| Austin
Dispatches |
No. 108 |
Apr. 28, 2008 |
The federal government’s post-9/11
fight-the-world-invite-the-world policies have finally claimed a deserving
politician as collateral damage.1 Saturday, delegates at
the Constitution Party national convention in Kansas City, Mo., trounced
pro-war ex-Republican Alan Keyes’ presidential aspiration by a 3-1 ratio.
Instead, the party nominated the Rev. Chuck Baldwin of Florida, whom I’ve known of for years, through my contacts with politically active patriots.2 Baldwin and the party both have been consistent in their opposition to the unconstitutional wars Dubya’s regime wages in Asia.3
The convention outcome is Keyes’ second-biggest humiliation, after losing to Barack Hussein Obama in the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race.4 Keyes has close ties to the “neoconservatives” – Trotskyite Marxists who see the United States as a convenient vehicle for world revolution.5
Meanwhile, connoisseurs of political Schadenfreude can delight in the continuing travails of the post-libertarian Libertarian Party. Wes Benedict is stepping down from the Libertarian National Committee. He blogged that he thought the LP hadn’t done “anything really stupid this term….”6 Wes has a droll sense of humor, but that claim is a bit much.
The party’s problems that I delineated since my last extended writings about the LP – the equivalent of pounding one’s shoe on the podium at a diplomatic conference – have festered without correction during the same term Wes writes of.7 Moreover, these uncorrected problems have turned recent LP developments into new problems instead of the advantages they otherwise would be.
Specifically, the Reform Caucus’ gutting of the party platform at the 2006 Portland convention has lowered the barriers for presidential candidates. The existing collection of turkeys have been joined by contenders who are better known but still insufficiently libertarian or possessing severe personal flaws.8
The best of the lot, Bob Barr, a Libertarian National committeeman and former U.S. representative, is also a thrice-divorced ex-Central Intelligence agent. The latter two aspects render him morally unfit for a position of public trust or responsibility.9
Former Alaska U.S. Sen. Maurice “Mike” Gravel has joined the formerly Libertarian Party to seek its presidential nomination. I’ve described Gravel as libertarianistic before,10 but that’s by the standards of the contemporary Democratic Party. In fact, Gravel criticized the Democratic Party as “no longer the party of F.D.R. It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism – all of which I find anathema to my views.''11
By his comments, Gravel seems unaware of FDR’s role in establishing the corporatist, managerial-therapeutic, warfare-welfare state.12 Moreover, modern American libertarianism emerged from the Old Right, the authentic opposition to the New Deal.13 Even so-called “left-libertarians,” a group of people who have trouble getting auto insurance because it’s tough for them to drive with their heads up their asses, know enough to oppose FDR’s agenda.
Most recently, Mary Ruwart announced her bid for the nomination.14 I’ve read her work and seen her speak.15 I’m unimpressed. No, we can’t all get along. That’s why politics exists. It’s consistent with her coming across as an exceptionally obtuse Boomer-age woman.16 Our country and our republic are in peril. Don’t send a woman to do a man’s job.17
These turkeys join the likes of "reformer" George Phillies.18 Every time he opens his mouth, he comes down on the wrong side of a policy issue and antagonizes another group of delegates.19
Elsewhere, the surviving presidential candidates from the establishment duopoly have been continuing the same antics since I last wrote about them. All else is snarky detail.
On the Town
Mar. 8: I felt well enough after surgery to dine with Rick McGinnis and Paul Farris. Paul invited me to a overview presentation by Bob Schulz of We the People Foundation at Brave New Bookstore on The Drag near Martin Luther King Boulevard. Schulz's presentation was long, basic, and frustrating. Frustrating, because he understands that like-minded groups must coordinate, instead of operating in vacuum, for results. But he doesn't see the need to coordinate with a political party for multifaceted effectiveness. Rick raised that issue during the Q&A part.
Afterward, Rick and some disgruntled Republican woman joined us at El Mercado. Rick monopolized the conversation, and I had the odd sensation of hearing my rants from someone else's mouth. He castigated the LP for not having any balls, and said he's been butting heads with Wes and Pat Dixon over the need to play more hardball against the duopoly.
Unfortunately, he also thinks that's the political endpoint, instead of an intermediate strategy toward Libertarians occupying office. When I could get a word in edgewise -- itself in between mouthfuls of enchilada -- I tried to hip Rick to the connections: Me, Rick, Pat and Wes are talking about the same thing, but emphasizing different steps in the continuum. I think the other three are confusing the steps as contradictory strategies: A vs. B, instead of 1) A, then 2) B toward the ultimate goal of Z.
However, Rick was in full vent mode and couldn't process my input, at least immediately. Based on that same dinner, in six months he may be saying the same thing as me. I know Paul picked it up a lot faster.20
On the other hand, the last time I saw Wes, at the Austin Tea Party, after Angela Keaton had passed along my last complete critique of the LP, he flinched like I was about to whack him on the street.
Apr. 17: Two transplanted Miami Cubans, Manny and Guillermo, started chatting me up at Dallas Nite Club while I was on the prowl for dance partners. They were nice enough guys, but I probably seemed aloof because they were chatting me up while I was on the prowl for dance partners.
“¿Hables espanol?” Manny asked.
“Un poquito,” I said.
“Are you Puerto Rican?” Must’ve been the lighting.
“He’s not Puerto Rican,” Guillermo said. “He’s American.”
“But you know what they’re singing about, right?” Manny asked.
“It’s generally one of three topics,” I said. “The singer’s singing about a woman, he’s singing about the music itself, or he’s singing about Puerto Rico.”
Manny laughed and shook my hand.
Austin Death Watch
A new study concludes downtown Austin might have almost 1,000 underground storage tanks with gasoline, oil or chemicals, similar to the one that polluted Waller Creek in January.21 The situation is a convenient metaphor for the city under the ruling elite: high-minded rhetoric and grandiose schemes atop concealed problems and slimy deals.
For example, on Mar. 24, the sheriff’s department arrested a double-chinned philanthropy president-turned drug informant a second time for cocaine possession.22 In other police matters, the Austin Police Department thinks it might be owed nearly $900,000 for overtime and policing special events, but it’s not sure, because its records are a mess.23 This could be what sinks the police department. Killing unarmed suspects, beating sleeping vagrants half to death, fucking on the job, robbery, stealing drugs out of the evidence lockers, and protecting drug dealers – that’s just fun and games. But people owing and not paying up – that’s serious.24
Joggers found the body of an Arab school teacher, under FBI investigation, floating in Lady Bird Lake with his hands and legs bound and tape over his eyes. Austin police have already ruled the death a suicide; doubtless, conspiracy theories are circulating, fueled by an e-mail sent by the head of the local American Selective Civil Liberties Union.25
Nearby, insufficient parking and traffic to four simultaneously events held between the lake and Barton Springs Road created massive gridlock Apr. 20. The Statesman reports more than 250 people couldn’t even retrieve their tickets to an opera performance at the new $77 million Long Center. City officials had worried 10 years ago that parking was insufficient, but the neighborhood association blocked a taller garage. Only now is the City considering not scheduling events all at once.26 Maybe it should’ve considered not being involved in such matters 10 years. Also, the Statesman left unmentioned the City’s narrowing of Riverside Drive from four lanes to two.27 All this contributes to why I seldom visit downtown anymore.
Meanwhile, Cap Metro board Chairman Lee Walker is retiring. As the Apr. 4 Chronicle put it: "When Walker first came to the board in 1997, he inherited an agency in the throes of a crisis that threatened its very existence. At the time, Cap Metro was riddled with corruption and facing federal indictments. There was talk of dissolving it altogether….”28 And now? The same Chronicle also reports Cap Metro is fending off protests from the handicapped for eliminating their special transportation while rolling out the $100-million commuter train.29 The same reporter wrote both stories, but he was perhaps too polite to reference each. For its part, the Chronicle saved its venom in that issue over a corporate donation to establish a chair for the study of objectivism at UT’s Philosophy Department.30
A federal appeals court, ruling in matters that don’t concern it, upheld and tightened Austin’s smoking ban.31 At the same time, authorities have banned smoking in Beijing for the Olympics.32 In other words, our local officeholders are no better than foreign Communists.
Speaking of local officeholders, the Chronicle writes that “Rather like a family giving up a son to military service, Austin has sent its mayor into the international fight against global warming.” Translation: Mayor Will Wynn, unindicted assailant, and typical Austinite buttinski, is spending our tax dollars to attend hearings and conferences where he can run his mouth about how great it’ll be when other people are forced to do what he wants. If this is the equivalent of war, like the Chronicle writer’s metaphor says, can we try the environmentalists at Nuremberg after the good guys win?33
The Apr. 21 Daily Texan commendably dissects Paul Foster, a University of Texas regent, director of UT’s Investment Management Co., and oilman whose apparent cartelizing behavior – in contrast to the free-market rhetoric of that breed – has been sanctioned by the Federal Trade Commission.34 However, the short op-ed might have briefly distinguished between a monopoly, which has never existed in the oil industry, and a cartel, which does exist but has to be propped up by government support for its participants to benefit from their rigging the market.35 In Texas, that means the Railroad Commission, which was the inspiration for OPEC, an international cartel.36 The op-ed might further have pointed out the nature of initially independent outside regulatory agencies to be captured after a few years by the industries they regulate.37
Further down the corporate ladder, Dell is closing its desktop computer manufacturing plant in North Austin and shedding 900 jobs.38 It’s the biggest Dell layoff since 2001. AMD is cutting 215 local jobs.39 Meanwhile, the Smokey Denmark Sausage Co. is relocating from East Austin to Cedar Park because the City of Austin won’t allow the company to expand, its vice president told the Austin Business Journal.40
Likewise, a developer blames the City’s review process for stymieing a $40 million, 650-acre housing development southeast of the airport. The development isn’t even within Austin, but within an “extraterritorial jurisdiction” that lets city bureaucrats boss others around beyond city limits. This kind of thing is so commonplace the story ran inside the Business Journal.41
Cultural Canapés
I was going to see the movie “10,000 B.C.,” but it received so many bad reviews, characteristically saying the “C” stood for “crap.”42 Instead I looked at myself in the mirror while dragging my knuckles on the floor, grunting, and saved seven bucks.43
Angsty character actor Paul Giamatti is John Adams in HBO’s new miniseries. This is the wildest Founding Fathers casting since Harvey Keitel played Thomas Paine.44 Viewers learn the undeclared war with France in 1798 started when the French ambassador insisted on serving merlot at a state dinner.45
Music Notes
Dad’s new CD of bluegrass instrumentals, “Lost Tribe,” is now available through CD Baby and iTunes.46
Media Indigest
In its Mar. 21 edition, the Chronicle gloats for the umpteenth time at the Statesman’s misfortunes. The latter rag dropped the weekly TV listings supplement, an excuse for the Chronicle columnist to claim “clueless managers continue to make dumbass decision after dumbass decision, using tactics that were crowd-pleasers in 1982.”47 You’re one to talk, Chronicle. Many of the same valid criticisms leveled at the Statesman also apply to “alternative” weeklies. So do many of the same problems. But you wouldn’t know that reading the Chronicle’s media coverage.
An editor says his new local magazine, Odic Force, takes its title from the prhase “coined in the 19th century by Baron Dr. Karl Von Reichenbach, a true renaissance man who was conducting studies in vitalism, a pseudoscience wherein he theorized that all living things emitted a powerful field of energy that could be seen under the cloak of dark… [W]hile the Baron’s theory was never given much clout … we here at Odic Force magazine think this energy is alive, well, and thriving inside the creative people and processes of Austin.”48 However, in the same issue, an article broaches the possibility that Austin’s casual attitude may be hindering the advancement of Austin’s film industry.49
Ted Turner, college washout, ex-drunk, anti-Christian bigot, failed husband, and spendthrift, continued his twilight attempts at brownnosing his way into the global elite, despite being a old cracker from the South, by declaring to the Church of Global Warming that most of mankind will be dead by mid-century and the few left will be cannibals.50 His statements about this presumed development omitted the fact that alleged global warming will kill sanctimonious, power-lusting environmentalists, too.51 We can kill and eat those still alive, although given their pathetic vegetarian diets, they’ll probably be about as meaty as the typical buffalo wing. (Moreover, if we’re dead, we won’t have to listen to them anymore.) Also left unsaid by Turner: various barbecue recipes that can be used for such meals.
Neighborhood News
One recent night, I entered the nearby H-E-B just as the PA system began playing James Brown’s “Super Bad,” complete with free-form sax soloing.52 If you saw this happen in a movie, you’d think it was contrived. For the record, the only thing super bad about me was my cold, which is why I was at the supermarket.
A branch of IBC Bank at The Domain held its grand opening on Mar. 30.53 A San Diego real estate investment firm bought three buildings at the Braker Center.54 Fuddruckers plans to open in the strip mall under construction at Kramer Lane and Burnet Road.55
Consumer Reports
After driving my car for nearly a year, I’ve determined that the design changes to the model for safety’s sake are a wash in terms of safety. This version has side-curtain air bags, which means the side curtains are wider than on older models. Increasing the width of the side curtains has created blind spots in the front of the car. Not something you want to contend with, especially driving in heavy traffic.
Changes in my preferred brick-and-mortar retailers have forced me to order pants via the Web. For some reason, this item has no e-commerce cost advantage, unlike with books, CDs, inkjet cartridges, stereo components, or even dress shirts or neckties.
Instead, the party nominated the Rev. Chuck Baldwin of Florida, whom I’ve known of for years, through my contacts with politically active patriots.2 Baldwin and the party both have been consistent in their opposition to the unconstitutional wars Dubya’s regime wages in Asia.3
The convention outcome is Keyes’ second-biggest humiliation, after losing to Barack Hussein Obama in the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race.4 Keyes has close ties to the “neoconservatives” – Trotskyite Marxists who see the United States as a convenient vehicle for world revolution.5
Meanwhile, connoisseurs of political Schadenfreude can delight in the continuing travails of the post-libertarian Libertarian Party. Wes Benedict is stepping down from the Libertarian National Committee. He blogged that he thought the LP hadn’t done “anything really stupid this term….”6 Wes has a droll sense of humor, but that claim is a bit much.
The party’s problems that I delineated since my last extended writings about the LP – the equivalent of pounding one’s shoe on the podium at a diplomatic conference – have festered without correction during the same term Wes writes of.7 Moreover, these uncorrected problems have turned recent LP developments into new problems instead of the advantages they otherwise would be.
Specifically, the Reform Caucus’ gutting of the party platform at the 2006 Portland convention has lowered the barriers for presidential candidates. The existing collection of turkeys have been joined by contenders who are better known but still insufficiently libertarian or possessing severe personal flaws.8
The best of the lot, Bob Barr, a Libertarian National committeeman and former U.S. representative, is also a thrice-divorced ex-Central Intelligence agent. The latter two aspects render him morally unfit for a position of public trust or responsibility.9
Former Alaska U.S. Sen. Maurice “Mike” Gravel has joined the formerly Libertarian Party to seek its presidential nomination. I’ve described Gravel as libertarianistic before,10 but that’s by the standards of the contemporary Democratic Party. In fact, Gravel criticized the Democratic Party as “no longer the party of F.D.R. It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism – all of which I find anathema to my views.''11
By his comments, Gravel seems unaware of FDR’s role in establishing the corporatist, managerial-therapeutic, warfare-welfare state.12 Moreover, modern American libertarianism emerged from the Old Right, the authentic opposition to the New Deal.13 Even so-called “left-libertarians,” a group of people who have trouble getting auto insurance because it’s tough for them to drive with their heads up their asses, know enough to oppose FDR’s agenda.
Most recently, Mary Ruwart announced her bid for the nomination.14 I’ve read her work and seen her speak.15 I’m unimpressed. No, we can’t all get along. That’s why politics exists. It’s consistent with her coming across as an exceptionally obtuse Boomer-age woman.16 Our country and our republic are in peril. Don’t send a woman to do a man’s job.17
These turkeys join the likes of "reformer" George Phillies.18 Every time he opens his mouth, he comes down on the wrong side of a policy issue and antagonizes another group of delegates.19
Elsewhere, the surviving presidential candidates from the establishment duopoly have been continuing the same antics since I last wrote about them. All else is snarky detail.
On the Town
Mar. 8: I felt well enough after surgery to dine with Rick McGinnis and Paul Farris. Paul invited me to a overview presentation by Bob Schulz of We the People Foundation at Brave New Bookstore on The Drag near Martin Luther King Boulevard. Schulz's presentation was long, basic, and frustrating. Frustrating, because he understands that like-minded groups must coordinate, instead of operating in vacuum, for results. But he doesn't see the need to coordinate with a political party for multifaceted effectiveness. Rick raised that issue during the Q&A part.
Afterward, Rick and some disgruntled Republican woman joined us at El Mercado. Rick monopolized the conversation, and I had the odd sensation of hearing my rants from someone else's mouth. He castigated the LP for not having any balls, and said he's been butting heads with Wes and Pat Dixon over the need to play more hardball against the duopoly.
Unfortunately, he also thinks that's the political endpoint, instead of an intermediate strategy toward Libertarians occupying office. When I could get a word in edgewise -- itself in between mouthfuls of enchilada -- I tried to hip Rick to the connections: Me, Rick, Pat and Wes are talking about the same thing, but emphasizing different steps in the continuum. I think the other three are confusing the steps as contradictory strategies: A vs. B, instead of 1) A, then 2) B toward the ultimate goal of Z.
However, Rick was in full vent mode and couldn't process my input, at least immediately. Based on that same dinner, in six months he may be saying the same thing as me. I know Paul picked it up a lot faster.20
On the other hand, the last time I saw Wes, at the Austin Tea Party, after Angela Keaton had passed along my last complete critique of the LP, he flinched like I was about to whack him on the street.
Apr. 17: Two transplanted Miami Cubans, Manny and Guillermo, started chatting me up at Dallas Nite Club while I was on the prowl for dance partners. They were nice enough guys, but I probably seemed aloof because they were chatting me up while I was on the prowl for dance partners.
“¿Hables espanol?” Manny asked.
“Un poquito,” I said.
“Are you Puerto Rican?” Must’ve been the lighting.
“He’s not Puerto Rican,” Guillermo said. “He’s American.”
“But you know what they’re singing about, right?” Manny asked.
“It’s generally one of three topics,” I said. “The singer’s singing about a woman, he’s singing about the music itself, or he’s singing about Puerto Rico.”
Manny laughed and shook my hand.
Austin Death Watch
A new study concludes downtown Austin might have almost 1,000 underground storage tanks with gasoline, oil or chemicals, similar to the one that polluted Waller Creek in January.21 The situation is a convenient metaphor for the city under the ruling elite: high-minded rhetoric and grandiose schemes atop concealed problems and slimy deals.
For example, on Mar. 24, the sheriff’s department arrested a double-chinned philanthropy president-turned drug informant a second time for cocaine possession.22 In other police matters, the Austin Police Department thinks it might be owed nearly $900,000 for overtime and policing special events, but it’s not sure, because its records are a mess.23 This could be what sinks the police department. Killing unarmed suspects, beating sleeping vagrants half to death, fucking on the job, robbery, stealing drugs out of the evidence lockers, and protecting drug dealers – that’s just fun and games. But people owing and not paying up – that’s serious.24
Joggers found the body of an Arab school teacher, under FBI investigation, floating in Lady Bird Lake with his hands and legs bound and tape over his eyes. Austin police have already ruled the death a suicide; doubtless, conspiracy theories are circulating, fueled by an e-mail sent by the head of the local American Selective Civil Liberties Union.25
Nearby, insufficient parking and traffic to four simultaneously events held between the lake and Barton Springs Road created massive gridlock Apr. 20. The Statesman reports more than 250 people couldn’t even retrieve their tickets to an opera performance at the new $77 million Long Center. City officials had worried 10 years ago that parking was insufficient, but the neighborhood association blocked a taller garage. Only now is the City considering not scheduling events all at once.26 Maybe it should’ve considered not being involved in such matters 10 years. Also, the Statesman left unmentioned the City’s narrowing of Riverside Drive from four lanes to two.27 All this contributes to why I seldom visit downtown anymore.
Meanwhile, Cap Metro board Chairman Lee Walker is retiring. As the Apr. 4 Chronicle put it: "When Walker first came to the board in 1997, he inherited an agency in the throes of a crisis that threatened its very existence. At the time, Cap Metro was riddled with corruption and facing federal indictments. There was talk of dissolving it altogether….”28 And now? The same Chronicle also reports Cap Metro is fending off protests from the handicapped for eliminating their special transportation while rolling out the $100-million commuter train.29 The same reporter wrote both stories, but he was perhaps too polite to reference each. For its part, the Chronicle saved its venom in that issue over a corporate donation to establish a chair for the study of objectivism at UT’s Philosophy Department.30
A federal appeals court, ruling in matters that don’t concern it, upheld and tightened Austin’s smoking ban.31 At the same time, authorities have banned smoking in Beijing for the Olympics.32 In other words, our local officeholders are no better than foreign Communists.
Speaking of local officeholders, the Chronicle writes that “Rather like a family giving up a son to military service, Austin has sent its mayor into the international fight against global warming.” Translation: Mayor Will Wynn, unindicted assailant, and typical Austinite buttinski, is spending our tax dollars to attend hearings and conferences where he can run his mouth about how great it’ll be when other people are forced to do what he wants. If this is the equivalent of war, like the Chronicle writer’s metaphor says, can we try the environmentalists at Nuremberg after the good guys win?33
The Apr. 21 Daily Texan commendably dissects Paul Foster, a University of Texas regent, director of UT’s Investment Management Co., and oilman whose apparent cartelizing behavior – in contrast to the free-market rhetoric of that breed – has been sanctioned by the Federal Trade Commission.34 However, the short op-ed might have briefly distinguished between a monopoly, which has never existed in the oil industry, and a cartel, which does exist but has to be propped up by government support for its participants to benefit from their rigging the market.35 In Texas, that means the Railroad Commission, which was the inspiration for OPEC, an international cartel.36 The op-ed might further have pointed out the nature of initially independent outside regulatory agencies to be captured after a few years by the industries they regulate.37
Further down the corporate ladder, Dell is closing its desktop computer manufacturing plant in North Austin and shedding 900 jobs.38 It’s the biggest Dell layoff since 2001. AMD is cutting 215 local jobs.39 Meanwhile, the Smokey Denmark Sausage Co. is relocating from East Austin to Cedar Park because the City of Austin won’t allow the company to expand, its vice president told the Austin Business Journal.40
Likewise, a developer blames the City’s review process for stymieing a $40 million, 650-acre housing development southeast of the airport. The development isn’t even within Austin, but within an “extraterritorial jurisdiction” that lets city bureaucrats boss others around beyond city limits. This kind of thing is so commonplace the story ran inside the Business Journal.41
Cultural Canapés
I was going to see the movie “10,000 B.C.,” but it received so many bad reviews, characteristically saying the “C” stood for “crap.”42 Instead I looked at myself in the mirror while dragging my knuckles on the floor, grunting, and saved seven bucks.43
Angsty character actor Paul Giamatti is John Adams in HBO’s new miniseries. This is the wildest Founding Fathers casting since Harvey Keitel played Thomas Paine.44 Viewers learn the undeclared war with France in 1798 started when the French ambassador insisted on serving merlot at a state dinner.45
Music Notes
Dad’s new CD of bluegrass instrumentals, “Lost Tribe,” is now available through CD Baby and iTunes.46
Media Indigest
In its Mar. 21 edition, the Chronicle gloats for the umpteenth time at the Statesman’s misfortunes. The latter rag dropped the weekly TV listings supplement, an excuse for the Chronicle columnist to claim “clueless managers continue to make dumbass decision after dumbass decision, using tactics that were crowd-pleasers in 1982.”47 You’re one to talk, Chronicle. Many of the same valid criticisms leveled at the Statesman also apply to “alternative” weeklies. So do many of the same problems. But you wouldn’t know that reading the Chronicle’s media coverage.
An editor says his new local magazine, Odic Force, takes its title from the prhase “coined in the 19th century by Baron Dr. Karl Von Reichenbach, a true renaissance man who was conducting studies in vitalism, a pseudoscience wherein he theorized that all living things emitted a powerful field of energy that could be seen under the cloak of dark… [W]hile the Baron’s theory was never given much clout … we here at Odic Force magazine think this energy is alive, well, and thriving inside the creative people and processes of Austin.”48 However, in the same issue, an article broaches the possibility that Austin’s casual attitude may be hindering the advancement of Austin’s film industry.49
Ted Turner, college washout, ex-drunk, anti-Christian bigot, failed husband, and spendthrift, continued his twilight attempts at brownnosing his way into the global elite, despite being a old cracker from the South, by declaring to the Church of Global Warming that most of mankind will be dead by mid-century and the few left will be cannibals.50 His statements about this presumed development omitted the fact that alleged global warming will kill sanctimonious, power-lusting environmentalists, too.51 We can kill and eat those still alive, although given their pathetic vegetarian diets, they’ll probably be about as meaty as the typical buffalo wing. (Moreover, if we’re dead, we won’t have to listen to them anymore.) Also left unsaid by Turner: various barbecue recipes that can be used for such meals.
Neighborhood News
One recent night, I entered the nearby H-E-B just as the PA system began playing James Brown’s “Super Bad,” complete with free-form sax soloing.52 If you saw this happen in a movie, you’d think it was contrived. For the record, the only thing super bad about me was my cold, which is why I was at the supermarket.
A branch of IBC Bank at The Domain held its grand opening on Mar. 30.53 A San Diego real estate investment firm bought three buildings at the Braker Center.54 Fuddruckers plans to open in the strip mall under construction at Kramer Lane and Burnet Road.55
Consumer Reports
After driving my car for nearly a year, I’ve determined that the design changes to the model for safety’s sake are a wash in terms of safety. This version has side-curtain air bags, which means the side curtains are wider than on older models. Increasing the width of the side curtains has created blind spots in the front of the car. Not something you want to contend with, especially driving in heavy traffic.
Changes in my preferred brick-and-mortar retailers have forced me to order pants via the Web. For some reason, this item has no e-commerce cost advantage, unlike with books, CDs, inkjet cartridges, stereo components, or even dress shirts or neckties.
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