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Page 5 of 791 pages « First < 3 4 5 6 7 > Last »
Sep 2008
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The 48-Hour Rule (Update: It Only Took 24!) (Re-Update: More like 120!)
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Sun 21 Sep 2008 11:45
by Kevin McGehee
3 comments
[War]
[Get Offa My Lawn!]
[Media Ochre]
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Originally posted 9/15, re-updated and bumped.
I was interested in this when I saw it headlined on a well-known headline-aggregator’s website, but I held off because I figured if there was anything to it other, better-read blogs would cover it, and probably have a better handle on it than I’d be able to get. On the surface it looks perfectly like the alleged “October Surprise” from the 1980 campaign, which makes it both highly attractive, and highly suspect.
Two pieces I’ve seen so far are at Ace of Spades and Wizbang.
It’s entirely possible there is something to this, that mainstream voters need to hear about—but right now it doesn’t appear so.
UPDATE! Confirmed—by Obama. H/t: The Jawa Report.
‘NOTHER UPDATE!!!!!eleventy!! It took only 24 hours for the Obama campaign to confirm the allegation, and four whole days thereafter for Bush and Republicans to debunk it—because Obama couldn’t.
Most of a week passed before the truth came out, and it DIDN’T come from the guy who was there and who was negatively impacted by the story.
The guy who thinks he’s entitled to be our next president.
Yeah, he’s ready for prime time, all right. 
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Watch Your Step
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Sun 21 Sep 2008 11:21
by Kevin McGehee
0 comments
[Our Times]
[Get Offa My Lawn!]
[Here's Your Sign]
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...that slope is slippery.
In a change from the original proposal sent to Capitol Hill, foreign-based banks with big U.S. operations could qualify for the Treasury Department’s mortgage bailout, according to the fine print of an administration statement Saturday night.
The theory, according to a participant in the negotiations, is that if the goal is to solve a liquidity crisis, it makes no sense to exclude banks that do a lot of lending in the United States.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson confirmed the change on ABC’s “This Week,“ telling George Stephanopoulos that coverage of foreign-based banks is “a distinction without a difference to the American people.“» Foreign banks may get help
I beg to differ…
Leaving that aside, however: this is why getting the government into the bailout business is ALWAYS a bad idea. There is no logical stopping place. If the government can offer loan guarantees to Chrysler, why can’t it also bail out mortgage lenders? And if it can bail out American corporations, why not foreign ones as well? There will always be a good-sounding argument for taking it that one step further, and at what point does it finally become respectable to say, “Wait a minute, stop! That’s going a step too far!“
I submit that the “one step too far” was taken over 70 years ago. Maybe longer.
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The McGehee PDA Zone
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Wed 17 Sep 2008 15:02
by Kevin McGehee
1 comment
[Asides]
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Readers viewing this site with a PDA or other small-display device should change their bookmarks to McGeheeZone.com/index.php/pda/
That URL will show you a much-stripped-down version of this site—lacking, for example, the sidebar with its blogroll and other links.
I welcome feedback from users as to its readability on their devices.
Update: URL fixed.
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The Conscience of the Kingpin
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Tue 16 Sep 2008 21:19
by Kevin McGehee
0 comments
[Asides]
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Chris and I have recently become riveted to the new FX TV series “Sons of Anarchy.“
I read somewhere that there are parallels to Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the character relationships of Jax, his mother Gemma (Katey Sagal), and her second husband (and the gang’s leader) Clay (Ron Perlman, by himself the reason we watched the pilot). Mindful of this, I’ve been paying particular attention to what is being developed on the series about Jax’s relationship to his late father as well as to his mother and stepfather. If the tension there is fully explored, at some point Gemma will be caught between her flesh-and-blood son on the one hand, and her husband and the figurative family the gang represents, on the other.
If this were a Lifetime-TV series, she would of course choose Jax over Clay. But “Sons of Anarchy” is from the creators of “The Shield,“ and though I’d never watched that show I quickly saw similarities between “Sons of Anarchy” and “The Sopranos.“ No, Gemma wouldn’t side with Jax. But she can’t turn against him either, since family ties have been paid some serious lip service so far even by Clay. How she tries to hold it together will be interesting to see.
Readers of the story I’ve been writing are aware that family ties are one of the larger themes being explored. Chapter 4 in particular deals with the familial relationships among the three Scruggins men that you’ve met so far, though some of the tensions glimpsed have been only partly exposed. I know why the source of Bob’s given name is an issue between Seth and Caleb, but I haven’t decided whether it will be more than a side strand to that thread. It gives some insight into the Scrugginses themselves but may only be a matter of texture rather than an actual plot point. I will admit that Seth, never having appeared directly in anything I’ve ever written before, is proving to be extremely interesting to me. I’m finding it challenging to move away from the Scrugginses and back onto the other plot threads I want to write about.
I’m gradually working my way through a revision of another Scruggins-centric story I wrote years ago, bringing it more into the continuity represented by “Play Rough, Fight Dirty,“ and will have it posted fairly soon. Maybe the work I’m doing on it will slake my interest in that clan long enough to get back to the Calhouns and Ironwoods, et al, for a few more chapters.
Update, Wednesday: I reached a cliffhanger situation of sorts in rewriting the old short story, and posted it here. I’m sure I’ll resolve the cliffhanger.
Eventually.
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[checks calendar]
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Mon 15 Sep 2008 11:42
by Kevin McGehee
1 comment
[Wackadoodle]
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...nope, it’s September 15, not April 1. So, my question about this is, when did The Penguin become the CEO of Google?
Google may take its battle for global domination to the high seas with the launch of its own “computer navy”.» Google search finds seafaring solution
Apparently that whole “Don’t Be Evil” thing has gone by the boards—along with the unspoken “Don’t Be Campy” and “Don’t Be Bond-Villain-esque.“
Holy megalomania, Batman.
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This Just In: Vegetarians Are Pinheads
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Mon 15 Sep 2008 0:09
by Kevin McGehee
1 comment
[Our Times]
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This news is almost as earth-shattering as the discovery that things thrown up into the air don’t as a rule tend to stay there.
Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.
Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin.
The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to examine 107 people between the ages of 61 and 87.» Eating veggies shrinks the brain
On my Facebook page I recently changed my political label from “conservative” to “red-meat hippie.“
So right, it’s embarrassing.
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Buh-Bye, SiteMeter
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Sun 14 Sep 2008 11:16
by Kevin McGehee
5 comments
[Asides]
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As so often happens when somebody “upgrades” a service that works perfectly well, SiteMeter turned their hit-counter service into something completely unusable.
I don’t get more than 150 uniques per day anyway, so it’s not as if having a count showing on the page was ever doing me any good. Scroom.
Update: Now giving StatCounter a try.
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Meh.
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Sat 13 Sep 2008 20:03
by Kevin McGehee
0 comments
[Asides]
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I stole the background image (file here in case I stop using it) from Andrea after she promised she was going to ditch it (she hates stripes).
I don’t mind stripes, but I don’t care for the color. Paint can’t do a thing with the file, and I haven’t tried GIMP because, well, I really haven’t played with GIMP enough to have any idea how to use it.
What I’d like is to get the colors to a variant on the solid background color I’d been using, which is the same as…
...this.
I don’t know whether that color looks goldish to anyone else, but I kind of like it.
Update: Still no clue how to GIMP it, so I tried just making one from scratch using Paint. Unfortunately when I converted it from BMP to GIF it came up looking like carp, so I’m stuck (for now at least) with the BMP version.
It does look more like what I wanted.
‘Nother update, next morning: ...and now I’m tired of it. Maybe I’ll randomize it so it’ll be the gold stripes sometimes, or the solid background, or the blue stripes. You’ll just never know from one page-view to the next.
<evil, maniacal cackle>
Or maybe I won’t.
<evil, maniacal cackle>
I’ll think about it.
<evil, maniacal cackle>
‘Nother other update: I thought about it.
<evil, maniacal cackle>
Yet another update, Monday: Three new background images, courtesy of Jed at FreedomSight (discovered via my new StatCounter stats). Turns out he knows how to use GIMP, whereas I know how to rummage through the menus, look confused, and say, “Heck with this, I’ll use Paint.“
Yet another other update, Monday: One of Jed’s images was a little more contrasty than I wanted on my screen resolution (A 1280-px width shows lots of background space on either side of the content), so I fiddled with it in MS Photo Editor to tone it down a bit.
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