Give doze Dems a break

I've noticed that the Democratic congress has been getting poor grades of late. Now, being a Republican, I find that funny. I really enjoy it.

But I have to admit that it seems more than a bit unfair.

Hell, they've managed to do a bunch of stuff, such as upping the minimum wage. I guess their constituents believed the hype that they were going to ride in on white horses, er, mottled horses (white is evil right?) and change the whole wide world.

Nope, sorry. Napoleon pulled off that 100 day thing, but we have no Nappy's these days.

For crying out loud, cut them some slack.
Bush vetoes right? What, they can stop him from doing that? How?
The Republicans still have some power (Nyah, nyah), and the Dems really have to try and work with them at least somewhat. Keep in mind that this is harder now because at least half of the Republicans that got voted out were moderates who would have been at least somewhat willing to compromise. The Republican party is far less moderate than it was just 10 years ago. Oh, by the way, what sort of message do you think that sends the remaining Republicans?

Also, things are going better in Iraq, which is bad for the Democrat party. Then too, their buddies in the media have cut back a bit on Iraq reporting (always negative), which allows the good news to come in clearer. Not good for Dems as this bolsters Republican resolve and decreases the possibility of any concessions, along with decreasing the publics negative view of the conflict somewhat.

No, it seems to me that the Democrats in Congress have tried and done a fair job considering all that is still against them.

"Do nothing" is an unfair label.

Gays, Laws and Marriage

In way over my head, philosophically, but with all the laws being passed (or not), it is something I should probably think about.

Right off the bat, I admit to having some homophobic tendencies, as do most heterosexual American males. I would be mortified if people thought I was gay, I will be hating life if one of my kids turns out gay (though I'd forgive, that's right forgive), and the thought of gay sex is repulsive. Mind you, I am not repulsed by gay people, but the act. So for example, I can talk to gay folk about anything all day, except sex.

Oh, and I myself am not a normal man in that I am not turned on by seeing lesbian sex. I don't like sports either. Maybe I need help.

One of the problems I have always had with gay men is that I can't for the life of me understand it. Men are ugly and silly looking, even those that are considered handsome. I can understand women being attracted to men because nature wired them that way out of necessity, but men being attracted to each other simply must be a mistake. On the other hand, I can completely sympathize with lesbians. Not just because of the appearance factor, but because we men so often are complete asshats.

And now for my main anti gay argument.
For many years, I could convince myself to be non judgmental. I told myself that it's just another lifestyle and I shouldn't cast stones. Then one day, I got an honest to God "let's see what's going on in there big fella" prostate exam and my whole outlook changed in seconds.
I was in my 30's, and had been through exams in the Army and such. Over the years, several doctors had diddled my derrière with their dexterous digits, with little discomfort.
Now, I went to a doctor at a walk in clinic to check on my leaky John Thomas. The doctor was a woman who appeared to weigh 100 lbs soaking wet, and her thumb probably had the diameter of my pinkie.
She greased up the latex and inserted up to the knuckle or so I assume. Never had any of the previous doctors achieved the depth she did. Brothers, I'm telling you I nearly jumped into the opposite wall, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming and begging her to stop.
It was one of the most unnatural, bizarre and all around unpleasant feelings ever.
Close your eyes and imagine what it would be like to be tongued by one of those dual mouth critters from the Aliens movies. Got it? Now you have a general idea how I felt.
Then I realized that gays actually want things shoved up there! Big, honkin' luv pepperonis. Oh sweet mother of God, some stick Gerbils up there!
No way is this natural, no way is this anything remotely like what nature intended. The only possible explanation is that gays are wired way wrong, kind of like a neurological elephant man.

Ah, but would I hate an elephant man because he's misshapen and ugly? No.
Would I be upset if he moved in next door? No.
I would have no problem shooting the breeze with him on the phone or emailing and such.
I would not want him to be ostracized or attacked in any way.
But, I would not want to look at him. I would have problems with looking at him, and as wrong as that is, I am just that shallow.

So the analogy goes with gays in my narrow vision.
Move in next door, have a few drinks, brag about your new Mercedes, etc. Well, as long as you're not a jerk, that's the basic criteria for anyone after all. You're just another person and your sexual deviation (yeah that's how I mean it) is not important.
Just don't ever, ever, ever talk about your love life. It is, however, perfectly OK for you to make fun of my obesity and baldness.

On laws protecting gays, well I don't know.
It seems to me that existing laws protect against all sorts of discrimination and we don't need special ones for gays, but I could be wrong. I generally don't like adding more laws to the books, I think we have too much already.
I personally know of no incidence of a gay being passed over for a job or promotion, or ostracized at any place I've ever worked. Of course, it could be that there were gays there who hid it out of fear of such reactions.

Really, in order for me to support such laws, I'd have to be presented with actual cases of discrimination or harassment of gays, then be given an explanation of how the proposed laws would apply to the cases, and finally an explanation of how existing laws would apply, if at all. Of course, if the existing laws work as well as I suspect they do, I couldn't support more.
I'm sure Barney Frank is sincere, but I can't take him at his word, I need an objective argument.

On gay marriage, again I don't know.
Marriage is a union of a man and woman, not a man and man or woman and woman. I've believed that for years. Mainly, I've viewed marriage as a means of achieving a stable environment in which to raise children. The legal and religious ties bind at least as strong as the love, and have the added advantage of being constant. Since marriage is primarily a procreation thing, I reasoned, there's no place for gays in it.

Ah, but lately I've thought about people who are married but don't have kids. For them, it is the financial and/or emotional aspect of marriage that is important. Those that I've met seem to be doing well, and truly love each other, but in my former view, their marriage was a farce.
Well, I've changed my mind, and I no longer feel that marriage is strictly for child rearing purposes. This of course, opens me up to the possible validity of gay marriage.
However, I do have two other concerns that hold me back from full support.
One, we have civil unions. As far as I know, this carries all the legal protections of marriage. If gays are so worried about these protections, why push for marriage? Just deal with the unions. OK maybe marriage is important as some sign of acceptance. But since it's obvious that there is still so much opposition to gay marriage, why not settle for these unions for now? I know it's easy for me to say, but in 10 or 20 years, if the unions go well and there's little solid, secular ammo available, then it might be reasonable for gays to petition for the right to marry.

And that segues right into my second reason, cowardice.
Gay marriage is an entirely new concept. It has no precedence in this country. We simply cannot foresee all of the possible results of this, such as financial or legal abuses. And the general, perhaps uninformed, consensus seems to be that gays (at least men) are not the least bit monogamous, which would indeed render marriage a joke. I think this is one of the things religious folks fear. Bad enough we have about a 50% divorce rate now, what happens if gays make it a revolving door?
So if gays are successful and monogamous in the civil unions, then it'll be easier to convince folks like me that marriage is OK.
Of course, there is gay marriage now in some states. I say we could put a moratorium on the rest of the states and observe how well it works in those that have it. Maybe 5 years would be good enough, but I'm still thinking 10.

Easy for me to say, I know. I guess if the shoe was on the other foot, I'd be pretty ticked off too.

BTW, I haven't researched this much at all. For some reason, I just want to belt out opinions and "feelings" and then find out how close to true I got.

Not with Notepad

So I learn tonight that composing in Notepad and copying into the blog editor is not a good idea.
Actually, composing anything more than about one paragraph in Notepad and copying into another editor is not a good idea.

Live and learn.

I Killed Bambie's Sweet Loving Mother

So my wife sez that I left out a lot of fun details
on that deer hit post. I am normally a long winded sort,
and don't want to be here, so I try to keep it all short.
Maybe I shouldn't care, what with this being for me more
than anyone else.

So I'm tooling along Sunday morning in fine fettle.
Not really paying attention to the slowspeed-ometer, but
only hustling a little as we were just 6 minutes behind
schedule, a near record for our always late selves.

And then there's a deer bolting out from the woodline on
the right, running full tilt across the road in front of us.
My first reaction would normally have been to try and steer
around it, since it was moving quick. But there was an
embankment on my right with very little shoulder.
Too much chance of oversteering (I tend to overdo things)
and bump the embankment.

Of course, I barely touched the brake when the van
slammed into Bambie's mom.

I just caught a flash of brown and a thud at my side
window and pulled over. All was quiet for a moment
and then my 10yr old sitting behind me said "there's
spit on the window" in a very tight, teary voice.

Sure enough, Bambie's mama had gone into a spin,
whomping her head on the side window before arcing
off like a cow in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
In her last act of defiance, she spit and blew snot
all over the window. She also got the door handle a
bit, but I didn't find that out until later.

I got out and took a look at the damage, didn't look
like more than some little dings and cracks and the
headlights still worked. I figured if we didn't fix
the cosmetics, it would come in under our deductible
and we had to get to that competition. I told my wife
not to bother reporting it, but she already had and
now we were to wait for the cop to come and get a report.
Well, Hell's Bell's now we're gonna miss it.

Then I realized that I didn't see the deer anywhere.
Turns out it had flown right over to an adjacent road
and skidded into the middle of it!

Well, back into the van, turn it around and park on the
opposite side of the road, closer to the deer carcass,
as a courtesy to the cop.

Good fortune was with us, other than hitting a deer
when in a hurry to get somewhere, as one of the other
parents hadn't left yet. He stopped by and picked up
my assistant coach wife and our little competitor.
My older daughter and I stayed with the van waiting for the cop.

The corpse of Bambie's mother was in plain sight right
behind his truck, so I had to get out and have her look
down and cover her eyes while I guided her to the door.
She was a wreck - uh bad choice of words - she was most
distraught. We were all very worried that she  would be
too unhinged to compete well, but as I mentioned before,
she did fine.

Remember when I wrote about two paragraphs back that
there wasn't much damage? Well, when I opened the door
to help my little one, it noisily rubbed against something
and was a bit hard to open.

WTF?

Upon returning to the van, I saw that the fender was butt
up against the door... and there was a huge gap between the
fender and the hood!
I swear it wasn't like that when I first got out to look.
It's like the fender said to itself "hold on, don't move,
it's not that bad, you can take it - gaaaaaahhh, I'm losing
it, creeeeeaaaaaak..."
I think driving the van around to the other side and off
the road twisted things a little to the point that they let go.

Daughter says "At least the deer died quick." Not a minute later,
I see momma lift her head and flop around. Stopped before the
cop got there.

Cop arrives, nice guy, takes the papers and my statement and
starts writing up the report.
Daughter says "what's that awful smell?"
Well crap it's anti-freeze.
And there's steam coming out from the grill.
Go and tell the cop. He's finished writing, but comes out to
the van and says he'll add that to the report.

I swear the van is falling apart right there!
The engine's gonna fall out any second, the tires are
gonna flop off like in a cartoon. It's a slow motion
self destruct. It's not supposed to be this way, it's
supposed to be one big bang and then we're standing around
a steaming pile of what was once a fine vehicle, not this
"I'm OK, uh, well, not so much OK really, uh, that is, I think
I'm dying, you know, yeah, yup, I'm dead, sorry for the delay."

Well, we're close to home, so we say bye and thanks to the cop
and drive home. Van seems OK, but my daughter's shitting
pickles waiting for the thing to blow up.
It doesn't, instead it makes it home fine (as Honda's will do).

So, I park the van at an angle to make it as easy to tow as possible.
Well now my car is loaded with stuff for work. So we unload the
back and passenger seats and head off.

Oldest and I arrive almost an hour late.

Still, a good time was had by all.
Except that now the family is calling me "Uncle Buck."

Deer vs Van, Both Die

But the van can be resurrected.

Nobody hurt, thankfully it wasn't a very large deer. Had spouse and both offspring with me. Happened early last Sunday morning on the way to my little one's Cheer competition (won the state championship in their division, tough little kid she is).

The van is our 06 Honda Odyssey. I was mildly surprised at how little damage was done. Hell the airbags didn't even deploy, which is a good thing since that would have put me and probably my wife into the hospital (freaking useless shit those front airbags are).

Leaking anti-freeze, hood dented and won't open, driver's side fender pushed back, and the bumper, grill, headlight cover and trim all cracked. Drove it home, as it happened very close, and did not notice any driveability problems.

It's in the body shop now, a little over $3,000 damage, which is about the cost of a headlight and some fuzzy dice these days. Thankful for the $500 deductible. Or was that $1,000, not sure.

I'll ask for details at the body shop this afternoon maybe.

This is the first time I have hit a deer! My wife hit one with this same van earlier this year, but it was a fawn and she was driving slow so nothing but a scratch on both.

I'm getting sick of these damned long legged rats. If I had money, I'd buy a Nissan Armada (my favorite SUV) and put a Buckstop on it http://www.buckstop.biz/nissan_classic.html

Smack that rat and just keep going. Not even spill my coffee. Not even slow down.

Oops

Hadn't noticed that this was not allowing anonymous replies. Fixed that. I think.

I hate not being able to reply anonymously, I wouldn't want to do it to others.

US Auto Non Buyin' Rant

For no good reason, instead of a warm, "Hi, thanks for stopping by..." I'll lead this off with something unpleasant from my liberal side.

I don't believe in buying American cars. I believe in the Japs, specifically Honda, Toyota and Subaru.
Why? Two reasons, the first being the quality gap that we all know about. Now, a lot of people argue with me about that, to no avail. I might write about that in the future, right now it's secondary

See, even if the big 3 achieve parity with the Japs on quality, I still will probably not buy their products.
Why? Well, the second reason:
Executive Compensation

U.S. auto executives are grossly, criminally, overpaid.
For example, here's an excerpt about Honda's CEO pay from a Forbes article on Honda from 2006:

"Honda doesn't disclose executive pay in detail, but the sum of salaries and bonuses that Fukui shares with 36 board members, $13 million, is just about enough for the boss at a big American company."

And here's an excerpt from CNN Money on Ford's:

"Struggling Ford Motor Co., which posted a record $12.7 billion net loss in 2006, gave its new CEO Alan Mulally $28 million for four months on the job, according to the company's proxy statement..."

And, though I can't find the article, I remember reading that the CEO of GM is guaranteed a $5 million PENSION no matter what happens to the company.

Ya think any of these rat bastards will cut back on their own benefits, salaries, or pensions to help save the company? Dream on, that's the job of the workers, the executive's job is to increase personal income no matter what the cost to the rest of the world.

OK, so when you plunk down your dollars for an American car, who benefits? The workers? Bullcrap, they are being thrown out on the street and their jobs sourced out of the country. It is the executives who are getting your money, no one else.

Look at the U.S. content in that American Iron you're planning on buying, you may just find that the only thing American in it is the name and maybe the continent.
Now look at the U.S. content in some Jap cars, especially Honda and Toyota. In the end, they are more American than the big 3.

Jeez, I've made this too long, yet I feel I can still go on. I'll get better at this as I go I'm sure.

Thanks for Stopping by. There, I wrote it, I feel better now.