Althouse: At the Tearing-Up-The-Street-In-Front-Of-Your-House Café...

April 2, 2015

At the Tearing-Up-The-Street-In-Front-Of-Your-House Café...

... it's a little noisy in here.

36 comments:

mccullough said...: How are you supposed to get your car out?; 4/2/15, 2:04 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Althouse is putting in a tunnel to her classroom.; 4/2/15, 2:07 PM
traditionalguy said...: I hope Zeus is safe. Those are big tires.; 4/2/15, 2:09 PM
Ann Althouse said...: You've got to get your car out before that starts. They did warn us, but if we hadn't been right there, we could have gotten blocked. We have street parking.; 4/2/15, 2:15 PM
mccullough said...: Same thing with my street a few years ago. I had to park on the next block for a few weeks.

Kids really seemed to like the diggers, back-hoes, and end-loaders. One of my neighbors kids sold lemonade to the workers every day. And the sewers and street are better.; 4/2/15, 2:19 PM
madAsHell said...: They appear to be doing a lot more than just replacing the curb.; 4/2/15, 2:21 PM
MadisonMan said...: Daniel got sent home! Yay! I think Qaasim is the next to go. He wasn't very good last night.; 4/2/15, 2:41 PM
Simon said...: I have previously lamented that we lack any "gas giants"—"we have no one posessed of such scale and gravity who can come in and clear a path through the infinitessimals, lock up the nomination early, unite the party, and turn to the business at hand … The metaphor comes from the theory of planetary formation that says that one of the variables is the development of gas giants, because what the gas giants do is that they don’t just clear their own orbital path, they hoover up a whole bunch of material from the accretion disk which makes for a much safer, more peaceful neighborhood. We desperately need that kind of candidate—someone who is a heavyweight and who discourages embarrassing pebbles like Bachman from running in the first place and obliterates gravel like Rick Santorum when it insists on being there."

Ted Cruz is not a gas giant. But I am hopeful—and this gives solid reason for hope—that he might have the same effect. Not in the way or sense that I had envisaged, but because he's a big personality with enormous appeal to certain parts of the party. If Cruz is already in the race locking up the greater part of the money and support available from those parts, and if you're a Carson or a Santorum, or a Perry, Bolton, Jindal, Palin, or Huckabee, you've got to know that your niche in the ecosystem is already filled, the watering-holes from which you planned to sustain your campaign are already occupied. So what's the point in even running?

Cruz's play is to get in early, locking up the tea party and evangelical votes, and leave the small-bore candidates who were hoping to sustain their campaigns at those watering-holes to die. That leaves him free to go toe-to-toe as the candidate of the undivided right against a divided center of Bush, Christie, and Rubio. That's his play. I don't know that it'll work, but that's his play, he believes it'll work, and if it does, then in one stroke, Cruz has cleared the field. Maybe those people's egos are big enough that they'll run anyway, but you've got to hope that they're realistic enough to see that with Cruz in already and way out ahead, they're done.; 4/2/15, 2:48 PM
traditionalguy said...: Ah, ha. This is a cafe. The Final Four followed by the Final Two comes Saturday.

And the Garissa Teacher's College in Eastern Kenya was slaughtered by Muslim Jihadists raided and took 170 Christian students aside for execution.

Garissa Teacher's motto is "Jesus Christ of whom we are all witnesses."

I guess that makes the dead Christians into Martyrs.

This is the Jihad going around the world sponsored by our best friends, the Iranian Empire.; 4/2/15, 2:50 PM
MadisonMan said...: Gas Giants, in addition to Hoovering, also send lesser bodies hurtling into the Sun.

I think the metaphor breaks down at that point.; 4/2/15, 2:59 PM
Simon said...: MM, no, I think it still works at that point. A candidate suddenly starts shining brightly, and starts getting a lot of attention, but is ultimately doomed because (s)he melts under the rising crescendo of heat and light suddenly flooding upon them.

Cough. Cough. Walker. Cough.; 4/2/15, 3:14 PM
Tank said...: Islamists mass muderring Christians today.

Small non-story.; 4/2/15, 3:16 PM
Hagar said...: Looks like they are replacing 8"VCP with 10" or 12"PVC sanitary sewer pipe.; 4/2/15, 4:02 PM
Anonymous said...: I wanted to note that Cruz is now ahead of Walker in some polls.

But both are just flashes in the pan at this point.

The horse race must have new leaders every so often to keep the news selling.; 4/2/15, 4:51 PM
MadisonMan said...: 'Hoovering' is a great word, by the way. Thank you Brits for that addition!; 4/2/15, 5:14 PM
MadisonMan said...: Something that made me laugh today...I hope the link works.

Link.; 4/2/15, 5:19 PM
David said...: That's a pretty orderly work site. Sorry about the NOISE!; 4/2/15, 5:20 PM
Rusty said...: "Oh they'removing dads remains.
To put in nine inch drains........"

The blue-green pipe is water.; 4/2/15, 5:49 PM
Hagar said...: The pipe is green, so it is not "Blue-Brute." There is some pipes that look like 5' lengths of VCP that came out of the excavation. Those guys are standing on the outside of the trenchbox, and if that was as deep as it went, they would not need a ladder to get in and out of the trench, and for that matter, they would not need a trenchbox in the first place.
So, I think it is sanitary sewer.; 4/2/15, 7:01 PM
kzookitty said...: Althouse, pray for good weather. Rain means mud and noise, balmy weather means dust and noise, but you are going to want to spend A LOT of time away from home in the coming months.

kzookitty; 4/2/15, 7:03 PM
khesanh0802 said...: Ann;

You have my sympathy.; 4/2/15, 7:19 PM
rhhardin said...: As Belmont Club put it a few days ago

"Obama’s love of his own imaginary greatness sums up his disastrous policy."; 4/2/15, 8:22 PM
Anonymous said...: Not in the way or sense that I had envisaged, but because he's a big personality with enormous appeal to certain parts of the party.

Consider me his target audience.

This week is a great example of why I'll do what I can to get Ted Cruz elected.

Here we have a new law passed in Indianna. Then the left goes crazy and demonize a Christian pizza business. The governor, like the coward he is, does a terrible job of defending these poor people and the law that was passed. Mike Pence is just like 99% of the Republican establishment and even conservatives in government. They don't know what they believe, or how to articulate it. They haven't thought deeply about what it means to be a social conservative, or a fiscal conservative, so when they are on tv, they are like deer caught in the headlights.

Ted Cruz knows how to make the point. How to argue the case.

I remember many years ago, I used to hear Pat Buchanan talking about the "Bully Pulpit" and how the President has the "Bully Pulpit" and can bring the message of conservatism into the home. I didn't agree much with Pat Buchanan, but in this, he had a point.

Right now Ted Cruz is easily demonized because the media, Saturday Night Live, Late Night Talk Shows, the New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, regular sitcoms, etc, they can all get in their shots at Ted Cruz and make him into someone he isn't. He's even caricatured on House of Cards.

But make him President and they will have to give him time on tv. They will have to listen to him. He will get to put forward the counter argument.

I hope we get to see the day.; 4/2/15, 11:41 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Hold on what the Hell, I was told a butterfly flapping its yapping damn wings changes the world forever and whatnot, so I ought be subservient and derisive of the one or two people a year I meet below me in social status.

Now, you, all of you, NOW, all of you gathered here now and until this is wiped clear, just thought about what a backhoe does to butterflies in April?

?>>^^%€* April?; 4/3/15, 1:27 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: In April Dotty said, her true love went "whistling" by.

Thrice abortions I think are known but maybe that's conflagration.

Anyway, In April.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker; 4/3/15, 1:32 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: I meant confabulation, not the Freudian conflagration which I declared years ago with cause.; 4/3/15, 1:35 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Hewitt laughingly jokes "you insult a Minnesotta Morman and they will bake you a hot dish" and Althouse claims nice is superficial.

I agree with Althouse more but Hewitt of course always has a good point.

Iris Dement the Great has a song Let The Mystery Be.

The great Robert Novak, a reporter's reporter in the sense he made those around him better, way better in many cases, isn't a life we ought not remember.

You compare the sounds coming from the radio today with what the Internet offers, you must compare with compassion and an understanding unclouded by the rains of distrust.

Fuck I just threw up. Sorry y'all.; 4/3/15, 1:55 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: The best thing for the Althouse brand is apolitical observations with little conscious bias.

Why question that?

It is an ideal not a declamation.

A worthy ideal worth emulating, if you understand passion isn't contained within you alone.; 4/3/15, 2:00 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: One of the worst things that C. S. Lewis wrote was a review of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Lewis thought the problem with Nineteen Eighty-Four was the sex. He thought that the affair between Winston Smith and Julia was included by Orwell to "sex up" the story.
This is terrible reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Julia's relationship with Winston was essential to show that in a totalitarian world, there is no refuge from the State. Lovers are not allowed to make a private world. Everything is about Big Brother, always. Loving Julia was the crime Winston committed. Loving Winston was the crime Julia committed.
The totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century were the worst disasters in the history of mankind, and mankind created them.
Yet these days, I think, if you were to ask college students to list the five greatest threats to humanity, "Totalitarianism" wouldn't make the list.; 4/3/15, 2:30 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Since it costs...........................".......................

A lot to win.
Even more to lose......; 4/3/15, 2:52 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: You were the first thing that I thought of, when I'd try to drink you off my mind...; 4/3/15, 2:54 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Who gives a shit about Orwell when I read and Reread Brave New World.

I read it again so I could dismiss any cogitation anout either books nor there fuckn' authors.

I like cutting off debate and saying "I'm savage" for no known reason decency has ought yet.; 4/3/15, 2:58 AM
rhhardin said...: My street gets repaved occasionally, but there are no water, gas or sewer lines to deal with.

The dog watches.

Iron-rich well water.; 4/3/15, 6:58 AM
Unknown said...: I heard on a local talk radio show this a.m. that the U.S. has finally decided to address the flood of underage illegal immigrants once and for all, by flying their parents here to take care of them so they won't have to go back to their terrible country(ies).

I have a hard time believing this, but form what I've been able to find it seems real. And it scares me to think that someone in the government doesn't see the really obvious most likely impact on the incidence of people sending their unaccompanied underage children north.; 4/3/15, 8:39 AM
Simon said...: eric said...
"Consider me [Cruz's] target audience. This week is a great example of why I'll do what I can to get Ted Cruz elected. ¶ Here we have a new law passed in Indianna. Then the left goes crazy.... The governor, like the coward he is, does a terrible job of defending these poor people and the law that was passed … Ted Cruz knows how to make the point. How to argue the case."

That was exactly the thought process going through my head this week, too, watching our cowardly, sniveling excuse for governor retreat under fire. Whatever else he is, Cruz is a man who will fix bayonets. It's not just that he knows how to make the point, it's that he seems willing to do so: To say, when someone calls him a bigot, not "oh, well, yes, I'm terribly sorry, you're right, I do apologize and appreciate your pointing out to me my error," but rather "Bigot? You're calling me a bigot? Frak you! Come and say that to my face you childish piece of crap, and I'll break your frakking nose. Telling lies about me, misrepresenting me and distorting my record, spreading hatred about my beliefs, come at me, you lying shithead, I'm going to shred your arguments in front of the entire country." And after this week, there's an appeal to that kind of candidate.; 4/3/15, 12:07 PM
Simon said...: Unknown said...
"I have a hard time believing this...."

That's probably the right instinct. The United States doesn't generally announce major policy initiatives by leaking it to "local talk radio show[s]."; 4/3/15, 12:09 PM