Some old (and hard) lessons and a new-found respect

This from Sweetness and Light:

… Mr. Ford, on Oct. 29, 1975, gave a speech denying federal assistance to spare New York from bankruptcy. The front page of The Daily News the next day read: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.”
Mr. Ford never explicitly said “drop dead.” Yet those two words, arguably the essence of his remarks as encapsulated in the immortal headline, would, as he later acknowledged, cost him the presidency the following year, after Jimmy Carter, nominated by the Democrats in New York, narrowly carried the state.

In the speech, the president said: “The people of this country will not be stampeded. They will not panic when a few desperate New York officials and bankers try to scare New York’s mortgage payments out of them.”

Though he did later approve a federal loan to the city which was repaid with interest, the speech had a tremendous impact:

Howard J. Rubenstein, the public relations executive who was an adviser to Mayor Abraham D. Beame, recalled that the speech “galvanized New York like I’ve never seen before.” Mr. Rubenstein still has a framed copy of the headline on his office wall.
With 30 years’ hindsight, some of the players say that if Mr. Ford had acquiesced to the city’s appeals months or even weeks earlier, New York might never have recovered.

All this from a President whom the American Experience notes somewhat disapprovingly, “The president was reduced to governing by veto: sixty-six times he exercised his veto power.”

Like this is a bad thing?

And lastly, this prescient quote from the Nebraskan by birth and Michigander by choice:

“You know, the President of the United States is not a magician who can wave a wand or sign a paper that will instantly end a war, cure a recession or make a bureaucracy disappear.”

The Optimism is contagious

My bigger fear is that the bailouts will "work" in preventing a total meltdown by ensuring that future generations of Americans will come to know the grinding pain of a system that will give us permanent and almost total government control and responsibility for nearly everything in America.

More here from Riehl World View.

Commenter Picture Caption of the Day

... courtesy Awful Announcing

"McNabb: When am I going back in, Coach?
Reid: I told you already...after the first overtime.
McNabb: Awwww, hell no! I'm not falling for that again!"

- Adam

A nice steaming cup of coffee to go along with our nice steaming pile of Pravda every morning

If Congress is going to force Detroit into making cars that aren’t yet market-viable and which may not even be good for the environment in return for taxpayer largesse, then what’s in store for a bailout of newspapers? You scoff? It’s already here, Mac.

Seven legislators from the area served by The Bristol Press and The Herald in New Britain today wrote to the state Department of Economic and Community Development to ask for its help in preventing the closure of the newspapers.

And this:

The Bristol Free Press and the Herald in New Britain are owned by the financially troubled Journal Register Company of Yardley, Pennsylvania. Now, Connecticut's Governor and Attorney General say they want to help keep the papers going. Governor M. Jodi Rell and Richard Blumenthal have said they would be interested in taking part in a bipartisan effort to save the papers.

Yep, they went there. It’s getting to be anymore that the clearest thin-slicing indication that a maneuver by elected officials is a guaranteed piece of crap is when the “b”-word is used.

Its encouraging to see the noble 4th estate grovel and amazingly in this letter to the DECD the state legislators point out that, ya know, having a newspaper cover all the wonderful ethics legislation we’re trying to pass, like…. campaign finance reform! (the federal version of which exempts news outlets from restrictions on opining on candidates) is needed so our “independent” and “free press” can dither on unchecked about the wonderfulness of their benefactors, er, elected officials. Or else?

About as shameless a plea for boosterism as we can imagine.

Bailouts of the banks, insurance firms and of potentially the Detroit 3 anger us at both pragmatic and ideological levels. A potential bailout of a newspaper(s), however, strikes a more fundamental constitutional chord about the role of government with respect to a free and independent press and its clear from the letter linked to above that the politicians involved have not a clue as to where that line is drawn.

Quickies

Strange and dare we say, intentionally misleading MSNBC article titled, “Bush administration ignored clear warning” regarding the financial crisis and provided only the following to make its case: “Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job." Alrighty, then.

Maybe it’s their bad teeth. Simon Warr, the chairman of the British Lap Dancing Association, hoping to dodge some licensing difficulties had this to say with a presumably straight face while at a legislative hearing and being questioned on the specific intent of lap dancing: "All right, the entertainment may be in the form of nude or semi-nude performers, but it's not sexually stimulating."

And now it is time for the airing of grievances. Tree not up, lights not up - Yeah, for whatever reasons (well, we know a couple) we just aren’t feeling the Christmas spirit this year. Call it Fatigue fatigue. So in lieu of the traditional how about a little Festivus? Cyber Tuesday shopping here.

After reading about a diverted flight from San Salvador to LAX that sat on the tarmac in Ontario for 9-1/2 hours on Sunday because of fog at LAX we were reminded of some soul-searching the airlines did to combat the problems of keeping the passengers onboard the plane during extended tarmac timeouts. All this navel-gazing accomplished nothing as the airlines and some goofy passenger bill of rights ignored the obvious.



Folks, chilling out the natives isn’t really all that difficult when common sense logic and fermentation are applied. How this wasn’t even brought up as a possible solution was baffling.

We would’ve thought that driving while wearing that mascot head would’ve been difficult enough

Penn State’s mascot or rather the senior who plays Penn State’s mascot, James Sheep, was arrested on a DUI charge in the wee hours prior to the Michigan St. game on Nov. 22 and his status to make the trip out west for the Rose Bowl is in doubt.

The officer who made the stop saw that the vehicle was overloaded, with passengers piled onto each other and blocking the driver's view.

And just when you thought things could not get any more embarrassing…

At the Michigan State game, the final home game of the year, Sheep was honored for serving as the mascot since January 2007.

No word yet on whether JoePa will have Sheep running gassers with the mascot outfit on as punishment.

H/T: AOL Fanhouse

Failure to plan is planning to fail (UPDATED)

New York Giant wide receiver, Plaxico Burress, is being charged with two felony counts of criminal possession of a weapon after accidentally shooting himself Friday night at a Manhattan nightclub.

After learning that New York state law allows for a jail sentence of 3-1/2 to 5 years for illegal possession of a firearm, we wondered if Plax might have been better served by actually committing a crime with said firearm whereby his potential jail time would be reduced to 2-3 years with time off for good behavior.

UPDATE #1: ESPN Radio would appear to have difficulties grasping some basic journalistic practices.
On the way home from work today, we got a full dosage of Plaxico and his unregistered gun on good ol’ AM 800. Here’s how the shooting was described during a Sports Center update: “Burress suffered an accidental gunshot to his leg in a Manhattan nightclub over the weekend”. Of course, this is not an innacurate statement but it is misleading because they leave out one very important detail. Maybe they’re trying to save Plax some embarassment but the fact that they failed to mention that the reason why it was an accidental shooting was because Burress shot himself seemed rather odd.

And then afterwards during regular programming, the host had Steven A. Smith patched-in via phone and who wrote a column on the affair and asked Smith, “In your column, you put the blame squarely on Plaxico Burress. Why did you do that?” It didn’t take Steven A. more than a moment or two to collect himself and respond, “Because no one else shot him.”

One can only blame the IT department for so much.

What…? They didn’t get the memo?

B-Daddy reminds us that the humane treatment of prisoners, the potential closing of Gitmo, the withdrawal pact with Iraq, our next President over whom the world will swoon, etc., etc. matters not to some people. Read more here.

Hey, did we mention the Lakers are 14-1?

Charger G.M., A.J. Smith has stated in public that head coach Norv Turner will be returning next season. We’re not sure how anyone can look at this 4-8 season thus far and the effort the Chargers gave in their 22-16 defeat at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons and make that an ironclad guarantee especially considering that the score is no indication of how soundly and thoroughly the Chargers were beat.

The Falcons because of some boneheaded miscues of their own probably left 10 points out on the field and if not for some turnovers created by the Charger D, including a fumble return for a touchdown by Eric Weddle, this one could’ve been a blowout.

The big, fast, aggressive team that we’ve seen the past 2-3 years has been replaced by one that is completely passive and reactive in nature.

We’ve never met Norv Turner but if that old adage of teams adopting the personality and nature of their head ball coach is true then were pretty darn sure Turner is an uninspiring, retiring, bland and completely predictable individual because that is exactly how the Chargers played yesterday.

Well, almost predictable. At one point in the first half, LT was on the sidelines and Norv dialed-up a very nicely conceived and executed screen pass for… backup HB/FB Jacob Hester(?) LT promptly returned to the field of play for the next play only to be ran between the tackles. Got us there, Norv. Sending in Hester for a play call we’ve been dying to see more of with LT caught us completely off guard.

We saw some fight and some scrap left in this team as evidenced by that goal line stand at the end of the 1st half (which was the first time in 6 consecutive situations where the defense did not give up a score to the opposing team’s offense at the end of a half) but it appeared to be that of the last dying gasp nature rather than that of a team that is prepared to turn the corner and make real strides towards improvement.

The offensive line was terrible, the linebacking corp MIA and for the life of us, we cannot understand why the Charger defensive coordinator, whomever he may be, insists on playing zone in the defensive secondary when the personnel has never shown, through the years, any propensity towards being able to pick it up and… QB Philip Rivers is still yelling over to the sidelines to get the play in on time before the play clock expires.

We were 50/50 on the firing of Marty two seasons ago but we were 100% confident that the Turner hiring decision was a horrible one. The justification of “continuity” rang hollow and appeared to be cover for the Charger brass waiting so long after the season ended to sack Marty and being stuck with the leftovers as we were supposed to be more acceptant of the Turner hire because he installed the offense as offensive coordinator back in ’01 that the Chargers had been running to that point.

So, now what? As much of a tremendous talent evaluator that we believe Smith is, this mess is his doing and because of his massive ego, axing his guy Turner probably won’t happen. So we’re stuck with a lame duck head coach – not a lame duck in the eyes of the GM but in the eyes of the players who don’t respond to his style or personality and who will now be playing out the string until they or their coach is kicked out of town. Good times.

Picture of the Day

Bollywood actor, Imran Khan, at the Nov. 26 Bombay primiere of “The President is coming” and where just blocks away at the very same time, 10 Muslim extremists began a horrific 3-day terror spree, would appear to have an idea regarding who it is that is ultimately responsible for those murderous acts of terror.

More here on a shared trait of Bolly- and Hollywood actors' predisposition to blame everyone but the culprit.

H/T: Instapundit

The Medium is the Message

Since we’re grading on a curve here, we are cautiously optimistic about Obama’s cabinet and advisor picks. But if us raping and pillaging brigands on the right feel this way, we got to figure our friends on the other side of the aisle might feel a little uneasy about all of Obama’s unchange-i-ness so we checked in at the nerve center of the online liberal-Left, Daily Kos and found unrestrained outrage… actually we didn’t. We found some giving of thanks… not for the troops or for this wonderful country of our but thanks that their guy won the election and for the defeat of conservative ideas because, well, they suck! OK, then.

And we did find this article from Kathleen Parker of WaPo who seems to typify the efforts of the journalisti of lowering of the bar of change to help smooth things out for the President-elect. Besides the near pathological obsession many liberals have with making sure the rest of the world “likes us”, which it is implied that that through the sheer awesomeness of Obama is guaranteed to happen, she argues that Obama’s “style” is change in and of itself and specifically with respect to the African-American community.

Again, setting aside specific policies, Obama's example could have society-altering effects, especially in the African American community. By his example, he telegraphs the following messages: Being smart is good; education is good; being a good father is essential. Being an egghead is cool.

We heard this line of reasoning during the campaign and we are not entirely disbelieving of it (recall the YouTube video of several black teens “stepping” and rapping off lines like, “because of Obama, I am going to own my own business” and “because of Obama, I am going to go to college” – sorry, no link, can’t find it.). Maybe the mere fact that a black man who exudes a somewhat detached wonkishness and nerdiness and who will be the President of the United States in a couple of months can take a wrecking ball to the notion that getting good grades is “acting white”.

If Bill Clinton can raise the bar for what constitutes as “having sex” for millions of teenagers back in the 90s, lowering the bar for Obama and “change” means he will merely have to serve as a surrogate father to millions of African-American youths who are absent their own father. For the sake of Obama’s apologists and water-carriers in the media, we wish him well.