Romney's Evil Empire

So Mitt wandered around Britain sticking his foot in his mouth every time he opened it.

But he wasn't a clown in Israel.

He announced that Israel's success was due to " the power of at least culture and a few other things", including "the hand of Providence". While doing so, by the way, he didn't mention Israel's 45-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, nor its continuing blockade of Gaza, both of which have had a catastrophic impact on the Palestinian economy but he did severely misstate the per capita GSP of both Israel (he said $21,000, when it's more like $31,000 according to the World Bank) and that in the Palestinian Authority (he said "more like $10,000 per capita" when the World Bank says $1,500). More dangerously, he decided to wade into the minefield and defy the entire history of US-Israel relations and declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel.

And most dangerously, he told the Israelis that they could count on the US to help them when they attacked Iran. "In the final analysis, of course no option should be excluded. We recognise Israel's right to defend itself, and it is right for America to stand with you," he said, and "We have a solid duty and a moral imperative to deny Iran's leaders the means to follow through on their malevolent intentions."

Just what we need, right? Another war.

Of course, this is being portrayed as an attempt to woo the Jewish vote. I'm sure that's part of it, but he's most likely really going after another bloc, which is very different: the neo-conservative very religious right-wing Christians who think God can't make Jesus come back if we let Israel go under... I don't know if Mormons believe in that notion (I think probably not, since they have a very different eschatological take on things), but of course that bloc is pretty influential in GOP thinking. It leads them to put Israel's well-being above the US's, but of course you can't ask why we should craft foreign policy to benefit a different country or people call you an anti-Semite...

Still, the important thing is to realize that Romney is even more likely than Obama to pitch us into a war with Iran.

Blowdry

John Lawler has an undated (1995) posting on odd English forms in which he says:

I mentioned "wake in the present perfect" because it's my best example of an English "defective" verb; i.e, one that lacks a principal part, in this case the past participle, the one that's used in the present perfect construction. ... Other English defective verbs include 'beware' (usable in the imperative only), 'blowdry' (try forming the past tense and you'll see what I mean), 'born' (technically, a "deponent" verb, with only passive forms), and the modal auxiliaries, but they're so irregular anyway that's hardly surprising. Latin had lots more.

I've always said "have waked", myself, but I'm not going to argue it with him. But the first time I read that I said: "Huh? Blowdried, dude." Today's Zits bears that out - the joke isn't about how to conjugate blowdry, but how to define it.

The grand trip

Here's a list of all the posts from the cross-country trip my friend and I took this summer. We drove 10,157 miles, from Everett, Washington, to Laurel, Maryland, and back. The east-bound leg was across the top (Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland); the west-bound more along the middle (Maryland, DC, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington). We didn't exactly retrace the ends, as we took US 2 across the mountains going east and I-90 going west.

I did five posts on birds and beasts, to cut down the number of photos in some of the day posts, but they're all pretty image intensive. I also pulled out the Little Bighorn Battlefield for its own post (we went there on Day 3), and Fort Kearny (Day 15).

Day 1 Everett to Coeur d'Alene
Day 2: Coeur d'Alene to Bozeman
Day 3: Bozeman to Glendive
Day 4: Glendive to West Fargo
Day 5: West Fargo to Osseo
Day 6: Osseo to Michigan City
Day 7: Michigan City to Youngstown
Day 8: Youngstown to Laurel
Day 9: Baltimore
Day10: Laurel to Salisbury
Day 11: Salisbury to Oak Ridge
Day 12: Great Smoky Mountains
Day 13: Oak Ridge to Marion
Day 14: Marion to Independence
Day 15: Independence to Grand Island
Day 16: Grand Island
Day17: Grand Island to Laramie
Day 18: Laramie to Colter Bay
Day 19: Colter Bay to West Yellowstone
Day 20: West Yellowstone to Post Falls
Day 21: Post Falls to Everett

Little Bighorn Battlefield
Fort Kearny
Birds in Montana and North Dakota
Wildlife in the Smokies
Birds in Nebraska
Birds in Wyoming
Wildlife in Yellowstone

(I've now visited (or at least been in) 45 states. All I need to visit are Hawai'i, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine!)

Happy Birthday, Alexis

de Tocqueville, that is - born in 1805.

"He went with his best friend, Gustave de Beaumont, and after a brief stop in Newport, they arrived in Manhattan at sunrise May 11, 1831. Over the course of the next nine months, Tocqueville and his friend traveled more than 7,000 miles, using every vehicle then in existence, including steamer, stage-coach, and horse, going as far west as Green Bay, Wisconsin, and as far south as New Orleans. He interviewed everyone he met: workmen, doctors, professors, as well as famous men, such as Daniel Webster, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence and the richest man in America. At the end of nine months, Tocqueville went back to France, and in less than a year, he had finished his masterpiece, Democracy in America (1835)." [quoted from The Writer's Almanac]

America demonstrates invincibly one thing that I had doubted up to now: that the middle classes can govern a State. ... Despite their small passions, their incomplete education, their vulgar habits, they can obviously provide a practical sort of intelligence and that turns out to be enough.

It would be nice to think our passions aren't necessarily so "small", nor our intelligence just "practical" that they won't be "enough" this time around, wouldn't it?

Day Twenty One: Post Falls to Everett

Whew. 10,157 miles door to door. (At least I got a ten day break; my friend's been traveling for five weeks now!) Tomorrow I fly back to DC...

We left Post Falls a bit later than usual, since we'd stayed at a B&B last night. But we'd decided to take I-90 all the way instead of US 2, so the drive wouldn't be as long.

We crossed into Washington almost right away - the Idaho panhandle is narrow.



The part of Washington after Spokane looks different from the rest of the state - it's the Columbia plateau, and there's corn and potatoes and wheat fields among the sage desert. I saw a lot of red-tailed hawks, but 70mph isn't conducive to photos of flying birds - or even birds perched on a railing.





Potatoes with a center-pivot irrigation machine - I sure saw a lot of those in the hot, dry states.



This is Moses Lake.



This is Puget Sound Energy's Wild Horse Wind and Solar and Priest Rapids Hydro Power complex. It's pretty stunning.



This little guy sounded exactly like a phone ringing. I'm not sure what he is - he looks like a wren, but he doesn't match anything in my book... Edited to add: He's a rock wren.



Here's the floating bridge over the Columbia at the end of the lake.



Here's the wind part of that complex - or part of it; there are 149 turbines in all.



The sign on the side of the interstate read "Mount Rainier in the distance"



Here's the approach to Snoqualmie pass in the Cascades



And the Seattle skyline

Happy Birthday, Gerard

Born today in 1844 in Stratford, Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorite poets (still today, though I don't always agree with his philosophy).

Bless you, Robert Bridges, for publishing his work after he died, in 1888, too young and no longer writing...

The Wind-hover is my favorite, but I love this one too:

Spring and Fall
To a Young Child

Margaret, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's spríngs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

(more Hopkins here)

Wildlife in Yellowstone

Yellowstone was definitely the best place we went for wildlife. (There were also ravens everywhere; that link will take you to some shots of ravens playing in the sky.)

First, a chipmunk at Gibbons Falls



And another at Old Faithful

A deer just inside the park boundary, crossing the road

Buffalo! Bison! We've seen warning signs everywhere, but finally in Yellowstone we saw the animals themselves. Magnificent!

Here's a calf frolicking around its mother.



And after a while at Madison River, where the elk herd comes according to the sign, we started to drive away and then spotted this gorgeous girl across the road, heading slowly for the river.

Day Twenty: West Yellowstone to Post Falls

We got up early and left for Idaho. A raven was on the lodge roof - they had three personal safety tips for hikers there: don't take more than you can carry, let someone know where you're going, and beware of ravens, who will apparently rip your packs and bikes apart if they think there's food there.



The landscape rather abruptly became flat valleys surrounded by mountains or hills



The sky

These hills remind me of Northern California


At a Starbuck's we met up with a Zuni firefighter's group heading for one of the many fires blazing in Montana

Lewis and Clark. Those guys may not have been everywhere but they sure got a lot of things named after them!

A craggy hill



I'm not even sure I want to know...



Wildlife!



The Clark Fork river (yes, that Clark) winds under the interstate for a long way, back and forth. We crossed it a lot.





I'm not sure I've ever seen an Exit 0 before.



And we're in Idaho!



Stopped in Wallace again for lunch - barbeque, excellent!





We were a bit early to check in, so we went looking for a glass of wine. The Red Lion hotel had a restaurant that was open, but we sat for ten minutes without being served - or even acknowledged - so we got up and went to Templin's River Grill and had a wonderful pinot grigiot, and view.

Birds of Wyoming

Some birds I've seen in Wyoming.

Eurasian collared doves (a first for me, by the way)





And the ubiquitous grackle





Barn swallow chicks and one parent (there were two), at the restaurant in Colter Bay




There were plenty of ravens. This first one was at Lewis Canyon.



These ravens were at Gibbons Falls. They were so cool to watch as they soared and tumbled in the sky, pairing up and playing with each other, and then three chasing the fourth as it flew around with something in its beak.

The ravens at play at Gibbons Falls