Saturday, February 26, 2011

Saturday Double Feature Moving Picture Show

A pair of doves, similar to the ones that inspired Aunt Snow






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Friday, February 25, 2011

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Orbpocalypse Now

(These are from Monday Night.)




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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

This Is Our House - Let Us In!

Pics and video from Tuesday, February 22, 2011 rally to oppose Ohio Senate Bill 5 and support unions around the country.




Ohio
Rally
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: Capitol Building
Address: 77 S High - Columbus, OH. 43215









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Monday, February 21, 2011

Earliest Known Orb Photograph?

Another Kiwi sent me this in the mail. Could he be right?


From the internets, I've learned that this photograph of Sir Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel and Orbs was taken by Friedrich Rehberg. Due to the difficulty of Orb photography back in November of 1814, further processing was performed by James Godby, who stippled the final result into shape.

Sir Friedrich is famous because he discovered Uranus.

He also composed twenty-four symphonies, which were no doubt the inspiration for this band I saw this weekend here in Columbus, The Spikedrivers.


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Saturday, February 19, 2011

I Heard It Through The Jokeline 2



An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that. There are no guarantees that labor contracts, including contracts governing the most basic rights of unions, can't be renegotiated, or terminated for that matter. We hold elections to decide those basic parameters. And it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker's basic requests are modest ones--asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do. He is also trying to limit the unions' abilities to negotiate work rules--and this is crucial when it comes to the more efficient operation of government in a difficult time. When I covered local government in New York 30 years ago, the school janitors (then paid a robust $60,000 plus per year) had negotiated the "right" to mop the cafeteria floors only once a week. And we all know about the near-impossibility of getting criminal and morally questionable--to say nothing of less than competent--teachers fired.


John Cole wrote a post responding to Andrew Sullivan that I believe applies as well here:
3.) The fundamental thing you need to understand when talking to deficit hawks is that when they say something is painful or that cuts will hurt people, you need to recognize that what they really mean is that the cuts will be painful TO SOMEONE ELSE and hurt people THEY DON’T KNOW AND WILL NEVER MEET. That’s why it’s so easy to be a condescending asshole about the budget. That’s why it takes nothing to suggest raising the retirement age for Social Security. That’s why, after taking a month off from writing on the internet to recover from a cold, he can tell people who work back-breaking manual labor every day of their god damned lives for much less money than he or McMegan earn that they should “contribute” more to their health care costs.

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Friday, February 18, 2011

I'm BACK!






I blame Blooger. And that execrable lying fuck Scott Walker.

Stand up for your rights, union people of Wisconsin!


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Wisconsin news

Via Wonkette, I've learned that all 14 of Wisconsin's Democratic State Senators have skipped town to avoid Scott Walker's attack on state workers. Furthermore, they have awarded Lena C. Taylor one (1) internet:


Wisconsin’s State Senate Democrats are now officially hiding from police in a “secure location outside the Capitol.” So they must no longer be in the state, because when you think Wisconsin, you think danger.
The porpoise of my posting all this? For ZRM, this comment:

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Thursday, February 17, 2011

We Should Recite Our Lies In Bow Ties

BDG BDR mentioned that Dana Milbank has a new man-crush (Chris Christie, all the cool people are certain he's the next big thing).

Thia led me to the War Criminal Post, where George Effing Will is pimping another G.O.P. governor:




At first, the banquet audience at the 38th annual Conservative Political Action Conference paid Mitch Daniels, Indiana's Republican governor, the conventional compliment of frequently, almost reflexively, interrupting his address with applause.

Yo, peeps, this is how, a real wordsmith crafts, an opening sentence.

But as they realized they were hearing something unconventional - that they were being paid the rare compliment of being addressed as reflective adults - they reciprocated his respect with quiet attention to his elegant presentation of conservatism for grown-ups.

Get real, Will. This is CPAC. That audience fell into alcohol/HFCS induced comas while waiting for the next Andy Breitbart/birther wingnut to get on stage and bite the head off another chicken.

America, he said, faces "a survival-level threat," a new "Red Menace" consisting of ink. No enterprise, public or private, "can remain self-governing, let alone successful, so deeply in hock to others as we are about to be." Some people accept or "even welcome" a "ballooning of the state" that consigns America to "a gray parity" with other profligate nations. Such people believe history is controlled by a "leftward ratchet," always - never mind "the Reagan Interruption" - moving toward a more powerful state.

1-2-3! 1-2-3! Genuflect to Reagan, complain about our national debt, and with Reagan-style convenient memory, forget that Ronald Wilson Reagan quadrupled that debt.
Americans must say "an affectionate thank-you" to the last century's major social welfare programs - then sunset them, after those Americans "currently or soon to be enrolled" in them have passed from the scene. Social Security and Medicare should be updated to conform to Americans' "increasing longevity and good health." Medicare 2.0 should respect Americans' dignity and competence by empowering them to make "their own decisions" by delivering its dollars directly to individuals and expecting them to "pay for more of their routine care like the discerning, autonomous customers we know them to be."

The standard "Let's pay for our wars for plutocrats, tax cuts for plutocrats, and disastrous deregulation for plutocrats by stealing from Social Security."

To spur economic growth, we must "untie Gulliver": "The regulatory rainforest through which our enterprises must hack their way is blighting the future of millions of Americans." Barack Obama's recent executive order to prune the forest was, Daniels said, akin to the world's leading rap music producer suddenly expressing alarm about obscenity. And Daniels thinks conservatives' "first thought" should be about "those still on that first rung of life's ladder":

"Upward mobility from the bottom is the crux of the American promise, and the stagnation of the middle class is in fact becoming a problem, on any fair reading of the facts. Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some."

Funny, G. W. Bush and our deregulation-created financial bubble seem to have gone down the memory hole. Along with 30 years of GOP class warfare on behalf of the wealthiest 2% of Americans.

Author of the most succinct characterization of the Obama agenda ("shock-and-awe statism"), Daniels has practiced the lean government he preaches. Under him, Indiana has its fewest state employees since 1978, the nation's lowest state-government employment per capita, the lowest effective property taxes and the third-lowest per capita spending. So he has the credentials to counsel conservatives about the need to compromise in the interest of broadening the constituency for difficult reforms.
...
He reminded his listeners that when he was serving Ronald Reagan, the president admonished him and others that "we have no enemies, only opponents." The case for less strident conservative rhetoric is practical: "As we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us, just a bit."

Do not, Jefferson warned, undertake great departures on "slender majorities." Conservatives criticized Democrats for doing just that regarding health care.

Here is our closing crescendo of convenient amnesia. Both Will and Daniels remember that Daniels served in the Reagan Administration. Neither can remember that Daniels was G. W. Bush's OMB director from January 2001 through June 2003. I wonder why?

George Will has lied about global warming in the pages of the Washington Post. I say eliminating any mention of Mitch Daniels' record as OMB Director is equally dishonest.


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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Nutkin Sings The Blues




This squirrel and several others in neighboring yards were singing their heads off in German Village the other day. There were no cats or other obvious reasons for panic. I used some of the magical powers the orbs have granted me to provide you with a translation:



Update: A squirrel, a nest, and a jet walk into a bar...


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Sunday, February 13, 2011

High Temperature Eye of Round








I suspected that my cheap old apartment oven might have trouble retaining the heat after it was turned off, and covered each of the stove top burners with water-filled pots to compensate. Nonetheless, when I took the eye of round out, the oven was cool, and the roast was rare. Luckily, I like it that way.
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Saturday, February 12, 2011

Chillin'

Here are a couple of the robins I mentioned in the last post. They seemed very depressed by the cold weather, in contrast to the sparrows.






UPDATE: Youtube provides Youtubers with helpful feedback:

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Friday, February 11, 2011

Where are the effing butterflies?






P.S. I don't see the nuthatches much in downtown Columbus. Robins and sparrows are here in abundance.
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