A bipartisan call to arms

Don’t you love the smell of bipartisanship in the morning? It smells like … it smells like burning flesh, or victory. After all, those two smell pretty much the same, don’t they? Now that the American people have spoken, or at least a small percentage of them have spoken because it was a mid-term election with predictably low turnout, power players in the Republican leadership are in Ottawa dropping clues for Mr. Obama. If he wants to win their favor and cooperation, then all he has to do is attack Iran.

Last week, David Broder opined that if Obama wants to sail to reelection he only need start a war. That’s real political strategy there, people, never mind dealing with serious problems in the US; the trick is to incite an irrational fear and hatred in the American people. Get ’em all riled up for some vicarious killing and they’ll follow you anywhere. Some call it the “Bush doctrine.” Oh, hey, now don’t get Mr. Broder wrong: “I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.”

Lindsay Graham agrees, to a point, and he too would just love to see Barack Hussein Obama be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history. Of course he would, loyal opposition and all that. So to that end, Sen. Graham took the opportunity afforded by his trip to Ottawa to outline his favored, possible future for the US in regards to Iran.

Election day

I don’t want to vote. That fairly well disgusts me, because i believe voting to be a responsibility and one that i’m both happy and proud to fulfill. Not that i take it too seriously. I once voted for Frank Zappa, and another time for the Communists (because they nominated two women and my other choice was Bill Clinton). In 2008 i voted for a Senate candidate who proudly noted that his campaign spent $400. I felt he represented spare change i could believe in. And one time i drove forty minutes to vote against George W. Bush even though i knew it wouldn’t matter, but i did it anyway. I generally look forward to the act. But now, it just seems pointless. Depressingly pointless.

We need a hell of a lot more than a rally to restore sanity.

Dick Cheney hearts Osama bin Laden

Am i the only one who’s been wondering (for like nine years now) why Osama bin Laden seems to share foreign policy goals with a broad group of people i like to call Dick Cheney? He wanted the US to invade Afghanistan, and so did Dick Cheney. Remember when he made a campaign spot for John Kerry right before the election? Dick Cheney couldn’t have gotten better than that from Karl Rove. The tape before this last one had Osama bin Laden going on about global warming, confirming Dick Cheney’s message that environmentalism is the same as terrorism.

This last one though, this last bin Laden tape takes the cake.

Lonesome road

h/t to George Kenney

Redifining “pragmatism”

Ole Robert Gibbs sure let the cat out of the bag, didn’t he? Take that hippies, and by hippies i mean everyone to the left of and including Richard Milhous Nixon. Not sure that perpetual war for no discernible reason is a good way to spend our children’s tax burden? You must want to raze the Pentagon…or maybe levitate it with good vibes. Not sure that the administration did everything in its power to get every American access to quality, affordable health care? You must be a Socialist, no, worse…you wish you were Canadian. The Kucinich line was a throwaway, we all know who’s holding the leash. What all you radical, pinko, dope smoking lefties don’t understand is this: pragmatism.

You probably think that pragmatism means looking for ways to remedy situations within realistic constraints.

Wright St. experimental ag station update

Summer sure has progressed, and truth be told it all of a sudden feels like fall in the great white north. (It’s not, at least i hope not.)

I’m profoundly happy with the decision to double dig plots and not till what became rows. Close planting has kept weeds to a minimum in the plots and unplanted areas have been easy to keep clear by simply scraping a square-tipped digging spade across the ground. I’ve spent very little time dealing with weeds and it doesn’t show.

Things are moving along…

Surprise flower

This anemone should be a spring flowering plant, but i can only figure that it was so happy to get out of the pot that it decided to put on a little show this summer as a gesture of gratitude.

Clematis integrifolia ‘Caerulea’

Or, Bushy Blue Bells Clematis for those not into Latin. So far, a neat little plant that sprawls rather than climbs like other Clematis.

In the beginning…there was a field of weeds

Maybe i should start at the beginning. I should also apologize. I’m not even go to try to make this readable; it’s just going to be a journal with pictures. When it’s all set and done, i might come back and put it together properly.

Robin and i bought a house this spring. For financial (i.e. Socialist) reasons the process felt somewhat rushed, and there wasn’t a whole lot for us to choose from. That being said, we ended up buying the first house that struck our fancy, and it suited our wants pretty much perfectly.

Tribulations transplanting full grown shrubs

This wasn’t something i planned to do. The area wasn’t even slated for development yet. But my nursery partner, Linda, proposed to gift me a shrub. Her late aunt had given her a Nikko Blue hydrangea that needed to go. Linda’s an outstanding gardener, but a Zone 5 hydrangea in Zone 3/4 is a tall order. She made it grow, it just wouldn’t flower. As the shrub had sentimental value, she wanted it to go to a good home. That’d be me. Better yet, i’m zoned correctly for it.

So i chose to cut in and build a bed from the deck post that forms part of the “door” out from under the deck (i.e. it lines up with the basement door), curving to meet the bottom of the stairs down from the deck. I knew i’d put a bed there, but not when or what it would be planted with.