Archive for June, 2009
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is calling for a further weakening of the American Climate and Energy Security Act (ACES) that passed out of the House last week. Of course, that’s not what she calls it. Sen. McCaskill twittered last week:
I hope we can fix cap and trade so it doesn’t unfairly punish businesses and families in coal dependent states like Missouri. (emphasis mine)
I can’t help but wonder what happened to the Senator who dared mention that oil prices shouldn’t be allowed to fall too far at the Rocky Mountain Roundtable, Session 2, Part 3, during the DNC:
There’s a certain reality here that it is important that we don’t get gas too cheap again, and I certainly agree with what [Randy Udall] said. We will never see the days of… when people are pumping $1, $1.50 gas again. And that may not be an all bad thing because it will motivate the politics on this issue to the forefront so we have a sense of urgency.
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by Jennifer Angliss
My city, like many other municipalities these days, has a bit of a budget crunch. Expenses exceed income and so cuts must be made. One of the first things my city cut was the flower pots that decorate major intersections in the summers. To me, that seems like a reasonable cut. Yes, the flowers are beautiful. But they cost $20,000 per year (including water and labor costs). And at the same time, our library is struggling with its budget and has a hiring freeze, even with several open positions. In my opinion, if you’ve got an underfunded library it’s not wise to spend taxpayer money on flowers.
In the end, the Rotary Club took up the cause and donated money for the planters. Wonderful, I say. We get to keep the flowers without spending very much city money on them. They are still watered and tended by city workers who have been reassigned from jobs like weeding and picking up litter, but the bulk of the expense has been shouldered by the Rotary Club and private citizens.
However, (you knew there was a however coming, right?) I am a bit concerned about the attitudes of my fellow citizens on this. Full story »
 Hate meetings? Who doesn’t?
Not that it isn’t important to get the right people together in a room to talk about important issues, but let’s face it, in most organizations (and by “most” I mean “virtually all”) the average meeting probably lasts longer than it needs to. When it does drag on too long, productivity takes a hit and we all wind up spending more time to accomplish less.
So when I saw a link earlier today billing itself as The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings, I clicked. And I’m glad I did. In that piece, Tony Tjan boils meetings down quite nicely: Full story »
 We’ve had a Facebook page for some time, but now we’ve got our own vanity URL!
You may have noticed Facebook’s new feature that allows everything from big companies to lowly blogs like us to reserve facebook.com/YOURNAMEHERE, and thanks to Jennifer Angliss, who manages our Facebook account for us, you can now visit us and become a fan at facebook.com/scholarsandrogues. Thanks, Jen.
In addition, you may have noticed that little Tweet widget at the top of the right column, which means that you can also follow us on Twitter, if you like. We’re @scholars_rogues.
It is my extreme pleasure to inform you all that Full story »
 A modest proposal, perhaps.
It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)
On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”
On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office: Full story »
At the end of every summer, mom took my sisters and brother to town to shop for school clothes. She never took me. I was the favorite after all, with all the benefits and curses that entailed. Because I was the favorite, not just any outfit would do. I got special school clothes, and when I say special, I mean the types of outfits that either elicited fits of laughter from my siblings or got me sold to the pharaoh. Until the clothes were laid out and de-pinned and pressed, I never knew which. Full story »
 The Deproliferator
Conventional thinking holds that deterrence has kept us safe. If, that is, you don’t mind a little brinkmanship like Berlin in 1961 and the Cuban Missile crisis. The history of the Cold War was also sprinkled with accidents such as the 1966 Palomares, Spain crash of a B-52 bearing four hydrogen bombs.
Nor has the Cold War’s thaw elicited the same sigh of relief from the disarmament community as from the public at large. One state or another always seems to be looking for an excuse to develop nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, non-state actors, such as al-Qaeda or Chechen rebels, make no bones whatsoever about their nuclear avarice. Full story »
Michael Jackson’s death is having a strange resonance for me. The feeling I have is like the sound a spring reverb used to make when you bumped into somebody’s guitar amp.
I haven’t been able to work out for myself what it means yet. Of course it’s still early.
I keep hearing Patrick Star’s voice: there’s this Sponge Bob episode where Patrick cries in despair, “Why does this keep happening!?” And Sponge Bob says in a resigned, measured tone, “I – don’t – know.”
It’s like that, if you know what I mean, which I doubt.
Here’s some random information I’m sorting through:
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Last week’s quarterfinal matchup started out neck and neck, but in the end Rose Hill Drive stepped on the gas and pulled away for a resounding 88%-12% victory over Food Will Win the War. Congrats to the excellent FWWtW for making the quarters and best of luck in the future. We’ll be listening. Meanwhile, Rose Hill Drive moves on to the semis where they’ll square off with Asobi Seksu.
Now for this week’s first semifinal throwdown. Contestant #1 is 20 year-old UK Power Pop prodigy Paul Steel, who knocked off the dynamic and popular Gogol Bordello to reach the round of four. Paul recalls one of his greatest moments:
“I got in from college one day and there was a message from Andy Partridge. Full story »
Well, I didn’t expect my return to Scroguedom after six months would be in the form of a personal screed, and on domestic topics no less (as in “household”). However, as the feminist mantra of the 1970s claimed, “the personal is political,” a statement as salient today as it was then.
I’d like to be writing about clean energy or debating health care policy. I wish I could add something astute to the discussion about the future of democracy in Iran. But to do so would mean investing the time to follow these issues closely enough to have something worthwhile to add. And then there’s the time needed to actually write something. I’ve already got four or five unfinished posts languishing on my laptop.
Yet, in the words of my 14-year-old son this morning, who is angry at my asking him to pitch in around the house prior to the arrival of weekend guests, and who can’t understand why I won’t just drop everything to pick him up from the lake with his friends later today, I don’t have a “real job” — so why can’t I be like a good stay-at-home mom and craft my life exclusively around his? Full story »
It might be more difficult for Republicans to bash President Obama for being “timid” in his comments about the Iranian government’s violence against protesters if the U.S. media didn’t consistently censor US-Iranian history.
Take CNN’s recent Iran timeline, titled “A brief look at Iran’s history.”
According to the timeline, which begins in 1979, Iran has “been at odds with the West and some of its neighbors” since the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It refers to the Shah as having been “pro-Western.” Yet in the mother of all omissions, CNN leaves out how the US government was directly involved in bringing the Shah to power in a 1953 coup that toppled the democratically elected Iranian government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Full story »
UPDATE: It was a close contest for awhile, but now Rose Hill Drive has started to open up a bit of a gap. It’s not too late, though – polls remain open until midnight tonight. Your vote decides who moves on to the semifinals.
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In last week’s Tournament of Rock quarterfinal match we saw a close contest that was actually tied with just a few hours remaining. A late surge allowed Asobi Seksu to claim a 56%-44% victory over Black Mountain, however, and they now move on to the semifinals where they’ll face the winner of this week’s match. Congratulations to Black Mountain for an outstanding showing.
And now, let’s get this week’s quarterfinal match underway. First, from Boulder, Colorado, please welcome Rose Hill Drive. It’s no secret that RHD loves them some Led Zeppelin, but they don’t let that respect get in the way of forging their own hard-edged, yet tuneful sound.
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I don’t like flying. There, I said it, and no, a few hours in the air with you and your restored 1918 British Bi-Plane won’t help. Oh, I’ve done some flying and expect to do some more, but I don’t like it. I don’t have a fear of flying. It’s the landings that scare me.
When I was a kid, there were only two seasons: summer and everything else. In the same way that some people watch the earth for signs that signal the changing of winter to spring, so too we kept our eyes on Harmon Park. When the swings went up, it was almost time for school to let out. Better finish that tree-leaf science project. When the grass on the croquet lawn was cut, it was time to study for exams. Exempt? Not in my neighborhood. When the kiddie pool was filled, it was summer baby! Toss those books to the darkest corner of the basement, because it was time for doing something fun. And we had to hurry, because the fun turned to boredom in less than a week. Full story »
Appalachia has some of the most impoverished communites in the United States. The entire region is economically depressed as compared to the national average. But coal communities in Appalachia are even worse off than the rest of the region, a fact that runs counter to the idea that coal jobs support local communities. A new study out of the Institute for Health Policy Research at West Virginia University and published in Public Health Reports looked at this discrepency and found that, even using conservative assumptions, the economic costs of coal mining in Appalachian communities far outweighed the benefits from having a coal mine in the community. Full story »
Since no one reads these posts aside from Russ and a handful of others, I’ve decided to Full story »
What do all these things have in common: Cash-for-clunkers, IMF funding, pandemic flu preparations, and anti-narcotic aid to Mexico? They’re all considered “supplemental war funding” that the Senate approved in a late-night session July 18th.
Excuse me, Mr. President, but I thought I heard you promise not to use supplemental war funding bills any more. Apparently, according to PoliFact, I misheard (thank Bush for only funding Iraq and Afghanistan through September, 2009, instead of the whole year). But still, I’d really like to know how those programs are related to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh, that’s right. They’re not. Full story »
The revolution will not be brought to you in 140 characters or less from anonymous sources half-a-world away and repeated as the whole truth by talking heads with an agenda. It will not star your internet friends or make you vicariously courageous.
And what business is it of ours in any case? If you’re so excited about freedom on its bloody march, then start walking. But my best honest guess is that the majority of Americans now weighing in on a contested election in a country that a good many of them can’t find on a map don’t even understand what’s happening in Iran.
That’s the problem.
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Happy Saturday. Today we’d like to spend a few moments with our favorite comic, Lee Camp. First, a recent appearance at Comix.
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