Hammer Mill Days

Well, I haven't seen it. What kind of belt is it? Nothing of the kind. What am I, your valet? Damn it, man - use your eyes! Oh.... the Kuiper Belt. Right... nope, haven't seen it. Then there's that third reason. A little known fact about the "Goldilocks Planet": it lives right next door to the mother of all black holes (I believe that's referred to as the "Three Bears Neutron Star"). Before we took off, we asked the Gliseans how best to navigate back in the direction of our home system. They gave us what was, for them, some pretty typical advise - go left, but not too far left; then take a right turn at the asteroid... not the BIG asteroid, not the LITTLE one, the JUST RIGHT one ... and so on. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) took all this down in his memory banks, then plugged himself into our spacecraft's navigational computer and passed the directions along. (It may have been my imagination, but he always seems to have a self-satisfied smi...

Okay, so the president has a bit to apologize for. He's not alone in that respect - plenty of blame to go around here. Fact is, the administration is certainly wrong to criticize the liberal-left for denouncing the deal he cut with Republicans this week. If the president was painted into a corner, it was not by the left. The Congress members who were dead set against raising the tax issue before this past election were "Blue Dog" conservatives, worried about offending their constituencies - the same voters that would soon send more than half of them packing. It is now these conservative Democrats that Obama is relying upon during the lame duck session to shepherd this deal through the House. It seems likely that most Republicans will support it, so he hardly needs the entire Democratic caucus. In any case, the capitulation happened a long time ago. At this point, the main thing is making certain that unemployed workers get the help they need. I don't care how we get t...