Andrew Breitbart has died

Breitbart was the founder/publisher and public face of the very influential conservative blog, Big Journalism. He became a favorite target of liberals for the last few years since he took aim and dedicated his life and his internet presence to bashing us.

But hey . . . he was only 43. So that’s pretty sad.  I’m sure many of my conservative friends here have been fans and followers; I offer you my condolences. You lost one of your generals in this silly tribal war we wage.

The story is everywhere; here’s the official announcement.

I’m right here! Look over this way! Here I am!

I’m an old fan of Bartcop  and once in a while I jump in to try to provide the correct answer to one of his ‘mystery cities’ or ‘mystery cars’ quizzes . . . Yesterday I got one! The “mystery food”. A little thrill for sure, but check the name:

For those not familiar, Bartcop has been around since the 90′s posting cartoons, commentary and quotes from around the web, plus original stuff – including some wicked funny and original photoshopped offerings. A fine place to lose yourself for a few minutes every day.

Two years ago, I got linked from Bartcop (one serious OMG moment) and on that day racked up a record number of views – a number I’ll never reach again. This time though, no linkee.

Is there an awards ceremony?

Here come the Annual Rotten Banana Awards - given to the “20 Most Unbearable Movies of 2011″ by Dr. Ted Baehr, media critic and founder and publisher of Movieguide. From World Net Daily:

Sex, homosexual affairs, heavy drinking, gruesome violence and anti-human and anti-God themes – it’s all featured in [Kevin Smith's Red State] winner of the Vile, Vulgar & Anti-Christian Award and dubbed Worst Ultimate Christian Bashing Movie of the Year.

The film heads his list of the 20 Most Unbearable Movies of 2011, each receiving the Annual Rotten Banana Awards.

Other films earning the disgraceful designation include: “Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star,” which won the Slimy Pornification Award for its lewdness; “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy,” which received the Abhorrent Sexcapade Award; “The Skin I Live In,” which earned the Lurid Transgender Abuse Award; and “Happy Feet Two,” which was given the Environmentalist Hysteria Award.

“Most of these movies made very little money,” Dr. Baehr noted, “which shows the good taste of not only the vast majority of Americans but also the vast majority of moviegoers overseas.”

“Most of these movies” have never even been heard of either, except perhaps for “Happy Feet”, the second installment in a popular children’s animated film series, which has also drawn attention from a few FOX-heads who either don’t like penguins or don’t have children. Or perhaps don’t like penguins or children.

Once again, Christians are under attack but this time dammit, they stepped up and found some low-lying fruit to blame! So take that.

 

What Kevin Drum and I share

My lamb Pinky. Back when.

Liberal fans of the blogsphere probably know Kevin Drum. He launched his independant blog Calpundit around ’02. He later moved to Washington Monthly, where he wrote Political Animal, and a few years ago took up residence at Mother Jones.

The most important thing to know about Kevin Drum is that he invented Friday catblogging (now an actual verb). Before Atrios’ normal and handsome cats began making regular appearances, or the  intoduction of John Cole’s appalingly fat cat Tunch (who now has his own product line) - even before TBogg and his bassett hound  – Kevin was showing us the kitters every Friday.

Turns out we have something surprising in common. He posted this yesterday:

My memory has always been terrible. My mother is nearly 80 and still remembers classmates from her kindergarten days. I barely even remember going to kindergarten. Actually, that’s too charitable: I don’t remember going to kindergarten. Or first grade. Or fifth grade. Or high school. Or college. Or, for that matter, stuff I did two years ago.

Is this an exaggeration? Only barely. I remember occasional shreds from years past, but that’s about it. On the bright side, this means that if I had a nasty fight with you a few years ago, there’s a good chance I have no memory of it. On the not-so-bright side, it means that if we were close friends in high school, I might or might not even remember knowing you, let alone remember anything substantive about what we did together.

Most people don’t believe that an otherwise intact person can have such a profound disability – and I do consider it that, though not the kind that gets one special treatment. In fact, I’ve never met another person whose memory is as lacking as mine.

I sometimes slight people or insult them or even astonish them. It didn’t go down well the time I forgot I’d been an attendant at the wedding of a woman I saw at our 30th HS reunion. I still don’t remember that. I’ve since learned to fudge and be non-committal – I let the other person do the remembering. I figure they’ve probably got it right, so I nod my head. It covers the awkward moments anyway.

Adding to what Kevin said . . . before my father died at 98, I used him as my resource in matters of memory – I turned to him for dates and names and chronologies. He never forgot anything. Like Kevin’s mother, to the day he died he was able to recall all of his schooling, teachers, classmates. I’m kind of jealous of that.

The modern Republican Party

FROM the front page of Little Green Footballs at 11:55pm. Here are screen shots of five of the seven stories.

This may be one of the best political ads I’ve ever seen

Thanks to Unedited Politics for finding this when I couldn’t. He’s got lots of political video if that floats your boat (it does mine!).

For non-bloggers: A look behind the curtain

Lessons in spam: How [not] to Sound Like A Person:

I had been questioning occasion you ever considered altering customized for specific cultures of the website? Its really correctly created; I adore what youve obtained to say. But possibly it is possible to small a lot more when it comes to content so males could interact with it greater. Youve obtained a terrible total lots of text for only finding a single or two images. Maybe you’ll manage to area it out greater?

We all get robo-spam, those announcements of the latest ‘enhancement’ drugs or miracle weight loss systems. For every one that gets through, 100 others are probably kept out of your inbox by a blocker.

Same with blogs – Aksimet on WordPress does a fine job for
Whatever Works. (It’s blocked almost 14,000 spam comments from making it through, but does hold them for review, just in case.)

Robo spammers (see above) have been working at creating auto generated and specific ‘comments’ based on the content of a post. Sometimes they’re even successful, but not often. Sheer awfulness still reigns supreme. It’s a Beta world so far.

But that could change. I notice lately that the language is a bit sharper, the comment itself more relevant, almost believable.

The goal for now is commercial, to encourage a blogger to click through. Which means of course that the goal is to deceive.

I do wonder about future implications for us all when deception is run by software, is automated, targeted and widespread.

Newt’s gonna lose it after all

Andrew Sullivan surfed the interwebs tonight so we didn’t have to and gathered this damning round-up of conservative post-debate commentary. Not seeing anything but good news for Romney here:

Rod Dreher thought Romney wiped the floor with Gingrich:

Romney won this debate, and probably Florida, and so the nomination. Newt collapsed, as bullies and blowhards often do when somebody fights back. Santorum auditioned for Romney’s VP, and greatly enhanced his chances. Ron Paul shines on, that crazy diamond [great line].

Will Wilkinson seconds him:

Romney started strong, completely obliterating Newt on immigration and questions about his finances, and then stayed strong. Santorum again turned in an admirably dogged performance, but so what? Romney won the debate and the nomination.

Larison likewise expects a Romney win in Florida:

Romney held off Gingrich, and Gingrich was flailing most of the night. Unless something strange happens in the next few days, Romney should hold his lead in Florida. Santorum may have gained a little, but nowhere near enough to challenge for second place. Paul did a decent job tonight, but Florida is not a good state for him and he’s already looking to the caucus events in February.

There’s much, much more at the link. All of it worth a read if you’re interested in the Florida vote on Monday Tuesday.

Or just read the rest here after the jump.

Economy and debt: How to make it all better!

Atrios explains in just a few words what Democrats can’t seem to explain at all.

 ”It looks like the LTRO is having a positive contribution. Does it solve all of the problems sustainably? Probably not,” said Andrew Bosomworth, a senior portfolio manager at Pimco.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to growth — that’s what these countries need to keep their debt sustainable.”

Everybody has been getting it backwards.
1) Cut spending
2) ??
3) Growth
When the reality is:
1) Increase spending
2) Growth
3) pay down debt

I’m “going black” Wednesday

This site, along with hundreds of thousands of sites around the world (millions of sites?), will ‘go black’ at 8:00 a.m. today – and stay down for 12 hours – to protest the proposed U.S. legislation (SOPA/PIPA), which poses a real threat to a free internet and to freedom of speech on the internet. It’s being supported by and lobbied for by some of the world’s largest multinationals, who will benefit financially.

The SOPA legislation purports to provide protection for intellectual property, but is in fact toxic and dangerous. Watch the video here. You can sign the petition here.

See you back here after 8:00 pm tonight.

Es un milagro!

Google Translate will now do your entire website with the simple click of a button. Quite remarkable. Or . . . es un milagro! (h/t mac).

Never gonna happen

(UPDATE below) Since there is apparently another GOP Presidential candidate debate tonight (twice a week now), let’s look at this gem from David Frum (my favorite no-longer-crazy Bush guy) in its entirety:

Had I been on the panel for Wednesday’s economics debate, I’d have opened with the question: “Are taxes lower or higher today than on the day President Obama was sworn into office?” Just for fun.

CBS and National Journal asked me among others to suggest some questions to ask the candidates . .  My suggested list follows.

1. Mexico is being torn apart by a civil war to control the drug routes to the United States. Many Mexican leaders urge drug legalization in the US in order to move the drug trade away from violent criminals to legitimate business. If a Mexican president asked you to consider such a step, what would you answer and why?

2. Canada is our largest trading partner and most important energy supplier. What do you see as the major issues between the US and Canada and what would you do to strengthen this supremely important relationship?

3. If asked, would you support a US contribution to the fund to stabilize the Euro currency? Why or why not?

4. Taiwan is China’s largest foreign investor. Taiwan and China have an intensifying economic relationship. Taiwan has refused to make the military investments that our military considers necessary to Taiwan’s security. Is the US security guarantee to Taiwan obsolete?

5. If you had been president in 2010, would Hosni Mubarak still be in power today?

6. Do you believe there is a peaceful way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?

7. It’s often said that our present energy policy leaves us dependent on oil suppliers who do not like us. Our top 10 suppliers are:

Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Russia, Algeria, Iraq, Angola and Colombia.

The anti-US feeling of the Chavez regime is notorious. Which of the other 9 would you describe as a supplier who “does not like us”?

8. Afghanistan: At the end of your first term do you think we’ll have more or less than 20,000 troops in that country?

9. Iraq: Knowing everything you know now, if you had been in Congress in 2002, would you have voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein, yes or no?

Good questions, all of them. However, attention must be paid to 9-9-9 and Texas.

MEA CULPA UPDATE: The debate is now over. I watched it. And the moderators from CBS and National Journal asked intelligent and relevant policy questions. They really did.

Give them money and they will spend

It would cost $600 billion to simply give $2,000 to each of 300,000,000 Americans. If we confined it to just those who make under half a mil, say, we’d each get a bunch more. Now that would be a stimulus by golly. Narrow it further so that all the six billion ends up in the hands of adults and we’d be beating down the barn doors in a heartbeat. Instant demand! More jobs to meet the demand! GDP up! More revenue flowing into state and federal coffers!

Spend! Work! Grow! That would work, and we’re printing money anyway . . .

Note: Dr. Black (a real economist!) at Eschaton has been advocating this novel solution for a few years now. Perhaps they should have listened to him.

Wonder when FOX will correct this one? Hint: never

This ran yesterday at FOX Nation – no update yet . . . of course, she said no such thing.

According to video of the event Thursday and a transcript of the speech  provided by the EPA, Jackson spent part of her speech debunking . . . media reports that claimed the agency intended to “triple its budget and add 230,000  new regulators . . . .”A massive expansion was never a possibility — and the people who cited the  230,000 new EPA jack-booted thugs knew that,” she said.

Got that? Mocking the EPA expansion charge, she reassured her audience that there was no possibility that the EPA would add 230,000 new ‘jack-booted thugs’.

No offense given, but offence taken. The blogosphere outrage is in full swing. The fake story is out there and will remain. And now Lisa Jackson joins the ranks of Shirley Sherrod and Van Jones, both victims of blog smears.

Atrios proves again that a few well chosen words work just as well

There’s a wee flaw in designing an economy which requires people to spend a huge amount of money to purchase and maintain a giant metal box in order to be able to drive to minimum wage jobs.

Yup.

Let the party begin

Charles Pierce, one of the snarkiest and funniest political observers in the land, has a permanent blog home at last! Visit The Politics Blog at Esquire for his delightful take on almost anything.

Here’s some delicious from today:

Newt, you see, is a man of ideas, and one of his ideas is that he is a  historical figure already. Rarely do you see a man visibly carving himself in  marble before your eyes.

Now that’s some wordsmithing.

The Weekly Standard discovers that graphic design is out to get us. Again.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen periodic outbreaks of hysteria amongst our right wing brethren as they keep identifying secret Muslim messaging hidden inside logos and building shapes. Usually these subversive graphics are connected to our Muslim Kenyan president. Like here from the intellectual giants at Free Republic.

Here we go again. The Weekly Standard (how ya’ doin’ Fred Barnes? Cut back on the caffeine yet?) has found an anti-Israel ’message’ within a graphic on the home page  of the Palestinian Observer Mission, where a small square on a map of the world serves to outline the entire Middle East. That provoked this headline.

Palestinian Logo Suggests Elimination of Israel

This graphic, according to them, doesn’t acknowledge that Israel is not Arab. Or something. Scared yet?

Verizon is watching

On Wednesday I wrote a post complaining about Verizon and just now I find a comment there from . . . Verizon.

Honest. Go look. Don’t quite know what to make of it.

I think Atrios is reading me

First I saw lottsa oldies (my kind, not his) sprinkling his site and I thought, well okay, it’s a retro thing. But! But! Cometh this post, with one of my all time favoritest videos, which I first ran (and will again and again) after Governor Nojobsisbetterthanaunionjob of Wisconsin undertook union bashing – well, that is a step too far. I don’t care how famous is the Atrios, this video is  mine, mine, mine!

Just stopping by: Bobblespeak link

Moe’s vacation continues and perhaps a bit longer than anticipated.  I’ve just  suffered the horror of The Rise of the Planet of the Comcast for two plus days. Increasingly this is a regular event – but they’re the only game in town which leads to a somewhat cavalier definition of  ‘customer service’. Verizon FIOS is on the way, but hasn’t reached me yet. Is it any better in your neighborhood?

I am now back online but still on vacation. Before I return to my quiet place, let me remind us all to visit here because moonshinepatriot has again stepped up and watched the Sunday gabfests, so we don’t have to. The raw material for ridicule thins out when Davide Gregory isn’t on air but here’s a Meet the Press tidbit with Samantha Guthrie in for Gregory anbd Robert Gibbs in for the whoever.

I leadz the way ya know

Jonathan Turley’s blog put up Phil Phillips doing Sea of Love this week just because I did it last week! (But I had video! So there.)

Turley’s is a unique blog with a take on contemporary legal issues as seen by a constitutional lawyer. And other stuff (obviously). Think he’s reading me? Nah.

I’m going to be up all night reading

All Rick Scott, all the time! Words! Pictures! Abundant linkie, linkie! Even videos! I’ve just discovered Beach Peanuts.

Am trying to leave a comment over there, but it’s not posting. So perhaps this pingback will attract the attention of the blogger inkberry. If so and the good lady stops over, here is what I tried to say:

A random link just brought me here and I’m so glad to have found you. Now, instead of finishing the Rick Scott post I keep trying to close but never can because the damn news pours in too fast . . . I can just send people over to you. Which I’ll happily do. Great work.

A new kind of courage needed – Israel’s rock/hard place

While the neo-con Prime Minister of Israel is insulting our president and defying our foreign policy goals while here, proving himself once again to be among the rudest guys on the planet, Josh Marshall posted this today. His post at TPM acknowledges the hard truth Obama articulated the other day.

Just as no man is an island, no country can be either. On its present course Israel is on its way to becoming a pariah state, a status in which it cannot indefinitely or even perhaps long survive. Neither the fact that Israel faces a profound cultural animosity among the region’s Arab populations nor the bad faith that often greets its actions nor even the anti-Semitism that is sometimes beneath the animus changes this essential fact. The make-up of the 21st century world is simply not compatible with a perpetual military occupation of another people, especially one that crosses a boundary of ethnicity and religion. Only the willfully oblivious can’t see that.

Blogfriend in Joplin

Some of you are familiar with Duane Graham, a frequent commenter here, who blogs at The Joplin Globe as The Erstwhile Conservative. Joplin – which yesterday took a terrrible beating and is today an open wound.

He writes tonight about a walk he took with his son shortly after the tornado.

Sunday evening, before the onset of the cruel aftershocks that continue to pummel our devastated city with remorseless storms and rescue-impeding rains, my youngest son and I undertook a journey to a destination he—a high school student and baseball player—seemed desperate to see.

He wanted to go to his school. . . .

Just an hour after the historic tornado hit, we began our walk to Joplin High School. We stepped over thick, once-pulsating power lines; we listened to a natural gas main hiss an awful hiss as it filled the air with that unmistakable odor and imminent danger;  we stepped on and over shards of civilization—the wood, glass, and other fabric that make up a life-home; we passed by pummeled, twisted sheet metal no longer confined to driveways or cowering in garages, but like wildly wounded or dead tin soldiers on some strange and dreadful battlefield . . .  we walked through the rubble—how terrible it seems to call it that—and we watched the landscape, once so familiar, disorient us with its new unfamiliarity, the product of an appalling but natural disregard for our pattern-seeking and sense-making needs as human beings. . . .

To the west, the houses were gone.  The houses whose windows and roofs had been the targets of years of foul balls, duds bounding off the bats of too-hopeful Major League aspirants. Those familiar houses were gone.  All of them, and all behind them, and behind them. 

And to the south, all gone.  And to the east.

Netroots Nation, the liberal media and who’s making the money buddy?

Markos Moulitsas

The Netroots Nation convention (referenced below) was so named by readers of Markos Moulitsas‘ blog, Daily Kos, probably the most influential liberal site in the blogsphere. It’s routinely demonized by the right who have dubbed it – and by extension Markos – The Great Orange Satan (the logo color is orange). Kos has gone from a a lone blogger  – immigrant, veteran, lawyer, author, father, political activist -whose very first sentence in his first blog post (in ’04 I think) was “I am a liberal”, to a community of tens of thousands of activists,  hundred and hundreds of writers and advertising rates that would make The New York Times blush.

I’ve written often – here, and here, and here - about the utter failure of the liberal punditocracy and elected Democrats to make the point that liberal media dominates because it’s what people want and support with their dollars.

A blog is media. Daily Kos is a blog. Daily Kos is liberal and Daily Kos is making money. Lots of money.

It’s more successful than its conservative rivals (except perhaps  The Druge Report which even after a decade plus is still only a primitive blog acting as a news aggregator with a point of view). In any free market the major players are the ones that rake in the bucks because people value the product and pay for it. The media may be liberal, but what’s almost never mentioned is that it’s also   what America reads and watches. And pays for.

Let’s look at movies and compare the box office success of  the  anti-liberal movie Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged with Sicko, Michael Moore’s liberal documentary. Both of these were in limited release.

Atlas Shrugged:  Here’s a report from the Hollywood Reporter:

The man who says he spent $10 million of his own money to bring Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 to the big screen vowed Wednesday to go through with his plans to make the next two installments, even though critics hate the movie and business at movie theaters has fallen off a cliff.

[Producer] Aglialoro said he had to scale down his ambition for the film to be in 1,000 theaters this weekend, so it will likely be closer to 400. During its opening weekend, the movie took in $5,640 per screen but then only $1,890 in its second. Through Wednesday, the film had grossed $3.3 million since opening April 15.

That paper also covered Sicko when it was released in ’07. here. 

Lionsgate far outpaced the competition this summer, but its biggest hit was the Weinstein Co. co-release “Sicko.” Michael Moore’s harsh and humorous health-care expose took in $24.1 million. Currently neck and neck with “An Inconvenient Truth,” it will pass that film to become the third-highest-grossing nonmusical documentary of all time this weekend, though its purse doesn’t begin to compare with the top-ranking docu, Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” ($119.2 million.)

Liberal media has more reach. Because people pay for it. From an earlier post, I’ll republish this, because it can’t be posted often enough.

FROM Whatever Works in FEBRUARY of 2010 :

That most frequent target of conservative media, The New York Times, reported a circulation (March 2009) of 1,039,031 copies on weekdays and 1,451,233 copies on Sundays. And the venerable Wall Street Journal has equivalent if not higher weekday numbers. But since the Times is perceived to be ‘liberal’ throughout and the Journal is perceived to be conservative only in its editorial pages, they’re not politically opposite. The Journal is a hybrid. So a comparison would not be useful.)

NEWSPAPERS
The Washington Post – A publicly traded company
Daily audience 1,599,900

The Washington Times - A privately held company owned by the Rev. Sun Young Moon
Daily audience 83,511

MAGAZINES
The Weekly Standard - a privately held company
Can’t find circulation numbers, even at their own website, so to keep it fair(ish)
National Review - a privately held company
Weekly circulation 183,000

Time Magazine – A publicly traded company
Weekly circulation 3,400,000

I draw the reader’s attention to which of these publications thrive in the free market and which are rich men’s hobbies.

Of course it’s different this time

As Congress faces the vote to raise the debt ceiling – something we do every year –  the blogosphere is full of posts on the subject. Posts by blogfriends Kay and BeneathTheTinFoilHat led me to Perspectives where there is lots of bloggy goodness on the subject. This chart caught my attention.

Balloon Juice Day here at Whatever Works

For those amongst you who aren’t savvy to the ways of the netroots, John Cole (again) put up a post this morning asking for funds to send a Balloon Juice contributor to Netroots Nation, the huge annual convention of lefty bloggers, politicians and other media types. But mostly bloggers.

So Cole wants to send someone and posts a ‘bleg’ (i.e., to beg on a blog) for financial support to make it happen. Here’s how it goes:

Hello all- we are going to hold a brief, brief fundraiser this morning to pay for Kay to hit Netroots Nation . . . This isn’t too expensive a trip:

Hotel expenses are 390- $130 a night.
Air fare is 450.
I figure 300 for expenses, food, and other things.
And then another 300 for registration. All in all, we are shooting for about 1440. So if you are interested in helping pay for the BJ rep, hit the paypal link.

UPDATE:  At $750 at 11 am. Almost halfway.

UPDATE: STOP. We are at $1600. No more donations needed unless you want them spent on liquor and cat treats.

It took an hour. Lucky Kay.

Seen here some of the young bloggers of the left at  the first Netroots Nation, including Cenk  Uygur and Sam Seder who have both moved into traditional media.

Why Balloon Juice is so popular

It’s because John Cole is funny. He understands the power of language and here achieves a bit of typographic brilliance. In a single sentence, he replays a years long narrative. Herewith:

Fox news alerts concerned white people everywhere that there is a new common enemy (not apologizing) for their two minute hate. This time it is Rev. Wright Barack Obama Michelle Obama Eric Holder Van Jones Shirley Sherrod black farmers the new Black Panther Party Charlie Rangel Desirée Rogers Rev. Joseph Lowery AC-DC’s Back in Black Black Hole Sun The Man in Blackblack black BLACK BLACKITY BLACK BLACK! rapper Common:

Sarah Palin took issue with the White House inviting Grammy Award-winning rapper and actor Common, born Lonnie Rashin Lynn Jr., to a poetry event hosted by the first lady on Wednesday night. 

During an appearance on Fox News’ “On the Record,” Palin said, “The White House’s judgment on inviting someone who would glorify cop killing during Police Memorial Week, of all times, you know, the judgment, it’s just so lacking of class and decency.”

Jon Stewart also took up this bit of nonsense last night in what might be one of his top ten takedowns of FOX News. (Conservative readers who don’t follow Stewart should know that Stewart’s really-very-all-the-time-favorite target is CNN.)

The Blaze?

That’s the name of Glenn Beck’s spicy seditious blog where gather all his acolytes so get alerts on what to be afraid of whenever they can’t catch the show.

Kind of a gay name, isn’t it?

Kevin Drum is another smart man

He had a blog in the early ‘aught’s’ called Calpundit, which is now defunct. He blogged a column at The Washington Monthly for a few years and eventually landed at Mother Jones, a very good fit. Always worth a read.

I beleive Drum was also the one who originated ‘Friday Cat Blogging’ at Calpundit. (The kitteh is in his honor.)

Yesterday he posted a short piece called The Annoying Hypocrisy Trope after Obama was criticized for taking itemized deductions on his income tax filing, after saying he thought they should be phased out. 

Drum’s excellent as usual reasoning is especially relevant to those who call environmentalists hypocrites for using airplanes and cars.

The point of laws is to provide a level playing field, and no one is a hypocrite for following existing law even if they think it should be changed. That goes for congressmen who accept earmarks even though they think earmarks should be banned, it goes for drivers who park for free on city streets even though they think parking meters should be installed, and it goes for rich people who pay taxes at the current rate even though they think that rate is too low.