recepts of buddy don:
dream tater soup

i wuz over to sugarfused a'reedin bout a dream she had bout her daddy, witch he dun past away 20 odd years ago but thangs still hurts. n whenever i red bout that, it put me in mind of a dream i had bout my own dead daddy n in that dream cum this recept fer tater soup that everbidy calls dream tater soup. i promiss to give ye the recept direckly, but furst ye mite lack to here how the dream cum to be.

on the mornin of 9/11, i wuz wurkin frum home n up early. me n missus buddy don had us sum visters at the time, witch twuz her son n his partner. they had been to see the empire state bildin on mundy n wuz a'fixin to go visit the worl trade center on that tuesdy. they had bought em a pass whar ye kin see sevrul of the sites in new york city fer one price kinda lack a ticket book at disneyland, n they wuz wurkin thar way thru the book.

before they could git out the door, we gut a call frum thar grandmom in ohio. she wuz riled up bout how them kids wuz not a'goin to no worl trade center that mornin so turn on cnn. we dun it n thar wuz the awful site of the furst tower burnin n then the wurser site of the plane a'hittin tuther tower. corse we spent the day in shock. tuck us sum pitchers of the towers burnin befor they closed down the 14th street pier. mingled n spoke with the crowds that wuz a'gathern everwhar. wundered whut wuz nex. here's a cuple pitchers i tuck:

we gut us the idee that we needed to git them kids to tennessee n ohio sos they could see sum reltives. missus buddy dons daughter cum over frum harlem nex day. my job wuz done that day on a counta my lil firm wuz bout three blocks away n coverd in dust n all our receivbulls wuz frum folks that had jes los thar offusses n mayhap thar counts paybull departmints. so we wuz quick a nuff to git a car to rent n tuck off fer tennessee n ohio.

we wonted them kids to see thar grandmom in ohio n my mama in knoxvull n thar granddaddy down near chattanooga, so we wuz a burnin up the rode. whenever we gut to thar granddaddy, witch he happens to be my own daddys bruther n sounds lack him n looks lack him n all to whar mos of the visit wuz him n me reminissin bout daddy. twuz hard on me on a counta how i hadnt reelized how much i missed my own daddy till that momint.

n fer sum reason, i gut to thankin how i missed seein him that las time n why n all. i had moved to new york in 1985 n gut me a job on wall street n everbidy thought i wuz sumbidy. he died in 1996 n whenever he tuck sick it so happend that the firm i wuz a'wurkin fer wuz movin frum one bildin to whenever. i had me a crew of techies n wuz mixed as thick into that move as ye could git. we wurked ever weekend that fall settin up the network n gittin folks hooked toot n wurkin rite.

so when mama called to say daddy mite not make chrismus, i tole her id be home thanksgivin. then whenever she called to say she dint thank he wood make thanksgivin, i sed give me one more weekend. on a counta i figgerd twuz importunt to make that las weekend move fer the firm. i gut on the rode by mundy, but he died that nite befor i could git back to see him.

that talk with my uncle put all these thoughts into my hed, n i jes couldnt shake em. purty soon, i feared id brake down crine, so when we gut to my bruthers place down on watts bar, even tho the nite wuz yung n folks wuz a'wontin to sit out by the lake, i went to bed n dreampt this here dream.

i wuz a visitin my daddy. fer sum reason, he wuz livin alone in a bad part of town in a single room occupancy basement place, the wurse thay is. he wuz pleased as could be that i had paid him a visit n we went in n i could see the place wuz a mess. i ast how he wuz, n he sed he wuz all rite but he wuz hungry.

whenever we wuz lil n thay wuznt nuthin else to eat, he wood make us tater soup. we hated it n wonderd why we had to have it but he always kep us fed. so twuz no sprize how he sed, 'we should make us sum tater soup.' soons he did i sed i wood make him that soup, n twoodnt be jes no plane ole soup neethur.

suddenly thar i wuz on martha stewarts show n i wuz the star of the segmint on a counta she wonted me to larn the folks how to make dream tater soup n thats whut i dun fer the res of the show. when i had made the soup n martha stewart had sed how twuz so deelishus n all, the audience tuck to clappin n i woke up. but i never gut back to my daddy with that soup, n it made me cry as hard as ever i did in my life.

but the nex day we had to git on the rode fer ohio n i jes kep goin over that soup recept in my mine till i had it memorized. twuz a verr hard week fer all kinda reasons but we gut home finely. the hole area wuz still covered in the dust n soot of them towers. seemed lack everbidy wuz walkin wounded. i had to look fer wurk n the vacayshun of the two youngns wuz ruint n we wuz wore plum out.

so i made us all a pot of that soup n we ate it n we wuz fambly together. n everbidy sed how twuz deelishus same as martha stewart had dun. twuz one of them momints fer me, n i felt a peace, lack twuz a present frum my daddy to me, that soup, even tho twuz a present i never give him.

but i will give it to y'all.

dream tater soup

gredients:

olive oil
cuple carrots
cuple stalks of celry
onion
four or five cloves garlic
taters: accordin to how big thay happens to be, ye mite need ye as few as three or as minny as six or so. i lack usin them lil red taters or new golden taters.
bout a quart of water dependin
bout a teespoon dill
bout a teespoon parsley
grated parmesan or romano cheese or bofem
sour cream
salt n pepper to taste

ye start by choppin up yer carrots n celry n onion n garlic bout as fine as ye kin. cut up yer taters but not too small. i lack mine in wedges, maybe half as big as a golf ball n sum of em half that big.

nex ye coat the bottom of yer skillet with olive oil. i never measure eggzakly, but i lack to use a nuff them vegtabulls litely coated in oil. brang up yer heat to bout halfway n when tiz hot, add furst yer carrots sos they kin git a lil hed start, then yer celery n onion. cook em till they gits to brownin jes a bit. put in yer garlic but dont cook it too much.

dump all this into yer crock pot or else into yer soup pot that ye put on low. put in yer taters. add a nuff water to whar tiz covern the res of the gredients by bout a half inch to a inch . git to boilin n then put on low. sprankle in yer dill n yer parsley. stir the hole concockshun up good. then let it simmer till them taters is soft. takes bout a hour or so. ye kin leeve it longs ye lack in a crock pot.

serve it with the cheeses n sour cream thisaway; ye dish it out n let folks add however much lil salt n pepper they lacks. then sprankle sum them cheeses over top of it n add a scoop of sour cream rite in the middle.

sum lacks to stir it all up together n they claim tiz good thataway, but tiz meant not to be stirred. ye keep them varius tastes a seperated thataway.

goes grate with a loaf of fresh rye bread, witch we lacks to bake our own.

pinions of buddy don:
bizarro news -- publicans under bush are the big spenders

whutever happend to the idee of small gummint? wuznt that whut the publicans been rantin about all my life? so did we all git tellyported up to bizarro world?

"Want to curb spending? Then replace George Bush with a democrat. This is not entirely a joke. With Republicans in control of the White House and Congress since 2000--except for an interlude in 2001-2002 when Democrats held the Senate--spending has risen at roughly three times the rate of the 1990s when Democrat Bill Clinton was president. Back then, congressional Republicans stymied Democratic spending. Now, Republicans go along with Bush's spending initiatives, while he accedes to theirs. That's the way a governing majority operates." -- Fred Barnes, Hey Big Spenders, Weekly Standard.

ye dont speck the wall street journal to pick on inny publicans on its editorill page, but here ye go:

"Does anyone else notice a theme here?" Since taking office, Bush has been on a spending spree. On his watch, federal expenditures have increased by 23.7 percent; he hasn't vetored a single spending request in three years. ... Today, public spending per person is actually higher than it was under Bill Clinton. If Bubba were in charge, "Republicans would be shouting from the rooftops." -- Editorial, The Wall Street Journal (via The Week)

frum an aritcull name of "U.S. Government Spending Under Bush Is Highest Since World War II" by Gail Russell Chaddock, furst published in The Christian Science Monitor, reposted on Reclaim Democracy.org

Much of the $2.2 trillion that Washington is expected to spend in fiscal year 2004 is for mandatory spending on Social Security and Medicare. But so-called discretionary spending has also increased some 22 percent during the Bush presidency, from $734 billion in 2002 to $873 billion in 2004.

The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan watchdog, calls this the "most irresponsible year ever."

Biggest spending years
Federal spending is now at a level surpassed only during World War II, after running about $18,000 per year in the 1990s.

Spending per household
1. 1944 $26,445
2. 1945 $25,572
3. 1943 $23,370
4. 2003 $20,399
Source: Heritage Foundation (in 2003 dollars)

corse the cato institute has dun caught on toot n is a'ritin bout it. this heres frum a articull name of "On Spending, Bush Is No Reagan":

George W. Bush is increasingly being compared to Ronald Reagan. It's true that like Bush, Reagan came to Washington with an ambitious plan to cut taxes across-the-board and increase defense spending while containing federal spending. And Reagan, indeed, lightened the tax burden on the American people and oversaw a massive increase in defense spending. Thus, given Bush's recent push for more pro-growth tax cuts combined with increased defense spending for the war on terrorism, the analogy is tempting.

But at this stage in his presidency, Bush's dismal record on spending when measured against Reagan's nullifies that temptation. Better yet, in light of Bush's spending it looks like it would be more accurate to compare him to Jimmy Carter than to Ronald Reagan.

Let's look at the facts. Compared to the same point in Reagan's first term, not only is Bush a bigger spender than Reagan, he's a big spender in his own right. Adjusted for inflation, total spending under Bush's watch will have increased by 14 percent as opposed to 7 percent under Reagan. But more indicative of Bush's spending problem is the run-up in discretionary spending under his watch. Discretionary spending represents funds for programs that Congress has to allocate for on an annual basis and it is the type of spending that the president has the most influence over.

Now, it is true that a sizable portion of this discretionary spending goes toward national defense. Bush will have overseen a 21 percent increase for national defense -- pretty much equal to Reagan. However, the major difference between the two men is discretionary spending not related to national defense. Whereas Reagan was able to reduce non-defense discretionary outlays by 14 percent, Bush will have overseen a rise of 18 percent -- a whopping 32 percent difference between the two men.

corse whut matters aint stuff lack spendin but whuther the presdint delivers on parshul birth aborshun or preeches on abstinunts or tries to make it so the gummint kin hep churches or appoints conservativ judges n folk lack john ashcroft n leckchurs everbidy bout not leavin children behin even ifn he cant pay to brang em along on a counta thars more importunt thangs to spend yer money on, lack gas frum halliburton subsidiaries in iraq.

pinions of buddy don:
comp day

over on wall street, mos firms have whut they call 'comp day,' witch thats the day they splain to everbidy whut kinda bonus theys gittin. we had ours recently n since im a middle manjer, i wuz involved. in fact, i been doin that fer over 10 years, off n on, so i know bout how it goes. the thang that gits me mos is how them that gits the biggest bonus is the ones mos lackly to cumplain bout whut they gut.

speaking bout wealth, here are sum innerestin facks bout witch folks has gut it:

• The top 1% of Americans own as much wealth as the bottom 95% percent.  (Source: Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership, 1983-1998," April 2000.)
  
• The total wealth owned by the top 1% of Americans is equivalent to 200 times the total combined wealth of the bottom 40%.   (Or, the top 1% owns 200 times the wealth of the bottom 40%
  
• The total  wealth of the top 60% of Americans is 500 times the total wealth of the bottom 40%.
  
• Bill Gates, America's richest individual, alone has more wealth than 40% of the U.S. population combined, or 120 million people.
  
• The top 1% of households own almost 40% of the nation's wealth.
  
• The top 10% of Americans own over 70% of nation's wealth.
  
• The top 20% of the nation's households own 85% of the nation's total wealth.
  
• The top 60% of households own almost 100%, or 99.8%, of the nation's wealth.
  
• The bottom 40% of households own one-fifth of 1% (or 0.2%) of the nation's wealth.
  
• The bottom 80% of Americans own only 15% of the nation's wealth.

makes ye wunder witch diereckshun thangs is a'goin:

• In the fifteen years between 1983 and 1998, the bottom 40% of Americans saw their wealth drop 76%.  (In other words, they lost three-quarters of their wealth in 15 years).  
  
• In the same time period, the richest 1% saw their wealth increase by 42%. 
  
• The richest 40%, excluding the richest 1%, saw their wealth increase roughly 20%.

fack is, thangs is so bad fer em, thar after-tax incum wuz barely growin fast a nuff:

• The top one percent of families experienced an average gain of 72 percent in their after-tax income from 1977 to 1994. (See Figure 1.) This was nearly eight times the 9.5 percent overall average gain.
  
• The average after-tax income of the top fifth of families rose 25 percent during this period.
  
• Among all other income groups, however, after-tax income either grew by less than the average or declined. For example, the average after-tax income of the next-to-the-top fifth of families grew just four percent over this period.

but thars more to cumplain bout fer whut happened after 1994 according to an analysis of CBO facks:

• Among the 20 percent of the population in the middle of the income spectrum, average after-tax income is projected to rise a very modest eight percent between 1977 and 1999. This is an increase of less than one-half percent per year. Among the bottom fifth of households, average after-tax income is anticipated to fall nine percent from 1977 to 1999. (The CBO income measure is adjusted for family size. This report uses "fifth of households" and "fifth of population" interchangeably. All changes over time mentioned in this report are in inflation-adjusted terms.)
  
• In contrast, among the top 20 percent of households, average after-tax income is projected to increase a robust 43 percent in the 1977-1999 period. Among the top one percent of households, average after-tax income is projected to more than double, jumping 115 percent. CBO projects the top one percent of the population will have average before-tax income of $786,000 in 1999 and average after-tax income of $516,000.
  
• As a result, the distribution of income has changed markedly. In 1977, the top one percent of U.S. households received 7.3 percent of the national after-tax income. In 1999, this group is projected to receive 12.9 percent of the income, a higher percentage than in any other year CBO has examined. Most of the growth in incomes at the top of the income scale, as well as most of the growth in income disparities between the affluent and other Americans, occurred between 1977 and 1989.
  
• The top 20 percent of households is projected to receive 50.4 percent of the national income in 1999, slightly more than half. This, too, would be a record for the years for which CBO data are available. The remaining 80 percent of the population is expected to share the other half of the national household income this year.
  
• The share of national after-tax income going to the 60 percent of households in the middle of the income spectrum -- the broad middle class -- is expected to be at the lowest level CBO has recorded since 1977. The share projected to go to the bottom fifth of households is close to a record low.
  
• Income disparities have widened to such a degree that in 1999, the richest one percent of the population is projected to receive as much after-tax income as the bottom 38 percent combined. That is, the 2.7 million Americans with the largest incomes are expected to receive as much after-tax income as the 100 million Americans with the lowest incomes.
  
• Indeed, just the increase in the income of the top one percent of the population since 1977 is estimated to substantially exceed the total income of the bottom 20 percent of the population this year.

fortchunutly, hep wuz on the way to stop this dangerus incum redistribushun frum gittin out of hand: Year-by-Year Analysis of Bush's Tax Cuts Shows Growing Tilt To the Very Rich.

i speck ifn them rich folk is innythang lack them folk at the firms on wall street whar i been a'wurkin, well, they still aint gonna be happy. i bet theys gonna need more.

corse, lots of them folk that dint git much on comp day on wall street wuz not about to cumplain on a counta how they need thar jobs, so its good to know that folks is a'gonna be able to git em more jobs thanks to them taxes bein fixed.

pinions of buddy don:
iraqi n arab cultchur: have we gut a clue?

i know i dun beat this horse to death, but it is still jes a importunt as ever. we aint a'havin the sucksess we wont in iraq, n part of the reason is we dont seem to wonta unnerstan thar cultchur n tradishuns, witch thays bof gut a lot in common with the old testamint.

fer instunts, them arabs is a lot lack hillbillies is reputed to be: they lack thar feuds. ifn sumbidy kills one of yourn, tiz yer hole tribes duty to git revenge. tiz the old eye fer a eye, tooth fer a tooth thang. tiz a bleef that kin keep a conflick a'goin jes bout ferever.

lookit how the palestinians n israelis go at each other, ever time supposedly a'gittin back a tuthern fer the latest thang they dun: palestinians send out a suicide bomber to kill a bunch of israelis. israelis use them defensive weppons they bought with united states money to raze a block of west bank houses n destroy sum of the palestinian infrustruckchur, lack the plumbin n electrick. then them palestinians seeks revenge rite back by strappin dynamite to the nex suicide bomber n sendin him or her into a crowd of israelis n killin as minny as they kin. n that leads to the nex revenge attack by them israelis.

tiz whut ye call a feud, n tiz a big part of the cultchur of semitic folk of all stripes. ye kin see why jesus christ cum as such a sprize to folk with his idees of pacifism n fergiveness! too bad thay aint minny folk that still bleeves that prince of peace stuff innymore.

a good eggzample of jes how this cutchur thang wurks cums frum that book i keep talkin bout, 'the seven pillars of wisdom' by t. e. lawrence or lawrence of arabia. he wuz leadin the arabs agin the turks, witch them turks had dominated the region with thar ottoman empire frum the fifteen hunnerts up to worl war one. lawrence wuz larnin them arabs bout the idee of a arab nayshun made up of all arabs n havin boundries of all arabs, only tuther powers lack england n france woodnt go fer it n divided em up into different lil cuntries, witch iraq wuz one they made out of three differnt groups that wuz natcherul enemies: kurds, sunnis, shi'ites.

one day while lawrence n his bunch wuz marchin round the desert n puttin bombs on the turks railroads n army bases n jes generly attackin purty much the same way them iraqi insurgents is a'doin agin us, thay wuz a murder. one of them arabs killt a nuther, n lawrence had to do sumthin to keep frum havin the hole force split up. here's how he splains whut he dun:

My followers had been quarrelling all day; and while I was lying near the rocks a shot was fired. I paid no attention; for there were hares and birds in the valley; but a little later Suleiman roused me and made me follow him across the valley to an opposite bay in the rocks, where one of the Ageyl, a Boreida man, was lying stone dead with a bullet through his temples. The shot must have been fired from close by; because the skin was burnt about one wound. The remaining Ageyl were running frantically about; and when I asked what it was Ali, their head man, said that Hamed the Moor had done the murder. I suspected Suleiman, because of the feud between the Atban and Ageyl which had burned up in Yenbo and Wejh; but Ali assured me that Suleiman had been with him three hundred yards further up the valley gathering sticks when the shot was fired. I sent all out to search for Hamed, and crawled back to the baggage, feeling that it need not have happened this day of all days when I was in pain.

As I lay there I heard a rustle, and opened my eyes slowly upon Hamedâ's back as he stooped over his saddle-bags, which lay just beyond my rock. I covered him with a pistol and then spoke. He had put down his rifle to lift the gear; and was at my mercy till the others came. We held a court at once; and after a while Hamed confessed that, he and Salem having had words, he had seen red and shot him suddenly. Our inquiry ended. The Ageyl, as relatives of the dead man, demanded blood for blood. The others supported them; and I tried vainly to talk the gentle Ali round. My head was aching with fever and I could not think; but hardly even in health, with all eloquence, could I have begged Hamed off; for Salem had been a friendly fellow and his sudden murder a wanton crime.

Then rose up the horror which would make civilized man shun justice like a plague if he had not the needy to serve him as hangmen for wages. There were other Moroccans in our army; and to let the Ageyl kill one in feud meant reprisals by which our unity would have been endangered. It must be a formal execution, and at last, desperately, I told Hamed that he must die for punishment, and laid the burden of his killing on myself. Perhaps they would count me not qualified for feud. At least no revenge could lie against my followers; for I was a stranger and kinless.

I made him enter a narrow gully of the spur, a dank twilight place overgrown with weeds. Its sandy bed had been pitted by trickles of water down the cliffs in the late rain. At the end it shrank to a crack a few inches wide. The walls were vertical. I stood in the entrance and gave him a few moments' delay which he spent crying on the ground. Then I made him rise and shot him through the chest. He fell down on the weeds shrieking, with the blood coming out in spurts over his clothes, and jerked about till he rolled nearly to where I was. I fired again, but was shaking so that I only broke his wrist. He went on calling out, less loudly, now lying on his back with his feet towards me, and I leant forward and shot him for the last time in the thick of his neck under the jaw. His body shivered a little, and I called the Ageyl, who buried him in the gully where he was. Afterwards the wakeful night dragged over me, till, hours before dawn, I had the men up and made them load, in my longing to be set free of Wadi Kitan. They had to lift me into the saddle.

innywho, i wuz thankin bout this while readin a artickul in the new york review of books called  'Delusions in Baghdad' by mark danner whar he splains sum of the folks thats a'fitin us over thar:

Saddam's elite Republican Guard numbered 80,000; his even more select Special Republican Guard numbered 16,000; his Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary force -- in effect, Saddam's brownshirts -- numbered 40,000. The Mukhabarat and the various intelligence services, of which there were perhaps a dozen, numbered thousands more. All of these men were highly trained, well armed, and tested for their political loyalty. Few of them died in the war.

In May, in an astonishing decision that still has not been adequately explained, American administrator L. Paul Bremer vastly increased the number of willing Iraqi foot soldiers by abruptly dissolving the regular Iraqi army, which had been established by King Faisal I in 1921, and thereby sent out into bitter shame and unemployment 350,000 of those young Iraqis who were well trained, well armed, and deeply angry at the Americans. Add to these a million or so tons of weapons and munitions of all sorts, including rockets and missiles, readily available in more than a hundred mostly unguarded arms depots around the country, as well as vast amounts of money stockpiled during thirty-five years in power (notably on March 18, when Saddam sent three tractor trailers to the Central Bank and relieved it of more than a billion dollars in cash), and you have the makings of a well-manned, well-funded insurgency.

whut happend to all these folk? did they jes disappear? did they surrender? did they all git killt? or did they melt into the iraqi background? far as we kin tell, they mostly survived by not trine to fite lack we wonted em to, in a cunventchunal battle.

in sted, ye gut ye a bunch of folk who wont revenge agin us n agin thar own. thar trained n armed n gut plenty funds to carry on. not only that, since thays this cultchur of revenge in the arab worl, ifn we fite back n miss n mayhap kill a innocent bystander by acksident, then thars a hole tribe thats duty bound to git revenge fer each acksidentull killin.

reminds me of a game i used to play on the computer with my son. twuz called "king's quest,' n to win ye had to go up agin differnt kinds of enemies, trolls, draguns, ghosts, vampires n such. thang is, ifn ye tride to kill the 'undead' creatchurs lack the ghosts or vampires, ye jes ended up makin that minny more of em.

same kinda thang seems to be happenin over in iraq. when we try to fite back agin the folks thats attackin us, taint possibull to make sure ye git only them, n ifn ye miss n kill the rong person, lack sumbidy who aint guilty, then ye gut that minny more enemies reddy to attack or at lease to provide shelter n cover fer them that wood attack. wurse of all, the way thangs is stacked up now, we dont have much of nuthin in the way of a nuther choice.

ifn ye know one, twood be a comfert if ye wood splain it in a comment.

pinions of buddy don:
is it jes me, or is the news all over the map?

i have a habit of collectin news stories and punditry. i cull the ny times, wash post, la times, boston globe, knoxville news-sentinel, wash times (fer fun), bbc, n a passel of otherns. i copy the stories into a draft email n save the draft. over the years ive colleckted sevrul thousund of em.

i wuz looking thru em fer idees bout whut i wood rite today, n it struck me how odd the news wuz, with dimcrats actin lack publicans n publicans attackin the presdint lack dimcrats, tho thar is sum normal partisan stuff mxed in, witch we mite as well start with that.

bob herbert of the ny times (requires registrayshun, witch they dont charge but they wont a tiny bit of informayshun) cums in with a perdicktable story called 'Stalking the Giant Chicken Coop' bout the new medicare welfare fer drug cumpny bill:

• The drug benefit will be delivered almost entirely through private insurance plans. It would have been more efficient and cheaper to deliver it the same way other Medicare benefits are delivered. But that's not the idea. The Bush administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry, in which tons of government money -- the people's money -- are hijacked and handed over to the special interests.
  
  
  
• Drug company stock prices soared with the passage of the Medicare bill, a sign that another government vault had been blown open and the big Medicare money was in play. The Republicans are not subtle about these matters. The bill, for example, specifically prohibits the government from negotiating discounts or lower drug prices, and bars the importation of cheaper drugs from abroad.
  

nex cums a odd story bout newt gingrich sayin purty much the same thang folks is gittin on senator hillary clinton fer sayin:

• Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said yesterday that the Bush administration has gone "off a cliff" in postwar Iraq and that "the White House has to get a grip on this."
  
  
  
• In a blunt critique by a leading Republican, Gingrich said the administration has failed "to put the Iraqis at the center of this equation. . . . The key to defeating the bad guys is having enough good guys who are Iraqis," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
  
  
  
• The administration did not send enough Iraqi Americans there after the war, Gingrich said. On the main online site of the U.S. occupying authority, he added, "up until last week you didn't see a single Iraqi on that Web page," and now there is only one.

then thars dana milbanks story bout how the right is gittin on bush bout his reckless spendin habits:

• The Wall Street Journal editorial page accuses Bush of a "Medicare fiasco" and a "Medicare giveaway." Paul Weyrich, a coordinator of the conservative movement, sees "disappointment in a lot of quarters." Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, pronounces himself "apoplectic." An article in the American Spectator calls Bush's stewardship on spending "nonexistent," while Steve Moore of the Club for Growth labels Bush a "champion big-spending president."
  
• But in the long term, the conservative leaders say, their discontent could spread to a popular backlash if spending continues to swell, pushing up deficits and interest rates. And the free spending is already limiting Bush's policy options. For example, economist Bartlett said, "the budgetary situation is getting so off track that you simply can't propose any more tax cuts without looking like a complete idiot."

howard dean picks up a cuple of endorsements, one frum al gore, tuthern frum molly ivins:

• Although Al Gore's impending endorsement of Howard Dean must be disturbing news for all of the front-runner's rivals, it will strike most sharply at Joe Lieberman. John Kerry also badly wanted and needed the endorsement of Gore, who nearly selected the Massachusetts senator as his running mate in 2000.
  
• The conventional wisdom first dismissed Dean (the man has never been to a Washington dinner party!), then condescended to him, then graciously offered him instruction on how he should be running his campaign -- which seemed to be going along quite well without that input.
  
• I talked to some big-money guys who assured me that Dean Can't Win. But of course I'm noticing this interesting thing: Dean has so much money that he actually turned down public campaign financing. (I'm a card-carrying liberal, so I was naturally deeply unhappy over this. But Dean's money comes from Real People instead of corporate special interests, so I'm not that unhappy.) Let me second the notion that this year, the Internet is to politics what television was in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race.

finally thars this new film out bout whut they call 'Bush's lies about Iraq," witch it almos seems lack the lef it pullin sum of the tricks the rite used, tho aint nuthin nex to that video jerry falwell wuz hawkin in the 90s called 'The Clinton Chronicles' accusin clinton of drug smugglin n murder:

• The movie does more than just present the case against the hawks, though. Greenwald wants to make sure that the administration's prewar claims don't disappear down the memory hole now that most of them have proven false. To this end, he compiles footage of Bush and Condoleezza Rice warning of mushroom clouds and of Paul Wolfowitz telling Congress that Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction. Lately, conservative pundits like Andrew Sullivan have claimed that the administration never suggested that Iraq was an imminent threat. Greenwald offers an implicit rejoinder with a montage that begins with Bush saying, "Delay, indecision and inaction could lead to a massive and sudden horror." It then cuts to Rice, who says, "It simply makes no sense to wait any longer." Then Rumsfeld: "Take action, before it's too late." And Bush: "We will not wait." The sequence ends with Vice President Dick Cheney saying, "As President Bush has said, time is not on our side."
  
• Again and again, Greenwald juxtaposes scare-mongering quotes from the administration with expert debunking. First, he shows Bush saying, "Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." That's followed by Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying: "Any sarin that they were making in 1990, 1991, had a known shelf life of about two months. Well, if you made it 12 years ago and it had a shelf life of two months, it may not be safe to drink, but it isn't sarin nerve gas any longer. And there's no way the agency could not have known that."

pinions of buddy don:
over thar, over thar, send our jobs, send our troops, over thar!

mayhap tiz one of the rules of capitalism that adam smith dint git a chants to splain cumpletely, but seems lack lust fer profit dont leave no room fer inny other cunsidderayshun. tuther day i wuz ritin bout how minny jobs in my industry, witch i wurk in fine ants on wall street, wuz bein 'off shored,' witch that means sending the jobs over to sumbidy elses cuntry on a counta how they dont pay thar folk verr well. profit goes up all rite, but consumer buyin power has to go down n when ye thank bout it, the entire economy is lack as not to follow that buyin powers downwurd spiral.

one result is that they aint makin etch-a-sketch toys over in bryan ohio lack they had been a'doin fer the past 40 years on a counta ye kin git yer chinese wurkers to doot fer less money.

corse, it probly makes sense to start sendin the jobs over thar on a counta we need em to be prosperus sos they kin hep pay fer our budget deficit, witch theys happy to do fer a profit n fortchunately, the chinese are close friens that we kin trust:

Beijing has expressed mounting anger in recent weeks at what it says is a push by Taiwan's popularly elected president toward independence. China and the self-ruled island split amid civil war in 1949, but the communist mainland claims it as Chinese territory.

In response, Beijing has threatened war, possibly trying to push Washington to use its influence as Taiwan's military protector to rein in Chen. Wen is expected to lobby President Bush on this issue when they meet in Washington later this week.

tiz the way of the worl. fer instunts, ye dun seen how we aint gut no cumpunkshuns bout sellin innythang to innybidy, not even weppons to saddam hussain:

In 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day, Rumsfeld was in Baghdad for meetings With Saddam Hussain. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the UN Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers of war between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded...

Five years before Saddam Hussein's now infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds, a key meeting took place in Baghdad that would play a significant role in forging close ties between Saddam Hussein and Washington. It happened at a time when Saddam was first alleged to have used chemical weapons. The meeting in late December 1983 paved the way for an official restoration of relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

 or trainin to osama bin laden:

"We funded him, we and the Saudis," said Glynn Wood, professor of international policy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "He was not seen as any kind of threat until Desert Storm."

Pakistani investigative journalist Ahmed Rashid reported recently that the CIA funded an underground arms depot, training facility and medical center that bin Laden helped build in 1986 near the Pakistan border. There bin Laden set up his first training camp.

Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., likened the situation to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, where the United States aided a future adversary, Saddam Hussein.

n luckily fer us, sendin all them jobs overseas jes looks bad when as everbidy knows, tiz a win win situwayshun:

Benefits Across the Board
The most obvious benefits of offshoring accrue to businesses and English-speaking destination countries. Lower wages in foreign countries translate into significant savings and, often, improved quality. A software developer in the U.S., for example, costs $60 an hour whereas one in India only costs $6 an hour. This and other benefits could translate to a net impact of a 50 percent increase in profits for American businesses.

Destination countries see increased investment and job creation through offshoring. India, for example, gains in net benefit at least 33 cents for every dollar of spend offshored to its country.

Impact on America
While Forrester, a technology research and trend analysis firm, predicts the loss of some 3.3 million jobs to offshoring in the U.S. by 2015, MGI's [McKinsy Global Institute] analysis shows that America has much more to gain.

mayhap thangs will be better once we git that free democratic gummint set up over in iraq, witch at lease we gut eggsperience settin up gummints that does whut we need em to:

SOON after the C.I.A. installed him as president of Guatemala in 1954, Col. Carlos Castillo Armas visited Washington. He was unusually forthright with Vice President Richard M. Nixon. "Tell me what you want me to do," he said, "and I will do it."

What the United States wanted in Guatemala -- and in Iran, where the C.I.A. also deposed a government in the early 1950's -- was pro-American stability. In the long run, though, neither Colonel Castillo Armas nor his Iranian counterpart, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, provided it. Instead, both led their countries away from democracy and toward repression and tragedy.

makes me proud to see how the good ole usa is sharin our jobs n technolgy n army n democracy with the res of the worl!

life of buddy don, chaptur 79:
deathtrap

since ye live yer life lookin into a futchur that ye cant see, ye dont notice how makin one lil change is a'gone change everthang ferever. twuz so when i broke up with susannah n tuck up with emily. ye might coulda thought twooda been jes insertin emily whever susannah had been befor. twood all be out on the farm n the same folk wood be makin thar same reglar pearances here. but lookin back, ye kin see how die-reckly one lil change led to everthang changin.

nuther thang ye start to git as ye go long in life is how ye cant git thangs back to how they wuz. ever. n thats probly lucky.

innywho, along cum the summer of 1978 n i had to git me a job. i figgerd i wuz a'gone need to save a lil more money to pay fer everthang once the fall quarter gut a'goin, so i started lookin fer a job, witch i thought fer a bit i wood git a job as a ice cream man, but thatn fell thru. in sted, i gut a job at a place called the pantry, witch thays a strang of em over in oak ridge n round east tennessee in genrul.

lack i say, i wuz hopin to git a job as a ice cream man n i had a date fer the intervu on a mundy in june. that weekend i wuz over at emilys n she wuz talkin bout how she had to go to looseburg that weekend, witch thats whar she cum frum. she had always tuck the bus n one evenin when we wuz in the afterglow of the bedroom exercise, i ast her did she wont me to drive her down. ye mite coulda thought twuz christmas she wuz so eggcited, so we gut in the car on a saturdy mornin n drove down thar n i gut to meet her folks n all the gang down thar, witch ill git to splainin bout them die-reckly.

i stayed as late as i could on sundy n then deecided i wood drive back early mundy n still git thar on time but while i wuz a drivin back it cum a blowin rain the lack of witch ye aint never seen. twuz so awful i had to pull over n when it kep on i drove to a shoneys n sat drankin coffee till i knew twuz too late to git that ice cream man job. n watchin that rain, i figgerd it mite not be the kinda job i wood need.

twuz oscar clowder that gut me to apply at the pantry. he n brew wuz bes friends frum whenever they wuz both furst in robertsville junior high. they both luved fishin n wurkin n hikin in the smokies gittin high n all, only oscar lacked drank n brew lacked smoke. he had him a job at the new york avenue store so i went up thar n applied n purty soon they ast me to drive over to knoxvull to take a lie detector test.

i drove over to a place out kingston pike n the lil guy thar hooked me up to a nest of wires n started in to astin questchuns bout whuther i had ever stole thangs or cheated or lied n all. he ast me did i git hi n i sed i lacked a lil jack daniels now n agin n that i had smoked pot but wuznt a'doin it then. i wuz a lil wurried bout sayin that but twuz the literull truth that i wuz not smokin it then tho i wood smoke a lil later on that same day. i dint mentchun that n i past thar tes. twuz jes the one questchun bout drugs, witch that wood change to be thonly thang they carrd bout later on.

whenever i furst gut the job, they wuz movin me frum store to store n shif to shif lack crazy. twuz hard to git on a schedule when ye wood wurk one store frum 3 pm till 7 am n then the nex nite a nuther store frum 11 pm till 7 am n then a stretch of three day shifs in a row. i wurked twenty strate days when i started, tho mos of them days wuz at nite on a counta i had ast to have midnite shifs to i could take a german class that wuz startin my thurd week wurkin thar.

lucky fer me, ye mite could say, thay wuz a incident up at the store known as deathtrap, witch thats the one on the corner of illinois avenue n highland n ifn ye know much bout oak ridge, ye know tiz at the top of the hill on the way out of oak ridge hedded tords oliver springs. tiz near that whar i furst gut hi n twuz at that same innerseckshun whar becky turner wuz killt when that drunk run the red lite into thar car.

the incident wuz whar sumbidy cum in with a knife n robbed the nite man n cut him up sum kinda way, only later on they figgerd twuz the nite man his ownself who set it up with a frien n i wuz tole to call the po-leece rite away ifn i saw his accomplus or his car, witch that gut me to know bout callin the po-leece, witch ye gut to do ever now n then at a place name of deathtrap.

once i had me a reglar store, thangs wuz a lil easier. emily couldnt hardly stand not to be round me so we gut in the habit whar she wood sleep in my bed out at the farm, on a counta how twuz much closer to whar i wuz a'wurkin, n i wood sleep at her place in knoxvull after i went to class n all. in the mornin i wood pick her up n we wood drive in together jes as we wood drive out to the farm in the evenin.

so twuz that she gut to know mj n virgil n jill n brew n liza, brew's new gurlfrien, witch she moved in bout the same time me n emily gut together. mj wuz pregnunt with donavan at the time n emily lacked talkin bout that on a counta she never wonted to be no mother but she wuz fastenated by the topick.

thang wuz, i dint hardly have no time fer innybidy at the farm ceptn on weekends, n even then, i wuz lack as not with emily overn knoxvull or even in looseburg, so i dint hardly see the folks out at the farm. thang i dint know then wuz i never wood agin, lease not with me a'livin thar reglar.

that job wuz quite a eggsperients. i larnt a lot. we caterd to them that needed to satisfy sum cravin quick, generly sumthin they fergot or they wooda dun bought it sumwhar it dint cost so much. our main bizness wuz in feedin bad habits: gas, girly magazines, candy, soda, bad sandwiches fer the microwave n mos of all, cigarettes n beer.

twuz over the las item i had the mos truble. law in oak ridge at that time wuz whar ye couldnt sell beer after 3 am, n woodnt ye know it, ifn ye cater to a crowd that has fergot thangs, yer bound to git customers that dun fergut the time, so here they cum at 10 after 3 astin could ye bend the rules n sell em jes a quart or even jes a can, but i woodnt ever do it, not even to a huge fella wearin overhauls with a cunfederate flag across the chest n carryin a knife in his lef hand. he wuz upset n held up his knife, so i picked up the phone n dialed the po-leece, witch that made im madder to whar he jammed the knife down into the counter n starrd at me while i starrd back n served the dispatcher his helpin of yessir n nosir n thats right till the guy grabbed his knife n tuck the beer back to the cooler.

after that i gut in the habit of closin the store at 3 am fer fifteen mints sos i could take go take my daily dump n by time i cum out, twuz too far frum the line fer innybidy to baig me to bend the rules fer em.

bad thang bout that place wuz how twuz only six or seven blocks frum whar susannah lived. that mint she had to drive past it everday. we had broke up n all, but we sed we wood stay friens n even see each other now n then. she had half the crops in the garden so she had a rite to cum out to the farm, n fack is, she wuz out thar as often as i wuz. odd thang bout that wuz how virgil gut to whar he wuz feelin simpathy fer her in sted of me even tho he dint lack her whenever i wuz with her. but he also lacked emily a lot n he wood tell me he thought thay wuz sumthin fetchin bout her, witch that wuz thonly time i ever herd him use the wurd 'fetchin.'

so twuz jes a matter of time till the two of em met n it happend one evenin when i wuz on my way to wurk. we had stopped by the farm so i could take a bath n emily could stay the nite. susannah wuz alreddy thar, gittin sum food frum the garden n visitin virg n mj. so when we drove up n i saw that orange vw, my stumach wuz doin flips. it reminded me of whut gurdjieff had writ bout thar bein various kinds of intelligents inside ye, yer rashunull intelleck, yer spirtchul intelleck, yer emoshunull intelleck. n thang wuz, yer spirtchul intelleck wuz quickes n smartes, but twuz rare that ye wood listen toot. yer emoshunull intelleck wuz much quickern yer rashunull n twuznt always rashunull, but it made ye do thangs. n that gut me to wonderin on a counta even tho i wuz in luv with emily n wonted to spend ever mint with her, i wuz also still in luv with susannah n whenever i wood see her i wood feel jes as warm n eager to put my arms roun her as ever. i couldtn splain it, but twuz lack gurdjieff had writ bout that emoshunull intelleck. twernt rashunull, but twuz verr strong.

how kin a human thank such thoughts so quick? i dont know, but that hole thought n more run thru my mind in the instunt after i spotted that vw. i almos wisht i could disappear, but we went in n purty soon i wuz leavin the two of them to git acquainted while i wuz takin my bath.

after that susannah wood cum by the store ever so often in the mornin. n i had dinner over at her place on my way to wurk, even takin a bath thar, while emily wuz sleepin at the farm. twuz all a'wurkin out then on a counta how she had a boyfrien name of jeff or joe or sumthin.

twuz a time of grate intensity. me n emily wuz bout as in luv as ye kin git. twuz as if she had discuverd sex fer the verr furst time, witch ima gone address that topick at grater length by n by. mj wuz out to here by then but she wuz still wurkin in the garden. she wuz a'gone have the child deeliverd on the farm with a midwife name of sumatra kham, witch mj n virgil wuz agin usin hospitulls on a counta how they tuck the child frum the mother n thay bleeved it should start nursin rite away, witch sumatra kham splained how ifn that happens the after birth cums rite out. n they dint wont thar child havin no silver nitrate put in its eyes, witch twuz the practiss to put it in the eyes of a newborn to perteck agin infeckshun. so thay had it all planned out how the child wood be born in the lil house, n the plannin fer that gut maisie n gretchen n susannah n liza n emily n barbie n mos all the women roun about to hang roun n tell how they wonted to cum watch.

then susannah n her frien jeff or joe broke up n she gut to whar she wood cum by the store to stand n talk durin the mornin brakefuss rush, trine to git me to cum back. twuz a temptayshun on a counta how susannah wuz a verry independent person n twood be a much easier life. twernt so with emily who needed lots of tenchun n wonted to be with me ever mint if possibull.

on tuther hand, emily gut my juices flowin n my mind racin. she wonted to do everthang i did. we could talk fer hours bout books n histry n flossofy. she wuz verr intents. one evenin she gut a lil too much likker in her n dragged me down to the cathlick church, witch she had cunverted to cathlick while a'studyin the middle ages, only the cunvershun dint take fer long n the proof of how it dint wuz how she wonted us to go into the chapel n take off all our close n pray. twernt sumthin i wood do but i sprized her when we gut home by takin her in the hallway whar innybidy could cum upon us.

both women had thar appeal, in other wurds. i member feelin i wuz bein pulled in two twixt em, even ifn i wuz only touchin emily. it gut to whar i wuz thankin bout witch of four paths i wood take. i could go on with emily n have susannah fer a frien. i could give up emily n git back together with susannah, witch she had dun deecided she wood give up everthang she had been so adamant bout befor. (a strange thang i have noticed bout folks is how they fite till the end fer thar side. then when sumthin is over n they dint win, thar reddy to give in when tiz too late.)

or i could give em both up. or, in a fantasy only the greedy mind of a man could entertain fer morn bout three mints, i could have em both, live with the two of em. i knew susannah had been curious, as they say, n emily had dun thought she wuz a'givin up men altogether. corse, that wuznt nuthin but a fantasy n twood a turnt into a nightmare quick a nuff.

but it cum a time whar i felt lack darlene whenever i wuz roun susannah. twernt that i dint luv her, but that i couldnt be with her, witch thats eggzackly whut darlene had been a'tellin me n i had hated her fer it till the mint i felt the same thang bout susannah. seem lack she could read my mind the furst time that happend n after that, she quit trine.

then on a thursday afternoon in august, twuz the 9th, the phone woke me up early, bout 5 in the afternoon. i could tell by emilys half of the conversayshun twuz time fer mj to deeliver her baby, so i gut up n dressed n we drove out tords the farm jes a quick as the clinton hiway wood take us.

when we gut thar, mj wuz sittin in the livin room of her house, entertainin everbidy. she wuz in the prime of health n dint eat no meat nor drank nor smoke nor nuthin. but she did have a grate purple bud of theevil weed that she had grown fer herself n she sed she wuz a'gone lite it jes as soon as she finished deelivern the baby, witch she wuz havin cuntrackshuns even then. twuz only the two apprentiss midwives n virgil n emily n me that wuz thar then, but the res kep a cumin, furst barbie n susannah n then liza n then maisie with gretchen, witch they both wurked fer the same dentist n had gut to be bes friens. purty soon brew n oscar showed up.

then mj sed she figgerd twuz time, so she n the midwives n emily n virgil went into the nex room n we waited. n then emily fainted n they called me so i gut to see it. twuz a big sprize how mj wuznt a'lyin on her back lack i always figgerd thay dun. in sted, she wuz hunkerd down lack she wuz bout to take a dump, n purty soon, ye could see a tiny pair of feet peekin thru n then she split whar the apeasiotomy had been dun fer jill n a bloody bag of child begun to ooze out. i wuz holdin one of her legs n gut a purty good look till the midwives tuck hold of the child n nex thang i saw wuz lil donovan cuverd in blood a'lyin on his mamas stumach n alreddy nursin at her breast. n ye could see whar he woodnt take his eyes offn his mamas n she wuznt movin hers neethur.

they wuz lack that fer the longest till the midwives started crowin bout here it cums n shore a nuff, thar oozed out of mj a buckets worth of bloody afterbirth, witch everbidy kep sayin how twooda takin six weeks to cum out ifn the child had been deeliverd in a hospitull.

twernt but a nuther half hour till mj wuz up n walkin roun. n shore a nuff, she tuck that big old bud n started to roll up a number only randy fox had gut thar by then n everbidy knew he wuz the bes at it, so he made a gigantic number, biggern a cigar, n twuz passed all round.

purty soon twuz quite with nuthin but the sounds of lil donovan, witch he wuz sorta named fer me, sucklin at his mamas breast n liza rockin in the rockin char n jill talkin baby talk to her lil brother.

then randy fox ast mj could she brang the child up whar he could see everbidy. she dun it n the plop it made when she pulled him offn her breast made everbidy laff, n that made the child cry as she held him up. he wuz over nine pounds n had a full hed of hair n he wuz a crine fer all he wuz wurth.

eli walked in jes then. he went over n put his face rite on donovans, nose to nose, witch donovan stopped crine rite away. 'yew know whar yew are, lil sucker?' he kissed his forehed. 'ye dun made it to the deathtrap.'

twuz tipicull eli, but i made a joke out of it by sayin i had to git to my own deathtrap.

'thats rite,' oscar clowder sed, 'yer a wage slave, aint ye?'

'aint we all?' sed randy fox.

'then ye die.'

eli sed, 'thats rite. tiz the deathtrap.'

pinions of buddy don:
kissin yer jobs goodbye -- thar leavin the cuntry!

since 1988 i been wurkin on wall street. fer ten years i wurked at one of the big five n gut to be as hi as vee pee. afterds i tuck to consultin till that firm gut knocked out of bizness by 9/11 (we wuz jes two blocks away n mos of the folks that owed us money had jes lost hole departments n wuz in no posishun to pay us), so twuz jes a while till i wuz back at one of the big five on wall street. i aint a vee pee innymore, but i make a better wage n the cumpny is much better.

reason i mentchun that is how i gut a call frum a ole frien yesterdy. she wurks at the first wall street firm i wurked at, n she wonted to brang me up to date on whut thar doin with tech support, witch is they have a plan to outsource it n use the current employees fer six munths n then to 'off-shore' as much of it as they kin. ye mite have dun herd bout how wages is lower overn india n the philippines, amung otherns. she wuz wurried bout losin her own job after wurkin at the same place fer the las 20 years n shes hopin maybe thay mite be a place fer her at our firm.

but we dun gut a passel of folks a wurkin fer us in mumbai n manilla, n more a'goin thar everday, so thay aint much room lef fer folks frum this cuntry to git them kinda jobs. lucky fer me the bankers lacks to talk to real folk face to face now n then, n so far they aint figgerd out how to off shore that funkshun.

thays a book everbidy who cares bout this cuntry oughta take the time to read, witch thats a book i rote bout a while ago name of wealth and democracy by kevin philips. amung the minny thangs he splains in that book is how thays been four dominant global economick powers in modern times: (1) spain, (2) beligum, (3) england, n (4) usa. he points out how thays a few steps the furst three used in gittin frum dominunt global power to also ran, witch ye mite have dun noticed how we're doin our best to follow in the footsteps of the furst three:

1. change from perduckshun to fine ants


2. becum debtor nayshun, witch ifn ye scrol down ye kin see we becum a debtor nayshun in 1985 fer the furst time since 1914


3. invest muny overseas fer cheep labor


4. git stuck in a long war or series of wars

he also points out how the growin disparity of wealth heps the hole downfall to occur, witch were a'wurkin on thatn also. in 1960, 40% of the folks held half the wealth. now tiz 20%. fer sum reason, ceo salaries has increased by 1000% since 1980. whut are they a'doin to earn 10 times as much money as befor?

pinions of buddy don:
why is everbidy always pickin on miraculls?

everbidy always talks bout how they wont the bes fer the children, speshly when it cums to skoolin. one of the so-called miraculls of the educayshun worl happened down in houston, whar accordin to thar own tests, our children is larnin! (that gives ye the anser to mr. bush's questchun, 'is our children learning?') fack is, theys larnin so much, seems lack they cant remember all they dun larned by the time they gits to collidge!

thays an articull in the new york times bout it called "Gains in Houston Schools: How Real Are They?" n it gits rite to how fergetful these kids kin be:

As a student at Jefferson Davis High here, Rosa Arevelo seemed the "Texas miracle" in motion. After years of classroom drills, she passed the high school exam required for graduation on her first try. A program of college prep courses earned her the designation "Texas scholar."

At the University of Houston, though, Ms. Arevelo discovered the distance between what Texas public schools called success and what she needed to know. Trained to write five-paragraph "persuasive essays" for the state exam, she was stumped by her first writing assignment. She failed the college entrance exam in math twice, even with a year of remedial algebra. At 19, she gave up and went to trade school.

"I had good grades in high school, so I thought I could do well in college," Ms. Arevelo said. "I thought I was getting a good education. I was shocked."

kin ye magine? on the basis of such fergetfullness, they dun tuck to astin all these rude questchuns bout the test n even comparin it agin harder tests, lack the one called the Stanford Achievement Test, witch stanford is one of the hardest collidges to git into, so whut kin ye eggspeck? look at sum of the thangs they cum up with:

Þ  Houston students improved from 1999 to 2002 in most grades, but at only a fraction of the rate portrayed by the state exam. Using a widely employed statistical measure that allows different kinds of tests to be compared called effect size, the gains in the average scores on the Stanford test were about a third of the average gain in the TAAS scores.

Þ  Even students with the poorest skills posted high scores on the Texas test. In reading, a passing score of 70 on the test was the equivalent to scores below the 30th percentile in national ranking on the Stanford test in every grade. In 10th grade, passing the state exam was equivalent to the fifth percentile in the national ranking.

Þ  While the Houston gains on the Stanford test in some grades were large enough to be considered significant in educational testing, the city was not making much headway when compared with national averages. Some 57 percent of Houston students who took the math test in 1999 and 2002, and 51 percent of those who took the reading test, saw their standing relative to children around the country either fall or remain the same.

Þ  On the Stanford tests, the average reading scores for Houston students of all races in grades 9 through 11 have actually dropped since 1999. By contrast, the reading scores for 10th graders on the Texas exam -- the only high school grade in which the state test is given -- showed a large gain over the same period.

Þ  The achievement gap between whites and minorities, which Houston authorities have argued has nearly disappeared on the Texas exam, remains huge on the Stanford test. The ranking of the average white student was 36 points higher than that of the average black student in 1999 and fell slightly, to 34 points, in 2002.

"This says that the progress on TAAS is probably overstated, possibly by quite a margin," said Daniel Koretz of the Harvard School of Education, who also reviewed The Times's analysis, "And when all is said and done, Houston looks average or below average."

lucky fer the children who wuznt lef behin by the no child lef behin act, the houston miracull wuz spred nayshunwide.

but sum aint cunvinced n thang is, it almos sounds lack the kind of attack thats spozed to be reserved fer dimcrats (theys the ones known fer thar unfunded mandates, no?):

Dean has said he opposes the No Child Left Behind Act because it amounts to a mandate for local schools to put new achievement standards in place, but provides no federal money to pay for it.

damn librul media! whar do they git the idee that hi skool is spozed to git ye reddy fer collidge? it aint. its spozed to git ye reddy fer wurk:

The Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of leading corporations with a combined workforce of more than 10 million employees in the United States and $3.7 trillion in annual revenues. The chief executives are committed to advocating public policies that foster vigorous economic growth, a dynamic global economy, and a well-trained and productive U.S. workforce essential for future competitiveness.

oops. rong quote. sorry bout that. heres the rite one:

"The Business Roundtable is convening this panel to provide a fair and balanced progress report on No Child Left Behind," said John J. Castellani, Roundtable President. "In our view, this significant undertaking to improve public education for every American child can succeed if we stay focused on implementing its vitally important reforms."

too bad they dint have this whenever i wuz in skool. we still had to put up with distrackshuns lack musick instruckshun n fully-stocked liberries n new books that wuz hard to brake in n science labs n intramural sports n recess n real food n all kinds of wasteful misuses of tax money. then amidst all that innerestin enrichment stuff, we wuz still eggspeckted to larn a nuff to git into collidge n make passin grades. kin yew magine?

thangs is much better now.

pinions of buddy don:
could ye earmark that fer me?

spend spend spend! could ralph nader have been rite whenever he sed thar wuznt inny diffents twixt them dimcrats n publicans? how bout these earmarks:

• In the defense spending bill for fiscal 1995 - the last time spending bills in the House were written by a Democratic majority - there were 219 earmarks totaling $1.1 billion for military research and development. The defense bill for the 2004 federal budget year, which began Oct. 1 - written by Republicans - had 1,299 such projects worth $4.4 billion.
  
  
• NASA earmarks grew from two worth $48 million in 1995, to 104 worth $254 million in the bill covering fiscal 2003, which ended Sept. 30.
  
  
• Earmarks for the Commerce, State and Justice departments grew from 45 worth $104 million in 1995, to 966 worth $1.04 billion in 2003.
  
  
• The labor-health-education bill had no earmarks in 1995, following a long-standing tradition. There were 1,857 earmarks in the 2003 measure worth $896 million

changin the tone in washington

member this: "In 1995, soon after the Republicans gained the majority, Speaker Newt Gingrich declared his intention to make sure that votes would consistently be held in the 15-minute time frame. The "regular practice of the House," he said would be "a policy of closing electronic votes as soon as possible after the guaranteed period of 15 minutes." The policy was reiterated by Speaker Dennis J. Hastert when he assumed the post."

but with the tone in washington changed, we git this: "Early last Sunday, starting at about 3 a.m., the House of Representatives began its roll call on the Medicare prescription drug plan -- the most significant vote of the year. The House votes by electronic device, with each vote normally taking 15 minutes. After the allotted time, the bill, supported by the president and the Republican leadership, was losing. The vote stayed open. Before long it became clear that an absolute majority of the House -- 218 of the 435 members -- had voted no, with only 216 in favor. But the vote stayed open until Republicans were able to bludgeon two of their members to switch sides. It took two hours and 51 minutes, the longest roll call in modern House history."

corse, it used to be lack this: "In the 22 years that Democrats ran the House after the electronic voting system was put in place, there was only one time when the vote period substantially exceeded the 15 minutes. At the end of the session in 1987, under Speaker Jim Wright of Texas, the vote on the omnibus budget reconciliation bill -- a key piece of legislation -- was one vote short of passage when one of the bill's supporters, Marty Russo of Illinois, took offense at something, changed his vote to no, and left to catch a plane to his home district in Chicago. He was unaware that his switch altered the ultimate outcome. Caught by surprise, Wright kept the vote tally open for an extra 15 to 20 minutes until one of his aides could find another member, fellow Texan Jim Chapman, and draw him out of the cloakroom to change his nay vote to aye and pass the bill. Republicans went ballistic, using the example for years as evidence of Democrats' autocratic style and insensitivity to rules and basic fairness."

glad that tone thang is all better now.

rtb growth rate at 54% per year

id lack to welcum the latest rocky top brigadeers: tennessee ruck from china joins with his blog, voluntarily from china, smijer is an almos forgotten Dean supporter, n my own cuzin janet made the big time with her blog, the dagley dagley daily. welcum all! that brangs the total to 77, up 7 in the past 2 munths, makin fer a unsustainabull growth rate of 54% per year!

also, notice the new flag barry frum inn of the last home made fer us all. ye kin steal it frum this site lessn ye druther steal it frum barry or south knox bubba.

pinions of buddy don:
herd inny good publicans lately?

i've cummenced to wurryin bout my memry, so hep me out here. wusnt the publicans the ones that balanced the fedrull budget n the demcrats the ones that gut us into wars? seems lack thats how i member it. so has the two parties jes switched sides?

fergit bout the war fer a mint (it'll cum back aroun). tiz the ferdrull budget that has me perplexed. even the washington times wuz aware that sumthin out of whack wuz a'goin on:

• Federal outlays jumped by $222 billion in President Bush's first two years, a spending increase that is expected to accelerate under the administration-backed $400 billion prescription-drug bill that is speeding through Congress."
  
• in the same articull, they point this out: "Spending of all sorts is rising at a very rapid rate I figure that discretionary spending was up by more than 15 percent this year. That's a pretty good clip," said Robert Reischauer, former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Overall annual spending under Mr. Bush over the past two years has gone from $1.789 trillion in fiscal 2000 to $2.011 trillion in 2002, according to congressional budget officials.
  
• so how big a jump is that? same articull gives ye the anser: But budget officials say those dollar amounts do not fully measure the growth in spending. They prefer to measure spending increases as a percentage of the total size of the economy, or its gross domestic product. In 2000, President Clinton's last year in office, total outlays accounted for 18.4 percent of the GDP. By 2002, the budget consumed 19.5 percent of the GDP.
  
• kin it all be spendin on welfar n such? Democrats have been loudly complaining that domestic social welfare spending has been cut under the Bush administration. But congressional budget officials say that over the past two years such spending for education, job training, unemployment assistance, Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits, food stamps and other "human resources" has risen from 11.5 percent of GDP to 12.7 percent.

thays a paper in lakeland florida name of the ledger that has a nuther articull on the same topick:

• So much for the promise of smaller government. This year, for the first time since World War II, federal spending has topped $20,000 per household (in dollars, adjusted for inflation. Last week, The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that monitors federal spending (and seeks to eliminate the deficit), said the first six months of this year have been "the most fiscally irresponsible in recent memory."
  
• Even past defenders of Republican fiscal policy abandoned the party last week. The Wall Street Journal editorialized about it Nov. 24 under the heading "The Price of `Governance' ": "What was supposed to be an end-of-session triumph for the Republican Congress is turning into something of an embarrassment, if not a crackup. This tends to happen with a political party attempts to pass legislation inconsistent with what it claims are its limited government principles."
  
• Faced with the prospect of expanded Medicare without genuine reform, The Journal finished by wishing Sen. Ted Kennedy success with a filibuster to block the Medicare bill and ended by adding, "It's all enough to make us long for the Washington gridlock of the 1990s."

the washington post also noticed that the budget seems to be out of control:

• "The U.S. budget is out of control," the Wall Street investment firm Goldman Sachs & Co. warned Friday in its weekly newsletter to clients.
  
• In the final days of the congressional session, GOP leaders added billions of dollars to energy and Medicare bills to help persuade key factions to support the legislation. Overall, the energy bill would cost $33 billion and the Medicare bill $400 billion. Less noticed were congressional moves to expand veterans' benefits by $22 billion and increase spending on forest-thinning projects from $420 million a year to $760 million to ensure passage of forest legislation promoted by the White House. Lawmakers are also trying to extend 14 expiring tax cuts through 2004, at a cost to the Treasury of more than $7 billion.
  
• All those actions come in the face of a federal budget deficit already projected to rise from a record $374 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to close to or above $500 billion in the current fiscal year.

john f dickerson examines the topick fer CNN:

• Much of that has gone to fighting the war on terrorism, but funds have also been spent on new benefits for veterans, subsidies for farmers and aid to low-performing schools and needy students. Pork-barrel spending is also on the rise. In the past two years, it has gone up 48%, according to one watchdog group, including millions of dollars in the farm bill that went to those infamous mohair subsidies, and politicians of both parties are quietly delighted that the public no longer seems to care.
  
• Republican leaders insisted that the Federal Government should not use its bulk-purchasing power to demand low prices. Instead, the program will rely on pharmacy benefit managers to negotiate good deals; the companies will have more bargaining clout than senior citizens but far less than the Federal Government would have had. At the same time, provisions to ease restrictions on cheaper drugs from Canada and elsewhere were removed from the legislation.
  
• For this and other reasons, the announced price tag hides the magnitude of the promises being put into law. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office, says the costs of the bill will jump in the second decade to between $1.3 trillion and $2 trillion. A gap in coverage means those with prescription bills between $2,250 and $5,100 get no relief.
  

the new york times had an articull called Broad Bills Stuffed With Lawmakers' Pet Items witch tells bout how sum of the money is bein spent:

• A provision benefiting a specific hospital in Tennessee was added to the Medicare bill at the last minute in an effort to get the vote of Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee. The hospital was not named in the bill, but was described in terms that apply to only one hospital in the United States, the Regional Medical Center at Memphis. Mr. Ford's father, a former congressman, is a lobbyist for the hospital. In the end, Mr. Ford voted against the bill. Bush administration officials now say they will probably not provide any extra money, even though the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, is urging them to do so because the hospital is in his state.
  
• The Medicare bill also increases payments for doctors in Alaska for a cancer treatment known as brachytherapy and for health maintenance organizations that have been dropping out of the Medicare market.
  
• Data collected by The Chronicle of Higher Education shows that spending on pork barrel projects at colleges and universities topped $2 billion this year for the first time. In a recent report, the Democratic staff of the House Appropriations Committee said the number of projects designated for assistance under the health and education spending bill nearly quadrupled, to 1,850, in the last three years.

a los angeles times op-ed piece says most everthang in the hedline, Welfare Turns into a Suite Deal:

• HMOs and PPOs will receive almost $80 billion in federal subsidies to administer the program. An estimated $139 billion in additional profits will flow directly to pharmaceutical companies. Rather than enabling Medicare to use its market power to bargain for cheaper drugs in classic capitalist fashion, the Medicare reform bill specifically prohibits such negotiations.
  
• It also sets the bar so high for federal approval of safe and affordable drugs from Canada that it completely forecloses the free-market competition that might drive down U.S. drug prices by 50%.

so have ye herd frum inny good publicans lately, the kind that bleeves in keepin spendin under cuntrol? one wuz spotted, recently, name of john mccain. reuters wrote it up in a article called McCain Lashes Congress, Bush for Overspending:

• McCain said Bush, who has never vetoed a spending bill, was in large part responsible for this year's spending levels exceeding prescribed caps of 4 percent growth, at a whopping 8 percent. "The president cannot say, as he has many times, that I am going to tell Congress to enforce some spending discipline and then not veto bills," McCain said.
  
• We are laying a burden of debt on future generations of Americans. ... Any economist will tell you, you cannot have this level of debt, of increasing deficits without eventually it affecting interest rates and inflation," he added.

ye mite need to make sure ye dont lose yer overtime sos ye kin hep pay fer all the bills bein run up in our behalf.

pinions of buddy don:
ye cant win harts n minds with bullets

i wish i could find the quotayshun whar sumbidy wuz arguin that ye kin establish democracy with a gun. i thank twuz in the washington post, but i cant find it nohow. the riter pointed out how thay had dun been a few democracies made thataway. a cuple he menchuned wuz the american revolution n the french revolution.

but thatn dont wurk fer whuts a'goin on in iraq, witch thats whut the riter wuz trine to say, that ye could make a democracy usin a gun. problem with his eggzamples is that the holders of the guns wuz the folks who wuz fitin fer thar own democracy. twuz the insurgents in the fite, not the big powers, be they the british or the french monarchy. tiz us in iraq.

the history of the worl shows ye that it takes a folk makin thar own cuntry to git ye a democracy out of it. n that means that the folks has to git it into thar own harts n minds that democracy is whut they wont. ifn they dont wont it, then ye cant enforce it on a counta ye wood be voted out furst time they tuck a vote.

so whuther we lack it or not, whut we half to do ifn we wont democracy overn iraq (or innywhar) is to cunvints folks to wont it fer thar ownself. ye gut to win thar harts n minds. taint easy.

take whut's a'goin on over in iraq right now. furst, we had to close one of thar media outlets, al arabiya, on a counta how twuz broadcastin saddam hussein. in its place we dun put up a stayshun or our own name of al iraqiya. thang is, folks in iraq druther here al arabiya than al iraqiya.

problem fer us is were in a fite we dont hardly know how to win. these is just my pinions, so ye kin ignore em all:

1. folks livin in iraq aint used to democracy n dont hardly wont it
   
2. ifn ye could give democracy out to folks in iraq, its hard to bleeve they wood vote the way we wont em to
   
3. folks livin in the arab worl larnt how to fite asymetrickull battles frum lawrence of arabia n they been a'usin it ever since (have ye dun red t. e. lawrences seven pillars of wisdom? do ye wonta unnerstand whut's a'gone on over thar? then ye gut to read it! the movie aint near as good as the book fer this kinda thang)
   
4. folks livin the arab worl have been wontin n havin theocracy in sted of democracy most of thar histries.
   
5. thays folks over here that seems to wonta make us a theocracy in sted of a democracy
   
6. ifn folks over here, whar we gut us a form of republican democracy, kin wonta a theocracy, it shouldnt cum as a sprize that folks wonta keep the theocracies they dun gut or could git back
   
7. granted, iraq wuz a secular muslim nayshun, n thats whut we wont it to be, but thays minny folk over thar that never wonted it to be secular
   
8. member that the main thang saddam n osama couldnt agree on whuz whuther to have theocracy or a secular gummint
   
9. mos everthang we kin do with our power is a'gone hep tuther side make its points agin us

corse, ifn we cant win the harts n minds over here, whut kin we speck frum our efforts over thar? we wuz set on gittin osama, dead or alive. whutever becum of him? we wuz a'gone smoke him out frum whutever hole he wuz in. he wuz publick enemy number 1 with a bullet. now hes a forgotten man livin in pakistan or afghanistan, sumwhars whar we aint gut a nuff troops to ketch him.

did sumbidy use weppons of mass distrackshun on us?

i luv my cuntry the way i luv my son. ifn he wuz to tell me he wuz gittin reddy to do sumthin stoopid, lack try smokin crack, i wood criticize him. i wood try to stop him. i wood have a march on his home if i thought it wood wurk. fack is, i wood do everthang i could to git him to stop. i wood not be anti-son fer doin so. ifn he persisted in takin the rong path, i couldnt pertend its rite jes to show him my support. i wood half to tell him the truth.

same applies to my cuntry. twuz a miss take to git distrackted frum gittin osama. period. ifn we dont stick with doin whut we say were a'gone do, then aint nobidy gonna take us serious.

n ifn ye aint tuck serious, ye dont win harts n minds. fack is, ye kin only win harts with luv n minds with better idees. bullets dont fit neethur deescriptshun.