pissing, pissed....

It's pissing down rain like nobody's bidness. As it was yesterday. I am fighting off a cold, so have been a complete slug. With weather like today, though, why go anywhere? The good news is, after a long dry summer, they say the reservoirs are filling back up. AND, since much of the electricity here is hydropowered, that means that electricity rates will not skyrocket to three times last year's price as was being threatened. More water means more electricity which means cheaper prices. So that's good. But all this rain and dreariness tells me that summer is officially over, the time of tank tops and sandals is done, and it's back to my clunky warm boots and having to wear tights with skirts. Sigh.

In a complete change of topic, I always think that George Bush and company can't piss me off any more, and then I read this. This insanity with Congress raising taxes for expat citizens. To balance a tax cut for rich people back home. If you are not an expat you really can't get the full impact of how stupid, idiotic and ultimately anti-american this law is, but let me tell you it's fucking up international business like crazy. America is the only country in the world to tax its expatriate citizens, and now it looks as though we will be heavily taxed for services we don't receive, to a country we don't live in and for a President I, for one, don't support.
America is obviously trying hard to withdraw from the world scene in any way but with war. So why NOT make it hard for Americans to have jobs overseas and support things like, oh, I don't know, CHEAP OIL for the US? I meet people in the oil industry ALL THE TIME, there are many of them over here, and over-taxing them certainly seems like a strange way to keep that oil cheap, which everyone in the US seems to think is so important.
I mean, really, fuck all those expats, they don't live here and their votes don't count. So let's raise their taxes, their companies will decide it's too much trouble to have Americans as employees, those people will be forced to come home to 'Murca, and then you will have a lot of unemployed over-qualified world travelers on your hands who are REALLY pissed off. And on the dole. And who vote.....Democrat. George Bush (and also Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, what a xenophobic twat) have NO idea how the real world works. We Americans living overseas are, at this point, pretty much the ONLY ones showing the rest of the world that America ain't so bad.....mostly because Americans are now too scared to travel and those who do pretty much only go to London......

Damn, there goes my heart rate. GOD I get pissed off at this crap sometimes. I'd be interested to hear from other American expats on this point....have you heard much about this issue?

OH, yeah, and happy Memorial Day. Or is it Labor Day? I can never remember. Speaking of Labor....Heather! When you gon' have that baby?????? And another shout out to Karla May, who from all reports seems to be recuperating well and is in fairly good spirits.