It is very strange to have my (apparently) precious routines disrupted. For instance, I have no cable TV (no CNN updates, MSNBC (Olbermann and Maddow), Comedy Central (Daily Show and Colbert Report), Discovery Channel, etc.), library only internet access, or rhythms of my wife and son. I do have humidity, mosquitoes, squirrels and opossums in the attic (really), bad sheet rock, a cracked foundation, three taxing entities suing my mother’s estate, a growing knowledge of probate laws in Texas and Kansas, and a strong correlation between finishing a phone call and erupting in an outburst of Tourette’s syndrome.
On the other hand, I have plenty of time at night to sit zazen while the squirrels and opossums move furniture around in the attic. It’s probably good to have one’s routines disrupted.
Still dealing with passings. Make a will, folks.
My mother passed away this morning, peacefully and comfortably.
She had been undergoing treatments for cancer but was unable to rally.
My father passed away in 1992.
If you smoke, quit.
[corrected date error in post title]
Did accounting changes just before the issuance of the strongly positive 1st quarter profit reports have an effect?
After Year of Heavy Losses, Citigroup Finds a Profit [NY Times]
Citigroup, the battered banking giant, eked out a first-quarter net profit on Friday after more than a year of staggering losses and three bailouts from Washington, but used an accounting adjustment to do it.
The New York-based bank reported first-quarter net income of $1.6 billion, after a loss of $5.11 billion in the period a year earlier. <…> The results were also helped by an accounting adjustment that allowed the bank to post a one-off gain of $2.5 billion on its derivative positions.
So, check my math here, a $1.6B profit minus the one-off gain of $2.5B equals a -$0.9B shortfall, a $900,000 loss, yes?
Everyone remembers Columbine. One of the reporters of the original event, Dave Cullen, wrote a book about Columbine. It sounds like much of what was told to us is incorrect. [link via Doug]
10 years later, the real story behind Columbine [USA Today]
Their rampage put schools on alert for “enemies lists” made by troubled students, but the enemies on their list had graduated from Columbine a year earlier. Contrary to early reports, Harris and Klebold weren’t on antidepressant medication and didn’t target jocks, blacks or Christians, police now say, citing the killers’ journals and witness accounts. That story about a student being shot in the head after she said she believed in God? Never happened, the FBI says now.
I have the book on reserve from the library. I’m curious about reading it.
Like Rafe, I am concerned because “[o]ne of the biggest reasons I supported Barack Obama was the stand he was willing to take as a candidate against the worst excesses of the Bush administration in prosecuting the war on terror. As such, it is incredibly disappointing to me to see that as President, he is not living up to the principles he espoused before the election.”
I’m not quite ready to queue up Same Old Wine, but I’m feeling a bit tarnished.
Then there’s this from Glenn Greenwald at Salon:
An emerging progressive consensus on Obama’s executive power and secrecy abuses
It is becoming increasingly difficult for honest Obama supporters to dismiss away or even minimize these criticisms and, especially, to malign the motives of critics. After all, the Obama DOJ’s embrace of many (though by no means all) of the most radical and extremist Bush/Cheney positions — and the contradictions between Obama’s campaign claims and his actions as President — are now so glaring and severe that the harshest denunciations of Obama’s actions are coming from those who, during the Bush years, were held up by liberals and by Obama supporters as the most trustworthy and praiseworthy authorities on these matters.
Furrfu! Gotta pass that health care reform or it’s gonna feel like a wash.