August 21, 2006

Roy's saving up for this DVD

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 7:19 PM

Rolling Stone warns us in its current issue that Neil Young plans nine videos for his anti-Bush album, Living With War.

The first adds pictures to the global warming ditty, "After The Garden." It features clips from Al Gore's flick, along with fake news items scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Among them: "Plant trees, lots of trees."

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$50 Oil?

Posted by Jenna Ashley Robinson at 5:08 PM

According to Business Week, oil prices are more likely to stagnate or plunge than to hit $80 in the near future.

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Re: Lebensraum

Posted by Daren Bakst at 4:41 PM

Jon,

The rationale for the Hitler theme is very compelling:

"We are not promoting Hitler. But we want to tell people we are different in the way he was different."

In their defense, other names may have been taken such as Mussolini's Family Style Italian Restaurant and Stalin's Steakhouse and Cigar Bar.  Of course, if they were really being an authentic Hitler restaurant, it would be vegetarian fare.

Without getting too serious (although I guess I might be), let me say that anti-semitism around the world is reaching new lows.  Jewish population data is disturbing (see how Hitler was "different").   These are scary times.

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Speaking of Wake schools ...

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 4:31 PM

... Superintendent Del Burns has tweaked the school system's management structure. 

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Real Cause of Bright Flight

Posted by Lindalyn Kakadelis at 4:17 PM

“Poverty, flight hit urban schools” Observer article sounds as if Charlotte/Mecklenburg School System’s “bright flight” began in 2002, the end of court-ordered busing. Trends already occurring simply continued. During 1995–2001 the white percentage of students dropped from 53.3% to 46.2%. In 1998 the system’s white percentage grew only by .3 percent, and in 2000 began to recede. During this time Hispanic and “other” racial groups significantly increased, and also the percentage of lower income students.
Remember, in 2000 the School Board voted for school choice only to rescind the decision less than 12 hours before the “Showcase of Schools.”
Indecisiveness, misplaced personal agendas, and a lack of attentiveness cause insecurity and families to leave CMS. Neither giving parents educational options for their children, nor the removal of a 30-year-old court order should be blamed for poor decisions of a School Board. The Board simple ignores data! Watch out Wake, it is happening to you!

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Pigs in Asheville

Posted by Andrew Cline at 4:15 PM

Citizens Against Government Waste's Porker of the Month for August is none other than Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C.

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Re: Lebensraum

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 3:50 PM

Jon,

If you eat too much of the cuisine in that new establishment, you really will need "room to grow." 

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I'll have the Lebensraum Special, please.

Posted by Jon Ham at 3:39 PM

The only problem is that after eating at this place in a half hour you feel like invading a neighboring country.

Ba-dum, chiiing. 

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N.C. Wine & Dance

Posted by Michael Moore at 2:50 PM

The Lexington paper reported today that Childress Vineyards had a wine and dance festival this weekend.  I just wonder if the wine makes the dancin' go any better?   Well they could always get an ole boy I know from across the Mountain in Tennessee to help with making the dances go better!

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Videoblogger in the family

Posted by Paul Chesser at 12:44 AM

Ham's kid fills in for Michelle Malkin on "Hot Air."

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Faith and Freedom

Posted by Joseph Coletti at 11:46 AM

From Doug Kern at TCS Daily:

Thus, every time we aspire to build freedom where freedom was not to be found before, we embark upon an act of faith.

An act of faith! Oh, it turns my conservative stomach! Have we built our free, strong, affluent, educated society on this kind of sentimental twaddle? And, more specifically: did we embark upon this mad venture of building democracy in Iraq on the strength of hope? Billions of dollars spent, thousands of lives squandered, all on a wing and a prayer? This is conservatism?

Well, yes and yes and yes.

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Weak student literacy

Posted by George Leef at 10:10 AM

Here is an excellent article from the Washington Post on the weak vocabularies of students these days -- even those with high GPAs from "good" schools and universities.

We keep hearing from the education establishment how they're so committed to excellence, but there is evidence all around that schooling is mostly a matter of being rewarded for sitting around. This article makes the point that many students today just don't like to read and do little of it. They aren't required to do much reading in their K-12 years and when they get to college, professors who try to make them do any serious reading (and writing) encounter resistance. For many students, "education" just isn't about hard work and many educators have been content to adjust their expectations downward.

We know from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy that most college graduates are not proficient readers, a problem I've written about here. Employers often complain that college graduates they hire are weak in rudimentary skills. I suggest that American educators get over the fixation with "diversity" and instead become fixated on literacy.

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Two out of Three ain't bad

Posted by Joseph Coletti at 10:09 AM

Bob Geary at the Independent Weekly does a good job of defining two problems with elections in North Carolina and outlining solutions for them. Unfortunately, he separates the third problem into four symptoms and so misses the right solution.

• The two he gets right: gerrymandered districts and too high a bar for third-party ballot access
• The one he gets wrong: limits on fundraising by candidates

Because he gets the link between money and political speech wrong, Geary doesn't see the Gordian knot for what it is and devises piecemeal answers to the problems that arise from the first inappropriate intervention in how candidates run their campaigns.

• Wrong: the Black machine exists because few candidates are able to build a broad enough network to raise $400,000 in $5 increments
• Wrong: the Republican Legislative Majority committee (RLM), MoveOn.org and other 527s exist because those few people who have the money and commitment are barred from contributing it directly to candidates, leaving candidates with little control over their own message
• Wrong: Campaign spending limits are meaningless because incumbents get plenty of free publicity in the name of public service -- how many pieces of mail do you get from your legislator in non-election years?
• Wrong: private campaign finance means candidates must prove some ability to win or they won't get donors. Public Campaign Financing commits taxpayers to subsidize incumbents even more
  

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Gas Prices and Truth

Posted by Daren Bakst at 10:08 AM

This article is about Trilby Lundberg who oversees the popular Lundberg Survey that tracks gasoline prices.  It's a great article because it is filled with her strong, accurate, and easy-to-understand observations and analysis about gas prices, global warming, and much more.  Two of the many highlights:

1) Are there five oil industry executives someplace deciding the price of gas?

"That would be tragic because that would wreck the market," she said. "And it would be a comedy because it is impossible."

Lundberg said oil companies have no interest in helping each other and instead want to increase their sales at the expense of the competition.

2) On gasoline regulation: 

She condemns the "overzealous meddling" of the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies, and said government-mandated reformulation of unleaded gas and engine modifications aimed at curtailing emissions are more to blame for gas price increases than the worldwide Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

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The continuing diversity mania

Posted by George Leef at 09:55 AM

Students who attend the University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse, a middling school located in the quiet, rural southwestern corner of the Badger state, are going to have to pay considerably more in the future so that the school can afford a new "diversity" initiative. The story on Insider Higher Education is here. (The plan has been approved by the UW Regents, but still needs to get past the state legislature and Governor Doyle.)

The justification offered by the administration is the standard line about the educational benefits of diversity. Quoth the vice chancellor for administration and finance,"We need to prepare students for future realities. This is the right thing to do -- it's reflective of the world out there."

The reasoning of UW-LaCrosse officials therefore seems to go like this: Most of the students there are going to need to understand how to deal with a "globalized" world and the best way to prepare them for that is by inducing a few more American black and Hispanic students who would rather be somewhere other than LaCrosse to enroll there so that everyone will be able to see what the big, diverse world is truly like. That argument is absurd.

Most of the kids at UW-LaCrosse will never have any need for close encounters of the diversity kind, and for those who do, having sat in some classes with a few more black and Hispanic students is not going to make the least bit of difference in their ability to figure out how to respond to business people from China, India, Turkey, Estonia, Brazil or anywhere else. The LaCrosse students are no more at a disadvantage in dealing with the world than are students at all-black colleges in the US or the all-Japanese universities to be found in the world's second largest economy. Has anyone noticed that the Japanese have been extremely successful in their dealings with others all around the globe despite the fact that their schools are not
"diverse"? If the "diversity is necessary for cultural competence" theory were correct, the Japanese should be hopeless in international commerce. They aren't and that's because the ability to figure out how to cooperate and transact with others doesn't depend on having had minority "representation" in classrooms.

The idea that this new tax on students to fund diversity is for their own good is ridiculous. It's for the good of the administrators, who want to be able to crow about their "success" in marginally changing the ethnic composition of the campus. There are more important things for them to worry about.

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The 11th Congressional District of N.C.

Posted by Michael Moore at 09:31 AM

The News & Observer has this to say today about the House race in the 11th Congressional District, and the Asheville Citizen-Times says this.   

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Media maligned

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 08:48 AM

Okay, it's time for a little Monday morning guessing game. Which member of the right-wing "lunatic fringe" wrote these lines to complain about media coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah?

The American media, of course, have presented the war in a more balanced fashion-but the "balance" of on-the-one-hand, on-the-other reporting is bogus. Truth simply doesn't always reside in the middle. If that sounds odd, try this: The Japanese, on the one hand, were wrong to bomb Pearl Harbor, while the Americans, on the other, were wrong to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Need another clue?

Context, context. That's precisely what's missing in the media's "balanced" reporting of the conflict. Television is especially problematic. The images we see on our screens may be factually accurate, but many represent a profound untruth, leaving viewers with a plethora of images of a shattered Lebanon and a surging Israeli military.

Still not sure? Perhaps the writer's advice for the mainstream media will help.

The media must begin to recognize the fact that its familiar formulas for integrity just don't work in this new world that is anything but brave.

Give up? The author of these lines is none other than Mortimer B. Zuckerman, editor of mainstream media outlet U.S. News & World Report, in this week's new column.

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