Hummingbird Feeder

Hummingbird Feeder. End of Season 

This plant was hung up to dry in June. It gets a quart of water every day (except rainy days) and that's all. It brings in hummingbirds every day. The season, for both plants and hummingbirds, is just about over now. But Plant has been fun to have.  I'll probably get another one for next summer.

Sunday Pundits

Good old David Gregory on Meet the Press.  He is interviewing Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel.  Gregory asks Netanyahu "Aren't you trying to interfere in US elections when you advocate establishing "red lines" for Iran?" 
   Netanyahu politely changes the subject.
Gregory then asks "Don't you think Mitt Romney would make a better president than Obama?"
   Netanyahu politely changes the subject.
Gregory then asks  "Didn't Obama throw Israel under the bus?"
   Netanyahu politely changes the subject.
Far as I am concerned, Gregory was baiting the Israeli Prime Minister, hoping he would say something damaging to Israel on American TV.  Netanyahu is old enough and wise enough to avoid sticking his foot in his mouth, but it was not a friendly interview.  And Gregory is not a trustworthy newsman.  He is partisan, out grinding his axes.  Apparently Gregory is on an anti Semitic kick this Sunday.

Making Trouble

According to the Wall St Journal:
"In Eqypt, some journalists translated some of the footage into Arabic and broadcast it on national television. Several popular preachers in conservative Islamic channels urged people to turn out Tuesday at the US Embassy in Cairo, protestors there said."

   In other words, some Egyptians decided to stir up trouble by dredging an inflammatory bit of film off the Internet and playing it on Egyptian TV.  They got themselves a fine peck of trouble.  For cheap. 

Retaliation

I'd like some.  Burning American consulates and killing American ambassadors just frosts me.
Trouble is, I don't see anyone worth retaliating against.
We have fifty to a hundred thugs who did the actual assault.  We have maybe the same number of Arab mayors, police chiefs, and infantry officers who failed to disperse the mobs, either thru malice or incompetence.  We have the entire population of the country who didn't participate, but who like the idea of kicking Americans.  We have brand new national governments who probably didn't know this was going down and would have stopped it if they had known it was coming.
   Somehow it doesn't feel right to go to war against a third world country over the vicious acts of a very few mutants.  

Dead Cat Bounce, Rasmussen

That terrible bounce in Obama's poll standing, the one that had the Internet wailing and gnashing its teeth?  Well, it's gone.  Looking at the Rasmussen presidential tracking poll we see the bounce is flat.  Obama popped up a few percent, and then dropped right back down.  It's 46-45 Obama's favor this morning.  Which is dead even, a tie, in the real world.  The Rasmussen poll has a good track record. 

Words of the Weasel Part 30

Protest.  A mob in Benghasi burns the US consulate and kills four Americans including the US ambassador.  NHPR called this outrage a PROTEST. 
We used to call this sort of thing  an act of war.

Once Upon a Time in the West

Spaghetti Western Supreme. With Parmesan cheese.  It came out after Clint Eastwood's "Fistful of Dollars" and clearly borrowed from that flick.  It has some top flight actors, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, and Jason Robards.  It has pretty much every cliche there ever was.  It moves incredibly slowly.  In the final showdown gunfight between Fonda and Bronson, it takes a good five minutes of flashbacks and closeups before they draw the six guns.  It takes Fonda another five minutes of writhing to die after Bronson plugs him. Plot is confusing.  New bad guys keep turning up, dressed just like the bad guys that just got gunned down, are they returned from the dead or what? We keep encountering scenes of massive violence AFTER it has been done and no clue as to who did it. 
   Claudia Cardinale is knock out cute, even fully dressed is high Victorian style.  The guys are all super scruffy and unshaven, it's hard to visualize any chick wanting to come within fifty feet of any of them. 
   This flick has it's fans on the 'Net who call it the best Western ever made.  I don't agree.  High Noon it ain't.