January 06, 2004

This World Trade Center Design Stands Out Like a Sore Thumb From the Beautiful Skyline of New York.

It’s a mistake to build a monument to the achievements of the terrorists. But that’s what this memorial is:

This design proposes a space that resonates with the feelings of loss and absence that were generated by the death and destruction at the World Trade Center.

Oh, great. A monument not to our love for the departed; not to the heroism of the firefighters and the airline passengers of that day who fought the hijackers—but to the feelings of loss and absence inflicted on us by the terrorists. Al Qaeda would love this. "Never forget what we did to you!" they say, and this is just the way to carry that out. And that picture is just the memorial. Here’s what they have in mind for the new WTC:

If this AP mockup photo is to be believed—what a distortion this will be of the skyline of New York. What’s with those angled roofs? They look like they’re going to fall over. They don’t fit in at all with the rest of the skyline. They look like they’ve already been blown up. The whole design needs to be scrapped and replaced with something uplifting and beautiful.

Update 9-13-06: An improved design: Four new towers instead of two!

A FANTASTIC SPEECH FROM GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER.

I just want to quote the whole thing. It was inspiring, meaningful, and well-considered.

He’s done a lot already. He repealed the tripling of the car tax; repealed SB 60, the law that gave drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens; and passed a balanced budget amendment.

Together, we in this chamber repealed SB 60, which endangered the very integrity of the California driver’s license.

Rescinding that law was the right thing to do. And I thank you for your bipartisan support.

Together, we put measures on the March ballot that, if passed by the people, will save our state from a June bankruptcy.

June is the month when billions of dollars in past loans come due and the financial house of cards built over the last half decade is set to collapse.

When individuals overspend themselves into trouble, financial counselors often tell them to consolidate their credit card balances so they can work their way out of trouble _ and also tear up their credit cards.

That is what our California Recovery Plan is all about. We took the debt we inherited from the previous administration, the debt that threatens us with bankruptcy, and we rolled it into a $15 billion recovery bond.

Then we tore up the credit card.

We passed a balanced budget amendment.

And we created a rainy day fund for future hard times and emergencies.

Never again will government be allowed to spend money it doesn’t have.

Never again will the state be allowed to borrow money to pay for its operating expenses.

And you in this room have done that for the people of California.

Notice how he’s sharing credit with the legislature. That’s leadership.

The fact of the matter is that we do not have a tax crisis; we do not have a budget crisis; we have a spending crisis. We cannot tax our way out of this problem. More taxes will destroy what we are trying to save which is jobs and revenue.

That’s why I supported and voted for him—I felt he would take positions like these.

There’s a lot more. He talks about cutting spending and unnecessary government programs:

Every governor proposes moving boxes around to reorganize government.

I don’t want to move the boxes around; I want to blow them up.

The executive branch of this government is a mastodon frozen in time and about as responsive.

This is not the fault of our public servants but of the system.

We have multiple departments with overlapping responsibilities.

I say consolidate them.

We have boards and commissions that serve no pressing public need. I say abolish them.

We have a state purchasing program that is archaic and expensive. I say modernize it.

I plan a total review of government _ its performance, its practices, its cost.

Some of the recommended actions, I will make by executive order. Some will require legislation. And some will need constitutional change.

Read the whole thing.

Arnold Shows Big-Time Leadership.

The past few days the drumbeat has been building. Schwarzenegger’s budget is due. He promised not to raise taxes, so he’ll have to make cuts. And the media was waiting to pounce on him for making those cuts:

Barring a tax increase, Schwarzenegger will have no choice but to propose deep and broad-based spending cuts that may clash with his own values if he is committed to balancing the budget, lawmakers and financial experts said.

“Whatever decision he makes, it’s going to have a human impact,” said state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier). “He has to weigh what his bottom line is in terms of how much human pain to impose. And I don’t frankly see how he can get out of it whether it’s the developmentally disabled or poor children who need health care or middle-class children who want to go on to higher education. There’s going to be pain.”

If Schwarzenegger relents and raises taxes, he risks alienating his base of Republican voters. Some are already unnerved by a comment that signaled flexibility on the question. Were voters to show an appetite for new taxes, the governor said at a news conference, he would be inclined to listen.

Lo and behold, what do we see today? Once again Schwarzenegger has outflanked and surprised everybody, by getting the California Teacher’s Association to back him on $2 billion in budget cuts.

SACRAMENTO With the support of California’s largest teacher’s union, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to propose cutting at least $2 billion in education spending when he presents his first state budget Friday.

After closed-door negotiations with the governor’s staff, leaders of the California Teacher’s Assn. agreed to back an assortment of temporary education cuts the details of which remain sketchy in return for Schwarzenegger’s pledge not to tinker with Proposition 98, according to officials close to the talks. Proposition 98 is a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that K-12 schools and community colleges annually receive an increasing stream of money from the state’s general fund.

The union support could take significant political pressure off Schwarzenegger, who promised during his election campaign not to cut education in the course of resolving the state’s $14-billion budget deficit.

Budget analysts were anticipating that the governor would do battle with the education community over his insistence on closing the deficit without any new taxes. But educators said privately Monday that with schools accounting for about 40% of the budget, $2 billion in temporary cuts seem manageable. They had been bracing for much worse, alarmed by recent comments from the governor that a suspension of Proposition 98 might be necessary to rein in what he characterizes as out-of-control spending.

That’s leadership.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Declares Most of America To Be, Quote-Unquote, Stupid

Can you believe this?

The S factor explains Bush’s popularity

By Neal Starkman

...What can explain [Bush’s] popularity? Can that many people be enamored of what he has accomplished in Iraq? Of how he has fortified our constitutional freedoms with the USA Patriot Act? Of how he has bolstered our economy? Of how he has protected our environment? Perhaps they’ve been impressed with the president’s personal integrity and the articulation of his grand vision for America?

Is that likely?

Granted, there are certain subsections of the American polity that have substantially benefited from this presidency. Millionaires and charismatic Christians have accrued either material or spiritual fortification from Bush’s administration. But surely these two groups are a small minority of the population. What, then, can account for so many people being so supportive of the president?

The answer, I’m afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It’s the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don’t ask it, the media don’t report it, the voters don’t discuss it.

I, however, will blare out its name so that at last people can address the issue and perhaps adopt strategies to overcome it.

It’s the “Stupid factor,” the S factor: Some people—sometimes through no fault of their own—are just not very bright.

It’s not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren’t the people I’m referring to. The people I’m referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They’re perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don’t have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all—far above all—they don’t think.

The nerve of this guy, calling people names, like a schoolkid.

Well, let’s pretend to take him seriously for a minute, for the purposes of discussion.

First of all, oddly enough, in the first paragraph quoted above, he admirably summarizes Bush’s great achievements.

Second, Starkman (although he doesn’t appear to realize it) is rejecting Democracy, which is of course, majority rule via vote, and just happens to be the basis of our political system.

Since he implicity rejects Democracy, what does he want to replace it with? Let’s see—if not Democracy, what other political systems are there? Presumably he wants a dictatorship of the people he considers to be smart!

(via LGF and SharkBlog.)

Update: Don’t miss Iowahawk’s hilarious parody of this article.