Personal Musings category archive

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.

Republicans vote against Mother’s Day.

Yeah, I know it was just a stupid parliamentary ploy . . .

Accent on the stupid

. . . and I’m blowing it out of proportion,

but, dammit, if you act like a pack of clowns, the rest of us get to stand around you in a circle, giggle, point, and say, “There’s a pack of clowns!”

(Then, again, it was nowhere near as stupid as their War in Iraq and their annual so-called budgets and their fraudulent voodoo trickle-down economics.)

Ya know, it’s not the pet connection.

It’s the use of an industrial facility. Poor guy who they sent over there comes home in a box and they don’t even have the respect to use a funeral home.

They just truck ’em down the street to the nearest furnace.

The U.S. military has, since 2001, cremated some of the remains of American service members killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere at a Delaware facility that also cremates pets, a practice that ended yesterday when the Pentagon banned the arrangement.

(snip)

Pentagon officials said they do not think that human remains and animal remains were ever commingled at the facility. “We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever at this point that any human remains were at all ever mistreated,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said at a news conference hastily convened last night.

Regardless, the Pentagon will no longer permit crematories not located with funeral homes to handle the remains of U.S. troops, defense officials said.

H/T Karen for the story.

Florida and Michigan broke the party’s rules.

Consequently, the Booman’s arguments are irrelevant.

Valid, but irrelevant.

End of story.

. . . as I have pointed out before.

It is, admittedly, an emotional reaction, but it is real.

But it’s taking a more solid form. From the McDonald’s of newspapers:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

(Go here to see a discussion on the implication in the above quotation that hard-working Americans are, ipso facto, white Americans.)

The implications of her remarks, and, indeed, of her overall conduct during this campaign, leads me to a different set of willies.

It is certainly true that racism is a part of our society. It can be argued that racism is the original sin that stains the birth of the United States of America. The legacy of that sin and the continuing real live racism are all around us (I have fulminated about that before).

(Indeed, I have a good friend, whom I respect greatly, who is afraid that, if Senator Obama receives the Democratic nomination, the Senator will not live to see the election returns. Given the number of homegrown nutcases and racist terrorists we have, that is, sadly, not that far-fetched a fear. And I suspect that it is something Senator Obama has thought about. Nevertheless, if it does not deter him, neither should it deter others.)

That legacy of racism is what makes Senator Clinton’s argument that, despite her being an also-ran in the national results to date, she should be nominated because she is white, quite willie-inducing.

It is one thing to recognize that racism and bigotry are very real–and very dangerous–elements in our society. If you doubt that, go here (and, while you’re at it, kick in a little donation; Morris Dees is the real deal, a person who gave up a potentially lucrative career to fight for justice at the risk of his life).

It is quite another thing to argue that the Democratic Party should base its selection of its nominee for the office of the President of the United States on the United States’s legacy of racism.

I know that I am arguing a subtle difference. In my craft of writing, it would be called a difference of tone, which is defined as that quality of writing which conveys the author’s attitude to the reader.

The tone of Senator Clinton’s remarks, not only in this, but also in other instances, is not the tone of someone expressing a concern about the course and heritage of our society; it is the tone of someone gleefully wielding a weapon to her own ends.

It can be interpreted more sinisterly: that, as a white person, she is entitled to the nomination, whereas Senator Obama, as a not 100% white person, is not.

It is the tone of someone playing to racism for his or her own gain, the tone of Pitchfork Ben Tillman and Napoleon Bonaparte Broward and others of their kind.

Hillary Clinton gives me the willies.

More from Brendan and the Booman.

Addendum, 5/8/2008:

Time for a PFA. (That’s Protection from Abuse Order for those who don’t live in Delaware.)

Addendum, Sometime the Next Day:

Mithras.

Via Delaware Liberal.

. . . seems to be all the news today.

I remember Speed Racer.

Left me cold. I much preferred Super Car and Lancelot Link.

And, of course, Bugs Bunny.

Remember, it wasn’t the Supremes who sang, “Won’t Get Fooled Again“:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn’t have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary’s Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn’t get one but came to the precinct anyway.

“One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, ‘I don’t want to go do that,'” Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren’t given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. “You have to remember that some of these ladies don’t walk well. They’re in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts.”

Of course, the question is, “Why are the Republicans afraid of nuns’ voting?” (Follow the link before you comment, oh ye two or three who choose to comment.)

DDay has more.

Or something like that.

Duncan wonders why the Secretary of the Treasury believes that getting rid of the penny would be politically impossible.

I have a theory.

Does anyone seriously believe that, if the penny disappeared, prices would be rounded to the nearest nickel?

Noooooooooooooooo, Inflation Breath.

Our Wonderful American Business Community(tm) would, without doubt, round everything up.

Remember, this is the same Wonderful American Business Community(tm) that thought Liar’s Loans were a wonderful idea.

Nothing I can say can express the depth of stupidity in this.

Anyone who thinks Playboy is pr0n has either never read Playboy or never seen real pr0n.

Or is one warped nutcase.

(Personally, I’m voting for the latter.)

But ASZ is not lost for words and deals with it neatly.

What’s 18 1/2 minutes compared to months’ worth of emails?

The White House chief information officer, Theresa Payton, said in a sworn declaration that the White House has identified more than 400 computer backup tapes from March through September of 2003 but that the earliest recorded file was dated May 23 of that year.

That period was one of the most crucial of the Bush presidency. The United States launched the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, and President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1.

Payton and other officials said that older e-mails could still be contained on the tapes because of the way the files are dated.

The administration also said it is still searching computer archives for e-mails that have been filed in the wrong “digital drawer.” In addition, Payton and other officials have said that any e-mails missing from the White House archiving system might still be available on disaster recovery tapes.

Now, I’m not a big one for conspiracy theories. I go by the conspiracy theory version of Occam’s Razor:

Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity.

But, honest to Pete, it’s hard to believe that even this bunch of incompetent ideologues could be that stupid.

I had to go up to church, about 3/4 mile from here, to phony up my treasurer’s report for tonight’s meeting (which went on 45 minutes longer than it needed to, but I’ll put it down to team-building).

I think I’m getting the hang of this derailleur thing. When I got home and looked, I was actually in the gear I thought I was in.

I dropped more at Dunbar’s on accessories–lock, pump, gloves (for comfort), cork tape (the tape on this 30+ year old bike was falling off), tire levers–than the bike cost.

I found a tire pressure gauge that reads up to 150 psi (the bike tires inflate to 90 psi) at the hardware store. I suspect, though I did not check, that I saved several bucks just because it came from a hardware store rather than a bike shop.

(It’s like boats. Anything with the word “marine” in the name automatically costs 40% more than an equivalent product that lacks the word “marine.” I once watch a guy in a Boats-R-US Store–now West Marine–pitch a bitch at the defenseless clerk because the special mop he was buying for cleaning his hull cost more than a squeeze mop from Safeway. Never mind that this special mop had a telescoping anodized aluminum shaft to resist corrosion and, oh, did I mention? a locking telescoping feature for reaching those hard to reach places. Duh!)

We have been recycling.

No, we’re not green freaks.

It started with newspaper and gradually expanded to everything else.

Delaware makes it easy. You can either pay money and have the state pick it up (Urk!) or just drop it off at a recycling center. There’s one about two miles north of here, right on the way to DL, another one about two miles south of me right on the way to I-495 (my favored way around the city), and one in the state park just over there behind my back fence right on the way to the main street of the east coast.

So, from time to time, I just toss the junk in the back of the truck and leave 15 minutes early to wherever I’m going.

And now, except for batteries, corrugated paper, waste oil, and plastic grocery bags, you don’t even have to separate.

Yesterday, the local rag had a good article about what can–and cannot be–recycled. If you even dabble in recycling, it can be interesting reading. For example:

I had thought packages with food on them couldn’t be recycled. Not long ago, I told her, I’d thrown out an empty flour bag.

Just shake it out, she said, and put it with the rest of the paper.

Bottom line: A bit of residue is all right. Goo is not.

I thought I’d get her on the soup and milk boxes. Aren’t they foil-lined? “Just paper,” she reassured me.

But even experts don’t know what to do with everything.

Birtel picked up a noodle bag and turned it over, looking for clues, then shrugged. “It’s not marked. I can’t tell.”

Birtel’s rule of thumb: If the plastic is pliable – like bread bags and veggie bags – it can go in the storefront bins for recycling plastic check-out bags, which aren’t accepted for curbside recycling.

If it crinkles or crunches, it’s probably not recyclable.

Anything that’s mixed materials in one package – foil and paper, say – can’t be recycled.

(Now, I have heard reports of supermarkets throwing away plastic grocery bags left in the “storefront bins” when their recycling company hasn’t picked them up in time, though a quick Google didn’t turn any of them up, so I’m happier dropping mine off with the state.)

Oh, yeah, about those plastic grocery bags. I like to bag my own groceries with paper, when the grocery store has paper in stock. It’s awfully irritating when the clerks bag them in plastic bags. I get 20 items. I come home with 18 plastic bags.

With paper bags and little bit of that spatial recognition stuff us guys are supposed to be good at, I get 20 items, I come out with two, maybe three bags, depending on how many big things I bought. What the heck do they teach the staff about bagging anyway?

Furrfu.

Oh, yeah, and a paper grocery bag is just the right size for a weeks worth of Inkys.

H/T to Linda for catching the article.

The “gas tax holiday” being shilled by Hillary Clinton and John McCain is more McCrap from empty suits.

You know about empty suits: Look good in meetings. Write nice memos. Never met a decision for which they didn’t maintain “plausible deniability.” From Robert Reich:

I’m not saying HRC is George Bush. And I’m not suggesting economists have all the answers. But when economists tell a president or a presidential candidate that his or her idea is dumb – and when all respectable economists around America agree that it’s a dumb idea – it’s probably wise for the president or presidential candidate to listen. When the president or candidate doesn’t, and proudly defends the policy by saying she’s “not going to put my lot in with economists,” we’ve got a problem, folks.

Even though the summer gas tax holiday is pure hokum, it polls well, which is why HRC and John McCain are pushing it. That Barack Obama is not in favor of it despite its positive polling numbers speaks volumes about the kind of president he’ll be – and the kind of president we’d otherwise get from McCain and HRC.

Haven’t we had enough of politicians who reject facts in favor of short-term poll-driven politics?

(Aside: Probably not. Fantasy trumps thought. That’s how we got Bush in the first place. Oh, yeah, there was that little sell-out by the Supremes, but that’s all sludge through the filtration field by now.)

TPM:

Down at Ridgaways Getty just down the street:

Brings back memories of happier times.

Nixon.

Oh, my, Bush even makes Nixon look good.

I just used algebra for the seventh time since I graduated high school.

My 40th HS reunion is in August.