Well, it finally happened. The line between Republican paranoia and Democrat fear finally met in the middle and Barack Obama is caught, dead center, in an inescapable vise of his own doing. The Republican hounds have been after him since day one, hoping just to nip him up a bit to put a bit of blood in the water so the President is belittled and begrudged bite-by-bite until there’s nothing left of his presidency except an empty shell of what could have been and what never was.
Here are some of the rural traffic jams in Portugal. We do not get many of them — but here are some of the common causes.
First, a farmer leaving the fence with openings so the cows can cross the road from one pasture to another to get water.
This is going to be a two-part post — Sines — Ancient and Modern. I am breaking all the rules and giving you the modern first! I’m doing this mainly because when I visited Sines with this idea in mind, the old town was totally blocked off for renovations.
Remember me? I am the Alentejo cat that might be getting new pets — the tall one and the red one. They have been coming to see me most days and have been leaving me food. I was very glad of it when it was raining all the time — they even left it on the porch so it would keep dry for me.
Now it is sunny, and I have spent my time trying to catch these two birds on the fence — so far they have eluded me! They are crafty; they steal my cat food and fly off just as I pounce. I am patient though and, like me, they hang around most days.
Beja is the administrative centre for Southern Alentejo and it was administration that took us there today. Mr P had to renew one of his residence permits — there are several — so he could renew his driving licence.
Beja has been a strategically valuable population centre since Celtic times. It was named Pax Julia by Julius Caesar in 48 BC. Emperor Augustus renamed the thriving town “Pax Augusta”. Next to take over the region were the Visigoths, the town then fell to the invading Umayyad army in 713. This was the start of approximately 1000 years of warring between Christians, Muslims and the Moors. The inhabitants of the city have been massacred and the buildings razed to the ground more than once in it violent history. In spite of all this destruction and reconstruction it retains a certain historic charm.
I thought the height of White Men Invading a woman’s private parts ended with the trans-vaginal wand, but the hard Right Wing of the GOP have totally gone off the side of their flat-earth world when the likes of Congressman Steve Stockman uses the logo of the United States Congress to spew public hatred of women and the families of shooting victims like Sandy Hook Elementary.
Using a second “re-election” Twitter account that doesn’t use the U.S. Congress logo, Stockman is selling this ridiculous bumper sticker for a dollar: “If babies had had guns they wouldn’t be aborted.”
Today, as I casually pondered what I would do with my day off, I had a jolting moment that I’m sure many people in the tri-state area have experienced. I thought to myself that maybe I would head over to my beach, particularly its recreation areas– and then was struck with the memory that I couldn’t.
I am still devastated by the news Google Reader will be killed as a service on July 1, 2013. As a writer and publisher, 50 times a day, I get all my clean feed news from Google Reader. Sure, Feedly seems like an okay replacement for now, but what concerns me most about the demise of Google Reader is what that closing means for other non-tip-of-the-spear products like Google Voice and Blogger in the Google arsenal of free services.
Hi there, Google Glasses Pioneer!
This is an open letter warning you to put down your Google Glasses if you care about the health of your eyes and the prosperity of your soul. Those glasses are going to cost you a lot more than $1,500.00USD because your face is going to pay the price for prying into the public, everyday, lives of those all around you. Nobody will trust you. Everyone will suspect you are recording their every move — even if you are not — but because you can! Be thankful for universal Obamacare — because you are going to need it with the rising year. This is not a call for violence against you; this is a call out that violence will be waged against you.
The rise of Big Brother has long been a topic of discussion here. We have talked about cameras in the classroom, the FamilyMap service and the potential use of Google Earth by terrorists and all manners of surveillance and invasions of privacy in between.
However how diligent are we when taking action to guard our own privacy?
Alentejo is a beautiful part of the world and Portugal in particular. It is famous for many things, including its stunning natural beauty, its history, and of course, its beaches. Here are four snapshots for today. In the Northeast — Evora — one of our capital cities and one of our eldest cities, complete with ancient castle and university , quaint cobbled streets and one of the best cake shops ever!
Forget the Rise of the Machines — the mannequins are spying on you! Now, as you shop, you have non-human orbs watching you from afar and evaluating your every move. Don’t look now, but the empty stares flirting around you are committing you to memory!
If we are lucky in our lives, we get unexpected windows of opportunity, a chance to do something totally different, to change tack or to travel a different path. Two years ago this month, I was offered an impromptu visit to Portugal – it was to change my life for ever. I knew if I missed this opportunity I would regret it for life. Six weeks later, I relocated here.
I moved from South West England to South West Portugal. As one of my best friends rather quaintly put it, “I moved from the ass end of nowhere to the ass end of the ass end of nowhere.”
From Here to there:
We are starting to see the aftereffects of Obamacare starting to trickle down to patients, and there are some things that are both odd and curious. Obamacare goes full-blown in 2014, and in 2012 some doctors started the transition process by writing electronic prescriptions, but 2013 is already turning out to be the Big Obamacare Year of Change.
