Ok, now we know why the Washington Nationals don't have a owner yet. The reason? Well, MLB is balking at paying $6 million dollar rent for the stadium. Not like Washington's hasn't committed half a billion to bringing a baseball team to D.C., now MLB baseball thinks it can get away without paying rent?
The more I read about this mess the better MLB looks. I mean any organization that can make a city its bitch is doing something right. Washington, D.C. has bent over and took it straight up the ass and asked for more of it. Its amazing to watch public officials giving public money to a private bussiness and actually telling taxpayers that it is for a public good. Congrats MLB for finding the biggest idiots in America and milking them for all its worth.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Republicans: Prepare for a beat down in 2006
Just another reason why the Republicans are in for a bad election year in 2006. In its next issue, Time magazine will name Ohio Republican Bob Taft as the nation's worse governor. As one person says about Taft's place on the nation's worse governer's list: “I think that’s completely accurate. I mean the guy is an idiot. I just think about the things that he’s done for the state of Ohio. He’s made some poor decisions about what’s going on with the coin scandal.”
What is with politicans getting into a powerful position and then just being corrupt assholes? Ok, I know not all of them are, but I can think of dozens of scandals off the top of my head so its not that uncommon. At any rate, Ohio is a swing state and will probably see a huge Republican turnover. Nation wide the Republican party doesn't look any better. Libby, Frist, and DeLay help aid the perception (either warrented or not) that the Republican party is bankrupt. Either locally or nationally, corruption is never a good platform to campaign on.
What is with politicans getting into a powerful position and then just being corrupt assholes? Ok, I know not all of them are, but I can think of dozens of scandals off the top of my head so its not that uncommon. At any rate, Ohio is a swing state and will probably see a huge Republican turnover. Nation wide the Republican party doesn't look any better. Libby, Frist, and DeLay help aid the perception (either warrented or not) that the Republican party is bankrupt. Either locally or nationally, corruption is never a good platform to campaign on.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Heard in New York
Guy #1: Dude, I hate fat chicks that are stuck up.
Guy #2: Yeah, it's like, "Bitch, act your weight."
Guy #2: Yeah, it's like, "Bitch, act your weight."
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Quote of the Day
"I believe it is peace in our times." -- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, September 30, 1938, after returning from the Munich Conference.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Maryland Democratic party Codemns Racial Attacks on Steele
State Democratic party Chairman Terry Liermann said in a statement that his party would not condone racial attacks on black Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (see link to Washington Post article). "The Maryland Democratic party condemns all words, images and acts that suggest or reflect bigotry and hatred," Lierman said. "Racism, discrimination and prejudice are the enemies of freedom and the antagonists to our diverse, democratic society."
I am glad to see Democratic outrage for these ugly racial attacks on a black person just because he holds a differening view point. I think blacks in the Democratic party should remember that the Emancipation Proclamation applied to their minds as well as their bodies.
I am glad to see Democratic outrage for these ugly racial attacks on a black person just because he holds a differening view point. I think blacks in the Democratic party should remember that the Emancipation Proclamation applied to their minds as well as their bodies.
Farm Subsides given to the rich
Of the $143.8 billion in farm subsidy payments over the past decade, 72% went to 10% of the recipients, or around 312,000 large farmers, cooperatives and corporations. This according to the Environmental Working Group.
California Democrats abusing eminent domain
California Democrats have used the Kelo ruling to make avaible property otherwise protected under the Constitution. For them, eminent domain has become a crucial, regrettably routine shortcut for "redeveloping" run-down areas, speeding up gentrification of hip neighborhoods, and otherwise doling out favors to anyone promising the sales tax revenue on which their municipal governments depends.
In May the Los Angeles City Council approved a $325 million project at the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine, including a fancy new 296-room W Hotel. The project would displace, among others, the Bernard Luggage store, which has stuck by the neighborhood for 55 years. When it was approved, L.A.'s City New Service report, City Councilman Eric Garcetti "said the city would not use its powers of eminent domain to force property owners to sell, unless the developers were unable to reah a deal with the land owners."
In other words, the government won't take your property unless you refuse to sell. This Don Corleone style approach can be found all over California, especially in neighborhoods (such as Hollywood and Vine) that are no longer covered under any meaningful definition of the word blight. (State law establishes blight as the precondition for private-to-private eminent domain transfers.) The W Hotel isn't about to invest in Skid Row, but it sure does get annoyed when pesky luggage stores make it harder to tap into a resurgent neighborhood.
Ditto for a huge mixed retail project slated for downtown Alhambra, in East L.A. County, where tax-greedy local pols drool over the prospect of replicating the retail redevelopment nirvana of nearby Pasadena and are willing to label as "blighted" a whoping 60 businesses, including the Museum of Contemporary Arab Art. Blight has become such an elastic term of convenience that the sparsely populated California City, near Edwards Air Force Bae, has decleared "blighted" a patch of unused desert coveted by Hyundai.
The paradox is that eminent domain abuse is seared into the historical consciousness of Southern California's Democrat-leaning poor people. Dodger Stadium was infamously built on land stolen from thousands of working class Latino families, a vile act of property violence that has inspired a recent best-selling book, a popular local pla, a well-reviewed documentary, and a RY Cooder CD. In downtown L.A., multigeneration immigrant communites (and priceless Victorin homes) were leveled in the 1970s and 1980s to build sterile office tower for white-shoe law firms. The 105 and 10 freeways ripped ugly seams through poor black communites. Hollywood Star Lanes, the hardscrabble and locally revered bowling alley made famous in The Big Lebowski, was seized from it's original owners to build a mammoth school in a crappy neighborhood. And Indio, a city next to Palm Spring, razed an entire black neighborhood in 1993 to make way for a shopping mall expansion tht never took place. Obscenely, Indio officials are now trying to buy out two minority churches nearby to clear way for yet another promised extension.
Southern California has always been a political trendsetter, from property tax revolts to immigration crackdowns to the rejection of taxpayer financing for football stadiums. If the disconnect between its Democratic residents and politicians over eminent domain continues to widen, we an only hope another revolt is around the corner.
In May the Los Angeles City Council approved a $325 million project at the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine, including a fancy new 296-room W Hotel. The project would displace, among others, the Bernard Luggage store, which has stuck by the neighborhood for 55 years. When it was approved, L.A.'s City New Service report, City Councilman Eric Garcetti "said the city would not use its powers of eminent domain to force property owners to sell, unless the developers were unable to reah a deal with the land owners."
In other words, the government won't take your property unless you refuse to sell. This Don Corleone style approach can be found all over California, especially in neighborhoods (such as Hollywood and Vine) that are no longer covered under any meaningful definition of the word blight. (State law establishes blight as the precondition for private-to-private eminent domain transfers.) The W Hotel isn't about to invest in Skid Row, but it sure does get annoyed when pesky luggage stores make it harder to tap into a resurgent neighborhood.
Ditto for a huge mixed retail project slated for downtown Alhambra, in East L.A. County, where tax-greedy local pols drool over the prospect of replicating the retail redevelopment nirvana of nearby Pasadena and are willing to label as "blighted" a whoping 60 businesses, including the Museum of Contemporary Arab Art. Blight has become such an elastic term of convenience that the sparsely populated California City, near Edwards Air Force Bae, has decleared "blighted" a patch of unused desert coveted by Hyundai.
The paradox is that eminent domain abuse is seared into the historical consciousness of Southern California's Democrat-leaning poor people. Dodger Stadium was infamously built on land stolen from thousands of working class Latino families, a vile act of property violence that has inspired a recent best-selling book, a popular local pla, a well-reviewed documentary, and a RY Cooder CD. In downtown L.A., multigeneration immigrant communites (and priceless Victorin homes) were leveled in the 1970s and 1980s to build sterile office tower for white-shoe law firms. The 105 and 10 freeways ripped ugly seams through poor black communites. Hollywood Star Lanes, the hardscrabble and locally revered bowling alley made famous in The Big Lebowski, was seized from it's original owners to build a mammoth school in a crappy neighborhood. And Indio, a city next to Palm Spring, razed an entire black neighborhood in 1993 to make way for a shopping mall expansion tht never took place. Obscenely, Indio officials are now trying to buy out two minority churches nearby to clear way for yet another promised extension.
Southern California has always been a political trendsetter, from property tax revolts to immigration crackdowns to the rejection of taxpayer financing for football stadiums. If the disconnect between its Democratic residents and politicians over eminent domain continues to widen, we an only hope another revolt is around the corner.
Update on the Kelo aftermath
As I stated before, few events in the last 25 years have prompted a national uproar over a specifically libertarian issue. Fewer still have produced as much outrage as the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo v. City of New London. By a vote of 5 to 4, the Court declared that the Connecticut city and its quasi-governmental development corporation could take the well-maintained homes and businesses of people in the city's Fort Trumbull neighborhood to make room for an expansion by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
So what has happened since this decision? Well, the city has given the owners the wonderful gift of charging them back rent on their own property.
So what has happened since this decision? Well, the city has given the owners the wonderful gift of charging them back rent on their own property.
Quote of the Day
"This whole idea of personal autonomy--I don't think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone to do whatever they want to do, that government should keep our taxs down, keep regulation low, that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom, that we shouldn't get involved in cultural issueses, people should be able to do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world." -- Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)
We may one day be under military rule.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids "participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity" on United States soil unless specifically authorized by law. Army troop sent to discourage insurrection in the post-Civil War South were engaging in classic mission creep, enforcing workaday laws that would be more appropriately handled by town sheriffs, perhaps with the assistance of ad hoc "posses" drawn from the local citizens.
The act was intended to restore the armed forces to their proper role of defending the United States from external threats. Over the years, exemptions have been aded. But the main thrust of the law---keeping the four fighting branches of the military away from American citizens---has stood firm. Until now.
In June 2005, the Department of Defense approved a sweeping new reorientation, called "The Strategy for Homeland Defene and Civil Support," that will "fundamentally change the Department's approah to homeland defense in an historic and important way." The military now will take a "lead role" in "excut[ing] military missions" on American soil to "dissuade, deter, and defeat attacks."
A key part of the lead role, and the most likely way this new strategy will affect nonterrorist citizens, will be "to obtain and promptly exploit all actionable information needed to protet the United States." The military will "develop automated tools to improve data fusioon, analysis, and management, to track systematically large amounts of data and to detect, fuse and analyze aberrant patterns of activity," and it will create "a cadre of specialized terrorism intelligence analysts within the defense intelligence community." Among the intelligence already being collected is a detailed nationwide databae of every college and high school student over the age of 16, which the Defense Department says it needs to boost military recruitment.
The Pentagon claims the new policy does not create any conflicts with the Posse Comitatus Act. But if one comes up, U.S. Northern Command lawyer Col. John Gereski told The Washington Post, the first line of legal defense willl Article 2 of the Constitution, which gives the president authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. Should that fail to impress, Congress may be encouraged to amend the 1878 law.
The act was intended to restore the armed forces to their proper role of defending the United States from external threats. Over the years, exemptions have been aded. But the main thrust of the law---keeping the four fighting branches of the military away from American citizens---has stood firm. Until now.
In June 2005, the Department of Defense approved a sweeping new reorientation, called "The Strategy for Homeland Defene and Civil Support," that will "fundamentally change the Department's approah to homeland defense in an historic and important way." The military now will take a "lead role" in "excut[ing] military missions" on American soil to "dissuade, deter, and defeat attacks."
A key part of the lead role, and the most likely way this new strategy will affect nonterrorist citizens, will be "to obtain and promptly exploit all actionable information needed to protet the United States." The military will "develop automated tools to improve data fusioon, analysis, and management, to track systematically large amounts of data and to detect, fuse and analyze aberrant patterns of activity," and it will create "a cadre of specialized terrorism intelligence analysts within the defense intelligence community." Among the intelligence already being collected is a detailed nationwide databae of every college and high school student over the age of 16, which the Defense Department says it needs to boost military recruitment.
The Pentagon claims the new policy does not create any conflicts with the Posse Comitatus Act. But if one comes up, U.S. Northern Command lawyer Col. John Gereski told The Washington Post, the first line of legal defense willl Article 2 of the Constitution, which gives the president authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. Should that fail to impress, Congress may be encouraged to amend the 1878 law.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Quote of the Day
"The president is going to have a fight---either with the liberals or with his base." -- Paul Weyrih, Free Congress Foundation
Denny Hastert has a blog
Damnit! Not this fun loving Republican. How am I to compete against this guy?
Justice Antonin Scalia on the internationalization of Supreme Court Opinions
"It will seem much more like real legal opinion if onecan cite a foreign opinion to support the philosophic, moral, or religious conclusion or pronouncement. You can put it right there in the opinion. It looks like legal opinion. It says so and so versus so and so. I dare say that few of us here would want our life or liberty subject to the dispensation of French or Italian criminal justice." Antonin Scalia
Are International Organizations a smart way to govern?
The urge to international goverance is an admirable one, but it runs into problems when one looks at the pratical applications thereof. The world that Americans, and Westerners full of goodwill, want to mount and ride, feed and pat, is not a sweet-tempered pony but a huge, vile-tempered mule.
The words "United Nations" have a slendid sound. The United Nations has been offered to the world over and over again as the highest representation of hunity.
Not so fast!
It is a "union" of couse, not of nations but of states. And many U.N. states exist---even not counting ones recognized as "rogue"---that in no sense embody a civilized past, present, or future for the world or for themselves. Its members include governments largely or totally opposed to their own citizens' liberties and, of course, to Western culture in general. It lost some prestige when, for example, the U.N. Commission of Human Rights elected Libya as its chairman (see previous post on this). Sudan is also a member, but the United States was dropped in 2001. Israel is in effect permanently barred. Meanwile Syria was elected to the presidency of the Security Council.
It is not, therefore, a body whose powers can be allowed to include rulings contrary to our principles. It is a forum for dicussion, compromise, adjustment, and possible agreement on certain general issues. The United Nationa itself is an arena in which views are publicized and interests pushed and a venue for negotiation. At best, it is more like a stock exchange or a hockey field than a nice family picnic.
If the United Nations is regarded as having the potential to become a world government, one can only say that this potential is very weak and could only develop when the majority of states become politically civilized ... not just in rhetoric but reality as well.
Taking a look at international mandates it is maintained that binding the United States by signature to a treaty is automatically a good thing. The obvious objection don't seem to register in some critical minds: Not only do some of the states putting ink to paper fail to carry out anything like their obligations (Iraq comes to mind) in the real world, but permitting international bodies to intrude into the law-and-liberity countries also involves the institutionalization, on purely abstract grounds, of an, as yet primitive apparet. A very important trouble with international arrangements of all types has also been that Western government sign on to policies that have not been properly (or at all) argued or debated by their publics or legislatures. Thus these arrangements are a means of giving more power to their own executive branches and, of course, more power to the international bureaucracies and permanent staff, whose interests are so deeply involved.
What we witness today is the general diffusion of power, and the largest and most intrusive and expanding element is, of course, the new bureacuscracy. That alone shoudl be thought of as a recipe for the long-term decline of pluralist civilization. The only probable outcome of this enterprise is a resentment against the system itself where a build up of international government leads to a corrupt corporate culture.
The words "United Nations" have a slendid sound. The United Nations has been offered to the world over and over again as the highest representation of hunity.
Not so fast!
It is a "union" of couse, not of nations but of states. And many U.N. states exist---even not counting ones recognized as "rogue"---that in no sense embody a civilized past, present, or future for the world or for themselves. Its members include governments largely or totally opposed to their own citizens' liberties and, of course, to Western culture in general. It lost some prestige when, for example, the U.N. Commission of Human Rights elected Libya as its chairman (see previous post on this). Sudan is also a member, but the United States was dropped in 2001. Israel is in effect permanently barred. Meanwile Syria was elected to the presidency of the Security Council.
It is not, therefore, a body whose powers can be allowed to include rulings contrary to our principles. It is a forum for dicussion, compromise, adjustment, and possible agreement on certain general issues. The United Nationa itself is an arena in which views are publicized and interests pushed and a venue for negotiation. At best, it is more like a stock exchange or a hockey field than a nice family picnic.
If the United Nations is regarded as having the potential to become a world government, one can only say that this potential is very weak and could only develop when the majority of states become politically civilized ... not just in rhetoric but reality as well.
Taking a look at international mandates it is maintained that binding the United States by signature to a treaty is automatically a good thing. The obvious objection don't seem to register in some critical minds: Not only do some of the states putting ink to paper fail to carry out anything like their obligations (Iraq comes to mind) in the real world, but permitting international bodies to intrude into the law-and-liberity countries also involves the institutionalization, on purely abstract grounds, of an, as yet primitive apparet. A very important trouble with international arrangements of all types has also been that Western government sign on to policies that have not been properly (or at all) argued or debated by their publics or legislatures. Thus these arrangements are a means of giving more power to their own executive branches and, of course, more power to the international bureaucracies and permanent staff, whose interests are so deeply involved.
What we witness today is the general diffusion of power, and the largest and most intrusive and expanding element is, of course, the new bureacuscracy. That alone shoudl be thought of as a recipe for the long-term decline of pluralist civilization. The only probable outcome of this enterprise is a resentment against the system itself where a build up of international government leads to a corrupt corporate culture.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Its ok if blacks use racial hate
As long as the black person is a conservative liberals thinks its ok to throw Oreo cookies at him and call him Uncle Tom (and much much worse). One liberal black Democrat said the reason they can be so hateful to one black Republican, Michael Steele, is that "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."
Oh, well then thats ok. How about I say the same thing to blacks because the NAACP isn't in the best interest of white people. That is the dumbest shit I have heard. Black liberals need to get their heads out of their asses. And another thing: I can see Democratic policies have really helped out black people. Way to go you liberals. I guess breeding a culture of dependence in the black community is what you call progress. How can you comdemn Republicans when you don't even give them a chance? Just turn around and bendover and take it like the bitch of the Democratic party that you are (and I am talking about black people if you don't get that).
Really can anything be more offensive than saying conservative policies are against black people? Where do you people get off? Blacks are last in almost everything and you still want to take leftovers from the Democratic table. Either your really smart and I don't get it or really stupid. I hope its the former but I don't think so.
Oh, well then thats ok. How about I say the same thing to blacks because the NAACP isn't in the best interest of white people. That is the dumbest shit I have heard. Black liberals need to get their heads out of their asses. And another thing: I can see Democratic policies have really helped out black people. Way to go you liberals. I guess breeding a culture of dependence in the black community is what you call progress. How can you comdemn Republicans when you don't even give them a chance? Just turn around and bendover and take it like the bitch of the Democratic party that you are (and I am talking about black people if you don't get that).
Really can anything be more offensive than saying conservative policies are against black people? Where do you people get off? Blacks are last in almost everything and you still want to take leftovers from the Democratic table. Either your really smart and I don't get it or really stupid. I hope its the former but I don't think so.
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