The Chungs, who own the dry cleaners that was sued for a bazillion dollars by a DC administrative judge over a pair of lost pants, have withdrawn their motion to have court loser Roy Pearson pay for the $83,000 they chalked up in legal fees.
All the Chungs "want to do is make this case go away" so they can return to their lives, and they hope by "offering this olive branch" that Pearson won't appeal.
Any hope that Pearson might not file an appeal has grown slimmer...
After universal condemnation, an initial loss, and potentially losing his job over this, why would Roy Pearson continue?
We live in a fishbowl world, where our actions can be photographed, filmed, and recorded by just about anyone.
A friend of mine sends me a link to the story of a guy who sent his girlfriend flowers via 1-800-FLOWERS, and as is their custom, they send a thank you note for doing business with them. Except that his wife intercepted the note, and then got a fax of the transaction.
This YouTube video has its audio/video poorly synched, but listen anyway...
I guess they were separated at the time. But if that's true, then how is it that the Thank You note went to his wife's address and not his own? That's his fault, not theirs.
Tagged by Janet, I'm asked for my favorite Iowa State Fair memory. I'm that rare bird from Iowa - I've been to the fair only three times in my life.
The first time I attended, and perhaps the most memorable one, was not to attend the fair, but a concert. I think it was in 1981. Triumph, 38 Special, and a few other bands were playing. Back then, I owned a certified hippie vehicle: a flower-curtained, powder blue with white top Volkswagen Minibus. I'd purchased it like a week earlier. My best buddy, Jim, drove the six of us there. I had no idea how to drive a stick yet and didn't have my license (long story there...)
The concert was fine. Rik Emmett was awesome, and that's all that mattered. It was the ride home that proved memorable.
The concert ended late in the night, and we all got into the van. Jim drove home. As we headed back for my home town of Sioux City, Iowa, everyone in the back of the van passed the bong pipe and Jim and I sat in the front seats.
Somewhere just north of where 680 joins 29, Jim told me that he was too tired to drive. A quick survey of the group in back found them too stoned to drive. Me - and typically for me - I was wired and wide awake. So Jim pulled over to the side of the road and he and I swapped seats. Now, if you've ever driven a minibus, it has a stick about two feet tall coming up off the floor of the van. Jim tried to coach me into how to maneuver the clutch and stick, but lessons taught at 1 AM on the shoulder of the interstate aren't always fruitful.
So Jim took over again. But about 10 minutes into the drive, he started to nod off, and I caught him, and he righted himself. So he proposed that he and I switch seats - while he was driving.
Donna from the back shouted, "You've got to be kidding. You're get us killed if you try that."
Carl, in his tyipcal Carl way, said, "This is gonna be excellent."
The other two were half-asleep.
Jim lifted himself from his seat, I slid in behind him. Then the van started to lurch as it slowed down.
Jim looked over his shoulder at me. "You'll have to put your foot on the gas pedal or we'll kill our speed." And with that, he stepped on the gas pedal again and we were back to 55 mph.
"You guys are going to get in a wreck," said Donna.
"This is choice," said Carl.
I worked my foot underneath Jim's and floored it. There was no finessing the pedal in the position I was in. Fortunately for me, my van topped out at 65 mph. I worked my way up into the driver's seat and Jim stepped over the stick while holding onto the wheel. Amazingly, the van didn't swerve much during the exchange. A moment later, I took over the steering wheel.
Jim looked at me from the passenger seat, smiling. "You got it?"
"I'm good!" I replied, beaming.
Carl: "That was awesome."
Donna: "No, that was scary."
The rest of the drive was uneventful. When we got to Sioux City, I took my foot off the gas and then moved the stick into neutral until we coasted to a stop and them Jim took over again and dropped everyone off.
On Saturday, Tamara, Nick, and I went to Ames, Iowa, to volunteer at Newt Gingrich's American Solutions tent.
That's Tamara greeting a smiling Newt as he exits his van.
The straw poll was cool. As we drove there, we saw lots of Ron Paul signs littering the interstate shoulders. Iowa State troopers were tediously pulling them from the roadside. I had to laugh at one point though - under one Ron Paul sign was someone else's custom sign, asking the important question: "Who is Ron Paul?"
Indeed.
We stayed around long enough to listen to Mitt Romney's speech. He's easily the most media-friendly politician for the Republicans. The three of us voted for Mitt. He floated the idea of having zero tax on capital gains. He contrasted that with Edwards' idea of leaving the first $250 as tax-free. "$250?" Mitt quipped. "That wouldn't even pay for John Edwards' haircut."
He also proposed forcing computer manufacturers to install a "porn-free" button that would begin to filter out porn. Serious faux pas on several levels.
Who decides what porn is?
If he believes that government should be smaller, how does this infiltration into the private sector demonstrate that?
The technology would never work. Unless images can be screened for content - which they can't - there is no filtering of porn. Any image can be named anything we like and still posted, hosted, and sent by email. He's blitheringly naive to suggest this. But I suppose it makes for great soundbite...
That said, I still think he's the most capable executive and media-savvy candidate in the race. That's why I voted for him. He also showed an knack for turning out voters. Yeah, people might poo-poo his methods. I don't think that matters. He achieved what he needed to achieve, and at the end of the day, that's what matters for any candidate - or president.
Back to Newt...
I like Newt. I think he's a very smart guy. He proposes that instead of soundbites and short-form debates, the candidates give lengthy speeches that outline the what and the how of their future administration. I love that.
Under a new immigration bill, Gingrich wants the Department of Homeland Security to outsource the creation of a secure, accurate system to quickly check legal status of people who commit serious crimes. He wants the bill to require that anyone arrested for a felony be checked for legal status. Lastly, he stipulates that any city, county or state that refuses to do so would lose all federal funding.
What sane American would disagree with that? Good for him.
ETC: And more pictures with Newt from the Iowa Straw Poll...
Some people get real addicted to the string of letters that follow their name. These are each called a Name Suffix. You can be utterly booksmart and never accomplish squat. Professional suffixes be damned.
A guy with whom I once worked and I used to joke about this, and we came up with our own desgination: GSD. It stood for "Gets Shit Done." All the pretense in the world can't save you from an inability to make it happen. Ultimately, that's all that counts.
A week ago, I said that Barack Obama's campaign is over due to his serious foreign policy gaffes.
Today, news of exactly this, as Hillary Clinton holds not just a double-digit lead over Obama, but a 22% lead. Clinton is too smart to blow a lead that big with her own gaffe. I mean, even if her husband had, you know, like an affair or something, it wouldn't change anything.
UPDATED: As if on cue, there's this today: "I have it on very, very good authority that major opposition research has already been conducted on Bill Clinton, and it's going to be a massive smear campaign against him," he says. A group of former intelligence officers, he says, is "going to try to cripple Hillary through Bill." - I don't think this will stop her nomination.
Plouffe also pointed to Obama's prowess at raising money from 258,000 individual donors as a sign of his strength. Obama raised about $5 million more than Clinton during the second quarter.
And you can spend more money than the competition for marketing, but if the product is bad, it's wasted money.
He'll learn and he'll come back later and be smarter. Maybe his supporters can look at this as an investment in the future.
So if Hillary's the nominee, who's it for the Republicans?
It ain't McCain. He blew that with McCain-Feingold's chokehold on free speech and his support for amnesty.
Thompson? Maybe. Let's how he runs once he's actually in the dang thing.
Giuliani? I would love to see Giuliani get it, just to tweak the religious right. And I believe that any enemy who would try to hurt us would suffer in hell for it because he wouldn't put up with any crap. But I have no idea how he'll govern.
Romney? I think he's the most qualified executive running. A very impressive guy. Can he get enough traction? Here in Iowa, he got into a row with a local rude talk-show host, Jan Mickelson. I watched this video, and Romney handles the incessant interruptions really well.
(I've listened to Jan's show in the past, and I like Jan, but he was utterly pompous in this "interview." Bad form.)
I can't guage who the Republican nominee might be. I'd say that Giuliani and Romney have equal chance, with Thompson as a dark horse, and I think that in his own way, Newt Gingrich will factor into this somehow - though I think he has no chance whatsoever of getting the nomination.
Painting will be sparse in the next month or two as I shift toward left-brained activity (hence, the more analytical, political posts these days... that and the campaign and congressional stupidity is too good to pass up...) I've signed on to do a super-secret project in my spare time and I'll be cooking on that for the next few months.
I'll post up photos and highlight other artists in the interim.
My America: Self-Sufficiency - The Bedrock of Democracy
If I could sum up in a single sentence what I think the foundational principle of America is, it would be this:
America is a place where each person is free to live their own life without adversely impacting the lives of others.
What do you think of that? Agree? Disagree?
The founding fathers said it in their own way:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Emphasis mine. They're saying, quite openly, that anytyhing that interferes with a man's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is worthy of partial or total rebellion.
Earlier this week, I received something from a friend of mine, quoted from Garrison Keillor.
This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor's car won't start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one and then you turn into a Democrat. A liberal is a conservative who's been through treatment.
This is like a volleyball setup and spike: (Setup) You wouldn't drive by someone lying in the ditch, right? (Setup) You wouldn't avoid helping your neighbor get their car out of the snow, would you? (Spike!) Then obviously you agree with myriad goverment programs, right?
Paraphrased: if you're a good neighbor and a good person, you espouse social welfare. Right?
If I compare the two statements of Garrison Keillor and Thomas Jefferson, I don't think they're much the same. One says that people should be free to live their own lives and the government has no right to interfere with that, and the other says that people ought to help others live via myriad government programs.
Keillor's words are democratic bedrock? Not at all. They're socialist bedrock. I'll stick with Jefferson, thank you very much, who helped author the documents of democracy.
Between John Edwards' economic "tax-the-rich" populism and Hillary Clinton's "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good," what American principle are they following? They're in lock-step with Garrison Keillor, but not with John Adams, Ben Franklin, or Thomas Jefferson. It's not the government's right to take money from people to give to others. Nor is it the right of anyone to take money from anyone else. Jefferson viewed government as a "dangerous necessity" for this very reason, and felt that the federal government should have its powers circumscribed.
Freedom is the fundamental concept of this country. The limitation of government to intrude on the lives of its citizens is a very close second. The Bill of Rights isn't a declaration of freedoms allowed to us, so much as a declaration of limitations on the government:
Congress shall make no law...
...shall not be infringed
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner...
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects...shall not be violated...
No person shall be held to answer...
[Exception]
[Exception]
Excessive bail shall not be required...
...shall not be construed to deny or disparage...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
All of these but two expressly limit government. And the other two give rights to people held for trial.
In My America, this country is a place where each person is free to live their own life without adversely impacting the lives of others. It's a place where each person has a social obligation not to provide welfare, but to live on their own, provide for themselves, and provide for those for whom they are responsible.
Occasionally, some will stumble. I'll save that for another day.
You know, instead of funding a Bridge to Nowhere, why not fund Bridges to Somewhere? Because 70,000 bridges in the US are rated as deficient. Replication of the horrible tragedy of the Minnesota bridge collapse can be avoided, I think, if we drop the stupid earmark / pork spending and fund rightful improvements.
ETC:This money could have gone toward something useful, like - you know - infrastructure repair. (Via Glenn Reynolds)
(Why does John Murtha have any credibility at all with anyone?)
