Working for the weekend.

Relay for Life fundraiser...
and Sunday, a park pavilion dedication.

Small towns get 'er done...

Cowboys and Angels...

Remember George Michael?
(Listen w/o Prejudice, circa 1991?)































.

Whine...

Observation of the Day: Conservative/libertarian whine sounds exactly the same to my ears as liberal whine. (And it's not a pretty sound.)

Is Michelle Obama Trying to Kill Me?
I just saw a picture of Michelle Obama on Drudge with a storyline underneath exclaiming “Apple Slices in Every Happy Meal!” I headed over to the linked article and read:

An apple a day may keep the doctor away. But when you put it in a Happy Meal, it might help keep regulators at bay too. McDonald’s on Tuesday said that it would add apple slices and reduce the portion of French fries in its children’s meal boxes beginning this fall, effectively taking away consumers’ current choice between either having apples with caramel dip or fries as a Happy Meal side.

Great, I’m allergic to apples as are many people because of the pollen allergy. I have a friend who has very low sodium levels and when she goes to restaurants in New York City where she lives, she actually needs the salt. Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to ban salt leave my friend frustrated and annoyed. I wonder how many kids have apple and/or pollen allergies? Human physiology varies from person to person. One person’s apples are another’s poison. Are regulators and perhaps Michelle Obama trying to kill me with their “good intentions”? And don’t they care about the children?

Hint: If you are in the minority of the population that is allergic to apples (or those skinned, chemicalized apple slices that come plastic-wrapped in the Happy Meals), try this solution:
Don't order the Happy Meals.
Problem solved.

Now I definitely disagree with this way of thinking: Yay! Without smaller portion sizes, I'd never have thought to think: Does my body need to consume this now? Government interference for my own good: what could I do without it?

Apples and Oranges By Ta-Nehisi Coates
I guess it's good that McDonald's is putting fruit in their Happy Meals, though I'm more excited that they're reducing the portion size of their french fries. I think making people think before making that second order of french fries is a really good thing.

But maybe modern-day parents need the help because they've surrendered so much control already to their children. (?)

Personally,
when I go to McDonald, I do order -- as an adult -- the hamburger/apple/milk Happy Meal, with a side order of medium coffee, please leave an inch at the top. Then, I pour the milk into the coffee (McDonalds has free refills, along with their free WiFi), eat the burger and apple slices, and supplement the meal with fresh, raw vegetables. (either with me, or later at home). Also get a free little toy to take to the nieces and nephew when I visit...

Add it up. Ordering individually a milk, burger, and (you can't get fruit short of that sugary parfait on the grownup menu) small fries comes to more than getting it grouped as a kids' meal. And no "prize" either.

A decent diet, and thrifty too!

ADDED: For those of you who think of McDonalds franchises, and their employees, as the bottom of the urban barrel in terms of food choice, remember: they're franchised. Plenty of newer ones up here, with competent employees in it for the second-job in the family. It's a basic meal, not poison, but better than nothing on the days when you haven't cooked yourself.

Balance, balance, balance.

Heh.

Goldblog wonders, what's up with these Israeli Jews playing the Nazi card?

It's a perfectly nice thing for these Israeli women to bring Palestinians to the beach; this is the sort of protest against the occupation that seems both clever and humane. If these Israeli women think they're going to change Palestinian minds about the rationale for a Jewish state, they're kidding themselves, but still, it seems like a humanizing gesture. But comparing Israeli behavior on the West Bank to the Nazis? Is Hanna Rubinstein a blithering idiot?

Doesn't she understand, it's only Jewish-American men like himself who are qualified to see deh Nazis everywhere? It's just not fair *stomp, stomp, stomp* to let the ladies, who actually, you know, live there and raise their own sons there, to have any important input on these matters. No, this is for the Goldblog-like men to solve. Experts in victimry, fear and all.

Trouble is... their ways ain't working.
And the rest of us are getting sick of paying for it.

The "boogedy boogedy Nazi's-gonna-getcha card" just doesn't play so well anymore; most Big Boys have conquered that fear anyway. And perhaps the Israeli woman, who actually, you know, lives there, might better understand behavior modification and the consequences of "doing unto others as you'd have done unto your own boys and girls" a bit better than a macho (and condescending) suburban Jewish-American man living in the suburbs who presumably styles himself as an expert on all things Israel, simply because that's how he collects his change here in the States.

Keep rallying against the influx of all things German-engineered, bud? That's laughable too, but at least it's an unfair wrong you can right in your own country...

Leave the Palestinian and Israeli women to work, in their own small ways, toward creating a common peace in their own country. (Hey, it worked in Ireland.) And remember, it's their sons -- not Goldblog's American boy, tucked safely in his suburban American bed -- who are at real risk of having ethnic violence shatter their lives.

The reason Mr. Goldberg can pretend he's afraid of Nazi's in this day and age, even with a nuclear-weapon equipped Israel operating out of a set-aside state helpfully financed by American taxpayer dollars for defense -- is that he's fat and ... safe. Making his living, feeding his own family off the "conflict", in fact. Able to hype false fears, because he knows ultimately, he and his are at no risk over here.

The Israelis and Palestinians though -- so long as outside men like Goldberg are playing in the process -- something tells me there's much more blood to be shed before they ever wise up and see that a peaceful co-existence is in everyone's best interest. The occupiers and those currently occupied.

Hope this helps, Mr. Goldberg.
You really ought to get out more, y'know.

(What would he do -- why he'd be identity-less -- if he was forced to abandon the idea that Jews aren't perpetual victims of innate hatred? To acknowledge, it's more that right now in Israel anyway, they're hated for deliberate actions, how they think they must oppress and take from others in order to build what they think they need, or merely want at the expense of so many other innocent players? Which, of course, is why he continually needs to hype the Shoah, seeing it everywhere, even where it only exists in his own fearful, conditioned imagination. Find another "extreme sport" for artificial risks to spook ya? Or better yet, start privately funding your personal fears...)

ADDED: See what I mean?

Marc Tracy Scores My Fight With Danny Ayalon
By Jeffrey Goldberg
He has me up, thank goodness. Read the whole thing.

This is what hanging out too long in the Jewish ghetto gets ya. Maybe take up a real hobby or sport, preferably something cardiovascular-related? Maybe he doesn't see it now, and perhaps too many close to him encourage this behavior as "cute" (and again, the man makes his living off it), but trust me, in the long run, something like jogging or playing physically with your kids will probably do more good than such performance art, scored, "fights".

In related news:
NJ Gov. Chris Christie was hospitalized today with breathing problems...

Keep'n It Real.

The truth is that with Washington still unable to reach an agreement on the deficit and the budget, with the game of chicken continuing to a point that no parent would allow* out on a playground, everyone's base is crumbling.

Come now, Susan.
Tell me, how exactly do you "play a game of chicken" on the playground? Um, no. Mom can't just step in and "fix" this, because ... Mom's not around. Daddy neither.

It's a game from within.
Let's just hope nobody's got their foot stuck on the pedal, eh? Nevermind holding out for a hero.

-------------------

* That's a nice concise summary of liberal thinking though. As if, all of life can be "controlled" and it's just up to our ... betters to step in and intervene and protect us. Don't get me wrong. I'm not calling for a regulation-free society. But from where I sit stand, we're getting the whole damn thing all wrong. In trying to safetyproof the world, we're losing the individual critical skills of knowing how and when to act ourselves. We're relying too much on our ... betters, for protection, and safety. For somebody to intervene on our behalves, instead of relying on our own instincts and commonsense. (ie/ "I don't care what the advertisers or marketers promise. Consuming that product makes you sick. Now turn off the lights and get some sleep. Now.")

If you teach like that -- not the government, the adult in the privately grouped families -- then you understand, at some point, they grow up. That's a good thing.

Pretending at 26 a child is still an adult to be carried... structuring the economy so against young people that they need to be tied to their parents apronstrings pocketbooks to "make it" ... there's something very wrong with a society that selects on the perceived power of your parents, over true merit.

We all want to "look out" for our own. But at what expense? Artificially promoting the immature, keeping the culture in a kiddie mode, or worse, an adolescent male "badboy" stage (and the slut girls who love 'em!), again, there's something very wrong with a society that shuns grownups and adult pleasuresand activities.

Spoiled children makes poorly equipped adults. And perhaps, all this gameplaying now, is a result of all these elites operating in an artificial world, with little true natural consequences. "I just have to best you" to get ahead for me. That's the attitude in some sad place. Not competing to be the best. Not even understanding how America got where she did, the tremendous teamwork to win a war, built rockets and technologies, and remain disciplined internally to build a strong society postwar.

Not the way we're heading now. Rewarding dependency, creating government-families, relying on others to educate and entertain us.

In a good way, the signs are there. Only question now is, who will garner enough true followers to call themselves a leader? For real.

My money's on change, all right.
They all grow up eventually.


ADDED: Gaack! More artificial nonsense from Estrich, on how not to go...

Deserting the president "in droves," if that's how you want to describe it, doesn't help anyone. The blame game goes nowhere. It encourages precisely the sort of no-win politics that is paralyzing Washington during this long, hot summer.
...
We have to save ourselves, and we won't do it by acting like the children in Washington.

Where I come from, loyalty is not about standing by your man when times are good. That's not loyalty; it's just common sense. It's not the hard thing to do; it's the easy thing to do.

Loyalty is about tough times, tough decisions, standing by your man on the hard days.

I don't like the economy any more than the next person. I'm blessed to be secure, to be able to pay my bills and educate my kids, but believe me, that isn't true for many of the people around me, for family and friends. When unemployment is as high as it is, when housing prices have dropped as low as they have, no one is untouched. But that's not a reason to desert a president who has kept his promises and is struggling to secure a deal that will not betray those most in need.

I don't approve of everything the president has done. Who would? He's not my puppet. But I strongly disapprove of any Democrat who stands up to try to block his re-election because they think that somehow they could do better. If it were easy, we'd all be on the beach, including President Obama.

Ever an Optimist, I am...

If Maureen Dowd has this right, and even the patriotic first/second generation idealist in me suspects she does, that's no reason for pessimism, necessarily.

But now trust levels are drooping even lower. The public has less faith in Congress than Wall Street, and that’s saying something. Most Americans either feel that government is broken or that the fix is in, so that special interests and a handful of people at the top are the only ones benefiting.

The last century was the American century. But this one will not be, thanks to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who used their boots and spurs to ride roughshod over the globe and American economy. They spent eight years and trillions of dollars either barging into stuff they should have left alone or leaving alone stuff they should have intervened on.

It's a change in mindset that's needed, really.
Try this on for size: We're Number Two. We Try Harder.

Personally, I like it. The man who created that line for Avis, the late Robert Townsend, had a book out a few years ago, oh hell a decade at least by now, and I had the pleasure of interviewing him as a freelancer .

He had a great attitude.* Sometimes, you see, success spoils you.

If we can get out from under this current fiscal crisis, as an intact country, and figure out a way to backtrack on our promises before the demographics bankrupt us, that really is something to shoot for:

We're Number Two. We Try Harder.

No shame in being an up-and-comer. Beats being a fatcat only grazing off other people's efforts, if you ask me...

-------------------------------

* Up the Organization was his too. See here.

Many, Many Miles to Go...

A mountain lion killed by a motorist some 70 miles from New York City in June is the same animal that traveled through Minnesota and northern Wisconsin in the winter of 2009-2010 - a record-setting cross-continental journey that has left scientists amazed, officials announced this afternoon.
...
Biologists suspect - but don't know for sure - that it wandered through Michigan's Upper Peninsula, into southern Ontario, and somehow skirted the eastern Great Lakes on its way into New York State. They know it was the same cat as one that surfaced in the tony New York suburb of Greenwich, Conn., last month before it was struck by a car June 11 on a busy highway in Milford, Conn. It was the first confirmed mountain lion in that state in more than a century; the eastern mountain lion was formally declared extinct just this year.

The lion was initially presumed to be a victim of illegal pet trade. Scientists from Montana to Connecticut said they were surprised when evidence began to increasingly point to a wild animal born in the Black Hills of South Dakota. When the final confirmation arrived that it was the same animal as the St. Croix Cougar, surprise turned to amazement, several scientists said.

"It's one of those amazing animal stories," said Adrian Wydeven, a conservation biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, who helped track the cat when it passed through here. "It shows the potential some of these animals have for moving across the landscape."

It all comes back to that healthcare plan.

Like the settlements built by Israeli extremists on contested lands, I don't think you understand exactly how much ... hate (for lack of a better word) that created in the land. And how, much as some might now like, you can't just wave a magical wand and make it go away, when it's convenient for you.

People hate being told what they have to buy, what they personally need, especially when it's going to cost them. We can't even pretend that the Affordable Care Act is going bring down, or control, healthcare costs.

No, it's just tossing in a bunch of as-of-yet healthy non-consumers into the mix, for a short-term injection of premium dollars to keep the system afloat. Think beyond tomorrow?

That's why, Mr. Krugman, nobody much trusts the "experts" anymore to tinker in plans that will personally, mandatorily, affect our own personal bottom lines. Because they don't know us, and they don't have our own best interests at heart. Bureacracy is like that. Personally, I don't much care what Washington does, when I can opt out.

But when it's going to cost me, in terms of my pocketbook and more importantly, in terms of my future choices, well that's about where my trust level ends and my pragmatic side takes over.

Just like I don't much care when my neighbor buys more and more commerical goods, on credit. Or has babies he can't afford to support, when you calculate in the long-term costs of raising children. But ask me to bail him out and pay his bills? To feed his spoiled (by my standards) children? Suddenly, his overspending and lack of personal fiscal discipline is my concern.

It's simply untrue that all Americans went on a spending binge in the past decades. That none of us planned ahead, and we're all being caught short. Some of us did make modest choices, and budgeted accordingly. We didn't create this mess, and we resent it being "fixed" on our backs, out of our own future choices.

Plus, I wonder if Krugman -- he of the "listen to others, even Gentiles" advice -- can actually hear how condescending he comes off here? It's not that we're too stupid to understand, it's just that ... we haven't been properly educated by the media and pundits that serve us.

So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.

The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.

What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.

Sure. And if only we would have listened harder, and learned more details, we'd all learn to love the ACA, despite it's Constitutional dubiousness.

Now I too wish Mr. Krugman had been better blessed with a gift for ... persuasion. I mean, it must be tough sitting there on the sidelines as an economic expert, and yet no one is willing to buy into your ideas anymore -- not after endorsing that Christmas Eve healthcare bill that passed over the objections of the people when the rest of the country was out on holiday -- no matter how hard you might be trying to communicate them and show the country the way out.

It's like, being the only Boy Scout who knows the way out of the forest as darkness falls, yet for whatever reason (the Enron advising stint?), nobody in leadership power will listen to you and the bigger boys are forever taking us down the wrong paths.

Still, pretending the rest of us are too stupid to understand, or rather -- we just don't have the time or proper resources to further our understandings -- is a bit of a mockery. Truth be told, it is a morals thing.

Some of us believe that that our fellow countrymen, particularly those on Wall Street and in Washington, have such contempt for the country that as long as they "get theirs", it doesn't much matter if the team as a whole loses. We get it. We're just valuable when we pay the taxes and contribute, but nevermind listening to us on program priorities, proper incentives, personal freedoms, or overseas policies, to name a few areas of disagreement.

That's what the Tea Party movement is all about, Charlie Brown.

Getting closer...

but still not there.

This is not an orginal point, but it's probably time to stop grouping rape under the rubrick of "sex scandal." Elliot Spitzer and, say, DSK weren't accused of the same thing.

First, he had it as "group rape". Commenters were confused though: Congressman Wu is accused of group rape?? Or did he mean, "a groping rape" maybe?

Turns out neither. So he fixed it.

Now... do a double-check on that word "rubrick".
Words matter. In print, writing and not just sounds so much, counts for accuracy.

Not trying to pick on the boy. But again, words matter. The wrong word choice confuses, just as a misplaced comma can distort the meaning of a sentence.

I recommend: a good old-fashioned lesson, or two, in sentence diagramming. And that earlier advice: read, read, read some more. To become more acquainted with unfamiliar words, if you will. Not just how to pronounce them, but how to spell them too, so people can try and understand what it is exactly you're preaching.

If you have valid points to offer up, it's a shame that you never learned properly to communicate those thoughts using words, grammar, and basic proofreading skills.

Trust me, it's not just a white thing either.

ps. This is more a typo than a mistake, so to speak, and we all commit typos until we catch and fix them... (unless we're professors in denial; see earlier posts here today)

But check out that word "original" while you're at it too?

Thanks kindly,
a reader.

ps. Survey says, only one "l" in Eliot Spitzer's name, fwiw.

It will be interesting to see if the writer cares about these little things that turn off readers. Or if, like a tenured professor, he don't need nobody pointing out these minor ... mistakes.

(To her credit: when I pointed out last week in the comments section that Jim Henson spelled his surname with an "o" in there, not an e, shortly after my comment was deleted, the correction did get made. Now who said you can't teach an old tenured professor a new trick? You're very welcome, in advance. Gotta keep those standards up and all; think of the children still coming up, and what kind of written world we want to leave them...)

Speaking of Luke...

and all these latter-day discussions of "who is a true Christian?", let's not forget to include the portrayal of arguably one of big screen's most well known, struggling Christians: Lucas "I don't care if it rains or freezes..." Jackson.

Luke: Anybody here? Hey, Old Man. You home tonight? Can You spare a minute. It's about time we had a little talk. I know I'm a pretty evil fellow... killed people in the war and got drunk... and chewed up municipal property and the like. I know I got no call to ask for much... but even so, You've got to admit You ain't dealt me no cards in a long time. It's beginning to look like You got things fixed so I can't never win out. Inside, outside, all of them... rules and regulations and bosses. You made me like I am. Now just where am I supposed to fit in? Old Man, I gotta tell You. I started out pretty strong and fast. But it's beginning to get to me. When does it end? What do You got in mind for me? What do I do now? Right. All right.
[Gets on knees, closes eyes and begins to pray]
Luke: On my knees, asking.
[Peeks up with one eye, waits. Then opens eyes and crosses arms]
Luke: Yeah, that's what I thought. I guess I'm pretty tough to deal with, huh? A hard case.
[Clicks tongue]
Luke: Yeah. I guess I gotta find my own way.
[Headlights shine through windows, backs up]
Dragline: Luke?
Luke: [Shakes head and smiles] Is that Your answer, Old Man? I guess You're a hard case, too.

The Gospel ... according to Luke.

Speaking of Gentile wisdom...
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
8 for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will give him a stone?
10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

Take it ... to the limit...

one more time.

You can spend all your time making money.
You can spend all your love making time.
If it all falls to pieces tomorrow,
Would you still be mine?

And when you're looking for your freedom
(nobody seems to care)
And you can't find the door
(can't find it anywhere)
When there's nothing to believe in
Still you're coming back, you're running back
You're coming back for more

So put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit, one more time...

psst: Somebody tell Ez not to take that Eagles song too literally either. It's 'bout love, son. And you don't measure that with a yardstick, or a ruler even.

As I’ve written previously, the trick for the GOP right now is to take this all the way to the brink, as they have the leverage so long as Democrats fear default more than they do, but somehow avoid taking it over the brink, as the polls show they’ll take the blame. But the reason they’re credible taking this to the brink is that many in their coalition are comfortable taking it past the brink. It’s still not clear that Boehner can talk them down from that.

In the long run,
it's best not to try and game your way to a "win", either.

-------------
* Think of it more like the final showcase showdown on The Price is Right. You want to get as close as you can, without going over.

remember,
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

"The Bigger the Government, the smaller the people." *bump*

It means, (no disrespect to shorter persons -- think "people" as in the American people, not individuals): the more a group can advance on their own merits, without relying on the cooperation, or fiscal renumeration, from their government (or in some cases, from other people's governments, hence the lobbying troops), the bigger the lives they can lead.

Like in economics, it might be counterintuitive.
How can one be bigger when receiving less?

For that answer look around you, at how so many Americans have "grown", with government help, over the past 25 years. Did prosperity make us "bigger", or do we just have more? And maybe... we've become a smaller people, for all that.

Missing out on the finer, the rarer, the ... little things that make for a grateful heart. And a satisfying life, ultimately.


ADDED:
Ezra Klein, Size Queen?

Futher missing the point -- you don't measure the size of democracy, or free people, with a ruler -- Ezra Klein clowns: "What I’ve always believed is that the more data on your scatterplot, the better your chances of seeing a relationship. So I asked Dylan Matthews to work up a chart. He took the data from Wikipedia’s table listing the average male height in more than 60 countries and plotted each country’s height against the percent of GDP it collects in taxes. The result? A weakly, but noticeably, positive relationship between the size of government and the size of people."

So, his "scatterplots" show that the more government you have, the taller the men in your country. Hm. Nevermind causation error. Or basic logic fail. It's in the misdefining of the terms -- "bigger people" does not mean taller men, sadly.

Thus, Klein confidently concludes: "Bigger governments, in other words, mean bigger people."

Or, you might say, it just means taller men doing smaller and smaller things. Like, picking up stray balloon carcasses say. Or working hard to feed other men's offspring. Breakfast at school, even.

When we complain about "big government", you see, it's really not a height thing. It's more a families v. bureacrats thing. Who is ultimately responsible for ... the children? Might take a community to raise 'em, but it's turning out more and more, it takes a family to feed, educate and culturally clue them in to this "freedom" thing.

Rep. Boehner, when you get a free minute, please pull young Mr. Klein aside and try to explain to him what "the smaller the people" means, in terms of individual rights, responsibilities and freedoms. Still not sure if he'll get it -- it's something you live daily, in practice -- but at least we can all say we tried to help him, eh?

In other ways, the boy does prove himself capable of learning.

Ultimately, I’m not persuaded by the administration’s case here. The Affordable Care Act is an unstable platform right now. I’d prefer to wait until we see it implemented and secured before we begin basing other policy changes off of it.

Slow, slow slow -- that what comes with pretty much having an insta-closed mind and creating an insta-list to reinforce your own policy preferences -- but he's coming 'round, it seems. Sadly though, it will cost us big to "undo" these promised changes, that in reality, aren't working out as well as promised ... by the big government types, some of which includes tall men in their ranks even.

FUTHER:
Maybe Krugman can be a role model to Klein, the boy economist?

I agree with Mark Thoma that economists really need to listen to people outside their circle. Many years ago, when I wrote about doing economics, one of my principles was “Listen to the Gentiles”, meaning listen to intelligent people, even if they don’t speak your analytical language.

More like McVeigh than we know?

Sadly, an unstable home life seems to lead these madmen to blow their everyday grievances out of proportion.

The estranged father of the anti-immigrant extremist arrested for the mass killing in Norway said in an interview published Monday that he was shocked and despondent over the news and that his son “should have taken his own life, too.”
...
Mr. Breivik’s father, Jens David Breivik, is a retired career diplomat who divorced the suspect’s mother more than 30 years ago.

So the boy was two when, perhaps, his traditional world was shattered. And perhaps because he couldn't cope in life, he found a way to blame others, the newcomers, the government that permitted them in.

Sounds like McVeigh to me. Grievances against the world that no one could quell.

McVeigh, a militia movement sympathizer, sought revenge against the federal government for its handling of the Waco Siege, which had ended in the deaths of 76 people exactly two years earlier.
...
McVeigh was born in Lockport, New York, the only son and the second of three children of William and Mildred "Mickey" McVeigh. His parents divorced when he was 10 years old and he was raised by his father in Pendleton, New York.

McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school and that he took refuge in a fantasy world where he imagined retaliating against those bullies. At the end of his life he would state his belief that the United States government is the ultimate bully. Most who knew McVeigh remember him as being withdrawn, with a few describing him as an outgoing and playful child who withdrew as an adolescent. McVeigh is said to have had one girlfriend during his childhood, later stating to journalists he did not know how to impress girls. According to his authorized biography, "his only sustaining relief from his unsatisfied sex drive was his even stronger desire to die."

While in high school, McVeigh became interested in computers and hacked into government computer systems on his Commodore 64, under a handle – "The Wanderer" – borrowed from the song by Dion DiMucci. In his senior year, McVeigh was named Starpoint Central High School's "most promising computer programmer," but maintained relatively poor grades up until his 1986 graduation.

Meanwhile, back in Madison...

where the government is already big beyond belief, the manufactured drama these days includes blood in the Capitol and balloon carcasses.

No, I don't make this stuff up. And remember, somebody's paying for this political posturing, which seems to entertain less and less of us as time marches on.

When do the grownup's move in?

Commentary:

If it is not undone, it creates a free-speech forum, and the state will need to tolerate future balloons representing the full spectrum of messages [ED. note: ie/ "Helium Whippet Hits for Jesus"?] , and the dome will become the world's most ridiculous gigantic, inverted pile of litter.

Except... as anyone who's treasured a helium balloon in the same way one treasures a beloved snowman has learned, after about three days (give or take the life span of a carnival-won goldfish) the helium looses its oompf, and the ... balloon carcasses, to use the proper Madison victimology language, will drop to the floor. Now I agree, our tax dollars need not go to continuing to maintain the property for inane "protestors", but let's not pretend the Capitol is going to become some giant balloon dumping ground, akin to the dead zones in the oceans where trash is accumulating, just because people practice "catch and release" on balloons, not fish, in Madison.

Don't give them any more power than they already have. Ditto the silly publicity these types crave.

ADDED:
Speaking of dramatics, sadly, she continues to use the inflated death numbers in Norway too, even after having been corrected in the comments. It's 68, not 86, now confirmed dead at the youth camp, plus 8 others killed in the bombing.

It's common for professional news media to overestimate the numbers of the dead in the immediate aftermath of tragedies, with so many unaccounted for (in this case, those who presumably swum to safety), but there's really no excuse to try and "hype" the numbers, as the professor is doing here. Especially not when somebody's called attention to the original error.

But speaking of views of reality that are very difficult to explain, for murdering 86 human beings, Breivik faces a prison sentence of merely 21 years. According to the linked article, prosecutors are considering charging Breivik with "crimes against humanity," and that would push the maximum sentence up to a big 30 years. *

Also, it's unlikely Breivik will ever be set free, says his lawyer today. If he's found to be insane, the courts there can continue to keep him incarcerated, so the "only 21 years for 86 deaths!!" melodrama rings a bit hollow.

The tragedy of innocents dead is bad enough, especially in how they were callously gunned down. No need to hype the thing with deliberate false facts.

----------------

* I wonder if she even read the full article she linked to:

Police and court officials have said Mr. Breivik has admitted to detonating a large bomb in Oslo that killed eight people and then shooting and killing 68 mainly young people at a summer camp run by the ruling Labor Party on the nearby island of Utoya. The attacks on Friday amounted to one of the worst massacres in postwar Europe.

Debt Ceiling, Schmet Ceiling...

Eh.
No seriously.
Reminds me of the suit guys who take up an "extreme" sport. Like they don't have enough risk in their own lives, so they have to push, push for more. Sometimes, they get it.
These financial/political games playing out on a big stage: "The whole world is watching..." dramatics, (hey, I caught a bit of cspan after hours; out for the prime-time speech action...) are mostly a bore to the rest of us, I dare say.
Do the hedgies win, or do they not?
Me? I'm hedging my bets...

Back at hand, most of us are blessed with other matters closer at hand to consider. The school supplies are coming out, at their cheapest and greatest choice of the season. Picked me up some 49 cent memo pads, small enough to slip in the pocket when I'm out taking photos.

The garden continues to grow... the rain and sun still working on schedule, though they get kinks in the systems sometimes too, it seems. The rivers are swollen somewhat this summer, and running fast, which makes for a nice ride or two on a sunny day.

Summertime's here, and the living's easy.

Unless, of course, you're back in Washington sweating the term paper come due. That's a bit like bills to be paid, in the land of thinkers and traders, no? Summer school's still in session, and it's not the grades or even a paycheck so much that hangs in the balance, just the fate of the country, they say.

Good luck, guys. We'd send the cheerleaders, but we've had to cut back already.

ADDED: Andrew Ross Sorkin on "wiggle room", miscalculating, and political posturing:

While the sky indeed may fall if the sides cannot compromise, the fact that the market has been calm has served only to deepen the resistance to a deal. People who perhaps should be worried don’t seem to be, and worse, appear to have stopped listening to the warnings.

How did it come to this?

The administration may have made a strategic mistake in warning too soon that the market would react negatively. It ultimately undercuts the government’s negotiating position because the doomsday scenario has not played out, even though the deadline is fast approaching.

“They have lost all credibility,” said Neil M. Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. “It’s so typical of the way Treasury and the Fed treat everything — it is always to warn that Armageddon is coming.”

The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, is among those who may have miscalculated.

He has consistently held out Aug. 2 as the cutoff date for lawmakers to reach a compromise. After that, Mr. Geithner has said the government might not be able to continue sending out Social Security checks or Medicare payments. “On Aug. 2, we’re left running on fumes,” he told the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

He told me back in May that he was expecting to reach a deal by mid-July, way ahead of the final deadline. “Why would you want to experiment? In July, you’d want this done.”

But increasingly, the market seems to believe it was a false deadline. Some economists have said the government would have enough cash on hand to continue making payments for several days at least. The administration could also decide how to prioritize payments. The government, for instance, could opt to pay interest on Treasuries and put off other bills.

In other words, the United States has some wiggle room.

“The Aug. 2 deadline is not as hard as indicated by Secretary Geithner,” said Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of Pimco, the large bond manager.

It doesn’t help the government’s case that investors believe the debate over the debt ceiling amounts to political posturing.

BONUS MUSICAL INTERLUDE:

Shaggy, Keep'n It Real.

When I was young
I used to dream of being rich
Have a lot of houses and cars
Couldn't know which one was which...
And finding me a chick and getting hitched
Living the fairy tale life, perfect without a ditch.
You think that this would bring me happiness
If at the end of every rainbow
There was a treasure chest
Sometimes having more is really less.
So take a look inside yourself
You'll realize you're really blessed.
No matter how you're sad and blue
There's always someone who has it worse than you
Sometimes you gotta pay your dues
So don't worry just push on through...

Keep'n it real
Gotta big up all my peoples who be working on the future,
Though they know they gotta struggle.
Keep'n it real
To all my homies working on the 9 to 5
And doing right to keep themselves up out of trouble.
Keep'n it real
Although sometimes I know it seems impossible
There ain't no need in drowning in your sorrows.
Keep'n it real
If things are as bad as they can be
You can be sure there'll be a brighter tomorrow.

And I forgot to have myself the house, the mansion, and the Benz
I'm not the type of brother who be making mad ends
I got myself a girl but we be kickin' it as friends
Is that enough for me, now that depends
Again- not everything you want is everything you really need
The standard of society is motivated by greed
Are you prepared to follow?
Tell me, are you prepared to lead?
So persevere and you'll succeed...

Keep'n it real.

On "German Engineering."

C'mon kids, be honest.
You hear that phrase, what do you think?

9 out of 10 Americans think: Excellent autos. Well made motors.

If something "screams German engineering", it means it's well-made. Capable. A funny play on the stoic temperament. (Germans might pout, deny, walk away even, but you don't much think of them as a screaming people.)

I think the Goldblog must be thinking of specialized demographics here, in taking offense at a 21st century ad. Sure, if your parents or grandparents had family exterminated in the Holocaust, "screams German engineering" might mean something more personal to you. But that's you.

The sins, nay, the crimes against humanity by Adolph Hitler can't erase the mathematical, rocket-minded brilliance of Wernher von Braun. That's German engineering, at it's finest.

I doubt that even the most conscientious, Holocaust-museum visiting American would read the Bosch ad the way Goldblog here does.

It's so interesting -- I've gotten a bunch of emails and tweets on this already -- about 60 percent of the people who write are stating some variation of "these unbelievable clueless Germans." The other 40 percent or so of my correspondents are asking what the big deal is. Either you get it or you don't, I guess, but "German engineering" connotes the mechanized, efficient, aspects of the program of Nazi extermination. The word "scream," well, means "scream."

Another point of order though,
weren't the Jews led into the gas chambers quietly, that was part of the whole Holocaust tragedy thing -- they didn't realize until too late, or were bred to be compliant in accepting their fate until it was too late -- that the Jews stoically accepted their deaths at Nazi hands?

I'm all for calling out offenders where they exist, but it seems to me absurd to pretend that hyping "German engineering" on a superior product is some secret code designed to appeal to Holocaust deniers and those who simply don't see the death chambers everywhere these days.

On Amy Winehouse.

Truth be told, she and Sarah Silverman used to be indistinguishable in my memory banks. "Offensive entertainer" not worth spending any precious time learning more about...

In other, related news:
Recently learned, Lady GaGa is apparently singing about "Bad Romance". Not about being "caught in da bedroom dance", as I first heard it. Really.

In other words, if you seek pop entertainment value, best seek it elsewhere, not here. I want your love, want your romance and all, but not enough to learn much more about these fascinating ladies who obviously know how to make a buck off their own poisons and insecurities.

Here today, gone tomorrow.
ADDED: I guess that's all part of the attraction, the magical draw and all.

P.S. Do people really believe an early death makes the art/politics all the more palpable? Beyond the Kennedy/Cobain mystique and all...

Let's See...

Today, I spent some time picking cucumbers and mature peas in the pod, as opposed to pea pods, which I was picking before. I made Ruth's cucumber dish -- vinegar, sugar, sour cream mixed into thinly sliced, salted-and-drained-overnight, cucumber slices. I used dark brown sugar though, so the liquid-y dressing is browner, but still "cloudy" from the cream. Very good.

My wild weekend splurge included, $7 for pick of the early morning flowers at the Farmers Market. The biggest lily heads, pale lemon and white, with unopened ones too, one of which opened overnight. In a bouquet of wildflowers and greens. Very nice, again. I put it on an open bookshelf that hangs into the hallway, and the scent is nicely distributing with the windows open...

Speaking of, it's a very comfortable 71 here now, and sunny, after some of the wackiest humid-hot-rainy-hot-rainy-pleasant-rainy weather. Still, the gardens like it, weeds and all.

Sunday tune, weather related:
Touch of Grey. "paint by numbers morning sky... looks so phony."

Have a very great end-of-the-weekend, then.

Must be the Season...

when that lovelight shines all around us...

Go for Broke!

Krugman's advice, I'm applying to my weekend here:

Second, moderate conservatism isn’t working as a policy matter. As I’ve tried to tell everyone from the beginning of the Lesser Depression, a deeply depressed economy in which monetary policy is up against the zero lower bound turns the normal rules of policy upside down. We’re in a world in which conventional prudence is folly, in which playing it safe is extremely risky. And we have, alas, a conventionally prudent, play-it-safe president — the kind of president who might have done fine in the 1990s, but not now.

Be bold, take a chance, throw the long pass, play the long shot, nevermind practicing prudency, now is the time to go big... (ADDED: but don't be a Dick.)

I'll let you know how it goes, then.

Character Counts.

Doing the right thing matters, and feels good too...
Turning over a leaf with the new generation:

In one of the most heartwarming scenes you'll ever see, a young Arizona Diamondbacks fan named Ian made Wednesday's play of the day at Chase Field after an even younger fan named Nicholas missed a ball thrown his way by Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Rickie Weeks.

Though the dropped ball was instead handed to Ian by another person, he immediately recognized what he had to do after seeing Nicholas in a distraught state after botching an attempt at a souvenir. With an amazed audience looking on, Ian marched back down the stairs and graciously handed the baseball over to Nicholas, a Brewers fan, without any prodding from anyone else.

Here's play-by-play of the moment from announcers Daron Sutton and Mark Grace:

Sutton: "Are you kidding me, this kid is going to do this?"
Grace: "That is big time, right there!"
Sutton: "Oh my goodness!"
Grace: "What a nice young man!"

The Antidote...
to this (type of thinking).

Going Swimmingly.

I'm back to teaching lessons again.
Currently, 3 teen siblings and two friends, good people. They improve rapidly, and can go for two hours; understand the basics of physics. So much nicer teaching taller bodies too, and in a group, they "push" each other.
Little ones you can teach to swim too, but you have to integrate the "fun" in a different game-splashing sort of way, lest they become discouraged. Here, it's one hundred percent about the skills teaching, building on the drills, and, I'm learning, knowing when to go forward and ask for more of them, and when they need to catch their breath. The better we get with mastering the breathing, the less breaks we'll need.

----------------

Weekend already?
Have a good one.

Enough already.

It's a common word. Enough.
I used it here.

Jeff Greenfield uses it here, describing what incredible things might happen -- he forsees success for a third-party candidate -- should Congress and the President continue us on the current course.

Until now, when the two-party system had failed at one of the government’s most basic jobs: protecting the full faith and credit of the country’s obligations. The persistent, low-level discontent with Republicans and Democrats suddenly became a tidal wave sweeping across ideological lines, encapsulated by one tweetable, postable, share-able word: “Enough!”

From Mom-and-Pop proprietors to middle-management drones to Business Roundtable grandees, the business community had long allied itself with the Republican Party. But now, thanks in good measure to the most fervent voices in that party, credit was frozen, the housing industry was headed for collapse again, and retailers from one end of Main Street to the other were facing empty stores. How was this good for business?

The labor movement had provided the foot soldiers and the financial fuel for the Democratic Party for decades, But now, thanks in good measure to the most “progressive” members of that party, there was no work for the men and women who built houses, maintained roads or worked for contractors whose invoices the government could not pay. How was this good for labor?

“We must return to bipartisanship!” the political class thundered. And from countless corners of the country came this question: Just what had bipartisanship done for us lately?

In the 1990s, the Clinton White House and the Republican Congress jointly embraced the explosion of so-called innovative financial instruments, free of regulation, that within a decade had trashed the economy, wiping out millions of jobs and trillions of dollars’ worth of savings. A few years later, a Republican president gained the support of prominent Democrats as he led the country into a disastrous war.

Enough already.
(I think they're finally getting the message...)

I'll Play.

The NYTimes asks:

Will the Debt Standoff Sway Voters in 2012?
Or is this all a sideshow for what they really care about: jobs?

Pretty much, if you have a job, especially if you've had no job loss or interruption in this economy, it really is all about the government spending.

The idea that we can keep the same, or increased, spending on promises that cost more and more each year, and are not seen as investments that will ever pay off, people will be out there voting against that. And those politicians who seem to think nothing has changed.

Jobs are important, of course. But will the jobless be motivated to get up on election day and vote? Hmm. Not in great enough numbers to offset those who do still work, who are disciplined, and who don't believe that America should fail to face facts here:

Our money-making machine is broken in this country.

Cheating Journalist Wins Award.

He lied to employers. Forged federal documents. Again and again, as an adult man, refused to come forward and pursue legal citizenship.

He wins a liberal award for himself. In addition to all the scholarships and other prizes he collected by competing under false pretenses. Win-win. Just can't lose, eh?

Me-me-me-me...
What can America do for me?

Problem is: this way of gaming the system, and being prized for it, is catching up to us, folks. Ask yourself: what if everybody played the "special me" marketing card, and made it for themselves by cheating everybody else?

How long do you think until the resources will run out? Here, the trust factor.

And something tells me, this man has already written the most important work of his life. Cheers, buddy! For every "special" one that is rewarded for their deceipt like you, there's another getting whacked with a tire iron with little recourse because they haven't hobbnobbed with the right, upper class people who take a special liking to special old you.

Absolutely amazing that nobody thinks twice about rewarding these lies. How much else in his stories do you think he fudged? Not good for the country, not good for journalism as a whole.

But very special for Mr. Vargas, I'm sure...

MEANWHILE: Looking at Libya ... (oh nevermind. Who needs people to report the stories and investigate what's really happening when you can just insert yourself into the news cycle, and reap your winnings there.)

LIBERAL JUSTIFICATION:
or "I'm special, because..."

In his recent essay, "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant," star reporter Jose Antonio Vargas recalls being sent to the U.S. at the age of 12 to live with his grandparents, naturalized American citizens. He says he thought he was a legal immigrant until the DMV rejected his application for a learner's license four years later.

For the next 14 years, Vargas concealed his immigration status, which involved forging documents and lying to his bosses in order to keep living and working in America.
...
There's a big difference between habitual lies and terrible secrets. By "terrible secrets," I mean facts that would ruin a person's life if they came to light, but which are not in themselves shameful.

Resume fraud is wrong. Cooke chose to lie to get ahead. Whereas, Vargas was initially trapped by someone else's lie and forced to keep up appearances to keep his life from imploding.

Vargas was sent here as a child. He wasn't responsible for what happened to him.

Seriously,
this is why the man is not a convincing advocate for the DREAM act. As an adult, he continued to lie and defraud those who most needed to trust him. His former editor, Jack Shafer:

I get on my high horse about Vargas' lies because reporter-editor relationships are based on trust. A news organization can't function if editors must constantly cross-examine their reporters in search of deliberate lies. I'm more disturbed with Vargas for lying to the Washington Post Co. (which—disclosure alert!—employs me) than I am about him breaking immigration law. His lies to the Post violated the compact that makes journalism possible. It also may have put the company on the hook for violating immigration law [PDF], which slaps employers who knowingly employ illegal immigrants with legal sanctions and fines.

...
The liberal Beyerstein again:

Would Shafer say that every closeted gay journalist who comes out in mid-career should henceforth be treated as a pariah? After, all, coming out means owning up to years of lying. What about a battered woman who takes a new identity in order to flee her abusive ex? Should she be cast out of journalism if her editors find out who she really is?

Let's stop pretending with the prizes. He forged documents to get hired. He lied to qualify for scholarships and prizes. He ... cheated. This is not how you win the American Dream.

This man, not a boy, now a man, made a choice. Others, who are more innocent and did nothing themselves as adults to continue to lie and cheat, would be better spokespersons for the DREAM Act.

This one, he's out for only himself. Put the employers at risk, and trust me, brings down the DREAM Act in the eyes of many, when it turns out the children have learned to cheat and game the system too. Just like their elders who jumped the line in coming here under false pretenses and cheating their way ahead of honest people waiting in line...

Too bad he's now the face of those illegal immigrant children, not all choose to be dishonest like that, just to advance their own special selves by not playing by the rules. Some kids actually do learn something -- and take those lessons to heart -- in their American Civics classes. They learn of an America greater than their parents/grandparents know -- who cheated in bringing them here. My standards for these Americanized youth -- whom this man keeps insisting he is, is much higher. Did he learn nothing about teamwork, and a sense of fairplay in not disregarding the rules? Or did he come from a stressful cheat-on-the-tests-to-achieve school too?


But hey, he won a few prizes along the way. The rest of the pack -- eh. Let them learn to cheat and lie their own way up, I guess.


It's the same mentality really, as the current showdown in Washington. Do we try to live within our means, or do we know -- that as long as the can can be kicked down the road until it affects lesser others -- that we can "cheat" our way ahead: continue spending what we don't have, and then just throw up our hands "it's too big to back down now" and keep feeding the monster that knows no end?

Like a gambler, I'm sure with this next round of government spending, we'll never have to face the belt-tightening and bill prioritizing that comes from facing the facts: we can't afford to continue going on like this. Somebody -- not you, you're special -- loses. And their losses will be bigger and more spectacular if only because we continue to think we can cheat our way ahead.

The bigger they are,
the harder they fall,
and all...

Read, Read, Then Read Some More...

It's really painful to watch writers cheat there way out.

If you continually make spelling and grammatical errors without editing help, trust me, you need to put down the Books On Tape, and crack some books. Really. Go back and earn -- somewhere -- a basic undergraduate degree. Surely there's some institution that you respect, where you can put in your time learning the basics, before leading the discussion groups yourself?

How can you build a career on a crumbling foundation? Solidify the skills, then go forth and preach the word. Because it shows. Really.

And that bar's not going to be kept artificially low forever...

Fwiw.

If you are a professional writer, it means that some not substantial group of people have volunteered to live in your world. The way to respect that willingness, that submission, is to resist the urge toward despotism. There must be laws, and you can't put yourself above them. But the lure of lasers, super-powers, vampire bites and secret national security agencies is quite strong. And many writers cheat.

ADDED:
Bad, bad advice. This is why the publishing world currently has an overstock of depressed-me, I got dealt a raw hand in life and this is how I suffer memoirs.

And novels of affluent city people doing things inside. Or having things done for/to them, rather.

Trust me,
it's boring to read about depressed people who find no excitement in life, or lack the abilities or independence to make their own excitement either.

As the UW law professors I mentioned in the post below have discovered of late, it's really much, much easier to write if you have something in your life worth writing about. And that takes curiosity, for the most part ... and a healthy dose of imitation, if need be.

Distinguishing.

This is what distinguishes a scholar from a hack: the willingness to analyze a question dispassionately and tell the truth even when it is politically inconvenient.

That's law professor, and former judge, Michael McConnell, excerpted over on the Volokh legal blog.

Some people just like to play both sides work both sides of the street, though. Including prominent law professor bloggers, it seems...

You know, the ones that change their minds when it becomes politically convenient, and earns them more eyeballs than their original ill-thought-out stances.

Whaddayaknow?

or,
You Know You Got It... Shout if it Makes You Feel Good...
(oh yes indeed...)
Blogging kingpin Glenn Reynolds* links to this WaPo piece by Jennifer Rubin, who wrote on Sunday morning, that David Brooks' previous column about Just Saying Yes to Suicide, takes us down a slippery slope...

David Brooks of the New York Times likes to fancy himself as a truth-seeker, bringing social and hard sciences to the masses. But in his Friday column on health care and death, he makes some shocking and inaccurate assertions. Given his coziness with the Obama administration one has to wonder if he is test-driving some Obama administration rationalizations for rationing.
...
But is someone confined to a wheelchair (no dog walking) or who needs help dressing not living a life of value? Clendinen, and in turn Brooks, begin down a slippery slope as they decide that, really, is it worth it to keep grandpa around for years if he can’t tie his tie?
...
Anyone, for example, who has had an elderly parent, a friend with cancer, or an experience with mental illness knows the difference our health-care system, warts and all, has made in the lives of millions and millions of Americans. Who of us would choose to receive only the medical care available 20 years ago? And, from where I sit, I’m not ready to throw in the towel on my loved ones (or anyone else’s) because they can’t walk the dog.

Now need I point out? This blogger was there first on Friday.

Just sayin'.

--------------------

ADDED: Nevermind all these stories about "discrimination" against traditional African names. (For my money, it's not the names so much, as perhaps the unassimilating attitude that often comes with the Afro-centric names that makes employers fear making a poor hire...)

Maybe if I wasn't a "Mary" and changed my name instead to something more ... Jewish sounding. Like, Rachel say. Or Josh something-or-other. There's a reason, besides simply quality of the work, that certain types advance in the media world, and plenty others of us out here simply have our work picked over and published under other professional bylines.

Maybe as an Ezra say, my words would carry more weight.

Still, I'm pretty pleased with the benefits package I've got here... And the writerly independence thing too.

DOUBLE PLUS:
Me thinks Ms. Rubin might be a regular Subsumed reader:

The hardest stories to cover in politics are the dogs that don’t bark, that is figuring out why something isn’t happening. When it comes to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) the dog that isn’t barking, at least not yet, is her gender.

While I'm always flattered when I find folks imitating my work,

Friday, July 1
The Life You Save Might Be Your Own.
Eugene Robinson, on the debate that didn't bark:

The skies over at least six countries are patrolled by robotic aircraft, operated by the U.S. military or the CIA, that fire missiles to carry out targeted assassinations. I am convinced that this method of waging war is cost-effective but not that it is moral.

There has been virtually no public debate about the expanding use of unmanned drone aircraft as killing machines — not domestically, at least. In the places where drone attacks are taking place, there has understandably been great uproar. And in the rest of the world, questions are being raised about the legal and ethical basis for these antiseptic missile strikes.

or adopting my pet phrases or features here, I must say this: Ms. Rubin, find your own voice. Trust me, you'll be stronger for it if you stop copping work from others, and learn a bit more independence in developing your own work.

That goes out to all other imitators too. I know: I read a lot.

BONUS PLUS:
Y'all know who was posting personal Views from my Windows, waaay before the young interns at the Dish picked up on that feature and made a schlocky, for-profit book off it, right? See here, here, here, here, here, and keep searching on the early blog entries, if you need more... (I've always taken photos from my residence windows, dating back to college days.)

Then there was the whole, taking pictures of nature's beauty -- the twisted trees especially -- while out walking in the woods, thing.

Nevermind that two prominent blogs by UW Law professors -- who began their postings chatting about hen parties, coffee clatches and other indoors fun -- are now suddenly posting pictures of their plants too, coincidence?, and various Wisconsin water fun.

Like I say, flattered, ladies. Indeed!

Sunday, June 12
Heading out to Fleet Farm today to have the tires rotated. I'll bring a book to read in case there's a wait.
---------
If you're looking for a mild getaway this summer, try Stillwater, Minnesota. Quaint storefronts, a pretty rivertown. Near Willow River State Park in Hudson, and Taylor's Falls State Park in Minnesota.

If you head further north, there's the Hayward, Wisconsin area, whose sportfishing tourist heyday is behind it, but has a historic charm. Winter home of the Birkebeiner.

Finally, Bayfield on the shores of Lake Superior, and La Pointe on Madeline Island, are reminders of the trapper and missionary days in north America. They're accommodating, and you'll come back relaxed if you take a few days summer getaway. Happy flag day in a few.

posted by Mary at 12:50 PM

That's from way back in 2005, for those of you out there who might be keeping track...

Heh.

For the first time this year, I bought me a bikini top. To get some sun on my white belly, firm it up a bit, I thought. Get some sun on the skin. Just a few minutes at a time. When paddling, say, before feeling the heat and putting the t-shirt back on as cover. I still swim in the one-piece Speedos -- the cross back makes sure it stays on, even in the strongest river currents... Still, I like the bikini top.

Fashion myself a bit like this Roman maiden in the upper far left, with the light barbells. Back in the days when I wore my hair longer.

Oh and not to brag, but my thighs are better than that even.

Illegally Funding the Rebels.

No, no. It's not Reagan and the Nicaraguan Contras.

It's Ms. Clinton, and the Libyan Rebels. Seems, despite her legal degree and working qualifications pre-partnership with Bill, America might indeed be legally overstepping once again:

Recognition by the United States (and other countries) of the NTC as the "legitimate governing authority" of Libya is especially unusual under international law because the NTC does not control all of Libyan territory, nor can it claim to represent all of the Libyan people. Indeed, as a general rule, international lawyers have viewed recognition by states of an insurgent group, when there is still a functioning government, as an illegal interference in a country's internal affairs.

Recognition of the NTC while the Qaddafi regime still controls extensive territory and exercises some governmental functions also raises other legal and practical problems, such as which group bears the responsibility for Libya's treaty obligations. For example, does the Qaddafi regime still have international obligations under the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations and Consular Relations to protect foreign embassies or to provide consular access to captured foreign nationals, such as members of the press? Will the United States enter into diplomatic relations with the NTC? No doubt these are among the "various legal issues" that Secretary Clinton says the State Department is working through.

This making-it-up-on-the-fly approach to legal matters in both domestic and foreign policy is unbecoming a nation as great as ours. Too bad these legal academics -- Clinton and Obama -- think things like laws and ethics are passe in our wonderful technological times.

Just remember, folks: Do Unto Others As You'd Have Done to You. Plenty of foreign money out there could be used to overthrow, or illegally influence, our way of living here at home. And you know darn well, we'd recognize the illegality of such strategies then.

Clean it up, kiddos. We are watching, even if some parts of the media right now are wrapped up only in reporting the trivial...

ADDED:
Musical interlude: Rebels been rebels, since I don't know when...

As we taxied down the runway
I could hear the people shout:
They said, "Don't come back here Yankee"
But if I ever do
I'll bring more money
Cause all she wants to do is dance

Nightmare On ... the Internet Highway.

Remember: Things Aren't Always What They Seem:

A Minnesota hacker prosecutors described as a “depraved criminal” was handed an 18-year prison term Tuesday for unleashing a vendetta of cyberterror that turned his neighbors’ lives into a living nightmare.

Barry Ardolf, 46, repeatedly hacked into his next-door neighbors’ Wi-Fi network in 2009, and used it to try and frame them for child pornography, sexual harassment, various kinds of professional misconduct and to send threatening e-mail to politicians, including Vice President Joe Biden.
...
He then e-mailed the same child porn to one of the husband’s co-workers, and sent flirtatious e-mail to women in Mr. Kostolnik’s office. “You are such a fox,” read one of the e-mails. He sent the message’s through the husband’s genuine e-mail account.

After the husband explained to his law office superiors that he had no idea what was happening, his bosses hired a law firm that examined his network and discovered that an “unknown” device had access to it. With Kostolnik’s permission, they installed a packet sniffer on his network to try and get to the bottom of the incidents.

Then, in May 2009, the Secret Service showed up at Kostolnik’s office to ask about several threatening e-mails sent from his Yahoo account, and traced to his IP address, that were addressed to Biden and other politicians. The subject line of one e-mail read: “This is a terrorist threat! Take this seriously.”

“I swear to God I’m going to kill you!,” part of the message to Biden said.

A forensics computer investigator working for Kostolnik’s law firm examined the packet logs, and found the e-mail sessions sending the threats. In the data surrounding the threatening traffic, they found traffic containing Ardolf’s name and Comcast account.

The FBI got a search warrant for Ardolf’s house and computer, and found reams of evidence, including copies of data swiped from the Kostolniks’ computer, and hacking manuals with titles such as Cracking WEP Using Backtrack: A Beginner’s Guide; Tutorial: Simple WEP Crack Aircracking and Cracking WEP with BackTrack 3 — Step-by-Step instructions. They also found handwritten notes laying out Ardolf’s revenge plans, and a cache of postal mail that Ardolf had apparently stolen from the Kostolniks’ mailbox and stashed under his bed.

“One of the manuals had Ardolf’s handwriting on it and another had the unique identifying ID for the Kostolniks’ router typed into it,” Rank, the prosector, wrote.

Also discovered in Ardolf’s possession was the pornographic image posted on MySpace and sent to the husband’s co-worker, and evidence that he’d secretly staged a similar harassment campaign against a neighbor at Ardolf’s previous home in Brooklyn Park, another Minneapolis suburb. Among other things, he sent that family a postal-mail message consisting of a one-page, color print-out of the family’s “TurboTax” return with personally identifying information, in addition to several skull images.

“I told you about a year ago that you should be very afraid. I can destroy you at will, you sorry-ass excuse for a human,” the letter said.

The Brooklyn Park family told the FBI they believed Ardolf was upset that their personal care attendants, who looked after their two disabled twin daughters, parked their car in front of his house.

ADDED: Pioneer Press account:

...
Ardolf, 46, then a technician at Medtronic, was a "certified ethical hacker," according to the bumper stickler above his bed, who used his skills to hack into the Kostolnik's wireless router. He then opened email accounts in Kostolnik's name to send lewd and threatening messages to several people in the Kostolniks' lives.

Some emails threatened the vice president and other elected officials, while other messages, to Kostolnik's co-workers and bosses at the downtown Minneapolis law firm where he worked as a lawyer, included child pornography.
...
Ardolf was charged in June 2010, agreed to a plea deal, rejected it, was indicted on more charges, went to trial and then halted the trial after a couple of days to plead guilty.

Then, on the eve of his sentencing in March, he told Frank he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea and get a "do-over" trial. The judge rejected his arguments, setting the stage for Tuesday's proceedings.

Ardolf's sentencing took longer than normal. Sentencings in federal court are generally brisk affairs; the longer ones last perhaps an hour. Including a couple of short breaks, Ardolf's sentencing stretched on for 6-1/2 hours.

It was filled with lawyers' arguments, testimony from an FBI agent, the Kostolniks' statements and some words from Ardolf himself.

Dressed in orange jail antimicrobial clothing and sometimes wearing two pairs of glasses simultaneously, Ardolf, a widower, began his comments by apologizing to the Kostolniks, his own three children and his family, some of whom were in the courtroom.

But he spent most of his time talking about himself, a trait that had prompted Rank to complain at a hearing in May that Ardolf was a narcissist unable to show true remorse or feeling for his victims.

"It's been difficult for me to eat. I've felt no enjoyment," Ardolf told Frank of his time awaiting trial in the Sherburne County jail. He described his days alone in 23-hour lockdown, said jail food "is always horrible" and complained that "the beds are like taking a sleeping bag and sleeping on the garage floor."

He reeled off a list of recent prison sentences he'd read about in the paper - including the 10-year sentence meted out to former auto mogul Denny Hecker this year - and said that relatively speaking, his crime wasn't as bad as those of some people sent to prison for terms less than what he was facing.

"I didn't kill anyone," he said.
...
When it comes to sentencing, federal judges use by guidelines that assess scores for various crimes.

Frank noted that when Ardolf's points were computed, the guidelines called for a maximum of 15 years and eight months. But the judge said a harsher punishment - 216 months, or 18 years - was called for.

"Anything any less than that would not serve the purposes of justice," he told Ardolf, who stood before the judge, hands clasped in front of him.

The judge also fined Ardolf $10,000 and told him that when his prison time was done, he'd have to register as a sex offender.

Candorville.

Darrin Bell scores again.

A Pea-Pickin' Good Time.

Between having myself a great fair (ie/ - "Have a good fair!"), and floating down the Namekagon River yesterday to keep cool, it was a good weekend.

Now comes, for me, the hardest part of gardening: the kitchen prep to continue eating these delicacies in the more-than-raw state, and putting them away for winter.

Everytime I think of the work, I crunch a snap pea... *

Have a good Monday.

------------------

*Problem is,
you can't make them disappear fast enough. I need a pickling partner, I think. (For the cukes, not the peas. If you read it that way, please: you need not apply for kitchen help.)

Stories as Old as Cain and Abel...

Except with a gun, not bashing the brother's head in with a rock...

In the past weeks,
I've covered a plane crash (a lucky landing actually, pilot overestimated and ran out of gas); the murder above; and a creepy guy who taped a coworker going to the bathroom at a local motel... along with a piece localizing the new concealed carry state law.

Tune in Tuesday (hard copy; online stories to follow) for news of the Rice Lake mayor's father -- a real winner -- who allegedly had consensual sex with a 13-year-old. She giggled nervously, like the now 14 year old she is, when asked yesterday on the stand to define her previous term "having sex". It means, when putting a penis into a vagina, she said, as though surely the adults present in the courtroom already knew that...

Innocence taken early. Children made mature before their time.

We also had a Minnesota man allegedly making remarks to 3 Mexican men outside a convenience store in Cumberland. Police responding to a call of a fight found one man cradling his arm, later found to be fractured and needing surgery to fix. He, and the two others exiting the store when the officers arrived, spoke no English, but through a translator told officers they were minding their own business, going in to buy something, when the Minnesota man began yelling at them to "go back where you came from" and allegedly called them wetbacks.

Somehow, he smacked the one on the elbow with a tire iron -- he was drunk and looking for a fight, it seems. Sadly, we'll never know the whole story. He got his wish: the injured man, the assistant DA told me, is reported to have returned to Mexico, and thus, the charges were dropped in court last week.

I wanted to run it still -- report what was know from the criminal complaint, what he was charged with, and why it was dropped (we'll prosecute if the Mexican man returns, I was told) -- but we decided against it. Maybe if it was a local guy, we'd want the young man's name out there, as he sounds like a real winner you'd want to watch in the future.

Sadly, I suspect this happens a lot. When you advocate bringing in illegal workers, with none of the protections afforded American workers and citizens, this is what you get. No harm, no foul ... if the workers are invisible and unheard, for the most part.

Turtle Season Opener in Wisconsin.

Actually it was yesterday; I'm just slow. *rimshot*
No non-resident harvest though, so don't be booking those tickets just yet...

Now I've lived in the state for a number of years and didn't know there was a turtle season until I read it Tuesday night in our sports pages. Who knew?

No, I won't be hunting. More like weeding, and trimming sun leaves, as we're getting plenty of rain this morning, to follow up on yesterday's soaking. Good thing -- we're going to get plenty hot in the coming days, with a stretch and no break. (The first few days feel fine, but after 5 or 6, you see the people here just aren't accustomed to the heat. Not built for it, the way our Southern neighbors are.)

I'm more worried about the plants. Imagine the peas might not make it -- and boy oh boy, are there plenty to pick. The plants indeed self supported, we've no trouble with "extra pickers" up here, and I imagine this rain, followed by a good day of sunshine, will have them at maximum juicyness for the mature sweet taste.

I brought some home prematurely last weekend, for the children to munch on and my folks, but my father pointed out: Best to ... wait on now, for the sweetest taste. He's right too. They were good then, but they're great now...

Plenty of broccoli coming in too, and there'll be an abundant tomato crop from the 6 starters my Dad gave me after he returned from Florida and got them going under lights this Spring, plus all the Romas I put in myself.

Happy Saturday and good luck. (They tell me those turtles are faster than you might think...)

PS. It's a working weekend for me: the Barron County fair runs this weekend in Rice Lake. Did you know, we're the only county fair in the state that still features two nights of horse harness races?? Now ya do...

Advocating Suicide.

Suicide is a personal choice, of course. To some, it indicates weakness of the will. An easy way out when the going gets tough. Like some of us view no-fault divorce.

To some, it's a sin. A cultural no-no, that happens surely, but nothing to advocate. The late Pope John Paul II set an example in illness about the dignity of life, even a life lesser lived due to health. If the mind is there...

Hemingway is the other side of the coin, of course. Hunter Thompson too. They were in pain, perhaps unable to work -- or write at the level they'd come to expect of themselves. They took themselves out of the game -- a clean death for them, quick, painless, over. They left behind cleanup for others, and perhaps collateral damage, but that too is their choice, and I'm glad every one of us has the chance to make it. Some like the control that comes with knowing they direct their own destiny, to the timing of the grave even.

Still, I'm leery of advocating suicide as some noble pursuit. I too read the ailing gentleman's clarion call for death in the NYTimes. I had pity for him, and the toll his illness will take.

And one, from Texas, put a hand on my thinning shoulder, and appeared to study the ground where we were standing. He had flown in to see me.

“We need to go buy you a pistol, don’t we?” he asked quietly. He meant to shoot myself with.

“Yes, Sweet Thing,” I said, with a smile. “We do.”

I loved him for that.

I love them all. I am acutely lucky in my family and friends, and in my daughter, my work and my life. But I have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., more kindly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, for the great Yankee hitter and first baseman who was told he had it in 1939, accepted the verdict with such famous grace, and died less than two years later. He was almost 38.

Then, I looked him up online. It's interesting the background details: The dying man, in his 50s only, checked himself into an old-age home when his own mother was suffering from a stroke. Interesting. Having been around Mal's mother herself post-stroke, I know some of the physical limitations -- she never walked again, for example, needed help "transferring" and ate messily. Cradled her arm as it withered into her, and often held her head in her hands, from the body pain or the physical fatigue with the medications, I don't know.

Still, she was a great lady, a good patient, always paying compliments ("Your hair is so shiny", she used to tell me, admiring the wave and thickness) and always thanking everyone, even for the smaller things. She said, "I love you" a lot, and the simple things -- a pillow to separate her feet, helping fix her elastic stockings, a sweet treat or listening to old stories... It was a life worth living, and to this day, I think there's a reason she lived after the stroke: to help her family prepare for her death, to show them in her dying how rich everyday life is, to keep fighting until she was ready to go...

This man writing the essay chooses differently. What he saw, and experienced, checking himself in prematurely to that assisted care living/nursing home earned him a published book, full of tales of aging, companionship, working, and sex even, though one wonders if his age permitted him to see things, perhaps participate in them?, that others did not.

Another thing: the man is gay, not that there's anything wrong with that. But you wonder if his culture -- ever youthful, ever valuing physical images of health, happiness, and fun, fun, fun! -- influenced his thinking too, on being less desirable in a limited physical capacity and having less reason to live if "you can't have that..."

Maybe, maybe not.

The next morning, I realized I did have a way of life. For 22 years, I have been going to therapists and 12-step meetings. They helped me deal with being alcoholic and gay. They taught me how to be sober and sane. They taught me that I could be myself, but that life wasn’t just about me. They taught me how to be a father. And perhaps most important, they taught me that I can do anything, one day at a time.

Including this.

I am, in fact, prepared. This is not as hard for me as it is for others. Not nearly as hard as it is for Whitney, my 30-year-old daughter, and for my family and friends. I know. I have experience.
...
I’d rather die. I respect the wishes of people who want to live as long as they can. But I would like the same respect for those of us who decide — rationally — not to. I’ve done my homework. I have a plan. If I get pneumonia, I’ll let it snuff me out. If not, there are those other ways. I just have to act while my hands still work: the gun, narcotics, sharp blades, a plastic bag, a fast car, over-the-counter drugs, oleander tea (the polite Southern way), carbon monoxide, even helium. That would give me a really funny voice at the end.

I have found the way. Not a gun. A way that’s quiet and calm.

My point is: how we live, and how we die, are personal choices. Influenced by our cultures, our families, our friends surely, and mostly, our character. Do we struggle and fight and fail, or do we throw in the towel before our own body is prepared to surrender on our behalf?

I admired Hemingway's strength for controlling his destiny to the end, but I'd never advocate it. Maybe it was depression, or a weakness really. I mean, for most folk, life does go on when your writing and professional talents wane in later days. If you value yourself, surely there are other people, other communities counting on you. Every life has value, and all that.

It's great that this man touched so many with his call to suicide before he ends up living in a manner he sees as lesser and could not tolerate. He's suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, and like so many chronic illnesses, the end is not pretty. Living is not for the feint of heart. Dying takes toughness, an inner strength that some simply don't have.

Bringing the profitability factor into it: that's really what bothers me. Absolutely we have a medical costs crisis in this country. It's why so many object to revamping the system by forcing everyone to play brothers' keeper, instead of allowing the costs and choices to be borne by individual families as we've done in matters of life and death throughout history. No, now we're all going to be shepherded into some big government, corporate insurance plan, with ... outsiders influencing who lives, and primarily, who dies.

Let's not conflate the two topics. Brooks today in "Death and Budgets":

Clendinen’s article is worth reading for the way he defines what life is. Life is not just breathing and existing as a self-enclosed skin bag. It’s doing the activities with others you were put on earth to do.

But it’s also valuable as a backdrop to the current budget mess. This fiscal crisis is about many things, but one of them is our inability to face death — our willingness to spend our nation into bankruptcy to extend life for a few more sickly months.

The fiscal crisis is driven largely by health care costs. We have the illusion that in spending so much on health care we are radically improving the quality of our lives. We have the illusion that through advances in medical research we are in the process of eradicating deadly diseases. We have the barely suppressed hope that someday all this spending and innovation will produce something close to immortality.

But that’s not actually what we are buying.

If you want to advocate suicide for the suffering, that's very libertarian of you. But to hold someone up as a hero, for being a "money saver", when I suspect the writer's personal background -- the "been there (early), done that" stint in the senior care facility before he really needed to be there, the possible impact of his lifestyle choice discussed above -- influenced his thinking much more than the noble impulse of not wanting to further burden taxpayers with the costs of his care.

Sorry, Brooks has it wrong. What he sees as a "quick fix" -- urging others to choose death -- to our medical costs problem ought to be eyed very warily. Keep your private decisions private. Don't go sticking your nose, a very well-intentioned nose I'm sure, into other people's private situations because that's how these things start...

Others disagree with this pessimistic view of medical progress. But that phrase, “marginally extend the lives of the very sick,” should ring in the ears. Many of our budget problems spring from our quest to do that.
...
The fiscal implications are all around. A large share of our health care spending is devoted to ill patients in the last phases of life. This sort of spending is growing fast. Americans spent $91 billion caring for Alzheimer’s patients in 2005. By 2015, according to Callahan and Nuland, the cost of Alzheimer’s will rise to $189 billion and by 2050 it is projected to rise to $1 trillion annually — double what Medicare costs right now.

Obviously, we are never going to cut off Alzheimer’s patients and leave them out on a hillside. We are never coercive going to give up on the old and ailing. But it is hard to see us reducing health care inflation seriously unless people and their families are willing to do what Clendinen is doing — confront death and their obligations to the living.

Who says if a life is worth living? Who determines which illnesses -- Alzheimer's, dementia, physical immobility? -- mean you'd be better off dead, as the writer here is choosing for himself.

Sorry but "obligations to the living" sound dangerously close to the current entitlement "obligations" that some of our more productive citizens and achievers are already paying to carry the personal decisions of others...

My only point today is that we think the budget mess is a squabble between partisans in Washington. But in large measure it’s about our inability to face death and our willingness as a nation to spend whatever it takes to push it just slightly over the horizon.

You want slippery slopes, whoop there it is.

I don't trust David Brooks to be sticking his nose anywhere near the private choices made via cultural, familial, and personal values transmitted over a lifetime. Look for other ways to save your bucks -- including scaling back the system as a whole if medical costs have skyrocketed. Let those who choose to, and can afford to, live life to the end. Don't lock everyone into a government program, like we've done with these entitlement structures, and then secretly slip your own cultural choices and values into the mix. Something tells me, what you'd choose for others might not be what you'd choose for your own. Those like the writer who personally want to go, because their lifestyle/family connections to life just aren't that strong, sure they have a right to check out early. But let's not pretend that size fits everyone.

Let's put an end to interfering with other people's values and choices, before we even go there. Let's not culturally stigmatize the suffering and elderly, just because they now cost us all money when we're all collected into the same healthcare cost pot because nobody is allowed to remain independent and stand by their own fiscal choices.

You know it's coming. Demographically, it's a financial problem, not an old-person abundance. Premature babies cost us an awful lot for their little lives too. Should we urge a cost-saving there too, if we think their lives are not worth of the money expended? Who will make the call?

Keep private decisions private. Respect, and pity, men like the writer suffering from LGS. But don't hold him out as a hero, when in reality, he's an increasingly weak man making his own personal choices based on what he's learned and valued in his own life. That's it. Nothing more.

RELATED: More on personal choices being compared and ... equalized? Sure people have different options and make different choices. That's what happens when you permit them to be independent, and take care of their own. Pretending that we all will end up with the same results, and have to somehow equalize or justify the end-of-life results, when all the factors up to that point have never been equalized ... again, this is where it begins, and why we don't want to toss everybody into the same pool.

The end of life really is where the hard work and gambles pay off, or not.

"On average, whites have more income and education and can better afford these options,” Dr. Feng said. “They don’t have to go to nursing homes, or they’re better able to delay going.”

With greater scrutiny, then, this demographic trend represents a less happy scenario. Just as minority seniors are pouring into nursing homes, whites are turning to more attractive choices and staying out.

Because there’s much less data on who, exactly, relies on home and community services, compared to who enters nursing homes, Dr. Feng is couching this explanation as a hypothesis.

He notes that the statistics may also reflect cultural changes. Immigrant communities that care for parents in multigenerational households may be less able to maintain that practice as they acculturate. “A lot of things are happening to undermine those traditional family options,” he said. He’s seen a similar shift in his native China, a topic I’ll return to in a subsequent post.

Overall, he sees a good news-bad news story, in which minority seniors get stuck in the institutions that whites have the means to avoid. “I’m struck by this persistent disparity,” Dr. Feng said. “It looks like we’re making some progress, but not really. The disparities are still there and are deeply rooted in history, geography, segregation and socioeconomic differences.”