JamesSlusher.com

News like this just irks the hell out of me. This country is headed in the wrong direction and the knowledge of it tears at me constantly. A friend recently sent me a letter comparing our personalities and said this:

if someone steps on our toes, or we sense transgression on the innocent, we feel obligated to retaliate.

Now this is very true of me. But the one thing I wouldn’t ever do is get mad at a mirror for mocking me. What I mean by that is the last line in the article: “…a few and dangerous minds don’t understand that they have only mimicked the same perversity this painting had expressed.” Are they upset because they see themselves in that picture? Probably so. Oh sure, they would try to wrap their misbehavior in the Stars and Stripes and say that this gallery owner is “unpatriotic”. Patriots make changes to their country’s rules from within the boundary of those rules. Traitors are those who make their own rules as they see fit.

In fact, the assessment of me is so dead on accurate that I would love to find a way to protect people like Lori Haigh. If I were free to do so, I would go to Frisco right now and fight this out with whomever wanted a piece. But I can’t so that leaves me numbingly frustrated and pounding away at this keyboard in anger. There is so much wrong now, how can it ever be put right? And how do I make it right, what can/do I do?

I’m digging my RssReader v1.0.88.0. The trouble with it though is that it has an endless capacity to provide me with the depressing news of the day.

The thing that depresses me the most with seeing all of these news sources is that I realize now how much time media outlets spend reporting on …well, media outlets. They talk about liberal bias and/or the lack thereof. It’s awesome that a newspaper can sell papers by reporting on how biased other outlets are and then those others can sell ads by reporting on how biased that newspaper is. What a beautiful and efficient little system of crass self-consciousness we have. It’s like rappers getting paid to rap about how much money they get paid. It’s this efficient little system in which no thought or useful information needs to intrude.

Hopefully someday we will realize how underutilized these information sharing technologies are in the current systems of reporting and a new system will replace it in which useful and interesting facts occasionally show themselves.

In the CSRA, the Georgia residents are always somewhat critical of the South Carolinians. But I tell you, North Augusta does a better job running it’s city with much less money than Augusta/Richmond County ever has. They really do more with less here.

I got a letter today from the City of North Augusta explaining that they would unfortunately have to delay building sidewalks in my neighborhood because they only got one bid for it. “Because we did not have multiple bids to compare pricing, the city council did not feel it would be in the best interest of the residents…”. Now that’s using your noggin.

Augusta/Richmond county would never make that sort of sense with the current group of yahoos they got “running” things. Really it should be spelled “ruining”. Depending on where I work in the next 4 or 5 years, I might need to move back to the Georgia side. It will be a tough decision as I have the choice of A/RC or Columbia County which is having trouble controlling it’s own growth. I’m not excited about either proposition.

So I finally put shutters back on the front of my house.
What do you think?

BEFORE

AFTER

Here is yet another load of crap hoisted on the American public by the Bush Administration. There are numerous reports of a big Al-Qaeda threat this summer. The problem here is that it is all political CYAing and not a real attempt to make anyone safer.

If Al-Qaeda actually does pull off an attack, the administration can say that they tried to get the word out as early as possible. If nothing happens, they can say that their diligence averted potential disaster.

What good is having an alarm system set up that does not inform you of any specifics? It would be like having an alarm at the firestation that just goes off whenever there is a fire, with no info as to where it might be. You might luck out and save something once or twice, but most times everything will be lost. That is this administration in a nutshell.

My brother is bashing Catholic political grandstanding yet again. Of course, this time he might be right. Or I might have had one too many jumbo margaritas at one of the local Mexican restaurants tonight to give much of a s**t. We will see as this post unfolds.

I’m of two minds on this subject (and no, not sober and drunk). One is, the Catholic Church officials need to stay out of politics. That’s not gonna happen, though. The pope is getting more infirm by the minute and we will see more and more political grandstanding by Church officials every day. They are jockeying for position just as much as G.W. Bush and J. Kerry are. It shouldn’t be long before some Bishop or Cardinal is calling for all sinners to flagellate themselves.

Now as a (admittedly pitiful) Catholic, when I see these officials coming out with various and sundry hardline pronouncements, I think to myself, “Jackass”. I know he is just trying to curry favor with the Church.

At the same time, homosexuality is explicitly against Church doctrine. When I see or hear of a gay Catholic, I think to myself, “Jackass”. It would be like me joining the Nation of Islam. They just plain don’t want me. Being a gay Catholic is like being a gay Republican or being a gay Anti-Gay activist. You are in a group that really just doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Not that the Catholic church is anti-gay. It’s not. It doesn’t want gays hurt in any way. It just doesn’t want them helped, either.

My brother has some suggestions that might help gay Catholics protest the treatment they are getting from the Church. I have one, too. Become Episcopalian. Not just because they have a gay bishop. It’s just because every Episcopalian man I have ever met I have thought, “this cat must be gay”. Seriously, it’s the gayest f***ing church ever. The whole reason they became Episcopalian was so they wouldn’t have to confess to their homosexual liasons and cheating their business partners. It’s No Guilt Catholicism(TM). Try it out, you’ll love it.

P.S. I think Episcopalians wear those rainbow sashes every week. I could be wrong , though.

Everybody in the world is going to accuse me of lying about this, but I swear it is true. I’ve got witnesses. My 22 month old daughter picked up a piece of AT&ampT junk mail that we get all the time. She handed me the letter on the AT&ampT letterhead and said, “Daddy, A T T”. I asked her to repeat it and she repeated it several times. In front of witnesses, too.

Everybody thinks that their kids are smarter and prettier than everybody else’s. But mine really is.

…it just means that they have already thought of ways to abuse it. The Department of Homeland Security (or the SS, as I like to call it) and the (In)Justice Department have already had quite a hand in abusing the powers they have been granted after 9/11.

Case in point, Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon lawyer who is Muslim and had once represented Jeffrey Leon Battle in a custody case. Yes, Mr. Battle has been convicted of aiding the Taliban and Al-Queda. But Mayfield’s representation of Mr. Battle was in a divorce case.

After the Madrid bombings, somehow the FBI managed to “match” Mayfield’s fingerprints to those on a plastic bag near the scene of the bombings. It turns out, however, that they were wrong and that somehow, someway, they just managed to “accidently” identify his fingerprints out of thousands of non-muslim possible matches. What a load.

“This is indicative of how the Justice Department has overreached and cut constitutional corners since 9/11,” said David Fidanque, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon. “The Justice Department is using the material witness statute in a way that it was never meant to be used, and this is just the most dramatic example of that trend.”

Here is a picture of Mr. Mayfield after being set free:

I wonder how long it will be before they find an excuse to start arresting this man:

The girls and I spent the day at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia. Very nice little zoo. Not many places to sit and eat, but otherwise very fun.

Emily had a great time and her Mom and Dad did too.

Here is a picture of Marilyn and Emily. Notice the ostrich hamming it up in the background:

There seems to be more than one ham in this picture:

I officially have the world’s Crappiest Mood today.