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Dodd sets the record straight

Thursday, December 10, 2009

I’m not sure what I think of this.


Part of me agrees that, as Dodd says, we should set the records straight. The other part of me feels that it’s a fools errand to even respond to the Republicans patently absurd claims that they have been shut out of the health care process. In fact, as Dodd points out, the act contains numerous Republican proposals, not one of which garnered a single Republican vote. Why, the Democrats even came up with compromises like the opt out and the trigger and all that other tripe, all on their own, to make the act more attractive to the zero Republicans who voted for it.

The Republicans have become very adept at the big lie. If you say something loud enough and long enough a fair number of people will believe it. Of course, it helps to have a fair and balanced TV network to reinforce the message.


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A mystery-unsolved, at least by me

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

According to this morning’s Day, McDonald’s sales are slumping.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a good thing. I don’t expect to die happy, but I will die at least slightly contented if McDonald’s predeceases me.

Still, there’s something about this story that mystifies me. Here is the reason McDonald’s is doing poorly:

“I think ultimately, we’ll need job growth to get things turned around to get back in the positive territory,” said Morningstar restaurant analyst R.J. Hottovy.

On Tuesday, McDonald’s said sales at restaurants open at least a year fell 0.6 percent in the U.S. It was the second consecutive monthly decline for the measure, an important indicator of a restaurant chain’s health, and a steeper fall than October’s 0.1 percent.

…

That’s because until the U.S. unemployment rate, which was 10 percent in November, recovers significantly, McDonald’s customers are less likely to visit the chain – picking up coffee and a McMuffin for breakfast, or dashing in for a Big Mac with co-workers.

That’s right. Things are so bad that people can’t even afford to eat at McDonald’s. Proving that for every cloud there is indeed a silver lining.

But I digress.

Here’s what mystifies me. We all know that whenever certain of McDonald’s corporate interests are at risk, it exerts every effort to advance those interests. If someone proposes that we raise the minimum wage, armies of lobbyists working for McDonald’s and like corporations descend on Washington to prevent the marginal improvement of their worker’s lives. Yet, when those same corporate interests are seemingly aligned with those of the masses, the corporations grow silent. McDonald’s is losing money because people are unemployed. So are lots of corporations. Yet, how many of them are lobbying for an effective stimulus package to lower that unemployment rate? These folks are not stupid. They are perfectly aware that the Republican panacea, tax cuts to solve all problems, doesn’t work. Similarly, having experience in other countries, they know that rational national health care systems lower their costs in those countries. Witness the car companies. We constantly hear that several thousand dollars of the cost of each car represents health care expenses, yet the auto companies never advocate for the type of health care systems that save them money elsewhere. Why do corporations that actually make things stand idly by and let the bankers suck the life blood out of our manufacturing base without at least trying to get laws to stop the pillaging?

Why is that? Why do corporations fall silent when their own interests coincide with those of the American people as a whole? I can’t bring myself to believe that they actually believe the garbage they spew about capitalism, since they are perfectly willing to violate capitalist tenets when it serves their interests at the expense of the taxpayer, e.g., giant corporate bailouts.

As I say, it’s a mystery. My guess is that the answer lies more in the expertise of the psychiatrist than the economist.


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Some great rock and roll

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

I am basically taking the night off, this being the first day in a while when there is no where I have to go and nothing I have to do. Now that I’m finished with work that is.

By way of recompense, or added reward, depending on the way you look at it, let me urge my readers with a musical bent to set their Tivo to record Ed Sullivan’s Rock & Roll Classics, which is on PBS at 10:00 PM today. I recorded it with my EyeTV at 2 in the morning Sunday. I’m actually surprised it’s on at 10:00 PM tonight, since when I got around to editing it, the two hour show slimmed down to about 64 minutes, sans pledge breaks. What a shameful thing to inflict on those poor Insomniacs that were actually watching at that time. It’s hard to believe that anyone who’s not desperate would put up with that many commercials during prime time.

But that 64 minutes contains some rock and roll gems. I’ve spent a lot of time trolling youtube for Friday Night videos looking for real live non lip synched performances. Some groups are impossible to find. I couldn’t, for instance, find the Animals doing the House of the Rising Sun in a real live version. But Sullivan had them along with the Beatles, the Stones, Beach Boys, Four Seasons, Supremes, the Doors, Sly and the Family Stone and a host of what we must now consider minor groups (e.g., Herman’s Hermits, the Turtles). All live performances, sometimes more live that Sullivan liked, as when Jim Morrison welched on his promise to remove the word “higher” from Light My Fire. Who knew it was a drug song? I thought it was about sex.

Anyway, if you get a chance, tape it. Don’t by any means put up with the fundraising. Great music. Sullivan was a great judge of talent.


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Ned Lamont in Stonington

Monday, December 7, 2009

Just returned from the Ned Lamont meet and greet in Stonington. Quite a crowd turned out to hear Ned’s thoughts on what ails the state. Below, Ned with various Drinking Liberally regulars.

I’m still undecided, but I have to admit I feel a lot of affection for Ned. I also feel we owe him some consideration for being willing to step up and take on Lieberman when no one else would do it.

He’s clearly done his homework on state issues. It would be ever so nice if we had a governor that was more concerned about improving the state than his or her poll numbers.


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Too true

Monday, December 7, 2009

Joe made a big mistake abandoning his makeshift little party. Of course, Joe has a habit of abandoning people and things after he no longer needs them.


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A question of semantics

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Max Baucus has a girlfriend.

John Ensign has a mistress.

This engendered some lively discussion around our breakfast table this morning. I took the position that the usages are correct. A mistress, to my way of thinking, is the paramour of a married man. “Married” in the sense that the other person in that marriage is of the opinion, either actually or formally, that the marriage continues.

Baucus’ marriage was apparently on the rocks when he began his relationship with his girlfriend, while Ensign’s family values marriage remained strong and vibrant while he cavorted with his mistress.

My wife feels that the term mistress is not so restricted, and that Baucus’ girlfriend can as easily be considered his mistress. I say the dictionary is on my side, at least the dictionary in my Iphone, which defines a mistress as a woman who has an ongoing extramarital relationship with a man. My American Heritage Dictionary is a little equivocal, defining mistress as a woman who has a continuing sexual relationship with a usually married man who is not her husband and from whom she generally receives material support. But in a usage note that dictionary goes on to say that the term is now most commonly to refer to a woman who is involved in an extramarital sexual relationship, which I consider support for my position.

Of course, some questions remain unanswered. Is a married woman who has an affair with a single man a mistress. And what, pray tell, is the term for the man in that situation? As the American Heritage usage note points out:

English has no shortage of terms for women whose behavior is viewed as licentious, but it is difficult to come up with a list of comparable terms used of men. One researcher, Julia Penelope, stopped counting after she reached 220 such labels for women, both current and historical, but managed to locate only 20 names for promiscuous men. Murial R. Schultz found more than 500 slang terms for prostitute but could find just 65 for the male terms whoremonger and pimp. A further imbalance appears in the connotations of many of these terms. While the terms applying only to women, like tramp and slut, are almost always strongly negative, corresponding terms used for men, such as stud andCasanova, often carry positive associations. Curiously, many of the negative terms used for women derive from words that once had neutral or even positive associations.

One of those formerly positive terms, by the way, is mistress, which once referred to a woman in a position of authority, and still does, in some archaic contexts.

This has real world implications of course. We have no acceptable term to apply to a person like Ensign. (I am granting the loathsome Baucus a pass here, since he was merely corrupt but not hypocritical). Without a term such as mistress, or the more piquant slut, we are unable to properly pigeonhole him. Thus he goes scot-free, semantically speaking, for where there is no name for the offense, there is hardly an offense. Without a negatively charged word to apply to him, it is more difficult to get agreement on the seriousness of his crimes, for in this day and age, the formerly pejorative hypocrite, describes such a common political criminal that it is considered less than a misdemeanor.


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Take two Our Fathers and see me in the morning

Sunday, December 6, 2009

In an oddly named article (To a Divisive Debate, Now Add Religion ) the Times relates that the Christian Scientists have now gotten into the act on health care.

I say the article is oddly named, because of I’m not mistaken, religion has been dividing the debate on health care for months now, with the Catholic Church leading the way by demanding that its dogma be enshrined in law.

The Christian Scientists, at least, are not demanding that we do so with theirs, only that we encourage insurance companies to pay for wholly worthless “medical” treatment, that is, prayer. This would, at first blush, appear to contradict the act’s emphasis on evidence based health care. It would also appear to contradict it at the second blush, not to mention all the other blushes that come after.

Believe it or not, the power of prayer has actually been studied, so we have empirical evidence that it doesn’t work:

In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

But the Christian Scientists soldier on. (Was ever a moniker more misleading? This is a group whose members let their children die, rather than give them medical treatment. Sounds neither Christian nor scientific to me.)

Needless to say, this nonsense has strong Congressional backing. Even Ted Kennedy supported it while he was with us, proving once again that no one is infallible on any issue. The miracle is that the Christian Scientists are probably not going to get their way and the rest of us, may not in the end have to subsidize the rantings of Christian witch doctors.


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It begins-the Christmas Season, that is

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Some months ago my wife and I signed up for a bus trip to New York sponsored by the Groton Rec Department, which trip occurred yesterday. The fates decreed that the 5th of December should be a miserable day. To rub it in, it was sandwiched between two glorious fall days. Such is life.

We made the best of it. Herewith a few pictures, none of which are that good, but I feel obliged to post some, for my cherished little Panasonic DLC-LX3 gave the last full measure of devotion, as it chose to expire as we sat in a wine bar, wet and dripping, at the end of the day. Whether from the wet (from which I made every attempt to shelter it) or some other cause, its life is ended. Push any button, and it does not respond. It was a camera, take it for all in all, I shall not look upon its like again Unless, that is, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, it returns from its grave, of which I have some hope. Tomorrow it embarks on a trip to a camera repair outfit in Enfield, from which I trust it shall return resurrected.

Actually, it did not give the last full measure, as it expired before I got a chance to take a night time picture of the fabled Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, seen here in daytime less-than-splendour.

Being a huge chocolate fan, I was intrigued by the large numbers of folks carrying M&M shopping bags. Where there are such bags, there are no doubt, M&Ms, a fact to which sign gave further proof.

However, even I am not crazy enough to wait in line just to enter a store to buy M&Ms (and other assorted Hershey products), but much to my surprise lots of people were. The line stretched quite a ways, which just proves the power of marketing. Tourists go all the way to NYC and then stand in line to buy things they can probably buy at the local drug store.

One nice thing about rain, only partly redeeming its camera destroying qualities, is the reflections it creates on the streets, illustrated in the next two pictures.

We did survive, no mean feat considering the mobs of umbrella wielding people.

One last picture, in the spirit of the season.

By the way, for the photographers among you, I highly recommend Lightzone, which I got bundled with my DVD burning software. It does a great job on processing Raw pictures taken in low light, requiring a minimum of thought on the part of the photographer. Witness the pictures above, which have pretty good dynamic range, no thanks to me or the original output of my late, lamented camera.


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Friday Night Music-Layla

Friday, December 4, 2009

Various incarnations, with one necessary common element. Take your pick, or watch several. Just a great song.

Derek and the Dominos

Acoustic with Mark Knopfler

2008 concert version

Jazz version


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They can dish it out, but they can’t take it

Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Republicans are still whining about the fact that mean old Al Franken made them vote in favor of rapists a few months back.

This from the party that has made a habit out of proposing resolutions designed solely to force Democrats to cast votes that can be easily misrepresented (or, to be fair, that force the Democrats to act like the cowards they are). Recall the vote to condemn Moveon. These types of votes have been the Republican’s stock in trade for years. Franken’s amendment at least had a legitimate legislative purpose, the Republicans’ resolutions typically have no legislative effect; they are designed purely to embarrass their opponents.

Like most bullies, the Republicans can’t take it when someone stands up to them, or subjects them to their own tactics. There’s a lesson here, which will of course be lost on folks like Harry Reid.


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