After a brief hiatus, the What Have We Learned Team returns, tanned, rested and ready -- well, pasty, tired and unprepared -- for another episode.
In this week's episode, we discuss Larry King and his love of peanut-butter and marshmallow sandwiches, Russian spies, moose and squirrel and a country-club-style bar that will have metal detectors. Don't they all?
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, was asking Supreme Court nominee Ellen Kagan about the Christmas Day bomber when he queried Kagan about her whereabouts on Christmas.
"Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant," Kagan said
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), in an interview to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, said the Republicans are ready to regain favor with American voters.
"They're (American voters) are willing to look at Republicans again," he told the newspaper.
And how are they going to do that?
One proposal Boehner floated was raising the retirement age to 70.
That's right. Raising the retirement age.
Good luck with that.
The recession, that is.
All of the experts crunching the numbers say the recession is officially over. And it might be, if you're a rich Wall Street thief. But for a lot of people, the pain continues.
The story is today's paper:
"Despite month-over-month job growth in nearly all sectors in York County, the local unemployment rate in May increased two-tenths of a percentage point to 9.3 percent -- higher than the state's rate of 9.1 percent.
"Residents employed outside the county who have been cut from their jobs might be contributing to the higher rate."
If you've been paying attention to the budget nonsense in Harrisburg, you've probably heard that if Pennsylvania doesn't get some help, the state will have to lay off a bunch of people. A good number of those people live in York County. They are our neighbors.
And there was some dispiriting economic news from the summit of the world's economic powers. The people in power don't seem to believe that the recovery needs help to remain sustained. Nobel Prize -winning economist Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton and a columnist with the New York Times, warns that this move, cutting government spending in deference to deficits at a time when the economy still needs to be propped up, could lead to a depression.
There is historical precedent. In the '30s, as the New Deal was beginning to work, concern over deficits led to spending cuts in 1937. The result? A spike in unemployment that remained until the beginning of World War II.
In other bad news, the Senate continues to show its disdain for our neighbors, killing extensions of unemployment benefits. How many people will have to lose their homes before the politicians get it.
People need help out there. Let's get it to them.
Who cares?
Let me see if I have this right: The rumors that Gov. Ed Rendell was having an affair with one of his staffers, Kirstin Snow, a Glen Rock native, gained traction because someone took a photo of him having lunch with her and other staffers.
You know, it sounds like somebody needs a hobby.
This is almost beyond absurd. For one thing, who cares?
But seriously, it reflects the new media landscape. Journalists don't report rumors. That's what I always believed. That this became a story indicates how much our media is influenced by people reporting stuff on the Internet that may not be true, things that they just pull out of thin air.
It's ridiculous.
Of course, it's not enough to stave off the pending state budget crisis, which could result in the laying off of teachers and child care workers and such.
Still, the program collected $261 million in less than two months.
If you'll recall this is the program that resulted in a lot of people getting collection letters demanding payment of 12 cents, a nickel, a penny and so on.
So $261 million. That's a lot of nickels.
The story about the Nazis rallying in Gettysburg indicated they were from Alabama.
To paraphrase Jake Blues, Alabama Nazis. I hate Alabama Nazis.
A map by the Forbes people shows migration from York County.
Where's everybody moving?
Florida.
About the only place on the planet weirder than York County.
Not from the huge oil spill, but from idiots in Congress.
From the New York Times coverage of today's congressional hearing:
In his opening remarks, Representative Parker Griffith, an Alabama Republican said that "if we're going to talk about the environment," he'd "like to remind the committee that the greatest environmental disaster in America has been cigarettes." That means, he said, that the spill is "not going to be the worst thing that's ever happened to America."
OK, he represents Alabama, but still...
This story caught my attention.
A New Orleans cabbie was charged with various things after holding a fare hostage when she refused to give him a tip. A lousy 10 percent tip.
On the one hand, the cabbie shouldn't be holding people hostage. But come on, a 10 percent tip? Don't be so cheap.
OK, let's check in on the college sports world.
Last we checked, the Big 12 will have 10 members. The Big 10 will have 12 members. And the Pac 10 will have 11.
Math is hard.
From the New York Times:
"LOS ANGELES -- When Andrew van den Houten got a letter two weeks ago rejecting his request for Michigan public money to help finance his latest horror movie, 'The Woman,' it came with an admonition about the state's good name.
"'This film is unlikely to promote tourism in Michigan or to present or reflect Michigan in a positive light,' wrote Janet Lockwood, Michigan's film commissioner. Ms. Lockwood particularly objected to 'this extreme horror film's subject matter, namely realistic cannibalism; the gruesome and graphically violent depictions described in the screenplay; and the explicit nature of the script.'"
Has Lockwood ever been to Detroit?
It's all about the money.
From the New York Times:
"Internal BP documents, including an e-mail message calling the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon a 'nightmare,' show a pattern of risky choices made to save time and money in the weeks before the disastrous April 20 blowout, according to a letter sent to the oil company by the leaders of a House committee on Monday.
"The leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce cited five areas in which the company had made decisions that 'increased the danger of a catastrophic well,' including the choice for the design of the well, preparations for and tests of the cement job and assurances that the well was properly sealed on the top.
"Taken together, the documents offer the strongest case yet that BP bears much of the responsibility for the catastrophic explosion that killed 11 workers and the still-unchecked leaking of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico."
Certainly, BP will have to pay. But, in the general sense, this is criminal.
England and the Unites States played to a draw in the teams' much-anticipated opening round World Cup game Saturday.
Everybody was happy. A draw was a good result for both teams. Weird.
The losers?
Bars in England.
From Slate:
"Prior to the match, the streets of London seemed deserted; a Sunday morning in London had arrived on a Saturday night. 'If England win, you expect a lot of drinking,' said the barman before the game. 'If England lose, you expect a lot drinking. A draw--the drinkers go home.' The barman said this in a way that suggested that he wouldn't be so disappointed with a subdued end to a much-anticipated evening."
Brilliant!
News is that Nebraska is poised to become the 12th member of the Big Ten.
It'd be a good addition, at least for football. It'll be nice if they can figure out a way to schedule Nebraska-Penn State on a regular basis. There were some great games back in the the day between the two schools.
And it gives me an opportunity to dust off an old Nebraska joke, told to me by my cousin in Colorado.
What does the "N" in the Nebraska helmets stand for?
Knowledge.
Greatest sports fans in the world, even the little kids, who go to the game, quaff a few brews and boo Charlie Manuel.
Pretty soon, this kid will be all grown up, getting tased while running on the field.
BP now says it's going to burn the oil it is recovering from the leaking well.
Didn't they try this already?
And it seems that instead of fouling the ocean, now they plan to spread the pain to the atmosphere. Sounds like a great plan.
Weird story here.
Insane person Glenn Beck has endorsed the work of a Nazi.
An excerpt:
"Glenn Beck's latest excursion to the farthest fringes of the old American right, which occurred on his radio show last Friday when he endorsed 'The Red Network' by the late Nazi author and activist Elizabeth Dilling, revealed much about his own weird outlook. According to the Fox News star, Dilling's book, a racist and anti-Semitic tract published in 1935 as an 'exposé of Communism,' strongly resembles the patriotic service that he performs today.
"It is of course true that Dilling, and every other Nazi, Silver Shirt, Bundist and fascist of that era, promoted their ideology as 'patriotic,' 'Constitutionalist' and devoutly 'Christian,' much as Beck does."
Beck later tried to backpeddle, but the truth of the matter is he expressed admiration for the views of a Nazi.
Why hasn't BP canned it's CEO?
Slate's Dan Gross tackles it:
"Of all the mysteries of the BP oil spill, perhaps the most baffling is: Why does BP CEO Tony Hayward still have a job? Hayward, who has been CEO of BP since 2007, was in charge when the disastrous blowout at the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico took place, and he's been in charge as BP has failed--and failed, and failed again--to stop the flow of crude oil into the Gulf. What's more, his (unbacked-up) reassurances and poor turns of phrase ("I want my life back") have aggravated the damage to BP's public image. Yet Hayward is secure in his job. In fact, he may have the most secure corporate seat in Great Britain."
And why is that?
Read the piece.
Perhaps, when the questions are answered, Hayward's will be one of the asses President Obama is talking about kicking.
Amicus briefs have been filed in the Snyder vs. Westboro case.
The most off-mark is the one filed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The VFW does a lot of good, but it's way off mark on this one.
It's brief includes this quote:
"(The Phelpses') speech is of little, if any value. Conversely, the harm they inflicted upon a grieving family and the memory and service of a member of our Armed Forces is substantial and irreparable."
They are right, of course. But the First Amendment protects all speech, not just speech that some observers might find of value.
Interestingly, the attorneys general of Maine and Virginia did not join the fray.
A passage from the Sunday News story:
In a statement, Maine Attorney General Janet Mills said, "This is not a political question, a test of patriotism or a popularity contest about how many people take offense at a particular statement. Once we start carving out exceptions to the First Amendment for speech that is unpopular or offensive, then we start down a slippery slope that endangers the right of all of us to hold and express views that may be thought unpopular by others."
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said in a statement he did not join because "the case could set a precedent that could severely curtail certain valid exercises of free speech. If protestors -- whether political, civil rights, pro-life, or environmental -- said something that offended the object of the protest to the point where that person felt damaged, the protestors could be sued. It then becomes a very subjective and difficult determination as to when the line is crossed from severely offensive speech to that which inflicts emotional distress."
Dan Gross, economics columnist for Slate magazine, has a piece reporting readers' suggestions for punishing BP.
The best ones?
The Quentin Tarantino approach. Get medieval on the executives. Devise punishments that make them physically feel the pain they have caused to others. On this score, our readers were quite imaginative. Nick Inzalaco: "Hit BP executives over the head with every last one of the dead fish." Chad Brick suggested "seppuku for the executives of any firm that colossally screws up." Or we could take all the responsible executives and politicians "coat them all completely in crude oil and throw them in jail until their skin suffocates." Others suggested sentencing BP executives to spend their time cleaning up oil-covered birds. My favorite came from Becca: Raise money to fix the problem by letting BP execs participate in a dunk tank--filled with polluted gulf water.
Sounds about right.
Here, from the AP, is a story about a groundhog stowing away in a car:
"ATHENS, Ohio--An Ohio woman needed animal control, not a mechanic, when it turned out the thumping under her car's hood was coming from a stowaway groundhog. Rebecca Martin said she heard the noise last Tuesday while running errands with other family members in Athens in southeast Ohio."
It's happened before, to our own Frank Bodani. Read his account here.
Some guys in Maine have discovered an alternate fuel -- Mentos and Coke Zero.
It's a very cool idea, until we have a huge Coke Zero spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
A weird guy and a great actor. His roles in Easy Rider, Blue Velvet and True Romance were amazing. But his greatest performance, for me, was in the Francis Ford Coppola classic, Apocalypse Now.
Here's a classic scene.
One story I liked was when, some years after Easy Rider, Hopper met Jack Nicholson and after raving about Nicholson's work, Hopper said, "We should do something together."
And Nicholson said, "Um, we did Easy Rider together."
Oh, yeah, that, Hopper said. He apparently didn't remember much of it.
