... you cannot say the wrong thing.
IN THE COMMENTS: Clyde said:
If it was in Leadville, it would have been the Canna Bistro...He's talking about the 5th picture here.
a blog by Ann Althouse
If it was in Leadville, it would have been the Canna Bistro...He's talking about the 5th picture here.
"The most important thing is to make sure their facilities aren't damaged, which would take a long time to repair. If saltwater gets into the underground cables and those cables are carrying electricity, there is a real chance of damage to those lines," [said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.] "There is a lot less chance of damage to the lines if those power cables are not carrying power."
Justice Bradley said as she was approaching Justice Prosser on June 13, "I was in control, I knew exactly what I was doing." Justice Bradley said when she approached Justice Prosser, she said to him, "Buddy, get out of my office." Justice Bradley said she remembers specifically saying the word "buddy" to him as she was telling him to leave her office. Justice Bradley recalled this because as she was talking to her daughter about this incident after the fact, her daughter had mentioned how the only other time she heard her use the term "buddy" was three years ago when her daughter and her were in Bangkok, Thailand, in a taxicab. Justice Bradley said the taxicab driver was not taking them where they needed to go so she felt she needed to take control and she remembers saying, "Buddy, you take us back where you picked us up." Justice Bradley said that was the only other time she could remember using the term "buddy". Justice Bradley said, "Buddy puts me in control and them in the diminutive." Justice Bradley again said she knew exactly what she was doing and saying to Justice Prosser on the evening of June 13, and added, "I intended to do it just the way I did it." Justice Bradley repeated several different times during our conversation with her that she was in control on June 13, 2011 and she knew exactly what she was doing the whole time.Isn't it interesting that she denied her own aggressiveness right after describing herself as a woman in control and deliberately exercising domination? What if Justice Prosser had felt and acted in a similar way? He would have made a speech focusing on Bradley as the aggressor. He would have said, as Bradley said at the July 15th meeting:
Justice Bradley then said, "This aggressiveness they are trying to spin is not true."
I have a right... to enter my workplace without any fear of verbal abuse or physical abuse...Go to the outside and take other means?! Is that a victim seeking the shelter of the protections of the law, or is it the bully trying to instill fear? It's not too clear! But we know that Bradley, in the original incident, deliberately sought control. And in the the June 15th meeting, she also sought control. She had her prepared speech. It was studded with legalisms and warnings. She demanded submission, or else. You don't need to look past her own words to see that.
If I cannot get any assurance from you, the court, that this problem is going to be addressed, then I will go to the outside and take other means.
“Irene’s got a middle name, and it’s Global Warming,” environmental activist Bill McKibben wrote Thursday night in The Daily Beast. He argued that this year’s hot Atlantic Ocean temperatures and active spree of hurricanes — coupled with droughts, floods and melting sea ice elsewhere on the globe — are “what climate change looks like in its early stages.”But what if it's doing something fabulously good?
Patterns of rainfall in these years were more chaotic in these regions of Tanzania and often fell outside the rainy season. The scientists say this may have disturbed the natural cycle of mosquito development.Global warming — or, as they say, "climate change" (for maximum coverage of any possible condition) — is probably not the cause of the hurricane or the big mosquito drop-off, but those who like to wring their hands about the connection between
But the lead author of the study, Professor Dan Meyrowitsch from the University of Copenhagen, says that he is not convinced that it is just the changing climate.
"It could be partly due to this chaotic rainfall, but personally I don't think it can explain such a dramatic decline in mosquitoes, to the extent we can say that the malaria mosquitoes are almost eradicated in these communities."
There are some people who need to apologize to Mr. Justice David Prosser now that he has been cleared and soon. They took a shallowly researched and preposterous allegation -- that Prosser held fellow justice Ann Walsh Bradley in a chokehold -- and ran to the guillotine with it.Yes, let's look back on the public demonstrations. Let's remember that protesters had a big ugly balloon effigy of Justice Prosser, which they tied by the neck to a lamppost. Look at their signs. Let's remember how these protesters strung together "allegations about Justice Prosser choking Justice Bradley [with] much more general issues about abortion and violence against women." As I said at the time:
I heard no acknowledgements of the uncertainties about what we know about what happened and no sensitivity about fairness and due process. I heard: 1. declarations about the importance of women's issues and 2. a demonization of Justice Prosser.This is the level of left-wing activism we witnessed here in Madison. A justice is despised because his decisions do not please liberals, and so, without thought, they forgot about things liberals like to love themselves for caring about, such as fairness and due process. These are the same people who have been chanting the chant "shame, shame, shame" for months up at the Capitol.
Ms. Emily Mills owes an apology for blogging that UW law professor and bloggress Ann Althouse "has gone to great and terrible lengths to excuse the alleged behavior, attack the credibility of only the anonymous sources with whom she disagrees, suggest that no arrests (yet) mean no wrongdoing, impugn the honor of Justice Bradley, and cast doubt on the very justice system of this state." Looks like it is the other way around, Ms. Emily.(Here's my contemporaneous pushback of Mills.) Blaska ends his column with a request for more names. I have one: Bill Wineke. Like Mills, he owes me an apology.
In interviews with a detective on July 8, [Justice David] Prosser said that during an informal argument between two groups of justices Bradley "charged" him and he put up his hands to defend himself.So... she was "standing face to face to confront him." How did she get to the point where she was standing there? Did she "charge" him? It's not so much a discrepancy in the testimony as a time gap in the Bradley version.
"Did my hands touch her neck, yes, I admit that. Did I try to touch her neck, no, absolutely not, it was a total reflex," Prosser said.
Bradley said during the argument she wanted Prosser to leave the suite of offices that serve her and her staff and confronted him to tell him to leave because she felt he was being disrespectful to Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.
"You get out of my office," Bradley said she told Prosser during an interview with a detective on June 28. While saying that, she said she was "standing face to face to confront him."
Later, Bradley said, she could recall the contact of Prosser's hands on her neck but no pain or pressure that affected her breathing. She did, however, say that she had become emotional after the incident.So Bradley concedes that Prosser's hands merely made contact with her neck, after she got into the position of being in his face. This seems like a plain statement that there was no chokehold. But we have heard that Bradley called it "a chokehold."
Bradley felt Prosser "was attacking the chief justice," the source said. Before leaving, Prosser "put his hands around her neck in what (Bradley) described as a chokehold," the source said.[ADDED: That story begins with a direct quote from Bradley, giving directly to the newspaper: "The facts are that I was demanding that he get out of my office and he put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold."]
I want to know not only what really happened at the time of the physical contact (if any) between the 2 justices, but also who gave the original story to the press. If Prosser really tried to choke a nonviolent Bradley, he should resign. But if the original account is a trumped-up charge intended to destroy Prosser and obstruct the democratic processes of government in Wisconsin, then whoever sent the report out in that form should be held responsible for what should be recognized as a truly evil attack.So what I want to know is who put out the story that Bradley said she was choked and did Bradley herself ever claim to have been choked? It sounds as though she never said that to the investigators (or it would be in the report and the MJS summary today). Did she say it to anyone else?
"Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly grabbed fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley around the neck in an argument in her chambers earlier this month."Reading that, at the time, I questioned this approach to journalism:
I agreed with [Ian Millhiser at the lefty blog Think Progress] that "if it's true Prosser reached a breaking point and started strangling Bradley, he should go." But I wanted to know the whole story. It seemed to me that Lueders had given us "just the snapshot of one hard-to-comprehend instant within the longer event." I was skeptical about the version of the story Lueders had put out, because there had been no arrest and because I found it hard to picture an elderly, dignified man suddenly grabbing a (somewhat less elderly) woman by the neck.I quoted myself saying "whoever sent the report out in that form should be held responsible for what should be recognized as a truly evil attack" and said:
When I wrote that, it did not cross my mind that the "truly evil" person might be Lueders himself.Lueders has not yet responded to the special prosecutor's decision not to bring charges. The spotlight belongs on him right now. I want to know who put the word "chokehold" out there and why.
Vineyard hotel managers urged guests to plan their exits as soon as possible, and emergency officials told locals to stock up on four days of food and water....Of course, the little people — even rich little people — have to make their escape early, when they are dependent on commercial operations that will be overtaxed as everyone tries to leave at once. But the President has his own transport. He can leave at the precise moment he chooses, as long as the storm is not so close it's grounding the planes.
A considerably more likely scenario is that a hurricane-strength storm would come ashore on central Long Island. That would still be extremely bad: a weak Category 2 storm with an eye that passed about 50 miles from Manhattan would result in about $10 billion in damage, according to the model.And more than a Category 3? Directly hitting NYC? It's never happened. "[I]in recorded history, no storm has made landfall in the Northeastern United States while stronger than a Category 3." But if it did — and Silver says maybe with global warming it might — the economic impact would hit the trillions.
Although highly unlikely to be experienced in the case of Hurricane Irene, it is theoretically possible that an even stronger storm might hit the city at some point in the future. A Category 3 hurricane, one with wind speeds of 111 miles per hour or higher, could plausibly produce an economic impact in excess of $100 billion if its eye were to pass directly over Manhattan, according to the model. A stronger Category 3 storm, passing immediately over Manhattan, could rival or exceed the roughly $235 billion in economic damage estimated to have been caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
Keep in mind that New York’s annual gross domestic product is estimated to be about $1.4 trillion — about one-tenth of the nation’s gross domestic product — so if much of the city were to become dysfunctional for months or more, the damage to the global and domestic economies would be almost incalculable. The property value of New York City real estate, meanwhile, is estimated to be about $800 billion, and property damage represents only a portion of the overall economic loss that might be incurred from a catastrophic hurricane.Where would the people go? What would happen to them?
The first wave of protesters entered the statehouse carrying banners, shouting and banging on drums and cowbells...."Build Me Up Buttercup"! What the hell? Had they been reading the Althouse blog this morning? At 10:28 a.m., I wrote:
"Whose house? Our house!" the protesters shouted. Then they broke into a chorus of the labor song "Solidarity Forever!"
Later, the group of 13 mostly young protesters sat on the floor of the Capitol and clutched an American flag and heart-shaped balloons as the sounds of floor cleaners echoed through the mostly empty building. Capitol police and a few State Patrol troopers started carrying them out shortly before 7 p.m. after giving them a chance to leave on their own.
The protesters - many of them the veterans of past protests and arrests - chatted and sang popular songs like the Foundations' "Build Me Up Buttercup"...
Songs Meade is driving me crazy playing on YouTube this morning.Wow, I'm sorry I missed them. But the question is: Did they miss me? Seems like they were ready for their YouTube magic moment. I don't have it. I was off photographing poodles.
"Young Girl," "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes," "Everlasting Love," "Lady Willpower," "Build Me Up Buttercup," that "Star Trek" hippies song, "Count Me In," "This Magic Moment"...
What does it mean for me to live in a "zone"? If the city issues a "hurricane evacuation order," the government will order me to leave my home "immediately" and either (a) stay in an area that's not in a "zone" (which, again, could be as close as 3 blocks away) or (b) go to a "hurricane center." Where's the closest "hurricane center"? Oh, between 192nd and 193rd St. In order to get there, I'd need to travel almost the whole length of Manhattan....
What's really going on here is that the government is trying to signal that it is taking the hurricane very, very seriously — so seriously that it has a plan for evacuating a large portion of the city. The truth is, that's impossible. So the government makes up some arbitrary rules, as if the hurricane is going to carefully observe these neat distinctions between the various streets of Greenwich Village.
Ann Althouse chooses for some reason to dispute that Ron “respecting the God-given right to life—for those born and unborn” Paul wants to ban abortion.No. I dispute that he has "loudly trumpet[ed a] plan to impose criminal penalties" on women who have abortions. Those are your words, Matt, and it is quite dishonest to change the language as you embark on your attempt to discredit me.
Since she’s apparently incapable of reading between the lines of such proposals as “Defining life as beginning at conception by passing a Sanctity of Life Act’” she might be interesting [sic] in some other quotations from Congressman Paul such as....Well, the fact is, Matt, I really am interesting. I'm so interesting that you ought to pay attention to the precise words that I use in disputing you. Pay attention to the text before you embark on your flights of interpretation that you gratuitously insult me for supposedly lacking the capacity to perform. Pay attention to my text and to your own text (which needs editing). You ought to learn to read and be honest about what you have read.
"I support my darling black African woman," he said [in 2007]. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders. ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."
The following year, Gadhafi and Rice had an opportunity to meet when the secretary of state paid a historic visit to Libya — one that made steps toward normalizing relations after the United States went decades without an ambassador in Tripoli. ...
During the visit, he presented Rice with a diamond ring, a lute, a locket with an engraved likeness of himself inside and an inscribed edition of "The Green Book," a personal political manifesto that explains his "Third Universal Theory for a new democratic society."
"My initial reaction is ... 'Wow,'" retired appellate court judge Neal Nettesheim said of Abrahamson's plan. "That is truly revolutionary."Could have a chilling effect? Obviously, it would transform the conferences into some kind of public show and not conferences at all.
But Nettesheim and former state Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske said such a move — akin to allowing the public into the jury room — could have a chilling effect on deliberations by justices, who often change their minds before a decision is final.
In a statement, Prosser praised the prosecutor and slammed Bradley.If the issue really was "workplace safety," as Bradley says, why did she "sensationalize" it — to use Prosser's word — by taking it public in a way that was, I think, quite unfair to Prosser?
"Justice Anne Walsh Bradley made the decision to sensationalize an incident that occurred at the Supreme Court . . . ," Prosser said in a statement. "I was confident the truth would come out and it did. I am gratified that the prosecutor found these scurrilous charges were without merit.
"I have always maintained that once the facts of this incident were examined I would be cleared. I look forward to the details becoming public record."
In her own statement, Bradley said the case "is and remains an issue of workplace safety."
"My focus from the outset has not been one of criminal prosecution, but rather addressing workplace safety. I contacted law enforcement the very night the incident happened but did not request criminal prosecution. Rather I sought law enforcement's assistance to try to have the entire court address informally this workplace safety issue that has progressed over the years," Bradley said in the statement. "To that end, chief of (Capitol Police Charles) Tubbs promptly met with the entire court, but the efforts to address workplace safety concerns were rebuffed. Law enforcement then referred the matter for a formal investigation and I cooperated fully with the investigation."
"You should go into Pandora and make an "Everlasting Love" channel...""Midnight Confession," "Temptation Eyes," "Hitchin' a Ride," "Come and Get It," "Ferry 'Cross the Mersey," "I Know I'll Never Find Another You"...
"Okay."
[Rick Perry has] visited Israel on many more occasions than Obama, who’s been there exactly zero times as president. If I were Obama I wouldn’t go either. His favorability rating in Israel once clocked in at 4 percent. Say what you will about the Israelis, but they are not slow out of the chute. They know who their friends are. On the topic of the Holy Land, there remains the little matter of God. God talks to televangelists, football coaches, and people in mental hospitals. Why shouldn’t he talk to Rick Perry? In the spirit of Joseph Heller, I have a covenant with God. I leave him alone and he leaves me alone. If, however, I have a big problem, I ask God for the answer. He tells Rick Perry. And Rick tells me.(Via Instapundit.)
On the topic of politics, this year Wisconsin substantially limited the collective bargaining rights of public employees. There were intense protests against this at the state Capitol in February and March. Do you think public employees should have the right to collectively bargain, or do you see unions as too powerful a force in the public sector?
Overall, unions in America have brought this great country to its knees. The NEA has seen to it that American kids are the dumbest kids ever, the auto industry was raped, and government employees are rip-off artists that demand more than they produce. What's not to despise?
Wisconsin also just passed a law to allow concealed carry of handguns in the state. Do you think concealed carry makes communities safer or less safe?
It doesn't matter what I think. Every study ever conducted concluded that violent crime is reduced and neighborhoods are safest when gun-free zones are eliminated. Who doesn't know this?
Madison has a reputation as a liberal town. Given your own politics, what's your take on Madison? Do you like the city, or is too lefty for your tastes?
I have been rocking and hunting the great state of Wisconsin for over 45 years and connect with the good people of the Badger State. There are great Americans all across Wisconsin, including Madison, and I get along just wonderfully with all of them. People that hate America hate Ted Nugent, and I couldn't be more proud.
The book opens with an account of Mr. Cheney’s experiences during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he essentially commanded the government’s response from a bunker beneath the White House while Mr. Bush — who was away from Washington and hampered by communications breakdowns — played a peripheral role. But Mr. Cheney wrote that he did not want to make any formal statement to the nation that day.Well said.
“My past government experience,” he wrote, “had prepared me to manage the crisis during those first few hours on 9/11, but I knew that if I went out and spoke to the press, it would undermine the president, and that would be bad for him and for the country.
“We were at war. Our commander in chief needed to be seen as in charge, strong, and resolute — as George W. Bush was.”
[I]f it weren’t for his loud fanbase of self-proclaimed libertarians you wouldn’t really think [Ron Paul is] a libertarian. He’s loudly trumpeting his plan to impose criminal penalties on women who terminate their pregnancies...Would Ron Paul punish women who get abortions as criminals? His website says he "will continue to fight for the same pro-life solutions he has upheld in Congress, including..."
* Immediately saving lives by effectively repealing Roe v. Wade and preventing activist judges from interfering with state decisions on life by removing abortion from federal court jurisdiction through legislation modeled after his “We the People Act.”Does either of those proposals represent a plan — "loudly trumpet[ed]" or not — to prosecute women who have abortions? It seems to me that both of these bills are about cutting federal jurisdiction, which would leave the matter of abortion to state courts. Those courts would still be bound by Supreme Court precedent, by the way, although they'd be left to their own devices about following that precedent.
* Defining life as beginning at conception by passing a “Sanctity of Life Act.”
Ann Althouse chooses for some reason to dispute that Ron “respecting the God-given right to life—for those born and unborn” Paul wants to ban abortion.No. I dispute that he has "loudly trumpet[ed a] plan to impose criminal penalties" on women who have abortions. Those are your words, Matt, and it is quite dishonest to change the language as you embark on your attempt to discredit me.
Since she’s apparently incapable of reading between the lines of such proposals as “Defining life as beginning at conception by passing a Sanctity of Life Act’” she might be interesting [sic] in some other quotations from Congressman Paul such as....Well, the fact is, Matt, I really am interesting. I'm so interesting that you ought to pay attention to the precise words that I use in disputing you. Pay attention to the text before you embark on your flights of interpretation that you gratuitously insult me for supposedly lacking the capacity to perform. Pay attention to my text and to your own text (which needs editing). You ought to learn to read and be honest about what you have read.
Sarah Palin (as seen in The Undefeated), 47Hilarious... right?
Last-held office: Governor of Alaska.
Pros: Once upon a time there was a brave and brilliant reporter and mom who out-hustled corrupt politicians and got elected mayor of a small town, then governor of Alaska. She had the highest approval rating of any state executive. She pushed through a reform of the state's oil-tax laws, past the party's establishment and past the best efforts of the mighty industry. All of this was done to a booming soundtrack and lots of file footage of protests and things exploding. She was on track to win the vice presidency before the economic crisis hit and the media treated her so unfairly.
Cons: Not many people saw the movie; most other people have soured on the real-world Palin.
Except for the fact that the finials are not crosses, but a variation of the ballflower. In fact, the ones on the National Cathedral are even less like crosses than a typical French cathedral, where one could possibly be forgiven for thinking they are suchHe links to some photographs, proving his point. I said:
The WSJ article says "The earthquake knocked off the cross-shaped finial stones on three of the four pinnacles that jut out from the top of the tower."
A cross is only a shape. If something is cross-shaped, it's a cross.
So... the WSJ is wrong, based on the photos, and the message from God is, once again, obscure.
“The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The Vice President believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience.”Guy Benson, who extracted that response from the press secretary, is pleased to hear that condemnation of the policy, but says:
I still fail to see how publicly and proactively declining to "second guess" a policy that one finds "repugnant" amounts to "arguing against" it. If the Vice President's conviction is that China's policy is morally abhorrent, he should have said so when he raised the issue on Chinese soil.It's a carefully framed statement. He was "arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience," but not on the moral ground. He "believes such practices are repugnant," but that's not what he chose to say to the Chinese. The argument against the policy that he made was an economic one: It's not sustainable to have so many older people supported by a too-small number of younger workers.
So then, Biden's argument against the Holocaust: "The diversion of critical resources from the war to identify, round up, transport, house and then exterminate as many as 20 million would severely handicap Germany's ability to win its war against the Allies."
[Shawn] Loftis was suspended from his substitute teaching position in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools in January; his teacher's certification was revoked in April, despite his insistence that his porn days were over.Loftis is a popular CNN "citizen reporter." Here's one of his clips:
Loftis' porn shtick was to film in exotic locations around the world and slide sight-seeing and history segments into the dirty flicks. He took a similar travel-focused approach to his citizen-reporting gig with CNN.
Fuck you, leave me alone! I don’t even know you! But that wouldn’t be an appropriate thing to say on a blog, so I won’t. What I would say to this obnoxious, intrusive person is: I can walk to the 7-11 in about an hour or so, and bonus! I come back with an armload of tasty Hostess products! To use up the same energy on a bike, I’d have to pedal to Petersburg and back. Plus I’d have to wear one of those hats that make me look like an extra in a bad SyFy series. And then there’s the screaming berserk SUV drivers who are bent on converting all bikers into little impromptu shrines by the side of the road. That isn’t about biking, of course. It’s a class war. Sure, bikers can be arrogant assholes, but come on, they’re a bunch of skinny little guys wobbling around on bikes, and you’re grinding around in a big-ass smoke-belching SUV. Around these parts, when someone makes you feel guilty, you don’t rethink your priorities, you wipe out the guilt-causer. It’s the same for climate change, it’s the same for Food, Inc., it’s the same for the widening income gap, it’s the same for the homeless. It’s what we do. It’s the American way.He's just saying he needs some coffee, and he's got a drawing of just that.
Reports are coming in that an earthquake just hit Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Cleveland. The U.S. Geological Survey said an earthquake of a 5.8 magnitude hit Virginia near the town of Mineral...Lots of Tweeting.
The largest natural earthquake in Colorado in more than a century struck Monday night ... with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3...
No PetsWell, then! Let's go in topless and barefoot. If and when they're open.
Shoes, Shirt
Required
Perry is the first graduate of Texas A & M to govern Texas. When he was a freshman, in 1968, the student body looked much like him: white, male, determinedly rural.... At A & M, Perry ran the winning campaign of his friend John Sharp for student-body president. In response, Sharp got his friend elected one of the campus’s five “yell leaders”—male cheerleaders. Perry considered being a yeller the higher office. A typical yell is: “Squads left! Squads right! / Farmers, farmers, we’re all right! / Load, ready, aim, fire, boom!” During tense moments in a football game, yellers grab their balls and shout, “Squeeze, Aggies!”I was inclined to disbelieve that ball-squeezing thing. But I Googled it. There are some strange American folk traditions, apparently. But... why is this in an article about Rick Perry? Why merge that image with him? There's some psychological manipulation going on here!
Squeezing is only figurative, and the yell leaders do it when the football team is attempting to kick a field goal. Before the ball is snapped, they run down to the end zone and kneel down on one knee, abreast of one another with one hand over their crotch, waiting expectantly for the kick. The "squeeze" is a figurative gesture, nobody really squeezes. It's all done in good fun--a bombastic notion that self-induced pain would affect an outcome on the field. People in the stands do it also, even girls.
One idea being bandied about among the Degas scholars and those collectors who have spent millions of dollars on Maibaum’s sculptures is to convene a symposium that will allow all sides of the debate to air their views in a “litigation-free zone,” if you will. “I’ve encouraged people to get over their litigation hang-ups,” Beale, one of the Degas experts, told me recently. “The concern for litigation is beyond the pale.”Discussion in a litigation-free zone... what a concept! As if, in some later lawsuit, a judge would exclude evidence of these statements under some new "litigation-free zone" privilege.
... It makes economic sense. The president should think big -- upward of $100 billion a year for at least two years...The editors recommend a deal:
Unfortunately, a major public works program doesn’t make political sense right now. Republicans have served notice that they intend to stand pat against new federal spending...
Obama should temporarily suspend Davis-Bacon, then ask Congress to repeal the act and let the market decide wage rates, as it does for every other industry....I can't picture the Republicans accepting this. And does the public actually want a Works Progress Administration-style program?
Such a deal would stretch federal money, resulting in more jobs, especially for less-skilled workers who have been out of work for more than six months. And it would finally allow Obama to have a Works Progress Administration-style program that’s been missing from his recovery plans.
I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.
Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.
NATIONAL DEBT RISES BY $3 MILLION EACH MINUTE...(Both links go to the same story.) Above him, we see "Man busted near Nat'l Mall with fireworks-packed car 'fitted with turret, multiple tubes'..." (Scary! But it wasn't — go to the link — a terrorist.) (Addition phallic imagery implied by these explosive tubes.)
Obama sets record: $4,247,000,000,000 debt in just 945 days...
Mr. Weaver has long been at war with the GOP mainstream, and his candidates typically end up running against some element of the Republican base. That was his strategy in 2000 with John McCain, who won New Hampshire but lost in South Carolina after attacking fellow Republicans....The trouble with the strategy is that... it draws huzzahs from the media! The media lures Republicans into embracing the most liberal candidate, but they will turn on him as soon as he gets the nomination. That's what happened with John McCain, who, once nominated, wasn't liberal enough for liberals or conservative enough for conservatives. There's some idea that the moderates are left to throng to this liberalish Republican. (I just typo'd "Republicant" and before deleting the "t," considered, as an alternative, inserting an apostrophe.)
The trouble with the strategy is that while it draws huzzahs from the media, attacking Republicans rarely appeals to enough . . . Republicans. This year in particular it's hard to see much room for Mr. Huntsman running to the left of Mr. Romney. The GOP as "anti-science" was a main Democratic theme in the past decade but also isn't likely to move many Republicans now. Perhaps Mr. Huntsman thinks this will carve out ideological space to be the "moderate" choice as vice president, which on present course is his only chance of getting on the ticket.
McCain offered no defense of his party, only assertions that he had tried to get [financial] regulations passed. So, there he was, embedded in failure. He didn't stand by the principles of conservatism...In the end, summing up my 4 reasons for rejecting McCain, I said "He never defined himself as a principled conservative."
Look at how McCain failed to promote conservatism. McCain brought up Ronald Reagan 3 times: once to say he opposed him about sending troops to Lebanon and the other 2 times to say it was wonderful the way he worked with the liberal Tip O'Neill.
McCain never presented the conservative alternative to Obama. He never even called himself a conservative last night. He was wandering all over that red carpet, microphone in hand, and I have the feeling, in retrospect, that he was truly bewildered, mouthing old phrases, trying to slip by. But one old phrase that was missing was "I'm a proud conservative." Remember when he used to say that?
The general thesis is that law schools are intensely political places, in spite of the fact that they seem intellectually unpretentious, barren of theoretical ambition or practical vision of what social life might be. The trade school mentality, the endless attention to trees at the expense of forests, the alternating grimness and chumminess of focus on the limited task at hand, all these are only a part of what is going on. The other part is ideological training for willing service in the hierarchies of the corporate welfare state.Now, that's not really a declaration against interest for Kennedy, and Campos's book isn't a declaration against interest either. Both men were/are promoting their own work from a safe position of tenure.
To say that law school is ideological is to say that what teachers teach along with basic skills is wrong, is nonsense about what law is and how it works. It is to say that the message about the nature of legal competence, and its distribution among students, is wrong, is nonsense. It is to say that the ideas about the possibilities of life as a lawyer that students pick up from legal education are wrong, are nonsense. But all this is nonsense with a tilt, it is biased and motivated rather than random error. What it says is that it is natural, efficient and fair for law firms, the bar as a whole, and the society the bar services to be organized in their actual patterns of hierarchy and domination.
Because most students believe what they are told, explicitly and implicitly, about the world they are entering, they behave in ways that fulfill the prophecies the system makes about them and about that world. This is the link-back that completes the system: students do more than accept the way things are, and ideology does more than damp opposition. Students act affirmatively within the channels cut for them, cutting them deeper, giving the whole a patina of consent, and weaving complicity into everyone’s life story.
Resist!
If he is reelected, then that will be the end of running for President. He'll be 54 years old, and what will he do? Move to Hawaii and play golf? But he could move to Hawaii and play golf in January 2013, if that's an enticing prospect. And, if he does, he won't have maxed out his eligibility for being President. He can tantalize us, year after year, with the possibility that he would run for another term — a fascinatingly out-of-sequence term. The thing he's best at is running for President. Why let that game expire? He could toy with it in 2016, when he's 58, and in 2020, when he's a clear-visioned 62, and in 2024, when he's a well-seasoned 66, and in 2028, when he's a beneficent elder, offering his services once again, because his country longs for the golden days of 2011. It will never end, as long as the icon of hope and change... walks the face of the earth... unless he serves that second term.Morrissey emphasizes Obama's low poll numbers, the difficulty of reelection, the problem of dragging down some key Senate races, and the possibly exciting prospect of a Hillary Clinton candidacy:
No, not the requirement of the U.S. debt-ceiling agreement that Congress vote up or down on such an amendment -- everyone knows that proposal will be dead on arrival. Rather, it was the joint recommendation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that all 17 euro-area members adopt constitutional amendments by next summer that would require balanced budgets by specific target dates.Read the whole thing. Proposing an amendment — even passing it — doesn't make anything actually happen, Feldman informs us. "Constitutional commitments are only convincing when they credibly correspond to elite interests over the long haul."
In the context of the world’s current economic troubles, how could responsible, economically sophisticated leaders think it is a good idea to impose an inflexible constitutional debt ceiling? Merkel and Sarkozy are, after all, a far cry from Rick Perry.