A real frog-strangler ... We got rain! We really did! Wow! Rain! It's true! Well, why, you may wonder, is this guy so psyched about a little rain. Well, you have to understand, I'm in the drought-cursed Panhandle region of Texas (actually the South Plains) and rain is a major event around these parts. So what the hell, might as well make the most of it.

It's Friday night and the Marlins and Cubbies are going at one another with a vengeance - although the Cubs have a 1-run lead - oops, the Cubs just won on a bizarre note. The idiot base runner for the Marlins got stuck between second base and third and was tagged out to end the game. Cubs win in 11 innings, 5-4. Go Cubbies!

Alright! I know most of the sports team at the newspaper are feeling hellish heartburn right now since they're all Marlin fans - heheheheh.

So I've got to run. I told D I'd go to the store and pick up a few items and the store closes in about 20 minutes.

So don't sleep in gullies, wear a helmet when you speed on motorcycles, and remember, promiscuity requires SAFE SEX, OK?

Hope you all have a great weekend. I know I won't. I'll be at the damn newspaper tomorrow, slogging through sloppy copy and cockeyed cutlines and praying I don't miss an obvious error (copy editor's nightmare!).

Oh yea, before I forget, for all you Ditto-heads out there – yes, I mean you Rush Limbaugh fans – stick the latest news in your pipe and choke on it, OK. How is it that the impeccable, perfect Rushbo fell so low? Druggie! Ouch, eh? No wonder he lost so much weight! But seriously, what a hypocrite and liar that bucket-mouth bigot is, and now it's undeniable, although his clones (a la Hannity and his ilk) will sing his praises and applaud his "courage," as they're supposed to do (it's all scripted, ya know) they simply cannot sweep the past few years of Rush-crap from being exposed as just that, crap!

Why did el Rushbo, with knowledge "on loan from god," resort to illegally buying Oxycontin (about 100 times stronger than heroin) if he actually had a chronic pain condition? Why didn't his doctor simply prescribe the 30 or so pills per day he reportedly took to ease his agony? Well, I submit that the Rushmeister, yea, Rushorama is a plain-vanilla junkie! He went the dark route because his ego wouldn't allow him to stay in the light (you know, that famous light of truth he's always crowing about) and get in line at the pharmacy like the rest of the great unwashed. No! Rush had to resort to paying millions for thousands of pills to keep his personal demons at bay. Well, his just desserts have finally come 'round, I'd say.

Not to be completely heartless, I hope he's honest about his desire to get the gorillia off his back, though I must admit, I suspect it's another farce for public consumption, not to mention the obvious fact that, so long as he's in treatment he cannot be arrested, a very real prospect since the Florida DA has admitted that law enforcement has him under investigation.

Ah well. Life goes on.

Adios for now. :)

Bush's Clean Air Act is killing us! Christi Todd Whitman sold out the American people when she caved in to Bush's demand to allow the oil, gas and coal industries higher emissions standards - despite her vehement denials of same. Whitman, who resigned about a month ago, was at the vanguard of the Bush bait-and-switch game vis a' vis the environment that he's run on the public from day one.

The farce of sending Whitman to the Kyoto Protocol meeting in Trieste, Italy, was just that – a farce! Soon as Whitman found her chair word came from on high to vacate the place and discard previous rhetoric about the value of creating a worldwide coop designed to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Bush and his oil, gas and coal cronies don't want anything to do with Clean Air Acts or emission controls. The list of Bush appointees reads like a who's who compendium of energy czars, and those appointees hold pivotal positions of power, e.g. former Gov. Mike Leavitt, nominated by Bush to head the EPA after Whitman's departure. It's widely known that Leavitt is beholding to the oil, gas can coal industries because their money put him in office.

When, in 2002, the EPA was about to release a report card on the state of the nation's environment and suggestions to improve problems, pressure from the Bush administration caused her to delete paragraphs about greenhouse gases. Whitman caved in and gave Bush the editor's pen and he, in effect, omitted statements by the EPA, our scientific watchdogs for environmental safety, relative to global warming. The report stated unequivocally that global warming was real and that the consequences of ignoring the man-made problem would be catasrtrophic and far-reaching. Unfortunately, the only way Bush (and most Republicans) know how to kick-start the economy is to give free reign to big business and lower the standards that are meant to protect us from money-grubbing polluters.

Whitman was a lying, incompetent EPA director and her resignation is no great loss. In fact, it's just a logical step for the administration because now the Bushmeister has someone who shares his greedy, short-sighted views about environmental impact studies that get in the way of profits.

Bush is on record saying that he rejected Kyoto because of the economy, though he tried to sugarcoat his public back-stabbing of Whitman by saying it didn't make sense for America to participate based on the public's need for jobs.

Bull! And now we have a Clean Air Act that's a joke on its face. It actually increased the amount of poisonous emissions energy-based companies are allowed to fart into the atmosphere - the air we all breathe! But what the hell, eh? If Rush Limbaugh says it's OK it must be great, right?

Eliot Spitzer, attorney general of New York, said that Bush's undercutting the EPA's authority and regulations would allow companies to poison the atmosphere to such a degree that we can expect 20,000 more premature births annually, and millions more cases of pulmonary diseases and disorders such as asthma!

And here's a neat little tidbit. Under Whitman's (Bush's) leadership at the EPA, NOT ONE lawsuit was filed against any energy company, even in cases where flagrant rules-violations were provable.

Hooray for the red, white and GREEN!