“Mom, can I be propagandized? Please? PLEASE???”

July 14th, 2010

From the Houston Chronicle comes word that some area developers are planning a huge ecology theme park off north I-59 in Montgomery County, just north of Houston. “Like Disney, the unique underpinning will be the story that we’re telling — the whole issue of how to sustain our planet.”

Yeah, because there’s nothing kids love more than spending their vacation getting the same propaganda lectures they get in school.

The article says the park, still in the planning stage, is two years behind schedule and having problems getting financing, and I can see why: the entire project has “money-losing rathole” written all over it. Still, if they could get it done entirely on private funding, more power to them. Nothing wrong with liberals suffering staggering financial losses from their own pockets while propping up the local economy.

However, it’s obvious they can’t, since they were able to wrangle special taxing powers from the state government. I’m sure the residents of Conroe and The Woodlands are thrilled at the prospects of their tax dollars being used to propagandize them.

The strange thing is, that it probably wouldn’t even be the weirdest (or least successful) theme park in the Greater Houston area, since that would be the the park featuring 1/20th scale replica of China’s Forbidden Kingdom.

Regular Blogging Will Resume Shortly

July 14th, 2010

Sorry for the sparse blogging as of late, but I’ve been dealing with two problems (fleas and a leaking window) that, while minor in the overall scheme of things, still needed fairly immediate and time-consuming remediation.

Expect more regular blogging to resume shortly.

LinkSwarm for Saturday, July 3, 2010

July 3rd, 2010

A few tidbits to tide you over the Independence Day weekend:

  • Dwight over at Whipped Cream Difficulties has a very interesting post up on Maywood, California closing their police department down. Summary: It has less to do with the budget crunch than with the entire department acting like corrupt, out-of-control thugs running roughshod over innocent people. Dwight and I both though of the similar situation in the (now thankfully dissolved) township of New Rome, Ohio.
  • “I don’t know whether the Tea Party movement will die out. But I sure hope it hangs on long enough to take down Lindsey Graham.” (Yeah, this was already on Fark, with that exact headline, but since I was the submitter…)
  • Former leftist, opponent of jihad, devout atheist and relapsed smoker Christopher Hitchens has suspended his book tour to be treated for esophageal cancer. Hitchens intellectual journey from being a (mostly) far-leftist to being a (mostly) neo-conservative has been deeply gratifying to those of us on the right, and as a voice sounding the alarm against radical Islam he’s probably only second (at least in the U.S.) to Mark Steyn. (So yes, the two most powerful voices against jihad in the U.S. are a Brit and a Canadian.) As an agnostic, I have no particular stance on the metaphysical certitude of Hitchens’ atheism, but I do believe he’s underestimated the vital role religion plays as a binding agent in a free society, as those societies which made atheism a central tenant (the Soviet Union and its ilk) don’t seem to have profited by it. (To paraphrase the late Octavia Butler, “I don’t believe in God, but the people growing up today don’t seem to believe in anything at all, and it’s scary.”) I always thought it would be interesting to debate Hitchens on the issue from the viewpoint of the social utility of religion rather than its metaphysical truth. BattleSwarm Blog wishes him a speedy recovery.

(Hat tips: Whipped Cream Difficulties, the Bookfinder Insider Mailing List)

LinkSwarm for Wednesday, June 30, 2010

June 30th, 2010

A collection of sundry links to enliven your day:

Hat tips to Instapundit, Real Clear Politics, Slashdot, Whipped Cream Difficulties.

More Wiegel Fallout and the Coming Exposure of JournoList

June 29th, 2010

I wanted to avoid doing more than one post on the Dave Wiegel flap, but there’s just been too much news to ignore it.

Here’s Wiegel’s quasi-semi-demi apology. An excerpt:

“Why did I want these people to like me so much? Why did I assume that I needed to crack wise and rant about people who, usually for no more than five minutes were getting on my nerves? Because I was stupid and arrogant, and needlessly mean.”

Anytime someone issues one of these “I was being stupid and that wasn’t the real me” apologies, my automatic assumption is that they’re lying. They’re not sorry, they’re just sorry they got caught. Despite having, like Wiegel, contributed to Reason magazine, and despite Andrew Breitbart’s assertion that Wiegel was “outed” for being insufficiently left-wing, I see no particular reason to modify that assumption in Wiegel’s case.

The Washington Post still doesn’t get it. “The problem is that conservative views are the mainstream views–but not in Washington, D.C. or New York City or San Francisco. The problem is that only 20% of America self-identifies as liberal, so if the news organizations were politically correct and representative, they’d have 80% of their staff that is either moderate or conservative. Instead, 97% of journalists vote and filter their news through the liberal ideology.”

And what does admitting your naked bias against conservatives get you these days? Hired by MSNBC. I’m sure all 20 of MSNBC’s regular viewers will appreciate his insightful commentary.

Then again, they did beat CNN (but not CNN + Headline News) over the first six months of this year, which I think says more about how badly CNN is sucking than how well MSBNC is doing. And Fox News is basically slaughtering all of them in Prime Time.

I was going to say that if Wiegel really wanted us to trust him, he should put EVERYTHING in the JournoList archives up online. However, Andrew Breitbart has beaten me to the punch with his $100,000 offer for anyone willing to send him the complete archive. So I look forward to perusing the complete JournoList contents online later this week. Or better yet, watching Breitbart roll them out a few at a time over several months, letting the participants wonder how much of the archive he has, and who will be the next among them to be exposed, promises edification, amusement and a demonstration of “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” for months to come. I think Breitbart could probably keep dribbling out tidbits well into, say, mid-October…

Updated: Iowahawk weighs in with his usual pith.

Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe Dead at 87

June 27th, 2010

Here’s the Houston Chronicle obituary.

Briscoe (who had a mixed record as governor) was the sort of southern conservative who is no longer welcome in the Democratic Party. Indeed, his “no new taxes” pledge would probably get him labeled as a “right wing extremist” by other Democrats today. His defeat by the more liberal John Hill in the Democratic primary set the stage for Bill Clement to become the first Republican governor of Texas since Reconstruction, which in turn was a key event in Texas changing from an overwhelming Democratic majority state to an overwhelming Republican majority, possibly second only to John Towers’ election to LBJ’s seat in the Senate in 1961.

News Flash: It’s a Bad Idea to Hire Liberals to Cover the Conservative Movement

June 25th, 2010

Too bad it took The Washington Post so long to figure that out.

I’m also amazed that anyone, anywhere (even Dave Weigel) would think something they wrote on an email mailing list wouldn’t come back to haunt them. (Especially since emails from Journolist had already made it out into the wild.) Attention people: You have to assume than anything you email, post, or say in a public place is being recorded at all times. That’s simply the world we live in. Deal with it.

Obama Fires McChrystal, Replaces Him With Petraeus

June 23rd, 2010

Technically speaking, he relieved Gen. Stanley McChyrstal of command and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus. Petraeus (or, as Moveon.org once referred to him as, “General Betray Us”) taking over is probably good news, especially given Michael Yon’s criticisms of McChyrstal. Perhaps Petraeus can beef up our counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, and possibly convince Obama that setting a deadline for withdrawal is a bad idea.

I’m sure howls of outrage about the firing from those on the left who condemned Bush for not “listening to the generals” will happen any minute now. (Checks watch) Yep, any minute now…

Breaking: Federal Judge to Obama: No, you can’t have a Drilling Moratorium

June 22nd, 2010

Not yours.

This is good news, since actual oil drilling experts seem to agree that relief wells need to be brought to bear on the spill to prevent a leak blowout, causing an even-more-massive spill.

IowaHawk brings us Bob Etheridge’s martial arts secrets!

June 22nd, 2010

Learn his deadly technique for a mere $19.95!

Etheridge has already proven how effective it is