'The American Experience' explains 'The forgotten Civil War roots of Memorial Day'

I wish my readers a somber Memorial Day. I returning to the origin of today's patriotic holiday with The American Experience on PBS explaining The forgotten Civil War roots of Memorial Day.

A federal holiday since 1971, the roots of Memorial Day go back over a century prior, to the end of the Civil War.

After the burial of many Union and Confederate soldiers, "decoration day" rituals began to spring up, which included placing fresh flowers on soldiers' graves.

One of the earliest known celebrations took place in Charleston, South Carolina on May 1, 1865, when the city's freed Black residents organized a proper burial for hundreds of Union soldiers who had died in a Confederate prison, followed by a parade to honor their memory.

In the spring of 1868, General John Logan officially designated May 30th "for the purpose of strewing flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in the defense of their country," and Memorial Day as we know it today was established.

The U.S. would probably still have a holiday to commemorate the country's war dead as a result of the Civil War if the freed men and women of Charleston hadn't done it first, but they definitely deserve credit for leading the way for the rest of us.

Now for a different version of Taps Across America from The Seattle Symphony, Memorial Day: Taps Across America.

From the World War II Memorial to the Garden of Remembrance at Benaroya Hall, taps echoes across Seattle in honor of those who gave their lives in service. We honor their courage, devotion and sacrifice this Memorial Day.

Two things struck me. First, as my readers could probably tell, this video is from 2020. Media made during the pandemic has a very distinctive look. Second, the trumpeters are holding the first valve down. That's because they're playing C trumpets and "Taps" is usually played in Bb. Only a brass player and bugler like me would notice and understand why.

That's a wrap for today. I'll see if I have it in me to continue my series on the nominees at the News & Doc Emmy Awards tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Happy Year of the Wood Snake!

Happy Lunar New Year! So long, Year of the Wood Dragon! Welcome to the Year of the Wood Snake! I begin today's celebration with Lunar New Year 2025: The Year of the Snake explained | ABC NEWS (Australia).

We are saying goodbye to the Year of the Dragon and welcoming the Year of the Snake! What do you know about the Year of the Snake? What is the significance of the snake in Chinese culture and history and how do people in Asian countries celebrate the festival?

This is a return to form for me after last year's drum corps holiday. That written, the host's remarking that snakes are "dangerous and scary animals" that make him "run away screaming" inspires me to put a science spin on this entry with PBS Eons explaining How Snake Venom Sparked An Evolutionary Arms Race.

For some, the rise and spread of venomous elapids was just another challenge to adapt to. For others, it was a catastrophe of almost apocalyptic proportions. And we humans are no exception, because it seems that when elapids slithered onto the ecological scene, not even our ancestors were safe…

Fassscinating. Sssorry, couldn't resssissst.

I also couldn't resist revisiting how Disney celebrates the holiday. Watch Mulan's Lunar New Year Procession Returns to Disney California Adventure for the Year of the Snake from WDW News Today.


I observed "Eleven years ago, they had Kaa as their character for Year of the Snake" then asked "Anyone care to wager that Kaa repeats?" While Mushu repeated in the parade, Kaa still showed in the merchandise available in Shanghai Disneyland.


Disney's California Adventure opted for a snake coiled to form Mickey Mouse's head.

So, yes and no, but if anyone had taken me up on the bet, they'd have won. After all, I didn't ssspecify which park!

Enough of this year's fessstivities. It's time to conclude this post with the generic greetings I've recycled many times over.

Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le

Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi
 
Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok

Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财 新年快乐

Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財 新年快樂

Stay tuned for the Doomsday Clock.

The first National Detroit-Style Pizza Day

Happy inaugural National Detroit-Style Pizza Day!

On June 23rd, join the celebration born in the birthplace of the American Automobile and Motown. National Detroit-Style Pizza Day recognizes the square-cut pizza style first served at Buddy’s Pizza in 1946 in the city that also gave us Madonna, the Mustang, and the first paved road. And Detroit-Style Pizza is arguably Detroit’s greatest contribution!

What makes it Detroit-Style? It starts with the crust – deep and thick in composition and yet light and airy in taste. The steel square pans (borrowed from the auto industry) give it a unique shape and one-of-a-kind flavor. Authentic Detroit-Style Pizzas layer the toppings backward, meaning they lay the gourmet pepperoni directly on the hand-stretched dough. Next comes a generous layer of Wisconsin Brick Cheese, spread all the way to the edges of the pan. The resulting caramelized cheese creates an incredibly crisp crust. Finally, racing stripes of tomato sauce finish the top.

Detroit-Style Pizza has grown beyond Buddy’s into a nationwide phenomenon that you can find from Brooklyn to Denver to Los Angeles.
...
Buddy’s Pizza in Detroit, Michigan, founded National Detroit-Style Pizza Day to celebrate the pizza category’s 75th anniversary in 2021. In 1946, at a restaurant called Buddy’s Rendezvous, a delicious deep-dish Sicilian-style pizza baked in blue steel automotive drip pans was born. Today, Buddy’s Pizza keeps the flavor and tradition alive by making the same one-of-a-kind square pizza. For generations, they’ve been building their square pizzas from the bottom up. Discover what makes them so special in the Motor City.

In 2021, the Registrar at National Day Calendar proclaimed National Detroit-Style Pizza Day to be observed annually on June 23rd.

I couldn't resist celebrating a fake food holiday about Detroit. Neither could WDIV, which uploaded Buddy's Pizza celebrating 75 years with first-ever National Detroit-Style Pizza Day this morning.


Follow over the jump for the complete segment from Live in the D and more about Buddy's Pizza and the Detroit Zoo.

Happy Year of the Earth Dog!

Happy Lunar New Year!  So long Year of the Fire Rooster.  Welcome the Year of the Earth Dog!  I begin the festivities with Syracuse.com explaining Chinese New Year: The Year of the Dog.

Chinese New Year is February 16, 2018. It's the first year of the earth dog since 1958.

What is the Year of the Dog? What sign are you?

Learn more about the 12 animals and the five elements that make up the Chinese Zodiac, as well as what type of personality you have based on astrology.

One of the people born in the Year of the Dog is Donald Trump.  Al Jazeera noted that, too, and asked Will Trump be unlucky in the Chinese Year of the Dog?

The millions celebrating the oncoming Chinese New Year are hopeful that it will bring prosperity and good luck.

But Chinese horoscopes say that the Year of the Dog, which is about to start, brings bad luck, and those born in the same zodiac year will face that bad luck.

US President Donald Trump was born in the Year of the Dog, and fortunetellers are saying that the bad luck of his birth year will hit him this year.

Al Jazeera's Adrian Brown reports from Beijing.

I hope his bad luck, in as little as I believe in it, doesn't rub off on the rest of us Americans.  As for Trump looking like a dog or the dog looking like Trump, here is a side-by-side comparison.


Woof!

Happy Year of the Fire Rooster!

Farewell, Year of the Fire Monkey!  It's now the year of the Fire Rooster.  Al Jazeera English has a report on the festivities in China: Celebrations begin for “Year of the Rooster.”

For many workers in China this time of year means a month long holiday.
Saturday will officially mark the beginning of the Year of the Rooster, under the Chinese zodiac.
Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown reports from Beijing.

Even the Chinese can't escape Donald Trump, although caricaturing him as a rooster is a response I appreciate.

Follow over the jump for two videos from TED on the Chinese zodiac for the holiday.

Happy Year of the Fire Monkey!

So long, Year of the Wood Sheep!  It's now the Year of the Fire Monkey!  The Daily Telegraph explains in Happy Chinese New Year 2016! Everything you need to know about the Year of the Monkey.

The new year, also known as the Spring Festival, is marked by the lunisolar Chinese calendar, so the date changes from year to year.

The festivities usually start the day before the New Year and continue until the Lantern Festival, the 15th day of the new year.

Each Chinese New Year is characterised by one of 12 animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac. The Chinese zodiac is divided into 12 blocks (or houses) just like its western counterpart, but with the major difference being that each house has a time-length of one year instead of one month.

This year it's the Year of the Monkey, the ninth animal in the cycle. The next Year of the Monkey will be in 2028.

Click on through for the rest of the article, which describes the traits associated with people born under the sign of the monkey.  That's astrology, which I consider to be "bunk, but it's fun bunk" and "fun nonsense that I'm presenting for entertainment purposes only."  However, there's one prediction I'd like to pass along from NBC News' What Feng Shui Experts Predict for Year of the Monkey:

For the superstitious in China, the astrological divinations of a local feng shui master can be important guidance in making decisions for the coming year. For many others, the annual predictions are just for fun.

Unfortunately for anyone seeking reassurance about the worldwide economic turmoil, Chen does not have any encouraging words.

"In 2016 we will see a big slide in the world economy," he warns. "The global economic situation will be terrible and lots of companies will be bankrupted."

I don't need astrology to tell people that.

Mike Alexander posted his most recent update last June: 10000 point decline in the Dow in the cards over the next three years.  At the time, the DJIA had just hit a record close of 18,312.39 on May 19, 2015.  Since then, the market has already passed the 10% drop for a correction.  If it goes down another 10% to below 14,650, that will signal a bear market, which means we are on track for another recession within a year.  After that, if Mike is right, it's down to the 8,000s by the end of 2018.  The recession beginning late this year or early next looks like it will arrive right on schedule.

Enough gloom.  Time to wish my readers a Happy Lunar New Year, with text that I've recycled many times over.

Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le

Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi

Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok

Source

Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财 新年快乐

Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財 新年快樂

Source

Theme for January 2015: Balance

There is no more NaBloPoMo except in November, but there is still a BlogHer Writing Lab complete with themes.  So what's January's theme from the email?

January's Writing Lab Theme: BALANCE!
Balance. Do you have it in your life, or do you find that you give certain aspects of your day more than their fair share of time?

If you're struggling to keep balance in your life, this month's BlogHer Writing Lab theme will help you think about how you can use the beginning of the year to change the way you're living life.

Maybe you need to get a better balance between your online and offline time, set some boundaries between work and home, or simply give yourself permission to have a few guilty pleasures along with all the have-to-dos.

Or maybe you just need to kickstart your blog again. You can take or leave the monthly theme, and jump into writing challenges and thought questions.

The point is to get you writing: on your blog, on social media, in a book... anywhere you want to set down words. So let's get started with the January Theme.

Follow over the jump for the blurb from BlogHer's website.

Michigan marching bands parade in a new year

As the sign says, Happy New Year!  To usher in 2016, I'm returning to something that I mentioned at the end of Walled Lake Central Marching Band in Macy's Parade.

Plymouth-Canton's band has their own televised holiday event to look forward to; they're marching in the 2016 Rose Parade.  This is a good year for Michigan's top high school marching bands.

Here's the story from Hometown Life: PC marching band ready for Rose Bowl parade.

Plymouth-Canton Marching Band members – approximately 176 of them – and families had bumpy flights Sunday, but arrived in California to sun and warmer weather as they prepare to perform in the Tournament of Roses Parade Friday.
...
Band and booster members and parents have fundraised since the award-winning band was invited to perform in the Tournament of Roses Parade earlier this year. In the end, about $100,000 was raised to help defray the approximate $500,000 cost of sending the band, the members and equipment to Pasadena. The equipment was hauled by truck to Pasadena.

When the 126th Tournament of Roses Parade begins at 8 a.m., (west coast time) New Year’s Day, the Plymouth-Canton Marching Band will be in the 34th place in the procession. Band members are gearing up for the five-mile parade.
...
After their arrival in California Sunday, the band practiced and then were off to see the sights, including the Santa Monica Pier. “The kids are in good spirits,” [Chris] Zygmunt [president of the marching band boosters club] said.

On Wednesday, the marching band participated in a competitive band festival. The plan is also to perform at Disneyland.

The Tournament of Roses Parade this year sports the theme “Find Your Adventure.” So the band will perform the theme of the Back to the Future film, just as the parade makes a turn and heads toward the TV cameras. Back to the Future will also be in the band’s performance at Disneyland. But it will perform its 2015 show, “E.X.O.,” described as a musical journey into alien worlds, during the band festival.

Before I share video of the band festival, I'm sharing this clip of their performance at the Macy's Parade four years ago: Plymouth Canton Educational Park Marching Band Macy's Parade 2011.


I should be a good environmentalist and recycle that for Christmas! Now, Plymouth-Canton HS Marching Band at the 2016 Pasadena Bandfest

Plymouth-Canton High School Marching Band performing their musical selections at the 36th Annual Pasadena Tournament of Roses Bandfest on Wednesday, December 30th 2015.

I'll post a video of the band at the Rose Parade proper in a couple of weeks. Should their Disneyland performance become available by then, I'll post it, too.

Follow over the jump for more Michigan marching bands in parades.

Farewell, NaBloPoMo, a tradition on this blog

Normally, I would post this month's Nablopomo theme, as I've done ever since March 2011, when I posted April 2011's theme of Sprout.   That's not going to happen this month or any month until next November, not as a Nablopomo theme.  I'll let Melissa Ford of BlogHer explain in What's Next After #NaBloPoMo? Introducing the BlogHer Writing Lab.

Big changes are underway for lovers of #NaBloPoMo! Like NaNoWriMo, #NaBloPoMo will now own November and only November. But that doesn't mean NaBloPoMo is disappearing during the other eleven months of the year. Oh, no. It's only getting better.

What's Staying the Same

We will still create a monthly theme for you to take or leave as you wish. Each month, I'll post about the theme and give you ideas on ways you can embrace it. December's theme post will go up on December 1st.

There will still be daily prompts on weekdays, and I will be posting those prompts on BlogHer at the beginning of the month so you can work ahead if you choose.

There will still be a monthly newsletter sending along links and important information.

What's Changing

We're getting rid of the blogroll, except for the month of November. "But how will I join along, Melissa?" you ask. Keep reading below. We hope this new system has made it easier to drop in and out as time permits.

We'll only have monthly badges during November's #NaBloPoMo.

Brand New

First and foremost, the name. While we'll retain the name #NaBloPoMo for the November challenge, daily prompts during the other eleven months now exist as the BlogHer Writing Lab.

The name embodies everything we hope this project will be. We're excited to build up the community aspect of the #NaBloPoMo you know and love, making this experience ten times more interactive.

So, no more blogroll or monthly badges.  There will still be writing prompts, but they'll be on Facebook.  Since I've been ignoring most of them, that will probably continue.  Instead, I'm more enamored with a particular paragraph about what Melissa wants participants to do.

We want you to write about current events and figure out how to record the world around you. In other words, process the things happening in your world with words and images.

That's what I do here every day anyway.  It's about time that I participate in a program that encourages exactly that.

The ironic thing about the BlogHer Writing Lab is the first theme: December 2015 BlogHer Writing Lab Theme Is Tradition.

Listen, we get it. NaBloPoMo was your monthly tradition. But once you get over the name change for months other than November, you'll see that the best parts of NaBloPoMo are still here on a monthly basis. It's only gotten better!
...
We hope that BlogHer Writing Lab becomes your new monthly tradition, or really, your new daily tradition. Because blog post ideas pop up daily, but you need to be around to catch them.

This month, the set daily prompts concern traditions: starting new ones, celebrating old ones, and figuring out why you do what you do, year after year after year. In addition, we'll be throwing out extra prompt ideas over in the Facebook group, both about traditions and life in general.

Farewell NaBloPoMo, hello BlogHer Writing Lab!  As the description says, "Let's start a new tradition!"

'Falling Skies' vs. 'Defiance' for the final season premiere of 'Falling Skies'

I telegraphed the subject of today's post in the conclusion of 'The Last Ship' returns and other summer TV fare.

I'll do the same for "Falling Skies" and "Defiance" next week, when I'll elaborate on what I wrote in the footnote to Detroit fireworks show continues for yet another year.

The first season of "Defiance" reminded me of "Babylon 5," except on Earth.  The second season so far confirms that impression.  "Falling Skies" looks like "The Walking Dead" with aliens instead of zombies and other people as the antagonists and allies.  Given that I've mentioned "Babylon 5" only once until now, and that in passing, while I've mentioned "The Walking Dead" in at least nine entries so far, it should come as no surprise that I like "Falling Skies" more.

Stay tuned.

Despite the different inspirations for the two alien invasion series, the two shows followed common paths last season.  Both "Falling Skies" and "Defiance" introduced two tropes about controlling conquered populations, secular totalitarianism and religion in the form of a false Messiah.  In a further similarity, both shows had the daughter of the male lead as the false Messiah.  Furthermore, the fathers concluded the seasons by redeeming their daughters.  I think these are the kinds of coincidences that strike me as the result of something in the culture that both are responding to.

Follow over the jump for the rest of the essay along with a preview of the final season of "Falling Skies."

NABLOPOMO for June: READY, SET, GO!

After skipping a Nablopomo entry last month (the monthly meta didn't count), Nablopomo as the first post of the month returns.  To celebrate, here's the blurb from the email for the first time since January.

The moment between having a great idea and executing the first steps is maybe even more exciting than completing the project.

Take, for instance, a book idea. That moment when the idea comes to me, and I can't write fast enough to get it all down to when I actually sit down and write the first page is the best feeling. I'm walking around with a secret world or situation inside my head, and I love it.

And then I have to actually write the book. And that takes work. A lot of work. And then I have to sell the book and edit the book and... well... there are about 3000 steps before I get to hold my book in my hands. And while that part rocks, too, that moment when I'm readying my mind for the journey is what keeps me going so I can get to that finish line. I mean, how else do you keep sitting down at the computer to write unless you can channel into how excited you were back before you started?

That getting started period? That's what we're focusing on with this month's NaBloPoMo.

You can read more about the new NaBloPoMo theme on our opening post.

Follow over the jump for the relevant parts of that post.

Happy Year of the Wood Sheep!

That's the greeting I used to open my comment on What Progress Means at The Archdruid Report, and Greer responded with a hearty "Pinku-sensei, and gong hay fat choy to you as well."  I count that as an auspicious start to the new Lunar Year.  Even more auspicious is that the Sheep is as close to my family name as any animal in the Chinese Zodiac gets.  I may be born in the year of the Earth Pig, but I like the idea of the Year of the Sheep.

Last year and the years before, I've posted generic Chinese New Years greetings, such as the one Greer used, which is Cantonese.  This year, I present The Year of The Sheep in Chinese Zodiac - 2015, which teaches how to say greetings special for this year.

2015 is the year of the sheep.Do you know what to say to Chinese people during Chinese New Year. Watch the video to learn more. Chinese people like to specify lucky phrases that capture the year of the zodiac.

喜气洋洋 filled with happiness (洋 is the original Chinese character, people change it to the word 羊 just for the year of sheep)
一羊生金 a sheep makes you wealthy
二羊为宝 two sheep brings you treasure
三 羊开泰 full of luck for the year's beginning (阳is the original Chinese character, people change it to the word 羊 just for the year of sheep)

Now for the generic greetings.

Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le

Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi

Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok

Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财 新年快乐

Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財 新年快樂

Happy Year of the Horse

Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le

Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi

Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok

Source

Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财 新年快乐

Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財 新年快樂

Source

Updated from Happy Year of the Snake! and Happy Year of the Dragon! as well as the original Happy Lunar New Year! on LiveJournal.

Happy Year of the Snake!

Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le

Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi

Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok

Source

Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财 新年快乐

Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財 新年快樂

Source

Updated from last year's post.

Above originally posted in my LiveJournal three years ago. 

Preppers in Reuters and National Geographic, a murmuration

James Howard Kunstler titled this week's missive of doom Murmuration. It was surprisingly dispassionate in tone while being full of factual content and rational analysis. I found that combination not to be an accident, but I digress. What Kunstler had to say about his topic showed more insight than usual into humans as a social animal.

Investment guru James Dines introduced another seminal idea on Eric King's podcast last week. Dines's work over the years has focused much more on human mob psychology than technical market analysis - which he seems to regard as akin to augury with chicken entrails. Dines now introduces the term "murmuration" to describe the way that rapid changes occur in the realm of human activities. The word refers to behaviors also seen in other living species, such as the way a large flock of starlings will all turn in the sky at the same instant without any apparent communication. We don't know how they do that. It seems to be some kind of collective cognitive processing beyond our understanding.

Dines goes on to suggest that the political stirrings and upheavals of the past year represent an instance of human "murmuration" that will lead to even greater epochal changes in geopolitical and economic life.

My response was to praise him.

I like the concepts of trust horizon and murmuration, as they connect me to my scientific roots. Trust horizon recalls event horizon, something that marks the surface of a black hole. If we hit the event horizon, then we'll be sucked into the black hole with no escape. Of course, the center of a black hole is a singularity, so I suspect you don't want to extend the metaphor that far! As for murmuration, that's an even better one, as I'm an amateur astronomer, but a professional biologist who has studied animal behavior. Since humans are just a very smart social mammal, we shouldn't be surprised at how our behavior reflects that of other social animals, including coordination of group behavior by murmuration. Thanks for adding those concepts to my vocabulary. I'll be sure to blog about them and credit you for inspiring me.

That was yesterday morning. Yesterday evening, I encountered the following on Reuters as an example of a murmuration that is starting to change behaviors and become noticed--and noticed in a big way.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le

Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi

Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok

Source

Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财 新年快乐

Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財 新年快樂

Source

Above originally posted in my LiveJournal two years ago. 

Three stories about Detroit in the New York Times

No time for an essay tonight, so here are some links and excerpts.

Dismantling Detroit

We chose to focus our cameras on Detroit out of a gut feeling that this city — often heralded as the birthplace of the middle class — may well be a harbinger of things to come for the rest of the country.

One of the things I've been saying on this blog is that the solutions devised here will be exported to the rest of the continent, so it's important that we encourage the good solutions and stop the bad ones.

When the Lights Go Down in the City

BACK when I was growing up in Detroit, a bumper sticker appeared that read, “Will the last person out of Michigan please turn out the lights?”

It was supposed to be a joke.

Now they are turning out the lights. Cash-strapped Highland Park, Mich., has not only darkened two-thirds of its streetlamps, but removed them. Detroit is teetering on the brink of financial takeover by the state. Mayor Dave Bing plans to raze 10,000 empty structures; he also intends to provide full city services only to the more viable neighborhoods. This makes sense when you consider that Detroit has lost a quarter of its population in just the last decade, and around a million inhabitants in my lifetime.
...
Detroit’s troubles are self-evident. What’s harder to understand is what Detroit looks like to its citizens and the members, like myself, of the Detroit diaspora. For us, the city is not a symbol of despair or decay, but a source, believe it or not, of hope.

I also keep saying that exciting things are happening here, and I would miss them for the world.

Now, some good news from Detroit.

G.M. Regains the Top Spot in Global Automaking

DETROIT — After three years of settling for second place, General Motors reclaimed its title as the world’s largest automaker in 2011, a year when its sales grew in every region of the globe while Toyota sales were hampered by major natural disasters.

G.M. said Thursday that it sold 9,025,942 vehicles last year, 7.6 percent more than in 2010. Its closest competitor was Volkswagen, whose sales grew 14 percent to 8.156 million, with Toyota falling to third place.

Toyota has not released final sales results for the year but last month it estimated that sales totaled 7.9 million vehicles, a 6 percent drop.

As I've been posting over at Clusterfuck Nation lately, Happy Motoring--for now--from Detroit!

Jeff Wattrick has the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on the Troy Transit center

In New beginnings for two Metro Detroit transit projects, I made this prediction about the Troy Transit Center:

[I]t seems that it might pass by one vote. That would be enough.

Sure enough, that happened, as Jeff Wattrick of MLive reported.

Troy City Council passes revised transit center plan by 4-3 vote

Sure enough, the revised plan passed by one vote. The deciding vote both times was Council member Fleming, who voted against the original $8 million plan but voted for the revised $6 million version. As for the operating costs, Wattrick reported that the Chamber of Commerce will put together a plan to cover the station's $31,000 annual operating costs.

As for the bad, Troy City Council may increase transit center's operating cost per square foot to symbolically 'cut' federal spending. That occurred, in part, because the geothermal heating plant originally proposed for the site was replaced by a standard gas furnace. I really don't like this decision, and I'll probably have more to say about it later.

Finally, the ugly. Democracy's Earthy Aromas: Troy transit vote sparks colorful council public comment session. Wattrick had the following to say about the aftermath.

Troy's City Council approved the transit center plan Tuesday night. Public comment immediately following that vote, and boy howdy, you simply cannot beat municipal government public comment sessions for cheap thrills and unintentional comedy.

Quite naturally, I had the old digital recorder rolling to preserve in magical ones and zeros every explanation of how public transit was a Chinese plot to take our jobs, a UN Project 21 conspiracy to destroy America’s sovereignty, and the machinations of a shadowy cabal led by Rip Rapson, the dark overlord of the Kresge Foundation. All those things were said, but last night's public comment was so fantastic, none of them made the greatest hits album.

I highly recommend you read this article. It's local political comedy at its best.

Tom Tomorrow thinks Romney is a robot, too

The day after the Iowa caucuses, I snarked:

Romney is a corporate robot who will do whatever his programmers tell him to do.

Not even two weeks later, Tom Tomorrow has picked up that idea and run with it, explaining Romney's flip-flopping in the process.




Full-sized version at Daily Kos.

Whatever cartoon! Gingrich will do, it won't be any stranger than what actually happened in the real Gingrich's name.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to play SW:TOR with my wife.

When Mitt Romney came to town, he exposed the GOP's disrespect for its own ideas

Late last week, I wrote, "I'll have lots more to say about this video and the reaction to it later." After elaborating on my prior post, it's time to follow through.

P. T. Barnum is supposed to have said, "all publicity is good publicity." I'm not sure that Mitt Romney will agree with the man who also said, "a sucker is born every minute," something Romney and a lot of the other Republican candidates are banking on. Right now, Willard M. Romney is getting a lot of bad publicity, which is summed up in the half-hour-long attack ad presented as a muckracking documentary I posted in the first installment of this series. The blurb accompanying this video minces no words about what it sees as Willard's legacy and why he's bad for business, in more ways than one.

Mitt Romney was not a capitalist during his reign at Bain. He was a predatory corporate raider. His firm didn't seek to create value. Instead, like a scavenger, Romney looked for businesses he could pick apart. Indeed, he represented the worst possible kind of predator, operating within the law but well outside the bounds of what most real capitalists consider ethical.

He is exhibit number one the left wants to use in the coming election to give capitalism a bad name.

In other words, Willard is a liability, not an asset. While he might be "most electable," if his opponents want to score points based on economic philosophy, he's also the most vulnerable.

The blurb continues.

He and his friends at Bain were bad guys. Any real capitalists should disavow Romney's 'creative destruction' model that made him wealthy at the expense of thousands of American jobs.

Mitt Romney and his cronies pioneered 'deindustrialization,' a process by which they searched out vulnerable companies, took them over, loaded them with debt, and collected obscene fees while doing so. He sent jobs overseas or killed them altogether, and then picked apart the remains - including pension funds - before the companies went bankrupt.
...
If you wonder why America has lost so many manufacturing jobs overseas, look no further than Mitt Romney -- the King of Bain.

Willard, John Galt hates you. So, apparently, do a lot of other people who've seen this video and are commenting on both it and the reaction to it. One of them is Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs.