Year: 2010

Karma, Neh?

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So, a preacher in Ohio with a lot of money and wacked priorities decides to erect a six plus story statue of Jesus, because helping the poor is for punks.

I imagine that he thought that God is much bigger into graven images than he is into helping the downtrodden.

Well, the score is now God:1, religious and self-aggrandizing nut-job:0.

Lightning struck the statue and it burned to the ground. Doubtless the preacher won’t even feel a shred of doubt though.

Posted via mobile, which is why I am not composing a filk of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” (“Smoke on the Jesus?”) for my blog.

I am Completely Wiped

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Between my daughter’s bat mitzvah yesterday, and her reception today, I am completely wiped. Everything went pretty much to schedule, but the last minute running around was completely nuts.

I’m starting a new Job on Tuesday,* so I am hip deep in continued preparations, and adjustments for some days, as I will be away from home 4 days a week.

Hopefully, I’ll try to get back into the proverbial groove over the next week or so.

*And there was much rejoicing

Light Posting for a While

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I’ve got some stuff queued up, but I am heading off to a family get together on the Delaware shore, and then my Daughter is having her Bat Mitzvah this Saturday, so I will generally be away from the computer.

I have some stuff queued up, but volume should be light.

I have post dated this post until Sunday, after her reception, so scroll down for new posts.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!! (a day late)

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A day late, because my Daughter had her bat mitzvah, (my reflections on that later) but here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Washington First International Bank, Seattle, WA

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. Orange County Employees Credit Union, Orange, TX

Full NCUA list

So FDIC bank failures seem to be moderating a bit, but credit union failures appear to be picking up a smidgeon.

In any case, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):

Primary Election Results

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Blanche Lincoln won the runoff, I still think that she is going to lose the general, and this season, the Democratic wing of the Democratic party won’t be spending time, effort, or money on her.

On the plus side, it was her, intended-to-fail derivatives proposal that really got the financial regulation bill moving in the right direction in the Senate.

In California, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman proved that rich people can buy primary elections in California, which is not a surprise.

Meanwhile, South Carolina, once again proves Congressman James Petigru’s adage, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum,” true, with the Democratic Party’s primary of Alvin Green, an unemployed dishonorably discharged veteran facing felony obscenity charges who ran no campaign.

The theory is that he won because his name appeared first on the ballot, but this does not explain how he came up with a $10,400.00 filing fee.

This gets curious because SC Senator Jim Demint (R) was considered to be one of the more vulnerable ‘Phants this year in the Senate.

I’m wondering who counted the ballots.

I Found a Job

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I mentioned the interview earlier.

I start next Tuesday, and you can be sure that I will post very little about my employer, even if I come across a story about them in the news.

I think that blogging about one’s employer is a good way to make an employer* a former employer.

Since they are near Dulles airport, about 80 miles away, I will be getting a room in area (already lined up), and it includes Internet (Wifi).

Unfortunately, I do not have a laptop at this time, so I am looking to get a wireless enabled one, which is why I’ve changed my donation button to read Matthew’s Saroff’s Beer (and Laptop) Fund and Tip Jar.

I will be using the laptop for blogging, and to Skype video calls to Sharon† and the kids.

It’s the 2nd item down in the right hand column.

Needless to say, my blogging time will be more restricted, though the fact that I will be without a TV may make the effect on my blogging a wash.

Still, having a job as an engineer after 11 months of not having one (the 1 month gig was as a tech writer) is a very good thing, and I am close enough to head home for just an evening occasionally.

*It’s a temporary contract, so technically, they are a client, but still…
†Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

OK, This is Weird

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I just got a call from Caterpillar regarding whether I got my proxy statement, and how I would be voting on the measures their annual meeting, which is tomorrow.

It appears from reading the proxy statement, that they are worried about push-back on their executive compensation/bonus package, though it might be that they want to beat back a change to their board election procedures: It’s currently triennial, and there is a motion to make it annual, or a shareholder proposal for an independent Charmain of the Board.

I’ve gotten snail mail on such things before, but getting a phone call is a new one for me.

Moron

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Notwithstanding the nobility, and moral necessity of his actions, the person who leaked the helecopter “collateral murder” video, the leaker is a f%$#ing moron.

You see, he revealed that he was the leaker to some random guy online, and now has been arrested:

Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

Admitting to the leak to some random guy online, particularly given Obama’s, and his Department of Justice’s, jihad on leakers, is Palin-level stupid and arrogant.

It’s even stupider when you realize that he outed himself to Adrian Lamo.

I think that he did the right thing, because the coverups that the military engages in on such matters are simply not acceptable in a democracy, but in blithely telling someone that he did, and then doing something this mind-bogglingly stupid, and getting caught as a result, he dissuades future whistle-blowers, which is a blow to keeping our military, and our government honest.

He’s also completely screwed, because while he might be able to prevail on a civilian jury to see that the whistle-blowing served the public good, there is no way that a group of officers is going to show any mercy to an SPC (Specialiats) who does not even qualify as an NCO.

If there has been anything consistent about the progress of military justice since 911, whether it be torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, the death, and subsequent cover-up of the details of Pat Tillman, etc. it is that the military will go to extremes to cover-up the truth, and if forced to prosecute, it will go after enlisted men, as a first step.

I Suppose that I Must Comment on This

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Helen Thomas has resigned as a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.

In an interview, she said:

Thomas remarked in video posted to RabbiLive.com that Jews in Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.”

Thomas has never made a secret of her Lebanese-American background, and I think that anyone with a bit of skin in this game, myself included, can be a bit nuts, but the statement here is wrong on a number of levels:

  • It appears to be a call for ethnic cleansing.
  • About 60% of the Jews in Israel came from the Arab world, Iran, India, Etc.*

Needless to say, while I respect Thomas’ contributions to journalism, I do not appreciate when anyone sounds like Meir Kahane.†

I’ll miss her at press conferences

The tragedy is that Pat Buchanan still has a job.

(on edit)
I think that a refreshing bit of perspective comes from [url=http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/06/helen-thomas-affair]Kevin Drum[/url]:

Helen Thomas is retiring. Thank God. On a substantive level, this is a good thing. Her remarks about Israel were obviously odious and she’s doing everyone a favor by stepping down. Equally important, though, maybe this means we don’t have to spend the next week listening to every windbag in the country rant on about Thomas’s remarks, using them as an excuse to grind every axe ever invented and suck media attention away from actually important stories. Of which, you might have noticed, we have quite a few these days.

Say what you will about Thomas, she really was never a part of the pundit class.

* They are generally referred to as Sephardic, but this is a misnomer, as Sephardic Jews trace their origins back to the Iberian peninsula. Jews from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, India, etc. are more accurately referred to as “oriental” Jews.
†Let me google that for you.

Look Who I Ran Into

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Click for full size

His hair looks better in person

My wife and I had finished dropping the kids off at school following Natalie’s Bat Mitzvah rehearsal, the ceremony is this Saturday, and we stopped at Java Mamas.*

As we pulled up, there were people getting out of a couple of black SUVs, and I looked over, and said something like, “Would you look at that!”

It was former Maryland governor, and current candidate for governor, Bob Ehrlich.

My wife replied, “Matthew, behave!“

I behaved, but I snapped the shot. He’s the one in the shades.

They weren’t politicking, they were just getting coffee, and I didn’t say anything.

It’s not a great pic, though I think that it’s about as good a photo as I am likely to take with my cell phone.

He’s a little bit grayer than I recall from his last official photo, but that was almost 4 years ago.

I did not stay around, my wife and I had errands, so I cannot speak to tipping, though they did queue up politely and wait their turns.

I don’t approve of his politics, but I do approve of his taste in coffee.

*Good coffee and light fare like sandwiches and salad at Java Mama’s, 324 Main Street Reisterstown, MD 21136-1951 (410)833-8100.

Finally, Someone in Arizona Stands Up to Bigots

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In Prescott, Arizona, the administrators at commissioned a mural depicting current students at the school:

Faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of children enrolled at Miller Valley, a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. Wall said thousands of town residents volunteered or donated to the project, the fourth in a series of community murals painted by a group of artists known as the “Mural Mice.”

Unfortunately, since some of these actual students at the school were black and Hispanic, Steve Blair, a City Councilman and right wing talk show host on KYCA-AM, threw a hissy fit over the description of darkly complected students.

The weasels school administrators responded to this by ordering the artists to lighten the children’s faces:

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.

The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity. But the school’s principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.

It’s gotten a lot of coverage, and as a result, Steve Blair has been fired by the radio station, so apparently there are limits to racism in Arizona.

Here’s hoping that the voters will do so in the next election, but my guess is that they will elect him mayor.