The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

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Either that, or the boy finally cried "wolf!" one too many times. Sorry for mixing my metaphors, but let's face it: had the Dubya administration not played the "fear and panic" cards as often as it has over the past 7+ years, maybe someone would have paid attention to Dubya this time when he said we were on the verge of financial meltdown if his Wall Street bailout didn't get passed.

Note that he's finally learned how to compromise, at least a little. Once he realized that the "no review by anyone at any time of anything" the Secretary of the Treasury would do with the 700 billion dollars [talk about your blank checks!--Ed.] was Dead On Arrival, he was willing to attach a few small strings to the money to get the legislation passed. Just not allowing bankruptcy judges to help homeowners rewrite their mortgages along less onerous lines. [Corporate socialism is OK by the GOP, but assisting individuals to keep their homes is unacceptable, evil socialism, I guess.--Ed.]

No one told the House GOP members, apparently. Partisan bickering is more important to them than salvaging the economic future of the country. Even though neither the breakdown of the votes nor the other facts support them, GOP House members are blaming the Democrats for the bill's failure. [George Orwell would love this.--Ed.]

Fully two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted against the bill, sending it to defeat by fewer than 30 overall. The Democrats voted for the bipartisan bill just as they'd agreed to do. Two-thirds of them supported it, even though many had to hold their noses while they did so.

The GOP representatives are also blaming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's "partisan rant" for the collapse of the bipartisan agreement to pass the bill. I listened to her speech. She ranted no such rant. All she did was point out--rightly--that the economic deregulation policies of the last 7+ years are to blame for the mess in which we now find ourselves. And that we'd better pass some regulations with teeth to keep it from happening again [or at least to keep it from happening until the next time we forget our history and re-deregulate to assuage the greed of Wall Street--Ed.].

Even if she had ranted a partisan rant, so what? Isn't the economic future of the country more important than such trivialities? Not to the GOP representatives, apparently, since they are the ones who scuttled the bill.

[Anybody notice the irony here? More Democrats than Republicans voted to support legislation proposed by a Republican Administration. Dare I hope that this split within the GOP foretells the end of the rabid right wing? Nah. Wouldn't be prudent.--Ed.]

Not that the bailout is such a great idea anyway. I'm none too keen on giving even more money to the people who screwed everything up to begin with. I'd like to propose an alternative plan: you want to save the economy? Take Dubya's tax rebate program of earlier this year and make it big enough to do some good. You're prepared to spend 700 billion dollars we don't have? If you can give it to Wall Street, how much better to give each and every legal American (all 305 million of us) 2.295 billion dollars apiece?

I'll bet we all could do some serious power shopping with that. Wal-Mart, beware!

Summon Your Creative Muse

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People For The American Way has started a haiku contest. The winners will submit, in the proper 5-7-5 syllable format, haiku best describing the McCain-Palin ties to the far right, the issues at stake in this election, or what their election would mean for the Supreme Court should they [shudder--Ed.] win in November. Contest winners will be announced October 27th, and the winning entries will also be published in The Nation.

To submit an entry (up to three are allowed per person), or to get more details, go to: https://secure.pfaw.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=action_haiku&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr001=ete4zfjin1.app304a

I have submitted my three entries, but I have to confess, my creative muse is more like Weird Al than Ogden Nash. That is to say, I do better with songs than with poetry.

To honor my musical muse, here is my entry into my own personal Skewer-the-Candidates contest. It is to be sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques."

Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin
Cooks moose stew
Eats it too
Rocky begged you not to
Bullwinkle's hiding from you
Moose pot au feu?
Shame on you!

If you can come up with anything better [and I am certain you can--Ed.], post it as a comment to this post of mine. I promise not to delete anything on the basis of whom or what it skewers. All I ask is that you be witty as opposed to going for cheap, potty humor.

Break Out The Pepto-Bismol

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College football experienced a bloodbath this weekend. Four of the top five ranked teams were upset [hence my need for the pink stuff--Ed.], and even Nebraska managed to lose its first-of-this-season's nationally televised games by losing to Virginia Tech.

Bo (Pelini) may know football, but he needs to learn some anger management. After playing generally poorly, with occasional flashes of both offensive and defensive brilliance, it's a miracle of sorts the Huskers lost by only 5 points. What's worse, they may have won the game except for late and stupid self-inflicted penalties that kept Virginia Tech scoring drives alive. The worst of these was inflicted by head coach Pelini himself. After the officiating crew warned him, he kept arguing and didn't leave the field with enough alacrity--and got the Huskers slapped with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty . . . which kept alive the Hokies' touchdown drive that ultimately provided them their margin of victory.

There is no joy in Huskerville this morning.

Still, I don't think Pelini is in serious danger of losing the faith of the Husker Nation. Most of the tribe like and admire his passion and his intelligence, and concur with his ideas about "how to play the game." We just wish he'd be a little smarter about his sideline conduct while the game is being played.

Criminal Mastermind--NOT!

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This article ran in Saturday's Omaha World-Herald. I am posting it in its entirety because there's no other way to explain it.

LINCOLN--Lincoln police report the rare occurrence of arresting a man who called them for help.

Officials say the 25-year-old man called police Wednesday night to say someone was trying to break into his apartment. When police arrived, they discovered it was the apartment manager trying to get into the apartment, which was supposed to be vacant.

Police say someone had illegally changed the locks on the apartment, and the man arrested was illegally occupying it.

Police also found more than three pounds of marijuana, equipment used to grow marijuana and nearly $3,500 in cash in the apartment. -- AP


Two questions: (1) Why hadn't the apartment manager called the police?
(2) Do you think, as I do, that the man who called the police
had been sampling his illegal wares?

Revisiting The 70s

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I was channel surfing last night when I discovered that one of the cable networks was running all three Airport movies (Airport, Airport '75, Airport '77). It was fun, revisiting the pop culture of my latter high school and early college years, but it was also disquieting. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

I loved seeing the old Hollywood stars--everyone from Gloria Swanson to Olivia deHavilland, Joseph Cotton to Jimmy Stewart, Charlton Heston to Burt Lancaster, Lee Grant to Helen Hayes--mixing it up with young, important (in the day) stars like Brenda Vaccaro and Karen Black, Monte Markham and Erik Estrada (yes, that one--playing a curly-haired obnoxious kid)--and, of course, the acting link uniting all three films, George Kennedy. Not to mention the colorful cameos provided by everyone from Sid Caesar to Jerry Stiller to Darrin McGavin. It was both interesting and instructive to see how real stars, with real star power, tried (albeit with varying degrees of success) to make very, very thin material worthwhile.

[For my money, Burt Lancaster's best role ever was not in Airport; it was as Doc Graham in Field of Dreams. Efram Zimbalist, Jr., as the wounded but gallant pilot in Airport '75, was about the only credible thing in that film. However, Olivia deHavilland, in Airport '77, was a totally delightful hoot as a Steel Magnolia with a penchant for playing poker.--Ed]

But the clothes were awful, each movie's plot was less and less credible than the one in the movie before [--not to mention that the state of airport security was less than woeful . . . especially by current standards.--Ed.], and the attitudes! Well, all I can say is, we have come a long way, baby!

No matter that several female characters in the films had important careers of their own, requiring them to make significant, often split-second, decisions. In danger and crisis, all females cry, wail, and wring their hands because they don't know what to do until they are rescued by some big, strong, handsome man. (And while I agree that Jack Lemmon with a mustache was good-looking in an offbeat sort of way, his obviously thinning hair shot his credibility for me as a romantic lead. Charlton Heston in a too-thin yellow turtleneck that showed only his relative lack of torsal muscle tone, was, well . . . eeeeeuuuuwwwwww! Give that man a bra!) The only independently competent thing any of the females seemed to be able to do was provide care and comfort for the injured.

And every one of them, no matter how old, was a "girl." And no matter what her name was, she was "honey." And she had to be spoken to in strong, stern, parental tones to calm her fears so that she would be able to focus on what she was being told to do. 'Cause that was the only sure way to make her do it competently.

I thought I was going to puke.

Not to mention that every single "bad guy" somehow or another "got his" by the end--with just enough innocent victims along the way to make the bad guys' deaths somehow even more justifiable than they'd have been otherwise. The morality of these films was starkly black and white despite all their widescreen Technicolor splendor.

Still and all, if it weren't for these three films, we'd never have gotten Airplane!; that alone justifies the continued existence of the Airport film trilogy.

And stop calling me Shirley!

Mark Twain Was Right

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"Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." This is not to insult teachers, or pigs . . . or anyone. It is to say there's no point in pursuing a futile activity. Truer words were never spoken.

A woman I consider a friend recently told me "I'd vote for Mickey Mouse if he were on the Republican ticket." That's tantamount to admitting that she cares not for the facts--she's going to shoe-horn them into her preconceived notions of what's right and proper. [Or should I have said Right?--Ed.] It is no different from saying "Don't confuse me with the facts; I've made up my mind." She is intelligent, so her attitude shocked me. I thereupon undertook the fool's mission of trying to get her to open her mind a bit. Her only response has been to accuse me of being just as shallow, but from the opposite end of the American political spectrum. {Which is much narrower than the world's political spectrum, but that's a topic for another day.--Ed]

That's a problem, because I've related to her numerous specific incidents that show it's not true. I've never voted a totally straight ticket in my life; I doubt I ever will. No one political party has a monopoly on all the good people and ideas in this world. In 2000, I thought John McCain would be quite acceptable as the GOP presidential candidate. Barack Obama was not my first, nor even my second, favorite among this year's potential Democratic Party nominees.

But as I have watched the two men campaign this summer, and now especially after the events of the past 2 weeks, I just don't think McCain is up to the job. I won't recount all the outrages I've previously described. I'll just add a few of the most recent. McCain said he'd fire the Chairman of the SEC, when the President has no such authority; he called the president of the SEC the president of the Federal Elections Commission; he said the "fundamentals of the American economy are sound" at the very moment the stock market was dropping over 500 points. He then came up with the lame excuse that he was talking about American workers. No dictionary or thesaurus in the world says "workers" is a synonym for "fundamentals."

McCain attacked Obama because one of Obama's fundraisers was linked in the past to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Yet McCain's own campaign chief of staff was taking $15,000 a month till last month to lobby on Freddie Mac's and Fannie Mae's behalf. McCain claimed that his campaign chief of staff had cut ties to his lobbying business in 2006, but he's still listed as that business's treasurer and is a member of that business's board of directors. Talk about a pot calling a kettle black! [I shouldn't complain, I suppose. It is more evidence in support of my contention, expressed in previous my previous posts, that McCain's tactic is to run against himself by accusing Obama of all the things he, McCain, has done wrong.--Ed]

After Barack Obama called McCain this morning to suggest they issue a joint statement to address the economic crisis, McCain unilaterally announced he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington until the crisis was solved, and that he wanted to postpone the debate already scheduled with Obama for tomorrow night (on the campus of Ole Miss). Yet McCain's TV ads attacking Obama are still running nationwide, his campaign offices are still open (many staffers of which didn't even know about McCain's "suspension"), and McCain's web site is still accepting donations. First, what about this constitutes "suspending the campaign"? Second, Obama has correctly observed that now is the very time the American people need to hear as much from the candidates as possible on this issue, and he also noted (again, correctly) that the president has to be able to do more than one thing at once. America's enemies are not going to stand in line and wait their turn while the president deals with the crisis du jour.

McCain is careening all over the place with no rhyme or reason. It's "shoot first an ask questions later." It's a fighter jock mentality, which figures, since McCain was in fact a Navy fighter jock. My mother, who spent the better part of her 40+ years in civil service working at SAC (now STRATCOM) headquarters, in the Plans and the Personnel sections (the two busiest places in wartime), in wars from Vietnam through Iraq, says fighter jocks make the worst bosses--they refuse to acknowledge that they could not do what they do without the support of the rest of the military and civilian teams who handle everything from arranging their pay to gassing their jets. Their perception of reality isn't, for lack of a better term, realistic.

She also says that after those 40+ years of 12-hour days, she knows at 71 that she'd not be up to handling the job of the presidency . . . and she further knows that (1) her job was not nearly as demanding as the presidency would be, and (2) that she never suffered the physical deprivations McCain suffered while a POW in Vietnam. She thus has legitimate reasons, based on facts and her experience, to question whether McCain is physically up to being president, given what being president entails.

Based on the things I've seen this summer, I doubt it.

But my acquaintance thinks I'm just a liberal who's blind to "facts" with which I disagree. I'm scratching my head here. I'm quite sure that if she and I were to sit down and go down a list of "The Issues" one by one, I'd predict her stand on each of them correctly more often than she'd pick mine. For just two examples, I am way out of step with most "liberals" on things like illegal immigration and making English the official language of the USA. I base my positions on what I experienced while living overseas, both in Europe and in Asia, and on my understanding of American history--which, I am not ashamed to admit, seems to be better than most Americans'.

I think things through first, and only THEN make my choices. Why she refuses to recognize that, I do not know. [I can guess that it has something to do with the implication that forcing the facts to fit one's preconceptions is not merely lazy and shallow--it's wrong-headed and unwise. If I am just like her, my opinions are no better or worse than hers. But I cannot say for sure that that's her reason.--Ed.] It was driving me crazy that I couldn't seem to make that clear to her . . . until I remembered my Twain. I hereby give up my attempt to encourage her to see a wider world.

Oh, well. She probably thinks my quoting Twain was meant as an insult. It was not. If I'd wanted to insult her, I'd have quoted Dorothy Parker: when asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence, Ms. Parker thought for a moment, then said, "You can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think."

Here endeth the lesson.

Pardon, Your Myopia Is Showing

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The Omaha World-Herald is at it again. The editor on Monday chastised the Huffington Post for running articles about unnamed individuals hacking into Sarah Palin's email accounts. It showed "election-season hysteria" and a "disturbing disregard for someone's privacy."

Of course, what the World-Herald failed to note was that the reason Palin's email accounts were hacked is that she deliberately created and used personal accounts to conduct official Alaskan government business while avoiding the oversight legally required of anyone sitting in the governor's office.

Don't get me wrong. I do not condone illegal activities (as a rule) such as hacking. But I don't condone illegal conduct of official government business, either. There's plenty of wrong to go around on all sides in this slimy little scenario.

I wish the World-Herald had spoken out as strongly against the improper and probably illegal behavior of the one being hacked as it did against the hackers . . . who, for all we know, are the moral equivalent of whistle-blowers.

Ah, So That's What It Is!

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Many in the electronic and print media have confessed to having trouble figuring out Sen. John McCain's campaign strategy. McCain seems to be all over the place: one moment, he says offshore drilling is "a gimmick" that won't work, and the next, he's chanting "drill, baby, drill!" One [twenty-six year long--Ed.] moment, he's calling himself "a de-regulator," and the next, he's all for close federal oversight of stock markets and the entire investment banking industry. One moment, he says Sen. Barack Obama lacks the experience necessary to be president; the next, McCain says Obama is to blame for the economic mess we now find ourselves in. One moment, all Republicans (including the Dubya Administration) are saints from Heaven and all Democrats are the Devil incarnate; the next [and despite his 90% pro-Dubya administration voting record--Ed.], McCain is a maverick and the only candidate who can bring us real change as he will "clean up Washington."

Don't you get it? McCain knows if we were all smart enough to vote purely on the basis of the issues, he'd lose in a landslide. He therefore is trying to turn Barack Obama into McCain's evil black twin. If you want to find out what McCain stands for, all you have to do is consider the latest charges he's leveling against Obama.

It's ridiculous; it's wrong; it just may work. And so is proven my hypothesis yet again . . . for isn't McCain the one who said Obama's ambition to be president was so strong he'd do anything to win the election?

Wakey! Wakey! This Is Your Nine O'Clock Alarm Call!

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The New York Stock Exchange lost nearly 10% of its value in the past 2 days due to the ongoing effects of the subprime mortgage meltdown and its attendant effects on the entire banking structure of our country. How could this happen? Deregulation has once again come home to roost.

And now Sen. John McCain, who for the better part of 26 years has called himself a "de-regulator," says HE's the one with the knowledge and expertise to straighten out Wall Street, end unconscionable greed in America and get our economy back on track. And oh, by the way, he wants to privatize Social Security. That means taking all the money currently in the hands of the Social Security Administration and putting it into the SAME stock market.

Talk about your Social Insecurity!

I cannot believe that anyone who is paying attention to the issues is still even contemplating casting a vote for McCain. Are that many people so stupid and self-destructive? Or are America's problems with continued racism far worse than I want to believe? Or some of each?

The Piranha Brothers Have Nothing On John McCain

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I want to make sure I understand this: John McCain says the tone of his campaign against Barack Obama would have been different if only Obama had agreed to appear with him in several "town hall" style debates throughout the country.

So McCain wouldn't be spreading sleazy lies about Obama if only Obama had given in to McCain's demand that Obama agree to appear repeatedly in McCain's preferred campaign forum.

So McCain is both: (1) blaming the victim; and (2) committing extortion, pure and simple. This makes him of the cool and mature judgment to be the president exactly how?

And just when I think things couldn't possibly get any worse . . .

McCain's chosen VP candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has no real idea what the Bush Doctrine is. [People who are calling what Charlie Gibson asked her about that a "gotcha" question are missing the point. Her understanding of the Bush Doctrine is essential to our understanding of her foreign policy positions.--Ed] But her state's proximity to Russia makes her a foreign policy expert and ready to take over the presidency on a moment's notice. Right.

I'm still offering to sell that lovely bridge--you know, the one in Brooklyn--all you have to do is make an offer!

It Was Seven Years Ago Today

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On September 11, 2001, I was sitting at my computer, checking my emails and contributing to a blog that no longer exists, when I got a phone call from my mother. She was at work at Offutt AFB, doing her civilian job in the STRATCOM personnel office, when the world seemingly stopped--at her behest, I turned on my TV just in time to see the second plane crash into the second World Trade Center tower.

Every generation has its own "I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when ______________ happened" moments. But it seems to me that my generation has had more than our fair share. John F. Kennedy's assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Challenger explosion, the terror attacks of September 11 . . . "and the beat goes on." Or, "we didn't start the fire."

Or "the road goes ever on." As worn down by my own personal tragedies as I have been at times, I never seriously wanted to die [I think.--Ed.]--the historian in me can't stand the idea of not knowing how everything will turn out. Or maybe it's the cat in me. Lord knows, I have more than enough curiosity for any three people.

Maybe I won't have long to wait. According to the Mayan calendar, the world will end on December 12, 2012. It's not worth worrying about, because there's nothing we can do about it, but there may be something behind the Mayans' prediction. On that date, a rare astronomical event will happen. Our Sun, the Earth, and the center of our Milky Way galaxy will be in perfect alignment . . . and now that we know that a massive black hole sits at the center of the galaxy, we can surmise that something drastic may indeed happen at the moment of perfect alignment.

Then again, before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, some scientists feared doing so would set the Earth's entire atmosphere on fire. More recently, doom-sayers predicted that running the new neutron collider in Europe would create a mini-black hole that would destroy us all. Since I am still sitting here, typing, I can state with certainty that THAT didn't happen.

My mom is worried that my health will continue to worsen and that I'll start to let go. I keep telling her that no matter how bad my health gets, I'm not going anywhere: (1) I have too much to do--as long as I have even one unfinished craft project, I'm hanging in [and I have probably thousands of unfinished craft projects--Ed.]; (2) I have to find out how everything turns out [it's a rare occasion when I read a novel without peeking at the last few pages first--Ed.] ; (3) living is the best revenge. My ex-husband early this year expressed his wish that I'd die . . . and my response was that if I had to do it on will-power and one nerve, I was going to outlive him, just because of the crappy way he'd treated me when and after he abandoned our marriage. He got my Irish up. He has no one to blame but himself. [I suspect that if he had not abandoned our marriage, I would have died by 1998, just as the doctors who diagnosed my lung disease prognosed in 1988. I'd been telling myself by the time my ex left in 1993 that what was good in him was good enough, but he was draining me emotionally. I see now that I am in every way except financially much better off without his emotional poison in my life.--Ed.]

It's odd, the effects that the momentous events of the age can have on our small, individual lives. After 9/11, many people lashed out against Islam, Arabs, and anyone else they perceived to be "coddling" terrorists. It was sort of a collective wounded animal syndrome. Even people who tried to help got wounded by their indiscriminate anger.

Some of us looked inward and reexamined why we believe what we believe, and asked--and answered--the question of how we may best go about defending and preserving our beliefs. The one thing I know is that the moment we lower our tactics to the level of the terrorists', the terrorists have won. For they have made us abandon our most treasured beliefs, as embodied in our Constitution. That certainty is at the heart of my disgust with what the Dubya administration has done in the past 7 years; it is the core of my fear about what will happen to the country should McCain win the presidency in November.

Nevertheless, I'm hanging around. I'm sticking it out. I need to know for my own satisfaction that the good guys can still win. In the real world of late, it's all too often that the good guys get stomped by those who are willing to say or do anything to win--including accusing their opponents of having the overwhelming ambition that their own behavior reveals. Like lying under oath. Like ignoring the Constitution because it just "gets in the way." Like claiming to be an agent of "change" while voting 90% of the time just as Dubya wants.

Aha! Another lesson learned from Star Trek: in the episode entitled "Mirror, Mirror," a pacifist race called the Halkons is willing to die to the last man rather than to raise arms and fight, just "to preserve what we are." The Halkons knew that their integrity, once cast aside, could not be reclaimed. I daresay, if any of them survived their impending slaughter, they'd reclaim their moral high ground and continue to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Those of us who don't want to see Dubya's Third Term are no different from surviving Halkons. Our integrity is intact; if we win in November, we can bring that back to "official" America and restore the Founders' dreams. The only people who've lost their integrity are those who implemented all the illegal and unconstitutional doings of the past seven years. Their integrity is gone for all time.

There is a lot riding on the next few months. I feel the same way about this that I feel about certain baseball teams who shall continue to remain unnamed lest I unleash yet another jinx: I am full of hope, but part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nonetheless, I'm not going anywhere. If for no other reason, should I not be able to take my craft projects with me, I'm not going to go.

Veggie Tales

My cousin Anne yesterday brought me some of the bounty from her garden--tomatoes, a cucumber, assorted peppers, and green beans. I can't wait to make some Pico de Gallo with the tomatoes and peppers, and a side salad with the cucumber and some onions I already have on hand. Haven't figured out quite yet what to do with the green beans . . . and I must decide soon. When I got up this morning, I discovered that at least two of the green beans were making a break for it.

Well, actually, the cats were abetting the green beans in making a break for it. I caught Linus carrying one in his mouth while running down the stairs, and Lucy gingerly extracting one from the pile with her teeth.

I really need to get a video camera. The visuals are much funnier than any description I can provide.

Anyway, thanks to Anne for her generosity. Her garden's bounty will be put to good use . . . even if some of it does duty only as ersatz catnip.

Thank You, Garrison Keillior

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If you have never heard nor read Garrison Keillior's Lake Wobegon story Tomato Butt, I encourage you to find a copy (in audio, it's one of the "Summer" Lake Wobegon stories; in book form, it's in Lake Wobegon Days) and listen to it or read it immediately. If you don't laugh out loud and don't recognize yourself or your family/friends, you need a mental health check-up.

Besides, it makes a perfect bookend to my tale of Linus and Lucy and the Roma tomato (see my previous post, You Say To-May-To, I Say To-Mah-To). The wandering Roma has been found . . . and disposed of without further incident, thank goodness.

Sometime in the last day, Linus retrieved it from whatever downstairs hidey-hole he'd used for it, and he deposited it amongst my stash of 1- and 2-liter bottles of water awaiting refrigeration. Complete with kitty tooth marks. [On the tomatoes, not the water bottles . . . though I wouldn't put that past Linus, either.--Ed.] My lovely friend Sarah (not Palin, praise the Powers That Be) noticed it while we were making pizza last night. As I was telling her the wandering Roma story.

Timing is everything!

You Say To-May-To, I Say To-Mah-To

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I haven't written much about my kitties of late--not because they don't do something amusing every day; they do--but my attention has been focused primarily on other things. What happened yesterday, however, deserves special mention.

That's Linus in the photo, Lord Of All He Surveys. He likes to get up on the china hutch to get my attention when he feels I am not sufficiently attentive to his needs. So far, he's done nothing up there other than rattle a lid or two, but I am relieved that the hutch's crown molding creates a 4" deep barrier. I have no doubts he'd try to push one of the soup tureens or teapots off the thing if he thought it would get him what he wanted.

Sometimes he is a bit more subtle. Monday, my mom brought me a slightly under-ripe tomato from her garden. I left it out on the kitchen counter to get a day's sun to hasten its attainment of tomato-y Nirvana, and thus hasten my attainment of tomato-eating Nirvana. Yesterday morning, as I stumbled through my a.m. routine, I heard a thump, then the sound of Linus jumping off a counter, then the scurrying of cats playing with new and interesting toys, like twist ties.

I didn't think too much of it. I wasn't yet entirely awake. [Those of you who know me know well that I am not a 'morning person,' I have never been a 'morning person,' and I will never be a 'morning person.'--Ed.] Only later, when I entered the kitchen, did I realize that Linus and Lucy were playing soccer with the once and future tomato. Which has since disappeared. I have no idea where it is. I've looked for it in all the most likely places (as determined by whence the sounds of their playing with it came). I have looked in all the places they usually stash their toys, or lose them, depending on one's point of view. I have looked in places I believe it would be impossible for the tomato to be.

It's gone. I don't think they ate it; had they done that, there would have been seeds or juice residue visible somewhere. Besides, they've never shown a bit of interest in eating "people food"--except for Lucy with clotted cream and Linus with Ranch salad dressing.

I know. If I wait a few days, the tomato's location will make itself known. I'm just not sure I really want to find it by that method.

And why the heck didn't someone tell the cats the Olympics were over already, anyway?

It's The Eleven O'Clock News

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[Please see my 8/25/2008 post, "When 'Fairness' Isn't Fair" for background.--Ed.]

And here's the film: a Nebraska court has ruled that it does not have jurisdiction to change some of the wording in the non-official parts of the proposed constitutional amendment to end affirmative action; but that a few minor changes must be made in the wording of the text of the proposed amendment itself.

So the amendment, with this tweaking, will appear on the November ballot.

I'm still scratching my head about this whole thing, and still hoping that most Nebraskans will see through the smokescreen put up by the people pushing the amendment. However, I am not going to hold my breath.