Tanka

  Waiting for the sun
  Huffing and puffing,
    the whistle blows
      From the empty platform
   to the glistening sea

Sep. 30, 2005

Moving out

I am alone, and sort of will be for the next month.

The Fates conspired to give me something I wanted, but in a way which is more painful than expected. Such are the Fates.

My unit is drilling this weekend. I won't be there. Maia, however left this morning for Los Angeles to see her tailor, for some shifts for faire. This is a good weekend for it because our tailor is, sort of, slack right now. She also is heading down to see her sister on the occaision of her sister's birthday.

Me, I have to be in Sacramento at 0800 Sunday morning to do something related to organising California's contribution to Katrina relief. I'll be there for a month, and the schedule is completely opaque. Rumor has it they are doing 24 hour ops, Heel and Toe (which means Port and Starboard, to Navy/Marine types [or at least the old farts who taught me things], and twelve on, twelve off to the rest of the world). If we are doing that about all I'm going to see of my hotel room is the shower and the bed.

It means I probably miss the start of what I see as the Holiday Season (a Hallowe'en party at friends) and I won't be home for a month.

It also means I am not likely to get to celebrate our anniversary until Nov. This sucks. We've, to date, mananged to spend it where we met (for certain definitions of where we met), but this year I'll probably not get the time.

So Maia needing to get the train at 0700 this morning, well it stank.

Afterwards I headed up to Avila Beach, near Dinosaur Cave, and took pictures of pelicans, cormorants and seagulls. We'll see how they come out, and if I can select a few presentable ones before I make the schlepp to Sacto tomorrow.

Poor Bugman

I have to grab a shower, and then get a haircut. Were I going to drill I might be able to blow off the shower, but since I am rather going to OTAG (the State HQ) I really have to look sharp. Not that I care too much what the folks there think. I've seen the yahoos that come out of OTAG, and lets just say that some of them need to make a more careful reading of AR 670-1, Uniform and Appearance.

On the other hand, this when I show up I have a reputation to uphold, mine (which is frighteningly larger than I might prefer) and the Bn's. To paraphrase Sgt. Jelal, the Bn. has a good rep, and I expect to see it shine; so making sure I have a good haircut is the least I can do. First impressions matter.

But, Tom Delay; the guy's a peach. His supporters are lying about Ronnie Earle, to the point of saying some of the Dems he's prosecuted are Republicans, in the interest of making it look he's just being a partisan. Could he? Yeah. As the saying goes, given enough time, and money, a DA can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, but Ronnie Earle has a pretty good reputation too, and most of his cases have been against Dems. This is a guy who initiated a formal charge against himself for not getting a filing in on time.

This is like getting the ticket in the mail late (as Maia did this summer, by about two-weeks) and not taking the freebie the clerk of the court gives you. He went in, confessed, got a stupified look, was fined; paid it out of pocket, and left.

The rank and file of the right-wing, are being, well, rank. Some going to far as to say this prosecution, if pursued with any vigor will lead to civil war.

As our Sister Toldjah noted earlier, the "indictment" of Tom Delay is entirely bogus - from what I've read, Tom Delay didn't know about the perfectly legal transaction he is accused of conspiring to make. We have now left entirely the field of normal political conflict and entered a twilight world where fantasy is presented as fact and the only standard of conduct is "will it work?". This is not the actions of a political Party engaged in seeking a majority - it is the action of a Party determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself...it is, in short, the stuff from which civil wars are made...

I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge - you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received. If you can't defeat Tom Delay in the electoral field, then you will simply have to accept him as Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives - and you'd better start accepting political reality before things get really bad.

That's from a poster at, Blogs for Bush (you can find it yourself if you want to read it. I'll tell you about them, but not link).

This post at Daily Kos gives the guy a dose of what for.

But DeLay, well he takes the cake himself with his "list". If you are having flashbacks of a balding guy in a cheap suit standing at a lectern and waving pieces of paper around while explaining he knew of communists in the State Dept., well it's like that.

Speaking to Wolf Blitzer:

DELAY: Ronnie Earle does this to all his political enemies. He did it to conservative Democrats. He did it — and he does it to Republicans. And particularly in my case, he did it in conjunction and working with the Democrat leadership here in Washington, D.C.

BLITZER: Well, that’s an explosive charge you make, that there was some sort of collusion or conspiracy between Ronnie Earle and Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders in the Congress. What evidence, if any, do you have to back that up?

DELAY: It’s very good evidence, that they announced this strategy publicly, they put it on their website and this strategy is in their fund-raising letters.

BLITZER: Who specifically — who announced this?

DELAY: The DCCC, the Democratic Campaign Committee, run by Chairman Rahm Emanuel.

BLITZER: They announced that they were working with Ronnie Earle to get you an indictment?

DELAY: No, they didn’t do that.

BLITZER: What evidence is there they consulted with Ronnie Earle, that they talked to him or they had any dealings with him whatsoever?

DELAY: That evidence is coming. But the point is, they announced the strategy, and it’s very funny that two weeks ago, when Ronnie Earle said publicly that I was not part of the investigation, that I hadn’t been investigated, and then turns around in two days — over the weekend — he now is going to indict me. It is quite obvious, because the Democrats announced this strategy. And we all know how this place works. I’m sure they worked closely with Ronnie Earle on this strategy.

BLITZER: When is the evidence going to be made available? You say it’s coming. When are you going to make that evidence available?

DELAY: When it’s timely.

BLITZER: What does that mean?

DELAY: When it’s timely


There you go, the "vast Left Wing Conspiracy" will be revealed, when it's timely. (you can see whole exchange, if you have a strong stomach, here in quicktime).

We know this is a hatchet job because, as DeLay explains it, he was never given the chance to tell his side of the story to the Grand Jury.

"In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, he said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle never talked to him or asked him to testify.

"Never asking me to testify, never doing anything for two years," DeLay said in the interview. "And then, on the last day of his fourth or sixth grand jury, he indicts me. Why? Because his goal was to make me step down as majority leader."

Only, well it seems he was.

Dick DeGuerin, the attorney representing DeLay, said Thursday that DeLay actually was invited to appear before the grand jury, where he would have been under oath.

Houston Chronicle

Now, were I his att'y, I too would reccomend that he not speak to a Grand Jury, and certainly not under oath. Not only can a skilled questioner trip one up (and when one is accused of a crime, one rarely performs at one's best) but from what I've heard of DeLay's style, he'd be likely to antagonise the jury, which might make a weak case stronger, and cause an idictment where it might otherwise be ignored.

But that isn't what he's saying, he's saying he was never invited to speak, and that's a lie.

Today I heard him spinning the case that it was all a sham, a mockery of justice because what he did was "common practice." Well, it might be, but in Texas that practice is illegal. I could swear I recall that DeLay (class of '94, the people who borught us, "The Contract with America") were all about rooting out the corruption that had seeped into Washington. I recall that the present occupant of the White House was going to restore honor to that building, and I would expect him to want to see that same restorationj take place; when needed, in the Halls of Congress.

And I know, because I've been told that this administration is in favor of accountability. Why the President has said that as soon has the White House gets done investigating what went wrong in New Orleans; before, during, and after Katrina, why he'll cop to whatever they tell him was his fault.

So I know Tom isn't trying to come to us, as a grown-up saying, "everyone was doing it," because that's not the way it works.

You break the law, you pay the price.