I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the sky, yes, but the sky has been quite the attention hog of late. Here’s today, after my morning swim:
More hot moon-on-Venus action. The color is coming on now, too. There’s a stretch of silver ash trees along one of the main arteries here; on my way home I stuck the phone through the sun roof, kept one hand on the wheel and tap-tap-tapped a series of hail-mary shot against the briefly blue sky. Like so:
Maybe I should take some pictures of the ground for a few days. Just to balance things out.
Three-hour meeting today, which was observed by a writer from (publication redacted). I tried to behave myself. Link when the story is published, whenever that may be. Afterward, I stepped outside to wait for the rest of the crew to muster for lunch and whaddaya know? In the garden, the first course:
I was grazing like a deer by the time they came out, just popping those little beauties into my maw. I think of my friends whose newspaper was recently acquired by Gannett, and sigh. I really do have one of the best jobs in journalism right now.
On to the bloggage, then:
As I write this, the rumors are starting to coalesce around just why Kevin McCarthy quit the speakers race justlikethat. Maybe or maybe not he was up to something, but this paragraph from the NYT story just makes me sigh:
Mr. McCarthy’s decision left the House rudderless just weeks before the Treasury Department faces a debt default that could roil markets, and two months before a deadline for a budget deal to avoid another government shutdown. But it also represented another victory for the clutch of unyielding hard-line conservatives who toppled the ambitions of yet another member of party leadership.
Boy, can’t wait for this one to sort itself out. In the meantime, let’s all enjoy the weekend.
alex said on October 9, 2015 at 6:17 am
The House-capades should make for some good drama these next few months. Here’s betting the GOP will be the biggest casualty in its own war on government.
And when you start seeing the presspicking up stories like this one, it’s a promising sign that perhaps the tide really is beginning to turn in the gun debate:
“We’re considered weirdos,” said George Legeros, a lifelong Virginia gun owner who also supports universal background checks and limits on how many guns people can buy. “Anybody who tries to take guns away is a bad man. That’s why the NRA doesn’t represent me. For lack of a better word, they are too whacked out. It’s one thing to be pro-gun. It’s another thing to have no common sense.”
Is it just wishful thinking, or is the world finally saying enough with the cray-cray already?
Also, for those who may have missed it, Brian’s link to the story of the American Spectator in yesterday’s thread was well worth the time.
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 7:58 am
Obama said his reelection would trigger a civil war in the Republican party. I’m just sorry walking canes aren’t in fashion these days so they can beat the living shit out of each other in the cloakroom between manly crying jags. Only this time it’ll be Preston Brooks vs Preston Brooks.
Pajama clad icing bag Blake Farenthold says the Next speaker ought to be from Texas. That’s a real good idea there, Blake. You want to get people thinking about moving Trump’s wall a few hundred miles north, that’ll do her.
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ROGirl said on October 9, 2015 at 8:04 am
Doubling down on the cray-cray:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/carson-suggests-that-gun-rights-might-have-prevented-the-holocaust/2015/10/08/99a82d9e-6df2-11e5-9bfe-e59f5e244f92_story.html
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basset said on October 9, 2015 at 8:13 am
The Spectator story was indeed interesting – they were in Bloomington the whole time I was at IU, in a completely different orbit though. Never could find a reference to that curb-cuts comment, y’all let me know if you run across it.
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nancy said on October 9, 2015 at 8:22 am
The R. Emmett Tyrell curb-cut comment is decades old, and I believe it was in a WashPost profile, maybe. Way back then. He said something about how the rest of us shouldn’t have to turn our ankles so a few disabled people can get around.
Basically, the guy was a dick then and remains a dick today. Only now everyone knows.
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 8:25 am
Since you don’t have to be a member to be speaker, I hope someone nominates Bristol Palin. She’s a capable parturition donut, she swings a mean shoe, she’s got a pussy and she ain’t Hillary! This could set her up for her “Quitting to join the Pres-dent race” book tour.
She’s smug enough, stupid enough, and shameless enough.
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Deborah said on October 9, 2015 at 8:57 am
I had to look up parturition.
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Jolene said on October 9, 2015 at 9:11 am
Parturition, I understood, but parturition donut?
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Jeff Borden said on October 9, 2015 at 9:17 am
It’s worth a chuckle to watch the House Republicans having a food fight, but damn, these assholes may do very real damage in thrall to their ideology. I read a story recently about General Electric shutting down a motor plant in Waukesha, Wis., eliminating 350 good paying jobs and affecting thousands of others who work in businesses that supply the plant. GE is moving the facility to Canada. Why? They fear the nihilists of the Tea Party will destroy the Import-Export Bank, so they’re relocating to a more sensible nation that doesn’t have a bunch of crazies in charge. The upshot? This plant is in the district of one Paul Ryan, the alleged financial wizard of the tea baggers. This asshole just watched a bunch of jobs walk away so he can remain ideologically pure.
These idiots have no idea how the rest of the world views our country. And when they start balking at raising the debt limit, they have no idea of the very real and very lasting financial damage it will do.
ISIS doesn’t worry me. Teapublicans do.
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 9:19 am
I guess I should have gone with “serial bastard shitter”.
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brian stouder said on October 9, 2015 at 9:22 am
Jolene, parturition is my new vocabulary word for the day!
So I suppose ‘parturition donut’ might be analogous to ‘tennis elbow’ (if not plantar warts)
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basset said on October 9, 2015 at 9:57 am
Shouldn’t have to turn our ankles… this is Amurica and the majority rules. Sheeeesh.
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Joe K said on October 9, 2015 at 11:24 am
A little less whacko than the extreme left or right
Pilot Joe
Close Original View
Another massacre, another charade
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Picture
WASHINGTON — There’s the cycle of poverty. There’s the cycle of violence. And then there’s the cycle of gun talk. It starts with a mass shooting. Gun control advocates blame the deaths on gun control opponents, who argue, in turn, that none of the proposed restrictions would have had any effect on the incident in question. The debate goes nowhere. The media move on.
Until the next incident, when the cycle begins again.
So with the Roseburg massacre in Oregon. Within hours, President Barack Obama takes to the microphones to furiously denounce the NRA and its ilk for resisting “common-sense gun safety laws.” His harangue is totally sincere, totally knee-jerk and totally pointless. At the time he delivers it, he — and we
— know practically nothing about the shooter, nothing about the weapons, nothing about how they were obtained.
Nor does Obama propose any legislation. He knows none would pass. But the deeper truth is that it would have made no difference. Does anyone really believe that the (alleged) gun show loophole had anything to do with Roseburg? Universal background checks sound wonderful. But Oregon already has one. The Roseburg shooter and his mother obtained every one of their guns legally.
The reason the debate is so muddled, indeed surreal — notice, by the way, how “gun control” has been cleverly rechristened “common-sense gun safety laws,” as if we’re talking about accident proofing
— is that both sides know that the only measure that might actually prevent mass killings has absolutely no chance of ever being enacted.
Mere “common-sense” regulation, like the assault weapons ban of 1994 that was allowed to lapse 10 years later, does little more than make us feel good. A Justice Department study found “no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”
As for the only remotely plausible solution, Obama dare not speak its name. He made an oblique reference to Australia, never mentioning that its gun control innovation was confiscation, by means of a mandatory buyback. There’s a reason he didn’t bring up confiscation (apart from the debate about its actual efficacy in reducing gun violence in Australia). In this country, with its traditions, public sentiment and, most important, Second Amendment, them’s fightin’ words.
Obama didn’t say them. Nor did he seriously address the other approach that could make a difference: more aggressive psychiatric intervention. These massacres are almost invariably perpetrated by severely disturbed, isolated, often delusional young men.
Yet even here, our reach is limited. In some cases involuntary commitment would have made a difference. Jared Loughner, the Tucson, Ariz., shooter, was so unstable, so menacing, fellow students at his community college feared, said one, he would “come into class with an automatic weapon.” Under our crazy laws, however, he had to kill before he could be locked up.
Similarly, the Navy Yard shooter had been found by police a few weeks earlier in a hotel room, psychotic and paranoid. They advised him to get psychiatric help. Advised. Predictably, he fell through the mental health cracks. A month later, he killed 12 and was killed himself, another casualty of a mental health system that lets the severely psychiatrically ill
— you see them sleeping on grates — live and die wretchedly abandoned.
The problem is that these mass-murder cases are fairly unusual. Take Roseburg. That young man had no criminal history, no psychiatric diagnosis beyond Asperger’s, no involvement in public disturbances. How do you find, let alone lock up, someone like that?
There are 320 million Americans. Schizophrenia affects about 1 percent of the population. That’s about 3 million people. Only a tiny fraction are ever violent — and predicting which ones will be is almost impossible.
Loner, socially isolated, often immersed in a fantasy world of violent video games. There are myriad such young men out there, but with different ages of onset, in different stages of derangement. Only a handful will ever harm anyone. What to do? Forcibly apprehend them, treat them, put them on perpetual preventive parole? By the tens of thousands?
Committing the Jared Loughners would have an effect. But even they are the exception among the shooters. Yet “common-sense” gun control would do even less. Unless you’re willing to go all the way.
In the final quarter of his presidency, Obama can very well say what he wants. If he believes in Australian-style confiscation — i.e., abolishing the Second Amendment — why not spell it out? Until he does, he should stop demonizing people for not doing what he won’t even propose.
Washington Post Writers Group
Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist. letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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Deborah said on October 9, 2015 at 11:37 am
The latest school shooting in Arizona involves the combo of guns and fraternities. Lovely.
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 11:52 am
Shorter Charles Kauthammer: That uppity black wants to demonize the Republicans for horfing that NRA dick. Shit happens. What you gonna do?
He made an oblique reference to Australia, never mentioning that its gun control innovation was confiscation, by means of a mandatory buyback.
Krauthammer neglects to mention there have been zero mass shootings in Australia sine they implemented their program.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHY48Q2UBVk
Not only should we implement gun control measures, we should deport our criminal class of right wing shites to an isolated continent, where they can blow each other to steaming bloody chunks.
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brian stouder said on October 9, 2015 at 11:52 am
A little less whacko than the extreme left or right – Joe, agreed! Ol’ Charlie is a little less whacko.
I will argue that when he says (regarding the specific Roseburg massacre)
“Within hours, President Barack Obama takes to the microphones to furiously denounce the NRA and its ilk for resisting “common-sense gun safety laws.” His harangue is totally sincere, totally knee-jerk and totally pointless. At the time he delivers it, he — and we — know practically nothing about the shooter, nothing about the weapons, nothing about how they were obtained. Nor does Obama propose any legislation. He knows none would pass. But the deeper truth is that it would have made no difference. Does anyone really believe that the (alleged) gun show loophole had anything to do with Roseburg?
His “would have made no difference” is simply wrong. If the shooter didn’t have multiple guns, with large magazines, and plentiful ammo, then when he did his terrible deed the news flashes we received would have been terrible, but with a lower body count. Similarly, if the NRA could represent bazooka makers and explosives firms and flame-thrower manufacturers – then our headlines would be more Oklahoma City-like, with a triple-digit body count.
Indeed, after OKC, all sorts of regulation came down on the dry fertilizer industry, so as to preclude the next rental-truck drving empty-headed killer…and so far, so good, eh?
Common sense gun laws might preclude a person from owning more than, say, 15 guns, eh? And/or – once a person goes to obtain gun #5 (or 6 or 7 – whatever) maybe that person should have to pass a battery of aptitude tests and training. After all, the 2nd amendment very (very) clearly refers to a “WELL REGULATED MILITIA” – so even leaving aside that these shooters are almost always a militia-of-one (or in Columbine’s case, 2) – so we should be able to agree to regulations for chuckleheads, yes?
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 12:01 pm
Joe doesn’t regard himself as an extremist, he just comes here to take one of his Limbaugh shits. It’s just another instance of Dunning Krueger run amok. it’s enough to make you pine for the days when the woefully ignorant just breathed out their days in silent darkness.
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Bob (not Greene) said on October 9, 2015 at 12:26 pm
And, who would have guessed, another fucking shooting at a college. Yeah, let’s keep not doing anything. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-northern-arizona-university-shooting-20151009-story.html
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 12:48 pm
http://juanitajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/crmlu151007.gif
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Jeff Borden said on October 9, 2015 at 12:50 pm
It’s long past time to admit that one of the ways ‘Murica is so exceptional is our utter indifference to gun deaths and injuries. No other advanced, civilized nation would allow this to occur on a regular basis, but we wallow in it like pigs in shit. Unless some mad gunman slaughters the family of Wayne LaPierre –and probably not even then– nothing will change. Ever.
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 1:20 pm
The cult of the founders is largely at the heart of the rot that keeps this country medieval. The second amendment was never designed to protect free men from tyranny. It was designed to protect enslavers from the specter of slave revolt, and to cement the legal authority of the South to conscript independent armies to hunt, capture, and kill escapees, even in neighboring states. It’s an artifact of the slave power, whose staunchest defenders were the authors of our founding documents.
A good start would be to revisit their work, and the legal interpretation of successive courts prior to the enactment of civil rights legislation in 1964. The voting rights act will have to be reenshrined in any meaningful reinterpretation of the Constitution, and we’ll have to start teaching history instaed of great white father religion.
Until then, we’ll keep fighting a nebulous Civil War that terrorizes the populace because we didn’t have the sense to scour our documents for their fundamentally racist underpinnings, and tear them out root and branch.
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 1:30 pm
http://gawker.com/the-houston-chronicle-reports-that-texas-southern-unive-1735677931
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Julie Robinson said on October 9, 2015 at 2:20 pm
Darlings, you’ve gotten yourselves worked up over the wrong issues. Don’t you know about the real problems in life? Here, let’s listen to Indiana First Lady Karen Pence’s own words: “I have had so many times where I was swimming at a friend’s beach house, pool, or lake house, using their matching beautiful beach towels. Lo and behold, I would go in the water for a dip or up to the house for a beverage, and when I came back to my towel, it was gone! Someone else had grabbed my towel unknowingly … because all of the towels looked the same.”
Fortunately, Karen has a plan to fix all this, only she had a teeny-tiny ethics concern about producing her towel charms from the governor’s residence. Even more fortunately, the Indiana State Ethics Commission has rolled over and has no problems with her business plan. http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/indiana/First-lady-gets-OK-for-home-business-9249586
In other words, Mrs. Pence has figured out that her husband’s political career is over, and she better start bringing home some bacon.
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brian stouder said on October 9, 2015 at 2:24 pm
Cooz – true! – but beware.
Some of the worst monied lunatics (at least hereabouts in Indiana) are actively working for a new Constitutional Convention.
I don’t think they’ll ever pull it off, but if they do –
I suspect the ‘arc of history’ would sharply jag downward into economic and social injustice, if those people ever prevail
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Sue said on October 9, 2015 at 2:27 pm
Nancy, are you talking about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel? I’ve heard two points of view – one, an outside owner will stop some of the pandering Scott Walker coverage and editorial viewpoints, or two, how much worse can it get?
I’m sorry to say that MJS isn’t on the radar of too many people, it’s hemorrhaging readers and advertisers and now that it’s been disconnected from the radio and tv holdings, it seems a matter of time before it’s gone.
Too bad but seriously, that editorial board and whoever’s approving stories and telling reporters what to report on… I used to like that paper.
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coozledad said on October 9, 2015 at 2:31 pm
Obama tells the Krauthammer crowd to suck it.
http://www.joemygod.com/2015/10/09/report-president-obama-considering-bypassing-congress-with-executive-action-on-gun-control/
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nancy said on October 9, 2015 at 2:31 pm
Towel charms won’t make much more than butter-and-egg money. Big Mike’s gonna need the Indiana Policy Review for some real bacon.
Yes, I was talking about the MJ-S.
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brian stouder said on October 9, 2015 at 2:47 pm
Our Bobby Knight look-alike empty-suit will be working for Fox News, I bet, as he is a rightwing lip-flapper from way back.
Plus, Fox has a paid-time-off plan for their hosts to run for national office, so there’s that, too – for down the road
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Jenine said on October 9, 2015 at 2:49 pm
I am wondering if requiring insurance for gun injury/damage could make our country’s gun situation more rational. Vehicles have to be insured, why not guns? Let the NRA and the insurance lobby work that out.
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Suzanne said on October 9, 2015 at 3:04 pm
Two school shooting in one day-Arizona & Texas-which have some of the most lax gun laws in the country. So, where were all those armed good guys to stop the armed bad guy?
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Julie Robinson said on October 9, 2015 at 3:09 pm
BTW, I don’t run in circles of those with lake homes, but growing up I was lucky enough to have neighbors with a pool, and the rule was that everyone brought their own darn towels.
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LAMary said on October 9, 2015 at 3:38 pm
We only use the crappy frayed towels at the beach or pool. No one will take them or mistake them for their own. I do get other people’s crappy frayed towels back sometimes. My sons bring home more towels than they brought. These go into the general “boys going swimming, dogs taking baths” shelf in the laundry room.
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Sue said on October 9, 2015 at 4:22 pm
http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2015/10/09/plenty-of-horne-journal-sentinel-will-lose-all-local-control/
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Brandon said on October 9, 2015 at 4:23 pm
All I know is Jeb won’t get my vote.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jeb-bushs-bush-problem/story?id=34354148
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alex said on October 9, 2015 at 4:47 pm
Why, look who’s politicizing Roseburg. My, my.
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David C. said on October 9, 2015 at 6:28 pm
Sue, the two local papers I’m familiar with, the Oshkosh Northwestern and the Appleton Post-Crescent are both Gannett rags. They’re both in the bag for Walker too.
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Deborah said on October 9, 2015 at 6:45 pm
What’s the deal with Gowdy’s head? It’s either really pointy on top or he has a Pee Wee Herman hairdo.
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Wim said on October 9, 2015 at 7:09 pm
I think it’s both, Deborah.
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Deggjr said on October 9, 2015 at 7:55 pm
To put in a good word about the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, I personally thought this article on Scott Walker was great value: http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/article/2013/dec/18/scott-walker-early-years/. It was well researched and gave all parties their say. It must have taken a lot of time to create.
Megan McArdle reported that Walker did not have a college degree. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-12/does-scott-walker-need-a-diploma-to-be-president- The MJ-S article reported Walker enrolled for 8 semesters and earned 94 credits of the 128 credits required to graduate.
Guess which article was printed by the Chicago Tribune? No doubt those who only read the Chicago Tribune were surprised that Walker was an early drop-out from the presidential campaign.
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devtob said on October 9, 2015 at 9:34 pm
Newspapers, and other local media, are overwhelmingly in the bag for local Republicans because of their advertisers.
Local car lots, real estate outfits, furniture stores, restaurants, etc., are generally owned by Republicans who want more development and less regulation and taxes, and are often politically active in local Republican parties to that end.
For-profit media companies do not want to antagonize those who keep them in business, so they will slant their coverage of local, state and national issues accordingly.
As they always have.
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Deborah said on October 10, 2015 at 1:24 am
We had a very successful block party tonight for our little lane in Santa Fe. We met many of our neighbors and it was tasty, everyone brought something. I must say as fun as it was I’m glad it’s over. We spent a lot of time the last few days sprucing everything up int the yard around our complex where the party was held. As it turns out we found out we have some fabulous neighbors.
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Dexter said on October 10, 2015 at 2:52 am
I frequently drive past our local vocational high school and Northwest Tech , side by side they are, at the intersection of Ohio 66 & 34. Lately , for the first time in memory, there has been a presence of county sheriff SUVs. I doubt anybody thought, “WTF?” We all know why they are hanging out at the local tech schools. I couldn’t waste time watching coverage of gun nuts in Oregon a-dissin’ President Obama. Instead I wasted time watching and listening to 4 baseball playoff games and read up on Northwestern’s football team; they play Michigan today.
More driving for me…I was found to be “a quart low” on some blood levels so I am driving to Toledo VA five days in a row for injections and blood monitoring. Ah, I know…the price of getting old…the “huge needle” I was warned about by a friend wasn’t huge at all; it was easy-peasy. The VA does have glitches I am finding out…the MRI I took in May never got to my doctor’s desk, and yesterday an important blood test I needed was cancelled by a woman in Ann Arbor at the Big VA there…reason? “Oh sorry…I must have accidentally done that.” Well hell’s bells. And finally, Cubs lost to the goddam fucking Saint Louis Cardinals. 🙁
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 10, 2015 at 8:57 am
“This visible world is wonderfully to be delighted in… because it is the theatre of God’s Kingdom.”
~ Thomas Traherne
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coozledad said on October 10, 2015 at 11:04 am
I saw a small pickup truckload of trash that looked pretty much like this hovering around my car in a parking lot in Danville. They seemed to be accosting everyone who walked into the store.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/suspects-in-california-yoga-teachers-death-to-be-charged-in-second-murder-2/
The only way to combat this is through family planning. You can’t reach slime mold with education.
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beb said on October 10, 2015 at 11:55 am
Detroit’s mayor is a white man in a majority black city, following a long succession of black mayors. He won the election by promising to be a competent administrator. Promises are cheap but he seems to have done one thing right… an app that makes it easy to report problems like running water, illegal dumping potholes and the like. But more importantly he’s also getting these problems fixed!
http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2015/10/09/more-than-10000-problems-fixed-through-improve-detroit-cell-phone-app/
He’s got my vote come the next election.
Meanwhile the disarray among Republicans over electing a new Speaker of the house has given me a flight of fantasy where the only person that everyone can agree is Nancy Pelosi, because they all hate equally… Second flight of fancy is that they elect Sen. Ted Cruz…
There was an armed protest of the President for visiting Oregon yesterday and plans for armed protests are 20 Muslem populations today. I’m beginning to think we should just assume that anyone wanting to buy a gun is a treasonous lunatic and incarcerate them all…
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MichaelG said on October 10, 2015 at 12:29 pm
So I’m New Orleans. The streets are in bad shape. I don’t know if the city has the money to do anything about them. I haven’t seen any ATMs or gas stations. Who knows how people get money or gas around here.
Bar bands here are excellent. Real music with bands having trumpets/clarinets/trombones/saxes and real bass’ huge and wooden and full of sound. The singers actually sing real songs. What an improvement over the mindless rock and roll I hear at home – all noise and volume.
Absinthe. I partook along with my new bar friends, a couple from New York. The bartender sets a glass samovar looking thing on the bar. It contains ice water and there are four spigots arranged around the base of the vessel. A glass containing the absinthe is set under each of thee spigots. There is what amounts to a slotted spoon resting on top of the glass. It holds a sugar cube. The bartender cracks the spigot so that it drips ice water on the sugar cube until the cube is fully melted into the drink. He lets the spigot drip for another moment until the absinth reaches the desired degree of cloudiness. Then: stir and serve! I expected the drink to have a very strong anise flavor. It doesn’t. It does taste very herbal, though. It was good. Really good! I liked it a lot. Although, at $15 a drink, there’s no danger of consuming too much of it.
http://www.absinthefever.com/absinthe/fountain
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coozledad said on October 10, 2015 at 2:52 pm
MichaelG: One of the artisanal absinthe manufacturers has moved on to making rum. He’s angling for the flavor of traditional Jamaican style rum without having to use dunder pits (brew slops and carrion allowed to ferment).
I never had any tolerance for rum. I could drink some tequila and get up the next day and do my chores, but rum always struck me as poison. Now I know why. It’s flavored with rotten Bovril.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/26/great-rum-without-rotting-goat-heads.html
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Deborah said on October 10, 2015 at 3:19 pm
Oh great we got a bottle of rum to mix with hot cider for our party last night. There’s about three quarters of a bottle left. I think I’ll pour it down the sink.
We bought a Bartlett pear tree a little less than a month ago at a reputable nursery near us. It did horribly and seemed to be pretty much dead. So we took pictures of it and showed them to an expert plant person who works at the nursery. I didn’t know that they have a 100 day policy. If the plant dies within that time they’ll replace it or give you store credit. So we got another tree, this time we amended the soil with organic compost and got some stuff called Superthrive to add to the water. Hope it works.
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MichaelG said on October 10, 2015 at 4:22 pm
Learn stuff all the time.
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Sherri said on October 10, 2015 at 6:21 pm
A friend of mine serves on the local school board, and I do research for her from time to time. We have a problem right now that our schools are overcrowded and we have failed on our last three attempts to pass a bond to fix the problem (for a variety of reasons, some the fault of the district.) She’s trying to get her fellow board members to think out of the box, the particular box being the standard suburban school building with large minimum acreage requirements, so I was doing some research on what other areas have done to move away from that model.
In the process of doing the research, I discovered that there used to be something called the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, which was a repository of information about, you guessed it, educational facilities. Perfect, right? Unfortunately, it used to be funded by Congress. You can guess the rest. I guess I’m lucky that the archive is still available, but nothing new has been added since September 2012.
The less you know, the more you can be fleeced by private industry. Your Congress at work.
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coozledad said on October 10, 2015 at 6:36 pm
Sherri: And they’ve cut funding for the US geological survey. I was up around Puget sound in 1973, in a house that sat on the edge of a forty foot fifteen degree shelf.
Being twelve years old, I didn’t think about it being the product of plate tectonics. I just thought it was exotic.
I could have been a candidate for Speaker of the House.
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Deborah said on October 10, 2015 at 6:46 pm
I finally got my apple and walnut salad today. Fresh Jonathans from the farmers market. So delicious.
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brian stouder said on October 10, 2015 at 8:37 pm
So on this beautiful October Saturday, we went to Homestead High School (bleh) for the band contest, and watched Wayne and their 15 band members and 10 flags/weapons do a pretty good job, somehow in the same class as schools putting 190 people onto the field.
After they performed, my lovely wife and her people rolled off, to go downtown for Escape Fort Wayne – which I don’t fully understand, but which they enjoyed immensely, whilst I stuck around to see how Wayne did (silver medal – no advance to the sectionals – which makes Shelby happy)
It was a beautiful, sunny, breezy day, and the trees have suddenly exploded with color – and I thought if I keeled-over then and there, life has been altogether good to me.
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basset said on October 10, 2015 at 8:42 pm
Went to the Southern Festival of Books today, I’m not literary enough to qualify for most of it but Mrs. B and I did spend a pleasant hour and a half hearing Fiona Ritchie from Thistle & Shamrock and her coauthor talk about Scots-Irish migration to Appalachia and the resultant musical wonders. Also found a book about South Carolina pottery I’d been meaning to get for awhile, some of my forebears are in it.
Nashville Oktoberfest was just a few blocks away, and this year we officially gave up on it. Circle the distant parking lots for awhile, jump a curb and find a spot, walk up to the festival until the street’s too crowded to move, wait till it shifts a little, take a few baby steps, wait some more, look at the mob scene that’s supposed to be the line to buy beer tickets, look at the mob scene that’s supposed to be the line to buy beer with the tickets, look at the half-block-long line to get a bratwurst, say the hell with it, work our way out of the crowd, go home.
The book, btw, is “Great and Noble Jar” – if anyone has any particular knowledge on that topic, especially as it applies to the Union District of SC, please share it with me.
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Sue said on October 10, 2015 at 8:54 pm
David C., remember when Gannett took the time and used the resources a couple of years ago to compile a searchable list with the salary of almost every public employee in Wisconsin? Information that’s available to everyone anyway. Because although anyone can look up that information by going to a municipality’s or district’s website (or going through a request process), it was apparently essential that citizens of Bayfield have immediate access to information about how much Saylesville’s teachers make. Or something. It couldn’t possibly be a companion piece to the searchable website of people who signed the recall petition, helpfully provided by the GAB.
Using time and resources to *really* look into those shadow emails though? Just like every other paper in the state: yawn.
devtob, do not forget the huge importance of PAC money in media advertising. It’s not just the local car dealerships anymore. Moreso in radio and TV, but still big for print and internet newspapers. Millions of dollars statewide.
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Brandon said on October 10, 2015 at 10:41 pm
I enjoy Granny Smiths myself.
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Dexter said on October 11, 2015 at 2:15 am
I had heard of the Jamaican dunder pits, filled with dead animal carcasses and vegetable waste, which rotted a good while and then rum makers would throw some of the muck into the fermentation tanks of water, sugar cane and or molasses. Not to worry, there are other rum makers , dunder pit contents not included. I used to enjoy rum once in a while, with lime juice or even cola drinks, but my go-to was bourbon. Kentucky bourbon, by god. Tennessee booze was always second rate.
The sports blogs and blurbs and sports talk radio is on fire regarding LA Dodgers Chase Utley’s breaking NY Mets second baseman Tejada’s leg with a late high slide. It was a really dirty play , no matter how many experts say it was a good hard slide. It looked like Utley was trying to break Tejada’s leg. Mission accomplished. It was ugly and sickening to watch.
Michigan football Wolverines can’t be touched! Three straight shutouts. Go Blue.
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Sherri said on October 11, 2015 at 2:23 am
I agree with you, Dexter. Utley’s slide was dirty, and the ump should have called the double play. MLB has gotten rid of the home plate collision, they need to get rid of the egregious take out slides as well. It’s not like you can knock over the first baseman when you’re running down to first, but somehow it’s considered good old-school baseball to take out the middle infielder to prevent them from making a play.
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coozledad said on October 11, 2015 at 8:17 am
Planned BENGHAZIhood!
http://juanitajean.com/i-want-you-guys-to-see-something/
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Sherri said on October 11, 2015 at 10:39 am
Ah, but those BENGHAZI!!11!! staffers were going to be ready if terrorists attacked: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/10/benghazi-staffers-spent-their-days-designing-personalized-tiffany-glocks
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Jolene said on October 11, 2015 at 3:30 pm
It’s amazing how much more important the four Americans who died in Benghazi are than those who died in Baghdad. No tribunals to examine the thinking that went into that disaster.
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Deborah said on October 11, 2015 at 6:43 pm
The young woman who lives in the apartment next door left for her gig in Haiwai doing hair and make-up for a movie being filmed there. Poor thing won’t be back until just before Christmas. She worked on the Benicio Del Toro movie out now that was filmed in Albuqurque. This new movie goes on to be filmed in Austraia after Haiwai but she doesn’t yet know if she’ll be part of that leg of the filming. She’s like 25, what a great experience for her.
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Deborah said on October 11, 2015 at 6:45 pm
Hawaii, why didn’t auto-correct do its job?
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Brandon said on October 11, 2015 at 9:15 pm
@Deborah, might it be this?
http://khon2.com/2015/04/27/extras-needed-for-film-on-oahu-starring-zac-efron-anna-kendrick-and-adam-devine/
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Deborah said on October 11, 2015 at 10:08 pm
I don’t think so Brandon, she said it was an action drama that she wasn’t allowed to discuss.
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