A cool little recording by The Deadly Snakes. Amusing use of the "Be My Baby" riff. (You can buy the whole album here.) I'd never heard of this group, but I like this kind of music, which tends to play on the "Underground Garage" channel on satellite radio.
Cue Crack Emcee to come in and tell me this kind of music sucks. (Hey, did you see he got Blogger to restore his blog?)
May 16, 2011
"Shock. Political Bomb. Thunderclap."
So read the headline in left-leaning newspaper Libération.
Socialistes pauvres!
Yes. It could happen. The French are onto the machinations of the maids.
The deputy editor, Vincent Giret, wrote sadly on Sunday that [Dominique] Strauss-Kahn seemed “best-armed to respond to the disarray of the French, exhausted by the crisis and disoriented by the crazy reign of Sarkozy.” But Mr. Strauss-Kahn apparently believed he could win the presidency “without fighting,” Mr. Giret said, and so did not follow a path of “renunciation and abnegation.”A path of renunciation and abnegation... Some French way to say don't rape anybody... when you're running for the highest office and the hopes of a political party are resting on you.
Socialistes pauvres!
Some of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s allies said that he must have been the victim of a setup. Christine Boutin, head of the small Christian Democratic Party, told French television: “That he could be taken in like that seems astounding, so he must have been trapped.”Trapped... in a $3,000 a night hotel room... by the maid....
Yes. It could happen. The French are onto the machinations of the maids.
As for suggestions that Mr. Strauss-Kahn might have fallen into an elaborate sting, [Gérard Grunberg, a respected political scientist who studies the left] was dismissive. “If all this was a trap, he wouldn’t have fled in a panic”....
May 15, 2011
At the Rutabaga Café...
... you can call any vegetable, and the chances are good that the vegetable will respond to you.
If you're looking for an old blog post and came here...
... I'm having a problem with Blogger, and it's somehow blocking the display of all the posts — the 23,000+ posts — before May 13, 2011. I am in touch with people at Google who seem to be in the process of restoring the archive. Meanwhile, if you've used a search engine to look for something specific, you should be able to go back to the results page and find the "cache" version of the old post.
I'm really sorry this is happening,and I will keep this post at the top of the blog until the restoration of the archive is complete. I have my own version of the archive backed up as far as March 17, 2011, so no matter how bad this Blogger screw-up is, I'll still be able to preserve nearly all of my work on this blog.
I hate to think about leaving Blogger, because I like the way it works, and I want to like Google. But this experience has made me look at the other options. Every hour that passes without getting the archive back erodes my confidence. Perhaps Blogger really isn't meant to handle very large archives. Some time ago the "manage posts" page stopped working to return search results further back than about a year.
ADDED: I'm not going to keep this post bumped up to the top. It's too tedious to see it, and it makes the stuff below it look old. So... this is all very annoying, but I think I'll recover the whole archive soon enough... and this has lit a fire under me to make a big change that I think you're going to love!
I'm really sorry this is happening,
I hate to think about leaving Blogger, because I like the way it works, and I want to like Google. But this experience has made me look at the other options. Every hour that passes without getting the archive back erodes my confidence. Perhaps Blogger really isn't meant to handle very large archives. Some time ago the "manage posts" page stopped working to return search results further back than about a year.
ADDED: I'm not going to keep this post bumped up to the top. It's too tedious to see it, and it makes the stuff below it look old. So... this is all very annoying, but I think I'll recover the whole archive soon enough... and this has lit a fire under me to make a big change that I think you're going to love!
"How is it that people remain optimistic even though information challenging those predictions is abundantly available?"
"It turns out it is not commencement speeches or self-help books that make us hopeful. Recently, with the development of non-invasive brain imaging techniques, we have gathered evidence that suggests our brains are hard-wired to be unrealistically optimistic. When we learn what the future may hold, our neurons efficiently encode unexpectedly good information, but fail to incorporate information that is unexpectedly bad."
(NYT link.)
(NYT link.)
"Shadow Stat Misery Index Highest on Record."
Using "economic data for inflation and unemployment the way it used to be calculated pre-1990":
Based on that data, the CPI inflation rate is over 10%, and the unemployment rate is over 15% (see charts). The Misery Index is the sum of the current inflation rate and the unemployment rate. If it were to be calculated using the older methods, the Index would now be over 25, a record high. It surpasses the old index high of 21.98, which occurred in June 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president.Is Shadow Stats doing this right? I have no idea, but I hope not!
"Ryan will decide soon on Wisconsin Senate race."
He said, this morning on a CNN show.
ADDED:
AND: I wish I'd put one more option in the first poll, and it's not No, because he should run for President. It's: Yes, because he's the best hope for the Republicans to take another Senate seat. The fight for control of the Senate may be far more important than Ryan's retaining his position in the House. Some other Republican can take over where Ryan leaves off.
ADDED:
AND: I wish I'd put one more option in the first poll, and it's not No, because he should run for President. It's: Yes, because he's the best hope for the Republicans to take another Senate seat. The fight for control of the Senate may be far more important than Ryan's retaining his position in the House. Some other Republican can take over where Ryan leaves off.
The Wisconsin protests cost the state $8 million.
That includes the expense of all the extra security that was needed. The estimated cost of repairing the Capitol building was $270,000.
The $8 million estimate only covers the period from February 14 to March 13, so it doesn't include the cost of the added security we now have at the Capitol.
Originally, DOA Secretary Mike Huebsch estimated the repair costs alone would run about $7.5 million. The controversial figure was said to have been a quick estimate, based a single handwritten page of notebook paper. Heubsch later revised that number down to $350,000.Presumably, "malicious" means done solely for the purpose of destruction. There were plenty of intentional actions that were destructive, such as forcing open a door (bending a hinge and breaking a wooden panel) and putting duct and masking tape on marble walls.
On Friday, the secretary spelled out the estimate and said the costs could have been higher, given the size of crowds at the historic building for four straight weeks.
“It is important to note that there was no malicious damage,” Huebsch said. “But that said, this is still a lot of money.”
The $8 million estimate only covers the period from February 14 to March 13, so it doesn't include the cost of the added security we now have at the Capitol.
Huebsch said the tighter security measures would likely continue, at least until the collective bargaining bill debate is resolved. On Friday, however, Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, said it was time the Capitol returned to normal.And if the security were removed? I note that there was another protest at the Capitol yesterday, with 7,000 to 10,000 people. It was called the “Fight Is Not Over” rally:
“We did not need to waste this money, nor do we need to continue to waste this money,” he said. “The majority of the people here now are fourth-grade schoolchildren on tours.”
“We have to reclaim our moral outrage, our sense of indignation,” Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, said to cheers from the crowd. “We have to keep the pressure on and let them hear us.”Are we supposed to believe that the protesters wouldn't retake the Capitol building if the security were removed?
"Have you ever had a thought on the topic of race that isn't set generations into the past? Have you ever thought about the future?"
A commenter questions Matt Yglesias's questioning of Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich talked about having "a voting standard that says to vote, as a native born American, you should have to learn American history." Yglesias liken this to "the kind of techniques that were used to prevent African-Americans (and many poor whites as well) from voting in the Jim Crow South."
Well, you can expect to hear the Jim-Crow-South meme from Democrats whenever there's any talk about about restrictions on voting. We're hearing it in Wisconsin over the voter ID law. Republicans who want to pursue these issues need to have some good responses ready.
The most conventional response is: The Jim Crow South was the work of the Democratic Party. But Republicans shouldn't be too smug about that. Obviously, Democrats think all those Democrats would be Republican today.
The question I've used as the title of this post suggests the beginning of one response, but it needs to be filled out with some substantive, believable vision of a better future. Gingrich had some substance: He wants schools to do a much better job of teaching American history. But he could have stayed with that, not brought up the notion of "a voting standard." If that was an idle rhetorical flourish, it was incompetent, because he handed a chunk of red meat to his enemies.
Gingrich talked about having "a voting standard that says to vote, as a native born American, you should have to learn American history." Yglesias liken this to "the kind of techniques that were used to prevent African-Americans (and many poor whites as well) from voting in the Jim Crow South."
Well, you can expect to hear the Jim-Crow-South meme from Democrats whenever there's any talk about about restrictions on voting. We're hearing it in Wisconsin over the voter ID law. Republicans who want to pursue these issues need to have some good responses ready.
The most conventional response is: The Jim Crow South was the work of the Democratic Party. But Republicans shouldn't be too smug about that. Obviously, Democrats think all those Democrats would be Republican today.
The question I've used as the title of this post suggests the beginning of one response, but it needs to be filled out with some substantive, believable vision of a better future. Gingrich had some substance: He wants schools to do a much better job of teaching American history. But he could have stayed with that, not brought up the notion of "a voting standard." If that was an idle rhetorical flourish, it was incompetent, because he handed a chunk of red meat to his enemies.
Dominique Straus-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and potential President of France, arrested for attempted rape, criminal sexual act and unlawful imprisonment.
The NYT reports:
[Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman] said that it was about 1 p.m. on Saturday when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite — Room 2806 — believing it was unoccupied. Mr. Browne said that the suite, which cost $3,000 a night, had a foyer, a conference room, a living room and a bedroom, and that Mr. Strauss-Khan had checked in on Friday.Let's assume that the maid's story is true. When things like this happen, I suspect that this is a man who has had sexual encounters like this before, many times. He's gotten more cursory and abrupt over time, because he's been successful in the past. Here is an illustrious man, staying in an extremely expensive hotel room — a room with many amenities. Seems you can get whatever you want. A woman appears. Is she beautiful? He imagines that the woman is another thing the hotel subtly offers to men who pay $3,000 a night for the hotel.
As she was in the foyer, “he came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her,” Mr. Browne said, adding, “He grabs her, according to her account, and pulls her into the bedroom and onto the bed.” He locked the door to the suite, Mr. Browne said.
“She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaults her a second time,” Mr. Browne added.
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