2012 archive
“The End Is Nigh” 0
And nigh and nigh and nigh.
At the Guardian, Ted Harrison looks back at the continual failure and resurgence of those who think it’s all over. A nugget:
(snip)
History shows that if a date comes and goes uneventfully, it’s not the end of the world, so to speak. After their disappointment, the Millerites grew and thrived. Today, their millions of religious descendants are better known as Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Recruiting Drives 2
Fox News is often rightly characterized as the official propaganda outlet for the Republican Party.
Or is it perhaps the other way around? Jay Bookman reports:
A.) Urges Petraeus to run for president against Barack Obama;
B.) Tells Petraeus that she was instructed to carry that message to Petraeus by Fox News President Roger Ailes and its owner, Rupert Murdoch;
C.) Tells Petraeus that Fox would fully back his presidential campaign, and by fully back she means:
D.) Murdoch would finance the campaign. Ailes would leave Fox to run the campaign. And Fox News itself would become the house organ of the campaign. As McFarland puts it point blank, “The big boss is bankrolling it. Roger’s going to run it. And the rest of us are going to be your in-house.”
No doubt this would have worked out well.
After all, everything else being equal (which, of course, it would not have been), the Paula Broadman story would have broken three days after the election.
Beach Babbitry Bumbles on 0
The Virginia Beach city fathers are continuing their attempts to convince the citizenry that Virginia Beach needs nothing more than a sports palace to achieve civic nirvana, as the potential costs proliferate (many more details at the link):
At the same time, city officials have suggested boosting the hotel tax by 1 percentage point to help pay for the proposed arena at the Oceanfront, and resort hoteliers voted Monday to support the idea.
A rate increase to 14 percent, from 13 percent, would generate an estimated $2.8 million per year for the project. For a $200 hotel room, a customer would pay $28 in tax, up from $26.
“We think it will be a big boost for Virginia Beach and the region,” said Verne Burlage, president of the Virginia Beach Hotel-Motel Association, which he said voted unanimously to support it.
Supposedly, this will attract the Sacramento Kings, a third-rate basketball team distinguished primarily by the duplicity of its owners.
My two or three regular readers know that I see this as of a sport-fan-induced pipe dream the primary result which will be to deliver truckloads of money to developers. It is notable that, to create their rosy marketing predictions, the marketing consultants have extended their version of the metropolitan area as far as Richmond–90 miles away, about the distance from Manhattan to Trenton.
It takes so little effort with Google to find piles of the smoking ashes of arena pipe dreams in other cities that I’m not going to waste my time.
Instead, I will point out this little fact that seems lost in the shuffle: Several decades ago, two nearby cities smoked the same stuff and built very nice arenas. Major civic events, big-time professional sports, transformative effects, and magical visits from the revenue fairy were predicted. One of them even had a professional basketball team for a few years.
As I write this, both cities are still nice little cities with nice arenas that host concerts and other performances, but neither provides evidence that shoveling money to developers to build sports palaces transforms a relatively small city into anything other than a relatively small city with a mortgage on a sports palace.
Facebook Frolics 0
Facebook has received preliminary approval for a settlement in a class action suit over their “sponsored stories” campaign. In that method of “advertising,” they use pictures and names of Facebook “members” in “advertisements” to those members’ “friends.”
The Center for Public Interest Law is not happy:
Remember, in Facebook you are not the customer. You are the product.
“Is Your Timeline So Unreal” 0
Daffodils in December.
The Hostage Takers 0
Thom wonders what the next targets will be and visits with Congressman Alan Grayson.
Collectibles 0
kavips comments on the latest rage. All the cool gazillionaires have one:
Among the nouveau riche, it appears one hasn’t arrived until he/she has a prize winning candidate in their barn… It used to be racehorses. It is now GOP candidates…
She goes on to link this to the phony phiscal cliff.
A Question of Standards: Are Two Enough? Are Six Too Many? 0
Susan Antilla, writing at Bloomberg dot com, considers the disparate treatment of the principles in the affair of the Petraeus affair. A nugget:
Petraeus is no stranger to self-promotion himself, and several writers have called him out both for his assiduous courting of the reporters who covered him and for his tacky decision to adorn his civilian clothes with military medals for a recent speech in Washington.
But that self-promotion hasn’t led to any portrayals of Petraeus as “a shameless self promoting prom king.”
QOTD 0
Abraham Joshua Heschel:
When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
Stray Thought 0
I do enjoy the schmaltzy Christmas pop songs of my youth, but if I never hear “Little Drummer Boy” again, it will be about 10,000 times too late.
Driving while Black 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., defines “black blindness” as the ability to look at a black person, especially a young male black person, and see something that isn’t there, such as a gun in place of a wallet or a cell phone, or even a gun even in place of nothing whatsoever.
Pitts writes of Jordan Davis, yet another black teenager killed by a white man who intends to claim in his defense that he was just standin’ his ole ground not doin’ nothin’ when he gots afeared for his life (though no evidence of a threat or threatening behavior has been adduced).
A nugget:
Read the whole thing.
Aside:
After you read the whole thing, you might share my fear that some of these folks who insist on packing heat do so hoping for an excuse to shoot someone, because they think slinging guns is the cat’s meow and the bee’s knees and they want to be part of cool crowd.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
If they want your house, they will just take it.
In the coming weeks, the state would wire CitiMortgage, the servicer for her loan, at least $13,000 to make Long’s mortgage current. But unbeknownst to the state or Long, Citi had already foreclosed, despite reaching an agreement with the program, known as Homesafe Georgia.
In this case, after a long struggle, the state got the bank to back down.
This is called “working with the customer.”
Another Compromising Con Job 0
At Philly dot com, Thomas Fitzgerald, a normally level-headed sort of guy, has put forth a staggering exercise of High Broderism.
It’s a mad, maniacal image of the man the left, some Democratic members of Congress, and even former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson blame for bringing the United States to the brink of fiscal disaster.
They say Norquist’s power – stemming from an ironclad “no tax” pledge most GOP lawmakers have signed – has all but ruled out rational discussion and compromise.
But intransigence cuts both ways, and Democrats have their own Grovers.
Who are the Grovers of the Democrats? Fitzgerald nominates the AARP and several unions. (You remember unions? They represent persons who get by on wages, not on capital gains and consulting fees.)
And what are these sacred cows protecting?
Why, social security and medicare.
On the one hand, we have those who think that the richest of the rich should pay a little more of the expense of maintaining a civilized and civil society.
On the other hand, we have those who wish to take even more support and services away from those who have the least so the richest of the rich can buy more yachts, private jets and bank accounts in the Caymans.
Concepts of fairness, justice, and wise social policy are absent from the discussion.
The two positions are equivalent because, well, compromise.