Personal Musings category archive

In certain areas of Left Blogistan, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth that Senator Clinton has not, as the Senator expected to do, waltzed uninterrupted to the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

In those quarters, her failure to march triumphantly to the convention is being interpreted as a result of prejudice against women.

It is also giving rise to conspiracy theories as screwy as Republican policies. Phillybits has been doing a pretty good job keeping track of them here and here and here and here.

Senator Clinton’s supporters have also claimed that she has been mistreated by the press. When pressed, they offer up the same two or three culprits, most notably Chris Matthews. Yet, as Suzanne Smalley pointed out on today’s Radio Times, half the reporters on the campaign bus are women (go to the website and search for today’s date or listen to the show in Real Audio format here).

A couple of days ago, Howard Fineman, shilling his new book on that same show, said that he thought that there perhaps had been some coverage that betrayed sexism on the part of the reporter, but not a significant amount. He also pointed out that there’s a reason 75% of the word news is n e w, and Senator Obama is new. (Listen to the show in Real Audio here.)

(Aside: These generalizations do not apply to political blogs. Look not far to find enough racism and sexism to keep you gagging for a week.)

Senator Clinton’s double-x chromosomes do not make her more virtuous than Senator Obama’s x and y make him, despite what some seem to believe. Nor does it make her less virtuous.

Senator Clinton entered the campaign expecting, not a nomination, but a coronation. She unexpectedly found herself facing a competent and energetic challenger. Then she started to, well, behave badly.

Senator Clinton’s failures are her own failures. They don’t belong to anyone else. They are failures of strategy, such as running an incompetent campaign in Iowa (and elsewhere). It is her conduct and her behavior, not her sex, that has backed her against a wall.

It is her vote in favor of the fraudulent War in Iraq, in contrast to the vision of an opponent who recognized from the git-go that it was a fraud.

It is her lame claim that everything she has done since she got her law degree is somehow “experience in governance,” when most of it was experience in corporate law.

(And, as I have demonstrated, experience in governance is irrelevant to effectiveness as President. Hell, look at all those in the Current Federal Administration who have spent almost their whole working lives in the government, the Cheneys, Rumsfelds, the Ashcrofts–based on their performance, one can argue that experience in governance should actually disqualify persons from high office).

During the campaign, it has been her choice to pander to the worst American instincts, rather than to search for the best, that has seen her sink. And, at this point, she has shown that she can attract voters in the Appalachian states, whereas Senator Obama has shown that he can attract voters everywhere else (and don’t talk to me about Indiana and Ohio; anyone who has spent significant amounts of time there, as I have, knows that their south and central areas are pretty much nothing more than northern Kentucky).

And, as her prospects have become dimmer, her conduct has become–er–screwier.

Now, do not mistake me. If, through some combination of luck and political muscle and skulduggery, she gets the nomination, I will certainly support her.

The Current Federal Administration has proven to me that any Democrat is superior to every Republican. The political discourse can continue from that point.

Nevertheless, it’s not because Senator Clinton is a woman that she looks to be a sure number two in the race for the nomination.

It’s because she has shown herself to be a jerk.

And, sadly, some of her most fervent supporters over here in Left Blogistan have followed her lead.

Hillary Clinton gives me the willies.

kos:

Bottom line, McCain thinks if we offer our troops college education, they won’t want to stay in the Iraqi killing fields. So the best way to “protect our freedoms” is to keep our troops stupid and uneducated.

McCain’s pathetic alternate would’ve boosted the current $1,200 in monthly educational benefits to $2,000, but only after 12 years of service. Those given 3-6 years of their life in service to their nation deserved nothing, according to McCain.

In trying to identify a tree for Karen, I found a really neat website.

It asks a series of diagnostic questions to help identify US trees. In about five mouse clicks, I had the answer. Sure beats leafing (as it were) through a book of pictures.

Here’s the URL.

It was an ash. Now Chris can make bats. Or at least, holy homerun, Batman, bat pens.

From Phillybits:

used with permission

At the time, I was working at 20th and Market on the south side of Market, right across the street. (There was a big fuss about the buildings before construction started.)

I remember particularly when the construction firm had one tower crane up and was assembling another one.

For the second crane, the tower was up and the first half of the boom was in place. A workman was waiting on the end of the half-finished boom of crane number two, about ten stories above the street.

The operator of the first crane picked up the second part of the boom for crane number two from a truck on Market and, in one smooth motion, lifted it up and swung it into position and stopped. It stopped without a wiggle.

The gentleman on the end of the half-finished boom of the crane number two reached out about a foot, grabbed the second half of the boom, pulled into place, and started bolting it fast.

It was poetry in motion.

Gosh, I love to watch people work when they know what they are doing. (Maybe that’s why the Current Federal Administration gives me such heartburn.)

Another thing I learned when I was working on the 7th floor at 20th and Market.

It is better to do your girl-watching from the 7th floor. From the 7th floor, they all look cute.

Summarized by Delaware Liberal.

Balloon Juice has a different but related perspective.

Coincidence?

Or tradition?

The Democratic and Republic Parties are pretty much tied in terms of administrations that are remembered for ineptitude. Indeed, many historians believe that a Democrat, James Buchanan, is the current leader in ineptitude for his failure to do anything to avert the civil war, despite his having one of the most impressive resumes of anyone to serve in the office. (Interestingly enough, his successor, who had almost no experience in public service, is generally considered to have been one of the two or three best, if not the best, President.)

But why is that all the administrations that are remembered primarily for their corruption:

• Grant
• Harding
• Nixon
• Reagan (remember, more Reagan functionaries went to jail than did Nixon functionaries), and, in years to come,
• Bush the Minor

have been Republican?

Coincidence?

Or Tradition?

Or the inherent outcome of a bankrupt ideology?

McClatchy:

Whoever wins the presidency this November, it’s all but a slam dunk they’ll be working with a Democratic Congress. And it probably will be a stronger Democratic majority with more votes than it has today.

(snip)

“A large segment of the American public doesn’t have confidence in the Republican Party,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the party’s chief political operative for House races.

Golly gosh gee, Mr. Cole, I wonder why “A large segment of the American public doesn’t have confidence in the Republican Party.”

Could it have something to to with its being dedicated to making the rich richer and the poor poorer, with sending our young to die for a lie, with undermining the Constitution of the United States of America, with selling out the nation to the highest bidder, and with having a deficit of moral principles that would have embarrassed Little Nicky Scarfo?

Hmmmmm.

Ya think?

NRA bans guns at their convention:

A small but startling sign welcomed the gun lovers who arrived at the National Rifle Association’s annual gathering Friday.

“Firearms WILL NOT be allowed in Hall A during the Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum.”

So what if St. John McCrap was there? He’s already proclaimed himself as gun lover.

After all, guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Just ask all the dead folks. They will tell you that they are just as dead as if someone rapped them in the head with a sap.

What’s a few AK-47s between friends, anyway?

Now, personally, I got no problems with guns.

Apparently, though, the Secret Service doesn’t really buy the whole NRA gun nut “guns don’t kill people” propaganda line.

Hmmmmm. Wonder why that is? Maybe, could be, that they realize that a person with a gun is somewhat more dangerous than a person with a bow and arrow?

I just have a problem, a big problem, with

Hypocrites.

The whole damned lot of them, McCrap included.

ASZ links to Terry Gross’s interview with John Hagee (no, I am not going to link to his place). NPR’s Fresh Air replayed the interview yesterday because so many MSM outlets have been playing excerpts of it during the past couple of weeks.

Prior to the 2006 congressional elections, radical right wing mullah John Hagee sat down for an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. While there was some immediate reaction to the interview two years ago (particularly from the Jewish community and those of us who were horrified by the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina), the outrage quickly faded. And when snakeoil salesman Hagee slithered back into the spotlight earlier this year to flex his political clout, I figured that John McCain would disavow Hagee’s support and that any controversy would fade into obscurity due to the legacy media’s blackout of anything remotely anti-McCain. Of course, that’s before Barack Obama’s preacher problem reared its ugly head.

My girlfriend couldn’t believe that he said what he said, that he would attribute the destruction of New Orleans, and the wasting of the lives of so many innocent persons, to the plans of a small number of persons to have a gay pride parade.

Frankly, nothing he said surprised me.

But she had never been exposed to this type of self-righteous Pharisaical Protestant nutcase before.

She couldn’t believe the hatred, the vengefulness, the vindictiveness that he somehow managed to find in what is supposed to be a Gospel of Love, and was able to express in the dulcet, gentle tones of a nurse singing a baby to sleep.

I don’t know how he finds hatred in love either. Perhaps he’s read too much Leviticus and not enough John.

Oh, yeah, and has deep-seated psychological needs I’m not qualified to diagnose, but that’s just a guess

It’s just that I’ve met his sort before.

So I wasn’t surprised.

Just disgusted.

Free audio books.

A while ago, I posted a link to a site offering free audio-books. Opie worried that they might be computer generated and his worries were right on target. I tried one out, and it had all the life of last year’s cornstalk.

Today, I was nosing around Project Gutenberg and discovered that they have added audio-books to their choices. Some of them are computer-generated, but almost 500 were done by people.

Even better, their Advanced Search feature allows you to specify which type you are interested in (as well as a number of other criteria). The couple that I looked at were available in Ogg Vorbis, Apple iTunes, mp3, and speex (whatever that is) formats.

Much of the work for Project Gutenberg is done by volunteers, so it is probably unreasonable to expect professional-quality narration.

I downloaded several Project Gutenberg text files and ran out (cyberly speaking) to get myself a reader for my cell phone.

A note about Project Gutenberg:

It rocks. But remember that every book there is in the public domain, that is, the copyright has expired. Don’t look there for the latest John Grisham thriller; you’ll have to find some other place to infringe on that copyright (try newsgroups). Nevertheless, it has thousands of titles, ranging from Mark Twain to Shakespeare to Sigmund Freud to Edward Hobbes to even Victor Appleton (pen name of the author of the Tom Swift books).

Follow the link, listen to the story, then ponder the empty heads and hearts who think that pasting magnetic yellow ribbons on the back of their vehicles or wearing flag pins is what patriotism or what supporting the troops, who serve honorably, even when serving dishonorable leaders, is all about.

Fair weather patriots, who care not that good men and women are asked to die for a lie, then cast off upon their return, like the little green army men I sometimes find left over from my sons’ youth in the back yard.

It’s less than 10 minutes. Not much for you to give when they give their health, their sanity, and their lives.

Go listen to it.

Tammie LeCompte is among (military wives fighting to get justice and treatment for their husbands–ed.). When her husband, Army Spc. Ryan LeCompte, came back to Fort Carson, Colo., after two tours in Iraq, he was a different man — angry, withdrawn and isolated. In 2007, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and he eventually became so depressed and unable to function that doctors feared he might die.

So when Tammie LeCompte saw that the Army was not giving her husband intensive treatment — and, worse, his commanders were punishing him for not doing his job — she launched a campaign against the Army that eventually caught the ear of Congress. Today, doctors say that Tammie LeCompte’s battle may have saved her husband’s life.

Addendum, Later that Same Evening:

Senator Barack Obama involved himself in the VA email situation today by sending a letter to VA Secretary James Peake demanding an investigation into whether or not the Department of Veterans Affairs is under-diagnosing combat-related PTSD as a cost-cutting measure. Obama then requested hearings on the matter and, within hours, those requests were granted by the chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees.

I had to run out to a local shopping center today to make a deposit for my church.

I noticed that the space vacated by the independent dollar store had been filled.

By the Brandywine Republicans.

(For those of you not from these parts, this area of Delaware is known as Brandywine Hundred. It’s named after the Brandywine Creek, notable for having given is name to yet another battle that George Washington lost during the Revolutionary War–he only won two battles, the Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Yorktown, and he wouldn’t have won the latter without the help of the French, but that’s another story).

Here’s the funky part.

When I followed the link to the Brandywine Republican website, there was nothing there but a splash page. Sort of a metaphor for the Republicanism, ain’t it.

Guess I have to start looking for a new shopping center. This one has lost its cachet.

St. John “Hundred Years War” McCain seems to have figured out that a hundred years of war may not be a good plank for his campaign.

So now he has scaled it down to five.

Like most predictions emanating from the Republican Party, this one appears also to have been snatched directly from thin air. Concomitantly (I’ve waited years to work that into a post), he has shown that he has truly turned into McBush:

“He laid out what his dream was … without offering one single solitary concrete way explaining how he’d do the things he stated,” said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Having studied the Iraq situation probably as much as anyone who also has to, like, you know, work for a living, my personal opinion is that, if we leave tomorrow, the damn place will go up in flames; if we leave in five years, the damn place will go up in flames; if we leave in 20 years, the damn place will go up in flames.

Why? Because we never should hadda oughta been there in the first place, and, by going there, we’ve opened a can of worms that will wiggle for generations. It wasn’t our can, it’s not our worms, but it sure as heck was our can opener.

This column offers a trenchant analysis of St. John of the Hundred Years’s new way of counting the days, as well as his full conversion to Bushieness (emphasis added):

If he believes what he is saying, then McCain is again showing only a passing understanding of the conflict in the Middle East. Even by the most generous assessments, it would take at least sixteen months to withdraw our troops from Iraq. To have the bulk of our troops home by January of 2013, with his preconditions having been met, would require that McCain somehow achieve this functioning democracy and dramatic decrease in violence within two years of taking office. From where does he imagine he will find political reconciliation? In what sense can he expect a reduction in violence, given no evidence that a long-term reduction is sustainable? It is simply not feasible to assume that our exit from Iraq, if it were to coincide with the happy ending McCain portends, could possibly happen in either 100 years or on his new shortened timeline.

It is far more likely, however, that McCain does not believe what he is saying, that he has not in fact, had a genuine change of heart. The conditions on the ground in Iraq have not changed. But the political conditions for this election have. This is not an honest assessment from the self-appointed king of straight talk. It is rather yet another false promise, uttered with a straight face, as an attempt to survive an election, and with no intent to follow through.

With comments that break with himself and the GOP, McCain is showing yet again that he has a willingness to lie that truly makes him a Bush Republican.

(This does not apply to anyone who resides in the same domicile as I.)

“At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.”

Boing Boing,

Via Mithras.

So, we’re sitting here watching the ball game when Shane Victorino hits a homerun.

Some guy in the stands catches it, turns around and gives it to this little girl, who looks to be about five, who’s sitting next to him.

She just turns the ball around in her hands while her father, who’s sitting on the other side of her, looks.

Then they are being led off by the ushers so she can get the ball signed by Victorino.

Baseball is such a great game.

. . . that come with your credit card bills. Robert Reich:

For years, banks and the credit card companies that service them have been sending us greater and greater sounding offers. But they’ve been hiding how much interest they’ll be charging and how they calculate the outstanding balance. It’s not unusual for them to suddenly increase annual interest rates, impose high penalty fees, even shorten billing cycles to make it harder to pay on time. Sure, they disclose their right to do all this stuff when you sign up, but it’s in print so small as to give you a headache even if you understand it.

In other words, they’re offering what look like great deals, but the deals are becoming nightmares for millions of Americans. Sound familiar? It’s just like what mortgage lenders were doing before the bust.

Don’t expect any help from the Current Federal Administration. After all, helping the little guy wouldn’t make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

One can have hopes.

The Republic Party is down in the dumps after losing a solidly Republican district in that bastion of progressiveness, Mississippi (emphasis added):

This was the third special election in as many months in which the Democrats have grabbed a traditionally Republican seat. In March, Bill Foster beat Jim Oberweis — a Republican endorsed by Sen. John McCain — to take over former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s old seat. Earlier in May, Louisiana Democrat Donald Cazayoux won over a heavily Republican district despite big spending from the GOP.

“This is as bad as I can remember since post Watergate,” said Shirley. “It was so bad in 1974 after Gerald Ford was nominated for Vice President that there was a special election for his congressional district, which had been Republican since the civil war, and it went Democratic… The fact is that these are comparable races. These are all three seats that have been in GOP hands for a long, long time… Ultimately voters want to know what a politician is going to do for them. What has happened with the Republican Party over the last eight years is that some of the consultants have decided it is too hard to define what we stand for so we are just going to paint Democrats as worse than us.“

And, on the news tonight, I heard a Republic operative argue that the voters “have lost confidence in the things we (Republicans–ed.) believe in.”

Au contraire, loser breath.

The fact is, the public has seen the results of the things the Republic Party believes in.

• An economy in tatters because of an ideological refusal to regulate misconduct on the part of the business, because, after all, businesses are wealthy and therefore must be moral.
• A city left to drown because of an inability to respond to emergencies (and, in my opinion, because the majority weren’t white folks, and therefore just weren’t all that important).
• A war conceived in perfidy, born in lies, and prosecuted by bozos.
• A tolerance for, nay, a fascination with doing things, which, had they been done by others and offered for sale, they themselves would condemn as pornographic (Caution: link not work or child safe).

But wait! There’s more!

• A hypocrisy of “family values” that involves trumpeting abstinence, monogamy, and heterosexuality, while patronizing prostitutes, soliciting homosexual sex in men’s rooms, targeting children for homosexual advances, and encouraging wife-swapping.

And, on top of it all, they have betrayed the sincere voters who believed that they actually meant what they said and would do what they promised.

No, it’s not that the voters have lost faith in what the Republic Party believes in.

It’s that, after the Republic Party has been in charge for the last few years, voters have seen what it actually believes in.

Their actions belie their words.

It is their actions which have undone them.

Now, we shall see, as the fall elections approach, what lying words they will unleash to again distract their supporters from their deeds.

Addendum:

Balloon Juice weighs in.

Several times today, I heard the phrase, “Republican brand.”

Apparently, the Republican Party thinks it has a marketing problem.

It doesn’t.

It has a problem of truth versus lies, of being and doing right versus being and doing wrong, of upholding the Constitution of the United States of America versus subverting it.

It’s about a proven record of deeds:

Misdeeds.

Contrary to the beliefs of the marketeers, marketing isn’t everything. All the marketing in the world cannot erase the shame that the phrase, “Republican brand,” the brand of wars for lies and of making the rich richer and the poor poorer, evokes.

You can market the sow’s ear all you want, and you still have a sow’s ear. And even if a lot of persons buy your sow’s ear, it’s still a damned sow’s ear.

Can anyone say, “The Republican Party, the Yugo of governance”?

Yugo. There’s a brand for you.

Q. What to Communism and NeoConservatism have in common?

A. Both of them share a naive fantasy that government is unnecessary and evil.

• Communism, because government is the arm of oppression for the bourgeoisie. After the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariat would gradually wither away, as the natural virtue of the working class would lead to a paradise in which each contributed according to his abilities and each took according to (and only according to) his needs.

  Needless to say, it didn’t happen that way. Instead, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie lead simply to a new ruling class, and the dictatorship of the proletariat never came about. All that came about were dictatorships.

  It’s called original sin, brother.

  That’s why Communism as an ideology is dead, dead, dead.

• NeoConservatives, because to them the government is the arm of the working class that leads to nasty things like OSHA, EPA, safety nets, and taxes. If the government were made to go away, the wealthy, whom the NeoConservatives idolize would not have to pay taxes or pay attention to the needs of the working class, while, at the same time, the invisible hand of the market will lead to a paradise on earth.

  
  (Aside: Of course, the question does come up, without government, who’s going to build and maintain the roads their chauffeurs need to drive them places or the schools needed to teach students how to say, “Do you want fries with that,” but, as long as they’ve got theirs, they have no cares . . . .)

  Well, it’s not going to work like that. The invisible hand of the market knows not morality.

  It’s called original sin, brother.

  That’s why NeoConservatism will be dead, dead, dead.

Both are empty, hollow beliefs that depend on a misreading of human nature, a misunderstanding of the social contract, and a perversion of natural law.

was at its best today:

Here is a view from the Art Museum towards City Hall:

Note the wedding parties getting their pictures taken. We saw at least five wedding parties having pictures taken. Wonder what kind of cut the Museum gets from the photogs?

Here is a view of Center City west (that means west of Broad Street–City Hall is at the intersection of Broad and Market; you can just see City Hall in the left side of the picture) from the Art Museum. I used to work just over there, in that building. No, the other one. Yeah, that’s the one.

Of course, these are just snapshots. None of them are as good as Phillybits’s work.