For someone who spends as much time as I do online, I frequently find online research…enervating. That means “causing one to feel drained of energy,” in case you’re one of those “it kind of sounds like ‘invigorating,’ so close enough” people. Tabbed browsing is a wonderful thing, but every so often you look up and discover you have four windows, each with eight tabs open, and half you can’t even remember why they were important.
And then you get an email that says, check out this other thing. Soon: Three more windows, nine more tabs each.
Believe it or not, this is actually an improvement. I used to print everything. Back when someone else was buying my ink and paper, yes.
It’s interesting how we adapt to these things. A giant pile of papers on your desk used to be the sign of a serious person. I kept every letter a reader wrote to me for years and years. When I went on maternity leave (12 years after I started the job), I finally decided I could pitch that stuff. Friends, I regret to tell you that the Brian Stouder papers went with them, but if we don’t have them anymore, well. That’s what happens.
Today, I carry it all with me. Downside: If my laptop ever gets ripped off, I am screwed nine ways from Sunday.
(But yes, I back up. And I use the cloud. So it’ll take a laptop theft and a thermonuclear pulse to really screw me.)
So that was my day. That, and talking on the phone, mostly leaving messages. So you can imagine why, at 5:15, I contrived an errand involving mailing two letters and buying two lemons at the grocery down the street. (Veal scallopini.) Just to have a chance to move arms and legs in something resembling exercise.
Which is my way of saying I don’t have much today. Tomorrow will be better. But a little bloggage:
Bridge is running a big package yesterday and tomorrow, about the need for more and better early-childhood education. Everyone agrees it’s a great investment with big payoff down the line, and yet? Thirty thousand kids don’t get it. Go figure.
We were talking about the German industrial sector the other day? Here’s something about that, from Slate.
And with that, I’m out of gas. A good day to all.
brian stouder said on September 26, 2012 at 6:56 am
It’s at least somewhat possible that I still have a few Nancy Nall papers, somewhere or another; but indeed, they’re from a lifetime ago, and three moves, and major upheaval. (could be in a cache somewhere in gramma’s garage…or not)
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beb said on September 26, 2012 at 8:12 am
If there are 600,000 unfilled skilled trade positions in this country it’s because manufacturers want someone else to pay for the training and give them experience in that skill. Unlike Volkswagen they feel that training is a drain on their profits and once they get someone trained they’ll just go to someone else who pays a better wage. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Eschaton.com has a couple of outrage-of-the-day links..on the same day. One was an article in Forbes which argues that Millennials all expect to be given new, high-end cars. The author states that he and his brother wouldn’t even consider getting a driver’s license until that red convertible or the BMW was in the driveway. I’m sure every one he knows is just like that, because they’re all part of the 1%. For the rest of us, not so much.
The other piece, linked from mediamatters, was a quote from a Lars Larson editorial where he complains that many of the people he uses using food stamps on groceries don’t look elderly or infirm,. and wonders why they don’t go out and get a job. Instead of mooching off the high taxes of Lars Larson. How does one get to be a syndicates columnist and not realize that food stamps aren’t just for the unemployed, but for the working poor as well.
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beb said on September 26, 2012 at 8:29 am
This is racist?
http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/victorias-secret-geisha-lingerie-sparks-controversy-one-blogger-201500394.html
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coozledad said on September 26, 2012 at 8:45 am
Sheesh, The get ups people will get in to screw.
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coozledad said on September 26, 2012 at 8:52 am
Speaking of get ups, what’s this sweater/purse ensemble supposed to project?
It looks like a walking testis painted with mercurochrome.
http://www.dependablerenegade.com/dependable_renegade/2012/09/fashion.html#comments
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alex said on September 26, 2012 at 9:02 am
Tom and Lorenzo ain’t got nothin’ on you, Cooz.
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Julie Robinson said on September 26, 2012 at 9:06 am
So someone looked at the Victoria’s Secret catalog and was offended only because of the geisha references. Hello, forest? Trees?
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Julie Robinson said on September 26, 2012 at 9:30 am
And for all the Albom haters, I bring you the headline from the JG’s review of his new book, The Time Keeper: “‘Keeper’ waste of time for readers”. And from the review itself: “Time is precious. The good news is that readers can save themselves tens of valuable minutes by skipping this novel.”
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Peter said on September 26, 2012 at 9:38 am
Beb: You can add this to your Lars Larsen critique: I was griping about something to my local AIA rep last week when she mentioned that it appears that finally local architecture billing safe up: one member told her that his work has increased enough to the point where he’s off food stamps.
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Peter said on September 26, 2012 at 9:38 am
Edit: make that architecture billings are up. A balky keyboard and no edit function will do that to you.
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brian stouder said on September 26, 2012 at 9:49 am
The author states that he and his brother wouldn’t even consider getting a driver’s license until that red convertible or the BMW was in the driveway.
Beb, amazing, isn’t it? I can’t decide if that writer is really that insulated from reality, or simply that blatantly dishonest.
Not to sound like an old guy, but when my friends and I turned 16 and could get a driver’s license, there was never any thought about NOT getting one; and our first cars were all pretty sorry pieces of iron, but we were all very proud of them.
One friend had a (very used) Ford Maverick; another had an ancient Chrysler Newport – which was approximately the length of a river barge, and which had push-button transmission and a funny rearview mirror that was mounted on the dashboard (if the back seat was full of passengers, the mirror was useless); another had a ’66 Olds Eighty-Eight, which was even longer than the Chrysler, and which could hold 4 passengers in the trunk reasonably comfortably (useful for getting into the drive-in or Baer Field raceways on carload night); and I had a ’65 Dodge Polara with a gas guage that didn’t work, which always started.
And – I think Beb’s Forbe’s columnist outed himself as dishonest, since I don’t think “food stamps” actually exist anymore. Back when I was a teenager working at a supermarket, people brought in booklets of actual “food stamp” coupons, and everyone around could plainly see that this person is using food stamps, and then quietly critique their judgement on everything they purchased.
But nowadays this is all on EBT cards – which, to folks standing in the area are indistinguishable from any other debit card a person might use
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Suzanne said on September 26, 2012 at 10:01 am
Amen, beb @2. This has been my mantra for the past few years. On the job training is a thing of the past. It’s no wonder businesses can’t find the workers they need because their expectation is that you will walk in off the street with exactly the specific skills they need to do the job today with no acknowledgment that their systems and processes are unique to them. Almost any skill will take time to master, but that is no longer allowed by the employer.
It also speaks of the entitlement mentality. Business owners feel they are entitled to high quality workers who will help them make $$ without having to put any effort, time, or resources into the equation. But nobody seems to want to talk about that form of entitlement.
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Bitter Scribe said on September 26, 2012 at 10:13 am
Add my agreement to Suzanne’s. In a lot of places, “training” simply means “watch the person next to you and try to keep up.” This just makes for more problems and stress down the road.
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brian stouder said on September 26, 2012 at 10:30 am
To be honest, I didn’t know Andy Williams was still alive, up ’til the news of his passing. I remember watching his somewhat cheesey tv shows, years ago. He reminded me of the sorts of guys my dad played golf with
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JWfromNJ said on September 26, 2012 at 10:37 am
Brian – not only did people use actual food stamps, but most of the supermarkets had a food stamp window where the customers would hand in the voucher in exchange for the books of food stamps. I remember those at the Rodger’s stores in Ft. Wayne. My sister-in-law used to game the system by buying a single packet of kool aid with a $1 food stamp because they used to give you the change in cash. It didn’t take long for her to have cigarette money, and I’m sure it didn’t take long for beer money for other folks. EBT has at least ended that abuse.
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brian stouder said on September 26, 2012 at 10:48 am
By the way – I’ve the day off today (dentist appointment-done!; several errands – about to go; Shelby’s vollyeball game – 3:30 today; Red Cross platelets- 5:30) – and I just read the Ron French Pre-K column at Bridge, and let me just say, if there really IS a ‘silver bullet’ in the educational challenge, Pre-K is IT!
Our daughter Chloe benefited from that very directly, thanks to FWCS’s superb early childhood education/Montessori school, Bunche.
In fact, FWCS has such solid statistical proof of the connection between early childhood/pre-K education that I would suppose the day will come that people will look back at how things used to be done, and be amazed that we didn’t adjust the game sooner.
Anyway, check out Nancy’s link; very good stuff
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Jenine said on September 26, 2012 at 10:59 am
From Metafilter I found a link to this from The Detroit News. Small town high schoolers elected an unpopular student to Homecoming court. After word got out, the town rallied around the target. It’s described as like Carrie, but with a happy ending.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 11:04 am
Little Bird made a comment yesterday about Germany providing half of peak load electricity with solar generation. Germany is a bit larger than New Mexico and a bit smaller than Montana, two states that are sparsely populated and would provide ample opportunity for solar installations And of cours America has the Great Plains and four deserts that would be perfect locations. I imagine the 88,000 miners that would be laid off were coal companies to be shut down could take new jobs building solar power installations and renewing the decrepit US power grid. Ever been down a mine? I have. Nobody wants that job, but people in Harlan Co. KY and other coal mining places do it, and they augment it with WIC, foodstamps and other forms of government assistance, because mining companies have been extremely successful at keeping unions out of the mines, so you get monsters and mass murders like Massey Energy and its henchman Don Blankenship, who when the shit got too deep just spent $3million to buy a pet judge.
It’s difficult for me to believe that even knee-jerk anti-science people that deny climate change can be dumb enough not to understand that water is a limited resource, and that topping mountains and dumping millions of tons of spoil into wetlands is a horrendous process too damaging and dangerous for the USA to allow. And the entire point of mountaintopping is to use fewer miners. A major problem with solar and wind and even hydroelectric power generation in the US is the aged and incoherent electric grid and control of same. Modernizing and coordinating the grid should be a national priority right fracking now, and nationalization should be the first step. No more Enrons.
It also speaks of the entitlement mentality. Business owners feel they are entitled to high quality workers who will help them make $$ without having to put any effort, time, or resources into the equation. But nobody seems to want to talk about that form of entitlement.
And it’s the entitlement mentality of the “job creators” like, you know, Walmart that they should get the benefit of undocumented work force while bitching about “illegals”.
Rmoney wants to know this AM why submarines don’t have screen doors for cross-ventilation, speaking of sciencephobia, and if airliner pilots can’t roll down their windows, how do they check on the dogs on the roof?
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Jeff Borden said on September 26, 2012 at 11:19 am
Those idiots quoted in Forbes ought to meet up with the infamous Menendez brothers, who slaughtered their parents in a bloody rage because they got a new sports car, but not the make and model they wanted.
I’d argue those entitled poltroons are anomalies these days. Most of the Millennials I teach every day don’t give a fig about car brand names. And those who do tend to drive souped-up rice rockets rather than expensive sports or muscle cars.
Mitt Romney is the worst presidential candidate I’ve seen since Michael Dukakis. He’s thoroughly inept in just about every phase of the game. Happily, there is a good chance a thorough electoral flogging this November will not only usher Mr. Moneybags to the rear door, but leave the loathsome Paul Ryan heavily damaged by association. And then, I hope and pray, we see a real battle for the soul of the party between the zealots and those who actually want to get something done in this country.
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Deborah said on September 26, 2012 at 11:30 am
Loved the story about the high school girl, made me weepy and I’m about to step into a business meeting out of town.
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Jakash said on September 26, 2012 at 11:52 am
Prospero,
Did you see the movie “The Last Mountain”? It came out last year, is on DVD now, and deals with many of the issues you mentioned in your 11:04 post. If you haven’t seen it, I think you’d like it, though probably not as much as “Homicide”. 😉
http://thelastmountainmovie.com/film/
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Charlotte said on September 26, 2012 at 12:08 pm
My younger cousin didn’t like school, and so he apprenticed (via his dad) with the Pipefitter’s Union. Eight years later he was a fully-fledged pipefitter who now manages crews on things like nuclear power plants or, currently, he’s rebuilding a lot of the BP Plant in Naperville. Pay is good and the insurance is great, thankfully, since his young wife was diagnosed last year with an aggressive breast cancer (lots of surgery, chemo and radiation later and she’s currently cancer-free). Jason is pretty much the only person in the history of Parker School in Chicago to join an industrial union, and I think it’s sad that this is the case. Also, difficult to get in if you don’t have a family member to sponsor you. But coming from a family of really bright people, many of whom have a lot of reading/writing learning disabilities but who are creative and great with their hands — the lack of and stigmatization of technical education has really been an issue for us. Working in an office is death for a lot of people — so why can’t we train them more efficiently to do real things with their hands? Drives me crazy …
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Sue said on September 26, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Charlotte –
My father and uncles started out as pipefitters during the depression, two of my brothers, another uncle and several cousins either started out or remain pipefitters, all (I think) through the old Washburne Trade School in Chicago. By the time my youngest brother was ready to enter, they had started to crack down hard on automatic admittance in the union based on family connections, kind of going the other way to show they weren’t engaging in favoritism, and he didn’t get in.
None of the next generation went in, in large part because of the love/hate relationship trade families have, every family was proud to be part of it but the dads said to the sons ‘yeah I built the Sears Tower but find something better if you can, in 20 years you don’t need to be freezing your middle-aged ass off 60 stories up while at the same time burning holes in your shirt while you weld’.
My father had several descriptions for the cold, such as ‘colder than a welldigger’s ass in Siberia’. Such is the life of a pipefitter in a northern state.
I pray trade unions stay strong, it’s a hard life and you’ve got to have something to make up for the early-aging workload and danger.
Every year on Labor Day I wear the Pipefitters’ Union T-shirt my brother gave me, partly because I’m proud of the guys in my family and partly because the crossed-pipe-wrenches logo their local has is so awesome.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 12:38 pm
The efficacy of national Head Start has never been seriously questioned, and in fact, is an accepted fact among experts. Back in the day, the policy fell victim to the Oldtimer maunderings of R. Raygun, who just spewed some bullshit about it being free daycare service for Caddy-driving welfare queens on their way to buy vodka and cigs with food stamps. Like all sorts of idiotic shit that came out of Raygun, it’s now King James version for his acolytes and hagiographers like Ayn Ryan. Well you ignorant fucks, those people can’t work if they need somebody to take care of the kids. An obvious ancillary benefit of Head Start is that school lunches ensure that 100s of thousands of kids that live in poverty don’t go hungry for whole days at a time. And of course, feeding those kids means they will be healthier adults, with far better reading and cognitive skills than those without the benefits of preK. Seems like an undeniable economic win for the USA. The “Christian” right embarrasses itself bigtime on this subject (although I’m sure their minds would change if the kids were regaled with Bible stories instead of Danny and the Dinosaur or Super Whatamess. But seriously, which parts of “Suffer the little children…” and “What you do for the least of these…” do they not get. (I know, that’s not the real Bible, that’s just what Jesus said in the NT.)
Mitt Romney is the worst presidential candidate I’ve seen since Michael Dukakis. He’s thoroughly inept in just about every phase of the game. Happily, there is a good chance a thorough electoral flogging this November will not only usher Mr. Moneybags to the rear door, but leave the loathsome Paul Ryan heavily damaged by association. And then, I hope and pray, we see a real battle for the soul of the party between the zealots and those who actually want to get something done in this country.
Unfair to Mickey D. Bad candidate? Yep. Devoid of policy smarts and ideas? Nope. Ryan? Turns out he learned everything he didn’t learn from Ayn Rand from a nutcase Austrian economist who would have thought Rand was a bona fide nutcase:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/prime-time-for-paul-ryans-guru-the-one-thats-not-ayn-rand.html?pagewanted=all
And how does Ryan get a reputation as the smart Teabanger by taking up an economic philosophy that insists, as it’s principal tenet, that government cannot affect economy? Bizarre. How did “conservatives” decide Keynesian economics is a bogeyman, when it has worked in practice since the days of the WPA and the TVA? What other economic philosophy has that kind of track record? I know GOPer critics of FDR credit WWII, but how did that invasion idea work out for W?
I will check that out, for sure Jakash, thanks. I heard about the movie a few months ago when GOPers in the House tried to have Maria Gunoe arrested for child porn because she wanted to show a photo of a litlle girl in a bathtub of orange water. And I watched the three Adeena Watson, Araber episodes of Homicide last night , and I still believe that is the best drama I’ve ever seen on TV. Watched the first Treme again too, and realized immediately what put me off: character clutter like a hoarder’s house. Anyway, I care a great deal about the obscene politics and near hopeless poverty of coal country, because my family lived there for a few years when I was a kid. Those out of work miners were not freeloaders. They’d show up at our house after receiving free treatment at the Miner’s Hospital with hams, produce, ‘shine, Anything to not perceive themselves as taking handouts. I’d like to rub Willard’s nose in that, the dick. When Joe brings up miners losing their jobs, it pisses me off. The Bureau of Mines has been tracking mine employment since 1923, and it’s declined annually, as the mine owners automated and then developed the truly odious montaintopping method, and bought judges and pols to help them get away with it, while Wild Wonderful West Virginia is disappearing before the rapacity of the coal companies, who repeatedly saw it as more efficacious to pay negligible negotiated fines and buy judges to literally get away with murder by deliberately not implementing safety measures. These bastards are probably heroes in Mittens’ eyes.
Here’s an example of the despicable lengths to which these money-grubbing robber barons will go to protect themselves:
http://www.ctaylee.com/2012/06/07/coal-pornography-what-is-this-all-really-about/
The victim of this vile attack is Maria Gunoe, one of the activists featured in the movie jakash linked to. The actual porn is the photos of the despoiled mountains and cricks and hollers, not a little girl sitting in a tub of orange water. People like the owners of Massey and their odious henchman Blankenship are the most evil mofos in America and somebody should do something about them, like liquidate their capital holdings and distributing the money to their victims. “Conservatives” always stand for victims’ rights, right?
And isn’t it an annoyance how the word c”sonservative” in an American political context doan mean shit anymore, except as a historical reference. The Teabangers and Gangbaggers would run RMN out these days. My God, he went to China to sell CoCola.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 12:46 pm
And one more thing about coal miners, and I’ll stop unless somebody says something asinine on the subject. For Joe, you do realize all of those coal miners are in RMoney’s moochers category, because of low wages, earned income tax credit , and dependent child credit, right? Those that still have jobs that is. The rest are just too poor to pay taxes. Foodstamps, WIC and programs like SChip are crucial to those families’ survival. Guess that makes them freeloading losers. GOPers don’t give a runny crap about those people, but they do care about Massey Energy’s profits and the political donations they produce.
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Sue said on September 26, 2012 at 12:55 pm
I was kinda-sorta following the mine discussion yesterday and maybe I missed it, but did anyone mention the Ohio miners? Maybe coal county is for Romney because it has to be:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/coal_miners_forced_to_attend_r039537.php
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coozledad said on September 26, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Andy Williams was a lifelong winger. Now he gets to finish rotting.
Sue: The coal industry supports Romney because they’re shipping it to China, where Romney’s primary sympathies lie.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/as_coal_use_declines_in_us_coal_companies_focus_on_china/2474/
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coozledad said on September 26, 2012 at 1:34 pm
If things keep trending this way, the Republicans will have to establish some kind of affirmative action program for brownshirts:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/university-of-california-to-pay-uc-davis-pepper
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Catherine said on September 26, 2012 at 1:42 pm
That Bridge article was fantastic and I urge anyone who hasn’t, to click over. Really good statistics to support the story, and terrific analysis of the overall situation. Spoiled only by a few of the freaking commenters. I am just so very weary of these two arguments against early childhood education: 1) We didn’t have none uh that and look at us, we done turned out fine; and 2) ECE is the responsibility of the shirking, lazy parents, not the gubmint. People, let’s be pragmatic about this. The situation is what it is and blaming the victims is not really going to change anything. What do you really want to happen here? Is the status quo — specifically, falling international competitiveness, unacceptable drop out rates, the highest incarceration rate in the world — really working for ya?
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nancy said on September 26, 2012 at 2:05 pm
I live in an affluent community, where women (and some men) can and do take breaks from their careers to stay home with their children while they’re young. They do all the things those commenters say parents should do — read to them, pay focused attention, work on numbers, counting, colors, all of it. And they ALL send their kids to preschool, and not so they can get “free babysitting” or go back to work or get their nails done. It’s just important. Public school nowadays should be considered not K-12 but pre-K-13, especially in a state like Michigan, which has to transform its workforce p.d.q.
I don’t know why this is so hard for some people to understand.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 2:16 pm
A question that people should be required to answer that want to make wild statements about Obama policies putting miners out of work: What about the 25 miners that were put out of work with extreme prejudice at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine because of an explosion caused by conditions they had been cited for scores of times. Among their 60,000citations. 500 of which were at Upper Big Branch in the year before the explosion.For which they were fined one hours worth of Massey’s regular profits, $168,000, which were negotiated down from three times that required by statute, and none of which Massey paid. How about that job loss? And those 60,000 citations? Massey settled them for $20million, 1% of what the law required.
When Massey had a slurry containment break in 1974 and bury an entire town while killing 119 people, the federal government spent billions cleaning up Massey’s mess. Who’s the moocher in that scenario.
The power industry agreed to a plan 20 years ago to retrofit all coal-buurning plants with state of the art scrubbers and filtration baghouses, but they bribed politicians and dragged their feet and whined about the cost and never did build in pollution controls. First thing when W got to the White House, he rescinded the point source control rules, without benefit of Congressional action to change the law. Who was forcing stuff down people’s throats like a dictator back then, but that was fine with the Koch Bros. Koal Burning Kriminal Konspiracy, because they owned coal-fired power plants.
What a crock of shit.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Tell you another thing about wind generation of electricity. People that claim it’s too expensive relative to burning coal are ignoring coal subsidies, and true costs such as health care costs, and the destruction of water and air resources that are irreplaceable. They also deliberately ignore life cycle costs, which through the 80s were the single accepted rubric for judging effectiveness. Wind turbines well sited pay for themselves in very short periods of time.
I’d like to hear somebody tell me that coal and coal-fired power are a keys to prosperity when the environmental and human costs are considered, so I could tell them “Bullshit to his face. It’s patent bullshit. When the coal is gone, that’s all she wrote. God’s not making anymore dinosaurs nor tiny sea animals nor prehistoric flora and it would take rather long anyway. But when clean water is gone, people are gone, soon enough. Unless you want to include desalinization plants in the life cycle cost of coal-fired power. Pretty fracking expensive, unless your intention is short term prosperity for a very few at immense, perhaps fatal, cost to everybody else.
And for the originalists and libertarians, all the way back to Runnymede, air and water belong to the people; buying underground mineral rights creates no right to foul either, no matter what Ayn Rand might have thought. “Job creators” and “makers” and the 1% should be made to pay a steep price when they ignore those basic rights, and one of the reasons we have a government and a social compact is to ensure that price is paid. Scalito obviously ignore the similar ownership of radio and TV airwaves when they voted on Citizens United, and a concommitant pollution resulted. It’s very stupid for NRA-types to insist they need assault weapons to remain sovereign in the face of over-aggressive government. If you don’t think so, consider an auto rifle vs. a Blackhawk with Hellfires, or a drone for that matter with similar arms. People need to realize the threat to their freedom isn’t the federal government, it’s being talked into such a moronic belief by corporations that would just as soon have feudal workers indebted perpetually to company stores.
If Massey and Blankenship weren’t monstrous serial killers and mass murderers, this story of how they purchased their pet judge would be kinda funny:
http://www.wvablue.com/diary/1554/
Watched The Last Mountain just now for free on Netflix. Excellent documentary. If my kid was in an elementary school and Massey put a slurry containment perched on a blown up mountain right above it, I’d probably change my tunes on using firearms. If you have Netflix, and if you seriously believe it is not imperative too wean ourselves off coal-generated power, watch that doc. It might knock some sense, and some sense of commonweal and community, into your head.
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Bitter Scribe said on September 26, 2012 at 3:33 pm
Catherine @#29: Those are exactly the same “arguments” that were once made against kindergarten. I remember, when Mississippi was debating in the 1970s whether to institute free, mandatory kindergarten, one of the Solons down there declared that he was damned if he would use white taxpayers’ money to babysit African-American children. Only he didn’t say “African-American.”
In fact, I think probably three-quarters or more of the attacks on public education in general are based on that attitude. A shocking number of people feel it’s criminal to tax them to educate other people’s children, especially those people.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Nobody with lots of money is too low a slug for the GOP.
Now that’s not even a Push Poll, that’s a Push You Off the Cliff Poll. What is worse than abysmal? Speaking of abysmal, last time I remember hearing about this political whore, he was a member of Casino Jack’s Team Abramoff, helping to sell non-existent influence to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Or was it the Solomon Islanders they were defrauding? How’s that for Faith and Freedom? More peope would probably give some credence to Christianity if self-proclaimed Christians like this pondslime were actaully turned into pillars of salt or struck dead for lying, like Ananias.
The Ron French Bridge piece is a dissection of just how the non-moochers pretend they are doing the right thing and then turn it into subsidies for themselves at the expense of the “lucky duckies”, as Ryan intends with his Medicare overhaul, and as is almost always the intention of charter school proponents (along with teaching Genesis instead of Origin of Species, and the true American History in which Indians have always been the beneficiaries of gentle and fair treatment by European American settlers and nobody ever supported that 3/5 embarrassment in the Constitution because, after all, slavery didn’t exist, and if it did, it was a boon to families). The basic idea is that no white people are in the deadbeat 47%, and people like Mittens that promulgate that hilarious canard must have missed preK math.
Considering that Willard wants to bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran (as McCain would say) for his BFF in crookhood Bibi, here’s an enlightening comment on Irani president I’madinnerjacket.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 4:31 pm
That “divorced parents” at-risk factor for GSRP is sure big enough to drive a dualie through.
Only things I remember about Andy Williams in particular are 1) he foisted the Osmonds on an unsuspecting nation, and 2) he was married to the gorgeous Claudine Longet, who played Ben Gazarra’s long time love interest on the excellent series, Run for Your Life.
Oh, and this incredibly hokey, cheesy attempt at being musically cool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUeaqHHq2II
And then there was the Osmond psychedelic environmental period:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcXiZ2LI-AQ
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LAMary said on September 26, 2012 at 4:45 pm
You mean the gorgeous cokehead Claudine Longet who shot Spider Sabich? That one? I think that incident was the beginning of crazed celebrity period in Aspen in the seventies.
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Dexter said on September 26, 2012 at 4:51 pm
I never had a pc when floppy discs were being used, and I have almost always employed a system shield to back up everything, and I have always used The Cloud to store files…why bother with discs? I had two computers crash hard and I only lost a few photos which were easily re-installed onto the new pc. Cloud computing has been around a long time, just not called that until rather recently.
In my amateurish reasoning anyway, companies like Carbonite are just dinosaurs.
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Dexter said on September 26, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Back in time, to the apple discussion: The tree in the park I mentioned a few days ago just continues to yield wonderful apples. Today I walked past it and apples were falling off the tree, making an easy harvest. Funny, these latest apples are much bigger and have hardly any blemishes. This is the best year ever, by far, for this magical apple tree. The only other apple users from this tree are the deer, so I only took ten apples and left about twenty on the ground for the deer.
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Dexter said on September 26, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Did you ever sort-of “know” something, but found it hard to put into simple terms? Here is a primer that explains a few things like The Cloud.
http://www.20thingsilearned.com/en-US/home
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Sue said on September 26, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Speaking of Andy Williams and Branson etc., has anyone noticed that the next generation of fogey-specific programming has hit PBS, and it is… us?
There has been a sudden rash of crappy ’60’s clip programs on my local PBS station including a particularly annoying Ed Sullivan rehash. Other shows seem to be nostalgia concerts showing lots of shots of the audience dancing and clapping without any hippie rhythm at all.
Lawrence Welk hasn’t been booted off the air yet but the writing’s on the wall.
Maybe I’m just being sensitive because I recently ran across a website for my high school reunion and the photo of the organizing committee showed a bunch of old people.
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Dexter said on September 26, 2012 at 5:10 pm
Sue, the most-depressing shows are those featuring Sonny and Cher in their garish “hippie” garb, which very few real people actually wore, and one couldn’t really see people dressed like that outside of Sunset Strip in LA or hanging around on that little bridge in Sausalito, or for a short time in The Haight, before meth destroyed any trace of peace, joy, happiness.
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Sue said on September 26, 2012 at 5:20 pm
I dunno Dexter, ’69 – ’74 were my prime fashion years, and while outlandish hippie fashion wasn’t evident in my suburban Chicago town, modified hippie fashion sure was. My sister and I once made a vow that we were never going to give up our bell bottoms, and sewing patterns were full of peasant dresses, bell bottoms, flowing shirts, you could even make hippie hats. Embarrassing today but oh man if I had to choose between those fashions and say, waved hair and stick clothes from the ’20’s I’d choose my embarrassment over theirs.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 5:21 pm
LAMary, I had forgotten about Spider Sabich getting shot.
She was quite beautiful, and she was very good on that TV series, which I watched religiously when I was a kid. More of a stylist than a singer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2W2j_bWCsY
Am I wrong, but is “Would you like some of my tangerine”, sung in this whisper, pretty damned suggestive. She also did Jobim on the first of her appearances on Run For Your Life, in a vocal well suited to bossa nova, in my opinion. Mick Jagger is supposed to have written a song about Sabich’s shooting, but the record company was afraid of lawsuits. It’s on the Some Girls reissue, and it’s a pretty good lo-fi fast shuffle. First line is Claudine’s back in jail again. The song claims Sabich was shot once in the head and twice in the chest. Jagger’s lyrics say “I showed my wife how to clean a gun, but I always kept the safety on.” The tone of the song is, big surprise, leering, as if Mick is thinking about getting into her pants:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8IOKKG_PAQ
I didn’t realize this was about Claudine Longet when I got the album, Oldtimers, because I had no recollection of the shooting, though I’m sure I was aware of it when it happened.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 5:51 pm
Here’s a convenient way to register for anybody that hasn’t yet:
http://civic.moveon.org/vote/?id=52972-20374123-e98roWx&t=2
Wouldn’t it be great if GOPers put in the sort of hard work, imagination, and determination to get ‘er done on sensible public policy that they’ve expended on vote suppression? Somebody should do jail time for this. PA GOPers already admitted there is no fraud to prevent. Crooked bastards.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 6:15 pm
No bullshit comparison between Romneycare and ACA:
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/health_stew/2012/08/romneycare_vs_obamacare_which.html
Big surprise, since this was the Heritage Foundation baby from the getgo, which is why GOPer howling about the alleged costs, the alleged Medicare cuts, and the public option are so particularly odious and mendacious. The two things the author finds superior in Romneycare are both part of Obama’s original proposal that GOPers squealed like stuck pigs about.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Tort reform is the most ignorant and outrageous lie “conservatives” tell about health care costs:
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2012-09-25/conservatives-try-again-lower-health-costs-minimizing-lawsuits
The total percentage of all awards and malpractice insurance premiums in the grand scheme of US health care costs has never made it up to 1%. When California passed tort reform, insurance premiums got jacked immediately by nearly 30%. This information is easily confirmed with two googles. Why do GOPers repeat this ridiculous lie? They hate the “trial lawyers”, like all those lawyers on insurance company payrolls aren’t “trial lawyer”, because the “trial lawyers” give doanations and votes largely to Democratic politicians. Anybody that brings up tort reform as if it’s the Gordian Knot of health care costs, you can safely bet, is an ignorant idealogue. It’s simply nonsense.
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LAMary said on September 26, 2012 at 6:48 pm
I was living in Denver at the time when Sabich was shot. That was followed by Ted Bundy jumping out of the courtroom window in Aspen, and the story in Time (I think) about asking for a certain booth at bar in the Jerome Hotel or some other hangout in Aspen as a code for wanting to score some coke.
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MaryRC said on September 26, 2012 at 6:59 pm
I’m not sure if I’m remembering the actual case or something I saw on TV later, but I do recall that Claudine was sentenced to 30 days in jail for the shooting and served it on weekends! Which, of course, didn’t make Spider’s family and friends any happier about the verdict.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 7:13 pm
I’ve never been to Aspen, but I have spent two separate weeks helicopter skiing in Steamboat Springs with one of my brothers back in the 80s. People tended to behave in subhuman fashion in that environment and much of the bad acting clearly was drug-induced. Aside from the angelic role model Mahre bros, it seems that world-class male skiers are frequently aholes, eg. would it surprise anybody if Tomba or Bode Miller had gotten themselves plugged while behaving badly? I’m happy to be reminded of the Sabich shooting though, because it makes the Stones song all the more fun, if that’s not insensitive. Why was Bundy being tried in Aspen and not in FLA?
To add to what I said a while ago about health insurance tort reform, the revised version of the GOPer argument these days since the tort awards never added up to diddly has to do with CYA spending by docs on tests. This problem, to the extent it exists, has little to do with MDs or hospitals, or plaintiffs; it is almost purely generated by HMOs and insurance companies, since they can inflate their charges for these med services like so many much more expensive $12.50 Tylenols, and this is clearly addressed in the ACA. It bogus argument as a vindictive attack on plaintiff’s lawyers for their anti-GOP political leanings and remains so today.
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MarkH said on September 26, 2012 at 7:14 pm
LAMary, I am shocked, SHOCKED that you didn’t still have the Spider Sabich shooting on your radar screen. If I’m not mistaken you were tending bar in Denver in ’76, right? The affair with Sabich broke up the marriege to Williams, but he was famous for standing by her suring the murder trial. For which she got all of thirty days in the county lockup when convicted of lower degree manslaughter.
One of the earliest classic SNL routines was a staged Wide World of Sports ski race report from Aspen with Chevy Chase in the Jim McKay role. As each skier was coming down the hill, a shot rang out and Chevy kept repeating, “ANOTHER skier SHOT by Claudine Longet!!” I can’t link to YouTube from work, but I’m sure it’s there. Priceless.
Prospero, appearing on only two of the 86 RFYL episodes does not consitute a long time love interest for Paul Ryan. That’s right, Longet appeared as Nicole only twice. Other actresses with more appearances as potential love interests were Ann Helm, Marianna Hill, Carol Lawrence and the lucious Ina Balin. Diana Hyland, Mary Ann Mobley, Sharon Farrell and Yeoman Rand herself, Grace Lee Whitney also ran after Gazarra’s life in two episodes each.
I liked the show as well and Gazarra had a better reason to be galavanting around the country than Todd Stiles, Buzz Murdoch and even Jim Bronson.
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MarkH said on September 26, 2012 at 7:25 pm
Prospero, remember when Longet had a recurring role on McHale’s Navy as the French girl, Yvette, Ensign Parker was smitten with?
EDIT – I remember now that Nicole had long ago relationship with Ryan, explored in her appearances on the show, I think.
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MarkH said on September 26, 2012 at 7:47 pm
Pros, Bundy was charged with murders and kidnappings in Washington, Utah, Colorado and Florida from a deadly cross-country spree. After a Utah kidnapping conviction, he was extradited to Aspen when charged with one of the murdered young women there.
LAMary, you posted above while I was still working on mine. I see now that you were only unaware that Longet was married to Williams.
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Bitter Scribe said on September 26, 2012 at 7:58 pm
Bundy was detained in Colorado before he committed the Florida murders. He went to Florida after he escaped. One reason the Florida officials wouldn’t extradite him is, they were worried about lousy security.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Mark H: I realize it was only two episodes, but the story line was that they had been great true loves separated by fate for years and only back together when he’d been told he had two years tops to live. It was made into a big deal by making the first episode a season finale, and the second a season premiere. What I should have said was long-lost love, I suppose. I don’t remember details, but I recall it as being a harrowing two eps in which her life was threatened in some fashion. I do believe there were flashbacks involved, which was very cool for TV in those days. Because of that show, I became a fan of all the collaborative work done by Gazzara, Casavettes and Peter Falk, and always thought it would have been one big party hanging around those guys, and of course, the incomparable Gena Rowlands. Weird existentialist things like Husbands and Faces. Cassavetes directe at least one Columbo I think. And I think he guested on the show too. Never really warched McHale’s Navy, but if someone had done a remake of Father Goose (a great personal favorit Old Cary Grant movie), Longet was a bullseye for the Leslie Caron governess role.
Coach Nicholas Colasanto was also terrific in RFYL. And Then Came Bronson was brilliant. I recently watched Red State, in which Michael Parks is brilliant. My favorit road TV series was probably Moving On, with Frank Converse and Claude Akins. Spectacular jazz theme music. Rosie Grier did a guest shot and there was a fantastic episode with Cameron Mitchell as a washed up horn player that used a mountsin rockslide to set up a Lifeboat sort of situation
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brian stouder said on September 26, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Prospero – Father Goose is an all-time favorite movie of mine; I’d seen it multiple times on the late-late show on TV over the years, and I remember my dad laughing uproariously at it.
Pam bought me the DVD a Christmas ago, and the thing is even more wonderful than I remembered, when you can watch it uncut, and with no commercials.
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Prospero said on September 26, 2012 at 9:47 pm
The death by snakebite scenes where Caron drinks all the whisky is very funny, but the best parts to me are all of Grant’s radio conversations with the Trevor Howard. I think other than North by Northwest, Father Goose is my favorite Cary Grant movie. Well, and Topper, and Notorious, Philadelphia Story, Operation Petticoat. Bogart and Spencer Tracy were probably the only contemporary guys in his class for range from intense drama through action mystery through comedy over so many movies. So many great movies. The African Queen homage at the end of Father Goose when Catherine and the girls think Walter has been killed saving them is wonderful. And all of the kids are naturals.
You know the story about the reporter that was told to find out Cary Grant’s correct age. He wired Grant’s agent “How old Cary Grant?” Grant intercepted and wired back “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?” According to IMDb, an interviewer once began a question “Everybody would like to be Cary Grant.” Archibald Leach interjected “So would I.” Funny man.
One of my sisters in law has basically a complete set of Cary Grant movies (a few of which were gifts from me, she prefers the comedies) and my brother and I stay up late to watch Father Goose and sip Rusty Nails when I visit them.
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Deborah said on September 26, 2012 at 10:35 pm
Love is blue. I had a cousin a couple of years older than me who was gaga for Claudine Longet. He wrote letters from Viet Nam about her that I remember to this day. She would be in her late sixties now. I tried to find a current picture of her on Google images, but could not. She had 3 children with Williams I wonder where they are now.
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JWfromNJ said on September 27, 2012 at 12:00 am
fun on the campaign trail with carpetbagger Allen West:
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/sep/26/protestors-disrupt-west-event-at-pirates-cove-in/?partner=RSS
That tossing of middle fingers must have been bloody!
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MarkH said on September 27, 2012 at 12:34 am
She turned 70 this year, Deborah.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0519296/
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Prospero said on September 27, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Seriously? Allen West. holy shit what a whacko. non compoos mentis
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Prospero said on September 27, 2012 at 9:34 pm
I have been accuese of being some sort or dirty old man, Please, Not in a million. Why have these shitheads targeted me? Whatever, It’s all bullshit. What is wrong with assholes teying to make this sort of shit up? Whagever we say about what wha we have to do with’ We meann, whatwever. We are not stupid about wha we mean.
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Prospero said on September 28, 2012 at 12:05 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0otLhqSYCo0 There is a lot to be said to have gone to Jesuit school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0otLhqSYCo0
Dwborah, that is poignant. I had friends that , whatevever. 2+2. Its fine for aholes that didn;t live around then, but lots of us thought we we were doing something worthwhile, And we knew for a fact that while you were woofing Milhous you were assholes. There is no way anybodyy ever bet on the wrong horse like you assholes.
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