Friday orchid blogging

Phrag Wossner Super Grande

This is a bloom I grew early last year, I think. The plant is a phragmipedium - you remember those, with the blooms so many of you hate. And this one has a darker parent on one side, thus the flowers are dark red, which I find rather cool. It also has rather long petals (I think they call them sepals in the orchid world, though I may be getting that one wrong). Anyway, it's a pretty cool plant, not terribly hard to grow - it likes it moist, you never let the growing medium dry out, and try to give it as much sun as it can handle - near full-sun indoors in the winter, full sun outdoor in the early summer, then dappled sun as August approaches (or you'll burn the plant). Also, as with many orchids, to help promote flowering give it a good six weeks, if you can, of temps dropping at nights by at least 15 degrees from where they were during the day - nights in the 50s are perfect. The flowers take a while to form, and I think the flowers last several weeks - I got two flowers out of this one stalk at the same time.

Anyway, like I said, pretty cool plant. Oh, and you have to be careful about it rotting at the base of the plant. Water it before noon, and avoid letting water sit in the top of the plant.

Enjoy Read More......

Open Thread

With the court ordered release of the Abu Ghraib photos, may we suggest the President's weekend kickoff shot...

Fire And Torture

Scale ingredients to servings
1 shot tequila
10 drops Tabasco® sauce
5 splashes lime juice

Pour all the contents into a shot glass at once.

I hope this addresses the desire for a more Texas style shot. Hey, I was just trying to broaden Bush's horizons!

Open thread away! I'm watching the Red Sox game... Read More......

Open Thread

Austin blogging...here for the wedding of my friend, Bruce Elfant.

Good time to be in Austin. Read More......

Grand jury foreman defends Delay indictment

News 8 Austin

"I like his aggressiveness and everything, and I had nothing against the House majority man, but I felt that we had enough evidence, not only me, but the other grand jury members," Gibson said.

The grand jury foreman also takes great exception to accusations that he and 11 other grand jury members followed the lead of Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle instead of following the evidence.

"It was not a rubber stamp deal. It was not an overnight deal. If we needed extra information, it was provided to us," Gibson said.

Read More......

GOP candidate distances herself from Bush

The rats are leaving. Read More......

Some of Bill Bennett's "best friends" are black women

Yes, where would the black community be without heroes like Bill Bennett:

BENNETT: Let me just tell you, when it comes to abortion, my wife's program, Best Friends, has kept more young women from having abortions because they don't get pregnant because they take her good counsel...

HANNITY: Let me...

BENNETT: Than the entire black caucus. She has done more for inner city black girls than the entire black caucus. So I will not bow my head to any of these people.

More on this controversy here. Read More......

Lazy afternoon open thread

Man, feels like Indian Summer already, or finally. What's in the news? Read More......

Conservative blogger says "dump delay"

I just wanted to post this because it's interesting, and I know Josh and like him, he went with me on that voyage-of-the-damned to Scotland. He writes for Redstate.org, a VERY conservative blog.

Josh argues that the last thing the right needs to do is wrap itself around Delay, and thus go down in flames with him. I think Josh is right, about that point at least. In any case, it's interesting to see some conservatives suggesting that Delay should be dumped.

"Conservative leaders across the country are working now to make sure that any politician who hopes to have conservative support in the future had better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay."

-- Morton Blackwell, 31 March 2005

Good call, Morton. Now that the indictment of the erstwhile House Majority Leader is an accomplished fact, the wisdom of chaining the conservative movement to Tom DeLay is apparent even to the most fervent of the true believers. The fall of Tom DeLay is not merely a parable of hubris in one man: it is the tale of ego begetting ill-judgment in the conservative movement at large.

The pity is that Republicans who care more about their party than about the cult of personality attendant to its key figures have long warned of this day. We knew all along that Tom DeLay was a bully -- ask the Heritage Foundation about his penchant for petty grudges. We knew all along that he was, on a fundamental level, unprincipled -- ask him about the fat in the Federal budget. We knew all along that he was mostly interested in power for its own sake -- recall, please, that he sought a House rules change to protect his leadership position in this very circumstance. And we knew that if it came to an indictment, it would be the end...

More on this from the DCCC. Read More......

Open thread

No Sci-Fi Friday.... sigh. Read More......

AP: Army in worst recruiting slump in decades

Hmmm... think we can link this to the body armor issue? A perfect storm is brewing around this issue. Will anyone pick it up and run with it? Read More......

Note to Congress: Grow some cojones. Here's your chance

I've been thinking some more about my post, below, about the fact that our troops are STILL being forced to buy their own body armor.

It's time for Democrats to take an obvious issue handed to them by God himself and run with it in an intelligent, strategic way.

We shouldn't be offering stupid amendments to help the soldiers get reimbursed for armor they already purchased (that's the current Democratic plan). The soldiers are STILL buying their own armor. If they can find the armor to buy, our focus shouldn't be solely on reimbursing them, it should be on buying the damn armor now - they can find a vendor, why can't we? And just as important, maybe we need to provide each combat soldier with a voucher so they can buy their armor, rather than expecting them to find the money and then we reimburse them (and oh, if they don't have the money, too bad, they don't get armor under the current reimbursement scheme).

This is the kind of issue you shut down congress for. I have a very sick feeling that the Dems will do what they always do. Come up with an amendment. Offer it in a vacuum. Don't do any grassroots, any great media, no public events, and absolutely no coordination with the blogosphere other than handing us a press release. You'll simply offer the amendment up (Hillary and her independent commission amendment come to mind), let it get voted down, then think you've won.

Please, wake up Democrats. If you don't get it on an issue this obvious, then you aren't going to get it until we basically throw you guys out of office and put some Dems with a backbone and a brain in power. How many election failures do we have to have before we finally have that little revolution we all keep talking about? These guys on the Hill miss the same opportunities over and over and over again, yet we leave them all in power, and then we wonder why we keep losing.

Please, don't just offer a stupid amendment. Run with this, shut down the building for our troops. Demand that a good amendment, whatever it is, be passed or NOTHING proceeds in Congress (other than perhaps hurricane relief).

And finally, what would the Republicans do if Clinton had short-changed our troops during war time? Do you think all they'd do is offer a stupid amendment? No, they'd have an entire campaign laid out with their far-right non-profits working the grassroots and all the media (talk radio, TV, etc.), they'd launch a filibuster against any and all legislation until Bill Clinton finally stopped killing our troops, they'd have public events with soldiers, and soldiers families, and veterans, begging the president to stop sending our kids out to die without the armor they need. Hell, they'd probably start calling for the impeachment of the commander in chief.

That's how you organize a real campaign. It's not offering one single stupid amendment and hoping the earth will move. You have to make the earth move, not wait for the earth to move for you. Read More......

Our soldiers in Iraq are STILL being forced to buy THEIR OWN body armor

Any US military out there reading this, or their friends and families? Once again, you're hearing of this outrage from a liberal blog. Not from Republicans, who are the ones you keep thinking care more about our troops, but from Democrats. This is absolutely outrageous. I may be upset about the snuff-porn scandal we've been reporting on all week, but that doesn't mean I want our troops to die in battle because we haven't given them the equipment they need. Yes, I think this war has become a very sad joke, but leaving our men and women as sitting ducks is hardly the answer.

Where is your president? Where is YOUR Secretary of Defense? Where is your Republican congress?

Nowhere.

Ask yourself how many times this issue has come up over the past several years, and how many times Bush and Rumsfeld lied to you about the problem being fixed in a couple of months.

Operation Iraqi Freedom? Try, Operation Iraqi Katrina.

Nearly a year after Congress demanded action, the Pentagon still hasn't figured out a way to reimburse U.S. troops for body armor and equipment they purchased to better protect themselves while serving in Iraq.

For Marine Sgt. Todd Bowers that extra equipment — a high-tech rifle scope bought by his father for $600 and a $100 pair of goggles — turned out to be a life-or-death purchase. And he has never been reimbursed.

Bowers, who is from Arizona but going to school in Washington, D.C., was shot by a sniper during his second tour in Iraq, but the round lodged in his scope, and his goggles protected his eyes from the shrapnel that struck his face.

"We weren't provided those going to Iraq," he said yesterday. "But they literally saved my life."

He and other soldiers and their parents are still spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for armor they say the military won't provide. One U.S. senator said yesterday he will try again to force the Pentagon to obey the reimbursement law it opposed from the outset and has so far not implemented.

Read More......

DeLay to be "very powerful adviser" to GOP

Great, he can advise them all on how to get indicted:

Indicted Texas Rep. Tom DeLay will serve as a "very powerful adviser" to the Republican leadership while he battles the conspiracy charge that forced him to step aside as House majority leader, a GOP spokesman said Thursday.

"His experience and insight for over a decade of the Republican majority is invaluable to our leadership and to our members and will be used wisely," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

Read More......

Open Thread

So much to talk about... Read More......

Judith Miller testifying this morning

Scooter Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff, waived his confidentiality:

New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released from jail late yesterday and is scheduled to testify this morning before a federal grand jury investigating whether any government officials illegally leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media, according to lawyers involved in the case.

Lots of drama associated with Judith Miller. Bottom line is that it looks like Fitzgerald's case is wrapping up:

One lawyer said it could become clear as early as next week whether Fitzgerald plans to indict anyone or has negotiated a plea bargain.

DeLay this week. Rove next week? Read More......

Open thread

And off to bed.

(No threadbots were harmed in the creation of this thread.) Read More......