Friday, 31 October 2008

Linkage

Issues defined


Tam:

One side is offering me politicians acting like politicians, which is to say power-hungry, callous, and scheming; the other side is trying to offer me politicians acting like missionaries, and that scares the crap out of me.

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Thursday, 30 October 2008

Linkage

Getting back to the important stuff...


Neo-Neocon celebrates National Candy Corn Day.

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Linkage

The last Linotype book in America?


The latest volume of Studies in Bibliography has been praised as one of the strongest in the periodical’s six-decade history, but it is also special in another way, for it may be the last book in America produced from Linotype.

Related:  Old tools of newspapers now antiques

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Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Linkage

Guess who’s not paying taxes?


...More than 200 tax liens totaling more than $3.7 million have been filed by the government against the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now for unpaid taxes since the late eighties.

A tax lien is issued when a person or organization fails to pay taxes and that tax debt is considered seriously delinquent. A lien is only issued after the government makes several unsuccessful attempts to collect the debt.
...
The liens filed against ACORN and their associated groups come from the Internal Revenue Service and government officials in fifteen different states. - Amanda Carpenter
You remember ACORN, don’t-cha?  The gang who produced all those fraudulent voter registrations?  The gang who’ve received over $30 million in federal grants since 1998?

Yeah, them.

Via: Howard

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Monday, 27 October 2008

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Explainer: How charge card transactions work


Re: The Obama online contribution controversy,[1] a lot of people are doing a lot of unformed– and erroneous– theorizing about the way authentication of charge card transactions work, and who is left holding the bag if they fail or are fraudulent.  If you really want to know the nuts and bolts, go read this explanation by “Wind Rider.”

Additional geeky pedantry after the jump.
more...

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Friday, 24 October 2008

Linkage

Six Billion Dollars per Week


...larger than any one time “rebate” being talked about by government, and this money arrives every week.
But then there are those who think high fuel prices are a good thing.

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Thursday, 23 October 2008

Linkage

The epitome of culinary creation


...or not.


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Tuesday, 21 October 2008

Linkage

Think good thoughts about a pussycat


Dammit could.use.some.more, please.

UPDATE 081022:

Dammit goes in for an endoscopy and a liver biopsy to check for cancerous cells on Tuesday, the 28th.  It’s either lymphosarcoma or triaditis.  The latter would be preferable, because it’s treatable.  Please continue to keep him in your thoughts.

Previously.

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Saturday, 18 October 2008

Linkage

Weekend reading suggestions

Some longer items, for your Sunday morning.

Radical sheeesh!  Saul Alinsky’s 1971 book Rules for Radicals has become one of those books better known by reputation than by intimate knowledge.  Its recent citation, in connection with the ACORN voter registration scandal, prompted “dicentra” to read it for the first time.  She has been making notes, and posting them over at the Protein Wisdom Pub.

Along the way, she found some interesting contrasts between Alinsky and today’s left.  The person who wrote this is a radical?
Let us in the name of radical pragmatism not forget that in our system with all its repressions we can still speak out and denounce the administration, attack its policies, work to build an opposition political base...  I can attack my government, try to organize to change it. That’s more than I can do in Moscow, Peking, or Havana.
or this?
The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.  Those who enshrine the poor or Have-Nots are as guilty as other dogmatists and just as dangerous...
But it’s not all contrast, as you will find if you read on.  There are seven [update 11/1:] eight posts (each in the 1800-word range) up so far, with more to come:


o-o-O-o-o

Love the boat?
...Underlying the cruise ship model is the tacit assumption that it will never be called upon to sail into perilous waters.  Once this assumption is questioned, the beautiful luxury ship will lose its aspect as a vacation paradise and become a potential and very vulnerable death trap.
Twenty-first century life as a cruise ship.  Greater interdependencies: A solution to future problems, or “tying down the circuit breakers”?  A thought-provoking essay (and discussion) at Belmont Club.

o-o-O-o-o

Oh, what a couple.  “Armed Liberal” starts with the Milken Institute’s PowerPoints and builds “a long post on Fannie and Freddie.”  Even if you think you know what precipitated the mortgage meltdown, go read.

o-o-O-o-o

Really, it’s an estate.  Drew Pearce got to wash some windows at a 1907-vintage stately home in New Jersey.  They don’t build ’em like that anymore..
Is it possible to fall in love with architecture?  Because this house makes me giddy.  Not only is the place utterly charming inside, it’s built like a damn fortress.  The walls are at least two feet thick, solid stone. I bet there are 100 doors in the home, and each has a turn of the century brass lockset, in perfect working order, but with a 100 year patina you simply can not get at Home Depot. I went up into the attic late this afternoon.  I climbed up the back stairs central servant’s stairs ( it turns out that there is another staircase that goes from the end of the servant’s wing straight down to the laundry room and kitchen at the back of the house.  Who knew?  But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I found a 4th staircase somewhere.  This place is immense!) to the attic door, went in, turned on the light, and was magically transformed into a 7 year old boy in an instant. Wow. Stunning.
Links to the saga:
Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5 - aerial photo (scroll down)

It appears that his work generated some referrals.  He’d better watch out, or he’ll wind up making over $250k!


(Hattip to Pete Allen for helping me re-find that last one.)

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Friday, 17 October 2008

Linkage

Tacitus tells off Peggy Noonan


...The outrage expressed by your readers hasn’t been incurred because you’ve shifted your support away from the only conservative ticket on the ballot this November.  You’re faced with reader outrage because you’ve expressed the same contempt for your readership that has traditionally been expressed solely by your colleagues on the other side of the aisle regarding conservatives - you extoll conservative virtues with one article and then damn the very candidates who embody those virtues with another, and not due to any substantive reason.  Rather, it’s because those candidates didn’t attend a university with a high enough U.S. News & World Report college ranking and don’t articulate their positions using the same ebullient language found in the stump speeches of Senator Obama.  You’re not sold on Palin or McCain out of lack of substance, but of lack of style...
Link.

Related:  Heeeeeere’s Jack M.
Once you were a revolutionary.

Now you're just revolting.

Tacitus link via:  Treacher

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