Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
SO we are in the new digs, the U-haul has been returned, and I am now starting the process of putting my life back together, box by box. Here’s a quick pic I took from the Uhaul (and I was at a red light, so no bitching about taking pics while driving):
Tunch made some ungodly sounds the whole ride up, but seems to be adjusting to the new place quite nicely. I’ll post some more pictures when I can find my camera.
Added to Bobo’s concern over the spread between US debt and corporate debt, it looks like we’re going to make a mere $8 billion profit on the $25 billion stock portion of our Citigroup bailout.
Here’s an open thread to commiserate.
Update: The original post wasn’t clear. We’re going to get $33 billion for our $25 billion investment.
Open Thread: Another Step to the PoorhousePost + Comments (117)
TattooSydney suggested that it’s been a while since the last BJ Virtual Book Club…
The older I get, the slower I read — don’t know how much of this is natural attrition, and how much is the increasing influence of the intertoobz on my attention span. But I’m having a great time gradually working my way through Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello, which deserves all the accolades it’s collected. Professor Gordon-Reed is even making me slightly more sympathetic towards Thomas Jefferson, which is no easy feat, since I’ve been pro-Adams ever since I read my first Abigail biography when I was 6 or 7. Looking at “America’s Greatest Genius” from the underside — focusing on the lives of the people who made Jefferson’s brilliant lifestyle possible, at the cost of their own — is fascinating, in that shake-the-kaleidescope way that is history at its best. For instance, there’s the description of how Thom’s need to literally put himself above the abomination of the slave-driven plantations that fueled his comfortable life while violating his stated political philosophy further burdened his subordinates:
Situating a house at Monticello presented not only unique problems but also familiar ones on a far greater order of magnitude than was typical.
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First, building the house required shaving the top off the mountain, a huge earth-moving enterprise in an era that had neither earth movers nor bulldozers, at least not mechanical ones. Human beings, slaves Jefferson hired from a nearby planter, engaged in this massive effort, digging with shovels in Virginia’s hard red clay to level the ground and then digging a foundation and cellars for the house. This was backbreaking work carried out over twelve-hour days. On one occasion Jefferson observed as “a team of four men, a boy, and two sixteen-year-old girls” worked. It was winter. There was snow on the ground, it was extremely cold, and the laborers periodically stopped their digging to warm their hands over a fire before they returned to their arduous task.
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There was no ready water supply on top of the mountain. A well had to be dug, an especially difficult undertaking, because the workers were required to dig deeper to find water than they would have had to if they had been digging on level ground. It took them forty-six days to excavate sixty-five feet of mountain rock before they hit water, almost twice the depth of a normal well in Virginia. Even with that, at times when not enough rain fell to provide a constant and ready supply, water had to hauled up the mountain. Jefferson did not consider these issues a serious problem. From his perspective, as from that of any man of his class, his tasks were to imagine the design for his life on the mountain, engineer ways to execute the design, and then find people — slaves and hired workmen — to complete his projects. As long as labor was available, the job would be done.
Who else has got a good book to recommend?
Late Night Open Thread: What Are You Reading?Post + Comments (124)
I’m to the point now that all the important stuff has been moved, and I’m just filling garbage bags and chucking them in the dumpster. Let the FSM sort it out. I’m tired.
Got the internet turned on and rocking at the new place, and man is it speedy- ping of 29 and my download speed was pegged red on every speed test. Now that I have internet and can connect with the outside world, it is safe to move furniture into the new place.
Priorities. You get the internet connected and the modem running before you move your bed.
I’m back at the old place now, “borrowing” someone’s wireless while I get everything ready for the final move. Just consider me incommunicado until tomorrow night, at which point I might have pictures.
BTW- moving sucks, although I have taken about eight loads to Goodwill and thrown a bunch of crap out. Let’s face it. I’m never wearing those levi’s I fit into in the Army. Have at it!
There are a lot of great political cartoonists working in America today, but if I had to pick just one to follow, it would be Danziger.
Meanwhile, the POTUS visited an independent bookstore during his Iowa trip:
President Obama spent plenty of time in Iowa as a candidate. On Thursday, he had a little homecoming of sorts, making a surprise visit to the Prairie Lights bookstore, a business he had referred to during a campaign-style rally just an hour earlier. An account by the pool reporter, Carol Lee of Politico, who was traveling with Mr. Obama, offers the details.
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“Well, this used to be my favorite place,” Obama told the owner as she showed him around.
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He remarked how as president he can’t really mosey around bookstores anymore, and said the office comes with the good and bad.
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Along his way, he picked up “No Apology” by Mitt Romney and “Courage and Consequence” by Karl Rove.
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“What do you think, guys?” he asked the pool, holding up a hardback copy of each in his hands before setting them back down…
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A few minutes later POTUS stepped up to the cash register with two books in his hands: “Journey to the River Sea” by Eva Ibbotson and “The Secret of Zoom” by Lynne Jonell for his daughters.
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Obama pulled out five $20 bills to pay for the two books. Your pooler couldn’t hear the exact price but the two books didn’t cost that much.
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Obama also bought a book for Gibbs, who was holding a large Star Wars pop-up book for his six-year-old son, Ethan…
Click on the link, because the photo of Obama is really good. Maybe I’m just a mean cynic, but if his handlers had ever found it necessary for Dubya to be seen in a bookstore, I suspect they’d have pre-swept the place to clean out any examples of doubleplus-ungood wrongthink from the opposition.
Hold On.
In other open threaddish news, this Onion piece brings back one of my proudest moments: I correctly guessed who shot Montgomery Burns. Unfortunately the only guy who heard me say it later dropped out of college so you’ll have to take my word for it. Still, it was awesome.