Category: Idle Thoughts

Update

Yes, I am “boxcars” now, two-thirds evil.

The low at my place last week was 8-below-zero — but I was in Tucson that morning where it was 18º and everybody seemed to suffer a lot more. There were no plumbing problems or natural gas shortages at Casa NewMexiKen.

They are forecasting single digit lows and snow beginning tomorrow. Will this winter ever end?

Can’t we pass a law requiring that only the Marine Corps Band can play the “National Anthem” at big events? My god, that was disgraceful.

And how much longer will the halftime show try and replicate a Las Vegas floor show? Awful. Just. Awful.

I don’t know if I didn’t blog because I was depressed or was depressed because I wasn’t blogging. Either is sick.

This and that; mostly that

Karen has a nice tribute to Shel Silverstein.

At Juanita Jean’s we learn Joe Miller in Alaska is a total fool. Or we are. He says:

The first thing that has to be done is secure the border. . . East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could.

Joe Posnanski writes about the 32 NFL Coaches as Players.

Oh, and you probably don’t want to read Posnanski’s 2003 story about Tony Pena without a tissue handy.

Consumer Reports Electronics Blog has the latest about Facebook. They begin:

When it comes to the riskiness of using Facebook applications, the latest findings by the Wall Street Journal that popular apps have been compromising users’ privacy just scratches the surface of a much larger problem.

I received an email yesterday, presumably from a Facebook friend, that was bogus. It also had a number of current and former Facebook friends listed — and I have the maximum security settings (if one can even determine them). I wish you would all quit Facebook so I could.

CJR tells us we can be “Overly Possessive”. And you know me, I’ve never met an apostrophe essay I didn’t like.

Lastly, Hendrik Hertzberg quotes a blogger quoting him.

I value political liberty and political rights (freedom of thought, speech, conscience, and the press, the right to vote, civil equality) more highly than economic liberty and economic rights (property rights, freedom of enterprise, freedom from want, economic equality). I’m in favor of progressive taxation and generous public provision of education, pensions, and health care. I think people should have enough to eat and a roof over their heads, even if they haven’t done much to deserve it. I reject the idea that the market is the singular bedrock of society while everything else is a parasitical growth. I want government to do something about environmental degradation and gross social and economic inequality. I’m a secularist and a supporter of equal rights for women and gays. And when it comes to wanting World Peace, I’m practically a Miss America contestant. So I’m a liberal.

Me too.

Idle thought

The guy who founded Facebook just gave $100 million to the Newark, New Jersey, schools and you won’t even get a thank-you note.

It’s your privacy he sold to get the money to have $100 million to donate.

Nice donation though. I’ll give him that.

Oh, and he’s 26-years-old. How much money did you give away when you were 26?

Idle thought

Anyone seen any of the 2010 quarters depicting Hot Springs National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, Grand Canyon National Park or Mount Hood National Forest?

New Mexico’s Quarter will depict Chaco Culture National Historical Park in 2012. The coins are being issued in chronological order based on the date the park or site was authorized. The Grand Canyon and Mount Hood quarters haven’t been released yet this year.

Stuff

Blogging from the dentist’s waiting room.

70 degrees and sunny sunny sunny at 10:45. Love fall. Humidity back to single digits in the afternoons. Bye bye monsoon season.

I like comments that demonstrate the commenter hasn’t really read what was posted. I guess Challenger3 was assigned the task to spin the “mosquito” business at Gallery Place.

Labor Day isn’t as much fun when you don’t actually labor anymore.

Terrible winds last night until dawn. My allergies love that.

Idle thought

Modern life may in fact bring on more anxieties than our ancestors faced. And the constant barrage of drug advertisements and self-indulgent articles and books on this and that and every other ailment surely makes us more self-aware than they were.

Even so, I assume human beings have faced emotional problems beyond their control for centuries — and they were every bit as miserable as us, without any of the understanding, or any of the possible remedies.

It’s a wonder to me that the human race has lasted this long.

Idle thought

Poor Shirley Sherrod. I see now she wants to meet the president to talk about race. Next thing you know she’ll want a talk show gig.

Hon, it’s not about you.

This story is about the news media. It’s about “journalists” who don’t check their sources, either because they are incompetent, or much worse, because they are malevolent in using anything to promote their political agenda.

And, to a lesser extent, it’s about politicians, who cowed by the news media, fire people without due process.

It’s about our broken systems.

The White House’s wrong and gutless reaction

. . . to the whole Shirley Sherrod business just makes me sick.

(A few months ago Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, gave a speech at an NAACP dinner. She told a story about not helping a white farmer as much as she should have 24 years ago — and went on to tell how she realized quickly that was wrong. She did help, so much so that Sherrod and the farmer even became friends, confirmed by the farmer’s wife who told CNN, “She helped us save our farm by getting in there and doing everything she could do.” The point of Sherrod’s story at the dinner had been that people needed to look beyond race. That was what she had learned 24 years ago.

But a right-wing zealot edited the video of Sherrod’s speech, eliminating the whole point of her story. There was an outcry that she was a racist. The White House reacted to the outcry by forcing her out of her job.)

UPDATE: Apparently USDA Secretary Vilsack is taking credit for firing Sherrod. The White House should tell him to correct the decision. They aren’t reacting to the event, which was positive. They are reacting to the shameful, lying, agenda-driven, right wing, out-of context depiction of the event.