Say What?

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected him from your city." -- Televangelist Pat Robertson, Nov. 10, 2005

That's Dover, Pa., where voters turned out the entire Republican slate of school board members who changed their school curricula to teach the intelligent design view vs. evolutionary development of species. (Click the headline for more details.)

No matter your view of the whole squabble, I'm interested to know if anyone out there has any thoughts on Mr. Robertson's conception of God.

It's Not in the Water

I love New Albany. Warts and all. Here's proof that muddled thinking isn't exclusive to the misanthropic and "so open-minded their brains might fall out" disciples of Mrs. Anna Schmidt's boogedy-boogedy doubletalk. See if you recognize any of these themes.

As an ill-informed pseudo-intellectual with a particular interest in the unverifiable, I'm always on the lookout for some partially thought out misinformation. So, if you have an uninformed solution to a dilemma that doesn't actually exist, don't bother double-checking your information. I'm all ears.

Read the rest of this opinion piece at I'm Very Interested In Hearing Some Half-Baked Theories

Stunning

The missus and I sat down to view the documentary film, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," this evening, after a successful trial run at the Farmers Market in New Albany.

If you are an adherent, an acolyte, a missionary for the Wal-Mart Way, avoid this film at all costs.

It will change your buying patterns, if not your life. Never have I seen a film that affected me so deeply. Alternating between tears and curses, I was, simply, broken by what I learned from the film.

Mrs. VH professes that she knew all of this. I did not.

For example: Did you know that while a single big "W" typically generates $100 million in sales each year, the net result is the destruction of $140 million in local business activity?

Plan now to join Constituency for Progress and Destinations Booksellers in downtown New Albany just 9 days from now. Bring a chair, a muffler, perhaps gloves, and a warm coat.

Your life will never be the same.

Guru to the Gullible

Laura Oates, intake counselor for New Albany's CHODO and infrequent blogger, continues to cloud the ether with half-truths, concealing more than she reveals with each and every posting. Look at this example.

So, who didn’t do their job? Who are we supposed to blame for not staying on top of this? Why did they assemble a public committee to study the issue and make recommendations if all their work was simply going to be tossed aside as a useless formality? The Committee had a plan, the costs were only $200K by May of 2006, and it required no fees on residentials. But, that didn't satisfy the Administration.

Oates once ran for public office, but if she intends to do so again, it is clear that she will have to eradicate all trace of her Web log. The "public committee" she mentions in the above excerpt IS charged with making recommendations for a permanent stormwater impact and quality management fee structure. They were not charged with any responsibility to address interim fees. Furthermore, the ordinance passed by the council does not represent the "tossing aside" of the committee's recommendations. Except as modified in a gesture pandering to the likes of Ms. Oates, it was adopted as the committee recommended. And the $200,000 figure she quotes above is only the additional cost to stormwater quality management that will kick in this coming April.

This is just one example of the disservice Ms. Oates does to civic discourse. Ms. Oates is infected by a syndrome most tellingly revealed in the above excerpt, which I repeat here: Who are we supposed to blame for not staying on top of this?

Citizenship isn't about who you blame, Ms. Oates.

In any given posting, Oates either ignores reality or is unaware of reality. That's called lying when you know better.

But wait. It gets worse. In her management of the blog, she encourages blind postings that issue threats, ad hominem attacks, and more lies. Like a catfish to a ball of corn meal, Oates swallows the hook whole, as do her acolytes. It feeds their self-pity, their fear of the "other."

I'm sure this seems like engagement to Ms. Oates. But paranoid ranting, casting blame, and spreading lies is not engagement.

With her blog, as currently operated, Ms. Oates has made it clear that she does not want to engage. And with her effluvia captured for all time through the wonders of the Internet, it's clear she no longer has any ambition to run for public office or serve on any policy board. For one look at her blogging will abort any campaign or any application to serve. Credibility counts. Ms. Oates, you've lost yours.