2" ball valve. Inside, I've made a screen from the steel braid off of a 1" water line. The resulting loop looks like it covers the correct amount of the cooler's diameter. Not too close to the walls and not too far away. (I'll post pics later.) I also got a wort chiller today. It's an early birthday present from my lovely wife.

Another 45 minutes and it's time to sparge!

Hops

I'm doing my part to alleviate the hops shortage...



This is a Chinook hops. I also have some Willamette growing, though it's not nearly as prolific as the Chinook.

YES!!!! NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!!

Get Drunk And Vote 4 McCain

Keep an eye on your mivonks, Barak!

I dunno... There's just something about the look in Jesse's eye in this pic...



...that ought to have Barak Obama checking his shorts now and then. I mean there's "change" and then there's "change"!

Webhosting update

It only took a about 5 days, but the host finally got back to me. They still won't 'fess up to a security breach. Their advice was a "stronger" password. Given that the old password was about 12 characters long and made up of several words run together, I don't think that password strength was an issue. I still think they got rooted.

It's been a week and a half...

I just put a sample bottle of the Irish Red Ale in the 'fridge to chill. I'll sample it tomorrow.

I'm getting ticked at my Webhost

No, not the host for this page. Blogspot does a just plain ducky job of hosting blogs. I'm talking about a service I pay real, cashy money for to host a few sites.

The service, which will remain nameless for the time being, seems to have some "issues" with security patches. Google, the fine folks who run the fine site hosting this blog, flagged two of my sites last week as hosting malware. The "malware" was code injected by the host itself as part of a system upgrade. It didn't do anything more than tell them that the files were in the right place on their system. But, since that upgrade was finished a while ago, I decided that the code wasn't really needed anymore. So, to keep the Googlistas happy, I deleted the script. And sure enough, the Googlistas were indeed happy. The sites got a clean bill of health.

...Until today.

The "clean" sites suddenly sprouted real malware. (A virus/worm AVG identifies as Framer.Z) Now, the first thing one ought to suspect is a weak password; but, that wasn't the case here. We were using a nice, strong password on the site. A little Googling turned up several other customers of the unnamed host complaining about virus injections on their sites. Those same complaints pointed to a spotty job of patching their server software. Guys, if you're reading this and something seems familiar, you've got a week until this 5+ year customer wanders off of the reservation and stops recommending your to his clients.

Yeah, it's a Linux system and yeah, to those in the Windows World, Linux seems like rocket science; but really, it's not rocket science. You can patch a Linux system without having to reboot and without any downtime. There's no excuse for allowing someone to run around on your server adding scripts to everything named "index".

I'm waiting for a decent excuse from them as to how their system got rooted and how it will never happen again. Until then, however, I'm browsing the vast multitude of web hosting review sites out there.

Time to bottle!

The somewhat Irish Reddish Ale is ready to bottle. I yielded 44 bottles, including one pint flip-top bottle.

And heeeeeere they are...



(Cue the music!)

Something's fishy...

Hmmm... Something doesn't add up. Pakistan is complaining after a US strike killed 11 Pakistani soldiers:

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has condemned an air strike by Afghanistan-based US forces that Islamabad says killed 11 of its troops.

The incident took place inside Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

The US military confirmed it had used artillery and air strikes after coming under fire from "anti-Afghan" forces.

The incident comes as relations between the US and Pakistan militaries have been hit by mounting tensions.

The soldiers' deaths occurred overnight at a border post in the mountainous Gora Prai region in Mohmand, one of Pakistan's tribal areas, across the border from Afghanistan's Kunar province.

Eight Taleban militants (sic) were also killed in the clashes, a Taleban spokesman said.

...

A spokesman for a pro-Taleban militant group in Pakistan said it had
launched an attack on US and Afghan army troops trying to set up a
border control post.

"We launched an attack on them from several sides and caused serious
harm - and then the US and Nato forces began a series of air strikes,"
said the spokesman, Maulvi Umar.

Now here's what doesn't compute for me: If this is a case of "friendly fire" or plain, old fashioned recklessness, as the Pakistanis would have us believe, then how did eight Taleban terrorists get killed alongside the eleven innocent Pakistanis? In order for the Pakistanis and the Taleban to get killed side by side, they had to have been in close proximity before the shooting started. This, of course, should make us wonder what the Pakistanis were doing while the Taleban terrorists were shooting at the American and Afghan troops. Reloading?

Obamanity

Jonah Goldberg asks: Is Barack Obama the Messiah? A new religion, Obamanity, seems to be rising in our midst.

It looks reddish...

The airlock's quiet so into the carboy it goes. The color looks good, despite my screw-up on the grain. It smells great. It's been ~24 hours since I racked it off and it's settling out nicely already. Maybe I can bottle in a week or two?

Another brew

Yesterday was another brew-day!

I started a batch of what I hope will be a nice Irish red ale. At the moment, I don't know enough to design my own recipes, so I'm using a kit recipe from the local HBS. (They give you a break on the price if you do the leg-work and gather up the fixin's.) The recipe, however, called for two varieties of hops that they don't have in stock. So I had to make some substitutions. I also accidentally substituted a grain variety due to me not paying attention. (Oops!) So, this could be an Irish-ish Red-ish Ale.

At any rate... It sure smells good right now!

I've gone through ¼-to-½ of the first batch. That was an English Pub Ale. It was good after two weeks and it's getting better with each passing day.

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!

If you get cancer from eating carbon nanotubes, then you're doing something wrong! As far as I can remember, I've never seen anyone write about recipes that require nanotubes.

Carbon Nanotubes Could Be Toxic, More Study Recommended

It's inconceivable!

Mmmmm... Beer.

Oh yeah... It was worth the wait. Nice and hoppy, but not too bitter. I've had two so far this afternoon.

Bottled and resting...

OK... So I shoulda posted this earlier.

Bottling day was on April 26th. I yielded 38 bottles. It should have been more, but I didn't top off the fermentor to a full 5 gallons. (I don't know why, but it didn't occur to me until later that I should have done that. Oh well...)

It's been two weeks now. I tried a bottle after a week and the carbonation wasn't as much as it could have. We'll see what it's like now after a full two weeks.

Bottling day this weekend??

The brew is starting to clear up in the secondary. Time to bottle?? Maybe this weekend.

Update: Naaahhh... Not this weekend. Too much happening and the beer isn't quite clear enough yet. Another week or so won't hurt anything.

So far, so good

The wort was a wonderful color. (Yeah... I know; ya shoulda taken pictures, Red.) The yeast got happy. They got real happy after about 12 hours. Now it's time to rack off to the secondary fermentor.

Update: OK... Here's a visual aid...



Unfortunately, there's no HTML tags for smell cuz it smells wonderful!

Taking the plunge...

(OK... I know that I haven't written anything for a while; not here, at least. I've done plenty of popping off over at FreeRepublic.)

For years now I've been interested in getting into home brewing. I don't know why, but it sounded like fun. There's just something appealing about a cooking process where time is an essential ingredient. Well, I've finally taken the plunge. As I write this, my first batch is boiling away on the stove. And so far, watching (mostly) water boil has been fun.

More later.

DON'T TAZE ME, BRO!!

As I write this, Google reports that there are ~195,000 web pages with the phrase "don't taze me bro".

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When you lie down with dogs...

What do you wake up with when you lie down with nutters? Our own Senator DiFi finds out as Code Pinkos waterboard some poor schlep while she walks by. A bunch of anti-war nutjobs waterboarded one of their own as DiFi tried to enter a building. The look on her face is just priceless!

Well Senator... They may be nuts, but they're your nuts!

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Now they think it's their money, even before you've earned it!

In the AP story Internet Tax Moratorium Goes to Bush comes this odd line...

Support for a permanent ban [on Internet taxes] was strong in both the House and Senate, but concerns over the potential long-term impact on state and local governments forced a compromise.

The only "long term impact" is that they aren't being allowed to claim your money before you've made it! It's bad enough that Democrats think that what you make is theirs to play with. Now they want a claim on any future earnings.

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Leave it to Bill to over-engineer a simple task

Use DDT. Duh.

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MSMers get it wrong again

The editors at Al Reuters, gets their title muddled in Reid-Limbaugh spat raises $2.1 million for children. It was $4.2 million. Rush matched the winning bid, as the writer Thomas Ferraro gets correct toward the end of the article. But being as this is on Al Reuters, Ferraro just had to give the last word to one of Dingy Harry's spokesholes.

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Dingy Harry's gotta be p****d

SHOCKING BUT TRUE: MSM get one right!!

Earlier today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said that no MSM outlets other than Fox New were picking up on his eBay auction for the Dingy Harry smear letter. Well, now the story's starting to get some notice.

Over on USAToday.com, the OnPolitics blog mentions the story. What's surprising is that they get it right. They don't state that Rush called anti-war soldiers "phony soldiers". They simply say that he used those words. (And he did, to describe Jesse Macbeth.) Furthermore, the USAToday column gets it right in one of the links on that page. If you look at the page, you will see a link to a pdf of the letter. Note the file name: http://www.usatoday.com/news/pdf/rushlimbaughsmearletter.pdf. This is the original file name on Rush's site. They didn't make a change; they left it properly described as a smear.

Broken clocks perhaps? Let's hope that it's more than that.

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Ubama: Those who wear flag pins are 'phony patriots'

HE SAID THE "P" WORD!!

Not really, but if MediaMatters can play that way...

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ROTFLMAO!

VISTA SUCKS

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PWN3D!

Weigh in here on this weighty issue.

The little dweeb went from monkey humping to monkey dumping faster than a drunken debutante's dress can hit the floor on prom night. And if you're reading this Jonny, that ringing in your ears isn't from eating the stage; it's the sound of your fifteen minutes expiring.

...which kinda takes me to another issue that left me confused. How is it that shows like Survivor or The Simple Life are called "reality TV". MTV got it right when they called one of their series "The Surreal Life". There's nothing real about these shows. If Paris Hilton and Nichole Ritchie really did make a habit out of visiting pig farms, then perhaps the shows might be aptly named. I'm not saying that they can't be entertaining (for someone else). I'm just saying that they're about as real as a Clinton promise.

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'e's just resting'

This blog isn't dead. It's just pinin' for the fjords.

The Death of Blogs

The article makes an observation:

...What tired bloggers are increasingly discovering...is that it's not necessarily the quality of their blog posts that matter. It's matching their quality with frequency...

Which is true. No one wants to read pointless babbling, and trust me, I don't want to write any. (Not that I'm not good at inane babble; but, there's a time and a place for such things. Cheese threads on FreeRepublic are a fine example!) Sometimes, though, there's just not much that catches my fancy to write about. Believe me, I try to ferret out stuff to blog. Mostly, I do so for our NRA Members' Council website. I've found that fresh bloggery attracts new visitors better than anything else. The entire site suffers when I don't update the blog page for a day or two.

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I've got The Waitresses playing in my head

Will Fred Thompson finally stop teasing and end the Dance of the Seven Veils?

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"Vaporware"

Seen on LGF...

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One eBayer's reaction to the eBan...

Hurry up and place your bid on a gen-you-wine, full-auto, assault rock.

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eBay Extends The eMiddle Digit to Gun Owners

Perhaps it's caused by something they put in Pez candies...

The NRA-ILA is reporting that eBay has banned all gun and ammo related listings. The online auction site long ago banned the sale of firearms on their site, but now they are extending that ban to “any firearm part that is required for the firing of a gun.” Their list of newly banned items reads like it was written by a typical "Ewwww... Guns are icky!" liberal. We're still trying to figure out what a "bullet tip" is. Here is the full text of the NRA-ILA release...

Friday, August 03, 2007

Years ago, eBay banned the sale of all complete firearms on its online auction and shopping website. However, they did continue to allow the sale of parts and many accessories. This week, a spokesman for eBay announced that the company would ban the sale of all gun-and-ammunition-related parts and components. The ban is set to begin in mid-August, when eBay will prohibit the listing of “any firearm part that is required for the firing of a gun.” This prohibition will include, according to eBay, “bullet tips, brass casings and shells, barrels, slides, cylinders, magazines, firing pins, trigger assemblies, etc.” In explaining the decision to restrict these items, Matt Halprin, eBay’s Vice President, Trust & Safety, said, “After much consideration, the Trust & Safety policy team – along with our executive leaders at eBay Inc.– have made the decision to further restrict more of these items than federal and state regulations require.” [emphasis added] With this action, eBay sends the message that they don’t want, or appreciate, law-abiding gun owners’ business. By banning these legal products, eBay is adopting the anti-gun movement’s opposition to all legal gun ownership. Fortunately, gun owners and sportsmen have alternatives. The following companies operate websites designed for the buying and selling of firearms and related products: www.GunsAmerica.com; www.AuctionArms.com; and www.GunBroker.com.

First, let's all be clear that eBay belongs to its owners and not me. I'm in no position to dictate to a business how they must operate. If they want to sell sex toys and hash pipes but not guns, that's their call. However, that doesn't mean that we must patronize their business. If you were planning on "eBaying" a few extra gun parts or accessories, or anything outdoors related for that matter, please consider paying your listing fees to one of the fine sites listed above instead. If you were planning on bidding on such items, please check these sites first. First off, you may find a better selection. Secondly, and more importantly, you'll find sites operated by those who show more respect for your 2nd Amendment rights.

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I hate it when that happens

Yeah... I'm always finding other people's stuff in my pockets.

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I suppose that I should be paying attention to the YouTube debate...

...but I'm already fighting off a migraine. I can tolerate only so much idiocy on a good day. I did, though, catch Osbama's "Sure, I'll talk to thugs and murderers" answer. Hillary gave the young pup a good bitchslapping with her answer.

I never thought that I'd ever say anything nice about her.

...My head's getting worse now.

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Bloviating Buffoon

"The Swimmer" reacts to a "Mitchslapping" he and the Dems received the other day...

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The economics of prohibition

Over at The Corner, Jonah Goldberg shares this letter from a reader regarding the Dems' plan to jack up the tax on cigars from 5¢ to $10 stick...

The supposed reason for the tax is to raise money. But naturally when the tax goes from $.05 to $10.00 per cigar, they won't even get the $.05 because people like me will quit. I support my family of six on not alot of money in rural Oklahoma and I smoke usually one a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It's one of life's simple pleasures and I resent that I will have to give it up. I'm an Anglican priest and the only way I would quit would be if the doctor told me to or if I became a Baptist pastor. :) Or of course if my $37 bundle of 25 cigars goes up to $287 a bundle, I will also quit. I know it's such a minor thing compared to the ills of the world, but it truly bothers me.

The minister certainly represents one possible reaction to such a tax. Unfortunately, his reaction will not be the rule. It may not even be typical. This tax, should it become law, will encourage people to get the product they want by whatever means necessary. This would include, our history shows, buying on the black market.

The purpose of the tax, as the minister hints, is not to raise money; it's to stop people from smoking cigars. As such, it is a type of prohibition, just like this nation's flirtation with the prohibition of alcohol. All that was accomplished by alcohol prohibition was the rise of organized crime. This new prohibition will repeat that history. Those who choose to continue smoking, will be willing to pay less than $10 a cigar for their pleasure. All a bootlegger needs to do to sell his product is undercut the tax. He could sell that $2 cigar for $5 and call it "half priced". The old 5¢ tax goes uncollected, as does the new $10 tax, and the extra $3 goes into a smuggler's pocket.

Your tax dollars at work?

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Apropos of nothing...

I just love the "Preparing to background save" BS from MS Word. Background save... Kinda sounds like it's going to do that in the background, huh? Like it means that the program won't come to a screeching halt during the process? Like it won't sit there for a few moments like a 15-year old geek with taped glasses staring at a girl in a bikini? Like it will let you continue to work while this task happens in the background?

I wonder if it's done yet.

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ScribeFire is a blogging add-on for Firefox. This makes blogging very convenient. The account wizard makes adding multiple accounts easy. If you blog under more than one account, this could save you the trouble of logging on and off of accounts. See the little "Powered by..." link below for more details.

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...using a nifty little blogging extension for Firefox.

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CYA in the WOD

Capt. Ed has a pretty good summary of yet another drug raid gone bad.This time, our gallant Drug Warriors gunned down a 92 year old woman in Atlanta. Kathryn Johnson was the unfortunate homeowner who got to see her tax dollars at work. Police kicked in the woman's door after dark last night. She, however, didn't go without a fight. Apparently, Mrs. Johnson believed that she was being robbed. She cleared leather first and hit three officers before they killed her. Now the Atlanta PD sounds like Jon Lovitz as they search for a believable story. And as of yet, no drugs have been found in the house.

The story keeps changing on where and how the officers were hit. One story has them approaching the house, while another has them inside after their "dynamic entry". (That's what they call it when they kick you door in looking for drugs that you don't have.) Capt. Ed points out that blood spatter evidence should tell us which story is correct. (Betcha those Atlanta PD boys are hating the CSI franchise right about now!)

This incident is a little different than the usual War On Drugs nightmare. This time, the cops didn't stumble into the wrong house after misreading the warrant. They had the right address; but they were a bit too trusting of their informant.

So what does this have to do with you? Have you got anyone who's mad at you; nursing a grudge? Imagine the fun that would be had by giving your name to the local Drug Warriors! If all they need to get the ball rolling is an anonymous tip, then what's to stop someone from having a little fun at your expense?

...Especially when that "fun" might end in gunfire.

Vacation's over and the poke's run out

Well... I'm back on the mainland. It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last long enough. We miss the poke already. The Big Save in Koloa has a great selection of different styles of poke. They were all ~$5.50 per pound. You can't get the ahi alone for that around here! I saw ahi for $16.00 per pound the other day. And we usually get sticker shock going the other way around; people complain about Hawaiian prices.

More on Kaua'i

Most people think of this island as having three sides: North, South, and East. But what happened to West?! The West side of the island is mostly the Na Pali. Na Pali means "the cliffs" in Hawaiian. This is a vast roadless area dominated by cliffs that drop into the sea. This is a park now, but at one time hundreds, if not thousands, of Kauaiians lived in the area's hanging valleys. These were accessible only by sea and made for good hidey-holes in times of trouble. And since the vertical surfaces of the cliffs continue underwater, the fishing's probably pretty good. (Fish like vertical surfaces.)

We're staying on the South side of the island at Po'ipu. Princeville, on the North side, has a more hoitytoity selection of resorts, and it's much closer to the popular Hanalei Valley; but, we prefer the Po'ipu area as it's more centrally located. It's close to Lihue and pretty much equidistant from Waimea canyon and Hanalei. Also, the State beach in Po'ipu is one of the best snorkeling spots on the island, if not the best. Another attraction here later is in the year is return of the Humpback Whales to these waters. We saw quite a few last year, and a few scouts have already been spotted this week.

Hey Red! Didn't you describe the island as having three sides? What about inside and out; or inland and along the shore, to be more precise. Technically speaking, this would be another way to view the island, but the interior of the island is dominated by Mt. Wai'ale'ale. The mountain is the wettest spot on earth, receiving over 600 inches of rain each year. The interior is solid, roadless rain forest, so most people live along the shoreline.

More to follow later. Now we're off to find the black sand beach near the mouth of Waimea Canyon.

Aloha, baby!

Coming at you from Hawai'i this week! (I'm brashly assuming that "you" are actually reading this and that I'm not just talking to myself.) The Redcloak family is on the "Garden Isle" of Kaua'i. This is our third trip to this island in the last three years. More to come later; we're off to a lu'au.

Shower on!

And for all these years, I thought that this gem had been deleted. I'm wiping away the tears as I write this!

Shouts to da Mods for bringing this one back from the dead!!

More Pelosi fallout

The Varmint over at Attack Cartoons.com faces an interesting problem: How does one caricature a caricature?

"A banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors..."

Ronald Reagan's 1975 speech to CPAC:As valid today as ever.

Fun with Firefox

I'm trying out a new extension for blogging. I was using Blog This!, but there isn't a version for Firefox 2.0 just yet. This was posted using Deepest Sender. Thus far, it looks like it has all of the features I like to see.

We'll see what happens when I hit the "Post" button!

...OK, that wasn't so smooth, but it's not the developer's fault. The nice people at Blogger are doing their part to fight spam blogs. No one wants spam blogs, so this is okey-dokey by me!

About last night...

I wrote this late last night (or early this morning!) on FR...

I said on several threads before Tuesday that poll numbers suggested that the Dems were screwed. Their margin in the generic polls wasn't great enough, I thought, to give them control of either house. However, I'm standing by my assessment: They're screwed.

Early polls (August/September) hinted at a bloodbath this year. That didn't happen. The Dems control Congress by the skin of their teeth. (And as I write this, the Senate is iffy.) This is actually worse for them than falling short. Their far-left, base supporters are going to be claiming responsibility for the Dems' win and they are going to expect results for their effort. This trap of high expectations is going to be their undoing.

The first, second, and third items on the Moonbat agenda are impeachment, impeachment, and impeachment. This is something that Reid and Pelosi cannot deliver and cannot afford not to deliver. They face the same dilemma with the next agenda item: halting the War on Islamofascism.

The Democrat majority in both houses is not monolithic. There are a number of Blue Dogs in both houses and there's no guarantee that they'll go along with a Moonbat temper tantrum. A drive for articles of impeachment will look to the American People like a childish outburst. The Blue Dogs know this and won't want to get caught up in the backlash that's sure to follow. It cost us in the '90s and it will cost them now.

Pelosi's problem is how to find a way to persuade her most extreme supporters that impeachment is a bad idea. They are utterly convinced that the entire country thinks and feels just like they do. Any attempt to avoid impeachment will be seen as treasonous by them. I don't think that Pelosi can dodge this one. Either she pisses off her base, and this is a deal breaker with them, or she chases the Blue Dogs into George Bush's waiting arms.

The Blue Dogs also support the war effort. One member of the Democrat caucus in particular, while he may not qualify as a Blue Dog, certainly has an azure tinge and bruising around his throat: Joe Lieberman. Joe will probably view is re-election as a referendum on the war; and rightly so since his Democrat opponent made this the centerpiece of his campaign. The Moonbats also saw Joe's defeat in the primary as a sign of their own greatness. Seeing him in the Senate will piss them off; seeing him nixing any effort to halt the war will really piss them off! But what can Reid do? The knife wounds in Joe's back haven't healed yet. If there's a one seat margin in the Senate, then Reid needs to plant some wet one's on Joe's backside; especially on this issue.

And therein lies Reid's problem: It's a real pain the arse trying to hold together a fractious coalition. This is something that we understand. (And on a side note, loosing DeWine and Chaffee will be a blessing in the long run.) Any one Senator can become a king maker when the majority leader doesn't have the votes to spare. If halting the war comes up early, and it will, and if Reid caves in to Lieberman, and he will, then Reid will spend the next two years kissing blue butts. (Welcome to our world Harry!)

The Democrats are between a rock and a hard place. They will either split their caucus and lose their razor thin majority or they will have to cross their base. The Moonbat base has spent the last six years fuming over 2000. They want revenge and they want it now. "Go along to get along" is something that simply will not make sense to them. They will explode with rage if they don't get what they see as their rightful due. Nothing short of heads on pikes will satisfy them; talk and rhetoric won't do the job. But what satiates the Moonbats will horrify the Blue Dogs. What to do, what to do...

The Dems are screwed.

...and today, it sounds like Pelosi isn't backing away from the rabid Moonbats. Will she pick Moonbats over Blue Dogs?

Poor little neglected blog...

Where have I been? Everywhere but here, it would seem. You'd think that I'd have been venting my spleen here more often. I've been off offending sensibilities over at FreeRepublic, although I damn near got banned one night. (I thought that it was a funny remark. Jim didn't.)

Resistance is futile...

I was going to post this to a FreeRepublic thread on illegal immigration and assimilation; but, it got pulled while I was composing my brilliant thoughts. Who knows... Perhaps my insights could have saved the thread from the Mod's axe...

---

Things are not as bad as some people think. I've long noticed that no matter how unassimilated some Mexican immigrants are, their children and grandchildren are being assimilated into our culture. (Insert your favorite Borg warning here!) I just had an example of that not 20 minutes ago.

I work in a mostly Latino neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley and get my hair cut at a local shop. The owner is originally from Mexico. The girl who cuts my hair is Latina, but she was born and raised here. The shop usually has the TV on one of the Spanish language stations. This should set the scene for you.

A customer walked in with her little boy. She asked a question in Spanish of the girl cutting my hair, who answered in Spanish. Her little boy noticed something on the wall and asked his mother about it, in English. She responded to her son in English. A few minutes later, as I was paying my bill, the little boy walked up to me and asked ¿Como estás?. (I have dark hair and an olive complexion, so I assume that he mistook me for a Latino.) How is this a good sign, you ask? The little boy, while fluent in Spanish, obviously speaks English at home. English is his primary language.

Culture is something one learns and it's determined by language, not ethnicity. The culture that child is learning is ours; not Mexico's. His mother may be trying to cling to the culture of the "Old Country", but he is turning into an American. Resistance Is Futile.

All we are saying....

...is give Peeps a chance.

Shotgungate

Re: The hunting accident involving Dick Cheney

WHO CARES?!?

It was a minor hunting accident. To hear these inside-the-beltway, metrosexual bedwetters in the media carry on, you'd think that Cheney was hunting GOP donors rather than quail.

The next time I get peppered with shot during the dove season, should I alert the DC media? Or should I piss 'em off by letting someone call the local broadsheet?

Improved Google News

The Google News page has improved. Users now have the ability to easily customize their page to add their own search terms. Cool.

Zogby finally flips out

Pollster John Zogby still insists that he had the election right as his company performs "damage control" in the wake of his ridiculous predictions. Zogby predicted a Kerry win with 311 EC votes. So what went wrong? How is Zogby International explaining the error? Simple: It wasn't an error; it was rightwing fraud.

According to Zogby International, "We have received thousands of letters and phone calls regarding irregularities - many of which center on early exit polling results that were uncharacteristically inaccurate in several battleground states; questionable practices at polling stations that may have resulted in votes not being counted accurately; and in Ohio, as with other swing states, the automated Diebold machines were particularly disturbing because they offered no voting receipts".

In other words: IT'S BUSH'S FAULT!!

John, lighten up on the Kool-aid!

It's not PEST, but...

...it's something close!

I've been dragging since the election. I haven't posted a bloody thing here and I've done precious little over at our NRA-MC blog. I haven't done much more than crack jokes on FreeRepublic. I feel like I'm overloaded with tryptophan after a huge, Thanksgiving meal.

Maybe I had one too many servings of Democrat angst!

I've been content to sit back and watch the Dems implode. Comment hasn't been necessary; nor have they required any pushing to go off the deep end. Nothing to do but crash with a bowl of popcorn and watch the fur fly.

A milestone

Wow... I've had 2000 hits to this blog.

In the "nice to know" column...

It's nice to know that someone out there is using the Blogger nom de plume pajamapundit.

Drugs from Canada, eh

Are you confused about this talk of "allowing re-importation" of drugs from Canada? So am I. Good thing for all of us that someone slightly less lazy and slightly more interested than me decided to look into the Canadian drug thing. (Actually, Jeff at ShapeOfDays.com was only energetic and interested enough to ask others to "spoon feed" the answers to him; more than I can say for myself!)

A long story made short:If you suspected that it's a stOOpid idea, your suspicions prove correct. It is a stOOpid idea. While this risky scheme, to borrow a phrase from Algore, might, might, lower costs of name brand drugs by 1% over the next decade, H.R. 2427 could also increase the cost of non-imported drugs by $1 billion in the first year alone. StOOpid!!

(Did I over use "stOOpid" in this post? Perhaps.)

Mo' Haileygate

Staci D. Kramer at Wired.com news reports that Prof. Hailey is being pursued by mob of bloggers. Curiously, there's no mention of the Photoshop files the Prof. left on the school server.

AP: Iran Converts Uranium Into Gas

AP: Iran Converts Uranium Into [Uranium Hexafluoride] Gas

Not good.

bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'

Michelle Malkin is annoyed at the AP's description of Dick Cheney's performance at the debate as having a "cold efficiency". One must remember, however, that "Revenge is a dish that is best served cold".

The most memorable post-debate line

The award goes to Dennis Miller who said that Edwards' handlers "wisely chose to number his body parts so they could put him back together after Cheney finished slicing and dicing him".

The Bushies and the Swifties

Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy wonders about connections between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat veterans For Truth ads. He cites this exchange between George Bush and Bill O'Reilly...

O'REILLY: You didn't know anything about the Swift Boat ads before they went on the air, did you?

BUSH: No. I didn't.

O'REILLY: Did Karl Rove know anything about it?

BUSH: I don't think so. In other words, you're asking if anybody coordinated this in our campaign?

O'REILLY: No, whether they'd give you a heads up they were going to do it.

BUSH: Not to my knowledge.

...and then describes Pres. Bush as looking "awfully sick to his stomach".

I don't see anything sinister here. So he didn't say "Absolutely not!!"; he knows better than to vouch for the actions of people he can't watch 24/7. When you don't know the answer to a question, the correct response is "I don't know". The stupid response is to speak of things you cannot know about. Bush knows better.

Ya gotta love this. (Unless you work at CBS.)

The remodeled romper room

No, your monitor isn't broken; I made some changes. I was getting bored with the old template.

More on "Haileygate"...

Wizbang reports that the Hailey report may have been done at the request of Utah State University. There are lots of interesting links on the Wizbang page. The report site is down and University authorities are investigating the situation.

The Rathergate saga won't go away

This is just too funny!

In the ongoing Ra^thergate melodrama, another defender has stepped forward to safeguard Dan's virtue. This knight in shining armor claims to have proof that the See-BS memos are, in fact, the product of a typewriter. However, Wizbang has got the goods on him!

David Hailey of Utah State had rallied the hopes of Dan's peeps at the Boston Globe with his analysis of the infamous memos. But he made a mistake or two. The first was failing to look at his published handywork at high magnification. It becomes obvious that characters were added to his "typewriter" samples with Photoshop. Why would one say that Photoshop was used? That leads us to his second mistake: Leaving his Photoshop files in a public folder on the university server. Word is that the Boston Globe has stopped returning Hailey's phone calls.

Where do you want to be taken today?

Oh joy: JPEG exploit could beat antivirus software. Thanks Bill.

No, I didn't feel it

...But I imagine that the folks at the Parkfield earthquake observatory are quite excited about today's quake. Preliminary magnitude is 5.9.

The Pajamhadeen

As a matter of fact, I am in my pajamas.

Well... Let's try to look on the bright side of this whole Ra^thergate disaster.

It's kinda neat to know that MS Word can so faithfully reproduce documents across platforms and defaults printers. I remember back when changing the default printer on a document would wreak havoc on the formatting. This made working on a document from multiple networked workstations difficult. Changing workstations might mean changing printers. The word processing program would then change the fonts to match the new default printer and scatter your formatting to the winds. Those days are long gone. Now, you can create a document on Word and know that when you send the file to someone else, they will see the formatting just as you intended.

This is pretty cool... Unless you're trying to forge a document that was supposedly written on a typewriter 30 years ago!

What's the font size, Kenneth?!?

I have been thinking for the last three days about what to write on the passing of Ronald Reagan. He was the first President I had the priviledge of voting for in 1984. (I missed being able to vote for him in 1980 by a little over 1 year.) He set into motion a chain of events in this nation that has yet to play out. The "Reagan Revolution" continues to this day.

In thinking about what Reagan did during his Presidency, I began to think about how history would have changed without him. And when I began thinking about what the world would have been like, I realized that I had already seen this movie: Red Dawn. Red Dawn is an alternative history where the plot's "what if" is "what if Ronald Reagan had never been President".

Without Reagan, Jimmy Carter is re-elected in 1980. Abroad, Carter continues his anemic response to Soviet aggression. At home, the Malaise continues; there is no economic boom in the 80s and 90s. Where Reagan aided the Afghan people in their struggle against Soviet tyranny, Carter does nothing more than his boycott of the Olympic games. Nicaragua stays under Soviet control. Grenada becomes even more firmly entrenched as a Soviet satellite. Communist rebels in El Salvador succeed. Honduras falls. Costa Rica falls. Panama falls. Communist revolutions spread through South America like a cancer. Mexico begins to bend under the pressure of refugees fleeing north.

Without Reagan, there is no SDI. Without SDI, the Soviet Union is never pushed to the breaking point. Eastern Europe stays in Soviet hands. There is no Glastnost. Without Reagan's aid to the Afghans, the Soviets hang on and defeat the Mujahadeen. They are left in a position to threaten Pakistan. If they succeed, they can threaten the West's oil supplies in a way that Saddam could only dream of.

Without Reagan, there is no tax cut. The top tax rate stays ridiculously high and the boom of the 80s and 90s never happens. Economies all over the world depended on the Reagan boom to get started. From Asia to Europe, economies would have stagnated. There would be no Internet and thus no "eCommerce". Without Reaganomics, the economies of the West would have been weakend and thus more vulnerable to Soviet aggression.

In short, all of the set-up from the opening minute of Red Dawn would have had a chance to come true. America's allies would have dwindled, one by one, until we would have been left standing alone. And that weakness would have invited aggression from the USSR. Reagan's policies of strength detered aggression and lead to peace.

In 1980, freedom and democracy were on the decline. Today, those ideas are spreading. America is leading that advance rather than a retreat into darkness. The world is getting better; not worse.

Thank God for Ronald Reagan.

Some of the links on this blog may lead to sites that require you to register before you can view the content. I try to avoid that; however, if the box I'm using has a cookie set for that site, I may not realize that I'm logged on to such a site. If you do not wish to register, and thus hand over a bunch of personal information, head over to BugMeNot.com. BugMeNot is a database of usernames and passwords for sites such as the LA Times, the NY Times, and the Washington Post. You can thus view the content without having to waste time telling the site that your real name is "Dona Juana Bespammed", you're a female born in 1905, and you live in the 90210 ZIP code.

I've added a blog to the San Fernando Valley NRA Members' Council web page. Click the "news" link on the sidebar menu. (Yes, I'm that site's webmaster.)

WAFFLES

This morning on Fox, raw footage of Marines in Fallujah was being shown. These Marines had taken over an abandonded house and were drawing fire while spotting targets for air support and other units. What impressed me was the utter calm these boys possessed. They were probably outnumbered by the goblins darting around outside, but you couldn't tell by looking at them. They were relaxed, even joking, as they methodically reinforced their position and hunted out targets. The SAW gunner looked like his only concern was hearing his squad leader's commands over the din coming through the open door in front of him. These "boys" are well trained and they know it. The orcs outside didn't stand a chance.

I was poking around on Google looking up the address that "Citi-online" email links to . (It points the victim to a redirect service in Moscow.) While I was looking, I found the Antiphishing.org website. Think of this as Snopes for email scams.

If you have any doubts about an email you've received, check here. You may not find the exact scam, but you'll likely see something similar. Many phishing scams are very well done, despite the poor Engrish. These Citi-bank scams send you to Citi-bank's site but, there's a pop-up window over the top that isn't from Citi-bank; the "litlle winddow". I had another a few days ago that was a very well done replica of a Paypal page (Similar to this scam.) on a Korean webserver. That one, as a finishing touch, sends the victim off to the Paypal.com 404 page after grabbing the info. In short, be suspicious of what comes to your inbox!

This has got to be the funniest scam email I've ever received...

_Dear Citi-bank Cardholder,



This Email was sentt by_the_ _Citibank serevr to verify _your_ E_MAIL adrress.

You must complete this process by clicking on_the__link beloww and entering

in the litlle winddow your Citi_Bank _Debit card_number and PIN that

_you_use on local_Atm_Machine. This_is _done_ for_your protection becaurse some of our

members members have access to their _e-mail_ adderss_ and we must verify it.



http://citi-bank-online.org/?385586164247



To verify your_ EMAIL_ addres_ and akcess _your_ _citibank

account, klick on__the_link beloww.

I've sure that it was much more convincing in the original Russian.

Talk radio is sorta like a primordial blog. Well, I did some primordial blogging this afternoon. I was a caller on the John & Ken Show at the end of the 5 o'clock hour.

The subject was President Bush whacking California's share of Federal aid for housing illegal aliens in the prison system. John was, predictably, fit to be tied at the development. I called to point out that there's really no political reason for Bush to go out of his way to spend money on the Golden State. We thumbed our noses at him "big time" in 2000. As I recall, he lost by roughly 1 million votes. He's gonna lose again this year. Spending Federal dollars on our prison system isn't going to win him any Electoral College votes out here. That money is going to go to "Red" States; not this bright Blue one!

Hey! What's this? Hmmm... It looks like a "blog".

Kinda looks familiar, now that I think about it...

...like I've seen it someplace before...

Oh... It's my blog.

Never mind.