Remain Calm, Etc.: Buzzwords
Posted on: May 16, 2013
- In: Open Thread | You Tube
- 16 Comments
Good Thursday, Widdershins.
I am sick to death of the same old repetitive catch-phrases and cute little sayings spouted over and over in both broadcasting and print. I have heard some of them until I could weep. Sadly, they seem to not have a clear-cut expiration date, and will be repeated in staccato fashion until something else replaces them.
Lake Superior State University publishes an annual list of words that should be banned. I agree wholeheartedly with their selections, but believe that they stopped short of completion, and I have a number to add of my own. Let’s go over theirs first:
- The Fiscal Cliff: If I hear this again, I might just be tempted to jump off a regular cliff. Of course, that will be somewhat challenging in sunny South Florida where the pinnacle of heights tops out at roughly eight feet.
- Kick The Can Down The Road: If I were the Universal Benevolent Despot, I would make it mandatory that any churl who said this should suffer a similar fate to the aforementioned can.
- Double Down: While this may well be a perfectly good poker term, it lacks a certain finesse in the world of foreign relations. Furthermore, why not triple down? Quadruple or quintuple down?
- Job Creators: This is a synonym for They Who Must Be Obeyed. Until the Job Creators actually create a lot more jobs, I have no patience with this theory. (How many jobs could the job creators create if the job creators would create jobs?)
- Passion/passionate: Clearly there is room in the world for passion, but the frequency of the terms (mis)use would render one perpetually exhausted.
- YOLO: We are for the most part all aware that life is a one-time thing. No further acronymic advice required here.
- Spoiler Alert: This is easy – if it’s going to spoil it for me, just don’t tell me.
- Bucket List: This one is actually not too bad, if you actually have one and it’s realistic.
- Trending: This term has been used in medicine for decades to describe a progression in some arena of patient care – e.g., blood pressure, temperature, blood sugar, etc. This is valid. I can also see a use in polling data. Perhaps also in weather forcasting Otherwise, just find another term.
- Superfood: My nutritionist friend goes batcrap crazy over this one She emphatically states that foods are either healthy, or not so much. Period.
- Boneless wings: A chicken wing has about three small pieces of edible meat. These little yummies cannot possibly be from the wing section of any normal fowl.
- Guru: A great term in Eastern religions. In others, why not just use “expert”?
I know that I became tired of buzzwords in nursing. I still cringe when anyone says “facilitate”, “perception”,”doable”. or “throughput times”. I am also weary of outside the box, low-hanging fruit, synergy, mission control, in my wheelhouse, baby bump, paradigm shift, charm offensive, hot button issue ,czars, and midwife, unless you are speaking specifically about the space industry, you own a trawler, or are actually birthin’ babies. English is such a beautifully expressive language that it seems illogical to repeat the same useless buzzwords over and over ad nauseam. Just be a little creative.
Feel free to add your own examples of overdone buzzwords. This is an open thread.
- In: Ecology | Energy | Environment | Morning Widdershins | Obama | Open Thread
- 10 Comments
From the Financial Post Opinion
Well, isn’t this a fine how-de-do? President Treebeard (“Hoom, hoom, let’s not be hasty”) is finally, possibly, perhaps at some point in the future prior to the Rapture, going to make an august pronouncement about the future of the XL pipeline. Needless to say, since Obama is a horrible DINO on this issue, people who actually give a sh*t about the environment are quite concerned that he is going to give TransCanada the Presnitial Thumbs-Up , and are doing things about it. (They’ve been doing things for quite some time, but I am pleased to report that these things continue to be done.) 150 backers of the president’s two campaigns (aka, the money guys and girls) wrote a letter that urged him to use his presidency to truly influence the direction of our country away from the oil and gas companies, and towards a less disastrous environmental policy.
“Yours is the last presidency in which it is possible for America to choose a responsible path forward for itself, before climate disruption becomes unmanageably dangerous,” the letter said. Opponents of the pipeline fear the project seems headed for approval, despite Obama’s promises to act on climate change in his second term. Obama told a group at a west coast fundraiser last month: “the politics of this are tough.” The letter contends that the Keystone XL project would be the most important environmental decision of Obama’s presidency.
There are also a lot of feet on the street this week. In Oklahoma, the protest was small but attention-getting, as two wimminz found a very creative way to state their case. Check this out!
HOLDENVILLE, Oklahoma – Two women protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline have found a “solid” way to halt construction work. Holdenville Police say the women cemented themselves to the ground in the area of the pipeline’s construction site. According to the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance (GPTSR) website, the two women are members of the Cross Timbers Earth First protest group. The women walked on to the construction site early Tuesday morning and locked their arms into concrete-filled barrels in an effort to stop progress on the pipeline.
You go girls!
FREE FOR ALL COMPLETELY OPEN THREAD
Posted on: May 14, 2013
St. Louis Cathedral New Orleans w/thunderstorm
Okay here’s the deal Widdershins: I’ve had a family medical situation come up and by the time you read this I will most likely be away for a couple of days. I had some ideas of what I wanted to do for this post so I’m just going to throw out some links and hope you all read one or some of them and then discuss them here.
As I’m sure you know, there was a horrible shooting in nola on Mother’s Day. It was during a second line parade in the 7th ward of New Orleans. The second line was sponsored by one of the social aid and pleasure clubs in nola. The only thing I can say is it’s disgusting that people cannot get out and celebrate, in the way that nola celebrates, and have to worry about which little thug is going to decide to open fire on another little thug, and surrounding innocents be damned! 
The police have a suspect and I hope they have the correct one. I’m going to post a link to the index of stories on nola.com that you can check out if you wish.
http://topics.nola.com/tag/mother%27s-day-shootings/index.html
I’m also adding in a couple of links to particularly good pieces on this story.
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/05/students_respond_to_mothers_da.html
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/05/accustomed_to_handling_shootin.html
A Tulane University criminologist shares his thoughts and opinions on the youth crime issues in New Orleans here.
Is the first amendment in jeopardy?
Federal investigators secretly seized two months of phone records for reporters and editors of The Associated Press in what the news organization said Monday was a “serious interference with A.P.’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”
That piece of slime “doctor” in Philly found guilty
A doctor who was responsible for cutting the spines of babies after botched abortions was convicted Monday of three counts of first-degree murder in a case that became a sharp rallying cry for anti-abortion activists.
And I wish he had been convicted of more.
The case turned on whether the late-term pregnancies Dr. Gosnell terminated resulted in live births. His lawyer, Jack McMahon, argued that because Dr. Gosnell injected a drug in utero to stop the heart, the deliveries were stillbirths, and movements that witnesses testified to observing — a jerked arm, a cry, swimming motions — were mere spasms.
But after deliberating 10 days, the jury found Dr. Gosnell guilty in the deaths of victims known as Baby A, Baby C and Baby D. He was found not guilty of murdering Baby E.
Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty when the trial moves into the sentencing phase next Tuesday.
The story is here. And more info is here and here.
Hope to see y’all in a couple of days.
OUR HAPLESS, HOPELESS MEDIA
Posted on: May 13, 2013
One of the worst parts of the sequestration is the fact that over 4 million seniors and shut ins are no longer receiving “Meals on Wheels”. Other seniors receiving Medicare and in need of cancer treatments have also been shut out. The Headstart Program has come to a halt. And a myriad of other programs that effect us nationwide have also been effected by cuts brought forth by a GOP dominated congress.
Logic would dictate that this is something that should be heavily covered by the press as it touches so many of the vulnerable, some who have no place else to turn.
Not so! Let’s take a look at just what the press is “obsessed” with these days.
Camped outside the homes of the 3 girls who were held captive for 10 years by a perverted monster, they have managed to “interview” as many friends, neighbors, relatives or passers by, all rushing forward with commentary surrounding the horrific event each seeking their 15 minutes of fame.
The horror of what these young women endured is nothing but fodder for these ghouls. Even their own families have broken the privacy barrier by allowing the talking heads into their homes with the hope that one of these young women will allow an interview to share her misery with the cameras rolling. It is sickening beyond words.
Over in Arizona a death penalty trial that featured a woman accused of slaughtering her ex boyfriend became a headline grabber with nonstop coverage of the salacious details along with “celebrity status” granted to the comely murderer. No stone was left unturned when “people in the street” were invited to chime in with their own verdict of her guilt or innocence.
Along with that nonsense was the never ending coverage of a pregnant Kim Kardashian jetting from one place to another as we are invited to watch her “baby bump” grow. Fascinating stuff along with begging the question on whether the “baby daddy” will or will not “put a ring on it”.
Then there is the coverage of Lindsay Lohan who is “not happy” being forced into rehab once again. This caught the attention of the national news media accompanied by discussions of whether or not she “will stick with the program”. You can’t make this stuff up.
In the meantime we are discovering that these drastic “across the board” cuts are infecting First Responders, teachers, medical personnel, government workers and services, public parks, seniors, children, and women’s healthcare access.
The press is doing a great job in diverting attention away from the importance of the issues at hand.
What happened in Cleveland, Ohio is disgusting but it does not warrant the talking heads to camp out for days outside the homes of these victims and issuing hourly statements that not much is going on. Not when seniors are being deprived of perhaps the only means of nourishment they may have all day to survive in this era of “austerity”.
We have been chided for our “short attention spans” as we are continually fed the “sensationalism” rather than to address the real issues that effect our daily lives. The Boston Marathon event that dominated the news for a solid two weeks has been replaced – as we all recognize that it eventually would – by other events that have taken on a life of their own. Created for the sensationalism it produces, the “reality” goes unattended in place of the “entertainment value” that gushes forth.
Morons who deny science are sitting on the science committee in congress. Idiots who do the bidding of the NRA are hardly mentioned. States who aim to include “Creationism” into the public classrooms while banning a woman’s right to privacy find the coverage buried somewhere in the back pages. Sex assaults in the military are barely touched upon although hundreds of women have come forward to testify about their own mistreatment. These merely stand as “blips” on the focus of news outlets and talking heads looking for an audience in search of “entertainment”.
Perhaps we would be better served if the press camped outside the homes of these wealthy congresscritters who pass these hateful and illogical laws they themselves will never be forced to live with rather than to spend useless hours standing in the streets begging passers by to expound on issues that have little bearing on the rest of us.
Make sense? Hold them accountable for their dastardly deeds that are placed on the backs of the poor and disabled which is as much of a crime as any of the others they spend time “covering”.
Lazy Sunday: Best TV and Movie Moms
Posted on: May 12, 2013
- In: movies | Open Thread | Television | You Tube
- 23 Comments
Happy Mother’s Day, Widdershins!
Today I will be sleeping in a bit later, canines permitting. I am a mother and a grandmother, and I have earned my stripes in that department. I lost my mother 4o years ago, but sent a card and gift card to my step-mother, so I’m in the clear there. With real-life attended to, let’s talk about the Moms of the silver screens, both large and small.
Most of these moms are unbelievably good. Happy, smiling women in starched dresses, three-inch heels and perfectly coiffed hair who dispense sage advice and snickerdoodles with the same charm and flair. Then there are the moms that are just deplorable, some funny and others terrifying. So, let’s here it for moms. All of them.
(1) Marian Cunningham, Happy Days
(2) Molly Weasley, Harry Potter
(3) Leigh Anne Tuohy, The Blind Side’
(4) Good Queen Elinor, Brave
(5) Mrs. Jumbo, Dumbo
This is an open thread.
SATURDAY LIGHT FARE
Posted on: May 11, 2013
Hello Widdershins. It’s Saturday so as is my habit, we’ll look at some of the lighter things in the news that caught my eye. No serious thinkin’ required today. And also, no “B” words today either! 
Some people should not be given microphones
Ted Johnson formerly of the New England Patriots has a radio talk show in Houston. However, he might need to put the mic down for awhile. Now, I’m not saying that Ted is a dumb jock, but I don’t think he’s quite gotten the grasp of the idea that Google, the internet, Twitter, etc. will easily repeat what you’ve said or written. You see Ted violated an age old rule: Don’t talk bad about another man’s wife. And especially, don’t talk bad about Vince Wilfork’s wife, when Vince looks like this. And here is what Ted said:
You know what, I’ve got it,” Johnson said on CBS Houston when a caller asked him to identify the player with the least attractive wife (audio here). “And this is a big, big man. This guy had his way with the Texans this year. He won’t hear this — Vince Wilfork.”
Now Ted is no slouch either when it comes to the big and brawny but ole Vince can probably take him easily. Quoting some more from the article:
Thing was, there was no way Wilfork — who played on the 2004 New England team with Johnson — wasn’t going to hear that awful response…
And once he did, let’s just say that Johnson was lucky Wilfork didn’t book the next flight to Houston to teach him a thing or two about respect. (Would anyone here have blamed him if Wilfork forcibly fed Johnson his microphone?)
Wilfork instead took to Twitter to point out just how wrong Johnson was.
You can go to the link to see Vince’s response. And it’s really sad that Johnson said anything like this. Being a fellow team mate I’m sure he had to be aware of this:
Bianca Wilfork has always been very public with her support of her husband and the couple runs The Vince Wilfork Foundation, which raises money for diabetes research. She may not fit society’s traditional definition of beautiful but she’s clearly beautiful to the only person whose opinion matters — Vince Wilfork.
Ted here’s a scoop for ya: Not everyone in the world can be Tom Brady handsome and Gisele Bündchen gorgeous. So until you Ted can engage your brain before engaging your mouth, as the Soup Nazi said: “No soup for you.”
Everyone gets graded “F” here
The scene is a United Airlines flight going from Denver to Baltimore. On board are a couple and their two children ages 4 and 8. There is an in-flight movie, Alex Cross, that will be shown. The movie is rated PG-13. Mom and Dad were concerned about the violence in the movie so they asked the flight attendants if it could be turned off. The flight attendants said no.
The parents, whose children are 4 and 8, believed the film to be too violent for their kids. “Alarmed by the opening scenes, we asked two flight attendants if they could turn off the monitor; both claimed it was not possible” and would be a nuisance to the people behind them.
At this point, according to the letter, the people behind the parents spoke up and said it would be fine with them if the movie screen was closed. “Both flight attendants, and later the purser, claimed that they have no authority or ability to change or turn off the movie. The purser did, however, agree with us, as did many more of the passengers around us, that it is patently inappropriate to expose children to such content.”
The parents wrote that throughout the discussion, no voices were raised and everyone was civil and polite. The parents apparently accepted that the movie was going to be shown. They attempted to distract their kids from the “horrific scenes on the movie screens,” they wrote.
Okay. I get that the parents were concerned about the “violence” in the movie. By the same token, however, if they were concerned about a movie, perhaps they should have done a little further checking with United online to see what movies would be playing onboard the aircraft. It seems that United has some aircraft that are “mainscreen equipped” while others have the personal viewing screen channel seats. Even though the other passengers were in agreement about the movie themes suitability for children and did not mind having the movie stopped, what if others had not been willing to do so?
What isn’t discussed in the Yahoo piece is that the parents asked if the pilot had the authority to have the screen raised and movie turned off!
We asked if the captain has the authority to address this issue, but received no response. A few minutes later we asked for the captain’s name (I failed to make note when he welcomed us on the PA system), and was told, by the purser, that we will have to ask him ourselves when we disembark.
So now at this point apparently they have one pissed-off pilot they’re gonna deal with. In fact the pilot was so p.o.’d that he announced that due to “security” concerns the flight was being diverted to Chicago O’Hare. To quote from these two aggrieved parents:
After landing a Chicago police officer boarded the plane and, to our disbelief, approached us and asked that we collect our belongings, and follow her to disembark.
[...]
After we were interviewed (for less than 5 minutes), our identities and backgrounds checked, we were booked on the next flight to BWI, and had to linger in the terminal for hours with our exhausted and terrified little boys.
Now wait a minute because there’s more from the two outraged, offended, and concerned parents.
To us, this incident raises two grave issues. First, the abuse of power by Captain [XX]. We understand that airline captains can and should have complete authority. However, when this authority is used for senseless, vindictive acts, it must be addressed.Second, and of even greater concern is United’s decision to inflict upon minors grossly inappropriate cinematic content, without parents or guardians having the ability to opt out. Had this been in a cinema or a restaurant, we would have simply left if the content were too violent, or too sexual, for a preschooler and a 2nd grader. Cruising at 30,000 feet, leaving was not an option.
Okay obviously the pilot was a jerk, but then so were these two people who were so overly concerned about a freakin’ movie! Lady and sir: If you were that concerned about your two precious young’uns’ sensibilities, then as I wrote above, you could have checked United online and found out what the movie was going to be and thus plan accordingly. It is up to you to make these decisions for yourselves and not to expect an airline to accommodate you and your kids in a situation like this. I’m of the opinion that the content of the movie wasn’t going to affect the preschooler very much and for the 8 yr. old, didn’t they bring anything to occupy the kid with while on the plane?
I put this in my “lighter fare” post because for me it’s so “light” I lmao’d when I read the article. So here’s a hint for the young man or woman or both the next time they are going from Denver to Baltimore: Take a train, bus or car.
Now lastly I give you Jimmy Kimmel’s Lie Wittness News where he or a staff member go out in public and take the pulse of the American public on vital issues of the day. The question of the day here is what did folks think about Obama’s appointment of Judge Judy to the Supreme Court. (sigh) Sometimes I’m afraid of the gene pool.
So what’s on your minds today Widdershins? Tell me in the comments below and also, a Happy Mother’s Day tomorrow for all the moms around.
Benghazi ma…
Posted on: May 10, 2013
- In: Benghazi | Future | Open Thread
- 15 Comments
That’s “Benghazi water” in Arabic (that’s a long “a” in “ma”). Every good American scandal has to have water in its name — there was Watergate, Whitewater, now Benghazi water. Just goes to prove, every really good scandal needs to be hydrated or something like that.
A funny thing happened to the “All Benghazi — All the Time” network — other news that they love to hype inconveniently happened — the Jodie Arias trial, the Cleveland kidnapping recoveries, Jim DeMint and the Heritage Foundation declaring immigration reform dead based upon the statistical work of a guy who wrote his dissertation on why nonintellectually gifted immigrants need not apply.
Bret Baier of the “All Benghazi” network had a special three-part docudrama on the subject and practically soiled himself each evening. The run-up to the hearings on Wednesday was nothing short of a Super Bowl Pregame Show — the only thing lacking was a commercial where Go Daddy spokesmodels were having their way with unsuspecting Snickers bars.
Here’s what we learned — not much of anything. No smoking 3-D printer replicated guns — no vast political intrigue — nothing other than the robust and over-developed self-estimation of the star witness, Gregory Hicks. If tooting your own horn is an art form, scoot over Kenny G, Gregory H is in da’House.
And I quote Mr. Hicks:
I earned a reputation for being an innovative policymaker who got the job done. I was promoted quickly and received numerous awards,” Hicks informed the lawmakers. “I have two master’s degrees.. . . I speak fluent Arabic. . . . I fast became known as the ambassador’s bulldog because of my decisive management styles. . . .Incoming charge Larry Pope told me personally that my performance was near-heroic.
The long and short of this: Two dead foreign service officers and two CIA contractors — brave men all with stellar reputations, doing courageous jobs, and as a country we owe them a debt of gratitude. We do not owe them a sideshow media circus pitched under an opportunistic tent of partisan politics.
These four men join some 60 or so who died in attacks in Turkey, Greece, Syria, Yemen (2 attacks), Saudi Arabia (2 attacks), Pakistan (3 attacks), and Uzbekistan during the Bush Administration. No outcry for the victims then, let alone a Huckabee radio séance where he foretold of the President being on a short road to impeachment.
The usual suspects are conjuring their conspiracy theories, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, the Drudge Report, and the fairly unbalanced “All Benghazi” network. Of course, the viperous progenitor and disembodied voice of car alarms, Darryl Issa, has had to have every suit he owns scotch-guarded because he seems so excited he’s about to molt his serpentine skin.
We’ve seen this play before — Whitewater was the epitome of the Gingrichesque scorched earth politics of destruction — $70 million and six years to investigate a failed Arkansas land transaction only to uncover an untoward fellatio transaction in Washington. What Whitewater did was to severely hobble a second Clinton term agenda, institutionalize Congressional paralysis, and convert both parties into acolytes of the religion of personal destruction.
But Benghazi offers a twofer — cripple Obama’s second term and potentially cripple Hillary for 2016. Pretty good strategy if it wasn’t so fatally flawed — put simply, there’s no there there.
As usual, the self-certified brainiac pundits say that Bronco Obama loves it when the House Republicans get “out over their skis” on issues like this, thereby looking petty, vindictive, and overly political. That’s all good and uber-Zen’ish, but continuing to ignore this festering sore is just emboldening the “Tea Party kookus” and impeding 2014 efforts to rid the Capitol of the Tea Party infestation.
What no one seems to realize is in order to believe even one scintilla of the Fox/Issa/Beck/Jones/Tea Party fiction, you have to indict the Joint Chiefs and the $750 Billion a year Pentagon as either incompetently ineffective or inextricably complicit in the conspiracy. This issue needs to be neutered before Speaker Orangeman appoints a Special Select Committee or even worse, there is a Foster Friess funded movie – I’m sure there is one already in production. Undoubtedly Mr. Hicks will see himself as the star being played by Jon Voight and if he isn’t available, Ted Nugent will most likely get the call.
This is an open thread.
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