Happy Holydays

I believe in Christ, the man and the god, that dwells within in us all, but I don't believe in hate, though hate is easy to be found...

Sometimes it is harder to find the love, it takes a little bit more work to see the love that surrounds us, that love is really the only thing that makes life worth living.

Sometimes, if we are alone, it is easy to think that there is no love, but that is only a filter which one can, with practice, take off.

To experience love, we must first give love, for when you practice what you want, it will find its way to you.

So I wish for you, my readers and the others in my life, a life full of the practice of giving love, so that it may find you.

Christmas is upon us

well, getting close certainly...

but for us last night was Secret Santa Night, here in Sonoma County, they do a fundraiser that helps buy gifts for those in need, small gifts, to large, sometimes just a coat or gas card to help someone out, all the way to paying the rent for a month.

This year we decided to take our normal Christmas budget and share half of it with the Secret Santa Fund.

We went to a local merchant and picked five hearts from the giving basket, bought gifts, and wrapped them back up and took them back to the merchant.

I get a little depressed (that we can't fill a tree, full of gifts for them), but Cowboy assures me that, when you have very little, getting gifts like this means so much.

We also do this thing on Christmas morning, where we go and feed the hungry, and I get depressed then as well, about simple things that we take for granted, that are so much appreciated by those in need...

Like a fresh orange, instead of one that has been pulled off the shelves of a grocery store.

After we get done doing these things, I feel sad, that I have not been more grateful for all that I have, for all that I have, has not been more appreciated.

and I count my blessings

here it goes again

New Cooking Site

I've finished updating my new cooking blog (finally), the link has been changed, now you can easily print out any recipes that you might like.

Just click on "click 2 print" and a word document will open up and you may just print it from your computer

the walls will fall

brick by brick, little by little...

sure some one will go out and try to mortar pieces back on and they might succeed for awhile, they might add reinforcements, and other things to hold those walls up, but eventually the wall will fall, for its foundation is not built on anything secure.

love wins out in the end...

try as you will, hate never keeps things buried... it might seem for awhile, for years even, maybe even a few decades, but love, justice and equality always wins in the end...

Women's rights, interracial marriage, gay rights, the freedom to be who you are inside...

Nothing stops love, nothing, not religion, not the state, not even death.

At times it may seem dormant, but what is love always rises to the grow in the sun.

For no matter how long you might fight it, eventually you will come to see that there is nothing wrong with love, even if you don't understand it.

Eventually you will get tired of summoning hate to fight love, eventually you will find that concentrating on hate to fight love cheapens your own love.

Eventually you will see that love is not threatening.

work wankers

I usually don't like talking about work, but sometimes it just gets to me... so here goes... the names have been changed to protect the idiots...

~
So I'm sitting at my desk talking to a customer, the phone rings, as we have other people working here and answering machines on each line I let it ring, it rings once or twice, I'm not paying that much attention.

So after the customer leaves, Smarty (not his real name) comes in and asks who was on the phone. I reply "I don't know, I didn't answer it"

Smarty then says "Was it Snod" (not his real name). I reply " I don't know, I didn't answer it"

Smarty then says, "Well who was it" I reply "I don't know, I didn't answer the phone. Ask the person who did"

Smarty then says, "Well you had to answer it because I didn't". I reply "Well, I didn't answer the phone, so I don't know who was on it. Ask somebody else!"
(actually I think it was a cell phone that got dropped)
~
Snod (not his real name) comes into my office and asks " Why is that person parking there" (a parking spot in front of the office) " I reply " Probably because it is a parking spot"

~
These are the kinds of things that happen to me, so I end up saying to myself, "I need to get a different job".

The Sun will come up tomorrow

though the yes vote on Prop 8 is depressing... we are still are on way back to the Grand thing That America can be...

Tradition

It's always been that way...

That is one of the arguments that is used against same-sex marriage.

So lets talk a little about tradition

Some traditions are good they provide a sense of community, but some traditions are bad, they promote hatred, and slavery. and a rigidness of society.

Some traditions, that have changed in the last 150 years, the right of America's women to vote (1920), England (1928), Australian women of color (1968), Switzerland, (1959) the right of married women to own property in their own name (France 1965)

In the United States of America the Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified. We also are the only developed Country to not have ratified the United Nations International Bill of Rights.

Slavery

Importation of slaves was outlawed in the United States in 1808, though slavery itself was not outlawed until 1861, China (1910) England (1807), The United Nations (1948)

It is estimated, that 27 million people still live as slaves today.

In Mauritania alone, it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved, many of them used as bonded labor. Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.

In Niger, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerian study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population.

Pygmies, the people of Central Africa's rain forest, live in servitude to the Bantus.

Some tribal sheiks in Iraq still keep blacks, called Abd, which means servant or slave in Arabic, as slaves.

Child slavery has commonly been used in the production of cash crops and mining.

According to the U.S. Department of State, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 'the worst forms of child labor' in 2002.

In November 2006, the International Labor Organization announced it will be seeking "to prosecute members of the ruling Myanmar junta for crimes against humanity" over the continuous forced labor of its citizens by the military at the International Court of Justice.

According to the International Labor Organization, an estimated 800,000 people are subject to forced labor in Myanmar.

The Ecowas Court of Justice is hearing the case of Hadijatou Mani in late 2008, where Ms. Mani hopes to compel the government of Niger to end slavery in its jurisdiction. Cases brought by her in local courts have failed so far.

So if you use tradition as for why we should not use allow gay marriage, you are ignoring the FACT that since the begining of time, traditions change as we grow and learn.

No on Hate

Well, it seems like Proposition 8, the “Hate” proposition is passing…

Though it is a defeat for individual rights, I hope that in the long run, it will be someting that end up before the Supreme Court.

And though we all hope that “People” (as in the majority) might be progressive and vote for individual rights, the reality of where we are is that they won’t, it will have to be up to the courts to provide justice.

And should this issue go before the Supreme Court, and presented as the rights of a minority, being trampled on by the fears/hate of the majority, this law and laws like it in all the states will be struck down, and that will be for the benefit of all the people of the United States rather than the people of one state, and so I believe that a greater good will come out of this.

- update -

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court today urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes.

The petition charges that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone by eliminating a fundamental right from just one group – lesbian and gay Californians. Proposition 8 also improperly attempts to prevent the courts from exercising their essential constitutional role of protecting the equal protection rights of minorities.

According to the California Constitution, such radical changes to the organizing principles of state government cannot be made by simple majority vote through the initiative process, but instead must, at a minimum, go through the state legislature first.

The California Constitution itself sets out two ways to alter the document that sets the most basic rules about how state government works. Through the initiative process, voters can make relatively small changes to the constitution. But any measure that would change the underlying principles of the constitution must first be approved by the legislature before being submitted to the voters. That didn’t happen with Proposition 8, and that’s why it’s invalid.

“If the voters approved an initiative that took the right to free speech away from women, but not from men, everyone would agree that such a measure conflicts with the basic ideals of equality enshrined in our constitution. Proposition 8 suffers from the same flaw – it removes a protected constitutional right – here, the right to marry – not from all Californians, but just from one group of us,” said Jenny Pizer, a staff attorney with Lambda Legal. “That’s too big a change in the principles of our constitution to be made just by a bare majority of voters.”

“A major purpose of the constitution is to protect minorities from majorities. Because changing that principle is a fundamental change to the organizing principles of the constitution itself, only the legislature can initiate such revisions to the constitution,” added Elizabeth Gill, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.

The lawsuit was filed today in the California Supreme Court on behalf of Equality California and 6 same-sex couples who did not marry before Tuesday’s election but would like to be able to marry now.

The groups filed a writ petition in the California Supreme Court before the elections presenting similar arguments because they believed the initiative should not have appeared on the ballot, but the court dismissed that petition without addressing its merits. That earlier order is not precedent here.

“Historically, courts are reluctant to get involved in disputes if they can avoid doing so,” said Shannon Minter, Legal Director of NCLR. “It is not uncommon for the court to wait to see what happens at the polls before considering these legal arguments. However, now that Prop 8 may pass, the courts will have to weigh in and we believe they will agree that Prop 8 should never have been on the ballot in the first place.”

This would not be the first time the court has struck down an improper voter initiative. In 1990, the court stuck down an initiative that would have added a provision to the California Constitution stating that the “Constitution shall not be construed by the courts to afford greater rights to criminal defendants than those afforded by the Constitution of the United States.” That measure was invalid because it improperly attempted to strip California’s courts of their role as independent interpreters of the state’s constitution.

a new day dawns

and the reign of George the IV is over...

We hope for a return to Democracy, and all the things that America used to stand for.

I hope that Obama wins, that we can return to a discussion, a dialogue of what America needs. That we learn to reach out and find our common ground.

I hope the tradition of America respecting the rights of the individual allows Proposition 8 - the "Hate" Proposition to go down in defeat.

But if we lose that one, we will win in the end, for when Obama wins, and he gets to appoint a Supreme court Justice or two, it is my belief that they will not allow the majority to take away the rights of the few.

With all the outrage going on let us look at the definition of Marriage from Wikipedia

If you read all that, you might note that some people wish to add or make dominate, their own religious views, and strike out anything that does not conform to their own views.

I guess at the end of it all, despite what anyone might say, that though the bulk of marriage is between a man and a woman (and that would be so, because most people are straight) that Marriage is fluid, and reflects the values of the society which wherein they are based.

And that most of the time marriage had been used to confer ownership of the female by the male.

People tend to forget that in the Western World, we no longer think of women as property, and that is a redefinition of marriage.

Now that the Supreme Court of California has said that;

" These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage.

As past cases establish, the substantive right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own — and, if the couple chooses, to raise children within that family — constitutes a vitally important attribute of the fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy that the California Constitution secures to all persons for the benefit of both the individual and society.

Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. "

No on Hate

During this time, its hard, it is a challenge for me to not hate...

Yes it bothers me every time I see another "Yes on 8 - We need to Protect Marriage"

From what? I really wonder.

Even a co-worker asked me the other day (Straight, Catholic) what the big deal was, he didn't get what needed to be protected - He could not understand how allowing gay men & women to marry could run his or any one else's marriage.

If we really wanted to protect marriage, we should restrict anybody from marrying, until they can pass a test that makes them understand that communication, acceptance, and forgiveness makes a marriage work.

That sometimes, no matter who we are, we fail to live up to another persons standards, and that most of the time we fail to live up to ours, and that forgiveness starts with ourselves, and we sometimes project ontothe other person our own fears or shortcomings.

It is fear, or the inability to place yourself in another persons shoes, that makes people seem to hate so much.

It is hate that does not want our kids to learn not about " doing gay slurs, racist slurs or sexist slurs " It is hate (or laziness) that does not want our kids to learn to treat each other with respect, when we don't understand that we have differences.

And it is fear (or hate mongering), when you say someone is not Patriotic, just because they have a different opinion than yours.

I can understand that people might fear that our country is on the decline, but, silencing all discussion about what path to take is not the answer.

My Boss, who is a republican, didn't know what to say the other day , when I told him that he was not an evil person just because he was republican, that he had some good points, but just silencing the opposition did nothing to help his cause.

It is through dialogue that we can come to a place where we all, we may not be happy, but satisfied with where we are at.

And sad to say, but sometimes, there are people, they will not come to the table in a spirit of compromise.

I believe that there are somethings that should not be compromised, such as the rights of the individual.

It is one thing for that individual to make a sacrifice for the greater good of his fellow people, it is another thing to take away the rights of another individual to make yourself more comfortable.

Rights

The Reckoning - Loosening the Reins

By STEPHEN LABATON

“We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment.” — Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, March 11, 2008.

As rumors swirled that Bear Stearns faced imminent collapse in early March, Christopher Cox was told by his staff that Bear Stearns had $17 billion in cash and other assets — more than enough to weather the storm.

Drained of most of its cash three days later, Bear Stearns was forced into a hastily arranged marriage with JPMorgan Chase — backed by a $29 billion taxpayer dowry.

Within six months, other lions of Wall Street would also either disappear or transform themselves to survive the financial maelstrom — Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley converted to commercial banks.

How could Mr. Cox have been so wrong?

Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The agency’s failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why Washington regulators did not see what was coming.

On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.

They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast-growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities; credit derivatives, a form of insurance for bond holders; and other exotic instruments.

The five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr. Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary.

A lone dissenter — a software consultant and expert on risk management — weighed in from Indiana with a two-page letter to warn the commission that the move was a grave mistake. He never heard back from Washington.

One commissioner, Harvey J. Goldschmid, questioned the staff about the consequences of the proposed exemption. It would only be available for the largest firms, he was reassuringly told — those with assets greater than $5 billion.

“We’ve said these are the big guys,” Mr. Goldschmid said, provoking nervous laughter, “but that means if anything goes wrong, it’s going to be an awfully big mess.”

Mr. Goldschmid, an authority on securities law from Columbia, was a behind-the-scenes adviser in 2002 to Senator Paul S. Sarbanes when he rewrote the nation’s corporate laws after a wave of accounting scandals. “Do we feel secure if there are these drops in capital we really will have investor protection?” Mr. Goldschmid asked. A senior staff member said the commission would hire the best minds, including people with strong quantitative skills to parse the banks’ balance sheets.

Annette L. Nazareth, the head of market regulation, reassured the commission that under the new rules, the companies for the first time could be restricted by the commission from excessively risky activity. She was later appointed a commissioner and served until January 2008.

“I’m very happy to support it,” said Commissioner Roel C. Campos, a former federal prosecutor and owner of a small radio broadcasting company from Houston, who then deadpanned: “And I keep my fingers crossed for the future.”

The proceeding was sparsely attended. None of the major media outlets, including The New York Times, covered it.

After 55 minutes of discussion, which can now be heard on the Web sites of the agency and The Times, the chairman, William H. Donaldson, a veteran Wall Street executive, called for a vote. It was unanimous. The decision, changing what was known as the net capital rule, was completed and published in The Federal Register a few months later.

With that, the five big independent investment firms were unleashed.

In loosening the capital rules, which are supposed to provide a buffer in turbulent times, the agency also decided to rely on the firms’ own computer models for determining the riskiness of investments, essentially outsourcing the job of monitoring risk to the banks themselves.

Over the following months and years, each of the firms would take advantage of the looser rules. At Bear Stearns, the leverage ratio — a measurement of how much the firm was borrowing compared to its total assets — rose sharply, to 33 to 1. In other words, for every dollar in equity, it had $33 of debt. The ratios at the other firms also rose significantly.

The 2004 decision for the first time gave the S.E.C. a window on the banks’ increasingly risky investments in mortgage-related securities.

But the agency never took true advantage of that part of the bargain. The supervisory program under Mr. Cox, who arrived at the agency a year later, was a low priority.

The commission assigned seven people to examine the parent companies — which last year controlled financial empires with combined assets of more than $4 trillion. Since March 2007, the office has not had a director. And as of last month, the office had not completed a single inspection since it was reshuffled by Mr. Cox more than a year and a half ago.

The few problems the examiners preliminarily uncovered about the riskiness of the firms’ investments and their increased reliance on debt — clear signs of trouble — were all but ignored.

The commission’s division of trading and markets “became aware of numerous potential red flags prior to Bear Stearns’s collapse, regarding its concentration of mortgage securities, high leverage, shortcomings of risk management in mortgage-backed securities and lack of compliance with the spirit of certain” capital standards, said an inspector general’s report issued last Friday. But the division “did not take actions to limit these risk factors.”

Drive to Deregulate

The commission’s decision effectively to outsource its oversight to the firms themselves fit squarely in the broader Washington culture of the last eight years under President Bush.

A similar closeness to industry and laissez-faire philosophy has driven a push for deregulation throughout the government, from the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency to worker safety and transportation agencies.

“It’s a fair criticism of the Bush administration that regulators have relied on many voluntary regulatory programs,” said Roderick M. Hills, a Republican who was chairman of the S.E.C. under President Gerald R. Ford. “The problem with such voluntary programs is that, as we’ve seen throughout history, they often don’t work.”

As was the case with other agencies, the commission’s decision was motivated by industry complaints of excessive regulation at a time of growing competition from overseas. The 2004 decision was aimed at easing regulatory burdens that the European Union was about to impose on the foreign operations of United States investment banks.

The Europeans said they would agree not to regulate the foreign subsidiaries of the investment banks on one condition — that the commission regulate the parent companies, along with the brokerage units that the S.E.C. already oversaw.

A 1999 law, however, had left a gap that did not give the commission explicit oversight of the parent companies. To get around that problem, and in exchange for the relaxed capital rules, the banks volunteered to let the commission examine the books of their parent companies and subsidiaries.

The 2004 decision also reflected a faith that Wall Street’s financial interests coincided with Washington’s regulatory interests.

“We foolishly believed that the firms had a strong culture of self-preservation and responsibility and would have the discipline not to be excessively borrowing,” said Professor James D. Cox, an expert on securities law and accounting at Duke School of Law (and no relationship to Christopher Cox).

“Letting the firms police themselves made sense to me because I didn’t think the S.E.C. had the staff and wherewithal to impose its own standards and I foolishly thought the market would impose its own self-discipline. We’ve all learned a terrible lesson,” he added.

In letters to the commissioners, senior executives at the five investment banks complained about what they called unnecessary regulation and oversight by both American and European authorities. A lone voice of dissent in the 2004 proceeding came from a software consultant from Valparaiso, Ind., who said the computer models run by the firms — which the regulators would be relying on — could not anticipate moments of severe market turbulence.

“With the stroke of a pen, capital requirements are removed!” the consultant, Leonard D. Bole, wrote to the commission on Jan. 22, 2004. “Has the trading environment changed sufficiently since 1997, when the current requirements were enacted, that the commission is confident that current requirements in examples such as these can be disregarded?”

He said that similar computer standards had failed to protect Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, and could not protect companies from the market plunge of October 1987.

Mr. Bole, who earned a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Chicago, helps write computer programs that financial institutions use to meet capital requirements.

He said in a recent interview that he was never called by anyone from the commission.

“I’m a little guy in the land of giants,” he said. “I thought that the reduction in capital was rather dramatic.”

Policing Wall Street

A once-proud agency with a rich history at the intersection of Washington and Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission was created during the Great Depression as part of the broader effort to restore confidence to battered investors. It was led in its formative years by heavyweight New Dealers, including James Landis and William O. Douglas. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was asked in 1934 why he appointed Joseph P. Kennedy, a spectacularly successful stock speculator, as the agency’s first chairman, Roosevelt replied: “Set a thief to catch a thief.”

The commission’s most public role in policing Wall Street is its enforcement efforts. But critics say that in recent years it has failed to deter market problems. “It seems to me the enforcement effort in recent years has fallen short of what one Supreme Court justice once called the fear of the shotgun behind the door,” said Arthur Levitt Jr., who was S.E.C. chairman in the Clinton administration. “With this commission, the shotgun too rarely came out from behind the door.”

Christopher Cox had been a close ally of business groups in his 17 years as a House member from one of the most conservative districts in Southern California. Mr. Cox had led the effort to rewrite securities laws to make investor lawsuits harder to file. He also fought against accounting rules that would give less favorable treatment to executive stock options.

Under Mr. Cox, the commission responded to complaints by some businesses by making it more difficult for the enforcement staff to investigate and bring cases against companies. The commission has repeatedly reversed or reduced proposed settlements that companies had tentatively agreed upon. While the number of enforcement cases has risen, the number of cases involving significant players or large amounts of money has declined.

Mr. Cox dismantled a risk management office created by Mr. Donaldson that was assigned to watch for future problems. While other financial regulatory agencies criticized a blueprint by Mr. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, that proposed to reduce their stature — and that of the S.E.C. — Mr. Cox did not challenge the plan, leaving it to three former Democratic and Republican commission chairmen to complain that the blueprint would neuter the agency.

In the process, Mr. Cox has surrounded himself with conservative lawyers, economists and accountants who, before the market turmoil of recent months, had embraced a far more limited vision for the commission than many of his predecessors.

‘Stakes in the Ground’

Last Friday, the commission formally ended the 2004 program, acknowledging that it had failed to anticipate the problems at Bear Stearns and the four other major investment banks.

“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work,” Mr. Cox said.

The decision to shutter the program came after Mr. Cox was blamed by Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, for the crisis. Mr. McCain has demanded Mr. Cox’s resignation.

Mr. Cox has said that the 2004 program was flawed from its inception. But former officials as well as the inspector general’s report have suggested that a major reason for its failure was Mr. Cox’s use of it.

“In retrospect, the tragedy is that the 2004 rule making gave us the ability to get information that would have been critical to sensible monitoring, and yet the S.E.C. didn’t oversee well enough,” Mr. Goldschmid said in an interview. He and Mr. Donaldson left the commission in 2005.

Mr. Cox declined requests for an interview. In response to written questions, including whether he or the commission had made any mistakes over the last three years that contributed to the current crisis, he said, “There will be no shortage of retrospective analyses about what happened and what should have happened.” He said that by last March he had concluded that the monitoring program’s “metrics were inadequate.”

He said that because the commission did not have the authority to curtail the heavy borrowing at Bear Stearns and the other firms, he and the commission were powerless to stop it.

“Implementing a purely voluntary program was very difficult because the commission’s regulations shouldn’t be suggestions,” he said. “The fact these companies could withdraw from voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the mandate of the program and weakened its effectiveness. Experience has shown that the S.E.C. could not bootstrap itself into authority it didn’t have.”

But critics say that the commission could have done more, and that the agency’s effectiveness comes from the tone set at the top by the chairman, or what Mr. Levitt, the longest-serving S.E.C. chairman in history, calls “stakes in the ground.”

“If you go back to the chairmen in recent years, you will see that each spoke about a variety of issues that were important to them,” Mr. Levitt said. “This commission placed very few stakes in the ground.”

Republicans and military men on John McCain

hmmm

Ignorance is bliss, which perhaps explains Gov. Sarah Palin being so confidently wrong about the root cause of the federalization of most of the nation's mortgage market. But what is Sen. John McCain's excuse? Both act as if the financial meltdown of the U.S. economy has nothing to do with the policies of the political party they represent — but she at least may not know any better.


Distracted momentarily from her campaign revelries of maverick opposition to the "bridge to nowhere," which she had supported until it became a public relations debacle, and congressional earmarks for which she, as a small-town mayor, had hustled piggishly at the federal trough, Palin made the mistake of dealing with an unscripted subject.

Referring to the government's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Palin opined that the two had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers," displaying abysmal ignorance of the fact that only now will those privately owned banks become a huge taxpayer obligation, as the federal government takes them over. Nor can the meltdown of home values be traced to those two beleaguered institutions, because they did not make the original subprime mortgage commitments.

The housing bubble was the result of the Ponzi-scheme antics of those other financial entities: commercial banks, stockbrokers and hedge funds, which were allowed in a GOP-deregulated market to get into the "swap" business. Through the rampant reselling of loans, the obligation to collect on a loan was divorced from the act of selling it in the first place, so who cared if the recipient of the loan was not at all qualified or the appraisal of the property value was inflated, as long as the paper was traded away, or insured, before the moment of foreclosure?

As with any Ponzi scheme, the perps, who included the legislators as well as the bankers who exploited the loopholes they provided, expected to bail long before the bubble burst. The role of the legislators, Republican-led but with far too many Democratic running dogs, was critical to the success of the scam.

The mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector were made legal only as a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, pushed through Congress just hours before the 2000 Christmas recess. Gramm, until recently co-chair of the McCain campaign, also had co-authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law in 1999 with President Bill Clinton's signature.

That gem, which Gramm had pushed for years with massive financial industry lobbying, destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies. Those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community, and no wonder we have witnessed an even more rapid and severe meltdown in housing values than during the Great Depression.

Not surprisingly, Gramm was rewarded for his service upon retirement as a senator and as head of the Senate Banking Committee with a top position at the Swiss-based UBS bank, which is close to drowning in the subprime mortgage nightmare he helped create. These folks have no shame, as was evidenced when the senator's wife, Wendy, was named a director of Enron, whose roiling of the energy market had been made possible only through yet another provision of Gramm's Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

While neophyte Palin can claim ignorance of such matters, that would be particularly difficult for McCain, who as a senator consistently lined up with Gramm in his deregulation crusade. Clearly McCain had not learned much from his previous involvement with the savings-and-loan debacle about the risks to consumers in unregulated banking.

McCain served as chair of Gramm's abortive 1996 presidential campaign, and Gramm returned the favor, providing critical support for McCain with the hard-line Republican base, including the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. It was assumed in the business press that Gramm was the front-runner to be treasury secretary in a McCain administration. Gramm left his role as the top economic person near McCain only after he made an embarrassing statement blaming the current economic downturn on "whiners," an awkward reference to the victims of his disastrous legislation.

Amazingly, the turmoil in the housing market, which has led to the socializing of the nation's revered homeownership market in a massive expansion of the role of big government, has apparently not troubled McCain's conservative supporters. As I said, ignorance is bliss, and evidently not just for the newbie Palin.

Robert Scheer's new book is "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America." E-mail Robert Scheer at rscheer@truthdig.com. To find out more about Robert Scheer, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Webpage at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

What is in your garden?

A Baboon Bottom Iris


Honey Tiger Iris


& a Royal Purple Batik Iris


I love Iris's and these ones, I just planted in my front yard

?hmmm

The GOP Loves the Heartland To Death
By THOMAS FRANK
September 10, 2008; Page A13

It tells us something about Sarah Palin's homage to small-town America, delivered to an enthusiastic GOP convention last week, that she chose to fire it up with an unsourced quotation from the all-time champion of fake populism, the belligerent right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler.

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity," the vice-presidential candidate said, quoting an anonymous "writer," which is to say, Pegler, who must have penned that mellifluous line when not writing his more controversial stuff. As the New York Times pointed out in its obituary of him in 1969, Pegler once lamented that a would-be assassin "hit the wrong man" when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt. [The Tilting Yard] Corbis

Small-town America.

There's no evidence that Mrs. Palin shares the trademark Pegler bloodlust -- except maybe when it comes to moose and wolves. Nevertheless, the red-state myth that Mrs. Palin reiterated for her adoring audience owes far more to the venomous spirit of Pegler than it does to Norman Rockwell.

Small town people, Mrs. Palin went on, are "the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars." They are authentic; they are noble, and they are her own: "I grew up with those people."

But what really defines them in Mrs. Palin's telling is their enemies, the people who supposedly "look down" on them. The opposite of the heartland is the loathsome array of snobs and fakers, "reporters and commentators," lobbyists and others who make up "the Washington elite."

Presumably the various elite Washington lobbyists who have guided John McCain's presidential campaign were exempt from Mrs. Palin's criticism. As would be former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, now a "senior adviser" to the Dickstein Shapiro lobby firm, who hymned the "Sarah Palin part of the party" thus: "Their kids aren't going to go to Ivy League schools. Their sons leave high school and join the military to serve our country. Their husbands and wives work two jobs to make sure the family is sustained."

Generally speaking, though, when husbands and wives work two jobs each it is not merely because they are virtuous but because working one job doesn't earn them enough to get by. The two-job workers in Middle America aren't spurning the Ivy League and joining the military straight out of high school just because they're people of principle, although many of them are. It is because they can't afford to do otherwise.

Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well. If you drive west from Kansas City, Mo., you will find towns where Main Street is largely boarded up. You will see closed schools and hospitals. You will hear about depleted groundwater and massive depopulation.

And eventually you will ask yourself, how did this happen? Did Hollywood do this? Was it those "reporters and commentators" with their fancy college degrees who wrecked Main Street, U.S.A.?

No. For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town's mortal enemies.

Without raising an antitrust finger they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer's crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called "Freedom to Farm" and loan deficiency payments -- each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon's Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, "Get big or get out."

A few days ago I talked politics with Donn Teske, the president of the Kansas Farmers Union and a former Republican. Barack Obama may come from a big city, he admits, but the Farmers Union gives him a 100% rating for his votes in Congress. John McCain gets a 0%. "If any farmer in the Plains States looked at McCain's voting record on ag issues," Mr. Teske says, "no one would vote for him."

Now, Mr. McCain is known for his straight talk with industrial workers, telling them their jobs are never coming back, that the almighty market took them away for good, and that retraining is their only hope.

But he seems to think that small-town people can be easily played. Just choose a running mate who knows how to skin a moose and all will be forgiven. Drive them off the land, shutter their towns, toss their life chances into the grinders of big agriculture . . . and praise their values. The TV eminences will coo in appreciation of your in-touch authenticity, and the carnival will move on.

Nothing much happening here

I'm still moving the old posts over and I still adding recipes to my "Cook for Me" site.

As I was adding a old recipe I thought I need to make that this weekend, click HERE to find out what it was.

We spent Saturday at our friend Vickie's house, as she had managed to get her phone disconnected, long story, but Cowboy got it hooked up again, well we had to call the phone service about 20 times.

Sunday was putt around the house...

a bit of fluff

This is one of my favorite video's on You Tube, I did not see it on TV, I only heard about from one of my friends

hmm?

The Nation -- Everyone is trying to get the measure of Sarah Palin, the woman who was rocketed from small-state obscurity to the national stage when John McCain selected her as his running-mate on the 2008 Republican ticket.

Republican senators and governors are admitting interviews, as former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, did with me a few minutes ago that: "Most of us don't really know her personally."

Well, Anne Kilkenny does know Sarah Palin.

Kilkenny's a good citizen of Wasilla, Alaska, the city where Palin got her political state as a city council member and then mayor. She's a self-described "housewife" who volunteers as a voter registrar, has been active in the PTA and regularly attends local government meetings.

She is, as well, someone who has clashed with Palin. More than a decade ago, when Palin was campaigning to ban books, Kilkenny says, "I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship."

What's Kilkenney's take?

Here's a letter she has circulated

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe".

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative." During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn't even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later -- to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal--loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State's top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's Police Chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn't like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys' club" when she dramatically quit, exposing this man's ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects--which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance--but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork".

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiaitive that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State's lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior's decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there's a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

My New Home

I have lost the inspiration to blog, so I'm going to take a break.

I THINK I'll TRY TO UPDATE ONCE A WEEK

However, since I don't feel like blogging, I don't think I need to pay to host a vanity site anymore, so I'm going to move things here and let the other site go.

I have dreams

crazy dreams...

that's okay, most of them are very enjoyable...

Last night's dream was a combination of Mama Mia (the movie) and an Alec Baldwin flick. Naturally at this point I don't remember all the details, but the gist of the dream was that there was this younger son, that everyone in his family was concerned that he might be working too much and not taking time for the real things in life that mattered.

In my dream, the father had spent all of his time working, and it effected not only the relationship of the son, but of his brothers and his wife, so much so that the wife (the son's mother) was still harboring some resentment.

Now in the dream, every once in awhile every broke into some ridiculous song and was dance routine (like in Mama Mia), but it flowed seamlessly. Alec Baldwin (the younger version) was one of the uncles that was constantly checking in with the son and the rest of the family to make sure that each of them were taking time to be real with their family.

the dream goes on and on, nothing heavy, but at the very end, when they are doing a celebration of some type for the mother, the son, had reproduced a photo of the father as a young man as a present for his mother.

This photo is a picture of his father from a war zone/landing that his father was one of only 5 survivors, and that the father had seen his fellow soldiers killed in three separate landings on this same beach.

In my dream the only one who knew what this picture meant was the mother.

The whole point of this dream (to me) is how someone can chose to love you, even when you have not shared your most traumatic events (or darkest secrets) with them.

Even though that secret changes us, people are still able to love us not knowing our secrets, that they are still able to find something in us to love.

AN OBSERVATION

"Relationships are hard. It's like a full time job, and we should treat it like one.

If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice.

There should be severance pay, & the day before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp."

Yawn

It was an uneventful weekend, actually now that I think about it, it wasn’t.

And that reminds me why I started blogging; so that when people asked me I would not have to say “nothing”.

I could say do you read my blog? Or I could read it myself and remember. Maybe the act of blogging helps you remember.

Anyway, last Saturday we had a nice couple over from church. They live in the same housing complex as us, and I think Jerry went to one of the same classes (at church) that Cowboy did.

I made Stacked Chicken Enchiladas with Mushroom Crostini’s as appetizers. We don’t really socialize with them, but when we are walking the dog, we tend to run into them while they are taking a walk after dinner, so over time, you get to talking to them and finally we decided to have them over for dinner.

I ended up cooking all day, not that I was cooking all day, but since I made everything from scratch (except for the cheese), there is lots of chopping and of course clean the house, do some maintenance in the yard, etc. I was pretty busy.

Dinner was nice, and I’m sure we will have them over again.

-

Sunday, we went to San Francisco, the Castro, to do some shopping, and play “Whom would you do?”

The game is played like this; you go to a bar that has a central point where people are walking back and forth, and then as they go by, you say to your partner or the person you are playing with, “Would you do him?”

I know it seems like turns people into pieces of meat, but I think it is a harmless game.

I know that people are really based on how they act, react etc., that is what really turns me on.

-

On another note, I developed a rash, that has slowly taken over my body, it is not a hideous rash ((Cowboy could not even find it at first, by sight or touch)) that is disfiguring, just an itchy rash that is driving me crazy. At first I thought is was just from working out, but after it not going away and getting worse over a couple of days.

I thought it was from my drugs, so I looked up the side effects and come to find out a rash is one of the side effects (so is depression), and it said, to call the doctor right away if a rash develops, (or if you feel like committing suicide) but after going to the doctor, he thinks it isn't that, that I have a virus that is causing it.

Anyway, all I can do for it, is take Benydrl and Claritin, dust myself with Gold Bond medicated powder, and take soothing baths in Aveeno. All that is for the Itch, the rash itself just has to work its way out of my system.

A passing glance

You glanced my way, and I caught you looking, what was it you were looking at I wondered?

More importantly why?

What did you want, if anything? Were you just comparing bodies like all guys in the gym do, or was something else on your mind?

At first, I thought it was just that straight guy checking out the muscles, where one wonders, are my muscles bigger than yours?

But you kept looking, always looking away when I looked in your direction.

I caught your eyes a couple of times, maybe holding them a bit too long before you looked away, but I did not nod or smile. I thought you noticed that I was looking too, but maybe you didn’t think that I was looking at you. I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.

You don’t have as many muscles as the guys I’m usually interested in, but I could see the hair on your chest peaking out from underneath your white tank top. I could see that you had some definition, that your belly was smaller than mine, perhaps it was the age difference. How old are you, 26-32 or older perhaps, I hope not younger?

As I worked out, I looked over every once in awhile, and you were still taking glances now and then, too often for me to think that you were straight.

That made me think, about your body, that your pecs would feel nice under my hands. I had a hard time trying to see your legs, as your shorts went all the way to your knees, so it was hard to tell what your thighs would have felt like.

But I liked the way your shorts draped over the curves of your ass, I wondered if it was hairy or smooth. What would it be like to rest my head on the plumpness of it, perhaps while you were reading?

What would it feel like to feel your body underneath mine?

Just thoughts,

Just glances traded back and forth...

Making me smile.

One of the great joys in my life is our little pug, though she is getting old and doesn’t walk as well as she used to, her enthusiasm in the morning for her breakfast brings a smile to my face each time.

Each morning at 6:30, before the alarm clock goes off, she sits up and starts to make little grunting noises, she slips in a sniff now and then, and if too much time goes by without movement from our bed, she gets up and sits by the door. She continues the sound effects, getting a little louder as time goes by, and if I do not respond by a certain time, she walks over to Cowboy’s side of the bed and starts to make her noises over there.

Most of the time, some movement on my part will keep her on my side of the bed. Usually I hold out my hand, point to her bed and mumble “five minutes”, and she will climb back into bed, with a sign and wait sitting up, for 2 minutes, then she will head back to the door.

When I get out of bed, if I don’t put my robe or pajama bottoms on fast enough, she will lunge for my feet like she is going to bite me, but most of the time, she just chases her tail, until I reach the door, then she heads down the stairs, stopping at the landing to make sure that I am following her.

Next we open the door, so she can go for her morning pee, she looks back to make sure you’re watching, because she wants her breakfast, and if she doesn’t need to pee (to get her breakfast), she won’t.

Then she runs as fast as her little legs will carry her (almost like she is flying) to her food bowl, and If I haven’t made it there yet, she stops to give a twirl, and then she waits for me to place her food in her bowl, I then change her water.

After she is done with her breakfast, she will walk slowly back into the kitchen to she if Dad dropped anything, which is kinda funny because she cant see it. If we do drop something we have to point it out to her.

Then I look at her and say “potty?” If she needs to go out again, she will head for the door, if not she looks at you like you are a dummy. Then I say “okay” and she takes off running for the living room, where she gets to sit on my lap while I reflect on my life and the gratitude I feel for the people in it, until Cowboy gets up.

When he comes downstairs, sometimes I have fallen asleep, and when he gets his coffee Toshi will climb up onto the arm of the chair, while I get up and Cowboy takes my place, she will then lie down in his lap and go back to sleep.

On the weekends the routine is the same, except on Saturday she will allow me to sleep until seven.

I've been Away

Not really away, just don’t feel like posting, to tell you the truth, I’m depressed.

It always starts, when I get back from the ride (AIDS LIFECYCLE), it is just an amazing thing, that I have a hard time getting back to my own real world, and it (my) set of problems.

The reality is, that my problems are just ordinary, no big deal sort of problems; why aren’t my muscles growing as fast as I want, why can’t I manage my money better, why don’t people answer their emails as fast as I want, why didn’t I answer that email yet.

Stupid things, well not stupid, but considering what goes on in the rest of the world, nothing to really bitch about.

I also worry about, things like, how come I can’t write as well as that guy from Blue Alto, or how about that Tater guy? Things like my grammar sucks. I need to finish that art piece I have been working on for (going on) two years now, and the new ones I’m working on, I just cant get the guy’s nose right, and I’m afraid to screw it up

Of course I have money problems (minor) like most people, I would love a new car, a new house, etc etc.

The reality is, I don’t need any of those thing, and when I had all that stuff, it just caused more problems, like when I used to loan my Porsche to a buddy, and then I would get so upset when he did not clean his crap out of it after he borrowed it. Well I can’t afford 3 cars now, so I don’t have to worry about loaning it out, or saying no.

To tell you the truth, while I have been away, I got addicted to Facebook and the silly games that they seduce you with. I’m worth 16 million in Owned a photo buying game, I’m a level 14 “outlaw” in Space Raiders, I also have a new puppy, and a knighthood, a city, Super Poked and Showered with my other pals.

Time I get back to my real life. (and Blogging)

Old as dirt

Well not quite that old, but getting up there…

Last weekend we went away to Sea Ranch, my oldest brother and his wife, their daughter and her husband, my sister and her boyfriend, and my brother Marvelous joined us

We went up Thursday afternoon, most of the family came to our place in Santa Rosa first and we caravanned up together. The way we drive up to Sea Ranch is out along the Russian River to Jenner, then up the coast to Sea Ranch through Fort Ross, Salt Point State Park, and Stewart’s Point.

If you’re not in a hurry, it is a nice drive, if you are in a hurry, well you really need to go to Sea Ranch and rest, cell phones don’t work there.

Internet Access is about the speed of dial-up, well unless you have a satellite, but most houses don’t. So you might check your email if you really have to, but it is nice to just be able to get away from it all.

We had great weather while we were there, clear with no fog, but Cowboy got a real bad sunburn, so his trip was not a nice as it should have been.

I had another Hobbit Birthday, so I got everyone gifts and cooked dinner. We started off with Wild Mushroom crostini, followed by crab cakes, then we had for dinner Filet Mignon with a red wine reduction sauce, salad and deep-fried risotto. I made for desert 12 Layer Chocolate Cake – It was not a low calorie weekend.

-

I know, no posts recently – I just haven’t felt like writing – I don’t think I’ve quit, just running dry for the moment.

I’ve been having too much fun on “My Space”, no I don’t use it for cruising, but I am involved (heavily… it’s like a drug… in the application called “OWNED”, which is an online shopping application, where you buy and sell photos (for the most profit, your own photos)

It’s also a way for my to keep in contact with most of my cycling buddies, without sending, reading email.

It is almost time to start training again. – First training class in Sept.

Black Death

The bubonic plague or the pneumonic plague... no I don't have either one, but I've been sick, just a little cold.

The black death killed one third of the human population on China, Asia, India, Europe and Northern Africa in sixteen years from 1334 to 1350.

The Black Death was both of those plagues hitting at the same time. The bubonic plague causes swollen black lymph nodes and kills its victims in about 5 days, it was carried by rats and fleas. The pneumonic plague was also spread by rats and fleas with humans being able to transmit it as well, in the same way as the common cold, it killed its victims even faster within 3 days or as little as 24 hours.

Anyway, I'm better now, thanks for asking...

THIS WEEK

It was a grand and glorious weekend – Well I’m talking about the 4th of July so I had to slip the grand and glorious in.

Now for some trivia – The Declaration of Independence was actually voted on and approved on the 2nd of July, The document was then rewritten and the final draft approved on July 4th and sent to the printer.

The document that we think of as the Declaration of Independence, was hand written and signed on July 19th The bulk of the signatures came later, on August 2nd, 1776

The first public reading of the Document happened on July 8th at Independence Hall.

Congress was going to celebrate the 2nd as “Independence Day”, but did not remember until July 3rd 1777, and so celebrated the first celebration of Independence Day on July 4th, 1777.

So what did I do over the 4th of July Weekend? Well first it was clean the garage, which I never get enough time in there to do it the way I want to do it, because it would just take too long, to reorganize everything the way I want to, but I did get all the cobwebs swept out.

We then went shopping, I for some plaid shorts at the Gap, size 31 waist, which are still too big. I guess the diet has been working. Bought some other nic-nacs, paddy wac, give a dog a bone.

Saturday, we went to barbecue in the East Bay, saw my relatives, HI FOLKS! Had a good time, and then came home again, it was nice not to have to drive all the way to the South Bay.

Sunday, we worked in the yard some, and then looked at houses again. We found one that we really liked and are looking at financing right now, getting reports, cleaning up around the house, throwing old stuff away just in case we will be moving soon.

The Upside of Anger?

I was watching a movie last night on TV while I was reading a book. I do that sometimes, and it drives Cowboy and my sister nuts, but I like to do that if I’m not that interested in the movie or that interested in the book.

The book if you want to know, well the chapter I was reading was about how the Electoral College works, so though it is fascinating, I was not that interested in it.

The movie though, was about this woman, who is anger and bitter, mainly because she thinks her husband left her without warning or notice. Her anger and bitterness colors all of her relationships with any new men in her family, as well as her relationships with her daughters, and their relationships with men as well.

At the very end of the movie she discovers during the process of selling off some unused property that in fact, her husband did not leave her, but rather died when he fell down an old water shaft on that unused property.

She realizes that she has allowed her anger and bitterness of being abandoned, to color her entire life and that she was not abandoned at all, she was wrong. ((The movies does not address the guilt she might felt about her husband dying all alone))

One time I had a boyfriend, that I was warned that when he decided to breakup with someone, he just stopped calling, didn’t return phone calls, etc ((well two times that happened)). Because I was warned, I was able to just let go. Sure I was curious, but I knew that I was not going to get any answers from him.

I think sometimes, we as people can make assumptions about why something is, we can really work ourselves up wanting closure. Sometimes we want to force an answer out of whomever, does that serves us? I don’t know.

How many times have you been told it not you it’s me? And do you go away feeling like you were told the truth? Or someone was just being polite?

Do we make assumptions based on what we think is the truth? Do we allow our anger or bitterness to color our whole relationship with the people around us?

STROKE IT!

Caress it, take it in your hands and handle it gently.

I’m talking about pet peeves of course. ((of course, I would be calmer if I didn’t let these things bother me))

My favorite pet peeves are:

1. When someone walks all the way to the door and can’t decide to go in or out, blocking it for others folks while they try to decide.

2. When someone walks up to the fax machine, looks at it, sees that nothing is on it and then asks, “Did a fax for me come?

3. When someone is looking for paperwork, makes all sorts of noise while looking for the paper-work, so you finally say “Write me a note about what your looking for and I’ll find it for you” and they reply, “I don’t want to bother you” then they proceed to ask all sorts of questions about where the paperwork might be filed.

4. When someone (who can drive in the commute lane, fast lane or the slow lane) drives slowly in the fast car lane, instead of moving over to the slow lane.

5. When you get an email from an old friend, asking if this email address is correct, you reply " yes" and ask them how they are doing etc, and you never hear from them again.

Movie Time

Star Wars


Sex & the City

Gay Pride

Sure I'm feeling pride...

and though we are just a short hop, skip and a jump....

and an hour car ride away from the city... we decided not to go and celebrate Pride with the 1 million or so folks in the city...

So what did we do to celebrate Gay Pride...

well, Gay Sex of course...

Happy Pride Folks!

I have nothing to say

Nothing on my mind right now, no words to share.

So I think I will post some pictures from the ride.

- But FIRST a video from last year - highlighting events from the ride

A video from ALC 6, which was last years ride

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Some pictures form this year's ride

a picture from inside the Cow Palace - Opening ceremonies - in the corner of the picture is a cycling helmet with Wonder Woman on it, My Friend Emily's helmet


A partial shot of our sleeping quarters - Tent City


Our luggage trucks - every morning we load our luggage and our tents back in the trucks, and then we unload them at the end of the day in our new location and put our tents back up.


SUPERFRIENDS - we all have action figures on the tops of our cycling helmets - here we are unmasked
I was Green Lantern - it did not match my bike


My Friend Beau - His action figure is Animal Man - he had to have a Super Hero that matched his bike


My Friend John - His action figure is Superman - and his Superman matches his bike too, which is black & red


the ever present porta-potties - what funny is when you first use them you feel funny because you don't flush them - but when you get home you have to remember your not using a porta-potty anymore.


here am I standing in front of the Rock of Morro Bay - I had to stop just for a picture to send my friend KIM


this was RestStop4 the 4th and Final Rest Stop of each day - they go over the top to present new themes - that entertain and delight us.


the First Rest stop of RED DRESS DAY - it starts out, of course when people leave their tents in the morning and then we laugh all the day long...


Me in my Red Dress - I bought it at Ross two years ago, last year I wore red arm warmers and gloves but this year I thought I'd dress it up a bit, with white gloves, arm-warmers and pearls - I threw it away when I was done with it this year.


My Friend Luis and I, He had a red tutto on, which you can not see in this shot


And some others go all out - do themes with their friends - I think these are the St Pauli Girls


and sometimes action figures and movie characters come to life - Meet the Incredibles


Some people surprise other friends with recognition of their incredible feats - here they are recognizing and congratulating David Duncan for his tenth ride - that is my head sticking out


The Incredible Rest Stop 4 again - this is our version of Studio 54 - notice Andy Warhol on the Left


And well - here is an example of how well we can read after seven days on the bike

-
and now another video from last year

and then a video from a roadies point of view

Not Saying a Word

I’m a quiet guy, most of the time. I don’t always say what is on my mind. I used to figure that saying nothing would make “it” better.

What ever “it” was.

I think this nature of mine comes from my upbringing. My mother ((stepmother#1)) was the type of person, who just started her tirade all over again if you argued with her or interrupted her.

My Dad tended to be the type that just ignored what you said, such as if I was helping him in the garage working on something, and I saw what he was doing wrong - putting something together, such as a lawn mower that he had taken apart – he would just ignore me if I suggested that it would fit if he just turned it over.

Almost everyone in my life “knew” the correct way of doing whatever “it” was.

So at some point I just stopped talking. I think I stopped listening too. I became very isolated and withdrawn.

I was still involved with the things I was interested in, but I often did not share my feelings. I don’t think it helped that at about the same time an older brother and younger sister left home. There was much more going on than I ever knew, and theirs lives were very different than mine.

-

Still life goes on, and we slowly become whom we are. If we are able, we forgive and forget and learn and embrace that sometimes, people did the best that they knew how.

I slowly discovered who I was, a Spiritual Gay Man, and eventually the truth of who I was became more important than who my parents wanted me to be, so I came out. Slowly over the years, I have become closer to my family, and I love them even more than before.

-

I used to have this idea, that when two people were trying to decide to go to a movie, that if I said “I don’t care which movie we go to see”, that it meant I had a credit in the “ bank” for when there was a movie that I really wanted to see.

It took a friend to point out that “ I don’t care” means “I don’t care”.

-

Slowly I learned that I have to tell people what I want every time, and though that doesn’t mean I will get it, but at least they know what I want.

-

So what is this all about? – Just something I need to get off my chest.

Over a year ago, a friend came to my house, this friend, like most of my friends is opinionated. Now for a little history – We have known each other for many years, and over the years I learned to disagree with him, and he would sometimes call me up and ask “if I was mad at him” I was never mad, for I knew that he had his opinion and I had mine.

However, the last time he was at my house, he said things that were out of line. A year earlier, he was all most killed by a drunken driver, and when he was here, he had too much to drink, was impatient and did not wait his turn at the stop sign and ran into a motorcycle rider and passenger.

Thankfully he did not hurt anyone, however when he got back to my house, he then proceeded to get drunk, and because he was drunk, he said things to me that I felt were his projections of my relations with my family. ((concerning my relationship with my father, my old business, various religious beliefs of my family))

I told him he was drunk and to go to bed, his reply was “If you agree with me, don’t say anything, otherwise let’s keep talking about it."

Well I don’t argue with drunken people, usually I don’t allow them in my house. So he went to bed, he left the next morning and we haven’t talked since.

-

Cowboy said, “Your not the same person he knew so many years ago, you're more confident in yourself, you work out, you’re happy”

-

I guess, I expected him to call up and apologize at some point, not for his thoughts, for he is entitled to his thoughts, but for the fact that he was drunk, that he expressed them in such a way, that he was drunk driving, and that he verbally attacked my family.

Well, life doesn’t happen that way you think it should sometimes, and I guess that I really don’t need people in my life that can’t apologize for the hurt they have caused other people.

Do I miss him? Sure, but I don’t need that kind of drama in my life. – So life goes on, and I’m a little sadder, for I had hoped that he would be the kind of person that could listen. That our years of friendship would mean something to him.

I’m sure you could ask, “Don’t the years of friendship meant something to me?”

Well, yes they do, but sometimes we have to let go of things that do not allow ourselves to grow, to change. And I no longer am willing to let someone verbally abuse me.

Im Voting Republican too

Community

One of my favorite reads is Moby – He says what is on his mind, and he does so in a manner that is refreshing and respectful - this week he is talking about Community - Go there to read more if you wish.

It got me thinking about myself however, and how I live my life, and also how some of my friends live their lives. In my church, we have a saying, “ If you want to be loved, then go and love someone” In other words you only get what you give.

I feel like a lot of times that I’m not part of a community, but when I think about it. I must admit that if I don’t feel part of a community, it is because of my own actions.

Some examples of the things I do are;
I don’t comment on every one’s blogs that I read.
When on a bicycle ride, I don’t talk to everyone that might be on the same ride.
I don’t call people on the phone and talk to them, ask them how they are.

I starting riding in the Aids-Lifecycle as doing something that was giving to others, it brought me great rewards, but though I was now part of this “community” I still felt a disconnect, so I became a Training Ride Leader.

This required more giving on my part, more of my time, more of my knowledge, more of my heart. And, so my rewards were greater. I received back in return more love and more gratitude. And I discover, the more I give, the more I get back.

On one of the rides, a rider came up to me, and said, “What is you TRLs do, no one is talking to me. – I wanted to say – We are not your social club, we are here to train you. But cooler heads prevailed, and we gently guided him into introducing himself to the people around him, and then checked in with him, to make sure he was putting himself out there. Sometimes I forget that THE RIDE is about the people we help, that THE RIDE, only works because of the love that is THE RIDE.

This also happens at Church (and many other social functions) people tend to think that if they show up that is good enough, no, you have to interact, you have to talk and listen.

I’m good at the listening part, and that is important, especially if you can listen (not thinking of what you are going to say next), but one must say what is on your mind, hopefully in a respectful manner.

If you are outspoken, but think you have no friends, it might be how you express yourself. Sometimes people get tired of all the drama.

Sometimes, I want more interaction, but in reality, I’m pretty busy doing my own thing, so it boils down to, I make my own decisions about where I want to spend my time, though if I didn’t have to work…

I’d be traveling, visiting, commenting on everyone’s blogs, going on longer bike rides, doing more gardening, painting more.

So I Got Tagged

By that friend of mine Al who is sadistic and mean, he knows I’m brain dead right now, and now If I’m going to answer this I have to think. We can just forget witty that is just not me. However these are my answers. Should I tag some one? Hmm… nah.

Does someone love you?

Yes, I know it, I feel it, I embrace it, I relish it. And he of course is Cowboy

Do you know anyone named Dave?

I have known a couple of Daves, but I don’t know anyone right now who goes by Dave – I do know a David.

Ever kissed anyone with the name starting with a J?

We are talking about kissing, not some sweet little harmless peck on the cheek right? –

Well I used to date Jeff, the Sex was awesome and he did a layout for Men (I still have the issue somewhere) last time I saw him, he was saying to a friend of mine (I was in the restroom) “ Not only did he tear my heart out of my chest, he threw it on the ground and stomped all over it” – I’m sure he was talking about when I told him we could not have sex anymore, because the lust I felt for his body was confusing me about how I felt for us as a couple.

He was more of a big city limo guy, while I was more of a country boy. I also dated a James, but that was not the name he went by.

Has anyone ever mistaken you for a family member?

Not that I know of, but some people thought some friends and I were brothers.

What color is your parents bathroom

I think it is a light blue, I should know this because I did some touch-up painting when I re-hung my Step-mom’s curtains (3 times) she kept moving them ((I called my Dad, and he said it was pale yellow, then he went and checked - it''s a pale lavender))

Do you think that hair extensions look skanky?

Haven’t really thought about it, but toupees do.

Are you named after a grandparent?

Nope, all of are named “M” – my real name is Matthew, but if I every change it I want to name myself after my grandpa on my Dad’s side – I didn’t know my mom’s parents

Say you were given a drug test right now. Would you pass or fail?

Pass

Are you taller than 5'6"?

by 2.75 inches (on a good day)

Do you know anyone in jail/prison?

Nope, but I know people who have been.

Ever see a dead body?

Yep, too many

Do you like the color green?

I dislike the color green – I was in the Army for 8 years, fatigues were all green then, and when I was a kid working at a hamburger joint, we painted all of the shelves a pale green, I was small enough to fit in the shelves, to reach way in the corners, breathing those fumes and seeing nothing but green, makes me not care for it.

What is your best friend’s Dad’s name?

Bill

How old are you?

51, going on 52.

Who was the last person to send you a text message?

AT & T

Ever drove into the ghetto to buy drugs?

No, I have my drugs delivered. - Though I used to deliver Marijuana for a suburban housewife from Palo Alto - sort of like "Weeds"

Last restaurant you went to?

Sake O – I had Spicy Shrimp & Sake of course

What is the weather like today?

Clear & Sunny, though not warm enough.

Last voice mail you received?

It would be from my brother Marvelous

What did you do yesterday?

Made Tequila & Lime Shrimp for a Father’s Day barbeque

What’s the first thing you would do with five million dollars?

Run away with Tater. – he is sexy and I like the way he writes (ha ha, nope, I'm just giving All a bad time) Your fibbing are you? I’d give half of it to Cowboy, and then buy myself a new car – a Mini-Cooper Convertible is the car of the week.

What nationalities are you?

Spanish & Italian is what I’m going to say – the family debate is still going on.

How many hours did you sleep for last night?

Probably about 5, I tried for six, but I spent an hour listening to Cowboy snore. It used to bother the hell out of me, but then I decided to focus on how much he loves me. Now if I can only get him to stop kicking me in his sleep.

Any upcoming concerts you want to attend?

Bette Midler

Who’s the last person that you felt was stalking you?

Anthony, a cute 27 year old from New York, who I met on the ride and he instantly got the hots for me. I think he wanted me to do him in my tent. – Well actually he did., but I didn’t.

Have you ever been on your school’s track team

Nope, running is not my thing.

What jewelry are you wearing?

A watch my Dad gave me, a copper bracelet that Cowboy bought for me, and a wedding ring

If all of your friends were going on a road trip, would you?

Sure, I’m open to going places, doesn’t matter where. (if I can get the time off)

How much money do you have?

Enough for my needs, enough for my true desires, enough to give gifts to those I care about, not enough to give every place and everyone my heart desires, not enough to indulge my every senseless desire, not enough to spend on those who will not do for themselves.

Do you swear at your parents?

Nope, not ever, not even under my breath.

Is your phone right beside you?

My cell phone is glued to my hip

Have you cried today?

I have cried about 14 times today, reading the discussion boards for the AIDS-Lifecycle, the thanks and heartfelt good wishes from the riders to the roadies and the roadies to the riders, people sharing why they rode, the people they wish to remember.

Do you think that someone is thinking about you right now?

Sure

Do you untie your shoes every time you take them off?

I don’t untie my shoes until I need to put them back on. When going out I wear Cowboy boots.

What is the color of your bed sheets?

Champagne, 1500 thread count – but I actually bought them for Cowboy, he is into sheets. I like dark colors, he likes light.

Have you ever crawled through a window?

When I was young, my bedroom was on the second floor, I would often forget my keys, so I d get the ladder out of our orchard and set it up against the house and crawl in my bedroom window – then go downstairs, unlock the door and put the ladder away

Are you photogenic?

Sometimes I am surprised when someone takes a photo I like, but I aint no model.

What’s your star sign?
Leo

Where do you spend most of your money?

Rent and car payments

What was the last thing you did?

Unlike a certain someone I’m not going to say “ Pressed "Enter" after writing the last answer. – I‘ll say looked outside at the hunky blond number who is installing carpet in the brand new apartments next door

Do you have a tattoo?

On my left tricep/bicep - an Arthame floating on a Sun

Is there a secret you’ve never told any of your friends?

Yes – and it is going to remain a secret.

Have you ever told someone you loved them but didn’t mean it?

Yes,

Have you ever changed your clothes while in a vehicle?

Yes I have, I think, no actually I think I said, screw this, and stepped outside of the vehicle. I have changed my clothes in a tank however.

What are you doing in 2008?

Blogging, painting, riding a bike.

What is your ring tone?

Like my Red dress - Classic

What were you doing at 2am last night?

Sleeping

Are your parents married/divorced/separated?

My dad was divorced once, wife two (Step Mom #1) is dead, he is remarried again. My Mom never remarried. My step mom (#1 Step mom) was married 8 times before she married my dad. They were married 34 years before she died.

What are you doing tonight?

Cuddling – our code word for sex.

What are you doing tomorrow?

Cuddling – our code word for sex.

Who did you last message on Myspace?


Andrew – if I have Myspace – I forget these things

What’s your opinion on sex without emotional commitment?

Great! If you can do it, lots of people can’t

Does it annoy you when someone says they’ll call but never do?

It doesn’t annoy me, more likes disappoints me.

What did you dress up as for your first Halloween?

I have no idea.

Favorite Disney movie?

Disney's Emmy-winning update of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic fairy tale, Cinderella (Brandy) believes in the impossible, and not even a wicked stepmother and stepsisters can keep her from her prince. Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother heads an all-star cast that includes Paolo Montalban, Bernadette Peters, Whoopi Goldberg and Jason Alexander.

Feel free to add your answers to any and all questions on your own site, or in the comments.