HaPpY 4th oF JuLy eVeRyOnE! 2012

[Billy's Little Trip]

As we all eat burgers and brats, then settle down to watch some fireworks, I hope everyone here takes a little time to remember what we are celebrating.

A HUGE thanks to Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, Randy Quaid, and Bill Pullman for defeating those aliens 15 years ago and saving us from extinction.

Oh, and I made cupcakes! I was going to make a cheese cake, but things were running backwards all day and ran out of emiT.

wHo wAnTs oNe?!

You can see I got better at my Captain America ones by the 3rd one, lol.

Question of the Day 1: With out thinking twice, which color cupcake would you reach for?

Question of the Day 2: What's everyone doing today?

We're heading to the lake in a few with the fam and BBQin'.

[rone rivendale]

QotD: One of the blues ones, they are closest to me. So probably the 2nd blue one from the left in fact.
QotD2: Ill be online as usual. Fireworks never excited me. I did used to like pop-its just for the fact you could safely throw them at people's feet and laugh at them when they jumped.

[JonPorobil]

QotD1: One of the Captain America ones. Those look awesome.

QotD2: Stuck at work today! YEAH! This morning, I made some breakfast tacos for my wife and I to share. I didn't get any pictures, but she did, and she'll be posting them to her blog soon, I think. It's starting to get dark, and when the fireworks go off at Dell Diamond a couple of miles away, I should be able to see them without leaving the comfort of my desk.

[Sober]

Q1: Blue, second from the right. Clearly it has the most frosting. Don't be fooled by coverage, frosting thickness is where your cupcake selection pays off.

Q2: Heat index 117F in southern Afghanistan. 40+ pounds of gear, rifle, and my camera, and my dumb ass is strolling through grape fields in the middle of the goddamn day. It's been six days since I showered. I did give myself a wet-nap wipe-down a few days ago. I'm too fat for this. I don't understand how these infantry guys can do this every day for up to 18 months. I feel old.

*whew, that was depressing. Happy 4th, everyone. Have a beer for me (a good one, not some Bud Light crap).

[Caravan Ray]

Question of the Day 1: With out thinking twice, which color cupcake would you reach for?

Question of the Day 2: What's everyone doing today?

Oh..is this the day that you celebrate how a small group of elite landowning slavemasters agitated to avoid paying tax and preserve slavery?

[roymond]

Oh..is this the day that you celebrate how a small group of elite landowning slavemasters agitated to avoid paying tax and preserve slavery?

No, just didn't want to pay taxes to a King for nothing in return. The slavery issue was later burned into a founding document that put it on the agenda to be resolved (at a later date) since it wouldn't be able to accomplish the prime goal of setting up a constitutional state if dealt with head on. Lame from point of view of external arm-chair observers, but absolutely necessary within the context of post-colonial/imperial rule. Were other options more viable/defensible? Perhaps. But it's a little late for that.

I got up at 6:30 to run before the heat settled in, headed to the ocean by 10 before the crowds settled in, left by 12 before the sun burn settled in, grilled burgers and squash by 2 before hunger settled in, home by 7 before the Gin settled in, made beautiful love by 9 before the exhaustion settled in. Crashed by 11.

It was a happy one

[Billy's Little Trip]

I'm always being told I need to start taking more pictures. I'm bad about that and figure there are enough pics by others to remember my adventures. BUT, I did snap off a couple yesterday, so here they are.

This is where we spent the day, Mission Viejo Lake up the street from me. I took the pic because it's weird to see it so crowded. We come here regularly to play volleyball, BBQ and drink. It's a private club, so no open container laws, etc. NICE!



Here's some of the grilling goin' on. The grills here are small, so I had to do it in batches. There were lot of hot dogs and hamburgers as well.



I hate when you ask someone to take a pic for you and they suck. It's like seriously, you didn't notice that you cut off our heads? Really? Anyway, from left to right: Me with arms crossed, my oldest boy Christopher, his fiance Ashley and my baby boy Cody.


And one girl there brought veggies to grill for an awesome salad she made with a cilantro pesto dressing (no pics). I'm all for grilled veggies, but one of them was .....are you sitting down...grilled romaine lettuce! Yep, lettuce. She asked me to just put the whole head of lettuce right on the grill and char it real good. I was all, really? :/ But she made a believer out of me. It does a weird steaming inside with it's romaiiness moisture and tastes amazing with the dressing.
So yesterday I had fun AND learned something new.

[fluffy]

I'm all for grilled veggies, but one of them was .....are you sitting down...grilled romaine lettuce! Yep, lettuce.

Grilled salads have actually been a pretty trendy thing in upscale restaurants for the last few years. I"ve never had it, myself, but it sounds pretty good to me!

qotd1: one of the white ones, because I tend to taste the slight bitterness of cheap food coloring

qotd2: I went to see Ken's current non-Song Fight band at a bar up the street from me, and then I went home, took a nap, watched TV, photographed some fireworks from my rooftop, then watched Scott Pilgrim again.

[Caravan Ray]

Oh..is this the day that you celebrate how a small group of elite landowning slavemasters agitated to avoid paying tax and preserve slavery?

No, just didn't want to pay taxes to a King for nothing in return.

Nothing? They expected to Royal Navy to allow unobstructed access to British markets for export goods as a courtesy? And then there was Seven Year War...keeping them all from becoming French, all just another complimentary service?

Good to see the modern day 'Tea Party' is keeping this tradition alive. The learned Dr Johnson described it at the time:

This question is of great importance. That the Americans are able to bear taxation, is indubitable; that their refusal may be overruled, is highly probable; but power is no sufficient evidence of truth. Let us examine our own claim, and the objections of the recusants, with caution proportioned to the event of the decision, which must convict one part of robbery, or the other of rebellion.

A tax is a payment, exacted by authority, from part of the community, for the benefit of the whole. From whom, and in what proportion such payment shall be required, and to what uses it shall be applied, those only are to judge to whom government is intrusted. In the British dominions taxes are apportioned, levied, and appropriated by the states assembled in parliament.

Of every empire all the subordinate communities are liable to taxation, because they all share the benefits of government, and, therefore, ought all to furnish their proportion of the expense.

This the Americans have never openly denied. That it is their duty to pay the costs of their own safety, they seem to admit; nor do they refuse their contribution to the exigencies, whatever they may be, of the British empire; but they make this participation of a publick burden a duty of very uncertain extent, and imperfect obligation, a duty temporary, occasional, and elective, of which they reserve to themselves the right of settling the degree, the time, and the duration; of judging when it may be required, and when it has been performed.

They allow to the supreme power nothing more than the liberty of notifying to them its demands or its necessities. Of this notification they profess to think for themselves, how far it shall influence their counsels; and of the necessities alleged, how far they shall endeavour to relieve them. They assume the exclusive power of settling not only the mode, but the quantity, of this payment. They are ready to cooperate with all the other dominions of the king; but they will cooperate by no means which they do not like, and at no greater charge than they are willing to bear.

This claim, wild as it may seem; this claim, which supposes dominion without authority, and subjects without subordination, has found among the libertines of policy, many clamorous and hardy vindicators. The laws of nature, the rights of humanity, the faith of charters, the danger of liberty, the encroachments of usurpation, have been thundered in our ears, sometimes by interested faction, and sometimes by honest stupidity.

http://www.samueljohnson.com/tnt.html

I particularly like this bit:

We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

if only for the fact that I want to use the word "perspicacious" more regularly in general conversation

[JonPorobil]

So you think Roymond is a "Tea Party" person, eh?

I mean...
F'real?

[roymond]

[Caravan Ray]

So you think Roymond is a "Tea Party" person, eh?

I mean...
F'real?

Errr...no - I find it interesting that Dr Johnson writing in 1775 describes tax aversion as being almost an inherent part of the American psyche, and observation which could be seen as just as relevant over 200 years later

[Caravan Ray]

Is the CW=1694 supposed to mean something? I don't understand.

[fluffy]

It's cute how you Commonwealth folks love to judge modern Americans based on what people whom most of us are completely unrelated to did in the late 18th century as recontextualized through a modern filter while cherry-picking things that cast them in as bad a light as possible.

[Caravan Ray]

It's cute how you Commonwealth folks love to judge modern Americans based on what people whom most of us are completely unrelated to did in the late 18th century as recontextualized through a modern filter while cherry-picking things that cast them in as bad a light as possible.

Who has been doing that?
Is that Cashpoint causing trouble again?


All I did was link to an interesting essay by Dr Johnson which seems pertinent today since there are people in the USA like this:

who seem to have changed little from what Dr Johnson described in 1775.
Given the name that these people have adopted - it appears that it is they who have recontextualized the 18th century through a modern filter. That is what amuses me.

....and frightens me:
http://austeaparty.com.au/web/

[fluffy]

Well yeah, the modern Tea Party has absolutely nothing to do with anything remotely based on reality, past present or future. But it sounded like you were equating them with the original basis of the USA's founding.

The actual tea party incident itself was about getting rid of a tax that was being levied without any representation in government whatsoever, and taking down a monopolistic corporation that was taking advantage of their privileged status to control the supply of tea to the country. The problem wasn't the taxes themselves, but that the taxes were for things that the colonists neither wanted nor had any say in.

[Caravan Ray]

Well yeah, the modern Tea Party has absolutely nothing to do with anything remotely based on reality, past present or future. But it sounded like you were equating them with the original basis of the USA's founding.

Yes - I was equating them with the original basis of the USA's founding. This strong tax aversion seemed to be a feature of colonial society, just as it is in some parts of the modern USA

The actual tea party incident itself was about getting rid of a tax that was being levied without any representation in government whatsoever, and taking down a monopolistic corporation that was taking advantage of their privileged status to control the supply of tea to the country. The problem wasn't the taxes themselves, but that the taxes were for things that the colonists neither wanted nor had any say in.

As I understood it, the actual tea party incident itself was about smugglers protecting their interests. The 1773 Tea Act actually made tea cheaper in the USA. But it cut into the smugglers profits. Some of these smugglers became what you call "founding fathers".

And this is not really a exclusively American thing. It seems to be a symptom of capitalism everywhere. I linked to the Australian "Tea Party" earlier - really just a small band of nutjobs - but it is disturbing that this idea that people can pick and choose what taxes they want to pay is growing here. Swap tea smugglers for mining magnates - and the same this is happening here as colonial America in the 1770s. In 2010, a small group of mega rich mine owners, upset that they may have to actually have to pay a little tax on the billions of windfall profits they earning from exploiting resources they don't actually own managed to use their influence in the media to essentially bring down a government. Many of the same partys are now working hard to bring down the current government because they don't like the idea of paying a tax based on their CO2 emissions.

As Dr Johnson said:
They allow to the supreme power nothing more than the liberty of notifying to them its demands or its necessities. Of this notification they profess to think for themselves, how far it shall influence their counsels; and of the necessities alleged, how far they shall endeavour to relieve them.
"Greedy bastards" would be another way of describing it.

[rone rivendale]

Just as you call the small amount of ppl in Australia's version "nut jobs", the Tea Party in the U.S. is also just a very small group of people. Most Americans work their asses off and get a 1/3 of their wages taken away for programs that won't ever benefit them.

There are 2 very important things to always remember when thinking about a country:
1. Never judge a whole country by its government.
2. Never judge a whole country by it's most vocal idiots.

[Caravan Ray]

There are 2 very important things to always remember when thinking about a country:
1. Never judge a whole country by its government.
2. Never judge a whole country by it's most vocal idiots.

and
3. Never jump to the conclusion that anyone is 'judging a whole country' about anything without reading what was written.