Remember When?

Short Memories

Birds of a feather...

One of the great glories of the Information Age is that it is now easier than it has ever been to publicly expose political hypocrisy, which is always a useful thing.




Democrats have already begun their huffing and puffing about how the Republican-controlled Senate should simply acquiesce and consent to whomever President Obama nominates to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday.

Of course, they were all singing quite a different tune in 2006, when President George W. Bush sought to fill the vacancy created by Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation. Then-senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton joined the attempt to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito, as did Harry Reid, current Secretary of State John Kerry, and current Vice-President Joe Biden. That's worth keeping in mind when you hear all the arm-waving about "Republican obstruction" from Democrats regarding the current vacancy.

You might also want to ask Robert Bork about how cooperative Democrat-controlled Senates have been in approving Republican-nominated justices. I guess it only counts as "obstruction" when Republicans want to block a nomination.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer (who also joined the Alito filibuster attempt) even went so far as to say in 2007 that President Bush, having appointed Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, should not be allowed to appoint additional justices to the Supreme Court in the event of any vacancies. He vigorously objects to people bringing that speech up nowadays, of course.

"Well, the news media will certainly highlight such obvious hypocrisy, right?"

Never in a million years...

Beginning of the End

Always a welcome sight

On February 16, 2011 Borders Group, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and announced it would close more than 200 of its bookstores in the United States.




Those of us who loved Borders (I still have a Borders Rewards membership tab on my key ring) knew this was the death knell for the company, which had been very badly managed for many years (it last turned a profit in 2006).

Eventually, the Chapter 11 filing was converted to a Chapter 7, and the company was liquidated. Even though as a conservative I believe in the necessity of what Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction," it was a painful loss for me, as I whiled away many a pleasant hour in Borders stores all over the country.

"They served good coffee, too, didn't they?"

Yes, they did...

Speaking of Bankruptcies...

Hard to believe Kanye's clothing line didn't take off

The Grammy Awards were their customary over-produced and erratic snooze-fest last night, but it was wildly entertaining to observe Kanye West's Twitter meltdown over his financial woes.





What kind of a society have we become when a talentless, self-aggrandizing hack can't find anyone to rescue him from his calamitous debt and business hubris?

Called Home

From the pen of Lisa Benson, whose editorial cartoons you should read often, as I do.

Until Next Time...

Not everyone with a passion for music winds up as a performing artist, of course. There are many ways of channeling one's musical inclinations, and one of the great glories of the free market is that it allows people to form commercial enterprises that take full advantage of those pathways.

One of the more interesting companies to come along is Brand X Music, which specializes in creating music for use in motion picture trailers, television advertising, and video game trailers.

The company is the work of composers John Sponsler and Tom Gire, and its claim to fame is its library of compositions which can be seamlessly plugged into a variety of promotional materials.



Sponsler and Gire have chosen to release some of their work to the public at large. This week's Music Recommendation is their latest album, Chronos. You can watch a short video of the composers talking about how that project came about here.

Today's send-off is the official music video for "Unveiled," one of my favorite tracks from the new album. Enjoy...