Personal Musings category archive

General Powell’s endorsement of Senator Obama fell upon Left Blogistan with a resounding thud, as witness here and here and here, just to pick a few.

Some persons cannot forgive his hack sales job for the Great and Patriotic Glorious War for a Lie. Others think he has become, because of that, irrelevant.

Mithras injects some rationality into the discussion here.

Many years ago I worked for a retired Army bird colonel. I was chatting with him shortly after he lost a particularly bruising bureaucratic battle (he was on the side of the angels, by the way). He said, “I forgot what I learned in the Army. You fight like hell for your position, but, when the decision’s made, you shut up and follow orders.”

General Powell is a General, USA, ret. No doubt he learned the same lesson as Chuck. And no doubt this had a lot to do with his making his presentation at the UN.

I have a separate, unrelated story.

Well, not exactly unrelated, maybe tangentially related.

I used to work for a man–a good and honest man, the second-best boss I have ever had–who had been a very successful Sergeant in the Army, until he suffered an on-the-job (non-combat) injury and had to leave for medical reasons. He had the highest security clearance and knew persons in places the rest of us don’t know are places; indeed, he knew about First Son’s promotion to Sergeant before either First Son or I did.

He and I were standing out back in the designated smoking area chatting as the movement of men and material for the Great and Patriotic Glorious War for a Lie was just beginning.

“[Boss],” I said, “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

He looked at me and said, “Frank, it was going to happen anyway.” And, indeed, the warmongers had set the course for war from the beginning of the Current Federal Administration.

Now, you can argue that General Powell, rather than stage his dog-and-pony show, ought to have resigned, as Mithras argued last night.

And I will not disagree with you.

We cannot know, until and unless General Powell tells us, to what extent he was duped by the warmongers, to what extent he duped himself, or to what extent he he was consciously duplicitous.

How many of us have done something, perhaps something truly vile, by accident, to realize later that we should have done something else?

Persons in powerful positions are persons whose errors may have powerful consequences.

Here is my point: It is not right to dismiss the rest of General Powell’s truly distinguished career because of one powerful error.

Hold him accountable for his mistakes, but also give him credit for his accomplishments.

I cashed in some AmEx rewards points and got myself a toy. It’s a Garmin Nuvi 205.

It’s not that I need a GPS. I actually like maps.

One of my conceits is that, whenever I drive into a state, I’ll stop at the welcome center and get the current official state highway map (Va., Md., Pa., and NJ excepted, because I drive into them frequently).

So this is definitely a toy. And it was already paid for.

I took it for a spin today. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

No, I don’t leave it in the vehicle.

That’s another word for “underbelly.”

From the Booman, and he’s right on target. He describes the foundations of Republicanism. In all its slimy reality.

McCain has unleashed the dirty, ugly, secret-underbelly of the GOP’s base. It’s the base the enabled center-right rule on Wall Street and in the Capitol. It’s going to be a while before it can make a comeback. This is a total crack-up for one of the two major parties.

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

Racist bastards.

Silverado is on AMC.

vs. crass acts, over at the Booman’s place.

This one is worth 30 seconds–60 seconds on dial-up–folks (well, maybe I should say “folk,” but that’s neither here nor elsewhere).

It lays out in three column inches the difference between the two campaigns and their adherents.

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

Balloon Juice has more.

One thing I don’t get is the modern mania for decorating for every holiday. Hallowe’en may be the second to Christmas in terms of what persons do to their houses (though it’s sixth in terms of spending).

I wasn’t going to decorate for Hallowe’en.

But I’m having second thoughts.

Thinking he was being funny, Second Son, whom I’m in the process of disinheriting, brought this . . . this . . . this . . . thing into the house that is so appalling in its appearance and so bone-chilling in its implications that I’m thinking that, if I put it on a frame next to the front step, I won’t have to worry about trick-or-treaters; they’ll just go screaming into the night.

It’s carries such an aura of malevolence that I don’t want to put it here on the front page.

But you can see it (parental advisory) here.

Man, I’m glad I don’t live some place where it gets really cold, like, say, for example, Colorado.

. . . in the posts that got lost when my database went screwy, so I’m mentioning it again.

I didn’t used to be a card-carrying, money-contributing, rabid Democrat.

The Republicans turned me into one.

This country and its ideals are too important to be abandoned to the likes of them.

After working nine straight days, I just had to bag it today and get out of the house for a while.

Now, note, that’s not eight hours a day. In my world, you don’t get paid for lunch or for hanging around surfing the net or for thinking about starting to work; you can bill only for when you are actually working (including, of course, reasonable breaks).

So on the way back from mailing a package, I stopped at Blueberry Hill Resale. When I got divorced, Blueberry Hill was where I re-furnished the house for all but one or two items. I was a frequent visitor for a couple of years, because, frankly, it’s a really neat shop.

How’s business? I asked.

Lousy, she says. Traffic is way off. She started babbling, the same way I babble when I’ve been working at home without talking to an adult for a couple of days. I babbled right back.

She said she’s lucky to get three visitors a day and is afraid she might lose her business. She had to give up the garage across the street that she had rented for years to store large pieces of furniture. She couldn’t afford it anymore.

And, ya’ know what?

Nobody’s going to bail her out.

Just like nobody’s going to bail me out. We’re not rich.

We each have only one house and one car. Not seven or eight of each.

Not important enough for Bernanke to care.

She also said that, if McHack wins the election, she’s just going to pack it in and move back to Finland. “I can’t take four more years of this,” she said.

None of us can take four more years of this.

Never hire a law firm that advertises an 800-number on the telly-vision.

Or, as John Cole titled his post, from which I shamelessly stole this, “Elections Have Consequences.”

While I was waiting for someone–anyone–to show up at the Bellefonte Cafe this evening, I got into a tangle with someone who was surprised that I support Obama (frankly, if the Democrats had nominated a dachshund, I would vote for it against any Republican).

(Based on stuff I overheard later, I think she might be favoring some Libertarian nutcase.)

I pointed out to her that “elections are not about who’s not running” and later offered her an Obama sticker.

Remember that my son has been in the line of fire for two tours because of Bush’s lies. He has served honorably a dishonorable regime.

So has this man.

Dammit, elections matter.

And vote right, which means vote Left.

Unless you like having blood on your hands.

. . . but I have stayed away from it because, well, as my mother used to say, just because.

Yet the Booman phrased it so well:

Yeah, I know that Democrats sometimes cheat on their spouse (sic), occasionally even with someone of the same sex, but why is it that Republicans are so consistently the ones preying on children, trolling in public bathrooms, and asking prostitutes to put them in diapers?

Oh, yeah, and don’t forget to check out the list.

Family values my anatomy.

It is all sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, created solely to distract voters from the truth of Republicanism and to attract votes from the unwitting.

“Republican Family Values” is marketing, with no more sincerity or conviction than a commercial designed to get you to buy Cover Girl rather than Max Factor (which, incidently, are both made by the same manufacturer).

To quote that prescient philosopher, Mr. T, “Pity the fool” who bought their line of snake oil.

There is a sad, delicious irony in watching Republican economic theory and practices push the nation towards state ownership of the means of production.

If I hear one more commentary containing the words, “The market hates uncertainty,” I shall scream.

As I watch the Phillies game, I realize that the Fox Sports announcers are really really bad.

Bring back Harry Kalas for the playoffs.

At least he understands baseball.

Over at ASZ, Steve muses about what the phrase “overtly white” means, as the antonym to the phrase “overtly nonwhite,” as used below:

OK, maybe it is the English teacher in me, but that “overtly” is bugging me. I found it in this usage in the Washington Post this morning, in a quotation from a White Supremacist. The Post article is about the explosion of activity by racist groups on the internet in the last year or two, and how that explosion is being spurred by the candidacy of Barack Obama. Here’s the quote from the WaPo:

Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country’s first black president.

“I haven’t seen this much anger in a long, long time,” said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. “Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president.”

What the heck does that mean? If I’m having a hard time figuring out what “overty white” means, I’m having the devil of a time figuring out what “overtly nonwhite” means, especially as concerns Barack Obama. Let’s not parse this too much, but Obama is just as much white as he is black. Is that What Roper refers to, afraid that people will come back at him with the line I just used? “Overtly nonwhite,” then, means to him the mere color of his skin? Well, duh! That’s exactly what Roper means as he mangles the language, something the Harvard educated Obama is not likely to have done.

Well, this looks to me like what “overtly white” means in the context of Mr. Billy Roper’s statements and beliefs:

Racial epithets were spray-painted on the lawns of two houses and a playground in the Colton Meadow community near St. Georges on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Racial slurs in bold, yellow print were found on the lawns of homes of black and Hispanic families sometime Friday night, said county police spokesman Cpl. Trinidad Navarro.

The nearby children’s playground was marred with the words KKK, Jews and racial epithets as well as toilet paper.

Link to the full Washington Post story here.

My little three-bedroom one and half bath split clocks in at 1425 square feet. It’s plenty. In fact, as the kids have grown up and moved away, it’s gotten bigger.

And there’s no rule that says that every kid has to have his or her own room. Bunk beds work just fine.

When Martin Focazio and his wife were house-hunting in 2000, they fired some real estate agents unwilling to help them find exactly what they wanted: a small place.

“They couldn’t get out of their heads that, according to their calculations, I should have been able to buy this monstrous estate,” says Focazio, a consultant with Magnani Caruso Dutton, a digital-media agency. (He and his wife, who teaches part time, moved to this area after renting in New York City.)

“They were pushing us into these six-bedroom, five-bath, four-Jacuzzi monstrosities. It was fairly obscene stuff,” Focazio says.

Instead, the couple, since expanded to a family of five, settled into a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath house on several acres in Upper Black Eddy, Bucks County.

I am extremely disappointed in Senator Obama’s position on Stinky Hoyer’s F. I. S. A. bill.

I won’t bother to go into the reasons. For my two or three regular readers, they will be obvious. For others, check here and here and here; their arguments are not necessarily my arguments, but close enough.

I sent the following email to Senator Obama:

I am extremely disapppointed with the Senator’s position on Mr. Hoyer’s FISA bill.

It is time to stop selling out our civil liberties and civil rights to the Bush Administration. They have demonstrated that they act in bad faith. Democrats should no longer be complicit in their misbehavior.

Every time I think the Republic Party can’t sink any lower, it proves me wrong. Apparently, the Honorable Mark Steven Kirk (R.-Ill.) thinks assassination is a joking matter.

Mr. Kirk looks young. He no doubt has no memories of waking up to his clock radio in 1968 and hearing news when there should have been music. And knowing, at that point, that something must be very wrong. And learning in a few minutes that Robert Kennedy had been killed.

Follow the link if you think you have the stomach to listen to the audio (emphasis added).

Surely the Don Wade show should be taken off the air. And maybe Congressman Kirk ought to be called out by the MSM for a “mistake” the GOP seems to make a bit too often.

Transcript:

DON WADE: In fact, yesterday in a conference call, Barack Obama’s advisers were asked, “If Osama bin Laden were caught, should he get to challenge his detention in U.S. courts?” And the advisers said that — should that right to challenge detention that they get at Gitmo based on the Supreme Court ruling, should that be applied to bin Laden? — and Obama’s advisers said, “Yes.”

KIRK: Yeah, and I would much rather have a policy where if we see Obama there’s a shoot-on-sight order.

DON WADE: Well, okay. I’m with you, but I don’t know whether that’s going to make 67 — well it might —

Scum.

Someone made a comment to this post to the effect that there was validity to conclusion that “we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” because persons can have differing opinions.

Here is my response (slightly edited):

The way news is treated today has convinced a lot of people that opposite opinions are somehow equal opinions.

The facts make it clear that Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before the American invasion, despite the statements of the Current Federal Administration. They also make it clear that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction prior to the American invasion (that’s why the inspectors kept finding nothing–and why Bush kept advancing the deadline; Bush knew they were finding nothing and wanted to cut them off before the findings were conclusive.)

Bush lied us into this war. And a certain number of fools drank the Kool-Aid with him.

It is one thing to have differing opinions.

But, if one of those opinions is based on falsehoods, there is only one word for it: Lie.

If someone chooses to base his opinions on lies, I reserve the right to call him or her out for being a fool.