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Open thread
- By Phillip Brownlee
- Posted Dec. 4, 2006 at 1:05 a.m.
- Filed under Open thread
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47 Comments
Is it just me, or does anybody else find that Jerry O’Neal/Continental Siding commercial the most irritating “fingernails on the chalkboard” piece of crap on television … and then ending it with an order – “Call Now!”? All I can think of at the end of it is another order – “Fire!”
What about Billy Mays and Kaboom, Oxyclean, Orange Clean, Bam and others.
Good morning Joe.I vote for Cialis, Viagra, and all “male enhancement products”.Do we really need to advertise prescription only drugs?rm6406, you have a nice day.
I would add all the ‘rap music’ commercials for McDonalds etc.
Has the City of Wichita forgotten the Boat House? Where is Wichita’s committment to the Boat House and Bill Koch? Why does it set empty and falling apart? Why do so many of the City run attractions all lose money? I’ll guess a law suite over the Boat House is in the future with another public embarrassment for the City. Who did you vote for?
This could be fun …
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/12/03/is-white-house-whistleblower-ready-to-bring-down-the-president/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fsteve-young%2Fis-white-house-whistleblo_b_35438.html&frame=true
Is White House Whistleblower Ready to Bring Down the President?
I don’t want to go Woodward and Bernstein all over you, but last week, just after Air Force 1 lifted off towards a meeting with Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Maliki, someone in the administration who had had enough of the President’s insistence that he knows what he’s doing, sent a message that everyone seems to have missed: an administration mutiny is in the offing.
more at link …
Wink – the idea is to allow the Boat House to deteriorate to the point where they can demolish it and give the land to a “Good Ol’ Boy”
Hey, Tracy -Good to see you.
Ben,
Are you talking about selling the boat house land for pennies on the dollar to a good old boy who happens to be of Syrian decent?
That could never happen, could it?
Well. The Mustache departeth: Bolton out as U.N. Ambassador.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BOLTON_RESIGNS?SITE=KING&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Very interesting, in a Ben Huie-kind of way; looks like Bush didn’t want to fight with a new Democratic Congress over Bolton, or risk their wrath by offering him another recess appointment. This could be the White House keeping its powder dry, or a sign that the brittle strength of hardliners (i.e. Cheney) is beginning to splinter.
Ben Huie,
Not sure what the events mentioned in the Steve Young column portend. That Hadley memo was some embarrassing shit that all the spin in the world couldn’t cover up. God knows there’s all the difference in the world between the public face of the Administration and what’s really going on.
There ya go Steven … pointing out the obvious!
Yep!
Sorry about the obvious. To be clear, Dave Bayouth was the smartest county commissioner I ever met. He was not above taking some sweetheart deals, though – as we found out after his term in office.
And to be fully disclosing, I don’t know if the Bayouth family is from Syria or Lebanon.
As for most detestable ad, it’s no contest:
“Spangles, it just tastes better!”
Sorry to ruin everybody’s morning.
Steven – Lebanon I think. I agree with you that he was very bright and forward-looking.
Now, something to keep things bubbling here while I’m at work …
Bush left reality behind. Now we are all trapped
William PfaffSunday November 19, 2006The Observer
For Americans, Iraq has ceased to be a video game running along the edge of public consciousness. The midterm congressional elections demonstrate that the US public wants to get out of Iraq almost as much as the British, as does the attention suddenly given to the Baker-Hamilton Commission, which was actually set up months ago.But how is exit to be accomplished? Clearly the White House does not know, nor does the US army. The Baker-Hamilton Commission is unlikely to know, as its members were chosen because they represent the higher reaches of the conventional wisdom.
Yet the impression the Bush administration now gives is that the whole matter has been put into the hands of Baker’s group – which is ridiculous, especially as the President continues to declare that inviting Iran and Syria to help stabilise Iraq is unacceptable; he is against talking to them, and says he still expects ‘victory’. If so, what is the purpose of the commission?So this is the situation in which both the administration and most of the Democratic opposition find themselves. The existing policy is a failure, yet nothing can be changed because no one can imagine a valid alternative. American intentions and actions have, it is held, been correct, their goals irreproachable.
If anyone is to blame it is the Iraqis, who failed to seize the wonderful opportunity the United States offered them. Neocons are now saying that the Iraqis did not deserve our help. Some suggest they are an inferior breed.
I don’t include Britain in this accusation because, whatever Tony Blair’s mesmerised submission to the charms of George Bush, the British government, its people and forces have not been living in this condition of denied reality.
In America, it’s as though Bush, his inner cabinet, and the neocons have been playing a video game, with fictional characters and victims, virtual death and torture. Now the disc has suddenly finished, and it’s time to shut down the player.
This is not just a figure of speech. American policy has been running on images rather than evidence of real nations and people doing things for real human motives. It has been populated by abstractions: Global Terrorist Conspiracies, Rogue Nations, Fanatics Who Hate Our Freedoms, Generations of Terrorism and The Global Menace of Al-Qaeda.
The US, where actual people live, has been turned into an abstraction: the Sole Superpower, which everyone in the world knows is a Righteous Nation, the Mars (in the neocon Robert Kagan’s formulation) defending the fragile Venus which is Europe, the Straussian (Leo Strauss, the University of Chicago philosopher) Realist unflinchingly battling in a Hobbesian universe to protect Kantian Europeans, with their illusions of global parliaments and peace, from nameless horrors.
We are the tranquil Elephant (as another American academic, Michael Mandelbaum, has proposed) which by its very presence guards the smaller beasts of the savanna from carnivorous predators.
This is what we exist to do. We are the leading nation, the most moral, born with the redemptive mission to create what the Puritan preacher Jonathan Winthrop called the ‘City on the Hill’, the democracy ‘of the people and by the people’ that originated the modern world with our repudiation of monarchy and inherited privilege, establishing the greatest of republics, saving the Four Freedoms for the world by winning (alone!) both First and Second World Wars, then the Cold War, and now confronting the ultimate test of the ‘long war’ against Evil itself, incarnate as Terror.
Today this is the language of government, journalism, politics and foreign policy in the US, spoken in the policy discussions at Washington think-tanks and on the editorial pages of newspapers.
Is this Orwellian? Or is it just demagogy, politicians’ lies, White House spin, journalistic laziness, formulations conceived to sell books? Or could it be cynical manipulation by apprentice dictators, energy industry and weapons-maker magnates, closet fascists?
It is not Orwellian in that the neocon ideologues, George Bush and Tony Blair, certainly believe all this. They are not being manipulated.
It is not Orwellian because the creators of this cartoon-like conceptual world have themselves become actors in the virtual universe their ideas and actions have made. They have left reality behind – or they simply ignore it, as they did in invading Iraq.
We have passed from 1984 to 2006, into a post-Orwellian condition in which Big Brother has become a part of his creation. He is now imposing it on others by acting as though it were real, at whatever expense to others.
This is our problem today. In some measure we have all been drawn into this virtual world. How do we leave?
ยท William Pfaff is a senior American commentator on international affairs and American foreign policy.
Yeah Ben,
Where is “Neo” when you need him? – this Smith character has got to be stopped!
Bolton was perfect for the job … an idiot in the middle of a whole village of idiots wandering aimlessly behind Kofi Annan. Gawd !
Bolton was perfect for the job … an idiot in the middle of a whole village of idiots wandering aimlessly behind Kofi Annan. Gawd !
Speaking of Kofi, his term as secretary-general ends December 31. Wonder what rocket scientist will replace him and how much the new one’s son can embezzle?
The new UN General Secretary is expected to be Ban Ki-moon of South Korea.
Correct that – Ban Ki-Moon is the Secretary General – elect. His candidacy has already been approved by the Security Council.
My bad.
Correct that – Ban Ki-Moon is the Secretary General – elect. His candidacy has already been approved by the Security Council.
My bad.
An interesting article on another state’s handling of wind generation of electricity.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/061203wind.html
Notice how the tax issue was handled; is there a lesson there for Kansas?
Why do I care what Maine is doing? As posted on earlier threads, we have a daughter attending college in Maine. I like to keep up with what is happening there, as I have seen that its situation is somewhat analogous to Kansas, e.g., an aging population; younger people leaving the state, as they see no future; etc. True, it has something Kansas does not; tourism. However, its tourism seems affected by issues of climate change, in that the snows don’t come as early as in the past; when it snows, often the quantity isn’t what it was. Thus, the good people there seek to find new industry, and to do so, have determined that wind generation of electricity might be part of the answer.
Worst commercial–hands down winner is “MEL HAMILTON FORD!!! and their SCREAMING CAR GUY!!!”
Hey, Mel, let me put this to you in terms you can understand, please SHUT THE HELL UP.
I wonder if the purpose of that ad is to cull all the reasonably intelligent car buyers OUT so that only the stupid, easily manipulated ones go to MEL HAMILTON FORD!!!
Any bets on if we go into a recession in 2007?
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/
The absolutely awful macro news this past week – manufacturing ISM below 50 signaling manufacturing recession, faltering consumer confidence, very weak beginning of holiday sales and faltering sales of major retailers, sharp increase in initial claims for unemployment benefits, sharply falling durable goods orders and corporate investment, sharply falling new home sales, free falling construction spending (both residential and non-residential), falling mortgage applications, slumping auto sales signaling the worsening of the auto recession – fully confirm my views that I have been repeating for a while: the housing recession is now a construction recession, an auto recession and a manufacturing recession and an investment recession and, soon enough, a retail and consumption recession. U.S. Q4 growth will be at best 0% and you can expect a full fledged recession by Q1 or Q2 of 2007.
Thanks .morg, that will take our minds off of Iraq.
Damn, what more can this cowboy prez do for us?
Actually the Prez prefers the term “The First Buckaroo”.
If what I posted earlier about recession is too depressing here are some happy thoughts from Larry Kudlow a talking head on CNBC, he’s also a strong Brownback supporter.Kudlow’s Money Politic$Pro-growth, strong defense, virtuous values, business, and stockshttp://www.kudlowsmoneypolitics.blogspot.com/
.morg–
I can believe it. I’ve never seen such low prices for NEW cars as I’ve been seeing in the paper these last couple of months.
Add to that, car companies are giving .9 percent financing or zero percent financing . . . they can’t be making much.
But but but, tax cuts for the rich solve all problems . . . that’s what the Bush dead-enders have been telling us for six years.
The first recession was of course CLINTON’S FAULT. I wonder who they’re going to blame this one on.
Capn,Check out who is running the White house.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16028563/
America’s corporate elite has long upheld a tradition of joining Washington’s corridors of power for a new career. JPMorgan executives gave counsel to President Woodrow Wilson during the first world war. President John F. Kennedy asked Robert McNamara, a war veteran who had risen to the top ranks of Ford, to become secretary of defence in 1960.
But the appointment last week of Goldman Sachs’s William Dudley to head the Federal Reserve Bank of New York market’s group raised to an unprecedented level the number of top positions in public service that former executives from any one company have held during a White House administration.
Wonder what the effect of the eventual decision on the Louisville and Seattle student assignment cases will have on 259’s methodology for the “lottery” assignments for magnet schools?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/12/04/scotus.race.ap/index.html
Insofar as I can tell from the media reports, the one factor distinguishing 259’s situation from the others is the consent decree; however, Mr. Brooks is trying to get it (decree) released, in light of the district’s efforts, e.g., new K-8 school. However, an adverse ruling from SCOTUS would throw a large monkey wrench into those plans.
Some harbingers of change from the newly elected democrats:********************************************************************DEMOCRATIC REPS TELL EPA TO SUSPEND CLOSURE OF LIBRARIES
In what may be a harbinger of new rigor in Congressional oversight,four Democratic members of Congress told the EnvironmentalProtection Agency to cease and desist from closing public documentlibraries and dispersing or destroying their contents unless anduntil EPA obtains specific approval from Congress.
Public interest groups including the Union of Concerned Scientistsand the American Library Association had expressed alarm over theclosure of EPA libraries and the reported destruction of documents.EPA said that it was modernizing and digitizing its collectionsand that no information has been destroyed.
“We request that you maintain the status quo of the libraries andtheir materials while this issue is under investigation and reviewby Congress,” wrote Ranking Members Reps. Bart Gordon (D-TN), JohnDingell (D-MI), Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) and James Oberstar (D-MN) ina November 30 letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2006/epa113006.pdf
“It is imperative that the valuable government informationmaintained by EPA’s libraries be preserved,” the Congressmen wrote.********************************************************************
Should have said the soon-to-be majority is encouraging currently elected democrats…
Vaughn: Hmmmmmmmmmm. It will be interesting. Busing was a bad idea at its inception, and its even worse now. If we had spent the money on building neighborhood schools where they were needed … oh hell, I’m preaching to the choir there. Everybody knows how to end that sentence. We grew up with neighborhood schools, and we didn’t turn out TOOOOOOOOO bad. Brooks doesn’t impress me, but I can’t remember a #259 superintendent that has. They have always had “way too many chiefs, and not enough (sadly undrpaid) Indians”.
We keep spending more and more money on education with each president. So why is the performance of our public school system so pathetic?
But the answer is not to throw all the money at the evangelical christians that want their hands on the all that money.
Let’s try accountability and responsibility from educators, parents and kids. Do away with all this nonsense standardized testing and make sure each child can at least read and write. Not every child is college material – but we need to make sure each child has the opportunity to learn a trade or skill before graduating.
But the answer is not in giving all the money to these faith-based groups that will only accept their idea of a good student.
Well, Golf, I have some very politically incorrect ideas.
First, comparing our (U.S.) system to other countries’ is apples to oranges; in the U.S., it is the goal to provide an equal educational opportunity to everybody; many other countries “track” students from an early age, and based upon assessments, “shuttle” many students off to, for lack of a better term, “vocational” training, with only the best and the brightest, as determined by the assessments, placed on a university track. Maybe the U.S. needs to reexamine this.
Second, overall education is being “dumbed down”. I don’t know why, but it is. However, based upon the younger daughter’s high school Biology class, e.g., in some areas, students are being presented with information I didn’t see until college Biology, such as molecular bio, some biochem, etc.
Third, there seems to be a premium on extra-curricular activities over curriculum, it being more important to both students and parents to be the star “jock” than to be the Valedictorian. There are parents of my acquaintance that gripe that the homework load is too great, interfering with things like riding lessons, dance lessons and the like.
Fourth, there seems to be a growing attitude that academic success (and parents who desire their students to achieve academically) is “elitist”.
Fifth, U.S. schools are still, for the most part, mired in what I am told is the Carnegie model; great for training future factory workers, not so good in training critical thinkers, life-time learners, etc.
Sixth, the graduation requirements in this State and in USD 259 are, IMHO, a joke. Not nearly enough math, science, fine arts, foreign language required, again IMO.
I can go on (and, to the chagrin of my wife and acquaintances, have) quite a bit more. Feeling sympathy towards those reading this, I won’t.
Sunny: You go girl !!
VT – very good observations. Especially the attitude too many have toward those who strive to get good grades.
I would add that in too many classes teachers stifle free thought; preferring students to fit nicely in their little boxes.
Sunny, while you and I agree concerning the money, I will dissent from the standardized testing to a small extent.
Given the mobility of our society, I think it incumbent that there be a “standardized test” with national norms, assessing the ability of the student to read, write, do math, and generally think at a certain level as a requirement for graduation from high school. In this way, third parties looking at a high school diploma will know it represents a certain level of academic achievement, including the ability to learn a trade or occupation upon graduation if not headed to college.
Vaughn: I know that you don’t practice your craft to the public, nor do I, anymore, but, by God, buddy, if I needed a lawyer, I’d find you !!!!! That is NOT a threat ! :)
Thank you, rm; I’ll consider that a warning. :)
hmmm, I agree with your analysis of what is wrong in many a classroom. That was definitely what was wrong in my high school days; I suspect I’d have done better had I teachers who didn’t try to shove me into their box.
BTW, rm, I’m still practicing, although the latest telephone directory doesn’t reflect it (long story, has to do with office relocation, potential retirement of a partner) this year; will be rectified next time around.
Link double posted.
Posted here for the proposition that if we did a better job educating our youngsters, there wouldn’t be such a need to reform immigration of “high skilled” immigrants. Stated another way, the demand for such immigrants would be lessened if we (the U.S.) would get serious about incentivizing education in these areas, increasing our supply of qualified citizens for these jobs.
http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2006/12/the_economic_benefit_of_highsk.html
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