Quickies

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




Disney World turns 40 this year...

... and the perfect urban community of EPCOT didn't quite turn out the way Disney had envisioned it.

Rick Foglesong, professor of politics at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., and author of “Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando,” said the Disney example demonstrates the limits of city building in the American system – that it takes centralized control to run mass transit, deliver public services and maintain order.

“What distinguishes American cities is they are the first cities to be built under modern conditions of capitalism and democracy, both of which fragment power,” he said. “While I believe in a liberal society, it’s not clear a liberal society can build well-functioning cities.”

When he takes students to Celebration, the new town the Disney Co. built in the 1990s on the outskirts of Disney World, he says, they are “always turned off” by the limited color palette, perfectly aligned landscaping and lack of diversity.

To HOA or to not HOA?






B-Daddy wonders why, given the younger demographic tilt of the #OWS set, they aren't demanding reform of the financially-insolvent Social Security.

It's unfair to broad-brush a movement that lacks coherency and a consistent message but a prevalent theme does indeed seem to be less about honest-to-goodness reforming of the system and more of getting a pound of flesh in a class warfare sense as demonstrated in the photo of the previous post.






Rolling Stones recently released their 10 worst songs of the 80s:

1. Starship - "We Built This City" (On Rock and Roll)
2. Europe - "The Final Countdown"
3. Chris de Burgh - "The Lady in Red
4. Wham! - "Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)"
5. Men Without Hats - "The Safety Dance"
6. Falco - "Rock Me Amadeus"
7. Bobby McFerrin - "Don't Worry Be Happy"
8. Toni Basil - "Mickey"
9. Taco - "Puttin' On the Ritz"
10. Rick Astley - "Never Gonna Give You Up"

No real quibbles except for "Safety Dance" which we rather enjoyed in a completely unashamed and non-ironic manner.

if Occupy Wall Street was a genuine grassroots movement genuinely outraged by the idea that banksters own the government, then they would be marching on the Obama White House.

It's something we've been asking of the OWS set with respect to the Cronyist-in-Chief ever since the protests got started. We think there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy to all of this.





Obviously, we blew right past the post-racial America and are now in the post-post-racial America. Thomas Sowell gives a short review of J. Christian Adams' book Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department and gives a dressing down of that miserable hack that runs the Justice Department.







Can you feel her pain?

Back in the day, young people were out in the streets because of Vietnam (amongst other things) and if your draft number came up, you were going to Vietnam... no questions asked. Fast forward some 40 years later and we find it hard to work up a whole lot of sympathy because you managed a way to spend 7 years in college, wind up tens of thousands of dollars in debt and without a job because no one forced that psychology or womens' studies degree on you. Just sayin'.






Via W.C. Varones:

Alright, gang, that's it for today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and we'll see you tomorrow.