Prisoner at War wrote:
On Mar 2, 2:41 pm, Bill Baka wrote:


We have given up our manufacturing base, so if we get into it with China
we're screwed. And yes my grandfather had a huge lot in Chicago and my
grandmother tended the garden. There were always fresh veggies and
fruits when I went to visit.

So now you go to the supermarket for them. Big deal. I'm sure they
used to do their own laundry by hand, too. So what?

They don't anymore. Both dead and since my aunt just died in the house
that's the end of that chapter.

The country's only screwed if there's nothing to replace that
manufacturing base. And who the heck wants to be a cog in the
machine, anyway? You thank your lucky stars that this economy is
moving more and more towards an information economy where it's design,
not manufacturing, that's the order of business.

If you mean everyone in the US sitting in a cubicle then that is
negative progress and bad for the workers as well. Pushing IT is not
good for this country.

What, I'm registered as a Democrat but that doesn't force me to vote for
an idiot who happens to be a Democrat.

Yeah, but you seem to think Ahnold is super duper....

Not super, but way better than the guy who ran against him. I voted
democrat on all the other candidates, since they were all about the same
anyway.

Yeah,
I can't imagine ANY republican candidate wanting Bush associating
himself with their campaign. Bush is poison these days.

I don't understand how so many people could have ever voted for him.
The way he blinks and smirks tells you he hasn't a clue but is still
going to try to put one over you...you know what I'm talking about?
He has that mannerism, the facial gesture that goes, "holy ****, he's
got me -- but I didn't get where I am today by letting facts get to
me...."

You pretty much got that one totally correct. The first time I think his
brother was able to manipulate just enough votes to squeak his brother
into the white house. The second time just showed that Kerry was too
non-photogenic. He did go to Viet nam and serve in the military, which
seems to be an almost requirement these days. I don't see anything
intelligent about signing up knowing you are going to go to a lose-lose
kind of war and is just a meat grinder for American troops.

S.F. is the land of the strange, where half the people are queer anyway.

Makes you wonder why all the conservatives were ranting about Red
Chinese landing there, then, during the '60s.

The 60's were so hazed over from LSD and pot I'm surprised anyone can
remember what happened.

In that respect, I found it amusing how the rest of the country
rallied around New York, Sodom-on-the-Hudson, because of 9/11.

We do have bicycle police in the cities, just not a whole lot of them,
but they are in far better shape than their car driving, donut dining
counterparts.

I haven't seen an NYPD officer on bike patrol in the longest time. I
used to see them biking around doing patrols on bikes, but now the
only time I see them is at a parade or something like that.

They do exist in certain cities, but I don't know which.

BTW, I'm acquainted with a bike cop and he was telling me how they get
trained to do stunt-like things, such as biking down stairways.

I watched him a few years back where he bent down and looked under his
desk and said "Nope, no WMDs there." He has no presidential dignity and
came off as a total buffoon.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to.

It may be the postmodern reader in me, but I don't find anything
particularly undignified about that. I understand why some do, and
why there was a ruckus over it at the time, but I think it's good for
us not to take the Presidency too seriously. Heck, that's how we got
into the WMD mess in the first place. I think great evil is able to
happen in part because folks want so much to believe in the "dignity"
of the office that they will allow all manner of silliness, like the
undermining of many democratically-elected governments over the
decades.

????????
Bill Baka