Tom "The Hammer" DeLay Indicted!

So it has finally happened. He was forced to step down (for now anyway), as majority leader. Couldn't have happened to a nastier person. Oh and by the way, Republicans should stop pretending that this is just another partisan attack. They are right when they say that this charge will probably not stick, but only because the burden of proof is for them to prove that DeLay himself knew what was going on and knew it was wrong. Because of the way the law is written, it's a high hurdle to jump. I'm just glad that he's finally being made to squirm.

Roberts was confirmed today. Fine. He's conservative, but at least he doesn't seem like a partisan hack.

Speaking of partisan hacks, did anyone enjoy Michael Brown on the stand in Congress? Hey, nothing is his fault at all! It's all the fault of the local officials he says. Is that what your extensive emergency management experience dictated, Mike? Those political patronage positions are only fun if you don't have to actually do anything, aren't they? Kathleen Blanco on the other hand did not take the bait, and steered almost completely clear of the issue, which was wise. I'm sure she could have done better as well. Brown is already gone though, so he can't possibly bungle anything like that again, though I find it hilarious that he has apparently been tapped as a consultant for FEMA now! Only in the Bush administration. He's loyal to a fault, I'll give him that, even when all evidence and common sense dictates that he should sometimes be otherwise.

Switching tracks to football now...Joe Gibbs has jumped the shark. He is another guy that just makes up his mind to go in one direction, no matter what the evidence dictates. He has Patrick Ramsey, a largely unmolded and untried new talent, (also untrusted, just because his predecessor and not Gibbs himself selected him for the team) and decides that he is finally going to start him. He's in for about a quarter and a half in the opening game and got slightly injured, but was only out for the rest of the game. Brunell was then in and after scoring all of three field goals against a bad team, is named the started. He beat the Cowboys with two touchdowns in the final few minutes of the next game against the Cowboys, but for almost the entire game before that he was just woeful. Now the Jets want Ramsey, but the Redskins won't trade him. Poor guy. The incompetence of the Redskins continues. They are the "home team" for where I live, but the San Francisco 49ers, my favorite team, are looking more competitive this year. They beat the Rams in the opening week, which was great, got blown out by the Eagles, and then last week nearly pulled the upset on the Cowboys. We'll see what the rest of the season brings!

German Politics

So my German buddy Andi has had some things to say about German politics, and I thought I would chime in. Yes, Andi, to answer your question there has been a fair amount of coverage of it here as well. Just do a search on CNN or a similar one on Fox News or whatever news site you think is "the truth" and you will find plenty of stories on all of them. I also saw some video clips of their speeches after the election, and personally I thought they both looked really silly.

Schröder was going on about the fact that Merkel couldn't form her own government and saying that it meant that people didn't want him out of office, which I found pretty tough to swallow. He also said it was a really resounding vote that they did not want change, which I found insane. His party had after all lost a lot of support, and his party came in second in the polls!

Merkel was making similar overstatements in her speech, claiming a great "mandate" after winning the narrowest of victories (sound like a US president we know?). She may not even end up being chancellor even though her party got more votes than the SPD (sound like a US election we lived through not long ago?). She was pretty much demanding that she be given the chancellorship, even though she knows full well that she is not under any obligation to get it. She seemed pretty obnoxious.

So in short, I found both of them pretty unappealing, at least in their post-election speeches. Interestingly, in German elections, there is not the kind of culture war that we see in the US. Yes, there are differences between the old East and the old West, but that isn't the same thing that we have here between the parties. It seems that in Germany, no politicians from any of the major parties are trying to moralize from a political base, which is very refreshing. It really is all about the economy in Germany. In many ways, I think that should frequently be the over-arching issue. It's kind of like in football or any other sport. When the whole team wins, all of the hotheads on the team pretty much get along. In the same way, people that feel like they have economic opportunity and a decent future don't really feel like being angry at each other as much.

The Euro took a tumble after the election, and Germany seems to be in a pretty deep political crisis. We'll see how things go from here, but so far it looks like a mess. It's Europe's biggest economy and has the largest population of any EU country, so there is a lot riding on this. Let's hope they get this straightened out soon.

Finally The Story Begins!

Yes, I've been slacking on the blog. No, I haven't been slacking in real life. I've been working hard at work, and last weekend was the aforementioned wedding up in Albany. So here are a couple pictures of the vacation, and of course there will be much more later. I will also be sharing some interesting aspects of Europe that I have noticed from last year's Switzerland trip and this year's Germany/Austria trip. The cities that I visited on this trip were Munich and Hechingen (near Stuttgart, where my American cousin and his German family live) in Germany, and Salzburg and Vienna in Austria. In German, it's actually "München" and "Wien" (pronounced "Veen"), for Munich and Vienna, and the other two are the same in both languages. These first two pictures are from Munich. The first picture is a cute barmaid holding up a couple beers...just kidding. It's actually my cute wife doing that!



We were in the English Garden in Munich, which is a huge, almost Central Park proportioned park. It has fields, trees, a creek winding through it, lots of paths, a restaurant, a Chinese tower where they play live music quite often, some food stands selling pretzels, roasted nuts, and other goodies. Bikers were everywhere. A bunch of people were playing softball. Others were playing with frisbees. There were a couple spots where people were putting on impromptu concerts with bongo drums or xylophones or combinations of instruments, with small crowds of onlookers. We ate outside at the little restaurant there. We had just gotten off the plane shortly before we got there, and we decided to eat at the restaurant. Our waitress was very nice. I spoke a lot of German with her for the first part of the meal, but then she went over to English when she started talking about the lederhosen-clad musicians in the tower that they played a lot of American tunes. I had some sort of cut of steak with dried onions and a type of brown sauce on it I believe. Chris got the apple strudel for dessert, which I had a few bites of as well. It was incredible! It was served as a big thick slice in a bowl of vanilla pudding sauce. Best apple strudel I ever had, and to be honest I might have to include apple pie in that too! I should have gotten one for myself, but I knew there would be other opportunities. It's Germany's version of apple pie, a folk favorite, and they have it almost everywhere. Of course, I think Austrians claim to have invented it, but that's another story. They also claim to have invented the croissant. Who knows, maybe they did?

Anyway, the next day we had the world famous Hofbräuhaus beer hall high on the list of things to see. While we were finding things to do before dinner, we happened upon the Jagd und Fischerei Museum (Hunting and Fishing Museum), which had lots of stuffed animals of all kinds, and no, not beanie babies. These were all hunted and fished animals, and there was also quite an impressive collection of old rifles used by the gentry of the time, with fancy inlay patterns on the stocks and everything. The old sleighs were also pretty neat. I have pictures of those too, but for now here is a picture of me outside the museum with a bronze boar. More to come!

YES, There Are Vacation Pics And Stories Coming!

I know, it been several days now and nothing about the Germany and Austria vacation. It's been a very busy short week at work, and now I get on a plane to Albany in a few hours for a wedding in Saratoga Springs. So there are no pictures yet until Sunday. Then again, that's the first day of football season. VERY soon, OK?

On My Own Schedule

So, I haven't written anything for a couple weeks, by far the longest drought on this blog since I started it several months ago now. My German blog has been idle for about twice that long, maybe longer. There is no particular reason for it. I used to blog a lot at work. My old work had long since failed to be exciting or challenging, so blogging was part of my way of filling my extra time with something else. Now that I have a more rewarding job, it is less of a priority. Also, months ago when I first started with this blog, politics was really starting to frighten me, and I just needed to make myself heard. It seemed that there would be no end to the power that conservatives would wield. I have seen their power start to wane now, and the pendulum is slowly swinging to something approaching normalcy. After a number of bad policy moves and public policy overstepping, the president and his party are rapidly falling out of favor with the public, and I feel the cool breeze of change in the air. Regular people are starting to stand up to the "turn back the clock on science and everything else we don't like or understand" types. It will be a little over a year before we know whether it is really a solid trend or not, but I am less concerned than I was, and therefore less motivated to write about politics. I'm sure the mood will strike me again, and probably soon, but not as often or as urgently.

Some quick movie reviews. I have seen several movies in the last few weeks, much more than usual. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was very clever and very funny. It definitely beat the original in my mind. I give it 8 out of 10. American Wedding, extremely funny, laughed through much of it, some implausible parts, but hey, it's comedy, 9 out of 10. Meet the Fockers, 10 out of 10, and I rarely put a movie there, one or two a year at most, laughed out loud through most of it. By the way, I think I'm in love with Alyson Hannigan. Hahhah! Can you blame me, really? No, not the nympho character she plays...she's kind of dippy in the movie. It's her "real life" looks and personality, cute, but very approachable. Approachability, if that's a word, is important! I'm afraid my wife would probably veto me though. Such is married life.



What else, oh yes, we are off to Europe next weekend. Last September we went on a tour of Switzerland for eight days (went through Globus Tours), including a tiny bit of northern Italy and the tiny country of Liechtenstein. It was my first trip to Europe, and second for my wife, first for those countries for both of us. This year, I made all of the Europe arrangements myself, plane, rail tickets, and hotels. Yes, there will be many pictures on here when I return! We will fly in to Munich, spend two nights there, train to Salzburg, a night there, train to Vienna, two nights there, and then all the way back past Munich to the town of Hechingen, near Stuttgart, where my cousin Jordan, his German wife and stepdaughter live. They have lived in Germany for about five years now I think. The trip will be great fun and the total price for the whole thing is exactly $1,590 each, which includes all transportation, hotels, and breakfasts. It will almost certainly come in under last year's total, and give us more free time. Of course staying at my cousin's helps too, but still it would be quite a bit less. Here is a picture of Schloss Hohenzollern, which is in Hechingen. We'll be taking a tour of that for sure.



The very next weekend we will be flying to Albany, NY for the wedding of one of three people I am still friends with from high school. They live in Boston, but I guess his fiance is from the Albany area originally. That is the aforementioned "flying on 9/11" trip, on the way back. Big deal, I say. Just please make sure the plane isn't going to lose cabin pressure is really all I ask. Oh, and then a few weeks after that I fly up to Rochester for my tenth college reunion. That should be a lot of fun too. I will actually be solo for that one though because Chris has a big event at work that she has to prepare for that happens the next week. I've never flown this much in that short a period before. I guess I'll get more used to air travel. Safer than driving, plus I get to nap. Anyone else got anything exciting going on? Do tell!

The Wrath Of (People That Think They Are) God

Maybe Frist isn't as unreasonable as I thought. When you get the thumbs down from the evangelicals, it makes me think that maybe he's doing something right. Support potentially life-saving research after seeing how it is done, and *gasp* studying the issue in more detail? Allowing a compromise instead of further partisan bickering? Can't have that! Consumed by their own wrath. I suppose it's fitting.

Something Oxymoronic About W Talking About "Intelligent Design"

I'm not going to actually write much more about that topic because it's just silly. "Species had to have been created by a creator because stuff's...well, stuff's too complicated...or something." Sorry Gomer, that's not science. Not that it will stop you from thinking it is. That goes double for you too, W. People fear what they don't understand, and you really don't understand it. If not for 9/11 you'd be barely a footnote in history. Hopefully Mark Warner will be able to undo the damage you have done to critical reasoning and research if elected in 2008.

So my new job as you have surely noticed is leaving me a lot less time for blogging. I actually had a really good training session today where for the first time I felt pretty close to being a subject matter expert on the things that I work on. That was a good feeling. The ramp-up time for this job is longer than any job before, but that's good too because that means it's complex, at least moderately vital, and it's not the kind of job that trained chimps can do.



I'm really starting to look forward to my Germany and Austria trip in less than four weeks. You may recall that we are going to Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, and Hechingen (near Stuttgart, where my cousin and his family live). I'll take LOTS of pictures, and post some of the better ones here.

In baseball news, aside from the better news that football is starting soon, what the hell is wrong with the Nationals??? Even worse, what the hell is wrong with the Orioles? They are tanking even worse, but I care even less, so I guess that's not so bad.

I'm currently enjoying a fascinating documentary on the Battle of the Bulge that I found on Netflix during my exercising time. It's all very interesting. The Germans had started near radio silence before the attack because Hitler was not telling much of anyone much of anything. He was of course extremely paranoid and thought that even some of his closest officers might be spies. We intrepreted this as "giving up" or at least a sign that he was conceding eventual defeat. Instead he was massing a quarter million troops for a counter-attack on a line that was thinly defended with mostly green troops across Belgium and Luxembourg. The Germans actually pushed quite a ways into Belgium before Patton swung around from his move on Berlin to halt the advance. It was a mix of complacency and confusion that caused the battle to be so costly for us.

Frist Sees The Light!

Yes, it had to happen sooner or later. Frist comes to his senses "suddenly" about stem cell research. Well that's good. It took several years, but he finally figured out that it's a good idea to do it. You don't become the leader in medical research by letting other countries beat you to the punch.

That "Energy Bill" is about the biggest piece of pork to come out of Congress, in all of US history, and that's saying a lot. We are giving energy companies billions in tax breaks at a time when they are making record profits, because we hope that maybe they will spend some of it on environmentally friendly projects and on producing more oil in the US? That's funny. That would be really, really funny, if it weren't also so incredibly naive. Republicans should be enormously upset about this nearly unprecedented level of pork too, but for some reason, they are not.

By the way, what's up with the Nationals and the Orioles in baseball? They were both leading their divisions, and now they aren't even in the wild card driver's seat! What happened???

Vegemite Is Australian For "Raw Sewage"

A co-worker and his wife who is from Australia just got back from there, and he brought back some Vegemite and some Timtams to work today. The Timtams are sort of like the Australian Oreo, the most popular cookie type food in Australia. They are a couple of rectangular wafers with a thin, soft, pudding-like layer of chocolate in between them, and the whole thing is dipped in a layer of regular chocolate. They're excellent!



For those of you that have no idea what Vegemite is, or who have only heard of it before, like me, oh it's quite interesting. It's about the consistency of butter at room temperature, and Aussies do actually like to spread it on bread and have it for breakfast. It smells, well, kind of salty, a hint of soy sauce maybe. You spread it on the bread or whatever you want to spread it on, but not a thick layer like peanut butter or jelly. Then you taste it, and that's when the real fun begins. It tastes like a mixture of soy sauce held together with that gelatin-like stuff on the outside of the meat in a can of spam, and a hint of pureed anchovies. It's awful. Eat it only if you want to be able to say you've had it. I don't plan to ever have it again.

A Thoughtful Evolution Article By A Vatican Correspondent

I got this article from a friend of mine who has does canon law and works for the Las Vegas Diocese. It is very thoughtful, and it dispels some of the myths about evolution by those that dislike it because they think it is diametrically opposed to Christianity.

So it looks like John Roberts may be confirmed with relative ease. I'm prepared to see how he rules on things. We'll see.

I also saw some statistics on schools, and it's no wonder so many Republicans think that public education is a failure. The better schools have a tendency (taken as a state average), to be in blue states. Go figure. Hmmm, it might have something to do with the level of commitment toward public education. Yes, it's expensive to educate kids. It's also expensive not to.

Justice John Roberts?

So this is apparently the guy that Bush wants for the Supreme Court now. I know little about him. I am trying to find some info on him now. I imagine he is probably anti-abortion and generally very conservative, but I will do some checking. There is a brief bio in the CNN story, and another here on the Fox News version if you prefer. Apparently he has recently said, "There's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent." I guess we'll see, won't we?

Some Things Haven't Changed

Republicans are complaining about the media being biased against them. The Vice President himself devoted part of a speech to how the media is making too much of the war opposition. The patriotism of people that do not support the President is often and openly questioned. The year? 1969. Some things haven't changed. There are few people that make me angrier than those that suggest that Democrats don't love this country every bit as much as Republicans. Slapping an american flag on your SUV doesn't make you a patriot. Wanting your leaders to do right by the country does. Of course the two sides have a different idea of what is right, and that's fine, but don't ever question my patriotism.

I've been watching a documentary on Vietnam as my exercising companion for the last few weeks. It's quite engrossing, and I'm finally almost done with the ten or so hours of content. There were some interesting people featured in it. It was the "American Experience" series by the way, filmed in the 80s, which makes it a bit dated, but it's history so it's pretty thorough. Henry Kissinger was heavily interviewed. John Negroponte was interviewed a few times as well. He seems to be the consummate diplomat, and quite respectable. John Kerry was also interviewed, and spoke well. Yes, the one that was dragged through the mud last year, that one. Anyway, it was all very interesting. It seems that from we could have gotten what we had wanted if we didn't keep supporting various murderous dictators in the south. I don't know what we were thinking with some of these people. How could we have expected that they would inspire confidence in the populace?

Driving Past An Iraq War Death?

I was on my way to work this morning and I passed a hearse. Normally, no big deal. I did notice that it actually seemed to have a casket in it though, which I don't see every day, but again not terribly unusual. However as I drew closer to it, I noticed that it had an American flag on the casket, the car was labeled "Military", and the car had government tags. It was headed in the direction of Dulles airport which was only a few miles from where I saw it, and I suspect that was where it was headed. I wonder if it was an Iraq casualty, or if it was someone else that was just getting a military funeral.

Speaking of untimely death, I just found out that Freda Sorce, (the wife of Don Geronimo of the Don and Mike talk radio show), died in a head-on collision near Ocean City, MD. That's really sad. They often had her on the radio, and she seemed like a genuinely nice person. It's all very depressing. Anyone have any good news?

Karl Rove, And Republican Boredom

Yes, it's too early to say for certain, but given Scott McLellan's verbal mind tricks at the press conferences, it is looking very much like it was Karl Rove that leaking the name of the undercover agent. You'll recall that our "fearless leader" W, said that whoever did it would be fired. Will he get his chance to make good on it? It's fun to watch Republicans squirm when they realize that their friends are not the magnificent people they make them out to be. Plus, come on, it's Karl Rove. Is anyone surprised? Really?

Oh, and this is another little gem I heard about. Here is the story from a Republican blogger, if you prefer. Tom Davis and John Sweeney are trying to push baseball around by issuing veiled threats about how baseball should not allow George Soros to co-own a team, and that if he is allowed to co-own a team, then maybe Congress would come down on them in some way. Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, said today that the decision before them is not political. Good for him. It had to be said. First it's flag-burning, because you know it's such a terrible epidemic here, now they don't want people with opposing political views to buy some things, next thing you know they will start passing ordinances on the length of male fingernails out of boredom. This is what happens when the party in control gets power and then gets complacent. They get busy, then they get bored, then they get stupid, and then they get voted out. I'm just waiting for the last part to happen now. It won't come a moment too soon.

Because What IS That Thing???

OK, I just had to share this one, sent to me by a co-worker today. Even my wife, who loves nearly all animals, was taken aback. Apparently it won the "World's Ugliest Dog Contest". Very, very frightening.



On a more somber note, I hope they find the people who bombed London today. Why not write more about it? What's to tell? What else can I say? I have little to add to the story. I just hope they find who did it.