Back from vacation

For about 10 days, Shelly and I were away from Houston's August heat, exploring Oregon. It was beautiful. Temperatures seldom above 80, often in the 50s. Ocean, mountains, big old evergreen forests, wineries... What a great change of pace.

Came home to an answering-machine message from the director of the Theater program at Rice (I didn't know they had one!) She was inviting me to audition for The Threepenny Opera at Rice. She'd got my name from Rebecca Udden, at Main Street Theatre. It flabbergasts me to know that Ms. Udden even remembers me. I never know what's going to lead to something else, or when.

Paid Protesters

Amazing. I've captured a PDF-converted-to-PNG below, for posterity.

Think it's an isolated incident? Think again. Verum Serum does some digging to find who these people are.

Meanwhile, Obama works out a quid pro quo with Big Pharma. Who's in cahoots with industry, again?

Worrying

Not only do I think that "health care reform" is likely to be a horrific boondoggle, I find it disturbing that the political majority are working so hard to marginalize and dismiss those who oppose it. I get the strong sense that Democrats believe that people who are not on board with their agenda comprise oh, maybe 10% of the population. Just the far-right extremists, you know. A small but well-financed group of agitators out for themselves who are staging protests that aren't real, and who are stating concerns that aren't real, and who must be excluded or subdued. Vilified. Or at least informed upon.

You know who else was maligned and scapegoated this way? That's right, and look what happened to them: they got Israel! So I don't know why I said I'm worrying. The future looks greaaaat.

But just in case you've never met anyone who thinks Barack Obama is a bonehead full of bad ideas starting with his first executive decision (choosing Joe Biden as vice president), we exist.