September, 2010 archive
Responsible Fiscals, Contract on America Dept. 0
The Philadelphia Inquirer sees through the smoke:
You won’t find “more borrowing” listed as an agenda item in the House Republicans’ pandering “Pledge to America.” But sending the country deeper into debt is integral to their plan.
Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) and his crew want to extend tax cuts for all taxpayers regardless of income level, which would add nearly $4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. It is a formula for extra borrowing from foreign governments, to be paid by generations of future taxpayers – the very problems that supposedly motivated the GOP’s action plan.
Read the whole thing.
Segway Segue 0
Someone had to say it.
Responsible Fiscals 0
Have you noticed that all that fabled government waste always seems to be in someone else’s jurisdiction?
I’m Not the Only Person Who’s Fed Up 0
With pro (and big-time college) sports.
Except for the Phillies, who in what seems to be a tour de force have had no one arrested, no one suspended, and no one called to testify before Congress in recent memory.
Across the Big Pond, discontent also blossoms:
(snip)
So what happens when those very foundations of your existence are shaken to the core? When you begin to realise that not everybody has been playing by the rules? Trauma, that’s what. We sportists have just experienced a summer of unparalled trauma. First, there were the shocking allegations that Pakistan’s cricketers might not have been playing cricket at all – that they were deliberately bowling no-balls to assist betting syndicates. I have not watched a cricket match since.
The turning point: Sports stopped being “sports” and began to be “entertainment.”
Stray Thought 0
We are tired of “hearty soups.”
We’re going to start our own brand:
“Pine View Farm Puny Soups.”
For small appetites.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Another burst of courtesy:
Upon arrival, officers found a 2000 Dodge Neon that had been parked in the street damaged by gunshots.
But wait! There’s more! Up the road a piece:
According to the story, the gun magically went off by itself.
Stuck with Stuxnet? Dump Windows. 0
The stuxnet malware is getting lots of gee-whiz coverage in the news lately.
This, from the Christian Science Monitor, is typical:
One thing that is hardly mentioned in most of the stories is this:
It’s a Windows virus. It works only on Windows computers. Here’s what Symantec has to say about it (emphasis added):
Also, take the golly-gosh-gee-Batman-It’s-the-Joker coverage with several grains pounds of salt.
Light Bloggery 0
Chores.
QOTD 0
George Bernard Shaw:
You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Nutshell 0
From the lead to a story in the most reactionary paper in Virginia, offered without comment (emphasis added):
Five members of the Kansas-based hate group Westboro Baptist Church . . . .
Parking Wars, Reprise 0
I used to tell my classes, when they decided to go into Philly for the night, where to go, where not to go, and to be sure to park legally, because “Philly’s a tough town on parking.”
He’s charged with homicide.
Spill Now, Pay Later 0
The Buccaneer Petroleum sea food diet.
See food. Don’t eat it.
“Sent a whole truck up with 20 boxes,” Ernst scoffed. It’s a paltry shipment compared to the usual 75 boxes that Ernst said he received every day before the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico halted the steady flow of Louisiana blue crabs that were the lifeblood of United’s business.
Quibble: “Five miles northwest of Baltimore” is not on the Eastern Shore. Baltimore and environs is on the Western Shore, meaning the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
“Hippie Punching” (Updated) 2
Susie Madrak managed to get the term “hippie punching” into the news this week.
I’ve never quite been sure what “hippie punching” means, other than a sort of misdirection play, sort of a modern equivalent of “shoot the messenger” that might be expressed as
-
When you don’t want to deal with the cause of a problem, blame the hippies.
Never mind that no hippies have been seen in the wild since 1969 and that many of the persons who use the phrase with themselves in the role of “hippie” not only were not hippies, but also have never seen one–indeed, their activism is quite the opposite of anything hippie–but let them have their little fantasy.
As of today, the Urban Dictionary has only one definition, added three days ago from what is clearly a rightwing perspective (the user who posted it uses a nom de innertubes of DA+IRS+IS+GONNA+GETCHA+SOON).
With that out of the way, what Mithras said.
Interpolation:
Noz defines the term for me. From the comments:
“hippie punching” is when democrats gratuitously attack their liberal base, perhaps for the misguided reason that it somehow helps their credibility with “regular” americans.
End Interpolation.
A Question of Size 0
Bob Cesca muses on Republican efforts to make “government small enough to fit into your bedroom.”
The Republican fascination with manipulating the sex lives of others continues to befuddle me.
Stray Thought 0
The road to perdition oft leads through tradition.
The Entitlement Society 0
Eric Zorn reports in the Chicago Trib:
The nanny, the lawn service, the maid service, the private school for their three children, the cable TV … “If these cuts don’t work, we will sell our house,” he bleated.
I am somehow unable to feel Professor Henderson’s pain. Never having been elevated to ranks of the privileged, I cannot grasp the horror of having to vacuum one’s own floors, of having to rear one’s own children, or of having to push one’s own lawn mower.
“Dumb” Is Not a Generational Issue 0
Columns like this are a waste of time.
They are, at best, intellectual jello. A moment of sweetness with no lasting value.
Furrfu.
