Zenith, Comrade

Okay… So I’m bleary-eyed & a little punchy from spending all day doing teenage-kid-stuff and I sit down at the computer to browse all the news I missed during the day and I come across this headline in The Hill:

White House Criticizes Ban on Technology Products from China

So I think ‘What ban?  Did some big American company ban something?  Maybe Government Motors (G.M.)? Which might, maybe, possibly explain why THE WHITE HOUSE feels compelled to comment on a “ban”?’ (I mean, the passive voice in this is stunning when you see what’s coming – like the W.H. had *nothing* to do with it.) So I keep reading:

The White House on Friday came out against a new law restricting government purchases of Chinese technology systems.

Okay, STOP.  Several GIANT problems jump out at me.  Did you see them?  The White House comes out against a NEW law?  Well… How new we talkin’ about, Skippy? THE WHITE HOUSE HAS BEEN IN CHARGE – IN FACT, *SOLEY* IN CHARGE, SINCE OBAMA IS THE ONLY MAN ON ***EARTH*** WHO CAN SIGN A NEW U.S. FEDERAL LAW INTO EXISTENCE – OF ALL NEW LAW FOR MORE THAN FOUR YEARS NOW.  And it’s a GOVERNMENT ban?  So… like… OBAMA COULDN’T STOP IT IF HE WANTED TO????  Even if it WEREN’T a law he signed HIMSELF and not just a G-O-V-E-R-N-M-E-N-T BAN?

But leaving ALL of that aside, I soldier on:

The restriction was part of a temporary government funding measure that President Obama signed last week.

LAST WEEK??????  He signed this “new” law LAST WEEK and HE’S BITCHING ABOUT IT?  Pardon me, I’m just a simple housewife, but wasn’t the time to bitch about it BEFORE you signed it INTO LAW… LAST STINKING WEEK?????

Okay… Okay… I’ve read this far. I’ll never get those precious minutes of my life back but I can’t stop now (Save yourself some misery & just skip to the 5th paragraph which I highlighted in BOLD):

“The undefined terms of this provision will make implementation challenging,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an email.

“It could prove highly disruptive without significantly enhancing the affected agencies’ cybersecurity. While the Administration has raised concerns about the cyber threats emanating from China, resolving this issue requires open dialogue between the U.S. and China,” she added.

Hayden said the administration plans to work with Congress to revise the provision as part of the 2014 appropriations process.

A coalition of U.S. business groups also announced their opposition to the provision in a letter earlier this week. The groups warned that the law could hamper the ability of agencies to buy new computer systems and could prompt China or other countries to adopt their own restrictions targeting U.S. companies.

The provision, which was backed by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), bars select federal agencies from buying information technology that has been “produced, manufactured or assembled” by companies with ties to the Chinese government unless the FBI or a similar agency first determines the purchase would be in the national interest.

The provision… bars… technology… “produced, manufactured or assembled” by companies with ties to the Chinese government?????????????????????????

THAT’S LIKE… EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can they hear you scream in space?  You sign a law that bans electronics made in F*CKING CHINA??????????????????????????  AND NOW YOU THINK IT’S A BAD IDEA????????????????????  DID YOU JUST ********NOW*********** DISCOVER THAT ZENITH (which was notable for having been one of the precious few AMERICAN technology companies to manufacture consumer electronics) IS OUT OF BUSINESS????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

In case you’ve been asleep for 30 years: AMERICA HAS NOT ONE SINGLE SOLITARY TECH COMPANY THAT MANUFACTURES ITS STUFF IN AMERICA – NOT ONE. ***ALL*** our toys are made elsewhere:  t.v.’s, radios, cellphones, GPS, *****ALL***** of it.

100%

And 99% of “elsewhere” is… CHINA.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There aren’t enough capital letters and exclamation points to describe how garganutanly STOOOOOOPID this ENTIRE thing is:  the idea, the law, the fact that OBozo signed it and some fool gives a quote to The Hill saying ‘Hey… that might be kinda a BROAD group of products, huh?”

What I didn’t bother to delineate, as I have done for previous dumb quotes from this article, is that ALL companies in China have ties to the Chinese government because they’re (wait for it…)

COMMUNISTS!!!!!!!!!

Or maybe that piece of news was in the same paper with the Zenith liquidation sale so they missed it.

*sigh*

The remainder of the article, for what it’s worth, is below:

The restriction covers NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Commerce and Justice departments.

U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern that the Chinese government could use the equipment of Chinese businesses to tap into U.S. communications networks and spy on people in the United States. In particular, lawmakers have accused Chinese telecom equipment makers Huawei and ZTE of posing a threat to U.S. national security.

David Fagan, an attorney who works on cybersecurity issues for the firm Covington & Burling, said the provision restricting Chinese technology is vague, and it is unclear how agencies would be expected to comply with it.

He said devices such as iPhones, which are assembled in China, could potentially fall under the law’s restrictions, although he noted that was likely not the intent of lawmakers.

“We just don’t know how broad it is,” he said.

Smooth Insomnia

Up in the middle of the night again.

Gosh I love menopause-induced insomnia… not.

Actually, there’s a lot about it I love, weirdly.  I enjoy the solitude & the quiet.  With Leigh homeschooling now I am rarely alone, so that part of my nightowl routine is nice, but egad, it wrecks me for the next day.  Ah well.

Anyway, I tuned into the Phil Hendrie show pre-show video cast and he’s been stuck on this rant about the radio business the last several times I’ve caught it and it brought me back.  Straight down memory lane.  So I did a web archive search for WJJZ.

Whadda ya know.  It’s out there -> http://web.archive.org/web/19970427210333/http://www.wjjz.com/

It had the jingle, too!  And it’s just like I remember!  We had wicked cool jingles (most of the time – we had a few misses here and there, but mostly they were very, very, very cool, like this one featuring Al Jarreau, who, for the record, was neither particularly liked/disliked by me, but he just did a wicked good job on our jingles!).

WJJZ Al Jarreau Voiced Jingle

Sometimes I miss those days so much it aches.  I miss how much I loved it.  I miss how much fun it was.  I truly loved the music we played.  Our little station went from being just another SJ outlet to being one of the most respected, and certainly one of the highest rated ones, and at the time, Philly was the #4 or #5 market – I can’t remember which, and, in fact, it may have been both.  Anyway… with Janie in promotions, Ann programming, and Michael & Me & Desiree, and Frank!  Oh Frank!  Frank Childs doing our production and being our “utility” guy filling in everywhere and doing everything and doing it all with such expertise and good humor, we were a very special team.  Very, very, VERY special. It was one of those happy coincidences in life when exactly the right people were doing exactly what they were born to do at exactly the right moment in time.  I haven’t had as magical a professional experience before or since and I doubt, surely at this point in my life, that I ever will again.

When I left, in the spring of 1998, I was pregnant with the twins.  I knew what I was giving up.  I wouldn’t change a thing.  I made the right decision and would do it again… but man… those were golden days.  Hard.  There were some very, very hard days, but damn.  Good, golden days.

*sigh*

AFTERTHOUGHT:  I had to come back and insert a favorite memory I’ve talked about repeatedly over the years.  At one of our last station functions, a circle of us did $17 per shot tequila… TEN of us.  THREE rounds.  On Ann’s expense account. These were the go-go ’90’s when money was falling out of the sky, everybody had expense accounts, and life was very, very good financially.

*double sigh*