Personal Musings category archive

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.

And this would be a tragedy just how?

As the man sang, “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.”

I remember when National Football League quarterbacks were smart enough to call their own plays.

No.

Why does Microsoft think that persons with half a head will sell Xboxes?

Is it because persons with half a head buy Microsoft?

Does sweet potato pie count as a vegetable in dietary planning?

There’s a plumber parked in front of the house of one of my neighbors.

I’ve dealt with that company. It’s my first call when I need a plumber.

But life is a lot better when you don’t need a plumber.

Bushies are going around comparing the Current Federal Administrator to a Truman an Electrolux.

(Aside: I love my Electrolux. It picks up everthing. Dust. Dog hair. Pebbles. Leaves. Small rocks. Boulders. Subcompact automobiles.)

He’s what you get when you cross a Harding with a Hoover.

An expensive ersatz DustBuster. You know, a leadership vacuum that sucks, and doesn’t even do that very well.

Except that even a DustBuster–the real one, not the ersatz one–is useful in emergencies.

Why do the guys in those Viagra ads always have wives who look at least 20 years younger than the guys do? (Yeah, I know, it’s the casting dept., but really . . .)

Yeah, I know that Christmas was over a week ago, but this is just too well-said to pass up (emphasis added). Tom Noyes:

I had a great Christmas weekend, unspoiled by the failure of several retail workers to wish me Merry Christmas. But then, I don’t expect others to practice my religion on my behalf. I don’t expect others to show up for worship at my church, or gather with my family, or give to others if I can’t be bothered. The exercise of my beliefs is up to me.

That’s about one-third of the post. The remaining two-thirds are just as good.

Even if I did not already dislike Hampton Inns, the violence their recent commercial does to the Beatles’ “A Little Help from My Friends” would be enough to keep me from ever staying at one again.