I love barbecue! I get sauce all over my face and smile big. It's a red neck thing...sorry. I like to think of myself as an environmentalist, too. Some body has to save the world from boneheads like the ones in charge right now. There's a conflict...always is! Try this from Grist:

"In fact, a 2003 study found that Texans, who like to say that they "live and breathe barbecue," may be doing exactly that. In Houston -- with some of the worst air quality in the country -- meat smoke wafting up from restaurants and grills makes up a somewhat significant part of the pollution mix."

So that means that Bush is not one hundred percent responsible for the lousy air quality in Houston and the rest of Texas. If you are a Republican that lets him completely off the hook to you, since he is never actually responsible for anything bad that happens in your mind. It's Clinton! Well actually in this case, it's dead pigs!

Yum!

Well, we here in Tennessee get a fair bit of bad air contribution from Texas. While it would be bad enough if all we got was Tom Delay, the poster boy for pesticide misuse, the Texas air is not enough by itself so we have TVA and 1000 foot smoke stacks to help make it hard to be a living thing all the way up to the peaks of the Smoky Mountains.

I wonder about the things I do and how they affect the rest of the world. I would never be able to be a good conservative. Now I find out that my gas grill is a boon to the environment:

Though barbecue purists would probably fight to the death to keep their charcoal grills sizzling, the truth is that natural gas and propane are hands-down the most eco-friendly. Both charcoal and wood burn dirty, producing tiny soot particles that pollute the air and can worsen chronic heart and lung problems.

Further bad news...Beer is not an antidote! Dang!

http://www.gristmagazine.com/possessions/possessions082404.asp?source=weekly


******

I may have to come to grips with the fact that people I have respected in the past are willing to be lying weasels to help their side win, regardless of the long term cost to America. I voted against Bob Dole but I respected him.

I'm over that. Bob Dole is now officially a Republican weasel. He told a lie and then refused to take it back when confronted.

Alessandra Stanley writes in the Times:

"Mr. Dole suggested (on CNN) that John Kerry was in a rush to obtain his Purple Hearts to meet a regulation that allowed soldiers to leave the war zone after winning three. "I mean the first one, whether he ought to have a purple heart - He got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months..."

Bob Dole lied!

Right on National TV and should have been branded as such right then and there. Wolf Blitzer knew exactly what the dates of Kerry's war wounds! Kerry recieved the Purple Heart for being wounded in action on Dec. 2, 1968, Feb. 20, 1969, and March 13, 1969. Hardly the same day, and hardly the way one wounded war hero should treat another. Blitzer did not confront him right away but waited until later on a phone conversation:

"I wasn't trying to be mean spirited. I was trying to say all these guys on the Republican side just can't be Republican liars."

Well, yes they can, and as it turns out, yes they are, and Bob Dole knows it! Welcome to the ranks of Republican liars, Bob! You, and what's left of your honor, aren't going to fit in very well.

Now George Bush has come forward and called the anti-Kerry ad "False and Libelous"

This is the same guy who said, "We've found the Weapons of Mass Destruction." Of course that turned out to be a weather balloon trailer but hey, Republican Weasels, remember?



Peace,

Steve