March, 2013 archive
Facebook Frolics 0
Like, you know, like this explains, like, why you seldom see me, like, log into the Faceborg.
(I’ve mentioned this story before, but Thom presents it clearly and succinctly.)
Observance, Coda 0
George Smith remembers who put the lie in the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq.
War and Rumors of War 2
Dan Simpson hears the grumblings about yet another war and hopes that we learn from the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq. He lists those who monger for war. A nugget:
The second is that the Department of Defense, like the rest of the government, is facing budget cuts, due in part to sequestration but also because Americans will want their peace dividend now that the Iraq War is over and the Afghanistan War soon will be.
The third is that the world is always full of what the American military-industrial complex, first identified as a danger by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, can portray as lively candidates for U.S. military intervention.
The Iraq War was a success for no one other than Mr. Bush, who was reelected as a war president in 2004. It is hard to imagine that he would have been reelected without the war. America lost more than 4,000 citizens in Iraq and many thousands more were disabled. An estimated 110,000 Iraqis died. The financial costs are estimated at up to $2 trillion.
He hopes we have learned something.
I fear we have not.
Home Is the Sailor, Home from the Sea 0
A reporter from my local rag hitches a ride on a tug boat shoving a barge into port.
Read it. Learn what life is like under the drawbridge.
No Self-Awareness, None Whatsoever 0
An accused hit-and-run driver who injured a school crossing guard explains:
The Lost Cause 0
In my local rag, Margaret Matray writes of the effort by the Virginia State Historical Society to make historical information about slaves available for genealogical research.
It is a difficult task, as little is preserved, other than sales transactions, bequests, and gift records, for black slaves were considered on par with cattle. Indeed, as anyone who has ever dealt with prize cattle will know, more attention was likely paid to the ancestry of cattle.
The whole article is worth a read (it appeared in the print edition two weeks ago), but a few nuggets will remind you that, when persons speak nostalgically of “The Lost Cause,” this is the cause that was lost:
- A receipt from a slaveholder in Richmond in 1850 details the sale of a man named Nate for $850, his condition listed as “sound and healthy.”
- In a written agreement from King George County in 1762, a slave owner gives his daughter a wedding gift: a slave named Diana.
- In a 1758 estate inventory from Essex County, a woman named Leek is valued with her child, London, at 65 pounds. Their names appear on a list with other slaves, alongside silverware, furniture and cattle.
Twits on Twitter 0
Sexist twits, reprise.
And, once again, a woman gets punished for pointing out that men are, or at least often are, pigs.
It’s a mad mad mad mad men world.
We Need Single Payer 0
Robyn Blumner reflects on Time Magazine’s recent article on hospital costs (paywall). A nugget:
In nonprofit hospitals where top executives often are paid lavish compensation of $1 million or more, Brill documents how patients are gouged, charged hundreds of dollars for X-rays and other services that Medicare would have reimbursed at little more than $20. In one typical case, a dose of life-saving cancer medicine, already expensive at $4,000, was marked up by the hospital to $13,700 — with no explanation given.
It’s the free market* at work.
Except that, in this case, it’s a seller’s market, so the magickal mystickal competition fairy need not apply.
________________
*AKA, “oligarchy.”
Sequestrian Dessage 0
Emphasis added:
Capital City Airport in Harrisburg, Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe and Lancaster Airport in Lancaster were included on the FAA’s final list of 149 air traffic control facilities that will close nationwide starting early next month.
In New Jersey, the traffic control tower at Trenton-Mercer Airport will close.
The closures will not force the shutdown of any of those airports, but pilots will be left to coordinate takeoffs and landings among themselves over a shared radio frequency with no help from ground controllers under procedures that all pilots are trained to carry out (this should work out well–ed.)
“We are extremely disappointed with the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to close the contract air traffic control tower … due to sequestration,” said Timothy Edwards, executive director of the Susquehanna Area Regional Airport Authority, owner and operator of Capital City.
And it’s happening elsewhere.
Have you noticed how, now the sequestrian waltz has started, everyone is shouting
NOOOOOOO! Cut the other guy’s stuff!
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Teach the children:
In other news of gun nut viagra:
It was the second time this week that guns wreaked tragedy in the hands of minors in Central Florida.
On Wednesday, a 4-year-old Pine Hills boy suffered a gunshot wound to his face in an apparent accidental shooting inside the condominium he shared with family members, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said.
Flooding the country with firearms will certainly ensure that these do not recur.
Observance, Continued 0
Doghouse Riley takes time out for a Noonan.
A Peggy Noonan, that is.
A nugget therefrom:
A thing is not true just because you are, or pretend to be, serious about it. Especially you.
