No posting last night, no posting today. It’s entirely possible I have nothing to say — at least for a while. You don’t really want to know what I think of Mrs. Alito’s tears, do you? And besides, the temperature is due to hit 50 today. I’m going to get my work done, take the bike off the device that turns it into a stationary indoor torture machine and go see what the lake looks like.
If you like, let the comments be your playground. I’ll be back later.
Connie said on January 12, 2006 at 10:21 am
Sunny and in the 50s here as well. I enjoyed the reports on the auto show which I would never have looked at under other circumstances. Though my brother in law is a driver at the GM Milford proving grounds and he has great auto stories as well. Thanks.
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4dbirds said on January 12, 2006 at 11:14 am
I don’t have much sympathy. Atrios sums it up for me.
http://atrios.blogspot.com/
“Oh jeebus.
…I appreciate that Alito’s wife may geuinely find this stressful and bummer for her, but I just can’t stand the fact that our media which can’t seem to understand that people who support groups which try to reduce women an minorities on campus, who rule in favor of warrantless searches of 10 year old girls, who will likely declare the uterus state property, who shoot down almost any racial discrimination claim, and who support the practice of striking jurors based on their race might cause a few tears as well.
The media keeps declaring these hearings to be just political theater, and then they focus on the soap opera.
This. Shit. Matters. Pretend you care, or get new goddamn jobs.”
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Danny said on January 12, 2006 at 11:47 am
It doesn’t matter. He will be confrimed. The only thing the dems need to worry about is not continuing to make total asses of themselves during these hearings and using up all of the political capital they have courtesy of gop crooks like Tom Delay and Randy Cunningham.
Between Biden, Kennedy and Schumer, I can’t decide who is the most tedious blowhard. Of course, Lindsay Graham and Arlen Specter deserve honorable mention in this category, as well (except they did not make the nice lady cry). Geesh, I can’t believe all these losers are running the country. It’s quite sad.
On another note, Nance, what kind of stationary trainer do you have, the constant or progressive resistance type? I see them advertised in Bicycling magazine, but I would probably only use one sparingly in San Diego.
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mary said on January 12, 2006 at 11:50 am
Alright, Mrs. Alito isn’t used to rough and tumble politics. Is that the only news from the hearings? I sat through Katie Couric yammering at Joe Biden and Joe Biden not knowing when to shut up for what seemed like twenty minutes this morning. I didn’t notice NBC or CBS or any television news for that matter mentioning that both Bill Frist and Bill Bradley denounced that Princeton alumni group in the past. Alito used his membership in that group as a positive element on his job application. Do we really believe he had no idea what that group espoused? Do we really believe he only agreed with the group’s position on ROTC? I don’t, but then I’m a nasty cynic.
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Nance said on January 12, 2006 at 11:59 am
I guess it’s constant. It basically just lifts the rear wheel off the ground. I can adjust resistance by shifting gears. Cannondale makes it.
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alex said on January 12, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Membership on the Committee for a Lily-White Yale, or whatever it was, should be damning enough. So should the simple fact that the fringe right is so enthusiastic about Alito. When are those implacably crabby people ever happy about anything?
I fully expect the so-called liberal media to make this all about big bad Ted Kennedy blindsiding poor Arlen Specter and making the little lady cry. At least that’s the tenor of what I’ve read so far this morning.
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Danny said on January 12, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Most important news headline today:
Lance Armstrong’s Endurance Tested By Sheryl Crow Concert
The onion seems to be recycling stories the last few weeks.
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brian stouder said on January 12, 2006 at 3:59 pm
The most striking news I read this week was in the NYTimes (online) about the ferocious – and largely ignored – spread of diabetes. It said NYC alone has 800,000 cases of it (1/3 higher per capita than the nation) and that it is spreading at twice the average rate….and that it is killing more.
Apparently the disease is especially prevalent amongst Hispanics (as many as one in two will develop it); and of course it goes after people who don’t eat right (read: poor).
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mary said on January 12, 2006 at 4:26 pm
I read that story too, Brian, and it’s mind boggling. Here in LA it’s a huge problem as well. It’s been determined though, that poor Mexicans in Mexico are developing diabetes. It’s only after they come to the US and abandon the diet they had at home. More junk food here, I guess, and less physical activity. Native Americans are very prone to diabetes as well, if they are not eating the traditional foods and are consuming the American diet. Native Americans who recieve food from the government get diabetes, those who stick to the beans/corn/fresh vegetables that are grown locally don’t seem to get sick.
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brian stouder said on January 12, 2006 at 4:48 pm
I’m about 420 pages into a book about Henry Ford I got for Christmas (The People’s Tycoon; Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts) – and after the guy had made his huge pile of cash (in the 1910’s) he became an oracle of life-style advice for the public.
Most of his notions amounted to eccentricity – but he was attuned to a real, emerging issue in turn-of-the-century America; as we shifted to urban life and more liesure time – and away from unending loads of hard physical labor, the foods a person ate became all the more important….and staying physically active and ‘vigorous’ was all the more important to rich fellows like Henry (and Teddy Roosevelt).
And here we are at the front end of the 21st century, and such a simple truth is lost upon millions of Americans…and forget about bird flu – we have a real health crisis on our hands.
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mary said on January 12, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Didn’t Henry Ford want his employees to become “American” though? Wasn’t there an expectation of abandoning the traditions and beliefs of the old country?
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Danny said on January 12, 2006 at 5:14 pm
I have trouble understanding why people eat junk and remain inactive. If I do so, I feel like crap in a real physical sense, not in a psychological, guilty sense. I am not diabetic, but I ate a Krispy-Kreme doughnt once and thought I was going into insulin shock. Man, those things pack a wallop. And I just felt like terrible for the rest of the day.
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brian stouder said on January 12, 2006 at 8:07 pm
“Didn’t Henry Ford want his employees to become “American�? though?”
Oh yes! Henry thought he could ‘manufacture’ good American citizens in much the same way he could mass produce tin Lizzies.
I had always heard that Henry Ford was the first big-time industrialist who realized that paying a good wage would encourage lots of spending – which would ultimately be good for him (and the economy in general). The book details how Ford (in the 1910’s) dramatically announced that he was going to immediately double the wages of all his workers, to the then-unheard-of sum of $5/day. “The Five Dollar Day” caused a genuine nationwide sensation (and lots of Wall Street angst) impressing even leftists like John Reed…..
but the part that was news to me was that in order to qualify for the big pay raise, a worker had to pass muster. Ford Motor Company created a Sociological Department, and hired hundreds of inspectors who would visit a worker’s home (while the employee was at work) and interview the worker’s spouse, check to see that they didn’t take in boarders, and had a reasonably clean home for their children, and didn’t drink too much. They’d ask to see your bankbook, to make sure you weren’t blowing the money on booze or horses. They also set up english language schools (since a large number of Henry’s thousands of employees spoke no english) and taught people how to get a mortgage and buy a house, and also mundane things like personal hygene. This was, of course, all compulsery.
Very paternalistic (although the episcopal bishop that Henry hired to run the program would always say it was ‘fraternal’ and not paternal!), and utterly serious. If you didn’t submit, you’d lose your $5/day job altogether.
Henry is very interesting. As the author points out, he was born 2 weeks after the battle of Gettysburg, and lived too see the atomic attack on Japan. He had one foot in rural Victorian America – even as he did more than almost anyone else to creat the consumer-driven mass-culture of modernity.
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nancy said on January 12, 2006 at 9:04 pm
All true, Brian. It’s funny — of course everyone around here knows the Ford family the way people in Fort Wayne know about Samuel Hanna, et al. Kate had a unit about H.F. that was very how-you-say, age-appropriate. Needless to say, none of the stuff about his paternalism, nor anything about that “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” stuff.
I did hear about “baby Edsel,” though.
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brian stouder said on January 12, 2006 at 10:17 pm
One could almost guess that Henry had a mistress – but I confess I was taken aback by the details of Henry and Clara Ford’s arrangements with Evangeline Cote Dahlinger….pretty amazing stuff – stretching over thirty years…including a son with Evangeline named John
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vince said on January 12, 2006 at 10:24 pm
That diabetes story was a shocker — and extremel well done.
And to think… Diabetes is a known problem. I
t’s growing by leaps and bounds.
Yet in New York City 3 of 4 diabetes centers have closed.
Not enough demand?
Nope.
They’re losing money.
Because insurers would rather pay $30,000 for an amputation than $150 to prevent one.
A friend of mine in health care says the insurers are completely backassward when it comes to preventing disease.
They make more money on us when we get sick.
$$$$$$$
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nancy said on January 12, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Jon Carroll was diagnosed with Type II a few years ago. He wrote a three-part series of columns about it. He described the seminar on how to manage your diabetes like this:
The seminar was 3 1/2 days long. It featured lectures and individual consultations with doctors specializing in diabetes, nurses, nutritionists, pharmacists, the whole deal. Total immersion. Immensely valuable. My gratitude is unbounded.
Naturally, my insurance did not pay for this. When HMOs talk about supporting preventive medicine, they mean things like billboards saying, “Buckle up.” But when it comes to forking over cash, they’d much rather wait and PAY FOR SOMEONE TO CHOP OFF MY DAMN LEGS. Not that I have any feelings about this.
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