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One more time…

Our lonely quest for accu­racy remains unfin­ished, so let’s put this at the top of the blog today, so our vast and influ­en­tial read­er­ship sees it, first thing:

A com­mode is not a toi­let.

It’s true that the word is a euphemism for toi­let in many places, includ­ing the Amer­i­can south. But the one pur­chased by ex-Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain for his office likely sup­ported his table­top cigar humid­i­fier, a Bac­carat crys­tal decanter, a solid-gold dildo or per­haps his lat­est golf tro­phy, but not his over­paid ass.

This is a com­mode:

commode
Thanks, Wikipedia.

No one, includ­ing his edi­tors, tells Mitch Albom any­thing other than “yes, sir” and “great col­umn, sir!,” so we’ll write him off, and let him snicker, you can’t jus­tify $35,000 for a com­mode — yes, a com­mode …

But David Brooks has the best edi­tors money can buy, so what’s his excuse? Ahem:

Then there was John Thain, who was humil­i­ated because it is no longer accept­able to spend $35,000 on a com­mode for a Mer­rill Lynch wash­room.

The Wall Street Jour­nal, run by well-paid jour­nal­ists who pre­sum­ably know their Louis Quinze from their Louis Seize, explained it very well a few days back, but still, the con­fu­sion per­sists.

The WSJ is good enough to pro­vide the orig­i­nal item­ized list of Thain’s office fur­nish­ings, and you’ll note the com­mode is for the recep­tion area. Think about it.

And that will be our last word on the sub­ject, until some­one screws it up again.

While we’re on the sub­ject of lan­guage, how­ever, let’s take a look at what the ex-governor of Illi­nois is doing. Oh, look. He’s lash­ing out:

CHICAGO — For­mer Illi­nois Gov. Rod Blago­je­vich today lashed out at law­mak­ers who booted him from office, call­ing his removal a “hijack­ing.”

Some­one is always lash­ing out in the news­pa­per. “Lashed out” is straight jour­nalese, the lan­guage reporters and edi­tors speak amongst them­selves that no one else does. Let’s use the mir­a­cle of Google to see its awe­some power of descrip­tion:

Drunk George Tenet lashed out at Bush’s neo­cons…

Noam Schalit lashed out at Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Olmert and his gov­ern­ment on Wednes­day…

Pic­tured: The moment Sharon Osbourne lashed out at real­ity show con­tes­tant…

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney lashed out Fri­day when quizzed about the flap over a land­scap­ing crew work­ing at his home…

Kanye lashes out at Britney’s return to VMA…

Lash­ing out is done so often in news sto­ries, and describes such a wide range of behav­ior, that the term is effec­tively mean­ing­less. Fol­low that link to Sharon Osbourne, and you’ll see a proper lash­ing out — she’s throw­ing a drink in some slut’s face. Whereas Mitt Rom­ney, whom you wouldn’t think has a lashing-out bone in his body, got tagged after respond­ing to a ques­tion with another ques­tion: “If I go to a restau­rant, do I make sure all the wait­ers there are all legal? How would I do that?” the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor asked.

Of course, the first is from the Daily Mail, the sec­ond from the uptight L.A. Times. When in doubt, always trust a Brit. They know their lash­ing.

So. Kwame Kil­patrick was sprung from the slam shortly after mid­night this morn­ing. Of course he had a secu­rity detail, ineptly described in the Freep as “self-important, well-dressed men,” but the writer gets a pass — he was on dead­line. I’m amazed at the pol­i­tics of secu­rity details in this town; it really seems to be a badge of honor. (The super­in­ten­dent of schools gets secu­rity as part of the position’s com­pen­sa­tion pack­age.) Kwame in par­tic­u­lar appears to love rolling like Suge Knight, which I always found amus­ing, because the guy played col­lege ball and packed on the usual few dozen retire­ment pounds, and hardly looks like a handy mug­ging tar­get. He likes mul­ti­ple vehi­cles and a big car­bon foot­print — his pri­vate posse last night went for no fewer than five SUVs. I guess Fidel Cas­tro gets more, but in a place like this, it just reads as TGFW. Too Ghetto for Words:

The secu­rity guys, some wear­ing bow ties and long coats, oth­ers with Bluetooth-like devices in their ears, made it seem like the ex-mayor would be get­ting into one vehi­cle parked ille­gally in front of the jail.

For 20 min­utes before Kil­patrick appeared, they stood next to an open door and kicked at the icy snow piled on the curb. It was a bush-league feint rem­i­nis­cent of the body-double stunt Kilpatrick’s Detroit Police Exec­u­tive Pro­tec­tion Unit employed last year dur­ing one of the then-mayor’s court appear­ances.

Instead, Kil­patrick walked about 100 feet to the west and entered the Sub­ur­ban.

Sigh. Well, pol­i­tics at the other end of the Amer­i­can class spec­trum doesn’t seem any pret­tier. I read the New Yorker’s story about the brief polit­i­cal career of Car­o­line Kennedy and came away with two con­clu­sions: New York dodged a bul­let, and Lawrence O’Donnell is a gold-plated ass­hole. You’d think we’d have moved past the era of Kennedy brown-nosing, but nooo. Here he is on the woman who did get the job:

Now Car­o­line Kennedy has had her moment and flubbed it. Pater­son has appointed Kirsten Gilli­brand, a second-term con­gress­woman from Hud­son, near Albany. “Pater­son has no com­pre­hen­sion of upstate New York, absolutely none, and has cho­sen some­one bet­ter at rep­re­sent­ing cows than peo­ple,” Lawrence O’Donnell says. “What you have is the daugh­ter of a lob­by­ist, instead of the daugh­ter of a for­mer Pres­i­dent or the son of a for­mer gov­er­nor. This is the hack world pro­duc­ing the hack result that the hacks are happy with.”

Good god. Now there’s a lash-out.

OK, off to Gymville. I feel like shit, but I’m sol­dier­ing on. Have a bet­ter day than mine doubt­less will be.

Posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 9:45 am in Current events, Detroit life, Media. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


78 responses to
“One more time…”

  1. Dexter said on February 3rd, 2009 at 10:08 am

    I read that New Yorker story last week and well, it’s for damn-sure we won’t have Car­o­line Kennedy to kick around any­more, y’know? The part I found mem­o­rable was that she was recep­tive to guid­ance, but like Albom’s editor…some crunchy eggshells to walk on.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I am so glad that Mom is vin­di­cated in her usage of the word “com­mode” when I was a kid…but I was really con­fused when I heard it used to mean toi­let; now all the stars and plan­ets are in order in my uni­verse.

  2. moe99 said on February 3rd, 2009 at 10:36 am

    My mother had euphemisms for the words poop and pee. At least we didn’t have anti­macas­sars on the arms of our chairs.

  3. Rana said on February 3rd, 2009 at 10:39 am

    What I’m struck by in that O’Donnell excerpt is that appar­ently he feels these women’s most impor­tant qual­i­fi­ca­tions are whose daugh­ters they are and what their par­ents did for a liv­ing – rather than what the women’s own job expe­ri­ence might be. When being the child of a Pres­i­dent or a gov­er­nor is con­sid­ered a greater “qual­i­fi­ca­tion” for serv­ing Con­gress than hav­ing served Con­gress in one’s own right, something’s screwy.

  4. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 10:51 am

    Actu­al­lly, moe, “anti­macas­sar” is such a cool word that I think every­one should have some–or at least they should learn the word.

    Did you hear that one of Obama’s appointees–his prospec­tive Chief Per­for­mance Offi­cer, a second-level posi­tion at OMB–has stepped down due to tax prob­lems. I am not so much hor­ri­fied as amazed by these tax prob­lems. Makes me won­der how many peo­ple are, for some rea­son, not in com­pli­ance.

  5. alex said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 am

    Jolene, the story here isn’t that Obama’s vet­ting process is flawed. The real story is that all of the wealthy cheat on their taxes. Why should any of this be sur­pris­ing?

  6. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:14 am

    This lat­est thing seems to be about house­hold help. One would think peo­ple would be on top of that issue by now.

  7. LA Mary said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:16 am

    Anti­macas­sar is a nice word. We called them doilies, but when I left home and gained a worldly out­look, I switched to anti­macas­sar.

  8. nancy said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:19 am

    I like anti­macas­sar, too. I’m so glad they came along before hair oint­ments came to be called “prod­uct,” as antiprod­uct just doesn’t have a ring to it.

    Put me down as grow­ing short of tem­per with this parade of clowns going before Con­gress with their mealy­mouthed excuses, espe­cially Tom Daschle, who appar­ently is too fuck­ing spe­cial to even drive his own self to 7-11, and then never dreamed this is con­sid­ered tax­able income. Not. Buy­ing. It.

  9. Rana said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:21 am

    I have a ton of anti­macas­sars around the house, along with var­i­ous table­top or dresser-top cloths, that I inher­ited from my god­mother and grand­moth­ers. Unfor­tu­nately, I’m not really a doily per­son, so they mostly just sit in draw­ers.

    What I find inter­est­ing is how they’re seen as pri­mar­ily dec­o­ra­tive now, when they used to serve a very prac­ti­cal pur­pose – pro­tect­ing fur­ni­ture from dirt and hair oil. They’re the fancy Vic­to­rian equiv­a­lent of those paper things that dan­gle from some air­line seats, or the weird cloth drapes that come with reclin­ers and rest on the arms.

  10. moe99 said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 am

    I remem­ber that the Vic­to­ri­ans used to cover the legs of their chairs– they were so sen­si­tive that oth­ers would be offended to view exposed legs, even if they were on inan­i­mate objects and had never been alive. I won­der what those cov­er­ings were called.

  11. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Howard Kurtz reported this AM that he saw Daschle shop­ping on his own at a local Whole Foods. The past few days, he’s been vis­it­ing an ail­ing brother in SD. He’s a Belt­way insider, no doubt, but less sleazy than is typ­i­cal. As far as I know, there’s no evi­dence of cor­rup­tion in his past. Since he left the Sen­ate, he’s been heav­ily involved in pro­mot­ing Obama, includ­ing con­nect­ing the inex­pe­ri­enced sen­a­tor from Illi­nois w/ sev­eral mem­bers of his very expe­ri­enced staff.

    Here’s a story that decribes Daschle’s career and its con­nec­tion to Obama’s. Many other sto­ries, of course, in the Post.

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​2​/​0​2​/​A​R​2​0​0​9​0​2​0​2​0​0​4​5​9.html

  12. john c said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 am

    Another great jour­nal­ist word is “mulled.” Local offi­cials are always mulling, often to the cha­grin of “irate res­i­dents.”
    Also, bul­lets fired at night appar­ently ring out.

  13. Kirk said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:39 am

    “Irate res­i­dents” reminds me of one of my favorites: “resides.” That is a word never used in con­ver­sa­tion. I don’t reside here; I live here, by God.

  14. Catherine said on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 am

    OK, lashed out has become so overused as to be mean­ing­less. But can we still say tongue-lashing?

  15. Gasman said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    Cather­ine,
    Tongue-lashing; wasn’t that what got Elliot Spitzer in trou­ble?

  16. jeff borden said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    Okay, I am lash­ing out at the over­ex­posed.

    Ex-Gov. Blago­je­vich. Please drink deeply from a glass of STFU and go be ashamed in silence. You have passed your expi­ra­tion date.

    Joe the Plumber. I can’t stand this buf­foon, but appar­ently, he’s now going to be advis­ing a gath­er­ing of young Repub­li­can con­ser­v­a­tives on strat­egy. What an unem­ployed, unli­censed wannabe plumber has to share about polit­i­cal strat­egy at a national level has just got to be com­pelling.

    Mitch McConnell and John Boehner. Please see advice to Rod Blago­je­vich. Your guy lost. Big time. Please quit act­ing like any­one other than Rush Lim­baugh gives a fly­ing fig about what you think.

  17. beb said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    When half the coun­try thinks a com­mode is the same as a toi­let per­haps its time the other half of the coun­try stop try­ing to “edu­cate” them and just pick a new term for a small table with an enclosed cab­i­net.

    Texas is more than wel­come to our for­mer mayor, the felon, but I sus­pect he’ll be back all too soon to answer ques­tions to that there bribery thing.

    If we are to ban­ish “lash­ing out” from news­pa­pers what word should we sub­sti­tute? “Whined seemed good. ‘Karl Rove whined to reporters about hav­ing to answer ques­tions under oath to Congress’…’Republicans whined about Obama’s stim­u­las plan.’ Yeah, that sounds about right to me.

  18. brian stouder said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    See – but say­ing “whine” would be ajudged an overt bit of edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing – even if it is specif­i­cally accu­rate report­ing.

    I like “city man”. If I get hit by a bus, or if I win $27,000,000 on the lot­tery, I am “city man” (at least in the lead sen­tence).

    If I throw a rock at the bus, then I am “irate man” (or “Irate city man” or “irate patron”)

    If I get mur­dered and my remains are found, then I might be reduced to sim­ply “man” – until they fig­ure out I was a “city man”.

    But if you are the mayor or some other per­son with a rec­og­nized title, then you escape the generic…and if you are Blago, you will always be “the impeached gov­er­nor”

  19. LA Mary said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:32 pm

    The Onion has used “Area Man” for years. I think you can get Area Man T shirts.

  20. Kirk said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    “City man” head­lines used to make me think of a guy in a superhero-type cos­tume with a big “C” on his chest.

    As for Blago, he’s on Let­ter­man tonight. And he’s not just impeached, he’s con­victed.

  21. James Moehrke said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    “Area man” is another good one. Those guys are always in the news, most often in some sort of trou­ble.

  22. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    Years ago, Brian, a col­league com­mented that MLK, Jr. was always referred to as “slain civil rights leader MLK, Jr.” Then, one day, we saw a notice about his daugh­ter (and the daugh­ter of Mal­colm X) vis­it­ing out city. And how was she referred to? You guessed it. “Daugh­ter of slain civil rights leader, MLK, Jr.”

  23. Rana said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    If it’s intended to be a pos­i­tive label, then it shifts to “local man,” I’ve noticed. “Local man nom­i­nated for award” or “Local man killed in Iraq,” for exam­ple.

  24. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:44 pm

    William Zinsser has a great pas­sage on tired jour­nal­is­tic prose. Among other things, he notes that notes are always being “fired off”. http://​tinyurl​.com/​czkdmf

    His book, called On Writ­ing Well is a trea­sure. Worth­while both for the plea­sure of his writ­ing and for his good advice.

  25. ROgirl said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:46 pm

    I’m sure a lot of peo­ple were equat­ing the Mer­rill Lynch com­mode with the expen­sive NASA toi­lets.

    My sense is that Car­o­line Kennedy is a smart, thought­ful woman who could have ended up being a good sen­a­tor, but she didn’t give any indi­ca­tion that she ever had a real under­stand­ing of all that would be required of her, includ­ing the scrutiny that every part of her exis­tence would be sub­ject to. I think the trial by fire she under­went was all she needed to real­ize that being a sen­a­tor meant mak­ing her life very pub­lic, and that’s why she with­drew. Was she just being naive, or did she really believe that because of who she is she thought she wouldn’t be sub­ject to the same rules of the game?

  26. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    Daschle is out. Very sad, actu­ally. He’d have been great at shep­herd­ing health care reform through Con­gress.

  27. mark said on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    CNBC just reported that Daschle has with­drawn his nom­i­na­tion.

    Haven’t heard whether he said “I am dis­ap­pointed that I with­drew” to go along with his being dis­ap­pointed with not pay­ing his taxes.

  28. nancy said on February 3rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    What ho, all! The NYT has a lit­tle copy-editing test on their gram­mar blog! You can take it here; answers will be posted tomor­row.

    It’s not as easy as it looks, as I sus­pect it uses actual NYT raw copy. At the News-n-Sentinel the raw stuff some­times appeared to have been writ­ten by mon­keys, even after it went through a so-called line edi­tor.

    Sorry about Daschle, but I’m sor­rier about the will­ful clue­less­ness about tax oblig­a­tions. I pay my fuck­ing taxes, why the hell can’t he? And don’t give me the “he didn’t get a 1099″ excuse, either. That’s a tax dodge, and he should have known it would bite him if he intended to stay in pub­lic life, which he obvi­ously did. Let’s not for­get: He was mak­ing truck­loads of money in this out-of-office period, con­sult­ing for the very com­pa­nies he’d have been deal­ing with as a cab­i­net mem­ber. I know life in Wash­ing­ton is expen­sive, espe­cially if you’re accus­tomed to being treated like a U.S. sen­a­tor, but if this crap doesn’t stop some­where, it doesn’t stop.

    No sym­pa­thy.

  29. MichaelG said on February 3rd, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Another jour­nal­is­tic word: whisked. Peo­ple are for­ever being whisked away.

    I’m kinda pro­macas­sar myself. I don’t know why all you peo­ple are against those harm­less lit­tle scraps of fab­ric.

    Daschle is a total dweeb. A com­plete wee­nie. A weak, mealy mouthed lit­tle twit. He makes Harry “the Lion” Reid look like a hero. Know what Daschle’s wife does? She’s a big time DC lob­by­ist. Makes zil­lions.

  30. whitebeard said on February 3rd, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    My heav­ens, what is the mat­ter with high muckety-mucks and income taxes; don’t they real­ize that it will be their undo­ing even­tu­ally. The aver­age Joe or Jill hates income taxes, they hate the IRS (also known as the Infer­nal Revenoo­ers) and they are afraid of audits so pay their taxes on time.
    When they hear that some­one pow­er­ful is evad­ing taxes, they grind their teeth and clench their fists and become quite out­spo­ken (with­out lash­ing out).
    Didn’t they finally get gang­ster Al Capone on his “tax” prob­lems instead of his “mur­der­ing peo­ple” prob­lems?
    As a Cana­dian, I have a rather lack­adaisi­cal atti­tude toward the IRS and taxes, so my wife has insisted we always use an accoun­tant to do the taxes.
    In Canada I did not file my income tax forms for seven years; I paid my taxes through pay­roll deduc­tions, I just didn’t do the paper­work. When the Revenoo­ers finally noticed, a friendly chap said don’t do all seven years, just do four years and the cur­rent year and we’ll be happy. The good news is that I received an enor­mous refund (tens of thou­sands) for alimony deduc­tions and the Revenoors then tried to find my ex-wife over back taxes owed, which is con­sid­ered a more seri­ous mat­ter than not fill­ing out paper­work each year.

  31. Julie Robinson said on February 3rd, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Another phrase that always infu­ri­ated my jour­nal­ist dad was “com­pletely destroyed”. He would yell at the TV that destroyed already meant com­pletely. You hear it all the time now.

    Tom Daschle’s phys­i­cal resem­blance to a wiesel has proved accu­rate.

  32. whitebeard said on February 3rd, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    I also get upset when I hear com­pletely destroyed but I want to lash out when I hear com­pletely dec­i­mated, which takes some doing, math­e­mat­i­cally speak­ing.
    Do you think that Tom Daschle is com­pletely humil­i­ated now, or would he have his hopes com­pletely dashed? Hmm, “Daschle Hopes Dashed” would fit in the New York Post, wouldn’t it?

  33. brian stouder said on February 3rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm

    Glanced at the quiz; it looks hard! (I’ll take it tonight)

    Re Daschle: our tax col­lec­tion sys­tem is essen­tially on the honor sys­tem. If you get a pay­roll check every week, as I do, then (other than fil­ing the return) it’s all done for you. But if you work a day in the polls and get paif $80, do you report it? If you sell your old car, do you report it? If you run your own busi­ness, and a par­tic­u­lar cus­tomer pays you in cash every so often, do you tell Uncle Sam about that?

    Daschle IS an idiot who clearly knows bet­ter than this; he sup­pressed the impulse to go out of his way to report as income a non-cash ben­e­fit he received….and whereas the IRS missed this, the Obama team did not (although they came to it late)

    By way of say­ing – what Nance said!

  34. nancy said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    “Com­pletely unique.”

  35. MichaelG said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    Mis­takes were made. I’m sorry for what hap­pened. I accept com­plete respon­si­bil­ity. We need to put this behind us and move on.

  36. brian stouder said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    I don’t like “an his­toric” event

    They taught me that “an” pre­cedes a word that begins with a vowel.

    I would love to attend a his­toric event, and if the per­son next to me breath­lessly says “This is an his­toric event”, I will frown (and think to myself “you are an ass”); it just sounds like an intel­lec­tual pre­ten­sion when­ever I hear it

  37. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm

    Not to defend Blago­je­vich (not at all), but he’s not con­victed yet; his intrigu­ing appeal to the Illi­nois sen­ate was obliquely based on the not unten­able ques­tion — what if I’m not con­victed of any­thing? What does this process look like in two years if i’m found inno­cent, or charges are with­drawn?

    Which i think is a darn inter­est­ing ques­tion. I’ve no doubt Fitzger­ald thinks he can get a con­vic­tion, but in front of a jury, with rules of evi­dence and stan­dards of guilt, i think an acquit­tal should not be ruled out.

    Doesn’t mean you can’t impeach some­one not legally guilty of a crime, but it does lead to some inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions, polit­i­cally.

  38. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm

    Well, I don’t feel sorry for him exactly, but, as I said, I think he may have been, if not uniquely qual­i­fied, them among the most highly qual­i­fied to steer health care reform through Con­gress while deal­ing w/ the con­cerns of the cit­i­zenry, the rel­e­vant provider and payer orga­ni­za­tions, and reg­u­la­tory con­cerns. It’s going to be a hard job.

  39. brian stouder said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    Jolene, I bet Michelle Obama can name 3 or 4 peo­ple capa­ble of shoul­der­ing the respon­si­bil­ity of run­ning HHS, from that big Chicago hos­pi­tal where she worked

  40. Kirk said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    Blago has been con­victed by the Sen­ate. That’s why he’s no longer gov­er­nor. The fed­eral charges are another ques­tion.

    Impeach­ment is tan­ta­mount to indict­ment. Bill Clin­ton was impeached; he was not con­victed.

    Each of those impeach­ments, by the way, is accu­rately (and cor­rectly) described as a his­toric event.

  41. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    Could be, Brian. There are lots of experts in health care pol­icy in the world (at uni­ver­si­ties and think tanks, for instance), some of them more knowl­edge­able than Daschle. But I don’t think there are a lot of peo­ple who have both the tech­ni­cal exper­tise and the polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence. Nobody cur­rently in Con­gress comes to mind. Dur­ing the cam­paign, for instance, I was struck by McCain’s inabil­ity to get more than two sen­tences deep in dis­cussing his own health care poli­cies. Not that he’d be next in line, but you’d have thought he’d have been moti­vated to develop a solid two-paragraph pre­sen­ta­tion on the topic.

  42. Dorothy said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    One of my pet peeves:

    “At this point in time” = NOW

  43. brian stouder said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    While we’re pok­ing around people’s rev­enue report­ing mis-steps, it might be time to dive into our Olympic champion’s rev­enue reduc­ing mis-step

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​2​/​0​2​/​A​R​2​0​0​9​0​2​0​2​0​2​9​7​3.html

    Accord­ing to the British tabloid News of the World, which ran a photo of Phelps hunched over a glass tube and torch­ing it up quite pro­fi­ciently with a lighter, he “was out of con­trol from the moment he got there.” Can you imag­ine how much dew he inhaled, with his world-class lung capac­ity? I don’t know exactly what kind of killer nuggets were stuffed into the bowl of that German-made red Roor bong — why should I know such a thing, or even how to use a lighter — but they weren’t cloves.

    Granted, this excerpt is from a sports colum­nist – but it might as well have been in Japan­ese, for all the mean­ing that I am capa­ble of extract­ing from it.

  44. nancy said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    Heh heh. Heh heh. Heh heh heh heh. Heh heh. Heh heh.

    I am Beavis-and-Butthead laugh­ing at Brian.

  45. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    Kirk, i get your point. Thank you! So Blago is con­victed in one sense . . . i’m still going to be curi­ous to see if they can get him con­victed under crim­i­nal guide­lines.

  46. brian stouder said on February 3rd, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    Like, what.. what is, like, a “killer nugget”?

    I, like, heh heh heh, can sorta guess at “dew”…but is she refer­ring to, heh heh heh, hashish?

    Is red Roor a designer make bong?

    Heh heh heh. Heh heh…

    edit: Great Googly-woogley! I rescind the ques­tion about Roor, thanks to the Google. Their web­site actu­ally gave me a con­tact buzz…heh heh heh. Heh heh.

    http://​www​.roor​.de/

  47. coozledad said on February 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    Howard Dean will be fine at HHS. And just think of the money Bill-O will have to drop on get­ting his vibra­tor upgraded to a 2-cycle engine, just so’s he can relax again.

  48. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    I like Howard Dean, but, appar­ently, Barack Obama does not. Nei­ther does Rahm Emmanuel. So he will have to find another gig, and they will have to find another Sec­re­tary of HHS. And, per­haps more impor­tant, some­one to work w/ the var­i­ous con­stituen­cies involved in cre­at­ing new health care pol­icy.

  49. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    Did you all hear, btw, that GM is offer­ing buy­outs to all its hourly work­ers? Appar­ently, they want to down­size that part of their work­force from about 60,000 to about 40,000. Not sure I got those num­bers right, but they’re approx­i­mately cor­rect.

  50. coozledad said on February 3rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm

    Jolene: Yeah. I’ve heard that. It would be nice if they could get some­one who has expe­ri­ence as a physi­cian, or at least some­one who has directed a clinic for lower income peo­ple.
    I’ve known some regional hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tors who were basi­cally exten­sion agents for the insur­ance indus­try, in addi­tion to being racist shites.

  51. Rana said on February 3rd, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    brian, I am with you on the “an historical/historian/historic” thing.

    Nei­ther I nor any of my col­leagues in the field use “an” unless we are imi­tat­ing a pompous git for humor­ous effect.

    I am A his­to­rian, not an his­to­rian, and if I write a work, it is A his­tory (of what­ever). (Though this only sounds cor­rect if you pro­nounce the arti­cle to rhyme with “uh” instead of “ay”.)

  52. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 3rd, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    Mmm, i really, really like Howard Dean. Won­der if Rahm can re-think? He’s show­ing signs of doing so in other areas, so why not Howard?

    And Cony­ers wants to sue Syna­gro for offer­ing *whis­tles, looks around aim­lessly* some­one bribes? I’m think­ing the clas­sic out­come of Teapot Dome, where Doheny was acquit­ted of offer­ing the bribes that Fall was found guilty of tak­ing.

  53. jgw said on February 3rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    Another over used phrase (mostly among moron local politi­cians) is “due dil­li­gence.” I could use that today to say the Obama vet­ting crew didn’t do their due dil­li­gence.

  54. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 3rd, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    Or their doo-doo dili­gence.

  55. Lex said on February 3rd, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Cou­pla thoughts:

    – As a South­erner, let me lash out at the notion that a toi­let isn’t a com­mode.

    – Of course Kwame wasn’t get­ting into the SUV whose door had been open for 20 min­utes … in the dead of win­ter. What kind of reporter couldn’t fig­ure THAT out?

    – O’Donnell is par­tially right. A bet­ter pick for the Sen­ate seat would have been Car­olyn Mal­oney, if you’re look­ing for some­one with, you know, brains.

  56. Gasman said on February 3rd, 2009 at 5:04 pm

    If Daschle’s prob­lems were sim­ply that he didn’t under­stand the tax code, I could be more sym­pa­thetic. Hell, every year I do my taxes I won­der if THIS is the year that I’m going to jail. Not because I’m try­ing to cheat, it’s just the damn process is so f#$%ing con­vo­luted that nobody really under­stands what they are doing. I can eas­ily imag­ine myself mak­ing a mon­u­men­tal error on my taxes with­out any attempt to deceive the IRS.

    How­ever, I sin­cerely doubt that Daschle sits up late in the night plug­ging his num­bers into Turbo Tax. He cer­tainly has peo­ple that do that for him and they prob­a­bly advised him on how much money he could save if he sim­ply over­looked the gift horse, or rather, car and dri­ver. Or, it is entirely pos­si­ble that he decided not to even tell his finan­cial peo­ple. Either way, it doesn’t pass the smell test.

    What trou­bled me most about Daschle was his taint from his pseudo-lobbying of the health care indus­try. That was one of my beefs with Hillary Clin­ton. How can you expect sub­stan­tive reform in the health care indus­try when the per­son you put in charge has been whor­ing for them? Or would it be pimp­ing? Either way, his cred­i­bil­ity was in doubt before his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings even began.

    It’s too bad. I thought that Daschle was basi­cally one of the good guys, or at least he used to be. Maybe it is a les­son in how that kind of money can cor­rupt when one switches alle­giances from pub­lic ser­vice to abject greed.

    I too like the Howard Dean choice. If Obama can suck up to the likes McConnell and Boehner, he can cer­tainly make nice with Dean. I believe that Dean has the bona fides to even pass muster with many Repub­li­cans.

  57. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    Peo­ple, it doesn’t mat­ter how much you like Howard Dean. It’s not going to hap­pen.

    Also, it’s really sim­plis­tic and insult­ing to refer to lob­by­ing and polit­i­cal con­sult­ing as whor­ing.

    How do you think it would be pos­si­ble to acquire the kinds of exper­tise needed w/o some kind of con­nec­tion to an orga­ni­za­tion w/ a finan­cial stake in health care?

  58. Gasman said on February 3rd, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    Jolene,
    There is lob­by­ing and then there is lob­by­ing. When you are finan­cially beholden to an indus­try whose inter­ests are often at odds with aver­age Amer­i­cans it is hard to spin that as any­thing noble. To lobby for the unin­sured, for the home­less, for the dis­af­fected, that is a dif­fer­ent ani­mal alto­gether. How­ever, as they say in Texas, “You dance with them what brung ya’.” If you’re look­ing for sym­pa­thy for those who lobby against the bet­ter inter­ests of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, I sus­pect you’ll get lit­tle pity here.

    Daschle wasn’t lob­by­ing for Habi­tat for Human­ity, he was feath­er­ing his nest.

  59. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 7:12 pm

    Oh, give it a rest, Gas­man. “Get lit­tle pity”? I wasn’t look­ing for any. Daschle was in Con­gress until 2004. Between now and then, he made a lot of money. He also prob­a­bly did as much as any human on the planet who wasn’t employed in the Obama cam­paign to get Obama elected. He was pre­pared to leave his well-funded life to return to gov­ern­ment where he’d make some­where around 150K work­ing from morn­ing to night to improve access to health care and the qual­ity of care for all Americans–not to men­tion run­ning an agency made up of 65,000 peo­ple.

    He’s not a saint, but he’s hardly a con­niv­ing, self-interested bas­tard either. Peo­ple are com­pli­cated. When some­one who’s been on the side of jus­tice most of his life and appears to be launched on excit­ing new enter­prises screws up in a way that is polit­i­cally ter­mi­inal, it’s a tragedy or, at least, very sad. I can’t see tak­ing sat­is­fac­tion in Daschle’s polit­i­cal demise.

  60. brian stouder said on February 3rd, 2009 at 7:25 pm

    What Jolene said!

  61. MarkH said on February 3rd, 2009 at 7:40 pm

    Brian / Rana,

    Cour­tesy of Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­sity, this will clear up “a” vs. “an” his­toric.

    http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/anhistoric.html

    And if you really want to go to town, click on the “list of errors” link. All kinds of usage direc­tion avail­able there.

    BTW, Jolene, I’d go easy on the “hardly a con­niv­ing, self-interested bas­tard” stuff re: Daschle. He’s a plotiti­cian; lots of gray area there. He did take the favors and not account for them, after all.

  62. Gasman said on February 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 pm

    Jolene,
    Hey, if lib­er­als are going to take Repub­li­cans to task for even the appear­ance of impro­pri­ety, then we have to be able to hold our­selves to the same stan­dards. Yes, Daschle was instru­men­tal in get­ting Obama elected. For that I thank him heartily. Does that mean we should over­look legit­i­mate eth­i­cal con­cerns? Hell no! I defy any­body that claims they are more lib­eral than I am, but I will not hold our side to lower eth­i­cal stan­dards than the oppo­site side of the aisle.

    Obama him­self set the bar at a high level. I, for one, will insist that he abide by it. As I said, I don’t think that Daschle is nec­es­sar­ily a bad guy, but how can you over­look this kind of “mis­take?” If lib­er­als want to be smug, then we have to put up or shut up.

  63. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 8:05 pm

    To say, “he’s a politi­cian” as if we should under­stand that the indi­vid­ual is, in all like­li­hood, a crook really con­veys an unfor­tu­nate set of expec­ta­tons.

    Daschle’s tax returns were reviewed for 2006-2008. There were some minor adjust­ments to con­sult­ing income and char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions, but the major issue was the car and dri­ver, which was pro­vided by an orga­ni­za­tion that he worked for. In June 2008, the ques­tion of whether the car and dri­ver should be treated as com­pen­sa­tion occurred to him, and he asked his own con­sul­tant about it. How­ever, noth­ing was done about it at that time. Only at the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary, did he address the issue.

    So, yes, he screwed up. My first reac­tion was, “What’s wrong with those peo­ple?” He has to live by the ame laws as the rest of us. But, still, I think the loss of his exper­tise as a pol­i­cy­maker and polit­i­cal leader is greater than the gain to the Trea­sury.

  64. Jolene said on February 3rd, 2009 at 8:07 pm

    Who said any­thing about over­look­ing his mis­take? I’m just not up for danc­ing on his grave.

  65. Dexter said on February 3rd, 2009 at 8:16 pm

    brian stouder: It wasn’t the $27 mil that you wrote of, but it was a big chunk…I was buy­ing my lit­tle MegaMil­lions chance and a woman who had been scratch­ing in her car ran in all excited…she won a thou­sand on a $2 scratcher…years ago I was behind a man in a liquor store in Auburn who scratched a 50 grand win­ner right there on-the-spot. Ho hum….this lady today had just taken deliv­ery on a new car…all shiny and new .
    There ain’t no work by by gawd we got our lot­tery tick­ets!

  66. Gasman said on February 3rd, 2009 at 8:18 pm

    Jolene,
    Agreed. Let there be no post­mortem jigs. I am not happy about this turn of events. Let us hope that the vet­ting process is extremely thor­ough for any other appointees.

    On the other hand, it is prob­a­bly bet­ter that this came out before Daschle was on the job rather than after. Maybe there will be another role for him else­where at a later time. I agree that it is a shame to lose some­one of his expe­ri­ence. I liked the Daschle nom­i­na­tion.

  67. Dexter said on February 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 pm

    here’s the “Daschle old Pon­tiac” ad that was dis­cussed on TV today:
    http://​www​.swamp​pol​i​tics​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​2​/​d​r​i​v​i​n​g​_​t​o​m​_​d​a​s​c​h​l​e​_​w​a​s​h​i​n​g​t​o​n.html

  68. MarkH said on February 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 pm

    Go, Gas, GO! I, for one, am hav­ing a heart attack over that last post, com­ing from you. Only because of your occa­sional unbri­dled rants against republicans/conservatives. I agree, and if the tables were turned, I’d be say­ing the same about McCain and repub­li­cans. Pres­i­dent Obama has cer­tainly owned up to all this in an admirable mea culpa start­ing with, “I screwed up”. I’m sure he’ll find some­one to make all this right.

    Daschle, and the with­drawal of Nancy Kile­fer, “per­for­mance offi­cer” can­di­date, for tax skat­ing have to be mak­ing Tim Gei­th­ner uncom­fort­able. I still say he has less excuse than any­one given his back­ground for scoff­ing the IRS and the evi­dence that came out shows it. Sen­a­tors Robert Byrd and Susan Collins were right in their dis­sent­ing votes: had Gei­th­ner not been nom­i­nated, he still would have his back taxes unpaid. He should have with­drawn as well.

    Jolene, all I said was, “lots of gray area there”.

  69. brian stouder said on February 3rd, 2009 at 9:21 pm

    Mark H – thanks for the His­tory les­son link!

    Dex­ter – last year Pam gave me a lot­tery ticket she bought, which she said had won $5. I looked it over, and thought it was a $1 win­ner – but a win­ner nonethe­less. I stopped at a Marathon sta­tion and drew a nice tall icy cold Diet Coke, and I had about 75 cents change in my pocket, so I fig­ured I was cov­ered even if the ticket WAS only a dol­lar win­ner.

    I gave the ticket to the cashier and told her I thought it was worth a buck, and she ran the thing through her machine and then promptly counts out my change for the soda pop pur­chase – $98 and some-odd cents. The damned thing was a $100 win­ner!

    And then I was on the horns of an eth­i­cal dilemma: do I dis­close to Pammy that the $5 ticket she blithely handed over to me was actu­ally worth a C-note? I pon­dered that for approx­i­mately 30 sec­onds, but the joke was too good not to tell her (and she instantly snatched my wal­let out of my pocket!! Now THERE was a ‘missed oppor­tu­nity’!)

    I was work­ing on Nance’s edt­ing quizz – but the damned thing is a lot of work! We ain’t talkin’ “pick A B C or D” – you gotta get your hands dirty.

    I did the first two para­graphs, and then scrubbed the mis­sion.

    Here’s the first para­graph they had, and then what I did: (I can­not do the strike through trick, so bold­face words are what I struck out)

    Manny Ramírez also fits the descrip­tion of a future Hall of Famer with­out a team, but his sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent. Ramírez, 36, is still one of the best hit­ters in base­ball and is hop­ing for a mul­ti­year con­tract that will pay him about $25 mil­lion a year. He could have signed by now, he just wants a more sig­nif­i­cant pay­check to do so.

    1. Manny Ramírez also fits the descrip­tion of a future Hall of Famer with­out a team, but his sit­u­a­tion is with a dif­fer­ence. Ramírez, 36, is still one of the best hit­ters in base­ball and is hop­ing for a mul­ti­year con­tract that will pay him about at least $25 mil­lion a year. He could have signed achieved that, but now he just wants to learn the max­i­mum limit of his mar­ket value a more sig­nif­i­cant pay­check to do so.

    If’n I didn’t get any other damned thing right – that gra­tu­itous “just” was SURELY in need of being exor­cized!

  70. julia said on February 3rd, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    I sus­pect the O’Donnell thing is less about Kennedy than it is about Mr. Sheekey, his BFF from his Moyni­han days, who did seri­ous dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion and his cred­i­bil­ity by han­dling the Kennedy thing so badly. Kennedy-friendly news­pa­pers had head­lines around New Years say­ing that she thought Sheekey was being awful and she wanted him to go away.

    O’Donnell also showed up faith­fully when Sheekey was run­ning Bloomberg’s Repub­li­can con­ven­tion, strug­gling to cre­ate a groundswell for Bloomberg’s third party pres­i­den­tial run, and try­ing to get some­body to take a Bloomberg VP big seri­ously. He thought those were just great and mis­un­der­stood too.

  71. Dexter said on February 3rd, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    Today is National Car­rot Day. yep. Ain’t Twit­ter won­der­ful?

  72. Gasman said on February 3rd, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    Daschle had the mis­for­tune of being sec­ond in the tax omis­sion arena, and his was the biggest bill. I’m not sure how he could have made this work. Maybe if he’d cor­rected the mis­take before he was nom­i­nated he could have con­vinced some peo­ple. As it is, pay­ing the taxes in Jan­u­ary? It just looks really bad.

    I do rant so about the Repub­li­cans, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be called hyp­o­crit­i­cal. That’s the prob­lem with set­ting high stan­dards. Peo­ple expect you to live up to them. True, I could often be accused of being shrill, but always hon­est, and to the best of my abil­ity to dis­cern it, eth­i­cal.

  73. moe99 said on February 4th, 2009 at 1:03 am

    This was in our bar news this month and I think the gram­mar tips can be used by more than lawyers:

    http://​www​.wsba​.org/​m​e​d​i​a​/​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​b​a​r​n​e​w​s​/​p​e​e​v​es.htm

  74. Dexter said on February 4th, 2009 at 1:26 am

    great stuff moe99…just recently our host men­tioned the incor­rect usage of “lit­er­ally”. I read the article…”myself” usage , incor­rectly, bugs me the most.

  75. Dexter said on February 4th, 2009 at 2:03 am

    Pater­son tak­ing heat over leaks and lies regard­ing Car­o­line:
    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​2​/​0​4​/​n​y​r​e​g​i​o​n​/​0​4​p​a​t​e​r​s​o​n​.​h​tml?hp

  76. Gasman said on February 4th, 2009 at 2:04 am

    moe99,
    Great link. In regards to “hoi pol­loi,” com­mon usage seems to be at odds with the orig­i­nal Greek. Col­lo­quial usage seems more often than not to mean “upper crust” or “blue-blood” and not “the peo­ple.” The Oxford Online Dic­tio­nary sug­gests that this could be from con­fu­sion with the term “hoity-toity.”

    Regard­ing “alright,” the online edi­tions of Oxford and Cam­bridge do not agree. Maybe we should not be sur­prised. The Cam­bridge Advanced Learner’s Dic­tio­nary accepts “alright” and Oxford does not. At least not the Oxford that comes as a Wid­get on Macs. For what it is worth, my Mac’s word pro­cess­ing pro­gram, “Pages” does not mind it one bit. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dic­tio­nary dates its usage to 1887 and states that jour­nal­ists, busi­ness writ­ers, and writ­ers of fic­tion are the most cul­pa­ble for pro­mul­gat­ing “alright.”

    If those pointy headed dons at Cam­bridge don’t mind, this Amer­i­can philis­tine is all right with alright.

  77. Dexter said on February 4th, 2009 at 2:51 am

    gasser: For years I have had to strug­gle every time…”alright” always looks very “not all right”…but I suc­cumb, because ,as Mr. Alexan­der in “A Clock­work Orange” would say, I am “A VICTIM OF THE MODERN AGE! “

  78. Gasman said on February 4th, 2009 at 3:01 am

    Dex­ter,
    What time zone are you in? Here in MST it’s damn late. If you are any­where east of me you are indeed a night owl. Go to bed!

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