Personal Musings category archive

Wonder how well that odious telly vision show Flip This House will do in the ratings this year when the real estate market seems to be flying on a bling and a prayer?

In this dismal real estate market, lots of people think so, provided that the plastic is a figurine of St. Joseph.

Local shops that sell religious paraphernalia are reporting phenomenal sales of tiny statuettes of St. Joseph – the earthly father of Jesus and the patron saint of the home and house sellers – to real estate agents and homeowners.

As long as I can remember–and I am older by the minute–the Governors of many states have had the right to fill a U. S. Senate vacancy pending the next regularly scheduled commercial interruption election.

It’s worked just fine–not great, but okay.

Despite the fulminations of the Washington Post–which has over the past eight years demonstrated in its editorials a disturbing tendency to miss the point–the kerfuffle over New York’s Caroline Kennedy and Illinois Governor Blagomumble’s (insert mandatory “alleged” here) flea market does not impeach that method of filling out a Senatorial term.

All it does it impeach Caroline Kennedy’s pretensions and Governor Blagomumble’s conduct.

The Washington Post looks at why Chapter 11 Bankruptcy isn’t working any more. Companies are giving up reorganizing and, instead, giving up the ghost.

Virtually every large company that filed for Chapter 11 in the past year intended to reorganize. But Sharper Image, which went bankrupt in February, couldn’t come up with a viable plan for its gadget stores and began to liquidate them in June. (The brand still lives on the Web.) Linens ‘n Things, which filed for bankruptcy in May, planned at first to close 100 stores. But when it couldn’t find a buyer, it decided in October to throw in the towel. Whitehall Jewelers, which filed for Chapter 11 in June, began selling off the family jewels in August. Clothing store Steve & Barry’s filed for bankruptcy last summer and tried to reorganize before giving up and going for liquidation. Mervyn’s, the California department store chain, filed for Chapter 11 in July and in October said it would start liquidating its 149 stores. And so on.

Now, I’m not familiar with Mervyn’s, Steve and Barry’s, or Whitehall Jewelers.

I am familiar with Circuit City and have mentioned them here probably more times than I ever went into one of their stores (which was twice). At least in my little Circuit City store, they had a lousy selection unattractively arranged.

I am familiar with Linens ‘n Things and Sharper Image. Their selection ranged from the over-priced to the useless to the over-priced useless. Heck, Sharper Image made Brookstone look like a five and dime (Brookstone, for all it’s expensive, does sometimes have useful stuff that you just can’t easily find anywhere else).

In bad times, customers don’t buy over-priced unnecessary junk. Heck, they don’t even buy over-priced necessary junk.

I am not an economist (though I do have some economic training), and I’m guessing Bed Bath and Beyond is probably shaking in its bed bath and beyond slippers.

These are not times when persons are going to buy $120.00 coffee makers.

These are times when persons buy house brands, not brand hype.

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”

Via (with miswording and misattribution) Gene Weingarten, who was doing it off the top of his head, and got the wording a little wrong, while capturing the essence, and attributed it to FDR Benjamin Franklin.

While you’re at it, read Weingarten’s column from Sunday.

Not.

“Responsible journalists” are so busy patting themselves on the back that they keep forgetting to get the damned story.

The press wonders why newspapers and traditional media are failing financially.

In other words, they wonder why fewer persons are willing to pay for their product.

Has the press considered that their consistently missing the story may have something to do with it?

Persons don’t like to pay for a defective product.

Why would the Department of Homeland Security want to look at my picture of a magnolia tree?

From the stats (emphasis added):

URL: /weblog/?m=200604
Date: 2009-Jan-23 15:53:32
Referer: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://pineviewfarm.net/graphics/magnolia.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pineviewfarm.net/weblog/%3Fm%3D200604&usg=__dPjKV009qCbCCtyjW80S–urFL0=&h=497&w=435&sz=222&hl=en&start=20&tbnid=rZe-p23wXqEhYM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=1
IP: 204.248.24.163
Host: sbcp4.dhs.gov
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DHSI60SP1001; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)

One would think they could find better things to do with our time. Not, of course, that I ever surfed the web while at work.

(Frankly, I think it should never had been created. Congress blew that one. And, if it had to be created, it should have been called the “Department of Domestic Security.” “Homeland” sounds too much like “Vaterland.“)

“Whois” information below the fold.

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Of course, anyone who comes here knows that English is the lingua franca, as it were.

Nashville voters on Thursday rejected a proposal to make English the city’s official language . . . .

Passing a law declaring English the “official language” of a city, town, or state is nothing more that legislating xenophobia. Such laws have no practical value except to say to those who come looking for a better life, “Get off my lawn.”

The citizens of Nashville figured that out.

Yesterday, I received an email in response to this post.

The email was from someone in the Netherlands.

(As usual, I was mildly surprised to find that someone other than the two or three friends and relatives that I know about actually reads this thing.)

The writer told me of watching the inauguration of the President of the United States on the telly vision, because

the inauguration of Mr. Obama was and is something very very moving.

One of my friends tried to claim that the writer was trying to blame his country’s problems on the United States.

That could not have been farther from the writer’s intentions.

His country doesn’t have problems to blame on the United States (other than the venality of Wall Street and the corruption of Republican Economic Theory, which has poisoned the financial system of the world and which richly deserves opprobrium).

As I have mentioned from time to time, the United States of America is the only nation founded on an idea: the idea of freedom under the rule of law.

That idea is a real thing, not just for those of us who, like me, can trace their ancestry in this land to before the French and Indian War, not just for all those who since then have come here, believing in that idea and looking for a better life, but also for persons who have never left their home countries to come here, but who still treasure the idea of freedom under the rule of law.

This has never been a perfect country.

It is a nation that has done really bad things.

Just for a moment, think of the Trail of Tears.

Indeed, I have ancestors who were slaveholders.

One of my relatives signed John Brown’s death warrant (not that John Brown was a prince among men).

But, all the while, one of the core beliefs of America has been the idea of perfectibility.

This does not mean a belief that the United States or, indeed, mankind, can ever become perfect (only the wingnuts and the nutcases believe that we have achieved perfection, whatever the hell that is), but rather the belief that a free people working together can continually find a better way.

And, with many failures and false steps and mistakes, throughout the two and a half centuries of its history as a nation, the United States of America has, with all it faults, encouraged others that the world could become better, because the United States believed that it could become better.

To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, it’s been a long, strange trip, but somehow, with each meandering, the United States has managed to get a little closer to getting it right.

With much bumbling and fumbling and with many sidetrips and false starts, over the years, the United States has faced its failures, faced its injustices, faced its darkest impulses, and tried to fix them. Yes, often with great struggle, but getting it right a little more often than getting it wrong.

As I have pointed out from time to time, I grew up under Jim Crow.

Those who you did not, whether it was because of where you grew up or because of when you grew up, cannot imagine what it was like.

And, as I look back on it, the scary thing was that, as I was growing up, it seemed normal. Because it was what we were used to.

It seemed normal to have separate schools, separate bathrooms, separate water fountains, based on the amount of carotene in the skin.

Indeed, I remember taking the bus with my mother to visit my grandmother in the red clay country of South Carolina sometime in the late 1950s. Somewhere in North Carolina, I think in Raleigh, the bus made a rest stop. I remember walking into the wrong–into the “colored”–waiting room.

Never in my life, and I am old and have made many mistakes, have I felt so out of place. I can only imagine from that experience what it was like to be black in a white world.

And I know my imaginings cannot approach the reality that black persons have dealt with for 300 years on these shores.

I would not wish the feeling I had at that moment on anyone.

For the last eight years, I have had that a similar feeling in my own country, in the country my ancestors fought to found.

Under a mad leadership, the United States of America has been insane for eight years.

Horrible, evil things, deeds which betrayed the blood and the ideals and the beliefs and the sacrifices of the Founders, have been done in our name by persons who are yet and will remain unrepentant.

And, as we look at those persons, we see that evil is banal, for they are ultimately banal, small, weak persons who, having no character, no principles, no understanding of the meaning of the ideals upon which this country was founded, seized on force as the only value.

They are gone from governance.

Not merely gone. Repudiated.

In their own way, the American people, sometimes sooner, too often later, have managed to figure out the right thing to do.

As I told my correspondent from the Netherlands, it is good to have my country back.

God be with President Barack Hussein Obama as he leads us back to sanity.

If you don’t tell me why you’re calling me in the message you leave, I’m not calling you back.

Why does every device that comes with a USB cable say, “Use only the cable that came with this [device name]”?

Rant below the Fold

Yesterday, I went to a luncheon organized under the auspices of Moveon.org (Shake it off. Move on, already, for heaven’s sake. Stop wanking and fix the damn problems. That is what “move on” means.)

I started tearing up on the way there (about 15 minutes down Washington Street from here).

So, I’m sitting there at the table with my head bent and my left hand over my eyes trying to hold back the tears, as the telly vision showed images of bigwigs filing onto the West Front of the Capitol (where I used to take lunchtime walks when I worked up the street from there) when the lady sitting next to me touches me on the shoulder and asks, “Are you okay?”

“I’m better than I’ve been in eight years.”

“I thought it was emotion, but after a while, I decided I should check and make sure you weren’t choking or something.”

More below the fold

And disdain the christianists who preach hate in the name of the Gospel of Love.

For they blaspheme.

H/T Karen for the link.

There was a whole crowd in my desk either coming or going.

Addendum:

They have now been evicted. I even moved the La-Z-Boy and vacuumed under it.

How did all that dog hair get on a suit that’s been quietly hanging in the back of the closet sandwiched between two sports jackets for a month?

I worked for the railroad for 24 years.

Trains are big, heavy, dangerous things.

Except for passenger trains. They are big, relatively light, dangerous things that can go very fast.

A train engineer will tell you that, after wrestling a 100-car freight train with three engines up the Bryn Mawr grade, an 18-car passenger train with two units is a piece of cake.

It can take a mile to stop a passenger train gong 125 miles per hour.

It can take three miles to take a 125-car freight train going 50 miles an hour.

It is not a good idea to challenge a train.

Not even a slow one.

(And I know this crossing. It is definitely slow track.)

In the meantime, Kos speaks sense (link below).

Though I believe that Obama is a good man whose head is screwed on right–that is, left (hell, I have supported and continue to support him strongly enough)–we must be vigilant.

I don’t think we will need to hold his tootsies to the fire, but we should be ready to do so. He has been elected President, not Emperor (had Bush recognized the difference between “president” and “emperor,” he might not be leaving under such a cloud):

. . . one more note to the “we should trust Obama” crowd — Republicans went into the Bush presidency willing to give their president all sorts of deference and leeway, and the end result was a presidency that didn’t just destroy the county, but also their party. If Obama can be trusted to do the right thing, and I’m hoping for the best, then there’s no reason he should mind accountability provisions written into the release of the second half of the TARP funds. Rather than just give verbal promises to key legislators like Dodd, Obama should have no problem writing them down on paper and seeing them pass Congress, right? Because if he does have a problem with codifying his promises, perhaps he’s not that committed to them.

At the same time, like this guy, I’m just sick of all the leftie foolishness.

From Reuters:

Today marks the end of the Bush stock market.

Pfui!

It’s his for weeks and months to come.

To paraphrase the words, if not the intent, of Marc Antony: The evil that men do lives after them . . . .

Furrfu.

(With apologies to Jono Bacon.)

How do I know?

Time Life is offering a metal anthology.

Now, where did I put that AARP renewal notice?

Someone told me yesterday that she was looking forward to hearing what I had to say about the Current Federal Administrator’s last scheduled press conference.

Please, I said, I’m trying not to think about him. I don’t want to write about that.

Besides, I said, I’m afraid it will make my fever and headaches come back, not to mention the shakes and chills.

Nevertheless, she said, I’m looking forward to what you write.

Man, I just want to see him ride off into the sunset on his mountain bike and go clear brush somewhere (I hear there’s brush in Van Diemen’s Land), while still holding my breath about what more damage he might do.

Remember, there’s a week left. He has demonstrated an impressive capacity for doing immense harm in short time spans. Now he’s down to the two-minute drill of his presidency. He has nothing left to lose.

Cause he’s lost it all.

Not just for him. For us.

And, of course, it wasn’t just him. It was him and the whole rotten Republican and neocon establishment, which finally got to work its way on the United States, leaving her naked, bleeding, penniless, and violated, lying in a ditch on the road to Crawford.

Let us consider the record.

• Pissing away blood and treasure on the Glorious and Patriotic War for a Lie . . .
• . . . and in the marvelous Wall Street sinkhole, because, well, rich people can be trusted to do what is right. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be rich, now would they?
• Deregulating the economy right into the sewer.
• Trashing a 250-year tradition–one not always maintained, but one not before trashed by God-help-me the Preznut–of treating prisoners of war with at least a modicum of humanity.
• Not just ignoring, but destroying truth.
• And displaying a general ability to get anything and everything wrong.

Oh, yeah, and remember how he was going to solve the Israel-Palestine problem by the end of his term?

Furthermore, picking up from the Blondie comic strip, his party even managed to sully the image of the plumbing industry.

But there is a bright side.

He seems to have brought the Republican Party right down with him. One can only hope.

Of course, now that party is back in the role of doing what it does best: fighting progress, blowing stuff out of proportion, making mountains out of molehills, and impugning the patriotism of honest Americans.

Come next Tuesday, I expect to be bitchin’ about the Obama administration.

(I also expect to be reading with glee all the news reports that will no doubt spill forth from decent, honest civil servants who have feared to speak of the abuses and corruption they have witnessed under the regime of neocon hack political appointees.)

Nevertheless, however much I expect to disagree with them from time to time, I look forward with relief to the prospect of a Future Federal Administration that so far gives no signs of actively working as to do evil.

I don’t mind policy disagreements. Reasonable persons can disagree in good faith. Not that any policy-makers ever notice me unless I drag out Open Office and write them letters.

But I sure am tired of the bad faith, tired of the lies, tired of evil done in my name.

In eight days, it will be January 21. Wonder what other stuff is waiting to come out?

The documents show that front-line (FDA–ed.) agency scientists, like many outside critics of the agency, believe that F.D.A. managers have become too lenient with the industry. In medical reviews and e-mail messages, the scientists criticize the process by which many medical devices gain approval without extensive testing. And in e-mail correspondence, they contend that an agency supervisor improperly forced them to alter reviews of the breast imaging device and others.

Ooh! Ooh! More gifts to Big Pharma.