Strength in Numbers

Just want everyone to know that yesterday, when I went to the gym to work out, I was IN THE BEST SHAPE OF EVERYONE ELSE THERE. So take THAT! How could you people doubt my existence as one of the finest physical specimens ever to walk this planet?

Ummm.... yeah, OK, well, so for the entire hour, I was the ONLY one there. Fine. Whatever. You people always want to quibble about the details. Let it go.

And furthermore ... "QUIBBLE"???

The Eephus!

An entertaining baseball story ...

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=eephus/080715

Trust Me ~ I Never THOUGHT You were Harry Freakin' Potter

"There is no short term solution," Bush said. "The president doesn't have a magic wand. You can't just say, 'Low gas."

Asked about his comment earlier this year that he hadn't heard of $4 gasoline, Bush said: "I've heard of it now."

President Bush at press conference, 07/15/08

==========

I'm REALLY tired of this "magic wand" comment. The President must have said it 4 times of late. And my opinion is: Please knock it off, Sir.

The POINT is that a great many policies, both private and governmental have lead us to the situation we are in now.

And my opinion is that the entire focus of this administration regarding oil has been on the supply side... the profits side... the corporate side. Even if we drill all over the continental shelf, we aren't going to pull more than 2-3 years' worth of oil or gas out. The president has pushed for increased drilling for 8 years. THAT WON'T MATTER AND IT WON'T WORK.
WHY, Sir, haven't you pushed for and suggested ways to reduce demand? Why hasn't here been increased requirements for conservation? Why haven't we done EVERYTHING possible to find alternative energy sources? Because you believe that it's a private sector matter and because encouraging (or at the VERY least, being ambivalent to) grabbing massive profits suits your desires and the pocket books of your friends and lobbyists.

What about DOING THE RIGHT THING?

If oil was too inexpensive before to fund alternative sources & technologies, then why wasn't that research subsidized and funded? Did you think that we'd always have enough oil? that it wasn't going to run out? Of course not .... but there was no interest in planning for that future...for taking the big, and yes, painful steps to set this country on the path to LEADING THE WAY to find solutions.

China and other countries are just now setting their growth and dependency on this finite supply. And we have missed the boat by not creating the opportunity to show them how to skip the industrial "oil" age. THAT'S where our future should be...

SAFE nuclear energy... BRAND NEW energy technologies.... SOLAR, WIND, WATER power....
Not new drilling. Not mistakenly converting this country's crops to inefficient corn ethanol subsidies when the predicted climate change will require everything we have to help feed ourselves and others.

I am 50. I was taught this was coming when I was a schoolboy. And no one has done much of anything about it. How sad and pathetic.

And the LAST thing I need is a snarky president who gets "testy" and makes useless references to magic wands. LEAD, for crying out loud.

This infuriates me to no end.


Oh, and the smart remark about the $4/gallon? You deserved that for being so arrogant the first time you were asked, Sir. It was an insult to Americans everywhere for you to respond as you originally did.

188 days, 8 hoursd, 32 minutes left.... and then we have to begin fixing what has been wrought.

This country, which I love, is in deep and serious trouble.

From CNN.Com

GM to Cut Jobs, Suspend Dividend, Cut Healthcare to Non-Salaried Retirees

Beleaguered automaker also plans asset sales, aiming for $10 billion in 'cash improvements' by 2009. CEO Wagoner says 'difficult decisions' necessary for survival.

=======================
I have ZERO tolerance for this. It's utter bull shit.
It's a PRIME example of piss poor corporate vision and management.
Yes, it takes years to tool up production lines - I work no where near this industry and I know that. So what - the people in charge of this company's planning didn't see this coming? At ALL?

Yes, they did .. but their interest was in making trucks & SUV's. It was to lie to themselves and the consumer by saying "Oh, we are just fulfilling demand." That's a cop out, and now thousands of people ...THOUSANDS of employees are adversely affected by greed, ignorance and irresponsible business practices.

YOU DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING????

This is a significant part of why this country and it's economy is shit right now. No forward thinking. No PRACTICAL planning.

And I have no tolerance for it.
This will be repeated over and over and over in the coming months and years - and this country's citizens, and elected officials and business leaders have proven that they don;t care to think ahead, for the benefit of all.

Seriously. Fuck 'em.

These Guys are NO Fun at ALL...

From an ESPN.COM article today about China's announcement of contraband at Olympic event venues...

"Banned items include guns, ammunition, crossbows, daggers, fireworks, flammable materials, corrosive chemicals and radioactive materials."

"Also restricted are knives, bats, long-handled umbrellas, long poles, animals (except for guide dogs), vehicles (except for strollers and wheelchairs), loudspeakers, radios, laser devices or wireless devices."

Because nothing says "Go TEAM" like a plutonium-filled foam finger, or a cross-bow and a wolf.

This is going to be the most BIZARRE Olympics yet - and the IOC deserves all they get.

And THIS guy is SO not getting in to the synchronized swimming events.

Happy Birthday, Dad

Bill King (1924-1998)

My dad (on the left) in an undated photo. One of those you find one day in a box in the attic that make you realize that your parents weren't always those evil oppressors who lived only to suck all the fun out of your life. Apparently dad was MUCH cooler in his youth than I ever was....

He would have been 84 today, and he's sorely missed.

The Missiles of July

Iran's missile launch photos have reportedly been altered.

Original..

Doctored...

This one below points out the actual alterations...

But... which way? Original to Doctored? Or Visa-Versa?

See what happens when you have been lied to ONe too many times?

Those Who Don't Learn from History...

I'm always fascinated by people who try to put history into the proper context.
Perlstein's comments at the end (below) ring true. Nostalgia cheats the past, and martyrs get extra benefits of perceived power.
We also rarely learn from our mistakes as a society, because we don't try to understand our history as it was. And change can never come without a LOT of heartache and work.



Politician, punch line, president, and the land he left us

(CNN)
Rick Perlstein could have called his book "Paranoia."
If Perlstein's history of the 1960s and early '70s in America has a throughline, it's mistrust. Parents don't trust their children. Enlisted men don't trust their officers. Blacks don't trust whites, Southerners don't trust Northerners, the Silent Majority doesn't trust the Intellectual Establishment, and -- soon enough -- nobody trusts the government.
And in the midst of it all was Richard Nixon: Red-baiter, former vice president, failed gubernatorial nominee, punch line, political strategist and president, a master at playing both sides to maintain his hold on power. In doing so, he provided a roadmap for his successors.
Hence Perlstein's actual title: "Nixonland" (Scribner).
"I'm fascinated with how Americans fight with each other," says Perlstein, 39, who was born the year Nixon took office. "And the '60s is the best, the most -- besides the Civil War, I can't think of a more dramatic canvas. And Nixon fits in as the guy who exploited these tensions to create a new kind of politics that we're still living with now." Slideshow: What made the '60s the '60s »
Perlstein's book has earned rave reviews. In The Atlantic magazine, conservative writer Ross Douthat praised the author for "the rare gift of being able to weave social, political, and cultural history into a single seamless narrative." Newsweek's Evan Thomas called it "the best book written about the 1960s" in more than a quarter-century.
Perlstein says he's long had an obsession with the '60s -- which, in "Nixonland," start with the Democratic landslide of 1964 and end with the Nixon landslide of 1972. The author, now a senior fellow at the left-leaning Campaign for America's Future in Chicago, considers the book a sequel to his earlier work, a biography of Barry Goldwater and the rise of the conservative movement.
But "Nixonland" is as much a cultural history as a political chronicle; indeed, in the '60s the two were tightly enmeshed. The decade saw the full flower of youth culture, which was intertwined with Vietnam War protests, increasing drug use and distinctive music.
It also saw the rise of what Nixon, in a major 1969 speech, termed the "Silent Majority" -- older, more conservative Americans buffeted on all sides by change, taking refuge in the familiar.
Both groups had their pop culture heroes and touchstones, Perlstein observes.
"The generational divide went so deep as to form a fundamental argument about what was moral and what was immoral," Perlstein says. "This was how people lived in the world -- through popular culture and through politics. The two feed off each other."
Though the era is now remembered through the rosy lenses of the baby boomers, their parents -- the heart of the "Silent Majority" -- didn't look upon the culture so fondly. Many disdained the era's pop music, the most obvious expression of youth.
Moreover, some of the highest-rated TV specials of 1969 and 1970 were Bob Hope programs, Perlstein writes, and when a movie such as 1970's "Joe" came out -- about a hardhat who loathes the hippies -- many in the audience came to cheer for the hardhat.
Movies may have been the most revealing mirror of society. The rise of the youth culture coincided with the death of the studio system. Some of what emerged were films willing to show the grit and ugliness of the cities ("the cities" being a common euphemism for civic decline). "Midnight Cowboy" and "The French Connection," the Academy Awards' best pictures of 1969 and 1971 respectively, show a weary, cold New York crumbling under its residents' feet.
Television tiptoed more gingerly into the new age, Perlstein says. With just three networks catering to the entire country, "everything had to have this lowest-common-denominator mass appeal," he says. "You could watch TV in 1966 and it's really not any different from what it looked like in 1956.
"When you did get interesting shows, it was often an accident -- a midseason replacement," he adds. " 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' was supposed to be a typical variety show. [CBS] never would have signed it up had they known that they were going to start talking about how much they hated the Vietnam War and started putting on Pete Seeger and making jokes about Richard Nixon. It was an accident."
An underlying theme of "Nixonland" is how the various cultural and political movements eventually borrow from each other, with varying results.
The mass gatherings of youth -- "be-in," "sit-in" -- became "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in," a colorful comedy show hosted by two nightclub comics, with a writing staff that included an old Nixon hand, Paul Keyes.
The nightly arguments between parents and children became the sitcom "All in the Family," a show whose central figure -- the bigoted construction worker Archie Bunker -- became a cultural hero.
And then there was Nixon, a controlling man who, in trying to stay at least one move ahead of everyone else, ends up consumed by his own power. The result is Watergate, which is just being uncovered as "Nixonland" ends.
Could it have been different? Countless commentators have tried to replay history from the hinge year of 1968, wondering if a surviving Robert Kennedy could have beaten Nixon and salved an angry culture.
Perlstein, whose next book will chronicle the '70s, will have none of it.
"I don't like that magic thinking. I'm very suspicious of it," he says. "Martyrs seem to get 100 extra bonus points in the annals of history, and that's a bias. By the same token, nostalgia systematically cheats the past.

"I think that it pulls around to one of the huge themes of my book and my work, which is that we really want to believe that somehow magically we can transcend our differences in American and as Americans without working hard at it.
"If only this person had lived; if only this event hadn't gone the way it did. But the fact of the matter is, we are a deeply divided nation, and transcending those differences isn't the work of an afternoon or a single person. It's something we all have to fight for."

Random Pick-up Lines

The worse, the better...

"I may not be Fred Flinstone, but I can make your Bed Rock!"


"If your left leg was Thanksgiving and your right leg Christmas, can I visit you between the holidays?"

"Here i am. what are your other two wishes?"

How to get fired....
"If you were homework, I'd be doing you right here on my desk!"



And if you get shot down...
"He: Do you want to dance?
She: Yeah but not with you!
He: You must have misunderstood me, I said you look fat in those pants!"


AND, OF COURSE, THE INSULT...

"I'd like to screw your brains out, but it appears that someone beat me to it."

Thanks for Your "SORT OF" Expert Advice, SORT OF

Bush: Pakistan, Not Iraq, Next President's Big Task
From US News Political Bulletin
On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol recounts that in a 90-minute, mostly off-the-record meeting with a small group of journalists last week, President Bush "conveyed the following impression, that he thought the next president's biggest challenge would not be Iraq, which he thinks he'll leave in pretty good shape, and would not be Afghanistan, which is manageable by itself. ... It's Pakistan." We have "a sort of friendly government that sort of cooperates and sort of doesn't. It's really a complicated and difficult situation."


Thanks for that insightfully astute analysis of the political landscape, Sir.
What about China? North Korea? South America?
And how about the Saudis? They are a "sort of friendly government that sort of cooperates and sort of doesn't, too. Oh, wait, but but your administration (along with a other earlier administrations) were in bed with their leaders, so there is no perceived issue there.