Copyright © 2010 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2010 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings.
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Rubio grabs Arizona amendments as a fig leaf. Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio now likes the Arizona "papers, please" law, now that a little sandpaper has been applied to it. Only, according to the Miami Herald, the amendments "don't appear to have eliminated the shortcomings Rubio laid out in West Miami" in late April. "Not carrying immigration papers -- the provision that Rubio said evoked a 'police state' -- remains a crime." As long as our princples are intact, right, Marco? Nothing to do with having it both ways, right? Holding their breath to oblivion? So the more right wing elements of the Utah GOP have opted against their incumbent Senator Bob Bennett, going instead for someone who likes tea. Why aren't there more pragmatists questioning this approach? You have newly-independent Charlie Crist leading Rubio in polls; you have the Republicans losing NY-23 to a Democrat after veering further to the right; and prior to all this, the independent Joe Lieberman beating the Democrat, Ned Lamont. If the GOP is really going to pursue these extremes, they need to go whole hog to support these candidates; otherwise they risk losing the seats. And when I say whole hog, I mean whole hog: they need party leaders and party Senators out there campaigning, relentlessly. Talking about the importance of the values their candidates espouse, expressing true commitment. Nothing lukewarm. Of course, they'll invariably veer from the planned text, and say something stupid which will be used against them, but there's no sense in them speaking in code that the independents won't understand come voting time. What happened before Tasers? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe stupidity, running on fields during games, and public drunkenness existed before Tasers. Somehow the police were able to resolve all these conditions in spite of being limied to tools such as persuasion and hand cuffs. These days, not so much. Is anyone going to really try and tell me that there's a new breed of a**hole citizens out there, for which the old training manuals no longer apply? Give a guy a hammer, and he starts looking for nails. 
While you're still awake. A little Paul Hindemith for ya. Bad store layouts. Every foodie in NYC knows about Kalustyans, a food store focused on Indian foods, at Lex and 28th. Basmati, lentils, all the herbs and spices, and so on; but not just Indian, they've also carried a diverse range of olive oils, Turkish foods, Konimex condiments. I've been going there for at least 20 years, and have always felt like I knew it like the back of my hand. Some time between my last visit and today, they'd take over space in the next storefront and opened up space above, making space in the aisles more open (good) and allowing them to put stock in different places (mixed blessing here). The organization leaves something to be desired... Perhaps it was an inventory turnover ratio thing, but all the naan and parata were relegated to a very small space which was difficult to encounter naturally. And the papadum (I know, it's not really a bread) was in a completely different place, over by refrigerated foods as well as spices. The singular example of bad layout was the tagines. I'd never known Kalustyan's to carry tagines, but apparently they do. And they're up on the second floor, by some kind of food counter. All the other pots, pans, and the like are down on the ground floor. I guess this is what they think of Moroccans, I don't know. I'd have thought that the tagines would go with other pots and pans, and possibly (because of how glorious they look in a row) out front and center. But no.
He's like George Clooney in "Up In The Air." Only it's real estate, and he processes you through your eviction. No grandiose, Cromwellian proclamations of "necessary evil," because it didn't have to be this way. I'm wrapping up Yves Smith's ECONned, and it's pretty clear that the sub-prime "crisis" was fueled by a financial industry that was in high demand of mortgage-backed paper. As represented in the article, this reaper is non-committal about blame, seeing it in many sources. And he knows it's tough on his assignments:
Of course, it's too bad the Democrats weren't suitably admonished by the Republicans about steamrolling health care reform through.
He left his keys in the ignition of the Nissan Pathfinder. Yes. But let's be clear, even though the key to his house was on the key ring, it's not like it had a tag with his address on it. I hope this isn't game theory, lulling us into confidence that all the terrorist strikes to come will be similarly unsophisticated: "And then, all my friends will clap really hard, and the vibrations will jostle the propane tanks, and then, they'll take off their auto shop coveralls, each with their name patch, and deposit them in a..." The guy apparently thought that firecrackers would explode each other and produce the cumulative effect of setting off all the gasoline and propane, as well as a bunch of non-explosive fertilizer. We got lucky.
The "all the terrorists have to do is get lucky once" theory. I can't help but wonder if that's what some of the terrorists are banking on; Saturday's attempt in Times Square seemed inept to me early on... not just the failure to get the Pathfinder to explode, but to leave the VIN on the engine block? How could the perp not know there was a VIN on the engine block? And then to try to make your escape through JFK? It's a new breed of amateurs. They have to be taken seriously, of course, but this is nothing like the detailed planning which went into 9/11. Perhaps an enterprise as complex as 9/11, with so many participants and so on is no longer possible; maybe al Qaeda has to resort to small-change efforts like this. But it's still surprising that it's so unsophisticated. Perhaps they are truly counting on getting lucky occasionally; no doubt we'll get more insight from the arrests made in Pakistan.
Feed your MP3 player. The Trashcan Sinatras' new single "People" is a free download from Amazon, for about a week from this date. Share the link, a loaf of bread, a walk in the park, and enjoy! This is the link to send your friends: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003BMFLVC/
Flat out wonderful. Ignore at your own peril. "Not a spill, it's a continuous ooze." That's the no-holds barred characterization from Florida Governor Charlie Crist, about what we face in the Gulf of Mexico. (Of course, it's a politician's real job to understand the truth as best as possible, and convey it. Sometimes that means hugging a President who brings relief.) But this problem isn't going away, as it could take three months to cap that faucet:
I know that we're drilling because of our dependence on fossil fuels. And I know that we can't readily do a 100% switch to alternatives. And I know that people can't quickly pack up and move to a metropolitan area that has mass transit. And I know that new, effective mass transit systems don't develop like Polaroids. But can't we at least take some steps in these directions? Pump up your bike tires maybe, and bolt a basket to the handlebars for the times you only need a half gallon of milk and some produce? What would a reborn Washington Times look like? The Unification Church is trying to sell it, and here's an idea of the financial value it might represent to potential investors (emphasis added):
The nature of the paper will be a function of who the investors are, of course. In his book What Liberal Media? Eric Alterman made a strong case that the political biases of the reporters mattered little in comparison to the biases of those further up the food chain, i.e., the owners. Right now, the linked article reports that the Washington Times has deliberately cut both staff and circulation in order to cut costs. If former editor John Solomon really wants to rebirth it under a new name, I'm not sure what he thinks he'll be getting. I would presume that the existing equity is tied up in its current name, and I'd be reluctant to rebrand it. But who wants to invest more in a money-losing proposition and just swap out the name? And if, alternatively, you really wanted to change the name, why would you need the old plant? Why not just rebuild a web-operation from the ground up, and charge for admission? If you're going to be losing money anyway... I don't see how this deal works in any fashion but as a millionaires' toy. (Hat tip to Romenesko.)
Remember, Fox NEWS isn't biased. They might allow that their evening hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are biased, but they're not really news; they're commentators. That, of course, is why Fox highlights them in ad celebrating their ratings with the headline "The Most Powerful Name In News." So I guess O'Reilly and Hannity's shows count as news shows. Except when they don't. Do I have it right, Roger?
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