In real life…

…I am in the process of relocating.  As some of you may recall, I bought a house in Pennsylvania.  It was a foreclosed property and I got it at a steep discount.  This past week, I started getting it ready for occupancy.  It needs a bit of work, especially in the basement where there is a water issue that needs to be addressed.  There are also some landscaping issues and code violations that need to be fixed so we won’t be moving in for awhile yet.

But the best part of cleaning up this house has to be pulling the carpets up.  I’d like to thank the elderly ladies who like wall to wall carpeting.  Here’s the before shot of the living room:

Living room with manky old carpet

 

And here is the living room after a couple hours of RD with a utility knife:

Living room minus manky carpet

 

That drop dead gorgeous hardwood floor has been lovingly protected for 60 years from dogs and kids by successive applications of dingy beige carpet.  I couldn’t afford a floor as beautiful as this.  It’s a rich dark brown with a lovely patina.  It just needs a good cleaning but not too much refinishing action.  Even the seams between the planks are perfect.

Buying this house was a bit like going to a basket auction and not knowing exactly what I was getting.  The floors were a nice surprise and they run throughout the house.  Combine that with the arched doorways and built-in hutches and niches and I would say I scored a bahgain.

 

Another good reason not to work in Cambridge

It’s in lockdown mode right now while the terrorist suspects are being rounded up.  There are a lot of R&D facilities in Cambridge. Derek Lowe of In the Pipeline who works there just checked in with an update.

This is not the first time that R&D people were associated by location with terrorism activities.  In 2001, the pharma labs in central NJ had visits from the FBI when the anthrax letters made their way through the Princeton, Trenton and Rocky Hill post offices.

I’m sure it’s just an unhappy coincidence.

Stay safe, friends.

Ok, I’ll say it. It was terrorism. But first, some clarity.

When someone(s) plants explosive devices at locations where there will be crowds, detonates them and, as a result, kills and maims dozens of people, that is terrorism.

Why?  Because senseless death in such a dramatic fashion tends to scare the bejeesus out of people.  When the explosions are seconds apart and within walking/visual distance of each other, there is no question that it is terrorism.  The explosions were meant to kill and terrify.

The problem is that we have come to associate terrorism with scary brown skinned people with middle eastern names and have conveeeeeniently forgotten that before Al Qaeda, there was Timothy McVeigh.  Now, unless people are starting to refer to McVeigh as a freedom fighter, we should remember that we once called him a terrorist.

So, while we wait to determine who set the explosives off, we shouldn’t be afraid to call it what it is: terrorism.  And it’s just as likely to be homegrown as middle eastern.  All you right wing whip kissing cowards can chill until we get to the bottom of this.

Here come the soft targets

I was cleaning leaves out of the flower beds at the new house when I heard the news and hoped that #1 child was in class today in Framingham and not taking the day off to watch a race in person.  She hasn’t texted me back yet. She’s probably just busy.

It’s taken 12 years for terrorism to go after soft targets here in the US.  I expect there will be another round of shrieking about how we must go after brown skinned people and clamp down even more and subject each other to even more interrogation and frisking.  But there are more than 300 million of us and we will all grind to a halt, some of us cowering under our beds, and the country will be no safer from soft target terrorism.

Maybe this time, we’ll think before we invade, although I’m sure the military contractors would prefer we are thoroughly freaked out by today’s turn of events.

Yes, I’m pissed off and I’m very sad for the victims.  But I haven’t lost my mind yet.  This time, we need to keep our collective heads cool because as far as we know, the soft target terrorism is just beginning and we don’t know yet who is responsible.

How wealth is really distributed

Most of you have already seen this video.  I’m reposting it here for those of you who lurk here from the right.

Wealth *is* being redistributed in this country.  It’s going to the people at the top.  ”Oh, sure”, you say, “that’s just statistics and you can make statistics lie and stuff.”  Now, you’re beginning to sound like Stephen Colbert.

The point of this video is not to attack wealth.  The point is that it is concentrated in the hands of too few people to the detriment of everyone else.  A corporate CEO does not work 380X harder than his accountant and even garbagemen deserve a living wage. For too many people, a living wage is not a reality.

Well, of course he’s going to meet with the suits

I’ve read posts by Charles Pierce, Digby and Atrios lamenting how Obama has decided to hold a “leadership” meeting with the big bank ceos who got us into this mess to discuss the details of the Grand Bargain.

It sounds a lot like crocodile tears.

Look, you guys KNEW when you were cheering for him (or cheering against Mitt Romney) last year that he kisses the bankers’ collective asses.

What I can’t understand is how it is that such a bunch of smart people could only see two possible options last year.  You didn’t even try to challenge Obama and put the fear of God into him.  So, stop your “shock!” and righteous indignation or pointless navel gazing about why the “culture of smartness” does what it does and cuts ordinary people out of directing their own fates. You’re either useful idiots doing the party’s work or you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are.

There are always multiple solutions to the problem.  You need to think outside the box, possibly take the long view and stop being such whiny ass titty baby cowards about what is happening to your formerly safe spot in the Democratic party.

They moved your fucking cheese.  Get on with it.

The only thing Obama’s budget’s got going for it…

…is that the chained CPI cuts will apply to current seniors as well as future ones.

I realize that sounds counterintuitive but it’s not.

Think about it.

(Hint: “Do it to Julia!”