Give Me a Break category archive

I have an idea.

Save 200 bucks and get a netbook instead. It comes with a keyboard and without a walled orchard.

Special SWAT team edition.

There appears to be evidence that the people who run Facebook are mentally a bunch of teenaged boys who can’t deal with puberty.

From the country that gave us Hello Kitty:

Japanese inventors have devised a gadget to make you prick up your ears – electronic cat’s ears.

Strap on the furry headgear, and its ears are programmed to move in ways that reflect the user’s inner mood.

Video at the link.

For those of you who don’t understand how adherents of the Lost Cause can argue, even today, that slavery was not the cause of the American Civil War, I offer you this column in yesterday’s local rag.

The author employs a tactic which I remember from defenders of the Lost Cause during my youth, surrounded as I was by white folks whose ancestors wore the gray, as did my own, and who were distressed that the Civil Rights movement threatened Our Way of Life(TM).

He drags out the political minutiae of the last few months leading up to the war, creating a haze of detail about conventions and congresses and resolutions and proclamations, to avoid the ultimate truth:

If it were not for a desire to protect and perpetuate slavery, no Southern state would have seceded and no war would have ensued.

All the rest is sophistry, sophistry designed to avoid confronting the moral rottenness–the belief that some persons, because of the color of their skins, are destined by God to be bought, sold, and otherwise disposed of as property in perpetuity–at and in the heart of the Lost Cause.

A Sternly Worded Letter to the Editor has been dispatched.

In a post last week, I suggested that one of the insidious aspects of bigotry is that most bigots do not see their prejudices and bigotry as what they are, but see them as normal and reasonable.

In today’s local rag, local columnist Roger Chesley tells a little story. Here’s the short version; follow the link below for the full story:

A young black lady and her friend went to the “residences-only” pool of the predominantly-white development in which her family owns a house. She made sure to have her credentials establishing herself as a resident of the development, having forgotten them once before.

After some unspecified period of time, an old white guy from the homeowners’ association demanded her credentials (“May I see your papers, please?”), telling her that she didn’t “look like” she belonged.

She felt singled out, as no one else was being challenged, (Jeez, ya think?) and refused. He called the police. The police inspected her credentials and told the old white guy to leave her alone.

When Mr. Chesley contacted the old white guy, who happened to be a member of the homeowners’ association, he told Mr. Chesley (emphasis added)

“As far as I’m concerned, nothing happened.”

I rest my case.

John Kass in the Chicago Trib:

Rahm Emanuel as a poor innocent victim of ruthless insider Chicago politics?

’nuff said.

From the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it files:

A Carrollton woman has filed a medical malpractice lawsuit that claims she was given the wrong-sized breast implants.

Gwen Haden says a surgeon at a Nevada VA hospital shorted her by 50 cubic centimeters. She is asking for $150,000 in damages.

In November 2009, Haden underwent elective breast augmentation surgery at Mike O’Callaghan Federal Hospital, near Las Vegas. She says in the suit she paid $1,850 for the surgery plus $800 for 300cc implants.

Lord love a duck!

Portable North Pole, a project launched by Montreal-based video web developer UgroupMedia, sends kids personalized videos from Santa — even those who deserve a lump of coal. Tell the site your kid hasn’t been so good, and the video Santa peers over his glasses and tells the child: “You’re on my naughty watch.”

There’s more, if you can bear it.

Afterthought:

I first got into online communication back in the BBS days. When my younger son was about three, the sysop of my favorite BBS installed a door to a chat with Santa. The user would type in something and the program would respond with a more-or-less relevant reply.

Younger son and I had great fun with it. But here’s the thing: Butch (the all-powerful BBS ruler) wasn’t looking to make money or gain publicity. He was looking to spread a little joy and fun.

Intentions sometimes matter.

As much as Mark Zuckerberg irritates me with his casual disregard for Facebook users’ privacy, he seems to irritate the Randians even more. The Ayn Rand Institute has accused him of “going guilt”:

“Other businessmen, however, have decided to ‘Go Guilt,’ i.e., to sign Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s ‘Giving Pledge,’ vowing to give away most of the wealth they have earned,” the Center’s Don Watkins stammered. “The recent news that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has signed the Pledge is making headlines.”

Invoking a column he co-authored for Forbes, Watkins declared that the pledge “treats your wealth, not as a justly earned reward, but as a gift from society–one that came with plenty of strings attached. The message is: Fulfill the obligation that came with your riches, give your wealth away–or hide your face in shame.”

The pledge, he claimed, was crafted as emotional blackmail for rich people and is the reason why businessmen “feel unearned guilt for their success.”

The controversial writings of Rand, the Center’s icon, included fierce and unabashed defenses of wealth and a deep dislike of taxes, social programs, and altruism. In modern society, however, altruism is widely considered a virtue, and few, if any, extrapolate malicious intentions from it.

Randian philosophy, you may recall, is simply Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes for sociopathic greed.

Some of my leftie friends like to refer to themselves as a “reality-based” community, to differentiate themselves from this kind of reasoning.

I don’t see much reality in the leftie reaction to the compromise on tax cuts.

One more time, Mr. Obama was elected President, not king; the Presidential Seal is not dusted with magickal pixie dust that ensures he gets your way.

He can’t get laws that Congress won’t give and, unlike his predecessor, he believes in the rule of law. He’s not going to make laws up; that’s not his nature.

He also believes that getting something is better than a Pyrrhic victory under a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Furthermore, anyone who ever though Mr. Obama was some kind of cutting edge liberal wasn’t paying attention during the campaign. He is being what he promised to be: a slightly left-of-center mainstream Democrat who believes that compromise is worthwhile to get stuff done.

Do I like it that the persons who have benefited most from the American economy continue not to pay their fair share to support it? No.

But . . .

If you’re one of my leftie friends who’s taken to blaming Mr. Obama for the morally bankrupt and craven actions of the Republican Party and their Blue Dog pets (and you know who you are), grow up.

You’re acting as if you just discovered that there’s no Santa Claus and can’t deal with it.

Give me a break.

Aside:

I had a much longer post composed in my head, but Dennis G. beat me to it.

I wasn’t sure what I thought about the City of Philadelphia’s removing the “Christmas Village” sign from a set of temporary shopping booths on Dilworth Plaza.

Dilworth Plaza, for those of you unlucky enough not to have visited the greatest city with an inferiority complex in the United States, refers to the portions of the block occupied by the Philadelphia City Hall (arguably one of the ugliest buildings on the east coast) where City Hall isn’t.

At first I thought that it was a little silly to drop the “Christmas,” even though I could understand persons’ having qualms because the so-called “Christmas village” was on public land.

Then I remembered that the “Christmas Village” sign was pimping a temporary shopping center on public property.

The whole thing had nothing whatsoever to do with the true meaning of Christmas.

It’s all about the true meaning of an American Christmas: bamboozling people into buying stuff they don’t need for people they don’t like at prices they can’t afford.

After thinking about it, I have decided it’s not the “Christmas Village” sign that should go. It’s the whole damned shopping village that should go–off to some place zoned retail.

The Inky reviews the controversy. Follow the link for the full story:

It began when word got to Managing Director Rich Negrin that some city workers and residents were offended by the giant “Christmas Village” sign erected on Dilworth Plaza’s northwest corner.

After all, there are a few Jewish and Muslim vendors among the nearly 50 wooden booths that make up Philadelphia’s version of the traditional German Christmas village, which officially opened here Thursday.

There was also a story that reached Negrin about a little Jewish girl walking with her father who asked, according to Negrin: “Dad, don’t we get a village?”

Addendum:

Via Field, the sign is back. Now everyone is once again able to worship mammon in the name of Christ. Field reports.

I just heard on my telly vision that KMart is open on Thanksgiving Day.

To misquote Patrick Henry,

Men cry Peace! Peace! But there is no peace.

There is only pence. And we want your pence!

From MarketWatch:

From time to time, after I finish the Cheerios box, I find myself reduced to reading the NASCAR coverage in the local rag.

Back when I was a young ‘un, back in the days of cars of wood and men of steel, back when persons actually knew what a “hemi” is, stock car racing was about winning races with the best car and driver. The cars were stock: you could drive one to the race, then drive it in the race.

Now the cars are as far from “stock” as they can be, and racing seems to be about causing your opponent to crash. Items like this are far too common:

Gordon and Burton had different mindsets. They wrecked under caution. They hit before the caution came out and Gordon moved up to Burton’s car to show his displeasure. Burton went to acknowledge him and turned left into Gordon, wrecking both.

They met in the backstretch. Gordon shoved Burton before they clutched and grabbed each other as series officials separated them.

It’s turned into pro wrestling without the clever scripting.

Specifically, the (Virgina) state attorney general’s office alleges that the Cedarwood Condominium Association discriminates against families with children.

It says the association does this by fining them $50 for repeated violations of an association rule against throwing or hitting balls in the common areas, while no residents without children have received complaints or fines, according to the suit filed in Chesapeake earlier this month.

The association has fined three of the neighborhood’s six families with children – out of 82 housing units – for their children playing football, the suit alleges. It also alleges that children playing outside have been harassed, according to the family that brought the complaint, but doesn’t say by whom.

If you live in a condo, pretty much everything outside your door is “common area,” unless you happen to have, say, an small enclosed patio or yard area, as I did when I lived in Fairlington 30 years ago. In other words, children are forbidden to play ball outside. Playing ball inside is not generally recommended.

The local rag’s resident curmudgeon delivers her opinion here. For once, I pretty much agree with her (she bats about .500 on the “agreeing with Frank” scale).

Fortunately, the condo board where I live is pretty laid back. I made a point of complimenting the new chairman on this when I had to call him yesterday. He thanked me and told me that the board was determined not to be like the one just down the road to the right, which the residents refer to as the “clipboard nazis.”

Better still, let’s just all walk around naked.

From the ACLU:

Andy Greenberg at Forbes.com reported yesterday (Tuesday–ed.) that company representatives told him that backscatter X-rays mounted in vans that can be driven around the public streets have been sold to, and deployed by, domestic U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Backscatter X-rays are one of the technologies that are used in full body scanners at airports (over our strenuous objections). They can see through clothing and reveal the naked human form.

We don’t know exactly how government purchasers of these vans are using them, but if they are in fact being used on public streets, that would be a major violation of the Constitution. In fact, it’s hard to believe that any counsel at any government agency would sign off on allowing these vans to be used in that way.

Bob Cesca comments.