Another Week Flies By....

Another week already about over and I still have one foot stuck in winter.... Well, as Red State Rebels noted for Boise, I will note for northern Idaho: we have crocus in bloom as well. And my tulips are coming up, the roses have buds, and I had to spray stinky red pepper, garlic, rotten egg spray on all of those today to keep the deer from eating them. The wild turkeys are another matter completely. They destroy my garden, eat my chives, eat my grape hyacinths, roost on my roof, and I hope the coyotes get them! I heard the coyotes two mornings in a row now and I found myself dreaming the absolute worst kind of dream: coyotes slurping up turkey eggs. You may think I'm vile for such thoughts but how would you like over 70 turkeys in your garden this spring? If I hunted, I would definitely be having wild turkey for Thanksgiving this year....

Politically it has also been an exciting week here in Idaho. Maria Weeg is leaving us for a better position in Arizona. She deserves this! But we will miss her. I only hope that her replacement is energetic, young, progressive, diplomatic and understands Idaho. With Idaho on the edge of becoming blue, the replacement will have a lot of weight on his or her shoulders. But that person will also have much support from various counties around the state. We're all in this together!

I became caught in a tangled discussion this week by one of the local Democrats who questions the reality of global warming. I finally reached the point where I had to declare an impasse. To me, global warming is as clear as An Inconvenient Truth made it out to be. Of course this person also believes that nuclear power is clean, a thought that tightens my throat just to type it. I think it mad to think that something whose waste products outlast their containers by 10,000 years is "clean." This kind of thinking is right up there with Otter wanting to kill the first wolf. Or the Idaho House passing a bill for needs-based Idaho scholarships, WITHOUT providing funding!

But I'm really upset about the House passing the Abortion Consent Bill which requires a minor to get parental consent before having an abortion. I think that more than anything the passing of this bill speaks volumes about the ignorance legislators have about abuse in families, the sexual mores and attitudes that young people have these days, the lack of appropriate education, and turning a blind eye to how people really behave. It really makes me wish that some of the under-30's crowd ran for these offices.

But such ignorance seems par for the course in this country. I'm almost finished reading Mike Gray's Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess & How We Can Get Out, which details how misguided prohibitionists, lying presidents, political fanatics, and other equally irresponsible members of our government brought into being a drug policy based on fallacies, lies, government corruption, thievery, and chaos, and turned it into an industry that makes tons of money by feeding on itself. This book takes a look at a government policy that continues to be based on an out-dated, and misconstrued kind of Reefer Madness mentality.

And we are just experiencing this same kind of idiocy again in Boundary County, where the school district, which is predominantly Republican, wants money for a Supplemental Levy, all the while voting for the Republican Legislators who consistently vote money right out of Idaho public education. And our Superintendent, Don Bartling, is one of the worst! And to top it off, he just loves to throw about self-aggrandizing phrases like, "well, when Governor Otter was in my office last week...." Give me a break! Will the levy pass? The Democrats reminded the superintendent of the party that always supports public education, and of the party that obviously does not. Indeed, as noted by morialekafa on 3/9/07, one of our long-term local Democrats has resorted to feeling that the lack of money for schools is a Republican problem, so let the Republicans fix it....

So much corruption, so much to fix, I'm surprised that anyone would want to run for public office.... Well, I think I'll enjoy the first blossoms of spring, oh, dang, the bloody turkeys are back in my yard!!!