The Occasional Observer

Carmine left

May you all have a happy and healthy Turkey Day!

Blessings to all of you and your families.

From the WSJ:

A Kentucky Census worker found hanging from a tree with "fed" scrawled on his chest committed suicide and staged his death to look like a homicide, authorities said Tuesday.

Read the rest here.

It's about as rare as Haley's comet, but SNL has yet another skit mocking Obama, this one focused on his trip to China. It takes a little while to get going but it's pretty good.

Jon Kyl could barely contain himself. Meanwhile, over at the RGA meeting, Gov. Daniels (aka, "the blade") took care of business by laying bare the Dem lies regarding the costs of the health care bill:


This guy keeps saying he won't run for President, but dang if I'm not thinking he shouldn't give it some serious thought.

1) The Fusion wins MotorTrend's 2010 car of the year, and they say it has "a sensational lineup of quality powertrains (for which Ford deserves huge applause), smartly tuned chassis, functional and attractive cabins, and outstanding value."

2) Check out U.S. News' ratings of "affordable mid size sedans." They have the Ford Fusion (and the related Merc Milan and hybrids) as the best available vehicles in class, with Chevy Malibu close behind. Both are ahead of Camry, Accord, and Altima.

3) In entry level luxury, Edmunds did a comparison of the totally revamped 2010 Buick LaCrosse and the Lexus ES (which the LaCrosse was apprarently built to compete with). The result? LaCrosse apparently smokes the Lexus in every conceivable way.

4) The LA Times echoes Edmunds findings here, with the article subtitle reading: "GM's first new car since it emerged from bankruptcy is as good as or better than the ES350 in every way..."

5) And don't look now, but the 2011 Buick Regal will be coming out in the next 6 to 8 months, and looks sweet:

I could easily see a Fusion sport, Regal or LaCrosse in my future.

The Hadley Climatic Research Center (the main guys behind all the global warming nonsence) got hacked. Guess what? They got documents and emails with these guys talking about fudging the numbers to make it fit their model. Read the whole story if you really want to be disgusted. We'll see if the demagogues keep it up anyway.

Iran? Delay tactics? Shocking!

When the US backed the UN plan a month ago that Iran should send its uranium to Russia for enrichment, and Iran agreed to consider the proposal, all indications from the WH and MSM were that this was finally the big breakthrough. See, diplomacy does work, all you need to do is extend an open hand.

Except that once again, it does not. To the surprise of no one with an IQ above 10, Iran rejected this latest offer. And once again, in playing the "we'll take that proposal into consideration" game, they bought themselves yet another month to create their nuclear weapons program unfettered.

When will Obama and ElBaradei get it? Their naivete is a massive joke, with Iranian leaders pulling their puppet strings any which way.

SEOUL, South Korea - Showing impatience with Iranian foot-dragging, President Barack Obama said Thursday that the U.S. and its allies are discussing possible new penalties to bring fresh pressure on Iran for defying international attempts to halt its contested nuclear program.

Obama's warning came after Iran rejected a compromise proposal to ship its low-enriched uranium abroad so that it could not be further enriched to make weapons.

Well, college hoops season is well underway. As many of you know, I've been a lifelong Johnnies' fan. However, I'm thinking of switching my allegiance to Villanova.

Here are my pros and cons.

Pros:
1. Jay Wright knows how to run a program, I can easily get behind the team.
2. Catholic to Catholic school swap.
3. In all my years of watching Big East hoops, 'Nova never bothered me. Only G-town and UConn would be out of the question for me.
4. Johnnies show no sign of taking their hoops program seriously ever again and turning it around. I'm a patient fan (see point #5), but come on.
5. As a Mets, Jets and ND fan I can only take so much for so long. I need SOMETHING. 'Nova would give me that winning team.

Cons:
1. Can't really think of any, except that I strongly prefer to keep my allegiances and root for the hometown team.

Any thoughts?

From the L.I. Press:

Next week would have been Rodney Dangerfield’s 89th birthday. Can’t let it go by without giving you 10 of his one-liners.

-I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.

-A girl phoned me the other day and said, “Come on over, there’s nobody home.” I went over. Nobody was home.

-Once when I was lost…I saw a policeman and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, “Do you think we’ll ever find them?” He said, “I don’t know, kid…there are so many places they can hide.”

-If it weren’t for pickpockets, I’d have no sex life at all.

-During sex, my girlfriend always wants to talk to me. Just the other night she called me from a hotel.

-I was such an ugly kid…when I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.

-I was such an ugly baby…my mother never breastfed me. She told me that she only liked me as a friend.

-I’m so ugly…my father carries around the picture of the kid who came with his wallet.

-I’m so ugly…my mother had morning sickness after I was born.

-I’m so ugly…I worked in a pet shop, and people kept asking how big I’d get.

So let me get this straight. We're going to get health care reform that will increase the number of insured people, while NOT increasing the number of doctors, REDUCE the total budget deficit, and NOT end up rationing services?

Really?

I've got a two-syllable word for you and I'll give you the first syllable: Bull.

The rationing has already begun. As this Reuters article states, experts are suggesting that the ONLY motivation by the U.S. Task Force to reduce mammograms for women over 40 is to cut spending.

"These new recommendations seem to reflect a conscious decision to ration care," Lee said in a statement.

Can't wait to see what other "frivolous" medical procedures are eliminated as we move forward.

why don't you just ask him what happens when the flesh eating bacteria strike? See, if you're not sufficiently fat enough, the bacteria give up on your love handles and go straight for the vitals. But satiate them with a healthy roll of back fat? You can win this fight, gentlemen.

Edward Pinto, formerly the chief credit officer for Fannie Mae, spells out how typical well-meaning, but ill-conceived liberal legislation combined with Fannie, Freddie and ACORN led to the housing bubble that burst to give us the recent near economic collapse. It's too dense with sad facts to paraphrase.

When my grandfather used to call me a meathead when I did something dumb, he was actually helping me. I knew all the doting, praising-at-any-cost, baby einstein watching stuff was crap. Check out this article on cracked.com (may not be sfw).

I earlier posted this: "Once you control spending, you can cut the taxes. We've got to move away from the starve-the-beast model which just hasn't worked."

No comments.

I'm interested if that's b/c you guys agree, disagree, or just don't care. This is, to me, probably the most important issue out there going forward, and at the core of how I think the GOP needs to redefine itself. Don't cede the notion of "responsibility" to Obama and his ilk, especially when they're the ones bailing out their cronies (See: W, UA).

Of course, there are probably lots of seasoned politicians who would tell you a tighten-the-belt candidate is as well liked as a bowl of rice when you're already constipated. Or something like that.

1.75L of Evan Williams + 1.75L of Sobieski.

Total expenditure < $45.

Looks like the Nassau County Executive Race is going the way of the GOP.

On election night, the tally had Suozzi (D) up 200+ votes on Mangano (R). After the re-canvass of all the machines, with GOP and Dem party officials monitoring the count, Mangano is now up 497 votes. That's nearly a 700 vote swing in the GOP's direction when the counters are being monitored. Draw your own conclusions.

There are still thousands of absentee ballots to be counted, but both Newsday and LI Press have reported that they are expected to lean GOP. Look's like Mangano is sitting pretty right now.

No, not the fact that the stimulus funds were wasted. Not the fact that the number of created/saved jobs was wildly exaggerated. And certainly not the fact that Massachusetts severely inflated and falsified numbers.

The real shocker is that the Boston Globe has actually exposed it. First sentence:

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated.

My favorite quote: One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’

That's quite a correction.

are suing to preserve an Indian team name and mascot (in this case, Fighting Sioux), and the PC police (in this case, the NCAA) is requiring a team to drop the name even though the Indians like it.

WTH?

In case any of you haven't seen this yet, it's probably the most enjoyable smack down on the impending nationalization of our health care system. Here's the opening:

The King James version of the Bible runs more than 600 pages and is crammed with celestial regulations. Newton's Principia Mathematica distilled many of the rules of physics in a mere 974 pages.

Neither have anything on Nancy Pelosi's new fiendishly entertaining health-care opus, which tops 1,900 pages.

So curl up by a fire with a fifth of whiskey and just dive in.

But drink quickly. In the new world, your insurance choices will be tethered to decisions made by people with Orwellian titles ("1984" was only 268 pages!) like the "Health Choices Commissioner" or "Inspector General for the Health Choices Administration."

You will, of course, need to be plastered to buy Pelosi's fantastical proposition that 450,000 words of new regulations, rules, mandates, penalties, price controls, taxes and bureaucracy will have the transformative power to "provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending . . . ."

By the way, any guesses how much control the government has over you when they pay for any bad health decisions you make? Once the government foots the bill if you get sick or hurt, think they might have something to say about whether you're allowed to eat certain kinds of food, drive certain kinds of cars, etc.? Is there any decision you make in your daily life that can be completely divorced from health care cost? If not, is there anything that the government couldn't regulate once they're paying for your doctors, Rx, etc.?

Love the sound of this new proposal that starts focusing the GOP on spending instead of taxes. Once you control spending, you can cut the taxes. We've got to move away from the starve-the-beast model which just hasn't worked.

Race 4 '12 has the details here.

It seems like the Brits may require sex ed. without the option to withdraw. Will this come to the U.S. next? I personally want to pay close attention to what the school will tell my sons about sex. If I don't like it, I'll fight to withdraw them, regardless of what some bureaucrat says.

Predictably, the Senate Dems don't want to apportion congressional districts based only on citizens, but on the total number of people living there.

Read here

A great night for the GOP, with McDonnell and Christie providing the signature wins. But it wasn't just the big races that were important. In Nassau County, the GOP picked up 2 seats and regained control of the Legislature; and Mangano trails Suozzi for County Executive by a mere 0.1% of the vote (237 votes out of approx 235K cast) in a race that will involve absentee ballots and perhaps a recount. It's a shame that the Conservative Party didn't endorse Mangano, as that would most certainly have pushed him over the top--Hansen received over 9,000 votes. All in all, much to be encouraged about.

To all the newly elected GOP officials: get to work sharpening that axe. Let's get spending under control.

A very interesting article in Forbes points out that there has been an ongoing exodus of educated middle-class people from the blue stronghold cities such as Boston and New York.

Here are some good tidbits that hit close to home:

Massive public spending increases over the past decade in California, New
Jersey, Illinois and New York have gone overwhelmingly into the pockets and
pensions of public employees.

The American Association of State Highway Transportation, for example, ranked
New York 43rd in the country and New Jersey dead last in terms of quality of
roads. Some 46% of the Garden State's roads were rated in poor condition,
compared with the national average of 13%, even as the state's spending reached
new highs. The typical New Jersey driver spends almost $600 a year in auto
repairs necessitated by the poor conditions of the roads.

There are lots of implications here. I'd love to see an analysis of what this will do to the electoral map. I have a feeling it will just make the blue bluer and the red redder. What does this do to the economies of these states? What does it do to the tax burden of those who remain in the blue cities and the surrounding suburbs?

I was very disappointed today when I voted to see many of the candidates here in Suffolk ran unopposed. I'd run for a government position, but I actually like to work for a living.

I saw a headline on digg from the NYTs today that caught my eye. I was foolishly optimistic about the content: NYT: GORE'S BIG PROFITS FROM 'GLOBAL WARMING'....

I'd love to see a website where the reader's take NYTs stories and rewrite them how they should have been written without bias. But alas, it is a fool's errand to pursue.

Get to the polls this Tuesday! Nassau county elections are destined to be very close. If you haven't already made sure you're friends relatives are voting for lower taxes and a stronger economy (e.g., for Republicans), now is the time.

Vote Mangano for County Executive!