Personal Musings category archive

One of my favorite radio shows is Radio Times. Each topic gets a full hour and Mary Moss Coane is a skilled interviewer.

She interviewed Carl Bernstein recently regarding his new book about Hilary Clinton. I listened to the show on my way to the cooling tower place via podcast.

It was a fascinating discussion. Given the current political race, I would recommend a listen to the interview.

But even Mary Moss Coane couldn’t control Carl Bernstein. I would have to say that, like, you know, how can I say it, he ran the interview.

For facts, it was fascinating. For anyone who has ever tried to control a conversation (like us ex-tech support types), it was a hoot.

I recommend it on both levels. Go to the website, select “browse archives,” and navigate to the October 30, 2007, show or listen here (Real Audio).

(All joking aside, it was a very interesting interview. Give it a listen.)

You can say it, but that doesn’t mean I have to listen.

You can say it, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to publish it (remember, it’s freedom of speech, not freedom to be published by someone else).

You can say it, and the rest of the world is free to decided you are an idiot.

You can say it, and be denied the opportunity to accompany children on a field trip.

Yeah, really.

A blogger says her right to free speech was violated when the school district removed her from a list of approved school volunteers because of content on her Web site.

Lisa Becker, who owns www.thebarnegatpress.com, was removed from the list at the Board of Education’s regular meeting Monday night. After asking why, Becker, who has three children in the district, was told she would be allowed to volunteer in the future once the site was taken down.

“What I do, yes it’s opinionated, but it has nothing to do with my ability to volunteer,” said Becker, whose past volunteering included work with the high school marching band and passing out sandwiches at school picnics.

You can decide for yourself how subversive her website is by clicking here.

Tip to Linda.

Glenn Greenwald speaks:

Do not shield the law breakers.

Via Brendan.

Second Daughter requested one of these when First Grandson was born.

She says First Grandson seems to like it.

And it says right on the box not to put it anywhere but the floor or the ground (emphasis below added):

Early Show consumer correspondent Susan Koeppen reports the Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced the voluntary recall of about a million Bumbo “Baby Sitter” Seats, made by Bumbo International, of South Africa.

The CPSC says, “If the seat is placed on a table, countertop, chair, or other elevated surface, young children can arch their backs, flip out of the Bumbo seat, and fall onto the floor, posing a risk of serious head injuries.”

I’m going to be the last person to argue that businesses are always virtuous.

They are not.

But in this case, it’s not the chairs that need to be recalled. It’s the parents.

As I pointed out here.

It’s called history. It’s sort of made up by a lot of facts and some interpretation. But the interpretation has to at least give a passing nod to the facts.

The history tells us where we came from and helps us figure out where we are going.

Lying about the history confuses us about both.

But, then, there are folks who base their way of life, their philosophies, and their politics on lies.

Josh Marshall comments.

Tizzy in a teacup:

A do-it-yourself Craftsman-style Sears kit house, painstakingly assembled in 1925 by its owner, is up for grabs in Northwest Washington — not for a price but simply for the taking.

The two-story house, assessed by the District tax office at $813,950, has been boarded up for more than a decade and hardly looks like the showplace depicted in old Sears catalogue drawings. A plumber named Jesse Baltimore put it together — all 10,000 parts — with the help of a 77-page Sears, Roebuck and Co. instruction book. He was among thousands of people across the nation who bought the company’s house kits decades ago.

A plumber built this house in the Palisades neighborhood in 1925 from a kit he purchased from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog.

Neighbors advocating demolition declared the house an eyesore years ago. But preservationists hailed it as an important symbol of how Washington’s working-class neighborhoods developed after World War I. The preservationists wanted to keep the house right where it sits in the Palisades neighborhood.

(Aside: Northwest Washington is definitely the high-rent district.)

I grew up on the Sears and Montgomery Ward Catalogs. On Pine View Farm, they were our link to shopping. The nearest cities were 90 miles away (north) or 40 miles and an hour-and-a-half ferry ride (south).

A house in a box is certainly a curiosity, but really not much different from the McMansions being thrown up now (I have seen the kits from a leading McMansion manufacturer heading down the road on the backs of flat-beds–don’t remove the scaffolding until the Ty-Vek is up), but, given that, as the story later points out, “(a)bout 90 percent of the estimated 75,000 Sears houses sold across the country still stand,” this house is hardly a historical site worthy of preservation.

More a historical curiosity.

It was good to see First Son and First Daughter-in-Law.

The campus of my alma mater has not changed much. A few new buildings, a couple of new statues, and co-eds a lot younger than I remember them.

Colonial Disneyland is still as nice as ever.

And the wireless cloud in the hotel did not reach our room, but, in all other ways, the hotel was top-notch.

First Son will be on the way back to Afghanistan early next month, hopefully to end his S(pl)urged ™ tour next spring.

He reckons that, after that, it will be back to Iraq.

I just can’t think of anything more to say.

The Honorable Pete Stark:

He went on to say, “in his previous job as an actor, our governor used to play make believe and blow things up. Well, the president and the Republicans in Congress are playing make believe today with children’s lives. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up, in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress.”

The scathing comments drew immediate condemnation from Republicans, who demanded he retract it. “Congressman Stark’s statement dishonors not only the commander in chief, but the thousands of courageous men and women of America’s armed forces who believe in their mission and are putting their lives on the line for our freedom and security,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

When asked if he would take back any of his statements, Stark told KCBS “Absolutely not. I may have dishonored the commander in chief, but I think he’s done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me.”

Fairly typical on the part of the Republicans, actually.

Rather than deal with the substance of the comments, they resort to ad hominem attacks.

Ad hominem attacks–the first resort of those who have nothing going for them.

Via Susie.

I have stop kicking the plug for the hub out of the UPS.

One of the neat things about the golden era of porn in the 1970’s and the 1980’s (before the internet made porn accessible to everyone) was the titles of the movies.

I remember walking up Market Street from 30th Street Station to the office at 20th and Market and passing the theatre (right next to the massage parlor where once I saw a very happy looking guy in a wheelchair exiting) advertising “The Oral Majority.”

Well, the majority seems to have become a minority.

. . . is home on leave.

I hope to see him this weekend, before he goes back to finish being S(pl)urged.

Yeah, he’s one of those whose 12 month deployment turned into a 15 month deployment as the Current Federal Administrator continues to be, like Mike Nelson, trapped in the giant kelp.

Unlike Mike Nelson, of course, the Current Federal Administrator chose to swim into the giant kelp, dragging the rest of us with him.

Via, God help me, AARP.

I went to the local Radio Slum today and, on my way back, I’m sitting happily in the left turn lane.

The light turns green.

And the bozo in the straight through lane to my right turns left, nearly hitting me. Had I not laid on my horn (and I can count the number of times I hit my horn in a year on two hands–well, maybe two hands and a foot), the oblivious selfish auld phart probably would have hit me. He still managed to cut me off.

Then he proceeds to drive ten miles per hour under the speed limit ahead of me for the next mile and a half until he turns off at the Senior Center or the therapy site or whatever.

But that was nothing like this, what happened a few miles up the road from me.

Difference between ordinary ignorance and wingnut ignorance.

Via Atrios.

It came to me this morning as I was cooking breakfast.

It’s a game.

They sit there in their easy chairs, punching buttons.

Avatars move about the screen. It doesn’t matter what happens to the avatars because, you see, they are inexhaustible. New ones leap up when old ones are gone.

The power pills give the gamer eternal life.

And the avatars, well, they have no personal lives. They exist only to be manipulated.

There need be no reason for the game.

The game exists for its own sake.

It exists only to give the gamers the thrill of control, the illusion of mastery.

And, as it is fantasy, rules and laws don’t mattter. The gamer can do whatever he wants, because, after all, it’s his game.

Any hack or cheat he can get away with is okay, because, you see, he is in charge and no one and nothing else matters–not lives, not laws, not right and wrong.

Here’s where they hang out.

My friends, we are being gamed every day.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy . . .

Blackwater USA is an out-of-control outfit indifferent to Iraqi civilian casualties, according to a critical report released Monday by a key congressional committee.

Among the most serious charges against the prominent security firm is that Blackwater contractors sought to cover up a June 2005 shooting of an Iraqi man and the company paid, with State Department approval, the families of others inadvertently killed by its guards.

Blackwater has had to fire dozens of guards over the past three years for problems ranging from misuse of weapons, alcohol and drug violations, inappropriate conduct and violent behavior, says the 15-page report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Just after the report was released, The Associated Press learned the Federal Bureau of Investigation is sending a team to Iraq to investigate an incident that has angered the Iraqi government.

The founders learned that the Hessians could not be trusted. Neither can modern mercenaries.

. . . and the big fool says, “Push on.”

For three summers while I was in college, I worked for the local health department, performing clerical duties and pulling a mobile clinic from place to place–four different locations every week.

The health department had four bathrooms in the waiting area: two labelled “Men” and two labelled “Women,” two in the front of the room and two in the back.

Klutz that I am, it took me a while to realize that, only a few years before, one was labelled, “White Men,” one was labelled “Colored Men,” and–oh, well, you get the picture (yeah, there were two unlabelled water fountains, also).

Dick Polman’s blog post brought those memories back to me.

In the end, the first nationwide strike against General Motors Corp. in 37 years came because the United Auto Workers want something that GM will find difficult to promise: Job security.

A basic principal of labor relations is that unions are the creation of management.

Companies who treat their people decent do not have labor problems.

Yet, it is characteristic of American industry to view unions as the enemy.

Why is that?

Perhaps it is because, when unions hold fast, they bring the incompetence of management to the surface, for all to see.

This is certainly what is happening in the General Motors strike.

Why is GM in such bad shape?

Because of incompetent management.

Incompetent management that gave away the store to the union back in the 50s and 60s when the Big Three were still the Big Three.

Incompetent management that hailed “concealed window wipers” as a great advance even as Honda brought out the 40 plus miles per gallon Civic in the early 70s.

Incompetent management that put all its chips in the storage area of the elephant Tahoe even as fuel prices rocketed to the skies in the 2000s.

Incompetent management that gives itself huge bonuses for its own incompetence even as the elevator falls to the basement.

And, of course, the persons who should pay for this are, needless to say, not the incompetent managers.

There will likely be no winners in the GM strike. If the company goes under, though, remember this: it will not be the fault of the persons who build the vehicles.

It will be fault of the empty suits who have run ran the company into the ground.

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

Will Bunch.

Addendum, 9/25/2007:

Will Bunch, again.

Yesterday, the Fluffia Philadelphia Eagles’s Donovan McNabb had a perfect passing game, according the the NFL’s quarterback rating system. (No, I’m not an Eagles fan. I’m a Redskins fan, so life has no meaning for me. But I do like and respect McNabb, who has more class than do 50 Eagles fans in a bucket.)

The rating for a perfect passing game is 158.3.

158.3?

So I did a little research (that means two minutes of Googling) to find out how those crazy quarterback ratings work.

The best explanation I found was here (the site includes a spreadsheet you can download to see the formula in action).

There used to be a radio host in these parts who was fond of saying, “You can’t retire FROM something. You must retire TO something.”

This was confirmed today by a person of my acquaintance who is so bored with retirement that he’s planning to go back to college and get his degree in history.

Among other things, he said that, “You can’t watch daytime television. There’s nothing on.”

Richard Blair has the evidence.

There has been a lot of fuss today regarding the demonstration at Jena, Louisiana.

I heard one of the citizens of Jena (obviously white–don’t ask me how I know, I know) saying that he didn’t understand what the fuss was about.

And that, my friends, is precisely what the fuss was about.