As Russel Mead at Via Meadia writes to great effect the Great Loon, the Duck of Death is dead. 

And here is Russel Mead’s interesting take on protests etc.  A very insightful piece that hit home once more regarding something that puzzled me… ” There was a time long ago when political protest really mattered.  The Vietnam protests didn’t end the war (and didn’t keep Nixon from carrying 49 states against George McGovern in 1972), but they helped end the draft.  The civil rights movement led to some of the most profound social changes this country has ever seen.  Before that, there were labor and suffragette marches…”     ” But these days the old style protests remind me of political conventions: empty and pointless (though noisy and publicized) rituals.  “  And he draws a comparison to the conventions.  Once the conventions were important, before mass media and instant communications, but now they are just rituals the politic druidic class still hold.  In the old days a mass rally meant something, life for the working class was twice todays and wages closer to subsistence, and brutality was expected of the police, going to a rally meant something. Today it’s not much more than a smelly holiday.  Not to say that there aren’t some grievances and suffering…but OWS is more theater than struggle.   And then Amity Shales had this to say about what these folks want, vs what they need.

I am never going to be the blog-media-news miner that Instapundit is.  Here is the latest on the SLS fiasco from Rand Simberg, the Space Launch System is a works program, yes well paid and aerospace is effective economic multiplier but the money could be spent to so much better effect!

(edits, still not getting all of this right the first time)