Sunday Morning Stuff

spooky October snow

Hi guys, I found a lot of stuff in the spam filter this morning and have released them.  I have no idea why your messages are getting sent there.  There’s no obvious trigger words or filtered IDs.  It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma.  I’ll have to be more diligent about fishing them out.

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It snowed here yesterday, quite a bit for October, actually.  My cable internet connection and ATT signal were fubared for part of the day yesterday. We didn’t get the high winds of the Nor’easter here in NJ but I hear that Manhattan was windy and snowy.  The occupiers in Zuccotti Park have a list of requests, if you are so inclined to help them weather the weather.  They would really appreciate socks and other cold weather gear.  If you have some stuff to spare, check out their donations page here.  The fire department confiscated their gas powered generators on Friday.  Yeah, that will make them leave.  Not.  I don’t think Bloomberg gets it yet.  Taking stuff away and making people uncomfortable only makes them want to stay just to get in your face.  Given that they’re not going to go away, preventing them from getting hypothermia might be the humane thing to do, not that I actually expect that billionaire mayors will do the humane thing.

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bemused_leftist says that some Tom.Brune from Newsday dude is asking Clintonistas to justify their support of Hillary and explain what we think she would have done differently.  I can’t find Brune’s request by bemused_leftist (can you provide the link?  If it gets spammed, just email me)  says it goes something like this:

“I’m picking up reports and suggestions here and there that many Clinton supporters have a nostalgia for the Clinton presidency that never was. And I have thought about that and wondered: What would or could she have done that Obama didn’t do, and what did Obama do that she wouldn’t or couldn’t do.
Have any thoughts on that?”

At first, I thought I would reply to this request by listing some of the things I thought she might have done differently.  Then I realized that that’s not really what Brune wants.  What Brune wants is to continue to frame Hillary Clinton as an undesirable candidate for reasons that are known only to Brune and people like him.  And my response is that it does not matter if Brune and his droogs think that Bill Clinton wasn’t the Greatest Liberal Hope of the 20th Century.  It also doesn’t matter what we think she might have done differently.

What matters is that 18,000,000 people voted for her.  I spoke to many of them by phone when I was campaigning for her in NJ and PA.  And ALL of the ones I spoke to  said they had nothing against Obama.  They just didn’t think he was ready, but judging by her performances in the debates, they thought Hillary was.

That’s it, Mr. Brune.  That’s all you need to know.  18,000,000 of us thought Obama wasn’t ready and Hillary was.  We don’t have to justify anything else.

However, YOU and the rest of the Obama contingent and the DNC *do* have to justify why you think it was acceptable to take those 18,000,000 votes and dispose of them at the convention.  YOU have to justify why it was OK to deny Hillary Clinton’s delegates a legitimate roll call vote during the convention.  YOU need to tell us why there wasn’t a debate on who would get the nomination because the delegate count between the two of them was slimmer than a gnat hair.

Come, come, Mr. Brune, let’s not have any hypotheticals and revisionist history.  We know what went on during the Clinton administration because unlike some Obama supporters, we were old enough to vote.  Just because you didn’t like her, and found him to be a flawed human being, doesn’t mean you have the right to tell us what we should be thinking.  You and your clueless cohort continue to dismiss our opinions and ask us to come up with reasons that you can shoot down.  And you shoot them down because you haven’t come to terms with why you rejected the best candidate you had in 2008.  I think we both know why you deep sixxed her.  We’ve seen enough so we know what lurks at the bottom of what might be called your souls.  There’s no reason for us to continue to play this game with you.

Here’s the bottom line, Mr. Brune.  There are still voters out there who prefer Hillary Clinton.  There are some former Obama voters who have snapped out of it and have had a change of heart.  There are some Republicans who are alarmed enough about economic conditions and have been impressed by her performance on a world stage.  And in the latest polls she is leading by wide margins against any Republican challenger the right wants to throw at her.  She beats them more soundly than Obama ever will.

You can’t change that.  It must be frustrating for you that we just don’t get it.  We just will not accept that getting what we actually want and voted for is not going to happen.  All of the “serious people” have decided that, in advance, and consider us silly women and crazy, delusional nutcases.  The trouble is our numbers are not going down.  We stubbornly resist the “serious peoples'” attempts to reason with us, which for some peculiar reason come off sounding like mocking condescension.

If it feels like the former Clintonistas and new converts are determined to drive the country off a cliff next year if they don’t get with the program and vote for Obama, then good!  Now you know what it feels like to be ignored and lead involuntarily into a period of economic instability by a president who is tragically unprepared to deal with it.

There’s your answer, Mr. Brune.  No, no, don’t thank me.

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For those of you still wondering why the big deal over Steve Jobs, here’s another piece of the puzzle.  Back in February, Silicon Valley doges got together to host a dinner for Obama.  He was no doubt trying to get his donors all lined up in advance.  Steve Jobs wanted to plan the menu and thought that the chocolate cream pie the White House had ordered, along with the shrimp, cod and lentil soup was “too fancy”*.  Mark Zuckerberg was annoyed with John Chambers of Cisco who wanted Obama to get legislation passed that would allow him to not pay taxes on overseas profits.  Obama seemed annoyed too.  But Jobs wasn’t too pleased with Obama either:

Jobs, who had a coveted seat next to Obama, told the president about a growing need for engineers and pitched a popular idea in Silicon Valley: Grant any foreign student who earns an engineering degree in the United States a visa to stay upon graduation. Obama, though, said such a provision could only be included in the Dream Act, which would let illegal immigrants who arrive in the United States as minors and complete high school to become citizens — an idea opposed by congressional Republicans.

Jobs, who never had to worry about dealing with a loyal opposition at Apple, was not happy, saying later to Isaacson: “The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can’t get done. It infuriates me.”

Nonetheless, Jobs was willing to create an iCampaign for Obama’s re-election after the president followed up on another idea the Apple co-founder offered up: launch a national initiative to provide basic engineering courses at community colleges or tech and trade schools, whose graduates could supervise manufacturing plants in the United States. The lack of such workers, Jobs said, was a key reason Apple doesn’t set up assembly lines in America.

In the Walter Isaacson biography of Jobs, much is made of his “Reality Distortion Field”, Jobs irresistable charisma and belief that the impossible was attainable by sheer force of will of the people working on his projects.  This is probably a necessary trait for a president to have to some degree or another or he (or she) can’t lead.  And Obama, um, doesn’t.  Tom Brune might want to think about that because clearly, Hillary Clinton voters who watched her triumphing over the odds and the media during the primaries of 2008 detected the scent of a Reality Distortion Field.  It was strong enough that the Democratic party had to kill it.  But whatever.  Anyway, Jobs doesn’t have a very high opinion of Obama.  Jobs was a complex man and a bastard in many ways.  But one thing you can’t fault him for is his ability to size up people.  He had a knack for that and Jobs found Obama lacking.

By the way, has Obama ever followed up on Jobs request that community colleges and tech schools train new assembly line engineers? Anybody?  Tom?

*Interesting perspective on Jobs: He was a bit of an ascetic.  He had a weird aversion to a normal diet.  Jobs definitely ate to live and not the other way around.  He also thought buying 60,000 sq ft houses was an ostentatious and tasteless show of wealth.  He and his family owned several properties but he wasn’t into living in many of them.  His family home is nice but not plush or gargantuan by any stretch of the imagination.  His family didn’t have a live in staff of servants or a security detail.  For a billionaire, he lead a pretty modest life.  He was ambitious and driven but not by money or material things.  They did hang out with people who were into money.  Larry Ellison, who used to own one of the largest yachts in the world, the Rising Sun, invited Jobs and his family for excursions.  This prompted one of his kids to ask if they were going to take a ride with one of Jobs’ rich friends.  Too funny.