home

Sunday Morning Open Thread

By Jeralyn, Section Blog Related
Posted on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 07:11:00 AM EST
Tags: (all tags)
Share This: Digg! StumbleUpon del.icio.us reddit reddit

I've been up late, and intend to sleep late, so in case BTD or TChris aren't around in the a.m., here's an open thread for you, all topics welcome.

I checked the morning papers before going to bed, but didn't see anything that leapt out at me, crying for its own post. Hopefully, you'll have better luck.

Enjoy your Sunday, and if you're online, thanks for sharing some of it with us.

< Reactions to President Obama in Grand Junction | The Silent Majority >

  • The Online Magazine with Liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news

  • Contribute To TalkLeft


    • Display: Sort:
    Sunday Morning Open Thread | 30 comments (30 topical)

    Readers Must Login or Create an Account to Comment

    "Not in serious dispute" (5.00 / 6) (#3)
    by gyrfalcon on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 06:50:33 AM EST
    Go, Dan!

    I've never been a big fan of Dan Rather, but I am so glad he's just refusing to let CBS get away with this.

    Thanks very much for the post, D from H, and thanks to the LATimes for digging into this some more.

    It's a start! (5.00 / 2) (#5)
    by jen on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 10:01:54 AM EST
    About tax evaders with offshore accounts. AP via Yahoo News:

    Tax dodgers scramble to come clean amid crackdown
    By Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer   - Sat Aug 15, 1:57 pm ET

    Laugh of the Sunday Morning talk shows (5.00 / 2) (#8)
    by ruffian on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 10:50:09 AM EST
    Ed Gillespie, on ABC, "putting all partisanship aside" is disappointed in Hillary Clinton.

    Yet, he is take seriously on round tables everywhere.

    It's official (5.00 / 2) (#10)
    by ruffian on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 11:02:17 AM EST
    I'm the world's worst caulker.  Done with the DIY repairs for the day and on to things I know something about, like laundry and vacuuming and railing against the press.

    Heh (5.00 / 2) (#12)
    by gyrfalcon on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 11:57:52 AM EST
    Can somebody please explain to me why men seem to be born knowing how to do this stuff, not to mention more obscure mysteries like what kind of screw to use to hang somehing on which kind of wall?

    My sympathies.  Lucky for me, my house is an old and very modest farmhouse, so my ineptitude with things like caulking just adds to the "charm"-- or so I tell myself anyway.

    Parent

    Not Born Knowing (5.00 / 1) (#14)
    by squeaky on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 12:06:27 PM EST
    It is just practice, practice, practice, combined with being comfortable with a gender stereotype identification.

    Same for dishes and laundry. Women are not born being naturally good at those tasks.

    Parent

    The girls in my family (5.00 / 2) (#20)
    by Inspector Gadget on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 01:18:56 PM EST
    learned more from our dad than we did from mom. He believed his girls also needed to know how to change tires, and do minor auto maintenance, as well as some routine household electrical, plumbing, and repairs. As a single mom maintaining my own home for nearly 2 decades those were valuable things to know.

    My mother seemed to think the cooking, baking, cleaning and organizing thing was inbred in girls. NOT.


    Parent

    I would love to test my theory (5.00 / 2) (#15)
    by Cream City on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 12:26:17 PM EST
    which is that instructions, manuals, how-to books, etc., for a lot of these "guy tasks" are not pre-tested with women before printing.  It's like sports pages, which are written with so much lingo that guys learn in locker rooms or something -- or, in the reverse, like instructions for a lot of "wimmen's work" that my spouse couldn't figure out.

    Once I decided to learn the lingo to be able to read sports pages -- ditto with business pages or, for that matter, military history -- I realized how easily all that stuff could be written in gender-neutral English.  Great sports books like The Boys of Summer, great military history like A Stillness at Appommatox, were written clearly and gripped me.

    So once on my own again, I decided to break the code of tool instructions and how-to DIY books and such, so that I no longer would be laughed at when going to hardware stores.  Well, I still had to put up with some guys trying to pull that, but I just blathered back some of the guy lingo, and then they were willing to sell me what I needed.

    Think of Marisa Tomei in the courtroom in My Cousin Vinny, on the stand testifying about auto mechanics, one of the great movie scenes -- because her character grew up in an auto mechanics' family, learning to fix cars.  I called on my internal Marisa Tomei when going into hardware stores and Home Depots, and it works.  

    Btw, my spouse when on his own took classes in cooking and baking and figured out how to follow cookbooks just fine, too.  He's still mystified by instructions for sewing and knitting and quilting, when he sees mine around the house.  But he really isn't interested in all that, anyway.  Much as I decided to pay other people to fix my car.  My internal Marisa Tomei goes only so far.

    Parent

    I love that (5.00 / 1) (#23)
    by gyrfalcon on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 02:07:50 PM EST
    "Inner Marisa Tomei"!  Unfortunately, you have to know what you're talking about to carry it off.

    How did you go about "breaking the code"?

    You're totally right about the lingo.  It usually assumes basic knowledge you don't have if you weren't raised on this stuff, just like cooking does.  I well remember a male friend determined to fix a nice dinner for a visiting dignitary, following a good basic recipe, and then it gradually became apparent he didn't understand that the "clove" of garlic called for in the recipe was the term for one section of that big white blob you get in the produce section, not the whole thing.

    Similarly, I was given lots of encouragement and advice on putting a stack thermometer in my interior woodstove flue.  No problem.  Easy as pie.  Just drill a 5/8 inch hole, then do this, then that.  Easy!

    And then one guy finally piped up and said, "Er, you do realize you should use a metal screw bit, not a wood screw bit, right?"  Arrrgghh.  No, I not only didn't know that, I had to ask whether the standard set of bits supplied with my drill kit were wood or metal because they weren't labled and it wasn't even hinted at in the manual.

    I'm obviously kidding about guys knowing this stuff from birth, but they do grow up learning it from pretty darn close, just like we women usually  grow up learning what a "clove" of garlic is, even if we never do become real cooks ourselves.

    My dad, the son of a carpenter, taught me not to be afraid of tools or of simple things like rewiring a lamp.  But somehow we never got around to screws and nails and wallboard versus plasterboard versus sheetrock and yada, yada, yada, and my education pretty much ended at rewiring lamps.

    Parent

    I'm in awe. You rewire lamps! (5.00 / 1) (#29)
    by Cream City on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 08:44:03 PM EST
    I do not attempt anything electrical.:-)

    Yes, I have had to help some male relatives start eating better -- which meant not living on fast food but learning to cook at least some basic stuff.  It was itty-bitty steps at first, with a cookbook called "A Man, A Can, and A Plan."  It cracked me up that it was made of those thick cardboard pages, laminated, just like little kids' books.

    Re the rest of your comment, too; Yep, been there, been stymied by different drill bits and such.  Then saw my son stunned that there are different sizes of needles for sewing -- I swear he took out one almost the size of a knitting needle to sew on a button!

    Parent

    Lamps (none / 0) (#30)
    by gyrfalcon on Mon Aug 17, 2009 at 08:21:39 AM EST
    are mostly pretty easy, and I'm very glad my dad demystified the simple electrical stuff for me.  I don't go anywhere near anything in the wall, though.  Screw up the lamp wiring (which is pretty hard to do) and the worst that happens is it shorts out when you plug it in. Screw up the stuff in the wall, though....

    So how did you go about "breaking the code" on this stuff?  I honestly have no clue where to start, since almost all home maintenance type books start in the middle and I'm lost a couple graphs in.

    Parent

    Word by word (5.00 / 1) (#32)
    by Cream City on Mon Aug 17, 2009 at 11:37:25 AM EST
    just like a code is how I tackled it -- looking up each term that baffled me(on the internet, not just the dictionary, as the internet lookup often linked me to not just definitions but explanations).  The comforting thing is realizing that most of the words in the manuals are words like "the" and "of," so focusing on the baffling terms narrowed the number. :-)  Also, good how-to books like ones done by Readers' Digest on my shelf made a difference -- my ex-spouse had those, so I went and bought my own when I became a single, female homeowner.  

    As for rewiring lamps, I did look into it . . . but decided that I wouldn't want to plug anything I rewired into a wall.  You had a useful dad!  Mine was not good at any of this stuff, so perhaps that helped me when I realized that my male siblings had to figure it out on their own, too.

    Parent

    Comical.... (5.00 / 2) (#33)
    by Inspector Gadget on Mon Aug 17, 2009 at 11:53:05 AM EST
    I'll replace outlets, switches, fixtures, etc., but the lamp rewiring has always intimidated me. When I had to replace the 220 outlet for the dryer, I did request my dad come over and watch every move I made, though...that can pack a wallop of a shock. There wasn't enough wire left after taking off the old outlet, so I had to raise the position and do a bit of wallboard work, as well.

    I think it's fun. Both my daughter and son got lots of mileage out of my auto repair knowledge, and neither one was allowed to get their license before they could prove to me they could change a tire, windshield wipers, and oil. They needed to know how to charge a battery safely, check the various fluids, and know a little about troubleshooting noises. These things assist greatly when dealing with repair people.

    Parent

    Ha! (5.00 / 2) (#31)
    by CST on Mon Aug 17, 2009 at 09:35:45 AM EST
    When I started cooking, I made the "clove" of garlic mistake.  Trust me, you only make it once.  Especially when something calls for more than one clove and you throw in a few bulbs.

    My house is funny, we only had daughters.  Somehow, the fact that I studied engineering made me the "go-to" person for fixing stuff.  I learned to re-wire lamps, and fix a few things on cars, build stuff, etc...  I had some experience from school and work, but mostly, people in my family assumed I could do that stuff since I took a physics class, and I had enough background lingo and personal ease about it to pull it off.  I think it's mostly about confidence and not having fear to mess it up.  If you think about it, whatever you're trying to fix is already broken, so what's the worst that could happen?  Now my parents think I'm a genious because I can set up their DVD player, and my roommates think I'm handy because I can use a plunger.  But in order to dupe the guys at the hardware store, you defninitely pull out your internal Marisa Tomei.  I love that movie.

    Parent

    IMO (none / 0) (#16)
    by squeaky on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 12:41:20 PM EST
    It is less about how the texts are written that make it difficult for gender crossover in stereotyped tasks, it is more about gender identification, which starts really early. Going cross-eyed while reading a mechanics manual as a woman is due less to how the manual is written imo, than to having to battle the messages in one's head while reading that say this not women's work.

    Yet, for sure, part of the early gender id, is the ubiquity of non-neutral gender representation, which holds true for early text, aka children's books, billboards, etc.

    Parent

    Well, that's your theory (none / 0) (#17)
    by Cream City on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 12:44:21 PM EST
    And it's really just another way of saying the same thing.

    Plus, I like to address how to compensate for nurture now, rather than wait for society to change.

    Parent

    Well (5.00 / 1) (#18)
    by squeaky on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 12:51:54 PM EST
    Start writing, then.

    And I disagree, I find the relative difficulty of reading cookbooks, knitting and sewing manuals, mechanic manuals, computer manuals directly proportionate to my level of interest. Of course good writing always makes the task of deciphering these things easier.

    Also, once one gets used to deciphering one mech manual, then it gets easier to read the next 10 on relatively the same subject.

    Parent

    Then we agree (none / 0) (#19)
    by Cream City on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 01:00:05 PM EST
    that it's about determination, as I said, to break the code, as I said, and once a code is broken. . . .

    As for "getting writing," I already do.  But I know enough about the field of technical writing to know that I would rather do just about anything else.

    Parent

    lol (5.00 / 1) (#22)
    by squeaky on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 01:59:51 PM EST
    Yes rather boring job, tech writing..  

    Parent
    And creating lists of 10 reasons why. . . (none / 0) (#13)
    by oculus on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 12:01:43 PM EST


    Parent
    Bill Clinton at Netroots Nation (5.00 / 1) (#21)
    by jbindc on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 01:46:40 PM EST
    Answers a critic on DADT, DOMA.

    Go Bill!

    Heh (none / 0) (#2)
    by Wile ECoyote on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 06:31:58 AM EST
    Would Obama-As-The-Penguin Posters Have Been OK?

    It is mainly about the police reaction to the posters.

    Would love CC's take on this (none / 0) (#4)
    by jbindc on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 10:00:42 AM EST
    Gov. Jim Doyle (D-WI) announced he won't seek a third term, setting off what could be one of the most competitive gubernatorial races next year.

    The rumor is that Obama (5.00 / 3) (#6)
    by Cream City on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 10:32:58 AM EST
    is going to give Doyle his long-deferred reward for the Wisconsin primary, the tipping point in 2008.  So word is that Doyle won't even finish out the term.

    That means Wisconsin would get its first woman governor by default: the first woman elected lieutenant governor, the great Barbara Lawton.  But that means there also is rumor of pressure on Doyle to not let that happen, librul that she is (and woman that she is, which some guyz in the party just can't handle, as has been clear for years).

    Local blogs are abuzz, as they have been for a while on these rumors.  But no matter the reason for Doyle's decision, he was doomed -- his ratings have declined as fast as the economy in Wisconsin.  He wasn't my first choice, anyway, and my concerns that he was too much of the Madison set, too anti-Milwaukee, proved all too true.

    Parent

    Btw, one of the Dems listed (5.00 / 4) (#7)
    by Cream City on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 10:38:14 AM EST
    in the link as a possible contender again for governor, one whom Doyle defeated in primaries, is in the hospital today after being a hero.  Milwaukee mayor and former Congressman Tom Barrett intervened last night to help a woman being beaten in a domestic dispute in a suburb of the city --  and the wifebeater turned on Milwaukee's mayor and beat him with the metal pipe.    

    The mayor had head injuries but is reported as in stable condition.  He is a great guy, a good mayor and was a good Congressman, and may he heal well.  

    Parent

    Yikes! (5.00 / 2) (#9)
    by jbindc on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 10:50:33 AM EST
    I wish him a speedy recovery!

    Parent
    Update has mayor in good condition (5.00 / 2) (#11)
    by Cream City on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 11:09:38 AM EST
    but still hospitalized.  Head injuries are worrisome.

    Maybe this will quell for a while the criticism this week of the mayor as a racist -- the farthest thing from what he ever could be, and after all he has done in Congress and as mayor to get funding and jobs and more into Milwaukee's inner city.  But a huge problem remains the city's public schools, devastated for decades (and worsened under Doyle) by the school choice program that costs residents of the city double to support private schools, too.  Those have expanded while city schools suffer.  And the school board just battles internally, incessantly, to no use for the city's students.

    So the mayor proposed (and Doyle backed but probably now will back off and leave it all) that, as in many cities these days, that the school superintendent be appointed by the mayor.  For that, the head of the school board called him a racist.  It truly has been sad here to see many AA legislators and others used by conservatives in the suburbs to push school choice in the city, and the inner city doesn't know who its friends are anymore.

    Parent

    Rahm Emmanuel (none / 0) (#24)
    by squeaky on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 04:15:54 PM EST
    Here is an interesting NYT profile on Emmanuel via Laura Rozen

    If things do not go well -- and right now Mr. Obama's political popularity is declining, his health care legislation is under conservative assault, the budget deficit is at an eye-popping level and Afghanistan remains volatile -- it is Mr. Emanuel whose job will be on the line before Mr. Obama's.

    [snip]

    "I've heard more from Rahm in six months than I heard from Andy Card in six years, and Card's daughter worked for me," said former Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia, referring to a chief of staff under President George W. Bush.

    [snip]

    His win-the-day mentality, so shunned by the Bush team, can make for a reactive White House. Where Mr. Bush's aides prided themselves on sticking to plans, Mr. Emanuel constantly adjusts. Aides said they went home at night thinking they knew the next day's plan, only to discover after his 7:30 a.m. meeting with top advisers that the plan had been ripped up.

    NYT

    Liar (none / 0) (#25)
    by squeaky on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 04:37:17 PM EST
    Well more of this please:

    Lawerence O'Donnell to John Culberson (R-TX): You Lie to America About the Evils of Government Health Care

    digby

    Huckabee for the Worst Person in the World (none / 0) (#27)
    by joze46 on Sun Aug 16, 2009 at 07:38:43 PM EST
    I have had it with Huckabee

    This man is so disappointing, watching Huckabee on Fox New this afternoon. Not because I like him, because to listen carefully as to what he is talking about and the context Huckabee is using. This man is deliberately characterizing everything and anything the Democrats want done as hypocrisy, untrue, or something that just can not work for America.

    The prime example is Health Care. Most of what Huckabee says is wild exaggeration given with the influence of his master of ministry. This guy should be held accountable for his pseudo-divine tweaking. From my view Huckabee is twisting an already disturbed society, his following, conjuring himself as a philosopher of good deeds, but really filling the special needs of a crack pot in the fanaticism of the Republican so called Conservative right Fox news network.    

    Moving forward, I am so glad this man, Huckabee did not get to be President. After listening to his narrations and views hopefully Keith Olberman would one day consider Huckabee for the worst person in the world. Or better maybe Rachael Maddow, Jon Snow or Colbert could find the time to make an analysis on this Huckabee Character. Hiding behind ministry parables with those persons like Pat Roberson or that focus on the family guy who do nothing more than corrupt the scripture ultimately destroying confidence in the American dream.

    Huckabee should be on pay per-view channels this stuff is not worth it in the public spectrum.      

    Sunday Morning Open Thread | 30 comments (30 topical)

    Readers Must Login or Create an Account to Comment