Too Much Time on My Hands

Do you think there’s a reason why I have to read this story on the BBC
rather than finding it on Fox News (well, it might have been on Fox news, but I refuse to watch anything that tries to delude readers into believing that right- wing propoganda is really “fair and balanced) or any other main-stream news channels?

Actually, I probably wouldn’t have found it at all, but I’ve been subscribed to
alt.muslim for quite awhile as an antidote to the anti-Muslim stance of much of the news I ‘m forced to rely on for lack of better political sources.

While I’m not surprised that Secretary Rumsfeld has declined to criticize Evangelical Christian Lieutenant-General William G Boykin for labeling Allah an “Idol,” I am a little surprised that the chair of the U.S. Joint Chief of Staffs would argue that “there is a very wide grey area on what the rules permit.” Guess there must be a much wider grey area for generals than there is for lesser officers, considering that I’ve seen letters of reprimand and worse for officers caught wearing uniforms at anti-war rallies during the Vietnam era.

I was more surprised that I hadn’t found at least a mention of this truly ironic, in a post-modern, literary sense, of course, story about ex-President Bush’s award of the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service to anti-war critic Democrat Ted Kennedy at my favorite political blog (yep, you-guessed-it) Open Source Politics.

Stormy Monday Blues

The weather has been so depressing here today, even for the Northwest, that the best I can do for today is to let you know that I posted a new article yesterday at Open Source Politics, and urge you to continue to read the article and other fine articles there.

They’ve issued local stream flood warnings here, but unless sea level rises by nearly 1,200 feet I’m not in any real danger. Still, it was raining so hard that even after putting on my rain hat and rain jacket I wasn’t willing to dash the 100 yards to the mailbox out of fear that the letters would disintegrate before I could get them in the mailbox.

In fact, the weather was so awful today that I spent the morning entering VISA charges, cash withdrawals, and generally balancing my checkbook rather than going for my usual morning walk. I had trouble merely getting the dog to go outside and relieve himself. Skye turned back, lowered his head sadly, and looked at me like I was crazy every time I tried to get him to go outside.

Since I was already depressed, I figured that I might spend some time online looking up information on Superfund sites, which, inevitably, led me to look up information on the Superfund site here in Ruston, a toxic brew of arsenic and lead that keeps my daughter from growing vegetables in her yard, and makes me wonder if I should attempt to grow my own garden here without more facts.

It’s good reading when you’re depressed because it seems people are more interested in affixing blame than attempting to clean up the mess. Needless to say, there’s more than enough blame to go around, and not nearly enough money to remedy pollution that has already been identified.

UPDATE: No wonder I was down today. Today set the record for the most rain EVER in Seattle, and it rains a lot in Seattle. As of 6:30 p.m. there was 3.7 inches of rain today in Seattle, and Gig Harbor, right across the Tacoma Narrows, got over 6.6 inches. I figure we had to be somewhere in between the two, though apparently there’s no official measurement taken in this particular area. Let me just say that there was TOO MUCH rain.