Fish Fear Me

Still Pissed

I'm slightly calmer today than I was last night when it became apparent that the House was not going to take a vote on the Boehner Plan, but not by much. Right now I'm pissed at everyone in Washington.

I'm pissed at establishment Republicans for their part leading up to this miss and the many years of "go along, get along."

I'm pissed at Tea Party Republicans for their "burn down the house" mentality and refusal to recognize that taming the deficit is going to be a decade long process, one that will require painful but prudent cuts. They need to show they can be prudent and not just stridently principled or they will get no chance to govern. Try cutting the deficit then, idiots.

I'm pissed at Democrats for their blatantly cynical partisanship in doing not one thing to try to get something moved out of the House. President Obama keeps saying he has a plan but he refuses to actually show it. The one Democratic plan that has enough substance to get a CBO score is another cynical joke, with half of its so-called "cuts" coming from money that wouldn't be spent anyway.

Three years after another disaster at least partly inspired by the geniuses in Washington, retirement wealth has made a comeback in the form of IRAs and 401Ks. A meltdown of that again would be disastrous for the economy and Tea Party Republicans better wake up to the fact that they will be blamed, whether that is fair or not. 

P.S. Krauthammer is exactly right here:

Obama faces two massive problems — jobs and debt. They’re both the result of his spectacularly failed Keynesian gamble: massive spending that left us a stagnant economy with high and chronic unemployment — and a staggering debt burden. Obama is desperate to share ownership of this failure. Economic dislocation from a debt-ceiling crisis nicely serves that purpose — if the Republicans play along. The perfect out: Those crazy Tea Partyers ruined the recovery!

If that happens it will go down as one of the most spectacularly stupid political blunders in our nation's history.

Dan Pfeiffer Is A Major League Asshole

It takes some real fucking gall to put something like this out there...

"Clock ticks towards August 2, House is naming post offices, while leaders twist arms for a pointless vote. No wonder people hate Washington," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tweeted.

...when your boss has put exactly nothing in writing about his plan to get out of this mess.

Barack Obama is not only an idiot, he's a fucking coward.

Yankee Doodle Scientists

Watts Up With That has the Quote of the Week from Nature(please kneel and bow your head):

It is scientists, not sceptics, who are most willing to consider explanations that conflict with their own. And far from quashing dissent, it is the scientists, not the sceptics, who do most to acknowledge gaps in their studies and point out the limitations of their data — which is where sceptics get much of the mud they fling at the scientists.

These are the saints in scientific garb, dedicated scientists, all volunteers. Every red-blooded American knows, if he is a victim of climate change, he will be in the strong, capable hands of a Yankee Doodle Scientist.*

You may rise. 

*Well, that last part is not really a quote, but it could be.

Last Night's Harvest

I think I should have started picking green beans about a week ago:

They kind of snuck up on me and got big fast. Now I have to dig up some recipes since I don't cook much with raw green beans. I'm thinking something that also involves onion, garlic, and some olive oil will be in order.

As you can see, I got the first two ripened cherry tomatoes too. Lots more to come in that department.

But Are You Worried Enough?

Heaven knows I'm not a big fan of The Nation or Matt Stoller, but I think he brings up a fair topic for discussion here about the growing supply chain vulnerabilities in our economy:

Worryingly, there’s been very little consideration of how systemic collapses can happen in another, perhaps more dangerous realm—the industrial supply system that keeps us in everything from medicine to food to cars to, yes, videotape. In 2004, for instance, England closed one single factory, which caused the United States to lose half of its flu vaccine supply.

It goes much deeper than that as the disruption caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan showed us this spring. One would hope that event would have CEOs and board members everywhere scrutinizing their own supply chain vulnerabilities, but who knows? Single source and true "just in time" supply systems have been put in place to squeeze as much cost as possible out of the system. Will companies relax those systems and trade increased cost for more security? Would shareholders tolerate possible lower profits now for insurance against some event that may never happen?

Both my materials management and data center/network manager experiences have made me acutely aware of single points of failure. How, or sometimes even if, to eliminate or mitigate those risks can be tricky and expensive questions. Regardless though, vulnerabilities should aggressively be hunted down and exposed so the organization understands the risk. I wonder how often that happens these days, and how many CEOs are rolling the dice without telling their shareholders.

Stoller wants to see government and society pull manufacturing back into the US to lessen the systemic risks in globalized supply chain. While I think the goal is worthy, we part ways on how to accomplish that.

Improved visibility to systemic risk and pricing that into share value is important. So is a regulatory climate that encourages manufacturing to stay here in the US and even have some of it come back. So is a sensible energy policy that seeks to lessen the cost of energy instead of making it skyrocket as Obama himself has proudly promised.

A good economic climate is essential to seeing some of that overseas manufacturing return to the US. But the first thing that has to happen is for companies to ask; "What if?"

They owe that to their customers and their shareholders and if they aren't doing that they are being derelict in their duties. And we as consumers have our own duty to make ourselves aware of the issue and ask if our political leadership is doing anything to lessen these systemic and potentially societal risks of collapse.

From The Department Of Don't Let The Door Hit Ya Where The Good Lord Split Ya

Occasional funnyman George Lopez:

GEORGE LOPEZ: I agree. If Sarah Palin becomes president at any point, I will say allegedly, I will move to Canada.

MORGAN: Really?

LOPEZ: I will go further north. I've been south. I'll go further north.

MORGAN: You would literally leave the country?

LOPEZ: I would leave the United States of America.

Damn. Another reason to vote for Palin if she runs.

Tell Me How This Doesn't End

In principle I stand with those who want some serious deficit reduction, including a real path to at least a balanced budget, if not debt reduction. But we also need to pay attention to the current political reality and recognize that such a goal will not be accomplished by one, or two, or even three Congresses. It is going to take a decade or more of fiscal discipline and constant education in the face of bitter demands to spend money on this or that cause of the day. We need to keep that long-term perspective in mind and put in place now whatever deal we can get that starts to cut spending, does not raise taxes, and ends the current uncertainty before the debt ceiling is hit.

Those who think that House Republicans should stand firm and make no compromise now need to do a little reality check about what happens next. President Obama will not do what is best for the country, he will do what is best for himself politically, and that means creating the most chaos and pain that he can pin on the GOP without splashing any on himself. Despite a little pushback yesterday from White House reporters, a compliant press does not want a Republican elected president in 2012. They will cover for him as long as Obama plays his cards right and the GOP will not only be blamed for whatever issues arise from the debt ceiling mess, they will then also get pinned with damage to the overall economy letting Obama at least partly off the hook for the mess he has created. And the even worse thing is, eventually the debt ceiling will be raised anyway. Welcome to four more years.

Somebody tell me how it doesn't play that way. 

In a blog post titled "I would remind you that extremism in defense of solvency is no vice," Stephen Hayward invokes Churchill and his refusal to come to terms with the Nazis:

My headline here obviously borrows from Barry Goldwater’s infamous line that “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”  A better precedent might be to that singular moment when Churchill faced down the appeasers in the war cabinet on May 28, 1940, not yet three weeks into his premiership.  Scott has drawn attention to this moment on Power Line a couple times over the years, but it is worth noting once again in our present circumstances.  When Lord Halifax and a handful of other influential members of the war cabinet were building support to seek peace terms with Hitler through the Italians, Churchill reminded them that “nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished.”  The same may be said for the Republican Party today; if it surrenders to Obama, it may as well pack it in for good.

Yes, well, Churchill was also a practical man. The moment he uttered those words he was already two days into evacuating as many Allied forces as possible from the beaches of Dunkirk. He did not demand that those troops all die or be captured in a futile attempt to stop the Germans, he did his best to save them to fight another day. Hayward may want to think about that side of Churchill too.

Odds and Ends

I'll echo Rob and for now simply express my condolences to the people of Norway regarding Friday's terrible events. There will be time to analyze and argue in a few days after the police establish more facts about what happened and Norway has had its time of grief and mourning. 

The Long Recall has turned out to not be all that long after all. They are pulling the plug just after the 150th anniversary of the first major engagement. Obviously a lot of effort was going into what they were putting out each day and apparently it was too much. I'm very disappointed, but it's their call to make. I appreciated everything that they did post and I'll look for other sources and go from there.

Congratulations to Bert Blyleven on his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame today. I was just a little boy the first time he pitched for the Twins, and I guess from today's perspective, so was he at the age of 19. Bert's mouth and ego have got him into trouble over the years and I didn't like the guy by the time he was traded in 1976. But he came back and was part of the 1987 World Champions and that means most Twins fans will always have a soft spot for him. Way to go, Bert.

The Twins are only seven games out of first in the American League Central, but today I'm going to officially say stick a fork in them for this year. The first reason is they are 22-17 within the Central, but 1-7 now against the division leading Tigers after a 1-3 home stand against them. They just can't hang with the Tigers this year. On top of that is their 8-19 record against the AL East. Even if by some miracle they win the division they will go nowhere in the playoffs again. Nowhere.

The Taliban once again show their true face:

An 8 year-old boy was hanged by militants in Afghanistan's Helmand province after the boy's father -- a police officer in the southern city of Gereshk -- refused to comply with militants' demands to provide them with a police vehicle, officials said.

Can you imagine negotiating a truce with such people and then expecting them to leave you in peace afterward? I can't.

This is going to take its own post, oh yes: What will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits? 

Garden Update

How about a little Saturday afternoon garden pron? (click any pic to enlarge)

Sweet pepper, "Gypsy"

La Roma tomatoes:

The War Against Charlie

"Out here, due process is a hand cultivator."

-John Wayne in The Green Berets

Well, I might have edited that one a bit. But if he was here he would endorse it, I'm sure, just as he would understand what I'm up against in my war against creeping charlie.

Now that the garden is pretty much in maintenance mode, I've turned my eye towards more yard related tasks. The heat put a pause in the fence clearing project for a few days. It was just too brutal to work in that heat. I did get 60' cleared and chipped away, the edging in, and mulch added from the box elder stump that I had someone grind out.

(click to enlarge)

That's about 1/3 done, though not all of the fence line will get edging and mulch. A mix of day lilies and peonies will be planted along that fence line and allowed to take over. The three green clumps are virginia creeper that I want to see take over the chain link fence.

As you can see by that pic, I have a bit of a creeping charlie problem in parts of my yard. I looked into conventional herbicides, but I really don't want to use those because they have active ingredients that persist for six months or more. If I use herbicides I could still compost the grass clippings, I just wouldn't be able to use that compost in my gardens for half a year or more. I don't want that, and I don't want to be paranoid about making sure that herbicides aren't getting into my garden and its produce. So what to do?

If anyone has an idea I would love it if you would share. In the meantime, I'm going to try a couple of experiments.

You see those bare patches along the edging in the pic above? As I was cleaning things up in preparation for the edging and mulch, the hand cultivator and rake I was using pulled up big patches of creeping charlie pretty easily. Well, relatively easily. That got me wondering how effective good old manual labor might be for this issue. 

(click to enlarge)

That's about a 7' x 12' patch where I cleared out most of the creeping charlie with a hand cultivator followed by a heavy rake. It left some bare spots where the heavier infestation killed the grass. I gave it a quick mowing and then a heavy seeding of grass. Even though it's not the greatest time to put down grass seed, since it is right next to the garden it is easy to keep moist. I want to see how it works to rip a bunch of the creeping charlie out of the ground and then turn the tables and choke it back. It took about a half an hour to do that patch. 

I think I'll try another patch that has more grass and see how it does just knocking the weeds back and not spreading grass seed. If that works than maybe I'll just try to hammer it back in spots as time permits. I know that might sound a little odd, but twenty minutes or a half hour here and there is not that big of a deal. To tell the truth, I kind of like doing that sort of physical labor these days. And it's kind of satisfying to see the results right away. Something to test out anyway. And like I said, if anyone has a better idea that doesn't involve persistent herbicides I'm all ears.