a friendly cyclist!

Spotted the same guy twice yesterday, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and he had a big grin on his face when he saw T., each time.

well _that_ explains a lot about conservatives

Craig T. Nelson of "Coach" fame on Fox News, as seen clipped by the Daily Show last night for Your Moment of Zen: after saying that people who don't make it in business go bankrupt, no one helps them out (dude, do you _know_ what used to happen to debtors who couldn't pay up? prison? and without food, either, unless family brought them some. and that was in societies that didn't kill or enslave them), he followed up with the priceless: "I've been on welfare and food stamps. No one helped me out."

Really? Those welfare payments and food stamps to feed yourself and possibly your family? Manna from heaven. Even God expects credit for manna. He will stomp your ass if you don't show appropriate gratitude.

We should stomp Craig T. Nelson's ass. Similarly.

what happens to political parties in the US

There have been other parties in the US. The Republican party, the party of Lincoln, rose from the ashes of two parties which died in the leadup to the Civil War, because they were unwilling to take up the cause of the abolitionists. The Republican party had no intention of taking up abolition. Neither did Lincoln. In the end, the war was handed to them anyway, started before Lincoln took office.

And no one was dumb enough to fight that war and _not_ end slavery. I mean, duh.

I feel like there's an analogy here somewhere. I'm not sure what it is. But I feel like there are some relevant lessons to be learned.

ETA: And it's fun watching someone at US News distance from a whack job at the Atlantic Monthly, and someone writing in a Salt Lake City paper explain how different Utah is from Kansas.