Ken Nelson

Slate has an interesting 6 part article on “signs”.

http://www.slate.com/id/2245644/

The photo tour of bad signs through Penn Station really hits home:

My son and I flew to Atlanta last November. At Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, we joined a long line of travelers going up an escalator into what turned out to be a smoky beer joint. The signs for baggage claim seemed to point there.    I’m not sure how many people at that point gave up and whether from embarrassment or frustration stopped for a beer.

http://www.paris-26-gigapixels.com/index-en.html

A very cool 26 gigapixel panorama stitched together from a bazillion different pictures.

The prebuilt tours in the lower right are very cool.

I’d love to see this for more cities.

In someways, Google Earth is like this, but without the particular perspective.

Hanks was talking stupid again:

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Hanks ignores many truths from the past to try and highlight an untruth today.

Hanson takes him to task:

Despite Hanks’ efforts at moral equivalence in making the U.S. and Japan kindred in their hatreds, America was attacked first, and its democratic system was both antithetical to the Japan of 1941, and capable of continual moral evolution in a way impossible under Gen. Tojo and his cadre. It is quite shameful to reduce that fundamental difference into a “they…us” 50/50 polarity. Indeed, the most disturbing phrase of all was Hanks’ suggestion that the Japanese wished to “kill,” us, while we in turn wanted to “annihilate” them. Had they developed the bomb or other such weapons of mass destruction (and they had all sorts of plans of creating WMDs), and won the war, I can guarantee Hanks that he would probably would not be here today, and that his Los Angeles would look nothing like a prosperous and modern Tokyo.

In other words… Tom Hanks should be glad we won, and should hope we win against fascist Islam. After all, what would your typical jihadist mullah do with a guy who dressed like this:

 
Tom Hanks’s in Bosom Buddies

I’ve set the DVR to record “The Pacific”. Not cause I like Tom Hanks, but because I’d really like to see two of my favorite books – “Helmet for My Pillow “ (Robert Leckie) and “With the Old Breed” (Eugene Sledge) set to film.

National Education Standards, authored by Obama’s people,:

The whole idea of imposing a single set of age-based standards on all students rests on a false premise: that children are identical widgets capable of being dragged along an instructional conveyor belt at the same pace, benefiting equally from the experience.

But kids are different — not only from one another, but when it comes to their own varying facility across subjects as well. Any single set of age-based standards, no matter how thoughtfully conceived, will necessarily be too slow or too fast for most children.

Kids are different. My two are.  Both are super smart, but in different ways and areas.

I can think of few things worse than national centralization of education standards and funding.  That would doom us.

My son just read and reviewed Ptooma Productions Complete Glock Reference Guide.

In conclusion, if you own a Glock, your police department issues a Glock, or you work on Glocks for other people, you need this book! Here is the link to amazon.com to buy it. You will not be disappointed!

He liked it. And I’d note that my Glock 35 now has a nice sweet new trigger that he put in it, with this book as his guide.  It is also available locally at Sportsman’s Warehouse.

From IBD:

Unless Washington acts soon to resolve these uncertainties, from the cap-and-trade folly to the health care monstrosity, most investors will likely remain largely on the sidelines, consuming some of what would have been invested and protecting the remainder of their wealth in cash hoards and low-risk, low-return, short-term investments.

Private investment lags almost 1/3rd behind 2006 levels. The largest “investment” happening is irrational politically driven government spending, which actually acts as a brake by causing fear and uncertainty. Throw in crazy debt levels, and unpredictable rises in taxes and labor costs and you squelch investment and recovery.

Things would be different if Congress lost their jobs on real economic metrics.

 
I’d raise taxes on 50 million people!

52 million tax returns in 2008 paid nothing. 50 million of those reported over $50K in income.

Doesn’t that seem wrong? Shouldn’t everybody pay something? And shouldn’t that something rise and fall with government spending?

Without one religion anyway

Some, Commenter Carl for instance, rant on about how Christians want to control every move you make. They ignore Muslims that actually do want that level of control. And they ignore nanny statists that force you to separate your trash, drive slower than you should have to, and steal more than 1/2 your income.

I do not lose sleep at night over Christians. I know any group that large will have some kooks, but they are nowhere near power. But I know, right now, as I write, there are  hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of progressives and liberals plotting to use the force of government to make me do something they think I should do, or not do something they don’t want me to do. Or not eat what I want to eat.

The latest assault comes from Nanny Central, New York state, where a law has been introduced to ban the use of SALT in preparation of restaurant foods.

"No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises," the bill, A. 10129 , states in part.

No… I’m not worried about the “Christians”.  Their faith centers on free will.

I just wish our government still did.

 
Aerial shot of Kansas City schools

Between 1985 and 2003 Federal Judges took over Kansas City, Missouri and channeled 2 billion dollars to the school district. 

Not only did they double property taxes to pay this huge bill, but they imposed an income tax surcharge on everyone who lived or worked in the city.

…

Despite this massive effort, litigation failed either to improve the quality of education or to reduce racial isolation. Test scores continued to drop, and the percentage of minority students continued to rise. Eventually, black parents—who had long opposed the court’s heavy emphasis on "magnet schools" designed to draw whites into the school system—insisted upon a return to neighborhood schools.

Yesterday, the district voted a plan to shut down half their schools and fire 700 of their 3000 employees.

Why, exactly, do we think the Feds can run our health care any better?

http://www.crimereports.com/map/index/?search=+St.%20George+UT

It looks like about 500 crimes happen every 7 to 10 days.

How local governments view your car

You may have figured out that I think many cities use traffic enforcement as a random tax on its citizenry.  If you disagree with that, you aren’t paying attention.

Folks in Knoxville, TN noticed that traffic enforcement has gone up with the city’s budget woes. In a blog posting about it I found this sage advice:

"Can citizens fight back?"
YES!: If EVERYONE who gets a ticket contests it in court, the judicial system simply can’t handle the volume. Right now, only a tiny fraction of citations are contested, even if that tiny fraction merely doubled (a small increase overall) the system would grind to a halt.
Always contest a ticket. (1) you take the chance that the officer won’t show and you win by default (2) You deny them any profit: because even if you go in and plead ‘no contest’ and ask for a reduced fine you eat the judges time, the officers time, the bailiffs time, the court recorders time, etc…
Fight the ticket = deny them the profit.

I agree. I haven’t had a ticket in 20 years, but if everybody fights back together we can beat this scourge.

My brother is a cop. I’m friends with a number of cops. Most claim “ah that traffic stuff is penty anty, I don’t do that”.  But I’m old enough that most that I know are high ranking or senior and have their pick of jobs – and they aren’t on patrol anymore. They don’t do it, but their departments almost certainly are.

St. George’s department used to post traffic stop statistics. But then I brought to their attention, and the local newspaper’s attention, that the statistics did not vary with population in our seasons… implying a quota system was in effect.

Now they don’t publish it anymore.

They just want the money – safety has little to nothing to do with it.

Virginia will pass a budget that is SMALLER than 2006 – actually shrinking its spending:

But many Republicans believe that the budget crisis offers the long-awaited opportunity to pare down spending in a state that has taken on too much.

"There’s no question this is scaling back," said Del. M. Kirkland Cox (R-Colonial Heights). "I think some of it is structural and won’t come back."

Naturally the Washington Post and the Democrats whine that children will die:

Many Democrats believe that the state’s new spending priorities abandon its most vulnerable residents citizens, and will have an impact that could extend well beyond the current two-year budget cycle.

What they should have written was that “Democrats had unspoken fears about how many votes they would be able to buy in coming election cycles”.

I predict Virginia will do just fine and nobody will die. In fact, I suspect they could go to 2000 budget levels with nil effect on day to day life.

Good on you VA – Bob McConnell and Chris Christie might make a great 2012 ticket!

Or maybe Congress needs a Chief Exorcist as well?  The Devil certainly has an office suite there.

No Private Ryan this time

According to the NY Post the movie “Green Zone” slanders America and our troops.

"Green Zone" isn’t cinema. It’s slander. It will go down in history as one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio.

So I think I’ll skip it.

When will a Band of Brothers or Sands of Iwo Jima be made for this generation of heroes?

It sucks that Hollywood and our political class hate us so.

BTW: Is it an accident the last patriotic war movie Damon was in was during the Clinton Presidency?  They only love America if they are in charge of it.