Veritas et Venustas

If only

The Tourist Lane http://improveverywhere.com/2010/06/08/the-tourist-lane/

Landscape Urbanism Bullsh*t Generator

THIS is your brain on drugs: http://www.ruderal.com/bullshit/bullshit.htm

ASTOUNDING

1) CUT the amount of money the state gives to towns and cities the governor doesn't like. 2) Next, allow the governor to declare towns and cities that are struggling because he withheld funds from them to be in a crisis. 3) Allow the governor to give himself emergency powers, so that he can dissolve the town he drove into bankruptcy. 4) Put the town under corporate control. NB) Don't talk about any of this while running for elected office.

I first ran across this type of New Republican in the 1980s. My father was heavily involved in town government in his small town, the only town in Connecticut that had voted for Goldwater. Suddenly, there were Boomer Republicans who, without any discussion within party ranks, sued several of the town's Republican leaders on charges they almost certainly knew were bogus.* But several of the leaders resigned rather than go to the expense of going to court, and the Boomer Republicans then successfully ran against the "corrupt, Old Guard" party. Once they were in office, it turned out that they were more conservative than the politicians who had left office. A few years later, Lee Atwater used similarly dishonest tactics against Presidential candidate Mike Duakakis.

Ever since, we have seen a lot of this. The "vast right-wing conspiracy" against Clinton's moral failings (for behavior that the White House press had previously considered off limits), the "swiftboating" smears, the Birthers, and all the talk about Obama consorting with known terrorists are all examples were attempts to substitute slander for discussion of issues. The absurd apogee may have been reached when Governor Palin called Senator Obama an unqualified celebrity.