Jots with dots 10/30

White guys and catcalling or whatever this is….

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/10/29/catcalling_video_hollaback_s_look_at_street_harassment_in_nyc_edited_out.html

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120040/there-should-be-more-white-men-viral-street-harassment-video

For a guy like me, ie, a middle aged white guy, this a lose / lose argument to pursuit.  But we’re talking amongst ourselves here, and I am not one to be cowed by the possibility of being called a bigot…because I‘m not a bigot, and I certainly have no great adoration for my own ethnicity.  I live in the real world, and I’m ‘street’ enough to know that the reason black and latino men are overrepresented in this video is because white guys don’t typically act this way.  It’s outside of white guy social norms.   They didn’t get good footage of white guys because the frequency of occurrence wasn’t as high.  This lament about them being underrepresented is about something else, ie, the silly need for a proper villain in power / privilege / Marxist terms.

Said this a month ago when the race WI race seemed essentially tied.  Burke is a dilettante.  Is it realistic to have an expectation she could pull this out and defeat Walker?  No.  http://watchdog.org/179822/mary-burke-trek-sales/  If the race was that important, WI Dems, you might have wanted to put up a better candidate.

Madison Bumgarner:  There’s the elite baseball player, which most pros are.  Then there’s the elite, elite baseball player, who are better than all the other elite players.  I’m shocked he lost a game this year.  Key:  he doesn’t throw strikes that a guy can put the barrel of the bat on.

Jots with dots 10/27

Minnesota Poll – http://www.startribune.com/local/yourvoices/280483962.html has Dayton by 7 and Franken by 9.  That means Dayton / Johnson is probably essentially a tie, with Johnson having some chance of walking off with the prize, what with the Minnesota Poll usually having a built in 8 pt skew to the Democrats. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/governor/mn/minnesota_governor_emmer_vs_dayton_vs_horner-1393.html  Seriously, the governor’s race has always been volatile (think Carlson v Perpich, 1990).  I have no doubts a preference cascade could occur here in the final week that tips it to Johnson.  I’ll say it…Johnson wins.  One of Franken or Dayton is going to lose.

At this point it’s too obvious to ignore / dismiss with blithe sycophancy.  SNL mocks Pres. Obama for his competence.  http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/27/video-snl-mocks-entire-obama-tenure-in-ebola-skit/

More IRS scandals that are ‘bullshit’ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion-no-crime-required.html?_r=0

Jots with dots 10/24

Experts question MnSure average rate increase of 4.5%

http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/280266952.html

Why yes, they do question it!  I think they question it because, ya know,  it’s bullshit.  Self respecting statisticians and actuarials, even if they are passionate partisans, can’t put their credibility in question by the embrace of the Dayton administrations grossly charitable statistical treatment here.

It’s a ‘lie’ as far as it goes, though Democrats are once again somewhat excused, as this is not the moral equivalent of a Republican lie.  Republican lies are done for the Koch Brother’s, and Democrat lies are done to facilitate the greater good.  There’s a difference.

On the question of balance, there is the presence of false balance here, I’d say.  Figure, the 4.5% number ought to be indefensible, but the Strib extends some unwarranted deference to the Dayton Administrations explanation, going through the rote exercise of gathering and presenting opposing viewpoints, including the wholly ridiculous ones.  They don’t push back with ‘explanatory journalism’.

Chait Stains:  hey, all these things are poll taxes, and the Republicans support that!  http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/how-conservatives-justify-poll-taxes.html

Bullshit.  These are not poll taxes.  What the republicans disapprove of and think is unfair, is this practice of rounding up transients, putting them on a bus, and taking them to the polls on election day.  They think that’s a misuse of the franchise, and would not be so easy if people had an ID requirement.  That’s all, and, are they really wrong in that sentiment?

Today’s news in graft and patronage

Hunter Biden discharged from the Navy for cocaine use.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/16/politics/hunter-biden-discharged-from-navy/index.html

Ya know, I do not have craven contempt for people afflicted with bad judgment or worse like this, and that’s not the thing here anyway.  It’s that that the days to take an assignment like that were behind a guy like Hunter Biden.  He’s too old.  That he did was some combination of rainmaking for his firm or establishing a public service record with say an emphasis on the military or foreign affairs.

Anyway, I’m surprised a few ‘understandings’ or phone calls didn’t ‘clear it up’.  But it he’s not himself a big donor.  Not like the Dach’s

http://nypost.com/2014/10/09/secret-service-sex-scandal-investigator-was-asked-to-withhold-evidence/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/business/man-who-helped-image-of-wal-mart-steps-down.html?_r=0

The elder there crossed over from government to public sector a couple times.  Last stint as an executive counsel at Walmart he probably earned himself an amount in the low tens of millions, ya figure.  He’s Horatio Alger compared to his son, who now apparently has a $100k fake job doing women’s issues at the state department despite having been implicated in the Cartagena prostitution scandal.

And of course, Chelsea Clinton was recently bringing in $600k at NBC and convinced she was earning it.

So, this is not ‘corruption’, we want to reserve that for bribery and back scratching of some scale in most ways.  It’s grafty nepotism.  But this should still be very much at odds with principles off ‘good governance’ that liberals claim for themselves.  Conservatives say this is rampant, and the liberals are hypocrites.  Liberals will say, no of course not …    and a rebuttal is kinda absurd, you wonder how they can do that with a straight face.  I think it’s some sort of prosperity gospel / purchase of indulgence variant.  They figure if they are working in furtherance of progressive egalitarianism, it’s not wrong that they bring along the kids to dip their beaks.

Where is Zingy?

I didn’t lose my passion and interest all that quick.  Came down with what I thought was the flu on the evening of the 13^th, did not work the 14^th, or the 15.  On the 16^th, made a clinic visit and was hospitalized for ‘Cellulitis ’  Which is a staph or strep infection of a sort.  My best guess is that came from the dirt, doing a home project over the last weekend.  My first time hospitalized!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulitis

Its on my leg, like that example pic.  But mine is bigger.

The lesson here is, don’t do home repairs.

Time, it flows like a river…. damnit

My great aunt died.   Her father, my great grandfather William, who I did not know, was from the old country, Kalmar county Sweden.

http://www.itenfuneralhome.com/lifestory/clouds/home.html?Year=2014&Month=10&Day=6&FirstName=Germaine&LastName=Clark

I was reflecting a bit on Dolly, and I had a vision that I would live until I was 92.  I will be happy if that doesn’t turn out to be fanciful.  I turn 46 next month.

Jots with dots 10/10

SEO diary – Been working on my content on my enthusiast’s site. The goal is to have the best site, and by virtue of that, be the most obviously compelling destination for searchers. For a straight search of ‘Maguffin Six Shooter Co.”, there’s some improvement in my searchability. I’m in the 3 spot on Google and the 2 spot on Bing. There’s actually a perfunctory Wikipedia entry that takes the 1 spot, and that’s going to be hard to supersede. So that don’t count. I’m using the WordPress host with a more elegant domain name pointing to WordPress’ URL. Just learned, as awkward as those WordPress URL extensions are… you shouldn’t cloak them with a URL mask. It discourages the Google search spider.

Smart is overrated, grit is underrated. http://www.vox.com/2014/10/9/6835197/grit-kipp-noncognitive-skills-duckworth-teaching My dad’s word might be ‘moxie’. I agree, and I think it can be taught…. By failing a bunch of times and then succeeding. Age is a pretty decent enabler of that. But ya kind of lose energy as you age. It’s paradoxical, damnit.

Ya know, I haven’t cared prole mocking liberal bourgeoisie snobbery. Palin derangement is that and more. Um, the Palins don’t come off well here. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/palin-brawl-police-report-amazing-moments Chivaly: I’ve done that thing where you let the mad drunk chick sock you in the face and don’t fight back (23, drunk myself, at a party. Glad those days are long gone). There’s some righteous instincts there, but the spectacle of taking the chick’s punch ain’t really worth taking the punch.

Thing is, to me and other conservatives it’s not intuitive at all that higher taxes on the rich would redress income inequality. So liberals might find this counterintuitive, but I don’t. http://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6946565/progressive-taxes-are-not-the-solution-to-inequality Never mind rich conservatives. I don’t think rich liberals are prepared to pay taxes at a rate that actually mitigates wealth / income inequality.

Conservative outrage du jour: Cartagena. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/aides-despite-denials-knew-of-white-house-tie-to-cartagena-prostitution-scandal/2014/10/08/5b98dc90-4e7e-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html If you’re a liberal, what’s that rationale that excuses the coverup? Just that anything giving Republicans an electoral / political advantage is worse, cuz of, ya know Koch brothers / we’re better people because we’re pursuing egalitarianism / ends justifies the means?

WWP: Liberalism 2.0

We were on this topic before with Maher v. Charlie Rose.

Now, right. A critique of Islam as more malevolently anachronistic than Christianity or Judaism isn’t ‘intolerant’. American political conservatives here have been making this critique for oh, about 20 years. But Lambo agrees with it now that Maher and Harris have endorsed it.

Lambo on the liberal deniers: The ironic bind, which makes liberals of Affleck’s ilk jump the tracks, is that a call for a reasoned, sustained protest against religious-inspired intolerance sounds like a call for … intolerance.

Ya know, that may be part of it for the merely dissonant or obtuse liberal. A more common phenomenon is that liberals have a lot of psychological investment in their own superiority re being better , smarter people than political conservatives. ‘Tolerance’ is one contrast that feeds that perception of superiority. So you affirm the same critique that political conservatives make, and you lose the contrast. You thus lose what makes you better and smarter.

I mean, cmon. This isn’t ‘Liberalism 2.0’, it’s just Maher and Harris. The rest of the herd won’t embrace reasoned, sustained protest if that means giving up the opportunity to call conservatives bigots.

Dot with Jots 10/8 #stribpol

AP – http://www.startribune.com/sports/vikings/278137431.html  In my infosnacking, I kept hearing the word ‘orgy’, and I was moved to ask…. Is there some stylebook guidance on that?  Cuz I think what Peterson had going was much less classy than an ‘orgy’.   I think what they call that with Peterson are ‘gang bangs’, although maybe that’s a bit too pejorative for the newspaper.   Don’t ask me though, maybe I’m wrong, never been to one.  I have hay in my shoes.

Well not really hay in my shoes.  I was a suburban white kid, but same dif.  I liked this article by Jonathon Chait.  http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/what-liberals-get-wrong-about-football.html  He makes me feel not so pathetic for remembering my own highlight reel of shit so fondly.  I didn’t play football, I played soccer and baseball.  In an amateur playoff game, I once came in and struck out the side with the bases loaded.  I was about 22, a skinny soft tosser, and not a good player.  It was all curveballs.  I had been obsessively working on my curveball for about 7 years by then, and I could put a lot of spin on the ball.  I digress.  I agree with Chait, and I agree with him on a more tangential point that my generation is more like our parents than the millennials.

Kershaw v Adams

I haven’t seen Kershaw a lot. He’s supposed to be great, right? I swear, just before that HR I was saying to myself, boy that curveball looks a bit lazy. Which is to say, lazier than I would have figured for a great pitcher.

Very lazy horizontal arc on that last one.