Daily Show: 60 Minutes' "Meh Culpa"

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Rachel Maddow's Mea Culpa on the Preamble to the Constitution

Image from source, Newsbusters

It never fails. If I'm on a message board, or the comments section on somebody's blog responding to the rampant stupidity of something or someone, I will myself have a moment of stupid. I'll misspell something, I'll make an unfortunate typo, something. And seconds after hitting the "post" button, I'll realize what I've done, and have an oh crap! moment.

Much the same thing happened to Rachel Maddow on her program on Thursday. Maddow was covering the silly multi-thousand (millions!) protest on the Capitol steps, and poking fun at orange-faced John Boner Boehner. The facial-twitch affected House Minority Leader was gettin' all high and mighty, waving around his micro-copy of the United States Constitution. He then proceeded to recite part of the Declaration of Independence, calling it the preamble to the Constitution.

That's pretty funny right there, and Maddow--as she is often wont to do--called him on it snarkily. Unfortunately, she had one of those "oh crap" moments herself, saying the Constitution doesn't have a preamble, rather than that the Declaration of Independence doesn't have one (it sort of does, but it isn't really called that). I knew it as soon as she said it, and I wouldn't doubt that she did too, or at least shortly thereafter.

The folks at Newsbusters, an outfit that sees its mission as a watchdog on the dreaded "liberal media" has come down like a ton of bricks on Maddow. Which is expected, but rather unnecessary. As any watcher of TRMS knows, if Rachel makes a mistake, she almost always corrects it, which she did in her usual entertaining fashion. First up, here's Newsbusters' take on the story.

[Excerpt]

Maddow Wrongly Claims 'Constitution Doesn't Have A Preamble'

Did you know the United States Constitution doesn't have a Preamble?

Well, that's what the oh so arrogant, high and mighty MSNBC host Rachel Maddow told her audience Thursday night. . .

More at: Newsbusters

I'll have an update with Rachel's School House Rock mea culpa as soon as it becomes available.

UPDATE:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Christmas is Over, Bring On New Year's!

Whew! Christmas hit like a freight train, with a very full day for this editor. All in all, it was pretty nice, but it leaves you a little winded. Today, we're having Christmas II: The Sequel at the Stupid Monkey's house, followed by Christmas III: This Time, It's Personal at another friend's house the next day.

After that, I believe we will have wrung every last drop of Christmas magic out of the season, and will be looking forward to New Year's Eve. In the mean time, posting around here will remain light. I see, after perusing my favorite blogs, that I'm in good company with the barely there internets. Until you're on the inside of the blogosphere looking out, you don't realize how difficult maintaining a blog can be during holidays and special events. Shoot, even weekends are hard.

The blog should be back with gusto on Thursday and especially Friday, when I will have more time to post. Until then, keep on having fun!

Holidays Strike Again!

Is there no end to this madness? Yet another holiday gathering once again prevents me for dutifully posting very many new goodies here on the blog. I know this this falls back-to-back with yesterday (and the day before), but what can I do? Deny my friends the splendor that is me? Heh.



Oh, I've got a little time to put some very newsworthy items up, just not enough time for scintillating commentary.


I'll try to post some stuff tonight (for morning readers), and surely over the weekend. Do come back. . .I will! I promise.

Holiday Time Ramps Up

Tonight we're hosting some friends for a nice ham dinner. As a consequence (or benefit, depending upon your point of view), posting will be fairly light this evening. I hope to have a few things up in the early evening, and possibly have a thing or two posted for tomorrow morning.

If not, mea culpa! I'll see you tomorrow!

Computer Woes: Near Disaster at Work

Photo from BRPoint.net

I'm regarded by my employers and coworkers as something of a computer guru. It is a title that I hold a little uncomfortably, as I tend to just stumble and bumble my way to a solution. But, I usually do find a solution. It isn't so bad to be regarded as something of a genius when you solve problems. It is altogether a different story when you are the cause of a problem.

On Friday, I decided it was time--with the Thanksgiving holiday coming up--to do a system backup. I plugged in our portable hard drive, and went to work. Since I was going to be leaving shortly after starting the process, I decided the most expedient way to proceed would be to blank the portable drive, and then start a fresh copy process. That was my first mistake.

Our files are stored on a drive designated as "Z:" and all the drive is used for is file storage. After plugging in the device, I mistook the Z: drive--designated in the computer (unbeknown to me) as "F:"--for the portable device. After the deletion procedure started, I noticed that one of our biggest folders on Z: had disappeared. Alarmed, I immediately stopped the process. Thinking I was utterly screwed, with a blank backup and a deleted source drive, I panicked.

I decided the best course of action was to leave without saying anything, and ponder what to do at home. I figured, why ruin the bosses' weekend, when I didn't yet have a plan of attack. I hit upon a quasi-solution while at home. This was an optimal situation for file recovery, as the drive in question had not been accessed for anything at all after the deletion, and is not used by the computer for any programs. I found an online downloadable program for file recovery that costs $40 a pop--a price I could definitely live with.

So, here I am at work on a Sunday. I found my situation to be a little less dire once I got here. The source drive is indeed trashed, though the file recovery program is in progress, and looks like it will work. I also found that I had not deleted the backup drive, which has files as recent as the end of September. Worst case scenario: we've lost half of our files since September. A pain, but an endurable problem.

I'm currently also copying the files from the backup device to my desktop computer to have even more protection, in case the file recovery doesn't work. And, I discovered an even older backup from November of last year on a separate computer. Cross your fingers for me, I just may pull this one off, and retain my title as computer guru.

Because of this situation however, my posting to this blog is likely to be very light today. But since I still haven't shaken a bad case of nerves over this situation, it may just be that I'll be back blogging today, if only to release some nervous tension!

UPDATE: It seems to be working, but (of course) not without a couple of hitches. First, the $40 activation only supplied me with enough "quota" to restore a minimal number of files. So, I had to purchase another $200 worth of storage space. Good news: It's now unlimited, and can be used for future unfortunate events. The second hitch is where to store the recovered files. Since there isn't enough space on the other drive in the computer, I have to carefully blank the backup drive, and put the files there. Whew! It may be almost fixed!

UPDATE II:

I'm $240 poorer, but the old backup has been re-backed up, the portable drive blanked, and the file recovery is now proceeding with gusto. It may be several hours until it finishes, and then I'll probably have to doctor a few of the folders. Then I will have to copy the backup drive back to the original drive. It may mean I spend all of my Sunday here, but I think in the end, all will be back to normal.

UPDATE III: The restore is almost complete, and amazingly enough--I really don't know how--all of the files seem to have returned to their rightful place. I'd thought I lost a large chunk of folders, and--yay!--they seem to have somehow survived. And the boss is going to cover the $240, amazingly enough. The program, if you're interested, is called VirtualLab. Be sure to just pony up the $200 the first time though!

UPDATE IV: It's 5:20 pm, and I'm finally home. I actually left work around 4:00 pm. At that time, the files seemed to be up to nearly 100% recovery. I left with my newly restored files being backed up one more time onto the portable storage device. Unless there's a fire, flood or someone blows up the building, all is back to normal.

Away for the Evening

Just a quick post to say, I'm away this evening, so there will be little to no new posting tonight. I'll be back in the first half of Saturday at the latest. If you've come to read something, I hope there's something you haven't seen. If not, scroll down, and check out the new AmericaBlog or MediaMatters posts (in the left column). They're constantly up to date.

I'll be back!

A Note on the Light Posting This Weekend

If you're a regular reader of Greenlee Gazette, and you're wondering why the posts are so light this weekend, fear not, I haven't gone anywhere. This weekend is the first opportunity The Other Half and I have had time together alone in about a month, and we've taken advantage of it.

Regular postings should resume Sunday night, and be up to normal quantities throughout the week. I know that a lot of blogs lose their regular readers when fresh posts are not appearing, and I just wanted to let you know I'll be back! Thanks.

More Posts This Weekend, I Promise

I've had a real drought of creative ideas, not to mention another migraine headache over the last two days, which might explain my lack of posts. I had a real run for the last couple of weeks, and then kind of dried up. But this weekend, the Other Half is gone, there's nothing on the agenda, and there should be time to get the ol' creative juices flowing.

Meanwhile, why not a little bit of fun? Thank the internet gods for YouTube! See you tomorrow.

A clip from one of my all-time favorite movies, What's Up, Doc?. It's also Barbra Streisand's first appearance on this blog. Fancy that.

Sorry for the Lack of Posts!

Busy back at work, and schedule is tight. I hope to get a couple of posts up tonight, at least. Thanks for your patience!