anger five feet high and rising

Watch out, coffee snobs, I'm about to say something else nice about Starbuck's. I got a sandwich there yesterday[1], and it was so good that I got another one today. My only objection to today's sandwich is that they called it a Panini. It's not a fucking Panini. It's on untoasted white bread. It's a sandwich, people.

I will be having animal crackers instead of chips though. They don't even have vending machines here. They used to have all kinds of free snacks, but now it's just soda (which does me no good at all), microwave popcorn and occasional pretzels and animal crackers. The animal crackers go quick, so I grab a sack whenever they appear. The pretzels are not terribly popular.

The also stock saltines in the kitchen. I never bring soup, but if I did, that would be pretty darn convenient. Saltines are hard to transport.

I'm going to complain about Dubya again. fish.barrel.shoot and all that. Let's just make a short list of the things he's undone or fucked up since his arrival, shall we?

changed the executive policy on protecting the populace from arsenic in drinking water

decided that OSHA rules to protect workers from repetitive stress injuries were so burdensome on business that he invented a new procedure to undo Clinton's executive order.

decided that preservation of road-free wilderness is such a foul idea that he should try and undo Clinton's executive order

reverted to the old 'gag rule' policy for family planning clinics that offer abortion. This doesn't mean that you were publicly funding abortions before...you weren't. But that wasn't good enough.

feels we desperately need to drill for oil in the ANWR instead of attempting to reduce our dependence on petroleum products in general. The oil up there is not enough to solve our petroleum dependence issues. It's only enough for us to prolong doing anything about it for a few more years.

flip-flopped on his campaign promise to reduce CO2 emissions on the shortsighted premise (developed by his advisors) that the greenhouse effect would have an overall non-effect or even good effect on the United States. This idea is not supported by a majority of scientists.

decided that our bankruptcy laws made it too easy for people to escape credit card debt. Never mind that this is a cost of doing business for those companies and that it is reflected in the usurious rates charged to people with questionable credit.[2]

His naked self-interest in supporting his corporate sponsors is frightening. At least the democrats make their ass-kissing of corporate money a bit more hidden.

I'm just stunned how quickly things are changing. I never believed he could do this much damage in such a short period of time. I'm thinking of how long it took Clinton to accomplish anything, but he didn't have total partisan control over all governmental branches either.

Man, it's just chilling. I wish people were screaming their heads off about all this, but they aren't. Everyone is looking at the tax cut, but that's not the half of it. That's just money. This stuff affects our social environment, I believe very negatively.

Maybe the democrats will put up someone who can win by a bigger margin this time because Gore proved that it's not enough to win. You have to win big, lest the nepotist machine overturn your victory.

[1]I like to walk in the door here with all my daily needs in hand. I usually have a latte, a pastry (almost always a scone), a liter of water and whatever I'm eating for lunch. To get lunch here, you have to either drive, which is a total ass-pain or take a very nasty walk across a vast parking lot and then up or down Gallows Road.

[2]Tino disagrees with me on this one. He claims that now the market will drive down interest rates. I argue that the consumer market doesn't have that kind of control and that the credit card companies will simply leave their rates as is and simply make a bigger margin of profit. In time, we'll see who's right.

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