The timing of things?
Maybe we have a problem here. As a starving student, I am one of the poor folks in Butte County that supplements minimal income with food stamps, specifically the CitiBank program called “Golden State Advantage”. This is a credit card that allows California to send my allotment to a computer network.
I can call on that network anytime I purchase food that month. Of course there are reporting requirements and periodic reviews that come with this plastic. I have to visit the county offices in Oroville and let them know I exist.
A letter came in from Butte County a week ago, asking that I report next month for review. Unusual in it's sequence, I would not make a note except for the posts I did last month in the Washington Post. The timing caused my eyebrows to raise.
This is my page in the WashingtonPost.com
My Comments
Comment on: Charles Krauthammer - Lit Up For Liftoff? - washingtonpost.com on 8/3/2007 7:32 PM
Top of the day Mr. Krauthammer;
I would like to file an amicus brief to your commentary. NASA has been the guiding light for this country since I was a wee lad.
Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the impossible mission of flying a man to the moon and getting him back in a decade, before the modern technology we're swaddled with.
Since the days of the Right Stuff, NASA has been a high pressure organization, trying to do the inconceivable on a shoestring budget.
We expect these employees to be superman and superwoman, and sharpen our canines to rip them apart when they prove to be human beings.
They nay be the best people we have working for us, but in no way does that mean that they are perfect.
Frankly I wouldn't want to employ them if they were perfect. Perfection comes at the price of one's humanity.
Remember, space exploration is a human experience.
Comment on: 'Poor' at $100,000 a Year? - washingtonpost.com on 8/2/2007 7:03 PM
Seems that Representative Barton, with a wicked pen, has nailed a problem we have in this country. The Unites States hates poor people.
With whatever label we choose to hang on them, illegal aliens, homeless, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, they are the scum on our shoes that we want to scrape into the garbage.
We haul away our garbage to the dump in this country. And so it is a matter of great frustration that we can't do the same to those people.
Isn't it a tenet of Christianity that what we do for the least of our brethren, we do for ourselves? And don't you know, Representative Barton, that bureaucrats are the screen behind whom politicians hide when they don't want do deal with the effects of the laws they pass.
Comment on: Comments: Robert D. Novak - Bush's Turkish Gamble - washingtonpost.com on 7/31/2007 7:02 PM
Top of the day, Bud0;
First of all, I recognize your points. It sounds like, from your viewpoint, this PKK organization is equivalent to the Irish Republican Army. Be that as it may, what is described in the basic article is a problem.
The United States is already in Iraq. For better or worse we tried to establish an inclusive government there. That may work, but if the US throws in with Turkey, won't our troops be fighting our troops?
The last time that happened was in the 1860s, our War Between the States. There may be debate as to whether we're involved in one civil war now. We don't need to make it two.
Comment on: Robert D. Novak - Bush's Turkish Gamble - washingtonpost.com on 7/30/2007 6:20 PM
Are we seriously entertaining the re-establishment of the Ottoman Empire? Turkey occupied Iraq as part of that entity until 1922 when the British and the European powers dissolved the empire, including the territory we know as Kurdistan.
How much of this has to do with the Turkish economy? Until January 1 of this year, the Turkish Lira had slid to an exchange rate of 1.3 million to the dollar.
They re-valued their currency, but the new lira may still be an indication of just how bad things are there.
This would be the third time Britain and the United States have stabbed the Kurds in the back. Britain set up Iraq, and now they want to wash their hands of it. After the Gulf War, the United States, as I recall, pledged to help them, but thousands died.
If the Bush Administration does this, not only will we over-extend our military resources, but this country will prove just how untrustworthy we are.
All this sound and fury is about oil and money. Iraq has it and Turkey wants it. If history is any guide, the Kurds should have Kurdistan. They've had enough troubles with the Turks.