A Blog for the People... + one.
into the void. Swim lessons wrapped last night; weekday work is up to par, with the summer business plans coming along nicely.
Whatever the weather, get up and make it move this May weekend. Doesn't cost a dime. You'll be glad ya did!
Maybe the sexx was like steroids for Woods, who finished 9 behind Bo Van Pelt at Quail Hollow today. It's only Thursday sure, but my mind still jumps ahead, thinking: "If that's it, he can always take up the sexx again, after the divorce comes through, right?" *
Not nosy really, just how my mind thinks...
The cheer that rumbled across the almost empty golf course was like the first hint of thunder from an approaching storm. But the cheers did not foreshadow the revival of Woods’s golf game, just the arrival of an old-style Woods gallery — a multihued conglomeration of nationalities and races, much like those he attracted earlier in his career. It was accompanied by a discreet but visible police presence — both uniformed and undercover, on foot, on bicycles and on Segways — as a reminder of the changes that have come into his life recently.
A most unwelcome change to his on-course life is what Woods calls “the two-way miss,” the shot that goes off line, either left or right. It first appeared in competition during his return to the game three weeks ago at the Masters.
It appeared at the second tee, when his tee shot darted left, and popped up at various times throughout his round. While the crowd remained resolutely positive in its receptions for Woods, he was largely unaware of it as he struggled to somehow rein in his recalcitrant golf game.
One of the benefits of Internet writing, I think, is the valuable feedback you get from a variety of readers. Sometimes, our "diverse" worlds are very colorful and ethnic-friendly, but there really isn't a diversity of opinion shared.
Today, when reading this post by Annie Gottleib, I immediately thought of that short story (Baldwin, I think, maybe Ellison or Hughes though...), where the young boy is waiting at home for his mother, a domestic, to return from caring for somebody else's family so she can properly satisfy the needs of her own.
After the CNAs (certified nurse assistants) from hospice bathe and dress J and get him up, I like to hang out with them and have coffee before they go on to the next patient or (since we’re often their last stop)* to their family caregiving duties at home. Most of them are black (in all the multifarious shades of golden, freckled, ruddy and brown that word so flatly fails to suggest), and single motherhood is the norm in their community; the men have long since left or been kicked out, and those who’ve stayed are often described as not much help or not worth the trouble.
...
On the plus side, mothers/grandmothers are always there to be relied on and to take care of babies and little children while daughter-mothers go to work and to school, struggling doggedly for education and certification and advancement. In return, they take care of their aging mothers who struggle with arthritis, diabetes, heart failure. It’s a hard life and takes a heavy toll on health.
A South Florida girls' flag football coach is caught pulling the flag of an opposing player who intercepted and was heading toward the end zone.
"There was nobody between [safety Jessica Lucarelli] and the end zone," said Western coach James O'Brien, who sent the photo to the newspaper. "I even heard the ref turn to the coach and say. ‘What are you doing?'"
The District 22 flag football semifinal was scoreless with about eight minutes remaining when the junior intercepted a pass around the 50-yard line and started down the sideline.
"I saw the coach out of the corner of my eye," Lucarelli said. "I was shocked. You definitely don't expect something like that to happen. I was upset. He took away my glory and was teaching a horrible example to his players. What does it prove?"
Sampler blogpost of the day: http://livinginagoldenage.blogspot.com/
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Talking to Extraterrestrials: circa 740Staying the night at Summit-Top Temple,
you can reach out and touch the stars.
I venture no more than a low whisper,
afraid I'll wake the people of heaven.
~From The Selected Poems of Li Po.
Perhaps the universe is filled with intelligent creatures, but clearly we cannot be numbered among them. To imagine a sky filled with sentient beings, all of them angels and none of them demons, how much hubris and stupidity does that take?
Instead of trying to contact them, it is better by far to let them sleep.
We have a winner.
@RuthAnneAdams @BXGD #buttinski Apart from her being pro gay marriage, I get an anti-gay snarkiness from her. Subtle, but it's there IMO.
@RuthAnneAdams I think the problem is that she's a lot more shallow than people realize.
Who knew.
The Democrats understand that they have a winning issue right now. Goldman Sachs is making money. Bonuses are back, if they ever went away. The same folks who made obscene amounts of money taking risks that taxpayers ended up covering are still making obscene amounts of money, even as they fight against regulation that would try to prevent another collapse by providing stricter oversight and greater protection for consumers.
...
The Republicans' unwillingness to even have an open debate about financial reform makes them look like Wall Street really did get its money's worth from them. Sure, the Democrats get money from the bankers, too. (Who else can afford these $35,000 dinners, after all?) But the big question is not who gave what to whom, but what they got for it.
According to The Hill, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein endorsed the financial regulation reform legislation during his Senate testimony today.“I’m generally supportive,” Blankfein told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Wall Street will benefit from the bill because it will make the market safer, Blankfein said.
“The biggest beneficiary of reform is Wall Street itself,” he said. “The biggest risk is risk financial institutions have with each other.”
I don’t think this says much about the merits of the legislation, particularly because Blankfein also confessed not to know all of the bill’s details, but I suspect it could affect the politics.
Ways to Keep your Sanity in Tough Times.
I've never used an ATM, but I think this would be funny:
When The Money Comes Out The ATM,Scream 'I Won! I Won!'
When Leaving the Zoo,
Start Running towards the Parking lot, Yelling
'Run For Your Lives! They're Loose!'
Is this is the same Annie Lowrey that head-of-the-household Ezra Klein lists as an "unmarried partner" on his Census form? Things that make you go ... Hmm.
We are self-critical. We know that we would do well to think less about ourselves. We took pause at the painful irony of Opal Mehta-gate—the frenzy surrounding a book about an organization kid who learns to lighten up which was exposed as plaigarized and reviled in the media as the prototypical example of glory-mongering. The recent hunger strike for living wages showed that we as a student body want meaningful changes.
Largely, I went with the organization-kid tide at Harvard. I over-did extracurriculars and elbowed for internships. I joined Teach for America, which caters to organization kids just like Goldman Sachs does. But sometimes, I felt that sinking feeling as I did in the pool: The system is sick, because of the organization kid mentality. I overheard one student describe writing a thesis as “Hoopes-ing it up.” I saw one student cry with envy when another student won a Rhodes scholarship. I know someone who took a class hoping that the big name professor would help her with an internship.
And I know I’m not alone in hoping that Harvard students can craft a healthier ethos. Knowing that you have a problem—and we do know it—is the precursor to change. If only Harvard required drown-proofing.
Annie M. Lowrey ’06-’07 is an English and American literature and language concentrator in Quincy House. She was a Crimson associate magazine chair in 2005
The old order haunts this one, and whispers that maybe something was lost as well as gained when we sacrificed all for the sake of high achievement, safety, and equal opportunity. In some of the imposing old portraits, for example, I saw a moral gravity and a sense of duty that are missing from the faces of the recent presidents, who look like those friends of your parents who encouraged you to call them by their first names—friendly, unassuming guys in tweed jackets. Those old Princetonians were not professional administrators ministering to professional students. The code of the meritocrat was not their code, and maybe in some ways theirs was the more demanding code. For the most striking contrast between that elite and this one is that its members were relatively unconcerned with academic achievement but went to enormous lengths to instill character. We, on the other hand, place enormous emphasis on achievement but are tongue-tied and hesitant when it comes to what makes for a virtuous life.
...
When it comes to character and virtue, these young people have been left on their own. Today's go-getter parents and today's educational institutions work frantically to cultivate neural synapses, to foster good study skills, to promote musical talents. We fly our children around the world so that they can experience different cultures. We spend huge amounts of money on safety equipment and sports coaching. We sermonize about the evils of drunk driving. We expend enormous energy guiding and regulating their lives. But when it comes to character and virtue, the most mysterious area of all, suddenly the laissez-faire ethic rules: You're on your own, Jack and Jill; go figure out what is true and just for yourselves.
...
This young man took me to lunch in his college dining room, and when I asked him about character-building, he spoke more comfortably and thoughtfully than anybody else I had met. He wasn't easy on himself, the way supercharged achievers have a tendency to be. "Egotism is the biggest challenge here," he said. "It can make you proud if you do well. It can make you self-assured and self-sufficient. You don't need help from other people. You won't need help from your wife. You won't give yourself over to her when you are married." He went on, talking calmly but faster than I could write. He was talking in a language different from that of the meritocrat—about what one is, rather than what one does. He really did stand out from the other students, who were equally smart and equally accomplished but who hadn't been raised with a vocabulary of virtue and vice.
The premise of the current financial regulatory reform is that the establishment missed the last bubble and, therefore, more power should be vested in the establishment to foresee and prevent the next one.
If you take this as your premise, the Democratic bill is fine and reasonable. It would force derivative trading out into the open. It would create a structure so the government could break down failing firms in an orderly manner. But the bill doesn’t solve the basic epistemic problem, which is that members of the establishment herd are always the last to know when something unexpected happens.
If this were a movie, everybody would learn the obvious lessons. The folks in the big investment banks would learn that it’s valuable to have an ethical culture, in which traders’ behavior is restricted by something other than the desire to find the next sucker. The folks in Washington would learn that centralized decision-making is often unimaginative decision-making, and that decentralized markets are often better at anticipating the future.
But, again, this is not a Hollywood movie. Those lessons are not being learned. I can’t wait for the sequel.
Or being a winning player on a consistently losing team.
And we're not talking Walter Payton here either...
"She just can't be chained...
to a life where nothing's gained...
and nothing's lost...
at such a Cost."
"Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day..."
Blackhawks take out the Predators in six games. The Hawks now face the Canucks in the Western Conference semi-finals.
"Whenever you can win a playoff series, especially against a team like Nashville, it feels good. I don't know who said it was going to be an easy series or we were going to get upset. It was two teams that played hard going back to the regular season. It was a very tough series. I give them a lot of credit. It could have really gone either way."
—Patrick Sharp.
I really like this version of the Growing Pains theme. Really.
Good words, good performance.
I hope every liberal who voted for this man because of the history making power of his black skin is listening.
My observation?
Funny how he's soliciting help from "young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again."
Now who's missing in that special interest category? Who's starting to wise up that they're being played for votes, with nothing "fair, strong, or just" offered up in return?
Teh Gays, of course.
Personally, I'll just be glad when this generation of glib Boomers -- all talk, no walk -- fades into the sunset, and stops with the artificial enhancers to special groups, to allay some of their own legally preferential treatment in this "Fairer, Stronger, More Just America."
But maybe we aren't so keen on highlighting the value of critical thinking just now. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ... Be Satisfied with the Status Quo, and the special protections given to those deemed "too big too fail."
And remember kids -- Vote Dem in November. For a Fairer, Stronger, More Just America. Heh.
And get your parents to jump on the historical bandwagon again too! Who needs substance when you've got style points oozing out the pores??
If you were a smart blogger, making enough money, wouldn't you bother to reinvest in a decent tracking software, before making public accusations about unknown commenters?
I wouldn't accuse without solid evidence, particularly if I were a polished skeptic. And especially if my accusations against the other party involved a larger institution, like a public school.
You know damned well I let people disagree with me here all the time and that I have a problem with a particular person who is a former student of mine. You owe me an apology. If it doesn't come fast, everyone ought to see that you are in bad faith.
By Bob Unruh © 2010 WorldNetDaily
Federal agents invaded an Amish farm in Pennsylvania at 5 a.m. to inspect cow-milking facilities then followed up the next day with a written notice that the farmer was engaged in interstate sale of raw milk in violation of the Public Health Services Act.
...
The farmer told NICFA he came out of his house about 4:30 a.m. for his milking routine and noticed a lot of traffic on Kinzer Road.
Shortly later, the cars were coming up his lane.
"I stood back in the dark barn to see what they were going to do. They drove past my two 'Private Property' signs, up to where my coolers were, with their headlights shining right on them," Allgyer reported.
He called to the five men as they were preparing to knock on his home, where his wife and family remained asleep.
"Two were from the FDA, agent Joshua C. Schafer who had been there in February and another. They showed me identification, but I was too flustered to ask for their cards. I remember being told that two were deputy U.S. marshals and one a state trooper. They started asking me questions right away. They handed me a paper, and I didn't realize what it was," he said.
"Schafer told me they were there to do a 'routine inspection.' At 5:00 in the morning, I wondered to myself? 'Do you have a warrant?' I asked, and one of them, a marshal or the state policeman, said, 'You've got in your hand buddy.' I asked, 'What is the warrant about?' Schafer responded,
'We have credible evidence that you are involved in interstate commerce,'" the farmer reported.
"You would have to be part of a combat infantry unit to appreciate what moments of relief Bill gave us. You had to be reading a soaking wet Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then see one of his cartoons."
Bob Greene:
[T]he United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that's going to happen this month: Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamp. Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003. The end of his life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to care for himself after the scalding, he became a resident of a California nursing home, his health and spirits in rapid decline.
He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin, and his work, meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen Willie and Joe were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.
Mauldin was an enlisted man just like the soldiers he drew for; his gripes were their gripes, his laughs were their laughs, his heartaches were their heartaches. He was one of them. They loved him.
He never held back. Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close for comfort, his superior officers tried to tone him down. In one memorable incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, and Patton informed Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons -- celebrating the fighting men, lampooning the high-ranking officers -- to stop. Now.
The news passed from soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.
Not quite. Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe . Ike put out the word: Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants. Mauldin won. Patton lost.
...
Mauldin's famous JFK cartoon was drawn on deadline in an hour. The editors at the Chicago Sun Times took one look at the drawing and immediately gave it the entire back page. Jacqueline Kennedy requested the original.
But he never acted as if he was better than the people he met. He was still Mauldin the enlisted man.
Mauldin is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This month, the kid cartoonist makes it onto a first-class postage stamp. It's an honor that most generals and admirals never receive.
What Mauldin would have loved most, I believe, is the sight of the two guys who are keeping him company on that stamp.
Take a look at it.
There's Willie. There's Joe.
And there, to the side, drawing them and smiling that shy, quietly observant smile, is Mauldin himself. With his buddies, right where he belongs. Forever.
Students at Marshfield High School in Marshfield, Wisc. didn't let their non-proximity to the ocean stop them: The five-person team won their second National Ocean Sciences Bowl championship in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Twenty-five high schools competed in marine biology, technology, climate change and geography categories. The coasties placed and showed too:
Marine Academy of Science and Technology, of Highlands, N.J., placed second, and Mission San Jose High School, of Fremont, Calif., placed third.
The "freshwater" * people in the 21st Century are just too dumb to realize Americans can't be self-sufficient and isolating, and if the people on the coasts make a big mess despite all their expertise and need to rely on others to bail them out, we ought to just shut our dumb cud mouths and accept that the elites are really on the money this time... No really, we mean it! We know better than you where your dollars should be spent -- "you're not listening" whine...
There’s been a huge outpouring of blogospheric discussion about “epistemic closure” on the right: a complete refusal to look at evidence or arguments that don’t come from the like-minded. I don’t have much to say about all that aside from the fact that it’s obvious, and has been going on for years.
But I think it’s worth pointing out that something similar has long been true in macroeconomics. And like the political version of epistemic closure, it’s not a “both sides do it” issue. It’s a fresh-water phenomenon; salt-water macro isn’t subject to the same problem.
Here’s what I mean: ask a grad student at Princeton or MIT, “How would a new classical macro guy answer this?”, and the student can do it; classes at freshwater departments teach real business cycle theory, and good students can tell you what it says even if their professors have a different view.
But students at freshwater schools — or, alas, many of their professors — can’t return the favor. It’s been painfully obvious since the crisis broke that people at Minnesota, or even many people at Chicago, have no idea what New Keynesian economics is all about. I don’t mean they disagree, or think it’s garbage, they literally have no idea what the concepts are. And that’s why they reinvent 80-year-old fallacies when they try to discuss the subject.
It’s interesting to ask why this sort of cocooning is a feature of the right but not the left. But it’s very real, and has a dire impact on economic as well as political discourse.
The key fact about health care — the central issue in health care economics — is that it’s all about the big-ticket items. Checkups don’t cost much; neither does the treatment of minor illnesses. The money that matters goes to bypasses and dialysis — costs that are highly unpredictable, and that almost nobody can afford to pay out of pocket. Modern health care, if it’s going to be provided at all, has to be paid for mainly out of insurance.
Yet if the crisis has pushed freshwater economists into absurdity, it has also created a lot of soul-searching among saltwater economists. Their framework, unlike that of the Chicago School, both allows for the possibility of involuntary unemployment and considers it a bad thing. But the New Keynesian models that have come to dominate teaching and research assume that people are perfectly rational and financial markets are perfectly efficient.
To get anything like the current slump into their models, New Keynesians are forced to introduce some kind of fudge factor that for reasons unspecified temporarily depresses private spending. (I’ve done exactly that in some of my own work.) And if the analysis of where we are now rests on this fudge factor, how much confidence can we have in the models’ predictions about where we are going?
Saltwater economists are associated with economists from the Universities on the East and West coasts of the US. In particular universities such as Berkeley, Harvard, MIT and Yale.
Economic thought from these universities tends to be more suspicious of free markets and advocate a greater role for government regulation and discretionary fiscal policy. Saltwater economists are more critical of rational expectations and point to examples of irrational behaviour.
Freshwater economists are associated with the Chicago school of Economics and other universities around the Great Lakes such as Rochester and Minneapolis. The Chicago school of Economics is such a dominant force in economics, it is probably a more common term than ‘Freshwater Economists’.
Freshwater economists typically place greater emphasis on the benefits of free markets, rational expecations, real business cycle, monetarism and are more critical of government intervention in the economy. It is also termed ‘laissez faire’ economics and is closely allied to the neo–classical school of economics.
successfully tilled. Never ceases to amaze me the rich blackness the glaciers scraped us up here... yum yum minerals.
Let the planting begin !
Jerusalem now:
“Where else in the world would you need 2,000 armed, fully equipped police officers to secure a failed march of 70 of your own citizens in an area that you claim as your capital?”
As in the financial world, it becomes clearer and clearer that he who controls the systems overcomes substantive objections, to the detriment of others. Too big to fail ?
If you were a smart blogger, making enough money, wouldn't you bother to reinvest in a decent tracking software, before making public accusations about unknown commenters? I wouldn't accuse without solid evidence, particularly if I were a polished skeptic. And especially if my accusations against the other party involved a larger institution, like a public school.
Plus, as a woman myself, it personally saddens me to see one spanked, and then embraced back into the fold, once she learns her place, Lil Lady... Consistency counts. If you want to be respected as an equal, at some point you have to start playing defense, and drop the feminine charm poses that surely distinguishes and contributes to success, but is so easily played against one, if you never learn to defend and hold your own ground, without falling back on "special" cards, or ending the conversation prematurely, "Do you know who you're talking to, and what your position is relative to mine??"
See, I do know who I'm talking to. Or at. Or -- most importantly -- where I'm NOT dropping bon mots. If you can't say the same, if you're getting confused by technological and other reigny day misleaders, Think It Through... preferably, before making public accusations in a local, Weekly Reader gossip rag.
You know damned well I let people disagree with me here all the time and that I have a problem with a particular person who is a former student of mine. You owe me an apology. If it doesn't come fast, everyone ought to see that you are in bad faith."
I haven't taught Level I Red Cross swim classes in ages -- the beginning kids -- and they do get younger and younger each year. We had 10 signed up, so Joe -- the other instructor -- and I decided to split them into high and low skill levels, with me gamely offering to take 4 of the lower clinging and crying tots, to his 6 who needed no urging getting into the water that first day.
Only one in swim diapers, a fresh 3 years old, with the most advanced turning 4 in May. What a treat. After a few lessons, I asked the parents if they'd be interested in joining us in the water too: you can concentrate a lot more on one child if you don't have to simultaneously distract the other 3 with something to do at the wall.
The fathers were game:
The confidence levels soared. Smiles were seen.
I've got one close to independently floating already, with a nice deep water bob going too. Another who's submerging the face and opening the eyes to reach and locate the ring. And two more kicking up a storm and blowing the bubbles on the front -- essentially getting used to the float position, and figuring out how we move in the water as opposed to land.
We've got some jumping in unassisted (okay, one -- but with one almost there who just likes to hold your fingertips), and all 4 can pretty much bob/kick to the wall safely from a few yards out. Progress at the lower levels, not unlike mastering rotary breathing in Level III and realizing, "Hey, if I do this right, there's nothing keeping me from not only crossing the pool, but going beyond 25 yards because I'm not even tired or out of breath..."
In short, last night's lessons again were a joy. I just sometimes forget: when you're around a flush-cheeked little one who doesn't seem his usual energetic self, and you wake up yourself the next morning with a sore throat and active nose, it's a good reminder of the many ways the little ones share their love...
That American family reminds me a bit of the Romney's, and it's good to see them appreciated.
[T]he Denver Broncos selected Tim Tebow with the 25th pick of the first round of the NFL Draft. Tebow was the second quarterback taken, behind Sam Bradford (No. 1 overall) but ahead of Colt McCoy and Jimmy Claussen, who many expected to be selected ahead of Tebow but who were not drafted in the first round.
"Not everybody has to like you, only one team has to like you," said Tebow, who spent several minutes hugging family and friends near his home in Jacksonville. "I'm so blessed to be able to go play there."
...
Denver traded spots four times to eventually end up with Tebow, who joins Kyle Orton and Brady Quinn in Denver's quarterback rotation.
...
Jon Gruden and Steve Young both defended Tebow's skills, and agreed that Denver was one of the best destinations for him. Broncos fans have desperately wanted an heir apparent to John Elway.
"This guy Tebow will not be denied. He'll be huge in the Bronco community," Gruden said. "Who knows when he's going to play, what he's going to play, how he's going to play, but you are adding one big time human being on your football team."
Critters spotted on a mid-afternoon paddle of the Red Cedar, the first river journey of the year, and a low river at that:
Pileated woodpecker
Whitetail deer
Juvenile bald eagles
Sun turtles
Nesting waterfowl
and ...
a found and returned purse to a huggingly grateful 81-year-old woman, who said it was taken 3 weeks ago from her car parked in the driveway in town. The cash was gone, but pictures, cards, car keys, glasses, makeup, etc. were still intact, though waterlogged.
After expressing that sentiment on the Today show yesterday, 15-year-old Michael Brewer returned to school today in Florida. The three teens charged with setting him ablaze last October await trial on second-degree murder charges.
You just can't keep a good man down. Go Michael Brewer. Life only gets easier from here.
I know pokin fun at somebody's name is not the best way to get them to take criticism seriously, but I can't help it: Lil Ezra acts and thinks boyish. Like he's better than you. I don't mind that. It's just ... he's never been properly checked. Seems he came up through the education credentials route, and no doubt his boyish clean-cut looks help endear him to his journalistic elders. But real-world common-sense checking? Not his strong suit.
Truth be told: Ezra Klein is inaccurate, and in over his head prescribing liberal solutions to all the nation's ills.
Start with the "healthcare reform" laws that do nothing to address skyrocketing costs of medical procedures with no plans at all to determine how finite resources should be most efficiently allocated. Instead, we "fix" that problem by corralling millions of healthy, non-participating adults into involuntarily contributing to private businesses. To prop up a failing insurance system currently unable to balance premiums coming in with payments going out.
Trouble is, what if all those new (forced) paying customers decide they want treatment and services for their premium dollars too? If they're not content to pay in for others with pre-existing medical needs and bills, without drawing out for their own healthcare desires?
Have the number-crunchers calculated human psychology into the mix? Because by "guaranteeing the right of healthcare to all", Mr. Klein and his economic expert pals might just be doing the exact opposite of what we all know is eventually needed: to curtail unnecessary and ineffective medical care in order to most effectively help the greatest numbers of Americans. Seeing "medical costs" reclassified before the private companies have to comply with the supposed "teeth" in the law ... well nevermind that. Ditto with pointing out that the medical needs of undocumented immigrants have not been fiscally addressed in the reform. You think that might have been a key part of addressing America's healthcare needs and how we work together to finance what we can.
But that issue "solved", we're on to bigger and better windmills for the little liberals to tilt against:
Today, Mr. Klein in his position as junior economist at the WaPo, has pulled out a "new" study, illustrated with Katie Couric and Elmo Sesame Street "when families grieve" graphics. Too cute! (But c'mon cheer up: y'all won't miss the Capt'n Cruch that much.)
Turns out, kids can be influenced by tv ads. Who knew? But help is on the way. It's gonna take some government funding to get those parents the resources they need to turn off the boob tube and teach the young un's to eat right.
But what's this? The "new" study is dated September 20, 2005? Could it be young Mr. Klein is reaching for stats to support a pre-conceived talking point of today?
Namely, that Americans are too dumb to feed ourselves properly without government spending to help us?
Why we need calorie information on menus
Let's say you take your family to Claim Jumper for a delicious dinner. You're trying to eat a bit better lately, so you'd like to make a relatively low-calorie dining choice. Should you order the spicy jambalaya, the "widow maker" burger, the cobb salad, the whiskey-apple glazed chicken, or the homemade beef stew?
Answer here. I bet you got it wrong. And let's not even get into the sodium.
Why not agree to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the planned healthcare mandate?
Nevermind constitutionality, how about a change that acknowledges equal opportunities -- whether personal health decisions or career choices -- trump federally guaranteed promises of equality any day of the week.
Surely we can find bipartisan support for such tradeoff? It might save us a lot of years in the court system, and help people plan better futures, begin tightening the belts so-to-speak now, before we become dependent on an entitlement that cannot be sustained should the mandate fail.
Rattled.
@5:05:
"Because...Can I just say? -- once again:
Barbara and I are supportive of repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, so I don't know why you're hollering.
Now the problem we have here..."
And if there comes a Time
Guns and Gates no longer hold you in
And if you're Free to make a Choice
Just look towards the West and find a Friend.
Hey nikita is it cold...
~Bernie Taupin.
Columnist Susan Estrich collapses in New York City, and finds herself saved by the acts of a kind-hearted stranger.
Well it gets me nowhere:
It was a hot day. I'd been on a plane for six hours. Nothing to eat. Five cups of coffee. Not much sleep the night before. In my life, what else is new?
...
I worry too much, and sometimes I worry about all the wrong things. I don't trust, I verify.
...
For many years, I thought that if only I worked hard enough, did enough people enough favors, piled up the IOUs and the private numbers, I could somehow protect my loved ones. Of course, it isn't so. There is no amulet, no Rolodex big enough, no place safe enough.
...
I was carrying a purse full of credit cards and money. I was still carrying it when I got to the hospital. I was wearing an expensive watch and a fancy (looking) ring. I was still wearing them when I got to the hospital. She could have slipped off the watch or the ring, or looked in my purse for my ID and found hundreds of dollars and a stack of credit cards. I would not have known or cared.
Instead, she sat with me and protected me until the ambulance arrived. You might say she saved me. That's what I think.
"In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path and he directed my path straight to her," King shouted to the crowd, reinforcing the role he says his faith played, after finding Nadia and returning with the rescue crew. "Because I prayed that all the way."
"...I see the stars
I hear the rolling thunder...
Thy pow'r throughout the universe displayed."
"No girl made has got a shade on ... Sweet Georgia Brown."
Mitt Romney might be the most viable candidate to challenge the incumbent president, but Ron Paul will be an attractive fellow choice:
“In the technical sense, in the economic definition, he is not a socialist,” the Texas Republican said to a smattering of applause at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.
“He’s a corporatist,” Paul quickly added, meaning the president takes “care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.”
Julia Sugarbaker; Hal Holbrook's wife; a classy lady, Dixie Carter:
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The middle of three children, Carter was born in 1939 in McLemoresville, Tenn. Carter was the daughter of a grocery and department store owner who died just three years ago at 96.
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Carter grew up in Carroll County and made her stage debut in a 1960 production of "Carousel" in Memphis. It was the beginning of a decades-long stage career in which she relied on her singing voice as much as her acting.
She appeared in TV soap operas in the 1970s, but did not become a national star until her recurring roles on "Different Strokes" and another series, "Filthy Rich," in the 1980s. Those two parts led to her role on "Designing Women," a comedy about the lives of four women at an interior design firm in Atlanta.
Carter and Delta Burke played the sparring sisters who ran the firm. The series also starred Annie Potts and Jean Smart. The show, whose reruns have rarely left the airwaves, was not a typical sitcom. It tackled such topics as sexism, ageism, body image and AIDS.
"It was something so unique, because there had never been anything quite like it," Potts told The Associated Press at a 2006 cast reunion. "We had Lucy and Ethel, but we never had that exponentially expanded, smart, attractive women who read newspapers and had passions about things and loved each other and stood by each other."
I'm cobbling together odd jobs as I get my own business up and running. Swim lessons, Census work... I just picked up another Old Town Otter at Dunham's pre-season sale, a lightweight paddle and new lifevest too.
Last year, I bought a little trailer to tow after the Corsica, after having the trailer hitch added years ago. I'm hoping the siblings and their friends will visit this summer to enjoy the lakes and rivers; I'm thinking of running an ad for private lessons too.
You can't beat northern Wisconsin in the summertime, even if just for stolen visits.
Was there another happening Thursday in the wide world of sports? I mean, besides the Wisconsin Badgers knocking Rochester off their skates in Detroit to advance to Saturday night's college hockey championship game?
By David Albright, ESPN.com
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Wisconsin started the day when it rolled Rochester Institute of Technology 8-1 by the largest margin of victory in a Frozen Four game since Lake Superior State beat Boston University 9-1 in the 1994 final.
That was followed by Boston College's 7-1 crusher against No. 1 overall seed Miami.
The 13-goal combined differential was the second largest in Frozen Four play behind a 15-goal day way back in 1954.
Thursday's two victories, in front a surprisingly quiet record indoor hockey crowd of 34,954, set up a rematch of the 2006 championship game (which was won 2-1 by the Badgers over the Eagles at Milwaukee's Bradley Center). BC and Wisconsin meet Saturday night (7 p.m. ET, ESPN HD, ESPN3.com) to decide the 2010 NCAA hockey champion.
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"We ran into just a powerhouse tonight," RIT coach Wayne Wilson said. "They have a tremendous power play and we knew that going in. But they had an answer for everything. They were physically stronger and quicker and really answered anything we tried to generate."
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Wisconsin will be going for its seventh national title and third (in three different venues) in this town. But the Badgers know that Thursday's easy skate won't likely be repeated Saturday.
"It's a good win for us, but we gotta continue to play hard and play smart and we gotta get ourselves ready and focused to play one more," [Wisconsin center Derek] Stepan said. "And having that balance of not being too hot or not being too low is kind of a key. With being confident comes that poise and having that poise is very crucial."
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[T]he Badgers, who lead the nation with 171 goals (4.1 per game), have to feel pretty good about their chances too heading into the championship game.
"I think this group, because of the upperclassmen, has the ability to enjoy the moment and get back to the task at hand," Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves said. "I think that is one of the guys' strengths is being able to do that. And we're going to need to be able to have that happen again."
And with any luck the final game of the college hockey season will be played on level ice.
" The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it? ”
What a childish question. If you lose your faith so easily, if you believe that the evil actions of some impugn the good results of all, then walk away. Commit spiritual suicide, or better yet, find a religion or spiritual home that works for you? Because people have stuck by their faith through more trying times, and asking the question only shows the naivete.
The above quote comes from Maureen Dowd's brother, as she steps aside in today's column to let him do the heavy lifting. She thinks as a practicing Catholic, and a male brought up participating more in the faith traditions, he might hold more sway with her readers and church leaders:
My brother Kevin is conservative and devout — his hobby is collecting crèches — and has raised three good Catholic sons.
When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things. He wrote the following:
“In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the Police and Fire departments told me once ‘Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce.’
My brothers and I were sleepily at his side for the monthly 8 a.m. Holy Name Mass and the guarding of the Eucharist in the middle of the night during the 40-hour ritual at Easter. Once during a record snowstorm in 1958, we were marched single-file to church for Mass only to find out the priests next door couldn’t get out of the rectory.
The priest was always a revered figure, the embodiment of Christ changing water into wine. (Older parishioners took it literally.) The altar boys would drink the dregs.
When I was in the 7th grade, one of the new priests took four of us to the drive-in restaurant and suggested a game of ‘pink belly’ on the way back; we pulled up a boy’s shirt and slapped his belly until it was pink. When the new priest joined in, it seemed like more groping than slapping. But we thought it was inadvertent. And my parents never would have believed a priest did anything inappropriate anyway. A boy in my class told me much later that the same priest climbed into bed with him in 1958 at a rectory sleepover, but my friend threw him to the floor.
Council member Romaine Quinn, 19, beat Dan Fitzgerald, incumbent, 965 to 844.
Here's Quinn's Facebook page, if you can glean anything from that. We're also watching Sean Duffy take on Rep. Dave Obey, up north, in the fall. Duffy remember, first came to fame at the family's lumberjack shows before joining an MTV cast of The Real World.
Speaking of real worlds...
Wednesday already. One day closer to the weekend, but then again with these brighter mornings and lengthier afternoons outside into the evening, who needs to wait for the weekends.
Sometimes I think we ought to set aside a day to let the prize-winning economists, pundits, and business/political leaders stop talking long enough to learn a little something from the people who actually get the jobs done in this country.
Denise Giardina:
People in West Virginia had hoped that on Monday night we would gather around televisions with family and friends to watch our beloved Mountaineers face Butler in our first chance at the men’s N.C.A.A. basketball title since 1959.I think they understand the richness of life there.
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Then, on Tuesday morning, we would wake to triumphant headlines in sports pages across the country. At last, we would say, something good has happened to West Virginia. The whole nation would see us in a new light. And we would cry.
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On Tuesday, the headline in The Charleston Gazette read instead: Miners Dead, Missing in Raleigh Explosion. And we cried.
Despite the sunny skies and unseasonably warm weather, the mood here in southern West Virginia is subdued. As of Tuesday afternoon, 25 men have been confirmed dead, two are critically injured, and four are missing and presumed dead. Their fellow West Virginians work round the clock and risk their own lives to retrieve the bodies.
Already outrage is focused on Massey Energy, owner of the Upper Big Branch mine. Massey has a history of negligence, and Upper Big Branch has often been cited in recent years for problems, including failure to properly vent methane gas, which officials say might have been the cause of Monday’s explosion.
It seems we can’t escape our heritage. I grew up in a coal camp in the southern part of the state. Every day my school bus drove past a sign posted by the local coal company keeping tally, like a basketball scoreboard, of “man hours” lost to accidents. From time to time classmates whose fathers had been killed or maimed would disappear, their families gone elsewhere to seek work.
We knew then, and know now, that we are a national sacrifice area. We mine coal despite the danger to miners, the damage to the environment and the monomaniacal control of an industry that keeps economic diversity from flourishing here. We do it because America says it needs the coal we provide.
West Virginians get little thanks in return. Our miners have historically received little protection, and our politicians remain subservient to Big Coal. Meanwhile, West Virginia is either ignored by the rest of the nation or is the butt of jokes about ignorant hillbillies.
Here in West Virginia we will forget our fleeting dream of basketball glory and get about the business of mourning. It is, after all, something we do very well. In the area around the Upper Big Branch, families of the dead will gather in churches and their neighbors will come to pray with them. They will go home, and the same neighbors will show up bearing platters of fried chicken and potato salad and cakes. The funeral homes will be jammed, the mourners in their best suits and ties and Sunday dresses. ...
Congrats to Brett Favre, who became a grandfather yesterday at the ripe old age of ... 40. I totally understand if he wants to play a few more seasons now -- like Tiger, preferring the relative calm of the playing field as a refuge from home.
Deanna and I are very proud and excited to welcome our new grandson Parker Brett to the Favre family. Parker Brett was born on Friday, April 2, weighing 7 lbs. 7 oz and we're pleased to say that both Mom, Dad and Parker Brett are healthy and doing great.
-- Brett and Deanna
or, Variations on a Theme.
Roger Cohen admirably resists temptation before, alas, succumbing to snark, seven graphs in.
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As Christians through Easter festivities celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus, and Jews through Passover mark deliverance from slavery in Egypt, I prefer to dwell on unity rather than division. Journalism has an inbuilt inclination toward strife that it is as well to resist from time to time.
Oh, the temptation was certainly there — given the Vatican’s amateurish rebuttals of the gravity of sexual abuse among priests, its lashing out at “the gossip of the moment” and the grotesque analogy* (later regretted) drawn by one priest between criticism of the church and anti- Semitism — to devote a column-length excoriation to tone-deaf performances unworthy of high religious holidays.
Pope Benedict XVI of Germany had a very tough act to follow. The least that can be said is that the challenge often appears beyond him.
But popes come and go, as do off-key spin doctors. Easter is about something more riveting: an empty tomb a couple of millennia ago and what that meant. As Jon Meacham has written, “Christianity’s foundational belief is that Jesus was the Son of God, who died and rose again as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of a fallen world.”
The recovery work begins.
By LAWRENCE MESSINA, Associated Press Writer
MONTCOAL, W.Va. – A huge underground explosion blamed on methane gas killed 25 coal miners in the worst U.S. mining disaster in more than two decades. Four others were missing Tuesday, their chances of survival dimming as rescuers were held back by poison gases that accumulated near the blast site, about 1.5 miles into the complex.
Rescuers prepared to drill three shafts going down over 1,000 feet each to release methane and carbon monoxide that chased them from the mine after the blast Monday afternoon, Gov. Joe Manchin said.
The explosion rocked Massey Energy Co.'s sprawling Upper Big Branch mine, about 30 miles south of Charleston, which has a history of violations for not properly ventilating the highly combustible methane, safety officials said.
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Manchin said investigators still don't know what ignited the blast, but that methane likely played a part in the explosion. Although spring explosions are rare, winter months are usually when the risk is highest because the air then is heavier and methane is harder to vent out of the mine.
"Normally we're holding our breath to get through January and February," he said.
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A total of 31 miners were in the area during a shift change when the blast happened, officials said. Some may have died in the blast and others when they breathed in the gas-filled air, Stricklin said. Eleven bodies had been recovered and identified, but the other 14 have not, said Manchin, who returned to the state after being out of town. Names weren't released publicly, but Manchin said three of the dead are all members of the same family.
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Manchin said the explosion was massive and that the situation looks bleak, but that miracles can happen and pointed to the 2006 Sago Mine explosion that killed 12.
Crews found miner Randal McCloy Jr. alive after he was trapped for more than 40 hours in an atmosphere poisoned with carbon monoxide.
In Monday's blast, nine miners were leaving on a vehicle that takes them in and out of the mine's long shaft when a crew ahead of them felt a blast of air and went back to investigate, said Kevin Stricklin, an administrator for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.
They found nine workers, seven of whom were dead. Others were hurt or missing about a mile and a half inside the mine, though there was some confusion over how many. Others made it out, Manchin said.
Another law professor, another attitude:
A startling passage — in an essay by Elizabeth Scalia — AKA The Anchoress — that tries to explain — on this Good Friday — how she can be a Catholic after so many revelations about priests who sexually abuse children and the kindly protection they have received within the power structure of the Church.
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A Tom Toles cartoon
What a hateful cartoon to post on your site on Good Friday. It mocks the good works done by countless innocent priests. As an attorney, a law professor, a bright mind, you of all people should know that the abuse scandals do not tell the entire story of faith, of priesthood, of grace. Badly done. Needlessly insulting.
4/2/10 12:37 PM
Ann Althouse said...
"Needlessly insulting."
Do you have any comprehension of how much worse the insults could and should be? That cartoon is fucking lighthearted.
4/2/10 12:42 PM
Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.
Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole word,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
There are three great groups of victims in this story. The first and most obvious, the children who were abused, who trusted, were preyed upon and bear the burden through life. The second group is the good priests and good nuns, the great leaders of the church in the day to day, who save the poor, teach the immigrant, and, literally, save lives. They have been stigmatized when they deserve to be lionized. And the third group is the Catholics in the pews—the heroic Catholics of America and now Europe, the hardy souls who in spite of what has been done to their church are still there, still making parish life possible, who hold high the flag, their faith unshaken. No one thanks those Catholics, sees their heroism, respects their patience and fidelity. The world thinks they're stupid. They are not stupid, and with their prayers they keep the world going, and the old church too.
"If you were charged with a crime, would you rather be rich and guilty or poor and innocent?"
USC Law Professor Susan Estrich:
If you were charged with a crime, would you rather be rich and guilty or poor and innocent?
Every year, when I ask my students that question, rich and guilty wins by a mile. And who am I to say they are wrong? After all, over the years, I've had my share of success in securing reversals of the convictions of many criminal defendants a jury had found to be guilty. While I try to do my share of pro bono work, the truth is that most of my clients can afford me. And the ones who can't are generally people I take on precisely because they were so poorly represented in the first place.
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[W]hile the market is hardly a perfect judge of talent, and while there are many public defenders offices around the country staffed by capable and dedicated lawyers, there is a definite correlation between competence and cost.
The lawyers who make their livings by taking appointments to represent those who can't afford counsel are not the lawyers you would hire if you had the resources to choose. And the reimbursement rates paid to those lawyers create powerful incentives not to investigate or prepare (you get more for court time than prep time) and not to take a case to trial (you are limited on total hours, even in court).
Unfortunately, the old saw that you get what you pay for holds true much more often than it should.
"Nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can write that can't be run..."
