17 December 2008
17 December 2008
JUST SAYING NO…
0810 by Jeff HessFrom The Associated Press:
A sheriff in Southwest Ohio has ordered deputies to ignore eviction orders when people have nowhere else to live.
Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones says evictions in winter weather and during an economic recession are heartless and those cases should be sent back to the courts and resolved some other way.
Jones on Tuesday ordered deputies to ensure that people have shelter before they’re forced out of their homes. He also sent a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland asking him to issue a state order to stop forced evictions for at least the winter months.
The sheriff could face court action if a bank or landlord challenges his refusal to honor a court-ordered eviction. Jones says he will face any consequences of his order.
[W]e”re all terribly concerned about foreclosures and evictions but nobody with political power (like a sheriff, or a judge, or a governor, or a legislator, or a Treasury Secretary, or a Federal Reserve Chairman, or a President-elect) is allowed to actually do anything to stop them.
Except, you know, throw a trillion dollars at the banks.
17 December 2008
MY COMMENTS…
0722 by Jeff Hess16 December 2008
SOMEBODY PLEASE HOSE ME DOWN…
1920 by Jeff HessOh but the longing is terrible
once a heart”s under attack.
I want to love you all the way off.
I want to break your back.The color of all that”s hysterical
travels along your bones.Just be near you,
sucking your skin,
not gonna leave you
alone.Yes dear, of course there are miracles.
A lover that loves, that”s one.
Room with a laughter,
ecstatic disaster
coming to rouse the fun.We could build an engine
Out of all your raising stars
Tear apart the apart
that seem to think we are
16 December 2008
A MASTER CAN WRITE ANYWHERE…
1849 by Jeff HessI’m as fussy about my writing space as most, I imagine, but I have a photograph to the right of my writing desk of E.B. White sitting at a simple wooden table in a tiny cabin in the Maine woods pecking away at a small portable typewriter to remind me not to be too full of myself and my writing needs.
And that is why I got a good laugh out of this particular writer’s workspace this morning. From the point of archetecture the building is magnificent. And yes, I’d love to have a place like that to write, but I would be no better writer for it.
The video doesn’t identify who the writer is other than to say that he or she lives on Long Island. A cursory search via Google turned up lots of hits referring to Architect Andrew Berman, but none giving the name of the writer.
I am curious as to how much she’s written and how well.
16 December 2008
16 December 2008
NINE PREDICTIONS FOR 2009…
1353 by Jeff HessThe Earth will complete its 584 million mile, 67,000 mph trip around the Sun without incident.
Many things will change, but many people will not
Most people will sit quietly in their seats and watch life unfold around them
A lot of people and businesses will fail
Many “friends” will be lost and many new ones made
The passionate will not only survive, they will thrive
Success will go to those with the best questions, not those with the cleverest answers
Execution is the new strategy
Making a difference will trump making a buck
The last is my favorite. I hope he’s right.
I’m asking myself what will I do to make his point. What will you do?
Via Tom Peters…
16 December 2008
WHAT THEY SAY…
1140 by Jeff HessThis str[uck] me as odd. The people making the accusations kept acknowledging that they had no evidence. One might think that communicating to television personalities the fact that there was no evidence of wrongdoing on Obama’s part would constitute a good PR strategy. Given that they knew there was no evidence of wrongdoing, they should have ceased implying that there was wrongdoing. But they didn’t do that at all. Not, I would submit, because of any failings on Obama’s part, but because Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, John Heileman, Mark Halperin, and Pat Buchanan don”t care at all about the accuracy of the impression their coverage gives.
16 December 2008
16 December 2008
16 December 2008
AM I A PACIFICST…?
0921 by Jeff HessMy history belies that assertion.
At 18 I volunteered for the United States Navy where I served for five years, including two deployments to the Western Pacific and Indian oceans. I was a Gunner’s Mate Missiles, a very, given that it involved the care, feeding and willingness to use nuclear weapons, non-pacifist job classification
I served on board the USS Bainbridge CGN-25, a nuclear powered guided-missile cruiser. Because we could move quickly — flank speed essentially forever — and operate independently without supply for more than 30 days, we were a critical element in the Navy’s ability to respond rapidly to hot spots. Continue Reading »
16 December 2008
WHAT THEY SAY…
0751 by Jeff HessI know that made and makes me look like a total douche in some people’s eyes, but I figure that journalists who are afraid of looking like douches for doing their job should pick another line of work.
15 December 2008
MY COMMENTS…
1235 by Jeff Hess15 December 2008
KNOWING HOPE OR DENYING REALITY…?
1123 by Jeff HessTim Russo and I disagree on Afghanistan. I don’t think it’s any more winnable than Iraq.
That does not mean that Tim and I disagree on taking out Osama bin Laden. That is a very doable task and it is possible that cutting the head off the snake will indeed kill the snake. It’s not a certainty, but it is a reasonable expectation.
Tim has something in this discussion that I don’t, boots-on-the-ground experience in the former Soviet Socialist Republics of the region. My position is based purely on academics.
Still, I think history trumps Tim’s point of view. As I said to him, only a purely, or at least predominantly Islamic force can transform Afghanistan. No western presence will ever accomplish that.
Reading this morning, I find that Andrew Sullivan and Joel Klein are in agreement with me on this point.
Rudyard Kipling understood.
15 December 2008
THAT WOULD BE… “GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY…!
1057 by Jeff HessLet’s be absolutely clear what this means: When we saw an image of Lynndie England pulling a naked prisoner around on a leash, we assumed at the time that she improvised this, or was some kind of “bad apple.” This is and was a conscious lie to the Congress, and to the American people, and to the world. The person who authorized the use of nudity and leashes on prisoners was not Lynndie England or any of the other grunts thrown to the wolves. The man who authorized the technique shown below is the president of the United States:
The report itself is not that long [Only 19 pages, it may be the most important 19 pages you ever read. JH] and I highly recommend reading it all closely. It is the most sobering indictment of high government officials in the U.S. since Watergate. And, in the gravity of crimes, it is a far more profound violation of the law and the constitution and the security of the United States than Watergate ever was. Bush’s crimes are far greater than Nixon’s – because war crimes are far graver than burglaries. And there is no statute of limitations for war crimes.
Frankly, this is a major reason why I dropped my drumbeat for the impeachment of President George Bush following the 2006 elections. Impeachment and disgrace will not answer for President Bush’s crimes.
I feel sorry for his parents and siblings. The Bush name is about to be sullied for generations to come.
15 December 2008
13 December 2008
THE 10 BIG ENERGY MYTHS…
1911 by Jeff HessMyth 1: solar power is too expensive to be of much use
Myth 2: wind power is too unreliable
Myth 3: marine energy is a dead-end
Myth 4: nuclear power is cheaper than other low-carbon sources of electricity
Myth 5: electric cars are slow and ugly
Myth 6: biofuels are always destructive to the environment
Myth 7: climate change means we need more organic agriculture
Myth 8: zero carbon homes… dealing with greenhouse gas emissions from buildings
Myth 9: the most efficient power stations are big
Myth 10: all proposed solutions to climate change need to be hi-tech
13 December 2008
THE KIND OF BLOGGER/WRITER I ASPIRE TO BE…
1848 by Jeff HessThat said, I do my share of righteous condemnation, but I hope, by and by, to do less. I’ve written about why people might like Sarah Palin, why white people roll up their windows, why black people would like Wal-Mart, why black men should be grateful to cops, why cops shouldn’t be prosecuted for police brutality and so on.
I don’t write those sorts of things to affect some fake-ass contrarian pose (I’m not up for being that black writer) but because I’m genuinely curious. I know what I know. I’m fairly certain and confident in what I believe, and I find it boring to rewrite the same old denunciations day after day after fucking day. More interesting to me are the following–1.) What am I missing? 2.) What is the logic at work in the people I so vehemently dismiss.
13 December 2008
BEHIND THE $73 PER HOUR BULL SHIT…
1821 by Jeff HessThe third category is the cost of benefits for retirees. These are essentially fixed costs that have no relation to how many vehicles the companies make. But they are a real cost, so the companies add them into the mix – dividing those costs by the total hours of the current work force, to get a figure of $15 or so – and end up at roughly $70 an hour.
The crucial point, though, is this $15 isn”t mainly a reflection of how generous the retiree benefits are. It”s a reflection of how many retirees there are. The Big Three built up a huge pool of retirees long before Honda and Toyota opened plants in this country. You”d never know this by looking at the graphic behind Wolf Blitzer on CNN last week, contrasting the “$73/hour” pay of Detroit”s workers with the “up to $48/hour” pay of workers at the Japanese companies.
These retirees make up arguably Detroit”s best case for a bailout. The Big Three and the U.A.W. had the bad luck of helping to create the middle class in a country where individual companies – as opposed to all of society – must shoulder much of the burden of paying for retirement.
12 December 2008
WHY WE MUST SAVE PRINT JOURNALISM…!
0857 by Jeff HessRemember, America, you can’t wrap a fish in satellite radio or line the bottom of your birdcage with MSNBC (however appropriate that would be). It’s expensive to swat flies with a podcasting iPod. Newsboys tossing flat-screen monitors on to your porch will damage the wicker furniture. And a dog that’s trained to piddle on your high-speed internet connection can cause a dangerous electrical short-circuit and burn down your house.
As the Plain Dealer and others in the dead-tree media circle the drain of the clueless I was struck by an event during a meeting yesterday at the Maltz Museum. I was there to learn more about a Go Green initiative planned within the Jewish community. About a dozen people were in attendance including an advertising sale person and a writer from the Cleveland Jewish News.
Perhaps because they were on a short schedule, the two women from the CJN spoke first and there was a brief discussion of a nearly $2,000 dollar insert/supplement that would be 50 percent advertising and 50 percent editorial.
I and others spoke up that such a supplement would be a waste of money since it would first, require the use of paper and second, because it would have a very brief lifespan, most likely measured in hours. Instead, the creation of a web presence for no or little cost and fueled by the compiling of available synagogue and organization email lists was suggested and received with enthusiasm.
Very shortly thereafter the CJN staffers departed.
As I said at the beginning, perhaps they had to get to their next appointments, but their departure after it was clear that there was no money to be made there — disregarding any news value of the complete meeting — was curious.
Such is the place journalism has descended.
