When Wives Don’t LIsten To Their Husbands
Me: Evie, you don’t need to play with Mommy’s nail polish.
Evie: But I want it.
Christy: It’s okay.
Me: Are you sure?
Christy: Yes.
[Erick exits to get lunch]
[Erick comes home]
Christy: It’s all your fault?
Erick: What?
Christy: Well . . .
[Evelyn enters the kitchen with nail polish painted all up her legs and arms]
Erick: Hrumph.
Christy: It’s all your fault.
“Temperchurch”
A quantum of data collected with a thermometer, according to Evelyn, who usually says she needs her “temperchurch and her medicine” because she “feels bad” [insert fake cough here].
I suspect it is possible to be driving on the interstach (”enter – stay – ch”) and get a temperchurch at the same time.
Death of a Nation
Canada has committed suicide, I regret to report.
A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl’s grounding, overturning her father’s punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday. The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself online using a friend’s computer.
It’s Not Hypocrisy Barry. It’s Pointing Out How Full of Horse Manure You Are.
Barack Obama says “no lobbyists allowed.” Barack Obama says this applies to the DNC.
Of course, he has a problem.
While Senator Obama ordered the Democratic National Committee last week to stop taking donations from lobbyists, the co-chairman and lead fund-raiser for the host committee for the Denver convention, Steven Farber, is a lawyer and federally registered lobbyist with Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Schreck LLP, a firm with offices in Denver, Washington, and elsewhere. “Not only that, they’re a donor,” an advocate of tighter regulation of political funding, Stephen Weissman of the Campaign Finance Institute, said, pointing to the firm’s logo among several dozen “partners” on the host committee Web site.
This comes on the heels of me pointing out that two of the DNC’s vice-chairs are registered lobbyists.
So what is the Obama campaign going to do? They say John McCain is not allowed to talk about this. They say John McCain is hypocritical to harass Obama on this because he has so many connections to lobbyists.
Best I can figure, Obama must staff his campaign with high school dropouts because they very clearly don’t understand the meaning of the word hypocrisy. Hypocrisy means you, Barry, set standards that you, Barry, are failing to live up to.
Pointing out your hypocrisy is not itself hypocrisy — it’s actually shoot fish in barrel.
Dog Pound Disappointments
My first piece of legislation finally passed out of committee today, My second piece of legislation has already been enacted. This particular legislation is to do away with euthanasia by gas chamber in favor of lethal injection of animals.
There was no controversy in Council when this first came up. I think most all of Council has signed on as a co-sponsor. All the opposition came from the Mayor’s Office. That office is worried about the budget year. Because there were so many animal control ordinances put forward, the Chairman of the Public Safety Committee created a subcommittee on animal control to consider the legislation.
During the subcommittee investigation, the head of Animal Control said he needed about $150,000.00 to get lethal injection up and running. Curiously, on his inventory list he said he would need stethoscopes. Rabbi Schlesinger, on the subcommittee, asked why they did not have them already. Animal Control is required to check each animal before disposal.
The head of Animal Control admitted that Animal Control in Macon does not do that. He said they pile all the animals in the pin together, lower them into the gas chamber, and then raise them up. They make a visual inspection to see if any of the animals are alive. They then leave the animals for a dump truck that carries them off to the landfill.
The animals are not sedated. It is not uncommon for animals in such a situation to tear each other apart in a panic.
One of the ladies from the Humane Society told how on several occasions animals that had been euthanized had been recovered from the land fill still alive.
Over the course of several meetings, the head of Animal Control lowered his initial cost estimate to roughly $50,000.00. To address the Mayor’s concerns about putting this into the already tight 2009 budget, the subcommittee recommended that this legislation not go into effect until July 1, 2009. That would give more than a year to prepare for the transition.
Today, the legislation finally made it back to committee. The Mayor’s Office informed the committee that, while the Mayor views animal control as a priority, he will veto the legislation. The Chief of Police chimed in and said that if the legislation passes and there is no funding in one year he will shut down the pound.
The City Attorney chimed in and said — get this — that passing this legislation was committing future revenue to future events. He made it sound like this is highly unusual. Last week the City Council voted to spend $2 million over several years beginning in 2010. It seems to me all the committee was doing was stating that the method of euthanizing animals must change. Sure there will be budget concerns, but that is no different from any other legislation.
In the end, the committee voted 4-1 in favor of the ordinance. Yet again, Larry Schlesinger and Tom Ellington were the grown-ups, both speaking in favor of the ordinance. Those two always have this annoying habit of saying more in one sentence than I can say in a paragraph. Ha!
It’s amazing to me that the Mayor could find $15,000.00 to move a model of a boat to City Hall, but given one year and one month and a full time grant writer he does not think this self-proclaimed priority of his is worth signing into law.
This is not an issue I ever cared about until people in the community raised the concern. As Rabbi Schlesinger said, the community really does want this. And I believe I have the votes to override the veto.
Daddy the Spanker
Christy took Evelyn downtown on Friday while I was working. They passed City Hall and Christy told Evelyn, “That’s where Daddy goes to his meetings.” Evelyn kind of gave her a “huh” and Christy said, “That’s City Hall. That’s where Daddy goes to his meetings.”
Evelyn responded, “Oh. That’s where Daddy goes spanks those people.”
Hahaha
“Sorry Charlie”
Evelyn, Christy, and I headed out to the grocery story last night. I put Evelyn in her car seat and accidentally snagged the belt of her car seat on Evelyn’s leg. She protested.
“Sorry Charlie,” I replied.
“I’m not Charlie,” Evelyn protested. “I’m Evelyn.”
I laughed and told her, “Sweetheart, that’s just an expression.”
“Sweetheart, I am not an expression,” she emphatically explained. “I’m an Evelyn.”
I had a hard time staying composed on that one. And she was aggravated that I’d laugh.
Democrats Finally Embrace the Bible, Shut Out the Woman, and Repeat History
While I feel a bit of pity, mixed with glee, at the tragic fate of Hillary Clinton, I think the Democrats should be applauded for following the Bible. “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent,” the Bible teaches in 1 Timothy 2:11-12. Likewise, the next chapter makes clear that overseers, or leaders, should be men, not women.
The Democrats have taken to the Bible.
Of course, in the history of this country, women have always taken it on the chin in favor of not just the man, but the black man. We could not expect the Democrats to defy history.
We would do well to remember that women were on the verge of getting the right to vote before the Civil War, but the war interrupted the movement. Women sat by patiently for the end of the war.
1870 looked promising. The nation had before it the 15th amendment giving all citizens the right to vote. Except the amendment decided to make citizens and voters equal to men only. The women’s movement protested and fought, but they were outmaneuvered by an eloquent black man named Frederick Douglass.
And black men won the vote leaving all women out in the cold.
In 1914, things looked very promising. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the congress. But then war broke out. From 1918 to 1920, women again sat on the sidelines while the men took care of business.
In 1920, women got the right to vote. Fast forward to 2007. Hillary Clinton was set to become the first woman elected President of the United States, finally capping the long struggle for equal rights. Though deeply unpopular with a lot of the country, people were still willing to vote for her for President. Of course, students of the women’s movement should have seen it coming, but they didn’t.
An eloquent black man came on to the scene and talked people out of a giant leap for womankind. And just as it happened so often in this country, yet again women’s hopes have been crushed. I await the feminists new strategy of scrapping affirmative action, except for women.
Ladies, back to the kitchen please. Mr. Obama is hungry.
Confession is good for the soul
I have a confession to make. I’ve been in bed now dwelling on this. In fact, I’ve been stewing over it all night since it happened, not so much because of the implications of doing it, but because of the implications of not doing it.
So I have a confession to make. I was too timid in City Council tonight to speak up when a wrong was being committed and because I did not speak up, a bad decision was made.
Tonight we approved about $470,000.00 to a local private organization for housing development pursuant to a federal program — a community housing development organization (CHODO).
The legislation had been written to give the organization about $46,000.00 and yesterday we learned it was actually for $470,000.00.
Well, remember that federal investigation into the City of Macon for its faith based program?
Tonight we went behind closed doors and it came out that this organization was listed in the investigation. At least seven members of Council had serious reservations about moving forward without further information, but two members of Council had to abstain from participation because, by virtue of their offfices, they are now on the board of this organization.
The odds are that this organization did nothing wrong. We already know, it seems, that a lot of the organizations did nothing wrong — it was the city that was at fault. But there remains a question and we had before us legislation to give this organization $470,000.00. And the organization will go on to pocket six figures in fees from the project if I read the contract right.
The mayor has a meeting with the U.S. Attorney coming up. He could have checked into the situation and we could have reconsidered this matter in two weeks without there being any adverse effects.
On the Council floor we danced around the fact that this organization was named in the federal investigation. We kept talking about “serious legal matters.” No one dared discuss what we talked about behind closed doors. Several members of Council, as a result, were able to question the motives of others and hurl invective without those of us with concerns pointing out the serious nature of what we are dealing with.
I should have told the public this information. I am absolutely convinced as I’ve stewed over this tonight that one or more members who voted to go on and give this money knowing it was named in the investigation would never have done so had I spoken up.
What they could do with no shame through unknown facts, they could not have done if the facts were known.
Information revealed in closed sessions should not be revealed for very good reasons. But tonight, I don’t think there really any good reasons remained. The councilman who raised the concerns was well meaning and did so behind closed doors, only to be insulted. We made a decision having all the facts that we most likely would not have made had all the facts also been known by the public.
I should not have been so timid. I voted against the legislation in committee and on the floor. But I did not speak up.
Hopefully the mayor will not sign the legislation until he has talked to the U.S. Attorney and made sure this organization is not actually under suspicion.
Again, I think the organization probably has done nothing wrong. But City Council should not have acted without doing due diligence. The measure passed by two votes.
More on Obama and the New Party
The more you dig in to this, the more troubling it becomes.
In the 1996 election for the Illinois State Senate, Obama was running in a four way primary.
To make up ground, and pay attention here, to make up ground he sought the New Party endorsement as well. In that way, Obama calculated that he could get the Democratic left and the hard left to support him.
But Obama was running against Alice Palmer — she was already hardcore left. So, and again pay attention, Obama went to the left of a hard core leftist to win. That’s what he did by seeking the New Party endorsement.
Now here is where it gets interesting. At the beginning of 1996, Obama was able to get all of his opponents thrown off the ballot.
Mr. Hope and Change used the brass knuckles and ran uncontested as the Democratic nominee.
We’ve already established that the New Party had, by 1996, become the party of the hardcore leftist radicals — an amalgamation of communists, socialist, and other reds — in other words, not something acceptable to mainstream America.
Why then, if he then did not need the New Party’s support, did he keep up the relationship?