wha?

"I just want you to know if the country that we're probably one generation removed to where no matter how hard you study, based on your last name or the color of your skin, you'd have no shot," Sen. Lindsey Graham

Is it just me? Or is this totally incoherent? I think I understand what he was trying to say, but it still makes little sense on its face.

I wish I could be as stupid and heedless as Jeff Sessions is, in my job.

The Wire remains, all things considered, arguably the greatest creation ever made for television. And the Emmys gave it exactly one writing award in its first season.

You can't help the feeling that things like The Wire simply frighten Hollywood. The Wire raised the bar so high on television drama that no-one has matched it, let alone exceeded it.

Tom Coburn is as good a reason as there is (other than James Inhofe and Jeff Sessions) to make our own House of Lords into a symbolic institution, with no real power. It's anti-democratic, and always has been, the holdover of an aristocratic world that should not exist anymore.

I realize there have always been Senators who weren't too bright--almost seems a requirement of the job in some cases--but guys like Coburn are so stupid I begin to wonder how it is they can figure out how to tie their shoes every morning. Muscle memory, I guess.

why doesn't Boren just change parties already?

What an idiot. He sounds like the stuffed-shirt at elementary school who finks to the teacher about all the other kids who won't include him in whatever Fun Thing they happen to be doing.

He's an embarrassment. To himself and everyone around him. I can't imagine anyone taking him seriously, except maybe David Broder. They should go off by themselves somewhere and quit bothering the adults who are actually trying to do something productive for ALL the people.

40 years ago, all the racist southern senators were Democrats.

Now they're all Republicans. That's progress you can believe in.

Other than that? Not much progress...but, then, what do we expect? The GOP has kept power for 50 years by pandering to the racist South and midwest, and they're not about to quit.

I'm sure that the management of the corporations that own our mass media have made it abundantly clear to relative grunts like Chuck Todd exactly which side their bread is buttered on.

You can make a case that most of this is the predictable result of years of Village inbreeding, but I think, even more the insidious influence of right-wing corporate management is the bigger problem. Journalists like Todd, who have lost the right to call themselves reporters, are just tools for corporate management, corporate management that will always be right-wing, and always argue for further aggrandizement of government power and secrecy in the hands of their pals...the pals in government they've bought, and sold, repeatedly.

Todd is a clown. They all are. We should hold them in perpetual contempt unless or until they realize what they're doing. Or not doing.

walk into any Craftsman or Spanish Revival house built 100 years ago that's in decent shape, and you'll see how people used to live. How some of us still live, if we're lucky. Even the most modest house has a richness and solidity about it that's impressive. Proportions that are just right. And if you're a little bit patient, you can find lovely antiques to go with it, that often cost far less than something new would cost, ready to use.

The price of cheap goods for all is too high, and has been for a long time. We really needed to limit the number of people on this planet to about half--or less--the number who are on it now, and in affluent countries (affluent mostly by virtue of rapine and dominance of less affluent countries), we could use about half the number of people. In 1910, a year when many nice, but modest homes were built all around America, and most everything we used was truly hand-made in one way or another, there were 100 million people in this country. Sounds just about right to me.

Alas, we're too short-sighted, and, really, just too emotionally undisciplined to limit our population...and I can assure you, the planet is going to limit it for us, indirectly if not directly, in the not too distant future. We could have avoided that. But, we can't. Our DNA evolved for a very different world than the one we're in, and has not caught up with our forebrains. By the time it does, it'll be a miracle if there are any humans left on Planet Earth.

Another example of how quality once meant something:

http://www.classicrendezvous.com/

look, and weep.

Used is good. Used, in fact, is best. I buy almost nothing new anymore. Except books maybe, and even those I try to buy used. computers, since they evolve so quickly, and old ones are virtually useless. Other than that, though? Not much.