We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
San Diego’s tourism industry leaders are in panic, and some politicians too,as some Arizonans cancel their summer trips due to the San Diego City Council and School Board condemning Arizona’s illegal immigrant enforcement law.
The summertime influx of Arizonans to San Diego’s balmier weather is a major source of tourism revenue. Tourism is one of San Diego’s main industries, off during this recession.
Tourism officials are advertising in Arizona an open letter urging Arizona residents to overlook local politics and come to San Diego just as they always have to escape Arizona's summer heat.
The San Diego Union-Tribune report remarks:
In some cases, it appears that Arizona residents misconstrued the votes taken by San Diego’s elected leaders as calls for an actual boycott of Arizona as opposed to statements of opposition.
The reporter should look back a few days to her paper's own reporting:
At the urging of board Vice President John Lee Evans, the board eliminated an Arizona travel warning that President Richard Barrera had proposed for students and their families out of concern they may be subject to harassment or racial profiling. However, the San Diego Unified School District will develop a policy restricting travel and participation in conferences in Arizona.
The San Diego School Board is in the hands of union tools.It schools, mostly poorly, a high percentage of immigrants, 44% of its students are Hispanic, 75% ethnic minorities.The School Board President says, “Certainly, we know how important tourism is to San Diego, and it wasn’t my intent to impact the tourism trade.” The tourism industry employs many immigrants.
Seems the School Board voted to place the parents of some of its students in the unemployment line.The School Board should have stuck to the Three “Rs” and not the “I” that tourism officials call “political posturing.”Similar for the City Council, not paying attention to the City’s severe budget deficits, largely the result of pensions for unionized workers. One hotelier comments:
“I understand the City Council was being passionate about their politics, but I don’t think they thought it through,” Holladay said. “If it negatively impacts hotel revenue, it impacts the transient occupancy tax, and that goes right into the general fund, so they’ll have less money for their programs.”
P.S.: So far, 93% of those voting in the LA Times online poll oppose similar "posturing" by the LA City Council.
The left wishes to use the illegals as a battering ram against the American polity, the same as they used labor, and blacks, and every other group they ever encountered. Illegals will become a new protected class, with privileges and entitlements denied the rest of the populace (including, ironically, current members of previous such classes). They will be discouraged from learning English, as occurs today under the doctrine of "bilingualism", to assure that they remain a separate presence. A vast bureaucracy will arise to "assist" the new citizenry, funded with billions -- oh hell, make that trillions, this is the Obama era -- and staffed with sociologists, ethnographers, psychologists, and other disciplines unimagined today. All will be of the same political persuasion. A permanent crisis atmosphere will be generated around the new class. The "Amnestee" question will lead to endless problems and ramifications and act as a permanent indictment of the country and its policies. The native population (not to mention legal immigrants) will grow increasingly embittered and angered. The former illegals will be rendered even more miserable than they are today.
From what I have read, Kagan seems a bit wishy-washy on the First and Second Amendments. Not sure what she thinks about the rest of the Constitution, but I think she is of the "I know better than those dead guys" school of thought.
Now I see Redstate has located her Princeton thesis on Socialism. Of course, she was just a kid then. People grow and learn and evolve...with real world experience.
Rush Limbaugh has said for years that opinion polls by news organizations are nothing more than efforts to measure how effectively their reporting has impacted the public's perception of current events. Looks like he was right once again.
A JOB, A DRIVERS LICENSE, SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, WELFARE, FOOD STAMPS, CREDIT CARDS, SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE, A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY’S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON’T GET ENOUGH RESPECT * AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.
An “epidemic”. A “national health crisis“. Got it?
We have a climate crisis. Solution: Big government. We have a financial crisis. Solution: Big government. We have a health care crisis. Solution: Big government. We have an childhood obesity crisis.
Create a “crisis” and then create the solution. Any guess what the solution might be? If you’ve been paying attention lately, you do...
I missed this one, re the now almost-forgotten Times Square bomber, from Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, professor, Washington and Lee University
I think the politics of this incident will turn heavily on who is found to be responsible. If, as seems unlikely, the bomb is linked to South Asian or Middle Eastern terrorists, questions will again arise as to whether the Department of Homeland Security is doing all it can do to keep us safe. If, as I believe is much more likely, the bomb was placed by a right-wing lunatic, it seems to me that questions need to be raised as to whether the right-wing media bear some responsibility for stoking the delusions of such people through their relentless and often unfounded attacks on the Obama administration and the federal government.
We need to consider whether it isn’t time to return to responsible, ethical journalism.
No, we need to consider whether it isn't time for absurd, ideology-blinded profs to shut the heck up, and administer themselves a bit of needed self-criticism. As I recall, Mao always used to send the Profs out to the fields for a while...or a long while, presumably to refresh their minds.
Department of the Obvious, for guys anyway. Quote via Riehl:
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner admits he's not much of a 3-D enthusiast. But he says if there's something people would most like to see in 3-D, it's "probably a naked lady."
Pelosi Says Illegal Aliens Are... Patriotic? States beside Arizona are planning to deal with illegals. Maggie's supports legal immigration, at a level which the citizens deem appropriate. With so many young folks unable to find work, I am not sure that we need tons of immigrants right now. Really, they should work to fix their own countries so they don't feel the need to come here. That would be the right and patriotic thing for people to do.
'The biggest 'all-in' in the history of poker,' was how Henrik Enderlein, economics professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, described the massive aid package assembled on Sunday night in an effort to save the Euro from collapse.
Many observers see the measure as delaying the end of the Euro, not preventing it.
“[Are you] suggesting that Princeton, Harvard and NYC isn’t the totality of real life?” former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who followed the same academic path, joked in an e-mail when asked about the women’s parallel tracks…
Is Andrew Sullivan Kicking Off A Media Frenzy Over Kagan’s Sexuality? She's not a butch lesbian even though she looks like one, say friends. Who cares?
Kagan is wishy-washy on free speech. What the heck does "balanced with the good of society" mean? Only an arrogant, latent-totalitarian elitist jerk would ever say anything like that, in my humble opinion. Americans don't talk like that: we want everybody to say whatever they want, and let us separate the wheat from the chaff.
The Union of Concerned Scientists tackles gardening to save the planet. Good grief. What a bunch of sanctimonious putzes those folks are. They have been like that for years. "Ban the Bomb" and "Better Red than Dead" and the whole Global Cooling scare of the 1970s. A bunch of Viagra-deficient kooks and cranks.
Speaking of santimonious cranks, White House: Stop Marketing Unhealthy Foods to Kids. Hey, Washington: Shut the heck up and leave us alone. You can eat what you want, and we will eat what we like: Philly Cheese Steaks, and barbecued short ribs with corn bread, and stuff like that. Bread Pudding for dessert, with a Port or a single malt on the side. Then a cigar.
"We are building a world in which the wealthiest nations on the planet, from Norway to New Zealand, are all but defenseless, while bankrupt dysfunctional squats go nuclear. Even with inevitable and generous submissions to nuclear blackmail, how long do you think that arrangement will last?"
...Brown's statement appeared to give Clegg's party a viable alternative, and real temptation: join a possibly short-lived alliance, remove the unpopular Brown, and pass electoral reform that could transform their fortunes and even banish the Conservatives to the political wilderness for many years.
Sounds like ACORN. Update: Never mind. Cameron's in, for what it's worth.
“Every decision you can make as a human being has an economic footprint — whether to procreate, whether to marry,” he said. “To say that is enough for your behavior to be regulated transforms the Commerce Clause into an infinitely capacious font of power, whose exercise is only restricted by the Bill of Rights.”
I know nothing, but my impression has been that the intent of the commerce clause was to eliminate and preventobstacles to inter-state trade, not to create obstacles and controls of commerce - much less our daily lives or our deaths.
Kinda makes ya wonder how Ginsberg snuck on there with her sketchy educational resume. My Diversity Meter detects some problems here: Where are the folks from George Mason and Hillsdale, and the folks who say "y'all," and the folks from Montana? It's not as if you have to go to Harvard or to be from New York City to be able to understand the Constitution. It was deliberately written in plain, simple English - instead of legalese - so every citizen of every state could understand what they might decide to sign up for. It's short, and it's not rocket science. The Federalist Papers, however, are more interesting.
If it sometimes seems that the nation is governed by an elite liberal clique of college fraternity and sorority pals who are out of touch with average Americans, that's because it's largely true. Every president, and almost every presidential candidate for the last two decades, has been a graduate of Harvard or Yale. If the Senate confirms Kagan, every member of the Supreme Court will have been a Yale or Harvard attendee, too.
The entire political class needs to understand that the coming events transcend ideology and partisanship. The electoral wave of 2010 will have been preceded by the waves of 2006 and 2008. That will make three electoral waves in a row, affecting both parties and conservative and liberal politicians alike. The American people are sending the establishment a message: we're angry at the way you are running our government; fix it or you'll be next to go.
ARE CARBS WORSE FOR US THAN FAT? If so, can we sue the nannies who have been trying to force us to eat less fat? If nannyists and “public health” crusaders were held to the same standards as, say, drug companies, they’d all be in jail now.
Economic enlightenment is not correlated with going to college, at least among the 4835 Americans who completed a Zogby International online survey. Economic enlightenment is highest among those self-identifying “conservative” and “libertarian,” and descends through “moderate,” “liberal,” and “progressive.” Other variables include party affiliation, religious participation, union membership, NASCAR fandom, and Wal-Mart patronage. Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and Daniel Klein report.
Douglas told a news conference today that Vermont's student population declined by about 1,600 last year, while schools around the state added 218 new staff. Reformer
Big tits tips for bigger boobs. It's not fair, and I think the government should do something about it. If we really care about equality, that is. My opinion? Vive la difference.
Perfect timing: Comedy Central developing Jesus Christ cartoon. I really could not care less. Bad taste is part of pop culture, but it no longer serves to epater le bourgeois. It just seems stupid and adolescent.
Congressman Joseph Cao, elected to replace "Ice Box" Jefferson in Louisiana, faces an uphill battle to keep the seat. Cao is unafraid of speaking up for what he believes.
Recently, the Vietnamese government asked him to arrange meeting with the US Vietnamese community for Hanoi to present its case. As Cao replies, Hanoi has no case.
In his reply letter, Congressman Cao says the premise for the request is misguided. The Vietnamese left their homeland because they rejected tyranny. Until the government of Vietnam demonstrates real changes, respecting human rights and freedom, it will not be taken seriously by the Vietnamese-American community: release political prisoners, stop oppressing democracy activists and religious freedom, respect the rule of law.
That's just a quick summary. Read Cao's entire letter for much more. It is eloquent, heartfelt, and quite an education for those not familiar with the conditions in Vietnam.
I surely do not blame Obama for Islamic terrorism and jihad, but I also suspect that he and his admin imagine that love and appeasement are effective strategies for dealing with hateful killers. Shiver agrees.
The Democrats and their lapdog media love having it both ways. In the span of 24 hours they went from hinting it was evil right-wingers that left the bomb in Times Square to warning about the right being racist toward Muslims.
Graduating from Yale is like leaving Paradise? Well, graduating from any college (or high school) is like leaving the womb - unless you are somebody who is eager to take on the world and to test yourself against tough reality.
Volvo town bans plastic water bottles. Talk about meaningless gestures. If they really cared, they would ban all use of plastics, heating oil and auto fuel.
Statistically, do Liberal men tend to be girly men? Perhaps in San Francisco and in academia, but, in general, I am not convinced.
There is no such thing as a financial package or instrument that is inherently "good" or "bad," "better" or "worse" than any other. These packages simply offer different profiles of risk and return. They can be "better" or "worse" only for a particular client, based on what the rest of the client's portfolio looks like and thus what kind of additional exposure to risk and return is optimal for that portfolio. The exact same financial instrument could be a very good investment for one party and a very bad investment for another. It all depends on the desired risk exposure.
Today is Armed Forces Day
San Diego’s tourism industry leaders are in 
Leaving late tonight for a long weekend, putting the boat in the water, etc. Leaving these links. Y'all fill in for me, heah?
Marketing a mutt: 
Pelosi Says Illegal Aliens Are... Patriotic?
No time to think or write, but I want to clean my tabs up, and get these links out to our corner of the universe:
The Pill turns fifty: are we having fun yet?
I surely do not blame Obama for Islamic terrorism and jihad, but I also suspect that he and his admin imagine that love and appeasement are effective strategies for dealing with hateful killers.