Hammer Mill Days

I spy with my little eye.... a breakfast nook. Yes, that's it. I spy with my little eye... a seven-foot-tall solid iron anvil. Found that one too, eh? Hmmm... I'm going to have to make this harder. Hello again, visitor(s). Yeah, just killing a little time on a holiday weekend. All the carolers have gone home, back to their cabins somewhere in the Adirondacks to stoke their hearth fires and peel their stocking-heel tangerines. Celebratory drinks all around! The place is as dead as a hammer head... and we've got a lot of those lying about the old abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (Or, as some call it, the hammer mill of the imagination.) I'm looking out upon empty cobblestone streets in the old canal-side district of Little Falls, NY, watching the snowflakes drift lazily earthward, each one laden with icy cloud-stuff, little bits of frozen heaven dropped by the formidable gods of the great north. Sometimes it feels like we're in the middle of nowhere. (I think I know why ...

You've heard (way too many times) the facile comparison between legislating and making sausage. It's the kind of analogy that obscures the spectacular level of dysfunction now most impressively on display in the U.S. Senate. This institution has always been a problem with respect to the popular will, but under the current circumstances, the "world's greatest deliberative body" has become not the cooling saucer of democracy but a dousing bucket of cold water. There is, of course, no question that the Senate is an extremely undemocratic institution, according the same number of votes and, therefore, the same political power to every state, whether it is home to 36 million (California) or 500,000 (Wyoming). Even if the chamber's arcane rules allowed for voting on a majority-rule basis, it would be intrinsically unfair to larger population centers - i.e. the kinds of communities that most rely on social programs administered by the federal government. But it's...

Are you broke in Hoboken? Skint in Flint? Empty in Tempe? Down on your luck in Keokuk? Well, let me tell you friend, I've been there. I've BEEN there. Hope you're well. Things are okay here... about as okay as things can be. Actually, right at this moment, my knees are a little cold, but aside from that, all is well. (Bloody winter! It's miserable even when it's not here yet.) I suppose I should get our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to look at the thermostat one more time. Seems like no matter how many times I turn that dial clockwise, the old Hammer Mill stays cold as a New England clam. And now that we're on the subject, I notice that there are icicles hanging from Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Great Scott... it's not just a little glitch in the temp control. This place is a block of freaking ice . What the hell - didn't I bribe the oil man this month? Oh, right.... not suppose to say that on the Internets. (Please don't let that g...

Looks like the bottom is falling out of the legislative health insurance reform effort. Oh, there may be a bill, but the political legs are getting very wobbly. All of the compromises and fall-backs the left has agreed to over the past year have been painted as too radical for the public at large, even though the public at large broadly supports elements like the "public option" and expansion of Medicare to people under 65. In other words, the majority of people in the United States think there should be some kind of government provided health insurance available to everyone, not just retirees, veterans, and people in the United States Congress... but Joe Lieberman and 40 G.O.P. senators don't want it, so it's not going to happen. Small wonder that more recent polling by one of the major networks and the Wall Street Journal shows a majority now against the health care legislation under consideration in the Senate. Someone should poll Lieberman and make sure that he...

THE BIG GREEN FAMILY HOLIDAY NEWSLETTER Happy holidays, everybody. Man, has it been a year already? Can't believe it. Seems like it was just yesterday when last we were filling you in on the inane details of our tawdry little lives. Tempus fugit. (So fuggit. ) Anyway, here's the news from our neck of the woods... Matt's doing okay, thanks very much. He finished that little project he was working on - you know, the papier-mache helicopter that can fly between dimensions and traverse great distances fueled only by a LePage glue gun. Man, THAT was a big disappointment! Gave the prop a spin, tossed it over the battlements, and down to the street it went like a week-old cabbage. Man got to have his hobbies, you know. If it weren't for the daily task of keeping those bazooka-toting, treestand-dwelling deer murderers away from the back forty, I don't know how else he would occupy his time. A lot of you ask about the two little Lincolns, and small wonder. Cute little fell...

Obama does Oslo this week. There's been a lot of commentary on this, including my own, so I won't add much at this point. Suffice to say, he's collecting the award the Norwegian Nobel committee gave the people of the United States for electing someone who isn't totally bug-fuck nuts and for putting the enormous American imperial locomotive back onto its tracks. Yeah, it's still belching toxic smoke and running people over, but it's doing it along a predictable line, pulling a bunch of lesser cars behind it, and that makes people a lot more comfortable. Let's face it - Dubya thought the train was a go-cart. He drove it on the grass, into the middle of the street, through people's living rooms, etc., to the point where no one wanted to hitch-up their boxcar anymore (except our trusty coal-car Britain and, I don't know, Palau). Now that choo-choo Charlie has chugged his scrawny ass back to Texas, everybody wants back onto the empire gravy train. So... g...

Here comes Big Green , like a bat out of hell, someone gets in our way, someone don't feel so well! Hey, what's the problem, Lincoln? You depraved on account a' you're deprived? Oh, hi, friends. Didn't know you were looking in just then. (We always seem to get caught by surprise... probably shouldn't live our lives on the Internets so much.) No, we're not working up some numbers for a West Side Story revival of some kind. Not a bit of it. Just feeling a little like outsiders, that's all. Our own village government has turned against us, our own man-sized tuber has made monkeys of us, and our own abandoned hammer mill is getting draftier by the day. (The fire brigade broke a few windows when they were here... Mayor's orders.) Ergo, we're spending more time out on the mean streets, or at least, in the mean courtyard. (Cobblestones make a lumpy mattress, friends - word to the wise.) With the cold weather coming on, it's almost like we've b...

Nice speech, Mr. President. Now explain to me why, when committing 30,000 more Americans to this endless debacle in Afghanistan, you aren't asking those of us who are not in the military to make some real sacrifices. You invoked the noble acts of some of your predecessors, but they were not reluctant to ask for the able-bodied to serve (even if many had "other priorities") or the relatively well-heeled to pay more taxes. Why are you so reluctant? Don't feel as though I'm singling you out. I could, of course, ask this question of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and the sainted Ronald Reagan with equal justice. The difference, I believe, is that you are probably brighter and more worldly than any of them. I know what their excuses would have been. What is yours ? Explain, also, why it is so much more urgent to keep Al Qaeda, violent extremists, the Taliban, etc., from taking hold in Afghanistan than in, say, Jordan or Syria, where literally hundred...

Bailiffs to the left of me, lawyers to the right; judge straight ahead. Half a league, half a league, half a league on. (Whoops... sorry, your honor. Went half a league too far.) Yes, well... greetings from the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill on this blessed week of giving thanks. Thanks for what? Nothing, that's what around this dump. Forgive my ill humor... it's just that the man-sized tuber - our own beloved root vegetable companion - has embarked upon a virtual reign of terror as our municipality's new mayor. I'll tell you, friends, you never really know a person (or a sweet potato) until you've a.) had them over for holiday dinner, or b.) elected them village mayor or town supervisor. The maxim about absolute power corrupting absolutely may well be ascribed to the extremely limited power conferred upon the executive in charge of the little hamlet that has heretofore reluctantly tolerated the presence of Big Green . Silly me - I thought with one of our very own in...

Hey, what can I tell you? For a few days, it almost smelled like Obama would resist the call to send tens of thousands more U.S. troops into the hell-hole that is Afghanistan. That cloud of wispy optimism has surely passed, and while the announcement, as of this writing, has not yet been made, it's clear that something like 30,000 to 35,000 more American bodies will be placed between the religious fanatics, drug smugglers, blood-stained warlords, and underworld entrepreneurs that dominate both sides of the Afghan struggle. To what end? Well, we've been promised that Obama will explain his strategy in a nationally-televised address this coming week. My guess is that it will be somewhat reminiscent of Bush Jr.'s address announcing the surge in Iraq - a change of strategy concentrating on the fundamentals of securing and holding territory, investing more dollars in reconstruction, and promoting regional cooperation. Bush's speech was in the wake of the major disaster that ...

What is this - another citation? Third one today. What? You mean there's a stack of them downstairs as well? Jesus H. Jumping Christ! What kind of a squat house is this, anyway? Yes, friends, we're back home in Indiana... I mean, in upstate New York again. Back at the fabled and storied (actually, three stories, plus the roof and basement) Cheney Hammer Mill. We arrived on the redeye late last night... and by "redeye" I don't mean an overnight flight from Andrews Airforce Base; rather, an eye-popping super-light speed journey through the outer solar system with a drunken mad scientist at the controls, half-empty quart of redeye clutched in his left paw. Weaving? Yes, we had that. Sudden drops in altitude? Most def. And what about those dramatic gravitational variances? Well, we endured our share, clinging to the exposed plumbing of the upper deck (some of which emitted an eerie green glow - uuuuhhhllll), rolling with the turbulence as our inebriated navigator snak...

I am probably the millionth blogger to comment on Major Hasan's alleged massacre of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and I'm sure it won't stop there. I have to say, though, that the rhetoric I've been hearing over the past week has made it impossible for me not to toss my screed onto the growing pile. Commentators pretty much across the mainstream spectrum of opinion have latched onto this idea that Hasan was given the chance to do this heinous act by virtue of a culture of "political correctness" within the military, i.e. the Army being over-sensitive to Muslims within their ranks and overlooking Hasan's failings. This strikes me as wildly off the mark and - worse - an attempt to utilize an unspeakable act of murder to make political points. It's also part of the very common practice of mainstream commentators to avoid the elephant in the room when discussing matters related to our two simultaneous wars; namely, the true costs of such extended conflict...

Here in the situation room, no one speaks in muted tones. Everything is shouting, all the time, shouting. Oh, the noise! Can't we all just get along? Oh, hi, you-all. Hope everything is well back on Earth. We will see you there soon, I trust, as we appear to be heading in that general direction, assuming Mitch Macaphee's navigational skills have not gone seriously downhill in the last month or so. (We walk by faith, not sight.) Rolling to the end of another outer-limits tour - this one a bit more ad hoc than previous outings, apropos of the severe economic recession back home. Couldn't even afford to brand this tour, and that typically doesn't cost much more than a couple of beers at the local pub. (We quaff them until somebody emits a decent idea... or something a bit less savory.) As you know, Big Green always operates on the cheap, but this time was the worst yet. As someone who's used to dry Soy Slice sandwiches, it took some time getting used to sandwiches mad...

Don't know if you have credit cards with major TARP-rescued banks. I certainly do, and this week I received a notice from one of them telling me that they were summarily changing the terms of my credit agreement. In essence, they said they were raising the interest rate on my card to 23%. Yes, that's right - 23% on a balance well below my credit limit, on a card I've had for at least a decade without missing a payment. You don't seem surprised. Perhaps they've done the same to you... and, in fact, they are doing the same to everyone, as far as I know. It seems CitiGroup, the recipient of $45 billion in publicly funded bailout dollars, has settled on a business model that empties the pockets of American taxpayers a second time. Charging 23% and more on credit in an economic environment such as this, when people are losing their jobs, their homes, their shoes , for chrissake... and when institutions like Citi are drawing money from the Federal Reserve lending window a...

There it is again. Hear it? That creaking noise. Yeah, yeah... that one. Is that your astronaut couch or one of the main support beams holding this clunker together. Don't be in a hurry to answer that. Oh, hi, Web-based readers, listeners, and curiosity seekers. It's your old pal Big Green , out here in deep space, fresh off a thrashing series of gigs on Kaztropharius 137b - one of the few places in the known universe where our music gets played, bought, and reviewed - and headed in the general direction of home. Yes, we've had it for the time being. After all, the holidays are coming, daylight savings time has ended (spend all that saved-up daylight yet?), and darkness is falling across the northern hemisphere of our tattered planet. It's at this time of year, more than any other, that the sojourner's thoughts turn to hearth and home, and certainly we of Big Green are no exceptions. Many's the time I've repaired backstage (what the hell, you can hardly re...

Well, I don't know if any of you were following it, but my neighboring Congressional District - New York's 23rd - just experienced a national political dogfight reminiscent of the one we were treated to three years ago. In some ways, it was worse, actually. You may know the story. Long time Republican Congressman John McHugh was tapped by Obama to be Army Secretary, opening up a special election to replace him. Instead of being in essence a regional race for a national office, this became a clusterfuck grudge match between two wings of the Republican Party - the moderate-conservative and the lunatic-conservative. And the actual fighting took place not so much between office holders in the G.O.P., but among retirees, resignees, also-rans, and professional bloviators like Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, George Pataki, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Army, and so on. The G.O.P.'s-nominated candidate was apparently not conservative enough to please these... these.... objects, so...

One day you're up, the next you're down. As true in outer space as it is back on terra firma. Take it from one who knows. (Or from Juan, who knows... because he knows, too.) Just found our way over to Kaztropharius 137b in hopes of finding some Big Green fans. (Seems like that quest takes us farther and farther with each passing year.) Not a lot of love to be had in the Great Magellanic Cloud, but the Kaztropharians are reasonably congenial ... if a bit super-sized. Jesus christmas, what an enormous crowd of revelers we had that first night! It was like being in the outer-space version of Gulliver's Travels, not the Lilliput journey but that other one. (No, not the horse people. The other, other one... with the big people.) While giants tend to make me a little nervous, most of my colleagues seemed unperturbed. Mitch Macaphee just worked on various science projects, off in a corner some where. The man-sized tuber practiced his saxophone backstage - a bit distracting, bu...