I was going through my Instagram today and realized I had an example of the East Jordan Iron Works manhole covers that I should have included with yesterday’s post. So here you go:
Isn’t that lovely? Computer-aided design has changed the game, hasn’t it?
It was one of those Mondays — a long staff meeting that ran over the lunch hour. Sometimes a decent breakfast can carry me past 1 p.m., but there wasn’t enough fat in Monday’s, and I was ravenous by noon, to the point I could hear my own stomach feeding on itself. But the meeting was productive, the skies were sunny and the temperature kissed the low 30s, which set just enough melting in motion that, when the temperature dropped with the sun, the sidewalks were covered with glare ice.
It’s snowing like crazy at the moment. Nothing more treacherous than ice covered with a thin coating of snow. Alan went to walk Wendy and fell twice before he reached the neighbor’s property line. I’ll try that again later. In cleats.
So now it’s Tuesday, the week has momentum, and I have the usual array of crap to do. I’m trying to get into “House of Cards,” but it’s losing me, and fast. If I want sudsy soap drama, I watch “Empire.”
Now I’m going to hit the phones and hope to carve out a few minutes for Bibi. You?
Open thread.
brian stouder said on March 3, 2015 at 9:59 am
Bibi is like the dog who caught the car; have fun there, big fella! (Hope it doesn’t back up and run you over!)
Question: Is the latest frothy foam emanating from the mouths of the flying monkeys – about HRC’s email account? – substantive?
Lawrence O’Donnell – who I can stand about 1.5 times a week (cumulative) seems to think so.
We shall see, I suppose
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Kirk said on March 3, 2015 at 10:09 am
As a baseball fan, I have several problems with Curt Schilling, not the least of which is that he just seems like an asshole. But I’m all for him on his latest endeavor, linked below.
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/03/03/curt-schilling-lowers-the-boom-on-some-men-tweeting-threats-against-his-daughter/
Some people are whining that Schilling is a bully for doing this, that he might ruin people’s lives. I say full speed ahead and ruin as many as need to be ruined. The world would be much better off if social-media cowards were atomized.
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coozledad said on March 3, 2015 at 10:12 am
If there’s one thing Republicans ought not to be discussing too loudly or too long it’s the concept of treason. They’ve been doing it outright since Dick Nixon sabotaged the peace talks in ’68, and they’re sabotaging fruitful discussions with Iran, with who we have a common enemy in ISIS.
The Racism is endemic to the party though. That’ll never wash out.
http://wonkette.com/578206/tea-party-lady-just-wants-to-string-up-blacks-who-skip-netanyahus-big-speech
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Sue said on March 3, 2015 at 10:39 am
brian, as a Wisconsinite, I say yes, yes, yes, it’s substantive. Shadow email accounts, private email accounts, whatever – don’t do anything that even looks like something might not be available to the public.
She knows better. I am very very annoyed right now.
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Jeff Borden said on March 3, 2015 at 10:44 am
Has anyone found a historical precedent for the bullshit John Boehner is throwing by inviting the war-mongering Netanyahu to speak to Congress as this most delicate of times? When the wee man from Crawford was stomping around the Middle East, setting fire to everything in sight, I seem to recall we were advised to support our president in time of war. I won’t label the orange-tinted asshole from Ohio with the label of traitor, but what he and his party seek to do is nothing less than undermine our foreign policy.
I support Israel, in general, but this small nation –which still receives billions in foreign aid from the U.S. yearly despite its prosperity– receives outsized attention from us while we get pretty much nothing but grief in return. This is particularly true under Bibi, who clearly wants to provoke a war with Iran on his terms using our muscle.
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nancy said on March 3, 2015 at 10:44 am
It’s what Sarah Palin did in Alaska to sidestep the rule there. If I disapproved of that, I gotta disapprove of Hillary doing the same thing.
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coozledad said on March 3, 2015 at 10:49 am
We’re still waiting to hear anything about Dick Cheney’s energy task force.
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Deborah said on March 3, 2015 at 11:03 am
Kirk, I’m with you on outing people who engage in that kind of filthy behavior. I don’t care if they’re young people who might get their lives ruined. Make them be a lesson to other numbskulls.
I finally made it to Chicago, arrived late last night and I’m officially a no-show for jury duty. I didn’t receive a response from my email, so I guess I will call them again.
The graphic image on the manhole cover seems wrong to me. The textured area that represents land looks like water to me (it has kind of a wave pattern) I would have used that texture within the lake area and made the land area smooth. Unless I’m misunderstanding the geography? Or I would have used a different texture pattern to represent the land area. Sorry, I can’t help myself as a graphic design professional (retired).
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coozledad said on March 3, 2015 at 11:04 am
Has anyone found a historical precedent for the bullshit John Boehner is throwing by inviting the war-mongering Netanyahu to speak to Congress as this most delicate of times?
In no particular order of outright treason:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
Weapons of mass destruction?/Iraq war
Ronald Reagan/delay of hostage release
Iran/Contra
Intimacy of Bandar Sultan with Bush Family and Bin Laden
Saudi Royal family’s hands/George Bush’s ass.
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Jeff Borden said on March 3, 2015 at 11:06 am
This was a huge, unforced error on the part of a woman whose many years in the public eye and whose status as Public Enemy No. 1 to the mouth breathers should have taught her to dot all i’s and cross all t’s. I’m hugely unenthusiastic about her as a presidential candidate for myriad reasons, but I won’t be able to vote for a Republican, so if she gets the nomination, she’ll get my vote. Supreme Court appointments alone are reason to vote against any GOP presidential candidate.
I continue to hope someone will test her in the primaries. I’m not sure my stomach lining can take eight more years of Clinton-style drama in the White House.
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brian stouder said on March 3, 2015 at 11:44 am
If this nudges in Senator Warren, then….I’m happy!
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MarkH said on March 3, 2015 at 11:55 am
Jeff Borden, I firmly believe you will get your wish: Elizabeth Warren. There is blood in the water regarding Hillary, Warren smells it and is circling. Time will tell, but that’s where my bet is. Among other things, her relentless quest for accountability of Wall Street and the big banks will continue to resonate as Hillary’s armor chinks are revealed in the coming year.
What Sue said at #4. While stories are out today that she is not the first secretary of state to make extensive use of personal email account while in office (CBS pointed out Colin Powell), Hillary apparently left it to her staff to use official email corridors, while she exclusively used her personal account.
Deborah, take this from the husband if a district court clerk who has heard a lot of jury duty stories over the past 17 years. Just make the call to account for your absence and all should be good. The jury pool is rarely short of people, so the adjudication will go forward. Can’t speak for Cook County, but you wouldn’t be in trouble here.
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Julie Robinson said on March 3, 2015 at 12:26 pm
House of Cards lost us about halfway through the first season. Maybe we’re unsophisticated but there wasn’t anyone to like.
The Hillary-haters are so vast and venomous as to make her unelectable. She might sail through the primaries, only to go down in defeat in the general election. I too could go for Warren, and I don’t see any other contenders. Biden? I love the guy, but he continually shoots himself in the foot.
It sounds like Cook County needs to take a few lessons in jury management from Allen County, where you can set up all your communication via text message. Quick and efficient, and it sure beats the old system of having to wait until 5 the night before and calling to find out if your case had been dismissed or if you still had to show up the next morning. But make sure you leave that cell phone in the car because it’s not allowed in the courthouse!
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Suzanne said on March 3, 2015 at 12:52 pm
Speaking of public officials who got themselves in trouble, this editorial from the local paper showed up in my Facebook feed: http://www.news-sentinel.com/article/2015150309940
Because, let’s face it. Nothing says religious freedom better than someone knockin’ on a vehicle that’s rockin’ & finding this US rep in the back seat with his honey. Will this guy ever go away? Why would anybody care what he says?
And I guess David Patraeus is also in more trouble (or maybe I’m just finding out about it) He certainly went from the top to the bottom in quick fashion.
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beb said on March 3, 2015 at 12:58 pm
Hillery will be in trouble over the email thing because her conversations with others — as secretary of State are official records of the US. The Bushies got in trouble for using GOP email accounts to conduct business, either official or political. Mitt Romney bought the hard drives out of all the computers he and his staff used so their email could be destroy. How far this will go is hard to say, but since Republicans never forget a weakness I suspect they’re hound her with it once she’s officially a candidate.
I, too, would like to see someone beside Hillary run for president. HRC is too much a lackey of the DLC, which is to say ‘Republican-lite.’ Without someone running to the left of her she’ll just be like a less conniving Jeb Bush. I’m not sure Elizabeth Warren wants to run because I think she think she can do more good as the gadfly in the Senate. There are some good lefty out there, like Bernie Sanders who could make her bear left instead of drifting right.
I’m currently marooned at work! There was a big water main break inside Water Works Park that flooded the main entrance this morning, so we were directed to a second gate a couple hundred yards down the road. Now it’s under 1-2 feet of water. There is a third gate at the back of the grounds which I guess they’ll open eventually. Good think I brown bagged it today.
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Dexter said on March 3, 2015 at 1:35 pm
I’m lovin’ S3-HC. When President Frank Underwood confronted Jesus Christ, citing a difference in policy beliefs, I about fell out of my chair…and Frank’s tag-line as he left the alter was a classic. And I hate “SPOILER ALERTs!!!!” with a passion, because I can’t discuss TV shows because it offends people who aren’t “there” yet. Oh well…I guess it’s SPOILER ALERT!!! or just type nothing.
I guess I understand when folks drop out. When “True Blood” jumped the shark and featured all those vampires who moved so quickly and had too many angles to keep interested in, I quit.
“Walking Dead” lost me instantly. Even “Game of Thrones” lost me after two great seasons. I never read the books, and I really didn’t get into it with the dragons and all the stuff going on at once..I dropped out. However, I always waited with great impatience the showings of “The Sopranos”, Boardwalk Empire, ” Breaking Bad” and especially “Treme”. Many others, too, both abandoned and treasured . For no reason, I never even tried the nn dot com fave, “Mad Men”. And on Netflix I have found the entire series “My Name is Earl”. I have it figured out: if you love The Three Stooges you will love Earl and his gang. It’s slapstick/moronic humor and it’s just great.
I have a lot I could rave on about concerning Netanyahu but I will keep my trap shut. I do not like that sonuvabitch.
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coozledad said on March 3, 2015 at 1:43 pm
Yeah, this will kill Hillary deader than Mitt Romney’s failure to release his taxes did with the GOP.
On the bright side, this will give NPR a reason to knobgobble Republicans after they failed by every political measure in the house this session. And while Bibi didn’t work out too good for them today, maybe they can get that dynamic Vladimir Putin to address the House and we can get back to giving them a complete pass for being scuzz.
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Dexter said on March 3, 2015 at 1:49 pm
…anyway, in case you really want to spend 3/4 of an hour listening to this jackass: http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/national/netanyahu-addresses-both-houses-of-congress/2015/03/03/ad8b7c42-c1c9-11e4-a188-8e4971d37a8d_video.html
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Sherri said on March 3, 2015 at 1:58 pm
I think Curt Schilling is a blowhard and an asshole, but I’m with him on outing the little pieces of shit that tweeted the vile things about his daughter. This shit goes on all the time on Twitter, and Twitter won’t do anything about it. We need to change the social norms of the Internet (or maybe the social norms of 16-24 year old boys, or both.)
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coozledad said on March 3, 2015 at 1:58 pm
All that needs to be said about Bibi, Republicans, and their gulls-
Commenter MDS at alicublog:
Bibi is the same guy who was in one of the most recent enthusiasms up to his neck. I mean, seriously: “Remember when I told everyone what a grave threat Iraq was, helped prime the WMD bullshit catapault, and suggested ‘Let’s you and him fight’? Well, I’m here today to boldly cut-and-paste ‘Iran’ in place of ‘Iraq.'”
Way to remind folks of that last debacle, cons.
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Deborah said on March 3, 2015 at 2:21 pm
Don’t count Hillary out yet, the Clintons have gotten away with a lot of crap and have come back swinging. I would love to see Senator Professor Warren run, but I think it’s still a long shot that she will run, and an even longer shot that she would win. If Hillary doesn’t run the Republicans have a better chance and they damn well know it. Bernie Sanders doesn’t have a chance in hell.
Thanks Mark, I called the Cook County Jury folks this morning and they said they were closed yesterday (why?) and that all that would happen is that they’d send me a new summons in 11 weeks. I just have to make sure I’m back in Chicago at that time.
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brian stouder said on March 3, 2015 at 3:16 pm
I think HRC’s troubles are manageable, so far, especially having come this early.
If the R’s can unload a really good turd late this summer, and HRC spirals –
I think it’s President Kasich
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adrianne said on March 3, 2015 at 3:44 pm
I believe Elizabeth Warren when she says she doesn’t want to run for president. I think she wants to be lighting a fire under the ass of big banks from her perch in the Senate, and if the Democrats win it back in 2016, she’ll be more powerful. Hil has her flaws, but she’s far and away the best candidate the Dems have going. The Republicans know it, and that’s why some of them are trying to drive a wedge in the party ranks by encouraging Warren to run.
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Julie Robinson said on March 3, 2015 at 3:55 pm
On reflection, I could also be happy with a President Franken, though I’d be waiting for a Stuart Smalley moment from the Oval Office. I’m smart enough, I’m good enough, and doggone it, people like me.
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alex said on March 3, 2015 at 3:59 pm
I don’t think the GOP stands a chance in hell of winning in 2016 and it will take a lot more than e-mailghazi to upend HRC’s candidacy. I’d rather see Elizabeth Warren running, but doubt it’s gonna happen.
There is simply no Republican candidate who can appeal to the mainstream without running afoul of the far right, or vice versa, and this might finally be the election where the Tea Party — which thinks the last two GOP nominees lost because they weren’t conservative enough — finally gets to have its way and learn its lesson.
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brian stouder said on March 3, 2015 at 4:12 pm
Agreed, Alex.
It seems to me that the R’s are trying two, somewhat contradictory approaches to the email thing: that it could contribute to a security breach, and that it means that “official records” may be incomplete or unobtainable.
The fact that previous SecStates have done this (including an old fave of mine, Colin Powell) undercuts it a little, and makes me think that this story (almost by definition) won’t have “legs”. But on the other hand, computer security is becoming a larger issue every day.
It will be funny if/when one of the opposition tries to indignantly point out what the Founding Fathers would have said about using one’s own email account, rather than their official State Department email
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Kirk said on March 3, 2015 at 4:15 pm
Alex@25: I’ve thought that might be possible, a rerun of 1964, when the John Birch Society hijacked the party. At the ’60 GOP convention, Barry Goldwater said, “Let’s grow up, conservatives,” as in let’s get organized and serious. They did, Barry got the nomination and he went down in one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history.
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Dave said on March 3, 2015 at 4:40 pm
In the UK, they must take trolling seriously: http://tinyurl.com/np8r2fz
Deborah, I was called for jury duty a couple of winters ago. I called and told them I spend the winter in Florida. They (Allen County, IN) told me that they didn’t do things like interrupt retiree plans and excused me.
I foresee years of political contention and am afraid that I will never see it change again. The Supreme Court rulings about PAC funds, gerrymandering, and realms of misinformation swallowed whole have done the average citizen no good.
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Bitter Scribe said on March 3, 2015 at 4:52 pm
The Bibi thing has a long history in this country, dating back to the French Revolution, when Citizen Genet was running around America trying to get us involved in France’s wars.
OTOH, that ended when the revolutionary factions changed, and Genet was recalled to France to get his head cut off. (He declined the invitation and settled here.) May that happen to Bibi, except for the guillotine part.
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MarkH said on March 3, 2015 at 5:11 pm
Wrong, Brian. Other sec/states made use of both official government email AND personal email accounts with varying emphasis. Thus they may have cover. Hillary used her personal account exclusively, for official business. It’s just not enough to say, ‘well, they are preserved officially anyway, because her staff used official state department email to communicate with her’, as Josh Ernest was spinning this afternoon. Oh, really? How do we know that? Who else may have communicated with her using non-official electronic communication? Also, why are you assuming pointing out security concerns AND preserving official records as ‘contradictory’? Why aren’t both issues simultaneously valid? Politicians love to run on transparency, but as soon as they go opaque, they tend to say ‘never mind’, and the public tends to say, ‘Okay’.
It certainly may take more than this to derail Hillary, but it’s coming, with plenty of time to spare. And regardless of what Warren says, she is a politician as well, taking notes….and waiting.
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Sherri said on March 3, 2015 at 5:27 pm
If the Secretary of State is using a personal (presumably unsecured) email for work, then why is the government prosecuting leakers so vigorously? (If you’re not the former head of the CIA, that is: David Petraeus just got a sweet plea deal.)
If HRC is the nominee, I will probably vote for her, because the alternative will be worse, but I’d rather be disappointed by somebody new.
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Sherri said on March 3, 2015 at 5:44 pm
While James Inhofe is throwing a snowball in Congress to demonstrate that global warming isn’t happening, Seattle is having its warmest winter ever: http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott/Seattle-sets-twin-records-for-warmest-February-winter-on-record-294516031.html
We’re pretty much full into spring at this point. Everything is starting to bloom. We never really had a winter this year.
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alex said on March 3, 2015 at 6:23 pm
We’re having your winter for you, Sherri. It’s been tacked onto the end of ours.
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coozledad said on March 3, 2015 at 6:39 pm
People who don’t do politics can’t comprehend how money shapes politics. Warren is not running because it takes money to run, money the Clintons have because they are Eisenhower Republicans.
Jeb Bush is the nominee for the dirtbag/ fuck the nation Republicans who are just waiting to jack up federal spending to transfer to their private accounts again. The fact he is in it is enough to secure all the money, because the last time they were in it was a golden shower of grift for their bank. You can read the Republican commenters on this here site and see their pokey for the Bushes has never, never detumesced.
Their is no politics in Republican presidential races where the Bush clan is involved. Only a merger of streams of cash from the extraction and finance sectors, and those hopeful for a return to the healthcare speculation and collateralized debt obligation grifts.
There’s a pretty stark choice, in that one party has directly embraced the palingenetic white power movement, and has been willing to admit it to the forefront of its policy apparatus. Their embrace of fascism and police state power is also amply in evidence.
Jeb will have the Mark Halperins and Chuck Todds hanging from his pimply scrod within a couple of weeks, if not already.
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coozledad said on March 3, 2015 at 6:41 pm
Their/there. My argument is, of course, void!
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David C. said on March 3, 2015 at 7:13 pm
According to this, many State Department officials including Colin Powell used private e-mail accounts for official business. Also, the law requiring electronic files be archived didn’t take effect until 2014, two years after she left as SoS.
There may be less here than meets the eye. Of course, that won’t stop anyone from screaming if they have a mind to because Benghazi!
http://thedailybanter.com/2015/03/story-hillary-clintons-private-email-account-isnt-awful-seems/
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coozledad said on March 3, 2015 at 7:17 pm
There is nothing that is not Benghazi, ever.
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Jolene said on March 3, 2015 at 7:48 pm
Indeed, cooz, there was an article in the NYT this past week about how Jeb is not only sewing up donors, but advisors and consultants as well. Presidential candidates recruit advisors in many areas to produce position papers and tutor candidates, especially in foreign policy, as it’s hard to acquire expertise and experience in that area as anything other than president, secretary of state, or membership on a relevant congressional committee. Some of the experts interviewed for the article noted that they had planned to be a source for several R candidates, but Jeb’s people told them if they wanted to work with him they had to cut ties with all others.
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Connie said on March 3, 2015 at 8:06 pm
Speaking of trolling….
Some baseball guy named Curt Schilling (yes, I now know he is famous but earlier today I had never heard of him) tweeted about his senior daughter’s plan to play ball for the university she would be attending, and was horrified to receive in return some tweets about sex with his daughter.
He got mad, what Dad wouldn’t? And shared the tweets and identified the two (young) men who both have problems as a result.
His blog post with details is here: https://38pitches.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/the-world-we-live-in-man-has-it-changed/
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 3, 2015 at 9:58 pm
Dexter, your comments have my ear.
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Jill said on March 3, 2015 at 10:11 pm
Deborah, Cook County courts were closed yesterday for Casimir Pulaski Day. Some schools were closed too.
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MarkH said on March 3, 2015 at 11:42 pm
David C. – Interesting article and it sheds some light. But. As I said at #30, others in the state dept. have used a mix of personal and official emails, including the secretaries. Regardless of which laws there are that govern this, or when hey took effect, doesn’t strike you as a little off-kilter that Hillary is the only one who saw fit to use her personal email only, not official communications? That seeming obsession with control doesn’t lend anything to transparency and a lot to hiding things. How does anyone know she’s turning everything over.
Brian, I have to admit I’m fascinated by your endorsement(?)of Kasich. As the so-called frontrunners flounder, he could emerge. But given Jeb’s momentum, John is likely no more than number two to any of the others. Just sayin’. I wish Jon Huntsman, Jr. had the fire in his belly for another run. Could solve a lot of problems for the republicans, assuming he is the ultimate test of the extremes of the party.
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