Don't miss Randy's Roundtable, "Thursday Nite Tart - Lisa Marie Scott."
More, at American Perspective, Maggie's Notebook and Zilla of the Resistance.
And my friends Marathon Pundit and Marooned in Marin.
And check out Eye of Polyphemus.Despite fire-and-brimstone opposition to taxes among many in a state that still has "Heart of Dixie" on its license plates, officials never stopped collecting a property tax that once funded the Alabama Confederate Soldiers' Home, which closed 72 years ago. The tax now pays for Confederate Memorial Park, which sits on the same 102-acre tract where elderly veterans used to stroll.Seems to me that if a memorial park is important and valued, people will agree to be taxed to pay for it. And this is another example of the power of government to tilt toward corruption and malfeasance. A memorial park is worth it, but not at the expense of deceit. See the Gadsden Times, "Time to end this tax":
The tax once brought in millions for Confederate pensions, but lawmakers sliced up the levy and sent money elsewhere as the men and their wives died. No one has seriously challenged the continued use of the money for a memorial to the "Lost Cause," in part because few realize it exists; one long-serving black legislator who thought the tax had been done away with said he wants to eliminate state funding for the park.
We’re happy to see the park flourishing, and expect it to get a lot of business during the ongoing sesquicentennial celebration of the Civil War.
However, we question the fairness of this particular facility being subsidized to this level by the state — through a tax intended to pay for something that long ago ceased to exist — at a time when other historic tourist attractions in Alabama that receive money from the state’s General Fund are suffering because of budget cuts.
When those cuts were being formulated, Confederate history groups and others made it known they wanted the Mountain Creek park’s earmarked funding left alone, and it was. Support for the park is strong, so it’s likely to survive a vow by Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, to cut off its state money.
We don’t have an issue with the park getting state money, but it ought to come from the same pot similar attractions draw from.
Women, who head up a majority of the household budgets in this country, sit down every week with a calculator and their checkbooks and make really hard decisions. There are sleepless nights and stress associated with these decisions, but they put on their big girl pants and make them just the same.
This is why Americans are so angry with our national leaders. It's not really that complicated. There is lots of talk about T-bills and bond ratings. Yes, we know the global financial markets and Federal Reserve policy are complicated, but the basic principle is not: We as a nation must live within our means. Forgive me if that sounds over-simplified or antiquated.
But again, the average household understands the consequences of not paying debt and spending money you don't have -- you get a bad credit rating and then you can't buy even the things you do need. They know the answer is not to keep spending or even cut back slightly.
Unfortunately, the president has not gotten the memo. He doggedly refuses to seriously agree to spending cuts.
CNS News reported in late 2010 that "in the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan."
That's a lot of money for one president to burden the public. Now he's trying to borrow more money and force our nation to go further into debt by advocating a debt ceiling increase without serious cuts in our spending.
That's why it’s important that the House passed the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution (BBA). It is time for the nation to force accountability on our leaders and it is why the Senate needs to pass it as well.
This essay's making the roudns, from Daniel Greenfield: "Outraged Protest Tours - The Tourism Package for Leftists Who Hate Israel."
Via Blazing Cat Fur.
LIKE VIRTUALLY ALL modern revolutions, the latest Russian one was started by a hesitant liberalization "from above" -- and its rationale extended well beyond the necessity to correct the economy or make the international environment more benign. The core of Gorbachev's enterprise was undeniably idealistic: He wanted to build a more moral Soviet Union.At least from an ideational perspective, the argument is familiar. I'm reminded of the edited volume from Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen, International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War, published in 1995. Ideas are contrasted with material interests as a mobilizing factor in historical change. So Leon's argument builds on themes that have been common in international relations literature for some time. Aron's book on this is forthcoming, and looks interesting: Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991.
For though economic betterment was their banner, there is little doubt that Gorbachev and his supporters first set out to right moral, rather than economic, wrongs. Most of what they said publicly in the early days of perestroika now seems no more than an expression of their anguish over the spiritual decline and corrosive effects of the Stalinist past. It was the beginning of a desperate search for answers to the big questions with which every great revolution starts: What is a good, dignified life? What constitutes a just social and economic order? What is a decent and legitimate state? What should such a state's relationship with civil society be?
"A new moral atmosphere is taking shape in the country," Gorbachev told the Central Committee at the January 1987 meeting where he declared glasnost -- openness -- and democratization to be the foundation of his perestroika, or restructuring, of Soviet society. "A reappraisal of values and their creative rethinking is under way." Later, recalling his feeling that "we couldn't go on like that any longer, and we had to change life radically, break away from the past malpractices," he called it his "moral position."
Grand bipartisan budget deals are one of the great come-ons of Washington politics. They rarely work out, and when they do they usually benefit only the political class. The latest offer from the so-called Gang of Six Senators might be an exception, if—and this is a big if—its inviting generalities can be matched by useful details.Continue reading.
The budget outline—that's all it is so far—promises some $3.7 trillion in deficit reduction that includes rewriting the tax code, reforming entitlements, stabilizing the national debt, freezing domestic spending and rewriting federal budget rules—all in a handy seven pages of talking points. Senate committee chairmen would have wide latitude to write the new laws as they see fit. Anyone up for Max Baucus rewriting the tax code?
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That said, the outline from the three Republicans (including Oklahoma conservative Tom Coburn) and three Democrats is different from most other such offers because it combines spending cuts with reform that would lower tax rates. Most Beltway budget deals combine immediate tax increases with the promise of future spending cuts that somehow never occur. They enhance Washington's claim on the nation's private resources. This deal has promise because it would reduce that claim.
When the orbiter Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, ending the 30-year-old space shuttle program, NASA will have its sights set on the next big exploration mission: sending astronauts to an asteroid in about 15 years.But see, Nicholas de Monchaux, "Spirit of the Spacesuit."
But the path to that goal remains poorly defined, jeopardized by a bleak budget outlook and a weak political consensus. It has left a deep angst that U.S. leadership in space flight is in rapid decline and the very ability to fly humans off the Earth is at risk.
"I'm very disappointed about where we are today," said Robert L. Crippen, who flew on the first space shuttle mission and went on to senior leadership jobs in both NASA and the aerospace industry. "NASA's future is very fuzzy right now."
NASA has a complicated plan that would include operating the International Space Station, tapping a private launch service to ferry astronauts to orbit, and building a new launch system to send humans on deep space missions, including an asteroid by the mid-2020s.
Engineers and technicians are busy at plants across the nation, building new crew capsules, testing hardware in vibration chambers and preparing to conduct demonstration flights, all part of supporting the future steps that NASA envisions.
Nonetheless, the overall plan has failed to gain widespread support, reflecting serious concerns about the costs, risks and the lack of detail about the most difficult aspects of the exploration mission.
The Disqus comment system appears to be working out well. There are lots of features available to Disqus users that are documented in their knowledge base. As there are years of comments that have been imported from our old site, regular commenters may be able to merge their profiles and claim old comments. There’s even some tricks like being able the enter the @username of another commenter. While some do not like the fact that commenters must be registered, I think I’ve made it as easy as possible to leverage other identity systems as opposed to having to create a whole new persona. Requiring registered commenters makes for a better community and will allow us to police it more effectively.This is exciting. I'm hoping to restore some of the previous vitality I had at the comments here. Wordpress is cool with the registration function, so that's a big incentive for change. I'm also talking to potential contributors to build a multi-author roster of right-bloggers.
For cyber-optimists and cyber-pessimists alike, the advent of Google marks off two very distinct periods in Internet history. The optimists remember the age before Google as chaotic, inefficient, and disorganized. Most search engines at the time had poor ethics (some made money by misrepresenting ads as search results) and terrible algorithms (some could not even find their parent companies online). All of that changed when two Stanford graduate students invented an ingenious way to rank Web pages based on how many other pages link to them. Other innovations spurred by Google—especially its novel platform for selling highly targeted ads—have created a new “ecosystem” (the optimists’ favorite buzzword) for producing and disseminating information. Thanks to Google, publishers of all stripes—from novice bloggers in New Delhi to media mandarins in New York—could cash in on their online popularity.Well, who's right?
Cyber-pessimists see things quite differently. They wax nostalgic for the early days of the Web when discovery was random, and even fun. They complain that Google has destroyed the joy of serendipitous Web surfing, while its much-celebrated ecosystem is just a toxic wasteland of info-junk. Worse, it’s being constantly polluted by a contingent of “content farms” that produce trivial tidbits of information in order to receive a hefty advertising paycheck from the Googleplex. The skeptics charge that the company treats information as a commodity, trivializing the written word and seeking to turn access to knowledge into a dubious profit-center. Worst of all, Google’s sprawling technology may have created a digital panopticon, making privacy obsolete.
It’s the summer concert season and, as usual, many fans are frustrated that rampant ticket scalping online has made seeing their favorite performer almost as much a frustration as a thrill. But now a new group says it wants to help.I'm old fashioned. I like to have ticket in hand when I head out the door. All I've got to do is get to the concert and get inside. But RTWT. The issue is how are markets for concert tickets organized. There's just a couple of big players, and few outlets drive up prices. Interesting, in any case. I'd like to see more concerts, especially with front row tickets.
This week a new nonprofit group, the Fans First Coalition, announced itself with a mission of protecting ordinary consumers from predatory ticket scalpers. The group appeared to have broad support from the industry, including prominent artists like R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, Maroon 5 and Jennifer Hudson.
What fans might not know is that the coalition is financed by Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, and that it has grown out of a lobbying fight between Live Nation and StubHub, the biggest legal online ticket reseller, over control of the multibillion-dollar secondary ticketing market.
Muddying the waters further, there is another group with a confusingly similar name, the Fan Freedom Project, which also claims to represent the interests of consumers. But it is largely financed by StubHub, a division of eBay.
The organizations, which were introduced with the help of Washington public relations firms, are of a sort typically referred to as astroturf groups. They are unusual for the entertainment industry but to political watchdogs, the idea of powerful interests creating apparently populist nonprofits is all too familiar.
NORWALK, Iowa—Michele Bachmann has captivated conservative activists here as she pushes to establish herself as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.Keep reading.
That fast start comes amid new scrutiny of her background and physical health as she seeks to translate grass-roots enthusiasm for her campaign into votes at a crucial straw poll next month in Ames.
he Minnesota congresswoman returned to Iowa early Wednesday morning as polls show her gaining ground nationally as a top alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the early front-runner for the GOP nomination. Since formally entering the race last month, she has eclipsed other Republicans in the field, including fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty, who has been actively campaigning all year.
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll offered a statistical glimpse at their diverging fortunes. In the poll, 16% of the registered Republicans picked Ms. Bachmann as their top choice, putting her second behind Mr. Romney, who remains the first choice of 30% of the Republicans polled. In the same survey, 2% of registered Republicans chose the former Minnesota governor as their top pick, down from 6% in April.
With the Internet now a popular forum for political discourse, courts are increasingly called upon to relocate the moving boundary between protected speech and credible threats to political figures.Bagdasarian's lucky.
The 9th Circuit recently heard testimony in another case involving an Arizona man's threats to shoot Super Bowl spectators in Phoenix eight years ago that were never carried out. The appeals court has yet to rule on whether the threat itself was a crime, even though it wasn't committed.
Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said that he thought the majority "got it right" in interpreting Americans' free speech protection but that the ruling "pushes it to the limit."
"I only feel comfortable saying that having 20-20 hindsight in knowing that the threat wasn't carried out," Scheer said.
Debra Hartman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego that brought the case against Bagdasarian, refused to comment on the case or the appeals court action.
Bagdasarian's attorney, Ezekiel E. Cortez, declined to comment or make his client available to discuss the ruling.
The leftist weltanschauung sees society’s and the world’s great battle as between rich and poor rather than between good and evil. Equality therefore trumps morality. This is what produces the morally confused liberal elites that can venerate a Cuban tyranny with its egalitarian society over a free and decent America that has greater inequality.Yes, worse. Much worse.
None of this matters to progressives. Against all this destructiveness, they will respond not with arguments to refute these consequences of the liberal welfare state, but by citing the terms “social justice” and “compassion,” and by labeling their opponents “selfish” and worse.
