Raspberries!

Raspberries (Rubus strigosus) are ripe and ready to pick in the LipsYard Garden.

Best way to do that is to use a small bucket, lined with wax paper, and a lanyard to hang it around your neck to free up both hands for picking.

We're easily getting 1 or 2 pints a day. They make a nice snack everytime you walk by the fridge.

My favorite preparation is mixed with sliced peaches (Prunus persica.)

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney got a raspberry (the Bronx cheer version) from John McCain courtesy of Hurricane Gustav. The Republicans were in such a hurry to get to New Orleans and prove they wouldn't screw up relief efforts like they did last time, that they cancelled most of the speeches on Day 1 of the Republican convention in St. Paul. This included removing W and Dick from the line-up. Happiest about that was John McCain, who's trying to distance himself from the failed policies of the last 8 years, and the fact that most of his agenda for America is just 4 more years of the same.

Never fear, here's a short list of the foibles of the Bush-Cheney administration:

1. The central mistake of President George W. Bush was to abdicate the function of governing to "steamroller" Vice President Dick Cheney, who then used his vast experience in government to create a parallel government. The trouble all started thanks to a one vote majority of the U.S. Supreme Court that put them in power, after having lost the popular vote.

2. The totalitarian "Bush Doctrine" foreign policy of preemptive wars, international unilateralism, and of American assertive military supremacy around the world. This beauty was driven by his "Neo-con" buddies, who even now are arguing for keeping US troops in Iraq for 50 years, and taking our "War on Terror" to Iran.

3. The Bush-Cheney administration has betrayed democracy because it has relied on lies, deceit, propaganda and manipulation in a way that would have been worthy of a totalitarian regime: Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, the run-up to the war in Iraq.

4. Destroying the more than two century-old American tradition of separation of church and state. By channeling billions of dollars of public money to religious organizations through the new Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives ($2.15 billion in 2005 alone,) Bush-Cheney insured the support and votes of their own particular group of believers in their own particular religion. George W. Bush stands alone among all American presidents for having done so.

5. George W. Bush has violated his oath of office, which requires him "to protect and defend the constitution." After launching their trumped-up invasion of Iraq, the administration reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at other secret locations around the world. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution, least of all the commander-in-chief clause, allows the president to commit felonies. Nevertheless, within days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush signed a secret executive order authorizing the new policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on Earth and transfer them to prisons in countries such as Egypt, Syria, or Uzbekistan, where torture is a normal practice, or to secret CIA prisons outside the United States where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.
Within the USA, the Bush-Cheney administration undertook extensive spying on American citizens without obtaining the necessary judicial warrants and without reporting to Congress on these activities.

6. Because the Bush-Cheney administration chose to make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise a far second, it has been plagued with an unheard-of display of incompetence at all levels. They have appointed unqualified loyalists to key positions, such as Gonzales at Justice, Feith at the Pentagon, Brown at FEMA, Bolton at the U.N., Bremer in Iraq, Wolfowitz at the World Bank, etc., all disaster-prone individuals who dutifully extended the incompetence at the top.

7. The Bush-Cheney administration has militarily conquered and thoroughly destroyed the country of Iraq, and refused to leave when asked by the Iraqi parliament, all the while pretending they were occupying this country for the sake of "democracy." In fact, the Bush-Cheney administration has dutifully worked to take over Iraq's oil resources, first, by pressuring the regime under occupation in Iraq to pass a law called "The Hydrocarbon Act," and second, by threatening to block dearly needed reconstruction funds of more than a billion dollars earmarked for the ravaged country if the proposed privatization of Iraqi oil did not go forward. By its ill-advised military invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Cheney administration has triggered a civil war in Iraq that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. In fact, our military invasion of Iraq is responsible for having deteriorated the relations between all religious communities in Iraq and succeeded in unleashing a sectarian religious war between Iraqis in many regions of the country.

8. The Bush-Cheney administration has shown contempt for international treaties and for international law, demonstrating an abysmal lack of judgment in world affairs, while withdrawing from already signed international treaties, including: The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia, the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming, the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the 1997 Land Mine Treaty, the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the Geneva conventions of Aug. 12, 1949, the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the 2001 UN Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms, the 1998 International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty, the 1996 Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty, the 2001 International Plan for Cleaner Energy, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1945 Nuremberg Tribunal Charter against wars of aggression, etc. It has even violated the spirit of the 1967 “Outer Space Treaty” (OST)by indicating its intention to assert American military control of Outer Space.

9. By its actions around world and by its attitudes, the Bush-Cheney team has also fed the flames of Islamist terrorism and has even succeeded in rekindling the flames of the Cold War with Russia, with their ill-advised and provocative plan to station anti-missile bases in eastern Europe at Russia's doorstep.

10. Economically, the Bush-Cheney administration will be remembered for two things: massive budgetary deficits and big increases in oil prices.

It is hard not to conclude that George W. Bush and his far right administration have been a disaster for America and for the world, and the consequences will linger on for years to come. They have been agents of uncontrolled greed, of uncontrolled militarism, of massive incompetence and of illegal policies. By any account, this is a most dismal record. We really don't need 4 more years of this.