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« May 2005 | Main | July 2005 »

Red Sox In First — But For How Long?

The Red Sox have been in first place for the last week or so.  I wonder how long it will last?  I’ve seen too many seasons where the Sox start out gangbusters and then slump their way home to be convinced that it will last. 

Don’t get me wrong — I love seeing them in first place.  But it’s even better to see the Yankees in 4th place — 6 games out.

Now that’s sweet!

Posted by on June 30, 2020 at 11:18 AM in Current Affairs, Games, Sports | | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

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Gays Rights In Maine — Again

You have to give them their due — the gay right activists in Maine are a persistent lot.  Unfortunately for them, so are the gay rights opponents.

I’ve written previously about this subject here and here. 

In Maine, the Legislature approved a law in 1997 forbidding discrimination against gays.  This was overturned by voters in a referendum the following year.  Three years later, the Maine Legislature put it out to referendum again.  The voters gave it a thumbs down.

A few months ago, Governor Baldacci sponsored a gay-rights bill and the State Senate and House approved it.  They did this without requiring that the voters approve it (despite the fact that it has been voted down twice before).

Well guess what?

To the surprise of no one, gay rights foes have now raised 57,000 voter signatures to once again ask voters to repeal the law that the Governor and state legislature enacted against their wishes. 

I wonder what will happen if this measure goes to vote in a November referendum and the voters once again vote against the law.  I assume that the state politicians will just assume that the voters in Maine are just a bunch of prejudiced, back-water homophobes, and they’ll enact the law all over again.

What do you think?  Should state elected politicians just keep trying to run this law through despite a clear majority of the voters being against it?  As a politician, is your obligation to follow the will of your constituents or can you just ignore them when they’re acting in your opinion like ignorant buffoons?

Posted by on June 29, 2020 at 09:47 AM in Current Affairs, Legal | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

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Stinking Pervert

Put this one under the “how low can you go” column.

In today’s local paper, a 45 year-old Maine man was arrested in New Hampshire when he was found hiding in an outhouse tank.

A teenage girl found Gary Moody of Gardiner, Maine staring at her from below an outhouse seat.  Police pulled him from the waste tank under a log cabin outhouse. 

“We had to decontaminate him,” said Capt. Jon Hebert of the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department.  Before handcuffing him, firefighters hosed him down.

Hebert said, “we treated him as if he were hazardous material.”

Posted by on June 29, 2020 at 08:44 AM in Current Affairs, Legal | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

This is my result, what’s yours?

 

 

Your Linguistic Profile:

40% General American English
40% Yankee
15% Upper Midwestern
5% Dixie
0% Midwestern

Posted by on June 28, 2020 at 01:37 PM in Current Affairs, Games, Travel, Web/Tech | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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Rumsfeld v. Cheney on Time Table in Iraq

Vice President Cheney said a few days ago that the insurgents were in their “last throes.” 

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the insurgency could go on for any number of years.  “Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, ten or twelve years.”

Gee, do these guys ever talk with one another?

———————-

Oh yes, Rumsfeld also noted that the insurgents’ attacks “are more lethal than they had been previously, they’re killing a lot more Iraqis.”

Memo to Rumsfeld:  They’re killing more of our American troops too. 

In February, March and April of this year we had 146 Americans killed.  In May and June, we’ve already had 155 U.S. soldiers killed.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, General McCaffrey, who led the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division in the 1991 Gulf War, just returned from a visit to Iraq.  While he states that failure isn’t an option in Iraq, he confirms that the U.S. Army and Marines are too “under-manned and under-resourced” to maintain the status quo beyond next fall.  He acknowledges that the American people are losing faith in the war leadership and support for the war itself is fading.

He calls for an increase of 80,000 personnel for the Army and 25,000 for the Marines. 

Posted by on June 27, 2020 at 06:48 PM in Current Affairs | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Where Will Oldies Music End Up?

I was watching Spiderman 2 on cable recently with my 11 year-old daughter.  At one point in the movie, Peter Parker loses his Spiderman powers while the song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” plays in the background.

I asked my daughter if she’d seen the original movie when the B.J. Thomas song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” was introduced.

“Wasn’t that in Forrest Gump?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, but it was originally in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” (1969)

“Is that a good movie?” she asked.

Well, that started me going.  Good?  Sheesh — it’s one of my favorite westerns.  Then I had to tell her about various parts of the movie.

 “Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch?”

 “Rules? In a knife fight? No rules.”

“If he’d just pay me what he’s paying them to stop me robbing him, I’d stop robbing him.”

“Who are those guys?”

Listening to the song made me wonder again what will happen to all the oldies that I often listen to and that are still played frequently on radio stations all over the country.  After all, most of the songs I grew up with are now heard often as soundtracks in today’s movies.  They’re sometimes used in automobile television ads.  Even worse, I hear them in elevators and in grocery stores as background music.

I never would have imagined growing up that I’d hear the Beatles, the Beach Boys. the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Chicago, CCR and even B.J. Thomas used as “waiting room” music. 

I was mortified a few years ago when my daughter came home from summer camp and sang some songs she learned from the counselors while sitting around a camp fire.

When I was a kid, camp songs were things like:

On Top Of Old Smokey

Michael Row The Boat Ashore

She’ll Be Coming Around The Mountain

You Are My Sunshine

You know the kind of songs I mean. 

So what does my daughter come home singing?  The old Hollies tune “Rockin Robin.”  If that’s not bad enough, and I know for some of you this will sound sacrilegious, she was singing Don McLean’s “American Pie” — as a freakin camp fire song!  Imagine — the #1 song in 1972 that talks about the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper — being a campfire song.

It makes me wonder — and not for the first time — whether oldies music will still be played after my generation retires and eventually dies.  I have a son in college and one who has already graduated from college.  I laughingly tell them that music they listened 4 or 5 years ago has long been forgotten and will never be played again.  But the music I listened to 40 or 50 years ago is still played all the time.

But will it be?  When all the baby boomers are laid to rest — will it be played anymore?  Or will all the great songs of the fifties, sixties and seventies just be background tunes that folks hear once in a while and immediately forget?   

Posted by on June 27, 2020 at 06:01 PM in Current Affairs, Film, Games, Music, Television | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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The War In Iraq According To Rumsfeld and Cheney

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld denied yesterday that the Iraq war has become a quagmire.

“Anyone who says we have lost the war or are losing the war is wrong,” Rumsfeld said.  He added that setting a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal “would throw a lifeline” to terrorists who have suffered significantly recently.

Vice President Cheney a few days ago said that the insurgents were in their “last throes.” 

I’m not sure what make-believe-world these men live in, or whether in their attempt to convince the American people of this nonsense they have deluded themselves into believing their own propaganda.

Just take a look at what the men really responsible for the fighting in Iraq have to say:

General John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for U.S. operations in the Mideast, said that more foreign fighters were coming into Iraq and that the insurgency’s “strength is about the same” as it was six months ago.  “There’s a lot of work to be done against the insurgency,” he said.

Having just returned from a visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. Abizaid said he was surprised at how many American commanders and troops asked whether the military was losing support at home for the war.  “It was a real concern,” Gen. Abizaid said.

Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, also appeared at the hearings yesterday with Rumsfeld.  When questioned about whether the insurgency was in its final throes, as V.P. Cheney suggested, or was essentially holding its own, as Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, stated this week, Gen. Casey admitted: “There’s a long way to go here.  Things in Iraq are hard.”

Hard?  Is that what you call it?

So far, as of June, 23, 2005, 1725 Americans have been killed in Iraq.  The New York Times reported today that:

“Four car bombs exploded in a central Baghdad commercial district early Thursday morning, spewing shattered glass and bits of human skin over the streets while killing at least 17 people. The bombings raised the toll in the capital to at least 43 dead and 100 wounded in a string of similar attacks that began Wednesday night.”

That’s 43 dead and 100 wounded — in just one day.  A few paragraphs later, the article notes:

“The attacks demonstrate the insurgents’ ability to strike at will across the capital despite a month long crackdown by United States and Iraqi troops that commanders have said has been aimed primarily at curbing car bombings. In Baghdad alone, an insurgent offensive aimed at destabilizing the new Shiite majority government killed more than 700 people in the past month, most of them in car bombings.”

This, I submit, is the reality of the war in Iraq — not the poppycock that Rumsfeld and Cheney are trying to force down our throats.  The military officers who are fighting the insurgency on a daily basis don’t agree with the rosy picture Rumsfeld and Cheney want to paint.

Things are not going well in Iraq.  Nearly 2000 coalition troops have died so far and the insurgents are killing hundreds of troops and civilians each month.  The coalition forces don’t have control in Baghdad — let alone all of Iraq.

There is a growing feeling within Congress that the violence in Iraq is not weakening — in fact, it may be escalating — U.S. efforts notwithstanding.  There is a feeling that ever-increasing American combat deaths is eroding public support for the war.  

“Public support in my state is turning,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told Rumsfeld.  “People are beginning to question.  And I don’t think it’s a blip on the radar screen.  We have a chronic problem on our hands.”

I expect Rumsfeld and Cheney disagree with that assessment.

Posted by on June 24, 2020 at 09:51 AM in Current Affairs | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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Movie This Weekend?

My sons can’t wait to see George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead.  I was 13 when Night of the Living Dead come out in 1968.  I certainly can wait for it to come out on DVD.

I’ll probably opt next week to see Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.  That seems to be more my style.  The original movie came out in 1953.  I remember how frightened it was seeing it as a young child.

Your thoughts?

Posted by on June 23, 2020 at 09:36 AM in Business, Current Affairs, Film | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Yankees New Stadium Is Greed Gone Amuck

Allen Barra reported in the Wall Street Journal today that the new Yankee Stadium proposal is about one thing: money. 

After all, the Yankees are the No. 1 draw in attendance in the major leagues today.  There is no clamor among fans for a new stadium — many are in fact ticked off that the team might abandon the House that Ruth Built. 

What’s in it for Steinbrenner?  Luxury boxes — lots of them.  And less luxury taxes.

Huh?  What’s luxury taxes have to do with a new stadium.  Barra explains that the Yankees have to pay a luxury tax each year for being the richest team.  The rules say that they have to pay 34% of their revenue from ticket sales and tv contracts to poorer teams.  This year it amounts to around $31 million for the Yankees because they exceeded Major League Baseball’s $128 million payroll ceiling.

The catch?  Teams are allowed to deduct what they spend on new ball parks from their revenues.  The estimated cost of this new stadium is $1.5 billion.  Result: Steinbrenner won’t have to pay any luxury tax money to those poorer teams that are now beating up on his rich players.

Yankee Stadium now has 18 luxury boxes that go for around $400,000 per year — the highest in baseball.  The new proposed stadium would have up to 60 luxury suites — bringing in an additional $20 – $25 million a year. 

What does it mean for the “regular” fan if this new stadium is built?  6000 fewer seats.

Thanks for nothing George.

 

Posted by on June 22, 2020 at 09:45 AM in Business, Current Affairs, Games, Sports | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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Top Of The Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner

Top Of The Heap

Erle Stanley Gardner

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

$6.99 soft cover 222 pages; ISBN 0-8439-5352-7 (2004).

 

 

 

This book was originally published in 1952.  It is experiencing a revival as one of the Hard Case Crime Books.  The Hard Case Crime website describes their selection of books this way:

 

Hard Case Crime brings you the best in hardboiled crime fiction, ranging from lost noir masterpieces to new novels by today’s most powerful writers, featuring stunning original cover art in the grand pulp style.

 

 

They have a stunning list of authors, and their website features a new book by Stephen King called The Colorado Kid.  For more information, go to www.hardcasecrime.com.

 

Erle Stanley Gardner wrote this book under the name of A. A. Fair.  Gardner was a lawyer and the creator of Perry Mason.  He was also a prolific writer – he penned 146 books, 85 featuring Perry Mason.  As was common at the time, his books featured intricate plots and many surprises – though by today’s standards they suffered somewhat from a lack of character development.

 

Top Of The Heap features the type of language you might expect from a mystery written in the 50’s.  The book begins with John Carver Billings coming into the Cool & Lam detective agency and asking Donald Lam to find a couple of women that he spent the night with after having danced with a beautiful girlfriend of a notorious gangster.  The girlfriend has disappeared and Billings fears that the gangster will come after him and needs to find the other women to provide him with an alibi.  Lam asks Billings why he should find the women.

 

“Why beat about the bush?” Billings said.  “She’s Gabby’s moll.  She knows who pumped the lead into him.  She didn’t tell the police but she knows.  Suppose someone should think that she told me?”

                “Any particular reason why she should tell you?” I asked.

                “Or,” he said hastily, “suppose something’s happened to her?  Suppose the milk bottles keep on piling up on her porch?”

 

                Lam quickly discovers that Billings is being less than completely truthful.  What starts out as a straightforward investigation to find two women quickly escalates to something much more complex.  Dead bodies turn up and Lam uncovers a mining scam and an illegal casino. 

 

                If you enjoy – or can endure – the type of conversation popular at the time in these paperback crime novels, you’ll relish a story full of twists and turns with a satisfying conclusion.   It’s not hard to see how a wise-cracking sleuth  today – like the one portrayed by Spencer in the Robert Parker novels – had the writing of Gardner to use as an example. 

 

                When Lam is captured and questioned by a shady character named Channing, for instance, it’s the typical tough-guy exchange.

 

Channing said, “Lam, I don’t like this.  You sat around in front for several hours with a companion.  The man is still down there waiting for you.  I suppose if you don’t appear within a certain time, he’s to come and get you or else call the police.  Is that it?”

                                “You’re talking.  I’m listening.”

                                “I suppose you feel that gives you a paid-up policy of life insurance.”

                                “I’ll run my business,” I said, “you run yours.”

 

                For anyone nostalgic for the old fashioned, hard-boiled detective novels of the past, look no further than the Hard Case Crime Books.

Posted by on June 21, 2020 at 10:30 AM in Book Reviews, Books, Current Affairs, Legal | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

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