Thursday, September 27, 2012

Pulling Out The Big Guns

I think Romney already has a lock on the old white farts in Ohio. He should have tried to find a younger celeb.

Just look at the love in those eyes. Nicklaus's affection for Romney must be all political principal because, if it was about golf, he'd probably be supporting Obama. I hear from Republicans that Obama is getting to play a pretty fair game because of all the practice he gets. I've never heard that about Romeny.



My favorite Nicklaus quotes:
“When I was competing, I didn’t lean on someone else in tough times....I know what I had to do on the golf course to succeed, and when I won I certainly didn’t apologize for my success.”

You'd think he'd be able to conjugate the verb "to know" correctly. My Brazilian students do. 

Monday, September 24, 2012

What Are Those Things?

I´d guess that about 20-25% of the trucks and buses in Brasil have these things installed. I saw them on my first visit to Brasil way back in 2005 from the window of a moving bus.  I asked people off and on what they were, or what their purpose was and, effete snobs that all of my Brazilian friends are, nobody ever knew.

Then I´d forget about them until, once again, I´d be on a bus on the highway and I´d see them  again, and wonder all over again.

It took almost 5 years before I saw them closely enough to know what they were, and then I realized that I should have been able to figure it out almost immediately, if I´d only thought about it for a bit.

Can I assume that everyone else knows their purpose?


The Perils of a White Buidling In a Gray City

If I were ever to be taken by the entrepreneurial spirit, I think I'd start a building-cleaning business in São Paulo.

I could make an entire blog from a series of filthy building shots.



Saturday, September 22, 2012

My Quote For the Day

From the opening fly leaf of a book I haven't yet read called How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization:


If you removed all of the homos and homo influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would be pretty much left with Let's Make a Deal.
---Fran Lebowitz

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Just Because the Elephant Is In The Room

Some headlines and catchy phrases lifted from three different sources today:

It Was an Honest Mittstake.
Does Romney Even Want to be President?
When Bad Things Happen to Mitt Romney

As Nicholas Kristof, who lives and writes on a plane that usually stays above partisan politics noted:

Romney has proved himself right: We manifestly do have a problem with people who see themselves as victims even as they benefit from loopholes in the tax code.
One is running for president.


Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Some Other Kinky Quotes I Overlooked

“If you elect me the first Jewish justice of the peace, I'll reduce the speed limits to 54.95!”
.
"I'd felt that a man without a woman was like a neck without a pain." 

" I've also said a journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance. This spiritual journey to the Governor's mansion is a long one, and we are going to need some help.”



            

Kinky Friedman




Image of Kinky FriedmanI encountered the first quote below (way below) tonight in the forward to a book, and was reminded of how much I like Kinky Friedman. I think the first time I heard of him was in the late 1970s when I was living in Topeka. He and his band, "Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys" were a fixture at the Lone Star Cafe in NYC. I didn't know anything about his music, but who couldn't love a guy who fronted a band with a name like that?

Then he surfaced again in my life as an author of humorous mystery novels in which the main character was a Texan musician in NYC named Kinky Friedman, living in the Village.

Greenwich Killing Time, A Case of Lone Star, When the Cat's Away, The Prisoner of Vandam Street, Musical Chairs and The Mile High Club are a few of the titles I recommend that you go to Amazon and buy.

I think I've read all of the mysteries listed above, but I confess that I haven't read any of the other books listed below, but how can you not be drawn to titles like this? And this is just a sample. The guy is prolific.

Kinky Friedman's Guide to Texas Etiquette: Or How to Get to Heaven or Hell Without Going Through Dallas-Fort Worth

Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola

'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out : Reflections on Country Singers, Presidents, and Other Troublemakers

Armadillos & Old Lace

 Drinker With A Writing Problem
 
Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned

 You Can Lead a Politician to Water, But You Can't Make Him Think: Ten Commandments for Texas Politics

 The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover, A Novel

 Then he surfaced again as a candidate for governor of Texas in 2006. Many of the quotes below appear to be from that period (He finished fourth in a six-man race with 12.6% of the vote.)

And now, those promised quotes:

It's all very well going around thinking you're a cowboy, until you run into someone who thinks he's an Indian.

I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.

Remember: Y'all is singular. All y'all is plural. All y'all's is plural possessive.

A happy childhood... is the worst possible preparation for life.

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

I see an issue I like, and I support it.

Musicians can run this state better than politicians. We won't get a lot done in the mornings, but we'll work late and be honest.

I've always said money may buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail.


May the God of your choice bless and keep you. I respect Him as long as He does not circumcise me anymore.

And I think musicians can better run this state than politicians. And, hell, beauticians can better run the state than politicians.

Well, I just said that Jesus and I were both Jewish and that neither of us ever had a job, we never had a home, we never married and we traveled around the countryside irritating people.

We've got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the pedophiles and the politicians.

Yes, I'm a Judeo-Christian. Jesus and Moses are in my heart, and... both of them were independents, by the way.

The Democrats and Republicans are the same guy admiring themself in the mirror.

These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable.

How can you look at the Texas legislature and still believe in intelligent design?

Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.

You have to pretend that your life is a financial pleasure even when your autographs are bouncing.

I even went so far as to become a Southern Baptist for a while, until I realized that they didn't hold 'em under long enough.

If Willie Nelson had been Rosa Parks, there never would have been a civil rights movement in this country, because he refuses to leave the back of the bus.

I just want Texas to be number one in something other than executions, toll roads and property taxes.

When I'm governor... I'll be the first governor with a listed telephone number.

The teachers are getting screwed, blued, and tattooed by the system.

We're first on executions. We're 49th in funding public education. We're in a race with Mississippi for the bottom, and we're winning.

Politics is the only field in which the more experience you have, the worse you get.


I'll sign anything except bad legislation.

I'll keep us out of war with Oklahoma!

I have a better head of hair than Rick Perry; it's just not in a place I can show you.

I'm too young for Medicare and too old for women to care.

I'll tell you right now. I'm for prayer in school.


I don't remember the first half of my life. All I say is a happy childhood is the worst possible preparation for life.


The only currency I value is the coin of the spirit. That's very important in my life.


We were a country band with a social conscience.


William Bennett is my patron saint, one of them. Redd Foxx is another.

No, nothing has changed in my life at all, and nothing would change if I had millions.

The first thing I'll do if elected is demand a recount.
  (NOTE: I think he stole this from William F. Buckley)
 
I admit I was drinking a Guinness... but I did not swallow.

Students don't know who Mark Twain was because he wasn't on the test.

The folks in Mississippi are saying, 'Thank God for Texas.'


Saturday, September 15, 2012

Lifetime Honorifics

The next time you hear someone refer to Governor Romney, please make a point to make your own reference to him as Bishop Romney.

He's not a Bishop and he's not a Governor, but he was a Bishop longer than he was a Governor.

Just saying.

Campaign Specifics

I've read several items lamenting the lack of specific proposals from both presidential candidates, but I think that is a bit misleading and disconnected from Washington reality.

As long as the Republicans maintain control of the House, and the Tea Party keeps its stranglehold on the Republican party, a likely reality which I haven't seen anybody seriously question, that is where the agenda is going to be set.

We can either elect a President who will do battle with these monomaniacs, or we can elect one who is indebted to them for his existence, and who hasn't shown much backbone throughout the umpteen years he's been campaigning, someone who appears to believe in nothing quite so much as the fact that he thinks he should be President.

We can expect Obama to continue to support programs like the American Jobs Act of 2011, and we can expect the House to continue to make sure those programs go nowhere.

A few days ago the Senate passed a Democratic-sponsored Veterans Job Bill 95-1, which everyone knows is going to go to the House and die. As long as the Republicans keep control of the House, that bill has no future.

I'm hesitant to speculate about motive but, sadly, I can't help but believe that the Senate Republicans who voted for the bill probably did so only in order to prevent the charge that they were against providing help veterans, which they could safely do in the full knowledge and approval that the bill would never get out of the House. So they could cover their asses without the risk that Obama and/or the Democratic Party would get credit for anything. I know; I'm so unfair.

The one vote against the Veterans Job Bill was cast by Rand Paul. He tied his support for the bill to the cut off of all financial aid to Pakistan until they release the doctor who helped in the capture of bin Laden. What the fuck?! In the words of that punter from the Vikings, "Holy fucking shitballs," that's goofy.






American Exceptionalism

Sometimes my habit of ignoring television does deprive me of the opportunity to see something worthwhile. In this case, what I missed on PBS in 2008, came back around as an ebook in 2012.

The book itself longer than it needs to be and the author's writing style becomes tedious, which is unfortunate because the story is important. But that's why gawd made PBS documentaries, I guess.

By the way, unless you have read the book or seen the documentary, you might think this is just another  history of Jim Crow laws and the hopeless misery of share cropping, but that's not the case. This is the story of illegal forced labor and peonage that existed in the south right up to the dawn of WWII.

The author takes exception to the common terminology of using "Jim Crow era" to describe this period because it is a deceptively tame and misleading description. He refers to it as the era of Neo-Slavery.



The author is not trying to make a claim for reparations from the responsible corporations, but he does make an interesting point. U.S. Steel is one corporation that benefited directly from the use of this slave labor. They also bought smaller companies in the south whose value was acquired through the use of slave labor. U.S. Steel consistently professes both ignorance of, and a lack of responsibility for, the practices of the companies they purchased. The author points out the hyprocrisy of American law which would hold US Steel responsible for any environmental pollution committed by companies it later acquired, but not for the slave labor on which they were built. He uses Wachovia Bank as a contrasting example of a corporation which has owned up to and apologized for its own past and the past of banks it has acquired and merged itself with over the years.

Friday, September 14, 2012

The Perfect Gift for Birthers

Apparently these serving trays are being sold by a housewares store on Broadway in NYC. Someone should send one to the Kansas Secretary of State.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

I Thought There Was No Business Confidence










I Stole This

"[Romney's] bluster is a coward’s idea of how a brave man acts: Never hesitate, never apologize. When you’re wrong, say it again, only louder," - Mark Kleiman.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Just Like Fox News

To be fair and balanced, it's sad that the reason given for Obama's not meeting with Netanyahu while the latter is in NYC at the UN, is a scheduling problem. I believe I read, but cannot now confirm, that the conflict had to do with a campaign commitment.

It is a relatively small point compared to the crude heavy-handed attempts Netanyahu is making to interfere in the U.S. election, which I have a feeling might backfire. But I wish Obama had gone out of his way to meet with the prick.

I like Bill Keller's comment, referring to Romney and Netanyahu: "When it comes to international diplomacy, we are reminded this week, both have the subtle grace of cattle on loco weed."

If this post hasn't seemed fair and balanced as promised in the first few words, refer to the title.

Everything Is About the Campaign Apparently

Romney seems to have a thing about not apologizing, and it is so strong that he sees apologies where they don't even exist. He continues to make the allegation that one of Obama's first acts as President was to make an apology tour, which PolitiFact.com gives its "Pants on Fire" rating, and FactCheck.org agrees.

Now, as regards the killings in Libya he says:
 “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
 “The first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation, and apology for American values is never the right course,”
And never forget that to mention gun control in the same breath as whatever happens to be the gun-related violence of the moment in the U.S. is to "politicize a tragic situation."

I think Obama is dead on when he says that Romney "shoots first and aims later."

As an aside, Heitor sent me a text from the subway today. The cars have TV screens arranged throughout to take our collective minds off our miserable, workaday lives in the subway, and he texted that he couldn't believe how much Obama has aged in four years. I told him the presidency does that to serious people...which is why W looks about the same as he always did.
 

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Players’ Support of Gay Marriage Alters N.F.L. Image

The title of this post is taken from a story in the NY Times.  It is a great illustration about how rapidly the times they are a changing.

First, a Baltimore Ravens player made a video in support of the same-sex marriage initiative that will be on the ballot in Maryland in November, and posted it on YouTube. Actually, he made and posted the video last year, but it apparently only recently caught the attention of a Maryland state legislator who opposes gay marriage. Perhaps he is just a little slow.

Second, the legislator sent a letter to the owner of the Ravens in late August urging him to (somehow)  “inhibit such expressions from your employee and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions.”  Yes, you read that right.

Third, the punter for the Minnesota Vikings learned of the legislator's letter (much more quickly than the retarded legislator learned of the video, it might be noted) and sent him a great "profanity-laced response," as the staid NY Times called it, and then sent it to Deadspin.com.  It is so delightfully profanity-laced, and is exactly like some on the letters you might have composed in your mind, and then thought better about. Fortunately, this player didn't think better about it, gawd bless him. Please go and read it.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

More Tea Party (Republican) Hypocrisy

I just love the hypocrisy of this, which is from a story in The Nation.  The Nation's story says that the funding provided by HRSA-11-017, which is referenced in the first paragraph of Ryan's letter below is a result of the Affordable Care Act. I verified that with a quick internet search. It is.

So Ryan, who has undoubtedly voted with the Republican House majority all 30-plus times they've had a symbolic vote to kill "Obamacare," and is running for VP at least in part as an opponent of it, is not averse to trying to bring home a little federal bacon to his district and take whatever credit he can get for it.

But then Ryan seems to be a congeries of contradictions, lies and hypocrisy. Even a Fox News Reporter, Sally Kohn, called his convention speech "an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech." Fox News!!

And then there is the hypocrisy of his attempt to get Todd Akin to drop out of the Senate race in Missouri, despite the fact that they have identical voting records on abortion in the House, and the fact that Akin said what he meant to say, instead of "legitimate rape" was "forcible rape" which is a term Ryan has introduced into legislation. As I have said before, their positions are identical and they are in the mainstream of their party on the issue.

But enough. Here is a hypocrite at work, earning his pay:

Paul Ryan's request for Obamacare funds

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Continuing the Theme of Lies

Continuing on the theme of lies, I no longer remember who or where I stole this from yesterday, so I can´t provide links.

The GOP campaign is based on five main themes, three negative and two positive.Negative:
The claim that Obama denigrated businessmen, saying that they didn’t build their own firms — which isn’t true.

The claim that Obama has gutted Medicare to pay for the expansion of health insurance — which isn’t true.

The claim that Obama has eliminated the work requirement for welfare — which isn’t true.
Positive:
The claim that Ryan has a plan to balance the budget — which isn’t true.

The claim that Romney has a plan for economic recovery — which isn’t true. (The Economist: “The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs” is like “Fifty Shades of Grey” without the sex).
I now remember where the above is from.  It is from one of Paul Krugman´s blogs.

By the way, PolitiFact.com and FactChecking.org, very respectable organizations, both show that the Romney has been much more dishonest in his statements and ads so far this year than has been Obama. And I think both of groups compiled those numbers before the convention.

I hope everyone is enjoying the hilarious fact that Romney and Ryan, the entitlement-reform guys, have been trying to pose as the saviors of Medicare against Obama, who is trying to destroy it.  I hope they continue with that theme because I have no doubt the Democrats can win any demagogic contest the Republicans choose to start on the subject of Medicare. It is interesting because Romney/Ryan are being dishonest about both Obama and their own intentions as regards Medicare.

And finally, does anyone think that Paul Ryan is so out of touch with his own hometown not to know that the automobile factory closed before Obama ever campaigned in Janesville. It didn´t keep him from making an outrageous "misstatement of fact" about it in his acceptance speech.

By the way, and this is not totally off the topic of competing visions for the country. During one of my summers working on carnivals in Wisconsin, we played the county fair in Janesville. It had been one of the very rare "circus moves," which involved tearing down the carnival one night after closing and driving to another town and setting up in time to open for a matinee the next day. I remember being dead tired and sleeping inside one of the game tents that next morning, probably 4-5 hours before we were scheduled to open, and having the Janesville kids opening the tent flaps and waving money.  They wanted to play the games.  Probably had something to do with the fact that there were good=paying union jobs in Janesville.