Richard Wright

Richard Wright, keyboardist for Pink Floyd, passed away Monday September 15th at the age of 65.

“In my view, all the greatest Pink Floyd moments are the ones where he is in full flow. No-one can replace Richard Wright - he was my musical partner and my friend.”- David Gilmour.

The Answer

(Left) This is a Brittany spaniel.
(Right) These are broccoli spears. Get it? Okay, let's move on ....

One Year Ago

One year ago today, I posted this:

"Well, hold everything! This blog got reviewed by webcogito.com, and here's what Jean Valjean said:

'Frogtown is the unique title given to the Blog written by David Kirk. No drama. No exploitation, no antics, and no Britney Spears pictures... just honest stories shared by an honest man. I highly recommend you stop by, read, and comment.'"

Now, the review is real, but there's a very funny joke here that no one got. You have one more day to figure it out....Ready, set, go!

These Folks Are An Absolute Gift ...

... that keeps on giving!

How Obama blew it, by Kirsten Powers of the NY Post

YESTERDAY'S Gallup poll had John McCain ahead of Barack Obama by an astonishing 10 points among likely voters. A Washington Post poll had that lead at only two points, but clearly showed a McCain surge - especially among women.

This wasn't what Democrats were expecting when they left Denver - yet they have nobody to blame but themselves. Obama's toughest challenge has always been to connect with working-class swing voters. So attacking the poster child for small-town values, Sarah Palin, was a bad strategy.

No, Obama didn't engage in the mass sneering at Palin - but he did fall into the trap of disrespecting her. When McCain chose her, the Obama campaign's first response was to ridicule the size of her town. Then the candidate himself began referring to her as a "former mayor" when she is in fact a sitting governor.

When she retaliated (justifiably) by mocking his stint as a organizer, the Obama camp was clearly rattled. Obama himself actually began arguing about the importance of community organizing. His supporters amplified this cry - claiming Palin's attack was a racist slur and passing around e-mails titled "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor."

Meanwhile, the rest of the country was probably wondering what being a community organizer has to do with being president. Lured by the McCain camp, Obama supporters engaged in an argument about who had more overall experience - the top of the Democratic ticket or the bottom of the GOP ticket. This diminished Obama.

Meanwhile, the media lit up in all their cultural-elite splendor. Alaska? they sneered. It has the population of Las Vegas! Funny how the coastal elite only sneers at red states with small populations. Howard Dean hailed from a blue state with almost the same population as Alaska and was a national phenomenon and front-runner for the presidency. Joe Biden's Delaware has a similarly small population - but no mocking was forthcoming there.

Evangelicals will never vote for a woman who works! they declared. This from people who've likely never met an evangelical in their lives. They could barely contain themselves when they found out Gov. Palin's daughter was pregnant, so sure were they that evangelicals would hang her from the highest tree. When evangelical leaders expressed support, there was a palpable disappointment that Palin or her daughter wasn't branded with a scarlet letter.

They claimed that the Palin announcement was some desperate pick that came out of nowhere. Had they been doing their jobs, or even perusing The Weekly Standard or right-wing blogs, they'd have known that she was on the list. Since they didn't know anything about her, they started making things up. Anything that fit the caricature of a right-wing hypocrite was thrown up with, seemingly, no fact-checking.

They said she opposes contraception, when she said in a campaign debate that she is pro-contraception. They said she cut funding for pregnant teens, when she provided a massive funding hike. They accused her of cutting funding for mentally disabled children, when she raised it 175 percent over the former administration. She was said to have been a member of the wacky Alaska Independence Party; The New York Times had to run a retraction.

Like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Palin has been deemed one of the GOP's rising stars. Since it's national reporters job to cover American politics, their ignorance of about her is distressing. Most Americans think that the media are cheerleading for Obama, so they'll punish him for the reporters' and editors' sins.

So now he is weighted down with more baggage as he works to convince an important voting bloc that he and his party don't hold them in contempt.

The clock is ticking.

Three Political Funnies

1.  Chanj I can beleeve in.

2.  A community organizer?

(From an anti-Palin site called Impalin.

You can purchase T-shirts, buttons and bumper stickers with this message here.)

3.  The liberal philosophy reaches the woods.

(Thanks to This is What It's All About.)

I Like Sarah Palin

I think John McCain made a great choice when he picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate.  I like her for several reasons.  Here's her take on oil exploration:

And for those of you who didn't get to watch the Democratic National Convention last week, I can sum up what they said in two sentences:

1.  John McCain and Emperor Palpatine may be the same person, and

2.  Barack Obama was probably born in a manger.  More later...

In the Eye of the Storm

Welcome to Kermit, Texas, where school board meetings sometimes lead to fistfights...

Thursday, August 21. Crunch time. It's meet-the-teacher day. The first day of school is Monday the 25th. The new school won't be ready until January, so here we are at East Primary again. It's morning now, and you can feel the tension in the air...

This is my lovely and gracious wife's second year of teaching second grade.

"Welcome!" says the happy apple. "Now GO TO THE OFFICE AND SIGN IN!"

Mrs.Kirk has a nameplate over the door this year... for the very first time! Progress is being made!





Part of the much-celebrated science word wall returns from last year, defying bets that it couldn't be found.

Liz's credentials.


Do you like the crystal rocks and petrified wood in front of the window?



All these writing concepts for second grade?

Meet-the-Teacher isn't until 4:00 p.m., but some parents were standing outside at 2:00, like it was some kind of Star Wars movie! One dad even called the police when he was told he couldn't come in until 4:00!

"Math Magic"was a concept which came to Liz in a dream!

I like the traffic light concept for the discipline chart. Liz's eyes also change color when she is angry, just like the smiley face on the red light.



This year, Kermit the Frog over the sink has been replaced...

by the solar system.

Here's a Kermit, napping in this cabinet.

A cartoon map of the town.

3:55. Five minutes until the parents come in, Robert and I have been told to scoot. We will head to Purple Sage (the 3rd thru 5th grade school) to meet Robert's teacher.

Meet the new school, behind Purple Sage Elementary.

The new building is coming soon! Everyone is wondering how it will work to move their classrooms over Christmas break....

The new school will be right across the highway from the Kermit pyramid house.

IN OTHER NEWS:

• Here's my former preacher, Brian McGonagill, getting on the TV news just by buying gas.


• A GenX blogger's memories of Kermit.


• Another paper, this time from Grand Junction, Colorado, discovers Kermit.


• McCain beats Obama in hissing cockroach race.