Democratic Politics Enters the Realm of Ridiculousness
By Brian | April 22, 2008
(NOTE: Blogger went down again, right after I made my previous post. It’s been down one two three four five more days at this point. The following post was written on 4/22)
I document this today, the day of the hard-fought Pennsylvania primary, because I know people have short memories, and once the media changes the national conversation, others will call me crazy for suggesting what is common knowledge right now. And that is this:
On April 22, 2008, Barack Obama has already been called unpatriotic, racist, unqualified, unprepared, inexperienced, beholden to lobbyists, elitist and Muslim. Hillary Clinton has been called a liar, a hypocrite, a war hawk, over-emotional, contrived, out of touch and willing to rig elections with changes to primary rules and reliance on super delegates. His healthcare plan has been criticized for leaving millions uninsured. Her position on NAFTA has been criticized as being inconsistent with her previous votes on the subject. He’s been accused of a willingness to mollycoddle world leaders. She’s been accused of fear mongering.
And all of it, every single bit of it, is coming from within the Democratic party. There’s no conceivable way to blame any of this on John McCain, Karl Rove, or the RNC. They have wisely stayed on the sidelines and watched the Democrats feast on each other, well on their way to throwing away an easy victory in November for the third time in a row.
Come September/October, though, when the same questions are still being asked, many of the people who are responsible for the above will be in front of cameras, condemning the Republican Attack MachineTM for it’s deplorable treatment of the Democratic candidate and it’s willingness to distract Americans from the “real issues.” And what’s worse, those of us (and yes, regardless of who I vote for, I will be among them) who point out that the candidate did the very same thing to his/her opponent in the primaries will be accused of irrationally endorsing the failed policies of George W. Bush. No, I don’t know why. But mark my words, it will happen.
For the record, I think Hillary has been more guilty of this than Obama. If you read the above lists carefully, you’ll notice that his attacks on Hillary have been at least tangentially (and sometimes directly) tied to politics and policy, whereas her attacks on Obama seem to suggest that this man, who has a long history of public service, has secretly harbored racist, elitist, anti-American tendencies that are just now coming out as he’s running for President against Hillary.
It was the most recent exchange, reserved for today, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, that made me finally blog about the topic (hat tip: Power Line). Here’s the campaign ad currently running for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania:
Note the imagery of FDR, JFK, the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl harbor, Soviet aggression, gas shortages, Osama bin Laden, Hurricane Katrina and home foreclosure. In 30 seconds. From a woman who has consistently accused the Bush administration of governing by fear.
Obama’s response shows video of Bill Clinton speaking at a 2004 campaign rally:
Now, one of Clinton’s Laws of Politics is this: If one candidate’s trying to scare you and the other one’s trying to get you to think, if one candidate’s appealing to your fears and the other one’s appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.
Now tell me John McCain isn’t on the sidelines taking notes…
Categories: Political Rantings | Comments Off on Democratic Politics Enters the Realm of Ridiculousness
Oh Blogger, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?
By Brian | April 21, 2008
Yes, world, the long and horrible wait is over.
On the afternoon of April 14th, after posting a humorous entry on the Plainview Library’s schedule of events, I went to edit my recent post & found that Blogger wasn’t letting me FTP files to my server (the specific error, so the Google Gods pick this entry up, was “Your publish is taking longer than expected. To continue waiting for it to finish, click here”). That happens from time to time, and given that they interact with hundreds (thousands?) of third party hosting services to do FTP publishing, I can imagine that fixing it would be a complex task. But this time, the lights went off for SIX WHOLE DAYS!.
The message boards lit up with people complaining about the problem and threatening to migrate to WordPress or the like. This particular thread got particularly vitriolic, especially after a Blogger Employee suggested that users 1) Read the help file on FTP publishing, 2) clear their browser cache and cookies, and 3) “Head to the kitchen, grab some comfort food, and then try again a little bit later.” Poorly worded post, to be sure, especially given that this was the only response from Blogger itself on the whole thread (or on any other thread I could find). Even the official Blogger blog, Blogger Buzz, didn’t mention the problem – not even in their most recent post entitled Updates and Bug Fixes for April 18th.
I realize Blogger is a free service, and you tend to get what you pay for in this world, but this was truly frustrating. And I say that as someone who was just going through the normal blogging withdrawal. Others on the messageboards were complaining about lost business, missed media opportunities, difficulty communicating with their customers/business partners, etc.. Blogger (and Google in general) have historically been very responsive to problems, both within the company and by making use of the “Army of Davids” that their user base represents. This time, though, they acted as if they weren’t even aware of the problem. I even went to the “Contact Us” section and filled out a problem report, for which I was promised I’d get an e-mail response. I’m still waiting…
In any case, the problem seems to have subsided – at least for now. If I vanish for another six days, though, you’ll know why.
Oh, and if you’ve arrived at this page because you’re having the same problem and you were hoping I’d shed some light on how I solved it? Well, I waited for it to go away and eventually it did. How’s that for entirely unhelpful?!? If anyone has a better idea, please leave it in the comments? Thanks…
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 3 Comments »
Library Schedule Hu-Hu-Hu-Humor
By Brian | April 14, 2008
Big ol’ tip of the hat to Mike Starr, who passed along today’s schedule for his local library, the Plainview – Old Bethpage Public Library. Here’s a quick summary (emphasis mine):
10:00 AM-SENIOROBICS
10:30 AM-SENIOR BOOK DISCUSSION
11:00 AM-SENIOROBICS
3:30 PM-Girl Scouts Troop 3051
3:30 PM-Hospice of New York
6:30 PM-NATIONAL OVARIAN CAN COALITION NY LI DIVISION
8:00 PM-National Stuttering Association
8:00 PM-National Stuttering Association
You can’t make up stuff like this…
Categories: The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on Library Schedule Hu-Hu-Hu-Humor
Yankee Stadium Construction Espionage
By Brian | April 14, 2008
This has to be my favorite baseball story of the year so far.
It seems that a construction worker from the Bronx, Gino Castignoli, who is also a Red Sox fan, took a job on the construction team for the new Yankee Stadium, with the express purpose of burying a David Ortiz Red Sox jersey in one of the stadium’s concrete slabs in order to jinx the stadium and the Yankees. After that one day on the job, he quit, stating that he would never set foot in Yankee Stadium even if they “gave him free tickets” and “let him sit in George Steinbrenner’s box.”
Alas, two anonymous co-workers ratted him out. On Saturday, a team drilled for five hours in the offending concrete slab and found the jersey under two feet of concrete. The shirt, tattered from the jackhammers but still easily recognizable as a Red Sox jersey, will be auctioned off by the Jimmy Fund to raise money for Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The Yankees will contribute a Yankees Universe T-shirt as well, which will benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Here’s the best part, though (you have to watch the embedded video in the article to catch this). Hank Steinbrenner, George Steinbrenner’s son and principal owner of the Yankees, had this to say about the incident:
I hope his coworkers kick the [expletive] out of him
And Mr. Castignoli, who has no remorse about the incident whatsoever, responded thusly:
Tell Hank he can come meet me if he wants to try – and tell him to bring [catcher Jorge] Posada, because he’s the one Yankee I can’t stand.
This is the kind of stuff that makes the Yankees & Red Sox one of the greatest rivalries in all of sports. As for jinxes, well, Boston fans know all about jinxes, now don’t they? Not to mention, as long as there’s stuff like this in the building, the Yankees will be well protected. As Derek Jeter said in a recent interview, “the ghosts don’t have far to go – just across the street.”
Go Yanks!
Categories: New York, New York, Sports Talk | 1 Comment »
More Song Graphs
By Brian | April 10, 2008
This post about graphs that represent well known songs has quickly become one of my more popular posts, so I figured I’d pass along a link to a few more song graphs. These are cute, although there are not nearly as many as the first link…
Enjoy!
Categories: Words about Music | Comments Off on More Song Graphs
A-Rod Attacked in Fenway Park
By Brian | April 5, 2008
Tip o’ the hat to Ilya Burlak for pointing out this unbelievable story. Seems a Bristol, CT middle school took their kids on a class trip to Fenway Park in Boston. A red-tailed hawk, who nests in an overhang near the stadium’s press booth, suddenly decided it didn’t like one of the students very much. It swooped down, talons extended, and scratched the scalp of this innocent, 13-year old girl, drawing blood but not seriously harming the girl (see picture).
Here’s the kicker. The girl’s name? Alexa Rodriguez!
As Ilya says, you just can’t make this stuff up…
Categories: Sports Talk, The World Wide Weird | 1 Comment »
The New, Volatile Stock Markets
By Brian | April 3, 2008
If you follow the financial press, or watch a financial news network like CNBC, you’ve heard a great deal lately about how volatile the stock market has been lately. Every day, it seems, the Dow Jones Industrial Average seems to either jump more than a hundred points, or dip more than a hundred points. People who, well, let’s just say, people of a certain generation have been waxing philosophic about how a hundred point move on the Dow was unheard of in their day, and now it happens all the time.
This got me thinking: are we just enamored of large numbers? The DJIA is, after all, an average, so the number of points it moves on any given day isn’t as important as the percentage change that move represents. And, when the Dow was 6,000 (late-1996), a 1% move only represented a 60 point shift. Today, with the Dow over 12,000, the same 1% move represents 120 points. Perhaps there were lots of 60 point shifts twelve years ago but no one remembers those as clearly as the triple digit shifts they see today?
Here’s a telling graph:
The above trend lines represent the average daily shift in each of the three major indexes for each month over the last ten years. In January, 2008, for example, the average daily move for the Dow (up or down) was 1.27%. In the same month, the S&P500 moved an average of 1.31% each day, and the NASDAQ moved an average of 1.40%. As you can see by the trend lines, these numbers are higher than they’ve been for around five years, so there is some justification for all the bellyaching of recent months.
That said, it’s not nearly as bad as it was back in 2000-2003, particularly on the NASDAQ, where average daily shifts regularly topped 2%, sometimes even 3% or 4%.
This graph might be clearer:
It’s the same data, but the daily averages are grouped by year, rather than by month. Here, we see that averaging together all of 2008 so far (January through March), this year is indeed more volatile for the Dow and S&P500 than any year in the last 10, except for 2002. For the NASDAQ, though, it still pales in comparison to 2000-2002, and is even slightly more stable than 1999. Comparing the two graphs, we see that 2000-2003 had some high (>2%) months and low months, so while the peaks were worse than what we’re seeing now, the year-long averages balanced out. This is telling as we remember that 2008 still has 9 months to go, so the overall annual average might settle down quite a bit before it’s done.
Bottom line: yes, the markets are volatile. But no, this isn’t some calamitous event that we’ve never seen before and, in fact, in some cases it has been much worse. Also, my point from above still hold some water, I believe. Larger ordinal numbers create a bigger psychological impact than the changes of years past. Our memories are short enough as it is, and a constant stream of triple-digit changes help to cloud those memories even further.
At any rate, I hope you’re all enjoying the (bumpy) ride…
Categories: Money Talk | Comments Off on The New, Volatile Stock Markets
How People Found Me – March Edition
By Brian | April 3, 2008
Another monthly summary of how people found their way to Familygreenberg.com in the past month.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 2 Comments »
Familygreenberg.com Health Check – March Edition
By Brian | April 3, 2008
| Metric | February | March | % Change |
| Visits | 1,436 | 1,486 | +3.48% |
| Pageviews | 2,059 | 2,079 | +0.97% |
| Pages/Visit | 1.43 | 1.40 | -2.43% |
| Avg Time on Site | 0:45 | 0:37 | -17.04% |
| Bounce Rate | 83.36% | 83.92% | -0.67% |
| % New Visitors | 86.28% | 89.43% | +3.65% |
March was basically the same as February, albeit with two extra days to make it happen. I consider this a good result, given that I took the entire last week of March off for a family vacation. When I did that in December, the numbers dropped off dramatically, and took two months to recover. So hopefully, there’s some momentum around here going into April.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on Familygreenberg.com Health Check – March Edition
Fashion Tip
By Brian | April 2, 2008
A quick note to people who wear a tiny diamond chip about halfway up their nose (a la last year’s American Idol winner, Jordin Sparks): unless the light hits it just right, it looks like a zit.
That is all…
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »