School drop off

It's the first day of the new school routine
Dropping the boy at before school care, dropping the girl at day care and going to work.

And I have an 8:30 meeting.

I pull out of the driveway at 7:30 am with both kids strapped in and munching a Gosselin breakfast. I have the boy’s backpack, the backpack has the boy’s lunch. We’re good.

School drop off is a total mystery, I made a mental note of the street to take – I’ll park near where I was when we dropped the boy off.

I’m expecting bedlam, and the street is deserted. No people walking around and ample parking.

Odd.

I know I’m supposed to take the boy to the cafeteria – those were my instructions. I start heading for the door closest to the familiar, box-like appendage sticking out of the west side of the school.

The boy tells me we are headed to the wrong door. I figure, he’s done this before – so I follow his lead. We go down the stairs towards the door on the east side of the school. We get to the door, and it’s locked.

On the other side of the door, I see a teacher walking by who stops and gives us inaudible directions. My confused expression makes it clear I’m not getting what she’s saying.

Exasperated, she points with her arm to the west end of the school and repeats her inaudible directions.

The visual message gets through. We turn and head west.

---Bit of a comment here.

The school starts after 8am. This conflicts with virtually all work schedules known to man. If the school started classes at 7:45 or 7:30 a lot of lives would be simplified. Plus, I would not have to pay someone to watch my child for a half an hour before school every day.

That’s a systemic issue – not really the point – I’m concerned with execution here. The before school care is not run by the school. This is made clear by every school staffer you speak to.

“We don’t have anything to do with that.”

Now, I get that the school staff is not affiliated with the before school care people. I get that they don’t want to assume the responsibilities or liabilities that go along with caring for children in the hours before and after school.

But here’s the thing: Don’t act as if being asked about this care is somehow a burden to you. Don’t pretend that there is anything unreasonable in a person asking a school staffer about this service.
And for crying out loud – stop acting as if this service has nothing to do with the school.

No, you don’t have anything to do with this service – you only

• Receive my children from this service before school
• Deliver my children to this service after school
• Allow this service to take place at your facility

I mean, why the hell would anyone at the school know the slightest thing about it?

More to the point – this service benefits enormously from the school lending it an air of respectability. If this was child care in an offsite facility I’d have all kinds of other concerns:

• Is the facility safe?
• How will they handle transportation?
• What kind of security exists?

The fact that this care takes place in a school means those concerns are at least minimized. I know a school will not have power tools, rabid dogs, or circus carnies on the grounds. I know that if the child care person was showing R rated movies or passing out needles, there would be a high probability that someone would notice.

This service is leaps and bounds more acceptable in my sight simply because it occurs on school grounds. The school helped sell this service to me.

So - enough with the “Not my job” attitude, eh?

--where was I?

Ah yes. The three of us (with little e still carrying her cup of cereal) once again traverse the length of the school and walk up to another unlabeled, closed door and take a guess.

The door opens. Hooray. I’m at least at the right end.
We walk in. The instructions I had were “it’s by the principal’s office.”

Now, I don’t know if the cafeteria and the gym are the same thing. What is near the principal’s office is clearly a gym. And it’s packed with kids who are easily 12 years old.

As a parent of a five year old, I view 12 year olds like wildlife. On their own – they are perfectly pleasant. But I’m not leaving my son in room full of them.

I find no signs and no staff, so I start looking elsewhere. A few steps down the hall later, the boy tells me this is the wrong direction. We turn back towards the zoo and I go looking for a keeper.

While I’m doing this another parent streaks into view – dragging a child about the size of my son. I’m hopeful. Perhaps she knows where she is going.

She doesn’t. She is, however, at a higher level of frustration than I am and marches into the zoo. I hear her ask in a loud voice “Is this where before school care is?”

Now I see the keepers. They were inside the room just out of sight. This New Parent is talking to one of them. A balding middle-aged guy. Baldy shrugs and says something unhelpful. Behind him, another keeper says “I think they’ve moved to the teacher’s lounge.”

A third keeper shows solidarity with Baldy: they roll their eyes and say “It’s always something…”

New Parent is off like a shot and the boy and I try to follow. Little e is not in the mood to go fast. Anyway, she dropped a Cheerio and needs to pick it up.

Eventually we get to about the mid-point of the school when I see New Parent coming towards me, sans child. “They’re in the art room,” she says. “The middle school principle is kind of a…” she flops her hand around to imply: Dork.

I thank her.

We then go to the art room and there are a few kids sitting around a table with games and stuff. There’s a Nice Young Man who explains that when the school needs the gym the before school kids get booted into the art room. He shows me the sign up/sign out sheet and tells me he’s going to take the kids outside in a little while.

I tell him “It’s a good thing that the middle school thought to bump afterschool care on the second day. No chance of confusion there.”

He grins.

The boy gives me a hug and one of the kids tells him where to put his backpack. I leave.

Little e and I go to the nearest exit – the locked door we’d tried first. It opens to let us out and we walk back to the car.

It’s 8:05.

I’m twenty minutes from day care and day care is ten minutes from work. Parking is seven minutes from my desk. I call my team leader and tell them I’m going to be late. “Around 8:45” I say hopefully.

Usually, when I am late I start envisioning the forces of Murphy’s law sizing up my situation and deciding on tactics. It’s a delicate balancing act. Too few delays, I might show up on time. Too many, and their intervention becomes obvious (“Oh come on… a herd of cattle?”).

Today – their balance starts out pretty good. A train crossing. An ambulance delay. Traffic jam outside a school zone.

Then they get a bit greedy. A moving truck that backs out of a driveway blocking two lanes. It goes back and forth repeatedly because the driver is OCD and insists on having equal pavement on both sides of his truck when he parks.

The car in front of me stops to let pedestrians cross in front of them. These people are a half block away but this person is patient. “I’m in no hurry and I’m sure no one behind me is either…”

And then we’re at day care. Little e has (of course) taken off her shoes and socks, because its fun. So I re-shoe her and get her inside (where I then remove her shoes and put her in slippers). My watch says 8:30 and the day care administrator strikes up a conversation about web design.

Web design discussions… like crack… must resist….

I’m out the door by 8:35.

And realize I’m parked in. My day care, there is one driveway. You pull up to the house, somebody could park you in. Hasn’t happened to me in months.

Today’s the day.

So, I sit in my care for ten minutes. Because the parent who parked me in hasn’t tracked that they parked someone in. They’re in no hurry. I’m not mad at them. This is systemic, everybody gets a turn. Only way to avoid this is to park on a busy street which I hate –

But did it have to be today?

The parent comes out, apologizes and I’m off to work. Murphy’s done his damage, so the rest of the trip is without a hitch.

I hit my meeting at 9:05.

The room at the top of the stair

The milestones of childhood sneak up on you while you're watching them.

You have all the warning in the world - and it does you no good.

For weeks now, mom's been sending packages to the boy with school supplies - pencils, glue sticks, new clothes, a backpack. You figure I'd get get a clue there. I've been to the boy's school, met the teacher, took him to his new locker.

I can tell the boy is fretting over it. He grinds his teeth at night. He's been coming into our bed at night with some regularity. For him it's a huge change. Losing all his buddies from day care - losing his awesome teacher and having to start over.

I've never understood the whole kindergarten angst for parents, though. My mother has told me stories from her elementary school that seemed positively surreal.

The one I remember the most was about a mother of twins.

First off, she was incredibly tall. Taller, even than my mother which takes some doing. She was easily 6'4" and dressed in full corporate battle gear: power suit and all the accessories. She was dropping off her two boys for their first day of kindergarten.

After her boys had gone off down the hall, this imposing, seasoned professional lay prostrate in the middle of the hallway and sobbed her eyes out. Aware of the spectacle she was making, she crawled into my mom's office to recover.

It took awhile, my mom said. A long while.

I've never understood that. Her children were coming back to her in a few hours. All these books that purport to prepare your kids for going to kindergarten make some reference to crying parents. It makes no sense to me.

The kids are safe - they're coming back. I mean, sure - it's a change, but it's not like boarding school.

So, this morning we take the boy over to his new school. The whole family, because it's a big deal. We take pictures - and the boy is nonplussed by the whole thing. He wants us to carry his backpack. He's wondering when the bell will ring so he can line up to go inside. Total anti-climax.

I've been wondering if he'll freak out a bit when we start to go, but E's staying with him a bit. I'm leaving early because little e has to get to day care. I've got a meeting I need to get to. He gives me a bit of a wave and disappears into the throng of other kids and parents.

And then I literally go to pieces. Little e's tugging at my hand and we're headed to the car. I'm wishing I had a hat with a brim - I have to walk past a line of late arrivals and their parents. One of the neighborhood kids is here - Jesus, what if they see me? I'm a grown up for cryin' out loud.

The masochist centers in my brain dredge up the verses to a McCutcheon song that ruins any hope of regaining composure.
I always say since dad died, I'm all out of stoicism. I'm not sure if that's the excuse here - but I'm unable to stop or make sense of what is going on.

I'll see him this afternoon.

I get little e to the car and she's too delightful to notice that her dad's a wreck.

This makes no sense.

So I drive her to day care, searing myself with thoughts of work and my meeting. I'm good until I get to day care and drop off little e without her brother. The boy's teacher is there and I'm edging towards becoming spectacle. Little e runs off and behind me I hear some of the new parents coming.

I am not one of those people. You have no right to see me like this.

So I opt for the half door next to the classroom. It's never open and we're not supposed to use it, but its the quickest way out. I get through here, I can be gone before the new parents come down this way.

And the door's sticks - and I can't get it to close behind me. And there they are, the new parents - right in front of me.

And I'm a spectacle. Little e's teacher is great - she knows the score and gives me a hug. This only encourages my problem and I dash up the stairs, willfully ignoring the other parents.

Alone in the car, I still can't make it all make sense. The boy is fine. I should be fine. I'm not sure what the root of my problem is.

I can't stop it - which is infuriating. I'm ten minutes from work. I'll be in a meeting five minutes after I get there.

But that part that needs to keep suffering just won't give up.

Now I sit on the bed
As the memories rain down
There’s a hole in my heart
Where you’ll always be there

I still don't understand.

Make it stop.

How they do it over there

A good amount of ink has gone into rebutting domestic myths about our own health care system - leaving American myths about foreign health care unchallenged.

At last, WaPo's T.R. Reed steps up to slap down some of the sillier ones.

He wind's out with this:

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.

(H/t CJR)

America's Minotaur debate

Once again, the foolishness of American political debate is best encapsulated by satire.

Witness - the torture debate, as rendered by The Onion:



(H/t to CJR)

Still takin' what they're givin'

Critics have been all over the Congressional plans for their expense, their lack of cost controls and a host of imaginary horrors.

I think the NYT's David Leonhardt highlights another weakness - choice.

Real choice is not part of the bills moving through the Democratic-led Congress; even if the much-debated government-run insurance plan was created, it would not be available to most people who already have coverage. Republicans, meanwhile, have shown no interest in making insurance choice part of a compromise they could accept. Both parties are protecting the insurers.

He points out that what is happening may be a step forward, but its a baby step.

Lest anyone confuse the current situation in health insurance with choice, the NYT offers a graph of the current regional monopolies in health coverage.
(H/t E)

Bloomberg beats the fed?

(Via CJR)

Bloomberg has won their FOIA case against the Board of the Federal Reserve System.

All that money the Fed has been pumping into the system and hasn't been telling us where it was going?

We might find out.

McCaughey v. Stewart: A knife to a gunfight

I like you, but I don’t understand how your brain works.
-Jon Stewart to Betsy McCaughey

There could be no better illustration of the difference between a political discussion and what occurs on a so-called news show than Jon Stewart's interview of Betsy McCaughey.

McCaughey is a health care advocate who launched the meme that has since become the “Death Panels” talking point. She is an experienced PR messenger who appears before national audiences on radio and TV and never goes off script.  That she’s even talking to Stewart (who opposes her viewpoint and has an audience that will support him on virtually anything) illustrates her confidence in her ability to get her message across.

And she gets bludgeoned.

Stewart mops the floor with her, in part because he is so well prepared, but largely because McCaughey is so good at her job.

Stewart is having a conversation – and McCaughey is reciting her talking points. In any Sunday talk show, McCaughey ‘s approach would have carried the day.

How many times have you seen this exchange before?

Interviewer: [Your boss has stayed silent on this issue, but you haven’t] And — and that, to your critics, is a sign of his statesmanship and your lack of it.

What do you make of that?

PR Messenger: Well, I — I don't pay a lot of attention to what the critics say, obviously.
From my standpoint, the notion that I should remain silent, while they go public, that I shouldn't say anything, while they threaten to disbar the lawyers who gave us the advice that was crucial in terms of this program, that I shouldn't say anything when they go out and release information that they believe is critical of the program and critical of our policies, but refuse to put out information that shows the results that we were able to achieve.

The bottom line is…

Most times, that’s the response. No follow up. A shorter version would be-

Interviewer: Give me your talking point.

PR Messenger: Here it is.

McCaughey is clearly prepared for that kind of interview.  She enters with a prop (a large binder containing part of a health care bill), and refers to it as she sits down. “I’ll put this down here.”

Tactic 1: She tries the charm.

McCaughey: Hello everybody…It is so nice to be here.  This is such a great show. It’s such a big show…”

Which is her attempt to assert control of the conversation. Sit back and let me praise you.

This goes nowhere, anyone trying to disarm Stewart on his show should know better.

Tactic 2: Distract the audience. She discusses her prop, the copy of the bill. She rolls her eyes at the size of the document, suggesting that its size means it is both bad and hard to understand (for us).

Stewart doesn’t take the bait. He immediately goes right at her assertion that health care reform will compel seniors to make end of life choices they don’t want. “The infamous page 425,” Stewart calls it.
McCaughey, in classic PR fashion shows no fear.

McCaughey: Let’s get right to it, this is my major concern...

 Tactic 3: But before we get to your question…

McCaughey: I really want to help cover the uninsured. Nobody should lose their home or their savings because they bet sick.

 I come in peace. Classic PR – answer a question you weren’t asked. Say something no one can have a problem with.  Then switch to-

Tactic 4: Hit your talking point:

McCaughey: …But this bill is dangerous..

Science of attention, classic pivot: I’m for good things, and this bill is bad.
The talking point continues:

McCaughey: Page 425 to page 430 outline advanced consultations, living wills, other end of life consultation issues. The government proscribes what must be covered in detail including foregoing nutrition and even antibiotics.

Twofold tactic here: Hit the talking point, get out the scary words “government proscribes” and “foregoing nutrition” – she’s also establishing her mastery of the subject: she cites page numbers.

Stewart counters-

Stewart: Although the language is ‘life sustaining procedures’, the language of the bill is..

 Tactic 5: Stay on message.

McCaughey: No, it includes hydration, nutrition...

 McCaughey is trying to get all her scary words out there. Stewart cuts her off-

Stewart: No no no, I understand that, but they also say – it’s so you can make that decision.

McCaughey: That’s right. But it does proscribe, the uh medical professional shall, not may, shall must include-

Stewart: Have the conversation. If they have the conversation with you.

McCaughey: That’s right.

 McCaughey’s faltering here – she’s agreed to something Stewart has said. Twice.

Stewart presses on and starts to do some damage-

Stewart: Now you have said that the conversation is mandatory.

McCaughey: It is.

Stewart: Now the bill, at least the way I read it, and again…

Tactic 6: Stall.

McCaughey: Did you only read section 1233?

Stewart: I may…

McCaughey: That’s the problem. Factcheck.org. Everybody reads factcheck.org. They’re really spot-check.org.

All this yammering does nothing to back up her assertion that the conversation is mandatory. It does put Stewart on the defensive (Did I read 1233? Well, I…) and give her time to fill airtime with yet another talking point: Don’t trust factcheck.org.

Stewart: Give me the part that says it is mandatory that you must.

McCaughey: 1233. It’s on page 432.

Stewart: Read it to me. I’d be happy to hear about...

Stewart asks her to back up her mandatory assertion. The whole point of the discussion is being insisted on. Read it out. If you have it, show it to me.

Can anyone picture this exchange happening on any Sunday “News” show? That a talking point would have to provide a citation which is then read aloud to the audience?

When push comes to shove – she cannot produce a citation that backs up what she has said here and in other places.

She does try a host of distractions:

• “Look! I wrote ‘disgusting’ on this page of the bill!” Why does that matter?
• “Listen to this story about…”  Your story is irrelevant.
• “This provision is so dangerous, the Senate has ripped it out of its draft” Only because you are freaking people out with misinformation.

No. Stewart smacks her down and then spells out what he’s asking for 

Stewart: But there is absolutely nothing in that reading that says this is a mandatory consultation-

McCaughey:  Well, you’re wrong.

Stewart: I’ve read it. Honestly.

McCaughey:  You’re wrong.

Stewart: Alright then show me where it says it.

And they go to commercial while she tries to find it.

They come back with Stewart reading a citation that is filled with bureaucrat-ese that sounds nothing like what McCaughey has described. He pronounces the last words with particular relish: “…adherence to orders for life-sustaining treatment.”

You can just feel the collective smirk from the audience.

Undaunted, McCaughey claims our health care is the best in the word. Which leads to:

Stewart: We’re 46th in life expectancy

McCaughey: Life expectancy. When you remove violent crime and car accidents, we are number 1.

The audience laughs.

Stewart: (smiling) Point taken.

McCaughey: So instead of fixing the health care system we could fix the highways.

Incredibly, she’s still trying to push her talking point – and so Stewart cuts her off at the knees.

Stewart: Maybe what we could do is this. After a car crash, ship people to countries that are really good at treating people who have been in car crashes.

Ow. That’s going to leave a mark.

Clearly rattled, McCaughey then tries to paint him as an elitist: Well Jon, you’re so rich, he’s got a big penthouse…


And Stewart judos her all over again.

• She discusses her plan – which Stewart has read and then crucifies.
• She brings up a testimonial letter – which Stewart exposes as the distraction it is.
• I’d give her credit for hanging in there, but that’s the very thing that ensures she looks like a total fool.

Watch all three segments. They are fricking beautiful from any angle. Ask yourself what journalist would be this prepared, or pin down a guest to this degree?

Part 1 (Via TPM)

Part 2 (Via Comedy Central)

Part 3 (Via Comedy Central)


Late update: PalMD has a great observation on Mccaughey's tortured logic as it applies to PQRI:

HR 3200 does add a PQRI clause to advanced directive counseling, which, it may be argued, incents physicians to have these conversations and document them.
[Mccaughey is suggesting that] if this is included in quality measures, then it will be included in incentive, therefore doctors will coerce patients from changing their minds about advanced directives, which might lose them credit for "adherence".

...

This can only be an intentional misreading of the bill and of reality itself. The PQRI system, for example, provides different codes for a measure. There is usually a code for "did it", and "didn't do it because it's not appropriate" and "didn't do it because patient doesn't want to". The doctor is not in any way pressured to "require" patients to do a damned thing. And if the family changes their mind and "chooses to live", as McC puts it, there is no reason any sane, non-religious-zealot doctor would stand in the way. While the specific PQRI coding isn't proposed in the bill, there is not reason "adherence" would stand in the way of "mind-changing", since then you've created a new advanced directive with which to adhere.

Chris Whalen to Jim Cramer: I’m calling you out

Chris Whalen has had his fill of Jim Cramer's mindless mouthing of whatever Goldmann Sachs and Tim Geithner say.

But he puts in far more entertaining terms:

Jim, next time the boys at GS or Tim Geithner call and ask you to take a shot a Sheila Bair and our colleagues at the FDIC on TheStreet or CNBC, just know that I will put you into the boards every time. And I am looking forward to it with the greatest anticipation.

Here’s a challenge to Jim Cramer. If you want to talk banks some evening on your show, I know the way to CNBC HQ and will be happy to talk to the flock anytime you say.

Cramer went willingly to Jon Stewart's woodshed once, you wonder if he'll be so eager to invite Whalen over...

Here's hoping.

(H/t trainreq)

He'd better die quick is all I have to say

Seriously.

Fire with Fire

Love, love, love this - Barney Frank beating the stuffing out of a town hall whackjob:



(H/t TPM)

Put it on my card: How black ops get it done

(Via Danger Room and the New York Post)

More than seven years ago a group of Americans traveled to Siberia to buy a pair of Russian Mi-17 helicopters for the CIA’s post-9/11 clandestine operations in Afghanistan. As with many “black” programs, the contract had elements of craziness: Contracting officials paid the multimillion-dollar contract on a credit card at a local El Paso bar and then used the credit card rebate to redecorate their office; the team traveled under the guise of being private contractors; and the charter crew transporting the group abandoned the team in Russia in the middle of the night.

Saw this on Docuticker...

 

  

  

Well, most of that was found on docuticker...

(H/t E)

Why are we confused about food?

In 2007, Kellog spent $32.8 Million just to advertise Cheez-Its.
-Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle giving a great speech on the food industry, food policy, our limited understanding of both - and how we got here.

Her theme isn't exactly a revelation - but then, when so much money is spent to distract us - it's almost thrilling to watch an informed and entertaining re-introduction to what would otherwise be obvious to all.

Great stuff.

She references a report by the IOM on the marketing of food to children. Also worth a look.

(H/t Good Experience)

Glancing contact with a current event

A while back I was contacted by my credit card company telling me they'd canceleld the card and were sending me a replacement.

Apparently, my card information was part of the Heartland heist, whose conspirators were just indicted.

As my credit card is issued by a classy company - they handled the problem so I didn't need to do anything. No muss no fuss...

...but I'm sure interested to see what happens to the guys who brought this about.

A gust of wind and a chance encounter

(Via Starts With A Bang, H/t to Phil)

Take a look at this rock:

There's all kinds of cool going into this photo:

For starters, it was taken by a robot on another planet.

Also, this robot
-was launched over six years ago, traveled over 34 million miles through space before landing on Mars.
-has spent the last five years driving around taking pictures until...

... it took this picture.

In part because of a gust of wind.

What they learned from that picture picture is cooler yet.

Farve, buddy... give it a rest

Farve reportedly to sign with Vikings.

The hypocrisy of the anti-government reflex

I remember reading the transcripts of Terry Nichols making an @ss out of himself telling a judge why he shouldn't have to pay income taxes.

It was that whole Freemen thing - where individuals are free to advocate for the destruction of the very government whose social programs are subsidizing their existence.

Fast forward to today when Medicare beneficiaries are vocally denouncing government involvement in health care.

And you just grope for the right words...

Fortunately, somebody has come up with some:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables, thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

(H/t to Mike)

The ice cold water of the bank failure rate

I realize I'm a reflexive counterpuncher, so stories that speak ill of the current "recovery" mindset are appealing to me.

But here's a rather bit of commentary, courtesy of The Big Picture:

What kind of recovery, we wonder, permits the sixth largest bank failure in U.S. history? Colonial BancGroup, the flailing Montgomery lender that had 346 branches spread across Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas, joined 77 other banks so far in 2009 to find their way into the big bank home in the sky.

...

Says Sheila Bair, chairman of the FDIC, “The past 18 months have been a very trying period in the financial services arena.”

Consider that a sizable understatement. Last year, during what was considered the height of bank failures, the agency set aside $25 billion to cover what they saw as potential future losses. Now, less than 12 months later, the number of banks on the FDIC’s “troubled” watch list has jumped from 90 to no less than 305. The combined asset value of those “problem” banks? $220 billion.

Yarg.

I know the FDIC isn't running out of money any time soon, but a climate where banks keep imploding cannot be a good thing.

Peter Schiff is fond of saying that the FDIC is bad because it shields investors from risk. Logic being, if banks tanked, we'd be more careful where we put our money.

Problem with that is people don't want to have to suss out which banks are healthy and which aren't. And if people have trouble divining which banks are and aren't healthy now, wait until they have to worry about deposits under $200K fleeing to safer harbors.

I'm sure Uncle Sam will keep kicking out the cash to cover these kinds of takeovers - but you wonder if the rate continues to increase like this... what kind of course corrections will have to follow?

Our crazy tree is blooming

(Via TPM)

Rick Perlstein writes a monster article about the current health care debate:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

...

Before the "black helicopters" of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a "civil rights movement" had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would "enslave" whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn't lack for subversives -- anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and '50s.

Neil Cavuto tries to out-crazy Glenn Beck

Oh my god.

Watch this:



or just read the intro:

Neil Cavuto: Well all eight UK terrorist suspects were either doctors or worked in the health care system.
Is is because Britain's national health care system pays physicians such a low salary that they actually have a shortage of doctors, forcing the country then, to recruit from foreign countries?

Let's ask Jerry Bowyer, Jerry a columnist for the National Review Online.

Jerry do you think that could be the problem?

Jerry Bowyer: I think that's certainly a contributing factor, Neil. I looked at the statistics for foreign born physicians in countries that have state run health care enterprises like the United Kingdom, compared to private enterprise like us and what you find is far higher rates of importing physicians - and not just physicians, nurses from abroad. The united kingdom is the largest importer of medical personnel in the world. Feeding them into this huge bureaucratic system and that's going to create a certain amount of vulnerability.

Got that?

Mr. "I'm completely insane" Cavuto is suggesting a link between national health care and terrorism. National Review's Jerry Bowyer is agreeing with him.

You see, if you have a national health care system - doctors get paid less, ergo, less people will want those jobs, so foreigners will flock to your shores to snap up these comparatively low-paying jobs.

But, Neil  - you ask - why should I be afraid of immigrants? I mean lots of people come to America for work?

Because, Neal says, some of these immigrants will be....muslim:

Cavuto: Y'know the argument that the country has used for just the sheer increase of muslim doctors is the sheer increase in the muslim population. In for example Birmingham, England where a lot of these, uh, guys came from and where one of the attacks was first hatched- its up to 30% of the population. Maybe that's the problem?

Bowyer: Well, yeah. I think, I think that could certainly be a problem, but I think the biggest problem is the first thing you pointed out...

Let's boil down the conservative arguments against health care reform so far, shall we?

1. The government wants to kill off the largest pool of reliable voters. (The elderly)
2. Our health care is the best in the world. [Despite being ranked 37th in the world by the WHO, and dead last in number of preventable deaths)
   
   and now
   
   
3. Health care reform will bring Muslim terrorists to our shores.

Unbe f-ing lievable.

(H/t to Bad Science)

Warren Report

Time for another dose of economic clarity, courtesy of Elizabeth Warren:

You have to put up with Joe Scarborough being a total dork, but as ever - Warren shines.

I'm sure it's coincidental, but check out how fast the music comes up when Prof. Warren starts to second guess the necessity of Paulson's $700 billion.

Late Edit: CJR had this clip of Warren.



I love this woman.

Cancel my subscription

I'm on the phone, pulling the plug on my newspaper subscription when I run across Felix Salmon's post America's Doomed Small Newspapers.

He's talking about Bill Wyman's article Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing

The problem of the daily press in the U.S. is exclusively this: the collapse of its business model. That model used to be, plainly put, making money—a lot of money, oceans of money—delivering advertising on newsprint into peoples’ homes. Subscribers didn’t pay for news. Advertisers did.

-and it goes without saying that advertisers are pulling back.

And so am I. I almost never read my local paper. It piles up where I unthinkingly fling it: in the front hallway, the kitchen table, in the footwell of the car.

I've taken armloads of still-bagged newspapers and deposited them in the recycle bin in broad daylight - sure that somewhere the (now-resurgent) driveway fairy is looking at me with scorn.

Don't get me wrong - I love newspapers. Love them.

If you sprang a day off on me - no cash, just time - and turned me loose, odds are I'd end up at my favorite breakfast place with a copy of the NYT and spend as long as I dared there paging through it at length.

The time to savor reading the news - aaah the luxury.

But I don't have that time. And besides, newsprint has three unpardonable sins from my standpoint:

1. It costs money.
2. It's hard to navigate (pull out the advert/puff pieces...continued on page C7...etc)
3. I have to clean it up

Internet content obviously has none of these issues (so far) - so I'm a fool to have subscribed for so long.

Wyman's article starkly illustrates the dire straits newspapers find themselves in. It does not inspire hope.

The value the [newspaper] companies added to the print ads was their de facto hegemony over home delivery...that hegemony doesn’t exist online. And the value of that hegemony is gone forever.

He offers local newspapers a few bits of advice, but it's less than kind:

Serve the community. Don't publish crap. Tell folks stuff they might not want to hear. Grow a pair.

It makes you wonder what will come next.

...and more to the point - how it will be funded.

If it's selling, we will sell it (or something that looks like it)

It wasn't so long ago the nation was mad for Kona coffee. Grown on the slopes of Hawai'i's mountains, drawing flavor from the rich, volcanic soil.

Blah, blah, blah...

People loved the exotic mystic - and the flavor wasn't bad either. Demand soared, and supply followed. Suddenly, Kona coffee was everywhere.

And then someone did the math on how much coffee was getting sold as Kona coffee - and how much acreage actually grew Kona coffee. They came a rather obvious conclusion: 2,000 measly acres in Hawaii simply could not grow that much Kona coffee.

The suppliers saw what was selling, and rushed to sell product that looked like the real article.

They've been doin' it since forever.

According to WaPo's Jane Black, they've done it with heirloom tomatoes as well.

Call me persnickety, but someone needs to take a stand here: "Heirloom" is not synonymous with "good."

...

In a 2007 article in the journal Sociologia Ruralis, Jennifer Jordan examined the pressing question of why a growing number of consumers had acquired a taste for $7-a-pound "bug-eaten, calloused, mottled and splitting tomatoes that may or may not taste good."

The answer, Jordan concluded, was that heirloom tomatoes had evolved into a "marker of distinction." The lumpy, imperfect fruit had become a kind of mascot for the good-food movement that is against industrial agriculture's embrace of pesticides, against the development of genetically modified foods, in favor of preserving small farms and in support of local and seasonal food.

...

Heirlooms' popularity took a toll on their taste, however. As farmers and supermarkets realized they could extract high prices for heirlooms, they increased production. And, in some cases, quality fell; hence the gorgeous but mealy and bland heirloom I bought last week.

Black states that she's having a quiet revolt against heirlooms. I think that's a bit much - but it's good of her to point out that heirlooms can be mass-produced pieces of crap, too.

Like the chef in the article says "If a tomato tastes good, it's a good tomato. Nothing else matters."

Chevy: bad at math

Okay, all of a sudden there's this blitz of publicity surrounding the Chevy Volt and how it gets 230 miles per gallon.

I have two main reactions:

• How do you rate MPG for a car that is has an electric motor (with a combustion assist)?
• 230 MPG? What a load of crap.

The early pressers on the Volt stressed how its batteries had a 40 mile range. So, if your round trip under 20 miles, you don't use gas.

How does that translate to MPG? Unlimited?

The good folks over at Good Math, Bad Math take Chevy to task over this, but you wonder how even Rachel Maddow can get looped into this garbage. (To her credit, she questioned the figure and had an automotive expert on her show to discuss it - but the idiocy of using MPG for all electric usage was not given the beating it deserved).


The way I see it, they need a new rating standard.

MPG might as well be read as MPG(of gas).

It's a burn rate.

Up to the maximum range of the batteries, the Chevy Volt has no burn rate.

That's a stat.

It's all-electric range is 40 Miles.

It's time to recharge a fully depleted battery (using a standard plug) is another stat.

When the Volt runs out of batteries and engages the combustion engine - it has a burn rate like any other car.

That's a stat, too.

So if you're running a car like a volt - give me the

• All-electric range (40 miles)
  
• Recharge time (8-10 hours) and the
• combustion MPG

You might also throw in the average maximum distance the vehicle could drive at highway speeds if it started with batteries/gas tank that were filled to capacity.

Call that Crusing Range.

Then I have a picture of what I'm dealing with.

I'm excited about the Volt - I think it's great that they're trying this (I think it's stupid that they plan to sell the cars at a loss - once again GM's brain trust shows its quality)

But this made-for-PR BS that they are running with now, it's gotta stop.

We'll have to start drinking tap water

Tales of the recession... as told by the clueless elite.

Tough times are all around us - and nobody's suffering quite like the staff at Condé Nast

“That whole feeling of working here and it being cushy and other people loving it and being jealous? That’s kind of gone now”

...

“At the salad bar, you’re allowed one protein and generally they have five proteins listed,” said this source. “But the only proteins they have now are tofu and chicken! There’s no shrimp! I don’t think there’s any more shrimp there.”

...

“When I started, there was this little refrigerator, and it was stocked with amazing drinks,” said one ad-sales source. “Pellegrino, Orangina, Red Bull. And like the water wasn’t Poland Spring, it was like Fiji... But then in December...the drink supply emptied out. That Fiji water turned into Poland Spring. Worse, instead of the fridge, the water bottles were stowed in a warm closet.

And then: “I just found out today that we are on our last batch of Poland Spring,” said the source. “We won’t have any more after this. We have to start drinking tap water.”

The horror... the horror!

Late edit: Whoops, I whiffed on the H/t. It's CJR, of course.

Pirates in the Baltic?

(Via the BBC)

Russia's navy has been deployed to find a ship reportedly hijacked three weeks ago in the Baltic Sea.

Up to five vessels - reported to include nuclear submarines - will be involved in the search for the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea, the navy confirmed.

It has a 15-strong Russian crew and was reportedly taking timber worth $1.5m (£900,000) from Finland to Algeria when it was boarded by gunmen on 24 July.

The BBC is quick to point out that this brand of piracy is very different from the Somalia infestation. This may in fact be a kind of commercial dispute gone bad - but still...

These guys seized control of the boat and sailed it through the English Channel.

Pirates! In Europe!

Obama's eight protections

CJR’s Trudy Lieberman summarizes the eight protections that the President assures us will reform health insurance.

A sample:

No discrimination for preexisting conditions. That’s a good thing, and insurers have agreed to eliminate health status as a factor for granting coverage in the individual market if every American is required to carry insurance one way or another. Right now, a few states restrict preexisting conditions clauses; the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), passed in 1996, gives people the right to buy a policy in the individual market without regard to health problems if they do so within sixty-three days of losing coverage and if they have used up all their COBRA benefits. HIPAA, though, didn’t say anything about premiums, and so insurers in most states charge higher rates to discourage people with preexisting medical needs from signing up.

What to watch for: Lobbyists inserting language that limits insurers’ risks, like the restrictions in the HIPAA law that still make it difficult for sick people to obtain coverage. President Obama has been silent on the question of age rating, which serves as a proxy for using health as a factor in charging higher rates. Older people are likely to present more health risks and cost the insurers money. “As long as they can rate people up for age, that’s a proxy for health rating,” Kofman says.

Good stuff.

Ms. Lieberman is one of those must-read columnists when it comes to health care. Complicated issues, spelled out in ways that make sense. I don’t always agree with her – but I’m always going to read her stuff.

She was on Bill Moyers Journal the other night along with Harvard’s Dr. Marcia Angell. It was one of those despair-inducing hours that illustrated the long odds against reform of the health care system.

BILL MOYERS: The President, as you were saying a moment ago, is saying to everybody who's not covered, we're going to mandate that you exercise that right. We're going to mandate that you buy some form--

MARCIA ANGELL: We're going to deliver the private insurance companies a captive market. That's right. And they love that.

BILL MOYERS: Say that again.

MARCIA ANGELL: They love that.

BILL MOYERS: The-- his policy does what? His program?

MARCIA ANGELL: Delivers to the private insurance industry a captive market.

BILL MOYERS: By the mandate.

MARCIA ANGELL: By the mandate.

BILL MOYERS: It says "Marcia Angell, you've got to--"

MARCIA ANGELL: For whatever price they want to charge. Right. And so, this will increase costs. And let me tell you what he's running into, and he'd like to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat, but he won't be able to. If you leave this profit-oriented system in place, you can't both control costs and increase coverage. You inevitably, if you try to increase coverage, increase costs. The only answer, the only answer, and he said it at the beginning of his press conference, is a single payer system. In his first sentence, he said, that is the only way to cover everyone.

Gah.

No guarantees in health care

James Kwak has a marvelous essay called You do not have health insurance - about the difference between a health plan and what we usually think of as insurance.

Worth a read.

Also, if you haven't yet heard This American Life's episode called Fine Print, you really should. Act III has great stuff on health care, but the intro story (about Van Halen's M&Ms) seriously rocks, too.

Saturn WTF?

(Via Bad Astronomy)

Something's smashing through the rings of Saturn like the fist of an angry god.

Whooooa...

Danziger Bridge

Apparently, this particular bit of post-Katrina violence was substantial enough to warrant federal attention...

...the [September 4, 2005] episode, during which [New Orleans Police Department] officers loosed a fusillade of bullets on a group of civilians as they walked over the bridge, killing Ronald Madison and James Brissette, and wounding five others.

The police officers involved say they began shooting in response to gunfire from the civilians; that claim is vigorously disputed by the shooting victims.

-what a difference a new administration makes.

Talking Business With Sister Ping

Danger Room has an interview with Patrick Keefe, author of The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream

It's about the rise and fall of a New York smuggler called Sister Ping.

Looks yummy.

Here's a sample:

One of Sister Ping’s closest associates was a young Chinatown gangster named Ah Kay.

Ah Kay was a very bad dude. He was very smart and charismatic, but totally ruthless, and ended up pleading guilty to five murders. Their partnership ended up being fateful in a whole series of ways, and would eventually be the beginning of Sister Ping’s downfall. But they had a very curious history.

The first time the two met, Ah Kay robbed her family, pointing a gun at her children and demanding all the money they had stashed in the house.

He wasn’t satisfied with the loot on that occasion, so shortly thereafter, Ah Kay actually robbed her, at gunpoint, again.

The third time they met, she came and asked if he’d like to go into the smuggling business with her. He’d developed a reputation as a comer in the neighborhood, and she wanted to work with him.

Feeling understandably awkward, Ah Kay said, “Sister Ping, I’m sorry about the past.”

And she replied, “That’s in the past. We’re talking business now.”

Tell me that wouldn't make a killer scene in a movie.

RAND on F-22 cuts: This ain't over

Oh, you knew it seemed too easy. Following the beat down of the F-22 in Congress - the RAND Corporation just happens to release a study suggesting that the Taiwanese air defenses could be overwhelmed by an all out Chinese attack.

Sure they said essentially the same thing nine years ago, but now they've updated their report to suggest that Guam based F-22s could make a real difference in the outcome.

Gosh - I wonder who will be the first right winger to use this study to argue for us buying more F-22s?

(H/t Danger Room)

A free and unequal market

While my (near total) ignorance of how stock exchanges work makes pretty much any information new -

Here are some terms that apply to stock markets that are utterly at odds with how I'd expect a free and fair market to function:

High Frequency Trading - "Powerful computers, some housed right next to the machines that drive marketplaces like the New York Stock Exchange, enable high-frequency traders to transmit millions of orders at lightning speed and, their detractors contend, reap billions at everyone else’s expense." (NYT via CJR)

Flash Trading - [trades that] allow powerful traders to get sneak peeks at others’ stock orders for a split second, long enough for their computers to take advantage of the information.

and

Dark Pools - Off-exchange broker-owned markets that don’t display quotes to the public. These pools can be open to only select investors who are given early access to trades so they can get a jump on shifts in open market prices.

While I never believed the market makes traders equal - I hadn't appreciated the staggering difference between a lone investor managing their stocks and a big firm casually manipulating markets.

I'd always thought the matchup was eye-poppingly unfair - but it's so much worse than that.

Glad to read that the SEC is showing signs of waking from its Bush-induced coma.

9/11 Conspiracy theorists: liars or retards?

Cracked magazine ends the debate.

Yeah, this is old - but they had a new picture that made me laugh. Then I followed the related link.

Hee hee hee...

(H/t Bad Astronomy)

Yet another way the telecoms can screw consumers...

is to have wordy voicemail messages that extend the phone call into another billable minute.

...you know, the ones that say “to leave a voice message, wait for the beep,” only they take 30 seconds doing so, for the sole purpose of chewing up the mobile phone minutes of the person calling you.

James Kwak has the details, but he also has a nice work around.

I’m proud to say that my voice mail greeting for several years has begun, “Hi, this is James. To skip this message press star . . .

See the original post by the NYT's David Pogue for more detail.

You WILL respect those who can harm us

(Via Glenn and the NYT)

Here's Glenn:

The New York Times this morning has a remarkable story, and incredibly, the article's author, Brian Stelter, doesn't even acknowledge, let alone examine, what makes the story so significant.  In essence, the chairman of General Electric (which owns MSNBC), Jeffrey Immelt, and the chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), Rupert Murdoch, were brought into a room at a "summit meeting" for CEOs in May, where Charlie Rose tried to engineer an end to the "feud" between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly.  According to the NYT, both CEOs agreed that the dispute was bad for the interests of the corporate parents, and thus agreed to order their news employees to cease attacking each other's news organizations and employees.

and here's the NYT:

The reconciliation -- not acknowledged by the parties until now -- showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations.

So these two bastions of journalistic excellence, having locked horns and revealed each other's shortcomings - have decided it would be better for all involved if they agreed to stop covering each other and instead focus on beating up CNN. (Not that CNN doesn't deserve a good beating)

The NYT goes on to quote Olbermann as saying by email "I am party to no deal" which is a wonderfully inadequate response to such an allegation.

We're not suggesting you are in the room and signed a document, you fool. We're asking if you've been ordered to alter your show's content based on the deal that your bosses now acknowledge took place.

I've never believed Olbermann was much of a journalist, more like a counterpuncher with a knack for a good turn of a phrase - but I remember him lauding his employers for sticking with him after his first Special Comment. How they didn't threaten him or rebuke him. How they instead asked him to do more special comments. You wonder how he'll respond to the pressure about this little deal.

I want to see that special comment.

I expect I never will.

Glenn's follow up post on this is golden.

GE's journalists will stop reporting critically on Fox and its top assets because Fox can expose actions of GE that we want to keep concealed.

...

[GE's] Immelt was essentially being blackmailed by News Corp.: we will continue to report on GE's corporate activities unless you bar Keith Olbermann from criticizing Fox and O'Reilly. And now, Immelt has succumbed to those threats and ordered Olbermann to cease reporting on Fox. There is simply no doubt -- none -- that this happened.

Late edit: Shows what I know. Olbermann threw down at the NYT tonight. He claims there is no interference in his program and even took pains to beat on O'Reilly for good measure.

NYT? Ball's in your court.

OooOOooh, media throwdown...!

Later edit: Glenn went back to Olbermann with the new bit that he reported -

And now, [GE's CEO Jeffrey] Immelt has succumbed to those threats and ordered Olbermann to cease reporting on Fox. There is simply no doubt -- none -- that this happened.

and...Olbermann replied by saying he had "found nothing materially factually inaccurate" in Greenwald's  reporting.

That reads as Olbermann was ordered to clam up.

Fail.

Get in the fookin' sack

(H/t to Bad Astronomy)

In science, as in politics - it seems like the satirists swing the biggest bats.



We could use a few more like Dara Ó Briain over here.

Slope

What now, smart guy?

Having started out auspiciously, I realized the patio project was me running against type. This promised to be a large project and let's face it, I am not meticulous.

I went and got another of those Ten Pound Books - y'know the ones that make everything easy?

Anyway here's what I was looking at:

Top down, here's the patio as the landscapers left it.

 

That'd be eight inch thick concrete footing walls  surrounding a big pile of sand.

This was an improvement over what was there to begin with. Here's the original cross-section:

That's bricks on top of a concrete slab. The level of the bricks was higher than the sill plate.

As the slope of the bricks was dead level, it trapped water next to the sill plate:

As I'd said before, water + wood = carpenter ant damage.

That'd be foam insulation over our sill plate, under the door to
the patio - or an ant farm, depending on how you look at it.

 So what I need to do is to get the level of the patio down - and correct the slope. Setting aside the concrete footings for a moment, I'd think all I need to do is slope the dirt away from the house and lay down some bricks.

But Ten Pound Books is telling me that this is not so. You need to lay down a base for the bricks to sit on. A base (the book helpfully tells me) consists of four inches of compacted gravel, topped by an inch of sand.

This means E and I spend a hour digging down half a foot and plopping all that dirt in a big heap. Then I go pricing gravel. Gravel comes in 50 pound bags and runs about $2.50 a bag.

How many bags to I need? My patio is 11'x14' and I need to fill it to a four inch depth. The bag gives me a helpful equation:

W x L x .666 = number of bags needed to make a 4" depth.

Er... that's 103 bags. Or two and a half tons.

The patio has three sides: 1 is blocked by our fence, 1 is blocked by two hastily moved pallets of bricks and (yes) the last is blocked by a hastily pitched pile of sand. And I have to move 100 bags of gravel through this mess.

Not meticulous? Check.

Lesson learned. I shell out $250 for gravel and get it delivered on two pallets in the garage. I ask the guy to put it as far into my garage as possible, because every foot closer is one less foot I have to haul 100 fifty pound bags.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the base layer of dirt to slope away from the house. This is perhaps the most maddening part of the process. Trying to get a fix on true level is not as easy as it sounds.

I start with the concrete footing walls. They actually are level, but I spend a lot of time second guessing this fact. I pound wooden dowels into the sand, tie string between them and adjust them over and over until they are level.

Then my children trip over the string. And I adjust them. Then they move the sticks. And I replace them. Then they trip over them. Eventually, I use the string to mark out equal units of distance on a grid and measure down from them with a square. I plot the distance at five points across four parallel lines to make the slope.

If it sounds stupid, it is - and the only dignity I can salvage is to say that I knew my first efforts on slope would suck. So doing all this on the lowest level of dirt is pretty much just practice. I'm putting gravel on top of this, dirt on top of that and then I'll be doing the real slope on the bricks.

I expected this to be terrible - and I was right. I manage a grade of a 1.5" inch drop across the 11' width of the patio. Grade is a pretty grandiose term, it looks like a moonscape.

Enter the gravel.

I have an awesome wheelbarrel, so the plan is to put it on the other side of the back door of the garage. I'll lug the bags into it through the door, then wheel them over to the pit and dump them in. A few mishaps shows I can handle about 4 bags per trip.

The family's out helping spread the stuff - and the Boy loves the fact that he can stab the bags with a hand shovel to open them. It's actually a bit disturbing to watch him go all Norman Bates on them, but he's happy and the gravel is getting spread out.

It takes a few weekends, but between other obligations and errands, all the gravel gets laid out.

I then repeat and refine my slope-measuring technique. I snap chalklines on the insides of the footing walls and spray paint them so they'll stay. Then I take an eight-foot 2x4 to use in smoothing out the gravel.

It actually goes pretty well - about the time I'm finishing up I'm eyeballing the gravel and it just looks wrong. The sides are tracking to the slope lines I painted - but the middle of the gravel looks bad. I then realize something that any carpenter could tell you right off:

There is no such thing as a perfectly straight 2x4. I've been leveling my gravel with a particularly warped board - and depending on which side was down when I worked I was building a mound or digging a hole.

I go at it again using my metal level exclusively. It's four feet long and it takes more than twice as long as the board. And it still looks terrible. Having vowed to do this right, I'm starting to feel the familiar urge to say "Good enough."

I convince myself that the differences are sleight enough to be corrected with the next level: sand. It's not a cop out. Honest.

Then (sayeth the book) I need to get a plate compactor to smash down the gravel. Renting expensive, heavy pieces of machinery is not my favorite thing - but the book commands. I obey.

Running the compactor over gravel is surprisingly anti-climactic. It weighs a freaking ton - and since a full run over the patio takes ten minutes, I feel a bit let down when it's all over. Also, the compactor alternates between compacting the gravel and plowing deep furrows in it.

So much for my slope. I'll need to do a lot of patching with the sand.

SAND. Glorious sand. Last of the layers before I get to put down brick. Huzzah! Packing down the sand and getting slope has been something I've been looking forward to. The Book recommends laying down 1" diameter lengths of PVC pipe, then filling dirt up to just cover them.

This proves to be FAR easier than any of the insanity I'd tried before. Having two pipes 4' apart, I can set the slope on the pipes, shovel dirt between them - then use the metal level to scrape off the excess and presto! A level slope of dirt. No boards, no chalklines, and no goddamned string.

I doubt there was any need to seriously grade the previous levels now. Whatever.

So now - I start with the bricks. Remember, there are these footings around the outside of the patio - so I (in my infinite wisdom - decide that I will start on the far end, away from the house. AND I will make the bricks flush with the top of the concrete footings.

Like so:

 

The logic being - I don't have to move the concrete, and I certainly don't want people tripping over the footing every time they go to step off my patio.

This goes well for awhile. The Book has recommended that I use a rubber mallet to drive the bricks down into the sand. This is quite satisfying and soon I've got about 30 square feet of bricks down. I've been checking their slope like a demon. They are flat, they are even - they have the correct amount of slope.

I am pleased.

And then I have E out to look at them - and she points out what happens when I extend that perfect slope a bit:

Like the complete idiot I am - I'd forgotten that this slope will put the top of the bricks at the house higher than the sill plate. I will have done all this work - and I will have simply replicated the original problem. Oh, the bricks will have slope for a change - but I wasn't going to half ass this job.

-and that's right where I was headed.

So, I'll need to start with the bricks nearest the house, and slope down. This will put the top row farthest from the house below the level of the concrete footing.

Which will mean, I will have to take the top few inches off the concrete footings:

In cross section, that doesn't look so bad, but when you consider that the slope will be noticable over three feet or so - and that the footings surround the patio on three sides - you're talking about a lot of concrete.

That's the top three inches off a 14' length, and two more lengths of 8' each. Last time I used a jackhammer - I just about broke myself. Most people think jackhammer, they think of the noise. I think about the weight. Picking them up from the hole they just dug, setting them down. Doing it hundreds of times.

Hell.

E, naturally has the right idea though. A concrete saw.

That makes a lot of sense - make lengthwise cuts, then cross cut at regular intervals and bash off big chunks with a chisel. It'll be easy!

Renting a saw is a snap. MG puts us on to a great place to rent one. Their first question surprises me, though: "You want to rent a blade?"

Doesn't the saw come with one?

"No. The diamond edge blades for cutting concrete are a separate rental. We bill you for the weekend use, plus $2.50 per thousandth of an inch wear."

Uh... okay. Anything I should know to minimize the wear?

"Keep it out of the sand."

I think of the gouts of sand surrounding my footings - and resolve to do a lot of digging beforehand.

Gates

Like a lot of people, I've had an opinion bubbling around in my head about the whole Gates arrest fiasco. It's largely useless at this point, since (let's face it) most of us are sick of the story by now - and there's been no end of published opinions on them.

Honestly, I can see the whole incident as a racially neutral act that triggers racially-motivated responses by those who identify with the parties involved.

• Officer responds to a mistaken report of a break in
• Officer discovers that the suspect of the break in lives in the house.
• Suspect berates policeman.
• Officer arrests suspect on charge unrelated to original report.
• The charge against the suspect is then dropped.

What's going on there is disturbing and has nothing to do with race. A cop is fed up with the suspect's attitude, so he arrests him.

That should be the discussion. The validity of that action. And that's not a simple discussion.

But since the cop and the suspect have different skin colors- we get breathless coverage of the easy narrative: Race.

Guaranteed conflict and a ready supply of invective spouting pressure groups - eager to cast the entire affair as yet another example of why their side is correct. You SEE??!! they scream.

And then the president weighs in. "Stupidly."

In a vacuum, his comments make total sense. The cop is trying to arrest a man for burglary at the one location where that crime is impossible - his own home. The cop looks foolish. Since the disorderly charge was dropped, the cops have no crime to stand on. They do look stupid.

But this is America - and a comment about a single arrest is somehow an assault against all cops, and (to some) an attack on all white cops. Now we get the pent-up frustration of police officers everywhere rearing up to denounce the injustice of it all.

We're not racists. Stop attacking us!

If they would just leave it at that- that might pass - but we get

Gates deserved it. He was rude to the officer! He's racist!

Which spawns another round of:

-How dare you accuse a black man of racism? Don't you know the history of racial oppression in America?

We're not talking about history, here-

-OH YES WE ARE...

And so on.

We finally end up with the President of the United States being asked to publicly kiss the ring of law enforcement and construct an elaborate beer garden kabuki so all sides can save face. See? we got to meet with the president. We're right.

And then both factions go away with the same certainty they arrived with.

Meanwhile, the whole reason we had this whole farce - Gate's arrest on a disorderly conduct charge - is left largely unexamined.

Thankfully we have Digby.

She has an excellent post on that very issue:

Sure, we should treat the cops with respect and society shouldn't encourage people to be reflexively hostile to police. They have a tough job, and we should all be properly respectful of people who are doing a dangerous and necessary job for the community. But when a citizen doesn't behave well, if not illegally, as will happen in a free society, it is incumbent upon the police, the ones with the tasers and the handcuffs and the guns, to exercise discretion wisely and professionally. And when they don't, we shouldn't make excuses for them. It's far more corrosive to society to allow authority figures to abuse their power than the other way around.

I was going to go down that rabbit hole, but she's done it so brilliantly - I couldn't possibly add a thing.

Read the whole thing.