What in the name of God is going on now?  The UAE buys six of our busiest, most strategic, most valuable ports, and not only doesn't Bush go ballistic, he supports it.  And, to top it off, threatens to veto any legislation overturning the purchase or calling for a review.

Even Bill Frist (that criminal) and Dennis Hastert oppose it, and Bush!  Openly and stridently.  That is amazing.  This may be the beginning of the end.  I think the Republicans now know there is something wrong with Bush, and they're getting just as far away from him as they can.  It now looks as if the Democrats will be swept into control of the Congress whether they want it or not.

This is all just too weird for words.  If Bush is now portrayed as 'soft on terrorism', what does he have left?  This entire series of events since the Presidental Election makes me believe that there is much more here than meets the eye.   I've always enjoyed Alex Jones' Prison Planet (link to the left of this page) for the left wing absurdity of it.  Now the actions of this administration make Prison Planet look legitimate, if not downright prophetic.

And that scene in Farenheit 911 with George HW Bush literally holding hands with the Saudis doesn't seem so odd now, does it?

All of these deals are done in secret you know.  But we do have the solace of Michael Chertoff assuring us that he's reviewed it and it's OK.  Just like he read in the newpaper that Hurricane Katrina had missed New Orleans.

I like to quote Bob Dylan:  "When you gonna wake up?"

danger!  Danger!  DANGER!

...guns down his hunting partner, then stonewalls it, as I noted below.  Now (yesterday), he admits to having 'a beer' at lunch, while sitting under an oak tree.  I'll bet he peed on the oak tree also! Is this shades of Bohemian Grove, or what?  For those of you not familiar with Bohemian Grove, and the goings on there, you owe it to yourself to Google it and find out. 

One of the very minor things that occur in this all-male retreat is prodigious drinking and peeing on the giant redwoods that populate the Grove.  It is also 'secret' and 'secretive'.  But I digress.

How many hundreds of times have you heard people involved in any problem regarding alcohol describe how much they had to drink?  It always a beer or two.  Always! It's never I had four or maybe five, to wash down a shot or two of Jim Beam to ward off the chill.  It's always a beer.

So now the cover up is in full force, and it seems to have worked.  The American people are just so numbed to this sort of behavior that it just rolls off after a day or so.  And this administration knows it, and they are masters.

And this particular Congress should be ashamed of itself (if a Congress can be ashamed, which I guess it can't).  So every Congressman, with one or two exceptions (John Murtha) should be ashamed of himself/herself.

SHEEP!  SHEEP!  SHEEP!

DANGER!  DANGER!  DANGER!

You idiots.

The beach was beautiful today.  I had it all to myself.  Once I figure out how to post my pictures on here I'll post some.  It can't be that goddamned hard- almost everyone in the world does it.

...and guns down his 78 year old hunting partner!

How do we know he was drunk?  What other reason could there possibly be for the inexplicable missing 22 hours?  Any of us who have been drunk and in trouble (and, unfortunately, I can include myself in that number) know that ONLY TIME can get that alcohol out of your system.  And no amount of black coffee or cold showers or any other exotic treatments work.

The Secret Service denied the police access to D.C.  I guess there was some sort of goofy arrangement, but the upshot of it was that no authority got close enough to see what state he was in.  Because they might just have had to explain to Mr. Cheney, that "sorry Mr. Vice President, but you do understand that in cases like this we are required to do this simple breathalyzer test" or some such damning statement.

Then the fat would be in the fire.

Now the fire is in the White House (AGAIN!)  Let the cover-up begin!  To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, "this is more fun than a human being should be allowed to have."

I celebrated by going to the beach today (Valentine's Day).  It was 38 degrees and the wind was blowing 8-16 mph.  I ran barefoot on the beach (in my shorts), stripped off my sweatshirt and jumped into the Atlantic.  That got my February plunge in and put me on track to reach my goal:  going into the ocean at least once each month for a year.

Going into the water in February in Longport, NJ, is not like doing it in San Diego, by the way. 

Oh well.  Let the games (I mean the cover-up) begin.

This is a special day in our household.  It's Sunday morning.  There is approximately six inches of snow on the ground outside.  All around the Atlantic City area, to the west in Philadelphia and to the north in New York City, snow accumulations are in the 12"-20" range.

There is a big fire in the fireplace in the den.  I fixed bacon and eggs and biscuits for breakfast.  Only Casey was out of bed, but we ate a good country breakfast and had a nice talk.  There is a large pot of coffee brewing.  Casey is debating whether he should try to get back to New Brunswick today, where he attends Rutgers.   He probably won't make it- the weather is too bad.

Casey came home to visit with Scott, his older brother and my oldest child.  Scott goes into the Army on Wednesday.  This is the last Sunday (has, in fact, been the last weekend) that all five of us will be together for some time.  My wife Kim is now up.  Scott and Meredith are sleeping in on this snowbound day.

I am aware of every nuance.  Will we ever be together again like this?  We have always been close, and have usually taken it for granted.  Scott has been gone, but always close by.  Now he will be in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training.  He'll be gone for almost six months, before he comes home again, and before he is shipped off to...????

Yes, I am aware of evey nuance today.  And so is everyone else, in their own, unspoken way.  We are all very quiet.  We are all warm.  We are all safe.  It is cold and miserable outside.  We have a warm fire going.

Scott leaves on Wednesday.  I'm on vacation, so that I can spend a little extra time with him these next couple of days. 

This is a special day in our household.

Well how patently phony is this?  Even as I write, Keith Olbermann is now reporting that the 'nerve gas' scare is over, and has been determine to be a 'false alarm'.

False alarm?  But of course.  The Bush administration will resort to any dirty trick to scare the American public, and it works.

Look at this phony report:  first an 'alarm', ostensibly to detect nerve gas, goes off.  Then the reports say a 'powder' was found in the 'attic', but that the 'powder' turned out to be harmless.

So the powder set off the nerve gas false alarm?  Or after the alarm went off, someone immediately searched the attic and found a powder?  What in the hell is an 'attic' doing in the Russell Office Building?  Isn't an attic what your grandmother has in her house?

Mark my words:  Someone deliberately made this a news story in prime time just to remind all the idiots out there that there are terrorists on the loose, so wiretapping is OK, torture is OK, lying is OK, war is OK, loss of civil liberties is OK, cutting back on social programs for war is OK, an incalculable deficit is OK, and anyone who dares say or indicate otherwise is UnAmerican (and also subject to a little closer scrutiny).

If this group is not voted out of power in the mid-term elections, it's all over but the shouting. 

They also need to get off Brittany Spears' ass about not having her kid in a car seat.  When I grew up they used to stand us up in the middle of the front seat and throw their arms out in front of us if we headed for the windshield- and quite a few of us survived.

Good day.