Geeks take note:
A slideshow presentation by and video of ElmoFromOK — an “open-minded code monkey” and podcaster from Oklahoma — called…
From the blog economicus ridulous comes this post called Blue and Broke, about the economic necessity of bartering instead of paying for certain extras, and the emotional toll it has taken.
My sister’s son is getting married this summer. The invitation is sitting atop my fridge. The family lives in Ontario. I want to attend, but the cost is prohibitive, nay, impossible for me to even consider. Saying ‘no’ to the invite while retaining my pride has been difficult. The excitement of thinking about meeting with my family, the bride’s family and all those invited has slowly dissipated, leaving me feeling blue. And broke.
It serves to remind me that travel for pleasure is out. As is most entertainment.
I enjoy going to local theatre productions and listening to live music in my community.
To do these things, I make trades. I offer to put up posters, sell tickets, make coffee, set up chairs, run ‘front of house’ activities, then to help clean up when the show is over. This can only happen if I know someone involved.
The same is true of furthering my education or indulging in personal endeavours. I swap housecleaning for singing lessons. Have taken on secretarial/organizational duties for a nonprofit society, in return for attending their professional conferences; and do gardening for bedding plants so I may enjoy fresh flowers throughout the warm seasons. I barter with a friend who grows organic vegetables. This lessens the cost of buying from the Old Farmer’s Market or grocery store.
Occasionally, I am interested in certain entertainment advertised in the local paper which states that entry is “by donation.” I assume that means if I don’t have anything to offer, be it money or a tin of something for the food bank; I will still be allowed to enjoy what is presented. When I show up, I find someone sitting at the entrance suggesting that the ‘donation’ be $5 – $20. A burning shame overcomes me when I tell them I have nothing to give, that I thought ‘donation’ meant, even if I have nothing, I would be welcome. As this has happened on a number of occasions, I have become wary of approaching such events in my community.
The constant juggling of priorities wears me down. I become morose, refuse to leave the house, retire behind the pages of a book and become disinclined to visit with good friends. The daily grind begets depression, even for a positive-thinking person like myself.
Not so fast there, Ayn Rand fan. That graphic comes from a January 22 post called “It’s dead”, written by former Bush White House economist Keith Hennessey, a few days after a Republican had vanquished the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s would-be Democratic successor in Massachussetts, becoming the 41st, filibuster-enabling vote in the Senate against health care reform. At the time, Hennessey wrote this:
Yesterday I compared the comprehensive bill to Schrödinger’s cat: it was both alive and dead, and this uncertainty would be resolved only when we could see inside the box of the House Democratic Caucus. Speaker Pelosi opened the box for us yesterday:
“In its present form without any change, I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House.”
But the House folding and passing the Senate bill was the highest probability path to a signed comprehensive law. The path the Speaker is pursuing instead, of getting the Senate to act on a separate second bill, is too hard to execute logistically, substantively, and politically…
I wrote yesterday that the bill is not dead until the Speaker says it’s dead. I think she in effect did so yesterday. Based on this development I have increased my prediction of collapse to 90%, and I believe the comprehensive bill is dead.
However, Hennessey also wrote that one possible option for Democrats was a parliamentary maneuver called “reconciliation,” but that “neither the White House nor Congressional Democrats appear to have seriously considered using reconciliation as a substitute for the work already done.” But that has changed, and reconciliation is now at the heart of the Democratic game plan. The current proposed path to passage involves the complicated two-step of the House passing the Senate’s health care bill — substantially different than the House bill and anathema to some Democratic representatives — then bringing the bill into line with President Obama’s compromise legislation via reconciliation.
On Sunday, former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay defended Sen. Jim Bunning’s recent blocking of an unemployment benefits extension.
From the The Huffington Post:
Host Candy Crowley: Congressman, that’s a hard sell, isn’t it?
Delay: It’s the truth.
Crowley: People are unemployed because they want to be?
Delay: Well, it is the truth. and people in the real world know it. And they have friends and they know it. Sure, we ought to be helping people that are unemployed find a job, but we also have budget considerations that are incredibly important, especially now that Obama is spending monies that we don’t have.
Some reaction from various sites:
From Hullabaloo
I would guess that this is going to catch on among the dittoheads. The right is reasoning that they can appeal to a good number of the majority who are employed and make them question why they should subsidize all those losers who are not. It worked with health care. Empathy for your fellow man, or even a selfish sense that you might personally need some assistance someday, is being attacked by the right wing head on. And I would guess that there are more than a few people who secretly have thought these things but didn’t have the social support necessary to say it out loud. Now they do.
This isn’t a widely accepted point of view. Yet. But its infecting the body politic.
From The Reaction
-This is a widely accepted point of view on the right, and it’s already caught on among those who worship at the altar of Dear Leader Rush and the Republican Party of Teabaggers, which is pretty much the state of the GOP in 2010.
-I assume they have to know this was an argument they tried to sell after 1929. American workers were lazy spendthrifts said Republicans whose roaring 20′s resembled the ‘debt doesn’t matter, the market always goes up’ attitudes that brought us to the same precipice again. But sure, it’s the hardworking 1 percenters that need the tax breaks, giant corporations who need subsidies and the rest of America who deserves what they get and shouldn’t ask the “real” Americans to make sacrifices.
On Thursday, thousands of California students protested the severe budget cuts to education at all levels that have been enacted due to the state’s fiscal crisis. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Hundreds rallied at the state Capitol in Sacramento… Some students at Oceana High School in Pacifica formed an “SOS” on a beach, while in San Francisco more than 50 Commodore Sloat Elementary fifth-graders boarded a Muni bus to the State Building. Each wore a handmade sandwich board sign protesting budget cuts to schools…Many of the day’s protesters, including Jennie Lew, said the issue was personal. Wearing a “Pissed-off parent” T-shirt at San Francisco State University… she said she and her husband were struggling to keep up with rising tuition. The couple are graduates of UC Berkeley and were educated on federal aid and scholarships, Lew said, becoming members of what she described as the “educated middle class.” Now, she said, her sons’ graduation dates have been delayed because classes have been trimmed and teachers laid off…
California’s $20 billion budget gap this year, on top of $60 billion last year, has resulted in soaring tuition at the University of California and California State University. Courses are jammed, and many students can’t get in at all. Lecturers have been laid off and employees furloughed. CSU wouldn’t let new students enroll at all this semester. More than 200,000 students will be turned away from community colleges next fall because there won’t be enough classes for them, community college Chancellor Jack Scott said. According to the California Teachers Association, school districts across the state have issued almost 19,000 pink slips to public school teachers, warning that they may lose their jobs at the end of the semester.
Dramatic video from the protest on Thursday and also from one in November, posted on the Occupy Everything YouTube channel:
The shutdown of Interstate 880
The occupation of Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley (November)
Anthropologist/marketer Grant McCracken thinks he’s found what’s driving the success of USA Networks’ programming. This post called “The secret script at USA Networks (aka the enmeshed male)” explains:
I know you have watched something on USA Networks. After all, its a hit machine. It has given us “Burn Notice,” “White Collar,” “Royal Pains,” and “In Plain Sight…”
I was thinking about these programs and I noticed a similarity I had not seen before…
“Burn Notice” is about a former spy who has been booted out of the intelligence community and must now rely on his best friend, his sometime girl friend, and often his mother to continue in a low rent of espionage.
“Royal Pains” is about a doctor who was drummed out of his prestigious job as a New York City surgeon and must now rely on his brother, his girlfriend and a rich fella to eck out of living as a concierge doctor, low rent medicine indeed.
“White Collar” is about a jewel thief who has been fished out of jail by the FBI and can now do nothing on his own without the approval of his handler. He still gets up to crime but it’s now a far cry from the old days of a glamorous thief.
“In Plain Sight” is about a woman who works as Witness Relocation sheriff and because she, her mother, her sister are emotional train wrecks of one kind or another, she manages only with the help of her long suffering partner, her boss, her secretary and her boyfriend.
See a pattern? It is most clear in the case of the first three shows. A man riding high is brought low. He now survives by dint of his wits and only because he relies on people he never relied on before. This man is now thoroughly enmeshed in a small group of friends and relatives. Without them he is nothing.
Ok, let’s say you’re Monni Adams, of the Peabody Museum at Harvard. Professor Adams is famous for having detected and then explained patterns in Indonesian textiles. Explain, please, why this new pattern is so much in evidence in these USA Network shows.
What is happening in American culture that might help explain this new vision of our masculinity? After all, American culture has long been home to a notion of the unconstrained, rogue male. Consider all those tradtional TV heroes and movie stars, men who answered to no one. Why a new pattern? Why an enmeshed male?
Check out the post comments for some theories…
Ever hear “Intelligence Squared“?
Some past debates:
Lester & Charlie lend their expertise to solving the financial crisis.
Intrepid blogger Mary Hannington writes about the perils of living in crime-afflicted Detroit.
Guns and the Weber Grill Wars (Vagabond Guru)
I don’t know if it was a trend unique to my city or if it was popular everywhere, but everyone I knew in Detroit had a Weber grill and we barbequed all summer. We cooked steaks, ribs, chicken, brats… roasted corn and potatoes. We still all do. BUT I don’t know anyone that has a Weber grill anymore.
I lost three of them. How they got the damn things over my six-foot fence I’ll never know, but they did it somehow. And in later years, as Slouchy NEVER emptied the ash until it was overflowing, I imagine it was a messy affair.
I had a friend who found his at a pawnshop down the street and convinced the owner that the intelligent thing to do was to let him take it back home.
After the third grill left the backyard at the Hannington compound I said, “Screw this!” I found a grill made by some artisan in his garage. A western type deal, it was welded steel with cast iron parts and had a little horseshoe that you could swing out over the fire and heat up a cup of coffee or some barbeque sauce and an overhead bar with various hooks that allowed you to hang pots of beans or other barbeque-like fare.
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