Out to Get You? Sure...

They're Out Ta Get Me / They Won't Catch Me / I'm F---ing Innocent."

--Axl Rose, "Out Ta Get Me," Appetite for Destruction

I've been trying to keep up with the back-and-forth concerning State Sen. Wilkerson and Boston City Councilman Turner's candid camera moments (For you out-of-staters, both were caught on tape pocketing bribes).

The big response from a lot of their supporters seems to be less "it was a misunderstanding" and more about how the conspiratorial idea that "they" were "out to get" Wilkerson and/or Turner should somehow mitigate the action.

Obviously, there's a racial implication that could come with that, but it's worth noting that defenders of such notables as Eliot Spitzer, Larry Craig, Ted Stevens, and Bill Clinton used the same "defense," so it's clear that it can cut across several lines.

My response to all of this?

Well, duh.

As I started to write about in the last entry, anyone in any type of public or prominent position should operate under the assumption that virtually anything they do outside of their home can and will be recorded for posterity. That was always more or less true, but in the days where anyone with a web connection can report (gotta love blogs), anyone with a phone can record, and where YouTube means the anonymous millions can experience the schadenfraude that comes with your downfall, that becomes especially true.

For partisan elective officeholders, that's especially true -- besides the general idea that watchdogs like the FBI (or, say, undercover police assigned to monitor a particularly notorious men's room at the Minneapolis airport) might be monitoring you for a sudden integrity check, you also have to remember that you will always have folks from the other side of the political aisle nipping at your heels every two or four years.

So yes, it's fair to say that they really are "out to get you."** (That is, even though there's NO evidence that partisan conspiracies inspired any of the above...unless you believe a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to proceed with the Paula Jones harassment case against the sitting President was a 'partisan conspiracy').

So just behave with integrity and it really shouldn't be a problem.

Or, better yet, just retire to private life and spare me the pain of your self-righteous indignation.

** With due props, of course, to Nick for pointing this out in his comment following the Spitzer resignation.

What Was This Guy Thinking?

William Diamond is this week's hands-down recipient of the ex-Senator Marzilli award for allegedly engaging in lewd behavior that would lead anyone to naturally wonder, "Just what in the heck was this guy thinking?"

http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnews/ci_11057777

LOWELL -- Members of the Lynnfield High School cheerleading team had to ride home with their parents from a competition at Lowell High School on Sunday after their 56-year-old bus driver was charged with accosting girls from the Leominster team.

Police said William Diamond, 56, of Danvers, will be summonsed to Lowell District Court to face charges that he offered teenage Leominster cheerleaders $40 to lift their shirts.

Several girls witnessed the offer and told adults, who notified a detail officer working at the scene about 2:30 p.m., police said.

This was bad enough, but in the everyone-has-a-cell-phone-camera-with-recorder-and-access-to-the-Internet era, this whole thing could've been MUCH worse for all involved (not least of whom would've been the cheerleaders) had his offer been taken up. Even though it wasn't technology that brought this guy down, I'm amazed that more people aren't aware that virtually anything that they do these days could easily be audio- or video-recorded (sort of like State Senators or Boston City Councilors taking bribes from undercovers!)

Ex-State Senator Marzilli, by the way, is the gentleman who engaged in a downtown Lowell "groping spree" that ended in a foot chase by police to the Roy Garage (which just so happens to be right next to my house, though I swear that's just a huge coincidence).

Underwater, Maybe. Drowning? No.

http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_11030737?source=rss_viewed

The Sun had a piece today on so-called "underwater" or "negative equity" mortgages in the area -- in case you're wondering, roughly 1 in 5 recently-purchased Lowell homes falls in this category (I suspect mine is included in the 20%).

For the record, I don't care.

I bought the place with very little down, have put very little into the principal (as you know, those first many payments are heavily skewed to the interest side), and the market hasn't exactly zoomed. So yes, I'm technically "underwater."

All of that means absolutely nothing to me.

I'll get a massive tax break this year for all that interest (plus, the first-time homebuyer benefit), I get all the personal, intangible benefits of ownership (could be fodder for an entry or two sometime), and I don't plan on selling anytime soon. While my stocks tank by the day, I'm slowly but surely building real equity and net worth in the form of my condo.

The article was fair -- far from being alarmist, it even mentioned that the "underwater" status is only bad for those looking to sell, struggling to make payments, or both.

Just an important thing to remember every time you see news headlines about this -- to some, it's a crisis, but to anyone who bought a home using the I-plan-to-stay-here-for-several-years-and-that's-why-I'm-not-renting rule of thumb, it really isn't worth crying about.

The Car Dealer's Answer..

I ran into a Navy Lieutenant today whose family runs a string of car dealerships in northern Virginia. As soon as he mentioned this, I asked him something I'd been dying to ask for a few weeks and now finally had the chance:

"When gas prices were shooting through the roof, and analysts were predicting that crude would fly through the $200 marker, there were constant reports of people dumping their SUVs for anything they could, and stories about how dealers couldn't get rid of them....so now that gasoline has fallen by more than a dollar and a half per gallon, and analysts are making equally wild and irresponsible prognostications about how low the price of a barrel will soon go, are people now clamoring to buy SUVs?"

I could tell from his immediate reaction that a) he knew exactly where I was going with the question before I even finished asking, and b) it wasn't the first time he'd heard it.

"Absolutely," he replied. "We're selling SUVs at just as fast a rate as we ever have. In fact, if you look at some of the markdowns and the deals that have carried over, we've had some of our most brisk SUV sales ever in the past couple weeks."

Wow. I bought my car in 2004 (a 2001 model) and plan to hang onto it for several more years...literally, until it won't *go* any more. Can I be the only one who thinks that way?

What are all these new SUV owners going to do the next time gas spikes up to $4/gallon?

Not So Common

One of my least-favorite expressions is "that's common sense," because people throw it around when talking about something with which they're familiar and use it to put down others who lack knowledge of same.

Knowing how to operate ANY piece of machinery, for instance, can't be common sense because it requires some type of knowledge that a person who grew up without the technology wouldn't have. Same could be said for fixing said machinery -- things like changing your oil, replacing your headlight, and even pumping your own gas are only commonsensical when you've done it, or seen it done.

That having been said, there are times that the 'common sense' label ought to apply. I saw two such examples today, and feel inspired to write about them because a) not only was common sense violated, but b) the violator -- rather than offer an excuse or apology -- didn't seem to realize what had happened:

(1) In a room with three or more people in it, a speaker should address the person for which something is intended before saying it.

I think we've all seen this applied, or mis-applied. If you work in an office with eight people, there are always going to be two-way conversations, multi-way conversations, sidebars, phone calls, drop-ins, etc. Lots of talking is going on. Unless you signal the person you're addressing with "Hey, [insert name]" and wait for a "Yeah...?" before speaking, the recipient has no reliable indicator that he is being addressed in the first place. So you may go on with some ten-minute explanation of what needs to happen that day, or a diatribe about why a procedure is messed up, or whatever it is you're prattling on about, but all the "recipient" is hearing is broadband white noise. The same type of thing could happen in a crowded car, a lunch table, or anywhere else. The key thing here is that the burden should fall on the speaker. Because that could cut across any divide of culture, technology, and time (unlike, say, how to connect your laptop to your modem) I think it could fairly be put under the 'common sense' umbrella). Bottom Line: If you're addressing someone and he or she doesn't know it, the fault is yours for not 'signaling' first.

(2) Before entering an elevator, people should wait for those who need to get off to do so first.

I think this one pretty much speaks for itself, so there's really no need to belabor it. It's not an arbitrary thing to say off-loaders first, then on-loaders; from a practicality standpoint, it wins, hands-down. Of course, the same could be said for buses, trains, etc. The funny thing is, I'm staying at a hotel in Arlington right now (conference in DC this week), and I just saw this violated twice in a row. The second time, the woman who barged into the elevator as I was trying to exit in the lobby harrumphed me with a drawn-out "Excuuuse me," and I turned to her and calmly replied, "Yes, excuse you."

If you don't know the clutch from the gas from the brake, you're okay. Jared Diamond even has your back -- he wrote an entire chapter on the way people use relative knowledge to (wrongly) make the leap towards cultural superiority in Guns, Germs, and Steel. If someone accuses you of lacking common sense, just coolly reply with an inquiry about whether the person feels that any Maori tribseman (assume none has ever driven a standard) has common sense either.

But if you don't signal out the recipients of your speech in a multi-party environment, or if you barge into elevators without letting off-loaders move first and don't see the problem, I'm a little more inclined to worry.

Will the Real Sarah Palin Quote Please Stand Out?

Whatever your opinion of Sarah Palin, anonymous McCainiac staffer leaks, or the 2008 election in general, the quote below really stands out on its own:

"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars...Never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

Does anyone remember the quote from Billy Madison, after his portion of the debate thing with the evil guy? Well, here it is:

"Mr. Madison, what you just said is the most insanely idiotic thing I have ever heard. At no point in you incoherent rambling response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. We are all now dumber for having had listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul!"

Mea Culpa, Sarah Palin

Sometimes you're right when others think you're wrong (whether the 'Bradley Effect' might be a factor in the 2008 election), sometimes you think you're right, someone else thinks you're wrong, but no one can be sure (just ask the guy I work with whether my calling back to *check in on things* while I was on leave was appropriate), and sometimes you're just wrong.

Seeing the retractions to the stories about Sarah Palin's confusion regarding whether Africa was a continent (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081113/ap_en_tv/palin_hoax_1) I have to admit that it was something I repeated to friends and even made a reference to (albeit a quick one) on this blog...without ever having seen any documentation that she had ever said it (unlike, say, her answers to the Bush Doctrine question, the bank bailout, whether she reads any periodicals, and her own rebuttal to the Africa thing, which are all widely available on YouTube for your viewing enjoyment, or fear).

But when you're wrong, you're just wrong, and there's not much more you can say.

I know I wouldn't want people mis-attributing quotes to me, much less repeating said quotes, so the same respect should be due Gov. Palin.