Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!!

The Republicans have been holding their convention this week in Tampa. The Democrats are next. The lies spewing forth from the speakers on the podium are absolutely amazing. It is breathtaking. Paul Ryan actually accused Obama of being responsible for closing down an auto factory before he was even President...and he just kept right on going. It doesn't matter that it's a lie, the important thing is to get it out there so the pea-brains who are sucking this up can get energized.

I managed not to watch any of the convention but I'm following it on the news because you just can't escape it. My main news interest is in Hurricane Isaac, otherwise I probably wouldn't even have the news on. I probably won't watch much, if any, of the Democrats' convention.  Why bother?

We have our own little side show going on locally with Todd Akin, the GOP's senatorial candidate. And what a show it is. Missouri seems to collect wingnuts. I have a friend (sort of) who comes from his district who keeps me informed on all of the crazy and outlandish conspiracy theories that the local Republicans dream up. She makes the "Birthers" look normal. She threatened and chased the census bureau guy off her property because he worked for Acorn. She says Acorn is in charge of the Department of Commerce and is sending out the census people to get information on her. She, of course, is a Todd Akin supporter and thinks that that flurry of excitement about "legitimate rape" and the amazing capacity of a woman's body to shut down a potential rape pregnancy is just the "Godless Liberals" plotting against her hero, Todd Akin.

I admit that I voted for Todd Akin in the primary election. I voted Republican just so I could vote against a few people and I voted for Akin because I knew he would self-destruct. I thought he would last at least until Labor Day but I don't think he made it a week. I'm not a big supporter of Claire McCaskill. I've met her a couple times and was in meetings with her when she was the Jackson County prosecutor. I don't particularly like her but she is serious, smart and businesslike. She is 100 times better than Akin. She is up something like nine points in the polls now but come November, anything can happen. Remember, Missouri elected a dead guy to the Senate rather than select the other choice...John Ashcroft.

My impression of Mitt Romney is that he is a guy with limited values and convictions. Only things related to his immediate family, church or wealth have any weight in his life. Everything else is merely a business decision. He can easily promote one idea or value and then promote the exact opposite based on what he sees as the business climate. He seems to have no lasting commitments to ideas or values. He also has the corporate model approach to things...the same way Bush Jr. did.  He is not a details sort of guy. That's why he chose Paul Ryan as his VP --- someone to be involved in the details. I think we tried that with Dick Cheney and it didn't work.

Obama is a details guy, maybe to a fault. He is also a person with life-long values and convictions. He is more likely to stay on the same course in a second term. It has taken so long to dig out of the hole left by the previous administration that people are impatient. I'm convinced that the economy was worse than we think and it will take a while longer to get back on track. The obstructionist approach taken by the GOP is slowing things down. Now they want to go back to the policies that put us in a near-depression.

I'm something of a supporter of Obama-Care. I think he managed to get the cat out of the bag, so to speak, and we will see improved health care in the future. There is a lot in Obama-Care that is positive and worthwhile and supported by most Americans. I am concerned about the GOP's plans for a voucher-based medicare system. Medicare needs help but not that kind. They would turn the focus of the system away from Doctors and hospitals to a group that they know and trust...insurance companies...with deep pockets.

I fully expect the Democratic convention to be one more non-event with lots of speakers tossing around lots of false information. It will probably be dull. I don't think there's a hurricane coming. 

Farewell Neil Armstrong

August 25th...Farewell Neil Armstrong. There are only eight Apollo Astronauts left who walked on the moon and the youngest is in his mid 70s. Armstrong was the first.  Will we miss them when they are gone?

We ended the Space Shuttle program a little over a year ago. We still have space ambitions but most of the interesting and newsworthy stuff is done by robots of one sort or another. We have just landed on Mars with the Curiosity rover. It will be in the news for a long time.

We have the International Space Station, packed with real live humans, orbiting 250 miles up above the earth. The ISS has grown to a size somewhat larger than a football field and is resupplied periodically by unmanned supply rockets. The Russians run a taxi service for moving people out to the ISS and back home again. The ISS is one of the brightest things in the sky when it flies over. It can be much brighter than the moon if the sun hits it right...but it seems that few people bother to look up.  I'm a sky watcher so I've seen it and it is an impressive sight...but it is over in about four or five minutes.

I guess we've reached the point where most of the pioneering work is over...at least close to our home planet. Much of the equipment and artifacts from this time are showing up in museums. There was a news item last week about Los Angeles having to cut down 400 trees along a roadway so that the space shuttle can be towed to the local museum.

The Chinese are talking about sending humans on a mission to the moon. That would be goos, I think, but I can't imagine what the cost would be. I wonder if unmanned space exploration is much less expensive than sending humans. The focus would be on robotics and other types of technology rather than life support.

I wonder if any of those space monkeys are still alive. If J. Fred Muggs is still alive at 60 then maybe there are still a couple space monkeys around.  We still send animals into space. In February 2010 the Iranians sent a mouse, two turtles and some worms into space on one of their rockets. They survived the trip.

What I'll Remember About the 2012 London Olympics

The final javelin has been thrown, the final weight lifted, the final diver plunged into the pool, and the last marathoner crossed the line. The London Olympics are over. I enjoyed the Olympics. The USA's athletes did a great job individually and in team competitions. They all were great no matter what country they came from. I have some great memories...but let me get this off my chest first.

NBC's coverage of the Olympics was horrendous. They should be ashamed of the lousy way that they handled this global event. I really can't think of any instance where they excelled. When they could have made a good decision on how to cover the games they always...always chose the wrong option. I was beginning to think that Hallmark Cards was in charge of the broadcasts. We don't need Tom Brokaw telling us the heartwarming story of how the Brits struggled in WW-II...and taking nearly an hour to do it in prime time. War is hell, no matter what side you are on. We should have learned by now not to have wars but we haven't. There was no end to the sappy stories of how this athlete or that coach had to endure tremendous hardship to finally compete in the Olympics. Then, of course, there are the NBA players and the various other standouts (Phelps, Bolt, etc.) that they just had to squeeze on to the telecast one or two more times. And quite frankly, I have seen enough volleyball to last me a lifetime.

But I did enjoy the games in spite of the botched coverage. Here are ten things that I really enjoyed.

1. The opening and closing ceremonies were great. I had to reflect a little on the opening before I decided I liked it because it was a little odd.
2. I am glad Michael Phelps won his medals and is now the most decorated Olympic athlete. There were a lot of titles thrown about as cliches on TV but he has won a ton of medals. Is he the greatest athlete? No. He has duplicate event medals from several different Olympic games so he is very good at what he does...which is a narrow range of athletic performance. But I still think it's great.
3. I love soccer or futbol or football...whatever. I was excited to see South Korea win the bronze medal by defeating Japan. I was furious with NBC for not carrying the Mexico - Brazil final game on a major network that we could have watched. I'm very happy that Mexico won the gold medal. 
4. I enjoyed seeing the Jamaican runners perform. Usain Bolt is the fastest man alive...OK. (Now I'd like him to sit down and shut up). There are other runners from Jamaica. There were two or three Jamaican runners who went to Lincoln University...yes...right here in Jefferson City. I enjoyed seeing them run too. Jefferson City will, of course, ignore their very existence. 
5. I liked seeing some different sports. These may be the national sport somewhere but to me they are a novelty because I've never actually seen them. Field hockey was one that I enjoyed. I was completely confused about handball, which I thought was like racquetball but it isn't. Handball is more like water polo without the water. The rowing events were cool. I liked the cycling in the velodrome. The BMX cycling was interesting.
6. I found it interesting to see the ethnic diversity of the various teams. You can't look at a team and tell where they are from by the makeup of the members. In the olden days you could look at a French team and say "Yep, those are Frenchmen" but now you can't. There has been so much movement of people over the last few decades and generations that there can be a great deal of diversity where one would not expect it. It used to be that the USA team was the most diverse team but I don't think that can be said any longer. I think that's good.
7. I loved seeing Oscar Pistorius run on his artificial legs. He is called "the fastest man on no legs" and he made a good showing in his events. He didn't win a medal and I don't think people expected him to win a medal but he proved that he could compete with the best.
8. I enjoyed seeing some of Great Britain's athletes win medals just to hear the crowds roar. They had a good Olympics.
9. I have to hold my breath sometimes when I'm watching platform diving. The divers come too close to hitting their heads on the platform. Even so, they do some amazing dives. I like that the US diver won gold. I enjoyed the Mexican divers and the way they were pushing the envelope on the dives.
10. I was happy to see Spain make the USA team work for the gold medal in basketball. I am not happy with having NBA players represent the various countries (mostly but not only the USA). I think that there should be an age limit on basketball thee same way there is on soccer. Players should be limited to under age 23.

So now we wait two years for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Sochi might be interesting since it is a Black Sea resort and port city next to Georgia. The climate is subtropical which may make winter sports something of a challenge. The city is close to the Caucasus Mountains where they do have snow.

Do you remember when we used to hear frogs?

I watched a PBS NOVA special on the plight of frogs. We are losing frogs - they are in danger of mass extinction. There seems to be a worldwide infestation of a fungus that lives on the skin of frogs and slowly kills them by blocking oxygen. Frogs breathe through their skin, at least in part, and the fungus causes them to suffocate. Except for a small part of Panama, the fungus exists all over the planet and will probably invade this last safe area soon. This is very sad. Scientists are capturing the endangered frogs and keeping them in captivity in special breeding programs in the hope of finding fungus resistant strains of the different frog varieties. There have been some successes but the picture is bleak in most cases.

As a kid, frogs were one of the most common wild animals we encountered. The local ponds were full of tadpoles. We would collect frog eggs and keep them in a jar just to watch the tadpoles hatch out. I used to capture frogs and toads and baptize them when I was in a particularly religious mood. Maybe there will be a few frogs in heaven.  I remember the childhood debates we had about toads and whether we would get warts if we touched them. It never kept us from touching them. Toads would almost always pee on you when you picked them up. We figured that the pee was what made the warts.

Frogs ruled the night. The sound of frogs at night was ever-present. This was really true in a rainy springtime and early summer. Bull Frogs were the Potentates of the frog world. They were huge and very loud with a low booming voice. Tree frogs were peepers up in the trees. They were a background chorus for the mighty Bull Frogs.


When I was ten I had two pet salamanders that lived in a washtub in the back yard. Salamanders are similar to frogs and are now facing the same hazards. Mine seemed quite happy in their washtub world but salamanders apparently like to migrate. They must recognize some cosmic message that tells them that it is time to move on. One night my salamanders got the call and were off on an adventure. I know that one was eaten by a garter snake before he got very far. I won't go into how I know that. I just hope the other one made it to the local salamander rendezvous unscathed.


I remember seeing flattened frog and toad corpses on the road when I walked to school. They were probably on their way to an important gathering of amphibians when they met their Maker crossing the road. There were so many frogs and toads that it seemed like nothing would ever make a dent in the population. Frogs and toads were everywhere.


We would go spend a couple weeks at my uncle's cabin on the Big Piney River and at least once he would fix up "a mess of frog legs". These were usually Bull Frogs whose legs ended up on the plate. They looked like little peoples' legs. You would go out at night in a boat and paddle quietly waiting for a Bull Frog to sing out and then you would sneak up on him and blind him with a flashlight while the other person gigged him with a nine foot harpoon. The "Gig" had three points so you were pretty much bound to get him if you were any good at all. The impaled frogs were sort of stunned but seemed almost not to notice that they had been run through. Of course the points were barbed so he couldn't get off the gig and he soon ended up in a burlap bag on the bottom of the boat. It takes quite a few frogs to equal a "mess".


Not too many years ago we had a small tree frog who came to our screen door at night to eat the moths and bugs that were attracted by the light. We named him Edgar after one of our favorite baseball players, Edgar Renteria. Edgar was a hit with both my daughter and the family cat. Jill delighted in his nightly arrivals and would look for him and be disappointed if he didn't show up. Purro, our cat, was also delighted to see him but for other reasons. Purro would sit or lay quietly by the screen door and watch Edgar until he couldn't stand it any longer and he would swat the screen and Edgar would jump. One night Edgar got inside somehow and Purro pounced while three humans squealed and dove for the cat. We saved Edgar and put him back outside much to Purro's aggravation. Edgar, or maybe Edgar's kids, came back every year for a while but eventually disappeared. Even Edgar Renteria was eventually traded to Boston.

We have a little frog pond about 400 feet away back in the woods. We used to hear frogs at night but not anymore. Occasionally we will hear a peeper up in the trees or even close by on the deck (Edgar? Is that you?) but not very often. I will occasionally see a toad in the yard. Toads are more adaptable to dry conditions and sometimes would venture into the garden. I haven't seen a salamander in decades.

I hope that someday our kids' grandkids will still get to discover and enjoy frogs.