Obama's Regrets

President Obama says he regrets the language he used when he said the Cambridge police handled the arrest of Prof. Gates "stupidly."

Of course who am I to criticize? I winced a little when he said it, not that it seemed untrue, but presidents aren't supposed to tell the truth so directly. He needed to be more moderate, like "It's an ongoing case and we'll be closely watching both sides, blah blah blah."

He has a nice remedy for the parties involved, to invite them to the White House and perhaps to share a few beers. That's good.

As for the president making a mistake of sorts, imagine if it were Bush. He never made a mistake, at least none he himself ever recognized. So we're miles ahead with Obama no matter what he says.

Still, in my perhaps less newsworthy opinion, it's extremely stupid that a guy can be arrested while going into his own home, simply for that, no matter how must bluster he might've aimed at the officer in his home. That's freedom of speech. And as far as I'm concerned, when the officer saw it was a guy who lived there he should have apologized and left the premises immediately. To protect and serve? Isn't that what the police are to do? Not nitpick and harass.

But hey, I don't know all the facts. But it looks pretty stupid on the surface.

Our Idiot Congress

It's so hard to believe that these worthless halfwits are the guys and gals we choose by a democratic process to represent us.

They can't get anything done in an efficient and thoughtful way. You've got special interests, they're in their back pockets, they're scratching each other's back, they're currying favors, and, oh, the silver tongued devils can explain themselves. If you've ever gone to your senator's public meetings, they have enough explanations (and usually the crowd's on their side), given that they can allude to a lot of hearings and crap that you of course didn't attend.

This thing with health care reform, I want it done. I'm sick of having thieves and bandits in charge of our health care. But Congress isn't much better.

President Obama's on the right track. He seems clean. But these other guys, and this includes our Democratic side, blue dogs or whatever the morons call themselves, I don't know who they think they're representing.

Harry Reid, is it just me or is this guy worthless?

President Obama Tonight

The guy continues to amaze me. I think he's a great president.

I don't understand at all the opinion polls that show that he's losing some favor with the American people. It makes me wonder what they're expecting. He was given the worst problems since the Great Depression from the Bush administration. It's going to take some effort to clean it up.

And they complain that his stimulus isn't working fast enough. Which is an interesting complaint, since the Republicans' prescription for what ailed us was to do nothing. How doing nothing would be proactively any better than doing something, that's a head scratcher.

I wonder if the Republicans use that logic if one of their houses is on fire. Should I call the fire department? Why bother? The fire will go out eventually. But wouldn't it be worth the effort to save your house, if possible, or at least some of your stuff, or keep other houses in the neighborhood from burning down? It seems like that's what we have a fire department for.

Anyway, the President was on tonight and I watched big chunks of it. Good stuff. The man's still got it. He is as smart as they come. And he seemed to have some confidence that this health care reform would get done and that it would be a positive thing. When it came to George Bush, if he said the same thing I wouldn't have believed him. If George Bush offered a child a shiny quarter he'd be lying. But not Obama. He's believable and decent.

Spank The Wacko

Chris Matthews spanks this idiot wingnut congressman, John Campbell (R-CA). Good grief, it's no wonder there's problems in this country and problems with the Republican party when we have scurves like this in positions of power.

Wow, just do us a favor and resign. Maybe we need a bill that congressmen need to pass a basic threshold of sanity and decency to serve. What woodwork do these wackos crawl out from?

President Obama was born in Hawaii, which became a state in what? 1959, something like that.

From Cronkite To Beck

Walter Cronkitemania is sweeping America now that he's passed on. Fans are lined up outside the Staples Center. His old CBS newscasts are number one on iTunes.

It's weird that once upon a time we had a few TV channels and respectable guys on the news. We really looked up to these guys, Huntley and Brinkley and Cronkite, etc.

If they would've told us one day we'd have 24 hour a day news we would've been as happy as clams. That would have been awesome.

But how has it turned out? We have 24 hour a day news channels and they're wall to wall crap. You can't stand to turn it on because it is wall to wall crap. With just a few exceptions.

We have this scurrilous knave, Beck, who symbolizes all that's wrong with the whole scene. I don't personally watch him (ever) but I've read about him on blogs (and seen a few minutes of clips), so I know he's trash.

Quite a descent. Like that famous evolution progression in reverse. We are Devo.

Seriously, get rid of the news channels and have an hour or half hour every night like we used to. It would truly be progress.

Democrats

It's so frustrating to think we have Democrats in Congress who are dragging their feet on health care reform.

To think, we finally get a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, and they suddenly decide to dilly dally around. It's disgusting.

We need to get this thing done.

The insurance companies need to be severely spanked. They're bandits.

Album Cover Designer Dies

Tom Wilkes, 69, an artist who designed some famous album covers, died.

I don't remember the name but I recognize some of his work, including the cover for George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" album.

Other famous ones include "Beggars Banquet" and "Harvest."

Amazon Selleth, Amazon Taketh

This is ridiculous, that users of the Kindle reading thing can wake up to find their books gone.

According to this article, that's what happened. The books were Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, which the publisher decided, apparently, they didn't want to be available for the Kindle. Which of course would be fine for future sales, but past sales??

The books were deleted and the users given a credit. Unbelievable! As crazy as anything I've heard. That would give me a reason right there to ignore the Kindle. As if I didn't have enough reasons. I like books I can get my hands on. Books that will be with me when I'm in the nursing home someday. Not here today and gone tomorrow. I thought that already in the electronic sense, with the thing breaking. But I never imagined that you could buy something and have it gone tomorrow. I'm floored really.

I've been buying MP3 files at Amazon. I hope I don't wake up to see them all deleted somehow. Not that I see how they could do that. But they could have something embedded in them to make them quit working. What do I know about an MP3 file? Let's say I sign into the Amazon and they download a code to my computer that says none of my MP3s should work anymore. Because the record company didn't want them sold anymore.

I've bought books from Amazon too. I definitely don't want to wake up at night and have Amazon going through my shelves looking for them because the publisher changed their mind. This thing with the Kindle is just as ridiculous.

Talk about Orwellian.

A Big Camper

Tonight I saw the biggest camper I believe I've ever seen in my life. With a heavy duty truck pulling it, as would be necessary.

The brand name of the camper is Montana. That's Big Camper Country. This thing was enormous. Hard to estimate how long. Not as long as a mobile home, of course, but stacked up, nice and wide. It looked like it'd have enough room in it to get lost. Or to be at one end and not hear someone screaming at the other end. (Maybe not that big.)

I thought that's really the life. Go out to a campground and it's like you have an entire home with you. That would be a lot of fun I think.

Big expense, though, I'm sure. But worth it definitely if you can afford it.

Sotomayor

I'm not watching any of the Sotomayor hearings. I'm doing stuff when all that's on. And anyway, I wouldn't want to sit home all day and watch TV.

So all I'm seeing is an occasional video (I guess I haven't seen any of those) and reading snippets here and there about it.

The number one thing I'm hearing about is what crumbs the Republicans are. It's unbelievable that they try to score points just tearing down people. Like this lady, who sounds like about as good as they come. But the Republicans aren't interested in governing. They're interested in tearing down the government because they don't believe it's any good. How that makes any sense at all, since we obviously need a government, we haven't determined yet.

They're crazy.

A Michael Jackson National Holiday

One of the questions that keeps popping up on Facebook involves whether there should be a Michael Jackson national holiday.

On the face of it, when you first hear the idea, you think, How absurd. Then the more you think of it the absurdity continues on.

It seems to me, though, that a lot of these Facebook questions are just a means someone has for generating traffic to their app (or whatever you call all these Facebook appendages.) I can't seriously believe we're going to have a national holiday for him.

He was a fine singer, etc., blah blah blah. But there are lots of those, including Elvis, who, unless you count the marathon movies on his birthday, doesn't have a holiday. And great actors. John Wayne didn't get a national holiday. Neither did Red Buttons, no national holiday for him.

I'm not strictly opposed to more national holidays but I have reluctant to support them, for one simple reason: I hate it when the post office is closed and we don't get mail.

The Inner Sleeve

When I get an album, I like looking at the inner sleeve, if it has one and if it's printed on.

This album I got today is on the ABC-Paramount Records label, and it came with a nice inner sleeve, even though it's split at the bottom (big deal) and it's black and white. I love seeing the color ones, which are rare.

I've looked at thousands of records over the years and I like to see on these inner sleeves that there are lots I still haven't seen. It just makes me want to pray the Record Fairy even harder, and leave more broken records under my pillow, to see what I might find. Really, I'm not looking to own a lot more records because I have nowhere to put them.

This inner sleeve has some nice looking records. (There's others on the other side, which I don't have a picture of.)

The Paul Anka record in the corner, "Diana," I don't believe I've ever seen that album. And the Brian Hyland one in the opposite corner, I don't see that around. I have a Brian Hyland album on ABC/Paramount, "Sealed With A Kiss."

Those Lloyd Price albums in the middle look great. But they appear to be rarities as far as Goodwill, Salvation Army, and garage sales are concerned. One is called "Cookin'" (ABC-382), another "Mr. Personality" (ABC-297), and the other "The Fantastic Lloyd Price" (ABC-346). I have a few of Lloyd's 45s but none of these albums.

Ray Charles is represented in the next to the bottom row. The album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" by Ray I've seen numerous times over the years, never in good condition. It has a bright red cover, so bright that Ray himself could probably have seen it!

The others I'm not familiar with. Then there's some generic looking stuff, not too whoopie, but who knows, I might buy it if I saw it in pretty good condition. Don't ask me why. "Drinking Songs Around the World," "Adventures In Paradise," Italian songs, and an album that might be a documentary LP, "Sabicas: The Day of the Bullfight."

The other side has a rocker with Teddy Randazzo. I don't know much about him. I have a 45 with a nice picture sleeve I got at a garage sale a year or two ago. It's not too thrilling. It seems like I saw him in a rock 'n' roll movie from the '50s or early '60s once.

There's a few albums of bawdy ballads, songs from soldier life, some polka LPs, and one interesting looking one from Don Costa's Free-Loaders, called, "Music to Break a Sub-Lease." One by Oscar Brand, "Oscar Brand Sings for Adults." Ooo-la-la.

The bottom half is given over to jazz albums. They all have funky, evocative covers. Of these, I never see these around. There's thousands of records out there that never show up where I go.

UPDATE: I looked up "Sabicas: The Day of the Bullfight" and it's not a documentary record but has music tracks.

THE DAY OF THE BULLFIGHT
Sabicas
New York City: September 19 and October 27, 1958
Sabicas, Diego Castellon, Juan Jimenez Garcia de la Mata; Felix Garcia Vizcaino (g); Keene Crockett (sound effects); Kenyon Hopkins (orchestral introductions) with orchestra.

You can see what the tracks are called and the timings at that link. It has guitar, sound effects, and orchestra. That might be a very cool record.

Health Care

I'm grimacing. I'm not reading all these articles about Congress because it's all so depressing.

When Bush had a Republican Congress, they did what he wanted. I hated it at the time but that's what they did. Now Obama has a Democratic Congress, and they don't want to do what he wants. I hate that, because I want some stuff done while the doing is good. Like health care.

Now I saw a headline (I didn't read the article) that they're saying they can't come up with a package that would pass before whatever Obama's deadline is, in August sometime. That sucks. Let's get the thing done.

I don't know why it is precisely, except special interests and corruption, why these Congress critters from our party can't rally around the fact that we have an opportunity now to get this accomplished after all these years. But no, they're going to drag their feet, compromise, get some watered down version of the thing that won't come near to solving the problem, and that's what we'll be stuck with.

The voters will stick with you if you do the right thing. But if you dilly dally and screw it up, as sure as anything, they'll vote the Republicans in again. Get the stupid thing done!

More Cheney News, Ho Hum

I see they're reporting (NY Times) that Dick Cheney ordered the CIA not to disclose to Congress their various activities. Leon Panetta's telling it that way.

For anyone else, this could potentially be a problem. For Cheney, who seems to be quite above the law, it's just another day.

Is there anything this guy could do that would get him in trouble?

If he robbed a bank and they were chasing him down the road, I can hear it now. They're radioing ahead, "It's Cheney." "OK, let him go. Back to the station, men."