EdCone.com

Whatever happened to peace?

It's Banned Books Week.

Thnx to JG for the pointer.

Two months after Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall of 2008, a small group of European leaders set up a secret task force—one so secret that they dubbed it "the group that doesn't exist."

Its mission: Devise a plan to head off a default by a country in the 16-nation euro zone.

We just avoided an epic disaster, but if everything is not fine by now, it must be because Obama's a Kenyan, so we should reempower the folks who say "Deficits are a terrible thing. Let’s make them much bigger."

After reviewing the City's grant application, the DOE guidelines, the proposed budget and the City Council video, I thought it worthwhile to make a few points on the DOE grant...The City ought not delay accepting these funds.

Glenwood Observer left a comment here that is republished in full after the jump. 

[T]here's so much spin, ass-covering, internal confusion and changing positions from one moment to the next that it's hard to get a really clear read on just what's going on.

My money is on a combination of timidity and cupidity, although cluelessness looms as a possibility.

UPDATE: A relevant comment by eric from yesterday's thread on this topic:

Neither party (I speak here of the parties as organizations, and not necessarily of particular candidates or supporters) has demonstrated any serious interest in or credible commitment to policy or principle. Both trade primarily on fear and loathing -- the GOP on fear and loathing of poor, dark, and foreign people; the Dems on fear of the GOP. Both exist precisely to focus on the acquisition of power; once they temporarily accomplish that goal, they act more or less the same, with a few minor differences to keep the audience mildly interested.

To the extent that this is true, it's true in part because they work for the same people.

Can't make it to NY's Morgan Library for the big show of Lichtenstein black-and-white drawings from the '60s?

You can see his 1963 lithograph, Foot Medication, along with several other works at your local art museum.

[A]dvocacy groups like Americans for Job Security [...] allow moneyed interests to influence elections without revealing themselves. Congress is now wrangling over a bill that would require some disclosure.

Not as important as proving that Obama is a cryptoislamic agent, but maybe there are some other shadowy places in our political system worth illuminating.

The Republican Party's 21-page blueprint, "Pledge to America," was put together with oversight by a House staffer who, up till April 2010, served as a lobbyist for some of the nation's most powerful oil, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies.

Well, you got to dance with who brung you.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are idiots.

Before Madden was a game or even an announcer and pitchman, before the Raiders were always awful, Oakland had a team to be proud of:

Madden gathered the players together to begin the practice.

"Where's Hendricks?" he asked.

He was answered by a man in a Raider uniform and pads emerging from behind one of the end zones perched astride a large roan horse and wearing a black German army helmet embellished with the Raider logo on each temple. Expertly, Hendricks galloped the horse onto the field, dismounted at the 50, and announced himself ready for practice.

Dr. Hayes forwarded this one:

"The ad contains both factual errors and historical inaccuracies."

But scaring people can make for effective politics, so what the hell.

Maybe that explains the mini-epidemic of political theater, truthiness, and lies now underway in Greensboro.

Start with Danny Thompson's prop-waving performance when raising the issue of library filters, and consider the stream of disinformation on that subject at Joe Guarino's blog, which has even filter proponents throwing up their hands in disgust.

Then consider the attempted Breitbarting of Carolyn Coleman, and the apparent misrepresentation of plans for savings on the new jail.

The old journalistic saw has it that three's a trend. This trend is not a healthy one.

Asheville enacted an ordinance similar to Greensboro's RUCO program, and under it the number of housing complaints declined steeply. But under pressure from Asheville's landlords, the ordinance was repealed, and housing complaints quickly jumped back up...

City Council members, Prof. Wharton has provided today's reading assignment.

Please pay close attention: "The foxes, having taken up comfortable residence in the regulatory hen house, have finished their hors d'oeuvres, and are now hungry for the main course."

Anonymity is not always forever:

One by one, seven witnesses took the stand in Flathead County District Court and swore to tell the truth about comments they had written anonymously online....

More cuts and furloughs at the Charlotte Observer.

The bottom line is that the terrorists Hate Us For Our Freedom, but it's sobering nonetheless to remember that Bin Laden secured his base of operations because of the Taliban, which was sponsored by Pakistan, which does much of what it does because of its feud with India, which involves things that have little to do with Our Freedom.

"[B]y any reasonable measure, the $800-billion stimulus package that Congress passed in the winter of 2009 was a clear, if limited, success."

Maybe, but some of the projects visible from here seem a little under-baked.

The failed attempt to Breitbart Carolyn Coleman should not obscure the interesting information presented by Ms. Adkins in the video -- that our massive jail project is said to be $21 million under budget.

What exactly does that mean? How firm is that new budget?

Will $21 million (or whatever large number may shake out) actually be available to apply to Guilford County's ominous deficit next year?

And I'd still like to understand the revenue flow, if any, from the old jail, and to get an explanation of where that money will go and why it shouldn't be applied to the bond debt for the new jail.

P.J. O'Rourke: "I take the Tea Party point that, politically speaking, control is scary. Out-of-control is also scary. And what’s most scary about foreign policy is how often it’s simply beyond our control."

"The cynicism of this rhetorical journey..."

Danish cartoonists and cartoonish Americans: "These strident falsehoods have undoubtedly influenced the two-thirds of Americans who now oppose Park51."

UPDATE: Commenter CC4G quickly responds to my question: "Coleman's comment came one hour after the woman spoke and was in response to a male heckler. Ask yourself why the person who edited the video substituted a still shot of Coleman instead of using the video of her comments. On the video, a man can be heard yelling something at Coleman. Her response was to him and he is seen on the video -- but not on the propaganda for which you seem to be falling."

Looks like I got had. Apologies to Commissioner Coleman.

If Carolyn Coleman was not mocking this woman's accent, then what was she doing? Via Guarino.

Summers leaving job he never should have had.

Ariana Iacono, 14, has been battling Johnston County school officials for weeks about her small peridot nose stud. The dress code prohibits students from wearing nose piercings and other facial jewelry, but Ariana says she should be exempt from the rule because she belongs to the little-known Church of Body Modification, which encourages piercings and tattoos as a path to spiritual enlightenment.

They've got a website, so why can't she keep the stud?

Interesting decision by our local newspaper, with its local focus on local news, to splash an art story from New York City across most of its Life section front, while giving much less space to another art story that's, well, local.

And why not drop a mention into the wire copy to let locals know that they can see work by Stieglitz right here at the local art museum?

Oh, yeah, about that local story -- the paper's version is hidden in the e-reader, but here's the scoop: "On Thursday, Sept. 23, trustees of the Public Art Endowment will unveil Entrance to a Garden, a sculpture by internationally recognized artist Dennis Oppenheim. This public event will take place at 4:30 p.m. on the front lawn of the VF Jeanswear/Wrangler Building, 400 N. Elm St., Greensboro."

Press release: Greensboro To Host 2012 U.S. Masters Swimming Spring National Championships.

Read the whole thing after the jump, but remember to hate the evil new aquatic center.

A film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi novel Ender’s Game has been in the works for years now, hampered at various turns by Card’s frequent falling out with various producers and directors who want to make it a kick-ass war movie. So fams should probably take this announcement with the usual wait-and-see attitude...

Noted.

The accuracy of computer modeling is a flashpoint in climate-change debates, so this sentence caught my eye: "Computer forecasts of water temperature suggest that corals in the Caribbean may undergo drastic bleaching in the next few weeks."

All kinds of reasons the outcome will not be conclusive on the larger question, but interesting nonetheless to see how this short-term prediction plays out.

Yesterday's link to DeLong's post about rich people and their problems led to an email discussion of that timeless topic, How Much Do You Need to Be Rich?

Ignoring the obvious cul-de-sacs (e.g., many Americans would seem rich in much of the world, if you have your health, etc.), it's still hard to define the shades of meaning. I'd say "rich" is at the top of the heap, above "wealthy," with "comfortable" and "well to do" down in upper-middle-class territory.

Multi-billionaires and even mere billionaires and centimillionaires may need their own category, but I don't think they should have "rich" to themselves.That's what intensifiers are for ("really rich," etc).

In the email exchange, I proposed the baseline for "rich" as being asset-based: being able to live a fairly luxurious life without an earned income. That standard might cause the really rich to snicker in their private jets, and it doesn't address the level of earned income needed to be rich, but it's a starting point. Thoughts?

Greensboro has some good college radio, although you would not know it from this map.

Related: The Awesomest Radio Station, Like, Ever!

Is it pathetic that somebody with nine times the median household income thinks of himself as just another average Joe, just another "working American"? Yes. Do I find it embarrassing that somebody whose income is in the top 1% of American households thinks that he is not rich? Yes.

I think DeLong is right that people tend to look up rather than down the income scale, and that the spreading income gap makes that painful for some of the merely well-off.

Bed Intruder song pays for new home for family with intruded-upon bed.

Thanks to JG for the pointer.

The N&R's swell new wedding contest draws fire for actually being a marriage contest.

As pointed out here many years ago, there are gay weddings in North Carolina, even if gay marriages are not yet recognized.

My idea for the N&R website is that rather than just disappearing significant articles into the "e-reader" they should run a precis at the public page that lets online readers know the article exists in the first place, with a very brief summary  -- even a hed and dek, nothing this elaborate needed -- and a byline.

That way online readers (and Google) have a clue about what they're missing, and thus have a reason to consider the print or facsimile editions.

This would require some time and effort, although less of both as it becomes habit.

Regular Americans, fighting the elites.

David and Charles Koch [are] among the richest men in America...[they] believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus...

...The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.

Related: The Angry Rich.

I have been thinking about last leaves for a long time. My friend, Lucile Kirk, once told me, over lunch, that she didn't want to be the last leaf on the tree. That was a few years ago, and now she has left us and, as in winter's past, so have Lois and Harry and Bob and Artie and Leonard and Evelyn. If you are ninety as I am, you can substitute your own list of missing friends.

My grandfather Cone outlived his wife, his brothers, his cousins, and his friends, not to mention one of his sons; that reality was a source of sadness and wonderment to him. Thanks to Phyllis Greene, who began her blog at age 90 while in hospice care, for describing the situation so well. (via Metafilter)

GPD press release:

GREENSBORO, NC (19 September 2010)

On September 19, 2010 at approximately 7:40 pm, Officers responded to 3408 Yanceyville Street in reference to a Suspicious Device found by the homeowner in the backyard. The On Duty Bomb Certified Technician responded to the scene and rendered the device safe. Upon evaluation, it was determined that the device was not explosive.

Anyone with any information is asked to contact Crimestoppers at 336.373.1000.

You might think that the N&R would want potential online readers in the QC and across the country to see its review of Rick Rothacker’s new book, "Banktown: The Rise and Struggles of Charlotte's Big Banks."

Those folks aren't going to subscribe to the print edition of our local daily, but they might click by for an article on a topic of national interest written by Andrew Brod of UNC Greensboro's Center for Business and Economic Research.

But the review is disappeared into the N&R's "e-reader," so here's one by Harry Hurt III from this morning's NYT.

Missing from this N&R editorial: the word "if."

As in, "if they can pull it off."

Nido Qubein's plans for HPU are exciting and visionary and, if realized, would be great for the Triad.

But a little perspective on the challenges of raising $2 billion, debt-free, seems appropriate.

"Go Tar Heels. Just go in the right direction."

My newspaper column is fan mail, of a sort, for UNC atheltics:

Our flagship state university pledged to do things differently from the notorious football factories it set out to emulate, and in a way it has made good on that promise: Other schools tend to attract scrutiny and sanctions after they start winning big on the field.

Let Southern California worry about tainted championships and giving back the occasional Heisman Trophy; the Tar Heels have managed to skip straight to the problems without even waiting for gridiron glory.

You can read the whole thing after the jump.

"We could all use some of the dermabrasion for the soul that Yom Kippur promises." A holiday tradition since whenever I wrote it.

In case you need help judging yourself:

"Historically, it’s going to rank as one of the most productive Congresses in recent time, comparable to LBJ’s first two years, and maybe even Franklin Roosevelt's time."

But nobody's going to be happy until unemployment falls back to a more manageable level or at least trends strongly in that direction.

One of the things about living through history is that it's not always clear day to day that times are historical. Our kids and grandkids will have a better sense than we can now muster of the giant economic Charlie Foxtrot we're still trying to untangle. And we'll see how all that legislation works out, too.