Eccentricity

La Jour de Gloire

2008-07-14T16:40:00.001-06:00

Happy Bastille Day!

Some days I wish we were still in an age where it was possible to harness outrage into great changes.

We're not, and that may be a large part of what is wrong with the USA today.

Weekend Fun!

2008-07-12T22:04:00.001-06:00

[via The Biomes Blog]

Take a Google Earth tour of McCain's ten (or so) properties!

To Revamp an Old Joke

2008-07-05T18:38:00.001-06:00

Does Cindy McCain really want to live in an apartment in a smaller house in the inner city -- one that is essentially subsidized public housing?

Well hey, maybe she could do an annual lottery for one of those eight extra houses she has -- sort of a personal effort toward lessening the mortgage mess.

Jesse Helms

2008-07-04T14:57:00.002-06:00

Many years ago a writer friend of mine moved from Kansas to North Carolina to teach in Raleigh. Not too long after he got there, he reported back:

"You know that I used to think that Bob Dole was the worst, most reactionary Senator. Well now I live in North Carolina, and my Senator is Jesse Helms. Let me tell you, Jesse Helms make Robert Dole look like a great statesman."

Yes. Yes indeed.

The Reason

2008-06-25T17:57:00.002-06:00

For all the Fox criticism is because I now work in a government building, and Someone has the channel on all the public screens turned to Fox News, all day, every day. Yes, Propaganda Network is all that plays, and it's pretty rank. They have well-fed White Boyz with high, rude voices who talk over the guest segments. Most of the guest segments are blonde or brunette white women, or the occasional well-fed White Boy with a receding hairline.

It's really kind of appalling. And you can hear them fishing for some way to take Obama apart. So far it's almost all innuendo. I'd love to see them fish and flounder straight into November.

Yesterday Was "Icky Day" on Fox News

2008-06-21T13:19:00.004-06:00

Though I suppose that almost every day is pretty bad on Fox News.

With great moral posturing they were discussing the teenage girls who made a pregnancy pact and managed to conceive. When discussing reason, some of the girls mentioned that they wanted someone who would love them. Whaaa? All those girls needed to do was examine how very much they love and honor their parents to see that this is not likely to happen between them and their child, either. Kids grow up, and often have great disagreements with their parents that challenge the myth of total loving.

The Fox anchorman also suggested that the affected school was too permissive, allowing pregnant students to attend classes and even helping them to graduate.

When I was in high school, 14 girls dropped out between junior and senior year. Pregnancy meant the end of school back then -- and the only readily available contraceptives were condoms; the pill wasn't available, nor IUD's; no shots; nothing but condoms. The atmosphere was not permissive, and yet the number of pregnancies was pretty high, even though the consequences included expulsion from school and a world without day care.

There is no way to keep a girl who wants to get pregnant from getting pregnant except a contraceptive shot, regularly renewed. Parents who think otherwise are living in a dream world.

Pain

2008-06-07T21:28:00.003-06:00

It absolutely wrenches me that people can hate others because of their skin color.

Believe me, most people are the same -- loves and fears, anger and hope. I can't stand the idea that my friends with dark skin have been scorned, abused and pushed aside because they are dark brown. Most of them are such kind, decent people. I don't understand the wanton evil that is racism.

I still remember the first time someone ever voiced a racist idea to me. It was summer, and I was headed for fifth grade. We were going to have swimming lessons. I walked to the bus stop for the kids from our area. When I got on the bus, there was one kid in every seat, so I went back and sat with the girl with the nicest smile. She was great -- friendly and intelligent.

When we returned to the bus stop that day and got off to walk home, a boy asked me how I could stand to sit with her. I was just stupefied. I said "What is wrong with you? You are Jewish. She is Negro. But nice people are nice people." I suppose I was especially dumbfounded because almost all kids of the 1950's were aware of the anti-Semitism that was played out by Hitler. I just could not get that people felt that way about any group as a group.

Of course, I also think that people who hate blacks also tend to hate women. Racism and sexism seem to go together. Me, I hope Obama chooses Hillary so that the haters have to spread their attention, and so that they feel that they will be no better off if they play out their hatreds.

Fox News: Fairly Unbalanced

2008-06-04T16:10:00.002-06:00

I saw a really slimy trick on Fox today. They showed Hillary giving a speech to the Israeli meeting, and she said that we shared foundation values: "Human rights. Women's rights."

When Fox ran the closed caption, thy just happened to leave out the words "Women's rights" -- coincidence? Malice? I report, you decide.

:)

Is John McCain a Gigolo?

2008-05-30T18:05:00.002-06:00

Much was made of the fact that John Kerry had a rich wife. I'm here to tell you that John McCain also has a rich wife, who ostentatiously owns eight homes. Eight! They must move every half season to a nicer climate or something. Maine for August. Florida for February. Skiing in January. New England for Christmas. The Poconos in June.

The man has 100% disability, 100% Social Security, and a Senate salary so he doesn't have to ask for an allowance.

The disability was given to him after VietNam -- he who does not want current veterans to get disability, medical care, or education benefits. Oh he had them, but there is no way he is as decent to the troops as the nasty civilian world was about paying him back when he served.

McCain is lucky that Obama is such a kind and respectful man, or in answer to his "inexperience" remarks, he would hear the "has-been" label that suits him so well.

The Minimum

2008-05-14T18:04:00.002-06:00

If one makes the minimum wage, one almost cannot afford to drive anymore. The minimum wage is $5.85. A gallon of gas was 3.69 this morning. Federal taxes on 5.85 are .58, social security and medicare are about another .60 -- food has leaped upward in price. A person on minimum wage cannot afford the basics, and it will continue to get worse.

If I Ran the Zoo

2008-05-12T17:38:00.004-06:00

I started thinking about things I would do with the tax structure and US purchasing policies if I wanted to bring the country toward a more balanced budget and toward full employment.

1) Government contracts would only go to tax-paying, US based companies. If you wanted a contract, you'd be welcome to set up here.

2) Companies would pay taxes based on the profits reported to their shareholders. No deductions, no chicanery -- if you say you made money, you get to pay taxes on it.

3) Reduce the green-card holding populations back down to Reagan era numbers. Run boot camps to train domestic workers instead of importing foreign workers. Charge companies with foreign "call centers", help lines, and billing facilities a "worker retraining charge" equal to the difference between what they pay their foreign workers, and what they would have to pay a domestic employee. Put that money into a fund to pay education credits that people claim on their taxes. Maybe then English would become the first language of help lines again.

If I think of anything else, no doubt I'll write about it.

:)

Color Me Skeptical

2008-05-02T18:15:00.002-06:00

/tinfoil hat on/

The "DC Madam" was found dead today. Suicide.

And I am not sure I believe it, no matter how clear-cut it looked. She often stated that if she were found dead of suicide, it would be because someone killed her.

I hope she did what someone would logically do in that case -- I hope she transmitted all her information to someone charged with releasing it in the event of her death.

The web makes that pretty easy.

If I were in fear for my life, and I had information on that many people with access to folks who want to do them favors, you can be sure I would have made a web site, and that there would be someone to launch it if necessary. Let's hope she did the same.

/tinfoil hat off/

She What?

2008-04-22T05:55:00.002-06:00

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton confirmed Monday that as president she would be willing to use nuclear weapons against Iran if it were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.

Ugh. Just ugh.

"Nuke 'em! Nuke em!" Doesn't any candidate think before launching?

Delicious

2008-04-19T12:00:00.002-06:00

Fred at The Slacktivist not only blogs Left Behind weekly, but his political commentary is wonderful.

Go and read it. Uncle Fred wouldn't lead you wrong. It was Just Like That in the Good Old Days.

Best Idea So Far

2008-04-05T07:31:00.002-06:00

Over at Blah3, Invictus had the best suggestion I've seen for a lot of the mortgage problem -- let people take an emergency, one time withdrawal from IRAs and 401(k)s, interest and penalty free, with no repayment clause, for purposes of rescuing their homes from foreclosure. This would not be a loan, but a redirecting of a person's assets, and it would cost far less than any other kind of taxpayer bailout.

It would be nice if Congress at least considered something rational rather than immediately trying to decide how the rest of us should rescue people in big houses while we live in small apartments.

Shifting Lines

2008-03-29T18:42:00.003-06:00

This primary season is at least making some interesting things stir.

Just this evening, Senator Obama spoke up in defense of Senator Clinton's right to keep running for the nomination. Whichever of them gets it, I will vote for. I will say, however, that his sense of fairness and graciousness impresses me -- it's been too long since we had that in our leadership.

The other piece of interesting news was taht Condolezza Rice spoke positively about Obama's race speech -- and the right wing has, of course, started unloading on her as a result.

The GOP, once the party of Lincoln, has become the party of racists. Their southern strategy was way too successful -- all those Southern Democrats who gave the Democratic party a bad name moved over to the Republican party, where they are doing the same. Face it -- racists stink up their environment. Democrats had them by default after the Civil War because Democrats did not impose Reconstruction on the South. Republicans, on the other hand, invited the pigs into their parlor. And their parlor stinks.

Oh.

2008-03-22T11:51:00.004-06:00

Several years ago, a friend of mine left the place we worked to work at her boyfriend's business. He claimed he was making a lot of money. Doing what? Writing mortgages.

Huh?

Then another friend told me he took classes and wrote a mortgage. The job didn't agree with him. so he stopped doing it.

A third person told me they were taking classes on how to write mortgages, and that there was a money back guarantee that this would make the person big money in their spare time. Well, she didn't see it that way, so shortly after her class ended, she went and got her money back.

Do you see the trend here that I did?

The first person stayed with the job even though business took and abrupt downturn. She is never going to see the salary she wasn't paid. We can all see why by now.

I kept wondering what qualified these people to decide on the financial state of the applicants -- how they decided whether the loan was good. Short answer: they could not tell and their decisions most likely generated the instruments that are now being called "subprime". There was a real plague of mortgage writers for awhile. Now I am quite certain that I can guess at how that came to be. I'm also pretty sure that they have disappeared in the current climate.

Question

2008-03-16T17:59:00.005-06:00

For days I have seen the headline Democrats Divided by Race, Sex on MSNBC online and I have been driven to wonder, is that worse than Republicans being *united* by race and sex? They are the party of rich old warmonger white guys as far as an observer can tell. Is that a *good* thing?

Budget

2008-03-09T17:09:00.002-06:00

The military portion of the budget is going up again. There is no sign that any of it will be used to resupply Guard and Reserve units that were stripped for overseas combat.

I used to date a guy in the military who likely let me know more about how his job worked than he should have. One of the things he did was prepare a raft of purchase orders in the couple of weeks before the end of the fiscal year so his unit would use up all the alloted money -- that way they could ask for more next year. They got along *fine* without all those "spend it or lose it" purchases, but this kind of thing is a ritual.

So here's a modest proposal.

At the start of the last month of the fiscal year, orders should be cut suspending all military purchasing. The money unspent at that time should be reapportioned to the Reserve and the Guard to pay for items like trucks, personnel carriers, and other pieces of equipment they left overseas. This should be done annually until all our units have been resupplied.

The gratuitous blowing of money at the end of the fiscal year should stop. We have too many deficiencies to make that acceptable any more.

2008-03-02T17:37:00.005-06:00

What blogs are Excellent? Here are my top ten:

The Sideshow was the first blog I ever checked every day. Avedon's blog is indispensable, and I'll talk more about it as I go down this list.

The Alternate Brain Fixer and Gordon are my kinda guys,

The Biomes Blog ;Mark does an interesting job of discussing marine science, and he often discusses other topics with some regularity.

The Fightin' Cock Flyer Michael Caddell does this Kansas Blog, and his main interests have to do with sustainable living -- gardening, fuel, and politics.

The Slacktivist Fred has been dissecting the Left Behind series on Fridays. He has his eye on the Fundamentalist movement

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo I got to Skippy via Avedon Carol's blogroll and references. Skippy has been making a point of networking the smaller blogs via his own blogroll.

Blah3 is often first with an important story, and it's a good place to catch things that are not noticed until later by more prominent news sources. Sometimes I wonder how he does it.

Unsolicited Opinion belongs to Rez Dog, one of my co-bloggers on the Medley. He's concerned about the war, about veterans, and about social justice.

The Reality Based Community is the effort of Mark A.R. Kleinman. He followed the Corey May story in detail. He is concerned with misuse of authority and unrestrained police activity. Someone needs to watch this stuff, and Mark is a good resource.

Last but hardly least, I write for two other blogs.

The Mockingbird's Medley was completely written by Mimus Pauly for several years. He reached a point where he wanted to give it up, but instead decided to invite other to post to his blog -- and I was one of the people he invited, much to my surprise. Mimus came out and decided to use his Real Name, and thus he started writing under the name of Jim Yeager. I always loved the Mockingbird's Medley -- I found it via Skippy, of course, and I found Skippy via Avedon Carol.

Pacific Views is another blog I got to off Avedon Carol's web log, and I have read it for many years. A few weeks ago, Natasha contacted me and asked me to become a contributor. How could I say no (though frankly, I suspect both Natasha and Mary are more tuned in than I am)?

So the two others I write for are mentioned here because they are excellent -- they were excellent before I ever showed up, and I've read them almost from the first.

Now each of you can feel free to name ten excellent blogs.

I was selected by Bryan of Why Now.

Sources

2008-03-01T11:50:00.003-06:00

There is a British newspaper web site called The Daily Mail. Lately I have noticed that MSN, MSNBC, CNN, and other US web news outlets have been using the Daily Mail as a source and as a vocabulary guide.

The one that is driving me nuttiest at the moment is "baby bump". The Daily Mail is obsessed with celebrity pregnancy, and has been referring to "baby bumps" for months. Well, the language has hopped the pond, and we now find this term on US news web sites. How ... cute. It is as if there has never before been a term for the rounding out of the female form, and so web content providers have latched onto this coy bit so they can discuss protrusions in a way that only offends adult females -- because, of course, offending them is irrelevant.

Many gossipy news stories are also wending their way to US sources several days after they have started to appear at The Daily Mail -- and of course they have the same links.

If you want gossip, you may as well go right to the source and read The Daily Mail, keeping in mind that all bearing women are under a baby bump watch.

Memory Lane

2008-02-24T15:39:00.003-06:00

I am reminded that when I was in college, the euphemism for vomit used to be "ralph" -- a startlingly appropriate term these days.

I cannot imagine what possesses Ralph Nader. He has no qualifications at all for being President. Perhaps he loves the lifestyle -- panhandling, television appearances, blowing hot air, eating rubber chicken and local delicacies, and flying to and fro in the earth.

At least Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and their ilk now have a candidate. They hate McCain rabidly ... though since they do everything rabidly, perhaps the intensity is on the usual note. For people who are racist and/or sexist and who hate McCain, there is now a white male who is utterly useless just wating for donations and votes.

A Day Late

2008-02-24T09:31:00.000-06:00

My very first blog post was DATE: 02/23/2004 08:06:40 PM.

Waaah!

2008-02-24T07:30:00.001-06:00

Waaaaahhh!

Temper Tantrum

2008-02-23T16:17:00.003-06:00

One of the major ways that George Bush gets his way is by throwing tantrums -- as in "If you won't give telecoms immunity, I won't sign the FISA bill." And then he tries to shift the blame for no FISA bill onto the people who would not knuckle to his tantrum. Waaaaah, George! Waaaaah!!!

Face it. Telecoms have always known that they should not tap lines without a warrant. I used to work for one. They would not even tap your own line at your request to get rid of threatening and nuisance callers without a judge's ok in the days before Caller ID. They knew that spying was illegal. What? Did George tell them he would get a retroactive FISA warrant and then fail to do so? If that is the case, the telecoms have a valid defense. If it was not the case, they did wrong and they know it. Moreover, if that is the case, they really should be refusing to cooperate with a government that lies.

The current FISA legislation was offered without Mr. Tantrum getting his demands met. Good. He can sign it or not -- his choice. But his choice is no one's "fault" but his.