The Maverick Tribe

My favorite little 2-year-old Nico brought his parents Tina and Stefano to Hawaii recently.  Here he is showing them how to swim:

This photo belongs in a travel brochure with the caption: "Bask in the warm Kauai breeze with a 4-day/3-night package your whole family will love."

And, no, I'm not talking about Microsoft.  It's window time for "my" house.  The place is totally framed and the plywood sheathing is on there, so on Friday I learned what it takes to install a window.  I also learned how not to install a window, i.e., positioning and nailing it in without remembering to put on the flashing first.

I promised some pictures last time so here goes.

Here's more or less what it'll look like when it's done:

Brought to you by Philip:

If you missed the Fox News GOP presidential debate tonight, congratulate yourself.  I don't care if you spent that 90 minutes with the TV off, listening to Yanni, and picking the lint out from between your toes, it was probably more edifying than the debate.  Having just watched it, I'm now sitting here intellectually bewildered and catatonic.  What's worse, I fear the Fox News tractor beam has me in its grip.  Right now they're showing slow-motion footage of Dick Cheney fly fishing and I can't seem to change the channel.  Must....reach....remote....

Ok that's better.  Anyway, if you missed the debate, here's the boiled down version (as presented by Maverick Tribe):

Fred Thompson:  What this country needs is more school choice, more market solutions, and more, uh, more...(looking down at notes)...oh yes, and more platitudes.  Hillary Clinton is evil and Ted Kennedy is fat.

Mitt Romney:  I believe in strengthening America so that it's strong, with strong principles key to a position of strength.  And you know what's not strong?  Weak things, like HillaryCare, which, despite being modeled on my health care plan in Massachusetts, is government-run socialized medicine, whereas my plan is strong.  Did I mention Hillary bad?

John McCain:  I hate Mitt Romney.  And Hillary.

Ron Paul:  I tried to stop the Iraq War!  And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you darn kids!

Duncan Hunter:  In order to prepare for the presidency, I've waxed my eyebrows into the shape of Mr. Spock's.  A vote for Hillary Clinton would be illogical.

Mike Huckabee:  Don't be fooled by my sunny, folksy demeanor.  I hate Hillary more than any of these pussies.

Tom Tancredo:  Hillary Clinton is probably an illegal alien.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, states the obvious on farm policy.  Getting rid of national farm subsidies and trade barriers to agricultural imports would reduce global poverty, reduce illegal immigration, save taxpayer money, and improve the environment.  Given that repealing farm subsidies and tariffs makes so much sense to everyone except big agribusiness, we can all rest assured that Congress will never do it.

Robert Reich, you are such an adorable little man!  Who's a cute widdle idealist, huh?  You are!  Yes, who's a widdle idealist... Good boy! 

So today I put in another day at Habitat for Humanity.  This is the fourth time I've been out at the site.  Today we worked on putting up some plywood sheathing.  The first two floors are framed, and we spent a lot of time on what will eventually become the attic crawlspace.  I sharped my skills with power saws (circular, reciprocating).  By the end of the day my hammering arm was a little sore.

The Habitat crowd is about what you'd expect:  liberal, crunchy, hipster, generally vegan, and uniformly white.  At lunch someone loaned a Noam Chomsky book to someone else.  Another guy named JoJo, who probably dresses up like some sort of jester at the Renaissance Fair, went around asking everyone what their "spirit animal" was.  (His was the satyr-panda -- and no, I don't know what that is either.  He even drew a picture of one on plywood with his pencil.  All of it was slightly Napoleon Dynamite but without the autism.)  Someone else was chowing down on a "Soy-rizo", which is, as was explained to me, a meatless, soy-based version of chorizo.  Yum.

A freckly blonde gave me a personality test where she had me describe a cube, a sphere, a horse, and their relative placements to each other, and the sphere represents your life, and the color of the sphere represents your personality, and the horse represents... eh, who the fuck cares.  Building stuff is fun.

Here's a picture I found of some of the completed homes.  (I'll take my own pics the next time I go out.)

Do you want to see the most phony, heartless, disgusting performance of a politician currently on the campaign trail?  Watch how Mitt Romney dismisses a voter with a very personal question on the issue of medical marijuana.

I know you were concerned about little Sean Preston and Jayden James.  Thankfully, an African couple has agreed to adopt them.

Christopher Hitchens rightly recognizes the shameful role China plays in abetting the vilest regimes throughout the world, with Burma's being merely one of a long list.  Over to Hitch:

Is there an initiative to save the un-massacred remains of the people of Darfur? It will be met by a Chinese veto. Does anyone care about Robert Mugabe treating his desperate population as if it belonged to him personally? China is always ready to help him out. Are the North Koreans starved and isolated so that a demented playboy can posture with nuclear weapons? Beijing will give the demented playboy a guarantee. How long can Southeast Asia bear the shame and misery of the Burmese junta? As long as the embrace of China persists. The identity of Tibet is being obliterated by the deliberate importation of Chinese settlers. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who claims even to know and determine the sex lives of his serfs (by the way, the very essence of totalitarianism), is armed and financed by China.

And I agree that it's time to start talking about a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

From Britain's The Daily Mail:

"The military regime won and a new generation has been violently repressed and violently denied democracy. The people in the street were young people, monks and civilians who were not participating during the 1988 revolt.

"Now the military has cracked down the revolt, and the result may very well be that the regime will enjoy another 20 years of silence, ruling by fear."

Is there anything that can be done to prevent this?