2009 archive
LaLa Land 1
No. Not California.
Well, in addition to California.
Rich white guys who have jobs and work for the Wall Street Journal:
In an effort to ensure swift passage of his fiscal stimulus plan, which is aimed at arresting the recession, the president and his aides have used jargon that risks making it worse, to say the least.
Sorry, buddy. Whislin’ don’t put food on the table.
Return of Beyond the Palin 1
A rose by any other name . . . . (might be a turnip, but that’s a different issue).
“Sore Losers” 0
I Don’t Like California 1
I have spent a lot of time there, most of it in that fantasy called Southern California, a place that has no vegetation not imported from Florida and no water not stolen from Colorado.
SoCal was best described in Two Years before the Mast as a wasteland that no one would want to live in and where no one wanted to do real work.
It has since become a wasteland that many want to live in, thanks to Edison’s Magic Lantern. Real work, well, that’s another topic.
Now the California Republican Party is determined to destroy Cali before it drops into the sea.
Apparently, I don’t dislike California as much as its own resident Republicans do.
(Aside: Are all Republicans nutcases, or just most of them? No. Really. How can supposedly sentient beings be so Godforsakenly stupid?)
I Get Email 2
Really lame emails from major national insolvent banks.
The subject line said “confidential.” (They had my email because I signed up to get my whatchamaycallit W-4 whatever form the interest is reported on? last year). What the heck is confidential about this?
Call us to discuss your mortgage and services that
may be of interest!Consider one of these simple options to contact us, check your account status and make your monthly mortgage payment if you wish.
Option 1: Go to www.[bankname].com to automatically make your payment.
Option 2: Call us, at [toll-free number] and select Option 2 to make your payment by phone.
Please call us today!
I’m not going to call them to discuss anything (‘cept maybe their bonuses, but you know the poor minimum wage bozo who is doing honest work by answering the telly phone doesn’t get a bonus–after all, he or she is doing honest work; that’s not bonus-worthy).
They send me a bill. I send them a payment.
They have no other services that may be of interest.
Boneheads.
Oh, yeah. It’s ungrammatical also. It is a sin to omit the last comma in a series.
Ungrammatical boneheads.
“Now Playing” 1
One of the things I like about my new MP3 player is that, if I shut it down in the middle of a podcast and later turn it back on, it gives me a chance to pick up right where I left off with two clicks.
I just discovered that Comcast’s On Demand does something similar, except that it takes three clicks. I paused a show, then went downstairs to fight with Windows (Windows put up a titanic struggle, but I wrestled it down to the electrons for three falls) and came back to find the On Demand main menu screen on display.
But I was able to restart my program at the 27 minute mark.
Drink Liberally 0
You’re out of work or your company is teetering on Chapter 11.
You work for a bank and nobody likes you anymore.
You still have a job but the folks on either side of you? Oh. Well.
What else is there to do? Good friends, good food, good times.
Triumph Brewing Company, 1 1/2 blocks from Front on Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., 6 p., every Tuesday.
Nothing in the weather forecast about “wintry mixes” or car crashes all over the highways.
If my cold doesn’t come back on me tomorrow, I might actually make it for the first time in what seems like a month of Sundays.
Things That Go Bump in the Night 1
Supply and Demand 0
’nuff said:
This is in addition to the center’s recently expanded Saturday hours, also open 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
What Nationalizing the Banks Means 0
DougJ’s post at Balloon Juice considers the implications.
It includes part of a lengthy email from a senior manager at a hedge fund. That itself is worth your while.
Solomon the Bipartisan 1
When King Solomon offered to split the baby, he was not being bipartisan.
He was getting results.
There are too many out there who define “bipartisanship” as some form of splitting the baby. As long as the result is somewhere sort of half-way between the desires of the two major parties, it must be ipso facto “bipartisan” because it’s in between (in Left Blogistan, that philosophy is often referred to as “Broderism”).
The flaw in that reasoning is that what virtue there is in bi-partisanship lies in improved results, not in a split baby.
Today’s National Journal contains President Obama’s thought on bi-partisanship (emphasis added):
Cooperation on the economic agenda, he suggested, may have been unusually difficult because it “touched on… one of the core differences between Democrats and Republicans” — whether tax cuts or public spending can best stimulate growth. He predicted there may be greater opportunity for cooperation on issues such as the budget, entitlements and foreign policy. And if he keeps reaching out, he speculated, Republicans may face “some countervailing pressures” from the public “to work in a more constructive way.” White House aides suggest that regardless of how congressional Republicans react on upcoming issues, Obama will pursue alliances with Republican governors and Republican-leaning business groups and leaders.
Yet while promising to continue to seek peace with congressional Republicans, Obama also made clear he’s prepared for the alternative. “I am an eternal optimist [but] that doesn’t mean I’m a sap,” he said pointedly. “So my goal is to assume the best but prepare for a whole range of different possibilities in terms of how Congress reacts.”
Via The Huffington Post.
Also posted, with slight edits, at the Great Orange Satan.
Your Tax Dollars at Work. Your Good Faith Betrayed. 0
Mortgage Relief 2
Not for this guy. He dug his own hole.
Stand Up Guys 0
The Army Corps of Engineers:
Alamosa City Manager Nathan Cherpeski brought the situation to the city council’s attention during his weekly Friday update and commented further about it on Monday. He said although the Corps designed the current levee, and it was built according to the Corps’ design, the Corps is now telling the city the levee was constructed incorrectly.
The big problem with the levee is the tree growth on the land side of the levee, Cherpeski said. He pointed out that the Corps left many large trees in place when it constructed the new levee in 1997 but is now apparently blaming the city for the potential structural problems the trees could cause to the levee.
You remember the Corps. That’s the outfit that built the levees in New Orleans.
Yeah, those levees. The ones that fell over.
Via Harry Shearer.
Empty McMansions 0
More coming:
“It wouldn’t surprise me to see one or two of the top 10 homebuilders filing this year,” said Bittner (of Grant Thornton LLP–ed.). “But in most cases, the current lending environment is unique in that as long as a builder has positive cash flow, the lender doesn’t want to foreclose or force a bankruptcy filing. Recovery is more likely if a bank can be patient with a borrower. Positive cash flow and ability to service interest on a credit facility provides for a better negotiation position with the lender.”
Stray Question 0
Does anyone actually read Maureen Dowd? I can never get past the headlines.
Surrounded by the Aquarium II 0
Frank Rich in the Toimes:
(snip)
Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.
Surrounded by the Aquarium 0
The fish don’t seem to see the wider world around them. Or, if they do, it is distorted by the water.
Atrios poses the question.
(Aside: Many Washington insiders, like some of my friends, seem to think that today’s Republican Party bears some resemblance to the Republican Party that they grew up with 40 or 50 years ago, a party that included good, decent, sensible persons, such as President Jerry Ford, persons with whom one could disagree, yet still respect.
It does not.)