49 responses to
“Boats against the current.”

1. judybusy said on April 14th, 2009 at 9:00 am

   Sadly, Norm Cole­man will likely appeal. It is very frus­trat­ing for this MN resident!

   And about the anti-taxers: it seems to me they protest the most when Democ­rats do the rais­ing of taxes (which seems they actu­ally haven’t done in a good long while.…hmmmm) and when the money is spent for things other than death and vio­lence. How many of them have uttered a peep about the hor­ren­dous cost of the Iraq war? But sug­gest we spend money for health­care, and all of a sud­den we haven’t a dime to spare!

2. mark said on April 14th, 2009 at 9:14 am

   Yes, those mak­ing under 250K should be happy as a fox in the hen­house. There is plenty of money for every­thing once the nasty rich peo­ple pay their fair share, which must be some­thing more than the 70% of all fed­eral income tax receipts already col­lected from the top 10% of earn­ers. All that blood-letting is for my ben­e­fit, and that of every­one else not pulling down the big bucks, so I should cheer it and anx­iously await all the good­ies the new regime will throw my way.

   And since most of us con­tribute noth­ing of con­se­quence, it’s really none of our busi­ness what gov­ern­ment does with the money it col­lects from those obscenely wealthy folks. If hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars are funelled through AIG to parts undis­closed, that’s the busi­ness of my bet­ters. They don’t have to answer to me.

   The new dic­ta­tor is a benev­o­lent Aris­totlean, not a crazed Nero like the last guy. Once I know that, I don’t need to know any­thing more.

   I hope the gov­ern­ment spends tril­lions more, now, on me, because only future rich peo­ple will repay those loans. I’ll turn off my brain and quit wor­ry­ing about my coun­try in exchange for a bag of good­ies paid for by some­body else.

   And if the bag of good­ies is big enough, and the class war­fare fought with suf­fi­cient vigor, I won’t notice those lit­tle induce­ments that will, I’m sure, just make my life bet­ter and bet­ter. Like cig­a­rette and tobacco taxes, which I’m sure must be just goug­ing the hell out of the rich. And alco­hol taxes. And taxes on util­i­ties and gaso­line. And cell phones and cable TV. And user fees, park­ing meter increases, court costs, sales taxes, hos­pi­tal­ity and food and bev­er­age taxes, estate taxes, taxes on div­i­dends, taxes on cap­i­tal gains and taxes on doc­tor bills. And wheel taxes, licens­ing fees, air­port sur­charges, enter­tain­ment taxes, state and local income taxes, prop­erty taxes, social secu­rity taxes, medicare taxes, excise taxes, tolls, spe­cial assess­ments and levies.

   No, how gov­ern­ment spends it’s money is none of my busi­ness. It’s all for my own good and paid for by some­body else.

3. coozledad said on April 14th, 2009 at 9:49 am

   The rich are rich because the poor don’t make shit mak­ing the rich richer. And the racist dem­a­gogues are on the TV and the radio encour­ag­ing the poor to take one up the ass for Paris Hilton.
   What’s all this shit about con­flat­ing tal­ent with wealth? I’ve never seen a tal­ented rich kid, per­son­ally. I’ve seen them use their resources to put them­selves in the mix, but the lack of human expe­ri­ence mostly ren­ders them help­less morons.
   Or to quote a pop­u­lar Repub­li­can fuck­stick slo­gan, Free­dom isn’t free. You don’t do the fight­ing and dying, you don’t grow the food, you don’t clean the floors, you don’t build stuff. You only make sure your loath­some asses scarf up the money, then crank out a bunch of ass­wipe kids to scarf up even more. And it’s not even real money. The only thing back­ing the cur­rency from Rea­gan on has been the swag­ger­ing greasy rubes who con­verted the trea­sury into a steam­ing pile of neo­trash pseudo­Ge­or­gian edi­fices and Hum­mers. His­tory says you moth­er­fuck­ing sucked balls, and you’re under­lin­ing it with the whole teabag­ging thing. Way to go, douchebags.

   Show me this moth­er­fuck­ing tal­ent I keep hear­ing about ad nauseum.

4. MichaelG said on April 14th, 2009 at 10:00 am

   Rachel Mad­dow and Ana Marie Cox had a gig­gle fest last night about the teabaggers.

   Arcata is a great town along with its neigh­bor, Eureka. It’s on the coast about 80 miles south of the Ore­gon bor­der. It com­bines fish­ing, tourism, log­ging, cat­tle ranch­ing and ille­gal stuff grow­ing with a nice lit­tle U (Hum­boldt State) and a ton of old unre­con­structed hip­pies. I’ve done a cou­ple of jobs in the area. One was at the CHP field office in Arcata. Very nice peo­ple. I was again struck by the obser­va­tion that CHP offi­cers are a cut above other cops in every way. Any­how, Arcata has an air­port with sev­eral flights per day to SF and Sacto, beau­ti­ful moun­tains, the ocean, excel­lent restau­rants, nice bars and a mild, if damp, cli­mate. The drive to get there is spec­tac­u­lar, whether up 101 through the red­woods or over 299 through the moun­tains. The Arcata Eye fits. Worth a trip.

5. del said on April 14th, 2009 at 10:30 am

   Here’s Krugman’s take on the Tea Party issue from the NYT today:

   These par­ties — anti­tax­a­tion demon­stra­tions that are sup­posed to evoke the mem­ory of the Boston Tea Party and the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion — have been the sub­ject of con­sid­er­able mock­ery, and rightly so.

   But every­thing that crit­ics mock about these par­ties has long been stan­dard prac­tice within the Repub­li­can Party.

   Thus, Pres­i­dent Obama is being called a “social­ist” who seeks to destroy cap­i­tal­ism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Amer­i­cans back to, um, about 10 per­cent­age points less than it was for most of the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion. Bizarre.

6. whitebeard said on April 14th, 2009 at 10:36 am

   Quick, aome­one, any­one, please. Find Mark’s meds and Coo­zledad and I will shove them down his throat. Get over it, Repugs, your team lost and the tea party move­ment against taxes is too late to save your blood-sucking, money-grabbing, coupon-clipping hides.
   There, my rant is over; now I can go read about another infected boil from the sep­tic Bush era being lanced.
   And, Del, great clip from Paul Krug­man about try­ing to restore fair tax­a­tion for the fat cats.

7. moe99 said on April 14th, 2009 at 10:37 am

   Sorry to hear about the death of Mark Fidrych. I always enjoyed him.

   http://​www​.boston​.com/​s​p​o​r​t​s​/​b​a​s​e​b​a​l​l​/​r​e​d​s​o​x​/​e​x​t​r​a​s​/​e​x​t​r​a​_​b​a​s​e​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​f​i​d​r​y​c​h​_​k​i​l​l​e​d.html

8. Carolyn said on April 14th, 2009 at 10:39 am

   Nancy — Your gut is right in every way with what you’re going for on your local site.

9. Joe Kobiela said on April 14th, 2009 at 10:49 am

   I’ve never seen a tal­ented rich kid? Define rich. $100,000? 50,000, might be rich to some. 1,000,0000 rich to some not to oth­ers.
   How about the guy in Fla yes­ter­day who landed a King air-200 after the pilot died? He must have been rich, due to the fact he was fly­ing in a corp air­plane, and we all know only the rich can fly in corp air­planes. Guess he was tal­ented.
   Bill Gates is rich, he’s tal­ented, What about Phil Simms kid, he was rich, he has tal­ent. Joe Montanna’s kids are rich they have tal­ent. How about Mike
   Jordan’s boy?
   Any­one want to join in. Name some tal­ented rich kids.
   I bet we can do it with out drop­ping the F-bomb too.
   Pilot Joe

10. del said on April 14th, 2009 at 10:51 am

    I’m sorry that you feel so aggrieved Mark. Con­sider look­ing at things dif­fer­ently though. Instead of describ­ing those who make the most as the top 10% of “earn­ers,” ques­tion whether get­ting is the same as earn­ing. Remem­ber when A-Rod inked a multi-year Yan­kee con­tract with a value exceed­ing North Korea’s annual GNP? His tal­ent is very rare as hit­ting 100 mph fast­balls and cut­ters is dif­fi­cult but does A-Rod truly earn that money? Hell no.

    What’s more, he cheats.

11. LA Mary said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:06 am

    Read­ing the Arcata Eye has made me feel good about my son choos­ing to not attend Hum­boldt State. I cer­tainly under­stand Arcata’s charms. Been there, done that, came out ok any­way. The son is talk­ing about trans­fer­ring to UC Davis next year to study wine grape growing.

12. mark said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:12 am

    del–

    I’m far less con­cerned with the rate for the rich than I am with the absurd spend­ing, the fan­ning of the class-warfare flames, the ridicu­lous com­plex­ity of our tax code, and the real­ity that we crush our work­ing poor with exor­bi­tant taxes and fees directed at their lives, while encour­ag­ing them to get rich play­ing the lottery.

    Do you real­ize that last week Obama, with no prior notice, dis­cus­sion or con­gres­sional input, pledged $140 bil­lion in new US sup­port for the IMF? How many days of con­gres­sional hear­ings and how much pub­lic angst did it require to com­mit one-tenth that amount for the US auto companies?

    The pub­lic resentment/concern is about much more than rais­ing the top fed­eral tax rate.

    In my mod­er­ate sized town, there are fed­eral grants galore to sub­si­dize the con­struc­tion of yet more mid­dle class hous­ing to feed the cur­rent glut, while sewer rates are tripling to pay for new sew­ers to keep the sewage out of the rivers. Wealthy builders paid by gov­ern­ment to con­struct what we don’t need and low-income cit­i­zens dis­pro­por­tion­ately pay­ing for what we have to have.

    And I agree about A-Rod, but that mar­ket will even­tu­ally cor­rect, unless we decide we have to suib­si­dize it to avoid sys­temic collapse.

13. jcburns said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:12 am

    That’s exactly the right dis­tinc­tion. Did Bill Gates earn his wealth? Not so much. (Although I have no prob­lems with how he’s attempt­ing to dis­trib­ute some of it now char­i­ta­bly once he has it.)
    And if I were for­tu­nate enough to take home more than $250K, I think I’d find the tax rate quite fair and undictatorial.

    Rich kids, you want a def­i­n­i­tion? Easy. Par­ents take home more than $250K. Maybe I’d bump it to $400K. They are the chil­dren of the rich. They are afforded priv­i­lege that kids of the $100K fam­i­lies aren’t.

    They could still lead com­fort­able lives if $100K was chopped from their fam­i­lies’ annual earnings…in part because when you have that amount of pad, you can pay for and pay off stuff that’ll still be around when you have less work­ing capital.

14. MichaelG said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:42 am

    UC Davis is an excel­lent school. The People’s Repub­lic of Davis is a very nice town. It’s a col­lege and agro town. Again, good food, good bars, good the­ater and con­cert town, not as col­or­ful as Arcata and it’s a hot, dry place. Lotsa libruls. It’s also known as one of the most bicy­cle friendly towns in the U.S. Easy free­way access to the Bay Area and Sacra­mento and to I-5 and thence L. A. It’s only a few miles from Sacto air­port with a dozen or so daily flights to Bur­bank. Prob­a­bly fewer now with the slow down, but still. Your son could do a whole lot worse than Davis, Mary, and if he’s inter­ested in oenol­ogy or viti­cul­ture, Davis is the best there is.

15. Sue said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Mark, what do you mean by “fed­eral grants galore”? My munic­i­pal­ity goes after grants, and gets only a few. No stim­u­lus money for us, although we applied for it, along with every­one else. What grants are avail­able for “mid­dle class hous­ing”? Our munic­i­pal­ity nego­ti­ates with indi­vid­ual devel­op­ers to sell a cer­tain num­ber of house/lot pack­ages intended to be more afford­able, and if they want to build, even in these times, they had bet­ter be will­ing to nego­ti­ate; we are not inter­ested in “take the money and run” devel­op­ers. Our HUD Hous­ing Author­ity con­cen­trates on hous­ing for extreme low income indi­vid­u­als, and works with land­lords who usu­ally take a cut or go through hoops to qual­ify. Where do you live that wealthy builders have that much power, New Lon­don? And where is your tax­pay­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, run­ning can­di­dates to fight the local fee increases?
    Mark, you’re one of my “other side” favorites. You’re not on your game today. What’s up?

16. LA Mary said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:53 am

    Michael,
    I’m ok with Davis. He checked it out at Christ­mas time while vis­it­ing his girlfriend’s grand­par­ents and was very stoked up about it. Bike friendly, agro and good food all sound like my son’s sort of place. I think the girl­friend is trans­fer­ring there as well, which is at this point more impor­tant than the food and the bikes.

17. coozledad said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:53 am

    I’ve heard the same bitch­ing from guys whose busi­nesses were built on the backs of state insti­tu­tions. State funded research, stu­dent staffed lab­o­ra­to­ries, and some geek walks away with a patent and a bil­lion dol­lar busi­ness. And taxes are break­ing his back. Spare me.
    Oh. And lest I for­get, Fuck them.
    And what’s with the Bowd­ler­iza­tion? I’m cer­tain Shake­speare said fuck when “crawl­ing between the sump­tu­ous sheets” or some­thing, wasn’t terse enough. I’ve also been led to under­stand it’s one of the two most pop­u­lar final words in the Eng­lish lan­guage.
    I spoke with a woman who had a par­rot whose sole expres­sion was Fuck. Until it learned “Fuck it”.

18. del said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    Mark, I don’t like the term “class war­fare.” The words war/warfare are overused hyper­bole offered by polemi­cists; they should be reserved to mean, war and war­fare, alone.

    That said, I too would pre­fer more clar­ity in the tax code. I just read in today’s Detroit News that tax law was “unclear” about whether folks seek­ing to reclaim their 2008 IRA con­tri­bu­tions could do so with­out penalty if they’d filed their returns already. To me com­plex­ity in the Code is exploited by those who can do so (and we all know who they are).

    I’m sur­prised to hear that the feds are sub­si­diz­ing sprawl, that was always the province of pri­vate con­cerns, I thought. It’s a huge waste of resources to keep expand­ing our met­ro­pol­i­tan infra­struc­tures ever out­ward while let­ting older areas decay. Here in Detroit those who’ve fled to the sub­urbs are prone to declare about Detroit’s core, “let them take care of them­selves.” In other words, I’ve got mine, now you get yours. I may have rec­om­mended it here before but a book I highly rec­om­mend is enti­tled: “Sub­ur­ban Nation — The rise of sprawl and the decline of the Amer­i­can dream.” One of the 3 authors, I think was Andres Duany? Part of a move­ment called New Urbanism.

19. Sue said on April 14th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    I didn’t say the F-word until I was in my for­ties. It’s a rude word but it keeps pop­ping out now. My main objec­tion at this point is that it’s a verb, not an adjec­tive. I wish peo­ple would keep that in mind and use it cor­rectly; gram­mar is impor­tant, you know.
    And a friend of mine had a cat she named “Fucker”. Very funny, until it got lost one night and she spent a cou­ple of hours wan­der­ing around her apart­ment com­plex, cry­ing and call­ing him. She did find him even­tu­ally and he was called Frank after that.

20. coozledad said on April 14th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Sue; I’ll bet a woman wan­der­ing around cry­ing and call­ing “Fucker” made for a few ner­vous men in the apart­ment complex.

21. del said on April 14th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    That was rich Cooz. Ash­ley Morris’s favorite was also rich — fuck­mook. Classic.

22. LA Mary said on April 14th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    I know of at least three cats in Eng­land named Cook­ing Fat. They are fond of their Spooner­isms in the UK.

23. Nancy P. said on April 14th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    Have you read Scott Adams’ blog “How I Saved News­pa­pers”?
    http://​dil​bert​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​e​n​t​r​y​/​h​o​w​_​i​_​s​a​v​e​d​_​n​e​w​s​p​apers/

24. brian stouder said on April 14th, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    I like the Pub­lic Safety Map; very cool!

    In my dotage, I have taken to lis­ten­ing to Fort Wayne police and fire on in the inter­net in the evenings, as I play hearts or read nn.c, and it is amaz­ing. Despite that Fort Wayne ain’t that big, all sorts of bad things hap­pen, every sin­gle night. The sig­nal for Domes­tic Dis­tur­bance (42, I think) is a biggy, and God knows what that means from one time to the next.

    Just before Easter, I heard a pur­suit — it was down US-24, and the police­man radioed that the dri­ver blew through the red­light at Engle Road (peo­ple have been killed there on many occa­sions), and then veered onto Aboite Cen­ter Road, where speeds had exceeded 80 mph.…when a matter-of-fact bar­ri­tone voice said “Ter­mi­nate the pur­suit”; the guy got away. (They had his plate num­ber, so pre­sume­ably he’ll get his day in the dock)

    By way of say­ing, if there’s a police pur­suit in your neck of the woods, that should get a blue line on the Pub­lic Safety Map!

25. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 14th, 2009 at 6:40 pm

    Scott Adams — it ain’t gonna work, and my proof is the Cub Pack website/blog. Every­one “wants” the info in a handy, cen­tral site, and wants to see pic­tures (mainly of their kids, and maybe their kids’ friends), and every­one says they’ll for­ward you info, help with updates, and email you pho­tos they took at events.

    They don’t.

    Then they ask at pack meet­ings “there hasn’t been any­thing new added to the web­site this week! What’s up?” Same deal for neigh­bor­hood asso­ci­a­tion, vol­un­teer group at local his­toric land­mark, con­gre­ga­tion — every­one wants con­tent, and there’s info out there peo­ple want, but the abil­ity to man­age info, assem­ble data, and pack­age it into use­able form (let alone appeal­ing for­mats) is a non-universal qual­ity. Don’t know how you get peo­ple to put it together with­out a cer­tain crit­i­cal mass of paid crafts­peo­ple at work. How to get pay­ment out of peo­ple for that i don’t know, but the net capac­ity of vol­un­teers to cre­ate and pro­duce even super-local news is super-limited.

    We have e-newsletters com­ing out of the schools, and it’s a fifth busi­ness for the staffer doing it, and you can tell which prin­ci­pals have the touch and which don’t — bless ‘em, most don’t. Vil­lage press releases read like … munic­i­pal employee pro­duced press releases.

    Any­how, i’m baf­fled as to how super-local is going to be this self-generating deal. Yes, Scott, every­one wants it, but the hard fact is a) not every­one can pro­duce usable con­tent, or even read­able, com­pre­hen­si­ble con­tent, and b) most peo­ple talk about it, but never actu­ally get around to even try­ing. It’s like all the peo­ple who want to write a col­umn in the worst way, beg for years at editor’s desks, and then get the chance … and quit after about three months. Because the next week is star­ing at you, and …

26. JPK said on April 14th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    Any­one want to join in. Name some tal­ented rich kids.
    I bet we can do it with out drop­ping the F-bomb too.

    Ted Kennedy.

27. Scout said on April 14th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Mark, sorry to sound sim­plis­tic, but maybe now you can under­stand how peo­ple like me felt for the past 8 years, hav­ing our taxes finance: an immoral and ille­gal war, tax cuts for peo­ple who didn’t hon­estly need the money and no-bid con­tracts to ver­min like Hal­libur­ton and KBR. To name a but a few. Class war­fare rants from peo­ple who never said boo about any­thing Bush spent money on do not move me. And Fox Noise fake pop­ulist teabag­ging par­ties are just a joke. In more ways than they intended. Idiots.

28. nancy said on April 14th, 2009 at 7:16 pm

    And I’m sorry, but why is class war­fare wrong when it’s directed against the rich but just fine when it’s aimed at filthy hip­pies and east­ern elit­ists and Woody Allen, who as we all recall from the teach­ings of Speaker Gin­grich, rep­re­sents the val­ues of the Demo­c­ra­tic party? Who talked about how good it was to be back in the “real” Amer­ica? Just wondering.

29. alex said on April 14th, 2009 at 7:40 pm

    Regard­ing the item upthread about the f-bomb as an adjec­tive, the first time I ever heard any­one use it as every other word was when I was still rather young. I was in the Zoli’s on Broad­way in Fort Wayne and a kit­ten­ish old floozy in a teased blonde bee­hive who was innebri­ated and in a foul mood let loose with the longest string of f-bombs I’d ever heard.

    Today I hear peo­ple in pub­lic let­ting loose in this fash­ion all the time, par­tic­u­larly the younger gen­er­a­tion, and the tone is casual, not rag­ing drunk. Per­haps one day within our life­times the f-bomb will cease to have any shock value what­so­ever and some other word will take its place.

    Any nom­i­na­tions for the next biggest dirty adjective?

30. Scout said on April 14th, 2009 at 7:54 pm

    Alex — Palin? As in, “Give me a Palin break.”

31. coozledad said on April 14th, 2009 at 7:59 pm

    Alex: Appar­ently it’s in com­mon usage among pri­mary school kids in Ire­land, and come to think of it, once when my wife and I were shuf­fling between bars on the upper east side of Man­hat­tan, we saw a prim lit­tle nine year old girl on a Catholic school out­ing refer to a boy in glasses as “you fuckin’ fro­g­eye”.
    I don’t know about adjec­tives, but I thought England’s “Bas­tard Fuck­pig” from the eight­ies had a nice ring to it.

32. basset said on April 14th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    Bush.

33. Catherine said on April 14th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

    My favorite Irish swear word, learned from Roddy Doyle: Shite. It’s mainly a noun, though.

34. coozledad said on April 14th, 2009 at 8:47 pm

    Cather­ine:
    A usage that’s sel­dom got right
    Is when to say shit and when shite;
    And many a chap
    Will fall back on crap,
    Which is vul­gar, eva­sive and trite.
    –Robert Conquest

    The BBC has also recently approved the use of gob­shite and bogshite for Ulster television.The exam­ple they gave for bogshite is my favorite. It roughly trans­lates to red­neck.
    “Look. I’m as Irish as any­one, but I’m not some bogshite from Cork.“
    http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004633.html

35. Deborah said on April 14th, 2009 at 9:03 pm

    When I’m feel­ing par­tic­u­larly moody, my hus­band says “Buck up fuc­knose”. It cracks me up every time. Which of course is why he says it.

36. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:10 pm

    Ah, the Daily Show (11:07 pm) has the ani­ma­tion issue on the Somali pirates sit­u­a­tion flaw­lessly cov­ered. Theirs looks much bet­ter than the NBC ani­ma­tion, no dis­put­ing it.

37. Catherine said on April 14th, 2009 at 11:30 pm

    Wow. Poetry that rhymes shite *and* crap. I’m def­i­nitely going to have to use some of my (lim­ited) brain cells on mem­o­riz­ing that one.

38. moe99 said on April 15th, 2009 at 1:12 am

    C’dad: I’m steal­ing that poetry to share with oth­ers. That was damn good. Just got back from a ses­sion meet­ing and the report back from our Pres­bytery meet­ing last month about the vote on the mea­sure to open up ordi­na­tion to GLBT folks was just very bad, so I am in a foul mood. I take con­so­la­tion in know­ing that by the time the cur­rent 20 some­things have taken over, it’s not going to mat­ter, because they don’t care about such a stu­pid thing.

39. basset said on April 15th, 2009 at 7:40 am

    Yeah, and back in the 70s pot was gonna be legal once we became lawyers and judges.

    »Vil­lage press releases read like … munic­i­pal employee pro­duced press releases.

    Some of ‘em are indeed pretty awful… I’m a munic­i­pal employee and I write press releases, I can say that. You’re right, though, about lack of vol­un­teer com­mit­ment… if it’s everybody’s job, it’s nobody’s job and it doesn’t get done.

40. Cosmo Panzini said on April 15th, 2009 at 8:39 am

    Fox News on the TV in the police sta­tion? What a sur­prise. Just for fun, when the oppor­tu­nity arises and cops are around, I like to refer to Faux News as The Bull­shit Factory.

41. mark said on April 15th, 2009 at 8:49 am

    .…Woody Allen.…?

42. nancy said on April 15th, 2009 at 8:52 am

    You were prob­a­bly in law school or maybe a high chair, Mark — it was a while ago (1992). Back­ground.

43. mark said on April 15th, 2009 at 8:57 am

    Well that’s the kind of ser­vice that earns you a loyal following.

44. brian stouder said on April 15th, 2009 at 9:05 am

    And it’s worth not­ing that if the bull­shit fac­to­ries work long and dili­gently enough spew­ing their ‘prod­uct’ across cable tv and mid-day radio, even­tu­ally some small num­ber of their bullshit-covered shit-for-brains con­sumers will ‘blos­som’ into some­thing else.

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​3​0​2​22789/

    The Pitts­burg shooter looks a lot like a bull­shit fac­tory turd blossom

45. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 15th, 2009 at 9:53 am

    So, I’m cry­ing, i’m angry, i’m pray­ing. And if you read this, you’ll do all three, too, and you don’t even know Tiffany (prob­a­bly). In all hon­esty, i’m curs­ing, too.

    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​1​5​/​u​s​/​1​5​l​a​n​d.html

    That’s the con­text of my day job. Tiffany’s a win, Trevor’s a lose, and our bat­ting aver­age is about .700, as you can read in the arti­cle. Which isn’t good enough, d*** it. I’m almost sorry i can’t freely throw the f-bomb around like many of you, because i’m in the right mood for it after read­ing this arti­cle just after doing a “Trevor” medi­a­tion at 7:30 this am.

46. mark said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:09 am

    Thanks for the link, Jeff.

    I’ll let my con­ser­v­a­tive and other bias run loose and get straight to the point. I don’t buy the “Tiffany’s afraid to leave the small town, it’s all she knows” stuff. Tiffany is look­ing for love and approval from a dead­beat young man who has no inter­est in her poten­tial or her success.

    There are a hun­dred good uni­ver­si­ties that would pay to have a tal­ent and a suc­cess like Tiffany on their cam­pus. But Trevor the unem­ployed drop-out is con­duct­ing this performance.

47. Dorothy said on April 15th, 2009 at 10:49 am

    BRIAN!!! Gasp — no “h” on that Pitts­burg?!?! For shame!

    We were in Pitts­burgh over Easter week­end and we were aston­ished to see this on the news: Poplawski’s grand­mother (he’s the scum­bag who killed three police offi­cers) chained her­self to the front steps at the house where the shoot­ings took place. She said she needed to get med­ical records, med­i­cines, pri­vate papers from inside and the police would not let her go in. It’s an active crime scene so of course she couldn’t enter. She sat there wrapped up in blan­kets, with her cat, in the rain, chain smok­ing and weep­ing. The neigh­bors were extremely pissed at her, so they formed counter demon­stra­tions right in front of the house to draw atten­tion away from her sorry ass. It was an embar­rass­ment. Like the police in Zone 5 really needed to be deal­ing with that crap. See­ing the way the grand­mother acted and spoke told us vol­umes about the ass­hole who shot those fine young men.

48. brian stouder said on April 15th, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    Sorry about the H, Dorothy!

    Look­ing back at it, it looks wrong enough that it SHOULD have prompted me to check it —  but I have no excuse

49. ejohnson said on April 15th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    Ah hyper­local jour­nal­ism. Check­ing out those Reader’s Digest-style sites and hear­ing about their big grants makes me won­der what I’m doing wrong. Oh yeah, I’m actu­ally com­ing up with my own sto­ries, albeit with a dif­fer­ent spin than I was allowed as a news­pa­per reporter. Mean­while, the Chicago Tribune’s Tri­bLo­cal, a glo­ri­fied bul­letin board for local press releases, cruises my site daily for ideas. And sells ads.

    I’ll be avidly fol­low­ing your site, Nancy, to see how it evolves.