Bob Nilsson sent along this note about last week's You Can't Step In The Same River Twice

It may be a little different tone than you were evoking, but there was a good Twilight Zone episode about not being able to go back home: Walking Distance

Kent Peterman, who enjoyed the same item, was impressed by Atlantic Monthly's The 14 Biggest Ideas Of The Year self-described as a guide to the intellectual trends that, for better or worse, are shaping America right now. (Plus a bunch of other ideas, insights, hypotheses, and provocations.)

Dan Grobstein File

• U.S.   | August 18, 2011
  Transit Agency Study Finds Fares Up and Service Down
  By MICHAEL COOPER
  The economic downturn is playing havoc with the nation's public transit systems, with 71 percent of the nation's large systems having cut service while half have raised fares.

• OPINION   | August 20, 2011
  Paul Krugman: Swede Talk, Swede Talk
  By PAUL KRUGMAN
  But skip the lutefisk. 
• The secret bank bailout
• Smithsonian (@smithsonian) RT @amhistorymuseum: These photos of the 1906 San Fran earthquake are in color, not black & white. How is this possible? 
• Very good article. I've been pushing the deflation angle for quite a while. keeping inflation very low and/or pushing for deflation means that if people owe you money they pay with expensive dollars. If inflation ramps up, you pay with dollars that are worth less and less. It is easier to pay off your loan. The farmers wanted inflation through the free and unlimited coinage of silver and the bankers wanted to deflation through keeping the gold standard. The farmers wanted to pay off their loans with cheap money.
  Predatory Overlords, From Octopus to Vampire Squid
• OPINION   | August 21, 2011
  Editorial:  Surely They Can Read a Spreadsheet
  The economy is in profound trouble and is in desperate need of business leaders to promote sound ideas for both growth and deficit reduction.
• felix salmon (@felixsalmon) Students Have No Idea How Google Works – @Gawker 
• The Other Auto Bailout: Ford, Toyota, … and Harley Davidson?
• Fed Lending: Bailing Out Banks over People
• “The GOP Wants to Raise Your Taxes”
• The Republicans don't want an actual smaller government. They just want to shrink it by getting rid of any Democratic party influence. Of course that grows the government because it just brings in more Republican beneficiaries.
  OPINION   | August 25, 2011
  Editorial:  Gov. Perry's Cash Machine
  Gov. Rick Perry wants a smaller Washington but has enlarged Texas government to his political benefit.
• Students have no idea how to work Goggle
• Men don't read

Daniel Dern found a very interesting ad for a journalism job.
Kent Peterman turned me on to an amusing vocabulary exercise. Rather than reprint his (excellent) list and take up a lot of space, I searched for a longer and equally amusing list of pompous proverbs. He also passes along a small note about "fiction:"

The Wizard of Oz is more than 70 years old. Nowadays, if Dorothy were to encounter Men with no brains, no hearts, and no courage – she wouldn't be in Oz – she'd be in Congress.

Dan Grobstein File

• Peggy Noonan said something insightful. Shock!
• How blogs have changed journalism
• Heading for Duopoly cellphone consolidation
• Amakudari Perhaps we should adopt this Japanese word to describe Evan Bayh and Chris Dodd: The ministry and the agency, in turn, share cozy ties with Tokyo Electric and other operators — some of which offer lucrative jobs to former ministry officials in a practice known as “amakudari,” or descent from heaven.
• TECHNOLOGY | March 23, 2011
  Judge Rejects Google's Deal to Digitize Books
  By MIGUEL HELFT
  A decision against a class-action settlement threw Google's plans into limbo and undid years of negotiation.
• The NFL’s Ownership Rules Or, why there are no corporate owners and only one co-operative (Green Bay).
• Malaysia 'may be WMD transit point‎'
• This country is starting to remind me of a family owned business where the owner dies and the kids take over and milk it for all they can get out of it. They've always had their walking around money from dad, but have no clue how to keep the business going.
  U.S. | March 25, 2011
  In California City, Layoffs for Nearly Half the Staff
  By JENNIFER MEDINA
  Officials in Costa Mesa say they are just trying to solve a budget problem, but some see a political motive.
• What the stock market says about stimulus
• The Times has an interesting look at the politics behind the workplace reforms that took place after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that took place 100 years ago
• Newtered: Mass scrubbing of Newt Gingrich's Twitter archive
• OPINION | March 26, 2011
  Op-Ed Columnist: Losing Our Way
  By BOB HERBERT
  The U.S. can find the resources for endless warfare, but not for nation-building here at home.
• In prison for taking a liar loan
• Borders Seeks to Pay $8.3 Million in Bonuses
• DC Debbie (@DCdebbie)
  If Republicans do not like the redistribution of wealth, why are they redistributing the wealth from the middle class to corporations?

A friend sent me the Muammar Gaddafi/Charlie Sheen quiz. It is remarkably difficult; I only got 50%. Also, it is an unusually interactive and clever posting for a print publication. I guess the Guardian newspaper knows what it is doing.

Kent sent me a list of musical definitions, (see a complete list here) including:
JAZZ: Five men on the same stage all playing different tunes.
OPERA: People singing when they should be talking.
RAP: People talking when they should be singing.

Dan Grobstein File

• “The Financial Industry Has Become So Politically Powerful That It Is Able To Inhibit the Normal Process of Justice And Law Enforcement”
• I’d Happily Take Some of That ‘Decline’ points to The Myth of Japan’s ‘Lost Decades
• Frank Rich jumps from NYT to New York mag.
• Liveblogging World War II: March 1, 1941
• Imminent water disaster in U.S. The water shortage in Atlanta has been ongoing for quite a while & they don't do anything about it. Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone had an article about the banksters scamming one of the southern counties with a bond issue for a water treatment plant. Meanwhile in Pennsylvania they're pumping massive amounts of water into the shale to extract the natural gas and polluting the ground water. A friend lives in a gated community in the Poconos and last year all the fish in their lake died.
• High and Low Thrillers
• Do we all want to become the old Confederacy?
• OPINION   | March 01, 2011
  Paul Krugman: Trains and Freedom
  By PAUL KRUGMAN
  Better than the alternatives.
• OPINION   | March 01, 2011
  Paul Krugman: Dagny Taggart Wept
  By PAUL KRUGMAN
  On the track to collectivism?
• Is McKinsey & Co. the Root of All Evil ?
• Would would Molly Ivins say about Wisconsin?
• Bipartisan duo sues Florida Gov. Scott over rejection of federal high-speed rail money
• What Do Republicans Really Want?
• quote:
  In a nutshell by Mark Kleiman
  David Koch is sitting at a table with a schoolteacher and a Tea Party activist. On the table is a plate with a dozen cookies. The billionaire promptly scoops up 11 of the cookies. He then turns to the tea partier and says, “Watch out for that schoolteacher. He’s in a union, and he wants a piece of your cookie.”
  unquote.
• You Can’t Take The Train to Los Angeles, So The Runway Shouldn’t Be Full of Planes To Boston
• Mr. Plouffe likewise is less available to reporters and party officials and keeps his office television turned off — to tune out the daily distractions of cable TV’s political play by play.
• Frank Rich vs the NYT paywall
• House Republicans’ request to cut nearly all the money for poison control centers perfectly illustrates the thoughtlessness of their austerity bill.
• Ebert Tweet: RIP: Spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill. 
• A Liberal Is a Villager Who’s Been Screwed By a Mortgage Servicer
• Robert Reich (@RBReich) Cynical politics: Walker wants to entrench R power, not cut Wisc deficit. Rs in DC want to defeat O in 2012, not spur the economy.
• 18 and Under:  On the Left Hand, There Are No Easy Answers
  By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
  The riddle of why about 10 percent of people are born with the asymmetry of left-handedness remains.
  Here at work the guy in charge, the exec VP, the sales manager, the former HR person, 2 out of 4 accounting people and 3 others that I've noticed are left handed and this isn't a very big place.

Bob Nilsson writes:

This mainly behind-the-scenes controversy over the historical accuracy of “The King’s Speech” is fascinating. From a PR standpoint, it shows the trouble you can get yourself into when you respond with a lame defense as David Seidler did; rather than just letting the criticism lie.

The King's Speech Revisited.
The movie's screenwriter goes too far in defending his version of history

A friend of Kent Peterman's wrote an article about Lincoln.

Dan Grobstein File

• But I Thought Union-Busting Solved All Educational Problems!
  Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:
  South Carolina – 50th
  North Carolina – 49th
  Georgia – 48th
  Texas – 47th
  Virginia – 44th
  If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country. Let’s keep it that way. This isn’t to say that the lack of collective bargaining explains these poor outcomes, of course, but it is true that the evidence that breaking teacher’s unions improves educational outcomes is somewhere between “exceptionally weak” and “non-existent.”
• Koch Brothers end game in Wisconsin. It isn't really about the budget, it is about busting the unions.
• Forget the cheese — Wisconsin is now the land of fruits and nuts. So the fight over collective bargaining is a smokescreen. No new taxes forever & sell off state assets to your friends is the important part.
• Times does half-assed job on major fraud story
• Free Oil!
• Don't Blame Facebook.  So blame the internet, which has made competition from other professionals far stiffer than in the past. But the amateurs chattering away on Facebook? Not so much.

Ran out of time this week; sorry for the lack of political briefs or a Dan Grobstein File. However, Kent Peterman offers a Canadian view of recent events:
“We have a unique vantage point here aboard the International Space Station,” he said.
“As I look out the window, I see a very beautiful planet that seems very inviting and peaceful. Unfortunately, it is not. These days, we are constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another, not just with our actions, but also with our irresponsible words. We’re better than this. We must do better.”
-Astronaut Scott Kelly (brother-in-law of Gabrielle Giffords) from space.

Time for a small case of old-timers disease. Kent Peterman sent me a picture of IBM's first 5-ton 5-mbyte disk drive.Which reminded me, my first 10 mb hard drive was the size of two old-school vhs players, weighed 50 pounds cost $1,000. The first hard drive I worked with (1968) was a 1024-byte rotating drum memory (500ms access time–wow, is that slow) Monrobot Mark XI. Times change.

If you REALLY care about rock and roll (and nostalgia), try the blog written by Mark Astolfi, a college classmate of mine.

Daniel Dern checks in with: "Why 2 spaces after a period is wrong, wrong, wrong…"

From Richard Dalton:

…"Guns don't kill people, people kill people."  There's undeniable logic in that familiar statement, but I want to respond, "Do you think that the wingnut in Tucson would have killed six people and injured another twelve with a knife?" Derrick Z. Jackson, one of my favorite Boston Globe columnists, adds some meaningful data to the ongoing right-wing blather about Second Amendment "rights." Jackson cites a recent study published in the journal Trauma that that compared firearm death rates in 23 "high-income" countries.  The study, performed by UCLA and Harvard School of Public Health, showed  that our firearms death rate is almost 20 times higher than the other countries.  We account for nearly 80% of all firearm deaths in this group.  The disturbing findings continue.  I suggest you give this a look. Meanwhile, the State of New Hampshire just repealed a law banning the carrying of weapons in the state house by both legislators and visitors.  This country gets harder and harder to live in.

Dan Grobstein File

• It has seemed to me for a long time that our economic troubles can be laid squarely at the feet of the lack of competition caused by the non-enforcement of anti trust law. I had no idea that it was Bork's ideas that have now mainstream. And we indirectly have him to blame for Clarence Thomas too. (He took his place on the DC Circuit Court when Bork resigned after losing his Supreme Court confirmation).
  Robert Bork's influence over antitrust law    
• A Brief History of Welfare for Middle-Class Americans
• Trouble In the House of Google?
• Times Change Cute French kids are asked to identify various forms of obsolete technology

• Luckily haven't had this problem yet, but I know lots of people who have had to wait months for an appointment and to hear the Republicans tell it that only happens with government-run health care. Like in Canada.    A FREE MARKET ODYSSEY
• Why do we have a debt ceiling?
• Elusive Forger, Giving but Never Stealing
  By RANDY KENNEDY
  Mark A. Landis is one of the most prolific forgers American museums have encountered in years. But he does not seem to be in it for the money.
• "It doesn't have a major theme or anything" Dumpster-diving in Amazon for bad reviews of good books.
• Over 9,000 Murders by Gun in US; 39 in UK 

• Town meeting attendee confronts GOP freshman over health reform repeal
• It's So Hard Keeping Your Lies Straight (Sarah Palin's post-Giffords statement

Jon Carroll cat column

Belated Christmas Humor:

1. Schizophrenia — Do I Hear What I Hear?
2. Multiple Personality Disorder — We Three Kings Disoriented Are
3. Dementia — I Think I'm Home for Christmas
4. Narcissistic — Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me
. Manic — Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and..
6. Paranoid — Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Get Me
7. Borderline Personality Disorder — Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire
8. Personality Disorder — You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why
9. Attention Deficit Disorder — Silent night, Holy oooh look at the Froggy – can I have a chocolate, why is France so far away?

Kent Peterman shares some quotes:

New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time. -James Agate

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty. -John Seldon

New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. In a week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. -Mark Twain

Dan Grobstein File

• Playing the jealousy card against public employees

• Matt Taibbi explains MERS, the virtual mortgage registry that every banker loves

• On Mark-to-Market

• An anti-poverty program that works. What a neat idea. We have the earned income tax credit here but I think this idea is better because it has an idea of what it wants to achieve and can control the money and results where the EITC I'm sure gets spent, but doesn't have a goal to better the kids and the family life.

• Column: America's other deficit quote:
  The two deficits are more alike than people realize. Larry Summers, the outgoing director of the National Economics Council, explains it well: "You run a deficit both when you borrow money and when you defer maintenance that needs to be done. Either way, you're imposing a cost on future generations." A dollar in delayed road repairs and a dollar in borrowed money are not, in other words, that different: Both mean someone is going to have to spend a dollar later. In 2011, America should stop passing that buck.
  unquote
  Borrowing costs for the federal government are around 3.5% for 10 years. It's raining fresh soup & we're trucking the canned soup that we have stored in the warehouse to landfills because we don't want to pay for the storage.
  another quote:
  The government can no more cut its way to a strong economy than a person can starve himself to health.
  unquote.
  Now's a great time to spend. (I wouldn't be against having the rich and corporations pay some more taxes too).

• Prison Higher Education Programs: An Unfunded Unmandate. You have to spend money to make money.Just like the Brazilian/Mexican anti-poverty thing I sent you the other day, if we could change the prison cycle we will eventually save a lot of money.The Republicans want to punish people for their entire lives. And meanwhile their donors make a lot of money and that money can't be used for programs that progressives want. Win Win for them. Lose Lose for us.

• I Wasn’t Kidding Remember yesterday when I wrote that the media could not care less about informing the public and really don’t think the job of journalism is to deal with facts and the determining truth…

• Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, Jack Anderson: Bloggers?
• George Washington Vs. Small Government
• Get This Man A Job. Stat
• Truthiness, Cont. [James Fallows]  mentioned earlier how hard it is for some news organizations to say, "2+ 2 = 4," as opposed to "experts say 2+…."  A few reader updates.

Risking Citizens' Health And The Environment To Pay For Republican Campaigns

"Public Citizen's Tom "Smitty" Smith, a veteran of environmental and consumer battles in Texas, has a theory. Smith describes a "vicious circle" between Rick Perry's political ambitions and Harold Simmon's business ambitions, a perfect melding of corporate and political interests with far-reaching implications. Simmons is one of Perry's top donors; he's given the governor almost $1 million in just the past two years.

"What you see now is that Harold Simmons, who is one of the largest donors to Republican causes in the United States … now is making millions of dollars off this waste and can plow [the earnings] back into Republican campaigns to elect more Republicans. Among the benefits of that is to reduce the oversight over this waste facility and other facilities that he owns."

A more blatant example of what Ronald Reagan began doing about 43 years ago and continued to do with gusto while President.

LIEBERMAN!

Did Joe Lieberman Really Get A Law Degree From Yale?
Lieberman Confused Or Not Really A Competent Lawyer
Unctuous, Sanctimonious Lawyer Of Arguable Competence Unsurprisingly Attacks First Amendment With Unctuous Sanctimony

""What do you think of the Justice Department's actions so far not to charge Julian Assange with treason?" the Fox anchor, Jenna Lee, asked.  "I don't understand why that hasn't happened yet," Lieberman said."

Real simple senator, treason can only be committed by a U.S. citizen or resident (that is, someone who owes their allegiance to the U.S.). The person (innocent of treason) you slimed is not a U.S. citizen or resident.

Given failure to investigate and prosecute alleged torturers and torture enablers, at about 2:30 of video Lieberman acknowledges Americans likely to be involved soon in torturing again. No word on what Lieberman has done to start investigation and, if appropriate, prosecution of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney for involvement in torture.

Also: Lieberman Clueless,    Republicans Heartless And Clueless,   Sen. Lieberman Emulates Chinese Dictatorship

Recovery
The chart in It Seems Unlikely That The Second Stimulus And Giveaways To The Rich Will Solve The Economy's Problem  is probably the key to understanding the extant domestic economic situation. Briefly, economy was altered starting (to pick a random date) about Jan. 20, 1981 (manufacturing started to go offshore in a serious way) so recovery took long Letters: Peterman and Dan Grobstein Fileer and longer. Recovery time 1981 (start of downturn) recession was 27 months; recovery time 1990 was 30 months; recovery time 2001 was 47 months; recovery time 2007 is 35 months and counting with essentially no change. Perhaps a negative change given last month's results. Further, another 6M manufacturing jobs were destroyed between 2001 and 2009. Further yet, the employment drop off in 2007 was 6% from peak vs. 2% from peak in 2001. All of which indicates this recovery (back to peak employment) may take about 141 months (roughly 12 years or 2019) when, as, and if it occurs. This time is consistent with result when dividing about 20M jobs by about 140,000 new jobs per month (which would be an improvement over what has been happening lately). Chair Bernanke's comment broadcast Sunday, the most recent employment report Friday, and the history represented by the curves in the chart all indicate a recovery to the zero level is years away.

• Agency With Alcohol Problems Doing What?
• Sun Rises In East: George W. Bush Has Low Intellectual Reach And Abilities. And lies.
• Palin Does Not Support Constitution
  Article VI has provided since the Constitution of the United States was adopted on September 17, 1787 that: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution;
  but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
• Getting There
  U.S. trains may reach average speed of 79 mph (Milwaukee-Madison) maybe in a few years if about $800M is spent for Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Minneapolis high speed rail link.
• Is This Bankster Taking Inconsistent Political Positions?
  Another risk caused by the unconscionable failure of Pres. Obama to read and follow the PSACOT editorial of February 2009 on the banking and financial system. 
• Cheney Charged
  Given the absence of any inquiry into Cheney's admissions about his arguably illegal conduct in the U.S. and his conduct in the U.S., this legal action probably puts the U.S. below Nigeria on a list of countries' adherence to the rule of law.
  

Apropos of the season Kent Peterman writes:

Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.  ~Kin Hubbard
I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not  included.  ~Bernard Manning
No matter how carefully you stored the lights last year, they will be snarled again this Christmas.  ~Robert Kirby

Dan Grobstein File

• Check out a passel of items in this weeks Danorama
• BUSINESS DAY   | December 07, 2010
  U.S. Arrests Online Seller Who Scared Customers
  By DAVID SEGAL
  Authorities seized evidence from the home office of Vitaly Borker, who was accused of abusing customers to generate Web buzz that led to more business.
• Tucker Carlson: Bigger Jerk than you thought
• The payroll tax cut, Social Security and the problem of the trust fund
• Clueless golden parachute recipient
• Harper's Index: • Percentage change in spending by independent political groups between the 2006 and 2010 midterm elections: +310
• Is It Finally Time to Reform the Filibuster?
• America Underestimates Its Economic Strengths
• Ebert Tweet: I dislike anyone using the word "patriot" with the implication that I am not included.
• Don't know why I'm still amazed that republicans do the exact opposite of what should be done to help the country compete with the world in the 21st century.
  I Don't Really Think They Understand How Things Work

If this sounds familiar, it is because, in the great tradition of Herb Caen and Jon Carroll, I am recycling my eleven  previous Thanksgiving messages. I missed a year–maybe I was too distracted by teaching.

This year we will all be in Portland, Ore.; my wife and daughters, my dad, my niece and nephew. Who knows what wackiness will ensue this year. Vicki has  to work the week of Thanksgiving (including a bunch of volunteering for Amma's visit). Marlow's last day is Nov. 23. But for the fourth time, I have the whole week off. I pay for it at the end of the school year, which is now the second week of June instead of the first.

I know I have a lot to be thankful for. I have a job that still gets better every year, I have my health, such as it is, and I have my family. I can't imagine why I would bother getting out of bed each morning if not for my wife and my two girls.

Regular readers know I earned my teaching credential and now teach 8th grade US History at a middle school. It is still true that I have not been this excited and challenged since 1974, when I started working as a professional journalist. This is my eighth year. Each year gets easier, and I get better, but it never gets easy. (as Kent Peterman puts it). 

Still, my most important role is as husband to Vicki and father to Marlow and Rae. Of course, Marlow is now headed off for Mali on Jan. 31, so I will go from seeing her once in a while to once in 27 months. Rae is also in her own apartment in Rockridge.

I think we all lose perspective sometimes, forget what's really important. We get wrapped up in our jobs and spend too much time working on them, both at home and in the office.

The years I spent full-time with my girls are priceless. The time I spend with them now is priceless as well.

Not everyone can work in a home office–and I don't anymore.

But no matter where you work, the next time you have to make the tough call between the meeting and the soccer game, go to the soccer game. You'll never regret it. I am thankful for my family. Be thankful for yours.

Also give thanks for your friends and your good fortune. Spread that good fortune around in any way you can. I have much to be thankful for this holiday season, as I have had every year of my life.

I am thankful that I have a living loving parent and a loving brother. I am thankful for my loving and understanding wife, and for the two most wonderful daughters I could have imagined, both of them turning into vibrant, intelligent young women before my very eyes.

I am thankful for every sunrise and sunset I get to see, every moment I get to be in, every flower I try so desperately to stop and smell. I am thankful that I can move closer every day to living a life in balance. Every morning, I am grateful to be alive. Not a bad way to start the day. For reasons I don't want to detail, I am extremely grateful just to be alive.

I am thankful for 250; down 50 from my peak. I am thankful for the fact that I will still be near that weight next year at Thanksgiving.

Every week at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Orinda, the priest concludes the service with this homily. The provenance seems uncertain; the Internet lists several attributions. All I know is, it touches me every time I hear it and is sound advice for life:

"Remember that life is short and we have too little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. So be quick to be kind, make haste to love, and may the blessing of God be with you now and always."

It has been with me. I hope it is with you. In the meantime, I am thankful, finally, for each and every one of you reading this column. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!