The Tipping Point – A Systemic Perspective

Tucson, Arizona. Anyone paying attention to local politics, even just the mainstream media, knows that Tucson is struggling on many fronts which always include financial affairs. Council Member Leal with a fair shot of having the required votes (Romero, Uhlich, and Scott) has called for City Manager Mike Hein’s resignation. Hein's supporters, which include the Mayor, argue Hein is trying to get things done without subjecting himself to paralyzing micromanagement by a council that takes forever to make a decision.

Without getting into specific complaints, one should know the context that Hein was more or less anointed after circumventing the usual process of a wide search carefully narrowed down over successive events leading to a selection. Instead, rich folks well acquainted with Cloth (e.g. McMahon, Click) or Cloth incarnate (e.g. Hecker, Snell, Myers, Walker, ..) just declared Hein should be the guy, and so he was, just like that, even though he didn’t apply for the job (sort of).

At risk of oversimplifying, are we not witnessing a council increasingly impatient with the expectation that they collect their tiny stipends, stay mostly in the dark, and vote on something now and then, letting the "strong manager manage" without too much interference? Why are they impatient? Why are council members experiencing pressure to interfere? Think. Rising over the fray, we could ask that as Tucson grows, are we facing a system of governance increasingly ineffective no matter what cast of characters occupy what slots?

Jumping to extremes has pitfalls, but it can elucidate concepts. Consider huge cities with enormous populations and their governments. How are New York City or Philadelphia or Chicago governed? In a sentence, they use a strong Mayor and strong council populated by full time people respectfully compensated. Departments report to this Mayor.


I grow increasingly skeptical of the weak Mayor and strong City Manager model as a community’s population grows. While a fully paid city manager with marginally paid mayor/councils might make sense for Snowflake or Show Low, does it really continue to work for Phoenix or Tucson? Phoenix (and perhaps all towns in Arizona) continues to use the strong city manager approach with weak Mayors and councils paid next to nothing.

Of course I don’t know how this summer will shake out, and folks that just dismiss Leal’s letter and the sentiments behind it do not understand the frustrations brewing in this town. Rio Nuevo is a farce. Economic Development is past pathetic, and Workforce Development is even worse. Will Tucson ever see the day when it has full time, well compensated elected officials (who must face the polls regularly) given the authority and the responsibility to govern and manage? Would such a system produce superior results?

I don’t know, but the fire is growing and getting hotter, and so long as corruption, nepotism, favoritism, and all things "cloth" funnel millions to do nothing suits in do nothing agencies, the noise will continue.

People don’t like it when others drink their milk shake.

Cloth Cuts Another Throat

Tucson, Arizona. Teya Vitu has an article in yesterday's Citizen sharing the withdrawal of $100K in funding from the Downtown Tucson Partnership, the cloth bloated organization produced when the perfectly functional Tucson Downtown Alliance was expanded to serve local cloth meisters.

With smiles and fanfare, the Cloth inflate organizations (and their boards) with clothophiles. Then, a year or two later budgets are cut and instead of ousting the fat cats in the suits, they shoot the worker bees actually doing something. That happened this week.

A good person who worked hard to serve this community well got tossed in the street this week.

My prayers are with the honest and decent woman who now finds herself out of a job courtesy of swine. Unless CEO Glenn Lyons enjoys the taste of blood, he should rehire her and tender his own resignation. He doesn't need the money. If he stays, we witness greed.

Some CEOs conduct controlled burns and craft their own resignations when Cloth torpedoes their organizations. Of course, a soul is required.

Tucson Bifurcation

Tucson, Arizona. Anyone following the local scene knows about Council Member Steve Leal’s letter to City Manager Mike Hein calling for his resignation. Some have complained about the letter’s timing at or near the beginning of Hein’s vacation. So what? I recall a terrifying phone call at 9 PM the night before a supposed five day paradise trip with my daughter. Business doesn’t care about your personal life and never has. The phone call significantly damaged my ability to enjoy the trip. The reader can imagine the chorus of sympathy singing on my behalf.

My criticism of Leal’s letter is its lack of specificity regarding concerns, but this could be a protocol matter, where such material is delivered separately. At any rate, what’s really going on? The general theme involves the poor release of requested information and taking action without council input.

One view is that the council would like to hang the whole Rio Nuevo meltdown on Hein, an assertion with enough citable events (arena, hotel, failure to bond, expansion of DTA into DTP) to gain traction. Speaking of Rio Never, for completion I have to note that deeper discussion has clarified that AZ Senate President Tim Bee, currently running against incumbent Gabrielle Giffords (D) for AZ CD 8, and Toni Hellon, both state senators at the time, are better classified as cheerleaders after the fact regarding the TIF extension, not factors at all (save that Bee, under pressure, did call a meeting).

An amateur blogger, I cannot discern the true fire under this smoke, but it is not bus fares. The unilateral announcement about the Hotel Arizona had a foul stench, perhaps a fat stick on the camel’s TIF back. Can Leal count to four? I would not have written that letter without four solid, locked, loaded, and verified votes. I speculate he has Romero, Glassman, and Scott. He does not require Rio Never Chair Trasoff.

UPDATE: Leal does NOT have Glassman, which means that if this is going to fly, he requires Romero, Uhlich, and Scott.

There Will Be Blood II

The first instance of the use of oil dates back thousands of years to polishing weapons and armor. It lubricated axles, and resisting water, its thicker form (tar) was used to caulk ships. China saw that it easily burned and used it for cooking and lamps. The desire for artificial light exploded with the population, and we slaughtered whales to the brink of extinction for lamps and other applications. One could also squeeze various oils out of nuts, and in the 1300’s (with some earlier but rare instances) oil painting started. Leonardo Da Vinci improved oil paint by adding beeswax to the mixture.

The modern state of affairs more or less began on Aug. 27, 1859 when Edwin L. Drake struck oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania. Now we were into the ability to produce quantities dwarfing that of whaling vessels and consisting of a rich mixture of many lengths of hydro-carbon chains which could be isolated to sizes with the desired properties. In a process called cracking, the bigger chains were broken into smaller ones, producing kerosene, diesel fuel, heating oil, and another new invention came along, the automobile, that liked a particular flavor, gasoline.

Naturally or not this happened during the late 1800s when the country was at great risk of being completely usurped by robber baron corporations that formed trusts and monopolies colluding together to wrestle the last thin red cent from anything that moved, breathed, walked, or crawled on the planet. The oil industry was born in a world where prisoners were slaughtered for their assets and politicians were whores that bent over for the biggest bundle. Standard Oil Corporation showed no restraint in accelerating a positive feedback loop where profits bought competitors and non-competitors alike in a greed fest that would eventually own the entire country, an eventuality halted by the Sherman Act of 1890 which was then fortified by the Taylor Act of 1914.

Despite these efforts, oil remained an anomaly and exhibited remarkable resilience against efforts to curb its power and influence. Oil enjoys a "national security" status not only for its economic importance as it fuels transportation, industrial/farm equipment, heats many buildings, and provides critical input for plastics, paint, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, and other products, but more so, for its role in warfare. The entire military apparatus runs on oil.

Like alcoholics or addicts securing their supply throughout the house, powerful nations seek to ensure a steady supply of oil. Sharing sleeping bags, countries either nationalize their oil production or view their oil companies as crucial friends, viewing their global reserves and production as synonymous with the national interest. Governments support their companies’ efforts to obtain rights to new production sources and the most favorable distribution channels. Oil itself is war, and during WWII the Allies gave the restriction of access to oil to the Axes the highest of priorities. In almost every respect, oil is the heroin of nations and its producers the pushers of a narcotic without which the junkies cannot survive. We will do whatever it takes.

In this context we see Lord Cheney’s 2003 invasion of Iraq as pure exploitation of a pretense that did not exist to accomplish the real objective of establishing a foothold before the next superpower, be it China or India, invades the Middle East. Watch the news, and you will soon learn of contracts and deals granting US corporations (or at least US sympathetic corporations) the rights to explore, secure, drill, and extract sweet Iraqi crude for consumption in the United States.

When these deals and contracts are solidly in place and enforced by military units of the US, Iraq, or otherwise, then Eggplant can stand on a boat beneath a banner that reads, "Mission Accomplished."

P.S.
The reader is aware that Dick Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton (nation’s largest oil-services company) and Condolezza Rice is a former director of Chevron Texaco, after whom the company named one of its supertankers.

P.S.S.
The lack of discussion regarding Bush's utterly inane, vacuous, and idiotic address regarding offshore drilling is most intentional.

There Will Be Blood

Tucson, Arizona. Both GOP presidential candidate John McCain as well as Bush have called for an end to legislation on the books for over a quarter of a century banning off shore drilling for oil. They argue that lifting such a ban will result in exploration and oil extraction that will help alleviate demand for oil and result in price relief for oil consumers. Only blind followers of such characters or individuals favoring the oil industry will buy into the inane and severely flawed thinking behind such an approach.

First of all, the quantities involved as well as the timing associated with any result from off shore drilling render it irrelevant to today's situation. Second (further details coming) and even more significant is the fact that leasing property to oil corporations and granting them the right to drill for oil does not result in oil production. As noted by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), oil corporations already sit on 68 million acres of public land currently sitting entirely dormant. The corporations do not drill on land once granted the rights. They hoard it in accordance with self-serving calculations that have nothing to do with the welfare of the American consumer (or any consumer world wide) and conduct their affairs entirely in service of what they perceive to be their own best interests. No one loves the oil companies like themselves, and the industry is rich with a tradition of corruption, blood lust, betrayal, and financial rape. They don't even restrict themselves to the tactics of producing and selling oil. Think Enron and electricity in California. Think the suppression of scientific research on global warming. Think death threats and a myriad of efforts including sabotage to develop alternate energy sources. Make no mistake, the oil industry has blood all over it.

If humanity as a whole has heroin, nothing would come closer to pure cash than oil itself, and across the globe we don't manage the consumption of oil with any policies remotely approaching rationality. The laws of supply and demand have been prostituted in the service of the powerful and connected. I don't shed one microscope drop of moisture regarding the price of gasoline for all but a few of the less fortunate gouged because they lack the sophistication to steer clear of the trap. Throughout the globe, more in some countries than others, the consumption of oil is subsidized. While slightly dated, the following represent the price of a gallon of gas in various countries:

Sierra Leone $18.43 ----------Norway $10.37-----------------Turkey $10.14
Netherlands $10.11 -----------Germany $9.20-----------------Finland $8.90
Italy $8.78 ---------------------Portugal $8.78----------------Sweden $8.71
Monaco $8.33------------------Iceland $8.06-----------------France $8.06
Israel $7.95---------------------Poland $7.80------------------Hungary $7.51
South Korea, Guatamala, Greece, and Croatia---$7.38
Spain, Switzerland, Slovenia, Cyprus, Romania---$7.00 to $7.30

The countries below all pay over $6.00 for a gallon of gasoline:
Ukraine, India, Canada, Sri Lanka, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, Uruguay, Estonia.

The countries that pay less than $5 for a gallon of gas do so because it is heavily subsidized by their governments, and even India, at $5.15, would pay well over $7 were in not for a government subsidy that is currently causing its oil companies (and government) to bleed profusely. Those who discuss oil without some degree of understanding of the subsidization permeating the system and the brutality of the industry's history have no clue about the forces they discuss. In particular, any discussion that does not fully involve China and India, both subsidizing oil consumption at levels highly problematic for both each nation and the planet, might as well discuss something of which they are entirely ignorant, but with a more impressive title like Diffeomorphisms between semi-Riemannian surfaces of non-negative curvature.

One has to start somewhere, and I was impressed by Congresswoman Giffords call for legislation that tells oil companies to "use or lose" the vast oil reserves they currently hold hostage from the rest of the world.

Returning to subsidies, China and India are poor as hell, so the prices they pay, $2.80 and $5.15 respectively, are a steep bill for their populations to bear. They subsidize oil consumption to fuel the growth of their economies. Those in China and India will state that without the subsidies, the price would spiral to double digit or close (in dollars) and cripple their ability to consume any.

Without turning the post into a book, I'll just declare the honeymoon over regarding cheap oil and assert the solution is alternatives, not struggling to find the next fix. I've already voiced support for nuclear power, unprecedented investment in solar power, wind energy, and massive efforts in "going green" regarding efficiency. No matter how we proceed, there will be blood and it will get ugly.

Moves that further butcher the planet, like lifting the ban on offshore drilling, represent steps in exactly the WRONG direction.

Fund Games and Property Management

Tucson, Arizona. The city of Tucson provides taxpayer dollars to numerous outside agencies to provide a variety of services for the community. In most cases the outside agencies and consultants are listed in the budget, such as the following (all dollars are per fiscal year):


Southern Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair $12,510
El Tour de Tucson $30,000
Pima College Job Fair $9,610
Tucson Gem and Mineral Society $32,450
88-Crime $16,580
Community Mediation Program $54,830
Crime Prevention League $14,980
Elder Shelter $52,000
Humane Society $18,030
Metropolitan Education Commission $70,840
Pima County - Tucson Women’s Commission $51,750
Temple of Music and Art $100,000
Tucson Botanical Gardens $54,070
Tucson Children's Museum $86,860
Tucson Museum of Art $85,790
Tucson - Pima Arts Council $691,030

For cloth associated activity they create a "Non-Departmental General Expense." The italics are directly from page 210 of the budget detail.

GENERAL EXPENSE Services
The General Expense program provides centralized budget capacity and accounting and management control for expenditures that are not directly associated with the programs of city departments.

For reasons one might guess, the city does not itemize who gets this money, about $30M per year. Word is that the following are among the recipients:

Agency (Accountability) Funding Amount

Twiddledee (Fondle self) $110,000
Twiddledum (Twiddledee’s Assistant) $45,000
Schneederpuss (Meeting Coordination) $95,000
Schnoppinuttin (Rio Nuevo Public Relations) $125,000
Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities (Cloth PR) $1.2 million
Metro Tucson Convention Visitor’s Bureau (Resort PR) $4 + million
Twoddlehurf (Economic Development Consultant) $385,000
Nootinwad (Rio Nuevo Consultant) $400,000
Schleppinlode (TREO Travel Consultant) $85,000
Dickindurt (Strategic Planning Committee Selection Consultant) $210,000
KMS (Blueprint Planning and Publication Consultant) $315,000
Parkinflubber (Furniture Consultant) $70,000
Flabbinwoven (Wardrobe Consultant) $65,000
Weevinthred (Economic Development Consultant) $35,000
Powerdigm (Strategic Planning Consultant/Facilitation Services) $330,000
Cheesefinders (Cloth Consultant Selection Services) $270,000

I can’t speak for the rest of the cloth in terms of the county, but word is that it cut TREO’s funding by $320,000. As a result (in a twist of irony readers of Something Else will find positively exquisite) TREO is going to LEASE SPACE, i.e. rent as many as possible of the dozens of empty cubicles in their facility. Wesley Mouche himself is going into the property management business!!!.

I am so disappointed, Mouche. Why don’t you charge for those job training grants that were going to make a $1M+/year for SAIAT? If you were providing anything of value for the community, you would be self-sufficient. Requiring public funding is a reflection of bad management decisions.

REMEMBER?

Horne Horsepuckey

Tucson, Arizona. The Tucson Unified School District has an Ethnic Studies Department (really good 5/25/08 Star Article) that has developed innovative programs designed to help students succeed in their studies and graduate from high school prepared to participate in higher education. The program features: 1) African American studies, 2) Mexican American Studies, 3) Native American Studies, and 4) Pan Asian Studies.

Arizona’s Republican Superintendent of Public Education, Tom Horne, faced with one of the worse state education systems in the nation, considers it a priority to eliminate the Ethnic Studies Department and its four programs, among the most successful in the state. On Thursday, June 12, he took it upon himself to schedule a press conference right outside TUSD headquarters at 10 AM. TUSD Press Release.

Although he has no authority to tell TUSD what to teach, he is calling for the elimination of the department. TUSD Superintendent Roger Pfeiffer has repeatedly invited Horne to visit its classes and examine course material, but not wishing to be deterred by cumbersome facts, Horne prefers to declare the program contains subject matter that is "racist and anti-American" making no efforts to provide evidence supporting such claims.

Dr. Augustine Romero, Director of the Ethnic Studies Department, did release documentation regarding the Raza (Mexican American) program, showing that for each of the last four years students who participated enjoyed significantly higher graduation rates than those who did not. More dramatic, AIMS test performance of participants far exceeded that of non-participants. I will simply mention the reading, writing, and math results for 2006-2007 eleventh grade students at Cholla, Pueblo, Rincon, and Tucson High high schools.

Reading: Raza - 67, Others - 26
Writing: Raza - 71, Others - 16
Mathematics: Raza – 55, Others – 18.

I guess that racist, un-American stuff does a person’s reading, writing, and arithmetic a lot of good. I leave K-12 to individuals I admire like Dr. Vaughn Croft, Dr. Celena-Fagan, Dr. Augustine Romero, and other dedicated professionals including principals and teachers. They are aleady calling him to task regarding his ignorance of the program he condemns.

Update: The Tucson Citizen has a Commentary making similar remarks, i.e., mind your own business and go back to Phoenix.

The toxic paranoia of Arizona's xenophobic Superintendent of Public Education extends to the state legislature, where he supports the inane SB-1108, which would deny state funding to schools whose courses denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.

Oh, I'm sure we can all agree on what that means.

NoTel Hotel

Tucson, Arizona. As noted at the last post, Tucson City Manager Mike Hein last week declared that the purchase and renovation of the Hotel Arizona was DOA not happening, dismissing it with minimal language that included "too expensive." My cloth alert sensors flashed and rang regarding what appears to be a unilateral decision affecting many in the community.


1. Wasn’t the plan for the Hotel Arizona purchase and upgrade a package deal along with the purchase of the 6.7 acres and construction of the Sheraton as selected by committee last year? Doesn’t the assertion that some $60M or so is "too expensive" while $230M or so is affordable seem a little odd?
2. Was the $28M selling price a firm number? Is the $17M for the land a firm number? The price for the arena mushroomed. How real is the price for the Sheraton? Did the conversations proceed to where real numbers were on the table?
3. What appraisals were conducted and who did them? What methodologies were used? Are the glasses looking at the Hotel Arizona, the land, and the proposed Sheraton of the same color? With the right change of lens, I can make horse manure look like platinum.

I assert that underneath this one we would find cloth incarnate, the same nonsense that destroys functioning agencies and noteworthy efforts in order to stroke the favored. By the way, the reader does realize the cloth is rich with conflicts of interest.

TIF for TAT – Rio No Huevos

Tucson, Arizona. In what I would bet occurs as betrayal to someone, Mike Hein has decided that the $28M purchase and $47M renovation of the Hotel Arizona is “too expensive,” while dropping $17M for 6.7 acres of land and $200M for a new Sheraton is money well spent. Since when did cost effectiveness figure into any of these conversations? Until shown otherwise, I now find it impossible to avoid the conclusion that every decision is the one that either maximizes delay of actual expenditures or strokes one of the anointed cloth meisters.

The city is getting ready to pass its $1.3 B budget. We apparently don’t have enough money to fund a police force, but we can stuff the coffers of agencies like TREO and MTCVB with millions to pretend to make a difference in what? People coming to Tucson during the winter? People retiring in Arizona? Entrepreneurs building a warehouse, sweat shop, or Walmart in town to exploit the uneducated, slave wage workforce? I’m not saying we don’t need economic development or tourism agencies, but look at what those people get paid and what they actually produce. To really knock your socks off, take the freeway in either direction to another community and compare economic development results against agency budgets.

Now, oil and gas prices spiking to record levels (will only get worse) combined with the end of Eggplant’s suppression of scientific research will lead to unprecedented interest in green technology and alternative energy. The Southwestern United States is SolarCon Valley. The sun pours enough energy into Arizona and Southern California to run half the planet. People will notice and we are now looking at sooner as opposed to later. The University of Arizona, which has real research by real people leading to real results, has secured real grants to do things like go to Mars and conduct bio-medical research. I'll skip the cloth meister speeches taking credit for the work of others.

Tucson’s downtown needs a bookstore at least as good as the Border’s on Oracle or the Barnes and Noble in the Foothills Mall. It needs retail worth visiting and restaurants worth frequenting near the bookstore and a theater complex with over a dozen screens. The Congress Street Stakeholders understood this. Not long ago, Albuquerque and Tucson were pretty much the same when it came to matters downtown. Tucson got TIF and chose cloth. Albuquerque chose results and got them.

UPDATE: The more I think about this turn of events, the more it smells and the less I think the Andrea Kelly Star Article captures what is really going on. Cost effectiveness and proper pricing have nothing to do with this situation. Teya Vitu has another Rio Nuevo piece that is worth checking out.

This reeks of cloth. Perhaps more later.

Must Read Novels

Lacking substantive education in literature (a few elementary undergraduate courses), I do not have all of the distinctions to properly appreciate certain works (James Joyce), and I find Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Dreiser, or Thomas Hardy downright painful. However, I read a novel recently, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, and it was fantastic.

What makes a good novel? In one opinion, first, a novel is pure fiction, so all bets are off and the author has the freedom to create vast realities entirely removed from our own that operate according to different principles. Second, the author has complete freedom to craft both the lens and the distinctions used to interpret the events. Third, the capability of diving into the deepest thoughts and feelings (or not) of different characters sets up the ability to interplay conflicting perspectives and views amidst misunderstanding and miscommunication in dramatic situations. Fourth, the author can introduce unprecedented connections and concepts that leave the reader profoundly provoked and intrigued in the consideration of ideas not previously considered. Finally, the ability to introduce multiple levels, almost without limit, provides for rich artistry and the refinement of mastery of a truly remarkable craft.

Most of my reading involves non-fiction, so a novel is a rare treat. Restricting only to novels (maybe a play or two), below are the must reads in the opinion of a certain blogger. The list is NOT ordered. All should be considered top tier works that richly participate in all of the above concepts. If you don’t believe me, consider reading Irving’s book. What a brilliant, fantastic read. I am still thinking about Owen Meany, an exquisite literary experience.

Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
The Tin Drum – Gunter Grass
Crime and Punishment – Feodor Dostoevsky

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
A Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
1984 – George Orwell
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
A Fairly Honourable Defeat – Iris Murdoch
The Day of the Locust – Nathanael West (Miss Lonelyhearts is even better)

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
No Exit – John Paul Sartre
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Lord of the Rings Trilogy – JRR Tolkien
His Dark Materials Trilogy – Philip Pullman
Dune – Frank Herbert
The Foundation Trilogy – Isaac Asimov
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke
Snowcrash – Neal Stephenson

$/H

Oakland, CA. Currently at Cato’s Ale House at Piedmont and Montell listening to live Irish music (a bassist, violinist, guitar player, accordion, and an oboe). The current draft is an Arrogant Bastard Ale. Mostly, I’m thinking about a young woman at Stanford living in what is close to paradise just off Mayfield and Campus. The nearby homes ooze SES, and speaking of SES, back in Oakland, I headed further up the hill to Tilden Regional Park, the road to which offers spectacular views overlooking the entire bay area including both Oakland and San Francisco. The view was more spectacular than any portrayal I could find online.

Speaking of views, I thought of the recent shuttle launch, the first to feature the spouse of a member of Congress, amply mentioned in the MSM. I noticed that this time, Congressional spouse Mark Kelly is the commander, not the pilot. Until convincingly shown otherwise, I’ll believe they married for common folk reasons, unlike royalty. In either case, the couple likely faces better stars than Shakespeare’s most famous couple, their Arizona ceremony making the front page of the New York Times with a photograph featuring full dress uniforms and swords at angles framing the marital kiss.

As I wrote in Something Else, when I met Gabrielle Giffords "data of another sort" suggested correctly or not I was meeting someone not usually encountered. Such perception does not always bring tidings of good joy, for said data also sang when I met David X who later climbed into a gasoline soaked sleeping bag and lit a match.

I will always wonder what David was thinking during the six months his sleeping bag suicide required.

Returning to STS-124, BEE IS TOAST. The man does not even know what he is running against. Last I heard, he intends to suggest Giffords is responsible for the price of gasoline. When the next David has to spend more to prepare his sleeping bag, we know who to blame.

Now why didn’t I see THAT before?