Mollie Tibbetts
It is often said that those going to court to sue want justice, and those defending themselves want mercy. There is ample recent evidence that both can be failures, according to the results observed. I will elaborate on several notable cases, old and new.
Continue reading “Failures of Justice and Mercy”
Why are there boundaries?
Boundaries serve to delineate a difference – over here is Germany, over there is Poland. They serve to separate incompatible functions – on this side of the wall is Sales, on that side is Production (and dangerous equipment, pressurized gases, concentrated chemicals, high voltage electricity). And they serve to provide guidance / provide protection – if you go past the fence, the bull / deep ravine / toxic waste might get you. Valid boundaries are vital to your happiness / health / survival.
We went through, a generation back or two, a widespread rejection of boundaries – “tune in, turn on, drop out” in Leary’s phrase. Boundaries were seen as limiting, arbitrary, restrictive – as obstacles rather than protections. Boundaries kept people apart rather than kept people safe. Boundaries prevented free association instead of limiting contact between incompatible groups. Boundaries were bad.
I got an Email from my least-respected banking organization today:
Cash deposits will be limited to account owners or authorized signers
What is happening
To help reduce criminal activity and protect your account, we’ll be making changes to our policy for cash deposits made at Wells Fargo branches.
Once our policy takes effect in a few weeks, we’ll only accept cash deposits into your Wells Fargo Consumer checking or savings accounts if it is coming from an account owner or authorized signer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-stwo1q6eU
From a previous comment:
“Yo and El, you two crack me up! You talk back and forth like two grumpy guys in a barber shop. I need laughs right now. I’d watch 3 Stooges but I hate watching videos on my phone.”
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Therefore, this column: Jokes for Mary Christine. I’ll start:
Two young men were talking. One began, “I’ll never figure women out. My girlfriend and I have been going out for a month, but she doesn’t seem to be very affectionate. It’s like she’s looking for something I haven’t come up with yet.”
His friend responded, “Oh, that’s easy. Women are creatures of mystery and drama; they like pleasant surprises, out of the blue, with devotion and creativity. Next time you meet, try kissing her when she least expects it.”
“OK, I’ll give it a try!” and they parted.
The next day, the second sees the first with a huge black eye. “Some friend you are! Look what she did to me!”
The second replied, “Wow, what a shiner! But did you follow my advice and kiss her when she least expected it?”
“WHEN? Oh, I thought you said where …”
Please provide your own as the spirit moves you.
In the ongoing cultural wars, we have lost much. For a start, we have lost a lot of the distribution, impact and benefits that the Boy Scouting movement gave to America. What we had, how we lost it, and why we lost it is the subject of this rambling, unpoetic screed. Enjoy, detest, write hateful comments, whatever – YMMV, this is MY experience from forty years ago. I have no current contact with the Scouting movement, so feel free to add your two cents below as to what it is / does / should be.
I grew up in middle Tennessee in the sixties / seventies. Overwhelmingly white area, filled with fairly ordinary people, who did ordinary things. Our fathers were almost all living at home with us and our mothers, raising us as best they could, teaching, leading and disciplining us as possible. They were not perfect people any more than today’s are, but they gave us time, attention, and support above and beyond today’s call. We became better people because of it.
My dad was not a Scoutmaster – he didn’t have enough time. Five kids, a full-time job as a civilian contractor for the Air Force working at a wind tunnel facility ate up most of his time, along with a thirty-acre non-working (non-commercial) farm and various other things. For a couple of years we had a commercial greenhouse growing tomatoes for local supermarkets, but a nasty windstorm destroyed it and he let it go; wasn’t making a whole lot there anyway, too easy to grow tomatoes in Tennessee. But with all he worked and did and made and fixed and built and maintained and kept, he somehow found time for –
The Boy Scouts of America. As a parent, not an official.
Let’s see: the husband and former President met with the current Attorney General on an airport tarmac in Phoenix. The meeting was a completely random event, occasioned by the odd chance that they were both at the same place at the same time.
Anyone who believes this is credulous and gullible to a fault. A secret meeting between a Presidential candidate’s husband, who is being investigated for criminal behavior, and the boss of those doing the investigating, is held where no records are kept or recorded. They were just making small talk, pleasantries to pass the time between flights; no transcript is made or available. It is done in a small, private plane away from staff, reporters or observers.
Why did Bill Clinton tamper with a Federal investigation? Why did Lynch allow it? Post your guesses in the comments, please, and I’ll lead off:
(1) Bill is worried that the Clinton Foundation foreign donations are getting too “hot”, and wanted to make sure Loretta Lynch was going to step on the investigation before too many details are released to the public. Loretta agreed, and filed a motion Wednesday (the meeting took place Monday afternoon) to delay any release of information on the Foundation donors until fifteen months after the election. Bill agreed to destroy half of those embarrassing photos of Lynch now, and half after the election.
(2) ……
By James the Wanderer
“Last week our stove died, in a tragic egg-boiling accident.” That kind of line perhaps deserves a little explanation.
I put ten eggs in a pan with some baking soda and water and turned it up to high. You boil them for twelve minutes and dunk them in ice water; after a while you take them out and put them back in the refrigerator. Not exactly rocket science, and easy to do. I was just starting to grill pork chops, so I asked my wife that when the timer went off could she finish up, which she agreed to do. I went out to the grill in the backyard.
My eldest came running out to advise me that “Mom needs you right now!” I went back in to find her mildly upset; she had been in the living room and saw sudden flashes of light, electrical-discharge variety. Upon investigation, she found the eggs had boiled over and shorted out the stove. I pulled the oven breaker and we began the cleanup.
This was the stove in question. I’m not trying to chastise the manufacturer so I won’t name them, but I hope someone points this article out to them.
Guest Post by James the Wanderer
In 1981 I was a fresh young fellow, just out of college, and needed a job. I joined the Port Arthur Research Laboratories of Texaco Inc. in Port Arthur, TX, which was the most lucrative offer I had gotten out of college. It was one of a couple of offers I had received at the time; another was a company that made fibers for carpets and other things, Millikan. There was something of a stigma on them at the time, for periodically the owner would fire an entire corps of engineers if something went wrong, and was known for it; other companies would eagerly hire the fallen, since it was known that Millikan did this, despite having only hired the best he could find. But I was not interested in this, so I went for stability, which was TXC (their stock exchange symbol back then, hereafter a handy shortcut for the name); they were known for their veteran employees, and rarely fired anyone except for theft, incompetence or similar good reasons. I was neither a thief nor incompetent, so I took their offer.
Here I must apologize; despite the passage of over a quarter-century, I have not been able to establish that ALL the people I worked with are dead, retired or otherwise employed. And TXC had people of honor, character and discipline, which I have come to value wherever I find them; so EVERY name here is a pseudonym, to protect those who might still be serving in some capacity for their successor company, which turned out to be mainly Chevron, or somewhere else. I have no interest in gossip, nor maligning by association those who honorably do their jobs in this world. The worst perpetrators in these stories are dead, so it serves no purpose to name them either.
This article is to demonstrate by example the challenge of working honorably for an organization that is corrupt at the top. And how, despite the existence of honorable men and women (such as those who worked for TXC all over the world), a corrupt organization is doomed eventually.
I didn’t work at PARL for long; about eighteen months. The Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers were restless; there was strike fever in the air at the oil refinery next door, but the Research lab staff didn’t think there would be one; after all, they had “gone out” a few years earlier, and several members of the union had lost cars, boats, even homes when they had insufficient funds coming in to keep up their payments; they were too hurt from the last time to go out again so soon, so if there was a strike it would be short, a kind of face-saving gesture.
Some time back I promised Admin an article, when I was on fire about something; but the rant-mood passed before I could get anything worth reading down on electrons. Besides, I’m not sure I want my first article on TBP to be a rant; I don’t spend every day screaming, crying and carrying on about whatever has pissed me off the latest.
So instead, here’s an article on some of my favorite music. Some of you will try to figure out something about me from these, but really it’s just the ones I could readily find on YouTube. There are some really strange and obscure discs in my collection, but until I can figure out how to get tracks copied off (in decent quality) from vinyl to CD they’ll have to wait. These were chosen mainly for audio quality, although some have interesting images as well; if all you see is a single still image, that’s because it was the best sounding version I could find. Also, this post has exceeded the limits, so some are being left as links to fit the entire post into the editor.
I invite those who remember good music from whatever era to post their favorites in the comments, smile / bitch about mine, or remember an artist who didn’t get the “respeck” you think they deserved.
If America ever adopts Japan’s “National Treasure” system, surely Joe Bonamassa will be on it:
And just because I really like his work, which often speaks directly to my heart (like that cut above), here’s another:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiVDvF2Rqgo
Another choice would have been “Tennessee Plates”, just to show not all his work is dark and sad.
But then, sometimes you get a song that captures the hard times; Greg Allman did it for me back in the 1970s, I first heard this one on WSM-FM out of Nashville, when I was young and thought I was the only teenager with troubles. This is a more recent version, after all Duane died in a motorcycle crash back in the (1990s?), but it fits in well with my memories:
Continue reading “American Culture: lesser-well known rockers, mostly Southern”