I have had many, many a disagreement with Andrew Sullivan in the past. All of those are easily superceeded by his passionate coverage of the Iranian election and it's aftermath.
He singlehandedly is light years ahead of the MSM.
Update 9:35pm.. I'm traveling in WY and just got a call from my wife. Apparently, the extremely unusually cool and wet weather produced a wicked thunderstorm this afternoon and things do not look as pretty as they do in these pictures. They'll ultimately be okay, but right now, they are beat to shit.
So over the last month or so, I put down 300 sqft of sod along the south side of the driveway. I was able to do this because we removed some trees this past winter (you can barely see the existing beds under the trunk). This past week we brought in 16 RR ties and 3 1/2 yards of top soil to raise the tiered planters along the driveway. A few hundred dollars in perinnials and what you see below is the end result, mowed, planted and good to go. The empty whiskey barrels will eventually be planted but may not end up in their present locations.
This is a view looking in th opposite direction:
The pergola is finished.
A different view:
Now all we have to do is find the time to actually sit and enjoy it!
Fat chance!
I haven't weighed in on this (or much of anything lately - slacker) because frankly, I didn't much care. Huntsman is a very moderate Republican, exactly the kind of Republican the MSM and folks like Colin Powell think are right for the party, which immediately gets my hackles up. If everybody who is against you politically tells you something is good for you, it really means it's good for them.
For a good indicator of the liberal view of Huntsman, read this letter to the editor entitled Obama Disappoints. An excerpt:
However, I doubt that President Barack Obama gave much consideration to what this does to the political climate in Utah. As someone who supported candidate Obama, this appointment is a disappointment.
Gov. Huntsman was the only moderate Republican holding statewide office, and he was able to tone down some of the more radical ideas of the Legislature. His loss is a significant reversal for those Utah traditional families that include gays and lesbians among their loved ones, and it is a serious step back in our struggle to advance the cause of equal rights for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in Utah.
The Governor is conservative fiscally but socially liberal (see above letter). I'm sure he will be a great ambassador to China and Lt Governor Herbert will step in and keep the ship of state from hitting the rocks, although he will probably piss off citizens like our letter writer above. Who knows, we might even get some of those immigration laws enforced because Herbert is a bit stronger there. We'll have to wait and see. I think Herbert will win in a landslide for the governors role in a special election come 2010 unless he totally blows it between now and then.
I was in Dallas for meetings a couple of days this week and on the return flight, I had a layover of about an hour in Denver. Following the required bathroom break, checking email and voicemails and grabbing a snack, we started to board for the final leg into Salt Lake City.
Directly in front of me in line was a hip looking, 20 something man with longish hair, all the standard Apple appliances, nice jacket over jeans, pointed leather loafers, the works. He happened to be carrying a copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I thought, pretty cool, but then wondered what his motivation was. Was he reading it because of the tea-party movement and how that particular novel is getting so much attention and just wasnt to see what was getting everybody so uptight? I had no idea, really, and let it go as we stepped from the jetway onto the plane.
As the line slowly moved through the first class section, one of the flight attendants, a young, hip, stylish woman in her own right, was standing in the gap between first and coach and reached out and caught this man's arm. She said, " I'm currently reading The Fountainhead" and added "Good Luck." The young man nodded and said "this is my second time reading this," and ended with "Good Luck to us all."
It had been a long travel day and up to that point, I had been tired and grumpy. The screaming toddler in the boarding area who was about to get on the same plane I was on didn't help matters much, but what should I expect. I have yet to be on a flight into or out of Salt Lake that didn't have a screaming baby on it and I guess I should have been thankful it was only one.
Catching a glimpse of that somewhat private conversation between 2 members of a generation one tier down from my own, however, really lifted my spirits. "There is hope", I thought to myself as I finally got to 19A, secured my laptop bag and settled in for the flight. If there are two here on the same plane, there must be others.
From today's Tribune:
Mormons posthumously baptise Obama's late mother
A quote from the article:
"The LDS Church is walking a fine line when the mother of our very special president has been posthumously baptized and endowed in a Utah temple," she said. "It sends out the message that the religion she chose while she was alive was not good enough. And that spills onto her son, who is our president."
One wonders what the Rev. Wright would have to say about that...
Hey, you know that Pergola I built over the weekend? It's covered in snow today!
I've seen lot's of "Meh" attitudes on the MSM media websites, except for Fox News, of course, but here in Utah, there has been coverage. Quite a bit, in fact. Every half hour news break on both major AM radio stations, 1160 KSL and 570 KNRS have mentioned the tea parties and have stories (linked) on their respective websites.
The Salt Lake Tribune has a nice article on the front page of their home page. All the coverage has been generally positive in nature, or at least not derisive.
The Trib even provides a list of all the UT events occurring today in the linked article.
WIth the help of a friend, I built something this weekend. All it needs now is to be stained.
Given how cold and snowy it's been lately, we've had to take over one of our bathrooms and turn it into a make-shift greenhouse to get things going. Things are coming along nicely, I should think.
What you're looking at here is mostly tomatos, some egg plant, and a couple of different types of peppers.
We'll be planting 3 more flats tonight containing cucumbers, squash, watermelons and cantelopes and anything else we happen to throw in. Typcially in this area, you risk losing your plants if you put them in the ground before Mother's Day, so while we're a tad late getting started, we should be fine, especially as these 2 flats mature, then they can go in the greenhouse.
It gets in the mid 80's in there with sunshine and temps in the 50's which we have now. The problem is keeping them from freezing. While the seeds germinate, they need constant temps, but once they have sprouted and actually grown some of the plan't foliage, we can move them. Keeping the greenhouse a constant temp would require a huge heater even though it's only a 6 x 6 structure. Keeping it above freezing is much easier to do.
Crickets Chirping.
Not literally of course, as any crickets that would be alive here would have long since frozen to death given the weather lately. No, what I'm talking about is historic events related to today's date.
April 4th.
Hmm... I know something happened, but what could it be.... Let's see. It's too early for Easter, so that can't be it. The Masters week doesn't start until Monday.
Ah, I know. The Assassination of Martin Luther King. I looked at the home pages of Fox News and there is nothing. MSNBC and CNN have virtually the same article related to new pictures released by Life magazine of the assassination day, but nothing else.
Drudge? Nope.
My home town newspaper? Nada.
Where are the long flowing articles? Where are the tributes? Where are the wreath layings?
Hello...ello...ello..oo..o
Our first African American President isn't even in the United States on this historic day and the media have nothing to say. How sad.
It's as if MLK no longer exists, and in the age of President Obama, perhaps he doesn't.
I only wonder when the street signs will be coming down.
I thought I would get that out of the way first.
For a fantastic laugh, go read this.
For the last couple of years we have had a raptor prowling the property picking off the quail, rats and small rodents that abound. During all that time, we thought it a Perigrine Falcon based on our brief glimpses of it and the description we found in Sibley's Bird Guide. We recently found out that our next door neighbor took an up close picture of it and checked with local wildlife officials who positively identified it as a Coopers Hawk. Listening to it's calls here, I would agree with that.
So anyway, there are now 2 and they appear to be a nesting pair which is cool but doesn't bode well for the quail population. It's a beautiful bird, however, and it's a joy to watch flying in and out of the walnut trees and soaring over the property. While I was pruning trees earlier this month, I was standing up in the Golden Delicious apple pruning away and caught some movement out of my right eye. I glanced over and one of them, the female I think based on the larger size, had alighted onto a branch on the other side of the tree. She stayed just long enough to check me out and then flew away, but she was only about 8 feet from me.
Long may the nest here and they are always welcome.
Because all those mouths to feed require huge amounts of resources to sustain them and large SUV's to transport them, so you know, you people need to cut it out.
I saw this quote on a Fox News article on lawn mowers. Seeing as I take a great interest in lawn mowers and yard equipment in general, I thought I would take a peak. I wasn't surprised by what I found. This quote was refreshingly candid and as more people understand where these people are coming from, they'll start to push back:
"The absolute worst thing you can do is use a gas mower on a typical American lawn," says Lloyd Alter, design and architecture writer for Discovery Communications' PlanetGreen and TreeHugger blogs. "It still has carbon dioxide and other gases that are harmful. You can't call anything with gas safe for the environment." (emphasis mine -ed)
In case you didn't get it, this includes your cars, your motorcycles, your pick-up trucks, etc. These people want everyone (except them, of course) to be living in the days of the horse and buggy.
For those who don't know the back story, this yahoo lied on a bid application form and inserted himself into an auction for BLM land use for energy exploration all in the name of environmental extremeism. As the Tribune reports, he was hoping for some sympathy from the Obama Administration and didn't get it:
Tim DeChristopher -- the monkey-wrenching University of Utah student who caused an environmental sensation by disrupting a high-profile oil and gas lease auction -- pinned his hopes on President Barack Obama to get him out of trouble.
But shortly after a federal grand jury handed up a two-count felony indictment Wednesday against the 27-year-old economics major, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar crushed any notion of help from Washington.
The Bureau of Land Management, Salazar warned, "will not tolerate future conduct which undermines the integrity of the bid process."
It's a rare day that I agree with Ken Salazar, but this is one of them. No DeChristopher is looking at going inside for all day:
DeChristopher faces up to 10 years in prison and $750,000 in fines under charges he organized and participated in a scheme to "defeat" federal law and made a fraudulent statement when he registered as a bidder at the BLM's Dec. 19 lease sale in Salt Lake City.
U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman said that, while he recognized people may have deeply held views on government behavior, they should express them lawfully.
"Rather than follow the rule of law, this defendant has, in his own words, repeatedly said he intended to disrupt the lease-bidding process," Tolman said. "Today's indictment is our response to his decision."
On the day of the auction, DeChristopher signed a bidder-registration form that warned it is a federal crime to "knowingly and willfully make any false, fictitious or fraudulent statements" and cited the maximum penalties: up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
This is a slam dunk case and I hope that he gets everything coming to him.
Did I forget to mention April Fools? It's 28 and snowing.
That is all.
-KSL 5 News Weatherman just a few minutes ago on the local news.
Who you telling?
P.S. I just lit a fire in the wood stove. Did I mention it'll be April in 2 days time?
That's how long it's been since I last even signed into this blog. What have I been doing? Lots and lots of pruning in anticipation of spring, but spring seems to be taking it's own sweet time arriving. We've been stuck in a cold wet (read snow) pattern for weeks with no end in sight. As I write this, I'm looking at 8 to 10 inches of snow from yesterdays storm and the Lake Effect snow overnight and the thermometer reads 29. It's 2 days before friggin' APRIL!
I'm so over this snow and what's inevitable is the fact that when the cycle breaks, temps are going to soar and everything will leaf out overnight. I still have to charge the irrigation system and repair a bunch of heads (most along the front where my next door neighbor in an attempt to be nice, took them out with his ATV plow). I still have to aerate, fertilize and finish the pruning not to mention, till in the Biosol and get the garden ready.
Sorry to complain, but I look at just how much work is left to do, coupled with the time of year (almost April), the yardstick of snow still on the ground and freezing tempuratures when our "normal" highs are about 60 and it just pisses me off. Especially when things like this are pushed by the media despite being totally ineffective!
He might as well have a (D) after his name. Orrin, you've been there too long. It's time to vote your ass out.
From today's Trib:
With a new president pushing an aggressive agenda and an economic crisis highlighting the need to cut costs, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch says Congress faces a unique opportunity to reform the U.S. health-care system.
He tried to tamper it with this:
But he also warned that Republicans will not let Democrats do anything they please, and he threatened "warfare" if the final bill includes too much government control.
Sigh.
He must think we're all idiots.
I knew there was something about this state that I liked. It just has a good feel about it. Now I know why.
Andrew Sullivan posted a hypothetical from Ross Douthat today with the excerpt reproduced as follows:
Just imagine, for a moment, how conservatives would react if four months after the worst defeat liberalism had suffered in a generation, an Olbermann (or a Moyers or a Michael Moore or a Bill Maher or whomever) showed up to deliver the keynote address at a liberal equivalent of CPAC, and during the course of his speech he blasted every Democrat who disagrees with him as a miserable sell-out, suggested that conservatives are fascists and conservatism a psychosis, lectured the crowd on the irrelevance of policy ideas to liberalism's political prospects, and insisted that the only blueprint liberals need to win elections is the one that Lyndon Johnson used to rout Barry Goldwater.
I emailed Andrew my response, replicated below:
Andrew,
Olberman, Moore, Maher, et al, don't have to show up at a function equivalent to CPAC 4 months after an election to espouse that Republicans are fascist or Republicanism is a psychosis. They do so virtually daily on their own televised broadcasts. Those views are what is considered "mainstream" in today's media environment. Nobody who works for any of the network and cable media outlets would question those views because there is no need to; they share them and if on the rare chance they do not, they have learned to keep it to themselves. Any dissent is vigorously beaten down and continued questioning is what ends careers.
As to the first question of the hypothetical, Republican's would react pretty much as they do today, outraged, but in a vacuum. Republican's rebuttal/responses have been written off in pretty much all the media outlets. It's the primary reason Rush is so popular and AM radio has grown exponentially over the last two decades. There is a very large segment of this country (over 58 million in the 08 election) who want to hear viewpoints they share and they're just not getting it anywhere else.
The whole premise is moot anyway.
Let's play the game and assume Ross' premise actually occurred and some left of center politicians/pundits proffered their criticisms. Other than those who saw it live, no one after that would ever hear about it again and the unfortunate left of center politicians/pundits would be forever frozen out of any further media attention. Any web stream footage would be removed, websites would be scrubbed with no explanation and no one would ever speak of it again. The few conservative sites that would pull the information out of cache and post it like Newsbusters or HotAir, would be downplayed. The comment sections of each would be overrun, calling it biased reporting or such. The Democrats are excellent at portraying a unified front and will do whatever is necessary to maintain that image; truthfully, they don't have to work at it very hard, though. The media, because of a shared ideological belief system, is quite willing to cover for them.
What we have is status quo ante. Any dissention among Democrats would be buried and any dissention among Republicans would be and is, amplified. The Democrats, and the media by extension, want it that way. It projects the image that everything is harmonious on one side (Democrats) and chaotic on the other (Republican), so which makes more sense to John Q. Public? Who wants to be associated with people who are constantly at war with each other? Any reasonable person would take the harmony.
I think of the media as akin to Bob Uecker from the old Miller Lite commercials. They beset themselves between two Republicans and start fights, create tension and otherwise sow the seeds of dissention like Uecker used to do metaphorically tapping one on the shoulder and saying, "did you hear what this guy said? What's your reaction?" It's a honed skill at this point and Republicans react predictably, allowing themselves to be played, over and over again.
What Rush chose to do was to not allow himself to be cast into the commercial.
Jonathan Sabin
Via the Jawa Report:
I am organizing a "Tea Party" on the West Stairs of the Utah State Capitol to protest the out-of-control spending and the squandering of our country's future. The "Salt Lake Tea Party" (in honor of the Boston Tea Party) will be on Friday, March 6, 2009 at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Poster making begins at 11:00 AM and the rally will kick off at 12:00 noon when the legislators break for lunch. We want to tell them what we think as the legislators walk down the stairs to go to lunch. There are tax breaks and bailouts for everyone who made this mess and people who made the responsible decisions are left to pay for the hazardous waste cleanup.
Now, I will stand and talk to the wind if no one shows up. But, it would be better if you can help me get the word out and let the politicians know what we think. If you have any ideas, I am all ears.
Thanks for listening to me!
David
ps. the Salt Lake Tea Party official email is
saltlaketeaparty@gmail.com
I might just have to show up.
Update: That didn't take long:
Man oh man. Rush just now called out RNC Chairman Micheal Steele over his comments about Rush's CPAC Speech. It will be very interesting to watch the fall out over this one. More to come....
The Supreme Court unanimously decided the case today in favor of the city of Pleasant Grove. The gist of the lawsuit was that this small time religious group discovered that a city park in Pleasant Grove had a granite statue of the 10 Commandments in it. This didn't sit well with the religious group so they petitioned the city to install one representing their views as well. The city in essence, told them to pound sand, the group sued, and for the last few years, it has winded it's way through the courts.
In case you care, some background on the group can be found courtesy of the Tribune here.
Even with the unanimous decision today, the groups lawyer thinks the court gave him another angle to persue:
"It's like they are handing it to me on a silver platter," said Barnard, who intends to amend the lawsuit, adding church-state separation claims.
We'll see.
Words to live by.
I've been watching this issue for some time now and I'm glad to see the MillCreek city council split on the issue. I think it reflects the the split in the community and forestalls government from running in and mandating what a person can do with the property they own based on the voice of a minority.
Property rights are a big thing for me. I think that unless the property owner wants to do something illegal with it, then the city should stay the hell out. Pot farms, hotels on residential zoned property, etc, by all means, step on in and end the behavior, however, if an owner wants to tear down their house and replace it with one able to more comfortably accomodate their family and they want to do it at their own expense, not asking for anything from anybody, then they should be allowed to do so. Period.
The hope (dare I say it) that I felt upon watching this video is incredible. The whole country hasn't drank the Kool-Aid and people are starting to wake up to the disaster that is the Obama administration's economic policies. In one 4+ minute segment, Rick Santelli spoke for millions and millions of people scratching their heads at what's going on and while I think he might have been joking about the Chicago Tea Party in July, I think it will take root.
We're seeing protests pop up in quite a few places and I think those, too, will grow. There is a great Q&A between NRO's Stephen Spruiell and King for a Day, Rick Santelli over at the corner.
Support for this thing continues to fall as well.
Tiger is returning to golf.
