Our First Family Walk.

The sky was pink and purple. The air was warm and the breeze smelt of the sea. The street was empty. Christmas lights, abundant in our neighborhood, started to come on. My little girl, Ella, my lovely wife and I all took our first family walk last Sunday. From our door down to the corner. Ella in her faux fur coat aided by her tiny-tikes walker made pleasant, happy noises as the three strolled down the street.

It’s impossible to describe the love of a father and husband. It’s impossible to tell you how I felt watching my daughter starting to walk and stand. Seeing her laugh at the Christmas lights and smile saying, “Hi!” over and over to Persephone. Life is so hard. We spend so much time worrying or being screwed, sitting in traffic, and fighting other people. But, for one half an hour with the loves of my life the world was a peace. I know that moment will never happen again and I’m proud of myself that I knew it and just let it happen.

Inherit The Wind.

By 2020 China will be the world’s largest producer of renewable energy. “The program, begun in Feb 2005, has caught on across the country. A new law that took effect in January 2006 ensures a fixed grid price for wind power, which in turn has increased windmill production and public support for the program,” Vegetarian Times Jan ‘07

I am loath to praise a Communist country and I believe that China should be our enemy but what can I do, what can anyone do? China produces almost everything for almost everyone, and is the second largest consumer of energy on the planet. Now they want to cut the cord and be even more independent by having abundant, almost endless, non-polluting energy.

In 1962 JFK said,“ Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age..” Wha happen? (My personal feeling is that the unwanted influence of insurance companies has ruined so much of what made us America.) What? We don’t have the Rooskies to compete with anymore so we just sit back and forget about innovation and invention? Forget about the future and the needs of our nation? Sure we can find a way to make striped toothpaste and make TV that much harder to enjoy by having banners and chartrooms visible on the screen while I try and watch “Star Trek”, but is that it?

China a nation with no compunction about torturing, enslaving, and even murdering it’s own citizens has seen to it that steps are being taken to ensure that there growing energy needs will be met for the next few decades. While we here in the U.S. “founder in the backwash,” contemplating the unthinkable, burning coal and building more Chernobyls, and five will get you ten that Halliburton will get the contracts to build those plants.

Being Green aside, the power demands of the U.S. are only going to go up. We need to take measures to see to it that the United States isn’t a laughing stock holding on to outdated dogma because we fear change. Oil will run out, if not in my lifetime certainly in my daughters. Being on the Left or the Right shouldn’t matter. We all want a strong nation and if we get on the stick the U.S. could be the largest exporter of renewable energy tech and energy itself. But…we don’t want to be. We don’t want to grow hemp because of some didactic decision that hemp, “is bad,” or that, “solar is inefficient.” Granted a Pyrus doesn’t makes ones balls look as big as a 1971 black GTO but we should consider who has the bigger brains rather than balls, a nation that is ensuring it’s future or a nation that is trying to ignore change ?

(This is from Coctober 23, 2006 but it confrms what many of us already suspect.)

Not fair, not balanced: Sean Hannity shows his true colors

Last week on his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity encouraged Democratic voters to "stay home on Election Day," adding that, "your vote doesn't matter anyway." He asserted that Democrats should not turn out to vote "for the sake of the nation" because Democrats' votes "won't change who occupies the White House" and Democratic "candidates have absolutely no idea how to win the war on terrorism."
On the same program, Hannity misrepresented the Democratic Party platform, stating: "I don't think abandoning our troops on the battlefield, or closing your eyes to enemy communications or listening to enemy communications in our country, or killing the economy, or supporting illegal immigration, I don't think that's something to run on."
Comments like this demonstrate how Hannity and other right-wing media figures hope to impact the upcoming election -- regardless of their spin about being objective.

I am a Nazi Stooge.

(sigh) OK…OK…It started out like as many things do, innocently enough. I was searching Amazon. com for items relating to my new found interest in The French Foreign Legion when I came across "Songs and Marches of The French Foreign Legion". Wow! What a great CD to workout to. Legion songs are in a distinctive 88 beats per minute to match the slow march of the Legion. I enthusiastically ordered the CD along with a book about 2eme REP the Legion Para regiment and waited.

Not long after a small package arrived. “Look,” I said to my lovely wife,” my 'Songs and Marches of The French Foreign Legion are here'.” I tore it open and slid the CD out. I laughed with excitement as I looked at the cover image of a Legionnaire in his kepi blanc. Sticking out of the package was the companies catalogue. Eager to see what other Legion related items I could get from…wait… THIRD REICH BOOKS! I turned all the pages and every item was related to the Nazi’s and not in an “educational” way either, these folks were serious. Let’s face it anyone with, “Anti-Jewish Poems of The Third Reich,” for sale aint fooling around. A wave came over me as I handed the catalogue to my wife. My Jewish wife. I felt guilty. Third Reich Books now had $20 of my money and my address. I pictured the men in the store in a brown SA uniform dropping the CD along with the catalogue in the envelope. “Ah, bruzza Gruning. Vee hope you vill enjoy this moosic, ja?” Persephone looked it over and let out a laugh, “Don’t worry about it.” “But…I feel like a stooge. Should Amazon be selling books and stuff from a Nazi bookstore?” Quickly I logged on and looked up my order and its vender. There it was plain as day in a hyperlink, thirdreichbooks.com. I suppose the lesson here is always read your fine print.

The funny thing is that this Third Reich Books is in Lincoln Nebraska. I say funny because you don’t see pro-Nazi bookstores in Queens or other urban areas. It’s only where people claim that they are “true Americans,” does this type of think become visible. Not to say that there aren’t Nazi lovers here in Brooklyn but Brooklyn spent enough time following the Dodgers to have any more patients for losers.

As too the CD, the first 18min is excruciating, cymbal crashing, goose stepping, irritation. The second 19min actually has Legionnaires singing. The problem is, and I should have realized, that the Legion used to take everyone who showed up at their door no matter who they were. Many Waffen SS, Gestapo, and elite Wehrmacht units, fearing Allied retribution, took refuge in the Legion and many of their songs became part of the Legion tradition.

The final straw is that the CD is a copy of a record and has no tracks so I can’t even skip through zee tracks, ja.