I need a hug.

So now the liberals have an illegal war they can call their own. I don't remember anyone asking congress to vote on if a military intervention in Libya was a good idea. At least the Bush administration had the good sense to fake some evidence for their war of choice. By the way dropping bombs on people is absolutely an act of war, calling it a no fly zone doesn't change that.

Gaddafi is a bad guy, Saddam was a bad guy, Mugabi is a bad guy; wait, we didn't bomb him, Than Shwe is a bad guy but we didn't bomb him either, al Bashir is a bad guy ( a really bad guy) but we didn't bomb him even though we should have bombed him twice. I'm stopping now because I don't want to do 3 pages of this. The point is who our humanitarian wars (Orwell much?) are as capricious as our other wars.

While we're at it I want to ask why we are not helping the rebels in Bahrain or Yemen. Or for that matter why isn't there a no fly zone over Gaza? Aren't their psycho leaders colorful enough to warrant our attention? Are Israeli drones that blow up civilians justified?

 I don't know what scares me more, Obama the not left winger, the unhinged right-wingers on the radio trying to say intervention in foreign countries is bad (  you owe it to yourself to listen to that twisted dance. Be afraid, be very afraid), or the rest of us that don't get angry about a third war. Of coarse why should we? We didn't get mad when they botched the war in Afghanistan. We certainly had no problem attacking Iraq (cause you know the Iraqi navy was bobbing off the coast of New Jersey just waiting to take out Snookie). Why get in a huff now? It's March Madness.

Well I'm not going to get a hug. Hell I have to pay my Mom $20 for one and she's a three hour drive away. So a little food solace will have to do to ease my weary heart.

Oh yeah. In this sad world you need comfort that you can bath in. Now it's called gravy because you are going to load it up with meat. Meatball, yes! Sausage, yes! Chicken thighs, yes! Pork chops,yes! We'll hold off on the braciola for another meal. Maybe when we start a forth war.

Mmmm braciola!

I Shall Be Released

Sunday morning. Maybe not always a day for worship but certainly a day for reflection. While many of us go to a house of worship  many others go to the networks to hear the nattering heads make sense of the weeks events. They'll be talking Libya and Japan this week. Back and forth they'll go. How do you create democracy? What do you do to prevent or mitigate natural disasters? Is nuclear power safe? They'll babble-on puffed up with the majesty of their own revealed word. They will spin a mighty tale about the horrors, or bet money on, the safety of nuclear power. They'll wonder aloud why it is so hard to get democracy to take root. Some will blame Obama because it's their job to blame Obama. Blame for what I'm not sure. Others will just defend their point of view sans interest in facts or morality.

I'm not interested in blame. Not on Sunday, not during the week. I am interested in numbers though, even numbers that are only accurate estimates. Numbers like 250, 7,500, and 250,000. If you didn't know those are the death tolls for the earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan and Haiti.

Are you red, or... gray?

It was a tough week for working people. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker managed to strip the collective bargaining rights from government workers (at least the government workers that people don't care about. Fireman and policeman still have their right... well not a right, a privilege, since rights are for everybody, to bargain collectively). Same old same old. At least there was a fight.

"irony alert, he was a British dude"

Funny thing. Or maybe ironic. We'll be celebrating Saint Patrick's day this week. Probably with a big corned beef and cabbage hootenanny. Guess what, people in old Ireland didn't eat corned beef. As a British colony the best Irish lands were used  to raise cattle for meat. Meat that was not for British consumption but for export to other colonies. Meat that could travel in ships. Meat that was salt-cured so it wouldn't go bad, i.e. corned beef. If you were an Irish peasant and you wanted to eat  you helped your British masters raise cattle on the good land then planted rugged crops that took well to bad soil, i.e. potatoes, on the land that was left.

Corned beef was a money maker. Sucked about that potato blight though. Of coarse the Irish people didn't have any collective bargaining rights either, so the good lands were used for cattle, the food was for export, and you could either flee or die. Of coarse we wouldn't want to deny the Achievers in society their just due now would we? That would be socialism.

The Supremes

Oh Judge Roberts, everyone hates you activist bastards. Letting the Reverend Phelps rip on gays and fallen soldiers at funerals just goes to show that conservative and liberal judges can agree on free speech, and conservative and liberal pundits can hate on any decision they don't like.


Me, me, me! When you live in a nation of narssistists this is the enemy.

It must be true, I won an award!

The Academy Awards were last night, all is now clear. The King's Speech must be a better movie than the Black Swan or Inception. Natalie Portman is now a better actress than Annette Bening. Hey it must be true. Our society is a meritocracy after all, we are all about the merit. Reward the achievers, the rest of us can bask in their reflected glow. How could that ever go wrong?

Wait a minute, didn't I say achievers? We honor achievers, we elect, well you know.

So consider this list of achievements...

Awards and honors

• Anti-Defamation League – Torch of Liberty Award
• Beta Theta Pi (Zeta Phi Chapter) – Wall of Fame
• Brunel University (London) – Honorary Doctor of Social Sciences
• Child Advocates – Super Hero Honoree Award
• Episcopal High School – Campaign Fundraiser Award
• Gas Daily – Man of the Year Award
• Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans – Annual Membership Award
• Houston Area Women’s Center – Honoree
• Houston Children’s Chorus – Honoree
• Houston Community Partners – Father of The Year
• Kenneth Lay Day – Proclaimed by Kathryn J. Whitmire, Mayor of Houston, Texas
• Kiwanis Club of Houston and the Greater Houston Partnership – International Executive of the Year
• March of Dimes – Award of Distinction
• NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet – Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award
• National Conference of Christians and Jews – Brotherhood Award
• Oswego State University – Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree
• Phi Beta Kappa – Outstanding Alumnus Award
• Private Sector Council – Annual Leadership Award
• Stanford Business School Alumni Associations – Houston Business Man of the Year
• Texans For Lawsuit Reform – Award
• Texas Association of Minority Business Enterprises – Texas Corporate Partnering Award
• Texas Business Hall of Fame – Inductee
• Texas Navy Admiral – Commissioned by William P. Clements, Jr., Governor of Texas
• Texas Society To Prevent Blindness – Man of Vision Award
• The Brookwood Community – Honoree Award
• The Rotary Club of Houston – Distinguished Citizen Award
• The Wall Street Transcript – Chief Executive Officer Award
• United States Energy Association – United States Energy Award
• U.S. Navy – Navy Commendation Medal & National Defense Service Medal
• University of Colorado, College of Business and Administration – Ben K. Miller Memorial, International Business Award
• University of Houston – Distinguished Alumnus Award
• University of Houston – Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree
• University of Missouri – Honorary Doctor of Law Degree; The Hebert J. Davenport Society Benefactor Award
• Volunteer Houston – Honoree Award

...what an amazing guy with a pile of awards like that. It certainly is good living in a meritocracy where the cream rises to the top and if you don't become wealthy or famous it is probably your own fault. Thank god there are plenty of  awards so we know what we like? Who was good? What qualifies as art? Consider  an America without American Idol? How would we ever know who is a great singer? Why we might be fooled by...

Raw Vegan Goodness!

No I am not crazy. I just came back from the  "Organic Garden" in Beverly. I went because I love my friends, because I'm going stir crazy with the winter, and because you never turn down a chance to mooch a meal. I also figured that eating raw, vegan food would give me some sort of "Fear Factor" street cred. What's the worst that could happen? Boy was I wrong. The stuff was delicious.

 I'm almost mad about it, because despite this bloggy little exercise in politics and food porn I create I don't eat very much meat. There's a reason for that. I actually got to murder my own dinner many times when I was a wee lad. I spent a summer working at a religious retreat (many posts buried in my soul from that 3 months) that had their own farm. It wasn't a factory farm though so I never even blinked about the concept of where meat comes from. When Bessie got too old you eat her. What were you supposed to do? Let her go to waste? Then my friend who invited me today linked me over to this.

The Rules Matter.

When you cook stuff the rules matter. Put a piece of chicken in a pot of boiling water for 20 minutes and it will be cooked and it will be edible, but you're not going to want to eat it. That's because of the rules. The rules of physics actually. No matter how much you want say "screw the rules" if you put that piece of chicken in that pot of boiling water you are going to have some nasty, gnarly, dried-out, tough chicken. So just change the rules, right? You can't dumb-ass! Physics is above your pay grade. There are rules that can be changed though.

Wisconsin wants to change the rules for state employee unions. They want to take away the right to collective bargaining. So what, you say. " I think unions need a good spanking. We need to balance our budgets, why do they have stuff I don't have?" The thing is you don't need to strip away a right in order to balance a budget. Your church would probably suggest that hating on someone because they have a good deal is a bad thing. I might even concede that unions need a good spanking, I might if they hadn't been getting spanked ever since Ronny Ray-gun told the air traffic controllers to take a walk. We can go round and round on that, but can we agree that if they take away a "right" we all lose the use of that right. Hey, maybe we might need that "right" down the line.



You'll have to wait until the end of the clip before you get to my point, but it might be worth your time. Old George could really nail things when he wanted to.

Us? We have to deal with the rules of physics. Namely important stuff like how heat caramelizes sugar, starch is water soluble,  and butter, Mmmm butter!, brings on the goodness.

What's the Beef?

You'll see me come back to this one over and over. Roast Beef is good.

The regular news, with an extra shout-out to Fox news, is lame.

I mean let's face it. You come home, you've been working all day, you just want a little comfort. After all you work hard you deserve it. So, when you slide that roast out of the oven, and the whole house smells of beef, and you put a few slices on your plate along with a heep of garlic mashed potatoes and green beans , and you pour on the gravy, just at that moment you know that today was a good day. Then you turn on this.



Scary stuff, Oh No!, the whole world is going to hell in a hand basket! Run away! Run away! Now far be it from me to downplay the dangers of the modern world. Justin Bieber alone is a reason to tremble. Your news people shouldn't be just trying to scare and manipulate you though. Democratic uprisings in the middle-east aren't going to have guaranteed outcomes. Still, democracy is a good idea, right?



Listen for just the first few moments(or the whole thing if you want, this is America). Democracy is a noble thing. It was well worth blowing up a country of strangers and killing 10's of thousands of their people if we can bring that off. Then go back to that first clip. Apparently the Egyptians aren't ready to take the training wheels off the bike, and God only knows about all those other countries. (Shhh! don't tell anyone, but muslims live there.). Hogwash! Enjoy your dinner, turn off the news, and talk to your kids about why democracy is good and why people have the right to self determination. You could have the kids send Billo a letter reminding him when he liked democracy too. You know  what you believe. Consequences and Billo be damned.

What is the Beef!

Boy that's kind of a prissy meal. Well let's tackle the beef and then we'll man up the rest of the plate.

We are so stupid.

1. Us banks created credit default swaps, took our toxic mortgages, diced them up, inserted them into the credit default swaps, and voila! no risk ever again! Wee! it's like we can just print money.
2. Uh oh! Barney Frank + Acorn are crashing the economy (B***S**T but its better than banks being blamed right?).
3. Well the default swaps are still triple A rated investments Mr Public Pension administrator. They can't (cough, cough) fail.
4. Crap they failed anyway. Sorry. Lucky for us banks we are too big to fail.
5. Bush and Obama take turns giving us lots of your money, bonus time!
6. Oops! the states have a hugh deficit. Their pension funds are under water. Somebody sold them toxic investments. Someone will have to take a hit.
7. Time to stop those damn unions from wrecking the economy (not the police or fire fighters, Republicans (and bankers), like the police and firefighters).
8. Look at those greedy teachers and clerks having a job action. Why do they hate America?
9. I love me my gold bathroom fixtures.
10. It really is like we can just print money. I'm glad workers hate teachers and clerks more than they hate us. That way we won't get any flak when we foreclose on their houses.
11. If we are lucky we might actually be the lien holders. We merged so many times that finding the paper work is kind of a bother.
12. Somebody should have gone to jail for this. I hope those Acorn people are finally brought to justice.
13. I really do love me my gold bathroom fixtures.
14. Maybe we can get them to privatize social security. I'd love me a solid gold bathtub.

Something Fishy.

I'm not a big conspiracy guy. Things are usually exactly as they seem. That doesn't mean that all kinds of people don't try to sneak all kinds of things in on you when you are not looking. Sometimes a fairly average new wave band throws a little Nona Hendrix and some P-Funk into the mix and you get a breakout album.


Sometimes a news story gets a little twist so it fits our preconceived narrative a little better.



When you follow it on the news it seems to be about a bunch of public workers that don't want to take benefits cuts to help their cash strapped state. In reality the union had already agreed to talk about cuts, then the state legislature put a provision in the budget bill that would end the right of state workers to collective bargaining. (Fire fighters and police would be exempt. Let's not ruffle the groups that have good PR with the public). Maybe you don't think state workers should be able to collective bargain. FDR didn't and he isn't exactly a raging right winger. Still news should tell you 'The News" not what makes you react or makes you comfortable or fits a preconceived narrative.

Hidden secret stuff. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it confuses the issue, and sometimes it makes stuff taste awesome.!

Freedom Ain't Free

It's Sunday morning. For us agnostic dudes it's just another day. For the rest of you a little spiritual up-lift is in order. After all the bad guy in Egypt is stepping down and change is going to come to a region of the world where poverty and superstition have ruled to many peoples' daily life. But freedom isn't free. Mubarak is out, but for now Suleiman is in. When the head of the secret police, and the military, are running a country the work has just started.

"How can I be a free man when all around me I see people in chains."

I couldn't remember who originally made that quote, but there it is.  Today we are going secular so all the folks that need a little succor this morning can move forward. The hard work always starts now!



Just yogurt and toast this morning. Sorry no food porn.

Let's make it about us!

So what do we know? Well our boy Honsi resigned a couple of hours ago. Lots of people in Egypt are really happy. There are supposed to be free elections. That's pretty much it. Oh yeah, Honsi was a big fat dictator, but not the biggest fattest dictator in the middle east... so good riddance..... right? Wait, he was our personal big fat dictator.




In America everybody is at a loss. How do we take something that caught us by surprise, has almost nothing to do with us, and should be seen as an affirmation that people want to control their own lives and turn it into something that easily fits into our self absorbed red/blue 24 hour news cycle narrative?

If you are a democrat you tip toe around this whole development like it's a land-mine. Democracy is good, but there are scary muslims over there and if we aren't careful it will be like Iran, and then we'll get blamed, and it will be Jimmy Carter all over again, and we'll get croaked in 2012, and.... shut-up!

If you are a republican you tip toe around this whole development like it is a land-mine. Democracy is good, but there are scary muslims over there, and even though Bush's whole war in Iraq was about bringing democracy to the middle east if we aren't careful it will be like Iran, and that's a bad thing if we take credit too early, but it would be an even worse thing if it turns out well and the democrats get the credit, and it is definitely a bad thing if we don't get the Egyptian people to create a government the we want them to, and It will be Obama's 3AM call that he blew, which is good for us in 2012, and maybe it will turn out alright after all, which means Bush's vision... shut-up!

Thank God the people that read this blog  know that "Democracy is a good thing".  Let it happen.

Solidarity people of Egypt.

Valentines Week/Gender Roles/Man Crying

Nothing says love like an artificially generated marketing ploy designed specifically to sell product. That doesn't mean it didn't turn into a good idea. The folks in the boardroom force feed us stuff all the time. You can try rejecting it out of hand. Do that often enough and you end up so far outside the mainstream of society that you end up fat and alone pouring out sorry rants into your computer. Don't be that person.  The trick is to turn things on their head. Sure it is a fake holiday, sure it is going to cost you money, but you can definitely deny the big 3 (card, flower, chocolate industries) their profits.

Valentines day is also a girl holiday. I know, I know,  I'm a misogynist, but that doesn't change the fact that woman love Valentines day for its' spirit while men only like it because they can get laid if they preform the right set of tricks. Mmmmm laid! So, if we are going to subvert our corporate masters we must find a whole knew approach to Valentines day. We have a week so let's get started.

No, no, no, no! Getting woman to be more like men, or men to be more like women is not the answer. We want to enjoy Valentines day, not give it a feminist makeover. Feminism gave women a lot of deserved opportunity, it also gave women double the responsibilities, it also had unfortunate consequences. For example, in post feminist society there is Oprah, Dr Phil, getting in touch with your feelings, getting in touch with your inner child  and this...



The dreaded scourge of man crying. Now this post isn't to pick on Boehner. Man Crying has over-run our society as we all get in touch with our feelings. (Thank you sixties counter-culture as well)





I was going to show you Clinton crying too, but all the video I could find was of fake crying which is probably worse. That means man crying has so engrained it self in our society that there are times when not crying is going to cost you points.

Revolting

I guess this is revolution post part two. Revolutions, only sometimes a good thing, never a safe thing, always a deadly thing. What's up with the camel?



Of coarse you can't have a revolution without Rebels. In other places, other countries, a rebel is just a regular person who has had enough and is willing to risk everything to make things better. Even then a lot of times they don't get " better" they just get "different". Better is always out there, sometimes unrecognizable, sometimes out of reach, but worth fighting for. Different is just another word for change, and change happens all the time whether we like or not. So rebellion is not a narcissistic hissy fit by a bunch of spoiled arrested adolescence, it's unpredictable and dangerous. Unless you grab it and make it a lifestyle.



I wonder if the founding fathers had a cool hand shake and a hip attitude? Those darn 50's, quiet, safe, repressive, how could you not rebel? and if everyone was into it how could corporations not co-op the images for a profit. Of coarse there was real stuff to rage against. Civil rights  and the Vietnam war were an actual call to arms... so why do we just remember this guy?



Pretty cool huh? Rebellion as pick-up method. Nothing says Fight the Power like ruining a dinner party to impress the hot girl! Putz! Of coarse once you start making something into a commodity you might as go all in.

Right Wing, Left Wing, Buffalo Wing

Egypt is all over the news today. Don't get me wrong, it is definitely news. It's news because there is plenty of great video footage of people at risk. It's news because Egypt is in the middle east where all the scary Muslims live. It's news because our pundit class loves having something to pontificate about. Video, fear, bloviating blowfish; yeah, that's news. See gratuitous video footage here...


...but what are the facts

• There is a huge popular uprising in Egypt.
• Mubarak is in trouble.
• Mubarak was our guy.
• Mubarak is kind of a dick.
• This might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing.
• All those gibbering buffoons on television and the radio have no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Facts, there really aren't a lot of them on the news. So I'm letting this one go for awhile. We can check back in with the whole revolution thing later. No, I'm not being cavalier. I'm a fat dude at a computer. If you want to hear me blather on at least it should be about something I know. A sure thing. Like Buffalo Wings.

Super Bowl is this Sunday and you know you want buffalo wings. Now, for me the problem is I want a lot of wings, but the best way to make buffalo wings is by deep frying the living crap out of them. It's Superbowl Sunday, do you really want to combine 370 degree oil and drunken football viewers. Hell, even under the best of circumstances the mess alone makes it almost not worth the effort. Still, Mmmm buffalo wings! Hot, Hot, Buffalo Wings!

So, plan B,


20 chicken wings, split and tips discarded
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup red pepper sauce
3/4 cup tomato sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1) Kitchen shears, it's the easy way to section chicken, just snip. Save the tips for stock. 2) Spread the chicken bits on a couple of sheet pans. Leave room, you want maximum crispage.3) Put the pans in a preheated  375 degree oven for a half hour. 4) The sauce ingredients are just a suggestion. Lose the chili powder for allspice, now they are jerk wings. Lose the chili+cayenne, add brown sugar+soy sauce you have teriyaki. 5) Sauce those bad boys. 6) If you can wait out a second trip to the oven more heat will make the sauce set up. Nice! Oh yeah, make-um hot!

It's half time, crack a cold one, pass around the wings and skip the half-time show. If you have to have a plan B make it a party.

Revolution

Revolutions happen all the time. Real revolutions. Sometimes against brutal oppressors and sometimes at the behest of brutal oppressors. Still, there are a few things that all revolutions have in common. It's about the people being fed up with their government, the people being willing to fight the government, and the people being willing to risk everything to change the government. Oh yeah, one more thing, it's a bad idea to bring a briefcase to a tank fight.

In Nicaragua you had to figure that masked dudes with guns indicate that things are not going well...

In the Czech Republic facing down Soviet Tanks (with out briefcases, unlike those savvy Chinese in the top picture) was probably pretty risky.

 In the Philippines using machine guns to control Nuns seemed reasonable, you wouldn't want to turn your back on that pair in the front.

The Polish had Hitler, Stalin Khruschev, and Brezhnev from the 30's to the 80's before they were finally free.

In Tunisia the police are obviously always willing to help.

Egypt may be our friend, but not a friend if you are a Coptic Christen. Police state much?

So, I tried to show all kinds of revolutions against all kinds of tyranny. There seems to be some common themes when dealing with tyrants. Tanks, machine guns, billie clubs, tear gas, police, and soldiers all being used against everyday people. That's a revolution. Why I'd  have to say that fighting against tyranny seems dangerous, you'd better be ready for the worse...

 ... and you certainly don't want to stand out to the police...

... no good can come of taunting savage dictators...

... run ladies, run! in country ruled by monsters like our own a thuggish crackdown could happen at any moment...

When do the tanks show up? The next thing you know there will be a trail of tears and crushed lawn chairs from Washington to Any town USA. He might take our health care, but he will never take our freedom!

We Already Paid!

So I knew my attempts to play nice, stay calm, and advocate for a new, third, better, way wouldn't last. Still I had high hopes that I'd last longer than my fourth post, nope. State of the Union is always an entertainment fave, You have the Pubs, from their orange skinned corporate stooge leader to lobbying hating tea-party newbies, the dems, mostly in search of their spines, and the President, center left or center right?, all getting together to tell us it's going to take hard work to rebuild America, but we can get there if we sacrifice. Cut grandma's medicaid, push the retirement age to 67... you know the drill.

Well we already paid. I've never worked lest than a 50 hour a week in my life. Everyone I know works a 50 hour week. Everyone is afraid the axe is going to fall. Well guess what? Grandma needs medicine? We already paid! Johnny can't work anymore and needs help? We already paid! Need to retire because you're getting old? We already paid! Don't come to the State of the Union speech crying that you lost the money at the track and could we just suck it up and do a little more for a little less. I got news for you, we already paid!



Put the Pitchforks away. When your drunk uncle W tells you he bet your retirement money on democracy in the middle east that money is still gone. When that same uncle is down on Wall street a few years later giving the mortgage money to some hookers, that money is gone. When you get so fed up with your uncle that you get cousin O to buy the groceries and he still gives the money to the hookers on Wall Street, that money is gone. I just don't want to hear either of them tell me that I'm the one that has to buck up. Hell no, we already paid!

Somebody's going to have to think a little harder, work a little harder, give up the hookers and the unprovoked wars, and come up with plan C. I'm expecting better in 2012; and screw you Mayans, we're in this for the long hall.

When you get really worked up you need a little comfort food. Nothing says comfort food like Mac+Cheese

Tea Party

OK, so here I am, an old lefty (let's check, single payer health care, yes, gun control, yes, pro choice, yes, anti-death penalty, yes, wow, I'm so far left I'm right) and I'm pretty sure that this is a traveling clown show.

Yep, Ringling Brothers has a winner here, except, except...

I was working on a cold adult beverage at Archies Friday night. Local bar, easy walk from the house. Only not this week. As I've noted in my profile I'm a short fat dude, not so fat that I won't walk anywhere, but fat enough that snow banks that force me to climb them to avoid speeding cars are a hardship. Ditto getting half way up them only to have them collapse, sucking my boots to a slushy underworld and leaving me stranded like some overturned beetle between a 62 Nash Rambler and the curb. Everywhere snowbanks, no-where sidewalks.

Anyway I was enjoying a frosty reward after a unpleasantly hazardous trek, soaking up the ambiance that only cheap beer and heaping nacho platters can create, but I couldn't get Archie chattering about the NFL, hockey, or the Celts. Seems that he lost  most of his business to the snowstorm last week and all he wanted to talk about was the town government.

On the day of the storm  the weather was impassible which you have to roll with here in the great white north, strike one. Only on the day after the storm the downtown streets and lots were still not plowed, strike two. On the second day after the storm they plowed, they plowed the cars parked in the downtown streets and lots into their spaces so they couldn't move, strike 3. Finally on the third day after the storm the city closed off downtown to bring in front end loaders and dump-trucks to pick up the snow. Nothing makes for better business than a police cruiser blocking both ends of the street all day, strike 4. Wait a minute, strike 4? Four days, no business, yeah strike 4.

Archie doesn't know politics, but he does know that he lost 4 days of business last week because the government didn't come through for him when he needed them to. On last Thursday the guy in the triconer hat screaming about the government maybe looked like a clown; what does he look like on Monday?