I'm back at the North Pole after a brief holiday respite with the wife and kids in the Circle City. The 16 hours in the car coming and going sucked, but a little QT with Josie, Jmo and Josh more than made up for it.
Thanksgiving dinner with the Springmans was excellent, as always. No matter how urbane and sophisticated I get, I'll never be too uppity for the turkey gravy or the wife's chocolate pie and homemade whipped cream. That blender I bought her a decade ago keeps paying dividends.
Back to work Monday. It's hectic, there's never enough time to do anything and the company couldn't care less, but newspapering in a small town is pretty satisfying. We do it justice (mostly) and everyone knows just about everyone else. New Macs, an extra reporter, a rebuilt Goss Community press, an ImageSetter and a full-time news clerk would be much better, but there's no sense in dreaming.
If I can't be back home with the family, I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather work.
No really, I'm serious.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Stupak isn't the Devil
There is all kinds of Hell being directed at Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) for getting public funding of abortions services separated from the rest of the historic health care reform moving through the House today.
Abortion is as old as sex and no amount of governance or money will ever change that. Whether we know it or not, most of us know someone who has been a party to an abortion. The thought of it makes me sick, to be honest; but I understand why it needs to be safe, legal and readily available.
I get why Stupak, who is center/left on most other issues, is catching the aforementioned Hell. The Stupak amendment does discriminate against women who can't afford abortion services out of pocket. It is a slap in the face to the majority of Democrats across the country...at least for now.
I hate to be crass, but Stupak is doing his party a favor. This health care reform package is less than Medicare for Everyone, which Obama supporters expected, but it is a tremendous move against the vampires who run private health insurers. You can't be denied coverage anymore because you have diabetes...or autoimmune disorders like mine. Your boss gets some more and better options to make sure you have coverage. You don't have to stay in a crappy job working for assholes anymore to keep your kids insured.
Stupak's move takes out the one big thing Republican politicians and their K Street pimps would hammer Democrats about in midterm elections. Abortion has historically been the hottest button the GOP pushed to shake money out of the hicks and zealots and Stupak effectively killed that.
This reform is better for everyone who doesn't run an insurance company or suck insurance company cock for campaign money. That will become evident and the Dems will be much better off for it...maybe not in 2010, but definitely in 2012 and beyond.
Abortion is as old as sex and no amount of governance or money will ever change that. Whether we know it or not, most of us know someone who has been a party to an abortion. The thought of it makes me sick, to be honest; but I understand why it needs to be safe, legal and readily available.
I get why Stupak, who is center/left on most other issues, is catching the aforementioned Hell. The Stupak amendment does discriminate against women who can't afford abortion services out of pocket. It is a slap in the face to the majority of Democrats across the country...at least for now.
I hate to be crass, but Stupak is doing his party a favor. This health care reform package is less than Medicare for Everyone, which Obama supporters expected, but it is a tremendous move against the vampires who run private health insurers. You can't be denied coverage anymore because you have diabetes...or autoimmune disorders like mine. Your boss gets some more and better options to make sure you have coverage. You don't have to stay in a crappy job working for assholes anymore to keep your kids insured.
Stupak's move takes out the one big thing Republican politicians and their K Street pimps would hammer Democrats about in midterm elections. Abortion has historically been the hottest button the GOP pushed to shake money out of the hicks and zealots and Stupak effectively killed that.
This reform is better for everyone who doesn't run an insurance company or suck insurance company cock for campaign money. That will become evident and the Dems will be much better off for it...maybe not in 2010, but definitely in 2012 and beyond.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Podcast Nirvana
I'm addicted to podcasts, plain and simple.
I can't get to sleep at night without hearing an episode of Mervyn Bragg's BBC4 program, In Our Time. When I'm playing the PlayStation, I have to have the Napoleon Bonaparte podcast going.
I rush to my MacBook and hit 'Refresh' first thing every morning to see if Marc Maron has offered up a new installment of WTF, which is quickly becoming the podcast-equivalent of heroin.
I've swooned to Bart Ehrman lectures on St. Paul, laughed to Rude Pundit visits to the Stephanie Miller Show and succumbed utterly to the genius for James Howard Kunstler and his Kunstlercast.
Do a Google for something or someone you're interested in, add 'podcast' and you'd be amazed at what pops up. Between your kickass iTunes music library and a few hundred podcasts, you'll never have to listen to crappy commercial radio again.
Praise Jesus!
I can't get to sleep at night without hearing an episode of Mervyn Bragg's BBC4 program, In Our Time. When I'm playing the PlayStation, I have to have the Napoleon Bonaparte podcast going.
I rush to my MacBook and hit 'Refresh' first thing every morning to see if Marc Maron has offered up a new installment of WTF, which is quickly becoming the podcast-equivalent of heroin.
I've swooned to Bart Ehrman lectures on St. Paul, laughed to Rude Pundit visits to the Stephanie Miller Show and succumbed utterly to the genius for James Howard Kunstler and his Kunstlercast.
Do a Google for something or someone you're interested in, add 'podcast' and you'd be amazed at what pops up. Between your kickass iTunes music library and a few hundred podcasts, you'll never have to listen to crappy commercial radio again.
Praise Jesus!
Friday, October 30, 2009
Stuff is coming
I know, I know...long time, less than jack shit posted.
Come back around Sunday and I'll have some prescient, insightful crap to fling at you.
Come back around Sunday and I'll have some prescient, insightful crap to fling at you.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
It ain't snowin' yet
Lazy day today...except for updating the website for the day job, I did jack shit. I have to say, however, that I probably should have been out here.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Sleep would be good
I made the fatal error of falling asleep too early and now I'm wide awake at 2:30 a.m. I guess that gives me time to do notlapsednewsguy stuff, like going over some notes and prepping questions for an interview with the county hospital guy in about nine hours.
Things are actually kinda groovin' up here at the North Pole. I'm in a bigger place, as I outgrew the shoebox I've spent the last year in. News is breaking out all over the county and we're actually covering some of it. I've got Thanksgiving covered so I can spend a holiday with Josie and the kids in Indy.
This is the part of the personal post where I type "but", but there's no "but" today...at least not yet.
Have a nice day.
Things are actually kinda groovin' up here at the North Pole. I'm in a bigger place, as I outgrew the shoebox I've spent the last year in. News is breaking out all over the county and we're actually covering some of it. I've got Thanksgiving covered so I can spend a holiday with Josie and the kids in Indy.
This is the part of the personal post where I type "but", but there's no "but" today...at least not yet.
Have a nice day.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
$5
I'll give $5 to the first person who can tell me what I mumbled in this video:
Now you know why I'm a newspaper guy instead of a broadcasting guy.
Now you know why I'm a newspaper guy instead of a broadcasting guy.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Hypocrite? Huh?
It's happening again.
Michael Moore has a new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, and the mouthbreathers are in full Greek chorus mode before they even see it (read the comments in response to the above linked story).
As I understand it, Michael Moore is a hypocrite because he's rich and he criticizes the supply side economics the U.S. has practiced for the last three decades. If Moore were heavily invested in the stock market and criticized it in his film, that would be hypocrisy; however, he isn't heavily invested in the stock market (or so he says). He's made his money in filmmaking, rather than investing.
There is also the point that FDR was more wealthy than Moore and much more critical of the wealthy exploiting the poor. Rich people can have shame about their peers' exploitation of the poor, and poor people can rabidly defend rich peoples' rights to exploit. I don't know why seniors on fixed incomes and working poor people rally around the half-assed economic theories of clowns like Limbaugh and Beck, but I don't think they are hypocrites for doing so.
Moore is candid at all times about his politics, and he uses his films to advance those politics. You know that going in, just as you pretty much know what you're going to hear when you tune into the aforementioned Limbaugh and Beck.
This is yet another example of a trend I'm noticing more and more at the day job: anti-Obama/anti-Democratic reactionaries who cannot bear even the existence of conflicting ideas. I run one letter to the editor defending Obama and a reactionary will scream bloody murder about liberal bias. I run a letter to the editor opposing Obama and I might get one response from a liberal objecting, with much more civility, to an assertion made against the President.
I don't really despair over this; it's mostly a symptom of slow, but steady, decline of the George Wallace/Richard Nixon/Ronald Reagan voting bloc. Our political culture is comprised of pluralities and this one is dying out, in part due to age but primarily because working class whites are slowly coming around to the realization that they have been fucked hard by corporate flunkies posing as Reagan's heirs. The smaller the group gets, the more shrill the diehards are going to be.
Michael Moore has a new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, and the mouthbreathers are in full Greek chorus mode before they even see it (read the comments in response to the above linked story).
As I understand it, Michael Moore is a hypocrite because he's rich and he criticizes the supply side economics the U.S. has practiced for the last three decades. If Moore were heavily invested in the stock market and criticized it in his film, that would be hypocrisy; however, he isn't heavily invested in the stock market (or so he says). He's made his money in filmmaking, rather than investing.
There is also the point that FDR was more wealthy than Moore and much more critical of the wealthy exploiting the poor. Rich people can have shame about their peers' exploitation of the poor, and poor people can rabidly defend rich peoples' rights to exploit. I don't know why seniors on fixed incomes and working poor people rally around the half-assed economic theories of clowns like Limbaugh and Beck, but I don't think they are hypocrites for doing so.
Moore is candid at all times about his politics, and he uses his films to advance those politics. You know that going in, just as you pretty much know what you're going to hear when you tune into the aforementioned Limbaugh and Beck.
This is yet another example of a trend I'm noticing more and more at the day job: anti-Obama/anti-Democratic reactionaries who cannot bear even the existence of conflicting ideas. I run one letter to the editor defending Obama and a reactionary will scream bloody murder about liberal bias. I run a letter to the editor opposing Obama and I might get one response from a liberal objecting, with much more civility, to an assertion made against the President.
I don't really despair over this; it's mostly a symptom of slow, but steady, decline of the George Wallace/Richard Nixon/Ronald Reagan voting bloc. Our political culture is comprised of pluralities and this one is dying out, in part due to age but primarily because working class whites are slowly coming around to the realization that they have been fucked hard by corporate flunkies posing as Reagan's heirs. The smaller the group gets, the more shrill the diehards are going to be.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Paul Springman, an appreciation
Paul Springman went to sleep Sunday night and woke up in a much, much better place. Hopefully, he's sitting at the bar in the ultimate K of C council, drinking his third or fourth stein of Stroh's and taking pride in what and who he left behind.
The lapsednewsguy owes his grandpa a lot, which is sort of surprising considering that we couldn't have been more different. I run my mouth about everything, while my grandpa (whom I always called Hans for some reason) usually held his tongue unless it was really, really, really important. He endured the Great Depression and the slaughter of World War II in the Pacific and was grateful for the chance to raise his family and have a home. I still seethe because my boss fucked me out of a raise eight years ago.
He came home from the Pacific and worked for his pop at the family grocery store as a meat cutter. When Pop died in the early 50s, the grocery store succumbed to supermarkets, the suburban exodus and more than a few unpaid accounts receivable. Hans moved on to plumbing. He bartended on the side, too. By the he was 40, he had seven kids and a wife at home. He never laid in bed with a cold and often nodded off as he untied his boots after a long day on the job.
I can honestly say that the only mean words I ever heard from him came when he and Grandma fought (which wasn't rare and never amounted to much) and when I would get in a hurry on a jobsite and cut a piece of PVC too short.
He was a guy whose respect you treasured, not because his standards were high but because he did things the right way...no matter how long it took. One of the great honors of my life came on my graduation day from IU, when he braved the steep home stands of Memorial Stadium to watch me get my bachelor's degree...about three weeks before he finally got the hip replacement he had been putting off for a decade.
Alzheimers took his mind and spirit away and, to be honest, I grieved that loss years ago and was glad to hear yesterday that his body finally followed along.
Hans wasn't perfect; no man is. I could probably come up with a list of his faults if I thought about it, but they would pale in the his totality. Anyone who knew Hans was better for it, me very much included.
Rest in peace, Hans.
The lapsednewsguy owes his grandpa a lot, which is sort of surprising considering that we couldn't have been more different. I run my mouth about everything, while my grandpa (whom I always called Hans for some reason) usually held his tongue unless it was really, really, really important. He endured the Great Depression and the slaughter of World War II in the Pacific and was grateful for the chance to raise his family and have a home. I still seethe because my boss fucked me out of a raise eight years ago.
He came home from the Pacific and worked for his pop at the family grocery store as a meat cutter. When Pop died in the early 50s, the grocery store succumbed to supermarkets, the suburban exodus and more than a few unpaid accounts receivable. Hans moved on to plumbing. He bartended on the side, too. By the he was 40, he had seven kids and a wife at home. He never laid in bed with a cold and often nodded off as he untied his boots after a long day on the job.
I can honestly say that the only mean words I ever heard from him came when he and Grandma fought (which wasn't rare and never amounted to much) and when I would get in a hurry on a jobsite and cut a piece of PVC too short.
He was a guy whose respect you treasured, not because his standards were high but because he did things the right way...no matter how long it took. One of the great honors of my life came on my graduation day from IU, when he braved the steep home stands of Memorial Stadium to watch me get my bachelor's degree...about three weeks before he finally got the hip replacement he had been putting off for a decade.
Alzheimers took his mind and spirit away and, to be honest, I grieved that loss years ago and was glad to hear yesterday that his body finally followed along.
Hans wasn't perfect; no man is. I could probably come up with a list of his faults if I thought about it, but they would pale in the his totality. Anyone who knew Hans was better for it, me very much included.
Rest in peace, Hans.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Reason No. 1,282,388 why I don't take conservatives seriously anymore
In a profession that rewards hypocrisy, Gov. Goodhair deserves a Lifetime Achievement Award.
I hope Kay Bailey Hutchison stomps Rick Perry like a narc at a biker rally.
I hope Kay Bailey Hutchison stomps Rick Perry like a narc at a biker rally.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
And?
So Pres. Carter said that some of the rabble rising up against every fucking thing Obama does is rooted in racism?
And?
I awoke in my very comfortable hotel room this morning to hear MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and company pooh-poohing the former president for making the most obvious point in the history of American political discourse. I'm guessing Scarborough is behind the whisper campaign at Politico.com and other mainstream outlets pimping him to run for President in 2012, so he doesn't want the rednecks and mouthbreathers to think he doesn't agree with them.
There are teabaggers genuinely concerned about our nation's finances, to be certain, but they are inextricably tied to others who can't stand the idea of a charismatic black man in charge and they are doing everything they can to dehumanize the president in the eyes of the public.
The loyal opposition, which hounded Bill Clinton incessantly for eight years (as was their right), used to be a very effective harassing tool for the corporate Republican establishment. The problem today is that rabble is taking on a life of its own and the corporate Republican masters are losing their control. The way things are going, whomever wants the GOP nomination in '12 is going to be the teabagger candidate (Palin and Huckabee leap to mind).
A teabagger candidate would be Nirvana for Obama. They would be lucky to crack 35 percent in the election and Obama would cruise to reelection.
My only fear is that some teabaggers would get so distraught that they would try to foment armed rebellion, on the mistaken assumption that the (white) people secretly support them. They would be wrong, of course, and only succeed in becoming martyrs to a cause rooted in fantasy and ignorance.
One Timothy McVeigh was despicable enough; a thousand would be a senseless tragedy.
And?
I awoke in my very comfortable hotel room this morning to hear MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and company pooh-poohing the former president for making the most obvious point in the history of American political discourse. I'm guessing Scarborough is behind the whisper campaign at Politico.com and other mainstream outlets pimping him to run for President in 2012, so he doesn't want the rednecks and mouthbreathers to think he doesn't agree with them.
There are teabaggers genuinely concerned about our nation's finances, to be certain, but they are inextricably tied to others who can't stand the idea of a charismatic black man in charge and they are doing everything they can to dehumanize the president in the eyes of the public.
The loyal opposition, which hounded Bill Clinton incessantly for eight years (as was their right), used to be a very effective harassing tool for the corporate Republican establishment. The problem today is that rabble is taking on a life of its own and the corporate Republican masters are losing their control. The way things are going, whomever wants the GOP nomination in '12 is going to be the teabagger candidate (Palin and Huckabee leap to mind).
A teabagger candidate would be Nirvana for Obama. They would be lucky to crack 35 percent in the election and Obama would cruise to reelection.
My only fear is that some teabaggers would get so distraught that they would try to foment armed rebellion, on the mistaken assumption that the (white) people secretly support them. They would be wrong, of course, and only succeed in becoming martyrs to a cause rooted in fantasy and ignorance.
One Timothy McVeigh was despicable enough; a thousand would be a senseless tragedy.
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