Here’s a great rant on the SkyBox crowd, from Making Light. To the blogroll with her…
(via Joe Katzman).

No, you perv, I’m not going to be wearing a frilly apron…
But in the spirit of that comment, I’ve added Dawn Olsen to the blogroll…I actually use my blogroll (and referrer logs) to surf around, so it’s both for my convenience and because I realize that there is Severe Gender Imbalance on the list. I will go practice some Affirmative Action when I add some blogs.
I’m also working on a logo. The ‘Armed’ part is easy, but I’m struggling to give the artist some direction on the ‘liberal’ part. No one would get an Adlai Stevenson caricature. Best I can come up with is this, a picture of a samurai rabbit from a comic series called ‘Usagi Yojimbo’ (note: I’m a huuuge samurai movie fan, but don’t know much about comix; found this searching for cartoons of rabbits in Google). What do folks think??

Bob Morris weighs in on Joe Lieberman’s attempt to keep Al Gore on the New Democrat ranch:

Well Joe, you silly elitist twit, it IS a class conflict, and speaking out loudly against corporate fraud and corruption could be the best possible way for Democrats to re-take the White House. And by the way Joe, remind us why you are a Democrat since you are more conservative than most Republicans?

Bob, the sad fact is that you’re absolutely right – this is what the Dems should be doing. But also I think in taking this tack, the Democrats expose themselves incredibly (as noted in my post below). I’m hard-pressed to imagine that we could find a Democrat who isn’t vulnerable enough (remember that we don’t need parity in corruption…a mere stain will do)to this issue to make it suicidal gesture, and as a consequence I think we’ll get a lot of posturing over arcane accounting and administrative trivia which will allow the Dems to take Bush on (“what did he know and when did he know it?” type stuff) without threatening their own access to the private jets.

From hard heads soft hearts: a quote I particularly like:

more money for teacher’s salaries. 20% increase for education in exchange for vouchers/school choice. if you’re willing to work, a middle class society a common sense society; a middle class society: a society where if you work hard and play by the rules you can become a member of the broad middle class education, health insurance a decent home or apartment in a safe part of town with places for kids to play. Krugman parable of fishermen and gold prospectors
bringing backcommon sense, we’ve really got to reform our legal system.
de-meme-ing society; clean smart tough and kind; a middle class government; a common sense government, a government with American values: optimism; work ethic and the golden rule;

It’s worth going in.
roublen vesseau, a frequent commenter here, has started pulling together a scratchpad for a “new liberalism”, and has a couple of pages of cut-and-paste and rough notes that just might shape up into something. Check out hard heads soft hearts; start reading at the bottom and be patient…you’ll walk away with at least five things that make you go “hmmm…”

Down the coast from us, N.Z. Bear is kind of melancholy about one alternative future: The Truth Laid Bear: July 28, 2014.
There are others, N.Z. …

Bob Morris who has the great Politics in the Zeros blog (but no permalinks!) reviews two great books: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, and Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West.
I’ve read Cadillac Desert, and recommend it incredibly highly to anyone who wants to understand the history of the West.
We’re an irrigation empire; and the folks who control the water are the hidden emperors.

In this column, Arianna Huffington…gosh, it’s amazing how she’s transformed herself…actually nails the ethical issues in modern corporate finance.
I actually need to dig into her stuff a bit and try and see what happened. Maybe we can make it contagious.
Her transformation into someone who I regularly believe makes lots of sense matches the counter-transformation of Lewis Lapham who has become a babbling idiot.
Is there some kind of Law Of Conservation of Sense?

You’ve already read this, but it’s just so damn nice to get good news once in a while…CNN.com – Trapped miners emerging from Pennsylvania earth – July 28, 2002

…because there are more of us every year, in no small part. Ann Salisbury comments on Steve Lopez’s surprisingly intelligent column in today’s LAT.
I think this is another huge issue which won’t go away. I’m not living in fear of a Reconquista, but the impacts of massive population inflow combined with limited resources to build physical and social infrastructure presents some pretty big problems that need to be addressed.
I’ll try and jump in here a bit later.