Well, howdy-do John Christopher Burns, fellow Atlanta blogger, fellow Wordpress user, and fellow TextDriver/Joyeur.His blog is Positively Atlanta Georgia. He’s been rebuilding his house after the March tornadoes, and he’s been making progress.
Good on you, neighbor, and we wish you continued success.
I found the two-column version of the theme I use here, but it doesn’t work with this version of Wordpress. I’d like to have just one sidebar… Stef was right, the second one clutters the space. It’s very difficult to find the theme I want…. That should be a hint to learn something and do it myself, right?
Right.
[Sigh.]
I just wrote this post from my phone.
...
Because I could, that’s why. Sheesh.
Our anniversary is always on a hot and muggy day, and in the evenings people like to blow stuff up, often up in the air. It’s Independence Day but for us it’s also the day we got married, and I like to think we just keep getting better at it.
Love you, sweetheart.
RSS feeds are a good thing, and the feed from “Serious Eats”: brings me great food ideas and recipes every day. This one is a new favorite: Grilled Chicken Thighs with Roasted Grape Tomatoes, explaining the origin of capers, both sizes. We had the roasted grape tomatoes tonight with turkey burgers. Easy and well worth a try.
(more…)I got the quoted paragraph in an email today. My response is below.
QUOTE OF 2008“From the time Barrack Obama [sic] was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That’s how many days the Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days. I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that.” – Columnist Cheri Jacobus
Nice! No, really, it’s nice – in that quick condescending reductionist ignore-the-facts Fox News “terrorist fist jab” sort of way.
With this cute little quip, Cheri Jacobus, Pundit, ignores Obama’s years of community organizing in Chicago and other experience, first citing how many days the Senate is in session, and conveniently blowing past the work done over four years in office when not actually in session – from committee hearings to constituent service, and more – and implies that Obama’s only worked 143 days his entire life. Obama will concede he’s a young man, but its not unreasonable to claim that he’s done more serious work and more intellectual heavy lifting than the man he would replace, so let’s not talk about that. Let’s look at who brought us this valuable insight: it’s what we can expect from someone who boasts of her own extensive work experience on her own company’s web site.
“She appears on national television programs such as “Crossfire”, “The O’Reilly Factor”, “Your World With Neil Cavuto”, “Larry King Live, “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” and “Talk Back Live” on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and CNBC, “The Montel Williams Show” and ABC’s “Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher” and many more offering political analysis, commentary and debate. She also has lectured at The Leadership Institute, American University, Young American Broadcasters, American Bar Association Legislative Conference and other groups.”
There’s more than that, of course, including her helping a friend win the race for class president in 8th grade (I’m not kidding – look it up). What we have here, friends, is just a professional talking head. Heaven knows we need more of those, lest we suffer a moment of actual, ahem, news on cable news. Jacobus is an empty suit with a sneer, denigrating Obama with a cute turn of phrase. Again, nice. Good on you, Cheri! You’re making America better!
Friends, take note of her client list, here. Jacobus is little more than a right-wing sock puppet, a paid apologist – not for “freedom” or “conservative values” – but for high-paying corporate greedheads. There’s no evidence that she has never done a useful day of work in her life. To be fair, maybe some native modesty prevents her from admitting that between TV appearances she volunteers at animal shelters or a food bank or helps lead tours at the Smithsonian. It’s possible. And it’s possible she’s invented flubber, too. Whatever actual work she may have done, she certainly is proud of her service to the Republican cause in the late 1990s.
Remember the Republicans about 10 years ago? We must note that while she worked for a Congressional committee in the late 90s, the Republican congressional leader was Tom Delay, who along with others created the infamous K Street Project (look that one up too), the most corrupt lobbying environment in modern history. (Note that historically, the Democrats are no amateurs when comes to corruption, but come on – the 90’s Republicans were pros.) These guys are still coming to trial. Remember Jack Abramoff? At least he’s in jail now, where he’s likely to do little more harm. (He cried at his sentencing – thats good television!) A key thing to remember about those guys is this: saying they’re corrupt isn’t political rhetoric; they were Republican congressmen and lobbyists prosecuted and convicted under a Republican administration. Not just any Republicans, either, but the most partisan Republican administration with the most ideologically biased Justice Department in modern times (for that, look up former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and the whole fired U.S. attorney scandal). To be so corrupt your own highly biased team throws the book at you? To mention the time period (but not discuss the real work of the folks she was working with) front and center in her resume: that’s something to be proud of… for Cheri Jacobus.
Hmmmm… maybe she’s not the Quoter we want after all, so let’s entertain another possible Quote of 2008. Conservative author and ABC commentator George Will says in his latest book, that among the things the presidency of George W. Bush has brought us is
“a torrent of acrimony about the dubious inception and incompetent conduct of a war that became perhaps the worst foreign policy debacle in the nation’s history.”
That’s a good one. I found it here.
Or maybe check out the coverage of the testimony going on this week about all the innocent people tortured at Guantanamo and Bagram and other places. Did you know that numerous thorough non-partisan reports, including from within the government and even the military itself, have determined that, while there are legitimate terrorists in custody, several detainees were falsely imprisoned and tortured, and when they were discovered to be not “the worst of the worst” but innocent bystanders, or worse, victims of liars seeking bounties, they were still imprisoned so their shameful treatment could be kept secret? If you didn’t know that, would you blame the Liberal Media? The real question, though: How many more innocent people are still there? How many of them died in U.S. custody?
So, following from that, another suggestion for Quote of 2008: A CIA interrogation lawyer, discussing permissible “interrogation techniques” at Guantanamo in 2002, regarding how to do waterboarding:
“If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”
I’m guessing this would not be a time to play Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American.” Anyone? Bueller? Maybe we’ll cue that one up a little later, when the shame’s had some time to recede a bit.
Friends, if you’re still with me, I know I’ve ranted long here, but snappy statements from wholly-owned hacks like Cheri Jacobus really chap my behind when we’ve got genuine anti-American-values crap like this to live down. And note I am not knocking all Republicans, just the incredible combination of arrogantly misguided ideologues and greedmongering hypocrites who hijacked their party. It’s time for a change, and the tall thin man from Chicago might, just might, have something.
So, for Quote of 2008, what about an Obama speech, say the one he gave in Philadelphia three months ago about race in America.
It’s all over YouTube, if you don’t want to read it. I recommend it highly – whether you like Obama or McCain, it’s an honest take on what divides so many of us and it’s a vision of what might unite us. I’d argue it is worth more of your time than one minute of Cheri Jacobus cracking jokes about her leftovers.
With that, a good night to you all.
Will gets his high school diploma tomorrow!
One of the would-be idols rendered a pale shadow of Pete Townsend’s Baba O’Reilly this evening. Which sent me back to the original, full strength. And then Won’t Get Fooled Again. Sometimes, I go back to the music that shaped me, and this was an essential part of the soundtrack for me.
Other authors have described this album and its essential songs, and you can find their words with a minimum of searching. I’ll just tell you to listen, loudly.
I’ve got more to tell, and show, about the trip I took to New Orleans last month with some folks from my church. We worked on a house, mudding and sanding drywall, painting the porch, and more. We stayed at Olive Tree Village, formerly a church and now a center for housing volunteer work crews from all over the country staying in New Orleans and helping Presbyterian Disaster Assistance with the ongoing Katrina recovery effort.
Of all the disasters of the last few years, one reason to keep New Orleans in mind is that it’s a great and unique American city, and it deserves far better than the sham “heck of a job” of recovery it’s received. Do what you can for New Orleans – it makes America a better country. Even if you don’t do it for New Orleans, do it for somewhere hit by disaster. It’ll make you a better person.
This guy was there, always keeping a helpful eye on sanitary conditions. He never complained and he had a drink of water ready whenever anyone was thirsty. So say hello to SinkMan.
As I said, more to come on the trip, but I thought you might want to meet him.
At my host, Joyent, I’ve managed to move from Harwood, a FreeBSD Linux server to Laurel, a “Shared Accelerator” on Sun Sparc hardware running OpenSolaris. Which means little to me, a n00b who knows enough to create a lot of difficulty. Once I figured out the database password confusion, this blog reappeared along with my other one. This post is a test, to make sure I can still post. If you’re reading it, well, guess what?
Things you never thought you could do with your camera | MetaFilter
Yow – apparently amazing things can be done with a hacked Canon point and shoot.
I’ve taken to reading Andrew Sullivan’s blog at The Atlantic Monthly over the last few months. I remember seeing him often back in the 1990s when I had time to watch C-SPAN a lot. His stance is an interesting one: a gay Catholic Tory living in America, commenting on American politics. He used to be firmly in the camp of GWB, but has come to see that Bush’s America is a wretched place. He’s largely reasonable on many issues, and willing to entertain other viewpoints. He likes Ron Paul, or more precisely the phenomenon of Ron Paul: a Republican candidate who’s willing to call the big dogs the wrong-headed empty suits they are. He’s positively enchanted with Barack Obama and makes eloquent appeals for him and he’s so anti-Hillary Clinton that you can almost see the spittle on his posts about her (or that guy she’s married to).
In another vein, today he posted a message from a reader, a fiction writer who has worked in the video game industry, about the challenges of bringing the mechanics of storytelling to video gaming. I don’t know that I follow all this reader puts forth, and there is further material linked, including Irreconcilable Differences: Game vs. Story, an analytical lament for the basic differences in the two:
The audience must on the one hand disbelieve in the preparedness of stories, and on the other believe in the unpreparedness of games.
It’s all provocative, and since Will is considering a career along the lines this writer describes, it’s worth a look.
No time to add a comment right now, but I found this article, Cuts in movies, and their impact on memory, very interesting.
This slide show at the New York Times shows the immediacy of Capa’s work, and explains why this is a huge find in the world of photography. I’ve always been drawn to photojournalism and street photography, less to the more obviously contrived fashion and fine art. Capa’s work is important, and not among my favorites, but deserves its high esteem. It will be interesting to see if the negatives resolve the questions about The Falling Soldier.
Bankrate posted a month-by-month, what-to-do financial aid timeline for high school seniors. We’re mostly on time, it seems, so that’s good. Will’s been accepted in one of the main schools he’s chosen; the others have later deadlines so we’ll see.
And now that it’s 2008 (and a belated Happy New Year to you, interwebs), we need to get cracking on the FAFSA.
Eric Alterman and others on the best pop and rock albums of 2007. Must revisit these lists!
Media Matters – Altercation: For Goodness’ Sakes: The Altercation Music Lists
Via PopUrls.com, 60 Advanced Photoshop Tutorials – Top Web Resources. I love Photoshop tutorials. The more I learn about Photoshop the more I love it.
I sent Stefan “a link to David Foster Wallace’s introduction to the 2007 edition of Best American Essays. I have enjoyed his magazine pieces, and own two of his books, so I sent the link unread with a promise to him to come back to it later. Stef sent back a grumpy rant about the piece, and without getting into the nature of his complaints, what impressed me most was the closeness of his reading and the concentration he must have brought to bear. It forced me to realize that I don’t as a matter of course bring more than minimal attention to what I read – I’ve been scanning, not reading, and my mental muscles are weak. They need to do some weight lifting, and so do I.
Yes, “Tim” is an anagram for TMI, “Too Much Information.” Email messages unread: 68. RSS items unread: 625. Current browser tabs among 5 windows: 11. Too. Much. Information.
So where to cut back? I don’t want to lose more sleep. I would have trouble giving up reading political coverage during this run-up to an election year, especially when the Republicans are fielding such a bizarre misguided flip-flopping fear-mongering group of candidates. And the Democrats, ah the Democrats… they’re so amazingly timid about really pounding on the most incompetent regime America’s seen in my lifetime, and on the Congressional Republicans that have enabled it. George W.Bush makes Nixon look like a smart progressive on most issues. Who’d have thought we’d pine for Nixon? Ever? And in a situation like this, how can I keep from following it?
But back to Too Much Information. There’s always something new just a click away, whether it’s one of those emails, or in a feed, or on a site I haven’t checked this last foru minutes, or something. And I have this blog, see, the one you’re reading? Having a domain, and a blog, implies a commitment, and I have not kept that commitment. I have a camera, too, that camera implies another commitment, to take and publish pictures. I have not kept this commitment either.
Will Richardson writes and lives the Read/Write web, and I do not. Too much reading and not enough writing/photographing/publishing. I’ve allowed the too-many opportunities for something new to become data smog and I have to filter more of it out. I guess that output would become more of the smog for someone else, but the exercise of doing it myself would be better for my mind and my health.
Maybe it’s a bit strong to compare the drought here to the plight of murderous Macbeth, but things are in a sorry state in the south. I’ve been saying Atlanta’s weather has been like southern California’s, dry and not too hot for the last several weeks. Except we don’t have desert and sagebrush and rattlesnakes here, we have pine forests and creeks and water moccasins, and possum and mosquitos and… and rain, dammit.
Well now it’s gotten scary. I had heard the drought was serious, but I hadn’t seen that map or read this article:
In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days. Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices, NYTimes, 16 October 2007
This is finally serious in ways even I understand, all across the south, a slow-motion disaster that could change our way of life more profoundly than the 1998 tornadoes that blew through here, blowing down the many trees that used to make this neighborhood seem forested. It nearly blew Ellen and her dad and Jack and Will away, but the houses have been rebuilt, the stumps and wrack have grown over, and it’s hard to find a trace now. Who knows how this drought will change things? Will we become more like the inland scrub of the southwest? Politically, Georgia is already too much like Texas – will our climate come to match theirs? Oof. Will the fights for water escalate, will Tennessee and Alabama and the Carolinas find ways to keep it from flowing to Georgia? They might. They’re hard hit too. Things will change one way or the other.
So what can our family do here in our corner of the south? I have scarcely ever watered my lawn, so I can’t cut back there; the garden’s nearly dead and hasn’t been watered in weeks; we don’t wash our cars (we buy them with exterior colors that don’t show the dirt); we don’t have a pool or pond or even a birdbath. (Although I may add one; the feathered ones are parched too.) We’ll just have to wash our clothes and dishes and selves in less water to do our part.
How I would love to have the chance to follow these tips from This French Life and spend more time in museums in Paris, or just more time in Paris, or even more time to just think about more time in Paris.
VISITING Paris museums and monuments are the things you most want to do in the capital. However, they can often be crowded, overwhelming, and expensive. Here are 10 insider tips, from Richard Nahem, that will make your visit to places such as the Louvre and the Palais de Tokio smooth, efficient, and sometimes cheaper.