I have recently learned that the headquarters of a large payday check loaning company is just up the road from my hometown. Harper’s has a good article on it and the industry at large. Though the writer may have some bad general ideas (noted at the end) he seems to assess the situation well. People like me, Southern homebuilders making a certain amount of money, who don’t save what they can as they can, are digging themselves into a financial ditch by asking to pay $30 now for the cash in their paycheck coming in a few days. It doesn’t make sense for anyone to spend his check before it comes, especially for a service fee, but I can see the need or desire coming, if one doesn’t save anything. That’s poor judgment, but it’s immoral for lenders to offer the service and encourage them to just roll over their loans until the next check, adding another fee which will be due with the next payday check. It snowballs from there. No, it doesn’t have the same feel as typical loan sharking, but it has the same results. (via Chattarati)

“So, how was Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa,” you ask?

OK. Good. Awful. Hard to say.

I rolled into Elk Horn on Friday afternoon, having taken a vacation day. An extensive Viking camp had been pitched in the camp area, across the street from the Danish Windmill and Viking House.



Continue reading Tivoli Report 2009 →

George MacDonald writes, “He might have been unjust for the sake of his own–a small fault in the eyes of the world, but a great fault indeed in a nature like his, capable of being so much beyond it. For while the faults of a good man cannot be as evil as the faults of a bad man, they are more blameworthy, and greater faults than the same would be in a bad man.”

Matt Patterson is writing an eight-part series on conservatives in literary America. He starts with the story of a typical filmmaker who is soaked in liberal ideas in film school and effectively forgets any conservative ideas he may have had.

Next, he interviews Michael Blowhard: “Honestly I’d advise anyone, rightie or lefty, to avoid a life in the arts, at least the arts as conventionally understood: literary-fiction, gallery art, etc. It’s likely to be a very hard one. I’m very serious about that. Money is scarce, success may never arrive, frustration and disappointment are inevitable, breakdowns and suicides aren’t uncommon. And in a country as full of money, space, and opportunity as the U.S., why opt for the hard way?”

In his third column, he analyzes Mr. Blowhard’s statements a bit: “Does one really have to be an author or artist to have a tough time in life? There are lots of waitresses and dock workers and miners who have it tough. Money is scarce for many people, in and out of the arts. Success, the definition of which varies from person to person, may never arrive for anyone, regardless of chosen profession.”

And finally to date, Matt talks about new movements.

Lee Wishing quotes Russell Kirk in his Memorial Day column, saying, “Many Americans are badly prepared for their task of defending their own convictions … against the grim threat of armed ideology…. And in our age, good-natured ignorance is a luxury none of us can afford.”

In case you missed this on other news outlets earlier, the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, argues that torture is not torture unless the perpetrator intends to torture. A specific action, though harsh or intense, is not torture when done for training or without the intent to do lasting harm. The “knowledge that severe pain and suffering may result” from an action or situation is not enough to prove those with that knowledge intended to “inflict severe pain and suffering.”

Here’s another glorious reason we should take the circus out of politics so that idiots will have far less opportunity to rule the country.

I assume that Liberty University has a covenant or agreement all students must sign which would guard against them taking up certain unbiblical causes in student groups, but a Democratic Party club doesn’t strike me as one of them, so I can’t say I agree with Liberty’s administrators in shutting down the college democrats. Far better to engage the policies of the DNC in open debate and healthy discussion than to shut them down and make those who favor DNC ideas hold their tongues.