Reader Tips

Reader Tips 33 Comments

Nashville native Kitty Wells, aka The Queen of Country Music, has passed away at the age of 92. Her old-timey, squarish phrasing and unglamorous, modest, everywoman voice sounds rather unhip compared to some the gaudier starlets of today’s country music, but she did have a slew of Top Ten hits: here’s one from 1955 called Making Believe.
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33 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. There’s no escape:

    In the wake of the Supreme Court’s health care decision, several companies with 50 or more full-time workers have embarked on a quest. Their aim: Get below 50 and dodge the employer mandate. The health reform law forces them to start providing insurance by 2014 or pay stiff penalties.
    Kari DePhillips, who co-owns the Content Factory, a public relations firm in Pittsburgh, was hoping she could just break up the company to sidestep the rule. Maybe one firm would do marketing while the other builds websites….
    The only problem with her break-up plan is that it won’t work. The government would still consider both of her companies as one. That’s because the employer mandate penalty relies on “controlled group” provisions, focusing on who controls the company — not necessarily what they do…
    After hearing about the little-known rule, DePhillips took another stab at it: Start a second company that never existed as part of the first.
    Again, resistance to the rule is futile. The penalty only looks at who owns part or all of the company…

    h/t

  2. From Jay Cost’s “Bain Capital and Media bias” in the Weekly Standard:

    Just ten days ago, we received an utterly terrible jobs report, which reinforced the suspicion that the economy might once again be falling into recession. This could have substantial second-order effects on public policy, especially the deficit, and call into question the efficacy of the Obama administration’s policies.
    In other words, talking about the rotten economy is bad for this president.
    So, the media – following cues from the Democratic party – has pursued an alternative storyline: Mitt Romney is rich! He worked at a firm dealing in high finance! His money is invested overseas!

    The right narrative at the right time:

    Mitt Romney has basically been running for president for five years. Why are these stories about Bain Capital cropping up now? It is not as though the “scoops” in these stories were that hard to come upon; everything is in publicly available documents filed with the federal government.
    Generally speaking, we can perceive media bias on a whole different level when we start asking ourselves, “Why is the public discourse revolving around this question at the moment? Whom does this help?” This is where we can often see the alliance between the mainstream media and the Democratic political class. Journalists do not bend facts to support their ideological allies, but they ask questions that help them.

    After noting that four years ago the mainstream media “not only avoided asking tough questions about (Obama’s) background, but effectively labelled such enquiries as racist”, Cost writes:

    …the Romney campaign must tread very carefully with the Bain attacks. Because the media is looking to advance the storyline the Obama campaign desires, a direct response is going to be counter-productive. It only feeds the beast for that much longer, as the media will then lustily cover the “controversy” between the two sides.
    That’s not to say these attacks cannot or should not be countered. It’s just of question of how and when that should happen. Romney should not try to plead his case to the media, in the hopes that it will be a fair judge of who is right and who is wrong. It will not be.

    (emph. mine)
    The whole thing here.

  3. Great song by Jimmy Work and a great singer, Kitty Wells. She was one of my favourites over 50 years ago. Emmy Lou Harris’ 1977 version had more sophisticated phrasing and better production, but Kitty’s really had the heart.

  4. Michael J. Fell’s One-Way Transparency.
    Excerpt:

    “Progressives” keep insisting that Romney’s “secrecy” goes to the “trust factor”. When it comes to secrecy and the trust factor, how on earth can policy wonks who insist on hiding the Oval Office occupant’s entire past claim even a glimpse of, much less a hold on the moral high ground?

  6. felis, agreed. R.I.P. Kitty Wells. She was one of the favorites on my parents cabinet gramophone.

  8. There’s no escape:… Again, resistance to the rule is futile. …Posted by: EBD at July 16, 2012 10:04 PM
    Only for the stupid and unimaginative. I know many who have simply sold their company and used the money to set up a smaller leaner meaner company with less than 50 of their very best former employees…. and NO union.

  9. EBD, the Obama camp is desperate, hence Bain.
    If voters had any self-respect, they would see through this transparent mud-slinging and not vote for Obama for that reason alone!

  10. Re: Kitty Wells.
    Thanks! Must have sounded great on a 1950`s “Rock-Ola” jukebox with hi-fi!

  11. Any use of chemical weapons should turn Syrias military headquareters into a freefire zone.
    Just saying.

  12. EBD, 10:14p.m. —
    Regardless of our discussion last evening over the Romney ad, I’m overall pretty happy that the Romney campaign is cognizant of its possible risks — as you implied earlier today, better to address the concerns now than wait for the October surprise (I can still remember that goof-ball Democrat lawyer in the hat from New Hampshire or wherever reporting GWB’s thirty-year-old DUI, which revelation, despite how good he was, he never really recovered from).
    I like that Romney’s people have taken the long view of Bain and are going to disentangle it bit by bit. I actually believe that he will be able to innoculate himself against it by this flanking screen strategy, which reminds me a bit of what General Schwarzkopf did with the French army in the first Gulf War. Who knows, Mitt might well be able to score a Brian Mulroney 1984 moment against Obama in the debates. Regardless, I think this augers well.
    What I’m completely surprised about — and have been for a week or more — is why Obama’s people would have brought the Bain stuff up in the way they have recently (felonious behaviour, etc., etc.) There is a definite whiff of desperation about their behaviour — like Donna Brazile, the lady from NAACP and James Clyburn (as we have discussed previously).

  15. David (12:20), maybe the Bain/outsourcing attacks have been undertaken out of desperation, or maybe the Democrat braintrust did a lot of research and made the determination that they’re effective.
    The only certainty at this point is that Romney wants to play by gentleman’s rules, and that the Obama team has absolutely no intention of doing so. This breathtakingly hypocritical Obama ad, for example, which paints Romney as un-American, should be a warning to the Romney camp that the gloves are off, but Romney still seems stuck in his “Aw, shucks” mode. Here’s his response to one of those vicious ads against him:

    “I don’t know if President Obama knew when he said, ‘I’m Barack Obama and I approved this ad,’ that he knew it was untrue and factually inaccurate.'”

    I don’t know if he’s being disingenuous or if he’s just trying to take the high road, but Obama’s not a guy you should ever give the benefit of the doubt to, IMO.

  17. Love Kitty Wells.
    I ran into this lady singing up a storm in PEI this summer. This is the only video performance on the net I can find. This song doesn’t really show her talent. Juliette Squarebriggs. She aqppeared with a very talented electric guitarist, Ernie Gallant, unfortunately not with her on this video.
    http://vimeo.com/29399888

  18. Kitty Wells was the first female country singer to get a number one hit. She pushed Hank out of first place on the charts.
    After that record companies started signing up and really promoting women country singers.
    The song was “It wasn’t God who made Honky Tonk Angels”. It seems there was many a woman who identified with the song. 🙂
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKleTa94dC8

  19. 2 dead, 19 injured in gunfight at BBQ in Scarborough.
    Queue the reflexive, neo-liberal, illogical call for a handgun ban in 4, 3, 2, …, ….

  22. “Ohio filmmaker goes missing on quest to find elusive ‘spirit bear’ in B.C. wilderness”
    “Setting out from his Northern Ohio home in a car loaded with camping gear and camera equipment, Warren Sill had come 4,500 kilometres to the remote B.C. wilderness on a mission to find and photograph the elusive B.C. spirit bear. Now, more than 10 days after he was last seen, helicopters, volunteers and sniffer dogs continue to scour the hot, buggy heart of bear country looking for him.”
    http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/16/ohio-filmmaker-goes-missing-on-quest-to-find-elusive-spirit-bear-in-b-c-wilderness/
    …-
    http://animal.discovery.com/tv/grizzly-man-diaries/timothy-treadwell/timothy-treadwell.html
    “A Tragic Ending”
    “In October 2003, Treadwell’s remains, along with those of his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, were discovered near their campsite in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Reserve. They had been mauled and devoured by a grizzly, the first- known victims of a bear attack in the park.”

  23. Neo-AGW Progress Report: “plan B”.
    H/T Bill Gate$ of $oftmicro.
    “Keith, who manages a multimillion dollar geoengineering research fund provided by Microsoft founder Bill Gates,”.
    …-
    “US geoengineers to spray sun-reflecting chemicals from balloon”
    “Experiment in New Mexico will try to establish the possibility of cooling the planet by dispersing sulphate aerosols”
    “Environmental groups fear that the push to make geoengineering a “plan B” for climate change will undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/17/us-geoengineers-spray-sun-balloon

  27. Florida Police go to arrest suspect, but screw up the address. Random, innocent guy answers the door holding a drawn gun and they shoot him dead.
    ‘Officials said the deputies did not identify themselves because of safety reasons….”It’s just a bizarre* set of circumstances. The bottom line is, you point a gun at a deputy sheriff or police officer, you’re going to get shot,” (Lt. John) Herrell said.’
    So the next time three men bang on your door at 1:30AM and don’t say anything about being cops, if you value your life just go along with whatever they want.
    *Not the word I’d have used.
    http://www.wesh.com/news/central-florida/Deputies-shoot-kill-man-after-knocking-on-wrong-door/-/11788162/15527202/-/item/0/-/1245e2ez/-/index.html
    Stolen from Ace.

  28. Neil King Jr. in the WSJ:

    Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has an inordinate share of what might be called anti-support: supporters who support him primarily because they oppose President Barack Obama.
    That is beginning to stir some worry among Republican who fret that Mr. Romney’s anti-Obama support may not prove as durable as pro-Romney support would. “The danger is that those votes can slip away easier if circumstances change,” says Ed Rollins, a longtime Republican campaign operative.
    The polling numbers on this are pretty striking. A Washington Post/ABC News poll this past week found that just 38% of Romney supporters said their vote would primarily be for him, as opposed to 57% who said their support was actually a vote against Mr. Obama. That finding is in line with a number of other recent polls, including a June survey by the Pew Research Center.

    Later,

    Not everyone in the GOP thinks their standard bearer has to engender a blaze of positive votes. House Speaker John Boehner waded into the issue recently at a private fundraiser, when a woman asked if he could make her love Mr. Romney.
    “No,” he said, according to a transcript of the exchange the Boehner office provided to Roll Call. “The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney. I’ll tell you this: 95% of the people that show up to vote in November…are going to vote for or against Barack Obama.”

  29. ‘Now that they’ve passed the bill, we’re finding out what’s in it. One word that could take down Obamacare.’
    Posted by: A Dog Named Kyoto at July 17, 2012 12:35 AM
    A Dog Named Kyoto – This would indeed bring him, Obama, down if the guy running against him was not the author of ‘that bill’ at another time (pre Obama president) in another place (state of Mass.). Romany was the governor who wrote Obamacare and rammed it down the throats of the citizens of Mass! Why do people never ask why Mass. voted for Ron Paul?

  33. Kitty had class unlike some of the modern ‘country’ singers. Carry Underwear comes to mind. She took the tree outta country.

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