Random Musings About Eight Years Ago

One of the things that the Wingnuts were having fun with in 2004 was the fact that John Kerry spoke French. Some of the more unhinged members of that subspecies referred to French as "the language of surrender".

This time around, it's Mittens who speaks French. And you hear not one peep about that from the Right.

(Yeah, they were also poking fun at Kerry for being rich. Kerry released 20 years worth of his tax returns. Not just the two years that Mittens says he'll release, probably because it was only three years ago that he stopped doing the seriously amoral shit that he had to report. I imagine that, up until then, Rmoney had a serious position in a biotech stem-cell startup, along with holding a goodly amount of Blackwater/Xe/Sparkle-Pony-of-Death stock.)

I Don't Much Care for Obama

I truly don't.

Look, I think it was ballsy for him to approve the raid on bin Ladin's compound. He had to have known that a botched attempt would have probably cost him his job.

What I do not like about him is that he has not only taken no steps to dismantle the national security state we now live in, he has increased it. He could have vetoed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, the one with the GOP-inserted language that authorized the indefinite detention of American citizens for whatever reason suits the Fed's fancy. He didn't; he only added a vague and non-binding signing statement of "of course we'd never do this".

I find that wholly inexcusable for a man who once taught Constitutional Law. Yes, I know that first year law school Con Law doesn't get into the Bill of Rights, but I'd expect him to have a passing familiarity with it.[1]

I don't like that he has spent over three years trying to work with people who lure him in close and cock-punch him. He then gets up and does it again. I don't know if he is a born optimist, a fool or has a partial brain deficit.[2] Personally, I'd like to see a little more Harry Truman from Obama.

Part of the problem is that Obama, when it comes to dealing with Congress, is acting like the only responsible adult in the room. The Republicans have been behaving like spoiled children who, if they don't get everything they want, will quit the game and go home. Or, more sinisterly, they've been acting like terrorists, who have been more than willing to throw this country into default and depression if they don't get their way. So maybe he is doing the best he can, but I would still have rather seen more fight out of him.

I don't like that Obama has been playing more from the old DLC playbook than anything else. Yes, he ended "don't ask, don't tell".[3] He got the Ledbetter Pay Act passed. While the Affordable Health Care Act is pretty damn sucky and is more a gift to those rapacious bastards in the health insurance industry than anything else, he still got something through.

But the stimulus was too little and was effectively hamstrung by Republicans who didn't want to be seen as being totally obstructionist on boosting the economy, but they didn't want to do anything that might lead to a solid recovery. That's because the Republicans, in full-blown "Party First" mode, would rather see many more millions of workers out of jobs if that would win them an election.

I want to see him fight for us. I want to see him make the Republicans pay a dear price for being economic kidnappers.

I'm not holding my breath.

But may G-d help us if he loses to that team of the Corporate Robot and the Wisconsin Fibber which the GOP put on their ticket.
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[1] As for Republicans, they talk a great game about freedom, but you'll note that they are really vigorous at slashing freedom and liberty in almost all areas (excepting the 2nd Amendment). All you have to do is mutter phrases like "terrorism" and "homeland security" and those weak-brained fools, along with Democrats like "Traitor Joe" Lieberman would let the NSA put cameras in their homes.
[2] I'd say "retarded", but the last time I did that, I got all sorts of nasty emails.
[3] Contrary to conservative predictions, the armed forces have not crumbled.

It Took Four Marines to Beat Up One Gay Guy.

They're a real credit to the Corps, no doubt.

Might Not Want to Mess With Those Old Guys

A couple of burglars this year have learned the hard way not to mess around with really old men. For those men might have served in the Second World War and know something about guns.

In Los Angeles, the thug lived. The one in Kentucky wasn't so lucky.

Your Sunday Afternoon Jet Noise

The F-4, the coolest jet fighter ever made.

Storm

A storm from the remnants of Hurricane Issac moves across the countryside.

It'd be a better picture, visually, if the telephone pole and wires were not there.  But they were there and so they are in this picture.

There are people who could do that, maybe change the colors a bit to enhance things.  They're artists.

I started taking color photos with a Canon FT SLR, shooting Kodachrome 25 and 64.  I had control over framing (with the old "two-legged zoom" lens) and focus, and I could set the shutter speed and lens aperture.  When I pressed the shutter, I got what I got (and you get really good at panning if you want to shoot moving objects with slow-speed film).

Given the expense of shooting Kodachrome, especially for a teenager, my approach for taking photos was kind of like going hunting with a single-shot rifle.   Depending on how many shots I was taking of different things, it could take a couple of weeks or more to shoot off a 36-exposure roll.  Then I'd have to wait for processing.

When I got older and went into the service, I shifted to Kodacolor print film, because I didn't have to carry a slide projector around.  I used the Kodak pre-paid mailers which meant that, depending if I was on a ship and where that ship was, it might take over a month to get the photos back.

So there was nothing like the instant feedback you get with a digital camera.  You had to know what you were doing and watch for things such as light poles coming out of the heads of people.  Because, unless you were taking photos of stationary objects, you weren't going to get a second chance.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I'm not an artist.  I'm an amateur photographer and the picture that I take is the picture that I get.

Richard Bach

He crashed his airplane today.

One thing that I am hugely paranoid about around grass strips is power lines. If they are not marked, they are invisible under most circumstances to pilots.

I sure hope he recovers fully.

"We Forgot to Apologize. But We Didn't Mean to Cripple All of You."

That's the thrust of the so-called apology from the Grünenthal Group, the manufacturer of Thalidomide.

More than fifty years after deformed babies began being born to mothers who had taken Thalidomide, the manufacturer unveiled some bullshit bronze memorial and issued its non-apologetic Rumsfeldian apology.*

No small wonder that the families of the victims and the surviving victims are not the least bit amused.
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* From Donald Rumsfeld's famous reaction to the widespread looting in Baghdad.

So, Will George Clooney Talk to an Empty Suit at the Democrats' Convention?

It would be pretty funny if he did.

And it would be accurate.

While I'm on the subject of the Empty Suit, here is Mittens' bio as done by the Daily Show:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
RNC 2012 - The Road to Jeb Bush 2016 - Mitt Romney: A Human Being Who Built That
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

And the Borowitz Report, on Rmoney's speech:

TAMPA (The Borowitz Report)—Coining a phrase that seems destined to become his new campaign slogan, Mitt Romney needed only three words tonight to accept the Republican Presidential nomination: “I bought it.”

Those words had a special meaning for Mr. Romney, who had to spend seventy million dollars in the G.O.P. primaries to defeat a serial adulterer, a former pizza executive, and a crackpot in a sweater-vest.

It has been an up-and-down convention for Mr. Romney, who was largely ignored at Tea Party rallies early in the week but later picked up a key endorsement from his wife.

Caturday

It's been a long time since I posted a photo of Jake.

The other day, I was cooking up a chicken breast in a knock-off of a George Foreman grill. George used to get up on his hind legs, reach up to the counter with his front legs and scrabble his claws on the edge to let me know that he wanted some. He could be a character.