Friday, March 28, 2008

But enough about those two....



here's something that must be addressed.....:

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/03/27/Warners-New-Web-Guru


Musicians themselves may just be crazy, but the music labels are dangerously stupid, and need to be stopped before they can do any further damage to the music industry. Case in point: Warner Music, fully aware that the days of charging for recorded music are coming to an end, is now pushing for a music tax.

This isn’t the first time someone has called for a music tax. Peter Jenner argued for it in Europe in 2006. Trent Reznor said the same thing last year (as did the Songwriters Association of Canada). Mathew Ingram has other examples.

But Warner Music is doing more than just talking about a music tax. They’ve hired industry veteran Jim Griffin to create a new entity that would create a pool of money from user fees to be distributed to artists and copyright holders. Lawsuits against their customers aren’t working (The RIAA sent out 5,400 letters in the last year, says Portfolio, settling with 2,300 of those individuals and suing 2,465 who didn’t respond).

The goal? $5 per month from everyone, or fees of $20 billion per year. That’s double the current size of the recorded music industry ($10 billion).

Akamai’s David Barrett has an interesting angle on the issue. He calls the plan “tantamount to extortion, because it forces everyone to join,” and “It’s too late to charge people for what they’re already getting for free.” I agree - the music tax is little more than a classic protection racket.

Forcing people to buy music whether they want to or not is not a solution to this problem. The incentives created by such a system are perverse - guaranteed revenue and guaranteed profits will remove any incentive to innovate and serve niche markets. It will be the death of music.

Music industry revenues will be a set size, regardless of the quality or type of music they release. Incentives to innovate will evaporate. There will only be competition for market share, with no attempt to build the size of market or serve less-popular niches. Forget labels building new brands and encouraging early artists to succeed - they’ll bleed existing big names for all they are worth and work hard to keep anything new - labels, artists, and songwriters - out of the market. New entrants just means more competition for a static amount of money. Collusion by existing players will run rampant.

Soon labels will complain that revenues aren’t high enough to sustain their businesses, and demand a higher tax. It will go up, but it will never go down.

As I said before, Asking the government to prop up a dying industry is always (always) a bad idea. In this case, it is a monumentally stupid, dangerous, and bad idea. See my posts on Amtrak, for which my father worked, for more.

If this happens, it will put an end to the endless creative/destructive energy that is reshaping the music industry today. Good musicians will always find a way to make money. Others may have to follow their passion as a hobby and (shudder) get a day job to pay the bills. But if a music tax is put in place, that innovation will die, and with guaranteed revenues and profits, the need to innovate, market and compete will also die. A music tax is a sure fire way to destroy an industry that is just beginning to really blossom.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

His noodly appendage



What you can and cannot display on public property is a debate that sometimes ends in court.

In one East Tennessee city, there's usually no fight at all

On the lawn of the century-old Cumberland County Courthouse, you see an Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers memorial, chainsaw-carved bears, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

"It's made out of materials we bought at Lowe's and local hardware stores, just piping and insulation and spray paint," explained David Safdie. He and his sister built the sculpture and installed it on the lawn last week.

Cumberland County granted them a permit to display it as members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They call themselves pastafarians.

"Our message is freedom of speech and freedom of religion," said Safdie. "We just wanted to have chance to represent our message."

Al and Patricia Westerfield also express their views on the lawn. They put up a Statue of Liberty as a response to another statue erected here in 2006.

"About two years ago, all the sudden a statue of Moses magically appeared right in front of the courthouse," said Al Westerfield. "We asked permission to put up a Statue of Liberty. Each month we change the statement on it: a quote from the presidents or even from Jesus about the separation of church and state."

The lawn has become a free speech zone with diverse views.

A carved statue of Jesus graces the courthouse lawn as well.

"It creates controversy, and that's a good thing," said Mary Leedy, a Crossville resident who sell hot dogs nearby.

Leedy welcomes all the lawn decorations, and sees the Jesus statue as a blessing.

"Everybody is moved differently by it, I think," she said. "And the people who are looking for offense will find it, is my philosophy."

The philosophy of Flying Spaghetti Monster supporters?

"We hope people see it and get a good laugh," said Safdie.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster will remain on the courthouse lawn until May 1st.


Hooray for the FSM!

In other disturbing news, http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080327/D8VLG8RO0.html,
Having a big belly in your 40s can boost your risk of getting Alzheimer's disease or other dementia decades later, a new study suggests.

I'm screwed!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The bottle within




http://www.charlotte.com/171/story/548878.html


As a college student in Chapel Hill, John Allison stumbled across a collection of essays by Ayn Rand and was hooked by her philosophy of self-interest and limited government. As he rose over the decades to chief executive of BB&T, one of the country's leading regional banks, Rand remained his muse.

He's trying to replicate that encounter through the charitable arm of his Winston-Salem-based company, which since 1999 has awarded more than $28 million to 27 colleges to support the study of capitalism from a moral perspective.

But on at least 17 of those campuses, including UNC Charlotte, N.C. State and Johnson C. Smith University, the gifts come with an unusual stipulation: Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged," is included in a course as required reading.

The schools' agreements have drawn criticism from some faculty, who say it compromises academic integrity. In higher education, the power to decide course content is supposed to rest with professors, not donors. Debate about the gifts, which arose at UNCC this month, illustrates tensions that exist over corporate influence on college campuses.

UNCC received its $1 million gift pledge in 2005, but details about the "Atlas Shrugged" requirement came to light as the school dedicated an Ayn Rand reading room March 12.

"It's going to make us look like a rinky-dink university," UNCC religious studies professor Richard Cohen said Thursday after UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois told the faculty council about the gift. "It's like teaching the Bible as a requirement."

Dubois, who learned of the book requirement this month, says it was ill-advised. He may ask Allison to reconsider it, he told faculty.

Allison has been surprised that the gifts can generate controversy. He says he simply wants students exposed to the late author's ideas, which he believes the academic community has largely ignored. He welcomes opposing ideas.

He also points out that the schools approached the foundation, not the other way around.


References to Rand are scattered through American culture. She was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 1999, mentioned in the Pulitizer-winning play "Angels in America" and lampooned on "The Simpsons," in an episode in which Marge enrolls Maggie in the Ayn Rand School for Tots.

"Mrs. Simpson, do you know what a baby's saying when she reaches for a bottle?" the Randian teacher asks Marge. "She's saying, `I am a leech!' Our aim here is to develop the bottle within."

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

a bigger liar then Hillary!




AUSTRALIAN model Kristy Hinze says she was instantly attracted to her 63-year-old billionaire boyfriend by his brains



The 27-year-old granddaughter of the late Queensland politician Russ Hinze has been dating Texan billionaire Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape, for two-and-a-half years.

The pair were tight-lipped about their relationship until now, but Hinze has told The Australian Women's Weekly she was instantly attracted to the thrice-married entrepreneur.

"I never thought I was going to date an older man when I first met him," Ms Hinze told the magazine, which is on sale tomorrow.

"To me, it was different to hang out with someone with something to say that was so interesting and important and who was truly, incredibly intelligent.

"He's handsome and has so much charisma - and he's so funny."

Ms Hinze is a former Sports Illustrated covergirl and recently became the face of fashion label Sportscraft.

The US press referred to her as the "Aussie Angel" when she and Mr Clark were spotted together during his divorce from former Forbes magazine reporter Nancy Rutter.

The couple have also been spied together relaxing on Mr Clark's yacht Athena, the largest privately-owned yacht in the world.

Ms Hinze said Mr Clark was a regular guy, despite being reportedly worth $US1.1 billion ($A1.2 billion).

"He's very normal and down to earth," she said.

"He's an incredible man and I just love him."


Yeah......and monkeys fly out of my butt.

profoundly embarrassing


Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"

Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"

Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."

Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.

The scores of town planners in Australia building empires out of regulating what can and can't be built on low-lying shorelines will have to come to terms with the fact inundation no longer impends and find something more plausible to do. The same is true of the bureaucrats planning to accommodate "climate refugees".

Penny Wong's climate mega-portfolio will suddenly be as ephemeral as the ministries for the year 2000 that state governments used to entrust to junior ministers. Malcolm Turnbull will have to reinvent himself at vast speed as a climate change sceptic and the Prime Minister will have to kiss goodbye what he likes to call the great moral issue and policy challenge of our times.

It will all be vastly entertaining to watch.

THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a slightly longer version of the same piece.

The Australian's Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling paragraph from the Herald's version, which suggested that McEwan was a climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding on the proposition that "we need not only reliable data but their expression in the rigorous use of statistics".

What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following: "Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)"

The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age's version of the essay. The attribution reads: "Copyright Ian McEwan 2008" and there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.

Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn't there a nice irony that The Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at "absorbing inconvenient fact"?

Monday, March 24, 2008

say anything!


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/politics/24campaign.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin












When Bush was running for President the Left lamented that he "didn't have enough experience" (though he was a company owner and a two-term Governor, a brother in office and the SON of a former POTUS) and that we couldn't have a President that needed to "learn on the job." All those concerns have gone right out the window with one-term Senator Barack Obama. And how is it W's growing up in politics isn't a 'learning experience', but being a wife of POTUS is? I guess it depends on your definition of 'is'....

After Hillary won her Senate seat and George W. Bush won the presidency due to the electoral college, Hillary decried the decision and proposed the EC be done away with and the President be decided by the popular vote.

NOW, that Hillary has 219 EC votes and Obama only 202 the story changes. Now her campaign is suggesting that since the general election is decided with electoral college votes...why shouldn't the nominee in the primary be picked the same way...?

"The Clinton camp has argued that Mrs. Clinton’s having won the big states should be an important factor when considering her electability.

“Presidential elections are decided on electoral votes,” a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson, said in an e-mail message.

But Mr. Wolfson said superdelegates would also be looking at the popular vote when determining which candidate to support.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said that the idea of using the Electoral College as a metric was specious because the Democratic nominee, regardless of whom it was, would almost certainly win California and New York.

Many Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bayh, have opposed the Electoral College in the past, particularly after 2000, when Florida’s 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush, who became president, even though Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, had won the popular vote nationwide.

At the time, Mrs. Clinton, who had just been elected to the Senate, said, “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.” (source)

Interesting how opinions change in just a few short years...

I did not even vote for W last time, but all those ridiculous 'selected not elected' arguments are hereby recinded.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Steinbecks...Northside Tavern






A great time had by most at Steinbecks monday night. My thanks to Irish Jim, the hard working crew, and the 80-100 or so that came through the door to see us play.

This weekend is another 'Chicken Raid' blues festival, in honor of Frank Edwards.

http://www.myspace.com/thechickenraid





Mr Frank was a great old dude....Once, about 12 years ago, Danny and I were playing in Beaufort,SC....Mr Frank asked to tag along 'so he could see he doctor'....

After a wild night, he woke us up and asked us to drive him waaaaayyyy out into the marshes. We arrived at a trailer with a garage next to it. Mr Frank walks into this grage while the hungover band waited in the van for his return. About a half hour later, he comes out and starts peeling off large bills to a middle aged black man.

I later found out this was the real life son of Minerva, the Lowcountry "root doctor" who works spells for Jim Williams in the Midnight in the Garden of good and evil. This was a decade before I even heard of the book or movie, yet unbeknownst to me I was meeting the progeny of a central character. To this day, it bothers the heck out of me that I do not know what went on in that garage.

I was honored to play with Mr Frank on his last performance in 2002. It was one of his strongest sets ever, and he was a very,very old bluesman.

The defining difference I noticed about Mr Frank was his atheism. Most old time blues stars and pioneers ( Like Cora Mae Bryant, pictued above ) were uber-religious. Not Mr Frank.

I hope he was wrong, and he's in blues heaven, drinking coke, eating cake and chasing big hipped women!

Monday, March 17, 2008

St Paddy's!



Well, it's St Pats day...As an accordion and banjo player, there are 2 times a year where my services are required. Oktoberfest and Paddy's Day!

This year I will be performing @ Steinbecks Oyster Bar in Oakhurst with my Irish band, the Cabbagetown Criers. No cover! Erin Go Brah less!

On other topics, it didn't take long before this weekends 'Downtown Twister' was attributed to 'global warming'. Even though, the predictions after Katrina were for a violent season in 2006..Didn't happen. This winter was predicted to be 'mild'. Bullshit.

I've often wondered what happens to the large trees felled by the storm. Who get's the wood?

Driving home today on Peachtree, I saw another group of 'picketers' standing in fromt of WSB....Not marching, not chanting slogans, just one Union jackass and 2 homeless guys paid for leaning against a banner that reads' Shame on Wxia!'.

Hey, how 'bout moving around a little? It's not very convincing to feel 'shame' on a large corporate entity, if the protesters are standing around or leaning on a banner. The only 'shame' is how lazy these guys look. Sheesh!

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Twista!



http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080315/D8VE1RSG1.html

Friday, March 14, 2008

A Great read!



http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html/full

An interesting read into a Huffpo contributor, and and Village Voice columnist.

Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'by David Mamet
(An election-season essay)

"...And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests...."

WOW! Now THAT's writing!

Mamet's essay and his description of his political journey is familiar to me. If history has taught us anything about human nature, it is that the tragic view is far closer to reality than the romantic view. This is not my opinion. It is fact. And even more important, ALL attempts at large-scale social engineering have not only failed, but have produced the greatest mass murders and genocides in human history. If humans were perfectable, we would not need government. But if we are not perfect, then government in the hands of flawed human beings is particularly dangerous. The genius of America's founders is that they realized that the goal of a good society could not be the folly of trying to make humans perfect, but instead, to create a framework which reconciled government with an imperfectable human race. Therefore, they understood that government's most important role was the protection of individual rights, because any significant role for government beyond that would open the door for all the pernicious aspects of human nature.

Then came the "Progressive Era" and FDR's New Deal, and the temptation to use government to "perfect' the nation. The inevitable result is what we have today : a government which is paralyzed by special interest groups, unable to address the fundamental problems we face. And yet, the Left clamors for what ? You guessed it - MORE GOVERNMENT ! And the election of McCain, Clinton or Obama will change nothing in a meaningful way. This sad state of affairs is the inevitable result of the cultivation of the attitude that someone other than yourself is responsible for solving your problems. To be a Leftist is to believe that we should become serfs of the state.

Virtually all of the historical material progress of humanity is the result of trade and free market capitalism and the innovation it has inspired. Very little material progress for the rich or the poor can be attributed to government action, beyond the protection of property rights, and the rule of law. The story of human progress is largely the story of capitalism.

Democracy is not the answer to our problems. Democracy is the source of most of our problems. Democracy is basically nothing but mob rule. Democracy does not civilize us. Individual rights, private property rights and trade are what civilizes us. Human beings ARE compassionate. Human beings DO cooperate. And we do NOT need government to make us do it. The government is NOT the community. The community is organic, and exists largely outside the realm of the state.

We will either have a strong government or a strong civil society. We will not have both.

Just my 2 cents.


I should also note that the nature of the replies of most of those who disagree with Mamet's essay is all too typical of today's Left, and is another indication of its philosophical bankruptcy. Most of these responses are either ad homenim attacks, or consist of the "straw man" tactic, or, the "yes, but look how bad the other guy is" approach.

I have concluded that the reason many on the Left refuse to engage in rational dialogue is because their entire worldview would collapse if the acknowledged what massive amounts of emprical historical evidence would require them to acknowledge. And many people on the Left take great pride in maintaining a facade of sophistication. They cannot abide the possibility that a rube like Rush Limbaugh might actually be correct, and they could be wrong. I believe many Leftists actually know this, or fear that it is true, and the anguish of realizing their worldview has been proven wrong by history goes a long way in explaining the anger and vitriol on the Left these days. Take a look at the replies to postings on sites such as Huffingtonpost or DailyKos, and you will see what I'm taking about - some of the most vile hatred imaginable.

Here is another great explanation of another Leftist who finally saw the light. It was written after the elections in Iraq in 2005, but the essence of the comments are still quite relevant.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Monday, March 10, 2008

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion page..


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A legislative session that for Republicans had all the makings of disaster turned suddenly last week — demonstrating once again why nobody should bet on elections that are more than a few days away.

A week ago Friday, rank-and-file House Republicans were in a deep funk about the fall elections.

Democrats in one afternoon lifted them out of it. Bloodbath averted. Obama surge neutralized.

I’d have to hogtie you to force you to sit still long enough to hear the full explanation of why Georgia House Democrats — minus seven — voted last week to deny tax relief to 93 percent of Georgians who own cars, trucks and motorcycles. But they did.

Some votes can be explained to neighbors who don’t pay much attention to the games politicians play in Atlanta and Washington. Some, including this one, can’t.

Rank-and-file Republicans were disturbed because House Speaker Glenn Richardson was still insisting he’d make them vote on a tax shift proposal — a new tax on groceries and services to generate money for property tax relief — that would have walked incumbents into a bloodbath in the primary and in the general election.

Gleeful Democrats were beside themselves at the prospect of running against Republicans who could be accused of supporting 175 new taxes. Had Richardson pushed that tax bill onto the floor, it would have been the end of his speakership.

But he didn’t.

He dropped the proposed tax on groceries and services His tax bill was morphed instead into a proposal by Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter of Alpharetta to end the “birthday tax,” the ad valorem tax that Georgians pay on their birthdays to renew their car tags. It would have saved owners of almost 7 million personal vehicles $637 million, the sum counties collected in 2007.

This is genuine tax relief. Not a swap. It is the real deal, getting Republicans back to what should have been their roots.

The proposed constitutional amendment on the floor Wednesday would also have frozen property assessments at 2008 levels and limited them to 2 percent per year for homes and 3 percent for other property.

Overall, property tax collections by local governments would be limited to new construction, plus the rate of inflation in government’s cost of goods and services. That rate would have averaged 5.05 percent over the past five years, Richardson said. The cap would not apply to revenues from other sources.

The proposed cap could have been raised by voters in a referendum. The ballot question would have to be phrased: “Shall property taxes be increased …?”

That cap was a primary reason Democrats gave for voting against a tax break for owners of 530,362 vehicles in Cobb, 586,995 in Gwinnett, 527,555 in Fulton and 436,997 in DeKalb.

Dumb. Seriously dumb. Pick any barber shop in Georgia. Walk in and explain that you didn’t oppose giving patrons a major tax break on their cars but voted against it because the proposed amendment would have limited the increase that cities and counties could impose on their homes. And, for good measure, throw in some gibberish about the state “owing” local school systems some back funding — and that’s why you voted against a tax break for almost every family in the state.

Good luck.

Four of the seven Democrats who broke ranks — Bobby Parham of Milledgeville, Alan Powell of Hartwell, Jay Shaw of Lakeland and Ellis Black of Valdosta — represent areas where Democrats have lost ground for most of the past decade. The other three were Bob Bryant of Garden City, Kevin Levitas of Atlanta and Amy Carter of Valdosta.

The proposed amendment lost 110-62, with 120 needed. One Republican, Tom Dickson of Cohutta, voted no.

Had it passed and been approved by voters in November, Georgians would have gotten $672 million in tax relief, the sum projected for the 2011 fiscal year. That’s money politicians would not have been tempted to spend.

Republicans were headed to an election-year disaster. And then came the Democrats.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Hard to imagine that Democratic presidential politics could get any more bizarre, but party leaders are now suggesting a Florida re-vote with the primary being conducted by the U.S. Postal Service.

A mail-in primary is “actually a very good process,” said DNC Chairman Howard Dean on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Every voter gets a ballot in the mail. It’s comprehensive. You get to vote if you’re in Iraq or in a nursing home. It’s not a bad way to do this.”

The party is desperate, of course, to get out of the box it’s in. Hillary won Florida, and Michigan too for that matter, and has a legitimate claim to the 313 delegates. The national party withheld delegates because the two states elected to vote earlier than the national party wanted. Barack Obama chose not to have his name listed on the Michigan ballot. The choice there was either Hillary or uncommitted. Hillary won — but not by a landslide.

Who pays for a re-do, which would cost an estimated $6 million? The party, for sure, with money Dean says it needs for the fall campaign against John McCain. Republican Gov. Charlie Crist has made it plain that the state won’t bail out the Dems.

Michigan’s Democratic Sen. Carl Levin noted Sunday that “There’s some real problems” with a mail-in ballot. “Not just cost, but the security issue. How do you make sure that hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million or more ballots can be properly counted and that duplicate ballots can be avoided?”

Hanging chads, hanging mailman, here we come. Republicans really should not get too down about their prospects in November. Watching Democrats in Congress and in politics offers some reassurance that the party will over-play or misplay every advantage.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Moses.........say 'high'


High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Flori duh strikes again



This just in :Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged Florida and Michigan party officials to come up with plans to repeat their presidential nominating contests so that their delegates can be counted.

"All they have to do is come before us with rules that fit into what they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they'll be seated," Dean said during a round of interviews Thursday on network and cable TV news programs.

The two state parties will have to find the funds to pay for new contests without help from the national party, Dean said.

"We can't afford to do that. That's not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race," he said. The DNC offered to pay for an alternative contest in Florida last summer but was turned down, officials at the party say.

Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count in the epic Democratic campaign.




awwww....ain't that sweet?! Give the crybabies a 'do over'.

All this yet again from .........the birthplace of the dangling chad!

Ckeck out this quote from fladems :

http://www.fladems.com/page/content/makeitcount-faqs/#q4

"The Rules say you had to try to stop the primary move, but Democrats voted for the law. What gives?"

Initially, before a specific date had been decided upon by the Republicans, some Democrats did actively support the idea of moving earlier in the calendar year.

Here's the kicker:

"The primary bill, which at this point had been rolled into a larger legislation train, went to a vote in both houses. It passed almost unanimously. The final bill contained a whole host of elections legislation, much of which Democrats did not support. However, in legislative bodies, the majority party can shove bad omnibus legislation down the minority’s throats by attaching a couple of things that made the whole bill very difficult, if not impossible, to vote against. This is what the Republicans did in Florida, including a vital provision to require a paper trail for Florida elections. There was no way that any Florida Democratic Party official or Democratic legislative leader could ask our Democratic members, especially those in the Florida Legislative Black Caucus, to vote against a paper trail for our elections."






So, as I see it, either the GOP outfoxed the Dems and attached a 'paper trail' rider that guaranteed it's passage, which means the Dem party down there are pretty stupid.

Or, these guys voted to make themselves 'more important' in determining the primary outcome early, and cost themselves the delegates, which roughly translated means ' they are pretty stupid'.

Do I have that right? And isn't the reason we now need a 'paper trail' is due to these idiots inability to use the old butterfly ballot, which brought us the evil E-voting?

And Howard Dean. Way to show leadership and intelligence and try to avoid this nightmare. Good work, Doc!

Just hilarious:-)


With apologies to Aesop:

A donkey with an apple in its mouth once walked across a bridge. In the pond below, it thought it saw another donkey with a bigger, redder apple. The donkey reached down for the reflection of its apple, and dropped the real apple instead.

Moral: that’s what happens when jackasses overreach.

John Galt has arrived....It's Stossel!






http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080305130253.aspx



Do journalists have axes to grind with business and capitalism? ABC ‘20/20’ co-anchor John Stossel says so.



Stossel spoke before an audience at the Heartland Institute’s 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 4 in New York. He called the media “socialist” and warned things weren’t likely to change.



“The socialist media – maybe they will just never get it,” Stossel said. “Their world view is anti-capitalist. [Ludwig] von Mises wrote about it in 1972 and it’s just very hard to change. I would also argue the scientific community is as well.”



The ABC “20/20” host based that notion on his experience from being a consumer reporter. Stossel has worked for the network since 1981.



“[A]s I’ve done my consumer reporting, just to elaborate on that, I think what’s fueling a lot of this is a general hatred of capitalism,” Stossel said.



Stossel, author of Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know is Wrong, likened being a conservative in New York City to being as unpopular as a child molester. He said he even encountered some hatred personally.



“[I]’m trying to figure out what’s the hatred,” Stossel said. “It’s because I’m a consumer reporter defending business and people hate business. So, I’m trying to understand why do they hate business so much. I thought – some people have said ‘the envy of the wealth.’ Some people want so much more and they figure it’s a zero-sum game.”



He tied this ill-will about business and capitalism to global warming by saying the alarmism fed off of this sentiment.



“In our intuitive understanding of this zero-sum game – you made a profit off of me and I must have lost,” Stossel said. “That economic ignorance makes people hate business and I think this global warming movement feeds on it.”



This “economic ignorance” causes people to not be fully aware of how successful a capitalist economy has been, by having its track record ignored.



“Capitalism delivered more people out of the mud and misery than any system ever and continues to do that,” Stossel added.



Stossel mentioned ABC’s Bill Blakemore, one of his colleagues. Stossel said Blakemore was undeterred by any global warming skepticism and was convinced it is happening and is caused by man. Blakemore, in attendance, identified himself when Stossel brought his name up during the speech.



Blakemore has been critical of any global warming skepticism. In September 2007, he called footage from a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) commercial a “disinformation campaign.”

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

here we go again....


Oh Boy.. Florida voters are complaining about being 'disenfranchised' in the primary process...Now, if you listen closely to the Hillarites, they will all claim " The GOP Legislature moved the primary date! And now Howard Dean wont let them seat delegates! Since that will hurt our girl's chances....Why....WERE DISENFRANCHISED!!


Awwww shaddup.

It was not only the GOP that voted to move up the date, it was many democrats as well. And Jeremy Ring, a Democratic state senator from Broward County wrote the damn thing!

Even the LA Times saw this one coming a mile away
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-florida20may20,0,5268295.story?coll=la-home-center

"If the choice is Florida is relevant and has no delegates versus being irrelevant and having delegates, I'd choose being relevant with no delegates," Ring said. "We did this so 18 million Floridians could take part in the presidential primaries, not so a few hundred people can go to a party in Denver."


Okay, so now mensa candidate Howard Dean issued a smackdown. No votes for you!

So let me get this straight. These dolts move up thier primary, get punished, then cry about it. And now, they ( and Hillary, of course ) want a 'redo'?!

Riiiiiiighhht.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Good times......

The New York Times struggles.....



to make sense of 'global cooling'.Between this and the Democratic Primary, who needs the writers? Please, go back on strike. Plus, the last 2 SNL's sucked. Big Time.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Sunday, March 2, 2008