EdCone.com

"I expect the unemployment rate is going to peak at around 11 percent at some point in 2010, well above historical standards for even severe recessions." The customary caveat about hoping Roubini is wrong this time applies, but he's been right on the big stuff since before the current unpleasantness began.

"This is the moment when the liberal interest groups must to decide: are they going to represent the interests of their members and keep going, or are they going to play the access game and bow to Obama's wishes?" The popular President needs to remember why he's popular.

Palin's alleged strategery: "[I]t's simply poisonous, toxic, fatal for anyone running for president."

I've been meaning to post a photo of the construction underway at St. Piux X, but GDP saved me the trouble. A friend who worships there describes the old building as "very Vatican II." The new building will be more traditional; I like the way the ancient window design is framed in modern material.

Fun Fourth in downtown GSO was actually fun. It wasn't brutally hot and a big crowd seemed ready to have a good time. I worked as a ticket-seller for a couple of hours. Some folks carefully counted up the number of 50-cent tix they would need for a specific ride or drink or whatever. Others bought scrip by the strip. Kids urged parents to fund extensive activity plans. Parents told kids to tell me "thank you" as I put their ducats and change on the wooden counter. This is the view from inside one of the ticket booths:

Far left and center: Sorry, haters, but people made good use of Center City Park; right, a game of chess (click to enlarge).

United Guaranty has a sad cameo in Michael Lewis' new article on the fall of AIG, as one example of the widespread problems at the huge company. UGC's big losses were a drop in the bucket for AIG, though, and more of a symptom than a cause of what went wrong.

Thnx to alert reader K for the pointer.

I caught the last showing of Dogs of Chinatown's week-long run at the Carousel. I'm no student of the genre, but the fight scenes were good and the flashes of humor (great bit with the clip-on tie) worked for me.

Watching the movie, and the ciips from Monkeywhale and Dotmatrix that ran before it on the big screen, I wondered, again, if the downtown folks who not too long ago were talking and talking about "creative culture" even know this stuff (or this stuff) is going on.

I know that saying "corporate media work for the establishment" makes me sound like a dirty hippie but, y'know, it's largely true. In this case, the editorial bosses at the Washington Post get to be outraged with the rest of us, because the thing blew up before they showed up for it, but the peek at how the people who pay the bills see journalism is instructive.

One of the least-flattering details in last Sunday's article about Greensboro College was the bit about Craven Williams charging his wife's sessions with a personal trainer to the cash-strapped school. Today two letters dispute that claim, and the N&R has appended a correction to the online version of the article. Let's hope a visibly-placed print correction is on the way.

But is GC really just facing "the same economic headwinds that confront every college in the country today," as its restructuring consultants claim in their letter? Or is it facing those circumstances, which are real and painful, along with others more particular to its own situation?

Kay Hagan supports a watered-down public option for health insurance.

North Carolina elected a moderate Democrat, and she's acting like a moderate Democrat.

Binker's interesting article on Hagan's choice (I couldn't find it at the N&R site; it's buried on A6 of the print edition) makes much of the tension between liberals and the Senator, as do liberals themselves. And it's true that as a moderate NC Dem, she is cozy with big business and leery of looking librul.

Which makes her position on healthcare reform an indication of just how mainstream the issue has become.

Flag-burning amendment time, yet again.

It never gets old.

I wonder what the talking flag is up to these days.

Not unrelated.

I think Ryan Shell is onto something with his idea about increasing the number of bus shelters and benches. More data needed on the specifics, but the general notion that public transportation should offer a certain quality of experience is a good one. Interesting to see a candidate for City Council floating ideas on the web, rather than just voicing platitudes.

Some ways people are saving money. We need a bigger shift, a change in the culture to the point where people don't buy stuff they don't need even when they have credit, because they recognize thrift as a value and not just an emergency measure.

"To succeed, the Tea Party movement needs to remain true to the grassroots," says Glenn Reynolds. Agreed. I'd be interested to hear what he thinks of the top-down approach seen in Raleigh.

Ian McDowell is auctioning off a real treasure to help his dad. Read the story here, bid on the book containing hand-written fiction by Neil Gaiman and others here.

Bad review of the day: "I hate the new Tully Hall. To me it is everything Lincoln Center and its enthusiasts insist it is not. I find it corporate, sterile, claustrophobic and as acoustically arid a hall as I’ve ever heard."

Obama is bringing the fight for healthcare reform to the states, including ours. An event is scheduled for Greensboro on July 23.

Unless a great many people learn the basics of online crap detection and begin applying their critical faculties en masse and very soon, I fear for the future of the Internet as a useful source of credible news, medical advice, financial information, educational resources, scholarly and scientific research.

More: "Basic information literacy, widely distributed, is the best protection for the knowledge commons: A sufficient portion of critical consumers among the online population can become a strong defense against the noise-death of the Internet."

"The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama Bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States." The country for which this would be such a good thing is...the United States.

Federal IT projects are notorious for cost overruns and outright failures. US CIO Vivek Kundra has a plan - and some technology - to address that festering problem.

N&R takes a tidbit about a trip to DC and cracks a big story about downtown development. Roy Carroll's connection to the junket is explained - he's a boardmember of CFGG, which is helping to lead the charge - although that explanation won't mollify concerns about his courtship of elected officials. Worth remembering that other high-dollar downtown projects have turned out to be vaporware in the recent past.

"Didn't cross the sex line." That's how Mark Sanford describes his physical relationships with women other than his wife and his mistress. Reminds me of sorority girls who were said to be doing "everything but."

"Walker Sanders, president of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, confirmed Tuesday his group is organizing a trip to Washington to meet with every local delegate’s office about the foundation’s plans to redevelop the South Elm Street area of downtown."

Hmm. The N&R says the report was "confirmed," but it doesn't say where it came from in the first place. Seems like a statement from the mayor to another media outlet is worth acknowledging.

The Al Franken Decade may be upon us at last.

UPDATE: Coleman concedes.

Greensboro Mayor Yvonne Johnson called to express her concern for Geoff Marshall, who had his gear stolen during a stopover in our town. She asked if she and others could make a small financial contribution to his cause, and I told her about this effort to help him out.

Mayor Yvonne Johnson, along with Guilford County Commission chair Skip Alston, Community Foundation president Walker Sanders, and a representative from the school board, will fly to Washington this week to lobby elected officials for federal money for an education-based redevelopment project at the corner of South Elm and Lee.

The request for $15 million will be made to Senators Burr and Hagan, and to Reps. Coble and Watt.

The group will be flown to DC at no tax-payer expense by developer Roy Carroll, says Johnson.

One of the things that 9/11 Changed Forever^TM was the news media, which once favored stories about shark attacks and missing interns over news of deeper importance.

Marikay Abuzuaiter will kick off her campaign for an at-large seat on the Greensboro City Council with an event at Studio B, 520 South Elm Street, from 2-4 PM on Sunday July 12.

From the announcement: "Come get to know Marikay, listen to music and enjoy a variety of wonderful desserts!"

If you want to help Geoff Marshall, the guy who had his equipment stolen while visiting Greensboro, you can go here to make a donation.

Public option options. "94 percent of the country's insurance markets are defined as 'highly concentrated,' according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that's led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007."

More here.

My first newspaper column on the subject of blogging ran in 2002, back when we still had to stop to explain what a blog was. Found it while thinking about my upcoming column. We've come a long way, baby.

At the last minute, after considerable coaxing, [Hagan] walked across the street and met with over 200 North Carolinians for a few minutes. She made an informal speech, which was mostly "happy talk" and studiously avoided endorsing a public option, even when asked about it directly. Many of us are worried Sen. Hagan is more concerned about the corporate health care giants than she is about the health care of average North Carolinians.

Selma and Mike Taylor of Greensboro went Washington to meet with our elected officials. Full story after the jump.

I hadn't heard about the rally in DC, but, hey, did you know Michael Jackson died?

Geoff Marshall stopped in Greensboro last night on his Underground USA tour. He awoke to a smashed window in his car.

"They took my main kick-arse video editing PC. My prosumer Sony DV video camera. My Nikon D200 stills camera. About $6000 of technology, taken, stolen, gone. And without it, I don’t know if I can carry on."

He asks, "What do I do?"

Bonus points to John Hammer for working Bill Clinton into his conspiracy theory (third item) about the Air France crash. I look forward to future episodes starring Vince Foster and Ron Brown.

UPDATE: Thanks to alert reader TL for forwarding the hoax email debunked at this link.

A fairly definitive investigation of Jughead's hat, including its origins and social significance. Goober Pyle and the still breathing Jeff Goldblum are invoked.

You've got to hand it to the folks behind the "liberal media" meme. They've said it so long and so often that people just accept it as the truth, no matter how much evidence there is that corporate media work for the establishment.

Kay Hagan's picture graces the front page of Talking Points Memo, unfortunately: "Hagan Continues To Be Key Obstacle To Public Option In The Senate."

Previously: Who does Kay work for?

If anyone's got an account at the Chronicle of Higher Education, I'd love to read the article cited in this piece by Lorraine Ahearn about the financial woes at Greensboro College.

UPDATE: Thnx to alert reader mc for the login info. What struck me about the CHE article, aside from the criticism of GC's emergency measures, was the apparent surprise with which faculty met the news of the college's financial troubles. Rumors of GC's financial stress have been all over town for years, but somehow the campus seems to have remained in a bubble.

Ian McDowell says the fight scenes in Dogs of Chinatown are "really impressive, with long takes, no cheating edits, and lots of real contact." The locally-produced film plays for the next several days at 7:30 PM at the Carousel on Battleground.

Sue blames NC legislators for the Amazon fiasco. Betsy says Amazon is teh suck. Amazon says, You're next, Hawaii.