Friday Fish Wrap: June 12, 2009

Well, it’s been a hectic week between working a few more hours than I anticipated, having the entire outside of our house painted and then having to nip over to San Francisco to put in a Visa application at the Indian Counsulate bright and early on Friday morning. It’s a long story. I’ll explain another time.

The house painting thing is interesting. As a designer and fine artist of some considerable experience, I’m not afraid to use color. It comes as almost second nature. But after the painter got the back of the house done in the main color Tuesday night, I didn’t sleep well. I lay there awake thinking, “boy, now you’ve really gone and done it… messed up in a really big, public and rather expensive way finally. I was running all sorts of scenarios through my fevered mind of just how to tone it down after the damage was done.

I should have more faith in my instincts. They’re sound.

Yes, it’s a dark, warm banana yellow. With muted Spanish Red, Espresso and green accents, broken up with a warm, creamy white. I should probably mention here that the roof is green, and it’s a very spanish style house.

It’s absolutely going to rock, but I will be waiting for a few of my neighbors to start delivering ‘cows’. I figure that we’re providing a public service to the neighborhood of sorts …. a landmark, if you will. “Yes, Marge just keep going straight until you see that freaking bizarre yellow house and then turn right.”

In other news, doesn’t it just figure that Mitch McConnell, that self-righteous little guardian of our nation has voted against a really significant bill that would allow the FDA to further regulate tobacco. It seems Mitch has no problem telling everybody how to live their lives or taking money from big tobacco to the tune of over $400,000 over the last 25 years in Congress. That’s more than any other congressperson. There were a few others from tobacco states that let their campaign contributers vote for you the citizen (hey, that’s free speech, right?) and get their money’s worth. The other offending Senators are also Republicans. The two Democrats that also took tobacco money, such as John Warner of Virginia, managed somehow to do the right thing anyway.

Does that tell you that we need campaign finance reform big time? It does for me.

Under the heading of: are there people who should not have access to guns? One could be James Von Brunn. Here we have a guy who is the biggest flaming nutjob on the planet, with a toxic waste dump of ideas as a website … he walks into the Holocaust Museum and opens fire, killing an innocent man. Just how this supports the Second Amendment eludes me, but I’m sure Wayne La Pierre ( sissy name ) and his NRA cronies and fellow apologists will come up with something. They’ll probably suggest that everybody should be packing heat, and again, how that would stop the bloodshed escapes me. His nasty website appears to have been taken down, but I’d like to get a look at it if anybody can find it: HolyWesternEmpire.org. I did find some of his writings on other similar hate filled sites and it’s pretty disgusting stuff.

Here’s an interesting sidebar to the whole sad story of Von Brunn: Fox reporter Shepard Smith is taking heat from his ‘conservative’ viewers, and Rush Limbaugh, for actually admitting that the Department of Homeland Security just might have had a point about a growing threat within the U.S. from hate groups. The right hates it even when one of their own is right or shows signs of ‘getting it.’

Obama is working that voodoo that he does so well … going on the speaking circuit on behalf of healthcare reform. Gawd, I hope he can win this one, but the forces of darkness have already launched countermeasures … ala Rick Scott and his ilk ( see my webpost about Scott).

Yes, reform on the level that Obama and the thinking folk know is needed will, indeed, be expensive, but not nearly as expensive as doing nothing… or doing it in the same half measures as we’ve seen fail before.

Obama simply must go the mat on this one, and any of you that voted for him need to start speaking out and letting your voices be heard.

The American Medical Association (AMA) forever on the wrong side of issues that might benefit the greater good is still standing there declaring that a national health insurance plan would be the end of the private insurance business as we know it. Would that it were true.

Following this logic, having cops on the public payroll should have prevented private security companies from existing or being profitable, there seems to have been a long standing and healthy mix of public and private institutions of higher learning, libraries haven’t driven the bookstore out of business and private vacation resorts seem to exist just fine in spite of the existence of taxpayer subsidized public parks. It’s time for the AMA to get real.

Finally, Miss California, Carrie Prejean who so fervently believes in ‘opposite marriage’ is on the way to obscurity and probably a shot at some reality show. Perhaps Celebrity Survivor: Get me the hell out of here! Not even The Donald would go to bat for the bimbo a second time around, which as a really average woman with only one rather average boob (mastectomy, you see) sort of makes me happy. That’s probably mean and petty of me, but there you are. The Barbie dolls don’t always get everything.

Well, I’ve got to  be up with the chickens to get in line at the Consulate downtown in the morning, so I’ve got to wrap this  up. I’ll go read for a while … now reading Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food”. I recommend it. Great stuff.

Have a great Friday.

Don’t get up. I’ll let myself out.

maven