You’re Kidding, Right?

Michael P. Lewis was the Project Director for the notorious Big Dig, a job which made him second only to disgraced chairman Matthew Amorello in the line of responsibility for all the failures of that disastrous project.
Those failures include a 500% markup in the cost, from $3 billion to $15 billion, and the death of a Jamaica Plain woman due to shoddy workmanship.
In spite of this, the Turnpike Authority Retirement Board approved payment of an enhanced pension over 3 times the normal benefit: $72,578 versus $23,000 a year.
Adding insult to injury, Lewis is now employed as Rhode Island’s transportation secretary at $130,000 a year.

So Long

I’m finally rid of my old hosting company, a big relief.
When I started with them, they were a small local reseller, two geeky preppies with a lot of ambition and technical savvy.
A lot changed through the years; they moved out of state and stopped taking phonecalls, asking that tech support questions be emailed. No one seemed to know where they were or even what business they were in.

Continue reading So Long

Conundrum

Take a look at the pictures of this married couple from Clackamas County, Ore. and consider how you would describe their faces: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4550151&page=1
Arrogant?
Insolent?
Absent of remorse?
Smug?
Good-looking, well-groomed, healthy, maybe even financially comfortable*?
These are the faces of couple who let their 15 month old baby die out of some kind of perverse so-called religious belief.
I look at these people, who have everything going for them, and wonder how they could have been so selfish, or so weak, or so stupid, when someone like me, who had none of their advantages, managed to raise a child to adulthood.
“There but for the grace of God” I understand, but this? I just don’t get it.
______________
*Clackamas County, Ore, ain’t exactly Hooterville: the county’s median income in 2004 was $67,900.

But She’s Got Murtha

I don’t care how many second-rate politicians with dreams of personal payoff have endorsed the Pretender – Hillary Clinton has Murtha.
Not that you’d know this from the MSM, who have been cackling with joy about the endorsement of Obama by Pennsylvania’s anti-choice senator, Bob Casey, for days.
I’ve said it before: when books are written about the Democratic party’s nomination process for the 2008 election, there is going to be enough dirt uncovered to fill Colorado Convention Center.
Meanwhile, as of this hour, 82% of the respondents to a poll on the Boston Herald think that Massachusetts would be better off without Obama’s clone, Governor Deval Patrick.
Caveat emptor.

Coffee

Of all the common luxuries we have that were unavailable to even the Tudor court – central plumbing and heating, the automobile, the lightbulb – the ability to make coffee in the morning is among the ones for which I am most grateful.
I have a drip coffee maker, nothing special, but it provides a bit of civility and pleasure in the course of morning ablutions.
Sure, I enjoy the better things as much as the next person, but without a full-time caretaker, heated pools, high definition TVs, luxury cars would be a maintenance burden.
Bottom line, having a bed to sleep in with no Cobra snakes crawling around on the floor, a roof that doesn’t leak, heat in the winter, electricity to run essentials like the computer and the furnace, reliable transportation, and a coffeemaker are pretty much everything I and probably most of the human race would like to have to be comfortable and productive.

Thank You, Taylor Marsh

Maybe it was an editorial slip-up, but the virulently pro-Obama Huffington Post actually published an objective opinion piece on the devolving race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
Meanwhile, the party elders continue to embarass themselves with their divided loyalties and public flaunting of negotiations for personal gain.
This whole thing makes one nostalgic for the days when laughing at Bushisms was the political maven’s favorite parlor game.