It’s just a raging bitch kind of summer, or perhaps I am describing myself. The weekends have been great–better than probably any of us living in Virginia in June deserve. This weekend is supposed to be just like the last 3 weekends. Warm and gorgeous.
I am taking the plunge and having my wrap-around deck re-stained. What a pain! I think I have more on my deck than I do in my living room. Plants, furniture, mosquito spray. Mosquitoes have been horrible. Bull Run breeds them big.
Has anyone found a cure to keep the mosquitoes at bay?
I need a beer that is perhaps less biting than an IPA. Any suggestions?
Waterfront Blonde Ale has less bite and is a little cheaper.
Thank you. I will look for it today.
I am just learning about beer. I took a leave of absence for about 25 years. What is the difference in “pale” and “blonde?”
Pale is Winona Ryder, Blonde is Reese Witherspoon
More mystery. Would you care to expound on that comparison?
@Moon-howler
You took a leave of absence at the wrong time. Even the beer at Giant or Food Lion can rival a good home brew. We even gave my b-i-l our brewing equipment since the stuff on the store shelves is good.
I like some of Rogue’s brews. They had a good chipotle stout. I guess it could still be ordered but there’s always something tempting on the shelves to take its place. I don’t like that sissy Miller’s Lite or Bud so new brews are like Christmas every time we go to the store. There’s a Rogue chocolate stout waiting in the fridge right now!
Wowowow you are adventurous. I was going to Wegman’s once a week to look at the new beer. I even found one with my dog on it. Sneaky Pete.
Mr. Howler used to brew beer and he made a huge mess with it. His last batch, he dropped. It broke. He left it and I stayed up all night cleaning it up. I laid the law down after that. Plus it tasted like panther pee.
You are right. The break took place at the wrong time.
If you want something a little more adventurous you might want to try Laguanitas Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale
Tell me what I would be adventuring in to, please.
Remember, I have been on hiatus for 25 years. I wasn’t exactly a buG light girl but pretty close. Yes the G is intentional. Lafayette will explain.
Lagunitas beers are typically very hoppy and thus can have a real bite (not to mention a higher alcohol content on some of their beers like their Hairy Eyeball breakfast beer).
As to the entire line of buG products, they all taste like soapy piss and Miller Lite is for high school, err college girls.
You don’t tell mom about Winona and what she will do, you take Reese home to mom.
Don’t you love the names of beer!! You wouldn’t want your mother reading some of them.
I feel your pain about Mr. Howler making a mess. We’ve had a few bottles of home brew explode in the pantry. They were squeaky clean compared to the mess left by about a half dozen root beer bottles that popped!
What type of beer do you like?
If you like dark beer: Breckenridge Vanilla Porter. Sweet and mild with a vanilla overtone.
Hardywood Brewery has some very good stuff. I don’t know if you get that, though. Its local here.
Samuel Adams Brewery has something for every taste.
Their Summer Ale is very good. And their lager is a standard for good beer.
For cheap beer, I like Yuengling. Killian’s is good, too.
This guy usually has good reviews on beer.
http://www.musingsoverapint.com/
Of course, he’s also blogging about guns, religion, etc…..
I have some summer Shandy right now. I generally like that. Is that the same thing as Summer Ale?
Oops. I meant Rogue Chipotle Ale instead of stout.
@Cargosquid
Your list is similar to Mr. Censored’s – minus the guns (and probably religion), of course.
Is there a beer named Panther Pee?
There used to be. Made by Howler distributors. Then I put the kiss of death on it after it actually dented my hutch when some of it blew up.
I have a new piece on the capture of Abu Khattala and the call by some to send him to Guantanamo.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/opinion/no-to-guantanamo-for-ahmed-abu-khattala.html?_r=1&referrer
Thanks, Moe.
There are so many great beers now. I was born too late. Most of my legal beer-drinking age was a time of thin-gruel national brands. One of my cousins started a craft brewery in Boston in the late 70s or early 80s and now apparently has made his first billion. Hats off to him. May a thousand flowers bloom, as our Chi-Com friends used to say.
I continue to be fond of Anchor Steam, a taste acquired when I lived in San Francisco. But the variety and quality of beers available now is astoundingly abundant. My local Whole Foods now has featured beers on tap. I now often volunteer to do grocery shopping on the weekends. Mrs. Scout thinks I am being a dutiful husband (which, of course, I am). But my ulterior motive is that I can have lunch at the grocery store and sample a couple of the offerings they have at the tap.
You sneaky rascal…or perhaps I should say you sly fox!
@Morris Davis
+1 100%
Shame on us if we cannot bring an attacker against the US onto our soil to try him in our courts. What are we afraid of? We are the country that is supposed to be rule of law – and the law says that one should be tried for their crimes. Keeping the conflict out of our sights seems to have been the wishes of the Bush admin.
Will we be having the same conversation five years from now? What will become of those held in captivity in Gitmo?
Can someone please help me understand something.
Obama is saying that the “unlawful migrants” (Obama’s words, not mine) crossing the border currently cannot stay. Specifically that won’t be eligible for legalized status or deferred deportation. My question is, how are these any different than the hundreds of thousands that have already been given deferred deportation? Why does someone illegally entering the country in June 2014 have to go home but someone entering the country illegally in June 2013 get to stay?
And to be clear, I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I really want to understand what the difference is here. Is there something I’m missing, because I don’t see any consistency to the policy at all?
It is Obama’s way of making sure no one things the red carpet is being rolled out for them. Do you want to keep it open? Where do we draw the line?
Why would one of my friend’s husband have his status adjusted and another friend’s husband remain undocumented after 13 years? Its all a matter of timing. Policy changes.
Pat — You’re preaching to the choir. For over 200 years, our reliance on the law is what made us exceptional. For the past dozen years we’ve often tried to run from it. Hopefully the pendulum will swing and we’ll get back to what made us who we like to say we are. @Pat.Herve
Those who holler RULE OF LAW the loudest are often the first to disregard our laws.
@Pat.Herve
That would depend on what we consider this to be.
Is he a criminal? Did we treat him as such?
Or is he a prisoner in the war? An irregular combatant?
He cannot be both.
“My question is, how are these any different than the hundreds of thousands that have already been given deferred deportation?”
If he does deport minors, it’ll be a reversal of course. Apparently he has been surprised by the way that rewarding people for breaking the law is encouraging them to do more of the same, has no plan for the logical outcome of his previous actions, and is flying by the seat of his pants right now.
Meanwhile militia groups are going oyut there to try to prevent entry. This whole thing is going to get interesting.
The militia groups should be arrested. Do they think we are the old west or something?
These are women and children, not drug lords.
Actually they’re doing the job our government willfully refuses to. I’m thinking of sending them a contribution.
Is that really the America you want to live in?
I am picturing militias that resemble Cliven Bundy drawing semi automatic weapons on women and children in the middle of the desert.
The picture resembles something evil from a Steven King movie–like something out of The Stand.
@Morris Davis
Why can’t these Attackers simply be held as prisoners of war? I fail to see why an honorable soldier fighting for an enemy of the US can be held indefinitely as a POW until hostilities cease, but a cowardly terrorist has to be released if charges cannot be proven. If the terrorist is picked up near a “field of battle”, we should be able to hold them as enemy combatants just like any other POW. We just need a legal definition of the field of battle that is broad enough to handle the subtleties of global terrorism.
If we treated these combatants as soldiers rather than just as criminals, it would seem that many of the legal inconsistencies would disappear.
Conservatives Poll Watchers Will Police the Voter Integrity of Mississippi’s Black Democrats
By Arit John
13 hours ago
Here’s a story that sounds way too familiar: Mississippi conservatives will be watching the polls during Tuesday’s primary, to make sure black Democrats aren’t breaking any voting laws. Following incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran’s outreach to black voters in his bid to ward off a primary challenger, a coalition of conservatives groups backing his Tea Party opponent Chris McDaniel have formed a “voter integrity project” to “observe whether the law is being followed,” as the coalition’s advisor told The New York Times.
The Senate Conservative Fund, FreedomWorks, and the Tea Party Patriots have teamed up to send “election observers” to watch the polls in areas where Cochran has outreached to black Democrats. “The laws in Mississippi are unusually open to poll watching from the outside,” Ken Cuccinelli, the Senate Conservatives Fund’s president (and former Virginia governor hopeful), told The Times. “We’re going to take full advantage of that and we’re going to lay eyes on Cochran’s effort to bring Democrats in … And of course, if they voted in primaries, that’s illegal.”
http://news.yahoo.com/conservatives-poll-watchers-police-voter-integrity-mississippis-black-181406727.html
Our friend Cuccinelli is back.
Personally, I’m a fan of Sneaky Pete beer. It’s one of the few beers strong enough for a macho man like me (i.e., it’s a brawny 10% alcohol).
Welcome Dogbreath. (ewwww)
I have a friend who shares your love of Sneaky Pete. I don’t care much for it. I guess I like girlie beer. Sneaky is not for girls.
How about a thread on the Supreme Court decisions? There have been three 9-0 rulings this week:
Police can’t search a smartphone without a warrant (yea!)
Obama’s NLRB ‘recess’ appointments were unconstitutional
Massachusetts’ abortion clinic buffer law was unconstitutional
It’s interesting we are seeing so many 9-0 decisions. Usually the big decisions are 5-4. There are still big cases pending on affirmative action and government employee unions that make shake things up a lot.
Watching the soccer game. Start a discussion on the open thread.
I guess everybody’s watching the soccer game. I feel like I’ve been transported to Europe. Hopefully no hooligans in our future.
As for the court decisions, I think the smartphone decision is a really good sign. Almost everybody should be able to agree that smartphones that can carry entire libraries of data and track your moments minute to minute shouldn’t be searched without a warrant. That’s just common sense. It’s nice to see the court was unanimous in agreeing about that.
I’m sure some hardcore Democrats will be upset over the NLRB getting smacked down but this was a no brainer case. The Senate says it was in session (pro forma sessions) Obama said those don’t count and made recess appointments. Every court that looked at it agreed it was a separation of powers issue and that the Executive branch doesn’t get to tell the Legislative branch when they are or aren’t in session. Bad news for the NLRB but good for the country. Besides the same people were eventually appointed to the NLRB legally, so it just shows that it could have been done the legal way to begin with.
The abortion one just doesn’t seem like a bit deal to me. I know everybody gets all wee-wee’d up about abortion but I don’t see any great difference over a 35 foot buffer and a 6 foot floating buffer around people going in and out. I’m sure others will differ but I’ll give the court the benefit of the doubt on this and say they got it right. When it comes to 1st Amendment things, I’d rather err on the side of too much freedom than too little.
Smart phones, I agree with that decision.
NLRB, I haven’t followed it and don’t have an opinon. (option to change my mind)
The buffer zone decision sucked. Some of the self-appointed sidewalk “counselors” are aggressive and invasive. No one should have to endure that when they are going through any medical procedure, much less one that for most people is a gut-wrenching decision.
I have witnessed first hand how aggressive some of the anti abortion people are. I have permanent damage to my wrists from getting on the wrong end of one who came up from behind and pushed me to the ground while walking on ice. DC cops wouldn’t do anything because they didn’t see it. Best to let patients go in and out of medical facilities without the interference of strangers who have no real right to approach anything. They can hold signs or shout.
In the above paragraph, I was not a patient. I was an escort. Unless you get up close and personal with this situation, its hard to believe what actually goes on. I doubt any of the insulated Supreme Court justices have ever been in that situation. I can see Clarence Thomas doing clinic escorting now. NOT.
I wonder if a patient punches one of those intruders in the face if it will be seen as just exercising her first amendment rights? I seriously doubt it.
FYI – Old Town Manassas Summer Sounds at the Harris Pavilion
June 28th 6:30PM – Washington Scottish Pipe Band.
No charge. (Bring your lawn chairs).
@Furby McPhee
The one I was anxiously awaiting was last week’s 9-0 decision in Lane v. Franks upholding First Amendment protection of government employee speech.
@Morris Davis
Good one. Lane v. Franks really flew under the radar. It sounds like the decision was what you were hoping for though.
I have to admit it does get annoying how the supreme court bunches up a lot of their decisions to the end of the term. Although there’s a conspiracy theory out there that the court releases their really controversial decisions in the winter. Roe v. Wade, Citizens United and Bush v. Gore were all winter decisions. The conspiracy theory is that they do it to make it difficult on future protesters. I don’t buy it, but it’s funny to think about.
LAUGH FOR THE DAY: Luis Suarez, the soccer player from Uruguay who was banned from the World Cup for biting an Italian opponent, claims that he is innocent. He didn’t bite the other player. “My teeth fell onto his shoulder.”
@ Furby: the date of the release of decisions reflects a number of things – 1) when in the term the case was argued; 2) who is assigned to write the opinion; 3) the degree of cohesion around the majority opinion (i.e., it sometimes happens that there is not a clear majority and that minds and language are changed as draft majority, concurring, and minority views are circulated among the Justices; 4) the length and complexity of majority, concurring and dissenting decisions. Bush v. Gore got released when it was released because it affected the 2000 election. It had to be out before the Electoral College convened. The other two you mention as examples, I think were just happenstance.
The ones that tumble out late in the term often were argued later in the term, or were authored by a Justice who had some other difficult decisions stacked up on his/her desk, or reflect some internal debate around how the majority or plurality decision was formed.
President Present’s problem with the pipeline is over.
Canada has cancelled it. The president has cost us thousands of jobs while ensuring that any oil continues to travel by Warren Buffett’s unsafe trains.
Thanks, President Obama.
He’s focused on jobs! Like. A Freakin’. LASER.
Story in today’s Patch:
Big drug sweep in Prince William county.
Names and addresses listed.
The surprising thing to me was that I did not detect a single
Spanish name. We hear about drug cartels fr Central America
but in this case they seemed to be absent.
@punchak
I saw one Hispanic looking name. No evil south-of-the-border cartel in Operation Dragonslayer!
One thing I did notice and I don’t mean to be unkind, but what a motley looking bunch of people. They had bad skin and were just unattractive. Is that what people end up looking like with heavy drug use?
Were they busting the users or the sellers?
I didn’t see any pictures. Going after the users is ONE thing,
catching the dealers is another AND much more important, IMO>
@punchak
Right over top of the picture, click next
http://www.insidenova.com/multimedia/operation-dragon-slayer-mugshot-gallery/collection_e7c10bea-006b-11e4-b80c-0019bb2963f4.html
USA’s playing soccer against Belgium. 0-0 at halftime.
These sportscasters are horrible. Talk about biased. If Belgium is so far superior to the United States, why is the score still 0-0 and we just went in to overtime?
can you post a link please, thanks.
@Moon-howler
SOOOOOOooooooo close.
We fought like trapped wounded tigers…but couldn’t overcome that second goal.
@Pat.Herve
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/canada-oks-oil-pipeline-pacific-coast
and
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/06/27/Goodbye-Keystone-XL-Hello-Enbridge-Northern-Gateway
@Cargosquid
Heartbreaking. Poor Howard. What a hell of a job he did. 15 saves?
The announcers were just horrible.
Trapped wounded tigers! I love it.
The USA has nothing to be ashamed of.
Has anyone checked their Washington Gas bill? It is a new bill. I couldn’t figure it out if you held a gun to my head. They can’t either. I finally got hold of a supervisor who also didn’t know what to tell people.
I paid it but I shouldn’t have. I can’t figure out why I still owed money looking at a $153.00 credit.
I know why I paid it….Washington Gas will cut you off for smiling wrong. I was thinking about next February and how I didn’t want to be making any principle points then.
@Cargosquid
The article does not say the Keystone is dead – and this other pipeline being proposed is hitting the same environmental objections.
Because the US goal keeper was next to fantastic,
that’s why. Incredible performance, simply.
@Moon-howler
Wasn’t Tim Howard amazing!!!!!!
Washington Gas cheated me out of about a thousand dollars. They couldn’t get at my meter for a couple of years, so they extrapolated the bill. Then they put an electronic reader on the meter, and started billing me for real use (as far as anyone can tell). I noticed that because I was no longer heating the house during weekdays as I had been during the years they were extrapolating from, that I’d been wildly overbilled for the preceding 2 years. My meter readings conformed this. They sent someone out, who declared that the meter was broken; he reset it and obliterated the readings that proved I’d been drastically overbilled.
I filed a complaint with the state regulatory agency, who told me there’s nothing at all to do. Washington Gas are crooks.
They actually told me yesterday that they simply didn’t know what the new bills meant. I had a credit according to the new bill but still owed 67 bucks on the budget plan. Last year I got cheated also.
The case wouldn’t have played well for me in a court because (in photos I could have taken) the meter needle was sitting between numbers, in had to do with how you interpret it. So they get away with it – wiped the evidence and kept the money.
BBC Radio 4, Hillary Clinton, 3 July 2014. Sorry Madam Secretary; but, in Britain, a Conservative and a Tory are the same thing.
You’re welcome. Any time you need help………
Pretty difficult to be perfect when you are traveling around talking to many different people. That one I can forgive….
Climate Change getting Action:
http://hamptonroads.com/2014/07/climate-change-getting-action
Ah, “Climate Change”. Did you know that the US has been getting cooler, not hotter, over the past 10 years?
This article describes very clearly how our Government established a set of 114 weather stations to definitively measure temperature/climate in the US, and how it’s been collecting data since 2005, and how temperature has gone down, not up – http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/06/25/government-data-show-u-s-in-decade-long-cooling/
Global temperatures have gone down, not up, during this interval and actually during the past 17 years.
Meanwhile, sea ice is increasing, not diminishing. That’s cyclical, as is temperature. I’m not suggesting that the Earth is going to keep getting cooler. I am suggesting that warming theory as it was and has been presented to us, this theory that CO2 is causing climate warming which has been observed, is complete nonsense.
Tell that to Norfolk. I don’t necessarily think climate change is nonsense. I think we need to keep a close eye on what’s going on. Meanwhile, we know that burning fossil fuels is probably not good for us. Wrap your mouth over an exhaust pipe and see how long you last. I have a cousin who checked out that way.
If you want to believe increasingly cockamamie theories about how the Earth is really shown to be getting irrevocably warmer, during a 17-year cooling trend, I’ve got to seriously question your judgement and intelligence.
If you don’t find it problematical that raw data doesn’t back up warming theory, that “climate change scientists” have to reinterpret data rather than presenting real measurements, and that they have to selectively present it in hockey shape sticks very carefully rather than just adjust theory to real evidence, I have to question your gullibility.
We (the US) built a network to definitively measure temperature. We did so. It has been getting cooler.
This whole fake argument about warming keeps us from seeing things that are real – such as the effect that increased CO2 actually has on the Oceans. I’m not doubting that our ecosystem is fragile. There have been 5 mass extinctions on Earth, some with initial root cause of a change in the Ocean’s ecosystem. There’s real danger in lack of understanding.
But instead we have a dedicated group of people politicizing science, marching to Al Gore’s drumbeat and asserting falsehood in loud strident tones.
Insanity.
Insanity, stupidity, and primitivism. Bunch of people whose need to play hero trumps their common sense, trying to shout down anyone who doubts them.
Exactly like religion.
With one difference. You can’t quite debunk a religion – can’t disprove the existence of a particular God. But we can prove that the earth isn’t getting warmer, that ice isn’t melting in any accordance with warming models, that atmospheric temperature readings are wholly inconsistent with warming models. There’s no excuse for anyone to keep riding this particular crazy train.
Except that it fits the need of feeble minds to boil down complexity to something simple, and to play hero.
And someday I’ll tell you how I really feel about this.
@Rick Bentley
The point of the comment was to read what the Hampton Roads area is doing. I am really not taking a position one way or the other. It makes sense to me that the area in Virginia most affected by change should be the ones to do the study.
I have said a long time ago that I don’t have the scientific background to go around making comments about the exactness of climate change theory. I only know what I observe and what I read. On the other hand, I am not sure you have the scientific background to be making such pronouncements either.