September, 2010 archive
You Can’t Tell the Players without a Program in Virginia Beach 0
Having trouble keeping track of who’s running for what in the Virginia Beach City Council and School Board races, I compiled a program of the players for my own use.
The council contains 11 members, counting the mayor, who serve four-year terms. Five terms expire in one even-numbered election year; six terms expire on the alternate even-numbered election year.
This year, seven candidates are running for two at-large seats.
Two candidates are running for each of the following district seats: Bayside, Lynnhaven, and Princess Anne. The incumbent is running unopposed for the Beach District seat.
In a weird quirk having to do with the history of the City of Virginia Beach, all city voters can vote for every seat.
The City of Virginia Beach resulted from the merger of Princess Anne County and the Town of Virginia Beach in 1963. A “District seat” means that the person representing that district must reside in that district, but, unlike in most jurisdictions, does not mean that only voters in that district may vote fo the person representing that district.
At the time of the merger, Princess Anne County was sparsely-populated farmland. The system was created to reduce the likelihood that the concentration of voters in the Town of Virginia Beach (roughly the area in the upper-right quadrant of the map within a few blocks of the Atlantic Ocean) would overwhelm the relatively small number of voters in Princess Anne County, while still maintaining a form of “one voter-one vote” in city elections.
You can download a copy of my election program.
Please report any errors and I will fix them promptly.
Dis Coarse Discourse: Capped and Traded Away 0
My ex-local rag has an excellent analysis of the current place of cap and trade is what passes for political discoarse these days. Among other things, it points out that cap and trade was a Republican Party creation.
A nugget:
Long associated with programs born 20 years ago under Republican President George H.W. Bush, cap and trade was until recently a label for complicated market- and auction-based strategies used to control acid rain, smog and greenhouse gases.
Last week, however, cap and trade became a stripped-down surrogate for the running national debate over energy policy, the environmental cost of American dependence on fossil fuels and the price of paying now, or later, for carbon dioxide emissions.
QOTD 0
H. G. Wells, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.
Party Matters 0
Just as an aside, I never became a Democrat. I looked at my voting record of 30+ years and realized I always had been a Democrat, votes for Larry Coughlin (R-Pa.) and Bill Roth (R-Del.) notwithstanding.
So I came out.
John Cole:
Twits on Twitter 0
From the BBC.
Republican Magickal Thinking, Paradise Lost Dept. 0
Dick Polman:
For instance, it was hard to miss Miller’s reference to the Tenth Amendment. Nothing new there. Over the years, foes of progress have repeatedly invoked that language about state’s rights, in order to make their obstructionism sound more high-minded.
(snip)
There it is, the logical extension of the current tea-party argument, as articulated yesterday by Miller: If it’s unconstitutional for the feds to provide unemployment benefits, then it’s certainly unconstitutional for the feds to enforce laws that put blacks and whites in the same public accommodations. After all, It’s the same Tenth Amendment principle.
Read the whole thing.
Revolt of the Pod Pupils 0
Ear bud withdrawal:
A student claims that
“They’re a legitimate study tool when you’re trying to tune out the background noise of people talking and conversation flying by and just focus on the work that you’re doing right now,” . . .
Yeah.
Right.
Stirring the Pot 0
They read: “$10,000 TO TAKE A CRAP.”
(snip)
About a week later, the township’s code-enforcement agency notified Kliss, who lives at 436 Pheasant Rd., that he was violating a zoning ordinance that “No Loud, Vulgar, Indecent or Obscene Advertising matter shall be displayed in any manner.”
The homeowner is protesting being compelled to pay for a sewer connection which he claims will cost him big bucks.
He painted over the word “crap,” leaving the sentence dangling, and is taking the township to court alleging that
- the township’s motive is to silence political speech with which it disagrees, that
- the ordinance does not define “Loud, Vulgar, Indecent or Obscene” and is therefore too vague to be enforceable, that
- “crap” is in common usage and therefore isn’t “Loud, Vulgar, Indecent or Obscene” any way.
Speaking from a position of complete ignorance, I suspect he has a case.
The First American Civil Rights Movement 0
In the 1800s, free blacks were not free.
In an eerie precursor to Montgomery, black folks were not allowed to ride the street cars in Philadelphia or to otherwise live as free persons. Black folks who tried to ride street cars were subject to beatings, unless they stayed on the platform outside the body of the car.
Radio Times discusses the first American civil rights movement, which included gaining the right to ride street cars in Philly. The movement was news to the authors of the book, news to the interviewer, and news to me, even though my field of study in history was U. S. Southern (yeah, Philly ain’t southern, but even so this was relevant).
From the website:
Follow the link to learn more or listen here (MP3).
Afterthought:
It is so much easier to deny rather than to confront or admit bigotry.
Hence the fiction that the Civil War was about anything–anything–other than chattel slavery.
QOTD 0
Russell Baker, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
By the age of six the average child will have completed the basic American education…. From television, the child will have learned how to pick a lock, commit a fairly elaborate bank holdup, prevent wetness all day long, get the laundry twice as white, and kill people with a variety of sophisticated armaments.
Stray Thought 0
I didn’t much like Hawaii Five-O the first time around.
Republican Magickal Thinking: Doing the Same Thing Harder 0
Steve Benen. Follow the link for the evidence (emphasis added):
A detail that’s doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves is that the policy everyone’s fighting over — the one the GOP will do anything to protect — didn’t work. Bush’s tax policy was a failure, and didn’t deliver on any of its intended goals.
The only reason that makes sense for pursuing a failed policy is that it really is about making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
This, of course, assumes that sense has something to do with it.
Parking Wars 2
Ross Campbell, of Statham, was standing in a parking spot holding his 3-year-old son when Richard Junkins pulled up in a Ford Mustang, Athens-Clarke County police said Sunday.
Unexplained is why the victim was standing in the parking place to begin with.
Rosemary/Dill Rubbed Lamp Chops 0
Aye, there’s the rub:
- 4 parts dill
- 4 parts rosemary
- 2 parts basil
- 2 parts marjoram
- 1 part pepper, preferably freshly ground and coarse
Prepare enough rub to cover lamb chops thickly.
1. Marinate chops in dry sherry or dry red wine.
2. Coat chops thickly with rub, pressing it in.
3. Grill to medium or medium well over medium fire.
The Rest of the Story . . . 0
. . . is missing.
GMAC Mortgage may “need to take corrective action in connection with some foreclosures” in the affected states, according to a two-page memo dated Sept. 17 marked “urgent.” Ally Financial spokesman James Olecki confirmed the contents of the memo. Brokers were told to immediately stop evictions, cash- for-key transactions and lockouts, according to the document, addressed to GMAC preferred agents.
No indication yet as to what the “corrective action” may be.
The Weekly Address: Citizens Benighted 0
Excerpt:
We’ve tried to fix this with a new law – one that would simply require that you say who you are and who’s paying for your ad. This way, voters are able to make an informed judgment about a group’s motivations. Anyone running these ads would have to stand by their claims. And foreign-controlled corporations would be restricted from spending money to influence elections, just as they were before the Supreme Court opened up this loophole.
Pants on Fire 0
Quip of the day:
Read the whole thing.
