Hillary Clinton Said What?

According to CNN, regarding Clinton’s meeting in China:

“Human rights cannot interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises,” Clinton said.

I’m not going to get all political here, but what? I’m waiting for Clinton to reach behind her ear, pull off the elaborate latex mask she’s wearing and reveal herself as Donald Rumsfeld. It’s all human rights, people!

January 14, 2009

I’m actually too busy with work to write about work today, but I wanted to share an absolutely mind-numbing experience I had this morning.

I had the car in to a dealership to have a headlight changed, oil change, and to investigate a pernicious rattle from underneath. So, I brought some work to do while I waited, which ended up being about an hour and forty-five minutes. That was fine, no problem.

But there was a T.V. in the waiting room, an exceptionally loud T.V. that was blaring first the Rachel Ray Show and then The View, neither of which I’ve ever seen, thank heavens. For crissakes, if anyone has ever deserved to be hung up by their little toes and flogged with a brace of angry badgers, it’s every one of the bloody hosts of these two shows.

Rachel Ray is perhaps the most insufferably boring, and simultaneously irritating, creations the talk show world has ever produced. She sounds like she’s perpetually getting over a bad cold, croaking and rasping her way through the entire hour. How did anyone who sounds like that get a job speaking for a living?

And The View. The only thing I could think about the whole time was a parody I saw either on The Simpsons or Family Guy in which the hosts all just squawk and cluck like hyperactive hens. It was surprisingly accurate.

If this is what passes for entertainment in this country, no wonder it elected Bush twice and came within a hair’s breadth of a McCain/Palin administration.

Anyway, as fun as it is to rant and rave, I’ve got work to do.

Oh, come now….

UPDATE: the full list has just been released, and ten stores in my area are closing, including two I see on a weekly basis.  Huzzah!

If there’s anything good to be said about our economic woes of late, it’s this: Starbucks is closing a bunch of stores.  Ding-dong the witch (or mermaidy-thingy) is (somewhat) dead!  I don’t want to go into a whole big thing here, but I do want to mention how utterly ridiculous the media coverage has been.  Yes, okay, it’s another sign that our economy is in the dumps, but isn’t it going to help people in the long run?  I mean, who can afford to spend seven dollars (or whatever, I don’t go there, so I don’t know what things cost) on a g*dd*mn cup of coffee these days anyway?  So, more money in people’s pockets, and maybe an indy coffee shop opens in the space, and everyone can just chill the hell out.  Here’s what got me started on this.  From today’s Chicago Tribune, about the closing of a store in Country Club Hills:

“They just pulled the plug too soon,” [Russell] Morgan said as he satisfied his twice-a-day caffeine habit. “They didn’t give it enough time.”  To people who live in more fashionable ZIP codes, the loss of a Starbucks might not be viewed as a wound to civic pride. But in Country Club Hills, the opening of the ubiquitous chain in May 2007 signified a certain cachet.  ”It meant we had arrived,” Morgan said….[T]he nearest Starbucks purveyor is four miles away, in Homewood.

The story is accompanied by this photo of a dejected Morgan, apparently about to expire from the loss of his beloved Starbucks.  The man looks like he might actually keel over and die right now.  He may have, for all I know.  Come on, people, stiff upper lip! No time to mourn, we must reach Homewood before noonfall, or I fear we shall all meet a similar fate.  

As the Tribune story notes, despite its name, Country Club Hills and other south suburbs of Chicago have a hard time attracting businesses, and often feel left out of the region’s economic development.  Okay, fair enough, but why does Starbucks represent economic development?  Where have you “arrived” when a Starbucks opens in your community?  And why do you feel abandoned when Starbucks and its “cachet” disappear?  Can someone tell me just what the hell is so absolutely knock-me-down-and-call-me-Judy great about a freaking coffee shop?  I could understand if the argument was, “this is the only place in the community where people sit and interact with each other on a daily basis, it’s really a fixture in the daily social life of our area and we’re afraid of what will happen to the neighborhood if it goes.”  But no, that’s not the concern–it’s “cachet.”  Give me a break.  I need a cup of coffee.  Maybe I’ll go MAKE ONE MYSELF!

Anti-Starbucks logo from Amerikaos.