I know that at least bud has tried to post a comment at bradwarthen.com and failed. There have probably been others by now. Sorry.
I THINK I've got it fixed now. Please go try, and if you have problems, let me know here.
I know that at least bud has tried to post a comment at bradwarthen.com and failed. There have probably been others by now. Sorry.
I THINK I've got it fixed now. Please go try, and if you have problems, let me know here.
A colleague passes on this reader complaint, with the comment, "What planet does this person live on?":
Dang, and after all our efforts to keep the governor's position on this secret...
Just thought I'd share this voicemail from over the weekend, of a type that I get from time to time. I like to share the joy when I can.
It's from a reader who wanted to see more about George Washington's birthday in the paper. I thought at first maybe this was someone who had missed the point that this year was Lincoln's 200th, and thought Washington should have gotten as much play as Honest Abe. But no; that wasn't the caller's problem.
Here's the audio, and here's my transcription of the money part of the message, in case you can't hear it:
A reader in Tennessee who apparently read this post of mine from last summer is obviously a guy who's got his priorities straight, and I'd like to be able to help him out:
Anybody know where he might be able to obtain these seeds? One of our correspondents wrote in July as follows:
... but I don't know whether that will be helpful or not, to a guy in TN. Any other tips for a guy who knows what's good? (Actually, I'm assuming the "guy" part, and on thin evidence, it now strikes me. If Chris is a gal, I apologize.)
Something I forgot to do with my column Sunday about Midlands efforts to steer stimulus funds this way was to link to these two items that also ran on our pages Sunday:
Anyway, I think it helps to have those additional reference points.
Peggy Noonan had an intriguing column Saturday, about what she was seeing in Manhattan in terms of real, street-level effects of the recession. Here's an excerpt:
Here's what struck me about that: She implies that -- because of the stimulus, the TARP, etc. (I guess) -- the hustle-and-bustle that's missing from the not-so-mean streets near Central Park has somehow been transferred to Washington.
And yet, weirdly enough, I had been talking to someone else last week who had made a similar observation about a loss of activity in Washington. It was USC President Harris Pastides. When he came to see us with Mayor Bob and the gang last Monday, he had just stepped off the plane coming back from D.C., and his impression was that it felt dead, deserted. Of course, he acknowledged that the contrast was particularly sharp because he had last been there for the Obama inauguration just weeks earlier, but he seemed to be suggesting that he was seeing was a loss of activity from the norm, not just from the inaugural excitement.
(I heard that with particular interest because one thing that had always struck me when I visited D.C. -- and mind you, I haven't been there in years and years -- was something that my libertarian friends can identify with. I thought, crowded onto a metro platform with well-dressed commuters, or walking past swanky shops, "There's too much money in this town." Of course, part of that is the sheer size of the gummint, a good bit of which should be devolved. But part of it is the amount that the private sector freely spends on lobbying. I have no idea how to separate it out. But I know that in my limited experience, the lobbyists are snappier dressers.)
I haven't been to New York in almost a year, and I last went to D.C. in 1998 (yes, more than a decade). I don't know what impression I'd have if I visited either today (although I'm pretty sure NYC won't be as busy as when I made this video). Come to think of it, I don't know what impression I have of right here in the Midlands. For instance:
About three weeks ago, I went to the Lowe's out on Garners Ferry for the first time since before Christmas. It was late on a Sunday afternoon. And I was shocked, because when I walked in, there were about a dozen or more of those carts you use to stack your lumber on -- the kind that when it's busy, you've got to hunt around for -- lined up in a neat row in the lumber aisle before me. So there were at least that many carts free, and an employee had had time to gather them and make that neat row. Then after I left and got to thinking about it, I thought I had seen about as many employees as customers.
I've mentioned that several times since then, and sometimes people nod their heads and sometimes they dispute it. For instance, Cindi said she's been to Lowe's (including that particular store) maybe six times in the last few weeks, and it's always been busy.
Then when she said that, I suddenly remembered that I went out to Harbison Saturday, and the traffic was the worst I'd seen in several years. I thought I'd never get there, or get home. And the stores I went into were at LEAST as busy as the norm, if not more so, so I don't think it was just a matter of my having hit the traffic at a bad time.
From where I sit, there's plenty of evidence of our economy tanking in the aggregate, from the state unemployment figures to the horrific effect that reduction in advertising has on newspapers and TV. We can quantify the cuts that have occurred already and are coming in state government, or local school districts. And I know of quite a few specific cases of people close to me -- personally and professionally -- who have lost their jobs or are facing the high probability of such losses.
But then we still see the anomalous things, such as all that activity out at Harbison. And not just there. Over the weekend I thought, not for the first time, that the Vista is just TOO successful. Yes, I'm being ironic, but it's frustrating when that district has become so popular that you can't park within a block of Starbuck's.
So I'm wondering -- what are YOU seeing out there, as a worker, as a businessperson, as a consumer? What's the true picture of what's happening thus far in the Midlands? Maybe we can get a snapshot -- or better yet, a panorama -- of that right here on the blog. So how about it? What are you seeing?
For this post, I should create several new blog categories, such as "Way more than you wanted to know," and "Extreme disclosure" and ... oh, I don't know what.
Anyway, some of you asked yesterday where I was ("Where the heck is Brad?" quoth KP). Some of you divined political import in my absence from the blog for a day. Back in the second take of comments on this post -- the 41st comment, I believe (16 after you click on "Next") -- I answered the question. I'm not going to repeat the explanation, on the grounds that some of you may be possessed of delicate sensibilities. If you're curious enough, you can go look. And after you do, don't ever accuse me of not being in favor of full disclosure.
Perhaps this would be a good time to remind y'all that:
But hey, I appreciate the concern. And everything was fine, by the way.
This morning, I got a phone message from an acquaintance who thought my column today was great, which struck me as a little surprising since I know the caller to be of libertarian persuasion. Especially since it was about Obama's inauguration, and the WSJ reported this morning that -- as I read it -- his speech today will be of a communitarian bent (yes! thought I). Yes, I know libertarians claim "responsibility" as a theme as well, but they mean something very different from communitarians when they use the word. With Obama, it's more like:
"Given the crisis that we're in and the hardships that so many people are going through, we can't allow any idle hands," Mr. Obama said, taking a break from painting a dormitory at Sasha Bruce House, a shelter for homeless teens. "Everybody's got to be involved. Everybody's going to have to pitch in, and I think the American people are ready for that."
As I said, the communitarian sense of responsibility. And to that I say, amen.
Anyway, the speech itself is beginning now, and I thought y'all might want a place to comment on it. So here you go.
Among the things in my electronic IN box this morning was this forwarded message:
... to which I replied as follows:
Earlier this week we had an editorial about the USC athletics department’s recent "contribution" of $15 million to the university. An excerpt:
Any thoughts on that?
I bring it up because when we ran the piece, I had expected to hear a good bit of reaction both pro and con, and things have been fairly quiet. So I thought I'd bring it up here, to see what y'all thought about it.
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