#OWS update: the so happy together in Oakland edition

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Awwww... Oakland mayor not too hot on Occupy anymore.

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This past fall, while encouraging city workers to take time off work to join the Occupy protests, Oakland mayor, Jean Quan had this to say with respect to the Occupy movement:

“The highway patrol and other forces came and ensured that it was peaceful tonight. We will act if we need to tonight to maintain safety. But it looks like this was a good day for the demonstrators and for the 99% movement.”

As the Occupy movement showed it's true colors over the weekend by trashing Oakland's City Hall, Mayor Quan is changing her tune.

Oakland officials assessed damage to City Hall caused by Occupy protesters while leaders of the movement claimed Sunday that police acted illegally in arresting hundreds of demonstrators and could face a lawsuit.

Mayor Jean Quan was among those inspecting damage caused after dozens of people broke into City Hall on Saturday, smashing glass display cases, spray-painting graffiti, and burning an American flag.

That break-in culminated a day of clashes between protesters and police. Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan said nearly 400 people were arrested on charges ranging from failure to disperse and vandalism. At least three officers and one protester were injured.

In a news release Sunday, the Occupy Oakland Media Committee criticized the police conduct, saying that most of the arrests were made illegally because police failed to allow protesters to disperse.

"Contrary to their own policy, the OPD gave no option of leaving or instruction on how to depart. These arrests are completely illegal, and this will probably result in another class action lawsuit against the OPD, who have already cost Oakland $58 million in lawsuits over the past 10 years," the release said.

The scene around City Hall was mostly quiet Sunday morning, and it was unclear whether protesters would mount another large-scale demonstration.

Dozens of officers remained present inside and outside City Hall after maintaining guard overnight. Occupy Oakland demonstrators

broke into the historic building and burned a U.S. flag, as officers earlier fired tear gas to disperse people throwing rocks and tearing down fencing at a convention center.

Quan, who faced heavy criticism for the police action last fall, on Saturday called on the Occupy movement to "stop using Oakland as its playground."

"People in the community and people in the Occupy movement have to stop making excuses for this behavior," Quan said.

On Sunday, Quan said she is tired of the protesters' repeated actions.

"I'm mostly frustrated because it appears that most of them constantly come from outside of Oakland," Quan said. "I think a lot of the young people who come to these demonstrations think they're being revolutionary when they're really hurting the people they claim that they are representing."

(italics, ours)



Glad she's clued-in to what we've known all along. But cry us a river, Mayor, as instead of taking a hard line against these hoods from the start, you instead, effectively endorsed a movement that everyone with the slightest shred of common sense knew would ultimately turn violent. Just call it a classic case of enabling bad behavior.





And speaking of hurting those you claim to be representing:

Oakland officials said the massive Occupy Oakland demonstration on Saturday diverted police resources from calls elsewhere in the city, stymieing the Police Department's crime-fighting efforts.

An estimated 400 demonstrators were arrested during the protest, with some activists breaking into City Hall and vandalizing it.

Mayor Jean Quan condemned the local movement's tactics as "a constant provocation of the police with a lot of violence toward them" and said the demonstrations were draining scarce resources from an already financially-strapped city.

Oakland has logged five homicides since Friday, and Police Chief Howard Jordan told the Los Angeles Times that the law enforcement "personnel and resources dedicated to Occupy reduce our ability to focus on public safety priorities." [Updated at 9:03 a.m.: It is unclear exactly how many calls were delayed because of the protests.]

Oakland officials will seek monetary damages from protesters, Quan said. In addition, the mayor said she would pursue "restorative justice" by asking that those deemed guilty be put to work picking up garbage and removing graffiti in East Oakland.

Restorative justice..? Perfect. Remember: "Whenever there was an adjective added to an important value-based noun, there was an agenda."

25 years, a few showers and perhaps a mortgage are all that really separates your typical Oakland Occupier and Oakland's political class as represented by Mayor Quan. Far from demanding change or reform, these two sets of redistributionist statists are the staunchest defenders of the status quo and really do deserve each other.


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Addendum #1: Here's some more of that new civility we've been hearing so much about:

Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street movement threw condoms on Catholic schoolgirls, refused to allow a Catholic priest to give a closing prayer, and shouted down a pro-life speaker at a Rhode Island right to life rally on Thursday, according to its organizer. The event marked the third time protesters associated with the movement have disrupted a pro-life meeting in a week.

About two-dozen members of Occupy Providence hiked from Burnside Park to the 39th Annual Pro-Life State House Rally organized by the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee on Thursday.

The pro-life organization’s executive director, Barth E. Bracy, told LifeSiteNews.com that, near the end of the rally, the Occupiers “strategically fanned out with military precision.”

That’s when they “started showering condoms down on some of the girls from a Catholic high school.”

They gathered around speakers at the podium, shouting them down or otherwise jostling them and members of the audience.

We're confused. All this time we thought it was about "fairness", income inequality and getting someone else to pay down their student loan debt... all pretty straight-forward stuff, right? Now, they're getting into social issues like denying others their first amendment rights via Stalinist thug tactics?

As the tea party has struggled with how to take on or not take on social issues, it would appear that a similar debate needs to take place within the Occupy ranks with respect to general douche-baggery but we think we know what side has completely won-out, already.

What will they force you to do?

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Do you remember when the President told us that if we liked our current health care plan, we could keep it? Well, you could keep it unless you are a Catholic.




The following is the entire text of a letter issued by U.S. Catholic bishops voicing their objections to what they feel are the conscience-violating provisions of ObamaCare and which according to Gateway Pundit was read in churches across the country on Sunday:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.

And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience,to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
+Alexander K. Sample
Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample
Bishop of Marquette

(emphasis, ours)




We blogged about this last week, here. We're not letting this go as this represents perfectly how ObamaCare isn't about providing better health care to more Americans but rather it's about control and power. What better way to flex authoritarian muscle than by trampling over a group's religious beliefs and tenents. To wit, we were heretofore unaware that the contraceptives Catholic employers will now be forced to provide their employees were so inaccessible.

And it matters not whether you are a person of faith... If you are a person of freedom this should chap your hide and compel you to question whether or not your government takes the 1st amendment seriously and what it is they will force you to do that would violate your conscience. It's only a matter of time

We stand in solidarity with the Catholic church against this assault on religious freedom and their stand against these egregious provisions in ObamaCare.

Video clip of the day

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Here's Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine on the shameful and deceitful "Buffet Rule" campaign.


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Yeah, why the hell are we paying for Warren Buffet's Medicare?




We say shameful and deceitful because the President and his water-carriers are deliberately conflating two completely different tax rates in order to score cheap political points.

The hue and cry of Buffet's poor secretary being taxed at a higher rate than Buffet himself doesn't hold up to scrutiny when, obviously, the woman who makes between $200,000 and $500,000 will be taxed at a higher marginal rate (up to 35%) than Buffet who grants himself an annual salary of only $100,000.

Where Buffet acrues most of his income is in capital gains where the tax rate is only 15%. As Welch suggests, if Obama and Buffet were truly being honest and had the courage of their convictions, what they should be calling for is a 35% tax on capital gains. Cue: complete economic meltdown.

Of course, that's not what they are calling for but instead they trot out Buffet's 1 pecenter secretary (so far as making her a guest at the State of the Union address last Tuesday evening) as the poster child for the Occupy-approved message of "fairness" and income inequality.

As of yet, no one, least of all our increasingly cynical and desparate chief executive has explained to us how taxing the rich will cure unemployment, reduce the debt and be, ultimately, the pro-growth policy this country's economy so needs. But it isn't about any of the above... it's all about getting re-elected to do what, exactly, we're not quite sure.


Small wonder when we've been told it's food stamps and unemployment bennies that are the drivers of the nation's economic engine.

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Caption Contest!

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Via The Liberator Today:

"Welcome to Arizona, Mr. President. The former Governor sends her regards. Now, will that be a pat-down or body scan?"

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Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.







Here's some more of that "new civility" we've been hearing about... in the wake of the announcement that Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) will be stepping down from her seat in Congress, no less.

California Rep. Henry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the coauthor of the 2009 cap-and-trade climate change bill, decried efforts by the GOP to force the Obama administration into approving a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline.

"They want to use legislation as a way to act like terrorists. They hold things as hostage," Waxman said. "We almost couldn't fund the government because Republicans wanted to hold that idea hostage, we almost couldn't pay our debts because the Republicans wanted to hold that legislation hostage to their extreme agenda, and I wouldn't be surprised if they scuttled this conference by trying to hold us hostage."

We know exactly where we will be looking to adjudicate blame upon the next act of violence against a public figure.





Did someone say "unexpectedly"?

Sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly declined in December for the first time in four months, capping the slowest year on record for builders.

Why, yes, and this editon's winner is Bloomberg News.









B-Daddy (drunk-?) blogged the State of the Union address by POTUS this past Tuesday night so you wouldn't have to. Some high-lights:

Opening 75% of offshore resources to oil exploration. The same 75% you previously closed?


Apparently, Obama discovered the oil coming out of the ground in North Dakota. Now he is in favor of natural gas, oh wait, he's not; proposing new regulations for natural gas producers.



He keeps using the line, "send me a bill." No, you already sent us the bill.


Now he's going to interfere in the housing market and interfere in sound lending. Directing the banks to renegotiate mortgages? Welcome back from the dead, Juan Peron.
[Post speech note; Romney can hammer on the theme that government caused this housing bubble in the first place, more intervention props up a market that still needs to deflate.]

(ed. note: we blogged about further government intervention into the housing market here. Some people just never learn)

Millionaire bashing, no real new ideas here. Yes, sir, I am calling this class warfare, because it is built on a foundation of lies. The rich pay twice, first on corporate taxes then on gains. He envisions a nation of dependents, whose lives depend on taxes from the rich. What a poverty of imagination, if that were true we would truly be a nation in poverty.


Going after the cloture rule in the Senate? Really? Don't recall him being for that when he was in the Senate. Asking for a simple up or down vote on nominees? Be careful what you ask for, there will be a Republican President some day.


I think he's finishing. Terrible speech. Nope, back to taking credit for being Commander-In-Chief. Hey, where's the talk about engagement in Iran? Now he's talking Arab Spring and whacking Ghadaffi. He's going to whack Assad too? Who'd have thunk it, a dude named Barack Hussein Obama is all about whacking Arabs?

From B-Daddy's summation, it appeared he talked about de-regulation just as much as the need for further regulation. Incoherency, plain and simple.

Neither he nor the people working for him have a clue. Remember, these are the same people who gush all over themselves with respect to how many food stamps they've been able to issue as an indicator of economic success.

At any rate, thanks for falling on that grenade, bro. So, that others may live!





Shane Atwell reviews the movie Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged.

Do I recommend seeing the movie? Only if you want to know everything you can about Rand and Atlas or if you want to know very little. In the latter case the movie will give you a smattering of information on several aspects of Rand's life and the book with little effort. But you really should just read the book.

tea party girl goes solar!

“The polar bears can suck-it!”

Yep. That’s what I had to tell most of the solar vendors visiting our home. It’s not that I actually have anything against polar bears, they’re pretty efficient seal hunters. But I was shopping for cheaper fixed-priced energy. Period. I still think the concept of man-made global warming is a bunch of fabricated junk-science cr*#. I found that trying to ask a bunch washed out mortgage brokers re-trained as solar salesmen to fast forward past the green B.S. is like asking an overseas customer service rep to think for themselves.

Heh.








For those of you tired of the nagging and whining regarding "fairness" and income inequality from an administration that is the very epitome of the 1% and whose personnel rotate between it and Wall Street with the greatest of alacrity, you'd be pleased to know that 36 members of the President's executive staff owe over $800,000 in back taxes. For those of you scoring at home, that works out to about $23,000/person.

We know we are opining naive but how jaded and cynical does one have to be to go on the "fairness" offensive when one's own outfit is the most egregious violator of this completely undefineable* notion of fairness.

(* undefineable by our standards, not theirs)





Sir Charles at Doo Doo Economics has a SLOBs home page primer/how-to post here. Who are the SLOBs (San Diego Local Order of Bloggers)? It's a coalition of area bloggers committed to free markets, limited government, personal liberty and constitutional fidelity. We've got Randian objectivists, registered Democrats, Ron Paul supporters, libertarian-leaning conservatives (sage-brush conservatives?**) socially-conservative evangelicals and Catholics and independents.

All the world's problems are solved at our all-too-infrequent beer summits where we take a small amount of pride in steering a few of the SLOBs into that wondrous universe that is the San Diego craft beer scene.

As you might imagine, we don't do "group think" very well so if you want some fresh thinking and ideas that run counter to the narrative that is spoon-fed to you from the government-media complex, we certainly encourage you to bookmark the SLOBs and give us a "like" if you wouldn't mind. Thanks!




And speaking of SLOBs, Leslie at Temple of Mut has a great round-up of news and views herself, including that of the Scorpion Queen, Governor Jan Brewer, faith-based global-warming insanity and a potential SLOBs endorsement of Carl DeMaio for SD mayor? Go on over and check it out.



OK, gang. That's it for today. We'll see you all tomorrow.




** A nod to Barry Goldwater and the fact that the libertarian strain runs a bit deeper in the conservatives of the West/Southwest than other geographic regions of this great country.


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Stuff we saw on Facebook this week

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One in a series high-lighting cool and amusing things we saw on the social media Godzilla.


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You're darn right we'd be doing the same thing we're we too to find ourselves in similar circumstances.

We think you'd have to be over 30 yrs. old to get this.

Our friend "Tally"'s photo makes us think of something that would be on a Calexico album cover.

... with a side of chips!

boring... but BACON!

Absolutely spot-on!

To all our troops' safe return

Radio KBwD is on the air

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But first a Super Bowl commercial teaser..?

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Good lord. If you grew up in the 80s, who didn't want to live that one day... just one day... in vicarious fashion through the person of Ferris Bueller.


We were always fascinated with the ubiquitous and near prophet-like brand in which Bueller held in the movie... "You know Ferris Bueller?"


And for maintaining such a leisurely pace throughout most of the movie, they sure did accomplish quite a bit (it was June in Chicago... days are a bit longer than here in Southern California, so maybe that explains it).

Which brings us to this:

Cameron creates Ferris in his mind.

Ladies and Gentlemen, from England, here's The English Beat performing "March of the Swivelheads" and which is titled "Rotating Heads" on their outstanding Special Beat Service album.






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Economic illiteracy re-visited

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Andrew Napolitano and his panel on "Freedom Watch" take on the Davos Dodos of the ski party, one in the same that we did here, and yet another round of Keynesian gimmickry to keep people who are underwater in their homes still further forestalling a true housing recovery.

"It's kind of grotesque that the government is coming in and abrogating privity of contract."

And even more grotesque when you can say it with an indignant British accent.



If compelling banks to write down home loans sounds familiar, it should, as we have been down this road before back at the beginning of the Obama administation in January of 2009.

With the help of Martin Scorcese, no less, here is what we wrote about it at the time which illustrated not only the non-sensicalness of it but more importantly, the moral hazards inherent to the cozy private-public relationships in Bailout Nation:

From the Wall St. Journal:

A Senate bill aimed at giving strapped homeowners more leverage in renegotiating their mortgages cleared a hurdle Thursday when Citigroup Inc. dropped its opposition.

The legislation, which is being advanced by top Senate Democrats, would let judges set new repayment terms for mortgage holders in bankruptcy court. Lawmakers say the measure is aimed at jump-starting broader efforts to renegotiate millions of underwater mortgages now weighing down the housing market.

To better help illustrate what you just read, we call in Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorcese and his outstanding movie Good Fellas. In this scene, a restaurant owner needs some financial help and needs some protection from the cops, other wise guys, people who don’t pay their bills, etc., so he goes to the local crime boss and talks him into going in as partners. Great. The restaurant owner is now partnering up with the local muscle. Good times, right? What could possibly go wrong?

In this clip, Citigroup is the restaurant owner and “Paulie” is the Federal Government.

Wow. That didn’t end too well, now did it?

Maybe now, you are beginning to get an idea of why this bailout business was such a bad idea from the get-go. We’re not Wall St. experts but perhaps the reason why Citigroup dropped its opposition to this legislation is because “Paulie” is into them for $45 billion.

Until recently, Citigroup had fiercely opposed proposals to give bankruptcy judges latitude to change the terms of mortgages. Its about-face comes after the federal government has pumped $45 billion into the company since last fall. The government is now keeping the company on a tight leash.

Just. like. that.

Let that last line linger for a moment. Taste it again. Let it roll over your palate like vinegar.

Citigroup danced with the devil and lost. They never had a chance. Now that they are the Feds’ lap dog and a newly-minted GSE, any hopes they had of exercising any independent decision-making pretty much just blew right out the window.

And that money that the lenders will be losing with the “restructured” loans will have to made up from somewhere, right? But, where? The first logical place would be to charge higher interest rates for new home loans… but if those higher interest rates are not competitive then Citigroup cannot offer their money for these loans which could then ultimately lead to… if you were going to complete this sentence with “bankruptcy”, you haven’t been paying attention… even more of your tax dollars going to pay for other people’s home loans.

The lynchpin of free enterprise and capitalism: the contract – a contract between two independent entities spelling out the terms for an exchange of goods, services, money and which is bound by law is about to become a thing of the past.
In its place, a capricious set of variables set forth by some who are on the take from the very people they are overseeing and and who are dispensing this power in an arbitrary fashion as they see fit. (ed. note: remember what the British chap said about grotesquness)

We hope we are being guilty of hyperbole, but of all the ridiculous non-sense we have seen and heard with respect to Bailout Nation, this was the first instance that sent shivers down our spine. We welcome cheerful thoughts and comments.

3 years on and nothing has been learned. 3 years on and it's all still business as usual.


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Your (California) high-speed choo-choo update

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We had to cut short a post of a couple of days ago regarding California's high-speed rail system and the absurdity of the "alternate" use of the same for fear of sending our readers into a irreversible state of depression.

Having had a couple of days of rest and recovery, let's tread forward together in a slow and orderly fashion and pick up where we left off at the same linked article from the L.A. Times.


Certainly, Jerry Brown is under pressure from Big Labor, Big Green and Big Construction to begin building this monstrosity but what is the form of the pressure he is receiving from Washington D.C. and their partial funding of the project? In response to changing construction plans so that the high-speed rail system could be built first in urban areas* where it might actually be used instead of the Cental Valley:

At a recent hearing by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in Washington, key California legislators asked if the construction plan could be changed. But Joseph Szabo, the Obama administration's chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, said California has no flexibility to rethink the project.

"The ability to shift dollars is not there," he said.

Kind of like interior design decisions that cannot be changed when you made the decision to let the in-laws help out just a little too much with the down payment on the home. That skin in the game that was so welcome at the time has now become a mill stone.



Tax-dodging billionaire, Warren Buffet has been in the news of late for the windfall he stands to gain from shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline project as oil from the North Dakota fields (now the nation's fourth biggest oil producer and climbing) will have to be shipped southward on old slow freight trains. Burlington-Northern trains. Burlington-Northern trains that happen to be owned by Berkshire-Hathaway, Buffet's firm.




Now, back to California:

Roelof van Ark** , the project's chief executive, insists the bullet-train corridor will not become a white elephant.

He has conceded, however, that re-routing Amtrak would be relatively expensive for the benefit.

The federal government has set aside $108 million to link the high-speed segment to the track used by Amtrak, which it shares with freight hauler Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. High-speed rail officials say that's enough for the job.

But a number of rail experts said that more money will be needed to integrate the two systems, and it's unclear how the financially struggling Amtrak system would pay any difference.

(as if you needed the italics)



We almost feel sorry for Jerry Brown. We thought his pragmatist-centrist I'm just too old to give a damn campaign approach was brilliant and would strike a tone with indies and moderates. But here we are: he has allowed himself to be painted into a corner by a progessive coalition of labor unions, greenies, big city mayors and a corrupt adminstration pursuing a two-pronged attack of their unsustainable green agenda and a crony capitalism that is staggering in both its size and sheer audacity to build the greatest boondoggle known to mankind and which will ultimately define his political legacy.






* Also a dubious plan as San Francisco and L.A. both have light rail systems making high-speed choo-choos in those same areas completely redundant.


** Our German scientists are better than their German scientists. Sorry, it was just too easy.

Steyn smack

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Well, to be more precise, Steyn's readers' smack.


Here's Mark Steyn opining on the general slouch assumed by the West in the years intervening the Titanic and the Costa Concordia:

Sixty years later, the men on the Titanic — liars and thieves, wealthy and powerful, poor and obscure — found themselves called upon to "finish in style," and did so. They had barely an hour to kiss their wives goodbye, watch them clamber into the lifeboats, and sail off without them. They, too, 'ope'd it wouldn't 'appen to them, but, when it did, the social norm of "women and children first" held up under pressure and across all classes.

Today there is no social norm, so it's every man for himself — operative word "man," although not many of the chaps on the Titanic would recognize those on the Costa Concordia as "men." From a grandmother on the latter:

"I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls."

Whenever I write about these subjects, I receive a lot of mail from men along the lines of this correspondent:

"The feminists wanted a gender-neutral society. Now they've got it. So what are you complaining about?"

(italics, ours)


Like water seeking it's own level, we get the civilization that we pursue.

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Let's have some fun...

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by taking a quiz?


Yeah, yeah... but first the set-up: Last week KT linked to an excellent piece by Charles Murray on the changing face of and the increasing isolation of America's elite class.

That article got us to thinking: If we are going to bang on the elites in this country we darn well better make sure we aren't ones ourselves as much as miserable little populist poseurs.

So, take the quiz here to see if you really are a snob or can safely continue railing against snobs as living life outside "the bubble" and firmly entrenched in Main Street.


How did you do?



We're safe.

How Thick Is Your Bubble? Guest Score » 15 out of 20  (75% )  Result   On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 13 and 16. In other words, you don't even have a bubble. Quiz School Take this quiz & get your score

How Thick Is Your Bubble? » Quiz Maker

As beer-geeky as we are, we'll cop to having some Coors in the fridge from time to time as that's what were feeling after yardwork or while BBQing in August. And we have several very good friends that are smokers and who also happen to be some of the finest human beings we know.


Here are some questions that we think would fit right in as well:

- In the past year or so, have you shopped at a big box retailer or a Sears-like department store? (how that one was not a question is beyond us)


- In the past year or so have you attended either a college or high school sporting event?


- Do you own a pair of work boots... that you actually work in from time to time?


- Do you have a work bench in your garage?


- Do you own at least 4 power tools?


- Do you fly an American flag outside your house?

Quick story: Every Saturday, the Jehovah's witnesses flood our neighborhood going door to door but luckily, we thought, they never stop at ours. After doing a little research, we found out that Jehovah's Witnesses aren't too big on the patriotic thing nor are they down with military service. Yes, we fly the flag (JH repellent! - they probably figure we're lost causes) and just to make this airtight, we will be flying the Marine Corps flag from now on as well.

- Do you change your own oil?


- Do you put up Christmas lights?


- Have you scratched out personal checks or given cash in $25 amounts or less to two charitable organizations in the past year.


- Have you gone bowling in the past year?


- Have you or a good friend ever been a member of 4H or Future Farmers of America?


- Have you hosted or attended a cook-out that was pretty much just burgers and dogs and... seven layer bean dip?!



OK. That's good for now. Seriously, let us know how you did - we're all friends here and please chime in with some of your own Main Street questions in the comments.