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By Gregory Taggart, December 2, 2012 5:05 pm

You can find it here. I’ve attended at least three of the Choir’s annual Christmas Concerts, one with Sissel and David McCullough, another with Natalie Cole, and finally one with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Edward Hermann. Around Christmas, these concerts are one of the hottest tickets anywhere. They’re free, but you can only get them via a random, on-line selection process described here. As you’ll see, it’s too late to get ticket for this year, but put it on your calendar for next year.

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By Gregory Taggart, November 30, 2012 8:39 am

Kevin Williamson is a conservative columnist that I trust. I base my trust on the fact that when he swings his scythe through the political weeds, he is indiscriminate. Both bad Republican and bad Democrat ideas fall by the wayside–or would if he actually had any power. In National Review today, he cuts into the fiscal cliff debate, revealing it for what it is–a charade.

Chew on this quote from his article for a moment:

The fundamental unseriousness of the fiscal-cliff debate can be appreciated by examining [Senator Bob] Corker’s (R-Tenn.) plan . . ., which probably is very close to the best that deficit hawks could hope for in terms of a bipartisan compromise — which is to say, precious little. At best, the Corker plan would reduce the growth of U.S. federal debt by about $4.5 trillion over the next decade, but it would not eliminate the deficit or reduce the debt, and it would allow for trillions of dollars to be added to the wrong side of the national ledger. (emphasis supplied)

To repeat, just in case you didn’t grasp Williamson’s point: Corker’s plan would only reduce the growth in Federal spending over 10 years. It does not actually reduce the debt, which will continue to grow and grow and grow and so on. In other words, under Corker’s plan–and he’s a Republican, mind you; a so-called deficit hawk–10 years from now our national debt would be much larger than it is today–“trillions of [new] dollars” on the “wrong side of the national ledger,” Williamson writes–just not as large as it would be without Corker’s plan.

Some wise people argue for more spending in times like these to keep the economy moving along. When they do, they generally talk about raising taxes and spending the new revenue on our infrastructure. I’m conflicted on this subject. I see the need and I’d like to contribute, but the apparent unseriousness of the people who would actually be collecting and spending the dollars brings to mind a drunk teenager asking his parents for the keys to the family car.

And so the game continues. Somewhere, Nero is stringing his violin.

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By Gregory Taggart, November 13, 2012 1:06 pm

http://youtu.be/g9fKYLuwxVU

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By Gregory Taggart, November 5, 2012 12:39 pm

A corporation is a corporation is a corporation. And if NBC can promote or the National Geographic Channel can air Harvey Weinstein’s Seal Team Six two days before the election–to little or no criticism by critics of the Citizen United decision–then all the sturum and drang about the Supreme Court’s decision must have been much ado about nothing.

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By Gregory Taggart, November 3, 2012 10:41 am

So this morning, I followed a link on Twitter to a story in Politico and learned something about Mitt Romney (and therefore me) that I had never supposed. Apparently journalist and WSJ contributor Paul Levy doesn’t think much of Mitt Romney (and therefore me):

“It’s very simple: I think Romney [and therefore me] is a dangerous religious freak whose election [not mine] will cripple America,” said Levy, who has donated $225 to Obama this year.

In the early morning–I was still in bed, reading on my smartphone–that was bad enough. But then I realized that Levy’s was the only quote in the story wherein any of the people quoted gave a reason for their contribution. Worse still, that quote appeared in the 4th paragraph–just 14 short lines in even shorter paragraphs–into the story, with no similarly outrageous reference to President Obama being a closet Muslim to balance the tale. An in-kind campaign contribution to the Obama campaign if you will–in an article about journalists contributing actual dollars to campaigns. (I wonder if they can spell IRONY at Politico.)

Well, you can imagine how I felt. I immediately sought refuge among my friends on Facebook. Wrong move that. Quicker than a Mormon man jumping from one polygamous bed to the next, I stumbled upon the following gem on Joanna Brooks’s wall:

It seems that Lisa, apparently and entirely unaware of her audience, decided it would be nice to establish her street creds as one who can separate the wheat from the chaff. Speaking for those in Lisa’s version of chaff (I live in Utah Country), I’ll report that thresher she is not.

Anyway, I’m now awake, and even though I was awaken rudely, I am fine. I’m sure Paul and Lisa would want to know that.

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By Gregory Taggart, October 19, 2012 3:06 pm

Yes, I realize that. . . And I understand that . . . as well. Still, this poster is ironic, no?

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By Gregory Taggart, September 30, 2012 2:58 pm

Back in the summer of 1995, I was sitting on a grassy hill in the middle of UC-Berkeley’s campus with my daughter Caroline. It was new-student orientation week, and she and I were there to be oriented before she began school that fall. We had driven to Berkeley from Provo, Utah, our home for the previous four years and just 45 minutes down I-15 from Salt Lake City, the epicenter of Mormonism. Now if Mormonism teaches anything besides Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon, it teaches about the importance of families. We have Family Home Evening. We have the song “Families Can Be Together Forever.” We have temples where families are sealed together for “time and all eternity.” We have “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” In short, Mormons like families. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that some of us may actually believe Mormons invented the family.

So there I was sitting on that hill with my daughter in the middle of possibly the most liberal college campus in the United States, across the Bay from possibly the most liberal city in the U.S. and the second largest city in maybe the most liberal state in the Union–sorry Massachusetts. And what did I see? Hundreds of mothers and fathers sitting on the same grassy hill with their sons and daughters, eating box lunches before the afternoon’s activities. Their children, like my daughter, were about to separate from their family and move on. Then it hit me: Most, if not all, of those parents were not from Utah. Few were Mormon. Yet, like me, they were excited for their children’s future even as they were anxious for their safety. Like me, they were going to miss their children. Like mine, their family was about to be changed forever. I laughed because I realized that I had spent so much time in the Utah Bubble that I had almost come to think that Mormons had the corner on families. Seeing all those mothers and fathers on that grassy hill brought me back to reality.

Now Utah doesn’t have a corner on bubbles either. I’m mean count ’em: There’s the Beltway Bubble, the Liberal Bubble, the Media Bubble, the Conservative Bubble. Bubbles here, bubbles there, bubbles everywhere. The world is a virtual Lawrence Welk Show.

With that in mind, I’d like to step outside my Conservative Bubble for a moment to point you towards a blog post by Nina Camic, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She tells the story of her stint as an au pair to the daughter of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. Upon hearing about his recent death, she wrote:

A pause for reflection.

I came to live in the States as an adult (if you can call 18 adult) because of the goodness of a person who died today. I was an au pair to his little girl. I learned through him and his wife how to transition from Warsaw to New York again. I came with barely a flight bag full of clothes and possessions and joined a household that had a staff of helpers and an extended family of cousins, aunts, nephews — all intensely close, bonded in ways that history sometimes bonds people because of unusual circumstances. That I was treated kindly is such an understatement that I can’t even quite say it. The father of my charge will always in my mind be the person who liked nothing better than to drive away from the city, to the country home, fire up the grill and throw some meats for an evening supper with just his little girl, his wife and the au pair from Poland. After dinner, he and I would clean up in the kitchen and if I learned how to wipe down every last inch of counterspace it was because he taught me well. He was too kind for words and his little girl was just like him, making my au pair duties about the easiest that could be.

So, my thoughts are very much with the kids he leaves behind. Kids… How oddly stated! Kids. We were that once.

Yup, we were all kids once, and we’re all grown-ups now, men and women. Most of us, most of the time, are even good grown-ups. In the last days of this never-ending and way overheated presidential election, it’s worth remembering that even the former publisher and CEO of The New York Times–that bête noire of conservatives everywhere–was a kid once and was, apparently, a very good, kind, and generous man.

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By Gregory Taggart, September 22, 2012 10:32 am

So Mormon author (and sometimes critic of Mormonism) Joanna Brooks is all a-Twitter about the need for a big-tent Mormonism.

Just don’t give Mitt Romney the address to the tent.