Joe Lieberman Takes It In The Shorts

Sorry for the iconoflatulence (a term coined by my high school buddy Verde, who I think should retire to a life as a Northern Neck writer. Anyone who can come up with such a term should be writing.) But as you no doubt by now know, I can't help myself.

I must admit I am taking great pleasure in the demise of Joe (2%) Lieberman to, the heretofore unknown, Ned Lamont in his bid for a fourth Senate term. (2% is about the most Lieberman received in votes in any of the 2004 democratic presidential election primaries.) That well publicized Bush kiss and his gushing praise for Bush's Iraq policies are coming back to bite the arrogant bastard in the butt. Realizing that he will lose the democratic primary in early August, Lieberman has filed the necessary signatures to enable him to run as a repubdependent.

Lamont is leading the three term senator in all demographic groups except those over 65 and even the NYT has turned against him.

The establishment media and pundits are blaming the "netroots" for Lieberman's political problems. I think his problems have more to do with his hubris, and his sense that he is entitled to his senate seat.

I Think Hugo Chavez It Exactly Right

"After almost 200 years, we can say that the United States was designed to fill the entire world with poverty as if in the name of freedom," he said according to Interfax.

"The United States' empire is the greatest threat which exists in the world today. This is a senseless, blind and dumb giant, which does not know the world, does not know human rights, and does not know anything about humanity, culture, conscience, or consciousness."

He said the "winds of war" were blowing in the Middle East and were a "product of hegemony and imperialistic aspirations, which reveal Washington's bid for power over the whole planet".

Read the entire Guardian report here.

Villahermosa

Tonight I am in Villahermosa, with one days drive left to Merida. I’m pretty sure I will never return to this city. This afternoon I paid my first ever bride in the time I’ve been in Mexico.

Driving around the city looking for a place to stay for the night I pulled into a traffic lane reserved for buses and cooperatives. A police officer pulled up behind me and motioned for me to do a U turn and pull over. He explained the lane was reserved, I apologized and he asked for my driver’s license and registration. After telling me he would have to write me a ticket and that I would have to go tomorrow to pay it he began to walk toward his car. He turned around, came back and began explaining that if I put something in his mano he wouldn’t write me a ticket. I asked how much and he answered whatever I thought. I gave him $100. pesos and we both went on our ways. A violation of my principles, to be sure, but in this case expediency prevailed.

The best thing I can say about Villahermosa, of the limited area I saw, is that it has a highway that runs right through the middle of it which permits one to transit the city without stopping.

July 20th

Tonight I am staying in the El Castillo (which looks like a castle) another drive in hotel with private garages, though this one just has a curtain for a door. The room is quite plush and very dark. There is not enough light in the room for me to type on my laptop, so here I am in an internet café.

I have come to the conclusion that the hotel with the garages are places for discrete rendezvous. The room I’m in has a huge mirror at the head of the bed, colored lights above the bed, piped in music, and a price list on the wall that includes drink, toiletries and condoms. There is also a wooden rotating shelf in the wall between the room and the garage through which the staff can deliver items without opening the door or seeing in the room.

Generally having my head in the clouds, it usually takes me a while to figure these things out.

I expect to arrive in Xalapa during the early afternoon tomorrow. I will unload my household goods there and return to Merida.

Back in Mexico

I am back in Mexico, having tracked down a customs broker and successfully entered the country with a truck load of household goods.

I am feeling quite relieved to back in Mexico and to have crossed the border with my household goods with no problems. I now have no property or possessions, other than bank accounts, in the USA.

As it happened I was able to track down one of the customs broker with whom I had been communicating through email, though it took a bit to find his new location. I arrived at his office at about 9:00, provided him with copies of the “menaje de casa” visa issued me by the Mexican consulate in Seattle. He called his contact in Matamoras and informed me of the fee.

While I went to the nearest bank to get some cash, he made copies and arrangements with the broker with whom he works in Matamoras. When I returned to his office he instructed me to follow him to his warehouse where I would leave my truck while we crossed to Matamoras and went to the Mexican broker’s office to deliver the paperwork.

The USA broker took me on a driving tour of Matamoras for about an hour while the Mexican broker was preparing the “pedimento”. After a bit he suggested we stop at his favorite bar for a Clamato and vodka, which has to be about the most wretched drink I’ve ever tasted. I drank about half and pawned the rest off on him, explaining that I was getting a bit light headed and wanted to be completely sober for my border crossing.

We returned to the Mexican broker’s office, picked up the pedimento, and returned to his warehouse in Brownsville to await a call from the Mexican broker’s office with instructions on when to leave for the border. The call came and the Brownsville broker led me to the proper border crossing and left me with instructions of which line to get in and that a person from the Mexican broker’s office would meet me at the border with the necessary paperwork.

Sure enough the fellow was there with the papers and stood by as I made my way across the border to be sure everything went smoothly.

After crossing I parked my truck, went to the immigration office to have my visa stamped, and then moved my truck into an inspection bay where I waited for about a half an hour for my pedimento to make its way from the border crossing gate to the inspection area. Soon a fellow approached and asked me to open the back of the truck and to begin removing the stuff for his inspection, but after I had removed only a few items he indicated that he’d seen enough and a couple of fellows helped me reload. Everyone was quite jovial.

So off I was with one more gate to pass and perhaps another inspection. The fellow at that gate took a quick look at the pedimento and waved me through. About 10 kilometers down the road I had to pass through another inspection point but the fellow there also waved me through after a quick look at the pedimento.

So here I am in Ciudad de Victoria spending the night in a luxurious motel, with my own garage with an electric door, for $360 pesos. After getting settled into my room I notice there are 4 and 12 hours rates posted on the back of the door. I think I’ll call for room service, so to speak.

July 18

I arrived in Brownsville at 6:00 this evening and am settled in to a room at the Red Roof Inn with a high speed LAN connection. Tomorrow I go looking for a customs broker. One of the brokers with whom I’ve been communicating informed me today that her Mexican broker is no longer doing "menaje de casa"” work and I have not heard back from the other since I sent him a message informing him that I would be at his office early Wednesday morning.

During my four days of driving since leaving Elma last Saturday morning I have covered 2741 miles, or an average of 685 miles per day.

The drive today and my drive through the Cascades on Saturday were by far the most scenic. Today I left the dessert Southwest, which often looks like one big strip mine, and South of San Antonio drove through what I suppose one would call a coastal plain. The area between Corpus Cristi and Brownsville is particularly nice with lush, green grasslands, shrubs, and trees. (Did you know that Arbusto, the name of Bush's failed oil exploration company, is Spanish for shrub or bush?)

US Highway 77 from Corpus Cristi to Brownsville is a beautiful highway that is more like a boulevard, with a very wide grassy median with occasional palm trees. The only draw back was the storm of flying insects through which I drove most of the way.

This morning, a bit East of Fort Stockton and South of Odessa and Midland, in an area predominated by mesas, I came upon hundreds and hundreds of very large wind powered electric generators, such as one may see in the Columbia Gorge. And just outside of Ozona I left the freeway to get gas and came upon a very pleasant young couple who waved me down for help.

All but two of the lugs bolts had broken in a rear wheel so they had pulled over with their SUV at a slant on the shoulder. They had jacked the beast up, I suspect with the jack parallel to the slant; the jack buckled; and when I came upon them the wheel was setting on the dirt. Fortunately neither was hurt. I pulled out my jack and as I was positioning it under the leaf spring, thinking it would probably not jack the rig high enough, two fellows in service trucks stopped to help. I was able to use my jack to get the leaf spring far enough off the ground to enable one of the other fellows to get his jack under the spring and raise the vehicle far enough to get the wheel on so they could limp the two miles to town in search of a permanent fix.

One of the fellows who stopped to help, the one that actually did something, was all business while the other was a big, round, very friendly bubba type with a wad of chew and lots to say. It was heartening to see folks stop to help the couple.

The couple noticed my Yucatan license plates and commented that I must be learning to speak Spanish and indicated that they are they are learning English. We spoke a bit in both Spanish and English, bid farewell with warm thanks, and I was on my way.

July 17

I am staying tonight in Fort Stockton, Texas, having driven the almost 800 miles from Flagstaff and enjoying the morning rush hour in Phoenix with lot of stop and go and the smooth evening rush hour in El Paso. I-10 in Texas is a far better roadway than it is in Arizona or New Mexico and with a speed limit 80 mph I was able to cover quite a bit of ground. Given that Texas is fairly flat I was actually able to drive 80 most of the day.

Tomorrow I should arrive in Brownsville, where Wednesday morning I will visit a customs broker who will help with the process of moving my truck load of stuff across the border.

Once again I am in a hotel without wireless internet access but am able to connect to an unsecured wireless network located elsewhere.

July 16

Tonight I am spending in Flagstaff, AZ, in a Motel 6 scabbing off the Ramada’s wireless network. I am amazed at how often one can find an unsecured wireless network through which to access the internet. At one of my stops on the way North I tapped into a wireless network named “Brad is a Stud.”

I spent the last half of today on the US highway that passes Bryce, Zion, and Grand Canyon National Parks. It was the most direct route to get to Flagstaff and I 17 South which I will take to I 10 which will take me to Corpus Cristi.

During the last 40 or so miles of my drive I was treated to a spectacular lightening storm, with actual bolts that reached from the sky to the earth.

On The Road Again

I left Elma this morning after a great six day visit. I was able to spend a good bit of time and share lots of laughs with Long Time Harborite, my neighbor and very good friend of 30 years; visit with a few other Elma folks I wanted to see; ate and/or drank at Saginaw’s just about everyday; shared a couple of beers at Fred’s with Shu; and enjoyed a bit of Fred’s special sweet bread.

I am now sitting in a Super 8 motel in Buely, ID just North of the Utah border.

Last Tuesday I drove to the Mexican consulate in Seattle, where I arrived about 8:30 AM and took number 51 while the staff was serving number 21. My number came up after only about 45 minutes and I submitted the paperwork necessary to secure a visa which allows me to take into Mexico the household goods I had in storage in Elma. Amongst the paperwork was a detailed list of the items I wish to take to Mexico which I was told was in the wrong format.

So I walked a block to a restaurant where I reformatted the list on my laptop, in Excel spreadsheet format, while I ate. Then walked two blocks to Kinkos where I plugged my laptop into their docking station, printed the list, and got the copies I needed. The docking station was pretty cool, included a credit card reader, and put a little screen on my computer screen informing me of the running charges, which came to $ .78.

In about an hour I was back at the consulate, handed in my revised list, and was told to return at 4:30. I returned and received my “menaje de casa” visa. The service was great and the fellow at the consulate who helped me was very pleasant. With the receipt of the visa I had no further responsibilities except to load my truck which I did yesterday.

During my visit to Elma I stayed at the Elma Microtel Inn and Suites, and since I am an honorary employee of WSCO Petroleum, the owner of the hotel, I received the employee discount rate of $25 per night. Upon my arrival at the Microtel last Sunday I pulled into a parking space right next to the van you see in the picture and upon which you can see a reference to the Osgood Brown Conference Center.

As some of my very few readers know, during my last job, working for the City of Elma, I was responsible for processing the land use and building permit applications for the construction of the hotel and inspected its construction. During the grand opening ceremonies of the hotel, after I had left employment with the city, Mayor Osgood and I were informed that WSCO Petroleum was naming the conference center after the mayor and me and naming one of the two rooms in the conference center for the mayor and me.

I always had thought that building are only named for dead people. Also during the ceremony I was informed that WSCO was designating me an honorary employee.

I promise you that nobody at WSCO or their architects, engineers, or contractors ever even suggested that they should not be required to comply with all applicable regulations or in anyway received any special treatment from the city with regards to applicable regulations. What city staff did do, however, was to provide excellent service in reviewing and approving all necessary permit applications. The whole project was a great experience for me and, as it happened capped my career as a local government regulator.

My Pickup

I received a request for a photo of my little pickup.

Welcome ToThe Police State

Isn’t the act of people reporting to authorities the activities of their neighbor and friends just the sort of thing for which we of the USA regularly criticize totalitarian governments. So here we have FBI agents telling Muslims living legally in the USA that they will be deported if they don’t becomes snitches.

The Columbia River Is a Sewer

The Seattle Times has a very good report of toxic pollution of the Columbia River.

Columbia River toxins moving up food chain
By Craig Welch
Seattle Times staff reporter

VANCOUVER, Wash. — First were the crayfish near Bonneville Dam, so loaded with toxins that scientists wondered how they could still be alive.

Then researchers learned Columbia River fish were contaminated enough that nearby tribes face dramatically higher risks of disease. Scientists since have found deformed sturgeon, uranium building up in clams near the Hanford nuclear reservation, and water in parts of the last stretch of the river as contaminated as Seattle's Duwamish River, a federal Superfund site.

Israeli Hypocrisy

Today while driving through Utah and listening to NPR news I heard a spokesman for the Israeli foreign relations ministry refer to Hamas as a “terrorist organization” that has become the Palestinian Authority ruling party.

So history repeats itself. Israelis who committed terrorist acts against the British, who controlled Palestine after WW II, later became Israeli prime ministers and other government officials.

July Fifth

I grabbed a cup of coffee from the OXXO store across from the Dolores Hotel and left Aldama about 7:30, heading North on Federal highway 180, which I have been following off and on from Merida, toward the border crossing at Matamoros and Brownsville.

The roads were excellent all day so I was able to travel at about 70 mph for most of the day. I drove until 8:00 pm, with only a brief stop about 11:00 to eat a cantaloupe from my garden and once for gas.

I crossed the border, paying the $23. peso fee to leave Mexico only to find that no one at the gate would stamp my Mexican FM 3 visa to note I was leaving the country, which is required. So after passing through the USA border control station the USA customs folks very nicely helped me do a U turn. I entered Mexico, paying $23. pesos to enter, was waved over by Mexican officials for a look in the back of my truck, and was instructed that to have my visa stamped I must go to another border crossing, the Puerta Nueva. So off I went to Puerta Nueva, passed through the gate, again paid $23. pesos, the Mexican authorities showed me where to park and opened a gate through which I could pass to access the immigration office, and eventually got my visa stamped. So now I know.

From Brownsville I followed US highway 83, that snakes its way along the Rio Grande. It was almost as though I hadn’t left Mexico. I stopped for the night in Carrizo Springs, Texas, a hundred milesor so f rom Del Rio, where I happened upon a nice motel for $45. per night that consists of one story concrete block buildings constructed in the 1950s before construction of the interstate freeway system cut into its business. Though the building is old, the room is very nice, with air conditioning, a refrigerator, microwave, and a TV with a zillion, or so, channels. A very nice fellow from San Francisco bought the hotel a year ago and is now remodeling and modernizing the buildings.

To complete my day I watched a Bob Dylan documentary.

Along the way during the day I happened upon a fellow with his herd of cows grazing along the side of the highway confined within an electric fence which I assume the fellow moves along the road, thus obtaining low cost feed for his herd. All through Mexico, as well in Texas, one happens upon cows, horses, goats, and donkeys tethered along the roads feeding.

Along Highway 83 there were tornado evacuation route signs, which struck me as more ludicrous than the tsunami evacuation signs one finds along the coast in Washington State. I mean, if one encounters a tornado wouldn’t one head away from the twister? At least with a tsunami one knows where it will land, even though the two lane tsunami evacuation routes leading away from the coast will be so bollixed that folks won’t be able to escape. A tornado, on the other hand, has no established route. So how can one establish an evacuation route?

Tomorrow it’s on to Eagle Pass, where I will again join the Rio Grande and then on to Del Rio from where I will take US Highway 90, still trending to the Northwest heading for Santa Fe.

The Courier has not skipped a beat and is remarkably comfortable for the cheapest little pickup truck I could find. I have now had two days of driving for 13 hours and am without aches and pains.

My July Fourth

There are a number of Marimba bands performing on the streets of Xalapa. The percussionist in this particular band was quite adept at extracting donations from those passing by.

After thoroughly enjoying 4 days in Xalapa I left about 6:30 the morning of July 4. In keeping with my preferences, I opted for the secondary roads heading to the Northeast, rather than returning to Veracruz and the main road North. The road wound through the densely vegetated mountains and was a fairly slow go, especially when stuck behind a truck on a winding upgrade. However, the countryside was beautiful and the drive took me through every city, pueblo, and wide spot in the road along the way.

Not too far out of Xalapa I came upon a fellow sitting beside the road with six large sacks. He gestured that he was looking for a ride so I stopped; backed up; we loaded his sacks, each of which I'm certain weighed more than 100 pounds; and away we went to Martinez del Torre. The bags, I soon learned, were filled with plants he had gathered from the mountains and which he was taking to town to sell to gardeners. I helped him unload his bags in Martinez de la Torro and took him to pick up his tricycle with which he would deliver is plants.

Eventually I arrived on the coast in the town of Naulta and headed North, along what is called The Emerald Coast. The road carried little traffic even though the road is lined with hotels and restaurants. I learned later that August is the peak month for visits to the area. I seems the area would be a nice vacation spot for those who don'’t want to hang out with other gringos when vacationing. There is an airport not far up the road at Poza Rica.

A ways up the coast I drove past a restaurant with a large grill filled with cooking meat out front. The aroma of the grilling meat entered and lingered in my truck, even after about a half mile. So I stopped, turned around, and returned for a lunch of mixed grilled meat, onions, and cheese together with the omnipresent black beans and tortillas. As usual in Mexico more was served than I could eat.

From the Emerald Coast the road moved inland a bit, passed through Poza Rica, and returned to the coast at the city of Tuxpam. I did not stop in either City as I wanted to cover some ground after spending so much time in Xalapa.

The road leaving Tuxpam toward Tampico was atrocious, consisting of a muddy, pot holed terror. Though the mud soon ended the pot holes didn'’t. I have found that the roads in Veracruz state are terrible compared to those in Yucatan, Campeche and Tampico. On the other hand I found Veracruz much cleaner than those other states. I noticed the Veracruz state governments is conducting an anti-litter campaign with billboards and TV ads.

At Tampico I passed through the city as I had decided to continue on to Altamira, just to the North, to look for a hotel. As it turned out Altamira was a huge industrial park with no hotels, so I continued on. As my good fortune would have it I ended up on a beautiful two lane Tamaulipas state road, with very little traffic, that wound its way through a beautiful coastal plain. I had no idea when I might arrive someplace with a hotel for the night, but eventually came to Aldama and the Delores Hotel, a very modern building with rooms for $260 pesos. I found an internet cafe in town, later had a dinner of fried shrimp and all the fixings at the restaurant next door to the hotel, and called it a day.

Bill Bennett Smack Down

Apparently that self-important, imperious gasbag Bill Bennett has been going around avering that reorters and editors who report classified information sshould be jailed. The Washington Post's Dan Priest, on Sunday's Meet the Press, reportedly, pointed out to the gasbag, who has admitted to a gambling problem, that publishing classified information, like casino gambling, is not illegal.

Xalapa Sunday in the Park

Xalapa

I am in Xalapa, the capitol of the state of Veracruz, where I arrived yesterday about noon. Xalapa, called the garden city as it is lush with vegetation, lies in the hills about 60 miles West of the city of Veracruz.

It's elevation of about 3,500 feet ensures a more temperate climate, generally about 15 degrees cooler than Merida or Veracruz, and gets plenty of rain to keep things green.



The picture above is of a lake on the edge of the Centro district which receives storm water runoff for the city and is circled by walking paths, which was well used by joggers, walkers, and young children on bicycles when I visited.

The shot to the right is from the Middle of the extensive park located next to the state government building. The park has been constructed on a number of different elevations connected by a number of stairways and contains number of very large trees and various sculptures. The pink building is a public building which serves a number of functions and in which last evening there was a free concert

The City, with a population of about 600,000, has been built on the hillsides so one gets lots of exercise touring the place.

More Premediatd Atrocity In Iraq

Premeditated rape and burning of the body by USA troops.