2011 archive
Stray Thought 0
I don’t think that the NRCC will be wasting my time on the telly phone again.
Fumbles 0
The long-term injuries to NFL football players are becoming more noticeable.
The Denver Post reports that an insurance company and the Denver Broncos are headed to court over who’s responsible for workers comp payments to retired players claiming disability due to their football careers.
Note that the insurance company is not trying to disqualify the claims; it’s arguing that the team, rather than the insurance company, should pay.
“Your memory isn’t what it used to be,” Little said. “You don’t sleep as well as you should. I still suffer from the injuries during my career.”
Now his claim, along with claims by eight other retired Broncos players, has become entangled in a federal lawsuit by an insurance company that says it shouldn’t have to pay.
Little was one of the lucky ones, at least in football terms–a big star with a long career and many honors. The average pro football career is less than four years and the retirement benefits are surprisingly miserly.
Tell me again why I should sympathize with the billionaire owners who use the players so callously.
More about Floyd Little.
We Need Single Payer 0
Jay Bookman of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution debunks the lie that competition will magically reduce the cost of health care to consumers.
Here’s one of his charts. Follow this link to read the article.
Facebook Frolics 0
The novelty is wearing off. From the Guardian:
That means the site’s growth has slowed for the second month in a row, even as it approaches 700 million users worldwide.
In the US the site lost about 6 million users, from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at its end, according to data gathered from Facebook’s advertising tool by the site Inside Facebook.
Canada fell by 1.52 million to 16.6 million and the UK, Norway and Russia all saw falls of more than 100,000 users, the site said.
Cavalcade of Spots 0
At Tampa Bay dot com, columnist Don Wright has prepared a medley of politicians’ apologies for bad behavior, complete with footnotes.
It is most delightful how they all flow together into one mind-numbing procession of puerile phrase-mongering.
No excerpt. Just hop over there and have a look.
“Everything You Know Is Wrong” 0
Peter Bergman distinguishes between what is and what isn’t going on:
What is going on is a simultaneous crises in our economy, our environment and our health care and education systems. Wise minds have warned of this gathering storm for decades, but the American public would rather go Dancing With The Stars than Dealing With The Facts.
Follow the link. It’s a delicious, reality-based rant.
Time To Declare Victory and Come Home 0
Eugene Robinson:
Making progress is hard, Crocker said, but not hopeless.
Not hopeless.
What on earth are we doing? We have more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan risking life and limb, at a cost of $10 billion a month, to pursue ill-defined goals whose achievement can be imagined, but just barely?
“Because we are already there” is not a good reason to stay.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Flop this house:
When the lender agrees to take the lower price, the agent purchases the property in his name or that of a straw buyer and immediately flips the property to an honest-to-goodness buyer-in-waiting at a higher price than the one negotiated with the lender, with the difference split between the participants.
The whole damn economy seems to be based on fraud.
Much more at the link.
Two Hits, One Error 2
Typing closed captions for a live television show must be quite challenging. Mistakes can be forgiven.
But sometimes they make one laugh. Watching the Phillies and the Cubs on WGN.
Announcer, discussing the Cubs pitching woes:
. . . and they haven’t even gotten to the All-Star break.
Caption:
. . . and they haven’t even gotten to the All-Star briquet.
Aspirations 0
In an otherwise unsurprising column on Congressman Weiner and the “boys will be boys” mentality, Elmer Smith of Philly dot com comes forth with this:
Heathen status is conferred when your wife abandons all hope of reform. One day, she sees you stretched out on the couch with the remote in one hand balancing a beer on your belly and tells herself that this is as good as it’s ever going to get.
Weiner Roast 2
Jay Leno:
I recently listened to this episode of the Diane Rehm show, in which a panel of Beltway insiders discussed Congressman Weiner’s twits. (You can listen or read the transcript at the link.)
There wasn’t much new in the discussion. The Congressman has brought so much dumb to the table that one of the panelists reported using his behavior as a tool to teach the family teenagers that the internet is, indeed, a public place.
What most struck me, though, was the smug sanctimonious self-righteousness of the panel as it was shocked! shocked! SHOCKED! at someone’s doing something stupid while under the influence of male hotness delusion syndrome and at his attempts to deny it.
In America, parents can’t talk with their kids about sex; hell, they can’t even admit to it.
It is not surprising that someone would have difficulty talking to a howling pack of press jackals.
Clearly, none of the panel had ever succumbed to the temptation to do something stupid while under the influence of hormones or attempted to deny it when caught out.
Americans’ attitudes towards all things sexual are seriously bent, a sewer of fantasies in an uptight suit, glorifying hyper-sexual imagery, vicariously celebrating celebutards and their sex tapes, snickering at snookis, while quivering in fear and fiction and denial when confronting actual sexuality in any form. (See the note below.)
Congressman Weiner was stupid. If he were a run-of-the-mill employee in private industry or civil service, he likely would have been disciplined, possibly fired, by now. Indeed, by the time this posts, he may well be gone.
This does not make the public circus any less stupid.
Daniel Denvir addressed thia at the Guardian. An excerpt:
Asides:
(This is the blue plate special; it comes with two asides)
In a tangentially related article, Suzanne Moore points out what’s behind the hyper-sexual imagery I mentioned above.
It’s not libido; it’s marketing, marketing to and via libido. Sex sells, even as it is illegal to sell sex:
Also, this “I’m going to rehab now” is no more than today’s version of “I must have been possessed”–blame-shifting.
Except possibly in the case of psychopaths, “sex addiction” has become a synonym for “getting away with bad behavior just because I can.” The beneficiaries of a diagnosis of “sex addiction” are “sex addiction therapists.”
The Note Below:
I have nothing against sexual imagery.
Indeed, I quite appreciate sexual imagery.
Just don’t pretend it’s something else, like a swimsuit review, when it is clearly what it is.
I do have something against willful ignorance salted with crocodile tears.
Gastric Upset 0
Words fail me.
Those are some of the weapons that schools, doctors and parents wield to prevent overweight kids from packing on more pounds.
But there’s another possibility: Surgically implant an inflatable silicone band — known as a gastric band — around the top of the stomach to restrict food intake. That way, people eat smaller meals and feel full faster.
Banding works for many adults. Now Allergan Inc., a maker of gastric bands, is asking the Food and Drug Administration to approve its device for morbidly obese adolescents as young as 14.
A Tree Grew in Brooklyn 0
No more:
The bizarre 2 AM incident was captured by a surveillance camera attached to a neighboring building in the borough’s Kensington neighborhood. Video of the tree assault (seen above) was uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday.
The video shows the attacker taking a total of 53 whacks at the tree over approximately five minutes. On several occasions, neighborhood men can be seen seen trying to stop the ax wielder from downing the tree. It does not appear that the primary motive of the attacker was to steal the bicycle chained to the tree (though, 20 minutes after first striking the tree, the portly perp returned to the block and carried the bike away).
New Yorkers tend to be protective of their trees. They have so few of them.