Hustling Iowa -- The Democrats

So far, it is simple. No one is officially running for the Iowa caucuses nod to be a White House candidate. Then again, it is complicated, because every self-styled political celebrity who ever looked in a mirror and said "Hi Mr. (Ms.) President" is sniffing around, looking for a hay bale to sit on and go "Aww Shucks" to us.


The TMR contribution to this operation begins with a baby step.   Six Democrats score a point or better in the major polls. They're listed below, just the facts ma'am.  Changes galore can be expected.

I'm starting with Democrats because they are usually the major enemy of liberty. I'll get around to the Republicans before long. Know thy most important enemy.

Of the six,  all have either been here recently or have organizations in place. They do a little retail demagoguery, but the immediate goals is to endorse and throw money at state-level politicians  in hopes of getting a helping hand when the caucus campaigns take off.



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Joseph Robinette BIDEN;  born Nov. 2, 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania; lawyer, former Delaware senator, vice president.

Hillary Rodham CLINTON; born Oct. 26, 1947 in Chicago;  lawyer, former "first" lady; former New York senator,  former secretary of state.

Andrew Mark CUOMO, born Dec. 6, 1957 in Queens, New York; lawyer, governor of New York.

Martin O'MALLEY: born Jan. 18, 1963 in Boston: lawyer, former Baltimore mayor, Maryland governor.

Bernard SAUNDERS; born Sept. 8, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York; former congressman, mayor, student activist.  (Sanders calls himself an independent but caucuses with Democrats.)

Elizabeth Ann WARREN;  born June 22, 1949 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; lawyer, Massachusetts senator, former Obama consumer  "protection" official.

Blog beg, especially for vintage Apple experts

Being a packrat is fun and sometimes useful. But there comes a time...

So you wouldn't believe the amount of Jim-stuff heading for the landfill, including my first iMac  (eMac?), a desktop from the 90s, big heavy old brute running something like OS8.

It served me well, and there is a lot of stuff on the hard drive. I will probably never look at it again, but I might want to.
.
So, you experts among  my readers, supposing I pull the hard drive.

Is there a process for retrieving the information from the old drive alone if I ever want to?

Or do I need some sort of separate hard drive to download the old stuff to before I junk the computer?

Or what?


TIA.

Jim

(A nod here to all my old friends, acquaintances, and enemies from Over Yonder.)

Nautical distractions (4)

If I am not mistaken, today will go down in the history of a small Iowa city as the Day the Beard Got Flushed. 

Tomorrow the freshly shaven takes his departure, and I like to imagine that  he glances at the Mississippi River on his childhood doorstep and thinks: "See ya. I leave you now to master waters far greater than your little peetrickle flow." 

I look forward to having him here again on one of his early leaves so that he may confirm his suspicion that his new employer will never equip him with arms so fine as those he knew in his extreme youth.

Godspeed, Son.

Thanks a lot, Charlo, and fork you, too

Eventually I got around to reading the Reason take on Charlo Greene's  "F--- it. I quit"  skit and even scanned a few dozen reader comments.  Disheartening.

Of course television journalists aren't. They get paid to draw audiences to commercials for gunk to make your underarms smell better. That makes them  shills. But they pretend to be journalists, and most of the public goes along with the gag. They have contracts with their stations to maintain that pretense. Part of the ruse is to appear objective. A big part is promising not to say
"f--k" on camera.

Charlo broke her contract and became an instant "libertarian" hero -- if the bulk of  the Reason comments is any guide --  because she vulgarly pimped  a personal political opinion on her employer's time, employer' property, employer's  spectrum, and likely as not wearing her employer's clothing.

It was about pot, of course, and it's irrelevant that her personal opinion and (most of) ours are identical.  The war on some drugs is illogical, expensive, stupidly waged, and very often downright cruel and immoral. (Hey, toss a grenade trew that there door Rambo; there probably ain't no little girl sleeping in da crib.)

The remnants of journalistic integrity need to be preserved. When a reporter outs a crooked or stupid or venal politician, we should be moved to an initial presumption of accuracy. When she reports a failed policy we should be able to assume that something needs quite a little more thought.

That happens only when the profession creates its own reputation for reportorial virtue, and that is the opposite of attention-whoring.

Why yes, Charlo, I do mean you.