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More on the Beltline scam
From today’s AJC
Mason owns 5 miles of the proposed Beltline in northeast Atlanta. He had offered about half of his land to Atlanta for the Beltline network of transit, trails and parks. Atlanta planners rejected his offer and instead offered him a deal in which he would have donated his land to Atlanta in exchange for the right to develop about 2,000 residences anywhere in the city.
What is amazing is that this is going on in public. He sells the land in exchange for permits? How is that not every definition of graft?
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Tuesday round up
- Liberal attitudes about Islamist terror by Sam Harris – not terribly relevent since they control little, but it is not good for one side to drop out of contention
- More on the Atlanta Path Foundation
- DIY home photo studio setup
- The Beltline crashes – the enthusiasm of some people for real estate scams is an enduring mystery.
- Greshams law and criminal investigation
- John Robb on what’s next in Iraq – very interesting. One thing that goes unmentioned is that the more chaotic Iraq gets, the more valuable Kurdistan gets. Also, after a certain point, a volatile Iraq becomes a liability to Iran, particularly with American troops withdrawn.
- Headshaver – mine is on it’s way.
- Investing the fun way, in vice and sin. “…
- Fatwa Friday!
- Steve Tyler has Hepatitis C
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Live She Is!
After a ton of work, the Earth and Vine web site is finally live. Foodies rejoice!
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Nick was right!
The FoxNews.com website really did take a turn for the ugly and unusable. CNN.com sadly is blighted by the beligerant economic illiteracy of Lou Dobbs, which mars otherwise fine website.
In FoxNews.com defense, they do have periodic columns by Wendy McElroy and Radley Balko. CNN.com has no interesting columns I know of.
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The weekend in pictures
I like the shadowman the best. The angle makes it the figure more exagerated as the image gets higher.
Sunday – Full Street
Sunday – Empty Street
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Outside my chamber door….
My fondness for black and white extend to the insect world, or at least to the Praying Manti.
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Very well put
It’s not as if the opposition party has nothing to work with here. One might note the fiasco in Iraq, for example. Or OBL’s still-at-large status. Our bizarre herky-jerky stumbling into wider regional conflicts that will further take the focus off of al-Qaeda and others directly trying to kill Americans. This isn’t brain surgery.
On the other hand, it’s not so easy that voters are going to believe it if Democrats don’t even try to make the case. What’s more, ducking security fights looks weak. It looks weak because it is weak. It demonstrates a lack of confidence in the party’s own ideas and people. It re-enforces everything the GOP is trying to say. Democrats need to knock this off and engage with what’s pretty clearly the central issue of our time.
I think this is a good example of the Dems being more centralized (having a smaller collective brain if you will) than the Reps. Rather than picking on any of the weak points in the Republican platform, they charge groin first into the capable fists of the Republican party.
I’ve said this before, the Democrats have situated themselves so that they don’t have to win elections to make money.
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Two things that have surprised me
- The Israel-Hezbollah war hasn’t restarted yet.
- For all the conflict in Iraq, the government hasn’t fallen, nor are there several competing governments.
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Classic movies everyone should see
- Ivan the Terrible Part II – Quite good, interesting insight into the Russian character and the central role autocracy has always played in Russian history. Visually it’s quite stunning too.
- The Seventh Seal – Man’s struggle with God and Death come across much more believably in subtitles.
- I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang – Life on the chain gang comes across as more believable than realistic, an excellent piece. The final few minutes are particularly jarring.
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The three funniest things I’ve read today
Both arise from this post by Althouse, entitled Wisconsin, the necrophiliac’s playground.
Surprisingly necrophilia is not illegal in Wisconsin. One of the comments is
You’re just jealous because you’re not dead.
I read the two articles linked, the first of which yielded this gem
Authorities said the three were not acquainted with the woman but had seen an obituary with her photo.
which makes me think they were holding out for a hot corpse.
Radke said Grunke asked him to help because he wanted to dig up Tennessen’s body for sex, the court documents said, and the three had stopped at a store on the way to the cemetery to buy condoms.
Condoms? One would think the necrophiliac crowd would be a bit more devil may care about such matters.