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CapeCodTimes.com - Delahunt votes no; will support improved solution: "It was more focused on aiding the financial institutions and those who profited and benefited from them."
Glad to see our rep vote against the bailout bill in its current form.
As the mudslinging is going back and forth on both sides of the aisle about who's at fault for letting the bailout bill fail, I have to say that my one laugh-out-loud moment was Barney Frank's "WTF" reaction to the suggestion that Nancy Pelosi's (admittedly unnecessarily partisan) speech was the turning point for Republicans who were sitting on the fence:
"I'll make an offer: Give me those 12 people's names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they'll now think about the country."
CNN Headline: "Democrats and Republicans blame each other failure of bailout bill."
James: "Who the heck is Bailout Bill?"
CNNMoney.com Market Report - Sep. 29, 2008: "Approximately $1.2 trillion in market value is gone..."
Oooh! Maybe Congress can develop a bailout plan for the stock market.
Wait..what?
Other than "Everyone is a douchebag." Doesn't matter if you're a McCain support or an Obama supporter, you all look like assholes.
CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Fact Check « - Blogs from CNN.com.
CNN has fact checked some of the statements made by Barack Obama and John McCain in Friday's debate. Turns out that many of the statements made by both candidates micharacterize their opponents' position at best, or state outright falsehoods. Big surprise there.
The Discovery Channel's show Dirty Jobs with Mike Wroe has made quite an impression on James.
If you haven't seen it, Wroe takes the strangest jobs imaginable -- working in a sewerage treatment plant, for example, or sexing chicks. It's quite entertaining, mainly because Wroe is a clown.
Anyway, James and I were watching a rerun recently, and during the episode Wroe took a job gelding horses. James watched as Wroe reached to grab the horse's scrotum...
...and ran from the room screaming, I assume, in mock terror. He did not return.
Since then, he's regularly asked, "Daddy, is the show with the man who touches horse's penises on?"
"The American people are angry about executive compensation and rightfully so." - Henry Paulson testifying on Congress today.
Yeah, starting with the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, whose net worth is estimated north of $700 million.
I'm so angry I could spit.
I'm not the only one, either:
Is anyone with two brain cells to rub together actually working on the McCain campaign? Because this is the silliest shit I've seen in a long, long time.
This week we watched as Sarah Palin's handlers turned away the press from her meetings with foreign leaders, as if she's some delicate flower who might wilt if they ask her any tough questions. This, after the campaign has viciously attacked the Dems over and over with accusations of gender politics.
Now, we hear that John McCain is going to suspend his campaign to deal with the economy.
Uh. What?
I think David Letterman's quip (via the Drudge Report) is dead on:
"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?
"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"
(Via Bynkii)
Commentary: Bailouts will lead to rough economic ride - CNN.com: "... policymakers today have not learned the lesson that prices must adjust to economic reality. The bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the purchase of AIG, and the latest multi-hundred billion dollar Treasury scheme all have one thing in common: They seek to prevent the liquidation of bad debt and worthless assets at market prices, and instead try to prop up those markets and keep those assets trading at prices far in excess of what any buyer would be willing to pay."
Paul ran for the Republican nomination this year. He's also run as a Libertarian presidential candidate in years past.
How We Became the United States of France - Bill Saporito, TIME: "Admit it, mes amis, the rugged individualism and cutthroat capitalism that made America the land of unlimited opportunity has been shrink-wrapped by a half dozen short sellers in Greenwich, Conn. and FedExed to Washington D.C. to be spoon-fed back to life by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson."
Robert, on Friday: "None of the kids I voted for for student council won."
Me: "Who won?"
"The popular kids. Some real douchebags, too."
"Get used to it, Bob. Now you know how I feel voting in the presidential elections."
(Via Dan Dickinson.)
Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes - NYTimes.com: "Throughout [Sarah Palin's] political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials."
(Via Gawker.)
Three times this week I've gotten cold-called on different lines in the house from a telemarketing company manned by people with heavy Indian accents purportedly doing a survey on home security. The first question they ask -- which they launch into before I even have a chance to offer them a polite decline -- involves whether my house has a security system installed.
Does anyone with an ounce of sense actually answer these things? Maybe I'm just paranoid, but anyone calling me asking about whether or not I use a home security system is going to instantly stick me on high alert. That's like calling me asking me who I bank with or what schools my kids go to -- in other words, you better have a goddamn good reason to ask that, or I'm hanging up on your ass.
Op-Ed Columnist - McCain’s Radical Agenda - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com: "A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan."
Because Suze Orman thought it was a good idea.
Suze Orman: 'Thank God, they bailed out AIG' - CNN.com: "So in this particular case, my opinion, thank God, they bailed out AIG."
Some time between Bran and Mary's wedding on Saturday and today I've contracted a nice case of the creeping crud. I don't think it's food poisoning, and its onset is too fast to be something I picked up from someone at the wedding, so I must have picked up a bug from someone last week.
Anyway, my tongue is white, my mouth feels like it's coated with something scraped off the toilet, my head is pounding, and I generally feel like crap. I'm going back to bed until this is over.
The downside is that it was a two-hour drive. The upside is that it was to an oceanside inn in Gloucester, on Cape Ann, with a gorgeous view of the water. The food was fabulous, the setting was gorgeous. And with a couple of exceptions, the kids behaved themselves, so it was a successful trip.
Bumper sticker seen on a vehicle heading south on Route 28 through Falmouth, Mass. this morning.
Is this some pop culture reference I'm missing, or is the driver just advertising that she's a whore?
Either way, stay classy, young lady.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Last night was an open house at the public school our two younger children go to -- it houses all the kids in grades 3 - 6. The night started out with an assembly in the gymnasium led by the principal of the school, who I like very much.
During her comments, she mentioned that the school opened at 8:00 AM, and that parents who were driving their kids to school needed to wait until the doors were open and someone was there to shepherd the children into the building before they could leave.
I was flabbergasted. This is a real problem? Parents are actually dropping their kids off just arbitrarily, without any adult supervision, somewhere around the school?
I don't consider myself a "helicopter" parent, and I've never heard anyone claim that I am one of those parents that worries excessively about their kids, so I don't think I'm being overly cautious here. The idea that you should just drop your kids off somewhere around the school before actually watching them go in under adult supervision is just so foreign to me, I was surprised and a bit shocked to hear her actually have to remind parents to do this. It was a bit like someone reminding me to pull down my zipper before having a pee.
I love it when Keith Olbermann gets on a rant, even if he is a partisan douchebag.
This "lipstick on a pig" thing is such utter bullshit. The GOP is saying that Obama is playing gender politics, when it's they who are playing gender politics. The comment was clearly in relation to McCain's economic plan, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Sarah Palin. And anyone who thinks otherwise is ill-informed, incapable of understanding context, or just as fucking dumb as a box of hair.
James' attempt at a fairy story. Pinocchio's magic Windle grows when he tells a lie. I won't tell you what part of the body the Windle is, but I bet you can guess.
Li'l joker. :)
A week into school and this morning we got our first call from the vice principal of Emme's school.
Emmeline failed to do her homework last night, and decided to rush through it this morning as she was waiting for the bus. But she hadn't prepared herself; she hadn't eaten breakfast, gotten on her shoes or assembled the things she needed to bring with her.
So she left in a rush. And as she often does when she's rushed, she forgot things.
At 9 this morning we got a call from Mrs. Arnold, the new vice-principal. Sure enough, Emmeline was upset and had been throwing things and cursing.
Predictably, it was all our fault -- more specifically, all my fault -- for pressuring her to leave on time.
Bonnie dropped off her missing things -- she calls them her "coping skills" (a small plushie and a favorite book) -- so hopefully all will be well for the rest of the day.
Commentary: Obama wrong to spurn Hillary, pick Biden - CNN.com: "The one thing we know for sure -- the selection of Biden did the least to enhance any ticket since George H.W. Bush picked Dan Quayle back in 1988."
Below the Belt - Have Conservatives Discovered Sexism?: "Hey, have you heard? Conservatives have discovered sexism in the media!
"And they're learning that it's disrespectful toward women, potentially damaging to their careers, intrusive into their personal lives, and just plain unfair. That is, unless a feminist like Hillary Clinton is charging the media with sexism -- then it's called liberal whining or playing the gender card."
NOW PAC chair Kim Gandy on Palin's nomination.
Now I know.
Washington Sketch: The Eastern Media Elite - washingtonpost.com: "It is of course hard work to be a card-carrying member of the media elite. Still it's a rewarding job."
(Via Poynter Online.)
Palin: wrong woman, wrong message - Los Angeles Times: "She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger."
Author: Gloria Steinhem.
Just who the fuck are the elite media and where do I sign up?
I had two teeth pulled a couple of days ago -- two molars that had gone bad -- and the oral surgeon prescribed me Vicodin for the pain.
Vicodin is a great narcotic, and I can understand why people get hooked on it. It doesn't kill the pain for me, at all -- I'm just as aware of pain in my jaw as without it. But it makes me not give a shit at all about the pain whatsoever.
That part is great. What isn't so great is the dizziness that accompanies it and the inability to stay awake. I've been a waste product for the past couple of days, so I'm backing off it and sticking with Advil today.
"I hate annoying commercials for stupid things."
Amen.
ABC News: Money Trail: Big Business Means Big Fun for Congress Members at RNC: "In addition to spending millions on lavish parties, big corporations have put up $58 million dollars for the Republican convention. They put up about the same for the Democrats in Denver."
Lest you forget, we live in an oligarchy -- a plutocracy, really, where he with the biggest checkbook is rewarded with the best access.
Why we were falsely arrested: "Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists."
One thing came through loud and clear in Sarah Palin's speech and the speech of some of the other people featured at the RNC this week: Hatred and fear of the Other. The GOP is pandering to the most base instinct in its base -- it's them against us.
It stands in stark contrast to the hopeful and optimistic message that the Dems articulated last week -- that we're a nation full of hopes and ideals, that helping each other and helping ourselves helps us attain a nobility of spirit.
Instead, it was all cut-downs and teardowns of the liberal media, liberal congress, and a bunch of other fascist horseshit. There's no great left-wing conspiracy afoot here. That's spin the neocons have been turning for years.
Anyway, it was a turnoff. I wasn't feeling well to begin with, but by the end of Palin's speech, my stomach hurt and my head hurt and I don't think it was the trip to the oral surgeon earlier in the day. I felt like I'd just been through a few rounds in a boxing ring. It was exhausting. It was meanspirited and petty and not uplifting. I felt like I'd been slathered in shit, and I'd had quite enough.
Our intrepid Editorial Director today noted that he and others at Macworld are participating in National Novel Writing Month this year. NaNoWriMo runs throughout the month of November. This will be my first year participating.
Our readers occasionally perplex me.
It seems like we have a regular flow of forum posters who long for the good ol' days of MacCentral, as if we were somehow sullied by being acquired and subsumed by Macworld.
The readers also complain that Macworld.com is too full of product announcements. But they fail to recognize that this *was* MacCentral's raison d'etre.
Palin’s Start in Alaska - Not Politics as Usual - NYTimes.com: "Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question."
"... The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to 'resist all efforts at censorship,' Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support."
More on Sarah Palin from Time.
The report, I'll admit, is sketchy. It comes second-hand from a fellow named John Stein, who lost a seat on the Wasilla city council to Palin in 1992, so he may have a grudge against her.
"She asked the library how she could go about banning books," Stein told Time, reportedly because some books had naughty language and voters had complained. Time also says that news reports from that period show that Palin had threatened to fire the librarian over the incident.
The librarian at the center of the controversy hasn't been available for comment.
I've had quite enough of a Republican oligarchy doing their best to smash the Constitution to bits for the past eight years. I'll be goddamned if I'm going to help put anyone in a position of influence to do more damage to my rights.
A woman who crashed her Jeep in nearby Hyannis admitted to huffing before she did it -- apparently she got caught with a can of Dust-Off in her hand.
I can't be too judgmental about this poor woman -- I don't know her and don't know a thing about her circumstances. But I can say this, and I apologize if it seems overly judgmental.
Of all the people I've known who like to get high or inebriated, the ones who are the biggest waste products -- the ones who have absolutely gotten the most brain-damaged -- are the ones who like to huff.
Cocaine takes a heavy toll on your personality, and alcohol kills your liver, for sure. Meth ravages your body and heroin eats away at your soul. But huffing solvents? That shit rots your brain like nothing else I've ever seen. It's awful, awful stuff. And I wouldn't wish a problem with huffing my most mortal enemy.
Anyone who thinks that either the Democratic or Republican parties have the upper hand on ethics need to watch Brian Ross' pieces on ABC News. Last week and this week his pieces on the fat-cat lobbyist parties at the DNC and RNC have made me absolutely disgusted.
Both Obama and McCain have made hay about campaign reform; both candidates have talked at length about lobbyists' unfair advantages in Washington. Let's also not forget John McCain's efforts -- with Russell Feingold -- to draft the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (which will, forever, be called McCain-Feingold).
Meanwhile, companies like AT&T and CSX have spent millions over the past couple of weeks to wine and dine high-profile Democrats and Republicans alike.
Last week on Bill Maher's show on HBO, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine offered his perspective on how the lobbying process works. Doing these dog and pony shows don't enable the lobbyists to sit down with elected officials and say "make sure to vote favorably for this bill which will benefit me," he said, but it does buy face time for those lobbyists in front of the congresspeople who decide the fate of their pet projects.
Any way you slice it, it sucks. And it's another example of how the little guy -- the regular citizen voter -- gets totally fucked in this process.
Poll shows no convention bounce for Obama - CNN.com: "On the eve of the Republican convention, a new national poll suggests the race for the White House remains even."
Penn & Teller's Bullshit, on Showtime, recently did a show called The Good Ol' Days. It focused on how nostalgia distorts people's identification of the past.
Bullshit focused on extremes -- talking to "ren rats" that go to renaissance fairs and think wistfully of days of old before indoor plumbing and electricity; people who wax nostalgic on the 50s, thinking it was all like My Three Sons and Leave It to Beaver; and people who reminisce on the 80s as a more carefree time.
I'm old enough to remember that the 80s were anything but carefree -- we had "gay cancer," we had Ronny Rayguns in the White House, starving children in Ethiopia, Iran-Contra, Bhopal, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, John Lennon's assassination, El Salvador and countless other examples of man's shitty behavior.
But the 1980s, when I was 10 - 20 years old, was also the most formative time in my life for music, and despite a ridiculous amount of banality, I still identify with a lot of that music very closely.
It got me thinking about the role that nostalgia plays in your musical selection. I like to think that I'm pretty eclectic when it comes to musical taste. With the possible exception of opera, I'm open to listening to just about any music. But I definitely cycle back around to listening to stuff that came out in the 1980s more than just about anything else, whether it's cheesy rock and roll (Red Rider, Lunatic Fringe), goth (Bauhaus, Bela Lugosi is Dead) or synthpop (Gary Numan, Are Friends Electric?).
There's a comfort level involved with those old songs, as silly as some of them sound now, that's inescapable to me. It's the comfort of the well-known and familiar, like a favorite sweatshirt or, for a child, a security blanket. It's safety, I guess.
You'd think that after nine years of working from home that I'd be used to it by now, but summer vacation for the kids is always a bit of a trial for me. I find that I can't spend any time in my office because I'm breaking up fights or interceding in arguments or preparing lunch or snacks or any one of a hundred other things that the kids demand when they're home. And with Bonnie now working out of the house more weekdays than not, it's even worse.
So it's with great pleasure that I find myself on Labor Day, preparing to send the kids back to school -- all three of them -- tomorrow. I'm looking forward to having at least a bit of peace and quiet to get my work done during the daytime, even as the days grow shorter and colder and we march on towards autumn and winter.
