Day: August 22, 2008
Another Common Man
This one freezes up an airport for his personal convenience — something all common men commonly do.
The Common Man
Common men have too many homes to count.
And here he goes again….
It turns out that a few months ago, a McCain family corporation closed on a second multi-million-dollar beach condo in the same building in exclusive Coronado, California — at around the same time that John McCain offered his somewhat tone-deaf observation that struggling homeowners were “working at second jobs” and “skipping a vacation” in order to make mortgage payments on time.
Cindy McCain discussed the timing of the second condo purchase in a June interview with Vogue magazine (not online) that’s newly relevant in light of the explosive controversy over John McCain’s inability to recall how many homes the McCains own.
And in another fun fact that could pour fuel on this controversy, Cindy told her interviewer that the reason they needed a second beach condo in the Coronado building was that the first was too crowded because her kids were staying there and as a result she “couldn’t get in the place.”
Cindy continued: “So I bought another one.”
Here’s the relevant passage, from the start of the Vogue piece:
It is a late Sunday afternoon in April, and I am sitting in a condominium in Coronado, California, taking in the view of the gorgeous San Diego Bay with Cindy McCain. She closed on the place just two weeks earlier, and the only things unpacked so far are the family photos that dot almost every surface. It’s her family’s second condo in the building. “I like the ocean, and the kids love it here, and I love that,” she tells me, curled up on a nondescript couch that looks like it might have come with the apartment. “When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, ‘Oh, this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go.’ Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn’t get in the place. So I bought another one.”According to a July story in The Politico, a McCain family corporation spent a combined $4.7 million on the two condos in Coronado.
If the interview was conducted sometime in April, and she’d closed on the condo two weeks earlier, that means that the latest the closing could have happened is mid-April, and the earliest is mid-March.
On March 25, John McCain said:
And 51 million homeowners are doing what’s necessary: working at second jobs, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets to make their payments on time.So at around the time McCain said this, the McCain family corporation was either actively in the market for, or had closed on, a second multi-million-dollar beach condo in the same building which was necessary because the first one was too crowded with their children in it.
Link.
Yeah, yeah, I know, facts have nothing to do with President McCain, but it’s fun to beat him up.
A Hero
Steiner already was in his late 20s when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, bringing with them anti-Jewish laws they had spread through much of the rest of Europe. His father-in-law fled to Englandin 1938, but Steiner settled in Bratislava with his wife and young son.He was arrested after Nazis seized control of the country, but was later released to finish a building project in town. He began designing work camps and other sites for the Nazis, hoping the Jewish community would be better off if they cooperated.
Soon he had 4,000 people working in 130 workshops at the camps, making an array of items for the German war effort. At lunch, he gathered with other young Jews to talk about ways to improve conditions for the Jews. The band soon became known as the Bratislava Working Group.
But as Slovaks began a massive deportation of Jews to concentration camps inPoland in 1942, the group’s mission changed as well. It decided to focus on finding a way – any way – to rescue Jews in Slovakia.
“We wanted to help in any way we could,” he said. “It was a very close-knitfriendship with one ideal: To help the Jews.”
One of the members, Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, had heard a rumor that a Nazi official was willing to accept cash bribes to keep Jews off the dreaded deportation list. Soon, they had devised a back story for their gambit: They were negotiating on behalf of a fictitious world Jewish leader named Ferdinand Roth.
When it was time for a face-to-face meeting, the group picked Steiner, the confident man who cut a dashing figure with slicked back hair and a golden tongue. Inside, though, Steiner was awash with anxiety. A single misstep could have cost him his life and betray the group’s effort.
Asking the rabbi for advice, he got a most unexpected answer: Imagine the Nazi sitting on a toilet nude. When he arrived at the meeting and did just that, he couldn’t stifle a smirk.
“He got really angry but I told him if you’re angry we won’t make a deal. He conceded, then said, ‘Take a seat,'” Steiner remembers. “From then on, I wasn’t nervous at all.”
Steiner soon became the go-to-guy for the group’s negotiations with local leaders and Nazi officials, handing over cash installments smuggled in through contacts in Europe, America and elsewhere.
“He was the foot soldier of the group,” said Jacob Fuchs, a Tel Aviv author who chronicled the group. “He went out there and risked his neck in actual negotiations.”
Buoyed by its success, the group planned to boost the bribes to save Jews through the rest of the continent, but it couldn’t come up with the cash. Their work was sidelined for good in September 1944 when Slovak partisans revolted, drawing a crushing response from the German military.
[more]
Today’s Micro$oft Bashing
I bash because I hate having crap shoved down my throat; George B. or Bill G. It’s just that simple.
So Microsoft’s widely publicized “edgy” ad campaign, the one designed to counter the Apple (AAPL) ads that have so eroded its brand, is to feature Jerry Seinfeld as celebrity pitchman. And in many ways that does more to illustrate the sad differences between the two companies than the “Mac vs. PC” ads it’s designed to combat. Because Microsoft (MSFT) has chosen as quarterback for this campaign a tired ’90s sitcom star who not only used a Mac in the series that made him famous, but closed out Apple’s 1997 “Crazy Ones” ad–which, ironically, aired only once, during the series finale of “Seinfeld.”
So Microsoft, in an effort to overhaul its image and upstage the cool kids down in Cupertino, seems to have done little but confirm the message of its rival’s ads: “I’m a Mac, You’re a Dork,” or, in this case, a dated comedian. Really, the company might as well have hired Don Rickles for the job. Certainly, he would have come cheaper than the $10 million Seinfeld is rumored to have demanded. And there’s life left yet in that “What are you lookin’ at, you hockey puck?!” line of his.
Anyway, in the end, it’s not marketing that’s the issue here. It’s the product.
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And now something to clear the mind. This says it all — not about tech, but about life. Conservatism is, to a great extent, about death, this is about life:
A T For The Era
Info here.
Thought For The Day
Of little importance is the loss of such things as wealth. But a terrible thing is to lose wisdom. Of little importance is the gaining of such things as wealth. Great is the importance of gaining wisdom. – Buddha
A Defeat For Corporatism? A Business Actually Gets Shut Down
Two young East Bay girls are trying to find out if you really can fight city hall. The youngsters are battling to get their produce stand back after the city of Clayton shut them down.
The mayor himself is getting involved in this issue; he says the produce stand, operated by two young sisters, had to be shut down because of public safety and a zoning ordinance. But members of the Lewis family say – we have just begun to fight.
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Out Of My Mind 