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Gov. Paul LePage of Maine happened to be waiting for his flight at Augusta State Airport on a recent Saturday when the weekend crush began.

A turboprop Pilatus PC-12 carrying Melissa Thomas, her daughter, her daughter’s friend and a pile of lacrosse equipment took off for their home in Connecticut, following the girls’ three-week stay at Camp All-Star in nearby Kents Hill, Me. Shortly after, a Cessna Citation Excel arrived, and a mother, a father and their 13-year-old daughter emerged carrying a pink sleeping bag and two large duffel bags, all headed to Camp Vega in Fayette.

“Love it, love it, love it,” Mr. LePage said of the private-plane traffic generated by summer camps. “I wish they’d stay a week while they’re here. This is a big business.”

For decades, parents in the Northeast who sent their children to summer camp faced the same arduous logistics of traveling long distances to remote towns in Maine, New Hampshire and upstate New York to pick up their children or to attend parents’ visiting day.

Awww, but fear not. Now those same parents can send little Janie and Johnny off to camp on a private plane, while nattering with each other about how bourgeois those who drive are.

But some parents have already tired of this private-plane status infiltrating the simpler world of summer camp. Nancy Chemtob, a divorce lawyer, made several summer trips to Maine in the past decade, where her children attended camp. She once managed to get on a charter plane from the airport in East Hampton, N.Y., for $750 (her husband had hung a sign in the airport seeking a ride). After listening to enough banter among parents about “who is flying, who is flying private, who they can get a lift home with,” she decided she “was done with Maine and the planes and all of the people.”

“It’s a crazy world out there,” she added. She now sends her children to camp in Europe.

Welcome to the lives of the anonymous, nouveau riche living in banal-land. God forbid they'd have to fork over any more taxes. What would happen to little Janie and Johnny?

C&L takes the culture of life pledge

Check out my new post at Jesus General: "That god-fearing patriot from Crooks and Liars has come up with a living will for stem cell research. I hope it catches on. Greater love hath no man than he lay down the life of his family for that of a gooey collection of protoplasm."

Stem Cell Research Living Will

God Bless This Mess

Ezra Klein talks about a new ABC pilot that has Drudge (and the Drudgekateers) up in arms. Commander-in-Chief, starring Democrat activist Geena Davis as the President of the United States, for the fall schedule.

Jesse Taylor talks about it here: You do, however, have to love the unironic link to the Newsmax summary of the Joe Klein article in which Klein points out that it might be a bad idea for Hillary to run because publications like Newsmax will go batshit crazy.

. Powerline: The Great Unraveling

Powerline :A Sad Day

"What I don't understand is why this tragic case should be an occasion for the partisan hatred which currently bedevils our public life.

" I don't know how to account for it, unless one concludes that for some liberals, politics is about hate, period."

A picture of right wing zealots calling for Jeb Bush's head, yet it's liberals who hate.

Powerline again:

Why? Maybe they have "fallen half in love with death," as Noonan suggests? Or maybe they are just frustrated by losing elections, seeing the tide turn in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East (must Terri die for Bush's "sins"?), etc. Whatever the case, it makes for a sad and sorry spectacle.

A Christian conservative judge (with a price on his head) backed by the Conservative lead Supreme Court is ruling on this case, yet it's Bush hating liberals that are some how calling the shots. They should take a look in the mirror to find where the real hate is coming from.

Dan Rather retires and the religious right takes its shots!

There can be many things said about Dan Rather, but this one was the most ridiculous we heard all day.

Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition appeared on "Hardball" with Marty Kaplan of the USC Annenberg School of Communications and took her shots at Dan.

Video

Andrea: "I don't think he likes Americans!"

Matthews: "Dan Rather doesn't like Americans?"

Andrea: 'I don't think so. I think he's a grumpy old guy."

Marty: "Andrea, you just made my point about the right wing as well as I could ever possibly make it."

Here are some of the 'values" of TVC:

"Right To Life We also believe the government has the power to take the lives of those who murder others ...

Pornography: Pornography is a progressive addiction that ruins the conscience of the person. Frequently, this person acts out his sexual fantasies by molesting children, raping girls, and committing other sexual crimes—including murder.

Discrimination And Tolerance: We are not tolerant of behaviors that destroy individuals, families, and our culture. Individuals may be free to pursue such behaviors as sodomy, but we will not and cannot tolerate these behaviors. They frequently lead to death.

Love And Hate: The Bible teaches us that we are to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us.

Nutty, Nutty from The Poorman

There are two sides to every coins. There is yin; there is yang. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you kill Obi Wan, he becomes more powerful than you could possibly imagine. Such is the way of the universe, and, if you are feeling a little disheartened by Bush's re-election, try to take a more holistic view: for every gloomy you, there's a happy Bob Jones. The cosmic balance is restored.

November 3, 2004

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The media tells us that you have received the largest number of popular votes of any president in America's history. Congratulations!

In your re-election, God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.

Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you.

Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Bible says I must (I Thessalonians 5:18). It would have been hard, but because the Lord lifts up whom He will and pulls down whom He will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term. Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years—a brief time only—to leave an imprint for righteousness up upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God.

Christ said, If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my father honour (John 12:26).

The student body, faculty, and staff at Bob Jones University commit ourselves to pray for you—that you would do right and honoor the Savior. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them. Conservative Americans would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.

Best wishes.

Sincerely your friend,

Bob Jones III
President

PS: A few moments ago I read this letter to the students in Chapel. They applauded loudly their approval.

When I told them that Tom Daschle was no longer the minority leader of the Senate, they cheered again.

On occasion, Christians have not agreed with things you said during your first term. Nonetheless, we could not be more thankful that God has given you four more years to serve Him in the White House, never taking off your Christian faith and laying it aside as a man takes off a jacket, but living, speaking, and making decisions as one who knows the Bible to be eternally true.

Bob Jones: not opposing interracial dating as a tool of the anti-Christ since August of 2000! (The Pope is still Satan, though. On some things, there can be no compromise.)

What Gives?

Time and Newsweek both registered massive bounces for Bush during the Republican National Convention. Rasmussen says he would be showing Bush with a five point bounce (and, therefore, a four point lead) except his Saturday sample was terrible for Bush, giving him a slight 1.2 percent lead in the three day moving average. Now Gallup is showing a two point bounce based on a weekend poll that's moved Bush from one point behind to one point ahead (and now we're in the territory where sampling error matters, so it's not entirely clear than anything changed at all). Obviously, something a bit nutty is going on with polls taken on, say, Friday showing dramatically different results from polls taken over the weekend. Is this "faster public opinion" where people love Bush after seeing his speak and then forget all about it after 36 hours of hurricane coverage? As I recall something similarly screwy happened with Kerry -- he got a big bounce on Friday and then by the following Monday it was gone.

It's hard for me to understand the psychology of folks who would let their votes be swung by a speech -- we've had four years to watch Bush and his performance in office seems like an infinitely better guide to what you should do than is a speech -- so from my point of view there's really no telling.

MSNBC presented me with a panel discussion on moral values the other night that was moderated by Mike Barnicle, the famous literary grave-robber, that also featured Lawrence Kudlow, the famous cocaine-guzzling financier, and Joe Scarborough, the famous wife-dumping ex-congressperson. (Carl Bernstein was also there, running with a worse crowd than he ever did when he was hanging with Don Segretti.)

Anyway, this brood of B-list vipers blathered on from Hell until breakfast, driving me to one of the Internets on which I discovered this and then, this.

Consider: a plagiarist moderates a discussion on "values" with one guy who chucked the frau overboard the first chance he had, and a stock-market pimp who once put half of Medellin up his nose. The discussion is carried on further by a degenerate gambler writing on behalf of an institution that is giving its "Leadership Award" to a pill-popping creature of the strip-mall night who's currently working on Wife No. 4. Welcome to the mystical body of suckers, y'all.

As with most things, The Founder had a good eye for the likes of Bill (Sportin' Life) Bennett and the rest of the Green Room Sanhedrin: "Alas for you...you hypocrites! You who are like whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of corruption." (Matthew 23: 27-28).

Infrastructurist: The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, Shown in Graph

The Pump Handle: The general public has become slightly more aware of the fact that going to work – especially in the energy industry – can be dangerous, but how long will that awareness last?

TheZoo: The Blow-Out Preventer

Eunomia: Love of Liberty

FAIR Blog: WaPo or The Onion?

Brilliant at Breakfast: Classless Warfare