Turkey Goodness

Hello everyone.

As we wrap up November 2011, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this past October marked five years of me doing this blog. Yay!

Of course, I probably should have mentioned that last month when it was actually five years to the day, not today. What's the point in celebrating a five year, one month, and two day anniversary?

But I didn't realize I'd passed the five year milestone until a couple days ago. I have a hard enough time remembering my own birthday, let alone my blog's birthday, so cut me some slack.

I've been teaching myself HTML and CSS lately. I'm also planning on learning Javascript and some other computer languages, programs, and/or software in the near future. I have an idea for a website that I'm going to try to build myself, either from scratch or by customizing a template. I had been thinking about trying to find someone to build the site for me, but then I just thought, "Why can't I build it myself?" I already have some basic HTML experience from this blog, from our photo site, and from other projects, and I'm fairly intelligent, so why not learn how to do it myself?

But I'm quickly discovering that this sort of stuff is incredibly tedious to study. It's not terribly difficult--it's just all right-brain stuff. Or is it left brain? I always confuse the two. What I'm trying to say is that it's all logical stuff. So I find myself walking around with a headache most of the time. Maybe it's just a tumor and completely unrelated to the HTML and CSS language stuff. Or not.

I think it will be much easier once I start playing around with the language instead of just studying it. I'm probably going to fool around with the colors and fonts and formatting right here on this blog. I won't make any big changes (at least not on purpose) because after five years, I'm used to this layout the way it is. But I used the stock Blogger template when I first started this blog, and I'm really bored with it. So I'll probably change the colors at the very least.

The new project won't have much to do with what I do here, so I plan on continuing with this blog. Although, the new project will kinda involve Tucker. Stay tuned.

Thanksgiving News

Well, the turkey we made seemed to be a hit because Cathy and I sure got lots of compliments. I think if we're going to do it again, barbecuing is definitely the way to go. Here's what we did:

We started with an 18 pound turkey. I didn't want one that big, but it was the smallest one we found. Also, full disclosure: I broke one of my rules and didn't get a sustainably-raised turkey, mainly because a sustainably-raise turkey would've cost around $100 and required a drive to Spokane. So we caved and went to the local Safeway instead.

Here's how we prepared it. We thawed it in the beer fridge for a few days prior to Thanksgiving. By Thursday morning it still hadn't thawed all the way, so we soaked it in cold water in the sink for a half hour or so. Meanwhile, we:

• Cored two apples and cut them into chunks
• Peeled two Mandarin oranges and split them into segments
• Diced a couple stalks of celery 
• Diced an onion
• Peeled several (don't remember how many) cloves of garlic and cut them in half.

We mixed all those ingredients with some fresh sage and stuffed it into the cavity.  Then we coated the turkey skin with melted butter.  Finally, we put the stuffed bird in a roasting pan and put the neck, giblets, and extra stuffing in the pan around the turkey, and added a cup or so (didn't measure) of white wine to the pan.

For the barbecue, I started a chimney of "real wood" charcoal (in Eugene I used to get mesquite charcoal, but the closest I can find here is "real wood"--it doesn't say what kind).  When the coals were ready, I dumped them in the barbecue and put the turkey pan on the grill.  It barely fit under my Weber barbecue lid.  I started a second chimney, and when that was ready, I added it to the first, along with some mesquite chips that had been soaking in water.

From then on, we checked the barbecue every once in a while to baste the turkey and see how things were going.  Incidentally, we couldn't find a turkey baster (though I'm sure we have one somewhere in the house), so Cathy went to Safeway to buy one, and of course they were all sold out.  All they had was one meat injector, which she picked up.  It actually worked better than a baster because we could baste with it and inject juice into the turkey.

A couple hours in, I added a third chimney of charcoal, and that was all I needed in total.

About four hours or so after we started, it was done.  Here's what it looked like:

Not bad, eh?

We also made slow cooker stuffing and garlicky mashed potatoes.  My sister made sweet potatoes, homemade bread, and a couple desserts, while my nephew's wife (my niece-in-law?) made salad and another dessert, and my niece brought drinks and deviled eggs.  Everything was fantastic (except the deviled eggs, which I think are always disgusting, so I didn't have any, though other people said they were good).

In short, it was a success.

It was also lots of fun to hang out with the family.  Even though we live within an hour or two of each of them, we don't get to see them very much, mainly because they live an hour or two away.

Anyway, with an 18 pound turkey, even though we insisted that our family take some with them (they didn't seem to mind too much), we still had lots of leftovers.  Over the weekend I made a batch of my "award-winning" chili, substituting leftover turkey for the beef, but keeping the pork.  It was an all-white-meat chili.  I still plan on posting the chili recipe here at some point, I promise.

Cathy also made a damn good stock out of the turkey carcass plus some onion, celery, and seasonings.  Then she used some of the stock to make turkey noodle soup.  We also had turkey tacos.  And turkey sandwiches.  So many turkey sandwiches.

Fortunately, all the turkey is now either gone or is in soup or chili in the freezer.  I think I've had enough for a while.

And Now, A Musical Interlude

After posting a Tortoise video in my last blog, I realized this is the video I should've posted instead. It's not that the music is any better here than in the live video--it's just that this video is a lot of fun, especially for someone into photography like I am. Here it is:



Reading Materials

This one is going to be a long one.  Cue the obligatory "That's what she said" joke...

• Matt Taibbi talks about the UC Davis pepper spraying
• Naomi Wolf has "the shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy" 
• Joshua Holland says Naomi Wolf is full of shit
• Right-libertarian Ron Paul consultant Lew Rockwell criticizes conservatives who sided with the UC Davis police
• An open email about Occupy Austin by anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber 
• Even Martha Stewart has a sense of humor
• Five ways our generation ruined the OWS generation
• The ten stupidest objections to OWS
• Right-wing website reporters were beaten by NYPD, then helped by Occupy Wall Street protesters
• Occupy Eugene protesters targeted Wal-Mart on Black Friday
• In other Wal-Mart news: an older customer put a video game in his waistband to free up his hands.  In response cops slammed him to the floor, leaving him bloody and unconscious
• And to complete the Wal-Mart trifecta: if the cops don't injure you, your fellow customers will
• South Carolina cops killed a man with a Taser because he wouldn't stop his bicycle when they called to him.  The man was deaf and mentally handicapped.  The cops were there in the first place because someone reported seeing a man fall off his bike.  Standard procedure?
• An Ohio woman was assaulted, and the cops end up taking the victim to jail, forcibly strip searching her (some of the cops were male) while someone videotaped it, and then leaving her nude in her cell for hours.  Standard procedure?
• Miami cops caught on tape laughing about shooting an unarmed protester in the face.  Standard procedure?
• The militarization of the police continues
• Three for the price of one: Teenage high school student said Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback "sucked" on Twitter and was forced by principal to apologize after Brownback's office complained; student rightly refused; then Brownback ended up apologizing for sucking so bad.  See?  Sometimes news stories have a happy ending.
• Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, the average top 1% will get a tax cut that's worth more than the total income of the average bottom 99%
• Speaking of Bush, he cancelled a trip to Switzerland over fears he'd get arrested for engaging in torture.  Now if they'd only apply the same standard to Obama...
• You can't even count on "respectable" publications like Time if you want to be informed
• You can't even count on "respectable" TV networks like The Discovery Channel if you want to be informed
• No, it's not 1950, but sometimes it seems like it is.  A Kentucky church banned interracial couples.
• As if it's not strange enough that an Amish clan goes around cutting the hair and beards of other Amish people, the clan leader's name is "Mullet."  If this were an Onion story proposal, it would be rejected as too far-fetched.
• Tee-hee
• The benefits of being a polar bear zookeeper

In Closing

Do me a favor, drop by check out my friend Erin's new website, Cross Sectional Views. She's a great writer, and her posts are insightful and always worth a read.

Now here it is, your moment of Tucker (taken last August):

Rob

To Serve and Pepper Spray

Hello everyone.

In my last post, I wrote about how ridiculous I thought it was that our weather forecast called for 1-3 inches of snow, and yet we had a Winter Storm Warning. Well, as it turned out, we actually got about a foot and a half of snow, which of course is much more Winter Storm Warning worthy, but quite different than "1-3 inches." And on top of that, we got another 4-6 inches of snow yesterday morning. But then last night the air warmed up and it began to rain, so now everything is a big slushy, sloppy mess.

Every so often when chunks of the wet snow slide off the roof and hit the ground, it makes a big booming sound that scares Tucker. I told him it was just snow and it happens all the time, and that it didn't seem to bother him last year when he was just a little puppy, but he seems skeptical. I even took him outside to inspect the piles that had just fallen off the roof for himself, and all he did was pick up a big chunk of ice with his mouth and run around the yard like a cuckoo bird.  Of course, he liked to do that all the time in the summer, too, except he'd have a pine cone in his mouth instead of an ice chunk.  At least he sticks with what he knows best.

Occupy News

In case you haven't heard, here's the latest. Some UC Davis students decided to form their own Occupy group and pitch tents on their campus to protest, among other things, the steep rise in tuition California students are facing. When the campus cops told them to leave, they refused and locked arms to form a human chain. A cop then hosed them down with pepper spray at close range. Here's a video taken from four separate perspectives:



Good thing those campus cops were there in full riot gear to protect the students from the scourge of their seated classmates, eh?

Despite what Megyn Kelly says, pepper spray is potentially lethal, and "U.S. troops fighting overseas are banned from using it in combat by international treaty." It's pretty bad stuff. If Megyn Kelly really thinks it's a harmless "food product," I'm sure she'd have no problem letting someone spray a generous portion of it all over her face.

I'll let you, the reader, fill in the space after the last sentence with the obvious joke. I choose to rise above that sort of juvenile humor. Unless it's a joke about poop or farts. Those are always hilarious.

Anyway, pepper spray is designed to cause great pain and/or blindness. Normally something designed to cause pain and/or failure of one's basic bodily functions is considered a torture device. But when it's cops/military/government doing the torturing, people tend to be really good at coming up with ways to justify it.  We love our obedience to authority, don't we?

I've been reading online comments from people excusing the cops' actions by claiming that the cops were just doing their job and that the students were breaking the law. Except I've yet to see anyone point out exactly what law they were breaking. The closest I've seen is a quote from the college chancellor claiming the students were "violating university rules." But university rules aren't exactly the same as the law, no?

The First Amendment is supposed to guarantee the right to peaceably assemble, and the video makes it clear that's exactly what these students were doing. They were sitting down, arms locked. They weren't even chanting or yelling, for crying out loud. Even more, this was a protest by students on their own campus, and if anyone had a right to be there, it was them.

But let's assume the students were breaking some mythical law. How does that justify what happened here?  The justification for cops to carry pepper spray (or a gun, or a Taser, or a nightstick) is to protect themselves against threats. But how much paint thinner does one have to inhale to be deluded enough to think a dozen or so unarmed kids sitting on the ground pose any sort of threat to armed cops in full riot gear?  Also, why were the people sitting down the only ones targeted? After all, if simply being on campus is a crime deserving of chemical weapons to the face, why don't you see the cops pepper spraying all the students standing around watching? There were certainly a lot more of them than the dozen or so sitting down.


If you support the cop's actions, you have nothing to complain about if you get pepper sprayed the next time you get pulled over for speeding.  It's that simple.

The only crime committed at UC Davis that day was not by the students, but by the pepper-spraying cops. It was about crushing a Constitutionally-protected protest before it picked up steam. As Glenn Greenwald noted, this is all about intimidating others into submission and silence.

See, unlike other countries that outright ban free speech and free expression, our government pretends to allow it. And as long as people engage in the "right kind of free speech," the kind that can be manipulated and exploited by those who actually run the country, the corporate shills who dominate our media and political discourse will sing the praises of the First Amendment. But when people actually engage in free speech that threatens said status quo, the full force of the state will come down on the people in the form of pepper spray, tear gas, nightsticks, flash grenades, and skull-cracking rubber bullets to the face. We're seeing it now.

The administrators at UC Davis (along with the faculty, students, and cops) should consider themselves fortunate that the students didn't riot after the pepper spraying. People tend to respond to violence with more violence, even nonviolent protesters. If the cops keep up this type of behavior (and since they take orders from politicians, I expect more of the status quo), people are going to react. It's going to get ugly(er).

Pressure is on the chancellor to resign. Her walk of shame was caught on video. The cop who did the spraying was put on leave (with pay, naturally) while he's being investigated. I'd be shocked if anything happens to him. I don't even expect a slap on the wrist. He'll likely be back pepper spraying lawful protesters in no time. That's what happens in a police state.

Or maybe something will come out of this.  Maybe some real changes will happen.  Time will tell.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out one cool thing to come out of this: an awesome internet meme.

Here's one more thing I want to discuss. This photo has been making its way around the interwebs:

As I've mentioned before on this blog, for every job that's available, five people are looking for one. That's just the official numbers--the actual number is likely much higher. Also, that doesn't include people who already have a job, but whose job doesn't pay enough, so they're looking for a replacement or second job.

The point is this: the problem isn't that people don't want to work--it's that there aren't enough jobs. The people protesting are not to blame for this fact. They're not looking for a handout. They just don't want to be doomed to a life of poverty and debt servitude. In fact, the only demanding a handout are the Wall Street scumbags that tanked the economy then demanded a bailout.

Of course, I shouldn't be surprised that so many people have the basic premise behind the Occupy movement wrong given that our corporate media is not in the business of informing people, but rather selling corporate advertisements. I'm sure the lack of information and abundance of misinformation is even worse for the soldiers stationed overseas. Hence the sign. Don't believe it, though.

And Now, A Musical Interlude

Tortoise is my favorite instrumental band, and one of my overall favorites, instrumental or otherwise. Here's a set from one of their shows in Europe:



Reading Materials: 

• I linked to this earlier, but Glenn Greenwald is always a must-read, and definitely worth two links in one blog post.
• Pepper-spraying is not limited to California and New York.  This story combines my interest in the Occupy movement and my interest in photography.
• A pregnant woman miscarried after being kicked and pepper sprayed during a Seattle protest.  Where is the "pro-life" crowd calling for murder charges against Seattle's finest?
• An NYC cop pushed and threatened to arrest a woman who had identified herself as a legal observer.  That legal observer also happens to be a New York Supreme Court judge.
• Matt Taibbi shows how much injustice there is in our system.
• Scott Olsen, the Oakland victim of a rubber bullet to the head, is now up and out of the hospital.
• Obama gets mic checked during a speech.  I'm sure that won't stop the usual gang of idiots from claiming the Occupy movement is really a Marxist/Muslim/Socialist/Kenyan plot funded by George Soros and ACORN to create chaos in the streets in order to destroy capitalism and force our kids to get gay married to illegal immigrants and have semi-annual taxpayer-funded abortions.
• Amazon customers comment on the brand of pepper spray used at UC Davis.  Hilarity ensues.
• One of the reasons I'm all but done with Facebook these days (though I admit I do sometimes lurk).
• What happens when an elementary school teacher catches a boy and a girl smooching during PE class?  Well, the school calls the cops to see if they should investigate it as a sex crime, of course.
• Here's a handy chart to help illustrate the relative value of money.
• Rand Paul: "Millionaires and billionaires pay all the taxes."  I guess the next time I'm at the store, I'll just tell the cashier, "I don't have to pay the sales tax because I'm not a millionaire or billionaire.  Hey, Senator Paul said so!"
• Black Friday is coming up.  Most of what you know about it is probably untrue.
• This article debunks myths found in an article that supposedly debunked myths about eating local food
• Every time an Oregon Ducks fan makes the "O" hand signal, he or she is also making the sign language symbol for "vagina."  Seriously.
• Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a knack for pointing out the obvious.

In Closing

We're having Thanksgiving at our place this year.  I'm going to attempt to barbecue a turkey.  I've never tried such a thing before.  Hell, I've never cooked a turkey in the oven before.  So it should be interesting.  If it turns out to be a complete disaster, you'll probably hear all about it right here on Rob Dow's World.  So stay tuned.

Now here it is, your moment of Tucker (and Cleocatra):

"It's too cold to play outside."

Rob

Weddings and Stuff

Hello everyone.

No, I'm not going to talk about the Occupy movement today. I know there's a lot to talk about, but I'm just burned out on the whole thing, and that's nothing against the movement or its supporters. In fact, I'm not even planning on talking politics at all right now, even though there's plenty to talk about. I just need a break from it right now.

So for this post I'm just going to focus on stuff happening in my life.  Of course, I suppose everything is political, even stuff happening in my life, but you know what I mean.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you've dropped by specifically for my insightful middling political commentary, and/or if you couldn't give two craps what's going on in my life, you might want to skip this one. Your loss.

Rob Happenings

Cathy and I went down to Eugene last weekend to see two of our friends get married. Yes, to each other. Technically, they got married last spring, but no one was there to see it, so Saturday was the big ceremony with family and friends.

It was a success. They had the ceremony at an art gallery, and as they're both creative, artistic people, it was not only appropriate, but it was also really fun to be around all the art. Notwithstanding my snarky comments about a few of the paintings looking like Froot Loops cereal, there was some amazing work there, and it was inspiring to be surrounded by it.

During the ceremony, the bride and groom each gave a little speech to each other, sort of like vows but not really, and both of their respective speeches was well-written, tear-jerking stuff. Each of their moms also went up front and gave a little speech as well, and their speeches were also top-notch.

I began to worry.

Here's the thing: I was the Best Man. And I had to also give a little speech when I did the toast later on. I wasn't terribly worried about the public speaking aspect, as I had gotten used to speaking in public on a semi-regular basis while working as an academic advisor, and besides, I already knew a lot of the people who were there. Speaking in front of people you know and who know you is much easier than speaking in front of strangers, at least to me.

Leading up to the ceremony I had (mostly) teased the groom that I was going to give a Celebrity Roast-style speech about him, and he was a bit worried I'd embarrass him in front of his family and coworkers. In reality, I was just going to tell a few funny stories about him, none of which would make anyone think less of him. Truth be told, I'd have to make something up if I wanted people to think less of him, because he's a really good guy. But I had at least 15 minutes worth of material and only 2-3 minutes of allotted time, so I had to pare it down.

I had a tough time finding the line between saying nice, appropriate things and being myself. It's much easier for me to be an asshole than to be nice. In fact, I can be an asshole with little to no effort, but it takes a lot of work to be nice. I'm also much better at being an asshole than being nice.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional wrestler. I wanted to be a bad guy, naturally.

It's not that I want to be an asshole--I really don't. It's just the way I'm programmed. That's why I write. I can focus my asshole-ishness into a character, and that allows me to be me without hurting anyone I care about.

Anyway, before the ceremony I got my speech pared down to a couple minutes. I planned on saying mostly nice things that truly came from the heart without having to resort to stupid cliches, and I also managed to get in a few lighthearted jabs. I felt confident.

But then after hearing everyone else's speeches, I was a bit worried that mine wouldn't measure up. The thing was, it wasn't so much about my ego. Mostly, I didn't want to disappoint my two friends at their wedding.

But I went through with my speech anyway, more or less as I had planned, and I think it went well. I didn't screw up in front of everyone and make a fool of myself. People laughed when they were supposed to laugh, and people "Awwed" when I hoped they would. Afterward a couple people said it was a good speech. The bride and groom didn't seem upset afterward. If they were, they hid it well.

Cathy and I stuck around to the end to help tear down and clean up. We were exhausted, but some friends wanted to go out for drinks afterward. We went along and ended up more exhausteder. But it was fun.

Even without weddings and wedding-type events, these Oregon trips are incredibly draining. I hate the 9-10 hour drive each way. There's a couple hours in the middle of the drive that snakes though the Columbia Gorge, which is nice when it's not windy or icy. The rest of it sucks.

And when we're in town, we never have enough time. Never. This trip was even worse in that respect. We drove down on Thursday, did the rehearsal and then went to the rehearsal dinner on Friday, had the wedding on Saturday, and came home on Sunday. This meant that there was really no way we'd be able to see any of our numerous Eugene friends who weren't at the wedding. And we didn't even get to spend much time with our friends who were at the wedding. So this trip also included a generous helping of guilt.

But then again, it's a one day drive from Eugene to our place, and all our Eugene friends have an open invitation to come up here and spend as much time with us as they can handle.

I did, however, manage to pick up a few bottles of something very special from Oakshire. Stay tuned.

And Now, A Musical Interlude

I came across this recording of Nirvana doing "Something in the Way" during a 1991 BBC session. This version is heavier and darker, and I like it better than the one on Nevermind, which is pretty darn good in itself. Anyway, here it is:



I think my last music-related post was about Nirvana, too. I like Nirvana, but I wouldn't call myself a hardcore fan. I guess I've just had them on my brain recently.

I'll try to branch out and post something different next time.

In Closing

There's a Winter Storm Warning in effect for our area.  We're supposed to get up to three inches of snow over the next 36 hours.  They've really lowered the bar on Winter Storm Warnings lately.  It used to be you had to get a blizzard, freezing rain, and/or snow accumulation that could be measured in feet before it was considered Winter Storm Warning worthy.  Three inches in 36 hours?  Sounds like typical North Idaho winter weather to me.  But what do I know?

Now here it is, your moment of Tucker:

Rob

On "Violent Protesters" and a Few Reading Assignments

Hello everyone.

Meh.

That's how I've been feeling lately. I don't know if it's the cold, dreary weather, or the fact that I haven't had a whole lot of interaction with people not named Cathy lately, but I'm just not feeling terribly inspired these days. I haven't done much in the way of writing on my book for the past couple of weeks, and I haven't been terribly motivated to do the tons of projects around the house that are crowding up my to-do list. I did, however, find time to write a to-do list, so there's that, I guess.

I haven't even been in the mood to brew any beer. It's that bad.

So now I'm forcing myself to pump out a blog posting with the hope that it might help fight the doldrums. Here goes nothing...

Occupy News

In what should come as a surprise to no one, there's been a big crackdown on Occupy protesters all across the country. Cops in full riot gear have been sent in armed with batons, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and tear gas grenades to dispel the scourge of hippie drummers camping without a permit.

One noteworthy incident took place last week in Oakland, CA, where Scott Olsen, who served two tours in Iraq, was shot in the head at close range with a "police projectile"--either rubber bullets or a tear gas grenade--leaving him with a fractured skull and an inability to speak due to brain damage, though fortunately doctors expect him to fully recover.  To protect and serve!

When several people rushed to help the man who was laying on the ground motionless, a cop threw a flash grenade into the middle of the crowd. I'm sure that if he could, that cop would've arrested those people and charged them with obstruction of justice or some other bullshit charge for attending to a fellow human being. How dare they?

Now I know some you may be thinking the cops are being a bit heavy-handed toward the protesters. But they have to do something. After all, the Occupy crowd is being barely inconvenient, and we can't have that. If the cops did nothing, the movement might become slightly more inconvenient, and then what? We can't inconvenience the plutocracy, now can we? And we all love the First Amendment, but only if it's used to protect certain types of speech, such as unlimited, anonymous corporate campaign contributions, not regular people with signs.

(end sarcasm)

The latest is that the protesters have become "violent." I'm not so sure. People have admitted to infiltrating the movement in order to turn it violent and discredit it. There's pretty solid evidence that cops have infiltrated Occupy Oakland at the very least. And is vandalism really the same thing as violence?

But let's assume it's true. Let's assume the actual protesters--not agent provocateurs or infiltrators--have become violent. We know that the police (not all, but some) have been violent toward the protesters, so is it really a surprise that the protesters (not all, but some) have responded in kind? Isn't that just a basic human instinct?

I'm not making excuses or justifying. I'm as non-violent as they come, but I'm also realistic. It's idiotic to expect people who have been treated this way to not start fighting back. In fact, I think it's incredibly impressive that the so-called "protester violence" has been so minimal, not just because of human nature, but because of how deeply ingrained and institutionalized violence is in our culture. Just watch practically any newscast, any movie, or any TV show, and you'll invariably come across violent conflict. Every Fourth of July we celebrate violence. It's everywhere.  So why are we shocked when victims of violence in a protest respond with violence, but cheer when the latest movie action hero does the same?

Also, shouldn't cops (or rather, the people giving cops their orders) know that protesters (or anybody for that matter) is likely to respond to violence with more violence?  You'd think that if they wanted to keep things peaceful, they wouldn't send a riot squad in to crush a campout that's already been peaceful.  You'd have to believe either they're incredibly inept at what they do, or they wanted it to escalate into violence.  I can't see a third option.

If you have an agenda (and are willing to forgo critical thinking), you can see the "protester violence" as example of a failure of the protests. Or you could see the relative lack of protester violence as an example of its success. And if you're honest with yourself and informed, it's pretty clear to see that the violence has been incredibly one-sided: committed by cops and government officials, and the victims have been the people they're supposed to protect and who pay their salaries.

But one thing is clear: The emperor wears no clothes. If a few kids taking to the streets have caused this much of a reaction, it can only mean the people who own our country are scared. And their hold on power is incredibly fragile.

Reading Materials

I've decided to start a new segment, in which I share articles I've recently read and found noteworthy for some reason. I share articles on Facebook all the time, but I realize not everyone has a Facebook account, and I don't want to encourage people to get one, because Facebook is evil.

• Global Grind looks at reports that the NYPD has been encouraging drunks and transients to infiltrate the Occupy Wall Street camps
• Matt Taibbi (probably the best investigative journalist in the nation) takes on the nonsensical claims of Michael Bloomberg and the rest of the corporate shills that the financial crisis was caused by poor people taking on loans they couldn't afford to pay back.  It's Taibbi.  Read it.
• A home foreclosure mill had a Halloween party where the employees dressed up like homeless people to mock the ones the employees foreclosed upon for a living.  I don't believe in Hell, but if there was one, there'd be a special section for these scumbags.
• The Telegraph talks about how a bunch of sociopaths encouraged a 17-year-old to jump off a building and kill himself
• A woman who went for a late-night walk with a friend was arrested and held in jail for two days because she left her ID back at her room
• Bill Moyers speaks.  You listen.
• Do we want "jobs," or do we really want a better society?
• Counterpunch looks at the Obama administration's claim of foiling an Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador, and how it relates to a desire in DC to collapse the Iranian economy so as to overthrow the government and install a US and Israel-friendly regime.  It's so ridiculous, it just might work!
• The local Priest River Times has a blurb about a recent fire.  Ignore the writing--it's horrendous--but look at the photo to see if you can spot Cathy (hint: she's the one on the left).
• And finally, The Raw Story has an article about and 83-year-old who is being charged with being a gigolo for offering sexual services to pay off a debt.  It's nice to know even seniors can find work in this depressed economy.

In Closing

I feel a bit better.  Forcing myself to blog was a good idea.  I should probably do it more often, no?

Now here it is, your moment of Tucker:

"If I were human, dressing me up like this would be considered illegal under the Geneva Convention."

 Rob