I attended a funeral this morning, and while sitting there before the service began quietly contemplating the things one contemplates at a funeral, it did occur to me that I could count all the deceased I have ever viewed in person on one hand.
And one of those was Vladimir Lenin.
This short piece at The Atlantic Business Channel barely scratches the surface, but indications are that the television business is going to make the newspaper decline look like the good old days.
David Treuer writing at Slate Magazine takes a tour of Indian casinos, writing about Indians, treaties, poker, golf, success and failure.
The series is up to four installments written at Morongo and Pechanga (southern California). I recommend it highly as informative and interesting.
Did you know the Seminole Tribe of Florida owns the Hard Rock Cafes? All of them. And all that memorabilia.
“First, those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).”
Paul Krugman January 28, 2008
“I’m morally offended when people like Sarah Palin suggest that those of us who support the proposed legislation want to ‘euthanize grandma’. I’m against euthanasia. I simply wanted to do what was best for my mother.”
Kathy Flake in a fine post on death panels.
She’s right, you know. Those of us who support universal care are the ones who should be angry.
“This ‘Council’ provides an essential service that is desperately needed in the US. It makes a decision about a patient’s health that does not depend upon considerations like age, income, pre-existing conditions or lifestyle. The council has only one question to answer: does the patient have an illness (or trauma) that requires long term treatment? If the answer to that question is yes, the person is immediately covered at 100 percent for the duration of the illness.”
Getting Cancer in a ‘Hell Hole’ Socialist Country | Jane B.’s Blog
Poor Jane, she’s an American in France. 100% covered. Damn socialists.
Tom provided the following in a comment but I thought he added measurably to the discussion the nation should be having (instead of the one we are having) and so wanted it to have more visibility.
I gave up stuff like this when I went from political to wine blogging, but yesterday I got into an email argument with a friend and spent much of the afternoon reading through sections of the House version of the bill. The sections I read focused on whether the bill would make the government plan mandatory, as is widely believed.
I think I read about 50 or 60 pages of it, legal language with lots of references to other parts of the legislation and even standing laws going back to the 1950s. And I’ve got to say: this law is really well thought out. (Keeping in mind that it won’t get really cluttered with special interest crap until it goes to conference.) The protections in the law for people who don’t want to give up their private insurance are detailed and comprehensive.
It got to be kind of fun. My friend would email me a complaint, and I’d go find the relevant portion of the legislation and discover that the rightie scare story he was reading had the law exactly wrong. It’s going to forbid companies from offering private insurance! No, it’s not. It’s going to force me into the government plan! No, it’s not. If I have another kid, that kid will have to go into the government plan while the rest of the family stays in the private plan! No, it’s not. If I decline the government plan, I’ll have to pay a tax penalty! No, you won’t.
The legislation bends over backwards to let people and companies make their own choice, but to hear the opposition tell it, it’s a Nazi takeover. Instead of town meetings, politicians should host small-group readings of the legislation. I thought the afternoon was fascinating.
There are things in the law worth debating. (For example: The tax on small business seems to me kind of extreme, “small business” being defined by size of payroll, with the tax kicking in at $250,000. That’s a small, small business.) But it’s amazing, after an afternoon of exchanges with a friend who is a serious wingnut, that absolutely none of the complaints he raged over turned out to be true in any way, shape or form. That’s a pretty good batting average, if you think about it. Almost like someone is deliberately making things up.
SI.com ranks all 120 of the Football Bowl Subdivision schools.
It looks like a very long autumn in New Mexico (UNM #111 and NMSU #118). The Quad Blog has them #106 and #118.
I’m not terribly interested in John Hughes, may he rest in peace, but I hear that Molly Ringwald has a good tribute to the director in today’s Times — The Neverland Club.
Someone long familiar in these parts, Kathy Flake, helps us out:
It’s a sacrifice, but someone has to do it. And obviously, it’s not going to be Sarah Palin.
I start my day with a cup of tea, or three, a bowl of shredded wheat, strawberries and soymilk. This takes time, so I sit at my desk and I read what people who really understand health care reform have to say. They’re journalists, economists, and writers who’ve studied the issue for years, and understand the intricacies of health care policy and the current proposals for reform much better than I do, even though I paid attention in my Economics classes.
She says, “If you read nothing else but Ezra Klein’s columns, you’ll be very well informed on the health care reform debate. In fact, on days when I’m limited to one cup of tea, I make sure Ezra’s the one I’m reading while I’m sipping.”
KathyF has more.
OpenCongress, Avelino’s place of employment and devotion, is a good source, too: House Health Care Bill – H.R.3200: America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
Here’s the plate that was selected. The black design is supposed to represent pottery — an odd choice to commemorate the Spanish pushing aside the Indians, but who knows any history anymore?
This plate is $25 extra (other special plates vary from $25 to $37).
The turquoise plate I showed yesterday will be the standard issue plate. The yellow plate, by the way, has been around since 1980.
If you know anything about mythology you probably learned about it first from Edith Hamilton, born on this date in 1867. Hamilton’s book Mythology, written after she had retired as a school head mistress, was published in 1942.
George Hamilton is 70 today.
Mark Knopfler is 60. Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.
Pete Sampras is 38.
Cantinflas, the great Mexican comedian, acrobat and musician — and bullfighter — was born on this date in 1911. His actual name was Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes. Cantinflas was Passepartout in Michael Todd’s 1956 Around the World in Eighty Days. In English-speaking countries, David Niven was billed as the star. Elsewhere Cantinflas took top billing — he was the highest paid actor in the world at the time. He saved the movie from the stiff Niven if you ask me.
The movie producer Cecil B. DeMille was born on August 12th in 1881. Known for his extravaganzas (e.g., The Ten Commandments), DeMille won his only Oscar for The Greatest Show on Earth.
And it’s the birthday of Zerna Sharp, born in Hillisburg, Indiana, on this date in 1889. According to The Writer’s Almanac a few years back, Ms. Sharp is the woman who —
invented the characters Dick and Jane to help teach children how to read…Sharp’s idea was to use pictures and repetition to teach children new words. She took her idea to Dr. William S. Gray, who had been studying the way children learn to read, and he hired her to create a series of textbooks. She didn’t write the books, but she created the characters Dick, Jane, their sister Sally, their dog Spot, and their cat Puff. Each story introduced five new words, one on each page.
Emily reports from Walt Disney World that she:
“is confused by the fact that there is lightning all over the place and yet there’s still 100 people in the two pools at our hotel. Our local lifeguards close the pools if a car’s brights flash and the trunk slams.”
“Never before have we had so many tools to learn and to communicate. Yet the art of talking, listening and ascertaining the truth seems more elusive than ever in this Internet and cable age, lost in a bitter stream of blather and misinformation.”
I’m all for both freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.
But people taking loaded firearms to town hall meetings scares the shit out of me.
Yours truly is going to be traveling the second half of August — I’ve got places to go, Sweeties to see — all six at once for the first time in fact. I’ve decided to take that time off from here.
I will still be posting the rest of this week.
When I resume in September I’m considering starting over with a new blog and maybe even a new name. No doubt the same old stuff, but maybe a new feel and look (and a faster loading home page).
Will you still love me even if I get a makeover?
Adopt just the new plate, or keep the old plate as an option?
Take the License Plate Survey.
The new turquoise plate will be available in January. The 10-year-old balloon plate is ending its run.
“General Motors Corp. said today its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving …”
Two hundred and thirty. Of course, lets remember, electricity (you plug the car in) is not free.
Thanks to Marlita H. for the link.
… was born on this date 56 years ago. Who’s that, you ask?
Does 6’8″ (2.03m) help?
How about 275 pounds (124.7kg)?
Long blond hair, but balding? Fu Man Chu mustache?
Twenty-five years ago or so I saw this man in the St. Louis Airport. I had no idea who he was, but knew he had to be somebody. He was huge. His shirt was artistically slit. Twelve-year-old boys were all a-twitter.
I finally asked one of the boys, “So, who is that?”
He looked at me like I had just arrived from Mars.
“Hulk Hogan, of course!”
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary accepted its first prisoners 75 years ago today.
Alcatraz is a 22-acre rock island in San Francisco Bay, 1½ miles from shore. For 29 years the federal prison system kept its highest security prisoners there, including Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and the famous Birdman, Robert Stroud (played by Burt Lancaster in the film Birdman of Alcatraz). Reportedly, no one was ever known to have successfully escaped from Alcatraz, though Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers were never found after their attempt (as dramatized in the Clint Eastwood movie).
From 1868 to 1934, Alcatraz was a military prison. In 1969, American Indian activists occupied and claimed the island. Their occupation lasted 19 months.
Alcatraz Island became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area of the National Park Service in 1972.
Alcatraz, from the original Spanish Alcatraces, is usually defined as meaning “pelican” or “strange bird.”
This is a sign I saw a man holding alongside the curb early on a Sunday morning in Chandler, Arizona, six years ago yesterday.
“Car wash 4 baby funeral“
“The hazards Americans treat as facts of life — the risk of losing your insurance, the risk that you won’t be able to afford necessary care, the chance that you’ll be financially ruined by medical costs — would be considered unthinkable in any other advanced nation.”
Paul Krugman from last year.
… was born on this date in 1921. Haley was the author of two publishing phenomena — The Autobiography of Malcolm X (6 million copies) and Roots, which was not only a best-seller, but led to one of the most successful television series ever. Nearly half the people in the country watched the last episode in January 1977. Haley won a special Pulitizer for Roots, “the story of a black family from its origins in Africa through seven generations to the present day in America.”
Subsequently it bothered me to learn he plagarized sections of the book and possibly fudged some of the genealogy. Clearly, that wasn’t right. Even so, the good his work did in educating both black and white America (and I include both books) was a legacy of major proportion.
Haley, who served in the U.S. Coast Guard 1939-1959, before becoming a full-time writer, died of a heart attack in 1992. The Coast Guard has named a cutter for him.
The idea of socialized medicine — you know where the doctors actually work for the government like in Britain — scares the hell out of most Americans.
So of course, that’s exactly what we give our honored heroes, our veterans.