2008 archive
Support the Troops, Bushie Style 0
kos:
McCain’s pathetic alternate would’ve boosted the current $1,200 in monthly educational benefits to $2,000, but only after 12 years of service. Those given 3-6 years of their life in service to their nation deserved nothing, according to McCain.
Hillary Clinton Gives Me the Willies (Updated) 0
TPM on the “nuclear option:”
Jon Swift figures Obama is done:
Even more telling, many pundits seem to believe that Obama is already the nominee. Is there anything that pundits haven’t been wrong about this year? Remember when they said that Rudy Giuliani was the frontrunner? And that John McCain was washed up? And that Fred Thompson was the new Reagan? If all the pundits agree on something you can almost be certain that they are wrong.
Meanwhile, 23/6 explores Senator Clinton’s thought processes:
Addendum, Later That Same Day:
John Cole has more.
Unfortunately, I Can’t Whistle 0
No, I can’t do this.
The Israeli tourist was about to use an ATM in the main street of Kerikeri, in the far north of the country, when the men whistled, the New Zealand Press Association reported.
She calmly stripped off, used the cash machine, before getting dressed and walking away.
What Kind of Tree Is That? 4
In trying to identify a tree for Karen, I found a really neat website.
It asks a series of diagnostic questions to help identify US trees. In about five mouse clicks, I had the answer. Sure beats leafing (as it were) through a book of pictures.
Here’s the URL.
It was an ash. Now Chris can make bats. Or at least, holy homerun, Batman, bat pens.
I Watched These Buildings Go Up 0
From Phillybits:
used with permission
At the time, I was working at 20th and Market on the south side of Market, right across the street. (There was a big fuss about the buildings before construction started.)
I remember particularly when the construction firm had one tower crane up and was assembling another one.
For the second crane, the tower was up and the first half of the boom was in place. A workman was waiting on the end of the half-finished boom of crane number two, about ten stories above the street.
The operator of the first crane picked up the second part of the boom for crane number two from a truck on Market and, in one smooth motion, lifted it up and swung it into position and stopped. It stopped without a wiggle.
The gentleman on the end of the half-finished boom of the crane number two reached out about a foot, grabbed the second half of the boom, pulled into place, and started bolting it fast.
It was poetry in motion.
Gosh, I love to watch people work when they know what they are doing. (Maybe that’s why the Current Federal Administration gives me such heartburn.)
Another thing I learned when I was working on the 7th floor at 20th and Market.
It is better to do your girl-watching from the 7th floor. From the 7th floor, they all look cute.
Here He Comes To Save the Day . . . 0
. . . or not.
Dueling Electrons 1
I won’t even try to excerpt this. Just go here. It’s well worth a click.
Nagging Question 0
Why is a pack of standard staples longer than a standard stapler?
Junkier Mail 0
I got a letter from this outfit today.
As my daughter would have said when she was younger, “Eeeewwwwww. Gross!”
Boy, it’s makes Publisher’s Clearing House mailings look like Shakespeare.
(Actually, I’ve gotten some useful stuff from Publisher’s Clearing House at reasonable prices. And they are honest about being in it for the money.)
Bushonomics 0
and
What’s more, some local stations now are charging more for customers who pay by credit card than they do for motorists paying cash.
Seven gas stations in the eight-county area posted prices of $4 or more for regular-grade yesterday, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic. All were on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River – two in Philadelphia, three in Conshohocken, and one each in Doylestown and Morrisville.
Not to mention
Heavy metal is driving the latest trend in art theft.
With the cost of copper and other metals skyrocketing, thieves around the world are targeting outdoor sculpture to sell as scrap.
Thus far, Philadelphia appears to have dodged the copper bullet. But not entirely.
In late January, the plaque from Henry Moore’s 1964 bronze sculpture Three-Way Piece Number 1: Points was discovered missing from Triangle Park at 16th Street and the Parkway.
The plaque, which had been embedded in the grass next to the sidewalk, has not been found. The 7-foot, 3-inch sculpture, owned and maintained by the Fairmount Park Art Association, is untouched.
Other cities have not been as lucky.
In Warrenton, Ore., a 51/2-foot bronze statue of Sacagawea, the Indian guide, and her husband, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, was stolen from Lewis and Clark National Historical Park in January.
Regarding the last item, the sister church of my church (being a Methodist, my pastor rides a circuit), a big old stone pile about two miles from here, had its 70-plus year old copper gutters stolen a couple of months ago. The thief was caught coming back with his shopping cart for more stuff, but the police said that chances of recovery were slim, since the gutters had probably been reduced to something unrecognizable within hours of the theft.
Elitism 1
Will Bunch tears up the argument that someone who talks good and knows a subject from a predicate is somehow a conceited self-important asshole.
Ya know, my mother used to have a saying about persons who had nothing to offer to a discussion and who therefore resorted to ad hominem attacks.
“All they are doing,” she would say, “is tearing down.” The other side of that, which she usually would not say, is that they do not desire nor have the capability to build anyone, or anything, up.
Drinking Liberally 0
Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6 p.
Finding parking is a lot easier with the sun still out.
I’ll have–oh, I don’t have to order. The waitress knows what I want.
And since my attendance is so sporadic, all I can say is she’s a damned good waitress.
“Just Low Class” 0
Yeah.
Well.
They are.
And that surprises you how?
No Credit Where Credit Is Due 0
What Duncan calls the “Big Shitpile” continues to spread:
It warned borrowers that its new deals would be more expensive.
C&G said: “From close of business today, Monday May 19, we will be withdrawing and replacing our entire range of mortgage products. Most rates will increase by 0.25% following last week’s rise in the cost of funds.”
Meanwhile, back at home:
“For squatters, foreclosed homes like this are like a camp-ground with free camping,” says real-estate broker Marc Charney, a foreclosure specialist, as he enters the home in Brockton, Massachusetts, and shines a flash-light at a mattress where homeless people have been sleeping each night.
Squatting is on the rise across the United States as foreclosures surge, eviction notices mount and homes go unsold for months, complicating the worst U.S. housing slump in a quarter century and forcing real-estate brokers to enlist the help of law enforcement and courts to sell empty houses.
Legacy of Failure 0
The Nation (emphasis added), on what happened when the Republicans had all the marbles. They lost them.
(snip)
For forty years, the most important trait of conservatives of all stripes has been their unshakable conviction that their vision and their ideas are right. Moral permissiveness, a feckless foreign policy, a welfare-dependent underclass: all the viruses that had infected the body politic under the stewardship of liberals would be cured if only conservatives were given a chance. The right was united above all in its belief that a new Eden would dawn when Americans were liberated from the tyranny of government, whose intrusive hands reached unwarrantedly into every aspect of citizens’ lives (save, of course, the bedroom, where those hands were needed to prevent overly liberated citizens from indulging the wrong impulses). When Bill Clinton ended welfare and declared that the era of big government was over, the argument seemed to have been cinched: at long last, even Democrats had come to realize the folly of their ways. But something funny happened on the way to making the revolution complete: when Republicans were finally given the opportunity to free the citizenry from the chains of the Leviathan state, the result was crony capitalism, fiscal recklessness and bumbling incompetence on an unprecedented scale. The opportunity to govern without interference from liberals came, and the consequences–in New Orleans, in Baghdad, in neighborhoods ravaged by housing foreclosures, in levels of inequality unmatched since the Gilded Age–have been calamitous.