Tom Faranda's Folly

Rugby: 4 Nations Championship, South Africa vs Argentina, 2nd match

Played in Argentina. Here's the first match, which South Africa easily won.

 

Romney's plan for America, in two minutes: "5 step plan"

Off ABC website. #'s 1 & 5, are key. I didn't watch the whole speech, but dvr'd it and will over the weekend.

Clint Eastwood: "When somebody does not do the job, we gotta let 'em go."

Clint Eastwood, guest speaking at the Repub. Convention (MSNBC thought his shtick was disgraceful and demeaning).

Here's a link to the whole 11+ minutes (moderately amusing)

Clint Eastwood talks to President Obama

Here's the last two minutes and a bit.

 

Without Palin, TV ratings for Convention way down on 2nd day

Ratings were off 41% compared to four years ago, on day two of the Republican Convention in 2008.

Well, Palin is a lot better looking than Ryan (although maybe not, if you're a woman!).

OMG! What will the ratings be on the day Biden addresses the Dem Convention? Could they be zero?

Paul Ryan's VP speech last night

UPDATE: Here's a link to the entire speech, courtesy of CNN - Ryan speech

I watched it - along with five minutes of Huckabee and a few minutes of Susana Martinez (very good!), the Governor of New Mexico.

Ryan was excellent. This is off CNN

Now, the comment about the GM plant - note he didn't say Obama closed the plant - the Dems are saying Ryan "lied." Well, he didn't lie. But he did make some obvious points. 

Here's the transcript, posted by the AP:

President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: "I believe that if our government is there to support you. this plant will be here for another hundred years." That's what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.

Right now, 23 million men and women are struggling to find work. Twenty-three million people, unemployed or underemployed. Nearly one in six Americans is living in poverty. Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any work at all.

So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

Irish Olympic sailing commentary

From my friend and occasional contributor Dennis. Pretty funny - surprise ending!

Warning a couple of 4 letter words!

Rugby: 4 Nations Championship, New Zealand vs. Australia, 2nd match

Played in Aukland. Last time Australia was shut out by New Zealand was in 1962.

 

This guy is out to get Jon Corzine

The MF Global fiasco - $1.2 billion of missing client money. The latest word is no criminal charges. Want to know about Jon Corzine - CEO, Senator, and NJ Governor? This Vanity Fair feature is the best about him. Jon Corzine' Reckless Gamble

 

Another Romney rejoinder to Obama's "You didn't build this business"

Not from the current Repub. Convention - from his Ohio rally last Saturday.

Ann Romney's speech

I missed the first few minutes - what I did see I thought was good (I actually tuned in to see Chris Christie - he was good, OK, not great) and she got much better as she went along. "I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner."

Unsurprisingly, Pravda MSNBC panned her speech. CNN thought it was pretty good.

The video was immediately posted on PBS.

A good commentary on Warren Buffett recently dumping municipal bonds

Of course Buffett, one of the great famous investors. Although he hasn't done more then average in the past 15 years or so. Is he right on this? I don't know - but I don't have any clients in long term munis (But short and intermediate - yes).

Good column (published a week ago) on his bailing ... Only read it if you're interested in your money.

Simply put, vast unfunded liabilities (pensions and retiree health benefits) are bearing down on taxpayers who cannot afford to make up the shortfall. Consequently, a once placid and predictable market for state and municipal bonds is beginning to roil.

Yesterday, it roiled a lot, with the news that Berkshire Hathaway, under the direction of legendary investor Warren Buffett, announced its departure from the state and municipal bond market.

Discerning signal from noise isn’t easy in the cacophony of financial markets, but there was no mistaking this particular signal.  It was front-page news.  Everybody got the message.

2016, the Movie - here's the key 24 seconds

From the UK Telegram website. Pointed out by lawyer prof blogger (and 2008 Obama voter) Ann Althouse here  We saw the movie "2016 Obama's America" in Madison, Wisconsin. .

Now I've saved you the price of seeing the movie, which seems to be doing quite well (now #1 documentary of the year), much to my surprise (I won't be seeing it).

A clever barackobama.com anti-Romney ad

Although, maybe a little hackneyed? And a bit long.

 

Here's how ingrained the Haka is, in New Zealand culture.

At a funeral. Very moving really. This is off the Telegram (UK) website.

Clothing store troubles = funny

From my humor consultant, Ellen. Ellen hasn't sent me too much lately, but this is pretty funny.

Under two minute long vid.

http://www.heaven666.org/embed/58709

Romney, on Obama, Greek columns, and Greek economy

From Saturday in Ohio. Despite the press always telling us how stilted and wooden Romney (purportedly) is, I think he comes across fine.

 

The middle class - minus $4,019

Almost everyone - even people who are not statistically members - consider themselves middle class.

Here's how we've all done in the last few years -

The Presidential race is boiling down to one dominant issue: which party's policies will do more to help the financially stressed American middle class.

In January 2009, the month President Obama entered the Oval Office and shortly before he signed his stimulus spending bill, median household income was $54,983. By June 2012, it had tumbled to $50,964, adjusted for inflation. (See the chart nearby.) That's $4,019 in lost real income, a little less than a month's income every year.

Unfair, you say, because Mr. Obama inherited a recession? Well, even if you start the analysis when the recession ended in June 2009, the numbers are dismal. Three years after the economy hit its trough, median household income is down $2,544, or nearly 5%.

Add the authors: "The overall decline since June 2009 was larger than the 2.6 percent decline that occurred" during the recession from December 2007 to June 2009. For household income, in other words, the Obama recovery has been worse than the Bush recession.

It's true that the Bush years overall were also not great for household incomes. According to Sentier's analysis, real median household income is down about 8% from $55,470 in 2000 before the dot-com bubble burst. Some of this decline is due to the continuation of a trend of smaller family size, lower fertility rates and more Americans living alone. But some was also due to the subpar economic growth across the 2000s.

That slow growth trend has become worse since the latest recession, and this is where Mr. Obama is implicated. The President portrays the financial decline of American families on his watch as part of a decades-long trend. He's wrong. Real income for middle-income households rose by roughly 30% from 1983 to 2005, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The political left likes to blame the ebbing of union power. But nongovernment unionization fell dramatically in the 1980s and '90s, and incomes rose.

A little more -

The new income data reveal other eye-opening trends. The group that has suffered the most during the Obama Presidency has been black Americans, whose real incomes have fallen by more than 11%.

Mr. Obama also likes to say that government workers like teachers are hurting and the private economy is doing "just fine." But the data indicate that over the past three years households with government workers saw their incomes decline less than households with private workers. The public-private pay gap is now wider than ever ($77,998 government versus $63,800).

Every age group has seen a decline in income—except the elderly. Those between the ages of 65 and 75 saw an average 6.5% gain in income, though most are not working and collect Medicare and Social Security.

Hit the link for the rest of the story - and it's grim.

The hot Southern Comfort commercial: "I gotta be me"

2nd UPDATE: From the comment section below, and I checked it out; "The actor is Mel Shampain: http://www.facebook.com/mel.shampain"

UPDATE: The song is "Hit or Miss" by Odetta.

Speedo, and check the shoes. This should sell a lot of booze, which may be why it was written up in the Wall Street Journal.

 

Neil Armstrong

Certainly for anyone my age or thereabouts, a great American hero.

First moonwalker Neil Armstrong's death at the age of 82 marks the passing of a "reluctant American hero," as well as the dimming of the Space Age's brightest moment.

Armstrong has been immortalized in human history as the first human to set foot on a celestial body beyond Earth. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," he radioed back to Earth from the moon on July 20, 1969.

******

Armstrong was famous for staying out of fame's spotlight as much as he could. Some outsiders may have faulted him for his reticence, but not his fellow astronauts.

"Most of our group in those days could have accomplished the challenge of the mission," Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham told NBC News' James Oberg in an email, "but I do not know a one that could have handled the resulting notoriety as well as Neil did."

******

On Aug. 7, just two days after his 82nd birthday, Armstrong underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery after flunking a medical stress test. At the time, his wife, Carol, reported that her husband was "doing great" — but today the family said complications from that surgery led to his death.

Who knows more, Republicans or Democrats?

Bearing in mind that I am a registered Independent and have no axe to grind about political parties (but I could be called an ideologue!) these results are no surprise.

And the data/survey is from Pew Research, a moderately liberal group -

... this year’s results match previous Pew surveys showing the same dramatic Republican/Democrat disparity.

Here’s how Pew opened its summary:  “As the presidential campaign enters its final three months, most voters say they already know what they need to know to form a clear impression of the candidates.”  When it comes to party affiliation, however, it appears that one side maintains a clear advantage in terms of knowing what it needs to know in order to cast an informed vote. 

Namely, as referenced above, Republicans outscored Democrats on fully eleven of the twelve tests of knowledge. 

By 22 percentage points, Republicans were more able to identify the party in control of the House, and they outscored Democrats by double-digits when it came to recognizing Chief Justice John Roberts and naming Massachusetts as the state where Mitt Romney served as governor.  But Republicans also performed better on questions relating to Democratic figures and official positions.  For instance, Republicans outscored Democrats 80% to 71% in identifying Illinois as the state Barack Obama represented in the Senate, and they were even more able to identify Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s own Vice President.  The only question on which Democrats outperformed Republicans, by just 6%, asked, “Which presidential candidate supports allowing many illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to remain in the country?” 

Pew proceeded to say something interesting, which perhaps betrayed its own ideological bias. 

Specifically, the knowledge difference between older and younger voters was essentially the same as the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  Older voters also outperformed younger voters on eleven of twelve questions, and by an average of 1.3 percentage points compared to the similar .9 differential between Republicans and Democrats.  But Pew described that older/younger distinction differently.  “In general,” Pew stated, “older voters are better informed about the election than are voters under the age of 35.”

 

David Beckham is still pretty good

Scoring a goal on a corner kick.

OK, the goalie banged into his own defender, but hey, it happens! Beckham sure bends his corner kick!

 

What to do if bullets start flying around you

UPDATE: Here's the surveillance video of the shooting by the police of the murderer near the Empire State Bldg today.

With today's shootings near the Empire State Building, as well as this recent Times Square shooting , I had a quick read of this today, off the Business Insider website.

Written by an ex-marine.

5 Steps To Survival When Bullets Start To Fly

 

Rugby: Four Nations Championship - South Africa vs. Argentina

Played in South Africa. Return match this Saturday in Argentina.

 

Stepinac football preview

This article of course concentrates on the varsity; Tim is going to be moved around on the JV, playing several positions - especially linebacker. He's also likely to be the punter and possibly do the kick-offs.

Camp stop: Stepinac

With five Division I-AA players lost to graduation and two Division I-A stars lost the year before that, Stepinac would appear to have taken a step backwards after two of the better seasons in program history. It would only be natural, but the players aren’t ready to rebuild.

“We just reloading,” senior quarterback Dan Hoffer said. “It’s not like we’re rebuilding. Everyone’s saying we’re losing a lot of people, but we have kids who are going to step up. It’s high school football. People will step up and make big plays.”

And to what extent?

“I expect to be at Yankee Stadium,” Hoffer added. “That’s our expectation and that’s everyone expectation here at Stepinac.”

Hit the link for the full story.

Amusing column about FOX News women

On the normally abysmal Huffington Post.

Yes, it should be called FOXY news. But at least they have brains. On the sister FOX channel, FOX Business, it's strictly hot looks and a couple of yards of cleavage, with brains and business knowledge in short supply. You get the impression they've all been to the Obama School of Teleprompter Reading.

Note to FOX News - you should try to hire Erin Burnett away from CNN.

It's well acknowledged throughout the media world that female Fox News anchors are typically more, er, coiffed than their liberal counterparts. There are YouTube videos dedicated to Fox women's short skirts, a fully functioning website called www.FoxNewsGirls.com and Allure once penned a feature declaring, "With its bevy of babes, the network should be called the Foxy News Channel."

 

Good editorial on the pending "Fiscal Cliff"

The WSJ of course.

Well, well. So the folks who have run U.S. economic policy since 2008 are alarmed about the peril of the 2013 "fiscal cliff." Too bad they didn't worry about that when they were creating the very ledge they now lament.

The latest warning comes from the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated in its mid-year budget outlook Wednesday that the economy will return to recession in 2013 if taxes rise and spending falls on schedule in January. "Such fiscal tightening will lead to economic conditions in 2013 that will probably be considered a recession," say the CBO sachems, "with real GDP declining by 0.5 percent" from this year's fourth quarter to the final quarter of next year and unemployment rising to about 9% from 8.3%.

Yes, a year of falling output would "probably be considered" a recession, especially if you are one of the 9% jobless.

Hit the link forthe rest.

Rugby: Four Nations Championship - Australia vs. New Zealand

Played in Sydney. The south hemisphere championship tourney is now the Four Nations Championship with the addition of Argentina.

Watch the downfield block on the second try! (Should have been a penalty?)

 

Study: Marriage causes women to drink more than men

The results of a new study indicate that marriage can cause women to drink more, and men to drink less.

The study found that, while men drank more during divorce, women upped their alcohol intake while wed.

******

“We find that unmarried and divorced women actually drink less than their continuously married counterparts,” Reczek was quoted as saying. “For men, those who were recently divorced have the highest number of drinks and men who are married have the lower number.”

jus like my house!

Electoral college prediction model (right every election since 1980) is out

This may cheer up my chronically pessimistic friends who want a Romney victory but don't think it will happen, and put my Obama-fanatic friends over the edge.

Electoral College Prediction Model Points To A Mitt Romney Win In 2012

"Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble," Bickers said in a press statement.

To predict the race's outcome, the model uses economic indicators from all 50 states and it shows 320 electoral votes for Romney and 218 for Obama, according to The Associated Press. The model also suggests that Romney will win every state currently considered a swing state which includes Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Colorado.

That sounds about right to me - I think Romney will get 52-53% ofthe popular vote. The reason he won't do better then that is because many of the people who recognize Obama has been bad news for the economy (and the poor!) still have so much emotional capital tied up in their support for him, that they coudldn't possibly vote against him. But maybe they'll stay home ...

Of course Romney can still blow it.

Berry cautions that just because the model has worked in the past, doesn't mean it will work this time.

Well, duuuhh!

Things I didn't know about "The Independent Policy Advisory Board", AKA The Death Panel

Yeah. Sarah Palin got it right.

Obamacare defenders scoff at the idea that the IPAB’s decisions would have fatal consequences for seniors, but the panel has been given an extraordinary and perhaps unconstitutional degree of power. Its proposals automatically become law unless Congress counters it with another plan. Overriding the IPAB requires a three-fifths supermajority in the Senate. The Obamacare law dictates that Congress may not even propose doing away with the IPAB until 2017 and may not actually get rid of it until 2020. This dubious provision undercuts the argument that the IPAB is a harmless advocate for government efficiency.

Another take on Biden

My friend Nancy sent me this column in the NY Post -

One is forced to conclude that Obama chose Biden because he wanted a running mate who would have no independent standing whatever.

The whole column is an interesting quick read - almost funny - except he IS the Vice President of the USA ...

 

Latest Read: Obama's Last Stand

The new ebook that came out yesterday ($2.99). It's a very quick read - about 70 minutes. The author is Glenn Thrush, a reporter for The Politico. The title is NOT indicative that Thrush thinks Obama is going the way of George Custer. Simply that it will be his last political campaign.

The weakness of the book is that it's entirely based on Thrush's commentary - his notes, his memory, his recollection of what others told him, or he heard. There are no footnotes or documentation of any kind.

But so what? It's short - I read it on my android phone in two sittings, a total of 70 minutes at most. Good insights into the dynamics of the Obama White House and re-election efforts through this past July. Plenty of sketches of different players - Axelrod, Cutter, Plouffe, etc., as well as some insight into the President - who knew he was an avid card player (prefers Spades to Hearts)?

Strategic mistakes are pointed up, like the failure of the campaign to ramp up fundraising for their own super PACS early on. And tactical mistakes such as rallies at stadiums with lots of empty seats, and the use of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz as an Obama surrogate (she was rated the least effective by focus groups, although MSNBC types like her).

The big positive: the President is relentless; he's desperate to win, and he quite despises Romney, who he feels stands for nothing.

So a nice quick read, and I'll be getting the follow-up volume, which will come out after the election, no doubt with sketches of both campaigns in the home stretch - and the postmortem! 

I've posted the review on Amazon.

What Mr. Akin, in Missouri, should do

Got this off the Althouse blog.

Charitable giving: red vs blue

No surprises here. There's a long history of blue states (tend to be Democratic) not being as generous as red (tend to be Republican). And also - pathetically - the low givers tend to be Catholic states. For example, Massachusetts is always near the head of the list for non-giving, and the state is 42% Catholic (Full disclosure for anyone who doesn't know, I'm Catholic).

Red states give more money to charity than blue states, according to a new study on Monday.

The eight states whose residents gave the highest share of their income — Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Idaho, Arkansas and Georgia — all backed McCain in 2008. Utah leads charitable giving, with 10.6 percent of income given.

And the least generous states — Wisconsin, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire — were Obama supporters in the last presidential race. New Hampshire residents gave the least share of their income, the Chronicle stated, with 2.5 percent.

“The reasons for the discrepancies among states, cities, neighborhoods are rooted in part in each area’s political philosophy about the role of government versus charity,” the study’s authors noted.

But it’s not just about politics — “religion has a big influence on giving patterns.”

“Regions of the country that are deeply religious are more generous than those that are not. Two of the top nine states—Utah and Idaho—have high numbers of Mormon residents, who have a tradition of tithing at least 10 percent of their income to the church,” the study states. “The remaining states in the top nine are all in the Bible Belt.”

And of course the poster boy for self-centered, cheap SOB's is the "Catholic" vice president -

VP nominee Joe Biden releases ten years of tax returns, showing he gives virtually nothing to charity.

and

Charitable donation update: Romney, 15% of income, Obama 1%, Gingrich, 2.6%, Biden $369.

There's a 2,000 year history of generous, self-sacrificing men named Joseph - and Joe Biden is not one of them.

 

Scott McKenzie: "If You're Going to San Francisco"

Good Heavens! 45 years ago - another world! McKenzie died a couple of days ago. He also wrote songs for the Mamas and the Papas and some other groups.

Must be something to it - this video has been watched on youtube over 7 and a half million times.

 

Gov. Christie on last month's rise in NJ unemployment

Rafael Soriano - Mariano Rivera's replacment - as NY Yankee MVP

Good short feature in the Daily News this AM.

Soriano proves to be Bombers' saving grace

...no pinstriped fill-in deserves more credit than closer understudy Rafael Soriano, who has only stepped in for a legend by being among the best closers in baseball. Maybe he’s even emerged as the Yankees’ Most Valuable Player.

Hey, no single Yankee is having a monster season, except maybe for Soriano, who finished off the Yanks’ 4-1 victory over the Red Sox Sunday night by getting a double-play grounder with a slider and striking out Adrian Gonzalez after allowing a leadoff single in the ninth inning.

No one is saying, “Mariano who?” But Soriano has been splendid, converting 31 of 33 save chances and holding opposing hitters to a .200 average since replacing the injured Rivera.

 

61 years old - new record for oldest college football player

HA! From the AARP magazine. A nice short article. 

And his kicking is pretty good.

Vietnam vet Alan Moore is back on the college gridiron as a placekicker

... Moore's next goal was to play for Faulkner and its skeptical head football coach, Gregg Baker, 45. "He actually came to us back in the spring," Baker recalls. "One of my assistant coaches brought him to my attention.

"I asked [Moore] point-blank, 'Why are you doing this?' " Baker says. "He said, 'Coach, my biggest thing is to show [Faulkner students] that they should never give up on anything that they start.' "

Moore is working towards completing his degree - started decades ago.

Newsweek magazine turns on the President

UPDATE: Already and predictably, efforts to rebut the author. Here Naill Ferguson responds to Paul Krugman (an uber-promoter of all things Obama - in fact Krugman thinks the government didn't borrow and spend enough money ...)

Wow. Surprising - although maybe Newsweek thinks they'll sell more magazines (on their way to becoming an all-digital publication, before totally going out of business ...)?

The whole disaster is laid out -

Niall Ferguson: Obama’s Gotta Go

Sub-title -

Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope.

Peggy Noonan on Meet the Press, commenting on Joe Biden

Says it all in 30 seconds.

Peggy Noonan: If Biden Were Republican Meet the Press's Topic Would Be 'How Stupid Is This Person?'

Dramatic rescue of two women in a burning car

This has been in the news the last couple of days. ABC won't allow embedding of videos, but it's worth hitting the link for the two minute story.

Sisters Trapped in Burning Car Saved By Good Samaritans

How one E.R. staff handled the Colorado mass shootings

Good article in the NY Times, which I suspect only scratches the surface....

... for the doctors, nurses and other staff at the hospital — which received 23 of the injured, one of them dead on arrival — the shootings were not only a trauma but also a test of their skills, their stamina and their teamwork, as the simulated disaster drills they had practiced turned abruptly into reality.

Looking back, many said that having come through the experience, they now felt prepared for anything a violent and unpredictable world might throw at them.

“We went into emergency medicine because we know it’s crazy — you never know what’s going to come through the door,” said Dr. Comilla Sasson, one of two attending doctors in the emergency room that night. “But the thing none of us have gotten over is, we made it through. We really, truly shined.”

April Koehler, the emergency department’s nurse manager, said that for days after the shooting, she woke up in the middle of the night with the urgent feeling she had to go out and help someone — just as she did when her emergency pager went off at 12:56 a.m. that Friday, the message reading simply: “Mass shooting.”

Great Washington Post feature: the dinosaur fossil hunter in Maryland

I loved the article below, which I came across through a link in this morning's WaPo Likely footprint of spiky dinosaur has NASA’s Md. campus on cloud nine.

It was originally published last April.

OK, eccentric to some. Great story, great pictures, especially if you like dinosaurs and/or exceptional people. And there's a surprise at the end, as you find out Ray Stanford's real passion!  

Tireless tracker rewrote the book on dinosaurs in Maryland

In fact, before Stanford, only a handful of dinosaur tracks had ever been found in Maryland, in much older rocks 100 miles away in a quarry near Emmitsburg. Some of the great dinosaur hunters of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Yale University’s O.C. Marsh, had searched the Washington area and found the bones and teeth of three or four species. But no footprints had ever been found. The iron-rich geology wasn’t right for it. The textbooks said so.

Stanford knew this. In 1994, his three children from a previous marriage were visiting, and his youngest son, then 9, was going through his dinosaur-crazy phase.

One August afternoon, out hunting for Indian arrowheads, Stanford found a flat rock with an impression that looked like three fat toes. The children had been flipping through an illustrated guide to dinosaur tracks, so they were primed: It was the footprint of an iguanodon, a two-legged herbivore.

Read the whole article - a fascinating look at a "character."

 

 

USA Today op ed: Helen Gurley Brown vs. Nellie Gray

They died within a day of each other, and couldn't be more different. (Nellie Gray was the founder and mover for the annual Washington March for Life).

The author is Fr. Frank Pavone and it's only 11 paragraphs long -

Two women whose worldviews couldn't have been more divergent died just days apart, each leaving a dramatically different imprint on American society. Both sought to protect women's rights but were on opposite sides of a cultural battle that has shaped the past half-century. In the Civil War, the two sides were symbolized by "The Blue" and "The Gray." The sides in today's "civil war" could be symbolized by "The Brown" and "The Gray."

 

WSJ: The Yankees Red Sox loyalty dividing line - somewhere in CT!

Here's an amusing article. Yanks won last night, 6-4.

In the context of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, which resumes Friday in the Bronx, the state of Connecticut has long been seen as the divider that separated these two massive fan bases. More specifically, the city of Hartford—which is about a two-hour drive from both New York and Boston—is often cited as the midpoint.

Ben Blatt, the research coordinator for the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective, decided to find out for sure exactly where the Yankee Universe ends and Red Sox Nation begins. Using data from Facebook, he looked at 157 different towns across Connecticut to see what percentage of baseball fans there prefer each team.

It turns out that Hartford isn't quite the halfway point, with 56.6% of fans there supporting the Yankees. (The data only includes people who "Like" the Yankees or the Red Sox on Facebook and disregards people who associate with another team or no team at all.)

As for the true Yankees-Red Sox dividing line, it appears to come down to one of two places: Guilford, a town situated on Interstate 95 about an hour south of Hartford, or Middletown, a city in Middlesex County. Both places are 50.7% Yankee fans—the closest to a 50/50 split that Blatt found. Manchester, a city located 15 minutes east of Hartford, also came close, with 51.1% of fans rooting for the Red Sox.

******

One other note: More than 262,000 people in Blatt's sample claimed to like both the Yankees and Red Sox, according to a paper outlining his findings.

"If only I had time, I would map out where they live so that every true baseball fan can avoid them," Blatt wrote.

Usain Bolt votes with his feet on taxes

Howz that for a pun?

Why Bolt won't run in British track events (they made an exception in their tax code for the Olympics).

U.K. policy makers are trying to figure out how to keep the flame of British sports burning. They could start by changing Her Majesty's tax laws. After Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt won his third gold in London last week, reporters asked him why he doesn't compete in the U.K. more often. "As soon as the law changes I'll be here all the time," he said.

Punitive tax policy had kept the world's fastest man from competing in Blighty for the past three years. Explaining Mr. Bolt's decision to skip a 2010 race in London, his agent told reporters: "He will earn a lot less by competing in Britain if he maintains his current endorsement level." Mr. Bolt competed in Paris that August instead.

Few high earners in other fields would choose France over Britain on tax policy, but athletes are a different story. The British government has granted an exemption to income linked to Olympic and Paralympic competition. But normally Britain takes a cut of an athlete's worldwide endorsement earnings—that means overseas sponsors in addition to those in the U.K.—proportional to the time spent in Britain. By comparison, the U.S. only taxes nonresident athletes on endorsement fees paid by American sponsors. France does the same.

The point - Bolt stands to lose millions in taxes on his sponsorship money to the British government if he runs in Britain.

And Bolt makes millions. As it says in the article "Mr. Bolt's contract with Puma alone is worth $9 million annually".

It's enough to make you a socialist.

 

The difference between Main Street's view and Washington's view of Paul Ryan

Good column by Scott Rasmussen -

Reaction to Ryan: A Gap Between Mainstream America and Official Washington

... So when you ask whether cutting spending or helping the economy is more important, the question doesn't make sense. For most Mainstream voters, one leads to the other.

To gain a sense of how strong this belief is, consider the fact that voters are fairly evenly divided when asked whether they fear the government will do too much or too little to help the economy. At Rasmussen Reports, we asked those who wanted more government intervention what they would like the government to do. Most said cut spending. Overall, 66 percent of voters believe that the best thing the government can do for the economy is to cut spending.

The same dynamic exists when it comes to repeal of the national health care law. Rather than being seen as a diversion from talking about the economy, 43 percent believe repeal would help the economy. Just 27 percent think it would hurt. That's part of the reason most voters consistently support repeal. So, once again, it's not a choice between repealing the health care law and focusing on the economy. They're part of the same plan.

Princeton U. professor: ‘Just being human doesn’t give you a right to live’

Yeah, Peter Singer. For years he's written extensively on how you have to qualify to live. At least he's honest about it. He's written elsewhere many times that  an adult dog has more rights then a newborn.

I found his article referenced here -

To the ears of us ordinary people, it sounds like the ravings of some fringe group of European neo-fascists or Communists, but the man who made that statement in a Scottish newspaper today is perhaps the most acclaimed and respected ethical philosopher alive, toasted by liberal academic and political elites around the world.

And the original article is in The Scotsman (UK) here -

We can plausibly argue that we ought not to kill, against their will, self-aware beings who want to continue to live. We can see this as a violation of their autonomy, or a thwarting of their preferences. But why should a being’s potential to become rationally self-aware make it wrong to end its life before it has the capacity for rationality or self-awareness?

Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, they'd all agree.

NY Times Maureen Dowd - her Paul Ryan column

Predictable. When you can't discuss the issues, just launch a vicious personal attack.

The title is: "When Cruelty is Cute."

The link is the last line in her column -

Ryan should stop being so lovable. People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smile off their faces.

Maureen Dowd - the ultimate bitter 60 year old.

USA men's soccer breaks a 75 year winless streak

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLL!

With 35 second video

MEXICO CITY — The United States ended 75 years of frustration in Mexico, winning at its southern neighbor and regional rival for the first time Wednesday night when Michael Orozco Fiscal's goal in the 80th minute and Tim Howard's late sprawling saves provided a 1-0 victory.