2012 archive
A. P. Ticker’s Scrapple News 0
Excerpt:
The Joe Paterno statue was the only thing that was eleven years old that Penn State tried to protect.
Football uber Alles 2
In today’s local rag, Bob Molinaro calls out the media crocodiles for their tears. A nugget:
But you can’t teach those who won’t learn. Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Les Miles and other sideline Svengalis will continue to receive the royal treatment from TV they’ve come to expect – the kind Joe Paterno was accorded – for the simple reason that a moratorium on hero worship isn’t good for ratings.
Cult worship by TV networks, and also media with a far smaller financial stake in the game, leads not just to coddling but to the deliberate misinterpretation of a coach’s responsibilities and his school’s failings.
Read it.
Lies and Lying Liars 0
If one picture is worth 10,000 words, what price two?
Spill Here, Spill Now, Strain at a Gnat Dept. 0
In a piece right out of Inverse Universe, a story at Tampabay dot com states that Buccaneer Petroleum and Transamerica, the Deepwater Horizon wild well folks, were so focused on safety that they were unable to focus on safety.
Among the blurry areas:
- BP and Transocean’s “bridging document,” designed to align safety procedures between the companies, was generic and addressed only six safety issues, but none of them dealt with major issues.
- The companies didn’t have key process limits or controls for safe drilling.
- There were no written instructions for how to conduct a crucial test at the end of the cementing process, one that ultimately was misinterpreted by the crew after it was conducted several times, each time differently.
- Similar concerns about too narrow a focus on personal safety were raised after an explosion in 2005 at BP’s Texas City refinery that killed 15 people, but few of the panel’s recommendations were implemented on the offshore rig.
As near as I can decipher it, the reasoning seems to be that the two titans of industry were so wrapped up in rules to prevent personal injuries (broken legs, back sprains, and hangnails) to employees (and, no doubt, attendant liability for workers’ comp), that they didn’t pay attention to minor distractions such as exploding wells; spewing oil; burning, sinking oil rigs; and drowning employees.
Nice suits do not correlate with competence.
When you see one of those commercials set against an industrial background and showing a Master of the Universe in a suit with an ill-fitting hard hat talking to some schmuck in work clothes, remind yourself of just who in that scene actually knows what he is doing and does real work.
Hint: It’s not the suit.
“Get Off My Lawn” 0
In the San Jose Mercury-News, Scott Herhold rounds up nominees for his NIMBY awards. A nugget:
The General Welfare 0
President Obama explains something beyond the kin of Wingnut World: Society is, well, societal.
Plowshares to Swords 0
Too true to be funny:
Via Delaware Liberal, where Jason 330 points out in the comments:
This shows how tough it is to satirize the Club for Growth and their flunkies in the GOP. It would only take a few minor word choice changes in the script to make that conform tot he prevailing wingnut talking points.
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
“Look! Up in the Sky!” 0
Er, whoops.
The neighbor’s phone rings. The kid knocks. The Air Force shows up in a caravan to reclaim what is lost and promptly launches an investigation to learn the details of how this happened.
How, that is, a behemoth C-17 cargo plane landed at the wrong airfield.
What are the odds that the crew will end up on drone duty?
Self-Made 0
In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Ruth Ann Dailey spins a little tale that both skewers some sanctimonious* lefties and casts light on the rightwing reaction to President Obama’s statement that (I’m paraphrasing here) every successful person had a little help along the way.
Read it all the way through (the punch line is at the end, natch).
______________________
*Sanctimony is never well-timed and seldom welcome.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
There’s no there there. TPM:
The state signed a stipulation agreement with lawyers for the plaintiffs which acknowledges there “have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.”
It’s all hype and hypocrisy.
Misdirection Plays, Suffer the Children Dept. 5
At the Guardian, Dave Zirin argues that the NCAA sanctions against Penn State are a gross abuse of power. A snippet:
As rotten and corrupt as big-time college sports are, Zirin may have a point. It’s certainly worth thinking about.
More to the point, in my opinion, is this: Penn State’s cover up of a serial pederast was not about football, though the worship of football made the cover-up easier.
It was about powerful persons protecting other powerful persons because they were all members of the same club. A football team, a board of directors, a religious hierachy–all clubs with their insiders who consider their fellows to be better than everyone else because, after all, they would not be insiders otherwise, now, would they?
The NCAA sanctions will encourage persons to think that the issue has somehow been dealt with, so they can enjoy their NFL and college football games, drink their beers, and buy their overpriced branded swag without thinking of the rot on the sidelines, in the locker rooms, and in front offices.
And persons will think that the NCAA sanctions somehow address the rot and avert their eyes from the the amoral corruption of rich Insiders’ Clubs throughout business, politics, religion, and, yes, sports, because
Both Sides Now 0
Republicans want the evul fedrul guv’mint to go away, except when they don’t.
Gov. Bob McDonnell said the June 29-July 1 storms, which included hail and fierce winds known in meteorological terms as a derecho, “required extraordinary response and recovery efforts at the local and state levels.” Forty-seven localities declared emergencies.
Guns and Poses 0
Noz muses about calls not to “politicize” stuff. A nugget:
(snip)
i really can’t think of any time the “politicizing” objection ever comes up other than when some nutball takes advantage of the lax gun laws in the u.s. and blows away a bunch of innocent people. when that happens, then suddenly asking serious questions about the policies that allowed that to happen is a grievous sin against the victims of the tragedy, in the way that practical questions following any other kind of tragedy is not. it’s a crazy double standard, one that manages to shut down real discussion of an issue that certain parties don’t want discussed.
Follow the link to read the snippage. It’s worth the two minutes.
I’ve learned that it’s “politics” when you lose, a “process of negotiation and compromise” when you win.
