Photos from Popular Mechanics, of all places.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Facts, data, opinions, yelling really loudly and multiple alternative versions of reality.
I'm sorry, but I seem incapable of writing anything. "Not being able to write" and "blogging" don't really seem to fit all that well together. Sort of like "wanting to be an actor" and "being overcome with stage fright." It doesn't really work.
I suppose part of this is due to the fact that my job mostly entails reading and writing stuff, all day long. It's rather difficult to work up the enthusiasm anymore to come home after work or get up in the mornings on the weekend and think, "Hey, I really want to write more stuff!" After eating spaghetti three meals a day for six weeks straight, you really don't want to have any more fu*king spaghetti.
But my big problem, as I have said before, is I am just overcome with the vapid stupidity (is there another kind?) of our society, and the devisions within in it that don't even seem to dwell in the same reality as each other, much less talk coherently and be able to find common ground. Facts are not facts anymore.... Facts are subject to whether or not they fit in with your current philosophy. Facts are now just heartfelt opinions. There is data out there on the internet that supports any damn position that you would like to take. Earth is warming up? Sure, there's lots of data to support that. Earth is cooling down? Yep, there's data for that. Unless someone takes the time to go track any piece of data (which I guess would be a datum) that they are using back to its original source, then you just stop looking when you find something that works for you. We have gone way past that old joke about lies, damn lies and statistics. You can no longer try to use data and facts to try to convince someone of the validity of your argument, because the person you are arguing with is probably armed with more "facts and data" than you are that are in complete opposition.
Is there even any such thing as "truth" anymore? Was there ever such a thing? I always believed there was. However, I am coming to believe that I was wrong. I have degrees in engineering and physics. There is a certain kind of thinking that is required to get a degree in engineering, one that starts with a set of facts or data that everyone can agree on in order to come up with a solution to any particular problem. But now, all that's out the window. It's like you got every single answer to your final exam wrong, just because your professor disagreed with your starting data points. "The Laffer Curve tells you everything you need to know about taxation!" "No, the Laffer Curve is widely discredited!" What is it? It depends on what you go read and want to believe in the first place.
The consequences of these dueling sets of realities is that the two sides, or however many there are, will never, ever be able to agree on anything. Never. We are all now obligated to view whatever facts and data might pop up in front of our faces through the filter of our already preconceived notions. It is fits, then great. We can absorb that new one for future use. If it doesn't fit, then you toss it out without thinking anything further about it, or else maybe chalk it up to the partisanship of the "other side," who are obviously a bunch of malicious liars and/or complete morons.
In my universe, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are morons, Beck is more unhinged than Palin, but morons all the same. Others, however, think that both of them are saviors and conveyors of the absolute and unvarnished truth. How can this be that people can have this big of a difference of opinion about something that I think is so cut and dried? How could ANYONE with an education over about the fifth grade thing that Sarah Palin is anything other than a lazy attention whore who usually has no idea what they hell she is talking about? It's beyond me, other than to go back to my original assertion that there are no absolute truths anymore. There is no such thing as unbiased, rational thought. Every single thing must be seen through the filter of preconceived ideas before any sort of judgment is passed. If your particular reality requires that Sarah Palin is some sort of Goddess for Truth, Justice and the American Way, then that is what she is.
This is not how I think a civilized, thoughtful society should function, but that's how it goes these days, even for most of our mass media. And without a responsible mass media that doesn't use those same filters as their target audience, I must admit, there is very little chance of this country ever having a knowledgeable population that elects intelligent and knowledgeable people to political office in order to solve the huge problems facing this country if our society that does not have an active, truthful media that will accept the notion that they are there to help uncover the truth and not just to report that every story has two sides. No, partially because of our incompetent media that loves conflict, juicy scandal and playing to the audience in order to make as much advertising dollars as they possible can for their corporate masters, we can't even agree on whether things are even problems anymore, much less come up with ways to fix them.
To get back to my original starting point for this point, it is a very long way of saying, of course, that it is extremely difficult for me to blog about much of anything anymore when I have completely given up hope for our society. I have absolutely no idea where it might be headed. It could be headed for some 1984-esque world where facts are things to be manipulated and no dissent or even appearance of non-conformity is tolerated. We could be headed for some complete meltdown of orderly society when global climate change disrupts our food and energy supply and distribution to the point that we have no functional government at the national or even state level, a la The Road Warrior or the myriad of other post-apocalyptic films of the past 40 years. We could keep stumbling around just like we are, slowly sinking into the morass of our own stupidity and inability to see past the ends of our collective noses in order to maintain the purity of whatever vision of reality to which we subscribe. It could be a combination of little bits of all of those, or it could be something completely different. Probably the one thing that won't happen is what everyone was worried about in the 50's and 60's, there won't be a global thermonuclear exchange by two or more superpowers that wipes civilization off the face of the planet. That's probably not going to happen anymore. But, whatever happens, I firmly believe 1) it isn't going to be pretty, and 2) nothing we can do now can change it and only part of that is due to the fact that we don't want to change it.
So, that's why my blogging has fallen off to a whisper these days. It's pretty difficult to write something snarky or insightful or hopeful or full of passion if I have given up hope. What's the point? The last few weeks, I have engaged in active isolationism, and I have found myself being a lot less unhappy, frustrated and angry than I have been. If our society wants to commit suicide by mass stupidity, then who am I to complain about it?
I am just going to go bury my head in the sand over here for a while. Poke me in the butt if something happens that you think I might need to know about.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Future mass migration of Mexicans to U.S. because of global climate change?
From a story in the Seattle Times:
Boy, I cannot wait to see what conservatives do with this one. On one hand, this feeds into their paranoia about Mexicans coming to “take over the U.S.” That’s what they are always warning us about. And this one actually might be based in some sort of fact and logic-based analysis! That certainly isn't the case for most of the other BS that they routinely become hysterical about. But, on the other hand, in order to use this as any sort of credible threat, those same conservatives must admit that global climate change is not some sort of liberal plot and will indeed have real and lasting effects across the world. Climate change will eventually lead to mass migrations of entire populations.
What’s a poor conservative to do?
Climbing temperatures are expected to raise sea levels and increase droughts, floods, heat waves and wildfires.
Now, scientists are predicting another consequence of climate change — mass migration to the United States.
Between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico, according to a study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The number could amount to 10 percent of the current population of Mexicans ages 15 to 65.
"Assuming that the climate projections are correct, gradually over the next several decades heading toward the end of the century, it becomes one of the more important factors in driving Mexicans across the border, all other things being equal," said study author Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.
Of course, Oppenheimer acknowledged, changes could occur in U.S. immigration and border policy or in Mexico's economy and its reliance on agriculture. But he said this was a simplified first step in studying the effect of global warming on migration.
Boy, I cannot wait to see what conservatives do with this one. On one hand, this feeds into their paranoia about Mexicans coming to “take over the U.S.” That’s what they are always warning us about. And this one actually might be based in some sort of fact and logic-based analysis! That certainly isn't the case for most of the other BS that they routinely become hysterical about. But, on the other hand, in order to use this as any sort of credible threat, those same conservatives must admit that global climate change is not some sort of liberal plot and will indeed have real and lasting effects across the world. Climate change will eventually lead to mass migrations of entire populations.
What’s a poor conservative to do?
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Conservatives in this country want to be lied to.
I had been rolling this concept in my mind around for a bit, trying to get up the initiative to actually write a blog post about it. Of course, to quote Uncle Bonsai, “There’s no such thing as an original thought.” Doug J of Balloon Juice has it all right there.
I used to believe this sort of thing, that it was shameful, for example, that Fox provided such a low level of journalism to its captive conservative audience. My thinking was that conservatives watched Fox and listened to crazy conservative talk radio not because they enjoyed being lied to, but because they enjoyed overtly conservative media and Fox/Rush/etc. was what they had to choose from; the lying and low level of discourse, I reasoned, might very well be bugs rather than features.
Well, I was wrong, they’re features. Compare the ratings of Shep Smith with the ratings for Glenn Beck. Compare the traffic numbers for Hot Air, Drudge, and Instapundit with those of FrumForum, The American Scene, and Eunomia. And note that the Daily Caller traffic went way up with when they started in with the JournoList silliness (whatever one thinks of JournoList, the way that Daily Caller is presenting the story is extremely dishonest).
Given the choice, conservatives as a group will go for the dumber, more dishonest, more insane option. There’s a market for good-faith conservative media, but that market is liberals. Who watches/reads the faux-good faith propaganda of David Brooks? Totebaggers. Who reads The American Scene and Eunomia? People like me.
Conservatives, by and large, have no interest in what you or I or actual journalists consider journalism. It’s telling that when Clark Hoyt and Andy Alexander muse about pleasing conservative readers, they don’t talk about covering legitimate stories that conservative readers are interested in, they talk (exclusively) about following ginned-up Breitbart controversies.
And that about sums it all up, I think. There really isn’t any market for the truth these days, because somewhere between 25% and 50% of this country doesn’t want to know the truth. They really don’t want to know what was really behind the Iraq war, or how the United States of America came to be one of the world’s foremost proponents and practitioners of torture. They don’t want to know what caused the financial meltdown of a couple of years ago, and whether or not the policies enacted by some Republicans and then taken up by the Democrats really helped or not. They don’t want to know the truth that ACORN was a small, underfunded organization trying to help low-income people get their voices heard in government and was in no way some giant secretive monster manipulating elections behind the scenes.
No, apparently most conservatives of this country want to hear stuff that feeds into their already formed ideas and positions. Government is evil. Democrats are evil. Guns are great and everyone should be allowed to carry them anywhere they want. Big business can really do no wrong, and when something bad does happen (e.g., the huge oil spill in the Gulf, 29 miners killed in West Virginia coal mine explosion), then it was just “an accident”, “God’s Will” or, once again, the fault of the government for too much regulation. All events, everything that anyone has ever said or done, all can be manipulated to fit into these narratives, so that everything, absolutely everything, confirms to the conservative mind what they already “know.”
Now, this is not to say that there are not liberals and progressives that exhibit these same traits. No doubt, there are. I am always questioning myself about this. I don’t actually find anything that makes me change my mind on certain questions, I must admit, but at least I am asking myself the right questions. I think most liberals and progressives really do want to know the truth about their government and their country. If a Democrat is behind something underhanded, then I firmly believe that most of us would want that person gone, immediately. Mostly… Right now, many of us are torn by the Obama adminstration. They are making it mightily difficult for liberals and progressive to give their unbridled support to an administration that seems determined to always “go for the middle,” even when that means shortchanging the very people who supported them in the first place. And we really don’t like the fact that President Obama is intent on ignoring the wrongdoings and lawlessness of the Bush administration, and even carrying on some of the worst of the previous administration’s policies.
But, to go back to my original point, when conservatives will never, ever make any concessions of wrongdoing and try to use every single thing that happens as some sort of cudgel to bash the other side over the head, even at the expense of the country as a whole, then, ladies and gentlemen, we have an ungovernable country. We simply cannot fix the huge problems we are facing because one side doesn’t want to admit they are problems, or else they do believe they are problems but don’t have any policy that would actually address those problems other than to attack the Democrats for actually trying to do something.
I can’t say that President Obama and the Democrats haven’t gotten anything done in the face of this overwhelming opposition to everything. There have been a number of amazing achievements made since Barack Obama took office. But what could have been has been significantly watered down, and with the Democrats a sure bet to not have anywhere near the required “super-majority” in the Senate after January of next year, then it’s a good bet that major achievements will be few and far between.
I am extremely disgusted and disappointed by the almost everyone in our society today. I suppose I should consider myself some sort of wild-eyed idealist, as what I believe in seems to be so far out of the mainstream these days. By looking around the blogosphere, I can see I am not alone. There are many knowledgeable, educated and well spoken people that seem to believe in the same things that I do. But I have come to believe that we are not going to get there. Not in the time of Barack Obama, and not ever. The tide is just that overwhelming. Huge Money, in the form of powerful lobbyist groups, mega-corporations and wealthy donors that want to see their own agenda enacted, is just too much to deal with.
This country is on a path to mediocrity, and maybe even worse. But at the very least, we are on the downside slope of the curve. Yes, the United States will remain a power in the world, just because of the money and power that is concentrated here, along with a huge consumer market. (How long that huge consumer market lasts is an unknown, given all the forces that are at work undermining the capacity of 90% of the population of this country to actually be consumers of anything past the essentials for living.) The argument for “American exceptionalism” will become less and less persuasive, if it ever were a real argument, and more and more just some myth that hardly anyone believes in but keeps telling each other anyway, just like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Here's what I find so discouraging about the Shirley Sherrod story.
It's the reactions, or non-reactions, from everyone after it has been laid out so plain about what went on and how it was exactly like what happened to ACORN and Van Jones. The reactions seem to be able to categorized like this:
1) Who, us? We didn't do anything. It's all Obama's fault anyway. Oooh!!! Look over here! Big Mexican women helping Afghans become illegal aliens! (Fox News)
2) Gee, I feel sorry for Ms. Sherrod. She certainly went through some tough times. It's the NAACP that's the racists, that's who I was going after! ((Andrew Breitbart)
3) I don't really care what the facts are, Breitbart was correct! Shirley Sherrod is a racist and deserved to lose her job! (Wingnut commentators)
4) YAWN! Well, the White House certainly overreacted, didn't they? Yes, black eye for the Obama administration. No, Breitbart is perhaps overly enthusiastic, but he really didn't do anything wrong. And we certainly aren't going to say anything bad about our brothers at Fox News. (95% of the national media)
5) Yes, we overreacted and we did Ms. Sherrod a huge disservice. It was all the media's fault, they made us overreact. (Obama administration)
6) Um.... What? We didn't see anything. (Elected Republican officials)
7) We don't care, Democrats are evil and deserve everything they get! (1/3 of the population of the United States)
I may have missed a few, but that seems to be about how it went. Yes, the left leaning blogosphere and most of the programming on MSNBC made sure that how this all went down was well documented. But in the end, no one really cared, because it STILL is not going to be the "learning moment" that we have heard mentioned. Breitbart and Fox News are not going to stop doing what they do, because that's who they are. The official media won't stop listening to them, because that would be impolite. Politicians looking to cover their butts will still overreact to really stupid fake news stories but will not work together to address the very real problems that this country has.
Geez. After everything we have been through in the last 10 years, and people are still going to vote for Republicans. I can't believe it.
1) Who, us? We didn't do anything. It's all Obama's fault anyway. Oooh!!! Look over here! Big Mexican women helping Afghans become illegal aliens! (Fox News)
2) Gee, I feel sorry for Ms. Sherrod. She certainly went through some tough times. It's the NAACP that's the racists, that's who I was going after! ((Andrew Breitbart)
3) I don't really care what the facts are, Breitbart was correct! Shirley Sherrod is a racist and deserved to lose her job! (Wingnut commentators)
4) YAWN! Well, the White House certainly overreacted, didn't they? Yes, black eye for the Obama administration. No, Breitbart is perhaps overly enthusiastic, but he really didn't do anything wrong. And we certainly aren't going to say anything bad about our brothers at Fox News. (95% of the national media)
5) Yes, we overreacted and we did Ms. Sherrod a huge disservice. It was all the media's fault, they made us overreact. (Obama administration)
6) Um.... What? We didn't see anything. (Elected Republican officials)
7) We don't care, Democrats are evil and deserve everything they get! (1/3 of the population of the United States)
I may have missed a few, but that seems to be about how it went. Yes, the left leaning blogosphere and most of the programming on MSNBC made sure that how this all went down was well documented. But in the end, no one really cared, because it STILL is not going to be the "learning moment" that we have heard mentioned. Breitbart and Fox News are not going to stop doing what they do, because that's who they are. The official media won't stop listening to them, because that would be impolite. Politicians looking to cover their butts will still overreact to really stupid fake news stories but will not work together to address the very real problems that this country has.
Geez. After everything we have been through in the last 10 years, and people are still going to vote for Republicans. I can't believe it.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
"No, Buffy. You are at fault here and you must admit your mistake."
"After all, if it hadn't been for you falling in love with Angel, we wouldn't currently be overrun with good-looking, brooding vampires that attract young girls. The world would have never been exposed to Twilight, Underworld and the Wizards of Waverly Place if it hadn't been for your rash, impulsive behavior. I hope you realize that now."
Will the Shirley Sherrod story be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Will everyone finally acknowledge the agenda of the right wing media?
I rather doubt it. However, there are some signs of hope. For those who don’t know what this story is about, here are some good links to get the idea of what went down. This one is from Crooks and Liars and this one is from HuffPo.
The roles that Andrew Breitbart and Fox News played in this travesty are so egregious that even moderate conservatives are pushing back. Here is David Gergen, vaid Crooks and Lairs.
Here is David Frum, via The Week.
CNN actually spent a good portion of one of its news days to debunk this story. So, finally, maybe everyone is actually beginning to be willing to recognize and point out the extreme agenda Fox News and people like Brietbart have. They aren’t there to report news. They are there to manufacture news that is to their liking and supports their agenda, which is currently to make Democrats and President Obama look as bad as possible. They certainly succeeded in this case, as they did in bringing down ACORN with the same type of video manipulation. That is what they do. They have no other reason for existing, other than making money, of course.
This is why I really hold out very little hope that this country will ever regain anything that looks to be an “even keel.” We have people in positions of power and influence that have absolutely no compunction against manipulating truths and spouting outright lies, as long as it gets them what they want. They don’t really even care if they are caught, because they know there will be no adverse ramifications for them. In several weeks, this little “dust up” will be all but forgotten and they will play their little game with someone else. There are no grownups in the room to stop them, and we certainly cannot count on any of these people to come to their senses on their own volition.
We have media who lie to and manipulate their audience. We have mega-corporations that rape the only planet we have while making obscene amounts of money, and they will lie and cheat in order to be able to make as much money as they can. Even when their misdeeds are out there for the entire world to see, they still cannot make themselves do the right thing. We have politicians that are in the pocket of these same mega-corporations and will vote anyway that their masters want them to. A significant number of elected officials continue to make statements that have people wondering if these elected officials ever made it out of high school.
This country is so screwed. The eight years of the presidency of George Bush only cemented that fact. All this that I am talking about was already around. It all became institutionalized during the reign of George Bush, however. I don’t see any chance of things really ever changing for the better.
Getting back to the original story, I hope that Ms. Sherrod finds another job, one that she finds very fulfilling and provides her the same or greater pay than the job she from which she was forced out. If the Dept. of Agriculture does offer her her old job back (after the appropriate amount of “study”, of course), I hope she throws it back in their faces and sues everyone involved. Fox News, Andrew Breitbart and the Dept. of Ag. Everyone. At least I will come away with some vicarious satisfaction that assholes and thugs don’t always get away with their misdeeds.
The roles that Andrew Breitbart and Fox News played in this travesty are so egregious that even moderate conservatives are pushing back. Here is David Gergen, vaid Crooks and Lairs.
Cooper: Given what we now know, should Miss Sherrod have been forced to resign?
Gergen: Absolutely not... absolutely not. Anderson this is ripped away the veil and shown us all that is wrong with politics today. An ideologue injects poison into the Internet, other people rush to judgment on camera and then the administration gave its stamp to beat it and commits this travesty and injustice. What is needed now, the NAACP has at least had the courage to come back and say we were wrong and apologized. Now the administration needs to do the same thing.
I think the President tonight ought to order the Agriculture Department to reopen this case, give this woman a fair hearing and if the facts are as they seem, reinstate her with an apology indeed. I think she deserves a whole lot more than an apology. I think she deserves an honor for her attempts to bring people together.
Here is David Frum, via The Week.
But you’ll never guess who emerged as the villains of the story in this second-day conservative react. Not Andrew Breitbart, the distributor of a falsified tape. No, the villains were President Obama and the NAACP for believing Breitbart's falsehood.
CNN actually spent a good portion of one of its news days to debunk this story. So, finally, maybe everyone is actually beginning to be willing to recognize and point out the extreme agenda Fox News and people like Brietbart have. They aren’t there to report news. They are there to manufacture news that is to their liking and supports their agenda, which is currently to make Democrats and President Obama look as bad as possible. They certainly succeeded in this case, as they did in bringing down ACORN with the same type of video manipulation. That is what they do. They have no other reason for existing, other than making money, of course.
This is why I really hold out very little hope that this country will ever regain anything that looks to be an “even keel.” We have people in positions of power and influence that have absolutely no compunction against manipulating truths and spouting outright lies, as long as it gets them what they want. They don’t really even care if they are caught, because they know there will be no adverse ramifications for them. In several weeks, this little “dust up” will be all but forgotten and they will play their little game with someone else. There are no grownups in the room to stop them, and we certainly cannot count on any of these people to come to their senses on their own volition.
We have media who lie to and manipulate their audience. We have mega-corporations that rape the only planet we have while making obscene amounts of money, and they will lie and cheat in order to be able to make as much money as they can. Even when their misdeeds are out there for the entire world to see, they still cannot make themselves do the right thing. We have politicians that are in the pocket of these same mega-corporations and will vote anyway that their masters want them to. A significant number of elected officials continue to make statements that have people wondering if these elected officials ever made it out of high school.
This country is so screwed. The eight years of the presidency of George Bush only cemented that fact. All this that I am talking about was already around. It all became institutionalized during the reign of George Bush, however. I don’t see any chance of things really ever changing for the better.
Getting back to the original story, I hope that Ms. Sherrod finds another job, one that she finds very fulfilling and provides her the same or greater pay than the job she from which she was forced out. If the Dept. of Agriculture does offer her her old job back (after the appropriate amount of “study”, of course), I hope she throws it back in their faces and sues everyone involved. Fox News, Andrew Breitbart and the Dept. of Ag. Everyone. At least I will come away with some vicarious satisfaction that assholes and thugs don’t always get away with their misdeeds.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
John Boehner proposes a moratorium on all new federal regulations.
From Talking Points Memo:
This guy is the minority leader. He who supposedly speaks for the Republican Party. And here he is, actually proposing that Congress do nothing for a year. Oh, sure they hold hearings and supposedly approve the Presidential appointees (which doesn't seem to be happening either). But isn't that what Congress is supposed to do, make laws? That's why they are called "legislators." And he isn't talking just about Congress, but ALL government agencies that make regulations. That would include the FAA, FDA, EPA, TSA, etc. Everything that is there to protect the America and all her citizens, Boehner wants to put a muzzle on them. I have personal knowledge (as I work for the federal government) that many companies and individuals in industries that are being regulated have taken a position that if there isn't a regulation or guidance (how you comply with a regulation) about something that comes up, then they automatically assume that the government "does not care" about the issue and, therefore, they don't have to do anything about that particular issue. I have seen that time and time again, even on what might be very critical, safety-related issues. And Boehner wants all government agencies to essentially shut down their rulemaking process. That's insane.
"Breathing room?!?" These guys certainly have a much different idea about government than what I was taught in my middle school civics class. And, once again, I wonder what would have been the response of the Republicans and the media if Nancy Pelosi had proposed this in public.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, fresh out of a meeting with business and trade group lobbyists, announced a new idea this afternoon: A moratorium on all new federal regulations, for a year.
"I think having a moratorium on new federal regulations is a great idea it sends a wonderful signal to the private sector that they're going to have some breathing room," he said, according to Greg Sargent.
This guy is the minority leader. He who supposedly speaks for the Republican Party. And here he is, actually proposing that Congress do nothing for a year. Oh, sure they hold hearings and supposedly approve the Presidential appointees (which doesn't seem to be happening either). But isn't that what Congress is supposed to do, make laws? That's why they are called "legislators." And he isn't talking just about Congress, but ALL government agencies that make regulations. That would include the FAA, FDA, EPA, TSA, etc. Everything that is there to protect the America and all her citizens, Boehner wants to put a muzzle on them. I have personal knowledge (as I work for the federal government) that many companies and individuals in industries that are being regulated have taken a position that if there isn't a regulation or guidance (how you comply with a regulation) about something that comes up, then they automatically assume that the government "does not care" about the issue and, therefore, they don't have to do anything about that particular issue. I have seen that time and time again, even on what might be very critical, safety-related issues. And Boehner wants all government agencies to essentially shut down their rulemaking process. That's insane.
"Breathing room?!?" These guys certainly have a much different idea about government than what I was taught in my middle school civics class. And, once again, I wonder what would have been the response of the Republicans and the media if Nancy Pelosi had proposed this in public.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Hell is full of sludge, tar and oil.
I hope this is the fate that awaits oil executives who deliberately press on with risky oil drilling adventures with no real idea what do to if something goes wrong, even if government regulations require such a plan. This is the place for those who deliberately require their workers to work around their own safety procedures, and for those who threaten to fire any workers cleaning up the horrible mess left if they wear any sort of protective gear or respirators while working in a toxic environment that could harm the worker's health. This is the place for those who pretend to have the authority to arrest people if they attempt to take pictures of the environmental catastrophe, even though the President of the United States specifically requested them to allow open access to reporters and photographers. This is for the executives that "earn" millions and millions of dollars but will find every single way they can to wiggle out of their responsibilities to pay for damages and loss of income to thousands of workers in the Gulf, even after they said they publicly said they would.
There is no Hell great enough for these rapacious thugs of the oil industry. However, as we have seen lately, what really happens is, when the spotlight gets too great, they retire to the English coast and go race their yachts.
There is no justice in this world.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
The "Fire" Waterfall at Yosemite
From Wiki:
This is where Rick Roberts came up with the name of the 1970's country rock band, Firefall.
UPDATE: I see by my Sitemeter that this post of mine got a number of hits from people searching specifically on "fire waterfall" or "El Capitan", and some included the word "hoax" in their search.
For those who are interested, no, this is not a hoax. Now, the original text of the e-mail that I received these in was totally wrong, in that it said this was some sort of natural phenomenon due to sunlight hitting the waterfall in just the right way. That's totally bogus. The text above that I lifted from Wikipedia is correct. I happen to know the members of the band Firefall (yes, they are still around), the lead guitar player being my older brother, and the current bass player was the one who sent me these photos. I am pretty sure that Rick Roberts, who picked the name back in the 70's, would have known if this were a hoax or not. One of these photos is actually in the inside sleeve of one of their albums, Elan (the old vinyl version, that is). Although, not being much of a photo bug, I suspect that most of these are time exposures, which gives the firefall its smooth, continuous look. Otherwise, it would look like a bunch of burning logs and sticks falling.
Besides, if you can't believe Wikipedia, who CAN you believe these days?
UPDATE II: Thanks to commenter Amanda. There actually is a waterfall in Yosemite that does catch the sunlight and look like it is on fire. Here is the link she provided. O.K., there are TWO versions of a Firefall in the same national park. Amazing. I stand corrected. Actually, I think these pictures are a mixture of both. The one taken at the side of the falls where it is obviously twilight is the actual 1968 version of the firefall. The others may be this sunlit version.
Yosemite National Park, California.
This park was gazetted as a national park in 1890. It is world famous for its rugged terrain, waterfall and century-old pine trees. It covers 1,200 sq km and the "fire" waterfall of El Capitan is one of the most spectacular of all scenery.
The Yosemite Firefall was a summer time ritual that lasted from 1872 until 1968 in which burning hot embers were dropped a height of about 3000 feet from the top of Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park down to the valley below, and from a distance looked similar to a glowing water fall because the people who dumped the embers made sure to do so in a uniform fashion. The ritual was performed by several generations of the owners of the Glacier Point Hotel. The ritual ended in January of 1968 when the National Park Service ordered that the Firefall be discontinued. The hotel burned down a year later and was never rebuilt.
The ritual was performed at 9 PM every night, to coincide with the end of a performance at Camp Curry.
This is where Rick Roberts came up with the name of the 1970's country rock band, Firefall.
UPDATE: I see by my Sitemeter that this post of mine got a number of hits from people searching specifically on "fire waterfall" or "El Capitan", and some included the word "hoax" in their search.
For those who are interested, no, this is not a hoax. Now, the original text of the e-mail that I received these in was totally wrong, in that it said this was some sort of natural phenomenon due to sunlight hitting the waterfall in just the right way. That's totally bogus. The text above that I lifted from Wikipedia is correct. I happen to know the members of the band Firefall (yes, they are still around), the lead guitar player being my older brother, and the current bass player was the one who sent me these photos. I am pretty sure that Rick Roberts, who picked the name back in the 70's, would have known if this were a hoax or not. One of these photos is actually in the inside sleeve of one of their albums, Elan (the old vinyl version, that is). Although, not being much of a photo bug, I suspect that most of these are time exposures, which gives the firefall its smooth, continuous look. Otherwise, it would look like a bunch of burning logs and sticks falling.
Besides, if you can't believe Wikipedia, who CAN you believe these days?
UPDATE II: Thanks to commenter Amanda. There actually is a waterfall in Yosemite that does catch the sunlight and look like it is on fire. Here is the link she provided. O.K., there are TWO versions of a Firefall in the same national park. Amazing. I stand corrected. Actually, I think these pictures are a mixture of both. The one taken at the side of the falls where it is obviously twilight is the actual 1968 version of the firefall. The others may be this sunlit version.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
NASA study shows that first half of 2010 is the hottest on record.
Following fast on the heels of the hottest Jan-May — and spring — in the temperature record, it’s also the hottest Jan-June on record in the NASA dataset [click on figure to enlarge].
It’s all the more powerful evidence of human-caused warming “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect,” as a recent must-read NASA paper notes.
Remember last winter when the east coast of the U.S. experienced some pretty good snowstorms? And do you also remember the wingnuts, such as Rush Limbaugh and many others, screaming at the top of their lungs about how the presence of snow pretty much repudiated the concept of global warming and climate change? I certainly do, although I am pretty sure that Rush would never use the word "repudiate."
Well, where are they now? Are they going to say something about this data? No, I don’t suppose not.
Chart and quoted text from Climate Progress, via HuffPo.
And if that isn't bad enough news, here's some news of the near future from Stanford University.
Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.
"Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades," said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study.
Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Diffenbaugh concluded that hot temperature extremes could become frequent events in the U.S. by 2039, posing serious risks to agriculture and human health.
"In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heat waves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities," said Diffenbaugh, a center fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. "Those kinds of severe heat events also put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields."
I find it almost a relief that I won't be around to witness the worst of the looming environmental catastrophe. I do worry about what kind of life my daughter and her family might find for themselves.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Rush Limbaugh is a despicable human being.
Oh, I know that Rush must have a really tough job. After all, it can’t be easy to sit in the same chair, day after day, week after week, and come up with wild crap to spew, with absolutely certainty, about President Obama and Democrats. I mean, he must keep them fixated on how much they hate the Obama and the Democrats and just how different they are from “real Americans.” He needs to keep throwing them red meat, just like at a pack of dogs, to keep them in a frenzy. After all, that’s the only way his audience will keep coming back, day after day, week after week, and listening to him concoct ever more fantastic allegations about the greatest enemy that this country has ever known, i.e., people who disagree with Rush Limbaugh.
Every time I think Rush can’t go any lower, he does. This past week, he accused President Obama of tanking the economy of the country on purpose because… Well, I just refer to this column in HuffPo.
So, Rush’s premise is that Barack Obama becomes a senator and then runs for POTUS just because he hates America and wants to punish all Americans for racism. That’s what he is saying.
Can anyone beyond a fifth grade level of thinking actually believe any of that? Someone would actually want to become president because he hates America? Normally, that’s a pretty insane place to start a discussion. However, these are not normal times. Thinking is not required and it is actually frowned upon. Pure, raw emotion is all that is necessary for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. etc.
I am in disbelief at where we find ourselves in this country today. People like Rush and Beck get national soapboxes to shout their insane venom, just because they make billions of dollars for their corporate masters. Those corporations don’t really care what is being said, although I suspect most of them secretly or not so secretly delight is skewering Democrats on a daily basis. I certainly don’t think that those corporations are headed by people who really believe that President Obama is actively trying to destroy this country because he hates America and wants to “pay it back” for decades of racism. All they care about is the activity at the cash register. Cha-ching! Money, money, more money. They continually need more money so they can keep doing what they do best, which is to make more money.
I suppose I shouldn’t be too angry at Rush’s audience, those deluded saps who actually believe crap like this. It’s just basic human psychology, really. People want to hear stuff that reinforces things they already believe. Mob mentality takes over a bit, which is an interesting subject since the “mob” in question here is dispersed and only connected by an electronic media. That’s not the historical view of a mob, but I think it still applies. Also, human beings are easily manipulated. Given enough time and resources, you can apparently get humans to believe in anything, no matter how insane it might be. And finally, human beings apparently need an enemy, someone to make their lives worthwhile. If people don’t have a specific enemy, then they must invent one. Illegal immigrants seems to be the latest invented enemy in the minds of quite a few conservatives.
But to believe that President Obama went through years of grooming himself for public office and to spend several years of his life running for President, only so he can “punish” the country for its inherent racism is nuts. Absolutely insane. Yet, we hear about crap like this every single day. The more outlandish the accusation, the better. And Rush and his ilk need to keep up “upping the ante” every day in order to keep their followers angry. People will just stop being angry if they get fed the same old stuff every single day. So, Rush must come up with even more insane accusations on a daily basis, just so he can keep his audience.
Rush must really have a tough job… But, in my mind, that really doesn't excuse him for being the despicable human being that he is.
Every time I think Rush can’t go any lower, he does. This past week, he accused President Obama of tanking the economy of the country on purpose because… Well, I just refer to this column in HuffPo.
Rush Limbaugh said on his July 2 radio show that he believes Obama tanked the economy on purpose, both as "payback" for 230 years of racial oppression and because Obama simply doesn't like America.
He railed: "Who is Obama? Why is he doing this? Why? Why is he doing it? Is he stupid? Is it an accident? Is he doing it on purpose or what have you? ... I think we face something we've never faced before in the country -- and that is, we're now governed by people who do not like the country, who do not have the same reverence for it that we do. Our greatest threat (and this is saying something) is internal."
Limbaugh went on to compare Obama to the Black Panthers:
"So in this interview with J. Christian Adams yesterday talking about [how] he and his line attorneys were told to just drop the case against the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation in Philadelphia, he said that there were people in the office, DOJ, who said, 'Well, you know, those people suffered the indignity of slavery, discrimination, segregation and so forth.'
He said somebody else said, 'This is payback,' meaning, 'All right, look. We don't care if it's the New Black Panthers or whoever it is. Black people in this country have never, ever had a fair shake. This is payback. O.J. Simpson was payback. How does it feel?' That word 'payback' is not mine, [but] it is exactly how I think Obama looks at the country: It's payback time... There's no question that payback is what this administration is all about, presiding over the decline of the United States of America, and doing so happily."
So, Rush’s premise is that Barack Obama becomes a senator and then runs for POTUS just because he hates America and wants to punish all Americans for racism. That’s what he is saying.
Can anyone beyond a fifth grade level of thinking actually believe any of that? Someone would actually want to become president because he hates America? Normally, that’s a pretty insane place to start a discussion. However, these are not normal times. Thinking is not required and it is actually frowned upon. Pure, raw emotion is all that is necessary for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. etc.
I am in disbelief at where we find ourselves in this country today. People like Rush and Beck get national soapboxes to shout their insane venom, just because they make billions of dollars for their corporate masters. Those corporations don’t really care what is being said, although I suspect most of them secretly or not so secretly delight is skewering Democrats on a daily basis. I certainly don’t think that those corporations are headed by people who really believe that President Obama is actively trying to destroy this country because he hates America and wants to “pay it back” for decades of racism. All they care about is the activity at the cash register. Cha-ching! Money, money, more money. They continually need more money so they can keep doing what they do best, which is to make more money.
I suppose I shouldn’t be too angry at Rush’s audience, those deluded saps who actually believe crap like this. It’s just basic human psychology, really. People want to hear stuff that reinforces things they already believe. Mob mentality takes over a bit, which is an interesting subject since the “mob” in question here is dispersed and only connected by an electronic media. That’s not the historical view of a mob, but I think it still applies. Also, human beings are easily manipulated. Given enough time and resources, you can apparently get humans to believe in anything, no matter how insane it might be. And finally, human beings apparently need an enemy, someone to make their lives worthwhile. If people don’t have a specific enemy, then they must invent one. Illegal immigrants seems to be the latest invented enemy in the minds of quite a few conservatives.
But to believe that President Obama went through years of grooming himself for public office and to spend several years of his life running for President, only so he can “punish” the country for its inherent racism is nuts. Absolutely insane. Yet, we hear about crap like this every single day. The more outlandish the accusation, the better. And Rush and his ilk need to keep up “upping the ante” every day in order to keep their followers angry. People will just stop being angry if they get fed the same old stuff every single day. So, Rush must come up with even more insane accusations on a daily basis, just so he can keep his audience.
Rush must really have a tough job… But, in my mind, that really doesn't excuse him for being the despicable human being that he is.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Have a happy and safe 4th of July.
Give a thought to those Americans in uniform that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. They deserve our respect.
However, you might also want to consider whether or not that the mission these brave men and women are doing has anything at all to do with "keeping our nation free."
That is the fault of our civilian government, not the fault of the men and women of the armed forces.
Photo from here.
Friday, July 02, 2010
How is that that we are even considering the possibility of major Republican gains in November?
It appears that Republicans, en masse, have lost their freaking minds. And a majority of American votes might actually vote for this party of morons?
To whit:
- Michael Steele apparently believes that President Obama is the one that started the war in Afghanistan and that the position of the Republicans has been to oppose the war.
- Sharron Angle thinks that unemployment benefits should be curtailed so that all these lazy people on the dole will get back to work.
- Michelle Backmann doesn’t understand that the United States is already involved in a global economy.
- Joe Barton, among others, apologize to the CEO of BP on national TV for President Obama “shaking down” BP.
- Paul Rand thinks building an “underground fence” is a pretty swell idea to solve the problem of illegal immigration, but can’t explain exactly how an underground fence would work.
- John Boehner slams President Obama’s moratorium on deep water drilling, but supports putting a halt to deepwater drilling in the Gulf until we find out what exactly happened, apparently unaware that is kind of what “moratorium” means.
- Sarah Palin lies about her feelings about her dad who used to set bowling pins in Idaho, in front of a bowling exposition.
- Pamela Gorman apparently believes one of her big selling points to win an election is how well she can shoot a machine gun.
And these are only on the top of the “Crazy List” for the last couple of weeks. This insanity has been ongoing and getting worse for months. And we aren’t even talking about their political agitators like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
These people seem to be certifiably insane to act as they do in public and expect their actions to be well received. It’s one thing to be a nutjob and keep it to yourself or act like a relatively sane person while out in public. It’s entirely another thing to believe acting like a lunatic will cause a majority of Americans to support you and your political party.
If Democrats were to go around saying stuff like this on a consistent basis, the press would be all over them and the Democratic Party would take decades to recover. But apparently, crazy is the new norm for the Republican Party, and they might actually make significant gains in the November election.
What a society we have constructed for ourselves. Act like a crazy bastard and get elected, and the media pretty much pretends this is normal.
UPDATE: Yes, President Obama certainly hasn't done much to energize the Democratic/Progressive base of voters. A number of us are pretty disenchanted with the Dems in power right now. But truly, I would prefer this bunch of Dems 1000 times over than the cast of Gilligan's Island that the Republicans are putting out there. If you don't want to vote for Democrats, then at least go to the polls or vote by mail to vote AGAINST the Republicans. I don't think we can even imagine what might occur if these jokers get back in power. I imagine that impeaching President Obama will be one of the very first priorities.
To whit:
- Michael Steele apparently believes that President Obama is the one that started the war in Afghanistan and that the position of the Republicans has been to oppose the war.
- Sharron Angle thinks that unemployment benefits should be curtailed so that all these lazy people on the dole will get back to work.
- Michelle Backmann doesn’t understand that the United States is already involved in a global economy.
- Joe Barton, among others, apologize to the CEO of BP on national TV for President Obama “shaking down” BP.
- Paul Rand thinks building an “underground fence” is a pretty swell idea to solve the problem of illegal immigration, but can’t explain exactly how an underground fence would work.
- John Boehner slams President Obama’s moratorium on deep water drilling, but supports putting a halt to deepwater drilling in the Gulf until we find out what exactly happened, apparently unaware that is kind of what “moratorium” means.
- Sarah Palin lies about her feelings about her dad who used to set bowling pins in Idaho, in front of a bowling exposition.
- Pamela Gorman apparently believes one of her big selling points to win an election is how well she can shoot a machine gun.
And these are only on the top of the “Crazy List” for the last couple of weeks. This insanity has been ongoing and getting worse for months. And we aren’t even talking about their political agitators like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
These people seem to be certifiably insane to act as they do in public and expect their actions to be well received. It’s one thing to be a nutjob and keep it to yourself or act like a relatively sane person while out in public. It’s entirely another thing to believe acting like a lunatic will cause a majority of Americans to support you and your political party.
If Democrats were to go around saying stuff like this on a consistent basis, the press would be all over them and the Democratic Party would take decades to recover. But apparently, crazy is the new norm for the Republican Party, and they might actually make significant gains in the November election.
What a society we have constructed for ourselves. Act like a crazy bastard and get elected, and the media pretty much pretends this is normal.
UPDATE: Yes, President Obama certainly hasn't done much to energize the Democratic/Progressive base of voters. A number of us are pretty disenchanted with the Dems in power right now. But truly, I would prefer this bunch of Dems 1000 times over than the cast of Gilligan's Island that the Republicans are putting out there. If you don't want to vote for Democrats, then at least go to the polls or vote by mail to vote AGAINST the Republicans. I don't think we can even imagine what might occur if these jokers get back in power. I imagine that impeaching President Obama will be one of the very first priorities.
Glenn Beck: “Blacks don’t own Martin Luther King.”
Beck is really insane. Or else he is so intent on playing to his insane base of hard-core listeners that he doesn’t care if he sounds insane or not to the rest of us.
How could anyone possibly connect Martin Luther King’s leadership during the Civil Rights movement here in the United States, where blacks were threatened with physical violence if they attempted to vote or sit in a diner or in the front of a bus? Where black churches were bombed and little girls killed? Where dogs and firehoses were use against demonstrators? What is it that Beck actually thinks is remotely similar to the manufactured outrage of white tea-partiers in today’s society? What, Glenn? Just what the hell are you attempting to do here? President Obama hates white people? Tea-partiers are just like the Civil Rights demonstrators?
Until I see police dogs ripping the shirts off unarmed white demonstrators and poll workers getting murdered because they were attempting to sign up white tea-partiers to vote, then, Glenn, STFU.
Photo from here.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Movie Review: Six really very strange horror/sci-fi movies you probably have never heard of before, much less seen.
Updated per comment....
One of the reasons I started this blog was to do some movie reviews for off-the-wall films that might not get a lot of attention from mainstream reviewers. I am quite the film buff, in my own way. I specialize in science fiction and horror; the more unusual, the stranger, the more obtuse, the better, in my mind. Eventually, I got away from doing movie reviews, as I became very focused in on politics and the current insanity of our society, which I am not enjoying at all at this point in my life. But I thought I would go back and try some reviews, just to do something different and get my mind off of the very disturbing crap that is going on in this country on a daily basis.
So, with that explanation, here are my picks for some really quite strange films.
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell: This is from Japan, but is definitely not your prototypical Japanese monster film, with guys in goofy rubber suits knocking down small, fake looking buildings. This one is rather disturbing and very hard to describe, since it only has a passing nod to anything that might resemble a plausible plot.
A commercial airliner full of passengers experiences very odd goings-on, such as bloody birds throwing themselves against the plane’s windows and some unusual visual phenomena in the sky. After being hijacked by the bad guy, the plane crashes as it is trying to return to the airport. Lots of very strange things occur. It turns out that the Earth has been invaded by aliens, intent upon exterminating the human population. One of the aliens, I believe, referred to as a Gokemidoro (space vampire, I suppose?) takes over the bad guy's body and then prowls around the wreckage of the airplane and picking off the crash survivors, one by one. You can tell who is the Gokemidoro by the fact that the person has a very strange wound on his or her forehead (caused by the alien blob like creature entering through the forehead to take control of the person) that has more than a passing likeness to a vagina. This effect sounds pretty ridiculous when reading about it, but when you see it, it is very odd and disturbing. Not terribly frightening, of course, just odd and disturbing.
The film definitely strikes an unusual, surreal mood. In many ways, it’s not a lot different than a lot of modern “horror” films where the “bad thing” picks off the characters one at a time. You stop really being involved with the characters, as you know many of them are going to end up toast in the end. The only suspense about it all is trying to guess who is going to be left alive. This one, however, definitely has a very unnerving quality to it. And, in the end, everyone dies because the aliens win. One of the final scenes where the survivors escape from the crash site and make their way to civilization, only to come across a toll road full of thousands of stalled cars full of dead people, is a bit shocking.
Recommendation: Eh, it’s a coin flip. If you can find it and enjoy Japanese films (which tend to be a lot less linear than American films and don’t really waste a lot of time filling in the back story for the audience), you might try this some Friday night. You might decide that you wasted about an hour and a half of your life that you won’t ever get back. But then again, where are you ever going to see a space vampire with a vagina in his forehead?
Bubba Ho-Tep: This is a pretty recent film that stars Bruce Campbell (“Army of Darkness”) and Ossie Davis (a very accomplished actor who, unfortunately, just passed away). Now, it has what I thought a great setup just because it is so weird. (I tend to like weird, if you haven’t figured that out by now.) But it never really follows through on what could have been a promising premise. It just ended up as sort of a turgid mess of a film with a bunch of scenes that you know were meant to be funny in a strange, black kind of way but really weren’t.
Campbell plays either Elvis Presley or an Elvis impersonator living in a retirement home in rural Texas, and he demands that everyone treat him as Elvis. He is friends with Davis, who believes himself to be Jack Kennedy. This takes a bit of rationalization on his part, of course, given that a) Kennedy is dead, and b) he is black. Odd things happen in the nursing home, such as people dying suddenly. Since this is a nursing home for the very old and infirm, no one really asks any questions. But it turns out that an ancient soul-sucking mummy from Egypt is really the cause, wandering the halls at night, looking for victims. The mummy effect is actually rather creepy, but is somewhat diminished by the fact that the mummy wears a nancy-looking cowboy hat and cowboy boots. Elvis and Jack Kennedy figure all this out and team up to destroy the mummy, using Molotov cocktails and Kennedy’s motorized wheelchair.
Recommendation: Don’t waste your time. I just thought I would review it because it has such a weird premise.
Incubus: This one was considered to be a “lost film” for a while, which is unusual given it is a relatively recent film. It stars William Shatner, just before he moved into his signature “Captain Kirk” role in Star Trek. It was produced and directed by Leslie Stevens, of Outer Limits fame. In fact, many of the Outer Limits crew were involved in this film. What is really unusual about it, however, that every bit of dialog is done in Esperanto. This is probably the only movie ever filmed using Esperanto.
Shatner plays a man living out on a secluded Greek (I think) island with his sister in a shack. As so often happens in Greece, malevolent spirits are prowling about, looking for humans to screw around with. Kia is a succubus who tires of seducing the local men, as they are such easy pickings. She needs a new challenge, so she sets her sights on a truly “good” man, which, of course, is Kirk, er, Shatner. (Yeah, as if Kirk, er, Shatner ever resisted a female within 30 feet.) He sort of avoids her immediate sexually-baited trap, but still falls in love with her, and she with him, which is rather unfortunate for a succubus. Kia’s sister gets pretty upset about all of this, as this isn’t really supposed to happen to succubii, and eventually calls up the titular incubus to wreak vengeance upon Kirk’s, er, Shatner’s sister.
It’s all very slow moving but somewhat interesting, just because it is so weird to watch Shatner actually speak his lines in Esperanto. The two lady demons are not terribly seductive and don’t seem to have the hang of sending men’s souls to eternal damnation down.
Spider Baby: This film stars Lon Chaney Jr. as a chauffeur for a really strange family with a terrible medical affliction who live out in a secluded tumbled down mansion that bears no small resemblance to Anthony Perkin’s mother’s house. As a person in the family begins to grow older, they begin to revert to a child-like state and develop an unfortunate tendency toward cannibalism. Some distant relatives (Carol Ohmart, who starred in “The House on Haunted Hill”, plays the rapacious cousin) show up with a little weasel of a lawyer, intent upon raiding the family’s wealth. The family consists of two very cute but really creepy teenage girls, their older brother (played by Sid Haig, who went on to later fame in such gorefest classics as “House of 1000 Corpses”), and various elder family members who are kept locked away in the basement.
It’s all played very tongue-in-cheek, of course. Lon Chaney actually sort of “sings” the introduction song, “The Maddest Story Ever Told.” Sid Haug chases Carol Ohmart, in her rather risqué nightgown, around for a while. One of the girls ties up the other cousin, one of the only two sane people in the entire film, and threatens to cut him up into little pieces. The lawyer gets his due when he gets eaten by the family in the basement. Lon Chaney finally realizes he can’t hide the family anymore, so he steals some dynamite from the local road building crew and blows up the house, with him and the family in it. The sane cousin and the lawyer’s assistant escape and get married. The film ends by focusing on the couple’s happy home and their young daughter, who is seen out in the garden capturing and eating spiders…. The End.
This one is quite a bizarre one, although the 60’s did put out quite a lot of obscure, bizarre films. Not everyone was intent on making that “blockbuster” film which would pull down tens of millions on the opening weekend. I would highly recommend this one, if you can find it and you have the inclination toward black humor and weird people.
Shanks: I had never even heard of this one until recently. It stars the great (depending, I suppose, on how you regard mimes) Marcel Marceau. He plays, what else, the town fool, who is mute, also not much of a surprise. He has a bit of a crush on a pretty young girl who doesn’t regard him as a fool. He lives at home with a shrewish sister and her husband who treat him rather poorly. This is all pretty standard stuff, so far. The fool, at the insistence of his sister, gets a job with the local mad scientist (also played by Marceau). Said scientist is working on experiments with little radio controlled servo things that he can put into objects, including dead animals, that he can eventually get to stand up and walk around.
Well, the mad scientist sort of dies one day. The town fool is despondent for a while, but decides to try the doctor’s experiment on the doctor himself. He successfully “reanimates” the doctor and gets him to walk around the lab. The sight gags are pretty wonderful, in my estimation. Many things ensue which I won’t go into, but it turns out that the fool’s shrewish sister and drunk husband also get themselves killed. The fool, quite naturally, reanimates them as well. The funniest scenes in the entire movie are when the fool take both of them into town to go shopping. The visual humor is really good, especially since the two radio controlled puppets that look so silly were introduced to the audience as pretty nasty, unsympathetic characters. The fool eventually throws his young lady friend a banquet using the two as servants.
It is unfortunate that the film’s writer and director (William Castle, in his last film) decided to take this film in a very dark direction. I was with them up to this point, thoroughly enjoying the black humor. A motorcycle gang invades the banquet. The young girl ends up being raped and killed by the gang members, which causes the fool to use the doctor’s diabolical inventions to take his revenge. In the end, he triumphs over the evil motorcyclists and reanimates his young flame so he can live happily ever after, I suppose.
I really hated this ending. Don’t do that to me. Don’t make me care about a character, especially a pretty young girl, and then kill her off in a very violent and sadistic manner. You lost me at that point. (That is one very big reason I absolutely hated “Alien 3.” After making the audience really become emotionally invested in Newt in “Aliens”, the character becomes a burden to the script in the third film, so they just kill her off in a crash landing so they can get the movie going. I fumed through that entire movie and never did enjoy a single minute of it because I was so mad.)
Anyway, back to Shanks. The first three quarters of the film was thoroughly enjoyable. Sort of E.T.A. Hoffmann meets the Brothers Grimm meets “Death Becomes Her” meets Shields and Yarnell (if anyone remembers them, from the old Sonny and Cher show, I believe). Quite an unusual movie and pretty amusing, again using lots of dark humor. I would just recommend you turn it off after the banquet scene. I rather had a sour taste in my mouth after seeing the ending with its broad hint at necrophilia. Ick.
Six String Samurai: I reviewed this one much earlier at this blog. I thought I would include that one in my list of very strange horror/sci-fi films. Just click the link, I am not going to bother rewriting it. It is a pretty great film if you like weird. Some great lines, too. “You ever try a pink golf ball, Wally? Why, the wind shear alone on a pink golf ball can take the head off a 90-pound midget at over 300 yards.”
One of the reasons I started this blog was to do some movie reviews for off-the-wall films that might not get a lot of attention from mainstream reviewers. I am quite the film buff, in my own way. I specialize in science fiction and horror; the more unusual, the stranger, the more obtuse, the better, in my mind. Eventually, I got away from doing movie reviews, as I became very focused in on politics and the current insanity of our society, which I am not enjoying at all at this point in my life. But I thought I would go back and try some reviews, just to do something different and get my mind off of the very disturbing crap that is going on in this country on a daily basis.
So, with that explanation, here are my picks for some really quite strange films.
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell: This is from Japan, but is definitely not your prototypical Japanese monster film, with guys in goofy rubber suits knocking down small, fake looking buildings. This one is rather disturbing and very hard to describe, since it only has a passing nod to anything that might resemble a plausible plot.
A commercial airliner full of passengers experiences very odd goings-on, such as bloody birds throwing themselves against the plane’s windows and some unusual visual phenomena in the sky. After being hijacked by the bad guy, the plane crashes as it is trying to return to the airport. Lots of very strange things occur. It turns out that the Earth has been invaded by aliens, intent upon exterminating the human population. One of the aliens, I believe, referred to as a Gokemidoro (space vampire, I suppose?) takes over the bad guy's body and then prowls around the wreckage of the airplane and picking off the crash survivors, one by one. You can tell who is the Gokemidoro by the fact that the person has a very strange wound on his or her forehead (caused by the alien blob like creature entering through the forehead to take control of the person) that has more than a passing likeness to a vagina. This effect sounds pretty ridiculous when reading about it, but when you see it, it is very odd and disturbing. Not terribly frightening, of course, just odd and disturbing.
The film definitely strikes an unusual, surreal mood. In many ways, it’s not a lot different than a lot of modern “horror” films where the “bad thing” picks off the characters one at a time. You stop really being involved with the characters, as you know many of them are going to end up toast in the end. The only suspense about it all is trying to guess who is going to be left alive. This one, however, definitely has a very unnerving quality to it. And, in the end, everyone dies because the aliens win. One of the final scenes where the survivors escape from the crash site and make their way to civilization, only to come across a toll road full of thousands of stalled cars full of dead people, is a bit shocking.
Recommendation: Eh, it’s a coin flip. If you can find it and enjoy Japanese films (which tend to be a lot less linear than American films and don’t really waste a lot of time filling in the back story for the audience), you might try this some Friday night. You might decide that you wasted about an hour and a half of your life that you won’t ever get back. But then again, where are you ever going to see a space vampire with a vagina in his forehead?
Bubba Ho-Tep: This is a pretty recent film that stars Bruce Campbell (“Army of Darkness”) and Ossie Davis (a very accomplished actor who, unfortunately, just passed away). Now, it has what I thought a great setup just because it is so weird. (I tend to like weird, if you haven’t figured that out by now.) But it never really follows through on what could have been a promising premise. It just ended up as sort of a turgid mess of a film with a bunch of scenes that you know were meant to be funny in a strange, black kind of way but really weren’t.
Campbell plays either Elvis Presley or an Elvis impersonator living in a retirement home in rural Texas, and he demands that everyone treat him as Elvis. He is friends with Davis, who believes himself to be Jack Kennedy. This takes a bit of rationalization on his part, of course, given that a) Kennedy is dead, and b) he is black. Odd things happen in the nursing home, such as people dying suddenly. Since this is a nursing home for the very old and infirm, no one really asks any questions. But it turns out that an ancient soul-sucking mummy from Egypt is really the cause, wandering the halls at night, looking for victims. The mummy effect is actually rather creepy, but is somewhat diminished by the fact that the mummy wears a nancy-looking cowboy hat and cowboy boots. Elvis and Jack Kennedy figure all this out and team up to destroy the mummy, using Molotov cocktails and Kennedy’s motorized wheelchair.
Recommendation: Don’t waste your time. I just thought I would review it because it has such a weird premise.
Incubus: This one was considered to be a “lost film” for a while, which is unusual given it is a relatively recent film. It stars William Shatner, just before he moved into his signature “Captain Kirk” role in Star Trek. It was produced and directed by Leslie Stevens, of Outer Limits fame. In fact, many of the Outer Limits crew were involved in this film. What is really unusual about it, however, that every bit of dialog is done in Esperanto. This is probably the only movie ever filmed using Esperanto.
Shatner plays a man living out on a secluded Greek (I think) island with his sister in a shack. As so often happens in Greece, malevolent spirits are prowling about, looking for humans to screw around with. Kia is a succubus who tires of seducing the local men, as they are such easy pickings. She needs a new challenge, so she sets her sights on a truly “good” man, which, of course, is Kirk, er, Shatner. (Yeah, as if Kirk, er, Shatner ever resisted a female within 30 feet.) He sort of avoids her immediate sexually-baited trap, but still falls in love with her, and she with him, which is rather unfortunate for a succubus. Kia’s sister gets pretty upset about all of this, as this isn’t really supposed to happen to succubii, and eventually calls up the titular incubus to wreak vengeance upon Kirk’s, er, Shatner’s sister.
It’s all very slow moving but somewhat interesting, just because it is so weird to watch Shatner actually speak his lines in Esperanto. The two lady demons are not terribly seductive and don’t seem to have the hang of sending men’s souls to eternal damnation down.
Spider Baby: This film stars Lon Chaney Jr. as a chauffeur for a really strange family with a terrible medical affliction who live out in a secluded tumbled down mansion that bears no small resemblance to Anthony Perkin’s mother’s house. As a person in the family begins to grow older, they begin to revert to a child-like state and develop an unfortunate tendency toward cannibalism. Some distant relatives (Carol Ohmart, who starred in “The House on Haunted Hill”, plays the rapacious cousin) show up with a little weasel of a lawyer, intent upon raiding the family’s wealth. The family consists of two very cute but really creepy teenage girls, their older brother (played by Sid Haig, who went on to later fame in such gorefest classics as “House of 1000 Corpses”), and various elder family members who are kept locked away in the basement.
It’s all played very tongue-in-cheek, of course. Lon Chaney actually sort of “sings” the introduction song, “The Maddest Story Ever Told.” Sid Haug chases Carol Ohmart, in her rather risqué nightgown, around for a while. One of the girls ties up the other cousin, one of the only two sane people in the entire film, and threatens to cut him up into little pieces. The lawyer gets his due when he gets eaten by the family in the basement. Lon Chaney finally realizes he can’t hide the family anymore, so he steals some dynamite from the local road building crew and blows up the house, with him and the family in it. The sane cousin and the lawyer’s assistant escape and get married. The film ends by focusing on the couple’s happy home and their young daughter, who is seen out in the garden capturing and eating spiders…. The End.
This one is quite a bizarre one, although the 60’s did put out quite a lot of obscure, bizarre films. Not everyone was intent on making that “blockbuster” film which would pull down tens of millions on the opening weekend. I would highly recommend this one, if you can find it and you have the inclination toward black humor and weird people.
Shanks: I had never even heard of this one until recently. It stars the great (depending, I suppose, on how you regard mimes) Marcel Marceau. He plays, what else, the town fool, who is mute, also not much of a surprise. He has a bit of a crush on a pretty young girl who doesn’t regard him as a fool. He lives at home with a shrewish sister and her husband who treat him rather poorly. This is all pretty standard stuff, so far. The fool, at the insistence of his sister, gets a job with the local mad scientist (also played by Marceau). Said scientist is working on experiments with little radio controlled servo things that he can put into objects, including dead animals, that he can eventually get to stand up and walk around.
Well, the mad scientist sort of dies one day. The town fool is despondent for a while, but decides to try the doctor’s experiment on the doctor himself. He successfully “reanimates” the doctor and gets him to walk around the lab. The sight gags are pretty wonderful, in my estimation. Many things ensue which I won’t go into, but it turns out that the fool’s shrewish sister and drunk husband also get themselves killed. The fool, quite naturally, reanimates them as well. The funniest scenes in the entire movie are when the fool take both of them into town to go shopping. The visual humor is really good, especially since the two radio controlled puppets that look so silly were introduced to the audience as pretty nasty, unsympathetic characters. The fool eventually throws his young lady friend a banquet using the two as servants.
It is unfortunate that the film’s writer and director (William Castle, in his last film) decided to take this film in a very dark direction. I was with them up to this point, thoroughly enjoying the black humor. A motorcycle gang invades the banquet. The young girl ends up being raped and killed by the gang members, which causes the fool to use the doctor’s diabolical inventions to take his revenge. In the end, he triumphs over the evil motorcyclists and reanimates his young flame so he can live happily ever after, I suppose.
I really hated this ending. Don’t do that to me. Don’t make me care about a character, especially a pretty young girl, and then kill her off in a very violent and sadistic manner. You lost me at that point. (That is one very big reason I absolutely hated “Alien 3.” After making the audience really become emotionally invested in Newt in “Aliens”, the character becomes a burden to the script in the third film, so they just kill her off in a crash landing so they can get the movie going. I fumed through that entire movie and never did enjoy a single minute of it because I was so mad.)
Anyway, back to Shanks. The first three quarters of the film was thoroughly enjoyable. Sort of E.T.A. Hoffmann meets the Brothers Grimm meets “Death Becomes Her” meets Shields and Yarnell (if anyone remembers them, from the old Sonny and Cher show, I believe). Quite an unusual movie and pretty amusing, again using lots of dark humor. I would just recommend you turn it off after the banquet scene. I rather had a sour taste in my mouth after seeing the ending with its broad hint at necrophilia. Ick.
Six String Samurai: I reviewed this one much earlier at this blog. I thought I would include that one in my list of very strange horror/sci-fi films. Just click the link, I am not going to bother rewriting it. It is a pretty great film if you like weird. Some great lines, too. “You ever try a pink golf ball, Wally? Why, the wind shear alone on a pink golf ball can take the head off a 90-pound midget at over 300 yards.”
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
We need a moratorium on the word "slammed."
As in "Momsen slammed for smoking onstage", "Euro Drug Makers Slammed In Midday Trading", "Failure to prepare: Government slammed over health payroll bungle", "Stocks slammed by global slowdown fears", etc. etc. And those are only today's headlines. A few days ago, I saw three separate headlines at Huffington Post about someone slamming someone else. This has to be the most overused word in the English language in the electronic media. You can't just "disparage" someone anymore. Disparaging someone is lame. You must SLAM them. Someone slams someone, who slams that person back. Slammer and slammee become one. We are all slammed at one time or another, and we probably don't even know it. Unless we put a halt to all of this gratuitous slamming, it will worm its way into all sorts of places we would rather not see any slamming. "Winnie The Pooh Slams Tigger in Poohsticks!"
Feh....
Who the f*ck is Momsen, anyway?
Feh....
Who the f*ck is Momsen, anyway?
Friday, June 25, 2010
Latest Republican outrage.
Does anyone remember when conservatives freaked out when someone not associated with MoveOn.org posted a video on their web site that compared George Bush to Hitler? Does anyone remember that? I certainly do.
As the quote above demonstrates, it was a full blown grand mal epileptic fit on the part of the right wing that lasted over two weeks and the fallout lasted for years.
So, what do we have now? We have Glenn Beck comparing Obama with Hitler on a weekly basis. But that’s apparently fine. And we have an elected congressman from Texas quoting a column that compares President Obama to Hitler, on the floor of the House of Representatives! And that apparently is fine!
Let’s say it all together now. It’s O.K. If You Are A Republican.
The leftist extremists now in charge of the Democratic Party are either so desperate or delusional they are now comparing this nation to Hitler’s Third Reich and the president to Hitler himself.
Moveon.org Voter Fund has sponsored a commercial "contest" encouraging people "to help us find the most creative, clear and memorable ideas for ads that tell the truth about George Bush's policies." Two of those submissions ran on the Moveon.org site and directly compared President Bush to Hitler and this nation’s policies with the Third Reich's.
Upon seeing the ad, one has to ask, do they really believe this garbage? Are they so ill that they really think this, or are they so ill that they don’t believe it but are willing to subject this nation to the accusation? Either way you look at it, it is beyond the pale, to say nothing of obscenely absurd.
As the quote above demonstrates, it was a full blown grand mal epileptic fit on the part of the right wing that lasted over two weeks and the fallout lasted for years.
So, what do we have now? We have Glenn Beck comparing Obama with Hitler on a weekly basis. But that’s apparently fine. And we have an elected congressman from Texas quoting a column that compares President Obama to Hitler, on the floor of the House of Representatives! And that apparently is fine!
There’s a brilliant man named Thomas Sowell. And, um, I didn’t vote for Barack Obama in 2008, but I sure would have voted for Thomas Sowell. This man, well, his article says quite a lot. His editorial, um, says here — and it’s just been posted this week — but it says, “When Adolph Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920’s” — and I’m quoting from Thomas Sowell in his editorial:
‘leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler’s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. ‘Useful idiots’ was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.’
And this isn’t in the article — this is my comment — but we do have useful idiots today, who are heard to say, ‘Wow, what we really need is for the president to be a dictator for a little while.’ They know not what they say.
Let’s say it all together now. It’s O.K. If You Are A Republican.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
One thing (among many) that I find amazing about conservatives.
I was surfing through the web after the pretty amazing ending to the World Cup match between the U.S. and Algeria. Lots of very happy fans, but there were a number of people who actually took the time to log on and throw in their comments about hating soccer and hoping the U.S. loses. I won’t link, but you can find them easily enough. I then saw one post that talked about how Glenn Beck was on a rant about how much he hated soccer and was tired of “them” (whoever they are) “ramming it down our throat.” Here’s Bob Cesca’s post on that.
Good grief… I can understand why someone wouldn’t like soccer. It does take some getting used to for Americans raised on football, baseball and basketball. But Beck sounds absolutely offended that a number of people in this country will watch ESPN for World Cup coverage. And we will even watch matches that don’t involve the U.S.! What is up with this? Does everyone in the world have to agree with Glenn Beck about everything? There can be no difference of likes/dislikes, ever? Jeez.
I remember seeing a letter to the editor in the local newspaper a year or so ago. It was from a man who passed a hybrid car on the freeway. I guess the driver of the hybrid wasn’t going fast enough for this guy’s tastes. He said he was “disgusted” about this car and made more disparaging remarks.
Again, what’s up with this attitude? You don’t like hybrids? Don’t buy one! You don’t like soccer? Don’t watch it! But what’s with this sense of outrage? Yeah, we expect differences of opinion about rather important things, such as politics. I can see how people can get pretty emotional about those subjects, even if I don’t understand their specific positions. But on things that don’t matter, what’s the deal with this sense of outrage and indignation? It’s like these people are personally offended by even being in the presence of something they don’t agree with.
I don’t like NASCAR. I think it is a huge waste of increasingly scarce petroleum products, and it is very polluting to the local environment. But I am not offended that it exists. I just don’t support it. But a lot of conservatives seem to take soccer and other matters of personal likes and dislikes as a personal insult.
I am wondering what insight into the psyche of the conservative mind this gives us. Are Glenn Beck and people like him so convinced that they are right about every single thing they might express an opinion about that they expect everyone in the country to actually agree with them? Do they see things like soccer and hybrid cars as some extension of “creeping liberalism” that they cannot abide their very existence? Or are they so used to bitching and complaining about every single thing they don’t like that this just seems natural, like scratching an itch?
I suppose this makes perfect sense to conservatives, but it sure seems really stupid to me.
"It doesn't matter how you try to sell it to us, it doesn't matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn't matter how many bars open early, it doesn't matter how many beer commercials they run, we don't want the World Cup, we don't like the World Cup, we don't like soccer, we want nothing to do with it. [...] I hate it so much, probably because the rest of the world likes it so much, and they riot over it, and they continually try to jam it down our throat." Glenn Beck
Good grief… I can understand why someone wouldn’t like soccer. It does take some getting used to for Americans raised on football, baseball and basketball. But Beck sounds absolutely offended that a number of people in this country will watch ESPN for World Cup coverage. And we will even watch matches that don’t involve the U.S.! What is up with this? Does everyone in the world have to agree with Glenn Beck about everything? There can be no difference of likes/dislikes, ever? Jeez.
I remember seeing a letter to the editor in the local newspaper a year or so ago. It was from a man who passed a hybrid car on the freeway. I guess the driver of the hybrid wasn’t going fast enough for this guy’s tastes. He said he was “disgusted” about this car and made more disparaging remarks.
Again, what’s up with this attitude? You don’t like hybrids? Don’t buy one! You don’t like soccer? Don’t watch it! But what’s with this sense of outrage? Yeah, we expect differences of opinion about rather important things, such as politics. I can see how people can get pretty emotional about those subjects, even if I don’t understand their specific positions. But on things that don’t matter, what’s the deal with this sense of outrage and indignation? It’s like these people are personally offended by even being in the presence of something they don’t agree with.
I don’t like NASCAR. I think it is a huge waste of increasingly scarce petroleum products, and it is very polluting to the local environment. But I am not offended that it exists. I just don’t support it. But a lot of conservatives seem to take soccer and other matters of personal likes and dislikes as a personal insult.
I am wondering what insight into the psyche of the conservative mind this gives us. Are Glenn Beck and people like him so convinced that they are right about every single thing they might express an opinion about that they expect everyone in the country to actually agree with them? Do they see things like soccer and hybrid cars as some extension of “creeping liberalism” that they cannot abide their very existence? Or are they so used to bitching and complaining about every single thing they don’t like that this just seems natural, like scratching an itch?
I suppose this makes perfect sense to conservatives, but it sure seems really stupid to me.
Wow. U.S.A. 1 - Algeria 0
The U.S. is through to the final round in the World Cup. What a tense game, and I am not even that huge of a soccer fan. I was all ready to be very upset, as the U.S. got jobbed AGAIN by the refs with another disallowed goal that replays show was good.
That was tense.
That was tense.
Is the Republican Party committing suicide on purpose?
Here’s a bit of a post from Washington Monthly about the continuing purge that is going on within the Republican Party.
Wow, that’s a pretty big margin to lose by for anyone. But when it happens to someone with a pretty solid conservative voting record and who has served in the same district for 12 years, that’s pretty amazing. You would think that a huge defeat of someone like that would mean the person was engaged in a huge scandal. But no. This guy made noises that he might actually think like a reasonable person at times. And the hardcore Republican primary voters do not like that. They will punish anyone who might actually think about working with the enemy or might criticize their own side.
So, the question becomes, why are the Republican voters doing this? Do they not realize what they are doing? They are marginalizing their own political party. They may become “ideologically pure,” but, except for a few elections in places like Kentucky and South Carolina, this is not going to win general elections.
Do these voters care? Or do not realize what they are doing? My vote is the latter. I firmly believe that these people really believe that they represent mainstream thinking. Anyone who doesn’t think and act exactly like they do (at least in public) is obviously an extremist. They truly believe that their viewpoints are normal and mainstream, and nominating people who express those same viewpoints will obviously lead to electoral success.
This is the same point of view, of course, that leads these same people to believe that any time a Democrat wins an election, it must have been “stolen,” probably by ACORN. Any time a Democrat wins, democracy has somehow been usurped. And this thinking, then, leads to some politicians such as Sharron Angle in Nevada to declare that elections where their side doesn’t win should obviously be overturned by “Second Amendment Rights”, i.e., armed force.
I truly hope that a large majority of non-insane people end up voting in November. I think we can concede that tea partier extraordinaire Rand Paul in Kentucky will become a U.S. senator, even with all the insane things he was spouting off before the national Republicans told him to knock it off if he really wants to be elected. But I am hopeful that Harry Reid will come back from the dead and beat Sharron Angle. If the state of Nevada can actually elect someone like Angle, no matter how conservative the state, then I have a difficult time believing that the Democrats will be able to hold on to their precarious position in the face of the overwhelming stupidity of the American public.
I am usually a very cynical and negative person. But I do hold enough idealism to think that America, that great shining beacon of democracy that I learned about in grade school, will reject extremism. I truly do not mind if Republicans are elected to office. A government run exclusively by a single party, on either side of the political spectrum, is not a good thing. In fact, very bad things can happen. But I will temper my statement by the fact that the Republicans need to be sane and be willing to work with the other side for the common good of the country. Unfortunately, sane Republicans seem to be a vanishing species.
South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis has been bounced from his longtime seat by a well-known prosecutor after challengers questioned the Republican's conservative credentials.
Trey Gowdy of Spartanburg won the GOP primary runoff Tuesday.
Inglis has always scored well with conservative organizations. But his challengers this year painted him as a liberal who voted for Wall Street and banking bailouts in 2008.
It wasn't close -- despite having represented the area for 12 years, Inglis lost by a ridiculous 42-point margin, 71% to 29%.
Given the one-sided nature of the results, it's tempting to think Inglis must have been caught up in some devastating scandal, since incumbents in good standing just don't get humiliated like this often. But Inglis' only crime was taking on a moderate, pragmatic tone, which led Republicans to revolt.
I emphasize "tone" because Inglis had a very conservative voting record, and scored well among the far-right organizations that grade lawmakers on their positions.
But Inglis expressed a willingness to work with Democrats on energy policy; he urged his constituents not to take Glenn Beck too seriously; he thought Joe Wilson was wrong to heckle the president during a national address; and he said his main focus as a lawmaker was to find "solutions" to problems. Last year, Inglis said the Republican Party has a chance to "lose the stinking rot of self-righteousness" and "to understand we are all in need of some grace."
…
Inglis' humiliating defeat also sends a message to Republican lawmakers who might consider constructive lawmaking: don't do it. The GOP base doesn't want responsible leaders who'll try to solve problems; it wants hard-right ideologues.
Wow, that’s a pretty big margin to lose by for anyone. But when it happens to someone with a pretty solid conservative voting record and who has served in the same district for 12 years, that’s pretty amazing. You would think that a huge defeat of someone like that would mean the person was engaged in a huge scandal. But no. This guy made noises that he might actually think like a reasonable person at times. And the hardcore Republican primary voters do not like that. They will punish anyone who might actually think about working with the enemy or might criticize their own side.
So, the question becomes, why are the Republican voters doing this? Do they not realize what they are doing? They are marginalizing their own political party. They may become “ideologically pure,” but, except for a few elections in places like Kentucky and South Carolina, this is not going to win general elections.
Do these voters care? Or do not realize what they are doing? My vote is the latter. I firmly believe that these people really believe that they represent mainstream thinking. Anyone who doesn’t think and act exactly like they do (at least in public) is obviously an extremist. They truly believe that their viewpoints are normal and mainstream, and nominating people who express those same viewpoints will obviously lead to electoral success.
This is the same point of view, of course, that leads these same people to believe that any time a Democrat wins an election, it must have been “stolen,” probably by ACORN. Any time a Democrat wins, democracy has somehow been usurped. And this thinking, then, leads to some politicians such as Sharron Angle in Nevada to declare that elections where their side doesn’t win should obviously be overturned by “Second Amendment Rights”, i.e., armed force.
I truly hope that a large majority of non-insane people end up voting in November. I think we can concede that tea partier extraordinaire Rand Paul in Kentucky will become a U.S. senator, even with all the insane things he was spouting off before the national Republicans told him to knock it off if he really wants to be elected. But I am hopeful that Harry Reid will come back from the dead and beat Sharron Angle. If the state of Nevada can actually elect someone like Angle, no matter how conservative the state, then I have a difficult time believing that the Democrats will be able to hold on to their precarious position in the face of the overwhelming stupidity of the American public.
I am usually a very cynical and negative person. But I do hold enough idealism to think that America, that great shining beacon of democracy that I learned about in grade school, will reject extremism. I truly do not mind if Republicans are elected to office. A government run exclusively by a single party, on either side of the political spectrum, is not a good thing. In fact, very bad things can happen. But I will temper my statement by the fact that the Republicans need to be sane and be willing to work with the other side for the common good of the country. Unfortunately, sane Republicans seem to be a vanishing species.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Sharron Angle and tea partiers.
(Sorry that I haven’t posted in the last week. I was on a business trip. I’m very glad to be back home, not that I have anything against Iowa…)
It appears that things haven’t improved since I last examined blogs and newspapers. Same old crap that just seems to be getting worse and worse each day. Now, I am not really talking about the uncontrollable leak of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. No, I am talking more about the insanity of those people who are believe they are the sole owners of the United States of American and are really pissed off that Democrats and President Obama are sitting in positions of power that they believe are rightfully theirs.
For example, Sharron Angle, the tea party candidate that the Republican Party nominated to take on Harry Reid in Nevada seems to believe that if they do not get elected to whatever office they are running for, they should resort to armed violence. From HuffPo:
When pressed by what she meant by this by a local television reporter, she attempted to blame Harry Reid and literally ran away from the reporter.
These tea party people seem to think that the entire country thinks just like they do. They apparently believe that they need to throw “red meat” at their base voters to get them really excited about her candidacy. They just don’t seem to expect that they might actually have to explain what they really mean when the non-extreme right wing gets a bit alarmed.
What else could Ms. Angle mean than referring to an armed insurrection if they don’t get elected? What is it, exactly, that they would be “defending themselves” from? I don’t see armed troops banging down doors and hauling off people to concentration camps. What is it that they are threatening to shoot people over? I have not the faintest idea. I do know that they have absolutely no concept of democracy. Apparently, tea partiers believe that when they are voted into office, they are free to do whatever they feel like without consideration for things like working with the minority party or even the rule of law (if the presidency of George W. Bush is any indication). But when their opponents are voted into office instead of them, well, something is obviously wrong with our system and must be fixed by any means necessary, including “second amendment remedies.”
My question is, are these people insane? I cannot believe that they are just “playing to their base.” Can they not glimpse the hypocrisy of their position? Or the fact that what they apparently believe in has no connection to democracy or freedom?
The biggest problem that we, as a country, face from these lunatics is not that lunatics run for office. That’s their right, after all, if they meet whatever lawful requirements were set up for that office. No, the real problem is that, in certain places in the country, there are enough voters who will vote for people like Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Jim DeMint and Michelle Bachmann to actually put them into office. That’s a scary thing. If the consequences of electing lunatics to office were limited to the confines of those voters who put them into office, I think the overwhelming response from the rest of the country would be “Hey, you made your own bed…” But that’s not how it works. These people become sitting U.S. senators and congressmen. As we have all seen over the last few years, these people can really gum up the works of government so that nothing gets done. And that’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is if these nutjobs actually get to enact their own legislation.
If we had a government where tea partiers controlled the presidency, the Senate and the House, I have no idea what would happen to our immigration policy. I have a feeling that all illegal aliens would become huge targets, which would bad enough. It wouldn’t matter how long you have been here, if you have been paying taxes and holding down jobs. It wouldn’t matter if you were a child who, by law, is a citizen of the United States. If your parents were here illegally, then you would be gone. We would see what is going on in Arizona enacted on a national level. American citizens would be harassed and targeted, just because they “look illegal.” I think there would also be an attempt at trying to suppress any and all dissent. Freedom of speech and press would be a target. George Bush already attempted this during the Iraq war. With tea partiers in charge, I believe that anything that did not fit into their preconceived notions of right and wrong would be made illegal.
I hope that the majority of the voters of this country see the potential danger here. The one good thing about the 24 hour news cycle and instantaneous and always available information via the internet is that everyone now gets to see exactly what these people are advocating. It’s very difficult to hide outrageous positions. You cannot say one thing to one group of voters and then something different to another group. That just does not work, if the electorate is paying attention.
It appears that things haven’t improved since I last examined blogs and newspapers. Same old crap that just seems to be getting worse and worse each day. Now, I am not really talking about the uncontrollable leak of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. No, I am talking more about the insanity of those people who are believe they are the sole owners of the United States of American and are really pissed off that Democrats and President Obama are sitting in positions of power that they believe are rightfully theirs.
For example, Sharron Angle, the tea party candidate that the Republican Party nominated to take on Harry Reid in Nevada seems to believe that if they do not get elected to whatever office they are running for, they should resort to armed violence. From HuffPo:
Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical...
Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.
Angle: Well it's to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.
When pressed by what she meant by this by a local television reporter, she attempted to blame Harry Reid and literally ran away from the reporter.
These tea party people seem to think that the entire country thinks just like they do. They apparently believe that they need to throw “red meat” at their base voters to get them really excited about her candidacy. They just don’t seem to expect that they might actually have to explain what they really mean when the non-extreme right wing gets a bit alarmed.
What else could Ms. Angle mean than referring to an armed insurrection if they don’t get elected? What is it, exactly, that they would be “defending themselves” from? I don’t see armed troops banging down doors and hauling off people to concentration camps. What is it that they are threatening to shoot people over? I have not the faintest idea. I do know that they have absolutely no concept of democracy. Apparently, tea partiers believe that when they are voted into office, they are free to do whatever they feel like without consideration for things like working with the minority party or even the rule of law (if the presidency of George W. Bush is any indication). But when their opponents are voted into office instead of them, well, something is obviously wrong with our system and must be fixed by any means necessary, including “second amendment remedies.”
My question is, are these people insane? I cannot believe that they are just “playing to their base.” Can they not glimpse the hypocrisy of their position? Or the fact that what they apparently believe in has no connection to democracy or freedom?
The biggest problem that we, as a country, face from these lunatics is not that lunatics run for office. That’s their right, after all, if they meet whatever lawful requirements were set up for that office. No, the real problem is that, in certain places in the country, there are enough voters who will vote for people like Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Jim DeMint and Michelle Bachmann to actually put them into office. That’s a scary thing. If the consequences of electing lunatics to office were limited to the confines of those voters who put them into office, I think the overwhelming response from the rest of the country would be “Hey, you made your own bed…” But that’s not how it works. These people become sitting U.S. senators and congressmen. As we have all seen over the last few years, these people can really gum up the works of government so that nothing gets done. And that’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is if these nutjobs actually get to enact their own legislation.
If we had a government where tea partiers controlled the presidency, the Senate and the House, I have no idea what would happen to our immigration policy. I have a feeling that all illegal aliens would become huge targets, which would bad enough. It wouldn’t matter how long you have been here, if you have been paying taxes and holding down jobs. It wouldn’t matter if you were a child who, by law, is a citizen of the United States. If your parents were here illegally, then you would be gone. We would see what is going on in Arizona enacted on a national level. American citizens would be harassed and targeted, just because they “look illegal.” I think there would also be an attempt at trying to suppress any and all dissent. Freedom of speech and press would be a target. George Bush already attempted this during the Iraq war. With tea partiers in charge, I believe that anything that did not fit into their preconceived notions of right and wrong would be made illegal.
I hope that the majority of the voters of this country see the potential danger here. The one good thing about the 24 hour news cycle and instantaneous and always available information via the internet is that everyone now gets to see exactly what these people are advocating. It’s very difficult to hide outrageous positions. You cannot say one thing to one group of voters and then something different to another group. That just does not work, if the electorate is paying attention.
Friday, June 11, 2010
OMG, this is the end of the world as we know it!! But first, a bit about the ongoing NCAA realignment.
As I write this, the University of Colorado has jumped the Big-12 rapidly sinking ship and has joined the Pac-10/11 and counting. The University of Nebraska seems to be about to accept a bid to join the Big 10/11 and counting. All of this could change within the next few days, heck within the hour, so I wanted to give readers a context in which I am writing this.
Well, my take on all of this is that this is a bit like airlines charging exorbitant fees for checking your luggage. 1) To make outrageous sums of money. 2) Just because they can. 3) To keep up with everyone else who is doing it or will be doing it in the very near future. In each case, the welfare and well being of the main players in not the first or even the fifth priority. The airlines do not care one whit about sucking every penny they can from their customers. The conferences are intent on making as much cash as they can. The welfare of their “student athletes” is not really part of the equation here.
In the case of the conference realignment process, there do seem to be some very real and valid concerns here that are driving all this. With money tight all over (except for Wall Street CEO’s and hedge fund managers), it is pretty unreasonable for the universities of this country to expect taxpayers to fund their athletics programs. Even historically successful programs are hemorrhaging cash, and something must be done.
I won’t go further into the reasons behind all this. You can find that elsewhere. I just wanted to put down some of my thoughts and impressions here. I have two college degrees, one from a SEC school and one from a PAC-10 school. I had season tickets to the University of Washington men’s basketball for a number of years, before they started treating their season ticket holders and athletic dept. donors as major sources of revenue that must be milked dry each and every year. But I still watch them on television quite a lot.
Football is driving all of this, of course. Basketball is an afterthought, if even that. Just ask the Kansas and Kansas State, which may be left out in the cold. Having read some of their local papers, they are not at all pleased with this prospect of joining the Mountain West conference. The most hope they seem to hold out is that not all of the potential invitees from the slowly imploding Big 12 conference (Texas, Texas A&M;, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State) will accept the invitation from the Pac-10/11 and they get picked up as replacements. Having read most everything that is being written on the subject on the west coast, I haven’t ever seen this one proposed as even a long shot possibility. I feel very badly for those schools that will be left out in the cold, just because they aren’t super-desirable. Not terrible, but the circumstances just weren’t “right” for the current situation. That sort of resembles my situation during high school, so I do have some empathy there.
Now, to the Pac-10 or whatever it will be called and whatever teams might end up joining. I can’t see it staying at 11. That just screws up a lot of things, primarily basketball scheduling. Utah seems to be most often mentioned as “Plan B” if “Plan A” involving the Texas and Oklahoma schools falls through. I’m not sure how Utah would feel about all this, being invited into a conference when they know they were Plan B. But hey, pride takes the back seat when it comes to increased money and prestige, no matter how badly you feel you have been treated.
And while I am on that note, I read a lot yesterday about how it was a “slap in the face” of the University of Texas for the Pac-10 to have invited and accepted Colorado FIRST, before Texas. As Steve Martin used to say, “Well, EEEXXXCUSE MEEEE!!!!” Jeez. Is this how this is going to go all the time? They got their collective panties in a bunch because the situation for Colorado was just right and Texas and its little brothers are waiting to see what Nebraska does first? I am really concerned that the Pac-10/11 will be bringing in a LOT of baggage with the addition of the Texas schools, baggage that ultimately led to the likely demise of the Big 12. Will this be an ongoing and continual soap opera? Will Texas actually accept a role where they are not the only “big dog” on the block? Hey, USC (even with the NCAA penalties imposed) is still a heavyweight. Even though, as a UW Husky fan, I don’t like to admit this, the University of Oregon with Phil Knight’s money is a wheeler-dealer. UCLA is one of the biggest names in college basketball. Washington, although down for many years in football, is still a major player, as is Stanford, California, Arizona and Arizona State. Will Texas accept being just “one among many?” I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem really likely, no matter how much money is involved.
I am also wondering about the potential for cultural differences. LA is pretty laid back about most everything, where football may be equal to religion, in terms of the importance it plays in people’s lives, in the state of Texas. How will people from Texas and Oklahoma deal with being in the same conference as those liberal bastions, Seattle and California’s Bay Area? What will they think of the trip to Pullman, Washington (home of WSU)? Pullman is very nice, for a small town with not a lot to do. It is home to Keith Jackson, football announcer extraordinaire, Edward R. Murrow, and the Giant Palouse Earthworm. But it is certainly not a travel destination in any sense of the word. How many people will make the trek from Lubbock, Texas, to Pullman, Washington, to see a football game?
Yeah, if this happens as many people expect, I will probably pay some extra money to see Pac-Whatever sports on the new Pac-Whatever television network. I will probably still go to some games. But I can’t help but wonder what will happen to these soon-to-be mega-conferences that have truly terrible travel arrangements within the conference if the economy really tanks and real hardship continues and increases within the country. Sports, including college sports, in a commodity and, as such, is subject to discretionary spending by its consumers. Will these conferences be able to survive in their bloated states when the customers are no longer beating down the doors because they are too concerned about their own survival?
I have lots of mixed feelings about this. At least my teams will not be on the short end up the stick after this coming nuclear war. My schools will still be part of a major conference, which is a lot more than can be said of many schools that are now part of the Big-12, ACC and Big East. It might be exciting to see Oklahoma and Texas coming to play in Seattle on a regular basis. But something fundamentally is changing here, and that never really feels good unless your current situation is truly terrible. And, truth be told, our current situation regarding college athletics is not terrible. At least for the consumers of the product, it isn’t terrible.
I can’t help but think we are all making a huge mistake, one that we might end up regretting in the long run. The influence of huge money is ruining many aspects of our society. College athletics is no longer pretending to be about anything but making as much money as possible. That doesn’t feel very good. "Student athlete?" Phht. Don't make me laugh. As someone else somewhere on the web said yesterday, we might just as well call these professional football teams that are stationed near colleges.
UPDATE: Yes, well, I rather suspected that things would not turn out as predicted. Texas and the rest have decided to stay with this Big "12". Texas got lured by the promise of a bigger pot of money. They will have their own television network, which I understand would not have been allowed if they joined the Pac-10. There were a lot of other factors, mostly about money. And it appears that someone fabricated a reason to blame the Pac-10 for the deal falling apart, claiming that the Pac-10 all of a sudden wanted to include Kansas instead of Oklahoma State. The Pac-10 commish says this is not true, and I believe that. If they wanted Kansas, that would have been their going in position. They didn't really want Baylor and had no problem about aiming at Colorado instead.
Anyway, the Pac-12 now includes Colorado and Utah. Not necessarily a blockbuster, certainly not a "Super Conference." I would really rather have stayed at 10. But you know, if the Pac-10 was really intent on expanding, I am not at all unhappy with this deal. We have two schools that really wanted to be part of the Pac-10, and I think they will fit within the culture of the Pac-10 very well. They most certainly won't demand that everyone else cave into their demands, which is what I believe probably would have eventually happened with Texas. I read some columns out of the newspapers in SLC, and they seemed overjoyed to now be part of a BCS conference. Welcome, Colorado and Utah.
Now, is this nonsense about done with? Can we stop now?
Well, my take on all of this is that this is a bit like airlines charging exorbitant fees for checking your luggage. 1) To make outrageous sums of money. 2) Just because they can. 3) To keep up with everyone else who is doing it or will be doing it in the very near future. In each case, the welfare and well being of the main players in not the first or even the fifth priority. The airlines do not care one whit about sucking every penny they can from their customers. The conferences are intent on making as much cash as they can. The welfare of their “student athletes” is not really part of the equation here.
In the case of the conference realignment process, there do seem to be some very real and valid concerns here that are driving all this. With money tight all over (except for Wall Street CEO’s and hedge fund managers), it is pretty unreasonable for the universities of this country to expect taxpayers to fund their athletics programs. Even historically successful programs are hemorrhaging cash, and something must be done.
I won’t go further into the reasons behind all this. You can find that elsewhere. I just wanted to put down some of my thoughts and impressions here. I have two college degrees, one from a SEC school and one from a PAC-10 school. I had season tickets to the University of Washington men’s basketball for a number of years, before they started treating their season ticket holders and athletic dept. donors as major sources of revenue that must be milked dry each and every year. But I still watch them on television quite a lot.
Football is driving all of this, of course. Basketball is an afterthought, if even that. Just ask the Kansas and Kansas State, which may be left out in the cold. Having read some of their local papers, they are not at all pleased with this prospect of joining the Mountain West conference. The most hope they seem to hold out is that not all of the potential invitees from the slowly imploding Big 12 conference (Texas, Texas A&M;, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State) will accept the invitation from the Pac-10/11 and they get picked up as replacements. Having read most everything that is being written on the subject on the west coast, I haven’t ever seen this one proposed as even a long shot possibility. I feel very badly for those schools that will be left out in the cold, just because they aren’t super-desirable. Not terrible, but the circumstances just weren’t “right” for the current situation. That sort of resembles my situation during high school, so I do have some empathy there.
Now, to the Pac-10 or whatever it will be called and whatever teams might end up joining. I can’t see it staying at 11. That just screws up a lot of things, primarily basketball scheduling. Utah seems to be most often mentioned as “Plan B” if “Plan A” involving the Texas and Oklahoma schools falls through. I’m not sure how Utah would feel about all this, being invited into a conference when they know they were Plan B. But hey, pride takes the back seat when it comes to increased money and prestige, no matter how badly you feel you have been treated.
And while I am on that note, I read a lot yesterday about how it was a “slap in the face” of the University of Texas for the Pac-10 to have invited and accepted Colorado FIRST, before Texas. As Steve Martin used to say, “Well, EEEXXXCUSE MEEEE!!!!” Jeez. Is this how this is going to go all the time? They got their collective panties in a bunch because the situation for Colorado was just right and Texas and its little brothers are waiting to see what Nebraska does first? I am really concerned that the Pac-10/11 will be bringing in a LOT of baggage with the addition of the Texas schools, baggage that ultimately led to the likely demise of the Big 12. Will this be an ongoing and continual soap opera? Will Texas actually accept a role where they are not the only “big dog” on the block? Hey, USC (even with the NCAA penalties imposed) is still a heavyweight. Even though, as a UW Husky fan, I don’t like to admit this, the University of Oregon with Phil Knight’s money is a wheeler-dealer. UCLA is one of the biggest names in college basketball. Washington, although down for many years in football, is still a major player, as is Stanford, California, Arizona and Arizona State. Will Texas accept being just “one among many?” I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem really likely, no matter how much money is involved.
I am also wondering about the potential for cultural differences. LA is pretty laid back about most everything, where football may be equal to religion, in terms of the importance it plays in people’s lives, in the state of Texas. How will people from Texas and Oklahoma deal with being in the same conference as those liberal bastions, Seattle and California’s Bay Area? What will they think of the trip to Pullman, Washington (home of WSU)? Pullman is very nice, for a small town with not a lot to do. It is home to Keith Jackson, football announcer extraordinaire, Edward R. Murrow, and the Giant Palouse Earthworm. But it is certainly not a travel destination in any sense of the word. How many people will make the trek from Lubbock, Texas, to Pullman, Washington, to see a football game?
Yeah, if this happens as many people expect, I will probably pay some extra money to see Pac-Whatever sports on the new Pac-Whatever television network. I will probably still go to some games. But I can’t help but wonder what will happen to these soon-to-be mega-conferences that have truly terrible travel arrangements within the conference if the economy really tanks and real hardship continues and increases within the country. Sports, including college sports, in a commodity and, as such, is subject to discretionary spending by its consumers. Will these conferences be able to survive in their bloated states when the customers are no longer beating down the doors because they are too concerned about their own survival?
I have lots of mixed feelings about this. At least my teams will not be on the short end up the stick after this coming nuclear war. My schools will still be part of a major conference, which is a lot more than can be said of many schools that are now part of the Big-12, ACC and Big East. It might be exciting to see Oklahoma and Texas coming to play in Seattle on a regular basis. But something fundamentally is changing here, and that never really feels good unless your current situation is truly terrible. And, truth be told, our current situation regarding college athletics is not terrible. At least for the consumers of the product, it isn’t terrible.
I can’t help but think we are all making a huge mistake, one that we might end up regretting in the long run. The influence of huge money is ruining many aspects of our society. College athletics is no longer pretending to be about anything but making as much money as possible. That doesn’t feel very good. "Student athlete?" Phht. Don't make me laugh. As someone else somewhere on the web said yesterday, we might just as well call these professional football teams that are stationed near colleges.
UPDATE: Yes, well, I rather suspected that things would not turn out as predicted. Texas and the rest have decided to stay with this Big "12". Texas got lured by the promise of a bigger pot of money. They will have their own television network, which I understand would not have been allowed if they joined the Pac-10. There were a lot of other factors, mostly about money. And it appears that someone fabricated a reason to blame the Pac-10 for the deal falling apart, claiming that the Pac-10 all of a sudden wanted to include Kansas instead of Oklahoma State. The Pac-10 commish says this is not true, and I believe that. If they wanted Kansas, that would have been their going in position. They didn't really want Baylor and had no problem about aiming at Colorado instead.
Anyway, the Pac-12 now includes Colorado and Utah. Not necessarily a blockbuster, certainly not a "Super Conference." I would really rather have stayed at 10. But you know, if the Pac-10 was really intent on expanding, I am not at all unhappy with this deal. We have two schools that really wanted to be part of the Pac-10, and I think they will fit within the culture of the Pac-10 very well. They most certainly won't demand that everyone else cave into their demands, which is what I believe probably would have eventually happened with Texas. I read some columns out of the newspapers in SLC, and they seemed overjoyed to now be part of a BCS conference. Welcome, Colorado and Utah.
Now, is this nonsense about done with? Can we stop now?
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Yeah, my blogging is getting seriously craptastic.
I don't post that much anymore, and when I do, it's just a rant about the latest insanity. I can't get over how many insane people this country has and how many of them decided to run for political office or become bloggers or "media personalities." In what sane world does Glenn Beck have a radio program, much less a prime time television show?
Anyway, for those of you who actually stop by this blog on purpose, rather than just by something I wrote on this blog showing up on a Yahoo, Google or Bing search, well, I sincerely apologize. I wish I could have something interesting for everyone to read or look at on a relatively quick turnaround, but I seem to be failing on that account. I was actually kicked out of a multi-author blog not that long ago for not keeping up. Hey, what can I say? This is a voluntary exercise (meaning "no cash rewards") and my time and energy is rather limited these days. I can't keep up with the insanity, much less make intelligent comment or humorous snark about it. It all just saps the psychic energy out of me and it's all that I can do to keep up with my job and my day to day life, such as it is.
This is certainly not a "goodbye, cruel blogging world" post. I like to keep it up just for my own entertainment. But I have recognized that whatever momentum I had with this place about two years ago is all but evaporated. So, keep coming back on occasion, if you can. Maybe I will have something for you from time to time.
Here's some serious hoping that someone finds a way to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico soon, and then figures out a way to minimize the huge ecological disaster that is happening right now, even if they shut down the oil geyser today.
Anyway, for those of you who actually stop by this blog on purpose, rather than just by something I wrote on this blog showing up on a Yahoo, Google or Bing search, well, I sincerely apologize. I wish I could have something interesting for everyone to read or look at on a relatively quick turnaround, but I seem to be failing on that account. I was actually kicked out of a multi-author blog not that long ago for not keeping up. Hey, what can I say? This is a voluntary exercise (meaning "no cash rewards") and my time and energy is rather limited these days. I can't keep up with the insanity, much less make intelligent comment or humorous snark about it. It all just saps the psychic energy out of me and it's all that I can do to keep up with my job and my day to day life, such as it is.
This is certainly not a "goodbye, cruel blogging world" post. I like to keep it up just for my own entertainment. But I have recognized that whatever momentum I had with this place about two years ago is all but evaporated. So, keep coming back on occasion, if you can. Maybe I will have something for you from time to time.
Here's some serious hoping that someone finds a way to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico soon, and then figures out a way to minimize the huge ecological disaster that is happening right now, even if they shut down the oil geyser today.
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