All eyes will be toward Virginia tomorrow from the theaters as one of Virginia’s finest athletes appears on the silver screen. Our mystery athlete ranked #35 after being named one of the “50 Greatest Athletes of the Century.” He was named ahead of Mantle, Oscar Robinson and Wilma Rudolph.
McDonnell’s ABC Privatization Plan Meets Obstacles with Republicans
Governor McDonnell’s ABC privatization plan is meeting with some obstacles within the Republican party. Many folks are digging their heels in and saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” According to the Richmond Times Dispatch:
Del. R. Lee Ware Jr. is a political conservative standing on principle in the debate over whether to get Virginia out of the liquor business.
But he’s standing on a different principle than Gov. Bob McDonnell, who says the state has no business selling distilled spirits through the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
“The control of the sale of alcoholic beverages is a legitimate function of state government in serving the public good,” said David A. Bovenizer IV, spokesman for Ware, R-Powhatan. “Consequently, the free-market assertion regarding privatization of ABC is at best secondary to the common good.”
Bovenizer said Ware also regards the governor’s projections of state revenue from a private liquor industry as “unpersuasive” and the sale of the liquor monopoly unnecessary to raise money for road improvements, given the findings of a recent state audit of the Virginia Department of Transportation.
A Day Late….A Message from Ms. Skokan
I have the following communication from Kim Skokan, owner of KK Temptations, regarding Saturday’s protest. She had send me the information about the protest over a week ago. Because of all the other articles, I felt publishing that part was overkill. However, her gracious response should be published. I was remiss in not doing it on Friday:
We are saddened to hear that a protest will occur on what has generally been known to be one of the most successful community events of the year.
Old Town Manassas has many devoted merchants who are struggling in this tough economy; this jubilee could have been a profitable event for them; however this protest will detract from all of their efforts and hard work. For this specific reason we delayed our October 1 Grand Opening. I would urge the groups who are participating in this Peaceful protest to consider rescheduling to another day in order to not hurt the local merchants who count on this revenue for their business. I have to wonder, what the real intention is that they picked this date? If you ask me it doesn’t show their support for the community or its economic growth.
Kimberly Skokan
An Interview with Newly Retired Justice John Paul Stevens
There is a fascinating interview with newly retired Justice Stevens on the NPR site. Stevens is an active 90 year old who plays tennis several times a week and who spent 35 years on the Supreme Court. Today was the official first day of retirement since the current Supreme Court recess was over. Stevens was appointed by President Gerald Ford.
The interview includes the scope of Steven’s life experiences, where he sits watching Babe Ruth hit a homer during the 1932 World Series against the Cubs to his throwing out the first pitch of a Cubs game when he was 85 years old.
From the NPR interview:
A Fundamental Dispute
Stevens and Scalia have gone at each other on many subjects, but their core disagreement is over Scalia’s espousal of originalism — the idea that the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to mean only what it meant at the time of enactment, no more and no less. Or, as Scalia puts it, “the Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead.”
Stevens disagrees. “To suggest that the law is static is quite wrong,” he says. Stevens argues that “the whole purpose was to form a more perfect union, not something that’s perfect when we started. We designed a system of government that would contemplate a change and progress.”
This clash of views is exemplified in a 1990 opinion Stevens wrote, which invalidated the Illinois patronage system as a violation of employees’ First Amendment rights to freedom of association.
Stevens notes that when he first encountered the question, he thought the claim had no merit. After all, as Justice Scalia would subsequently observe, patronage existed at the time the republic was founded. But Stevens, upon examining the question, reached a conclusion exactly opposite of what he originally thought.
War Museum Status: What you see is NOT what you will get
Several folks have asked about the status of the War Museum. Need to Know, a regular contributor at Moonhowlings.net has been following this initiative and has kindly offered his findings for a thread:
[Disclaimer: All guest posts are the opinion of the poster and do not necessarily represent the views of moonhowlings.net administration. M-H]
Regarding the proposed War Museum:
The land belongs currently to the Hyltons. They are “donating” it but the package the BOCS will consider October 5 includes new development rights that will benefit the Hyltons. They, Stewart and their proponents are waving the flag for a museum to honor veterans to garner support but it’s nothing more than a land deal to benefit special interests and campaign contributors. The “donation” of land will not go through unless the BOCS approves the entire package.
The staff report can be found at:
http://www.pwcgov.org/planning/documents/PLN2010-00379.pdf
Note that this staff report reads like a promotional brochure for the project, lacking any semblance of due diligence and analysis as to whether the project is in the interests of PWC taxpayers or not.
A few more details:
The supporters state that the project will need $50 million and that they will raise all of that from private sources. Note, however, that after allegedly working on development of the project for nearly a decade they have, as of the last Form 990 filing, less than $1 million in real assets. Form 990 is the annual tax filing required by the IRS for non-profit organizations. You can see them by clicking on this link:
http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/PubApps/showVals.php?ft=bmf&ein=200008915
The 2009 Form 990 shows total assets of a little over $4 million, but over $3 million of that is in the form of pledges and grants receivable that their statements have carried for at least two years. It’s not real money.
There’s not a chance in h*** they are going to be able to raise enough money, especially in an economy such as we have now, to build this thing without extensive taxpayer support.
James O’Keefe Tries to Punk CNN Correspondent Abbie Boudreau
How embarrassing for people who ever set this little jerk up as any kind of young conservative model. Basically, he tried to set CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau up with a boat cruise that involved strawberries, champagne and hidden cameras and microphones. Apparently there were also sexually suggestive props already set up on the boat. He meanwhile would hit on her. Has no one told him he would be playing out of his league? Is this guy like a rapist wanna be?
Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck
Dedicated to our favorite cartoon guy: Slowpoke.
disclaimer:
I do not recommend taking the same measures Donald Duck took at Glenn Beck nor do I advocate anyone solving a problem in that manner. Note–it is a cartoon.
Protecting the Children
A friend of mine took her 6 year old granddaughter to see Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole 3D yesterday. She was rather shaken from the experience.
The movie seems harmless enough. However, Susan told me that her granddaughter spent the entire movie cringing in fear because of the violence. At least a third of the film had the different owl armies doing battle. Battle in 3D is much more dramatic than plain old normal fighting. Susan said talons and beaks were everywhere.
Our conversation then shifted to children’s films we had grown up with. Snow White had a wicked witch and a looming forest that scared one dinner partner. The Wizard of Oz has flying monkeys that terrified my husband as a very young boy. I recall being petrified of that witch on the bike after Toto. The other diner talked about some of the scary parts of Peter Pan with evil pirates making people walk the plank.
Druids Finally Recognized in UK
Wait. What’s wrong with this picture? Didn’t the Druids originate in the United Kingdom? Apparently origins didn’t buy the worshippers and recognition. On Saturday, October 2, 2010, the ancient pagan tradition was finally formally recognized under charity law in Great Britain. This recognition gives Druids tax exemptions on their religious donations as well as recognition that puts them on the same level as the Church of England.
The process took about five years and is fairly complicated. According to the Washington Post:
To register as a religious charity in Britain, an organization must satisfy requirements that include belief in a supreme entity, a degree of cohesion and seriousness and a beneficial moral framework. After a process that took nearly five years, the Charity Commission ruled that Druidry fit the bill.
“There is sufficient belief in a supreme being or entity to constitute a religion for the purposes of charity law,” the commission said.
Druids have been active for thousands of years in Britain and in Celtic societies elsewhere in Europe.
They worship natural forces such as thunder and the sun, as well as spirits they believe arise from places such as mountains and rivers. They do not worship a single god or creator but seek to cultivate a sacred relationship with the natural world.
Although they are best known as the robed, mysterious people who gather every summer solstice at Stonehenge – which predates the Druids – believers say modern Druidry is chiefly concerned with helping practitioners connect with nature and themselves through rituals, dancing and singing at stone circles and other sites throughout the country they view as sacred.
It is estimated that there are nearly 10,000 practitioners in the United Kingdom. If Druids have been active in Great Britain for thousands of years, one has to wonder if some of the traditions were actually handed down without a break in old and neo-Druid society. The Druids were still very much a part of ancient society when the Romans invaded Britannia. We still see their influence in various holiday and religious celebrations. The Druid societies are growing in number as more emphasis is placed on the environment and more people seek to establish a relationship with nature.
Manassas City Council: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Today is the Fall Festival in Old Town Manassas. It is an annual event that brings tourists into the heart of the City from all over the surrounding area. It is a day for the City to show off what a cool place it is and also a day for the merchants to bring in the bucks.
Bringing in the bucks is never a bad thing, especially in this economy. Many local shop keepers in the City and PWC have been hit hard by the recession and some have had to close their doors, as is evidenced by empty stores in and around the area. I hope that today is a great day for those merchants in Old Town. The weather is fabulous and it more or less defines what an October day should be like. Hopefully no one’s political agenda will mar the event.
The Manassas City Council has been placed in a position by residents and non residents that really leaves them between a rock and a hard place. For the most part, the council members are nice people who run for election, don’t get paid much for serving, and who are giving their time to make their small city and community a better place. They turn out for events and keep the public informed. The thing I have noticed the most about them is their unwavering dedication to the City and its residents and their never-ending championing of their home turf. This is a good thing and the good people of the City of Manassas have elected some mighty fine representatives.
During the past month, these council members have gotten crushed in a political debate that really has gone too far. It all started when someone noticed the store front window of KK Temptations, a soon-to-be adult boutique. The alarm was sounded and local “anti- porn” groups sprung to life. Several local delegates got involved and so did this blog. We supported the right of KK Temptations to exist, especially since there were already other stores with similar content within the City limits. Furthermore, KK Temptations had been approved for business according to City regulations.
The City Council got to sit through what can only be described as a marathon citizens’ time. Meanwhile, they got bombarded with requests to regulate the long standing women’s clinic that is an abortion provider. The Religious Right was on a real roll. No one wants to look like they like pornography. Delegate Miller did the Council no favors coming into their bailiwick and stirring the pot. He immediately defined the store as a “porno store.” That set the tone and allowed all reasonable and logical discussion to be overruled by a name.
To cause such a stink over location paints the City, and continues to paint the City as elitist. No one worried at all that MVC is a block over from the library, Parkside or Kindercare or that Fashion Fantasy is right there on route 28 for all to see as they enter the City from that approach. Some of those stores have been there for decades. However, because of the way KK Temptations was defined, the City Council has been placed in the position of spending money that they probably don’t have to handle something, that in all probability, won’t be a problem.
No elected official wants to appear to support pornography aka obscenities. Doing so can be a real deal breaker come election day. They also don’t want to be seen as being old fogies, so they walk a tight rope. The can-can girls perform in Harris Pavilion and the mothers’ march on a legitimate business goes on up the street. The Council walks a tight rope and hopes that none of the warring factions drops another lawsuit on their desk.
I nominate the Manssas City Council for the ‘I wouldn’t want to be them’ award. They have been put in the position that many PWC supervisors found themselves in in 2007 over immigration–between a rock and a hard place.
Open Thread Friday October 1, 2010
You know how you see the words WASH ME on the back of a dusty truck…I just got reminded, not too subtly, to change the Open Thread from last week. This the month of the witch…..
Old Town Merchants pt 2
Let’s see if this second post on the subject brings out the wrath of the christian right [lower case intentional] like the first one did. If that happens, we can always rename the thread “Greg Letiecq fights pornography with pornography.” But I digress…..
News & Messenger reporter Keith Walker has up-to-date coverage of the latest plan for the City of Manassas during Fall Festival, which is one of the city’s biggest events. About 50 people are expected to gather in protest at City Hall sometime during the Fall Festival.
Apparently the plan to coerce merchants into closing their doors between noon and 1 pm didn’t pan out. I know of 1 merchant who ran off the visitor who came to garner support for her cause. Picture a restaurant owner telling everyone to stop eating and to get up and leave right at noon. Sort of makes one chuckle, if some idealistic person didn’t take it seriously. What shopkeeper closes down during the busiest time of the biggest sale day of the year?
The leader of this pack was quoted in the News and Messenger:
MANASSAS, Va. —
Jennifer Basinger said she’s expecting about 50 people to show up at Manassas City Hall on Saturday to rally against an adult store set to open Oct. 20 on Battle Street in Old Town.
She said KK’s Temptations won’t fit in with the historic nature of the area.
“The shop I feel — and many do — is just not consistent with what Old Town is about,” Basinger said.
However, she doesn’t have anything against Kim and Kristina Skokan, the mother-and-daughter team who plan to open the store.
“It’s not a personal vendetta against the owner. It’s not an ugly, self-righteous march at all,” the 39-year-old Basinger said. “It’s really just wanting to keep Old Town the way it is.”
Basinger said the group will restrict itself to the area around City Hall between noon and 2 p.m. to avoid disrupting the Fall Jubilee that is also taking place Saturday.“It’s peaceful. It’s non-confrontational. It’s not meant to take any thunder away from the fall festival,” she said. “It’s not going to be a bunch of people marching into Old Town.”
Reality check! I saw an email or 2 and I don’t think you say some of that stuff to someone you don’t have a vendetta against. Perhaps I just have different values. Ms. Basinger needs to be more honest and forthright about that one.
Another reality check involves the image you want to create for your city. Do you want to stage a protest of any sort on your biggest tourism day of the year? Why not just bring Mr. Fernandez back with a few native Americans to parade around. I am sure he would be glad to accommodate. Anything to embarrass the City. How is this different? At least if Mr. F paraded around with Native Americans you could tell the guests coming in from other areas that it was just the Tea Party, getting ready to dump a few barrels of tea overboard.
Furthermore, what is it that these people want the City of Manassas to do? The City has caved in to every demand. Many people I know are so disgusted with the City for acquiescing to this group of christian conservatives [lower case intentional] that they are simply not going to spend money in the City. In trying to please everyone, you please no one.
Most of the City Councilpersons are nice people who take their elected position seriously. They try to represent their constituents, rather than advance their own agendas. What I don’t think they realize is that many people find KK Temptations a welcome addition to the City. It breaks up the ho hum and the restaurants. An even bigger number don’t care one way or the other.
Kim Skokan and her daughter have postponed their grand opening out of deference to the City merchants who will be their new neighbors. They didn’t want to draw attention away from a big sales day. They have dotted every i and crossed every t. Perhaps they, too, have been just a little too accommodating to those who are all about control and bullying. (and elections)
Another Bullying Story with a Bad Ending
The cable news channels are full of the sad story of Tyler Clementi. Tyler was a freshman at Rutgers University and committed suicide last week by jumping off a bridge to his death in the Hudson River. What caused this young man to go to such drastic measures to end his life?
Tyler had a sexual encounter in his dorm room. Apparently he asked for the room until midnight. Unbeknownst to him, the roommate left his computer open and the web cam streamed the entire episode onto the Internet. The roommate and a friend tweeted the information. Tyler’s encounter was with another man.
One has to ask what kind of monsters would do something like this? Recording this young man’s personal sexual encounter was just another form of bullying. Bullying goes on all the time. In fact, there is an epidemic going on in this country and it isn’t just against gays. Phoebe Prince of Massachusetts wasn’t gay. She was basically tortured to death by her peers, who have been charged in her death. Tyler’s bullies, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have been charged with invasion of privacy. They can receive punishment of up to five years in prison.
People don’t send their children to public school or to college to have them bullied by others to the point they take their own lives. Suicide with gay youth is 4 times that of straight kids. Yet, is bullying just a phenomena with young people or can it happen with any group? Does it happen at the office, in the neighborhood, in our political dealings, on the blogs? Bullying can and does happen everywhere.
We all need to look to see if our behavior involves bullying. We also need to watch for bullying behavior with our kids. Some of the most serious bullying starts with older siblings. However, experts say that today’s technology allows bullying to be carried to new levels. No longer are kids just beaten up on the playground or jumped on the way home and their lunch money stolen like in the good old days. Now people can sit behind a computer, such as happened with Tyler Clementi, and create situations that make someone’s life no longer worth living. Some folks survive and laugh at their tormentors. Others, like Tyler, decide to end it all.
Another One Bites the Dust: Rick Sanchez
CNN issued a statement today saying: “Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.’ That sounds final. Rick did not appear on the Rick’s List show today. It was hosted by his fill in, Brooke Baldwin. So, what happened?
According to Huffington Post, Sanchez had what can best be equated to hoof in mouth disease:
[He called] Jon Stewart a “bigot” and saying that CNN and the other networks are all run by Jewish people.
Discussing Stewart with radio host Pete Dominick, Sanchez said that the “Daily Show” host has a limited worldview, and called him a “bigot.”
The conversation began with Sanchez decrying “elite, Northeast establishment liberals” who “deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier.
“I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot,” he said. “I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I’m so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine.”
Rick Sanchez was not the most loved CNN correspondent. Who knows what set off his rant on Stewart. It sounds like it might have had something to do with the Jon Stewart rally on the mall.
Pete Dominick once worked for Stewart on the Daily Show. To date, Stewart has not made public comment. I am sure a good spoof is to come. Jon Stewart often makes self- deprecating ethnic remarks.
Will other networks pick up Rick Sanchez or will he go the way of the dinosaur?
Thanks to El Guapo for providing this audio.
