April, 2013 archive
Sunset on the Northern Neck. 0
H/T to my brother for the pic.
Undeliverable 0
Phil Terrana has a theory about why Congress obligated the postal service to pay up its pension fund for 75 years into the future: it’s all about the privatization con, another attempt to sell off the public’s assets for the personal gain of a few masters of the universe.
People keep asking why Congress doesn’t put a stop to this, or postpone it or reduce it to a more manageable figure.
The reason is that the people who put this into law don’t want the Postal Service to survive. They want to break the back of the Postal Service so that the only answer will be privatization, and some big investors with a lot of money will get their hands on a business that goes into every home and business in America.
Beyond the Paisley 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., attacks the stupid premise of Brad Paisley’s (and L. L. CoolJ’s) “Accidental Racist,” the idea that symbols of bigotry are, somehow, not symbols of bigotry, but just sweet little mementos, harmless fashion statements, like high-heel shoes or a little black dress.
But where African-American life is concerned, one frequently hears Paisley’s lament: how a white man is locked into his own perspective. That’s baloney. Both history and the present day are replete with white people — Clifford Durr, Thaddeus Stevens, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leon Litwack, Tim Wise — who seemed to have no great difficulty accessing black life.
One suspects one difference is that they refused to be hobbled by white guilt, the reflexive need to deny the undeniable, defend the indefensible, explain the inexplicable. They declined to be paralyzed by the baggage of history. One suspects they felt not guilt, but simple human obligation.
Do please read the rest.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
No doubt he was politely standing his ground parking space (or some such nonsense):
Nothing to see here. As they used to say in the John Wayne movies that gun nuts take so seriously, “only a flesh wound.”
“A Good Walk Spoiled”* 0
Ken Purdy attempts to explain the kerfuffle over Tiger Woods’s two-stroke penalty at the Masters.
If you enjoy reading income tax instructions, you’ll enjoy reading this attempt to clarify the rules of golf.
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*With apologies to Mark Twain (or someone else).
All about the Street Cred 0
At Asia Times, Chung Min Lee tries to figure out what’s with North Korea. A nugget:
But as Carl von Clausewitz reminds us, “any complex activity, if it is to be carried out with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a ‘genius’.” Clausewitz’s dictums were written nearly 200 years ago, but they’re as relevant as ever because Kim doesn’t have the intellect or the temperament of being a true genius. This is the first lesson that we should draw from North Korea’s unprecedented antics and bellicosity.
Read the rest.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Working towards an “Associate of Politeness” degree, no doubt.
Police on Friday night said they have charged 18-year-old Neil Allan MacInnis as the shooter after two women were wounded at a New River Community College facility.
Both Sides Not 0
When I was a young ‘un and integration came to my school (meaning 11 black kids joined my high school senior class of 70 or so), the grown-ups were deathly a-skeered that a black kid might dance with a white kid, so they cancelled the prom.
A group of parents organized a “private party” at a local firehall. Every not-black member of the senior class and his or her date was invited–and no one else.
To give you an idea of how long ago that was, it was long before I accumulated three grandkids.
I hoped that that sort of nonsense was over, but noooooo (emphasis added).
Raw Story spoke to activist Bryan Long of the progressive group Better Georgia, whose group has asked Georgia elected officials “to publicly support the students of Wilcox County who are fighting to end a ‘separate-but-equal’ high school prom.”
I’m trying to figure out how there are two sides to this issue.
I’ve got it!
There’s the right side and there’s the wrong side.
Sequestrian Dressage 0
No trip to Pensacola–JROTC units condemned to compete via video:
Oh, the humanity.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
The doors are locked.
To his surprise, his credit history showed a foreclosure, a “kiss of death” stemming from a strange credit quirk. Banks and credit bureaus have no special code to report a short sale.
Without the distinction, homeowners who won the bank’s approval for a short sale of their underwater home are seen as no different than years-long defaulters who ended in foreclosure.
“Good Old Golden Rule Days . . . .” 0
Welcome to NRA world.
Three shots thunder through white hallways with black-and-yellow signs that read: “Mustang Pride.”
“Help! Somebody help! Someone got shot!” a woman’s voice echoes inside the school.
Behind her, a man’s body lies in an open doorway.
Down the hall, a police officer commands: “Walk to us!”
Another officer walks beside him, pointing her gun.
That scenario, played out inside Hugo A. Owens Middle School in Deep Creek on March 28, was only a drill.
Gun nut paradise approacheth apace.
Georgia on My Mind 0
When I first saw the headline, I thought it was the other Georgia.
Damn, I should have gone to an Ag School.
Rand Gestures, Reprise 0
And the thing is, Rand Paul probably believes his own propaganda.
Republicans don’t lie just to voters.
They lie to themselves, too.
Via TPM.
Up at the Farm 0
The problem seems to have cleared up spontaneously.
)(*&z67*(*&6z computers!
