Of course they think it’s a disgrace that the EPA can’t ban lead ammunition, because why can’t we have a back door way to end the shooting sports and hunting as we know it? That would mean Heller and McDonald are without consequence, and we won’t be dismantling New York City’s gun laws in short order. It think that’s what the Times is really afraid of.
Year: 2010
We Return to Better Political News…
I’m currently catching up on the insanity in Delaware, where it seems enough crazy broke out over the last couple of weeks to entertain folks on both coasts nearly 24/7 on Twitter.
But, there’s this bit of interesting news from one of my favorite local political news sites:
That means some Democratic-held seats have become more competitive, most notably Patrick Murphy’s 8th District, which now sits at No. 4 on the rankings. Republican challenger Mike Fitzpatrick’s strong fundraising, an anti-Democratic climate and polling data we’ve seen all contributed to this change. Political forecasters increasingly see the Bucks County race as a battleground. No race has become more competitive since we inaugurated the Power Rankings—it’s moved from No. 10 all the way to No. 4.
This fascinates me, and likely will until the morning after election day. Talking to people on the ground, there’s not much enthusiasm for Fitzpatrick – the GOP candidate looking to reclaim the seat he lost in 2006. However, there is quite a bit of enthusiasm for voting out Patrick Murphy – the Democratic incumbent who ran as a Blue Dog and has voted fairly far left.
Of course, nothing we see here in Pennsylvania compares to the level of political engagement we saw out in Hawaii. Their primary isn’t until next weekend, and yet we saw sign wavers every single time we got in the car (with some exceptions when we were driving late at night). There are signs in lawns and banners hanging off the sides of a huge number of homes. We found it was even common for businesses to get in on the political game by showing their support for various candidates. It’s very clear that the Djou special election win has energized the GOP there, and they are out in full force showing their support for their candidates. On the Democratic side, Mufi Hannemann, the primary challenger to former Congressman Neil Abercrombie for the Governor’s office, appears to have quite the enthusiasm advantage. His volunteers were out everywhere. We never saw any Abercrombie supporters (at least in person – beyond a sign in the yard) until our next to last day. Even then, it was one group doing one sign waving event.
Anschutz Sells Out
We really need to revive American manufactured precision small bores, because the European Manufacturers are going to be increasingly regulated into extinction, or forced to neuter their products. We nearly destroyed Smith & Wesson over less, and now I will never purchase an Anschutz product.
So What’s Happening in the World?
I guess I should find out, and report back. I’ve been so out of it, I haven’t even really been paying attention to e-mail. Obama could have ordered house-to-house confiscation, and I doubt I’d have realized. Definitely haven’t been reading blogs. Many thanks to my guest bloggers for helping fill in for me while I was gone. Normal blogging will resume as soon as I figure out what I’ve been missing.
But one story I will link to is from Marko, and I have to say, after that long flight back from Hawaii, bravo. My parents took the same approach, and even when we were older, it was mostly Imperial Pizza for the family. No fancy places for us.
Back Home
Our Hawaiian adventure is over. Arrived back on the east coast at Newark, New Jersey at 6AM. Too early for the trains to run. Feeling like a day just up and disappeared, I was too tired to wait for them to start running, so we rented a car, one way, at the Newark Airport and high-tailed it down the New Jersey Turnpike for home. The good thing about a two week vacation is you’re kind of glad to be home, and don’t have to keep living out of a suitcase.
The latest Hawaiian vacation trend seems to be taking the kids along. Let me amend that — taking your screaming kids along. You’d almost have a hard time believing we’re in a recession, that people have money for the whole family to go on vacation. We took driving vacations to such exciting destinations as Ocean City, New Jersey, Lewes, Delaware (I never did get to see the screen door factory, though) and one trip to Florida (we drove). When my parents went on vacations that required flying, we got dropped off at the grandparents.
Standards of public behavior for children have also definitely gone downhill. If my parents had taken us on a plane, there’s no way I would be permitted to run up and down the aisles, and wander the plane annoying people. On the flight out, the parents were busy getting liquored up, while their kids were having free reign over the incredibly cramped 757. I think if you have your bratty rug rats with you, and you’d rather drink than parent, you ought to be required to buy drinks for the whole plane. I believe I  will take this up with the FAA.
I think the root of this problem is you can’t smack your kids in public anymore, and parents seem to think there’s no problem with imposing their kids on the rest of the world. I would have gotten smacked if I had behaved like that. It almost makes this tame:
Burning the Koran: Really Stupid
If you want to get media attention, saying you are going to burn the Koran does that just fine. But it is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count them, shall we?
1. It anger Muslims, as opposed to persuading them. There are a lot of serious criticisms that can be made of the Koran and Islam, but burning the Koran isn’t a serious criticism. It’s childish. That pastor should have organized a daylong serious analysis of the Koran’s inconsistencies and the difficulties with reading its text that have been acknowledged by Muslim scholars since around 1000 AD. Would it have converted many Muslims? No. But it would not have generated the…firestorm (yes, that’s the word) of passionate rage. It makes America look stupid.
2. Book burning has become a symbol of fascism. Even the Catholic Church, when it maintained its list of prohibited books, did not burn books. Great: a Christian pastor uses a symbol of the Nazis. What were you thinking? Were you thinking?
3. It provides yet another example of an ignorant Christian pastor for the news media (which is constantly ignoring the many equivalent Islamic radical imams) to use to portray Christianity in a bad light.
4. It almost certainly increases the risk that some Muslim fanatic is going to kill some American somewhere–and there is nothing that we get in return for that increased risk. If some action that we took actually increased the possibility of winning the war against Islamofascism in exchange for that risk, it might be worth considering. But what does burning Korans buy us? Nothing.
I hope this pastor enjoys his brief moment of fame.
An Astonishing Film: Surrogates
I saw the ads when it came out, but my wife and I seldom go to movies. While grading papers today, I watched it on Netflix.
Yes, grading student essays is not so difficult that I can’t watch a movie at the same time. (One quirk of both my daughter and myself that just drives my wife crazy is that we can and often do multitask–doing several things simultaneously.)
Anyway, the essence of the movie (explained in the very well done minute or two opening so I am not spoiling anything for you) is that in the very near future, humans live their entire lives through robotic surrogates that give you all the sensations and experiences–but without the risks. Many people never actually leave their homes–they rely on their surrogates to go everywhere, including doing their jobs. Of course, the robots don’t age, or get fat, or ugly. And if the surrogate dies, you can’t get hurt. Or can you?
To say that this is an astonishing commentary on our technologically deranged society is quite clear. I would blog some more about this–but blogging is perilously close to a surrogate form of social behavior!
There are so many cliched sci-fi premises that have been done again and again and again (such as time travel stories) that to really make it interesting requires a really astonishing piece of writing. And to get some thoughtful social commentary at the same time? Excellent!
The Obama Administration is keeping up appearances – Health Care Edition
Once again, the Secretary of HHS is threatening insurance companies who say they are raising rates in response to the coming Health Care Reform. This kind of thing is, if nothing else, disturbing because of the assymetry of power between a federal regulatory agency and the industry it regulates. If thre is fraud, prosecute it. Making threats is simply an attempt to suppress speech.
Presidential image on Flickr
I saw this picture on the White House Flickr stream a couple days back, and though, “wow, that’s a majestic office.”
BTW – the photog is a genius, IMHO, and has a real eye for a picture. Check out the Flickr stream for yourself.
Nine years ago, an anecdote
Nine years ago this month, I had just moved into a new apartment, and my wife had just started a new job. Tuesday morning we both went to work as normal. I was shooting the breeze with a coworker when another guy came into the workroom to let us know that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I recall dismissing the report with a breezy assurance that the Towers had been designed to withstand the impact of a General Aviation plane, and recounted the story of the B-25 that hit the Empire State Building in the 40’s. As the news came through in fragments, it became clear that my initial impressions were, well, wrong. Someone had plugged in a TV in an unused conference room, and we drifted in and out, watching Telemundo between trying (and failing) to get any useful work done. (It was set up before the other stations lost their antennae that were on the WTC buildings; I can’t say why we couldn’t pull in anything else besides Telemundo). My half-remembered Spanish wasn’t up to the task of following the commentators.
The “where were you” moment for me happened while I was standing in the doorway between the main work room and a smaller area off to the side where the laptop imaging stations were. A radio was on, tuned to a news broadcast. They were reporting that an airliner had hit the Pentagon, and I burst out with “My mother works there!” Of course, all the long-lines were jammed, so I couldn’t call down to find out anything, and between that and the reports of a car-bombing of the Main State building (where my father had worked for a long time), I wasn’t in any shape to keep working, though I tried for a while. Coworkers started drifting out to go home, and I eventually did likewise. I could see the tops of the smoke plumes rising in the north once I got home.
Eventually, probably via IM, I got the news that my mother was fine (she had been almost directly across the Pentagon from the point of impact, in the basement, and would later claim that her office had thought a transformer blew until they got to the marshaling areas. The only damage to her offices was the stench caused by a bunch of shrimp in a fridge that lost power) My father had been working in Crystal City, which I had forgotten. But a close friend of mine, who I figured was fine because she didn’t start work until 10 am, had chosen to go in early that day to her job across the street from the WTC, and her husband was half-mad because he hadn’t heard from her. Around dinnertime, he finally heard from her; she had been on the first subway train diverted from the WTC stop, and was actually caught in the dust cloud of the first tower going down. She had walked from there to the Brooklyn Bridge, and then uptown to the 34th st ferry to get across the Hudson. Later on I would hear of college classmates who worked in the area who had survived as well. (As far as I know, anyone I knew personally who was in the area survived).
I have a folder of music made for, changed for, or inspired by the occasion, including a recording of “Fire and Rain” insterspersed by sound clips from that day and following. It was put together by a local radio station.  It has famous sound bites from the president and others, and it also has clips from callers to the station, including an eyewitness to the second plane going in, from which I deduce the man was Roman Catholic and of a certain age, judging by his shouting “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Some of these songs are rather jingoist (there’s one entitled “Yackety Yak, Bomb Iraq, for example). Others are more solemn.
Three of them can be found on Youtube. Two are rather famous, one is less so.
We have:
Leslie Fish’s Flight 93
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPYMS9a8ELE[/youtube]
Neil Young’s Let’s Roll
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg6kLk38GTE[/youtube]
 Alan Jackson’s Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW8puRqE4Sc[/youtube]
For this last song, I deliberately chose that video rather than another of Mr. Jackson himself because it includes images (video and still; all very moving) and some audio, from that day and later, overlaid. In particular, there are images some would prefer to be pushed down the memory hole; and I don’t believe they should be. Be warned, though, I wiped some tears from my eye while watching it.