sweasel.com

Y’know, I started to make fun of Mr. Marceaux’s prose style. . .then realized that commenting on individual errors was like trying to empty the ocean by dipping the water out with an old boot. So I’m going to settle for just one example:

Education ,let us put phonics back in school if you can not read you can not do History, Math, English. And that where we are now. Let make it mandatory in high school to read the
minutes to the U.S. Congress , the Congressional Globe the real history of the U.S

Yup. Phonics clearly worked well for him!

Oh, yeah–Happy National Punctuation Day! everyone (unofficial U.S. holiday only. . .) I guess Mr. Marceaux’s probably not celebrating that one, hm?

I had the same problem trying to find a pull quote, Can’t Hark. The soup was WAY to thick.

I think I might have done him a disservice, though. I thought his “measuring waist” in socialized medicine was an error. On further reflection, I think he meant literally measuring people’s waistlines.

Happy thought! Possibly he intended a pun!

Mass politics are getting fun! We put a R (well, ok…actually a rhino) in the fat murderous bastards old place and even Bawney has a challenger this year. If Steele et all would quit trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, we might just be able to save the republic yet.

PLEASE put paid to Barney and elect somebody who owns a goddamned pair of teeth. Thank you.

New York’s governor’s race is odd, even for us. We have a serious conservative running on the Republican ticket, and a moderate Republican running on the Conservative ticket–both the result of primaries, as the moderate Republican was originally the party choice for BOTH Republican and Conservative parties. . .and his challenger in the Conservative primary was openly funded by the Conservative who was challenging him in the Republican primary.

Then, the democrat: politician son of politician father, which seems to be pretty much a ticket-to-ride for the candidate but in my experience rarely–if ever–works out well for the electorate. Plus which, he is a charismatic type-A personality,currently serving as our Attorney General. . .and that worked out so well for us last time around!

I’m seriously considering casting a write-in vote for the current incumbent who (except for the baseball ticket scandal, which does give me pause) has generally done a commendable job during the Governorship-from-hell. Plus which, he qualifies to sing the blues, and lord knows that resonates in this state!

Tennessee political blogs? You mean you don’t read Six Meat Buffet? http://sixmeatbuffet.com/ Not all Tennessee but they’re mean and funny.

They’re right below you in my Firefox favorites bar, so I just assumed you guys were close.

Six Meat Buffet! I knew there was a famous one out of Tennessee. It never made it onto my list, only because my list got so long there for a while.

Good to see your smiling ASCII, See-Dubya.

Rhode Island politics are currently grand. There is laughter in the hills and singing in the valley. Congressman Patrick Kennedy will be no more, having deprived us of the opportunity to elect his retarded, rehab-reject ass for the ninth time. Finally, someone has saved us from ourselves. Hallelujah!

PLEASE put paid to Barney and elect somebody who owns a goddamned pair of teeth. Thank you.

Haha! Every time I see a pic of him now I think about your query about whether he has teeth or not. Cracks me the heck up.

My kids have had nothing but trouble getting their absentee ballots in the various countries they’ve been in. If the kid ever makes it to England, she’ll have problems too. 🙂

Somebody mention me?

Your votes for me assures the return of the Studebaker Lark (especially the 8-cylinder convertible model) and the Willys Jeepster, the requirement that all “pop” radio stations devote at least 6 hours of the day to jazz and dance music of the 20s, 30s and 40s, the abolition of sweat pants and shorts with “Princess” or “Hottie” emblazoned across the bootay and the institution of an international dirigible service (using helium, of course), among other forward-thinking projects.

Vote early and often!!

Buff

I think I will write in Basil Marceaux for governor here in Colorado. We get to choose among the dishonest GOP hack Maes, the self-righteous lying douche Tancredo, and the Democrat Hickenlooper. I can’t bring myself to vote for any of them.

Basil’s my man.

I’m confused. Is Basil Marceaux the same guy as Basil Marceaux Dot Com? Did he get a name change or is he just going by a hipper, shortened version of his name? I’ve only ever heard him refer to himself as Basil Marceaux Dot Com. I thought his parents were really ahead of the game, y’know?

Buff, Buff, my good fellow, not the Lark, which was an abomination before God, but the Hawk. And Avanti owners must be compelled to use their badly-disguised Chevies as daily drivers. Perspective, man, have some perspective!

Regards,
Ric

Er, are you implying that you have an absentee ballot to vote in TN elections ? How is that possible, you not being a resident of TN and all ?

And yes, I have lived outside of America before – 5.5+ years and I voted in two presidential elections, but of course not in any state elections. I own property and (in a good year) pay taxes in OK, but I don’t get to vote there since I reside in VA.

I went back to Tennessee for a bit before I left and walked into the courthouse and registered to vote in person. If there’s a length of residency required, nobody mentioned it.

I have no ties at all to Rhode Island and will probably never see it again. I have family and property in Tennessee and will be going back periodically. Made sense to me.

I could’ve proxy-voted in the last lot, I guess. But the IOW is so solidly Tory, to whom I am broadly sympathetic, that it would not have been worth it (what was I going to do, vote UKIP and maybe let the LibDem in? That’s the tactical voting equivalent of calling in a fire mission on your own position. Only do it if Labourites are about to overrun you.)

“I went back to Tennessee for a bit before I left and walked into the courthouse and registered to vote in person. If there’s a length of residency required, nobody mentioned it.”

If you have a residency permit in the UK and/or can file your FIT and utilise the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (by either test) and/or file non-resident state tax forms in TN, you’re not a TN resident, even if you did register to vote before leaving. There are exceptions to such considerations, primarily for the military, but it doesn’t sound like any of those would fit your situation.

I’m not saying you can’t get away with it (dead people vote all the time, after all), but if you are not a resident of TN, voting there is election fraud, no different than if some resident of OH (as an example) did so.

I don’t understand, Mike. I have to get my ballot from somewhere. I’m not a resident of Tennessee, I’m a resident of the UK. And I told them that when I wrote for the absentee ballot — that I am a permanent resident abroad, but I own a home in Tennessee and regard that as my base in the US.

Which was, incidentally, exactly how I was advised to handle it when I explained my situation at the Smithville courthouse. And they sent me the ballot.

They’re wrong. You are not a resident of TN, period. Non-residents don’t vote in state elections (which also include US senators and congressmen.) As a US citizen living abroad, you do get to vote for president and VP, but that’s not this year.

You only get to have one primary residence, and if it’s in the US, you get to vote there in local/state elections. Having a secondary residence in a different state does not allow you to vote there. US military personel (and a very few others) get to keep a state primary residence even while assigned overseas, but ordinary expatriates who establish residency outside the US do not.

A quick and fairly reliable way to check the relevant law is to get on the intrawebbie thing and check out the TN tax website for their legal definition of residency (it does vary from state to state.) Local courthouse personel rarely know this sort of thing. Back when we moved to Qatar, the embassy provided us newbies with lectures and such from IRS agents (the IRS has an office in The Magic Kingdom) and such that helped in figuring out the rules.

BTW, I commonly use absentee ballots to vote in elections because I am on the road most of the year, be it foreign or domestic travel. But I get them only because I am a resident here in VA.

In fact, I better get one next week, because I’m not going to be here Nov. 2.

This sounds like me:

1. Who may apply to vote absentee under T.C.A. § 2-6-502?
[…]
OVERSEAS CITIZEN: A United States citizen who resides outside the U.S. and, but for living outside the U.S., would be qualified to vote in Tennessee.

As far as the subject has ever come up, every American ex-pat I know in the UK votes in home state elections. I was just chatting with someone on FaceBook about whether we’d voted in the primaries this year.

Wow:

PERSONS BORN OVERSEAS: A person who has never lived in the U.S. but has a parent who is eligible to vote in Tennessee may vote in Tennessee in the same voting residence claimed by the parent.

Well, I’m not a lawyer, nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, not am I familiar with TN law. But that sort of open-ended deal sounds dodgy to me. Essentially, TN allows non-residents to vote, and I would assume that goes all the way down to county school board and local dogcatcher, it that’s an elected position. If that’s the law, so be it.

I don’t think it’s just Tennessee, Mike. I occasionally hang out on a forum for American ex-Pats in the UK, and as far as I can tell, this is SOP. People register for absentee ballots from whatever state they were registered to vote in when they lived in the US…and, yes, they vote right the way down to school board and dog-catcher.

Now, you could argue I should have applied to Rhode Island instead…

…which is only fair, considering I have to file an income tax statement in the US for the rest of my life…

“…which is only fair, considering I have to file an income tax statement in the US for the rest of my life…”

Oh, pish-tosh. You could always divest yourself of any and all American-sourced income and then revoke your citizenship. No problema…

Jeez, way to burn your bridges, Mike. Even if one were willing to go through the psychological trauma that is to revoke one’s citizenship (I’ve lived longer outside the UK than in any one location within it, yet still consider myself as British as can be; my brother has a Dutch passport, but has ‘Brit’ running through him like a stick of Brighton Rock) there are grave practical hurdles to go through. The IRS is a jealous God, and will have none before it. You can’t, even if you wanted, go “snap! I’m not a Yank anymore, so come and get me!” Forget going through US immigration ever again without a hand in places hands were not meant to fit. For my part, the last time I flew to the UK, for all my railing against the EU, I was very appreciative of the fact that as a citizen thereof, flying via Madrid meant I could waltz through the place as if to the manner born.

It’s Weasel’s birthright as a native-born citizen of the US to exercise her Constitutionally-guaranteed ability to vote for those officers of the State that the law has seen fit to place under her ballot-wielding pen. There’s not a lick of difference between an American Weasel voting in Sussex and a guy taking time out crouching behind a HESCO barrier in Helmand province to flll out an absentee ballot while the Taliban mortar his position. Same goes, mutatis mutandis for me (and certainly for my niece while she was serving her country as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy in Iraq, whence her government had deployed her.) And it’s not even as if I’m taxable, the US being an outlier on the spectrum of how it covets its childrens’ income. I’m fuzzy about my history, but I seem to remember that “no taxation without representation” was a slogan of a bunch of hotheads a while back. There may even have been (heaven forfend) a Tea Party involved.

Oh, and it’s “no hay problema“, “problema” being one of those pesky Spanish nouns that end in ‘a’ while still being masculine, like planeta or dia or sistema, and hay being one of those weird bits of Spanish you just get used to.

Oh, nonono…not burning any bridges, me. One day, I might *need* that 60 acres of rocks and rattlesnakes in rural Tennessee…

The more my daughter hears about living in the UK the happier she’ll be to come home…and she ain’t even left yet (but not for want of trying).

What about the other direction? What if you’re a Brit who wants to come here? Not that I know anyone who is thinking about that (cough cough), or anything, of course. Just hypothetically.

Today I scanned an article in the local paper about a couple who sold all their property and got a big RV to roam the country. They discovered that they can’t vote now in any local elections since they have no permanent address. That actually makes sense to me. If your home can pull up stakes at the drop of a hat and move on to some other place, why should you have a voice in the local affairs? This is different from Weasel’s situation since she actually owns real fixed property in Tennessee.

Still thinking the most positive thoughts possible on behalf of your daughter, Nina. And a fat lot of help that’s>/i> gonna be! I have to say, my childhood image of England as the promised land is getting a bit tarnished. . .

Being undiagnosed OCD, I like to know the source of quotations I read. And I have NEVER managed to find the source of that one. So, if anyone here recognizes and can identify it. I’d be most grateful. Not that that means much, I suppose, but all the same–DEVASTATINGLY grateful!

One day, I might *need* that 60 acres of rocks and rattlesnakes in rural Tennessee…

Well, rattlesnakes are edible, y’know, if you toss the head. Tastes like chicken.

DAMN! I’ve been spending the day in square bracket territory, and seem to have lost the knack of doing angle-bracket tags. Sorry, Stoaty–don’t bother to fix it, I don’t mind looking stupid. Well, I MIND, but I think it is probably good for my character!

Hmm… can’t help with the quotation, Can’t Hark, but I can add to Nina’s perplexity by telling her that it is even worse going from the UK to the USA – however hard that may be to believe.

Even routine business trips can be fraught with ‘visa incidents’ and as for moving to the USA to live – well, it isn’t quite a case of ‘forget it’ but be prepared to jump through more hoops than a circus dog.

For whatever reasons, it’s as if our respective governments were trying to demolish any concept of an anglosphere.

In a children’s novel set in the North of England one of the characters–a retired Admiral of Her Majesty’s Navy–recites (well, murmurs meditatively to himself) the following lines:
“We will strike the battle ensign
Beyond the harbour bar.”

Operating under the rash assumption that you already know the quote is from War on the Darnel by Phillip Turner, Can’t hark, my first humble guess (‘cuz I came up with nuthin’) was that Turner penned the quote to give his admiral something lofty to say. Then methought, “Gee, it has the same tone as ‘The Laws of the Navy’ by Adm. Ronald Hopwood!” and went poking around his collected works

http://inquirewithin.biz/laws/lawsindex.htm

and didn’t find your quote.

So, now I’m back to my first humble guess.

Holy, um, well holy SOMETHING! You’ve read Philip Turner? God I love this blog!

No eyeroll?

Ackshully, I kinda thought you’d have been more impressed that I knew Admiral Hopwood wrote poetry…

Earnest effort never earns an eyeroll.

Well, yes, I was impressed that you were familiar (as I was not, I might add) with Admiral Hopwood’s works. I’ve bookmarked that site. And I was impressed that you did all that research in his works, for which I thank you.

But I was excited that you seemed to be familiar with Philip Turner’s books (which are a lot of fun), because it is lonely being the only person you know who has read a particular author.

Or did you by any chance come by that information at Quoteland?

Hm. My sense of humor is getting the better of me. There isn’t a lot about Hopwood on the Net, but there are several solemn and respectful comments about “The Laws of the Navy.” They say things like “Its shrewd common sense and philosophic outlook made it deservedly popular.” Have none of these people ever read “The Jungle Books?” “The Laws of the Navy” is a very clever poem, really–but it is clearly a deliberate parody of Kipling’s “Law of the Jungle.” There is no way Hopwood wrote “For the strength of the ship is the Service,/And the strength of the Service, the ship.” unthinkingly at the end of a stanza starting out “Now these are the laws of the Navy.”

It’s par for the course for me, Hark!

And thanks for the good wishes for the offspring. I’m just fretting how long it’s going to take to get her Visa once she gets new biometrics done. I hope they can just do it tomorrow, but I’m not counting on it 🙂

And I’m not at all OCD (too lazy), but I also like to know the quotes I read in books. The advent of the innertubes has been a great boon in that area. Not in this case, but usually. 🙂

Nina–it’s not at all the same thing, of course, but I do have a faint sense of the frustration. I once lost functionality in the driver’s side windshield wiper when on my way to a family gathering in Texas. Early Saturday evening in Arkansas in a driving rain storm. No garages open, the emergency road repair guy a truckstop referred me to was unable to fix the problem (but kind enough to drive in front of me, very slowly, so I could find my way to a nearby hotel). I needed a Saturn dealer to get it fixed; and car dealerships aren’t open on Sundays in Arkansas. And it never stopped raining–on Monday I got the damned car to a dealer by having it towed, even though it was perfectly driveable. . .on a dry day.

So that whole “waiting around while nothing happens and you can’t make anything happen” vibe resonates for me. Crossing my fingers for tomorrow!

@ Hark and Nina –

Weaselville is, indeed, an odd little place and polulated with the most interesting souls….

Thanks for the pointers to Hopwood’s work.

Years back I read a pair of books by Nicholas Monserrat, called “The Master Mariner”….

Anyway, Hopwood’s poem “The Master Mariner” is too evocative of the theme of Monserrat’s books to have been coincidence …..and Monserrat was too thorough of an author to not have connected the two.

To paraphrase Paul Harvey ….now I know ….the rest of the story.

*Whispers to Hark*…You live in N.Y., and have ties to Texas?!?

jw: My parents were born and raised in East Texas. During the Depression (you know, the one where people defenestrated themselves on Wall Street) but they, their families and their communities were not much affected by it due to the East Texas Oil Boom. (The Daisy Bradford 3 blew in on October 3, 1930 and changed the face of Kilgore forever. . .or at least for a bunch of decades. There were oil rigs pumping on the high school lawn, and it was one GORGEOUS high school due to all the ahl money in the town. . .) But they moved to New York as soon as they got married. . .Daddy was an electrical engineer, so all-in-all I have spent most of my life in the City that Lights and Hauls the World. But my kid sister went to college in Texas. It’s all one big cosmic cycle, hein?

Indeed, Hark!

My Mothers side of the family was raised in Cisco, and for the majority of my life, although, born in Germany, I was raised in Texas. My Daddys side of the family was raised in Wisconsin. I moved to N.Y. 8 years ago. I now live in the, uh, Central N.Y. area. 😉

I’m sure you can figure that out. Now….98% of my family still live in Texas. The other 2% live in Wisconsin.

I guess that makes me a…displaced or a “defenestrated” person from Texas. 🙂 That cracks me the hell up! I know Kilgore well. Ever heard of the “Home of the Dinosaur”?

Yeehawwwwww!

As always, a pleasure!

Thing about New York is. . .it has MANY centers. All depending. And all of them beautiful!

Well, throw Denton into the mix–where my mother’s family was from, but after her father died (when she was about 3) her mother went to Kilgore and became Dean of Women in the high school.

“Home of the Dinosaur” rings no bells, but I am on my way to check it out on Google.

Ah. Glen Rose–Southwest of Dallas, as Kilgore and Denton are Northwest. . .don’t suppose you know Lampasas?

“Jeez, way to burn your bridges, Mike. Even if one were willing to go through the psychological trauma that is to revoke one’s citizenship…”

I see I’ll have to lower my point of aim in the future as the jokes are landing long.

I lived in Denton for a few years, Hark. And yes, I know Lampasas as well. My Daughter was/is an equestrian, I hauled her and her horses all over the place. A few horse shows in Lampasas and…well, just about anywhere in Texas.

I guess Cicero is officially considered the geographic center of N.Y., but most folks think Syracuse when they think center. I’m in a little podunk village just outside of Syracuse. I find it very amusing here. There are villages within villages, within townships, within townships, within cities. Lots of drama and politics going on.

As always, a pleasure!

My grandparents retired, in the late 50s, to a ranch in Lampasas, where they raised ponies; I have many fond memories of the ranch. Many. Think it was finally sold in the early 80s.

And about the local politics–OH yeah! Our local conservative party (largely composed of Sheriff’s deputies and firefighters) always endorses Democratic candidates, and our local Working Families Party (largely composed of police officers) always endorses Republican candidates. . .of whom there are regrettably few these days. Of course, as we both live in New York, we must recognize that the local politicians merely mirror the statewide guys. . .

Ms Weasel:

Rhode Island has one candidate to be truly proud of:

Robert Healey for Lieutenant Governor.

http://www.votehealey.com/

His platform is to abolish the office, which would save $1M/year/. How cool is that?

The Republican candidate dropped out of the race to give him a better chance against the Democrat. (Whereupon the loser of the Republican primary demanded to be placed on the ballot instead.)