GU Board Forums - Online Crosby Center http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com Zags of all ages can discuss things like movies, music, theatre plays, concerts, campus activities, etc.... en Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:05:47 GMT vBulletin 60 http://guboards.com/images/misc/rss.jpg GU Board Forums - Online Crosby Center http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com Was Petraeus Wrong to Comment ? http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29971&goto=newpost Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:37:33 GMT From the OnLine WSJ... From the OnLine WSJ

Quote:
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.

Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.

"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort," Gen. Petraeus said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."
I suspect there would be as many lives in danger whether the good Reverend in Florida flicked his Bic or not. . . ]]> Online Crosby Center RenoZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29971 USAR Col Axed over unauthorized editorial http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29945&goto=newpost Sat, 04 Sep 2010 04:32:31 GMT . . .criticizing the rampant use of PowerPoint in his chain of command: Link... . . .criticizing the rampant use of PowerPoint in his chain of command:

Link
and saying, among other things:

Quote:
the "war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information."
The full editorial that got him canned is HERE.

COL Sellin was frequent UPI contributor prior to this so it's not a huge shock that he had the opportunity to get his rant published in the first place. ]]> Online Crosby Center RenoZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29945 The System does not work http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29934&goto=newpost Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:04:23 GMT The government is ineffective and bogged down by special interest groups, bureaucrats, greedy people who have no intention of doing anything for the... The government is ineffective and bogged down by special interest groups, bureaucrats, greedy people who have no intention of doing anything for the greater good, just themselves and the little pieces of ground they're from.

I'd change it to a benevolent dictatorship.

This thing is broken and irreparable. ]]> Online Crosby Center BobZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29934 TIME: Contrarian viewpoint http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29897&goto=newpost Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:00:33 GMT After this cover during the height of the housing bubble ... Image:... After this cover during the height of the housing bubble ...



Time magazine is causing a stir with its contrarian viewpoint about the "forced immobility" of a workforce tied to owned homes, rather than rentals.



http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...013684,00.html

Quote:
For the better part of a century, politics, industry and culture aligned to create a fetish of the idea of buying a house. Homeownership has done plenty of good over the decades; it has provided stability to tens of millions of families and anchored a labor-intensive sector of the economy. Yet by idealizing the act of buying a home, we have ignored the downsides. In the bubble years, lending standards slipped dramatically, allowing many Americans to put far too much of their income into paying for their housing. And we ignored longer-term phenomena too. Homeownership contributed to the hollowing out of cities and kept renters out of the best neighborhoods. It fed America's overuse of energy and oil. It made it more difficult for those who had lost a job to find another. Perhaps worst of all, it helped us become casually self-deceiving: by telling ourselves that homeownership was a pathway to wealth and stable communities and better test scores, we avoided dealing with these formidable issues head-on.
The article (full version only at newstands right now) asks all the right, but hard, questions about whether there should be government tip-the-scales policies that favor owning versus renting. The print edition also has a chart that correlates a high productivity per worker rate with a corresponding higher number of people renting in various cities, while looking at lower output/higher ownership numbers in other places.

It also cites a study of some years ago which looked at rust-belt cities with high unemployment rates and how those rates seemed to trend down over a period of about 6 years. But it wasn't a case of jobs returning to the towns. Rather, it was a situation of the towns losing population as people took time to sell homes (or let them be foreclosed) and migrated away to find jobs elsewhere. Lower population led to lower unemployment rates of that population.

It explores the phenomenon of "hollow cities" where there are jobs but few 24/7 residents in the downtown core and the factors contributing to that.

Interesting article. Should government "care" one way or the other about the personal decisions people make in life. Owning vs. renting. Number of kids. Or just stay "lifestyle neutral" -- with fewer credits, deductions, rebates and other gimmicks appended to the overall scheme of taxation. ]]> Online Crosby Center NJZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29897 Liberation Theology http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29896&goto=newpost Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:58:59 GMT Beck rebutted

http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/...&entry_id=3224 ]]> Online Crosby Center Angelo Roncalli http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29896 RIM: Concession to one, a concession to all? http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29895&goto=newpost Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:33:32 GMT http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-31/rim-s-agreement-with-india-is-likely-to-foreshadow-wider-government-access.html ---Quote--- Research In... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-0...nt-access.html

Quote:
Research In Motion Ltd.’s concession in giving Indian authorities access to BlackBerry e-mail and instant-messenger correspondence means it’s likely to do the same for other governments, analysts said.

The agreement sets a precedent that will make it difficult for RIM to refuse countries seeking similar conditions, said Romal Shetty, executive director of the telecommunications division at KPMG’s Indian unit. RIM spokesman Satchit Gayakwad declined to comment on the government accord or discuss any details of the proposal.

RIM’s proposal, disclosed by the Indian government yesterday, means the company may be willing to compromise on the privacy of corporate customers to placate regulators, said Prashant Singhal, head of the telecommunications division at Ernst & Young India Pvt. in New Delhi. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates threatened to shut off BlackBerry services unless RIM opened its encrypted client data for the sake of national security.
]]> Online Crosby Center NJZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29895 Emmy Awards: Fallon http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29894&goto=newpost Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:28:03 GMT One of the funnier opening skits? Or not? Jimmy Fallon a great host? Or... One of the funnier opening skits? Or not?

Jimmy Fallon a great host? Or not?

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/inde...ning_wate.html

People "born to run" in Land of the Boss loved it. :D ]]> Online Crosby Center NJZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29894 The married men know who won http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29865&goto=newpost Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:18:47 GMT http://www.spotery.com/funny/best-horse-race-ever This is the whole race. It gets good at the 1:00 mark. http://www.spotery.com/funny/best-horse-race-ever

This is the whole race. It gets good at the 1:00 mark. ]]> Online Crosby Center Zagpower http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29865 Alan Simpson Face Plant http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29864&goto=newpost Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:28:28 GMT President Obama made a big mistake in appointing former Republican senator Alan Simpson to co-chair the deficit reduction commission. Huffington... President Obama made a big mistake in appointing former Republican senator Alan Simpson to co-chair the deficit reduction commission.

Huffington Post

No wonder it's often called the "catfood commission."

. ]]> Online Crosby Center treehorn http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29864 Cab driver in NY stabbed for being Muslim http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29849&goto=newpost Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:55:36 GMT A byproduct of the violent rhetoric?... A byproduct of the violent rhetoric?

http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top...are-you-muslim ]]> Online Crosby Center abeanzag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29849 Musings on bipartisanship http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29845&goto=newpost Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:13:35 GMT Our recent experience with the Republican Senate using it's leverage to water down and emasculate all that the Democrats have proposed got me thinking.


For any given issue, assume three potential solutions in a broad sense. One is a largely "Democratic" solution. The other Republican. The final solution is the "possible" or the only one that can get enough support to get some Republicans on board to get it passed.

What are the odds that the effectiveness of the solutions in ranked order will produce #3 in last place, regardless of the order of the first two?

Another way of asking the question is to ask whether it is the good and potentially effective ideas that are stripped out in the bipartisanship machine that is DC today, and that the result is worse than if either one party or another had full control so that different ideas could be tested and vetted without the smoke screen and false "cover" that bipartisanship provides?

Are we making a logical fallacy in assuming that compromise and working together produces good results?

While I am interested in what the OCC says, I really really wish I could pose this question to Obama and Rahm Emmanuel. ]]> Online Crosby Center 229SintoZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29845 <![CDATA[GOP's answer to MSM?]]> http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29839&goto=newpost Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:22:53 GMT Thought this item deserved a post here. GOP Bloggers getting paid for favorable press.... Thought this item deserved a post here.
GOP Bloggers getting paid for favorable press. ]]> Online Crosby Center a13coach http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29839 Astounding: Home Sales drop 27%+ http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29834&goto=newpost Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:24:29 GMT Expiration of the tax credit shows how much it might have been propping things... Expiration of the tax credit shows how much it might have been propping things up.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...tory?track=rss

Quote:
Sales of previously owned homes plunged 27.2% nationally in July -- fallout from the expiration of a popular federal tax credit that had fueled the market for much of the year.

The big drop, which was worse than what many analysts had expected, sent stock markets tumbling Tuesday morning as investors feared a double dip in housing. The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 1%, as did the S&P 500, a broader measure of stocks.

The National Assn. of Realtors said that the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales was 3.83 million units in July, a drop from the downwardly revised 5.26-million-unit rate in June and a 25.5% drop from the 5.14-million-unit level in July 2009.
Quote:
"From our vantage point, the first-time home-buyers credit pulled forward demand -- by definition this is what stimulus measures achieve -- however the issue this time is that there was so little demand to be pulled forward, the credit has left no demand for the summer," Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., wrote in a research note Tuesday morning. "The result is exactly what we're seeing: a near, if not outright, collapse in housing."
]]> Online Crosby Center NJZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29834 <![CDATA[Greek Orthodox Church & Ground Zero]]> http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29832&goto=newpost Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:05:45 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/ny...%2Findex.jsonp

Quote:
The furor over plans to build an Islamic center two blocks from ground zero had already been joined by several politicians. On Monday, two politicians were joined in turn by officials of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, who sought to use the controversy to focus attention on their long-stymied effort to rebuild a church destroyed on 9/11 at the foot of the World Trade Center.
Quote:
Government officials who appear to be clearing the way for the center, which includes a mosque, are blocking the reconstruction of St. Nicholas Church, the only house of worship destroyed in the terrorist attacks.
Quote:
Unlike some religious leaders who have spoken in favor of the Muslim center, including the pastor of Trinity Wall Street, the historic Episcopal church near ground zero, Bishop Andonios said he and other Greek Orthodox leaders remained neutral.

“We didn’t want to say anything that might jeopardize the plans for rebuilding our church,” he said in a telephone interview. “That is our No. 1 concern: building our church.”

Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority, said there was never any doubt that the church would be rebuilt. In 2008, the authority agreed to accommodate a 24,000-square-foot church building just east of St. Nicholas’s original location on Cedar Street, and promised $20 million to subsidize construction. But the following year, he said, final negotiations broke down over the precise siting and size of the building.

Bishop Andonios said the issues were more complex than that, and he criticized the Port Authority as having “cut off all communications” with church officials.
Quote:
It was the news media, and then a number of political candidates, who first brought attention to the purported disparity in the official treatment of the developers of the Islamic center and of the Orthodox church, the bishop said.

“Some Greek-American newspaper reporters called me first,” Bishop Andonios said. “Then I heard from the candidates. Then it was Fox News.”

Mr. Sigmund, the Port Authority spokesman, said the authority has no oversight of any building outside the ground zero reconstruction zone, including the community and mosque.
Complicated fuller story from WPIX, Channel 11, in NYC

http://www.wpix.com/news/local/wpix-...,1393902.story

Quote:
St. Nicholas was a Greek Orthodox church that literally was in the shadow of the Twin Towers. A fixture at 155 Cedar Street since 1916, it was the only house of worship destroyed when the towers collapsed However, rather than a story of resurrection, it is a story of hurt feelings.

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, church leaders were assured by Gov. George Pataki the state would help rebuild the church. The offer was for a new space at 130 Liberty Street for a so-called mega-church with 8-thousand square feet – 6 times the size of the original location. In addition, the church would receive $20-million in public funds and the Port Authority would bear the $40-million cost of the structure underground which is part of the structure for the parking below. That was the offer on the table in March 2009.

However, sources tell PIX 11 News the church did not accept the deal and wanted to negotiate terms of domain and "other conditions" that began to threaten the pace of construction at the WTC site which was already heavily criticized for delays.
]]> Online Crosby Center NJZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29832 Rangel potshot at Obama http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29831&goto=newpost Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:51:33 GMT http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/the-early-word-stem-cell-surprise/ ---Quote--- Back in New York, The Times’s Michael Barbaro reports... http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...cell-surprise/

Quote:
Back in New York, The Times’s Michael Barbaro reports that Representative Charles B. Rangel, the Democrat seeking another term amid ethics troubles, shot back at the president during a candidate forum on Monday.

Mr. Obama has said that Mr. Rangel should try to end his career with dignity. For his part, Mr. Rangel said Monday: “Frankly, he has not been around long enough to determine what my dignity is.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/ny...1&ref=politics

Quote:
“For the next two years, I will be more likely to protect his dignity.”

The unexpected eruption seemed to reflect the increasingly bitter relations between the embattled 20-term Democrat from Harlem and a president who is trying to protect his party’s prospects in a difficult midterm election season.

And it came during an uncomfortable evening for Mr. Rangel, who made a rare appearance with his five challengers and found himself facing harsh public attacks in front of his constituents at a Baptist church in the heart of his Harlem district.

Long accustomed to being showered with praise and accolades, and surrounded by friendly crowds who treated him like a folk hero, Mr. Rangel could not escape the controversy that has shaped his re-election bid: the 13 charges of ethical violations issued against him by a House panel last month, including hoarding below-market apartments and improper fund-raising.

The best known of his Democratic challengers, Adam Clayton Powell IV, accused Mr. Rangel of “years and years of corruption.”
]]> Online Crosby Center NJZag http://guboards.spokesmanreview.com/showthread.php?t=29831