Author Archives: LesterMcGrowdie

Kevin’s Photography Tip O’ the Day

by LesterMcGrowdie Posted on April 23, 2017

Mother Jones

Here’s something very simple that I find pretty useful during my photo outings: a small beanbag. When not in use, it sits at the bottom of your camera bag and gives the camera a little extra cushion. In use, you just set your camera down on it. If the surface is rocky, it helps to stabilize the camera. If the surface is flat but not level, you can smoosh it around until the camera is pointed in the right direction.

The beanbag is nice if you don’t have a tripod on hand, or if you need to put the camera down in a small place where a tripod won’t work. Once it’s set, you can pretty easily take nice, sharp photos even with long shutter times. I’ll post an example tomorrow.

My beanbag was custom made for me, so you can’t have it. But I assume they’re fairly easy to find or make. A beanbag filled with little beads of silly putty or something similar might be even better, but I don’t where you could find something like that.

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Kevin’s Photography Tip O’ the Day

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This Ad by Republicans Against Barry Goldwater Basically Predicted Donald Trump

by LesterMcGrowdie Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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“When the head of the Ku Klux Klan, when all these weird groups come out in favor for the candidate of my party, either they’re not Republicans or I’m not,” says the thoughtful-looking man as he stares into the camera.

You wouldn’t be at fault for assuming such a line was used to describe the existential crisis within the Republican party today, as it wrestles with the very real prospect of Donald Trump becoming its presidential nominee. But it’s actually a direct quote from “Confessions of a Republican,” a 1964 television advertisement attacking then–nominee Barry Goldwater. It features an actor playing a lifelong Republican who struggles to come to terms with the Arizona senator’s rise.

The classic campaign ad has resurfaced today because of its eerie parallels to the 2016 election and the increasingly likely chance that Trump will secure the GOP nomination.

“This man scares me,” the man in the ad says. “Now maybe I’m wrong. A friend of mine said to me ‘Listen, just because a man sounds a little irresponsible during a campaign doesn’t mean he’s going to act irresponsibly. You know, that theory that the White House makes the man—I don’t buy that.”

For nearly five minutes the actor ponders the implications of his party’s nominee, regretting that he did not go to the San Francisco convention and oppose him. He concluded by urging Republican support of the Democratic candidate, Lyndon Johnson.

“I think my party made a bad mistake in San Francisco, and I’m going to have to vote against that mistake on the third of November.”

That’s probably where the parallels to today end.

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This Ad by Republicans Against Barry Goldwater Basically Predicted Donald Trump

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Quote of the Day: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Obamacare?

by LesterMcGrowdie Posted on April 8, 2014

Mother Jones

From a Republican congressional health aide who was “granted anonymity to speak candidly,” on the difficulties of creating a Republican plan to replace Obamacare:

The problem with replace is that if you really want people to have these new benefits, it looks a hell of a lot like the Affordable Care Act. … To make something like that work, you have to move in the direction of the ACA. You have to have a participating mechanism, you have to have a mechanism to fund it, you have to have a mechanism to fix parts of the market.

That’s a problem, all right. If you actually want to cover people, you have to pay for it. End of story. Republicans are steadfastly not willing to pay for it, so they aren’t going to cover anyone with whatever plan they dream up. No matter what kind of smoke and mirrors they throw up to disguise this, that’s the bottom line. No money, no coverage.

Really, though, all this GOP aide is saying is that Obamacare is fundamentally a pretty conservative plan. Liberals nearly all prefer a simpler, cheaper, more comprehensive riff on single-payer of some kind. But that couldn’t pass in 2009—even moderate Democrats wouldn’t have supported it—so instead we had to cobble together a bunch of conservative ideas into a kind of Rube Goldberg edifice that was at least better than nothing. It only works moderately well, but that’s because the conservative take on healthcare is fundamentally incoherent. The more conservative your health care plan, the worse it works.

So Republicans have a choice. They can:

  1. Introduce a more liberal plan that’s cheaper and works better.
  2. Introduce an even more conservative plan that’s more expensive and works even worse than Obamacare
  3. Toss out a few of the usual pet rocks and just pretend it’s a plan.

My money is on Option 3.

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Quote of the Day: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Obamacare?

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