Patrick's Rants

Professor Smartass Check it out.

At least he is if you believe Ben Quayle, pasty faced son of forgetable Dan Quayle. But Ben is hard to believe. He’s running as a family values candidate who used to write some pretty seedy things on a web site about the dirty side of Scottdale Night life.

He then says,

“Drug cartels in Mexico, tax cartels in Washington”

Drug cartels are Obama’s fault? Easier to say coke snorting former President, George W. Bush is to blame for that.

How about Nixon? Reagan who eliminated the entire S&L industry with the swipe of a pen? Nope. It has to be Obama.

No matter, he said he didn’t write for thedirty.com. While technically true he’s a bona fide right winger. And what does that mean about Obama being the worst President ever? Well, first you have to believe that he never wrote sleazy material for dirtyscottsdale.com. Do you?

The Republican primary ballot for my district breaks down so bizarrely that I wouldn’t know who to vote for if I were to request that ballot* on August 24.

So let’s see what we have:
For Senator, we there is John “I sent 3000 troops to the border” McCain. Never mind that Federal law prohibits troops from acting in a policing capacity on US soil. McCain has flip flopped on the border fence and is running on security, not jobs.

JD Hayworth is running against him. JD is a tea bagging blow hard who was voted out of Congress and then ran infomercials selling “free government grants” that were investigated for fraud and the company had to settle with several attorneys general for misleading advertising. (more…)

The supposed “Ground Zero Mosque” is adding to the list of lies perpetuated by the Tea Baggers and right wing wackadoos. “Death Panels” is a notable tick mark on that same list.

Here’s where I weigh in. Do not allow any, any “house of worship” anywhere. They impinge on my right to be atheist. They offend me in their beliefs that there is some mysterious “man in the sky” who controls life or watches us like tropical fish in a bowl.

Or maybe the right wing whackadoos should step back and realize that our first amendment protects the Islamic religion as much as it protects the Mormons who killed innocent cross country travelers in the US, the Catholics, who baptized babies so they would go to heaven when their heads were bashed in moments later with axes by those same Catholics and the Jews, who killed Jesus himself.

The mosque is blocks away from ground zero. And the right wingers, as Sara Palin has said, cling to their guns and their religion. The First and Second Amendments allow them to do that. It also does not allow them to take that away from the Muslims. If they want to build a mosque and cling to their guns I say so be it. The First Amendment does not read, “unless you happen to be muslim, or your church is too close to something I want to call ‘sacred’.”

Right wing whackadoos are allowed to spew their lies and hatred under the First Amendment and back up their words with their Second Amendment rights. Muslims are too.

We’ve been camping a few times this summer. Three times at Blue Ridge Reservoir, and this past week at Beaver Creek Campground. It was rainy this past weekend, the forecast was for 60 – 80% chance of continuing rain and I was sure that we wouldn’t be heading anywhere to camp. But my wife decided she was going camping and there wasn’t anything that I could do about it, except go along. Rock Crossing is our favorite campground, but we’ve been there when it’s been raining. It’s miserable – or least I am.

The water was high and running quickly. Not so quickly that the kids couldn’t get in, swim, splash around and ride the float down the channel, but quickly enough to keep the bottom swirled up and the water a bit muddy in the widened space we were using. I fished all three days we were there with only a minor amount of luck. A nice sized catfish hooked on my line, but I was too far from my net to slip under it and as soon as I tried to lift it out of the water my 6lb or so line just snapped and the fish was gone. It was later, fishing just as the light was beginning to fade that I hooked into my only trout of the trip. I was casting my line across the creek nearly landing the bait no the shore and letting it float down the current when I noticed what looked like a little pop on the bobber. A couple more casts exactly the same and I hooked a 10 – 12″ rainbow trout. I was hoping to hook a catfish or two and switched to hotdogs on the bottom – and to my new catfish pole (replacing the pole lost at Lake Mary) and settled in to fish.

Around 9:30 or 10:00 my wife came down to the water to check on my luck. While we were chatting, I caught movement from the corner of my eye. A skunk. And then two and then five. What is it with night fishing and skunks? I decided to give up on the fishing, packed my stuff up and grabbed my trout. We went back to our camp site and I started to clean my fish. Apparently fish smells good to skunks because one walked up right behind me while I was cleaning the fish. I had to clean it quickly, slip it into a ziplock bag and drop it into the cooler. I put my fishing bait in the trunk of my car too so the skunks would leave.

For breakfast we had bacon, eggs, potatoes, and no my plate fresh trout cooked over the grill. Butter, salt, pepper and the last of the Corona limes squeezed over the top and sealed in foil. The trout was absolutely delicious. My wife asked for a small taste and then kept taking forks full from my plate. She agreed that I could bring home more trout to cook.

A few things to remember if you are going to Beaver Creek:

• it can get noisy during the day since it’s easy to get to, the PBR crowd just may show up
• do not keep trash at your campsite overnight, the skunks will visit – they even licked the greasy spot where our portable grill was sitting. We kept the grill in the back of our van
• No see ums are out morning and evening, put on bug spray before bed. Watch out for the ants too, they are everywhere
• The campground is small – 12 rentable spaces – and you are fairly close to your neighbors
• There is a charge for your second vehicle if you have one
• Firewood can be bought from the host or picked up in the forest
• The water is not deep enough for diving

All in all we had a great time even though it rained for days in Flagstaff (we only had a little bit of rain). The camp hosts were very friendly, chatting any time we ran into them.