Hammer Mill Days

Try moving it to the other side of the tail fin. No, not that one! The dorsal tail fin! Okay, now hit it with a hammer a few times. Nothing? Hmmm .... how about if we light it on fire. Sometimes that helps. Oh, damn. I didn't realize I was typing this all into our blog. (I think that's called auto-typing.) Well, as you can tell, Big Green is working furiously to get our rented Plywood 9000 space rocket ready for launch before the election on Tuesday, when all hell is likely to break loose. At least, that's what the little voices in my head tell me. There are times when you feel compelled to stay and fight the good fight, and then there are those other times when you ... well ... decide to take a rented rocketship to another planet. That's a hasty decision, I know, but again ... those persistent little voices! Seriously, I am looking forward to a perhaps non-remunerative jaunt out to the Kuiper belt if only to free ourselves from the pressures of terrestrial life. ...

Here we are, once again, staring down the electoral precipice, praying for salvation. It's a quadrennial tradition, though sometimes more acute than others. This is certainly one of those times, though count me as among those who considered John McCain to be an existential threat to the nation back in 2008; his seemingly insatiable appetite for warfare would have led us in a very dangerous direction, to say nothing of his economic proposals. (He likely would have been a one-term president, but I'm not sure we would have lasted four years.) Now, of course, we're sweating out a resurgent Trump, buoyed by bad news for Hillary Clinton. This is a reactionary, climate change denialist detour we most certainly cannot afford at this juncture, but ... here we are. The fact that we so often find ourselves on the edge of disaster is an indication that we need to do something about not only this process of electing leaders, but also about the magnitude of power they wield in office. ...

Well, maybe a larger booster rocket would help. Or some tightly wound springs. Then there's the lever option, like a catapult - give me a lever large enough and I will move the world, that sort of thing. No? Okay, never mind. Oh, hi. Yes, we're grappling with the same conundrums that so vexed our predecessors in flight - how to defeat that old devil gravity. It's a little hard to imagine being able to reach planet KIC 8462852 without finding some way to break the surly bonds of Earth, whatever that means. Sure, it would be easier for Big Green to just give in and start doing terrestrial tour dates, packing ourselves into a multi-colored school bus and teetering down the road to Springfield and Lodi and East Aurora (unless we get stuck in Lodi ... again ...), but that would be an abandonment of all we hold dear. And in all frankness, gravity would still be vexing us! (Especially after a particularly long night.) The other day, a big semi backed up to the front gate of t...

Want a good reason to vote next month? Here's one: Paul Ryan's "Better Way" agenda, which he will drive home like lightning if his party is successful on election day. With a Republican congress and a Trump presidency, Ryan can pass the most regressive political program ever contemplated on the national level. At the core of this agenda will be another raft of massive tax cuts for the rich, including a 20% cut for corporate taxes, which will drain trillions of dollars from the Federal budget and (no surprise) prompt austerity action on social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. On top of that, the "Better Way" will use reconciliation votes to repeal sections of the Affordable Care Act, including Medicaid expansion. Ryan tested his caucus's ability to use this tactic on non-fiscal legislation this past term when he brought an ACA repeal vote via reconciliation. This will be repeated next year, but with a Republican president, their vi...

Look, Mitch ... you don't have to solve every problem with explosions. I know that cuts against the grain a bit, but at least try .... TRY not to dial it up to eleven every time you feel slighted. Thank you! Good day , sir! Jesus Christ on a bike. If you want anything done around here, you have to talk until you're green in the face. (That's probably how we ended up with the name Big Green, but I digress.) As I mentioned in passing last week, we are contemplating a little trip out into the nether regions of the solar system - not the most desirable area, it's true, but you have to book where they'll have you, right? Isn't that the first lesson of the music trade? Or maybe the second. The first is, play on, no matter what happens. Even if they set your banjo on fire, keep plucking. Then comes the bit about bookings. With me? Okay, so our plan was to fly out to KIC 8462852 with a brief stop at the as yet undiscovered Dwarf Planet at the edge of our solar syste...

We were treated to the third and final presidential debate this week, moderated by Chris Wallace of FoxNews. I can't decide which I found more annoying - the ridiculous utterances by the candidates themselves or the clueless pundit commentary on what a great moderator Wallace was. Maybe MSNBC is planning on hiring Wallace, I'm not sure - it seems like they were blowing him pretty hard the morning after, even though he apparently cribbed questions from the Peterson Institute and Operation Rescue. "Partial birth abortion," really? And no questions about climate change, of course. What a great news man. I could sit here an write about the obviously outrageous statements made by Trump over the 90 minute program, but you've probably heard enough of that. Suffice to say that the guy proves his unsuitability for the office of the presidency every time he opens his big yap. No one should need additional convincing, but alas ... this is America. No, what astonishes me is...

Going to Little Rock? But Big Green doesn't have any fans in Arkansas ... at least as far as I know. In fact, we don't have any fans south of the Mason Dixon line. Not since Cowboy Scat , anyway. What? Oh, okay .... never mind. Cheese and crackers, I thought we were going way on down south, but apparently we're going in a very different direction. Out towards KIC 8462852 with a brief stop at the as yet undiscovered Dwarf Planet at the edge of our solar system, and perhaps the undiscovered mystery giant planet as well. So at least our destinations are clear. That's the easy part. The not-so-easy part? Finding an agent who books that far out in the sticks, so to speak. (Actually, it's beyond the sticks and into the rocks.) We usually book ourselves in instances such as these, but times being what they are, it's helpful to have your interstellar ducks in a row before striking out into deep space. Speaking of ducks, we need to line up reliable transport as well....