Explain the Conclusion That This Person is a Republican

Colin Powell. What was George Bush thinking when he hired Colin Powell?

For some reason, we automatically respect generals. It’s silly, if you think about it. Wesley Clark was a general. Would you want someone that weird and ruthless and ambitious in public office? This is the guy who wanted to launch a military attack on our allies, the Russians. Then there was the general who ran Abu Ghraib. And how about General Benedict Arnold? The notion that all generals are brilliant and of sound character is clearly unfounded.

Colin Powell, like Albert Einstein, benefits from a strange kind of mindless worship. Einstein is quoted as an authority on absolutely everything, from politics to religion to personal relationships. Outside of his narrow field, Einstein was almost helpless. He had no common sense. He was selfish. He was absent-minded. He was a bad father and husband. He had a naive, childlike belief in some sort of central global government. He was wrong about lots of things. In fact, he spent many years trying to disprove quantum mechanics, which was a complete waste of time and an embarrassment. Still, we quote him as though his words were scripture. And the press gives the same treatment to Powell.

What exactly has Powell done to justify his guru status? If I recall correctly (from reading Schwarzkopf’s book), he was among those who discouraged Bush I from entering Baghdad and putting an end to Saddam Hussein’s nonsense, back when we had a giant, enthusiastic coalition that could have administered a postwar Iraq relatively painlessly. Would anyone seriously claim this was good advice? Our generals told us the Iraqis would fight to the death, and that we would have to go house-to-house, slaughtering their brave troops and suffering terrible casualties of our own. Is that what happened in 2003? NO. We suffered very few losses, and the war was over in a few weeks. Since then, we’ve had trouble dealing with terrorists and religious nuts, but we are definitely in charge, and the job would have been much, much easier with the rest of the world on board, as they were when Powell and the others were telling us to cut and run.

Powell endorses affirmative action. Is that a sign of mental acuity? Affirmative action divides our country and ruins people’s lives. All over the US, there are people who earned jobs and college spots, yet who did not receive them because they were given to applicants with inferior qualifications. As a result, many of these victims of politics have suffered very severe financial damage and emotional pain. And many of the people who got the things earned by the dispossessed have proven incompetent and unable to benefit from them. If you want to see what affirmative action does, go to any law school and compare the percentages of minority students in the first and second-year classes. Affirmative action beneficiaries show up in August of their first year, full of hope and optimism, and many of them leave in January or April with their dreams crushed.

Affirmative action discounts the achievements of women and minority members who get their success through merit. Have you ever been treated by a minority doctor and heard a little voice in the back of your head, asking you how he or she got his job, and whether you should make an excuse to see another caregiver? I sure have. On the other hand, if your doctor is a white male whose parents aren’t rich, you can pretty well assume he earned his wings, because when he applied to medical school, the entire system was trying to destroy him. It must be frustrating, being a highly capable black professional and knowing that people are unwilling to take your credentials at face value because so many of your peers are barely adequate. Powell is wrong about affirmative action, guru or not.

Colin Powell told us Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Personally, I think he was correct, and I believe whatever Hussein had was moved to Syria, while the French and Russians and Germans dawdled, in hopes of preserving their multibillion-dollar contracts with Hussein. That would certainly help explain the huge truckload of chemical weapons that departed from Syria in 2004 and was intercepted in Amman. But Powell now says he was wrong. Would a genuine guru let himself be wrong about a thing like that? Would he stake his reputation on it, as Powell did? Would he do that with war at stake? After leaving office, Powell turned on George Bush and tried to depict himself as the victim of a corrupt regime bent on invasion. Would a true statesman wheel around and attack his President in order to rehabilitate his own image? Is that what we call character?

Now Powell is telling us the GOP has been hijacked by religious nuts and far-right extremists. His advice is as sound as ever. He says we’re supposed to embrace minorities instead of “shouting” at America. Have you ever heard anything more vacuous and wrong? The GOP crawls on its knees, trying to attract women and minorities. How does Powell think he got his job? We’re already reaching out. The only way to reach out more effectively is to stop being Republicans, which is what Powell really wants us to do. He wants us to abandon God and conservatism and start pushing affirmative action. So we can have more visionary leaders like Colin Powell, I guess.

The ideas Powell is discussing involve notions like unity and chain of command. A political party’s leadership has to understand those things. Are we supposed to learn about them from a backbiter who undercut his former superior while we were still at war?

What is the point of having a Republican party that agrees with the Democrats? Didn’t we just try that concept, nominating a liberal Presidential candidate who, the press told us, could not possibly lose? That worked out real good, didn’t it? When we become a liberal alternative to the DNC, most of the base will disappear, and the rest of us will become Democrats or independents. Going to the GOP for the implementation of leftist policies is like going to Dunkin’ Donuts for health food.

Powell says, “Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh? Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?” I guess disloyalty, lack of firm principles, and personal ambition are our better instincts.

Furthermore, what’s wrong with voting your religion? If God is God, he is among us, working powerfully every day. Are we supposed to believe he won’t support us and help us if we let our belief in him shape our politics? If we believe that, we believe in a powerless God who is no god at all.

I plan to support conservatism and the most godly candidates available. Colin Powell’s opinion means nothing to me at all. Ronald Reagan was the most popular President of his era, and he would have sneered at Powell’s willingness to grovel and cave. Voters don’t vote for political philsophies; they’re not smart enough to understand them. They vote for people with confidence in their beliefs. Reagan proved that, and in the future, other conservatives can prove it again.

Here’s what I think is going on here. Colin Powell messed up his future by picking the GOP as his party. Now there is talk of a position with the Obama administration. Criticizing the GOP can only make his candidacy stronger.

I don’t think this guy is a statesman OR a saint. I realize I’m in the minority. Not the GOOD kind of minority, of course. But you know what I mean.

Table Saw Planer = FAIL

I learned some stuff today. I learned that a table saw will put a straight edge on a two-by-six in nothing flat, so it’s a pretty good jointer. I also learned that trying to do the same thing with the broad side of the same piece of wood is like walking a greased tightrope naked over a pond full of piranhas. So it’s a very lame planer. If I had all the right featherboards and something decent for outfeed support, MAYBE. But as it is, it’s terrifying, and the results are bad.

I also hate the table saw.

I have always said that if I got filthy rich, I’d invest in a Sawstop saw immediately, because it’s safer than an ordinary table saw. But this week I saw a safe, versatile, compact, relatively cheap substitute for a table saw, and I refused to buy it. So in the future, I would spend $2000 or whatever on a big cabinet saw, but in the present, I am too cheap to lay out $200 for something that will outperform a table saw 80% of the time.

Clearly, I am a slave to logic.

I’m talking about the EZ Smart track system. I know it’s a good product; too many good woodworkers say so for me to deny it. But I already invested a surprisingly large amount in a pretty good jobsite saw, with related paraphernalia. Therefore, faced with the prospect of spending more money, I would prefer sawing my fingers off.

The only obvious drawback to this thing is that it’s based on a circular saw with a small diameter. My table saw has a 10″ blade, and a circular saw would be a little over 8. So you get limited depth. The system involves an extra plate that goes on the bottom of the saw, so that makes it even worse.

I don’t know what I’m going to do for a router fence. I would feel like an idiot, going to a lumber yard and paying them to plane down a board for me.

I Even Bought an Opener for Beer Bottles

I just got back from my semi-annual dental checkup. Everything is swell, except one of my old metal fillings is not looking too good. It’s going to be gouged out and replaced. Fun.

I told the doctor it was about forty years old, but he wasn’t buying it. I am pretty sure it went in there under the Nixon administration. I was thinking about it on the way home. My mother loved me and all, but I believe I am correct when I say I did not go to the dentist between my teens and thirties. I think she quit taking me when I was in high school. I had a few cavities as a kid, and then when I returned to the dentist in the Nineties, I apparently had some little things called “pits,” which are not really full-blown cavities, yet which are profitable to fill. So they got filled. That’s about it. The Nineties fillings are composite, so anything metallic has to be ancient. They always say metal fillings don’t last, but I am older than dirt, and this is the first time one has shown signs of failure.

Since things went so well, I am celebrating. With a bag of Krispy Kreme mini-crullers. They’re not that good, I know, but I felt I had to make a statement, and the store didn’t have the little cherry Entenmann’s hand pies I wanted. I think I’ll put Quik on them. My teeth have been deprived of their protective layer of tartar, so I need to build it back up.

The store had rib roasts on sale for $6 a pound. Is that even fair? How am I supposed to not buy that? I always check the price, but I count on them not to put them on sale. We have an unspoken agreement. Now they have gone and violated it.

I better go get the Quik.

My Scrap Bin Runneth Over

Lots of comments on the router table. Let’s see.

“This: LINK is the Bible when it comes to dust control.”

Oh good. I hope it’s expensive.

“Next thing you know you’re gonna want one of these, a palm router: ”

Okay, just shut up. I am not listening.

I wonder who makes a good one…

“There is nothing you can’t do with a router.”

Succinct.

“Don’t forget about a “D” handle router, too.”

[fingers in ears] STILL NOT LISTENING.

“Something that both sucks and blows is called an eductor. If you blow high-pressure air into a venturi, it entrains air into the nozzle and out the back end.”

I actually thought about venturis in this context. My dad’s boat has toilets that work this way, except instead of air, they blow water. But I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Again.

“Does being 30% done on building an airplane count as worthy?”

I don’t know. Cutting a hole in a desk is pretty freaking impressive.

“From the picture it looks like the base is recessed below the surface of the table. Is that an optical illusion, or is that what you meant by adjusting the height?”

It’s both. Later on, I took a small block of wood and ran it back and forth over the joints, adjusting the set screws whenever it met resistance. It seems pretty level now. Or pretty fair, or whatever the word is.

I am still finding dust everywhere. I need to conquer it. Problem is, I will make dust when I create a fence, and I can’t make a dust collection system until the fence exists.

I originally wanted to buy an aluminum fence from Rockler, but I am developing an aversion to buying stuff a real man would make (having somehow confused myself with a real man), so I am thinking I should just grind one out of a two-by-four or two-by-six. I may be able to get a straight bottom and top edge using the table saw. A straight side may be more of a challenge. I could cheat and put a sacrificial strip of MDF on it.

I keep calling the table MDF, and I have seen other people call the same material MDF, but I believe it’s really particle board, with smaller than usual particles. Whatever it is, it routs pretty well. I think once I get it totally flat, I may spray the underside with something to seal it up and keep water from making it swell and bend. I don’t trust paint to do it. I happen to have some truck bed paint. That ought to do it, big-time.

Let’s see. Two-by-six for the fence. Flatten the top and bottom with table saw. Fair up front side with hand plane. Attach sacrificial MDF strip with dust rabbet along bottom. I could attach something to the fence at a 90-degree angle, on the back, to rest on the table and support it.

Guess I’ll look at my books and see what the story is.

People are telling me I need certain types of filters to minimize the health risk. To tell the truth, I wasn’t thinking about that. I figured I would always have to wear a mask. I was thinking mainly about the mess.

I hate masks. After a while, I find myself breathing heavily because of the air resistance. Dang it.

Anyway, progress is happening.

How Many is Enough?

I thought people were kidding when they left comments saying they had several routers. Now I can see how that happens.

I got a big ol’ plunge router, intending to put it in a table. Now it’s installed. So I have no handheld plunge router. Sure, I can uninstall it when I want to use it. And I could also do my routing using a sharpened spoon. It’s not going to happen.

The router experts say you need a nice fixed-base router AND a nice plunge router, but you don’t want a giant one like my table router, because the little ones are easier to handle.

I need to get rid of my old Sears table. Maybe I should keep the router.

Here’s something cool. A Greek guy named Dino has come up with a strange rail-based system for routers and circular saws. It’s amazing. You can cut 8-foot sheets of lumber accurately with this thing. You can get near-furniture-quality cuts with a 24-tooth saw. He has a thing that connects a router to it, standing up, and you can move the router around like a CNC deal. You can literally write your name with it. Although now that I think about it, that’s pretty easy with a router you hold in your hands.

There are other track-based systems, but his is the most interesting, because it’s just one lone nut, competing with Festool and Dewalt.

I have to make dust collection a priority. I wish I could blow it out into the yard, but as I have pointed out previously, it’s not easy to make a machine that both sucks and blows. Maybe I should just pressurize the garage with my compressor and run a Y-shaped hose from the fence and router to the yard. Will the compressor be big enough? Maybe I can find a surplus jet engine. And perhaps I could put wings on the garage while I’m at it.

Sooner or later I really have to build something.

Router Table!

I guess it wouldn’t be fair to all you tool wimps to tell you how great I am.

Feast your eyes on THIS:

That is my poor old computer desk, with a new router lift installed in it.

This is not hard to do, believe it or not. It’s hard for ME, maybe, but it’s not hard.

For this the Woodpecker people recommend a 5/8″ straight bit with a bearing on it, and wouldn’t you know, they just happen to have one picked out for you to buy. So I got that, and I bought the MDF template, which is a board with a plate-sized hole in it. I had a hell of a time clamping it to the desk, but I managed. I still haven’t figured out the best way to adjust the depth on the router, but I moved it down by increments, routing around the template over and over, until I got past the 0.40″ depth I needed. I could have done it in one pass; the Bosch is apparently a pretty powerful router, and the MDF and melamine didn’t seem to challenge the bit. But all the books and videos say to take an eighth of an inch per pass, so that’s about what I did.

It was unnerving, making that first plunge into the desk. But it worked perfectly. I got a perfect outer edge on the rabbet I was making. The inner edge was a little off, but that was scrap, anyway. I had read that a router this size was hard to handle, but it wasn’t.

When I got the rabbet made, I had to figure out how to get rid of the scrap in the middle. It wasn’t a rabbet yet; it was a groove, and the stuff inside the groove had to be disposed of. A lot of people recommend a jigsaw, but I don’t have one, and I suspect it would be very slow and make a real mess of the MDF.

I decided to use the router. I clamped boards to the table to use as templates, and I routed until I saw daylight, and then the scrap fell out. I nibbled the remaining rough bits off, freehand. I plopped the lift in the hole, and it looks perfect. The imperfections in the rabbet are pretty small; it doesn’t look bad even with the lift out. I still have to adjust the height, but that’s a five-minute job.

This is sweet. Now I have to do something about dust collection. I removed about three ounces of material and produced maybe thirty gallons of dust. And it flies up and goes under goggles. That was unpleasant. I’ll have to come up with an answer. I guess I need to finish flattening the table, build a fence, and see where I can attach hoses.

I got to use my vernier caliper! That thing rocks!

I feel semi-competent. I will cherish the sensation while it lasts.

More

It gets even better! I stuck the router in the lift! It goes up! It goes down! Next year, I’ll install a Wonkalift that goes frontways and backways, too!

Slim and Smart

I am loving the Blackjack II. It turned out to be compatible with my 8-year-old version of Outlook, and Outlook turned out to have useful features I thought it did not have, and everything is peachy.

The phone tells me to take my vitamins. It tells me when to take a break for prayer in the middle of the day. It makes sure I take Marv and Maynard out early enough to avoid conflicting with my bedtime. It tells me to get ready for bed. It tells me to go to bed. And I even programmed it to wake me up.

There is some kind of power problem here that makes electronic clock radios make funny noises in the middle of the night. I just discovered this. It’s infuriating; I think it explains why I keep waking up. Let’s see it make the phone buzz! HA! No way!

I’m just like Canadian inventor Le Trung, who built his own wife from parts. Drudge linked to the story today. She can’t have sex–he claims–but she does all sorts of other stuff. He spent his life savings on her; what a fool. My phone was way cheaper. And unlike his robot, it doesn’t slap me when I squeeze it.

Interesting detail: the robot looks like a Japanese anime babe, proving once and for all that even Asians think Asian women are the hottest. Sadly, if Asian women start designing husbands, they will probably take a different tack. After all, there are bars around the Pacific where Asian women go for the express purpose of meeting men who are not Asian.

Oddly, the robot is Japanese, while Trung appears to be Vietnamese. But I guess if he had a history of doing well with Vietnamese women, he’d be married instead of cohabitating with an erector set.

Two Kinds of Things That Suffer Blights

I keep harping on the notion that my family is afflicted because of bad things our ancestors did, such as growing and selling cigarette tobacco. And I often cite the misfortunes we’ve suffered. On reflection, I have realized that we’ve had more problems than I thought.

I used to cite my mother, my aunt, and my uncle, who died from cancer. And I have said that my grandfather’s cardiac surgeon opined that the death of my aunt contributed to the heart attack that killed him a month later. But there’s more to it than that. We have had other atypical problems, some clearly caused by addiction or drug or alcohol abuse.

This week I realized none of my grandfather’s four daughters had been spared. I have two aunts left. Both are smokers. One has problems I would rather not go into. The other has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. So two are gone, one has terrible problems, and another has a terrible disease. And most of the grandchildren have failed to prosper as they should have.

That is four for four. Out of four families, not one has turned out as hoped. All families have troubles, but it’s not exactly rare for a man and wife to grow old and die together, with children who are healthy and happy, and who have fairly healthy families of their own. My grandfather had four daughters. Three divorced, and the fourth is a widow. Most of the kids have had serious setbacks. I’m sure many people who read this blog have families with statistics that are considerably brighter.

I am told that the Parkinson’s is getting worse. My aunt is complaining about the dementia that goes with it. She forgets things, for example. I’ve been looking around on the web for helpful information. They say coconut oil, vitamin D, and omega 3’s may be helpful.

I’d appreciate it if some of you would offer a prayer for her sake. I believe my family faces special challenges, but I also believe in deliverance by faith. Almost anything can be turned around and made into a blessing. I think I’m out of the woods, personally, and I hope I can help the others get out.

I asked Aaron what the Jewish position on curses was, and he said a subsequent generation can suffer for the sins of its predecessors, if they don’t disapprove of those sins. That is pretty consistent with what I believe. If you go on in blindness, not realizing wrong has been done, that’s nearly equivalent with approval. I think that describes our situation.

By the way, don’t forget Mish Weiss. She continues waiting for her bone marrow transplant to have the desired effects.

Thanks.

Finally, a Tool I Refuse to Buy

Here’s another reason to beat everyone who works for Harley-Davidson.

It looks like I have a bad diaphragm on my fuel supply valve. The solution? Remove the vacuum hose, remove the fuel hose, take off the valve, and open it up. BUT Harley-Davidson uses stupid spring band hose clamps, and you have to have special hose clamp pliers to remove them. This is brilliance at its best. You save maybe five cents on the cost of the bike by using the crappy clamp, but you lose ten dollars when you buy the special hose clamp pliers to take the clamp off.

I can’t think of one good reason not to replace it with a nice AWAB worm drive hose clamp. That’s what I did to the carb, and it worked out fine. It will save me the price of those stupid pliers.

I love the little touches manufacturers put on their products, to quadruple the time and money it costs to fix them.

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Harley-Davidson used to make a replacement diaphragm that cost around seven bucks. Then they decided that was too cheap. Now you have to buy the whole valve, for almost thirty bucks. Supposedly, you can buy the diaphragm by itself, but they make you pay the cost of a valve.

No wonder people hate Harley-Davidson.

I’m getting a Golan aftermarket petcock. I’m tempted to eliminate the diaphragm and replace it with a gasket, but I’d have to remember to turn the petcock off whenever the bike wasn’t running.

This is how Harleys are. The stock parts fail, and when you try to replace them, they screw you so badly you pretty much have to buy aftermarket if you want to retain your self-respect.

I am Never Lonely or Bored

Marv’s new annoying phrase: “Can I squeeze your fat carcass?”

No Reasonable Bribe Rejected

My cellphone has been running me ragged today. Every time I try to sit down and think for two seconds, it beeps and tells me I’m supposed to be somewhere else. Deposit a check. Charge the Harley’s battery. Put my old crap on Craigslist so I’ll have room for new crap. It never ends.

I want a divorce.

I’ll try to catch up with blogging before long. Right now I’m busy trying to sell a piece of merchandise that just became available. I’m referring to the office of Governor of the State of Illinois. Place your bid, and I’ll see if I can get you appointed.

I’d love to give it to you as a gift, but it’s a valuable thing — you just don’t give it away for nothing. I want to make money. Hurry up, or I’ll take the office myself. If you’re not going to offer me anything of value I might as well take it.

Reverend Jackson, please stop calling.

Soup & Planers

The stuff from Woodpeck.com arrived a while back. It looks pretty good. Maybe it was stupid to get a router lift, but people who use them seem to like them.

I got my sliding miter saw set up on the woodworking table. I am still amazed at how big the saw is. I’m worried it may interfere with some router work, because it’s to the left of the router. But it will only matter for pretty big items. I think the answer is to mount the miter saw using lag shields and easily removed bolts. That way I can yank the saw off the table when necessary.

One problem: the table has an edge near the right side of the router, but the left edge is over three feet away, and between the router and the edge, there’s a saw. So I can’t use a conventional router sled. But I can think of ways to get around that.

I need a jointer. Or rather, I need boards that aren’t crooked. I know very little about tools, but I have learned that you can avoid buying a big, noisy, expensive jointer if you are willing to buy a hand plane and use a clamp. You learn something new every day.

The vegetable soup came out great, although I should have stuck some herbs in it. I know absolutely nothing about vegetable soup, but it seems to be programmed to taste good no matter what you put in it. One hazard I am aware of: soup made with red cabbage looks so disgusting it’s hard to eat.

It’s really sad; for 13 bucks I made like a gallon and a half of soup that is like ten times as good as anything you can get in a can, and I am sure a person who actually knows how to make soup can do it much better than I did.

Fling Ingredients at Will

I have been worried that I don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables. I have made a real effort, but there are days when my only vegetable is a nuked potato with butter. Luckily, this morning I remembered I had a bunch of rib-roast bones and a bacon wreath in the freezer.

Why is this lucky? Because these are things you can use to flavor vegetable soup.

The wreath is something I created when I was making bacon grease for Thanksgiving. I nuked a bunch of bacon strips laid out in a circle, and they contracted into a nice coherent ring. I also refer to these as “bacon pucks.”

I tossed these items in a pot containing tomato soup, and I proceeded to add vegetables.

Here’s a question: is it even possible to make bad vegetable soup? I have no recipe. I throw things in almost at random. It’s always good. Here’s what I used today:

Bones from 6-pound rib roast
bacon wreath
bottle of cheap tomato juice
can of cheap corn
2 cans cheap peas
3/4 head of cabbage, sliced
4 carrots, sliced
2 yellow squash, diced
4 red potatoes, diced
1 lb. fresh green beans, broken
1/2 cup wild rice
1 Jamaican hot chocolate pepper, sliced
sea salt
splash of Carlo Rossi Paisano
2 cloves garlic
water

I think that’s it. It’s blerping away on the stove. I may have to adjust it later. I suppose I could throw in some herbs. The only fresh ones on hand are rosemary, thyme, and sage. I have fresh oregano, but it tastes disgusting. I hate to admit this, but after tasting thyme over and over, I am still not quite sure what it tastes like. It’s one of those flavors that are so boring it’s hard to remember them.

I have another question. Are we buying cans from China now? Seems like every time I try to open a can, it folds up so the opener misses some places in the lid. Something is wrong, and it smells Chinese.

Without muh Sleeve…

I am anxiously awaiting the delivery of my router lift. Very exciting. The desk I am converting into a woodworking table looks viable, and I can’t wait to install a router.

I’ve been reading Bill Hylton’s router books. This man is not a fan of gadgetry. For example, I thought I needed a miter track in my table, but he says only a FOOL would have a router track. Actually, he uses the phrase “completely unnecessary.” He even thinks lifts are silly. I think. It sure looks that way.

I don’t care. I want convenience. I don’t want to pull the fricking router out from under the table over and over, and I don’t want to suffer with under-the-table adjustments. Maybe it will turn out that I’m stupid and wrong. I’ll get over it. I always have.

I thought I needed a fancy aluminum fence, but I was utterly lost and consumed with ignorance. Hylton uses crappy bits of MDF and scrap wood. So there’s a big expenditure I won’t be making. But I’ll have to be all manly and craft a dust thing to put on my scrap fences. I also need something to catch dust that falls through the hole in the table.

For the three times a year when I actually use this thing.

I seriously think I should hook up a blower and make a hole in the garage wall, so the sawdust goes out in the grass. It’s MULCH! It IS! Really! Sort of.

You could eject three hundred pounds of dust out there, and two days later, you would see no evidence. But while it’s easy to suck dust, and it’s easy to blow dust, it’s not easy to make a thing that sucks it while also blowing it.

I have a template for the router lift. Naturally, that turned out to be a total waste of money. Hylton says he-men make their own templates by routing around a lift plate’s edge.

Once the rabbet for the lift is cut, I’ll have to get rid of all the material inside it. How on earth do I do that? I never thought about it. Some people use a jigsaw. Which I do not have. Real men drop a circular saw straight onto the table. I assumed I would do it with the router. That may take a while, with an inch of MDF to cut.

I need to build a few things, in order to develop some competence. I’m wondering if I have what it takes to make a humidor. I don’t really need one, but I have never been happy with the one I bought for my dad. Maybe I could make a better one.

Shut up. It could happen.

Come on, UPS. I’m bored.

Sometimes the Evidence Matters

Finally, the information is on the web. A friend of O.J. Simpson’s says the deal he rejected was for three years in jail.

I’m not a criminal lawyer, but I would guess that when you accept a sentence in a plea bargain, you remain entitled to things like time off for good behavior, as well as parole. Correct me if I’m wrong. So O.J. could probably have been out in maybe a year. In Florida, he could have gone home in six months. We purge our jails twice a year, because if we didn’t, most of us would be living there right now.

The article says Simpson “and his lawyers” rejected the deal. Surely that doesn’t mean what it seems to mean. Surely the lawyers didn’t back Simpson on this horrendous decision. My father and I discussed this case the other day, and it seemed to him that it might be unethical to go along with a client in Simpson’s position who rejected a nice plea. O.J. was recorded conspiring to commit robbery. O.J. was recorded DURING the robbery. Hello? There was video of him entering and leaving the hotel. He was filmed bragging about the robbery later. If Yale Galanter thought a non-ghetto Las Vegas jury was going to let his client go free, I would truly like to know how he came to that conclusion.

Old news stories say O.J. was planning an acquittal party before the jury dropped the bomb on him. What goes on in this man’s head? Discussing the negotiations, the prosecutor said Simpson wanted something “just short of a public apology.”

Most people do something really stupid once in a while, but generally, when we realize we’ve stepped in it, we wise up. A smart person will search himself and repent sincerely; even a fool will try to avoid making things worse. What are you if you can’t even manage that?

O.J. Simpson, I guess.