SportsGuy Says: America Has a Strong Moral Responsibility!

You asked what land I love the best, Iowa, tis Iowa,
The fairest State of all the west, Iowa, O! Iowa,
From yonder Mississippi’s stream
To where Missouri’s waters gleam
O! fair it is as poet’s dream, Iowa, in Iowa.

Song of Iowa words by S.H.M. Byers to the traditional melody of “O, Tannenbaum.”

Wow! Another beautiful day in the neighborhood! It is currently 52* with clear skies at 8:00 PM and all is well on a Friday night. So quiet and DARK compared to last week. There is no spotlight shining in my window in anticipation of partying rioters. Fall is winding down.

But hey, the flowers in the courtyard are still blooming! Seriously, the impatiens and marigolds and other flowers are still out there putting forth the color and it’s NOVEMBER. It’s FIFTY-TWO DEGREES FAHRENHEIT outside at eight o’clock in the evening! In WISCONSIN!

What’s with that? All together now: GLOBAL WARMING!

How much do you want to bet that the Republicans change their stance on the issue of Global Warming as more and more public opinion polls bring in results like this one in Iowa?

Poll: Iowa Sportsmen Say Global Warming Must Be Curbed

DES MOINES, Iowa, November 2, 2007 (ENS) – Three-quarters of Iowa hunters and anglers responding to a new public opinion poll say America has a strong moral responsibility to act now to limit the worst effects of global warming. The statewide poll was released Wednesday by the National Wildlife Federation.

The poll shows that of the sportsmen who say they will vote in January’s caucuses, only nine percent have decided who they will support. And 66 percent of respondents said conservation is just as important to them as gun rights issues, if not more important.

W00t! You Go Iowa!

The people have spoken; let the people be heard! To the polls everyone! To the polls!

B

It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood…

It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?…

Fred M. Rogers

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood folks, just a beautiful day for October. The sky is partly cloudy with those big puffy cumulus clouds you can lay on your back on the lawn and see lions and tigers and bears in. The temperature is 85* as we speak at 2:33 in the afternoon and I should be outside enjoying this bounty.

Instead I’m going to put the buzzkill on all of my readers just as I have on everyone I’ve been talking to all week. Isn’t this wonderful weather we’ve been having all fall? Let’s hear it for Global Warming!

Hurray!

Because you know that the climate in Wisconsin has been changing gradually over the past twenty-five years, don’t you? I mean how could you fail to notice?

How could you not notice that you have to pull your winter coats out of storage later and later every year and take them to the cleaners earlier and earlier? How can you deny that winters aren’t as cold and the snow isn’t as frequent or as deep. How can you deny that the lakes aren’t freezing over hard enough or thick enough to drive a car onto the way they did years a go?

How could you discount the summer droughts in June and July that kill off the crops in the fields? Because the farmers up here have never had to irrigate but they are considering learning how now.  They are going to have to adapt or lose their farms.  It’s a big investment irrigation, but they probably have no choice.

How can you fail to notice that when the rains do come they come in torrents that drown out the spring crops? Then maybe too much for the truck farms so all the vegetable that those farmers who have been irrigating and who depend on taking their to the farmer’s market get ruined?

The question is not IF the climate is changing. The question is how much humans are contributing to that change and to what extent we should make changes to prevent the destruction of our environment. This planet is our home people. This is it, all we have. Our life…

Yep, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood… An Inconvenient Truth…

B

Making History Blogging For Hope September 27th 2007

BlogCatalog has designated today as Social Networks Blogging For Hope/Bloggers Blogging Against Abuse. Copywrite,Ink has jumped on the bandwagon and is offering a $250 cash first prize to be donated to the charity of your choice as well as premium BlogCatalog services.
You can write bout any kind of abuse. You can write about child abuse, animal abuse, substance abuse, environmental abuse, even Conservative Republican abuse. Whatever strikes your fancy. Heavens knows there is plenty to write about!

Please check out my entry in this link to

The Crones Daily Groan

B

The Heat Is On-on! The Heat is On the Street!

The heat is on, on the street
Inside your head, on every beat
And the beat’s so loud, deep inside
The pressure’s high, just to stay alive
‘Cause the heat is on

Oh-wo-ho, oh-wo-ho
Caught up in the action I’ve been looking out for you
Oh-wo-ho, oh-wo-ho
(Tell me can you feel it)
(Tell me can you feel it)
(Tell me can you feel it)
The heat is on, the heat is on, the heat is on
the heat is on Oh it’s on the street, the heat is – on.

Glen Frey 1985 Beverly Hills Cop Sundtrack

Well, it’s official folks, we set records for heat in June in Madison, Wisconsin and we are suffering up here. Now I know all of you southerners are going to laugh at me/us when I tell you that we reached a high of 88* on Friday. This is highly unusual this early in the season here in WI and we’re all worrying about those high electricity bills that will come in the mail next month here at the Three Threes.

We’re not wimps, I tell you. We’re NOT! But our roads might be. The Beltline buckled on Thursday causing traffic delays. I won’t call it congestion because according to another blogger we don’t have problems with traffic congestion in Madison. I guess the only real problem we have is we just don’t have enough streets going across the Isthmus or ways to get across the lakes.
Really we aren’t wimps. Our blood is thicker to hold on to any little bit of heat when things turn nasty in the winter and the wind chill index plunges to ninety below zero. hmmm… Does anyone remember when the last time that happened was? I know it happened in 1982 and 1989 and maybe in 1991 or maybe it was ’92 because I had to be somewhere important and my car(s) wouldn’t start. Nobodies cars would start unless they were under shelter and even some of them wouldn’t start.

hmmmm… There might be something to this global warming talk but to be conservative we better form another committee and spend some money to study the trends of the trends of the trends just in case we missed a trend. You think? But hey, I never liked those old cold winters anyway so I’m all for a warm-up. Is that selfish of me?

But back to warm summers. It started getting humid Thursday night and they started talking about how things were going to get worse over the weekend. Ugh… It’s not the heat that bother me you see, it’s the humidity. I swear, Wisconsin has some wicked humidity. It’s almost worse than Florida humidity when it sets in and the air stops moving. Seriously, a butterfly can’t fly on those days!

My son will come and get Patches and me if it gets to the point where I need to be in air conditioning but we’d rather stay home. Well I’d be fine going to visit the kids but Patches and my son’s dog Poser (or Po as we all call him) don’t get along well. It might be because Po is a Miniature Doberman who weighs less than Patches but thinks he twice as big and thinks she would be a good chew toy. Plus for some reason she doesn’t like anyone who is less than 4 ft tall and that poses a problem with my Gr-Son and my son’s friend’s kid who always want to pet her and play with her. Plus my son is allergic and doesn’t really want her there. The whole situation gets really ummmm… testy. That’s a good word, testy.

Going to D’s is an ordeal for everyone concerned. If Patches was a normal cat I’d pile a bunch of food in her bowl and turn on the bathroom faucet for her and she’d kiss me goddbye at the door, then I’d come waltzing home again in a couple of days and she’d be like “What, you’re home already? I haven’t finished properly ravaging the houseplants and shedding on the furniture!”

But Patches is far from normal. Patches is a short haired Calico cat. Patches has separation anxiety. I’ll be sitting here at my PC and she’ll be napping on the chair not three feet from me and wake up crying pathetically until I speak to her. Sometimes I think she must have myopia but she can see a ball of yarn I’m kitting from just fine to ponce on so it can’t be that.

Patches is also bulimic. She will eat until she pukes, Repeatedly. Right into her food bowl. I know, too much gross information. Patches has PTSD. Patches is the perfect cat for me. I have always had psychologically challenged cats. Poor Fatty Patty lost her Mama when she was less than two weeks old and was damn near dead when her rescuers brought her and her sister to me. She was traumatized and she’s needy. Her sister managed to cop some attitude and has moved on but Patches turned into a Mama’s baby and here we are. The good news is that she travels well. As long as my fingers are in the cat carrier she is fine. :^/

Madison Metro declared free bus rides for all Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as an incentive for people to leave their cars at home because of air pollution! That’s the first time that’s ever happened three days in a row. I’d like to see the stats on whether or not ridership was up. Today”s (Saturday) lack of commuters is believed to bring the amount of pollution hanging in the air down so we can all breath freely again and the Metro system can go back to charging their regular fares. It’s 2 for the price of one on the weekends. Patches does not ride the bus so we stayed home.

B