From Pine View Farm

June, 2008 archive

Stray Thought 0

The fireflies are out tonight.

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McMansion Backlash 3

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.

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Underwear in the News 0

H/T Karen for this link (It’s an AP story, so all you get is a summary):

In Lincoln, Nebraska, a gentleman decided that a thong was an appropriate substitute for gym shorts. Story here.

And here in the Greater Philadelphia Co-Prosperity Sphere:

Four people accused of stealing $2,200 worth of bras in Media may have been key players in an interstate ring estimated to have cost Victoria’s Secret stores as much as $1 million, according to Pennsylvania State Police.

“If what Victoria’s Secret is saying proves to be true, this is a pretty significant arrest,” said Trooper Jonathan Sunderlin, community services officer in Media.

More than a week ago, state police began looking for a gray Dodge Magnum with Rhode Island plates after employees reported a theft from the Victoria’s Secret at the Granite Run Mall.

So, on Sunday afternoon, when employees reported another theft, troopers were able to quickly spot the vehicle leaving the mall and arrest the three men inside, Sunderlin said.

Police searched the car and found the bras, as well as fake receipts, cut-up security tags, money, and gift cards, he said.

The question that occurs to me is this: Just how or where do you sell a stolen brassiere?

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Disappointment 0

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.

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Home Improvement: Cheapskate Dept. (Updated) 3

Not having any training gigs lately, I’ve been doing some work around the house.

The past two days, I’ve been rebuilding the shed. It was guaranteed for five years when I got it 15 years ago, so I can’t complain.

It’s been falling down for the past three years. For the past two, I haven’t been able to close the doors, because they were supporting the building.

So, yesterday, I ran down to 84 and got some lumber. Then I thought a while and, on the way back from the dentist, stopped at Home Depot and got some more lumber. (I generally try to avoid Home Depot, but it was right there on the way home; if it’s something I can’t find at the local hardware store, 84 is my first choice, Lowe’s, my second choice.)

I jacked up the lowest side with my trusty hydraulic bottle jack and placed supports under the roof, then boarded over the side with a 4′ X 8′ sheet of plywood. I then jacked up the other side and supported it.

Using my pipe clamp, I squared the front, which was easily five inches out of square, and nailed everything down.

Today I built and installed two new doors.

Shed

Tomorrow I am going to skirt in the bottom with plywood to cover the rot, then paint.

Details

For an outlay of about $150, I’ll get at least five more years out of this puppy.

Of course, I would rather have a new shed, but I’m not ready to drop three grand on the vinyl 10′ X 8′ number I want, at least not until I get a new gig.

Addendum, 6/22/08:

Finished.

Completed Shed

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Republican Congressman Suborns Assassination 0

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.

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Comment Rescue 0

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.

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“Mamas, Don’t Let Your Kids Grow Up To Be Mallies” 6

The largest mall in Delaware has banned kids who are not accompanied by adults on Friday and Saturday evenings:

Teenagers in the habit of whiling away weekend nights in Delaware’s Christiana Mall are about to get a new crowd to run with: their mall-walking parents.

As of July 11, unaccompanied minors will be barred from Delaware’s largest shopping center after 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights.

Christiana is the first mall in the Philadelphia region to move to a teenager curfew, which has spread into dozens of malls nationwide since its inception in the mid-1990s. No mall in Pennsylvania or New Jersey is considering a similar policy.

(Full disclosure: I don’t like Christiana Mall and avoid it whenever possible. When I have to go to a mall, I go to Concord Mall, the Small Mall That Has It All.)

(Aside: You know what a mall is. It’s a place with one or two department stores, 50 clones of the Gap, and one men’s store. Except Christiana Mall is a large mall. It has 100 clones of the Gap and a Williams-Sonoma–where you can pay far too much money for cooking equipment you will never need for dishes you will never cook–and one men’s store.)

Over at DelawareLiberal, liberalgeek seems to have decided that this is some kind of discrimination, even equating it with discrimination against black persons.

I’ve reared my share of teenagers.

Actually, more teenagers than I ever expected to rear.

And I think liberalgeek is missing the point.

The point is this: Parents shouldn’t use malls as dumping grounds for their kids, on weekends or any other times. Even if it gives said parents a chance to relive why they decided to become parents in the first place.

Furthermore, kids should not be left roaming around unsupervised for hours at a time, singly or in groups. It is not the job of a store or a group of stores or a mall to supervise other persons’ kids.

And if the parents are not using the mall as a dumping ground, but rather the kids are dumping themselves there, a whole nother list of questions arises, like, for example, say, “Where the hell are the parents?”

My kids were not allowed to go to the mall to hang out–at least, not until they got their drivers’ licenses and could go there on their own legally. And by then, of course, they had almost attained the age of majority. And they still had to have permission to use the family vehicle or they had to find their own damned ride.

By then they had learned to amuse themselves in ways that did not require hanging around at the mall.

(And, no, I don’t want to know what those ways were.)

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F. I. S. A. 1

What Brendan said.

I remember Steny Hoyer when he was a crusading young politician.

That was before he sold out.

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Diversity Training . . . 2

. . . is a training charlatan’s dream.

Diversity, Inc., on the other hand, is a pretty good magazine.

I submit this column for your consideration, especially if you are one of those folks who just don’t get what the fuss over race is all about.

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I’m Lazy 0

So I’m not going to bother writing my own post.

I’m just going to refer you to Noz. I pretty much agree with what he said.

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No Answer 4

“So,” I said to the vet, “how come, when she brings me a present of a half-eaten mouse, she always eats the front half and leaves me the back half?”

Jocat

The vet said, “Don’t ask me to explain anything cats do.”

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Vulgarity 0

Can be a lot of fun Whoops, almost forgot myself there.

Here and here.

I used to listen to Air America over the innertubes, since there is no Air America station here.

I was particularly fond of the Al Franken show. It was very lowkey and extremely literate.

But it appears that, in the eyes of some, there is no place for a professional comedian in an electoral race.

Only for accidental ones.

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I’d Vote for Him against Any Republican 0

’nuff said:

The residents of a Romanian village knowingly voted in a dead man as their mayor in Sunday’s municipal election, preferring him to his living opponent.

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Close Encounters of the Wingnut Kind 3

A few days ago, I accompanied my girlfriend to the doctor’s office–she was on light duty and not allowed to drive.

There was an older gentleman there–yeah, even older than me. Apparently he was a regular customer, because he was joking with the secretary. In the course of his comments, it came out that his grandson was in the Navy.

So I mentioned that my son was in the 82nd.

As the conversation progressed, I mentioned that I didn’t think much of my son’s boss.

And off he went. “We’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here blah blah blah.”

I said that, as regards Afghanistan, I agree completely; as regards Iraq, we’ll have to agree to disagree, and went back to reading Samuel Pepys Diary.

Later, my girlfriend complimented me on my restraint.

I said, “There’s no point in arguing with a true believer.”

But there is a larger point.

How can he believe that we are fighting them in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here, when there is no evidence that they (by which I assumed he meant Al Qaeda and their allies, as Iraq never posed a threat to the United States) were there in the first place?

Because he believes Bushie lies. Even after all that has happened to expose them.

That point is that there are persons out there who simply don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the world.

It is that ignorance which is the enemy.

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So Much for Baseball 0

I’ve found a new sport (emphasis added):

Whether it has any bearing on Monday’s crunch Euro 2008 match between the two countries is debatable but Austria drew first blood on Sunday when their topless women’s soccer team beat Germany 10-5.

The traditional swapping of shirts afterwards was not an option as the six-a-side teams wore nothing but thongs, with the national colors painted on to their bare skin.

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Brendan Writes a Letter 0

Someone must have taken the telephone away.

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I Heard about This Last Night at Drinking Liberally (Updated) 3

No, racism has nothing to do with it.

Really.

Nothing at all.

You can buy these from (guess who?) the Texas Republican Convention.

(Aside: No, I won’t link to them. If you want one of these, you gotta go find it yourself.)

Republican Appeal to Racism

Via Sadly, No!

Addendum, 06/19/2008:

Steve over at ASZ has more. Follow the link for the full rumination (emphasis added):

The Texas Republican Party has banned a vendor at their convention. The vendor was trying to sell political buttons with bigoted phrases on them.

(snip)

I suppose this is good news, that some semblance of control is being exercised over Republicans who can often be quite ugly. But I’m guessing they can’t control of all the Republican entrepreneurs out their (sic) who want to show their ugliness on their lapel buttons. I would argue Republicans created this ugliness with their concentration of wedge issues and their embrace of such talk stars as Limbaugh and Coulter. So let them live with it. I’d say most of America is tired of this sort of ugliness, and tired of the divisiveness that seems the only way the Republicans can work.

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Moral Low Ground 0

From Phillipe Sands in The Guardian:

. . . I learnt that the concerns of FBI personnel at Guantanamo were communicated directly to Mr Haynes’ office, in telephone conversations in November and December 2002 between Mr Bowman and, first, Mr Bob Dietz; second, Mr Dan Dell’Orto (who was then Mr Haynes’ deputy and is now his acting successor); and third, Mr Haynes himself. Mr Bowman told me it was “a very short conversation , he did not want to talk about it all, he just stiff-armed me”. My conclusion, taking into account my conversations with Mr Haynes, is that he was able to adopt that approach because by then – contrary to the impression he sought to create when he appeared before this committee – he had knowledge of the contents of the DOJ legal memos written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo on 1 August 2002.

On the basis of these conversations I believe that the administration has spun a false narrative. It claims that the impetus for the new interrogation techniques came from the bottom-up. That is not true: the abuse was a result of pressures driven from the highest levels of government. It claims the so-called Torture Memo of August 1, 2002 had no connection with policies adopted by the administration: that too is false, as the memo provided cover for Mr Haynes. It claims that in its actions it simply followed the law. To the contrary, the administration consciously sought legal advice to set aside international constraints on detainee interrogations, without apparently turning its mind to the consequences of its actions. In this regard, the position adopted by the Pentagon’s head of policy at the time, [Douglas] Feith, appears most striking.

As result, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was violated, along with provisions of the 1984 Convention prohibiting torture. The spectre of war crimes was raised by US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in the 2006 judgment in Hamdan v Rumsfeld. That judgment corrected the illegality of President Bush’s determination that none of the detainees at Guantanamo had any rights under Geneva.

Torture was their pornography.

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“I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions” 0

Thanks to John Cole.

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