Creepy Ways to Prepare For a Trip

Dave: yesterday i turned off all the lights in my apt and put my headlamp on and made myself a cocktail

Dave: this happened

Dave: this literally happened.

Road Trip to the Everglades Itinerary

Blog's back! New and improved (i.e., less political yammering, more stupid travel banter).

Situation: Stephanie and I take our second road trip together.  A lot has changed since our last trip - for example, it is now the year 2011, whereas before, it was the year 2009.  Also, Stephanie has now become a seasoned road trip/hiking pro (except for the fact that she still doesn't know how to drive...ugh).  Uh...that's all that's changed basically. Anyway, we leave on Friday, December 16, which is soon. How does this make us feel?

Exactly.

Here are the highlights:

1) Washington DC - tour of the Capital, Natural History Museum, National Zoo
2) Drive to Savannah, eat fatty bbq food
3) See a ghost in Savannah
4) Drive to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, buy wands
5) Highlands Hammock State Park - it's cool. Camp.
6) Airboat Swamp Tour - See gators, then eat gators
7) Everglades - massive hikes and canoe rides through croc-infested waters, avoid being eaten, maybe sacrifice Steph to save self flee gators successfully
8) Drive through Florida Keys
9) Go H.A.M. in Miami, avoid being serial murdered

Israel Wise Thought of the Day

From David Remnick, who is always wise and almost always right:

"A unilateral attack from Israel . . . would be a grave mistake for all the reasons made plain by Meir Dagan and so many others. It is terrible enough to imagine what might happen if Iran came to possess a bomb; but an attack now would almost certainly lead to a tide of blood in the region. The Middle East today is in a state of fragile possibility, full of peril, to be sure, but also pregnant with promise. A premature unilateral attack could upend everything and one result of many would be an Israel under fire, under attack, and more deeply isolated than ever before."

Thought of the Day

Important thought of the day, from Brad DeLong:


"The United States economy is, right now, in significantly better shape than the Japanese economy, the British economy, or the European economy. To do best of four major industrial powers in dealing with the Lesser Depression is a significant accomplishment, even though things are much much worse than I would wish--and even though I think Obama's buying of a premature turn to long-run budget balance and of a policy of appeasing the banks at all hazards lest he provoke a full-scale capital strike were bad mistakes."

Morning thoughts

Obama has killed a LOT of big terrorists. He's really good at it.  He's killed 5/6 of my least favorite terrorists.  He just needs to get that doctor who has an indented forehead from praying too much.  Seriously. It's like a bullseye.

Combination of everything I love in the world

You should write your congressman about the debt ceiling

Y'all should call/write your congressmen/women about this whole debt ceiling impasse.  It doesn't really matter what you say - stress you want compromise and you want it raised. Calling Democrats isn't that useful, they're all already on board - find some nice republicans and bother them.  DEMOCRACY. 

Here's what I wrote:

"This is getting outrageous.  I'm a corporate attorney who has had the luck to survive the horrendous economy of the past 3 years relatively unscathed.  You, your boss (the Speaker) and I all know that allowing this debt ceiling charade to continue will plunge us back into a recession - everyone with an elementary knowledge of finance knows this. Please have the Speaker stop attacking the President's good faith efforts to get to a resolution to this made-up issue immediately.  Raise the debt ceiling now. I support a balanced deficit reduction plan (and by "balanced" i mean with major spending cuts and minor tax increases, but you need the tax increases to bring the Democrats along - it's called compromise). But more importantly, I just support raising the debt ceiling now, as it has been 30 times in the past 30 years.

You're about to lose my financial support for your party if you can't get your caucus to the right side on this."

See what I did at the end there?