2010 archive
Up against the Wall Street 0
Shaun Mullen explains.
Do You Have a Story about Golden Retrievers? 3
Share it with Shaun Mullen, who’s researching them.
Please also relay Shaun’s request to your blog, your Facebook page, or your other social media channels.
To that end, we welcome your personal stories about your goldens — or those of family members or friends. Photographs in the form of .jpgs also are most welcome.
Mythbusters 1
Wingnut myth: Charitable giving will pick up the slack.
Real life:
PTSD 0
The local rag today told a powerful story of an Iraq vet whose life fell apart after his return from the war and who received no assistance from his chain of command.
His life fell apart to such an extent that, for a reason even he cannot explain, he attempted armed robbery.
Local rag has hidden the story behind a login wall.
Even though we pay happily for a dead-tree subscription, I refuse to create yet another innertube password. (If you let me read it on paper, you should damned well let me read it in electrons.)
If you want to read the story, here’s the link; you can register for the site.
hamptonroads.com/2010/07/iraq-veteran-posttraumatic-stress-help-never-came
The story relates to this:
Transcript here.
Bad Decisions Erase Good Decisions 0
There is no excuse for choosing bottled water when safe tap water is available. Indeed, much of what is sold as “bottled” water is tap water put into bottles and trucked about the nation, producing air pollution and plastic waste that otherwise would not exist.
This decision is stupid and wasteful.
And not surprising.
The prohibition was one piece of then-Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s government “greening” plan that didn’t make it through a McDonnell administration rewrite for fear that it could cost Virginia businesses too much green.
I love the rationale.
Some “industries” deserve no protection. This is one of them.
Speaking of LalaLand 0
When I worked at Amtrak, we did not find the idea of the persons inside our trains being subjected to this at all amusing.
Californication 0
And I am certain it’s not just in LalaLand. From the San Jose Mercury-News:
This is the path of the “sponsored bill,” a method of lawmaking little noticed outside California’s capital but long favored on the inside. In many states lobbyists influence legislators; in
California, they have — quite baldly — taken center stage in lawmaking.Although lawmakers in recent years have routinely failed to grapple with health care, the state budget and other matters of public interest, they’ve managed to do the bidding of the private interests who tout sponsored bills at an impressive clip.
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Gatesgate 0
I glanced at the stories regarding the recent report on Gatesgate and they did not stir my blogging nerve. Today, Joan Vennochi’s column in the Boston Globe helped me figure out why:
Skin color.
That’s what made it international news. That’s what drew in President Obama, who got caught up in the story when he said the Cambridge police acted “stupidly’’ and then wiggled out of it by hosting a White House beer summit.
But the 60-page report on the show-down between Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sergeant James Crowley barely mentions race. Instead, it’s all about respect and the need for more of it from citizens and law enforcement officials.
It is not just that color is what made it news.
It is very likely that color–a white cop and a black citizen–was a big part of what made it happen in the first place.
The flour, sugar, salt, and water in the recipe may have come from other sources, but I am certain that race was the yeast without which the loaf would not have risen.
Any “analysis” that avoided the issue of race was no analysis at all.
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QOTD 0
Nicolai Tesla, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
To stop war by the perfection of engines of destruction alone, might consume centuries and centuries. Other means must be employed to hasten the end.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society,” Truth or Dare Dept. 0
Dick Polman anticipates the next steps forward for the gunslinger lobby. Follow the link to see which proposals are imagination and which are real.
For example, is this one truth or dare?
Facts on File, Wingnuts on Spin 0
What happens when wingnut lies are challenged by facts (if you’re short of time, focus on the last two minutes):
There’s not enough grains of salt in the world to counteract wingnut lies.
Via Bob Cesca.
Swampwater 0
According to the story, they got drunk, defied orders to remain within their base or whatever they call it, went for a joyride, and killed two persons.
For now, the mercenaries remain in the dock:
U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar quickly dismissed that notion.
“You’re asking that he be sent back to Afghanistan” to face charges there? Doumar asked Cannon’s lawyer. “Is that what you really want?”
“That’s not an option for this court,” said Assistant Federal Public Defender Larry Dash, one of Cannon’s lawyers.
More at the link. The story isn’t real clear, but, based on the excerpt above, the defense strategy seems to be that no one has jurisdiction.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go, Nothing To Eat 0
“I’ve explored every avenue of employment that I can, to no avail,” said the New Castle resident, who has resorted to church food closets in recent weeks to get by. “I just make call after call after call.”
For Dziegielewski and thousands of other Delawareans, the temporary salvation of extended unemployment benefits has run dry, giving way to an existence of fear, despair and bitterness that the nation’s so-called economic recovery seems to be passing them by.
In other news, I heard some Republican hack quoted on the news regarding jobs and deficits. Apparently, everything that happened before January 21, 2009, has gone down some Republican memory hole.
One more time, this is the Republican Economic Theory. If Republicans get back in power, they will just do it all over again once more.
Introspection 0
John Cole points out the intellectual incoherence of “shoot first, ask questions later” Neocon foreign policy.
Dustbiters 0
I missed the one last week, but already the digit counters are starting to fall:
When it starts this early, if often indicates the FDIC has found the huntin’ good.
Later: