Motley Moose – Archive

One more “trial balloon” on the debt ceiling negotiations from an unnamed source and the Left and Right blogospheres will come completely unglued and/or collide.

Every once in awhile I take to the Google and check on the status of the training/certification process for DADT.

There have actually been some fairly major developments.  

I don’t seem to have much to contribute by way of deep meaningful posts but, OMG!, I had to share some of the goodness I found via The Mudflats.

There’s actually been some fairly news-worthy stuff happening in the world the last several days that hasn’t involved some guy’s manly parts clad in a pair of underwear.

Some of the news is actually quite unsettling, important, thought-provoking, and worth talking about.

I guess every Moose thread is an “open” thread where we toss off whatever is on our minds.  In that vein, this is going to be a bit of “stream of consciousness” because, well, I can.

The title of my piece (not that piece, fog) comes from two things, the first being the lack of cable television in my house.  The cable company and I disagreed on the frequency of my payments (quarterly didn’t seem to cut it with them) so they cut me off.  Not a loss really; I was going to cut them off at some point.  I watch about six channels and it didn’t seem prudent to pay as much as I was to watch so very few channels.  Plus, I was one of those people who turned the TV on first thing in the morning and the damned thing was on as long as I was home.  Even when I was sleeping ~ background noise, you know.  But amazingly, I’ve been without cable for a month now and I haven’t gone stark raving mad … yet (or more, depending on your opinion of me).  But, do not despair for I have discovered Netflix ~ the greatest thing EVER.  Sure, I’d heard of it but never bothered to investigate.  But it’s great!  I get to watch the movies I want to watch when I want them.  When I get my Internet back (yeah, they took that, too, but I’m going to get that back) I can stream stuff.  Is this country great or what?!

Silence, though, is turning the TV (or the radio, or whatever) off.  I usually watch about a half hour of whatever DVD is in the player when I get up and then I turn the TV off.  And, guess what!  There are all kinds of sounds to be heard.  The gentle snore of Fran or Sam (hopefully that was just a snore and not some other bodily function).  The lawnmowers or kids outside.  The sound of the audible crosswalk signals (we have those in soon-to-have-single-payerish-healthcare Vermont).

I can also hear myself think.

I figured we needed another open thread and, since today is my birthday (blech!) I figured I’d start one.

A sparkling lake to the West:

Beautiful mountains to the East:

As many of you know I have a bet with another Moose on who will be the Republican nominee for President.  I have Pawlenty while the other Moose (I’ll let someone else “out” the poor deluded soul) has Huckabee.  The field, official and otherwise, might be a bit crowded although only Romney, Pawlenty, and Santorum (?!) have officially formed exploratory committees.

But we all know who has been sucking the air out of the GOP room lately ~ The Donald.

We’ve seen calls for a no-fly zone from several fronts ~ both at home and abroad.  It seems to be the favored form of intervention of British PM Cameron, US Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Kerry as well as any number of twitterers.  We have seen calls for a no-fly zone in Libya, too, to be sure.  On the flip side, Gaddafi has vowed to use whatever military he has to fight a no-fly zone.

Me?  I don’t mind the idea (those three years I spent as a Data Processing Technician in the Navy made me a military expert) as long as the US does not take the lead.  I firmly believe, as SoS Clinton has said recently, the UN and/or NATO and/or the Arab League should take the lead.

What I find intriguing are the thoughts of SecDef Gates who, as you know, is a holdover from the Bush Administration and former CIA deputy director for intelligence during the Reagan years.