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BLOG'a'Boulder
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Dispatches from Boulder the Damned
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Thursday, September 02, 2010
So, hard to say how bad Earl is going to be for my home state of Massachusetts, but it does not look good. The state has had no hurricane since 1991, and that's a full generation that has not seen or felt the big sustained winds, and nothing teaches like recent experience. Hope there is enough institutional memory.
Even so, this is a Category 4 as I write and that's a lot bigger than the big ones I recall named Carol and Donna and the ones I do not like the Hurricane of 38, referenced here. With, as they say, more toys in the tub, the potential for disaster is compounded, not just because more crappy housing will go on insurance tabs but because there's more stuff airborne and weapon grade. These are extremely scary, and you only have to hear formerly friendly beaches thunder under surf and waves and storm surges unimaginable, and hear them a long ways from the beach and over high wind, to catch the drift here.
Be careful, and someone look after those who do business on great waters and who cannot escape.
Obama would like to move on from the dragging anchor of the Gulf oil horrors and get something more or less accomplished and sorta implemented for a temporary period of peace in the Levant (he's realistic at this point), but the damned oil companies will not let him. Another oil rig exploded today, and there is a mile long sheen of oil, and god only knows what this means.
At this point, one wonders if these rigs are protected from the new weapons of submarines employed by drug runners. Yes, even smaller than the midget subs of the Japanese in the Big One, there have been several instances of their use in Latin America and, perhaps, here. What would it take for these small machines to plant adhesive explosive just for the petty revenge of it? Or to detract from something else? When you think of it, they may be indefensible from organized attack and destroy the Gulf for generations, all of the southern US down stream from the ocean currents, most of Latin America far upstream.
The Glen Beck horrendoplasty is over, and I cannot say it was either frightening or important or much of anything. I do, however, get angry with this type of crap. Dick Armey used to be better than this. Because, here's this.
The Tea Baggers can get elected if the Democrats don't get their sorry ass in gear. If so, we'll deserve it. Here is the famed and feared Governor Jan Brewer of 100% American Arizona at the debate Wednesday night. She's terrible. Not bad, terrible. She made up a bunch of headless bodies and will not admit she was wrong, despite no evidence and testimony to the contrary.
Cannot say Fiorina, hardly a Tea Party sort - rather a snob, actually - is going to have an easy time with Barbara Boxer, who pretty much ran over the former overpaid HP washout, who I currently think is personally responsible for my new HP sounding like a 40 horse Evinrude today. Fiorina seems almost medically blind to her own weaknesses and image, and thinks far too highly of herself. Neither men nor moderates will like that, I suspect. Weird choice. Meg Whitman is a far stronger candidate in the Governor's race, and as much as I admire Jerry Brown, Governor Moonbeam, it might be best to let the GOP die in that chair, because I don't think there's any hope for that state.
Ken Buck strikes me as the worst sort of panderer to the ill educated. Here is an example, and ColoradoPols pretty well lays him out on it. You cannot blame the Department of Education for his dubious assertion of things that happened in the 1950's, because the DOE was formed in 1980 and the issues to which Buck refers happend in the 1960's.
Back to Dan Maes. He's not much of a businessman, was not vetted by the GOP because they didn't think McInnis would biodegrade, and he exaggerates his law enforcement career. To the point of lying, it seems. As a result Hank Brown and John Andrews (a weak reed anyway) have retracted their tepid support. He's already infuriated Dick Wadhams, the state chair of the GOP, and of Tom Tancredo is running in a different party. Way to go, GOP.
John Hickenlooper is, indeed, the world's luckiest person, but one reason is that he's liked and respected, even by those who disagree with him. It's going to be a while for the GOP to have anyone to be so described in the Centennial State. Josh Penry might have been the one, and may be again, but he caved after being forced out and became Jane Norton's campaign manager, for which he may not be forgiven, especially given her crappy campaign.
Have to dump this in Wadham's lap. All of it.
Sarah Palin often comes across to me as a nice woman with asperations and a bad case of cabin fever, someone who lusts for the excitement and society not found in Alaska. Other times, I find her a social climbing thug who lies and distorts to the point of slander. Sometimes, she is an idiot.
But the new Vanity Fair article pretty much cements her to small townhood forever.
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Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Eh, again.
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Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Okay. Wednesday it is.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Oh, for........
There are two great, dramatic moments that most of us have been through. One is god awful: the announcement that a beloved one has cancer. You'd think that nobody could make that into a drama-queen moment, but we are a species with no dignity, no shame.
Till the 1970's, cancer was a family secret and not discussed. Then, celebrities rightly outed themselves as having breast cancer and lung cancer, and articles, interviews, and made for tv movies were churned out. There is not a shred of doubt that it took courage and strength for them to do that, which requires you to be my age and remember how it was, and there is no doubt those brave women saved many lives by getting people to check their breasts and to talk to the doctors. Cancer had a stigma - from religion - of a deserved death by torture, because there was no cure and it was an awful out. Religions will deny it but it is true. I was there, I remember.
JFK's mother shook up the place when she went on television and said - without affectation and with great sense of pain - that her daughter Rosemary was mentally retarded, something her husband had fought against the public knowing because it would affect the elections. As a unassailable religious Catholic, Mrs. Kennedy broke many walls and deserves much of the credit that another daughter built upon making the Special Olympics. The Kennedys did amazing good in that area, and this announcement made it easier for others.
Of course, it was not long before a certain sameness to the stories became evident, and that it seemed a surplus of these stories verged on making it ridiculous. After a while, I found it opportune to point out that there were women who'd had breast cancer and had not called attention to themselves, had not submitted to a glamor shot for the newspaper, had not felt the need to 'share' because the victory had been won, and it was counterproductive to cash in on it.
I've seen people position themselves as 'cancer survivors' when they had the barely legal definition of cancer on their skin, slow growing, visible, and taken out without much problem. My father had it, and just provided the family with an FYI and the correct info and that was it. He had a band-aid on his cheek and neck. He was sort of embarrassed, but felt we should know cancer had appeared, sort of, in the family. We have no other instance of it.
He'd captained a PT boat in WWII in the Philippines for the Army Air Force. Well. It used to be a PT boat and now was an air-sea rescue craft, picking up downed pilots. No combat, but he got some hellacious sunburns. That's probably why and how, right there. Not a big deal.
The other Great Announcement is the dreaded coming out function for the gay friend or relative. Originally, say forty years ago, this did have to be done with some care since it could be both socially damning and dangerous. Today? Yeah, a little bit in some areas, but overall being gay cannot be viewed as a big deal anymore. In fact, it's moved into the area of cliche and overkill. The victory that began at Stonewall is pretty much done. The military and other bureaucracies don't move quick, but gays are not going to surge into the military when DADT is gone: they've always been there, and thank God they have been. Moronic to turn away patriots, and I doubt the lower ethic types surpass those featured in the heterosexual ranks.
In any case, I'm sick to bloody death of gay issues. I went to see The Kids Are All Right with a straight woman friend the other night and we came away totally at opposite ends. It's a sweet flick but the casting was wrong and I do not - do not - believe gay women watch gay male porn to get turned on. Sorry, that'll take some convincing and I'm not likely to subject myself to the arguments. I suspect that because straight males enjoy two women going at it (um, I've heard.....read somewhere.......), the assumption was here would be a gotcha moment, but the attraction of two women going at it is the absence of a male rival on the screen and two women. The people who watch it like to make love to women. I don't get the movie's point with the male porn, but my friend bought it.
Also, the daughter acted way too young and innocent for an 18 year old and looked 15. The supposed 15 year old son sounded and acted too old and looked 21.
Also, I'm straight and I loved Joni Mitchell (I used to work with her ex-husband, Chuck) as were most straight men in my experience, which was news to one character in the movie played by the incredibly beautiful and gifted Annette Benning. That didn't sound right, given Bob Dylan wrote Tangled Up in Blue for Mitchell's best album. It's the soprano voice that many men don't like, but they made an exception for Blue.
Also, the guy, the sperm donor for the kids, was utterly innocent. He was sought out by the kids, was nice and offered a job to the character played by Julianne Moore ( who is terrific) who came on to him big time. He did nothing wrong whatever. My friend disagreed. She's wrong.
This of course is the smooth segue that brings us to Ken Mehlman, the former national head of the GOP, who recently announced to stifled yawns that he was gay. Nobody cares, he was as gay as it gets without a starring role on Will and Grace in the past. It was such common knowledge that Bill Maher was outing him a long time ago, so were others, and even though the SOB was hypocritically fighting gay rights, people saw right through him. This was during the Ted Haggard fiasco here in Colorado. It gets to the point that a significant percentage of anti-gay activists appear obviously gay themselves, and even the conservatives have had to face fact. The silliness continues, but a melodramatic announcement of gayness from an obvious homosexual like Ricky Martin or Ken Melman or George whatever his name was, the singer who sang in a duo and had a video to one of his songs composed entirely of the camera fixated on his butt, is just pathetic. Man up, own up, and big deal.
Also? You guys don't have great taste in clothing, music, interior design, or hair styles. Sorry. That cannot be said enough. You have the same percentage of schlubs as the majority. Welcome to it.
Okay, then. Seems the Palin backed Alaska retrograde movement is on fire, and the only marginally reactionary Lisa Murkowsky may not actually get the GOP nod, but lose to Joe Miller, a non-entity who's never held elective office. Palin's picks are not doing better than 50-50 around the country, which suggests that her weight is only minimal if that. Josh Marshall thinks that because she picks unknowns and makes a race of it sometimes, that this is indicative of more heft.
I don't think so. I think she's a big fish in the Tea Party pool of motivated, old voters and she won't be much of an issue in the election. God knows, I've been wrong before, and yes: that is a wishful thought.
Alan Simpson, who was a big fan of corralling Social Security in years past, is being paraded as someone trying to repeal the New Deal. No, he isn't. He's concerned that Social Security has expanded beyond its original intent, which was to not let elderly Americans die in the streets as they were, or alone in their frigid decaying houses. It was a safety net.
Now, of course, it's a ton of money capitalists want to get their hands on to churn the market for their profit and the left wants to expand into a totally socialized national life. Simpson is right saying it's a cow with 350million tits. It is. And nobody wants to pay for the cow's hay. Simpson is correct that a calm, objective conversation is long overdue, and that a retirement age of 70 and other cutbacks ought to be in there.
But the nation as a whole has to come to grips with the facts. Machines can do things faster and safer than humans in many areas and in many industries nobody could imagine a century ago. We have to come to grips with the fact that we need fewer people each year to successfully provide for the nation. We are creating a large and worthless middle class of people who aren't willing to work the fields nor educated, motivated, or smart enough to move up into a declining number of places each year. Much work in the west is make-work, and if the machines can do it better and cheaper, as they can each year, there are fewer jobs.
It isn't bad. It's just unsustainable. We've been heading this way for a century, and the conversation about birth and population control and needed labor atop of the secondary role of being 'consumers' to continue the role playing, needs to begin. Soon.
Simpson is putting it all forward, and he's right to do so. It's just too bad that it's happening when we're trying to maintain social stability.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Tomorrow.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
So, this is pretty damning and makes me want to destroy Xcel. A few years back, some workers died by utterly avoidable procedure because Xcel, ignoring all other factors, went with the cheapest subcontractor which was famously incompetent when it came to safety. 9News has the video, which was released today, and it looks like our Electric Company is going to get a pummeling long overdue.
This is atop Xcel's trying to blackmail/intimidate Boulder into signing another 20 year exclusivity contract for power. I'm not sure that the city can put together our own power supply, but frankly absent clear reason, I'm supporting their attempt to do just that.
Xcel failed to deliver on the Smart Grid project here in Boulder, after the predictable over budget revelations, and now wants the state to pay for its failure. It may not actually be a failure, but Boulder didn't sign the contract and so this is just payback, and a juvenile, transparent temper tantrum.
If what is indicated by this early report and video from the US Chemical Safety Board is true, this is near manslaughter.
It's really hard to satirize the GOP's slate of candidates in Colorado. The Senate candidate is Ken Buck, who poses like Scott McInnis (defeated because of that lying-plagiarism-thuggery issue) as a He-Man's He-Man. He tongue bathed the far right and the Tea Party for the primary, but now is trying to change his stance to have any chance at winning an educated and increasingly liberal state. It won't work; it cannot.
Among other things, Buck wants to repeal the 17th Amendment and go back to the original method of electing US Senators, which was by the state legislators. In other words, he wants politicians, not the voter, to control the Senate's membership. This has issues from any number or sources, but it's the contradiction - the hypocrisy - that glares out. Everywhere, the conservatives pretend to hate government making decisions for the taxpayer, which is the word they hope to sub for citizen some day, and here they want to take back power from the voters and give it to the most likely corrupt and power hungry types on the planet: lowly state legislators. I see no chance for bribes or lobbyist influence, do you?
Buck is even more extreme and to the right of Don Maes, the GOP candidate for Governor. Maes, recently called a con man by a former GOP mayor south of Denver, and unable to get any national money from the GOP, is the guy who wants to concentrate on important stuff like the UN usurping our rights by bicycle favoritism and all that. ColoradoPols, which I enjoy more each day, has a terrific chart to explain this.
There are so many other problems, though, for the hypocritical GOP.
Among them is the fact that they aren't getting funded by their money bags anymore. It's probably due to the fact they fear the Tea Bag idiots will lose elections or, far worse, win a few.
Sarah Palin's clout isn't looking that heavy these days, if it ever did. Even in Alaska, her picks aren't doing well in recent polling, and that would be a bad message to send to those supporting her presidential run when after a full half term as Governor of the state with the highest percentage of federal land, her favorites aren't elected even in party primaries. Well, some are, but she isn't at the 50% mark yet.
Worse, in her own state, her chosen candidate is about to get clobbered.
So, there are primaries tonight in eleven states, including California, Nevada, South Carolina and Arkansas. It's going to be interesting, to say no more.
We'll be rid of that corrupt sleaze bucket Haywood in Arizona running against McCain. We'll probably lose Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas tonight, but we'll see. California is the usual horrendoplasty.
And, we get to see if Sharon Angle will be as big a fiasco as Rand Paul has been for Tea Party and GOP.
In Florida, Kendrick Meeks has made a comeback, or maybe people just looked at him for the first time. I'd hate to see Rubio get in just because Crist and Meeks divide the non-idiot vote, and give a victory to the near fascist expatriot Cuban group that is happy Rubio is running. He's competent, but he'll have to repay favors.
This isn't good. Not at all. Four pounds of stolen uranium. Corrupt Ministry officials, the whole nine yards.
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Monday, August 16, 2010
Every day, it seems, either bizarre or vicious weather is afoot nearby, although it just might be the media cashing in on climate change fears and milking it. But it does seem that weather patterns are, well, expanded over what I recall in previous decades, as if the warmer temps allowed storm sytems to extend from the Rockies to the Hamptons.
We have warnings up for tonight after a cloudy and muggy day, which is not normal out here. It gives the feeling of atmospheric tightness that has to be released. We'll see. Love for the temp to drop.
Meanwhile, the Tea Party continues to illustrate its inattention to detail, education, point, and agenda melding. Left to the religious right units, the US would be an ignorant bedsore in the hemisphere in a half century, unable to match the industrial output of most of South America. You can't yell for a strong military and nation without spending to produce the brains to keep it so.
As a rule, NFL preseason games are as exciting and meaningful as post pro golf match recaps, but I was curious about the new quarterbacks on a team with about 98% of its manpower on injured reserve and watched the Broncos at the Bengals last night. It seemed people blew out entire sections of their bodies just pulling on the jerseys in camp. But, the offense - even without its big new stars to be in the receiver corps - looked good and QB Kyle Orton looked real good. He moved the team against a good Cincy defense twice for TD's and looked confident and in control, and this without his main guy for protection.
Brady Quinn, the second string quarterback, had by far the strongest arm on the field but was by far the worst QB, showing the same defects that denoted his previous pro years. He misread the field, he telegraphed throws which he threw with dubious accuracy and terrible form, and until they put him on a safe mode reboot with quick lateral passes, he was awful. He then made some good throws and really, his arm strength was startling. But he didn't look any better than the rookie, Tim Tebow.
Tebow is a brick, and he ran for a touchdown and dinged two big defenders in the process. He did some okay throws but he did seem at sea often enough. He ain't an immediate threat but you could see his quick reads and his confidence. Quinn had none, and he looked scared. If he bones up in Denver, he ain't going nowhere in the league again except as a 3rd stringer somewhere and he knows it. Tebow didn't have that pressure. It was assumed he'd look rough and he did. But he's his own fullback when he needs to be. He ain't going to get dinged easy.
Intriguing team, the Broncos. We'll see, of course. Now. To The Meaningful.
Well, wait. Coffee. Get it, sit down, and watch this. Good way to start a Monday.
Here's a piece on homosexuality in the Catholic Church, which is a topic nobody my age ever thought we'd see chatted up in headlines. I'm glad to see that we agree JPII was straight. I, too, thought that obvious and the basis for his popularity. You could tell by how he reacted to women, especially good looking women, and it was obvious that for him celibacy was not easy, and therefore his character was strong. I also think that women sensed this.
No Pope before or, certainly, after was anything but clearly gay in my lifetime. The Roman Catholic Church cannot be distinguished from a criminal institution at present, and that needs to be addressed, and soon.
Ken Buck, one of the those half done muffins the Republicans love to watch strut about in their manliness, spent the primary trying to get to the right of Jane Norton and tongue bath the base on his knees. Mission accomplished, but now the realization the majority of voters will be hearing his documented idiocy has him 'walking back' a bunch of stuff.
Here's one position he might get away with.
But not these. From Colorado Pols:
The wholesale reversals are coming fast and furious now: Ken Buck abandoned his prior view that Social Security is a "horrible policy" that the private sector should be in charge of practically the day after his primary victory. This weekend, it was the wacky 17th Amendment stuff. Buck's opposition to women's reproductive choice, even in cases of rape or incest, is sure to follow soon--and somewhere in there he'll want to soften that whole "Obama is worse than nuclear war" thing.
And that's nothing close to a full list--it's an awful lot to walk back, isn't it?
I don't imagine any educated Republican is going to want that anti-education doofus, despite his law degree, in charge of any budget affecting the state.
Colorado Pols has two more killer takes.
One, the desperation and hypocrisy of the no tax types is allowing PETA to pose as a rescuer of infrastructure. Colorado Springs, the great hell hole of conservative synapse shorts, is broke and cannot provide city services, but the idea of skimpily clad 'librul' girls cleaning up is attractive to them.
But the best: John Hickenlooper, whom the Republicans initially tried to craftily call John Hickenritter to apend him to the current Governor Bill Ritter, has been endorsed and will be the beneficiary of financing help from three prominent Republican movers. This nails the coffin shut on either Maes, McInnis, or Tancredo, who is running as some sort of conservative something, or Josh Penry or any Republican who would accept this race.
And Christ on a cracker, if that doesn't do it for Dick Wadhams, there is no way the party could survive another election cycle under his leadership.
But what it also does is show actual businessmen aren't all that unimpressed with Hickenlooper or, by extension, Ritter, as they know what the state faced and faces and approve of the unhysterical way the Democrats did it. Or, at least, don't object to it. Combined with calliope scored fiasco the GOP put together at great expense over the last few months, the Republicans are lucky all their money hasn't gone away. But, the support is from calm financial conservatives, not the social hysterics and loons.
The Mosque on Ground Zero debate is notable because, one, it won't actually be a mosque and, 2., it's some blocks from Ground Zero. If people are offended by Muslims praying under a mullah that Bush II approved for our national image, than why do they allow strip clubs even closer in?
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All material on this site copyright Richard L. MacLeod (Dark Cloud) 1968-2010 unless otherwise stated.
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