Posts Tagged ‘Yachts’
Stuff…
Posted on: February 14, 2014
Happy St. Valentine’s Day!
Here’s hoping your Friday is a wonderful one free of ice, sleet, snow, and other hateful things that travel through the air and settle upon your world making life generally annoying like the news.
There’s so much stuff floating around out there in the world, today’s post is just going to be a jump ball of issues — add others, comment on these or dismiss them at will, but these are some of the things that have piqued my interest.
Stand Your Ground
The trial of Michael Dunn for the killing of Jordan Davis and attempting to murder three other teenagers, even more than the senseless killing of Trayvon Martin, has focused on the merciless inequities underpinning the “Stand Your Ground” laws. The practical effect of these “Stand Your Ground” laws is to award a statutory “reasonableness” defense for preconceived bigotry. Simply put, if you find yourself in a situation where you are in the proximity of a person about whom you harbor a preconceived prejudicial fear and that fear gives you a belief of imminent harm, you have a legislatively sanctioned right to kill.
In the case of killing seventeen-year-old Jordan Davis, was it reasonable for Michael Dunn’s “alleged fear” to be triggered by music? Was it reasonable for Dunn to see an “invisible” shotgun no one else saw or no one else found? Was it reasonable after the killing for Dunn to drive to a hotel and have pizza and wine? Was it reasonable to unload an ammo clip at four teenagers even as they sped away? Was it reasonable for Dunn to get up the next day and drive 175 miles home without so much as a call to the police?
The larger question is whether we, as a society, find it reasonable to look the other way at the extermination of a human being based upon meritless, unfocused, preconceived bigotry portrayed as fear after a killing? Lord, I hope not.
Performance Art Politics
Steve Stockman, the drugs in the underwear, homeless, outrageous in every respect two-term Congress-thing (I won’t flatter him by calling him a critter) is running against Texan John Cornyn for Senate. Stockman is known for his over-the-top Tweets like his favorite gun lubricant is “liberal tears,” or the best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out, or the solution to abortion is distributing firearms to babies.
If Stockman was smarter, he might well be a Sasha Baron Cohen character, but he isn’t. What he is, is a great example of politics for profit performance art — move over Herman Cain, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump — there‘s new competition on the way.
$10.10 an Hour
In conservative circles, there is almost uniform opposition to raising the minimum wage. It is understandable considering the reflexive reaction of the Republican Chamber of Commerce crowd. It seems to have gone unnoticed by these folks, but their position puts them squarely in the corner of more social welfare expenditures.
If wages are increased, more people will fail to qualify for assistance, thereby reducing the welfare rolls. Opposing an hourly wage increase equates to subsidizing businesses with government entitlements for employees and thereby supporting higher benefit expenditures. If Conservatives, for a moment, stopped and considered their position on this, their heads might explode.
Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie
Why is it that the characteristics admired in alpha males — boldness, decisiveness, and intensity — are characteristics loathed in women? Somehow describing Chris Christie as ruthless is positive, but describing Hillary Clinton as ruthless is an anathema. My bet — Hillary will be taking some alpha males to obedience school.
My Second Home is a Boat
The tax break allowing taxpayers to deduct loans for yachts as second homes if they have a toilet, galley, and a place to sleep has been around for 73 years. There’s legislation to finally repeal it — don’t hold your breath. My question: What was happening at the height of World War II in 1941 to reward the country’s yacht vacationers?
Butter
For someone who believes cooking with anything other than real butter is a sin against the cow gods, after 40-some years I was pleased the annual consumption of butter has once again surpassed margarine. Margarine usage is hitting a 70-year low. Finally!
West Virginia Water
Up until he caused the water to be cut off for 300,000 West Virginians, Carl Kennedy, the guy who ran Freedom Industries, had only been convicted of siphoning payroll taxes for sports cars, a private plane, Bahamian real estate, and conspiracy to traffic cocaine. I guess if you stick around long enough everyone gets a second or third act.
His incompetence or malfeasance isn’t that unique. In 2011 alone, 1,374 U.S. facilities discharged some 194 million pounds of chemicals into streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans. For those complaining over-regulation is so burdensome — just think, in order to dump 200-million pounds of chemicals into our streams, these facilities had to get their stuff to the river’s edge with no help from the government. Viva la free enterprise!
Iron Deficiency
The new CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (the behemoth corporate Martha Stewart) is a former scrap metal executive brought in to save the brand. How long do you think it will be before Martha is doing media pieces on the perils of iron deficiency?
NRA the Bluegrass Way
The NRA has almost convinced the Kentucky General Assembly (GenAss) the Commonwealth needs two new laws. One is to allow people to carry concealed weapons in bars, unless they are drinking. Think about that for a moment: Unless someone is so intoxicated as to point out his/her concealed weapon, who is going to then tell them, “Bad gun owner! Give me your gun!“
The other law the NRA is trumpeting is even more ludicrous. Kentucky Senate Bill 106 will allow judges issuing emergency protective orders to award the wonderful parting gifts of concealed carry permits. Any domestic relations attorney can attest to the race to the courthouse by both parties to be the first to get protective orders — under this madness, both parties can leave the courthouse with concealed carry permits to go along with their EPOs.
Madness, just absolute madness.
Utah, then Kentucky, Oh My!
Yesterday, a federal judge declared recognizing same-sex marriages performed in another state to be constitutionally required in Kentucky. It is noteworthy because the federal judge ordering the recognition was the first in the country to be appointed by a Republican, George H.W. Bush, back in 1992. The judge was recommended by Sen. Mitch McConnell. If tortoises can have dyspepsia, McConnell’s Tea Party opponent is giving him a good case of it.
One Big Buckeye Vote
In 2012, there were 5.63 million votes cast in Ohio. There was one person convicted of voter fraud. Now the Republican controlled legislature and Republican Governor John Kasich are passing voter id laws, reducing early voting, eliminating same day registration, eliminating weekend and extending hours voting, and eliminating same day registration. In short, inconveniencing everyone and making it harder to vote.
That one fraudulent vote must have been some vote!
What’s on your mind, this is an open thread.
SATURDAY LIGHT FARE
Posted on: July 20, 2013
seared scallops & pea relish
Good morning Widdershins! This will be a short post because I also have to do one for Sunday for Miz Chat and then come up with something somewhat interesting for Monday. Oy!
Mine is bigger than yours?
So how much is big enough when it comes to your own personal mega yacht? Apparently there is no such number or idea when it comes to yachts.
At 590- feet long, the Azzam is 57-feet longer than Abramovich’s mighty Eclipse — previously the largest yacht on the waves. The hulking superyacht is significantly longer than a football field, larger than the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and more capacious than many popular cruise ships.
Just building the yacht cost a staggering $605 million — a fee which doesn’t even begin to take into account the sky-high costs of its annual upkeep. In his book on the Lady Linda superyacht, author G. Bruce Knecht said that, “operating and maintaining a yacht is at least 10% of what the thing cost.” By which estimation, just keeping the Azzam on the water could cost as much as $60 million every year.
Conspicuous consumption much?
The Cow jumped over the moon
or it landed on the sleeping man.
Police say a cow fell through the roof of a small house in southeastern Brazil killing a man and narrowly missing his wife.
A police officer in the town of Caratinga says Joao Maria de Souza and his wife were sleeping when the one-ton cow fell through the asbestos roof and on top of the victim. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
The officer said Souza died of internal bleeding at a nearby hospital. The incident occurred on Wednesday.
He said the cow apparently was grazing on a small hill above Souza’s home.
A morning news cast that just rocks
Seems these morning news folks were in the middle of their show when apparently something just rocked their world.
KIII-TV’s studio anchors became the news last Friday morning when a nearby explosion shook the TV station, as well as its crew.
It was already an early morning as our three anchors readied themselves for a weather report at 5:30 in the Friday a.m. Almost two miles away a home explosion occurred, the blast of which was apparently felt all over town.
The KIII-TV station was literally rocked by the explosion, and all three anchors became visually perturbed as they waited for the shaking to subside.
And we have video of it too!
A few more youtubes
I thought this one was just great. A service member returns home (can’t tell which branch, the video is kinda dark) and his “girl” just goes nuts when she hears his voice.
Henri Le chat noir has a new video and he’s as morose as ever.
Okay that’s all I’ve got today folks. In addition to having to do three posts in three days (I don’t have that much to say), I’ve also gotta go practice my dance moves. I’m pretty good even if I say so myself, but you can check my moves out here. Stole that link from a friend of mine.
So what’s going on in your world today? Let me know in the comments below.
The Widdershins 
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