B-Side Thursday

"Alone" by Pearl Jam, circa second album.

Well Said

Original post here.

Keys to success

In "Little Red Hen retold" (Forum, Aug. 11), Jim Evans, who bakes his own bread, misses the point of President Barack Obama’s statement, "You didn’t get there on your own." That is not the same as saying, "You had nothing to do with it."

It means that no matter how much grit, entrepreneurship, energy, intelligence and personal sacrifice you put into a successful business or project, it could not have succeeded without others. To be sure, you were the catalyst. Without your efforts, it could not have happened. But you were a necessary condition of your success, not a sufficient one.

You deserve enormous credit for what you achieve. But you did not achieve it in a vacuum. You depend on a social and economic milieu that empowers you.

Nobody does anything by himself. No matter how determined, industrious or John Galt you are — you did nothing by your own guts and determination alone.

You owe your success to the background community of people who made your success possible: farmers, miners, road-builders, police officers, inventors, bankers, teachers, your own employees.

It’s because of them that you have achieved what you have. Without them it couldn’t have happened.

Bangs L. Tapscott

Salt Lake City

Farts Are Funny

Sadly, No! nails it, again. Damn those peeps are funny!

Dumb, But Amusing

Putting aside the idiocy of the message behind it, I actually think "Owebama" is kinda clever. Yeah, that's a lot to put aside. It does frustrate me that the debt is only an issue to the Right when a Democrat is in office, but then again, it frustrates me that the debt is an issue at all. 

This came up in the context of the nontroversy about the $716 billion that the ACA cuts from MediCare. Never mind the internal inconsistency of calling a President who cuts almost three quarters of a trillion out of the budget "Owebama," the idea that this means the Dems are hostile to MediCare, and the Republicans are going to "save" it is farcical. But keeping a consistent viewpoint and not just reacting on a purely partisan, emotional level is not really most folks' bag, or so the Intertubes keep trying to tell me.

B-side Thursday

Bands who have so much good material that quality tracks don't make it to albums impress me.

Also, Flea is a sick, sick bassist.

Blogsplosion

And yet another smart, cool person has started a blog.  That would be Jon, former guest-poster here.

Go here and read. Please. It's also over there on the right under "Visits My Friends."

Niall Ferguson: Still Being Given A Forum To Embarass Himself [UPDATED]

Update: Salon does it better, of course.

As a historian, Ferguson may have valuable insights, especially if you are sympathetic to the "White European Men Rock!" strain of historical analysis. But in many other ways, not least as a political commentator, he's just horrible. The link takes on one dumb point, the link inside the link (to Krugman) takes on another, but I just love this line of argument:

In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.

Is this satire? Irony? Or is Ferguson's understanding of the American political process at the Federal level so poor that he doesn't realize that the Congress, not Obama, dictates what laws are passed? Does he not get that the House has been Republican for two years? Does he not understand the significance of the filibuster, or the median vote in the Senate?

The rest of his article blathers on about the debt (which Ferguson does not understand), foreign policy (neoconservative garbage and apologetics) and is basically a big commercial for Romney 2012. It isn't that Ferguson is awful, it that he is respected that kills me. Hacktacular indeed.

Crooked Record

(This post is in honor of my brother-in-law, who is a new blogger, and a welcome voice).

As one studies history, to the extent one does, many times one will come across tidbits like "So And So discovered this or that." It doesn't take much thought to realize that there are almost always other people, some times many other people, who supported and assisted So And So, but this is a particularly striking example of someone doing all the work and getting none of the credit. So, here I go trying to set the record straight, via lazy linking.

New Blog Link

Check out Scott Radimer's blog, over there on the right under "Visit My Friends." Do it. NOW!