Tom Faranda's Folly

U.S. Women's soccer goal that advanced them into the quarterfinals

At the Olympics of course. The only goal of the game and a good one, by Abby Wambach.

 

USA Olympic swimming team video - you may want to start rooting for France ...

Only been out a few days (it says) and already way over 3 million views.

I guess I just don't see the charm -

 

Ross Douthat continues as a voice of sanity at the NY Times: "Defining Religious Liberty Down"

Of course he's restricted to one column a week, but he always gets to the heart of the matter.

On "Defining Religious Liberty Down". 

THE words “freedom of belief” do not appear in the First Amendment. Nor do the words “freedom of worship.” Instead, the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans something that its authors called “the free exercise” of religion.

I cannot improve upon the way the first lady of the United States
explained this issue, speaking recently to a conference of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church. “Our faith journey
isn’t just about showing up on Sunday,” Michelle Obama said. “It’s
about what we do Monday through Saturday as well ... Jesus didn’t limit
his ministry to the four walls of the church. He was out there fighting
injustice and speaking truth to power every single day.”       

But Mrs. Obama’s words notwithstanding, there seems to be a great deal
of confusion about this point in the Western leadership class today.   

You can see this confusion at work in the Obama White House’s own
Department of Health and Human Services, which created a religious
exemption to its mandate requiring employers to pay for contraception,
sterilization and the days-after pill that covers only churches, and
treats religious hospitals, schools and charities as purely secular
operations. The defenders of the H.H.S. mandate note that it protects
freedom of worship, which indeed it does. But a genuine free exercise of
religion, not so much.       

A similar spirit was at work across the Atlantic last month, when a
judge in Cologne, Germany, banned circumcision as a violation of a
newborn’s human rights. Here again, defenders of the decision insisted
that it didn’t trample on any Jew’s or Muslim’s freedom of belief. But
of course to be an adult Jew in good standing, as The Washington Post’s
Charles Lane pointed out, one must circumcise one’s son
at 8 days old. So while the ruling would not technically outlaw Jewish
theology or Jewish worship, it would effectively outlaw Judaism itself.

Now we have the great Chick-fil-A imbroglio, in which mayors and an
alderman in several American cities threatened to prevent the delicious
chicken chain from opening new outlets because its Christian president
told an interviewer that he supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

He goes on, and finishes here -

It may seem strange that anyone could look around the
pornography-saturated, fertility-challenged, family-breakdown-plagued
West and see a society menaced by a repressive puritanism. But it’s
clear that this perspective is widely and sincerely held.       

It would be refreshing, though, if it were expressed honestly, without
the “of course we respect religious freedom” facade.       

If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching,
or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban
Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect
our freedoms. Say what you really think: that the exercise of our
religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to
use the levers of power to bend us to your will.       

Where the President's expression "You didn't build that" first came from.

Someone tracked it down. From James Taranto's WSJ opinionjournal column.

The Shoulders of Giants: Obama didn't build "You didn't build that."

Who built "You didn't build that"? Not President Obama, or his speechwriting team, or even Elizabeth Warren, the leftist Massachusetts Senate candidate who's struck similar themes. Blogger William Jacobson discovers what may be the ur-text, and it dates from 2004:

There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money. He did not make his money alone. He used taxpayer infrastructure. He got rich on what other taxpayers had paid for: the banking system, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and the judicial system, where nine-tenths of cases involve corporate law. These taxpayer investments support companies and wealthy investors. There are no self-made men! The wealthy have gotten rich using what previous taxpayers have paid for. They owe the taxpayers of this country a great deal and should be paying it back.

The source, as with so much in left-wing politics these days, is George Lakoff, the University of California linguist who is the Democratic left's leading light on questions of cognition and rhetoric. That passage comes from "Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: The Essential Guide for Progressives," the only book we can think of with an imperative title, an imperative subtitle and a nominative sub-subtitle.

The central problem with Lakoff's argument is that his idea of a "self-made man" is a straw man. A self-made man is a successful man who succeeded by dint of his own effort. When he says there's "no such thing," he's engaging in the sophistry of strained literalism, pretending that a man can be self-made only if his own effort is a sufficient condition for success. One might as well say there's no such thing as a self-made man because we all have parents, or because God created us, or because we are the product of millions of years of evolution, or because today's innovators stand on the shoulders of giants in the private economy.

That last point is crucial. No one denies that people alive today owe a debt to the past, but Lakoff and his fellow progressives seem to be under the misimpression that government is the only means by which we receive that sort of inheritance. The great industrialists of the 19th and 20th centuries might have paid a lot of taxes, but that wasn't their primary contribution to the world of today.

Still, at least Lakoff gives them credit for some contribution. That paragraph refers six times to "taxpayers," a word that never appears in Obama's July 13 speech. Lakoff thus acknowledges, if only implicitly, the economic truth that it is the private sector that supports the government rather than the other way around. For Obama, it's teachers all the way down.

Justice Scalia talks good sense on gun control - and other issues

In an interview with Chris Wallace over the weekend.

Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Supreme Court's most vocal and conservative justices, said on Sunday that the Second Amendment leaves room for U.S. legislatures to regulate guns, including menacing hand-held weapons.

"It will have to be decided in future cases," Scalia said on Fox News Sunday. But there were legal precedents from the days of the Founding Fathers that banned frightening weapons which a constitutional originalist like himself must recognize. There were also "locational limitations" on where weapons could be carried, the justice noted.

When asked if that kind of precedent would apply to assault weapons, or 100-round ammunition magazines like those used in the recent Colorado movie theater massacre, Scalia declined to speculate. "We'll see," he said. '"It will have to be decided."

As an originalist scholar, Scalia looks to the text of the Constitution—which confirms the right to bear arms—but also the context of 18^th-century history. “They had some limitations on the nature of arms that could be borne," he told host Chris Wallace.

There's a bit more, if you hit the link.

Ryan Lochte's out-of-the-pool training regime

Looks like Lochte (he's 27) will be a dominant swimmer at this year's Olympics. He buried the competition on Saturday in an individual medley race (Michael Phelps came fourth). he did well in 2008, but was still disappointed.

NBC ran an interview with him - John McEnroe did the interview - before the race, with some video of his workout regimen. There are several videos of him online - here's one that's a 2 minute gatorade commercial and is pretty neat. Gatorade Inside The Edge: Ryan Lochte

The one below a bit of an advert for the gym where he works out. His trainer is an ex-Strongman competitor. It seems like every sport now puts an emphasis on dynamic weight training and jumping drills.

Romney ad responding to the "it worked" President comment

I posted about Obama's comment a few days ago. Mr. Obama on the economy: "We tried our plan and it worked" . I said "I hope he keeps speaking like this."

Here's the inevitable Romney ad - shooting fish in a barrel.

 

Best part of Olympic opening ceremony; Queen Elizabeth parachuting in

Brigid and I watched the ceremony - I thought it was mixed - some excellent bits and some tedious. We were quite thrilled to see the Cayman Islands was represented (really - since we lived there for two years).

Here's the Queen's arrival - unless NBC makes them pull the vid.

 

CNN President resigns

I suppose because their ratings are very poor.

“CNN needs new thinking,” Walton wrote in a note to staff this morning. “I have interests to explore, I need to give myself time to do [them].

 

Olympics open today; here's my all-time favorite race - 1988 women's 400 m hurdles

The 400 m hurdles has got to be the toughest race - virtually a sprint and jump over the hurdles!

I remember I had taped this live on our VCR, along with lots of other races. Last night I went looking for it on youtube. The vid below is what Brigid and I saw - the USA feed. I also found the Australian feed, and the UK feed and have links to them. Interesting to see the different commentaries.

The Aussie runner's sister had died just a few days before the race. What a finish!

 

Here's the Aussie feed - a minute and a half.

And the British feed - 4 and a half minutes long.

NY Times continues to loss money

UPDATE: Forbes has a very good article on the NYT New York Times Q2 Earnings: Caught Between Past And Future

It can't keep up with the times (the internet). Plus, it's demographic is older liberals, which is a shrinking group.

The net loss was $88.1 million, or 60 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $119.7 million, or 79 cents a share, in the period a year earlier, when the company wrote down the value of its regional newspapers, which it later sold.

Increases in circulation and digital subscriptions contributed to a 0.6 percent increase in revenue, to $515.2 million. But a $194.7 million write-down of About.com, the online resource guide the company bought in 2005, weighed on profits. The Times Company had an operating loss of $143.6 million in the quarter ended June 24, compared with an operating profit of $31.5 million in the period a year earlier.

Facebook exceeds Wall Street expectations; stock drops anyway

You have to feel that analysts have no confidence in FB or it's management. closed yesterday at $26 (down from it's IPO price of $38) and then dropped another 2+ bucks in after-hours trading.

Facebook Modestly Beats Wall Street's Low Expectations, Stock Tanks Anyway

Rugby: South Hemisphere Super Rugby playoffs; Canterbury vs. South African Bulls

Here's the first qualifier which I posted a couple of days ago Durban Bulls vs. Brisbane Reds.

This match was played in Canterbury, New Zealand.

80 year old lobster gets reprieve!

Guy buys it at a restaurant and releases "Larry" at sea.

MacKenzie won't say how much he paid The Dock restaurant to take Larry off the menu.

My birthday today. & here are the Saints who are celebrated on July 26

54 again (always subtract seven years ...).

Joe's birthday is the 24th and he turned 19. Brigid says she just needs to take the two big candles on Joe's cake and flip the 9 around for mine; HAHA, very funny.

Here are the Saints whose feasts are celebrated today - if I'd been a girl my name would have been Anne.

• Sts. Joachim and Anne
• St. Bartholomea Capitanjo
• Bl. William Ward
• St. Valens
• St. Erastus
• St. Hyacinth
• Bl. John Ingram
• St. Pastor
• Bl. Andrew of Phu Yen

Bowles & Simpson still working on a bipartisan debt reduction plan

My brother Jim sent me this, off CNN. Would be a good idea to sign the petition.

Bowles and Simpson: Still pushing boulder up the Hill

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A new campaign launched Tuesday aims to create public support for lawmakers who have been too afraid to back a bipartisan debt-reduction plan.

A key goal of the Fix the Debt campaign is to get 10 million signatures for an online petition that will call on Congress to pass a comprehensive long-term plan by July 4, 2013.

******

Besides doing outreach to educate the public, the campaign will encourage lawmakers to use the Bowles-Simpson plan as a starting point for their negotiations this year and next.

That plan would reduce debt by $4 trillion over a decade by cutting defense and discretionary spending, curbing federal entitlement costs and reforming the tax code.

Yes I did sign it. Very easy, just hit the link.

Franklin Graham on the Christian response to HIV/AIDS

Nice column in the Washington Post by the son of Billy Graham

Franklin Graham: Jesus is a model on how the church should respond to HIV/AIDS

In many ways today, HIV/AIDS has the same stigmas as leprosy did in Bible times. Leprosy was considered a death sentence. Victims were considered unclean and shunned by their families and communities. Yet, Jesus reached out to them, touched them, loved them, and healed them. This is the perfect representation of how the church should respond to people living with HIV/AIDS.

******

Unfortunately, there is still no cure for HIV/AIDS. But researchers have developed antiretroviral medications that can suppress the virus to the point where victims can now add years to their lives. It’s important that we make that help available to as many people as possible.

As the United States, United Nations and other organizations invest billions of dollars in the fight against HIV/AIDS, it’s crucial that they work with churches and faith-based organizations. In much of the developing world and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, no other institution has more influence than the local church. Former President George W. Bush recognized this, and I am glad to see that he is a keynote speaker at AIDS 2012. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003, was a landmark in the international response to AIDS—not only because of the unprecedented funding, but also because it involved faith-based organizations in the grass-roots implementation of programs. Starting with PEPFAR, Samaritan’s Purse has reached 1.25 million people with information on how to prevent the spread of HIV. We’ve also provided 200,000 with HIV testing and counseling.

Hitthe link above for the whole essay.

Mr. Obama on the economy: "We tried our plan and it worked"

I hope he keeps speaking like this.

Discussing his economic policies at a fundraiser in Oakland, California, last night, President Obama, told supporters that “we tried our plan — and it worked.”

“We tried that and it didn’t work,” Obama said of Mitt Romney’s proposed tax cuts and spending cuts, which he dismissed as a Bush-style “top down” economic policy.  “Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked,” he added later in the speech.  “That’s the difference. That’s the choice in this election.  That’s why I’m running for a second term.”

Obama made these comments in Oakland, where the unemployment rate was 13.7 percent in May 2012. The national unemployment rate is 8.2 percent — up from 8.1 percent in May — for the second straight month.

Great 4 minute CNN vid about Olympian Emil Zatopek, triple gold winner and political dissident

Great story. Zatopek paid a price for speaking out.

 

Sally Ride - I shared two things with her

Remember "Ride, Sally Ride!"

The first American woman in space.

We shared two things - we were both born in 1951, and we both played rugby!

Here are a couple of articles about her -

By becoming the first U.S. woman—and youngest astronaut—in space, Sally Ride, who died Monday from pancreatic cancer, was a pioneer and a trailblazer.

But it was what she did with the rest of her career that made her a leader.

And a longer faeture in the NY Times -

American Woman Who Shattered Space Ceiling

Dr. Ride, a physicist who was accepted into the space program in 1978 after she answered a newspaper ad for astronauts, flew on the shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983, and on a second mission in 1984. At 32, she was also the youngest American in space.

The big Yankee trade

Ichiro Suzuki is probably the best Japanese player to play in the Major Leagues. Ten time all-star and Gold Glove. And he's fast - he's hit the only inside the park home run in all-star history.

He's also 38, and his production has been slipping.

Here's what the NY Times thinks - A Fading Great Lands Where It Makes So Much Sense

and the NY Daily News -

Yankees' trade for Ichiro Suzuki is a great gamble as Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi hope playing for Bombers puts spark in 10-time All-Star

 

 

Rugby: South Hemisphere Super Rugby playoffs; Durban Sharks vs. Brisbane Reds

Played in Brisbane - some excellent tries.

 

Scott Brown commercial - two views of america

Pretty good. Makes the point. But at 2 and a half minutes not a real commercial.

 

A two minute video about the changes in Medicare Advantage and a "funny" coincidence

This was sent to me - of course I have clients with Medicare Advantage and they like it as it is.

FDR: "There are no coincidences in politics"

NY Daily News blames Obama, Romney and the NRA for the Aurora massacre

Idiotic.

Blood on hands of Obama, Mitt and NRA!

The terrible and brutal answer to the problem is - there's no way to completely eradicate violent horrible behavior. Limit it to the human extent possible, of course. There's no need for high capacity magazines to be legal - although I don't know if he had any ..., and the press should regulate themselves in the coverage of these events. The kind of coverage we always see with these events simply gives ideas to unstable people.

Alexander Cockburn

The columnist - a true left wing socialist, quasi-communist. For several years he had a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. He used to remind me of the late Christopher Hitchens, who according to the article below, he didn't like. Not pure leftist enough, I guess.

Like Hitchens, he was a clever writer but with no real depth.

Alexander Cockburn, Left-Wing Writer, Is Dead at 71

Mr. Cockburn had, at various times, regular columns in ideologically disparate publications like The Nation and The Wall Street Journal and became known as an unapologetic leftist, condemning what he saw as the outrages of the right but also castigating the American liberal establishment when he thought it was being timid.

Wayne Barrett, who worked with Mr. Cockburn at The Village Voice in the 1980s, recalled him in a telephone interview as “a punishing writer.”

“He had a remarkable mind and he could write so quickly,” Mr. Barrett added.

At The Voice, Mr. Cockburn (pronounced COE-burn) wrote, with James Ridgeway, a political column and another, called Press Clips, in which he critiqued the news media, and often mocked what he saw as the ethical failings of journalists.

But Mr. Cockburn, an often-fierce critic in the columns of Israeli policies in the Middle East, was dismissed from The Voice in 1984 after The Boston Phoenix reported that he had accepted a $10,000 grant from a group that its critics called pro-Arab — David Schneiderman, The Voice editor at the time, suggested that the grant created a conflict of interest.

Evidently a leftist happy to take money from whoever. ...

Msgr. Franco of St. Augustne's, quoted on Archbishop Fulton Sheen

this came from my friend Nancy, who received it from our joint friend Antoinette.

Msgr. Franco is the Pastor of St. Augustine's in Ossining, which is also the parochial school that Joe and Tim attended.

Way back when Sheen had his successful TV program, Hilary Franco was the "angel" who mysteriously wiiped the chalkboard.

The whole article - not very long - is interesting including touching on Sheen's weakness - vanity. i am just excerpting the comments by Msgr. Franco -

First Things: "The True Stardom of Fulton Sheen"

On June 28, Pope Benedict officially recognized Archbishop Sheen as someone who had lived a life of “heroic virtue,” and declared him “Venerable.” The devout priest from Peoria who became the first televangelist, commanded a weekly audience of 30 million, and appeared on the cover of Time, is now just one step away from beatification, and a second from sainthood, pending two respective miracles. The Vatican is already studying the case of a stillborn child who—having shown no vital signs for 60 minutes—astonishingly came back to life, after his mother prayed for the Archbishop’s intercession.

The advance of Sheen’s cause has elated his many supporters, especially three priests who’ve had a special devotion to it.

Monsignor Hilary Franco, who served as the Archbishop’s assistant when he headed the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in America—and is the only surviving member of his New York household—told me how thankful he was for the announcement: “I am a living witness to Archbishop Sheen’s holiness.”

Despite all the acclaim he received, Sheen strived to maintain “the simplicity of a dedicated parish priest,” said Monsignor. For Sheen, the priesthood was a precious gift that needed to be nourished through continual prayer. Every day, no matter where he was, even if traveling abroad, he made it a point to spend one hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament. It kept his mind constantly on the divine, and fortified his work.

Archbishop Sheen’s generosity was legendary. Apart from donating his own earnings to the Church, he raised enormous sums of money for the poor, the missions, and additional works of mercy. He brought famous celebrities into the Church, but brought far more unknowns into it, who were famous “in the eyes of God.” His private acts of charity were never publicized, but flowed from the heart of a servant. Monsignor Franco revealed how the Archbishop rescued a man named Victor from the streets:

He had suffered from leprosy and was so  badly deformed he was afraid to show himself during the day. When Archbishop Sheen discovered Victor’s desperate condition, he immediately saw to it that he was cared for, given proper medical attention, and invited him to dine with us every Friday night. He embraced Victor’s full human dignity and treated him as a member of his own family.

Teens pick the wrong woman to grope

Bad move.

Jogger targeted by teenagers turns out to be Kung Fu expert

"I think they knew they messed with the wrong girl," she said.

CNN: Everything the Colorado killer had in his arsenal was totally legal

This brief video doesn't mention the 30 home-made hand grenades he evidently used to booby trap his apartment.

All the guns and body armor were legal under federal and Colorado law.

 

The Obama enemies list

Make a large donation to Romney and you may find yourself in trouble. Reminds me of what I posted a several days ago about Croton politics - that being on a lesser scale of course.

The columnist is Kimberly Strassel of the WSJ -

This column has already told the story of Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman who last year contributed to a group supporting Mitt Romney. An Obama campaign website in April sent a message to those who'd donate to the president's opponent. It called out Mr. VanderSloot and seven other private donors by name and occupation and slurred them as having "less-than-reputable" records.

Mr. VanderSloot has since been learning what it means to be on a presidential enemies list. Just 12 days after the attack, the Idahoan found an investigator digging to unearth his divorce records. This bloodhound—a recent employee of Senate Democrats—worked for a for-hire opposition research firm.

Now Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted by the federal government. In a letter dated June 21, he was informed that his tax records had been "selected for examination" by the Internal Revenue Service. The audit also encompasses Mr. VanderSloot's wife, and not one, but two years of past filings (2008 and 2009).

Mr. VanderSloot, who is 63 and has been working since his teens, says neither he nor his accountants recall his being subject to a federal tax audit before. He was once required to send documents on a line item inquiry into his charitable donations, which resulted in no changes to his taxes. But nothing more—that is until now, shortly after he wrote a big check to a Romney-supporting Super PAC.

Two weeks after receiving the IRS letter, Mr. VanderSloot received another—this one from the Department of Labor. He was informed it would be doing an audit of workers he employs on his Idaho-based cattle ranch under the federal visa program for temporary agriculture workers.

All a coincidence? Remind you of the last Imperial President, Mr. Nixon?

Krauthammer - great column today: "Did the state make you great?"

UPDATE: Ann Althouse has a good analysis here. Note her last line - kind of agrees with my point below.

As he deconstructs the President's recent unfortunate comment. Romney should read the whole column at the republican convention as part of his acceptance speech.

Don't just read the excerpt below; hit the link.

“If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” — Barack Obama

... Moreover, the greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective.

Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive.

Absurd. We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did Steve Jobs. Yet only he created the Mac and the iPad.

******

The ultimate Obama fallacy, however, is the conceit that belief in the value of infrastructure — and willingness to invest in its creation and maintenance — is what divides liberals from conservatives.

More nonsense. Infrastructure is not a liberal idea, nor is it particularly new. The Via Appia was built 2,300 years ago. The Romans built aqueducts, too. And sewers. Since forever, infrastructure has been consensually understood to be a core function of government.

The argument between left and right is about what you do beyond infrastructure. It’s about transfer payments and redistributionist taxation, about geometrically expanding entitlements, about tax breaks and subsidies to induce actions pleasing to central planners. It’s about free contraceptives for privileged students and welfare without work — the latest Obama entitlement-by-decree that would fatally undermine the great bipartisan welfare reform of 1996. It’s about endless government handouts that, ironically, are crowding out necessary spending on, yes, infrastructure.

******

Beyond infrastructure, the conservative sees the proper role of government as providing not European-style universal entitlements but a firm safety net, meaning Julia-like treatment for those who really cannot make it on their own — those too young or too old, too mentally or physically impaired, to provide for themselves.

Limited government so conceived has two indispensable advantages. It avoids inexorable European-style national insolvency. And it avoids breeding debilitating individual dependency. It encourages and celebrates character, independence, energy, hard work as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy — precisely the virtues Obama discounts and devalues in his accounting of the wealth of nations.

Hit the link and read his whole column. A voice of sanity.

 

NY Jets coach Rex Ryan on losing 100 pounds and gaining Tebow

Ryan had the lap band surgery.

What a 40 year old Yankees' Grand Slam looks like

Raul Ibanez. A couple of days ago.A grand slam - a home run with men on all three bases.

 

WSJ on Post Office defaulting on retirees' payments

This is/was the headline on Drudge - in BIG letters.

Post Office Might Miss Retirees' Payment

The Postal Service repeated on Wednesday that without congressional action, it will default—a first in its long history, a spokesman said—on a legally required annual $5.5 billion payment, due Aug. 1, into a health-benefits fund for future retirees. Action in Congress isn't likely, as the House prepares to leave for its August recess.

The agency said a default on the payment, for 2011, wouldn't directly affect service or its ability to pay employees and suppliers. But "these ongoing liquidity issues unnecessarily undermine confidence in the viability of the Postal Service among our customers," said spokesman David Partenheimer.

The agency says it will default on its 2012 retiree health payment as well—also roughly $5.5 billion, due Sept. 30—if there is no legislative action by then.

Most everyone agrees the Postal Service needs an overhaul. It had a loss of $3.2 billion in the second quarter of this fiscal year; it is to report third-quarter results on Aug. 9. The agency blames factors including declining mail volumes and the unusual 2006 mandate by Congress that it annually set aside billions for future retirees. But while the Senate has passed legislation to overhaul the agency, the House says it doesn't expect to take up its own proposal until after August.

******

Republican House leaders support legislation they say would require the agency to operate more like a business ...

Like a business? What a unique idea!

Great soccer goal at Red Bull Stadium

This stadium is outside of Newark NJ and is a nice venue - I've been there to watch some internatioal rugby.

I's not much of a soccer fan - but check this beautiful goal. Skill + luck.

 

NY Yankee Robbie Cano has a 21 game hitting streak

What a smooth player. He's a joy to watch, at bat and in the field. Brigid loves him - that smile !!

The link has a nice video -

Cano is the only Major Leaguer with a hitting streak of at least 15 games in each of the past four seasons, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. But he never had a streak this long, and it marks the first 20-game streak in New York since Derek Jeter hit safely in 20 consecutive games in 2007, and Alex Rodriguez hit safely in 23.

 

Drudge headline: "Weiner Pulls Out"

Anthony Weiner that is. Not running for NY City mayor.

Anthony Weiner: Not running for office - for now

William Raspberry

The Washington Post columnist and very reasonable, even if you don't agree with him. He looked at both sides of things.

William Raspberry dies at 76: Washington Post columnist wrote about social issues including race, poverty

Mr. Raspberry wrote an opinion column for The Post for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2005. More than 200 newspapers carried his syndicated columns, which were filtered through the prism of his experience growing up in the segregated South.

His writings were often provocative but seldom predictable. Although he considered himself a liberal, Mr. Raspberry often bucked many of the prevailing pieties of liberal orthodoxy. He favored integration but opposed busing children to achieve racial balance. He supported gun control but — during a time when the District seemed to be a free-fire zone for drug sellers — he could understand the impulse to shoot back.

When strident voices were shouting for attention, Mr. Raspberry often favored a moderate tone. He did not consider himself a political partisan and even stopped appearing on argumentative news-talk shows because, as he said in 2006, “they force you to pretend to be mad even when you’re not.”

NY Times discovers that marriage is better for children than single parenthood

And evidently better for the adults.

How's this for a journalistic coup?

It's actually a comprehensive article with reams of data. And of course, some children of single parents do fine.

Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’

The economic storms of recent years have raised concerns about growing inequality and questions about a core national faith, that even Americans of humble backgrounds have a good chance of getting ahead. Most of the discussion has focused on labor market forces like falling blue-collar wages and lavish Wall Street pay.

But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay. Less-educated women like Ms. Schairer, who left college without finishing her degree, are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks that come in ones, not twos.

Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.

“It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.

About 41 percent of births in the United States occur outside marriage, up sharply from 17 percent three decades ago. But equally sharp are the educational divides, according to an analysis by Child Trends, a Washington research group. Less than 10 percent of the births to college-educated women occur outside marriage, while for women with high school degrees or less the figure is nearly 60 percent.

Long concentrated among minorities, motherhood outside marriage now varies by class about as much as it does by race. It is growing fastest in the lower reaches of the white middle class — among women like Ms. Schairer who have some postsecondary schooling but no four-year degree.

While many children of single mothers flourish (two of the last three presidents had mothers who were single during part of their childhood), a large body of research shows that they are more likely than similar children with married parents to experience childhood poverty, act up in class, become teenage parents and drop out of school.

7 year old autistic girl falls three floors and is caught

This is on all the NY channels today. The rescuer is a NY city bus driver. In other video, people were walking right past the scene, paying no mind.

Croton Republican Committee chooses not to run candidates in 2012 village elections

UPDATE: As always full disclosure, I'm a registered independent.

Here's their press release, which was sent to me because I'm on the "Everything Croton" email list. Funny that I'd just posted this article earlier today - What would America look like without Republicans?

What's mentioned below is certainly true. People have been threatened, pictures of their residences published online, their reputations attacked. Who needs that for a $1,500 annual stipend?

 A PRESS RELEASE FROM THE CROTON GOP 7/16/12

With sadness, the Croton Republican Committee announces that it will not be running candidates for Village Trustee in the November 2012 elections.

Although the Croton Republican Committee cares deeply about our village and the village’s taxpayers, the fact is that, in each of the last several election cycles, our candidates have been subject to an unremitting barrage of false and defamatory attacks by anonymous websites and commentators, the tone and tenor of which has spilled into the general community. The baseless vilification of our neighbors has harmed their personal reputations, and has damaged the CRC both financially and in its role as a community political organization.

Our party cannot, in good conscience, subject our members to the McCarthyite attacks that running for office in this village has engendered, thanks to those who choose to participate in the political process by tarring and feathering their neighbors with lies and innuendo, and who do so without accountability by hiding behind a cloak of anonymity.

We remain very concerned about the direction in which the current Village Board has chosen to lead our community. We believe that the current board’s agenda, which includes numerous costly projects of questionable value to this village, is not serving the best interests of our community. As a party and as individuals, we will continue to speak out against wasteful public spending, as well as against policies that depart from the idea of keeping our community small in scale, but welcoming in character.

We hope that in November 2013 the voters of Croton-on-Hudson will once again be given a choice of candidates to represent them, in an election campaign that is conducted in an honorable and decent way. We wish to express our sincere gratitude to Trustee Greg Schmidt, who previously announced that he will not be running for office this November, for his years of service to this village during his tenure in office as both Mayor and Village Trustee. We thank the community for its past support.

The Officers and Members of the Croton Republican Committee

What would America look like without Republicans?

An amusing article with lots of facts.

FULL DICLOSURE REMINDER: I don't belong to a political party

Welcome to California: America without Republicans

... It would look a lot like the state of California, where no non-cyborg Republican has been elected governor since 1994. Democrats have also enjoyed complete control of the state legislature since 1997. And they have governed exactly the way you'd expect Democrats to govern.

******

... With all of this unfunded government spending, Keynesian-Democratic thinking would predict that California's economy should be booming.

It isn't.

HA! the last paragraph is amusing -

The California dream is dead. Democrats killed it. Middle-class families can't escape the state fast enough. Conservatives must fight Obama and his agenda at every turn so that Californians still have other states to flee to.

 

NY Times columnist on Republican alternative to Obamacare

It's Ross Douthat of course, the only Times columnist besides Kristoff worth reading.

I am in general agreement with his points.

Given the unsustainability of our existing commitments, the central role that spiraling costs play in making insurance inaccessible, and the difficulties inherent in trying to make Washington responsible for insuring every inhabitant of what will be a nation of 400 million people by century’s end, a reform that expanded insurance substantially but not completely in the short term while putting the health care system as a whole on a sounder footing in the long run (as Bush’s 2007 proposal might have done) could be preferable, on moral as well as practical grounds, to a reform that achieves universality in the near term but ultimately brings everybody on board a sinking ship.

And Douthat makes this point as he ends his column -

If the Republicans win the White House and the Senate and then somehow manage to repeal Obamacare without putting any significant reforms in its place, it will represent not only policy malpractice, but a moral scandal as well.

 

 

One minute with Ed Koch

Well he talks straight anyway.

 

Another huge fraud and embezzlement case

Amazing. He did it using excel and adobe photoshop to create documents.

The perp left a suicide note (but failed in his suicide attempt) outlining the extent of the fraud. He said he stole $100 million - but the number might be twice that. His company has declared bankruptcy (it was a commodites and futures trading house primarily) and here's the company website.

The AP report -

FBI agents arrested Peregrine Financial Group Inc. Russell Wasendorf Sr. at a local hospital Friday and he appeared in federal court later in the day on charges of lying to federal regulators. Court documents detail a wide-ranging fraud scheme in which Wasendorf apparently fooled colleagues, customers and regulators by creating fraudulent financial records.

The Wall Street Journal did a much better report, but unfortunately it's only available to subscribers

(Here's the link - you can try it if you're not a subscriber and you may get through)

Wasendorf's note is online - here's a partial text -

Here,... is part of the text of Wasendorf’s statement:

“I have committed fraud. For this I feel constant and intense guilt. I am very remorseful that my greatest transgressions have been to my fellow man. Through a scheme of using false bank statements I have been able to embezzle millions of dollars from customer accounts at Peregrine Financial Group, Inc. The forgeries started nearly twenty years ago and have gone undetected until now. I was able to conceal my crime of forgery by being the sole individual with access to the US Bank accounts held by PFG. No one else in the company ever saw an actual US Bank statement. The Bank statements were always delivered directly to me when they arrived in the mail. I made counterfeit statements within a few hours of receiving the actual statements and gave the forgeries to the accounting department.”

Later in the signed statement, Wasendorf wrote, in part:

“…. I had no access to additional capital and I was forced into a difficult decision: Should I go out of business or cheat? I guess my ego was too big to admit failure. So I cheated, I falsified the very core of the financial documents of PFG, the Bank Statements. At first I had to make forgeries of both the Firstar Bank Statements and the Harris Bank Statements. When I choose [sic] to close the Harris Account I only had to falsify the Firstar statements [elsewhere in the signed statement Wasendorf noted that Firstar "eventually became US Bank"]. I also made forgeries of official letters and correspondence from the bank, as well as transaction confirmation statements.

Using a combination of Photo Shop, Excel, scanners, and both laser and ink jet printers I was able to make very convincing forgeries of nearing every document that came from the Bank. I could create forgeries very quickly so no one suspected that my forgeries were not the real thing that had just arrived in the mail.

With careful concealment and blunt authority I was able to hide my fraud from others at PFG. PFG grew out of a one man shop, a business I started in the basement of my home. As I added people to the company everyone knew I was the guy in charge. If anyone questioned my authority I would simply point out that I was the sole shareholder. I established rules and procedures as each new situation arose. I ordered that US Bank statement were to be delivered directly to me unopened, to make sure no one was able to examine an actual US Bank Statement. I was also the only person with online access to PFG’s account using US Bank’s online portal. On US Bank side, I told representatives at the Bank that I was the only person they should interface with at PFG.

When it became a common practice for Certified Auditors and the Field Auditors of the Regulators to mail Balance Confirmation Forms to Banks and other entities holding customer funds I opened a post office box. The box was originally in the name of Firstar Bank but was eventually changed to US Bank. I put the address “PO Box 706, Cedar Falls, lA 50613-0030″ on the counterfeit Bank Statements. When the auditors mailed Confirmation Forms to the Bank’s false address, I would intercept the Form, type in the amount I needed to show, forge a Bank Officer’s signature and mail it back to the Regulator or Certified Auditor.

When online Banking became prevalent I learned how to falsify online Bank Statements and the Regulators accepted them without question.”

Whew. Incredible.

Alzheimer's color test

From my friend Ellen.

Took me three tries just to get 88%. So I'm not so clever.

ALZHEIMER'S COLOR TEST
>
>More difficult than you might think!
>
>Color Test
>These are the things we're supposed to do to remove the
>cholesterol around our brain and try to slow up Alzheimer's Disease.
>It took me 3 times before I could finally
>tell this brain of mine to concentrate.
>A great test, do it until you get 100%!

>Follow the directions! 

>Click here to start
>
>http://www.humorsphere.com/fun/8787/colortest.swf

 

 

Empty nest weekend!

Joe and Tim are both away this weekend - and Tim for the whole week.

Going to feel weird ...

"Science Explains Why it Hurts so Much to Get Hit in the Balls"

Oddly enough, this is on the Business Insider website.

Includes a cringe-worthy picture ...

Of all the soft, fleshy spots on the human body, none register the same kind of incapacitating, end-of-the-world pain as the family jewels.

Ugly: A chart of the Administration's projected unemployment rate, vs. reality, since December '08

From the Business Insider. Hit the link for the chart.

Unemployment now is supposed to be 5.5%

But it's currently 8.2%.

 

Woman fishing off her deck in Myrtle Beach has her catch grabbed by an 8 ft. shark

Whew.

Unfortunately ABC doesn't allow embedding of their vids.

Shark Leaps to Steal Woman's Catch: Caught on Tape

Some day I'll have to post about Brigid and my meeting a hammerhead near "Chisholm's Trail" off Grand Cayman at 95 ft. down. It was only a few weeks before we left Cayman in 1981.