For those of you on the West Coast, a good 60 Minutes tonight. A discussion of the guy who had been reporting Madoff for years, the drug wars in Mexico, and then a nice interview with the Bobby Jindal I thought we were going to see the other night instead of that guy who reminded me nothing of the Bobby Jindal I had heard before.
Archives for March 2009
Hell Hath No Fury
Like a small businessman scorned:
To many in Old Town Alexandria, the sex shop that opened recently on King Street is nothing short of scandalous, a historical desecration just blocks from the boyhood home of Robert E. Lee.
But to Michael Zarlenga, it’s justice.
Zarlenga spent $350,000 on plans to expand his hunting and fishing store, the Trophy Room. He worked with city officials for almost two years and thought he had their support — until the architectural review board told him he couldn’t alter the historic property.L
Furious and out of money, Zarlenga rented the space to its newest occupant, Le Tache.
“I can’t say I didn’t know it would ruffle feathers,” said Zarlenga, 41. “Actually, I was hoping for a fast-food chain because I thought that would be more annoying to the city.”
***Zarlenga’s saga with the building dates to 2001, when he opened his hunting and fishing store. In 2006, he bought the building with the idea of renovating and expanding it to include more retail space, a bathroom and an elevator.
He hired a Washington architectural firm, which created eight designs for the project. The final one included plans to raise the roof on the back of the building and demolish a small section of a historic brick wall that was built about 1800. Most of the back wall would have been incorporated into the renovation.
Zarlenga said he consulted Alexandria’s historical preservation staff along the way to be sure everyone was on board with his plans. He said he relied heavily on the advice of Peter Smith, who at the time was the principal staff member of the city’s Board of Architectural Review.
But when the project came before the review board in 2007, it was rejected partly on Smith’s recommendation that it would cause an “unreasonable loss of historic fabric.” Zarlenga said Smith did not explain to him why he changed his mind. Smith has since died.
***Zarlenga said he felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under him. He appealed to the City Council but lost in September 2007. Council members suggested he go back to the staff of the architectural review board and submit new plans.
For Zarlenga, it was the final straw. He choked back tears as he told the council he was finished: “I have no faith in the staff. . . . They have completely taken the integrity, as I see it, out of the system. . . . The simple fact is there’s no money left, okay?”
***And there’s another piece of Zarlenga real estate that might start causing buzz. He owns a shuttered, dilapidated building several blocks away at Princess and Royal streets. Some of the broken windows have been patched with duct tape.
“As far as I’m concerned, that corner will always be an eyesore,” Zarlenga said. “That’s a little slice of revenge.”
I can’t say I didn’t laugh at Zarlenga’s revenge, but what else could he do? They ran him into the ground. At any rate, this dovetails nicely with this Matt Yglesias post from the other day pointing out that most of the things that annoy libertarians and small-government types happen at the local level, yet the debate and the fights about things are always at the federal level.
Frankenbirthers
Deep in this Ben Smith piece on the numerous conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth certificate and the desire by some on the right to get rid of the “birthers” is this nugget:
Meanwhile, the Birthers’ persistence has prompted another, competing conspiracy theory on the right.
“I’m not a conspiracist, but this could be a very big conspiracy to make conservatives disgrace themselves,” Medved said.
They have cultivated the crazy for so long that it is spinning out of control, and now they are struggling to reel it back in. I guess a years worth of whisper campaigns about Obama not being a citizen, being Muslim, being sworn in on the Koran, not covering his heart during the pledge of allegiance, and the rest of the nonsense is coming back to haunt them. And mind you, it wasn’t just whisper campaigns and email chains. They fed this baby. Prominent conservative Republican mouthpieces gave credibility to these rumors, and the newly annointed CPAC blogger of the year spent the better part of 2008 pushing pictures of Obama in “muslim-like” clothing.
And now they are so frustrated with their own creation that they are paranoid that it is a conspiracy to discredit them. No conspiracy is needed, Mr. Medved. We just need to give you all a microphone and let you guys take care of the rest.
NAMBLA Versus Godzilla
Newt Gingich, for some reason still the GOP’s idea guy, challenged CPAC with a ‘new idea’ list made up of old Republican ideas plus some contemporary catch phrase crap (‘infrastructure investment’) that nobody expects them to follow through. No doubt he got the crowd buzzing; too bad Newt apparently forgot to run it past the boss.
There is no question that Rush wins this fight. Sooner or later Newt and his senior Party friends will remember that Rush commands the troops, and that will be that. Rahm has it right. Gingrich won’t call out Rush by name if it means crawling back to apologize later.
RIP Paul Harvey
Another American icon dead:
Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90.
My memory of Paul Harvey is listening to him every day in the car on the rides to and from school. I feel old.
That Santelli Thing
Tim’s point that the protests are all irrelevant notwithstanding, the Santelli/Koch conspiracy theory seems to be picking up, and at this point, I just don’t think there is really much there to support it. As I noted last night in the comments, sure, it is interesting, but so are all conspiracy theories. The JFK conspiracy theories are so interesting that Hollywood spent a record (at the time) amount of money creating Oliver Stone’s JFK. The conspiracy theories about 9/11 being an inside job are all interesting, but they are nutty as hell.
So far, looking at the report, the evidence appears to be not very compelling. Basically, it is that there is a right-wing structure founded by the Koch foundation willing to fund opposition to Obama’s plan, that some guy registered a domain name in August 2008, that Rick Santelli is up for a new contract this summer, and that many of the tea party web pages look familiar.
To the first point, regarding the Koch family and right-wing structures willing to fight the Obama initiatives, my only response is: “No kidding.” Similar structures, perhaps not as well-funded, exist throughout every sphere of politics.
As to the “coincidence” of some guy registering the domain name chicagoteaparty.com in August of lats year, that too is not very surprising. As I noted last night, it didn’t exactly take Nostradamus to figure out that the tax cuts for the top tier would be allowed to expire, as during the campaign, if I remember correctly, the debate was not whether or not those tax rates would go up, but would they be phased out early or merely allowed to expire? There was no debate about whether any of the Democratic candidates would end the tax cuts or not, it was a matter of when. Folks register domain names all the times in anticipation they will pay off (you can go visit Ronpaul2012.com and you can almost bet that someone has snapped up all sorts of domain names for Hillary). And in case you missed the debate among Democrats over whether to end the Bush tax cuts or just let them out, the McCain campaign was out there every single day telling you they were going to raise your taxes. The entire Joe the Plumber phenomenon was created out of the erroneous notion that Obama was going to raise taxes on Joe.
In regards to Santelli, maybe his rant is surprising to someone who has never been exposed to him before, but as someone who has watched him a good bit, his tea party rant was part of a schtick he has had for a long time. If it feels fake to you, you haven’t watched him before- they all seem fake. I remember watching similar rants from him all through the meltdown last fall- back when the comments section at Calculated Risk were all renaming themselves Comrade, there were daily links in the comments section there to similar rants by Santelli. The idea that this tea party thing was something out of character for Santelli just ignores the fact that he has been doing this for years, and it has always been the same- the same smirk, the same body language, the same rant and the odd quirks of turning away from the camera while it is on him- it is all there. Here is a video of him from September of last year.
As to the rest of it, it just seems like the simplest answer is the easiest. Drudge puts up a siren, the usual suspects react, and it is no surprise that these spread wildly through social networking websites and look similar. THEY ARE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES. This is why political movements have adopted the technology- for this kind of rapid response. All the people in these social networks presumably think alike, or think alike to the degree that they belong. Thus, it makes sense they would all quickly adopt the same meme and spread it, and given the limitations of facebook and what not, it makes sense to me they all adopted similar looks. No one suggests a conspiracy when everyone in the facebook network puts up the same application asking 25 questions about themselves. Ask yourself- how long after Michelle Malkin suggested that Obama was responsible for all the stock market losses since November 4th did it take before you heard the same thing on literally every right-wing website? Was that a conspiracy, too?
Look, it would not surprise me if there is a well-funded organization and network out there waiting to pounce on something. Opportunism is not, in my book, the same as a deep conspiracy to penetrate the ranks of CNBC with a sleeper cell to stage fake rants which can then be used as the basis of a “popular” grass-roots uprising (and they just aren’t that popular). Maybe there is more to it- I have been wrong before, and as we all know, my instincts suck, so by all means, keep looking at it. But right now, it just seems like there are simpler answers for everything out there.
CBS Sunday Morning
Have at it.