So Long, Centerville

Roadkill 2 Comments

Looking for a solution to high local property taxes? Ungovernment your town.

Going out of business appeals to small places like Cooper, where only 145 people live. With no jobs and an aging population, the tax base is shrinking even though the costs of government keep rising. “It just got to be more than we could handle,” says Sue Dorsey. Dorsey says that’s why the 26 residents of Centerville let the state take over their affairs – everything from education to snow removal. “There was more to do and less people that wanted to do it,” says Dorsey. Centerville not only locked the door to city hall, it sold it for $3,500.

8 out of 9 small towns in Maine that have done this have seen a drop in property taxes.
Hat tip – Dr.Joyner

“The Small Guy”

More Money Than Brains No Comments

“Vote Or Die” P Diddy,

“Don’t underestimate the small guy. Nobody really respected us. Nobody really thought we would come out and vote. It really taught me that if you speak to young people, speak to minorities, they could change the world. The future’s ours. It’s our turn now. We’ve been left out of the game for too long. Time for y’all to let us in now.”
“After the polling, I came to MTV…”

Another reality-based celebrity…

How He Did It

Political Animal 3 Comments

I was in the shop painting all day, so I’m still catching up on my own blog reading. In the meantime, if you’ve not already, I recommend this Newsweek story ‘How He Did It. An insiders’ account of the evolution of the Kerry and Bush campaigns, written by reporters who were “imbedded” for the past year or so, it’s fascinating reading. (The page I’ve linked to is just the intro – the meat is at the link at the bottom.)
So far, only half is online. First impressions? My relief in the defeat of John Kerry is solidified. And I don’t mean that in any meanspirited way. But go check it out for yourself, and be sure to stop back and let me know if you agree.
(link fixed)

Maps Maps Maps

Little Known Facts 4 Comments

Velociman assists his readers in interpreting the election maps;

For those of you who keep pointing me to red state/blue state maps and telling me Bush won Hawaii: the “big island” you keep directing me to is fucking Alaska! They just put it next to Hawaii for purposes of convenience!
I will admit the Aleutian Islands did go Bush.
“Look at the big red island” indeed.

Reports From Fallujah

Military 1 Comment

A link from Wretchard a few days ago alerted me to this very good site for background info from Iraq –

So to sum up, if I am Joe Insurgent in Fallujah, and have news access (probably via shortwave radio), I know that:

  • Bush has won a resounding victory
  • the British are united behind him and will participate in the attack against me
  • the Arab media will mainly be embedded with the Americans, and will give accurate stories of their prowess, not the dreck I feed them
    All of these things have a psychological effect on the enemy combatants. If there is any chance at all for a peace settlement, the US’ blatant unity behind the president will further deepen existing discord between the sheiks and the foreign fighters.
    I would put all of these events, together with the unrelenting airstrikes, under the battle phase of “shaping the battlefield,” wherein we have not yet committed ground troops, but it’s the next step, and we are doing all possible right down to the wire to make them successful.

    • Read the rest of the post at Adventures Of Chester if you have any intentions of watching/reading news about Fallujah in the coming days.

    Exile Map

    Little Known Facts 6 Comments

    Kevin Steel has provided a handy map, along with advice for disillusioned Democrats.

    First of all, you’ll notice that you should probably best stay out of Western Canada, lots of red there. Ontario (just to the right of the red blob) is your best bet, though you certainly can check out the eastern seaboard, which is much like your northeastern seaboard. New Yorkers in particular should feel right at home in, say, Labrador. That’s what I would recommend.

    To which I’ll add, Churchill may appeal to the yachting crowd.

    Air Pollution, American Style

    Little Known Facts 2 Comments

    EPA: Looking at Growth and Emissions
    Each year EPA looks at emissions that impact the ambient concentrations of these pollutants. These annual emissions estimates are used as one indicator of the effectiveness of our programs. The graph below shows that between 1970 and 2003, gross domestic product increased 176 percent, vehicle miles traveled increased 155 percent, energy consumption increased 45 percent, and U.S. population grew by 39 percent. During the same time period, total emissions of the six principal air pollutants dropped by 51 percent.

    Feel free to email this graph to David Suzuki and every Kyoto supporter you know…

    “Score One for the Little Guys”

    Media 1 Comment

    CBC’s Ira Basen has an excellent summary on the role of blogging in correcting the crumbling standards of “old media”.

    […] this time, the agents of change are not high-priced media experts or expensive new technologies. No, this time the revolution is being brought to us by a large and mostly disorganized group of men and women who spend much of their days and nights pounding away at their keyboards. They are the people who produce political web logs. Some are read only by friends and relatives, others have numbers and influence that rival those of older, more established magazines. And in this campaign, the “bloggers,” as they call themselves, have been all the rage. And their presence really does seem destined to change the course of campaign reporting, just as much as the introduction of radio, TV and spin doctors did in the last century.
    […]
    There is a greater need than ever before for Big Media outlets to be at the top of their game when it comes to breaking important stories, dissecting spin, and highlighting the issues that matter to voters. But it has been a long time since Big Media has been at the top of its game. It has been riding on its reputation for too long.
    The most important development to come out of the coverage of this campaign is that bloggers, and others such as the intrepid “reporters” at The Daily Show, have pulled back the curtain and revealed Big Media to be a shrunken skeleton of its former self.
    Now is the time to begin rebuilding. And the mainstream would be wise to see the blogosphere not as an enemy, but as an ally in the process.

    Via Heart of Canada.
    Well, this doesn’t happen often – The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan in agreement with the CBC….

    Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief–CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS’s “60 Minutes” the election–the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America. Some day, when America is hit again, and lines go down, and media are hard to get, these bloggers and site runners and independent Internetters of all sorts will find a way to file, and get their word out, and it will be part of the saving of our country.

    Both are good reads.
    Jeff Jarvis has a useful observation.

    Last night, blogs (other than this one) got bombarded with traffic (shutting down this host) for a simple reason: Bloggers were telling the public what they knew. Big media was not.
    How absurd is that? When did journalists get into the business of not telling their public what they know?

    Bingo.
    Then, of course, there remain a few slow learners.

    Glass 48% Full

    Insufferable Twits No Comments

    It seems like a distant memory now – Howard Dean’s headline grabbing ascent to Democratic frontrunner – the internet fund-raising rock star of the Grassroots. If only they had known that the chorus of voices that bustled on the Dean blog forum were in fact, the only ones who would actually show up to vote for him in the primaries. But the Blog For America soldiers on. Today, this astute observation in a message signed by the good doctor himself.

    “And a record number of us voted to change course – more Americans voted against George Bush than any sitting president in history.”

    There’s the spirit, Howie.

    Thar He Blows!

    Moonbats 5 Comments

    The Graceless Luser theme continued….
    Michael Moore has come up for air, last sighted shortly before submerging in his private misery pool. (Goldstein contends it’s filled with guacamole, and he simply ate his way out.)
    His contribution to the post-election discussion? A mosaic of US war dead, arranged to create a portrait of George Bush. I’ll spare you the link.

    But today is a day to be magnaminous��towards those with whom we disagree. We should be generous and forgive Michael Moore his urge to lash out, for he has been dealt a double blow – for, with the re-election of George Bush, he saw a bigger prize snatched from his grasp last night.

    Reminding all of the timeless wisdom of Al Gore – “If you can’t be a graceful loser, then just aim for loser.”
    I’m pretty sure that qualifies as magnaminous. Megamagnaminous, even.
    update – This was inevitable.

    Graceless Lusers, Con’t

    Moonbats 3 Comments

    From Kevin Drum’s comments section the post-loss analysis is beginning…

    But, when all is said and done, Bush’s very convincing popular vote has one unmistakable cause: Kerry lost because more Americans indisputably like, trust, and feel more comfortable and safer with Bush than with Kerry.
    Why? The unavoidably obvious explanation is that Americans are by-and-large morons. Simpleminded, uninformed and undereducated, intellectually lazy and proud in their ignorance to boot, self-important and self- righteous, arrogant and benighted idiots. They are a reflection of George W. Bush, and in him they saw themselves. That’s why they love him and trust him so. Their reality is the faith-based myth that America is blessed and always right and great and perfect and freedom is handed down by God and not manmade constitutional governments and cultures of tolerance and inquiry. The are certain that the “real” America is in the unpleasant, xenophobic, homophobic, red states in the middle, where everybody has a white picket fence in the brain and they don’t seem aware of their own squalor and the fact that they make ends meet only because the far more prosperous blue states continue to subsidize their light beer guzzling.
    More people voted for this idiot than for Kerry. This is what we have to come to grips with. The majority of the American electorate voted for Bush; voting for an idiot is idiocy, which is something usually practiced by idiots; ergo… What other conclusion can there be?
    Americans chose Bush. They deserve him.

    The left, in a nutshell. I don’t know that anyone can improve on this, but if I find more, I’ll update.
    update – listening to John Edwards preamble to Kerry’s concession speech, I went to the TV and turned on the CBC. What are they running? A Bush bashing re-run of their faux comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes

    Graceless Losers

    Roadkill 7 Comments

    I suppose it was bound to happen. As Powerline notes, the Democrats are now trying to “redefine the meaning of close” in a last gasp attempt to avoid conceding defeat. In so doing, they risk convincing a good percentage of fair-minded Americans who had given them the benefit of the doubt over the Florida fiasco, that they might well be renamed the Lawyer Party Of Losers. At the core of this party is a group of people who are intellectually corrupt and emotionally immature. Little is going to change in Democratic Party fortunes until they are purged.
    Hugh Hewitt has been unwavering in his optimism during the campaign, and as it turned out, he was closer to being right than nearly anyone else. Hewitt’s blog should be an example for our local talk radio hosts – he has done a marvellous job of connecting his show to the voices on the internet, and it has made him all the more influencial. He writes;

    Pete Coors is a gentleman.� Trailing by less than 50,000 votes out of nearly 1.8 million and with 12% of Colorado’s precincts yet to be tallied, Pete nevertheless took a calm look at the numbers and called Ken Salazar to concede. Classy.
    �
    Contrast that with Tom Daschle, Tony Knowles and Betty Castor, and of course John Kerry.� No reasonable interpretation of the data in any of these races can give any of these candidates a win, but they are hanging on.
    �
    This is not the conduct of a great party, but it is also not surprising for the party of Michael Moore. What an example for the new democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps sleep will bring wisdom to this group.� Sleep, and a good hard look at what Al Gore has become.

    Hugh also notices that the gain of 4 senate votes breaks the Democrats ability to filibuster presidential judicial nominees – their last power wedge is gone.
    Other big losers are the mainstream media – how badly and how permanently their credibility has been harmed is too soon to tell, but the results – the highest all-time popular vote total, the first majority won since Bush Sr’s 1988 win – are a repudiation to the attempts to sway the election. The American public is “onto them”.
    update: Saner heads prevail …. but as we are still awaiting the speech, there’s still time for one last flip-flop!

    Election Poll Discrepencies – Mirror Of Ontario?

    Political Animal 1 Comment

    I commented at James Joyners Outside The Beltway a week or two ago (two lazy to dig up the direct link) that the tight race between Kerry and Bush in polls leading up to tonight may have been reflecting a phenomenon that occured here in Canada.
    Typically, Ontario voters lean towards the Liberal “natural governing party”, but the party was being rocked by the Adscam scandal. They were recieving a battering from some of their own, as well as the Opposition, and the usually friendly Canadian media was relentless in publicizing the details.
    During the election, the polls were very tight, and at one time the Conservatives held a slim lead. They were reported to be making inroads in Ontario – a breakthrough for the party that had its roots in the western Reform/Alliance party.
    On election night, the expected support in Ontario never materialized. While they did make gains, and we are in a Liberal minority government because of it – they didn’t pass the threshold needed to govern. In the post mortem, it became evident that a number of those voters polled who stated they were voting Conservative were lying. They were embarrassed to admit they were supporting a party ridden with corruption. But in the privacy of the voting booth, they returned to mother.
    There are parallels. The pummelling that the Bush administration has taken in the mainstream press, with legions of critics flogging tell-all’s, the “success” of the Moore movie… how many Bush supporters felt intimidated, even embarrassed to admit their preference when polled?
    My guess – enough to skew the data to give Kerry a few false points.

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