Open Threads

Bethany, West Virginia lost one of her best citizens yesterday as Lynn Adkins died after a several year battle with cancer. She was a devoted teacher, mother, social worker, and wife, and I knew her my entire life. I grew up with her children, I was very attached to her former husband as a teen (he was a wonderful man), and when I was entering a troubled stage of my teen years, Lynn was there to help give my parents advice. It is no exaggeration to state that Lynn Adkins helped save my sister’s life years ago, when she went through what I will simply describe as a personal crisis. Lynn was there to help her, and they remained close friends until the very end. My parents loved Lynn, and she and her husband were members of a circle of friends who did everything together.

This is a very sad day, and my thoughts are with her family.

RIP, Lynn AdkinsPost + Comments (44)

A new thread for you.

CBS Sunday MorningPost + Comments (12)

It’s coming to my area:

In April, Time Warner Cable will begin collecting information on its customers’ Internet use in the Texas cities of Austin and San Antonio and in Rochester, N.Y. Consumption billing will begin in those cities later this summer.

Fighting29th explains:

There’s nothing wrong with the concept of usage-based Internet pricing, but all of the usage tiering I’ve seen is unrealistic. Time-Warner’s is no exception: by one calculation, their top tier, which is still pretty limited, would lead to $200/month in overage charges for a family whose use I’d classify as “moderate”.

I will switch to our other broadband provider, Frontier, ASAP, but they have also proposed internet usage caps (of 5GB). Fighting29th expands:

There’s little or no competition in the home Internet market — Time-Warner has a monopoly in large parts of the 29th district. One way to get a real market here and elsewhere is to treat Internet service the way we treat telephone service. Local service – the connection to the nearest switching center – would be the responsibility of Time-Warner or Frontier and have a regulated, low price based on the actual cost of delivering the service. At the switching center, other, nationwide bandwidth providers would be able to compete with Frontier or Time-Warner for our Internet business.

Like long-distance, once real competition hit the market, we’d see an ever-diminishing cost for Internet bandwidth. It’s only because TWC and Frontier have a monopoly that they’d even consider $200/month Internet pricing. Their recent actions have shown that their Internet monopoly needs to be broken.

A website has formed to fight this, but who knows how successful it will be.

Internet consumption billingPost + Comments (55)

Charles Blow writes:

At the same time, the unrelenting meme being pushed by the right that Obama will mount an assault on the Second Amendment has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms. According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period; more than the number of people living in Bachmann’s Minnesota.

Coincidence? Maybe. Just posturing? Hopefully. But it all gives me a really bad feeling. (Where’s that Pepto-Bismol?!)

That sounds like an increase from 4.3 million to 5.5 million (a little over 25%). There may be other causes besides Beckism for this but a 25% year-over-year is certainly significant.

More of Glenn Beck’s AmericaPost + Comments (77)

Tomorrow night on the History Channel: “Ripped Off: Madoff and the Scamming of America.”

*** Update ***

BTW, scanning memorandum, I see that once again there is another round of stories about Palin’s family and last week there was a round of stories about Joe Biden’s daughter. I’m not going to link to them, but I have to say I am just sick of this stuff. Sarah Palin and Joe Biden have taken enough positions over their years that you can find any number of legitimate things to attack them for that their kids and their family members don’t need to be dragged through the headlines and trashed at every opportunity. The whole baby nonsense irritated me during the election, and the latest round of stuff makes me mad, as well.

Beyond the fact that this paparazzi like stalking of family members is creepy, and the fact that the people linking to this stuff take so much obvious glee in trashing people who are just private citizens, but every single on of you has a family member or relative with their own issues, and you would be livid if your job performance were somehow critiqued by what they do. Trashing these family members who are having hard times getting their act together, running their names through the media, and using them to attack their politician parent is ugly, it is inhumane, and it makes you a small and nasty person. Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson are kids. Joe Biden’s daughter isn’t writing drug policy. Al Gore’s son is not responsible for your problems. Leave them alone, you small-minded and petty jerks.

Sign of The TimesPost + Comments (89)

Not sure what you all are up to, but it will be a dull one for me.

BTW- I was just watching CNN while eating dinner, and Arlen Specter is already running ads against Pat Toomey.

Friday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (169)