1. The first cases of Sam Adams Octoberfest found their way into my refrigerator, via the local Fry’s. Best-tasting beer on earth.

2. The first ice glaze up on Mt. Washington.

3. The first frost in the Northeast.

4. I’m ordering my books to read during this year’s vacation.

5. Happy birthday, Mom!

6. E-mails from the Arizona Department of Transportation telling us it’s time for annual inspection. Another $500 to the state.

7. Saw the first Christmas Club commercial on TV the other day. I didn’t even know they still did Christmas clubs anymore…

8. Serena Williams and Roger Federer will win the U.S. Open.

9. The Old Farmer’s Almanac winter projections are out.

10. The pennant contenders are bulking up for the playoff run.

11. The President introduces politics into the start of another school year. Is there anything this guy will not use as an excuse for more face time?

This is a sad and depressing story worth checking out. I’ve posted on this subject several times before (here and here, for example), but to reinforce what I’ve written about before:

I still don’t understood the fierce devotion to the Democratic Party displayed by the vast majority of African-Americans. I mean I do, but I don’t.

By hitching themselves to “Great Society” government programs of the last four decades involving housing, labor, and welfare, they’ve only exchanged one form of historical slavery for another – one that, while perhaps well meaning in concept, is even more destructive, that of creating and maintaining generational dependence on the government for everything.

And shakedown artists like Jesse Jackson and race-baitors like Al Sharpton, Diane Watson and anyone else who equates any kind of attack on President Obama as racist simply because he’s black only exacerbates the oppression of African-Americans by Washington.

It is not only demeaning to the human mind and spirit, it is despicable, cynical, and inhuman.

As others have mentioned (here and here, for example), African-Americans will only truly be free of the shackles of their own unique American story when they learn to tell the government, ‘thanks, but no thanks’ and develop their own sense of self-sufficiency and independence.

Don’t believe me? Here is just the latest example of how Washington, in its own well-meaning way, undercuts American young people – especially African-American teenagers – seeking honest ways of earning money. And they do it to ensure that yet another generation of minorities remain reliant on a predominantly white government and power structure for their livelihoods and well-being.

It really is shameful.

Seems as the summer goes on it just keeps getting hotter here in the Valley of the Sun. Brutal.

We’re less than a month away from our New Orleans vacation, and I’m starting to get excited. Want to know anything and everything going on in Louisiana? Sure you could check out Rob’s blog (and you should), I’ve also added a cool new link to my blogroll – the Bayou Buzz!

Speaking of Louisiana, over at CrabAppleLane, Rob’s recalling his Katrina memories of four years ago. Hard to believe it’s already been that long – time is moving so fast nowadays.

Y’now, one would think that after the gross negligence and incompetence displayed by the federal government during the Katrina event Washington would figure out a way to be more sensitive to do the people’s more efficiently and cost-effectively. But….

If this video doesn’t serve as poster-child to the wanton incompetence and recklessness of Washington in regards to this country’s financial stability and future, nothing will.

And to think – these are the people pushing to be put in charge of our nation’s health care? Unbelievable.

And what a long tough week it has been…

A big ‘thank you’ to everyone who donated, and congrats to New England Sports Network (NESN) and WEEI sports radio in Boston for the success of their annual Jimmy Fund Telethon. The goal was to raise $5 million dollars over two days; right it looks like they got pretty damned close. In these recessionary times that’s nothing to sneeze at!

BTW, it’s not to late to donate. Just click here.

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OK, this is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long while. Ya gotta laugh…

Hat tip: American Digest.

I hate cancer. In fact, I despise cancer more than I do House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, which is saying a lot!

Think about it: cancer is a disease that cares little if you are rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, young or old, or Yankee fan or Red Sox fan. It destroys lives, creates mayhem and chaos in the lives of adults and children, and is just lurking around the corner waiting for you and me. You don’t even have to live a lifestyle that promotes it, it can be in your genes. We all know someone who has had it, been treated for it, or died from it.

Tracey sees it in the blood samples of children and young adults she receives every day. It’s disheartening at best, devastating at worst. Horrifying for all.

I am so grateful for all those who frequent this website. You may not always – if at all – agree with my political stands, and you might tire of my incessant whining about the heat out here (today, BTW, was – and is – absolutely brutal, with the next few days to be the same), but the hundreds of visitors to this site on a daily basis (and I hit a record just this past week, BTW), obviously come here to be either infuriated, entertained, or both.

So now is my turn to ask something of you. One of the charities very near and dear to my heart is the Jimmy Fund, the charity established by the Boston Red Sox to support the work of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to help strike out cancer in children. This week, they are holding their annual telethon in cooperation with NESN and WEEI sports radio, and I am respectfully begging each and every one of you who makes this website a daily or frequent part of your Internet browsing experience to donate to this most worthy cause.

I don’t care how much you donate – it could be $5, $10, or $50, or $100, or even $1000, but every little bit helps. Heck if you’d like, I could put it on the following scale:

* If you love surf music – $25

* If you love Mexican food – $25

* If you think I’m right about Obamacare and that Barack Obama and the Democrats are hell-bent on controlling every aspect of our lives – $50

* If you disagree with me and think Barack Obama is God’s gift to America – $100

* If you think the Great White Shank is more often than not full of $hit – $100

* If you think “Think About Me” is hands down the best friggin’ song Fleetwood Mac ever recorded – $50

To donate to this worthy cause, just click here. We may not alway agree politically, but I pray that the one thing we can all agree on is that cancer is a bad thing and to wipe it out so that children and their families some day may never have to face this dreaded disease is something we can help accomplish together.

If you can find it in your heart and wallet, please consider donating today.

If your local supermarket carries it you just have to try Mario Batali’s Marinara sauce. It’s as close to Boston’s North End as you’re likely to get out of a jar. Magnifico!

In the book rack: Paul Haffner’s “The Mystery of Mary”. Just getting into it, but it’s interesting: a comprehensive and thorough presentation of the person and role of Mary in Christianity and church history.

For those who might take exception to my alarmist tone of the many ways the Obama administration and the Democrats are seeking to expand their control over areas of American society never before seen, all you need to do is read this, and this.

Folks, I’m not making this stuff up. To use taxpayer-funded public agencies like the NEA and the FCC to promote the administration’s agenda is not just a conflict of interest, it smacks of the government seeking to control of the channels of communication by which people can express themselves and gain information. I’d expect this kind of thing from places like Cuba and Venezuela, but not in the United States. We are truly living in dangerous times.

Watching Tim Wakefield spin a beauty against the White Sox tonight brought back how baseball should be played: crisply and quickly. He was truly the anti-Penny out there: efficient with his pitches, working quickly, getting ahead in counts. It was a beautiful thing to see. Hopefully, this ends the Brad Penny era in Boston. I know my mom would be pleased.

Congrats to Michelle Malkin on a fourth straight week atop the New York Times’ bestseller list. Never before has a book been so important as to educate people who they really elected into office last November. Me, I’m missing the likes of Bill Clinton more and more each day. Mark my words, Barack Obama will make Bill Clinton look like Abraham Lincoln one of these days.

The Democrats certainly didn’t wait long to use Ted Kennedy’s death as a political tool. Question: is there anything Democrats don’t see in purely political terms?

Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy died today at the age of 77. May God have mercy on his soul. I will light a candle for him tonight, for no one’s soul should be beyond the reach of God’s infinite and abundant mercy.

Those who follow this distant outpost in the blogsphere might find this hard to believe, but I actually voted for the man on more than one occasion. Growing up in Massachusetts, I liked him and, like most of my generation, bought into the the whole “Kennedy mystique”. Robert F. Kennedy was, and will always be, one of my heroes – he was a dreamer, as am I – and Ted just followed in his not-insignificant wake. You almost felt sorry for him.

Most certainly he had his flaws – actions he will have to make amends for, I believe, in his afterlife – but no one could deny he had that Kennedy ideal of standing up for the common man. Even if, like his own brothers, his personal life might be lived in contradiction to those beliefs.

You’re going to hear a lot over the next week about “the lion of the Senate” and high-fallutin’ testimonies about the so-called esteemed Senator from Massachusetts. But make no mistake about it: Ted Kennedy never believed anything he ever pushed for politically was meant for him. As a human being he had faults just like you and me – I’m OK with that – but as a politician he was the poster-child of hypocrisy. As a Kennedy, he always believed rules were for the unwashed dopes of this country, not for him. He would unbelievably rail against the personal character and belief systems of conservatives like Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and John Roberts, as if his own record were somehow clean and white as snow.

As the youngest of the brothers, he traveled in the rarified air of his predecessors, and would never miss an opportunity to recall their own legacy as a way of reinforcing and/or establishing his own. Because he always knew he could never match either the charisma or the political intuition of his brothers, I think he used the Senate as a way to craft and establish his own identity.

But let’s make one thing clear: in the grand scheme of things, Ted Kennedy was no giant. Rather, he was nothing more than a pretentious, hypocritical pretender to the throne of a kingdom that had long ceased to exist. Hell, he couldn’t even articulate before Roger Mudd and a nationwide audience why he was worthy of consideration for President in 1980. Were his last name different, I doubt he could even have been elected dogcatcher of Waltham.

I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead. But I can only compare Ted Kennedy to his brother Robert, and he was no Robert Kennedy. Maybe that’s unfair. But there is no denying that Ted Kennedy was nothing more than a classic, modern-day liberal who always thought he knew better than the common man and never met a tax or government program he didn’t like or vote for. Or conservatives that he didn’t rail against in long-winded sanctimonious orations. He was an arrogant, elitist leftover from a time thankfully long past, where political families could push their own dreams and desires ahead of the common good for their own damned delusions of grandeur.

I’m certain Massachusetts will be stupid enough to put yet another Kennedy in the Senator’s place as a testimony to his legacy, but all they will be doing is delaying the inevitable. The Kennedy era is now officially past. They don’t make them much like Edward Moore Kennedy anymore, and when it comes to American politics, for that I think we can all be grateful.

May he rest in peace, and may God grant peace and comfort to those who mourn his passing.

To say I’m fearful in a way I never thought as an American I would ever feel about what is going on in Washington is an understatement. And it’s not just me – you talk with people at work, or in casual settings, there is a fear, an honest-to-goodness fear out there about the direction this country is being taken in by the radicals now in control in Washington.

I can tell you this, when St. Barack Obama was hyping his “Hope and Change” this was NOT what the majority of this country had in mind.

Were it just the idiotic notion of the federal government imposing it’s idea of health care reform on the citizens of this country in all its manifestations: any one who doubts you would find bowtied, bum-kissing, soulless government bureaucrats rationing care to the elderly, telling people what they can eat, how they must raise their children, what they can do for work, what they can’t do for leisurely activities, etc., all in the name of controlling costs – that would be one thing.

But then you have this. That would be akin to you or me running up a household debt of hundreds of thousands of dollars, then deciding after we just got laid off from our jobs to take a 3-month, around-the-world cruise on our credit cards after stopping by the showroom to purchase a Hummer H3. It’s that insane. No one in their right would ever think of such a thing, but this government does it – every day – without even batting an eye.

Can anyone honestly say they’re comfortable with the enormous debt this government continues to run up and its implications? This isn’t about taxing you (even thought that’s coming, believe me). This is about taxing everyone and everything. You don’t believe me? Check this out. This is not just about you, this is about your neighbors, your parents, your children, your grandchildren, and hell, your great-grandchildren, for that matter.

And it’s not just the Democrats. It’s the damned Republicans who started us down this damned road when they had control of Congress. It was the GOP that led us into the freak show that the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Harry Reid now run. If they were just incompetent that would be one thing. But these people are hell-bent (and I use that term in every sense of the word) on destroying everything this country stands for in the name of one thing and one thing only: maintaining and consolidating power. These bastards could care less about the impact of their uncontrolled spending habits – whether they tax the bejeezus out of you or your children, who cares? They only care about power, and they’ll do anything and everything they can do to maintain it.

And it’s not just the health care and economy. From the start this White House has sought to impose control and their radical, fascist agenda over Wall Street, the pay of private industry executives, the American auto industry, and lately, even over how enemy combatants in the field are interrogated.

And now they want to review the state of journalism in this country. Hmmm… now why would they want that? To impose a state-run media? With this crowd, nothing is beyond their imagination.

Remember one thing: this is all about control – expanding it, consolidating it, maintaining it. And it is up to the voters to stop it at all costs. Even Thomas Jefferson stated that a good revolution from time to time was a good thing. Nat Hentoff reminds us of this:

President Obama is teaching us that, as Thomas Jefferson often said, “the people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberty.” The growing resistance to the president’s goal of state-controlled health care is moving more of us to act on our constitutional power to protect our quintessential individual liberty — to decide for ourselves how long we are going to stay on this Earth.

The reverberating town-hall meetings are a legacy of the 1765 meeting in Boston where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty organized against King George III and, not having access to the Internet, later started the Committees of Correspondence that alerted all the colonists to insistent royal threats to their personal liberties. During a secret meeting in Virginia, Jefferson helped organize such a committee in his state.

Barack Obama and the radical leftists he has hopped into bed with have awakened a sleeping giant, something that is in the very bloodstream of the American experience. People everywhere are beginning to understand that our very freedoms and liberties are under assault by a government whose power up to this point has been left unchecked.

How to end this post? Well check out “Out Of Control”, an Eagles classic from 1973. A good tune.

I’m on fire.

The pool is back up to 94 degrees again after two days of a full sun where the humidity kept the evaporation to a minimum. I’ll admit to being a little torqued off tonight: after six months of taking water samples to the pool supply joint down the street, I find out I’m gonna have to drain the damned pool again this fall because the water’s too acidic. It appears the guy that set the pool up last fall miscalculated the water capacity of the pool and put too much acid in.

You know what they say: chlorine may come and go, but acid stays forever.

I’m sure my skin thanks the pool guy.

* The governor of New York is not just incompetent (like Massachusetts’ own Deval Patrick), he’s also an idiot. I despise people who look at everything in terms of race. Look, slavery ended 146 years ago. The civil rights movement of 40+ years ago has brought virtual equality to anyone in this country who truly wants to succeed. The Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, and David Patersons of the world are the real racists who can’t get over the fact that their time has come and gone.

* And I’m not so sure that Glenn Beck was wrong to include Barack Obama in that crowd.

* Personally, I don’t care what interrogation tactics the CIA used on Al-Qaeda prisoners. And you know something? I don’t think the majority of Americans care either. This is pure liberal moonbat Bush Derangement Syndrome hypocrisy. As you can probably tell from my political leanings, I’m no fan of liberals and progressives, but I’ll respect and listen to anyone’s point of view. But in this case, they’re dead wrong and barking up the wrong tree.

Just so happens I was watching “Moonstruck” the other day and was struck (no pun intended) by how much the World Trade Center towers used to define the Manhattan skyline. I miss the towers. You want to talk about harsh interrogation tactics? I can only think about what those poor people in the planes and in the towers had to endure.

Whatever has to be done to prevent that sort of thing from ever happening again I’m all for it. And I think most Americans are as well.

I just think how misplaced the so-called “compassion” of these incessantly obnoxious liberals are to people who wouldn’t think twice about blowing their sorry asses to kingdom come by detonating themselves on a bus or train full of other innocent people.

* Which reminds me: where are all the Code Pink Iraq/Afghanistan war protests now that a Democrat is in the White House?

Exactly.

When was the last time you heard the term “quagmire” used by the Obama kiss-asses in the mainstream dino-media?

Exactly.

Look, while I disagree with Cindy Sheehan, at least she’s being consistent and, in my mind, has credibility. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are Bush mistakes for sure, but I’m waiting for the first Democrats to call Barack Obama on his continued support of these conflicts.

* Anyone out there think this would have happened if George W. Bush were still president? I thought so.

* OK, OK, enough anger. How about something to soothe the savage beast…

…so says my lovely wife. I don’t know exactly what that means – after all, I’ve never promoted myself as some paragon of virtue – but just to make sure everyone gets a little of something in this post…

This is one of the most concise and thoughtful argument against government-run health care I’ve ever read. Feel free to pass it around.

I think Jeff Jacoby is right here. Senator Kennedy has done his time, and while I’ve seldom agreed with him on anything politically, he has served his causes well. But a man has to know his limitations and when it’s time to say sayonara….

Did you see the replay on this? Just goes to show you that anything can happen in baseball. Amazing.

Right now I’m pretty sick of the Boston Red Sox. The end of the season can’t come soon enough. ‘Scuze me while I take a break from watching them for a while. They disgust me.

The Democrats can certainly do this if they want to – they certainly can, given their majority in both houses of Congress – but personally I think it would be a big mistake politically.

The pool is back up to 92 degrees tonight, which makes me realize that summer around here ain’t going nowhere yet. I’m tired of the heat. I’m tied of the sun. I’m tired of the desert. But what do I know? After all, I used to have an open mind.