April, 2014 archive
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
The Basketball Racket 0
Sportswriter extraordinaire Bob Molinaro takes the opportunity provided by the end of the NCAA basketball tournament to reflect on how the NCAA fosters friendly amateur competition does business and (my words, not his) steals labor. A snippet.
And that’s a bad thing?
Do please read the rest.
Afterthought:
It’s reaching the point that, whenever I see the letters “NCAA,” I read “RICO.”
Tipping Point 0
Random meanness.
(snip)
San Francisco was abuzz over the trail of teeny-tiny two-seaters that turned up turned on their sides — and a fourth propped up on its rear end — in two sections of the city.
Speaking of mean for the sake of mean . . .
Republican Family Values 0
The gift that keeps on giving.
Afterthought:
Men misbehave; women get fired.
Now that’s family values.
Influential Friends 0
It’s all about who you know.
Gotterdamerung 3
At Asia Times, Ramzy Baroud evaluates the cost of over a decade of the Wars of George the Worst.
He is not optimistic for the fortunes of the United States as arbiter of world affairs. Two snippets (emphasis added).
(snip)
The US has truly lost the initiative, in the Middle East region and beyond it. The neo-cons’ drunkenness with military power led to costly wars that have overwhelmed the empire beyond salvation. Now, US foreign-policy makers are mere diplomatic firefighters, from Palestine, to Syria to Ukraine. For the Americans, the last few years have been less a “reality check”, more the new reality itself.
Read it, and weep for the devastation wrought by the wars of the Mongers of War.
The Secesh 0
Gun nuts show their colors.
Misdirection Play, Blame God Dept. 0
Humans love to blame God for things that humans do. A letter to the editor in my local rag called out the state of North Carolina for attributing Duke of Hazardous’s tar sands spills as “acts of God” (the precise term was “natural disaster”), though it was the Duke, not God or nature, who failed to maintain the retention ponds which failed to retain.
At the Tampa Bay Times, Timothy Egan recalls visiting some 25 years ago the site of the recent mudslide in Washington. He points out that it, too, was no act of God, but an act of man.
(snip)
Stevenson pointed uphill, to bare, saturated earth that was melting, like candle wax, into the main mudslide. Not long ago, this had been a thick forest of old growth timber. But after it was excessively logged, every standing tree removed, there was nothing to hold the land in place during heavy rains. A federal survey determined that nearly 50 percent of the entire basin above Deer Creek had been logged over a 30-year period. It didn’t take a degree in forestry to see how one event led to the other.
Persons do love to hide behind God to escape responsibility for their own evil, venality, and hate. Indeed, entire religions thrive on enabling persons to blame God for their own evil, venality, and hate.
Blaming God is a growth industry.
Drinking Liberally Norfolk Tomorrow 0
Drinking Liberally is a gathering place for liberals. Socialize and laugh in a friendly atmosphere.
When: 6 p., Tuesday, April 8.
Where:
Uno Chicago Grill
5900 Virginia Beach Blvd
(Janaf Shopping Center) (map)
Tuesdays for Norfolk, Thursdays for Virginia Beach to make it easier for persons with commitments on either day to catch at least one per month.
Wars and Mongers of War 0
Bloomberg’s Pankaj Mishra, published in the Japan Times, questions the relevance of Cold War thinking–and Cold War thinkers–now that the Cold War has been over for almost a generation. He suggests that recent domestic drumbeating about Crimea is, at least in part, an attempt by Cold Warriors to regain their think-tank mojo (and their think-tank gigs).
Forced into premature retirement by the unexpected collapse of communism in 1989, this thinker re-emerged after Sept. 11, 2001, convinced there was another worthy enemy in the crosshairs: Islamic totalitarianism.
Unchastened by a decade of expensive, counterproductive and widely despised wars, these laptop generals have been trying to reboot their dated software yet again as Russian President Vladimir Putin formalizes his annexation of Crimea.
He goes on to suggest that confrontational Cold War thinking led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as the USSR reacted to its perceptions of American intentions. (We experience the long-term effects of that whenever we stand in a security line at an airport, for that nurtured the Taliban and other forms of Islamic political radicalism, including Al Qaeda).
Follow the link to his article for his arguments. Follow the second link to learn more about the common origins of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Droning On 0
It’s the wave of the future, folks.
The injuries are minor. The drone’s operator, a photography company, is insinuating that the drone was hacked. I suspect it’s just as likely that the operators were hacks.