August 2007

Let ‘Em Burn!: John Sinrud on Wildfires

by Don Pogreba on August 31, 2007 · 1 comment

in Montana Politics

A reader sends in this link starring Representative Sinrud (R-Bozeman) and featuring his comments about the need to fight fires.

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Is it too late for the Republicans to consider a Burns-Sinrud ticket for the governor's race? 

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I don't mean to judge the good people at The Hardliner, as I understand that laying down astroturf, most likely at the Montana Republican headquarters, is pretty challenging, but you have to be one pathetic blog to block visitors who disagree with you.

The other day I posted a comment on the site, suggesting that the blog was perhaps something other than a grassroots movement. The next day, my comment was deleted. Today, my IP has been blocked from viewing the site.

Good luck getting your message out there, guys. Can I help invent the name of your next "commenter"? 

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The critics of blogging may be right:
there may be too many people writing blogs if you can’t go out to
dinner without having your server blog about your tipping habits.
However, in target="_blank">this story in the Consumerist it seems like
the customer deserved it.

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The Sins of Socialism?

by The Polish Wolf on August 24, 2007

Jonah Goldberg  strikes again , reminding us that envy, a deadly sin, is in fact bad. After accomplishing this difficult intellectual task, he makes a real leap. He calls socialism "the ideology of envy", which thus, apparently makes it ungodly, a system to be rejected by true Christians of God's Country (America, if you haven't caught on).
The Seven Deadly sins gained popularity in the middle ages, having been written down in the sixth century. But the Christian faith (and the Jewish tradition is springs from) which Goldberg tries to draw in by using the language of sin was never quick to agree with his worship of money.

Basil the Great, a Catholic saint and one of the Three Holy Heirachs
in the Eastern Orthodox church, has this to say about the merits of private property: "The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the man who needs it;…the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor."
St. Ambrose, one of the fourth original doctors of the Catholic church, goes even further to identify what is actually the sin which corrupts human society and removes it from God's ideal: "God willed that this earth should be the common possession of all and he offered its fruits to all. But avarice distributed the rights of possession."
Where did these men get these crazy ideas?

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Sign of the Apocalypse

by Don Pogreba on August 23, 2007

in Education

Remember back in the good ol’ days when
people were expected to be minimally capable of independent thought
and action? This news item, from Education Week, suggests that
those days are long gone:

School buses across New Hampshire are getting safety
upgrades designed to prevent children from being left behind.

A new device installed in the bus sounds
an alarm at the end of the driver’s route that can only be turned
off by walking all the way to the back of the bus. Officials say
that it will help prevent students who might have fallen asleep
from being left on a locked bus.

First Student, a private bus company, is paying about $350 per bus
to outfit its entire fleet.

First Student is outfitting 20,000 buses with the devices
nationwide.

Rauseo has been transportation director in Nashua since 2005 and
couldn’t recall a situation where a student was left on a bus.

The new alarm system eliminates the
possibility of a driver somehow overlooking a student, he said.

“I’m thrilled to have it,” he said.

$350 per bus for something that could be avoided by having the
driver walk to the end of the bus at the end of his/her shift.
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Branding the Democratic Party: A Cynic Is Amused by the Irony

August 23, 2007

Not more than eight hours after I posed a criticism of Helena's focus on branding itself, I received an e-mail from James Carville asking me to do the same thing for the Democratic party. He writes: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is launching a campaign to find the bumper sticker slogan that will carry [...]

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More Hard Hitting Brad Johnson News

August 23, 2007

The media has really delved into the story of Brad Johnson's failure to effectively administer the 2006 election, with a series of hard-hitting puff pieces about his self-declared "victory." In a sense, that's what makes the following transcript from Montana's News Station so entertaining: Johnson says the tour is also a way to hear concerns [...]

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Branding Helena: A Cynic’s Response

August 22, 2007

The city of Helena wants to make itself a more attractive vacation destination. Tourist spend money and create jobs, which is why so many cities compete for their attention. The idea of branding Helena might generate some civic discussion, but  I'd rather the see the city work on practical solutions than marketing. I read through [...]

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