PJ

Well, we turned in our 60 day notice that we were leaving the apartment.  This could start an interesting series of events that I will not comment on until they have all played out due to potential contract issues.  All I’ll say is our counsel has advised us that we are in the right so we should have nothing to worry about. 

We turned in the notice so we could move to a house in Bonita Springs, FL because I was offered a job in Ft. Myers.  More on that when all of the paperwork is done and it becomes official.  This has required us to move the search for day care for Danny up a little because the day care we currently has does not start until June 1st and it would be in a very inconvinient place for us once we move to Bonita Springs.  I have found a place with an immidiate opening but we’ll see how it pans out.  It was a nice place, I just wasn’t thrilled with its lack of access control, I keep reminding myself that it would only be for 5 months … we already have a day care for Danny when he turns 1 and starts walking.  I’m going to take the next couple of days to look for another day care, if I still find the 1 and 2 year waiting lists I think we will be forced to take this immediate opportunity.  A Nanny starting at $17.50/hour is just not an option right now.

Now that it looks like my days of Mr. Mom are numbered, I’ll probably shoot for a May 1st start date at work contingent on getting Danny into a day care we like and trust.  Now that my temporary vacation days have a firmer stop date, I’ve been slowly organizing what I need to do between now and then … Florida driver’s licence, register the car in Florida, get the windows tinted before the summer, take care of any freelance stuff for me or others that I want to take care of and read a little.  I just picked up Barak Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope.  I’ll finish that and write up a little summary in the weeks to come.

Good news on the international front, it looks like the 15 British sailors in Iranian custody should be free shortly having received a pardon from the Iranian president.

I’m very excited to move to a single family home again.  Even better the model of home we are looking at in Bonita Springs is actually bigger then our house in Ohio (minus the full basement).  It will be nice to not have stuff shoved in the garage and completely inaccessible anymore.  Oh, and a place for my grill.  The single biggest annoyance I have in this apartment (besides the upstair neighbor’s sliding glass door) is that I cannot have my grill on our patio due to fire codes in the apartment complex.  I feel dirty cooking on the common grills here.

Danny gets to meet alot of the rest of my family who have not met him yet this weekend on Easter Sunday.  I’m looking forward to it even though I won’t be able to spend a good part of it with my wife who will be working that day, but that is a part of the job when you work at a zoo and I understand completely!

That’s it for now, our parade of visitors starts this weekend so I need to start getting the apartment ready.  At least the next set of visitors will not be subject to this place, but to a much nicer house (hopefully). 

• “Activist judges legislating from the bench”
• “Up or Down vote”

Seriously, do these things even mean anything?  One thing I can hand to the GOP that they do much better then the Democratic party is being able to assign a negative connotation to almost any term in a short amount of time.  See: “liberal”.  Once they establish this connotation they can completely avoid conversation on a topic by spouting one of these terms that may or may not even have anything to do with the conversation.  Try it sometime.

The more I read and see about the proposed port deal, the more I was rethinking my position.  I believe 75% of our ports are already operated by foreign entities.  I still have my security concerns, especially with the “L Visa” program (I believe that is the proper letter).  It is my understanding, and I haven’t researched this totally, that companies who are in the position that DP World would have been in have what are called “L Visas” available to them.  These Visa’s are not as scrutinized as regular Visa’s and they allow the operating company to send workers to the US to assist in the management and operation under that Visa.  For example, if DP World said it needed to have a person in New York they would be able to get that person in and bypass most of the normal security proceedures.

That being said, I think this deal would have gone through if the Bush Administration did not make one fatal mistake.  They told Congress and the American people what amounted to “You don’t worry about security, you leave that up to us.”  After the events of the last 5 years I think that was a slap in the face to Congress and is what has caused this major backlash.  Everything done in the last 5 years has been done in the name of the War on Terror and National Security and for the White House to tell America “Don’t worry, we know best,” I think that was the last straw. 

I think the American people are tired of the perception that this administration is completely sheltered and out of touch with reality.  We can only be at war for so long with so many people.  I think that the White House has positioned itself over the last 6 years as an untouchable Ivory Tower that American’s just can’t relate to anymore.  George Bush was elected because the masses seemed to be able to relate to him and I think that feeling has began to erode.  More and more the edicts of this Administration sound like the speakings of the mythical Big Brother and I think America is tired of “trust me, I know what’s best.”

Personally, I think the answer is yes.  The Bush Administration needs to step up and block the completion of a deal that would allow a SOE from UAE to take control of 6 major American Seaports until a proper Congressional investigation can take place. 

What I don’t understand is that since 9/11 so many questionable decisons and policies have been made in the name of “National Security” yet something this significant does not seem to have been given a second thought.  What am I missing?