North Coast Online

Marriage Is A Hurtful Concept

Just when you thought it couldn't get any wackier.

Schools should be banned from promoting traditional marriage in sex education lessons for fear of discriminating against gay and lesbian children, academics claim.

The biggest lecturers' union criticised teachers who champion heterosexual wedlock for instilling "negative images" of same-sex relationships.

That's from the UK.  It will take, oh I don't know, until tomorrow for some educator over here to espouse the same view.  No pun intended, of course.

Self-Fulfilling Investigations

John Edwards makes a bold and brave statement.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards on Thursday called for a federal investigation into possible antitrust violations by the oil industry and criticized oil companies for raising gas prices.

Of course, he qualified it in the next sentence.

``There's absolutely no justification for the gas companies to be as profitable as they are and have the taxpayers subsidizing the industry,'' Edwards said.

You're right, John.  Why not campaign to do away with oil company subsidies and then leave them alone?  What?  You say that would take away your justification for using oil as a campaign issue?  Oh, I see.

Shared Misery

Hillary calls for a renewed collective effort.

It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few, time to reject the idea of an "on your own" society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a "we're all in it together" society.

Scott at Powerline writes, "Not since I was 16 have I wanted so badly to be on my own."

Garbage In, Global Warming Out

I installed my window air conditioner this afternoon.  At the same time, I took care to move my indoor/outdoor temperature sensor from that windowsill to another so the A/C's exhaust wouldn't distort its readings (duh).  One town in Oregon never bothered to do that and global warming data got another shot in the arm.

[UPDATE:] Check this out, too.

A.M.&A.'s

The battle over what to do with A.M.&A.'s is ready to heat up again.

Two prominent local developers are calling for the demolition of the long-vacant AM&A’s department store on Main Street downtown.

And they want the city to take the lead role in razing the deteriorating former store to create a “prime, shovel-ready” site.

“It’s a major eyesore, a blight on downtown,” said Ellicott Development chief Carl P. Paladino. “The time has come to knock it down.”

They're right, of course.  When it looked as if a big New York City developer was going to convert it into apartments, everyone was happy.  But now that the deal's fallen through, expect the preservationists to try and stop any attempts to tear the old pile of bricks down.

They'll claim that it's an excellent example of late 1940's modernism -- well, read for yourself.

The   former J.N. Adam department store, one of the best pieces of modernism on Main   Street, has been a major component of downtown streetscape for half a century.   It presents a masterful play of abstract form, interconnecting horizontal and   vertical elements with the sophistication of a Gershwin arrangement. Unified   horizontal window bands and layered horizontal monochrome materials: travertine-like   stone, buff brick banded with glazed buff tiles, subtly reinforce the linear   precision of the composition. The crowning glory of the whole complex is the   Washington Street elevation three earlier components designed by Buffalo architects:   E.B. Green, 1892 and 1896, and Esenwein &Johnson,1909, are well-preserved.

That's one way of looking at it.  On the other hand it's also a motley collection of very old and very inefficient buildings which have been disguised by a unifying facade.  And that facade, while admittedly created by "the designers of Saks Fifth Avenue,   Bloomingdale's Lexington Avenue and Lord &Taylor's Fifth Avenue", is just that -- a fake covering.

Don't be "guilted' into thinking that tearing it down would forever erase an irreplaceable part of America's architectural history.   It just isn't so.  The building's old and deteriorating and sits on, if we ever can agree to return cars to Main Street, a valuable piece of property. 

Now, I'm not saying that should be in any great rush to raze it.  We can wait a bit -- no reason to have a city block sit empty.  But we should agree now that if a solid proposal comes along like the one that would have seen HealthNow locate there, it'll be promptly demolished.  And an enlightened city planning department might even require that the facade of its replacement echo 1940's modernism.

Hey, fake now is as good as fake then.   
 

I May Switch Brands To Yuengling

Big labor lost one, a Pennsylvania brewery's employees voted to decertify their union. But the word of its  former members' isn't good enough -- the Teamsters are going to ask the government to fix this injustice. 

Depending upon whom you ask, Yuengling’s speech was either a pep talk to urge employees to work harder or an ultimatum to dump the Teamsters union, which is what they did.

The union has been trying to strike back, urging a boycott of the 178-yearold brewery’s product. The company says the effort has fallen flat — with “absolutely zero feedback” from the marketplace, according to chief operating officer David Casinelli.

Now, the Teamsters say they are going to try to get state lawmakers to intervene in what they say has been an unfair fight.

Have you ever noticed that unions always think it's unfair when they lose? 

Only Politicians Would Make A Decision Like This

$225,000 for houses on Sycamore Street?  And the city's the developer?  I'd say this bears watching.

Out Of Character -- But Welcome

Well, knock me down, Albany has voted to let ticket resellers and scalpers operate in a free market.

A measure ending current price caps on how much scalpers and brokers can charge on tickets to sports and entertainment events is moving toward final approval by state lawmakers and Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer.

Now, maybe we can work on liberating the rest of the economy.

Under Siege

Fred Thompson mentions Buffalo.

Let me ask you a hypothetical question. What do you think America would do if Canadian soldiers were firing dozens of missiles every day into Buffalo, N.Y.?

Leaving aside for the moment the worrisome possible answers, read the rest here.

[UPDATE:] USAToday insists that he told them he's running.

The Breck Girl Exposed

I don't know if Democrats will be influenced by tales of John Kerry's supposed discomfort for John Edwards; in fact, I don't even know if they're true (this is Bob Shrum after all).

He was comfortable after his conversations with Gephardt, but even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

Delicious stuff.