MISS PIGGY UPDATE

I wish I had more exciting news about Miss Piggy but at least she is up and walking, just a little.  She is still being fed by IV because she refuses to eat.  I just wish kitty IVs were like human drips and would be full of calories.  Today in Las Cruces I stopped in at Pet Smart and found some freeze dried salmon that has no additives.  They are going to try tempting her with that this evening.  If anyone has some ideas about getting her to eat, please let me know, ASAP.

 

I’ve had a long day in Las Cruces doing the parents’ doctor thing.  I fear it is going to be a LONG week!  Today’s posting is a bit short.

 

THIS IS WAR!

Okay, now Algore has gone to far.  The high demand for ethanol is causing Mexican farmers to plant corn instead of agave.  They sky is falling, the sky is falling.  How can we face global warming with a shortage of tequila!

 

WYATT EARP AND JOHN WAYNE

John Fund’s homage to John Wayne’s 100th Birthday from today’s Political Diary

"...John Wayne would have been 100 years old last Saturday, …Many attending the celebrations noted that while Iowa is proud that Ronald Reagan, who cut his teeth in radio at a Des Moines station, went on to become president, they're sorry Wayne never ran for office. They needn't be. The star of nearly 200 movies was very much involved in politics, but his conservatism was of a sufficiently politically incorrect kind that running for office and having to curry favor with large numbers of voters would have required giving up the essence of what it meant to be John Wayne.W ayne's tough-but-kind, cowboy-like persona struck a chord with moviegoers and he used his popularity to promote any number of conservative causes. In 1966, he cut a commercial for fellow actor Ronald Reagan's campaign for governor in which he dismissed as "empty nonsense" the criticism that his friend was "just an actor." His anti-Communism, which he expressed in many films, was so strong that according to Soviet archives, Joseph Stalin had once ordered his assassination but died before the deed could be accomplished. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, is said to have told Wayne during a 1959 visit to the U.S. that he had personally rescinded the order. Mr. Wayne never wavered in his hatred of the evil empire. Once, when told that everything regarding relations with the Soviet Union wasn't black and white, Wayne growled, "Why the hell not?" Mr. Wayne's patriotism was of the simple, refreshing kind. "Sure I wave the American flag," Mr. Wayne told a reporter during the Vietnam War. "Do you know of a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I am not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be."As for his fellow Americans, they are unlikely ever to forget him. His films remain popular, and the man himself has begun to receive overdue recognition for his qualities as a performer as well as a citizen..."

It’s been awhile since I’ve given you a Wyatt Earp lecture, but I think I will today.  Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, Wyatt Earp would hang out on the back lots at Republic Pictures, playing poker with Tom Mix and John Ford.  Wyatt and Tom Mix were very good friends.  In fact, not long before he died, Wyatt and Mix were making a list of the things Wyatt was going to ask the Almighty when he got to heaven because, by golly, he felt the Good Lord owed him an explanation for a few things in his life!

 

Both Mix and Ford were huge Southern Cal football fans.  There was this talented running back from the Midwest who did not have the money to stay in LA during the summer.  Mix talked Ford into getting him a job as a wrangler there at Republic.  Now the story goes that the young wrangler would hang around when Ford and Mix played poker with Wyatt Earp.

 

According to a 95 year old woman I had the honor of interviewing a decade ago, Wyatt Earp had a voice like a fog-horn.  When he laughed, his booming laughter would fill a room.  When he spoke, he spoke a bit slowly, enunciating every syllable. He had a bit of a strange walk.  He stood straight and tall.  He was a good Republican and according to Grace, “He was for the United States in every way possible.  He loved America.”

 

The young wrangler was named Marion Robert Morrison.  It was a name that would NEVER work for a cowboy, so John Ford had him change it.   The rest is history.

 

John Ford’s tribute to Wyatt can be found in two places, the classic My Darling Clementine, which is historically inaccurate, but is Wyatt the way Ford saw him.  Also, there is this absurd segue inside Cheyenne Autumn about the alleged Cheyenne attack on Dodge City.  Jimmy Stewart played Wyatt.  Of all the roles John Wayne played, not once did he actually play a character patterned after Wyatt Earp.  Instead, John Wayne became Wyatt Earp.  When we see John Wayne on the screen, we are looking at the person Wayne became after copying Wyatt Earp.

 

MISC NEWS

Al Qaeda’s newest threat to the US.

 

While this poodle may be the best dog in the world, Rumsfeld says you won’t catch him dead looking like this!

 

So now dyslexia is just another word for “stupid”? I guess I am just stupid, lazy and my 164 IQ isn’t considered high enough.   I don’t think students should get a disability allowance for it like they do in the UK, but I wish the form of dyslexia I have had been diagnosed when I was in college.  When I look at a column or page of numbers, I can literally see them move.  They make no sense. 

“…Julian Elliott, a leading educational psychologist at Durham University, says he has found no evidence to identify dyslexia as a medical condition after more than 30 years of research.  "There is a huge stigma attached to low intelligence," he said. "After years of working with parents, I have seen how they don't want their child to be considered lazy, thick or stupid. "If they get called this medically diagnosed term, dyslexic, then it is a signal to all that it's not to do with intelligence." He added: "There are all sorts of reasons why people don't read well but we can't determine why that is. Dyslexia, as a term, is becoming meaningless." …”

Confessions of a successful immigrant who was smuggled across the border as a child.  I guess you hard-liners want to deport her. 

 

MY MINI RANT OF THE DAY

CONSERVATIVE CANNIBALS

 

You don’t know how welcome this first posting, from Blog Lizards is.    For well over a year I have been telling you what is going on.  Strata-Sphere also picks up on Gingrich conservative betrayal.   I thought conservatives were honest, loyal, thrifty – sorry, that’s a boy scout.  Guess conservatives are no better than liberals. 

 

The new favorite conservative whipping person right now is our Republican President.  Frankly, I don’t see why conservatives have anything to be proud of.  As I have frequently, and I believe constantly stated, they have no loyalty to a person or party, only abstract ideals.    Blog Lizards is excellent hissing at our disloyal conservatives.   

“…But however narrow their majority, they still control both the committees and the agenda; and they can stop cold any of the GOP's remaining agenda items... unless Republicans stick together and peel off a few Democrats. Republicans alone, without a single Democratic defection, can prevent Congress from enacting a Democratic agenda: But they must rely upon a presidential veto (from the man they are determined to call the Great Betrayer); and again, they must stand firm and united, retaining even the votes of moderate Republicans, who are easily disgusted by the disloyalty of their fellow party members.

 

We court catastrophe when we join the Democratic dogpile atop the president; and we make fools of ourselves when we imagine we can isolate the damage just to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, without having it slop over onto the 2008 Republican nominee for president and Republicans running for election or reelection to the Congress. You don't win a fight by clubbing your own head.

 

It is time for conservatives to focus on the areas where they agree with the fellow Republican in the White House, and on areas where a change can make a compromise bill better, yet not act as a poison pill to kill it altogether. I beseech you, in the bowels of Oliver Cromwell, to leave the Bush bashing to the professionals in the other party...."

I try to never reference NewsMax because of its track history of being biased and factually incorrect.  I am referencing Ron Kessler’s hit piece on Fred Thompson.  Shall we say the ultra conservative dog eat dog feeding frenzy appears to have begun today.  

 

Just what is Gingrich trying to prove?  He now calls the Bush Administration the GOP version of Carter’s.  I think Gingrich’s idea that the only way to maintain the White House is to reach out to center-right voters is very ‘right on’.  We also need to face the fact that more and more often we are hearing people speak of “conservatives and the GOP”.  All criticism of GWB aside, (or in Gingrich’s case more likely Karl Rove – oh how people like you when things are going good) we are beginning to see a separation of the ultra conservative from the rank and file GOP.  Is this going to be good for the GOP?  I don’t know.  I do know these people are becoming more and more obvious in the fact that there is a difference between them and GOP goals.

 

It is also quite obvious we are starting to see infighting between the Tom Delay faction and the Gingrich faction.  t I am not sure if John Boehner isn’t part of the problem.

“…Not long ago, I asked the G.O.P. leader in the House, John Boehner, if he thought it possible for his party to keep the White House and take back Congress in 2008. His answer was revealing. “The Democrats have gone too far,” he said. “They’ve grossly miscalculated what the American people want on national security.” When I asked him to describe a set of post-Iraq, post-corruption, post-earmark-scandal ideas that would propel the Republicans back into contention, he said, “Members have to do the hard work, using their own brains to develop our proposals for the future.” Then he said, “The Democrats are going to stumble. It’s just the nature of things.”

It looks like the Republicans in the House are going to all play nice and back the Prez on a spending veto or two.  

 

PRIMARIES 2008

Social conservatives are embracing Giuliani.  Good.

 

I know this sounds snarky, but what the heck, everyone knows I am.  Apparently all that anti-immigration pandering Jim DeMint is doing is having very little effect on Romney’s

 status in SC.   To me it says several things.  DeMint has over-estimated the power of the very extreme conservative base to which he is pandering.  Remember, not long after the Nov election, DeMint said he could easily leave the GOP.  The ultra conservative base he is pandering to is not the ‘usual’ SC conservative base.  If this is the case, then I think we can safely extrapolate that we may end up seeing the same thing through-out the country.  There is something else that bothers me.  SC is the center of some of the more nasty conservative groups and movements in the country.  Does DeMint actually know who these people are?  We know when Tancredo was in SC last fall and we had the “flag” dust-up there with the Confederate flag, etc.  Also, Anderson County is the ‘center’ of some national based white supremacist movements. Just how is DeMint involved.  Or, is he that naïf about who his mover vocal constituents are.  

 

I think a poor Romney showing in SC hurts DeMint far more than a McCain loss would hurt Lindsey.  Everyone knows they are friends.  The other thing that bothers me is DeMint’s almost knee jerk reaction to the whole Immigration Bill.  He is offering one amendment after another, and making claims about the bill that are not true.

 

More on those great Bill Richardson ads.

 

The new ARG numbers  aren’t flattering to Romney.

 

Romney’s Memorial Day problem. 

 

Captain Ed ponders why Romney did well, then dropped.  I think there’s a very simple explanation.  He looks great at first.  But, like his stiffly sprayed hair do, once you pick your way through all that sticky sprayed perfection, there’s nothing under it.  I don’t think Romney wears well.