Still, the irony of spending big to publicize the country's frugal ways was troubling for Commissioner Bill Dwyer, board chairman, who nonetheless joined in the unanimous approval of the amount Wednesday.
"We got our hand out (for more money) on one hand, and we're spending money with the other," Dwyer said. "That's a dilemma that we face."
But through all of it, some of us persevered. We made the hard economic choices. We fought off eviction by keeping Linda Mustaine juiced up with mai tais at Applebee's happy hour. We sheltered our dirtbike assets in Kyle's shed, under a tarp, to stave off the repo men. We spent countless hours applying for the credit cards that would see us through. We made the wise economic decision to stop paying our stupid mortgages -- because we calculated that when the rainy day came, Washington would come to its senses and clear up the tab.
I wish I could take credit for it, but it took the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of us in the subprime community, working with the financial industry and public sector officials. Unfortunately, there is another group out there who is working to kill important financial bailout reforms just as they are sparking a renaissance in the American housing market. I'm speaking, of course, of the so-called "Tea Party" tax protesters.
More here from Iowahawk.
KT, sees and displays the upside to our pitiable hand-wringing over the the health of the President, here.
Having said that, I'm a proud American and infinitely aware that if I were a Cuban citizen and were to write an article such as this about the Cuban leadership, I could be jailed. Furthermore, I'm proud that the system set up by our founding fathers, while not exactly intact today, was never dependent on just one great leader per epoch. These things remain in question for the romantic heroes of Cuba and Venezuela. I consider mentioning this, and perhaps should have, but I've got something else on my mind.
Here's the history Penn ignores, courtesy of journalist James Kirchick: “Not long after the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro ordered the internment of gay people in prison labor camps, where they were murdered or worked to death for their 'counterrevolutionary tendencies.' Over the gate of one of these camps were the words 'Work Will Make Men Out of You,' an eerie homage to the welcome sign at Auschwitz instructing Jews on their way to the gas chambers that 'Work Will Make You Free.' ...
“Raul Castro was notorious for ordering the summary execution of ... people whose only crime was their homosexuality.”
For a dead woman, Laura Todd is awfully articulate.
“I don’t think people realize how difficult it is to be dead when you’re not,” said Todd, who is very much alive and kicking in Nashville, Tenn., even though the federal government has said otherwise for many years.
Todd’s struggle started eight years ago with a typo in government records. The government has reassured her numerous times that it has cleared up the confusion, but the problems keep coming.
Then Jimmy Carter took pity on our wretched souls. In 1978 he signed Senate Amendment 3534, a portion of which gave each household permission to produce up to 200 gallons of tax-exempt beer each year
Hey, it’s cool. We’ve lost a few numbers in our time, also, including 1-800-prayforthepresidentshealth.com
Four city employees were awarded $34,300 in damages after a jury found that they were sexually harassed after being ordered to participate in an event where they were exposed to sexually charged conduct, simulated sex acts and lewd comments for which they suffered stress-related problems such as headaches and anxiety.
$34,000…? That’s it? Is that some kind of joke?
The four city employees happen to be San Diego city (male) firemen and the event in question happened to be the 2007 Gay Pride parade.
Oh…
Oh, exactly. Don’t get your panties in a wad. They weren’t even touched.
Some thoughts on the original trial, here.
Sen. Chris Dodd is apologizing today for his comments Friday suggesting that it might be necessary to nationalize some banks for a short time.
The Connecticut Democrat, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, told reporters in Washington that he was surprised by the market’s reaction.
And speaking of protests….
If this clip is any indication, they just don’t make protesters like they used to. A group of students had holed-up in an NYU cafeteria with a list of demands such as greater budget transparency, amnesty for themselves and scholarships for Palestinian students when after 3 days, NYU authorities got fed-up and bum-rushed the proceedings. The video below picks up shortly before this happens.
The clip is over 9 minutes – stick with it – you won’t be disappointed. The unintentional comedy factor is as high as anything you will ever see. And the NYU authorities and security seem to have stumbled upon the perfect solution for handling these types of situations: boredom. Nothing seems to sap the life out of an ADD-addled sit-in like having to confront passive-aggressive behavior from the authorities.
And the poor kid holding the camera and narrating the whole sad and unraveling affair… he apparently grew up in a management seminar echo chamber. By the time his nine-plus minutes of fame are up, he has dropped enough buzz words to fill-out six or seven bullshit bingo cards. Focus on Consensus???... Who wants to be facilitator?
(UPDATE #1):
NEW YORK - Major stock indexes posted broad gains on heavy trading early Tuesday on news that a rogue group of student protesters from New York University had taken over the White House and barricaded themselves in the Oval Office. The Dow posted a 1100 point (17%) gain in the first hour of trading, wiping out nearly all of its loss since January 20 and almost 35% of losses since November 4.
"Finally, we're seeing encouraging signs of sanity in Washington," said UBS market analyst Jane Cohen.
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"In his long list of policy demands, acting President Lozano never mentioned the stimulus package, TARP, or auto industry bailouts," said USB's Cohen. "There has been widespread optimism that he will remain too stoned to remember it."
The mood on Wall Street remained upbeat through noon trading, but Baird analyst Peter McCarthy cautioned investors against undue optimism, pointing to troubling signs of a possible Obama administration return.
and speaking of beer...
Americans may be cutting back their expenses to weather the turbulent economy, but they’re still drinking their craft beer.
As most other business segments contend with negative growth, craft beer makers - small, independent and traditional brewers that produce less than 2 million barrels per year - are enjoying slowed but still-strong sales increases and outperforming the beer industry as a whole.
While craft brewers have seen slowdowns in the volume of their beer consumed at restaurants and bars, business has picked up at the packies as more people spend their free time at home to save money.
… our first protest!
We can’t believe it… it’s finally here. Our chance to, for once and for all, cast off the shackles of Gen-X indifference and apathy and to step into the light to receive the long sought-after approval of our Boomer older brethren.
It’s on – this Saturday on the Embarcadero just north of the Star of India – our chance to express our displeasure with the Generational Theft Act of 2009. Details here.
Protesting porkulus in the morning and beer tasting in the afternoon… we can’t think of a more American way to spend this Saturday than to exercise our 1st and 21st amendment rights, respectively.
We’re tired of all this stimulus and bailout talk….
We just want to post pictures of clouds and stuff….
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Strange weather here lately. Unseasonable humidity over the weekend and the first part of the week has made it feel not unlike the late August/early September monsoon season and which has generated some bizarre cloud patterns.
Was probably about 20 minutes too late for this sunset on Sunday evening.
KT provides a nice comparison of what 3 countries are doing to combat the global credit crunch and economic downturn. One is investing in a proven commodity that people around the world and within their own country will need for the foreseeable future and which will be the primary driver for their expanding economy. The second country is looking to that aforementioned country as a source of capital in order to expand the production of that commodity and the third country…. well, the third country is going to make it easier and quicker for bachelor and bachelorette parties to part with their money in Las Vegas.
Though not specifically mentioned in the bill, the bill does provide $8 billion for unspecified high-speed and intercity passenger rail projects, more than three times as much as allocated in earlier versions of the legislation.
In a town that loves to connect the dots, the funding increase raised suspicions that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who played a key role in writing the bill, pushed for it in order to promote home-state interests, namely the Anaheim-to-Las Vegas project.
A Reid spokesman said the money was not being earmarked for any specific project but would be available on a competitive basis. "This was a major priority for President Obama, and Sen. Reid as a conferee supported it," said Jon Summers.
The Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal has taken some time to actually look at the stimulus package and discovered that, surprise… there are strings attached to the federal funds being thrown at the states. Specifically, Jindal will reject $100 million dollars in unemployment benefits as acceptance of that money will require a permanent change to the state’s unemployment laws that will cost Louisiana businesses money in the long term.
Operational pause: A Republican governor… from Louisiana… of Indian descent… speaking with a slight southern drawl. Doggone it, we love this country.
Jindal sits at one end of the spectrum of GOP governors struggling with the lure of not-so-free money from the Feds while our very own Arnold Schwarzenegger is firmly planted in the Hell Yeah! wing of the Republican Party. Proving that any nod toward fiscal restraint with the recently-passed state budget was pure B.S., Arnie is already pushing for universal health care for all Californians even though it would require new taxes… not the new taxes that just got approved but, you know, newer new taxes. From the National Governors Association meetings this weekend:
“Even though it is against your principles or philosophy,” Schwarzenegger said, he believes officeholders should “do what the people want you to do rather than getting stuck in your ideology.”There’s that word again. The talking points have gone out and so it is that opposing porkulus is clinging stubbornly to an ideology. Never mind the fact that Republicans have abandoning this ideology to thank for the electoral wilderness in which they now wander, it’s as if Schwarzenegger and the rest do not believe that saddling future generations with mountains of debt, serving at the mercy of Chinese creditors and enabling the massive expansion of the federal government bears any pragmatic significance... or consequences.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist also appeared on “Meet the Press” and immediately rejected Jindal's approach.
“There is a national leader; his name is President Obama,” said Crist, who campaigned with Obama for the stimulus package in his state. “I think we do need to be bipartisan. We need to be, in fact, nonpartisan.”
Consider this porkulus' Festivus for the Rest of Us.
H/T: Redistributing Knowledge via Hedgecock.
P.S. We'll try to update this later as there is more here than meets the eye
(UPDATE #1): Even more hastily assembled than the stimulus bill if that is possible, a demonstration in that hot bed of conservative activism was put together last Monday up in Seattle on the eve of the President signing the bill into law. Blogger, Liberty Belle and the proprietor of Redistributing Knowledge, linked above, was responsible for this exercise of 1st amendment rights. KIRO-TV covers the protest here. Dig the lefty throwing out the Nazi salute in protest to the protest. Because objecting to the nationalization of private enterprise is now proof of being a Nazi?
Liberty Belle was on Hedgecock’s show this afternoon talking about the event and her motivation. She teaches at a private non-profit school for the disadvantaged that is supported only by private donations and the proceeds of a thrift shop up there in Seattle. She remarked with some frustration how some of the people she works with were excited to be getting an extra $20 or $30 a month through porkulus when, in reality, real freedom and personal economic expansion comes, in part, through basic reading and writing skills.
We love the subtitle of her blog: Because knowledge is the only commodity that needs redistributing. Stop by her place and show some BwD love when you get a chance. She’s out there making it happen.
ESPN has been planning for a little over a year now, to move a team out to Los Angeles, and have them do the late night Sports Center from a fabulous new facility. Well, that facility is just about complete, and today ESPN announced who was leaving the beautiful state of Connecticut and heading to La La Land.
In the end, immigration activists never made it to the site of yesterday's planned demonstration, a plaza dubbed Friendship Park that sits on a bluff overlooking the ocean at Border Field State Park.
For the first time, Border Patrol agents formally sealed off access on the U.S. side to the plaza, for years a popular meeting place on the U.S.-Mexico border for families to visit through the fence.
“This is a treasured piece of the San Diego landscape where people meet for peaceful reasons,” said John Fanestil, executive director of the Foundation for Change, a nonprofit social-justice group involved in immigration issues. “The fencing will change that landscape.”
With the Oscars this evening we’re wondering if any of the assembled will provide us with any blog fodder. Reason.tv shares our fascination with Hollywood’s fascination with Che.
Dig this:
If embed no worky, click here.
And the band heard in the backround? It's The Clap, of course, performing "Che Guevara T-shirt wearer"
Whether you’re a newspaper trying to sell copies or a Presidential administration trying to sell porkulus, there are a few simple guidelines to be observed and one in particular that we saw played out over the course of 24 hours this past week.
Bad news like the report that came out that median home prices for the county had fallen below $300,000 for the first time in seven years should be placed right next to an article on Obama’s proposed bailout of individual homeowners and should also be festooned with splashy multi-color graphics like the one below and which was seen on the front page of Thursday’s San Diego U-T.
However, news that the housing affordability index is approaching the 50% mark for the first time in years in 15 years and that existing home sales in Southern California have increased 52% from last year should be shuttled off to below-the-fold of the Business section as is what happened on Friday.
The news on housing affordability and increase in home sales is encouraging and is demonstrable of what should be happening in an inflated housing market that is trying to find the bottom without any outside intervention. The increase in home sales is a positive sign that perhaps the housing market is close to finding that bottom and is evidence that the free market is wringing the poison and bad actors our of the system… all of which should be left alone so the whole process can run its course.
Unfortunately, no one wants to hear that when leveraging the “worst economy since the Great Depression.”
Good read here from the WSJ on the President’s fear mongering and his convenient looseness with data.
Mr. Obama's analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a "recovery" package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy's woes might produce better policies.
Nobody.
Pete Farndon of The Pretenders is sampling Steve Miller's first hit song "Living in the U.S.A." in Friday's installment of Radio KBwD and which is the answer to the trivia question.
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — George Mason University senior Ryan Allen dresses in drag and doesn't mind being called a queen — homecoming queen, to be exact. Allen, who is gay and performs in drag at nightclubs in the region, said he entered the homecoming contest as a joke, competing as Reann Ballslee, his drag queen persona.
But he considers the victory one of his happiest moments and proof that the suburban Washington, D.C., school famous for its run to the Final Four a few years back celebrates its diverse student body.
Since the early 1990s, India has cut its poverty rate in half. About 300 million Indians—equivalent to the population of the entire United States—escaped the hunger and deprivation of extreme poverty thanks to pro-market reforms that increased economic activity.
Yet here in America we're turning away from market reform. Says Dalmia, "It's just this great conundrum that at the same time that deregulation and markets have produced such dramatic results in India, they are falling into suspicion in America." Dalmia's prescription for India is at odds with what politicians have chosen to "stimulate" the United States. "What India needs to do is continue apace with its liberalization effort, but expand it to include the poor. Release them from the shackles of government corruption and government bureaucracy."
As carbon-based beings ourselves, could we be outlawed? B-Daddy nails a prediction he made during the campaign season and looks forward to more hijinks and hilarity in the court of law, here.
You know the band but you may not know the song. When we first saw them back in junior high (on the telly – no live shows for us yet), we thought the lead singer was going to be our future punk rock girl friend in high school. Unfortunately, drug problems within the band cut short this quartet's shelf life and we never did get to date the lead singer.
Ladies and Gentleman, straight out of Akron, Ohio by way of London it’s Chrissie Hynde and the original line-up of The Pretenders on the set of Friday’s (this is the episode where Andy Kaufman who was hosting the show kinda loses it) performing "Louie Louie"…. not that "Louie-Louie".
A hearty atta boy to whom ever can guess the name of the song bassist Pete Farndon is riffing on at the beginning of the song.
At Christmas the letters would contain a photo, which we ritually magnetted up on the fridge to chronicle his growth. We reciprocated with our family pictures. I sometimes wondered if he wondered about us like we wondered about him. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't really notice when we didn't receive his annual Christmas letter last year. Yesterday we received a letter from his caseworker explaining why: Bakouma died in December of malaria. He was 14 years old.
President Barack Obama unveiled a $75 billion foreclosure prevention program yesterday aimed at arresting one of the root causes of the nation's economic spiral by helping as many as 9 million homeowners obtain more affordable mortgage terms.
A central part of the program would loosen lending standards at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to allow millions of homeowners to qualify for refinanced loans and take advantage of the opportunity to refinance at a time of historically low mortgage rates. Currently, many homeowners do not qualify for refinancing because the level of equity in their homes has not reached 20 percent.
But in the hardest-hit parts of the country where prices remain in a free fall, including California and Arizona, that may not be enough. “Why cap it at 105 percent (debt to market value ratio)? Why not refinance based on whatever it is?” asked John Courson, president and chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association.
"Mark our words: There's not going to be any more taxes from this body"
Attorney General, Eric Holder, gives a speech at the Justice Department honoring Black History Month and about the 1:00 minute mark dutifully informs us that we are in many ways a “nation of cowards” when it comes to dealing with race.
Full disclosure: We were only able to slog through the first 6 minutes of the clip due to unbearable self-flaggelating whining put upon us by Holder.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
We often, in San Diego, think of pension scandals as being associated with the city. But, as longtime readers know, I think the county's pension enhancements and subsequent scramble is the most under-appreciated fiscal atrocity to have occurred in the last decade in local government.
Thank goodness we’re not the only ones that can’t stand the new “What’s G?” television ads which are fashioned to rebrand the Gatorade image into something younger, edgier and more urban. We imagine this is the sports drink equivalent of promoting a fried-chicken empire out of the ante-bellum South and into the 21st century. “What’s K?”
Hey, look it’s John Carlos and Tommie Smith… ‘cause nothing says counter-culture co-opting like reproducing your iconic image for a sports drink commercial. ("Pops" would be pleased to find out these two gentleman who chose to make a political statement on the world stage at the '68 Olympics have not only been fully mainstreamed but are celebrated as elder statesmen of American culture. We're not sure what got his goat more, that or Hank Iba's handling of the men's basketball team in the '72 Olympics. "Damn Russians shouldn't have even been that close")
And the slasher movie hip-hop dance troupe? Thanks, no.
We’re glad G has finally revealed itself, though, as we couldn’t understand why we could no longer find our favorite flavor, the bug-juice grape awesomeness of Gatorade Fierce… which is now Gatorade Bring It. Can ya feel it?
More here on the matter from slate.com
And a Gatorade commercial more our speed
What accounts for this debacle? You could start with a lack of presidential leadership. Who would have thought the missing player in the first month of the administration would be Barack Obama? He let his signature economic legislation, the stimulus, be shaped by congressional Democrats. He let internal disputes over the difficult question of how to save the banking system result in a disastrous non-announcement of a non-plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week. Before that, he let Geithner become Treasury secretary after cheating on his income taxes, and waived his own ethics rules to appoint a lobbyist as deputy secretary of defense--undercutting his promises to clean up Washington. He allowed Rahm Emanuel to politicize the Census Bureau, losing as a result his commerce secretary-designee, Judd Gregg, an ornament of his professed hope for bipartisanship.
“Why should a waitress in Indiana making $12/hour send her money to Washington to subsidize someone with a pay package equal to $75/hour?”
With the calm, cool and collected voices of their hosts, we’re thinking Reason.tv is like the NPR of conservo-libertarian economics. Golly, dontcha wish these folks got some more air time on the public air waves?
(If video embed is not working, please click on link above. Grazie.)
H/T: Carpe Diem
Aboard Air Force One en route here, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters the White House was open-minded about another similar effort. But he stressed that there are no plans currently in the works for one.
... courtesy Awful Announcing.
"I'll take "Things Joey Porter Wishes He Could Go Back in Time and Prevent" for $800, Alex."- BF
"No Tiki, even with dreds you're still a (dork)"- David
Hey, remember us asking of the whereabouts of that $286 Billion highway bill that was signed into law just 3-1/2 years ago? Well, we think we found it or at least bits and pieces of it.
Design and engineering companies helping to build the nation's highways ran up millions of dollars in inappropriate charges at the expense of taxpayers, including bills for parties, luxury car leases and hefty paychecks for executives, according to auditors.
The bills were described by the firms as overhead costs but should not have been allowed, according to a Feb. 5 report by auditors in the Department of Transportation's inspector general's office.
The report serves as a cautionary tale as the federal government is preparing to quickly disburse billions in stimulus grants to states for highway projects.
Billions of dollars are headed to California from the federal stimulus bill, but state officials won't say how they plan to spend the money.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office refused a request from The Associated Press under the California Public Records Act to list in detail the projects the administration says will benefit. Yesterday, the administration told some state agencies and departments to refuse to comment on where the money would go.
Israel's leading female tennis player, Shahar Peer, was refused a visa for entry into the United Arab Emirates yesterday, as politics threatened the future of one of the world's richest tennis tournaments.
The UAE does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and tournament organisers believe the decision to refuse entry to Peer was a reaction to the recent conflict in Gaza.
Pending further deliberations, the tournament could yet be cancelled, or scrapped in future, as the WTA last night insisted that a prerequisite for tournaments played under its rules was that players had free and equal access to all events. The WTA chief executive, Larry Scott, said he was "deeply disappointed" by the UAE decision to deny Peer a visa.
The editorial board at The Onion opines on just what needs to be done about Africa.
Obama opts to go without a 'car czar'
Task force will oversee auto recovery
The Obama administration has dropped the idea of appointing a “car czar” to oversee the revamping of General Motors and Chrysler and will instead put the task in the hands of a presidential panel, a senior administration official said last night.
For all the talk about how the Fairness Doctrine won’t be re-indoctrinated, there sure are a lot of people talking about how nice the Fairness Doctrine would be.
Talk show host Bill Press thinks the abundance of right-wing talk shows across the dial is because of some grand conspiracy.
Why? Station owners complain they can't get good ratings or make any money with progressive talk, but that's nonsense. In Minnesota, independent owner Janet Robert has operated KTNF (950 AM) profitably for five years. In Madison, Wis., WXXM, 92.1 FM, just scored its highest ratings ever. And KPOJ in Portland, Ore., soared with progressive talk from No. 23 in market ratings to No. 1.
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For years, the Fairness Doctrine prevented such abuse by requiring licensed stations to carry a mix of opinion. However, under pressure from conservatives, President Ronald Reagan's Federal Communications Commission canceled the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, insisting that in a free market, stations would automatically offer a balance in programming.
That experiment has failed. There is no free market in talk radio today, only an exclusive, tightly held, conservative media conspiracy. The few holders of broadcast licenses have made it clear they will not, on their own, serve the general public. Maybe it's time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine -- and bring competition back to talk radio in Washington and elsewhere.
"Well, you either ought to have the Fairness Doctrine or we ought to have more balance on the other side," Clinton said, "because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows and let face it, you know, Rush Limbaugh is fairly entertaining even when he is saying things that I think are ridiculous...."
We’re not picky as to where we park in a grocery store or strip mall parking lot. If we wind up with a spot out in the nether regions of the asphalt Serengeti because we refuse to stalk other patrons returning to their cars then that’s fine by us.
Imagine though our horror at having to haul this packaging all the way back to our hoopdie and suffering the sidelong glances and sneering of the townies along the way.
Alas, a happy ending....
PALO ALTO, CA - An international mathematics research team announced today that they had discovered a new integer that surpasses any previously known value "by a totally mindblowing shitload." Project director Yujin Xiao of Stanford University said the theoretical number, dubbed a "stimulus," could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and Chicago asphalt contracting.
Mr. Emanuel owned up to one mistake: message. What he called the outside game slipped away from the White House last week, when the president and others stressed bipartisanship rather than job creation as they moved toward passing the measure. White House officials allowed an insatiable desire in Washington for bipartisanship to cloud the economic message a point coming clear in a study being conducted on what went wrong and what went right with the package, he said.
For those of you pursuing more amorous ends on Valentine’s Day evening, we present the NBA’s dunk competition from last night as a public service. It’s events like this that make one ever more appreciative of YouTube as the dunk contest, once fresh and innovative some 20 years ago, is best viewed as a 7-minute highlight clip and even that may be stretching it. Now, how’s that for a build-up?
And as a added bonus, here are the highlights from the ’88 competition when, with apologies to Dwight Howard, some of the game’s best players actually participated.
Yeah, 'Nique was robbed.
As readers of this blog have recognized, this is not a personal blog. Its not personal because any paltry readership that is scared up would be bored to tears and wasted-away with any recounting or relating of my procrastinating nature, my fear of committment and destructive personal habits not to mention my constant brushes with the law, struggles with substance abuse, conquering of 2 or 3 life-threatening diseases and my time in the French Foreign Legion. From time to time, though, I will throw out a personal experience.
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I coached 7/8th grade hoops up in North County this year. Technically, I assisted a former co-worker but often times I was the one with the whistle as the head coach would be on travel or at the games of his daughter’s soccer team of which he was also the coach.
Anyway, after getting our butts kicked by 15 points in the very first game of the season, we didn’t lose again as we played our best game of the season on Friday night in the championship game, winning by 22. That steady growth from seeing your guys run around without a clue in the beginning of the season to “seeing the light go on” by the end of the season to where they are running some semblance of the very offense you taught in practice ("hey, that looks strangely familiar – where have I seen that before?") and calling out and switching on picks on defense is one of the most gratifying things you can experience as a coach.
Well, almost the most gratifying.
Quick side note: About half the kids’ parents are first-generation immigrants of Asian descent and I was getting a kick out of being able to witness, first hand, their efforts to figure out just how it is you “thank” the coach at the end of the season. I’ve been showered with gift cards to Starbuck’s and Chili’s in the past but one of the parents, “Richard”, decided to solicit cash from the parents on a team schedule email thread and I was thinking that this would be converted into some form of gift card, as well.
After Friday’s game, Richard presented Coach “Jay” and I with an envelope and inside was a card which contained…. straight cash, homie! Sweet. I felt like a kid again getting hooked up with some green backs from my grandmother for my birthday.
Anyway, each of the kids or the kids’ parents wrote a quick little “thanks, coach” blurb on the card. One of the little thank yous caught me completely off guard because of the source. “Eric” was definetely on the bottom half of our roster when it came to talent and I think I heard him say a grand total of 5 words the entire season. Though not the most physically gifted player on the team, no one listened and executed better in practices and games what was being taught in those practices. Eric made gradual improvement through the season to where, though quite honestly he was still a bit of a liability on offense, he was playing very good on-ball and team defense (and that’s all Coach Dean really cares about).
Eric’s parents wrote the following: “Dear Coach, Thank you so much for a great season! You really brought out Eric’s love for basketball!”
Two things: A) You never know. You have absolutely no idea what sort of impact either for better or worse you have on those around you particularly in that sort of dynamic. And B) If I could bottle the feeling I had after reading that and which I had for the rest of the evening, I’d be a very rich man. Basketball is quite simply the greatest game ever invented. There is not even an argument to be made for any other sport, so to think I played some part in stoking a kid's fire for the game was humbling, indeed.
The season ended too soon. We were playing well but there is always improvements to be made. We still never really ran the against-a-zone offense all that well. I wonder if the kids would want to get together to work on it… you know, have practices? Gosh, so much to learn – so much to work on. Yeah, I’ll start making some phone calls and…..
We now return you to your regularly collegial and fraternal 2nd person-plural programming.
P.S. A secret weapon? I will never know for sure but I have to think that having as all our team’s primary ball-handlers, left-handers, had to give our opposition fits. Even as a lefty myself, I always hated guarding other lefties.
If they ever did a Up in Smoke remake or sequel, we have a scene suggestion:
Police at a Mexican seaport say they have found a pickup truck with body panels and a bumper made from fiberglass — and cocaine.
Officials in the port of Manzanillo dismantled parts of a 1990 pickup truck inside the container and found that its rear bumper and some of its body panels appeared to be made from pressed cocaine base coated in fiberglass.
As president, Barack Obama will restore the American people's trust in their government by making government more open and transparent. Obama will work to reform congressional rules to require all legislative sessions, including committee mark-ups and conference committees, to be conducted in public. By making these practices public, the American people will be able to hold their leaders accountable for wasteful spending and lawmakers won't be able to slip favors for lobbyists into bills at the last minute.
Rep. John Culberson, TX claims the "stimulus" bill must be urgently voted on today -- because Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leaving at 6:00 PM for an 8 day trip to Europe!
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would "have the chance" to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress.
Handing the new administration a big win, House Democrats passed President Barack Obama's $787 billion plan to resuscitate the economy on Friday despite a wall of Republican opposition. The bill was approved 246-183 and sent to the Senate, where a vote was scheduled late Friday afternoon.
We’re back from a highly successful sea trial aboard the USNS CARL BRASHEAR and are attempting to regroup and get caught up with everything and everybody. We hope to have some more posts up later today so please be patient while we get our land legs back.
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This little feller was a long way from home and not enjoying the ship’s demo of its counter measure wash-down system.
A little while back we wrote about the irony of Hollywood rushing to make movies that chronicled the lives of people caught up in one form of totalitarianism but shying away from detailing the same regarding another form of totalitarianism. Well, we are here to confess that we were a tad off base.
While the theaters are seemingly awash in movies depicting the horrors of the Nazis and of the Holocaust, its seems our boy Che is also getting the star treatment.
Just a few years after “The Motorcycle Diaries” young Che’s coming-of-age buddy flick, we get into the meat of Che’s political career in “Che” starring Benecio del Toro… except we really don’t because, dammit, nearly 4-1/2 hours isn’t enough time to get into everything.
The actor who portrayed Che in the movie, Benecio del Toro proves himself to be yet another useful idiot when he grew agitated and walked out on an interview when asked to address some of the inconvenient truths regarding Che, huffing:
"We can't cover it all," Mr. del Toro said. "You can make your own movie. You know? You can make your own movie. And let's see. Do the research."
The research has been done, Mr. del Toro. Among the many books that have been written about Cuba’s gulags is one the linked article mentions and is Against All Hope written by a man, Armando Valladares, who spent years in the Cuban prison system and which is also a book we happened to have read… well, almost. We only made it through about 2/3rds of the 400+ pages as we simply became numb to the repetive nature of Valladares’ imprisonments and the torture and abuse he experienced while in prison.
No Depression, our leftist Americana music monthly went under and to fulfill the terms of our subscription we’ve been getting this Spin magazine-like rag called Paste. Paste, also provides cover by copping the totally lame not-enough-time-in-the-day excuse. Here’s the opening paragraph from the magazine’s review of Che’:
It is simply audacious to make a four-hour plus film about the guerilla struggles of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara without ever really speaking of Guevara’s life as a doctor, his eye-opening motorcycle trips across South America, his family, his relationship with Fidel Castro or his work in the Cuban government.
Our favorite pro-Western lesbian libertina weighs in on the Fairness Doctrine.
The best hosts combine a welcoming master of ceremonies manner with a vaudevillian brashness. Liberal imitators haven't made a dent on talk radio because they think it's all about politics, when it isn't. Top hosts are life questers and individualists who explore a wide range of thought and emotion and who skillfully work the mike like jazz vocalists. Talk radio is a major genre of popular culture that deserves the protection accorded to other branches of the performing and fine arts. Liberals, who go all hushed and pious at Hays Code censorship in classic Hollywood, should lay off the lynch-mob mentality. Keep the feds out of radio!
Health-care resources are not unlimited in any country, even rich ones like Canada and the U.S., and must be rationed either by price or time. When individuals bear no direct responsibility for paying for their care, as in Canada, that care is rationed by waiting.
Canadians often wait months or even years for necessary care. For some, the status quo has become so dire that they have turned to the courts for recourse. Several cases currently before provincial courts provide studies in what Americans could expect from government-run health insurance.
In Ontario, Lindsay McCreith was suffering from headaches and seizures yet faced a four and a half month wait for an MRI scan in January of 2006. Deciding that the wait was untenable, Mr. McCreith did what a lot of Canadians do: He went south, and paid for an MRI scan across the border in Buffalo. The MRI revealed a malignant brain tumor.
Peddling fear overseas.
Ed Balls, the Children's and Schools Secretary, said the downturn was likely to be the most serious for 100 years, and his comments appeared to raise the prospect of a return to the Far Right politics of the 1930s and the rise of Facism.
His warning, in a speech to activists at the weekend, came after a trade union baron warned that far right parties were trying to hijack the campaign for "British jobs for British workers".
Chuck Schumer on some of the finer points of the stimulus bill (don’t worry – clip is short):
Whether or not the American people care about tiny porky amendments in their $1 Trillion stimulus gumbo is somewhat of an unknown and is not germane to Chucky’s words as what struck us about that quote is that Chucky is projecting… he’s projecting himself onto the American electorate.
Simply substitute “I” for “The American people” to get the true flavor of what Chucky is inferring.
Chucky don’t care what you think and the nature of this bill and how it was hammered-out in closed door sessions by only a few select people to where even Blue Dog Democrats were howling, speaks volumes about it’s ultimate intent: political payoff and investment in future votes via radical expansion of the federal government.
We will be out of pocket and out at sea for the next couple of days taking a test spin on one of the resources of O’s war machine.
So, from here on out, if the posts have a dated feel to them it’s because they are. And by dated, we also mean “repeat offenders”. We may recycle some posts we did over the Holidays as the down time people spent with friends and family did not bring the usual traffic to the site… at least that’s what we keep telling ourselves. So if the god-awfulness of a particular post seems reminiscent, be assured, said god-awfulness may not be all that original.
Headline from yesterday's U-T: Judges seek major inmate reduction
A special panel of federal judges tentatively ruled yesterday that California will have to reduce its prison population by tens of thousands of inmates to relieve overcrowding over the next several years.
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