Tom Faranda's Folly

Yankees get a new catcher - 7 time all-star - $85 million for five years

Here's the scoop on Brian McCann -

McCann’s lefthanded bat will play well in Yankee Stadium, probably to the tune of 30 home runs, he’s solid behind the plate and as we saw late last season when he got in the face of Carlos Gomez and Jose Fernandez for showing up his pitchers, he’s got an edge to him the Yankees could use these days.

In 33 seconds, how NOT to handle a dead sperm whale

This video has been all over in the last several days. YIKES!

I gypped the text below off Ann Alhouse's weblog. If you haven't seen this, it's worth the 33 seconds,

"... readers are probably thinking that a very large, rather dead, creature is going to have rather a lot of gas trapped somewhere within its innards. And that if the organ containing said gas isn't handled well, nasty things may result. Let's roll tape to put that hypothesis to the test...."

 

Now, here's the original exploding whale, back in 1970, on the Oregon coast. The local engineer who was in charge (George Thornton) just died a few weeks ago, in his 80's.

 

Mom's exercise can boost unborn baby's brain

From the NY Times health section -

If a woman is physically active during pregnancy, she may boost the development of her unborn child’s brain, according to a heart-tugging new study of expectant mothers and their newborns. The findings bolster a growing scientific consensus that the benefits of exercise can begin to accumulate even before someone is born.

It has long been suspected that a mother-to-be’s activity — or lack of it — affects her unborn offspring, which is not surprising, given how their physiologies intertwine. Past studies have shown, for example, that a baby’s heart rate typically rises in unison with his or her exercising mother’s, as if the child were also working out. As a result, scientists believe, babies born to active mothers tend to have more robust cardiovascular systems from an early age than babies born to mothers who are more sedentary.

******

... researchers at the University of Montreal in Canada recently recruited a group of local women who were in their first trimester of pregnancy. At that point, the women were almost identical in terms of lifestyle. All were healthy, young adults. None were athletes. Few had exercised regularly in the past, and none had exercised more than a day or two per week in the past year.

Then the women were randomized either to begin an exercise program, commencing in their second trimester, or to remain sedentary. The women in the exercise group were asked to work out for at least 20 minutes, three times a week, at a moderate intensity, equivalent to about a six or so on a scale of exertion from one to 10. Most of the women walked or jogged.

The results were dramatic - hit the link for details, and here's the last paragraph of the article -

But for now, the lesson is clear. “If a woman can be physically active during her pregnancy, she may give her unborn child an advantage, in terms of brain development,” Ms. Labonte-LeMoyne said. And the commitment required can be slight. “We were surprised,” she said, “by how much of an effect we saw” from barely an hour of exercise per week.

The J.D. Salinger "Three Stories" leak

You should be able to get to the stories here.

I did read The Catcher in the Rye, I guess in high school? Yawn. Holden Caulfield, just not my type of guy. FULL DISCLOSURE: Just for the record, I think my all time favorite novel is Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. In fact, anything by Hesse. And in further fact, anything by Graham Greene.

Here's some CNN coverage.

 

"6 Interesting Catholic Thanksgiving Facts You Need to Know"

ADD ON - Should have also posted this below - the Indian Squanto (helped the Pilgrims, remember?) was a Catholic. Here's an article referenced in the piece below: Squanto, the Catholic Hero of the Thanksgiving

Our friend Laurie sent me this today. Some interesting stuff off a website bleonging to some Catholic scholar who I never heard of. I have excerpted the first two.

6 Interesting Catholic Thanksgiving Facts You Need to Know

The history books will tell you that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Protestant pilgrims of Massachusetts in 1621. Not so. There was the Catholic Thanksgiving of 1565 in Florida and another Catholic Thanksgiving of 1589 in Texas.

1. The first American Thanksgiving was actually celebrated on September 8 (feast of the birth of the Blessed Virgin) in 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida. The Native Americans and Spanish settlers held a feast and the Holy Mass was offered. This was 56 years before the Puritan pilgrims of Massachusetts.Don Pedro Menendez came ashore amid the sounding of trumpets, artillery salutes and the firing of cannons to claim the land for King Philip II and Spain. The ship chaplain Fr. Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales chanted the Te Deum and presented a crucifix that Menendez ceremoniously kissed. Then the 500 soldiers, 200 sailors and 100 families and artisans, along with the Timucuan Indians celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in gratitude to God.
2. The second American Thanksgiving happened on April 30, 1598, when Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate requested the friars to say a Mass of Thanksgiving, after which he formally proclaimed “La Toma”, claiming the land north of the Rio Grande for the King of Spain. The men feasted on duck, goose, and fish from the river. The actors among them dressed and presented a play. All this took place twenty-three years before the Pilgrims set sail from England on the Mayflower.

Krauthammer on religious freedom and religious commitment

As they discuss the contraception and abortifacient mandate in Obamacare, and the case heading to the Supreme Court.

Krauthammer is self-proclaimed "not religious" so doesn't have a dog in the fight...

When listening to Juan Williams (who has a $2 million a year contract with FOX News) I often have to ask myself, just how well-read is the guy? Not very, evidently.

 

Thanksgiving, 1993 or '94

My brother Jim sent me this picture today, which Brigid had to remind me she took, in our living room. We still have the same couch. That's Jim to my left, Paul with his typical shut-eyes, and Phil wearing his left wing intellectual granny glasses. I do look hefty in this picture ...

Great Thanksgiving video: Pope Francis "Open your hearts ..."

Nice!

 

Preserved soft tissue from Tyrannosaurus Rex(!) now has explanation

With a few pictures.

The controversial discovery of 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex finally has a physical explanation. According to new research, iron in the dinosaur's body preserved the tissue before it could decay.

"What we found was unusual, because it was still soft and still transparent and still flexible," Schweitzer told LiveScience.

******

The researchers also analyzed other fossils for the presence of soft tissue, and found it was present in about half of their samples going back to the Jurassic Period, which lasted from 145.5 million to 199.6 million years ago, Schweitzer said.

 

"The problem is, for 300 years, we thought, 'Well, the organics are all gone, so why should we look for something that's not going to be there?' and nobody looks," she said.

 

The obvious question, though, was how soft, pliable tissue could survive for millions of years. In a new study published today (Nov. 26) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Schweitzer thinks she has the answer: Iron.

 

******

 

 

Dinosaurs' iron-rich blood, combined with a good environment for fossilization, may explain the amazing existence of soft tissue from the Cretaceous (a period that lasted from about 65.5 million to 145.5 million years ago) and even earlier. The specimens Schweitzer works with, including skin, show evidence of excellent preservation. The bones of these various specimens are articulated, not scattered, suggesting they were buried quickly. They're also buried in sandstone, which is porous and may wick away bacteria and reactive enzymes that would otherwise degrade the bone.

 

 

NJ policeman's dramatic rescue of driver - 36 second video

A bit of history and a Jewish view of Thanksgiving

I found this op ed in the Wall Street Journal from a few days ago fascinating.

God Delivered the Pilgrims—and My People Thanksgiving always had particular resonance for one group of religious freedom-seekers.

The once-in-a-lifetime convergence of Thanksgiving Day with the first day of Hanukkah has inspired culinary fusions like deep-fried turkey, song parodies and clever T-shirts. One enterprising lad has even invented the "Menurkey": a menorah (candelabrum) in the shape of a turkey. Humor aside, one group of American Jews—the members of New York's Congregation Shearith Israel —have reason to find in this year's calendrical happenstance a source both of institutional memory and of profound pride. Of all American synagogues, Shearith Israel has been celebrating both Hanukkah and Thanksgiving from the very beginning.

As with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the origins of Shearith Israel trace back to a small group of religious freedom-seekers and a treacherous ocean passage to the New World. In September 1654, 23 Jews set sail from Recife, Brazil, where the Portuguese Inquisition had made practicing Judaism impossible. Intending to return to Europe but captured by pirates mid-voyage, they gave themselves up for lost—until, as a congregational history puts it, "God caused a savior to arise unto them, the captain of a French ship arrayed for battle, and he rescued them out of the hands of the outlaws . . . and conducted them until they reached the end of the inhabited earth called New Holland."

Once arrived safely in New Holland, better known as New Amsterdam, the refugees formed the first Jewish community in North America. From the start, they remained loyal to their faith: praying together, ensuring the availability of kosher meat, and observing their holidays. For these individuals, the symbolism of lighting the Hanukkah candles in the dark of winter must have been especially resonant, at one with the dawning presence of Judaism in the New World.

Hit the link for the last eight paragraphs in this essay.

Obama people send out "talking points" for Thanksgiving dinner to promote Obamacare

Pretty tacky and hopefully backfire.

 

 

There's a whole website for it: "Health Care for the Holidays." (Somehow they managed to meet the deadline for getting that website to work.)

Regulating bone marrow donation: an issue that could effect me specifically (and everyone else!) in the future

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an editorial on the unelected, bureaucratic HHS Agency, which is doing it's central government thing, trying to override common sense.

Having had an autologous stem cell transplant - essentially the same thing as a bone marrow transplant - but given back my own cells - it's possible that in the future I could need a donor transplant. If my lymphoma were to come back, that could be one of the options (which of course, I'd like to avoid).

Bone marrow donation is very simple - akin to giving blood - and the issue is, can people be compensated for their donation.

Rationing Bone Marrow The feds want to control who can donate despite shortages.

The technique is less invasive than egg donation and has none of the risks associated with kidney or liver donation. Unlike blood donors, however, marrow donors cannot be compensated, which has led to shortages for patients with life threatening blood diseases and a waiting list of some 13,900.

In 2009, the Institute for Justice sued on behalf of Maine resident Doreen Flynn, whose three children have a disease called Fanconi anemia and will most likely need bone marrow transplants to survive. In 2012's Flynn v. Holder, the Ninth Circuit agreed, noting that new technology and the ease of marrow donation put the ban wholly out of step with the purpose of the organ donation law.

The Justice Department petitioned for rehearing en banc, insisting that marrow transplants should "not be subject to market forces." When the Ninth Circuit declined to rehear the case, the Administration mobilized HHS, which has proposed a rule that would overturn the Ninth Circuit and define marrow extracted from the bloodstream as an organ. The purpose, says the rule, is to "ban the commodification" of bone marrow used in transplants, "encourage altruistic donations, and decrease the likelihood of disease transmission resulting from paid donations."

None of these arguments stands up to scrutiny. If banning donor compensation encouraged altruistic donations, it would already have done so. The ban has been in place for decades and the result is chronic bone-marrow shortages, which have disproportionately affected minorities who have a harder time finding a donor match.

The claim that compensation would increase "disease transmission" is also a straw man. The thousands of people on the waiting list, including many with leukemia and blood cancers or anemia, often need marrow donation to stay alive. Any marginal increase in risk pales next to the certainty of death.

Treating bone marrow as a public resource distributed by the federal government hasn't worked. The Administration's campaign to reimpose the compensation ban and overrule the courts is another example of its penchant for political and bureaucratic control over medical decisions. The rule is open for public comment until December 2, and patients and doctors ought to express their opposition on moral and humanitarian grounds.

A timely 1st place outdoor Halloween decoration

From my friend Bernadette who says "A little late but couldn't resist sending!!!"

 

Rugby: Great game, New Zealand vs. Ireland, end of N. Hemisphere tour

Played in Dublin, the New Zealand TV feed. Couldn't ask for more drama.

Ben Stein states the obvious about selling of Obamacare: "Criminal fraud"

Totally correct. In what business could the dishonesty be gotten away with?

 

How to tell if your dog is involved in a sex scandal

From my friend Ellen -

NY City Mayor-elect De Blasio anti-Catholic!? Yup.

The only possible conclusion. It's called being a "progressive" politician. No doubt the Cardinal will be sucking up to him anyway.

From the Catholic League website -

Yesterday, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio announced the appointment of 60 New York leaders to his transition committee. He instructed them to “identify women and men from every part of our city and walk of life” that wants a better New York. He lied. Also lying was Transition Co-Chair Jennifer Jones Austin, who said that committee members “come from every slice of civic life—business and labor, science and the arts, clergy….” (My italic.)

In fact, there are two ministers, two rabbis and one imam on the transition committee. There are no Catholic priests. Catholics make up 52.5 percent of New York, yet they have no clergy representation. This is not an oversight: every attempt was made to include persons from virtually every sector of New York. This was clearly done by design. Looks like de Blasio’s politics of inclusion has its limits.

To make matters worse, de Blasio showed his contempt for Catholics by naming to his transition committee the man who insulted them in 1999 with the “Sensation” exhibit, Arnold L. Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. That exhibit featured a portrait of Our Blessed Mother with elephant dung and pornographic cut outs on it. I led a demonstration against it.

The bearish scoop on gold

Low inflation, growth in earnings for companies (money follows earnings), and the liklihood (actually sure thing at some point) of rising interest rates in the future - that's the short and intermediate term bearish case.

Gold Analysts Most Bearish Since June on Fed Taper: Commodities

New chess world champion! And he's 22 years old

So Magnus Carlsen could be the best for a long while.

Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen is new chess champion

Norwegian chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen has become the world champion, beating Indian title holder Viswanathan Anand.

Carlsen, 22, secured a draw to win the World Chess Championship in 10 games, with two left to play.

Carlsen won the match in Chennai, India, with a score of 6.5-3.5. He has now achieved the highest rating of all time.

But he misses out on being the youngest player to win the title. That honour goes to the Russian Garry Kasparov.

He was younger by just a few weeks.

More interesting stuff if you hit the link.

The economy: quantitative easing and the exit strategy

Friday's Wall Street Journal had a really excellent oped co-written by former Texas Senator Phil Gramm and an economics professor from Texas A & M. 

The essay is worth reading closely and with some care. Some of it is "inside baseball" stuff, but a person interested in the economy and our future problems is well rewarded by reading this, even if they don't "get it" all.

Every month that the Fed's quantitative easing goes on, the exit strategy becomes more difficult and dangerous.

If we listen to the Fed governors, the potentially explosive increase in the money supply inherent in the current $2.3 trillion of excess bank reserves won't be allowed to occur. At the first sign of a real economic recovery, the Fed will sell Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) to soak up excess bank reserves, or achieve the same result through repurchase agreements and paying banks to hold excess reserves.

It sounds simple, but in a full-blown recovery the Fed will have to execute its exit strategy quickly enough to keep the inflation genie in the bottle without driving interest rates up to levels that would derail the recovery. And every month that the Fed's monetary expansion continues, its exit strategy becomes more difficult and dangerous.

******

Even if the Fed could sell its MBSs (note: mortgage backed secutiries), absorb its losses and withstand the public outcry as mortgage rates soared, its work would not yet be finished. The Fed would still need to move about $600 billion of U.S. Treasurys off its books to reduce excess reserves in the banking system. The effect of these sales would be substantial, since the Fed now finances 62% of the deficit and holds 18% of all marketable Treasury securities. And as a legacy of its "Operation Twist," the Fed now owns 36% of all Treasury securities with maturities between five and 10 years and 40% with maturities longer than 10 years. Selling this long-term debt would compound market disruption.

There is another complication. The Fed does not mark its assets to market. Every increase in interest rates drives down the market value of its Treasury and MBS holdings and requires the Fed to sell more and more of the book value of its portfolio to lower the monetary base by the required amount, depleting both the Feds asset holdings and earnings. For example, 30-year fixed mortgage rates have risen by 89 basis points since September 2012. Even if MBSs carried on the Fed's books were worth $100 billion when they were purchased they would sell now for less than $80 billion. The same principles apply to Treasurys where 10-year notes bought at $100 billion in April would today sell for only $90 billion.

Here's the punch line - the last two paragraphs, which I believe are inarguable.

The weakest recovery in the post-war period was bought with a fiscal policy that doubled the national debt held by the public and a monetary policy that expanded the monetary base at a rate not approached in the modern era. The monetary expansion that started as a response to the subprime crisis has evolved into a prolonged and largely unsuccessful effort to offset the negative impact of the Obama administration's tax, spend and regulatory policies.

Never in our history has so much money been spent to produce so little good, and the full bill for this failed policy has yet to arrive. No such explosion of debt has ever escaped a day of reckoning and no such monetary surge has ever had a happy ending.

As I've posted before, the only way out - if you can call it that - is inflation. It will occur eventually, even if it's still a few years off. And unless the economy picks up and demand increases, it could be quite a few years off.

 

Was JFK pro-life?

An interesting article -

Examining JFK: Was John F. Kennedy Pro-Life on Abortion?

On the fiftieth anniversary of his death it is hard to avoid stories about John F. Kennedy (JFK) so I thought I would add another one.  Most stories describe JFK as a devout Catholic, though most stories also highlight the former president’s extra-marital activities.

The truth is during John F. Kennedy’s lifetime abortion was simply not the hot button issue it is today so there is little found that could point in one direction or another.  One book, JFK, Conservative by Ira Stroll did find this quote:

“Now, on the question of limiting population: as you know the Japanese have been doing it very vigorously, through abortion, which I think would be repugnant to all Americans.”

Unfortunately, not so repugnant to plenty of Americans today. What would he think of the Democratic Party today?

The Pope opines on rugby, and gets it right!

Of course - they play great rugby in Argentina.

 

Not just JFK - C.S. Lewis also died 50 years ago today

UPDATE: Other people have noted these deaths this morning, for example 50 years ago today, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley died.

As well as Aldous Huxley (the author of Brave New World and pointed out to me yesterday in an email from Brigid's niece June - I didn't know). It would be a good chat as to who of the three will prove to be most influential.

Here is a very fine discussion of C.S. Lewis, by the Catholic priest & evangelist Robert Barron, especially the last couple of minutes. "You don't really convince people by out-arguing them ... you conquer a position by out-narrating it. What we have in other words is competing narratives ...". I love it. Fr. Barron's youtube channel is excellent.

 

Like penguins? Preview to "The Secret Life of Penguins"

HA!

 

NY Times op ed writer has it figured out: Opposition to Obamacare is racist

Yup. Here's how he reaches the conclusion.

In addition, the Affordable Care Act can be construed as a transfer of benefits from Medicare, which serves an overwhelmingly white population of the elderly – 77 percent of recipients are white — to Obamacare, which will serve a population that is 54.7 percent minority. Over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act cuts $455 billion from the Medicare budget in order to help pay for Obamacare.

Those who think that a critical mass of white voters has moved past its resistance to programs shifting tax dollars and other resources from the middle class to poorer minorities merely need to look at the election of 2010, which demonstrated how readily this resistance can be used politically. The passage of the A.C.A. that year forced such issues to the fore, and Republicans swept the House and state houses across the country. The program’s current difficulties have the clear potential to replay events of 2010 in 2014 and possibly 2016.

First four women to graduate from marine infantry school!

Here they are - a "selfie" (as in self-portrait on smartphone camera). And all looking pretty attractive.

Harlee “Rambo” Bradford (in the middle) snapped this selfie after her and the three other women in the photo were the first ...

 

 

Rugby: Northern Hemisphere tour, Ireland vs. Australia

Expected to be a close game - the matador defense (wave as they go by) on the third try?

 

Huge rally yesterday for tax credits for private/religious school parents

The Westchester County Center was filled. Some great photos if you hit the link.

The sound of nearly 5,000 people cheering in the auditorium at the Westchester County Center on Tuesday was nearly deafening.

“I think 5,000 kids will overwhelm everybody and start to nudge the Legislature to make this happen. It’s something that’s really important to a lot of people and needs to be talked about and probably pushed,” said Kendall Bender, 16, a junior at Solomon Schechter School of Westchester. She was one of thousands of students who took half a day off from lessons to participate in regional rallies to support the Invest in Education tax credit.

“I believe that it’s in everybody’s best benefit to receive a proper education and ... I think everybody should have the same chance to participate in that and get the same opportunity that I get from my schooling,” she said.

The legislation, which has been twice passed by the state Senate but not the Assembly, would allow people who donate money to schools — public or private — to receive one-to-one income-tax credit. Right now, people who donate money to schools only get a percentage of that donation as a write-off on their taxes. Changing the law would encourage more donations that could be used to keep schools functioning, its supporters said.

 

PBS - a little more on the Gettysburg Address

Putting the Address in a historic context. Well worth spending the six minutes to watch this -

 

Jay Leno meets George W. Bush (1 minute vid)

Amusing.

 

Carly Fiorina (1minute vid); she should have been in charge of Obamacare

Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard. I think she's great.

 

What the Philippine typhoon says about China

Good insight from the National Interwst online journal.

If/when Chinas replaces the USA as the dominant world power.

If the Asia Pacific region ever needed a reminder of the difference between a U.S.-led order and one shaped by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the respective reactions of the two to Typhoon Haiyan is a stark one. One nation sends its navy and Marines and pledges $20 million in assistance. The other sends $100,000 in government assistance until it folds to the hectoring of the international community and increases its contribution to a still-miserly $1.6 million.

 

 

Poll: Romney vs. Obama today, and the result is reversed

I suppose this shows what would have happened if Obama had been honest about the healthcare plan.

a new survey finds that if the 2012 election matchup were held this month, Mitt Romney would hold the edge with the voters.

Romney topped Obama 49 percent to 45 percent among registered voters in the Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday.

"From 'Four Score' to 'Yes We Can!'"

On the big anniversary of the Gettysburgh Address - the great affirmation of the Declaration of Independence - below is a timely column in the Wall Street Journal.

Sudden modesty from the selfhyperadulated president.

Seven score and 10 years ago, Abraham Lincoln delivered his sacred speech on the meaning of free government. Edward Everett, a former secretary of state and the principal speaker for the consecration of the Gettysburg cemetery, instantly recognized the power of the president's 272 words.

"I should be glad, if I could flatter myself," Everett wrote to Lincoln the next day, "that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

Barack Obama is not scheduled to be present at Gettysburg on Tuesday to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the address. Maybe he figured that the world would little note, nor long remember, what he said there. Maybe he thought the comparisons with the original were bound to be invidious, and rightly so.

If that's the case, it would be the beginning of wisdom for this presidency. Better late than never.

Mr. Obama's political career has always and naturally inspired thoughts about the 16th president: the lawyer from Illinois, blazing a sudden trail from obscurity to eminence; the first black president, redeeming the deep promise of the new birth of freedom. The associations create a reservoir of pride in the 44th president even among his political opponents.

But, then, has there ever been a president who so completely over-salted his own brand as Barack Obama? "I never compare myself to Lincoln," the president told NBC's David Gregory last year. Except that he announced his presidential candidacy from the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Ill. And that he traveled by train to Washington from Philadelphia for his first inauguration along the same route Lincoln took in the spring of 1861. And that he twice swore his oaths of office on the Lincoln Bible. "Lincoln—they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me," he said in Iowa in 2011.

******

But now that has started to change. The president has been humbled; he's pleading incompetence against charges of dishonesty; the media, mainstream as well as alternative, smell blood in the water.

And his problems on that score are just beginning: ObamaCare is really a political self-punching machine, slugging itself with every botched rollout, missed deadline, postponed mandate, higher deductible, canceled insurance policy and jury-rigged administrative fix. John Roberts, we hardly knew you: Your ObamaCare swing vote last year may yet turn out to be best gift Republicans have had in a decade.

All this will force even liberals to reappraise the Obama presidency. Lincoln's political reputation went from being "the original gorilla" (as Edwin Stanton, his future secretary of war, once called him) to being celebrated, in the words of Ulysses Grant, as "incontestably the greatest man I have ever known." Obama's political trajectory, and reputation, are headed in the opposite direction: from Candidate Cool to President Callow.

******

Abraham Lincoln spoke greatly because he read wisely and thought deeply. He turned to Shakespeare, he once said, "perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader." "It matters not to me whether Shakespeare be well or ill acted," he added. "With him the thought suffices."

Maybe Mr. Obama has similar literary tastes. It doesn't show. "An economy built to last," the refrain from his 2012 State of the Union, borrows from an ad slogan once used to sell the Ford Edsel. "Nation-building at home," another favorite presidential trope, was born in a Tom Friedman column. "We are the ones we have been waiting for" is the title of a volume of essays by Alice Walker. "The audacity of hope" is adapted from a Jeremiah Wright sermon. "Yes We Can!" is the anthem from "Bob the Builder," a TV cartoon aimed at 3-year-olds.

There is a common view that good policy and good rhetoric have little intrinsic connection. Not so. President Obama's stupendously shallow rhetoric betrays a remarkably superficial mind. Superficial minds designed ObamaCare. Superficial minds are now astounded by its elementary failures, and will continue to be astounded by the failures to come.

Is there a remedy? Probably not. Then again, the president's no-show at Gettysburg suggests he might be trying to follow Old Abe's counsel in a fruitful way: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool," the Great Emancipator is reported to have said, "than to speak and to remove all doubt."

Rugby: Northern Hemisphere tours, New Zealand vs. England

"80 is the new 60 when it comes to retirement"

Not so far from the truth, unless you either (1) work for the government or (2) for a large corporation.

American business has become a gray area. As in hair color.

Now 80 is the new 60 when it comes to retirement. Many older workers who finally clock out have sharply underestimated their financial needs in retirement, raising the specter of personal financial disaster.

******

• The percentage of older middle-class Americans who said their day-to-day financial concern is “paying the monthly bills” has climbed from 52 percent last year to 59 percent today, according to Wells Fargo. Saving for retirement comes in second. Four in 10 say saving and paying the bills is “not possible.”
• Older adults are now the fastest-growing share of the US labor force. By 2020, workers 55 and older will comprise a stunning 25 percent of the civilian labor force. In 1985, workers 60 and older, and those 65 and older, made up just 6.5 percent and 2.3 percent of the labor force respectively, according to a Brookings Institution study. That’s projected to jump to 11.2 percent and 4.7 percent by 2015 — and then reach 13 percent and 6.2 percent by 2030.

Albuquerque New Mexico voting today on ban on abortions after 20 weeks

A little info here -

Voting in Albuquerque today to ban abortions after 20 weeks

If David Brooks (NYT columnist) thinks the President & Obamacare are in trouble, they're in trouble.

Brooks is a milquetoast columnist; beloved by liberals, who think he's a conservative.

Pope hands out medicine "for our spiritual souls"

The Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy - not  exactly avant garde.

 

Fastest growing group of rich people/1%'ers - Washington DC

Why/how would that be?

During the past decade, the region added 21,000 households in the nation's top 1 percent. No other metro area came close.

It's hard to say exactly how many of Washington's households in the top 1 percent draw their incomes from the broad business of serving, supplying or influencing the government. But an analysis of tax data by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the area's 1-percenters are most likely to be lawyers and executives, or those who work in management consulting or IT. Nearly 1 in 10 of those households is headed by a government worker.

Sickening.

Senator Gillibrand (NY) - one of my Senators - continues the healthcare lies

It's really outrageous that they continue with the claim that all the healthcare plans that were canceled were substandard. etc, etc.

 

The "North Face" - how they sell their stuff

I actually don't buy North Face gear - I think it's overpriced.

But this is an interesting insight into marketing - an excerpt below the link.

In a North Face Jacket, a Reversible Appeal

Of course, I was aware of the brand’s popularity. But it wasn’t until I got my own that I realized how omnipresent it was. That particularly struck home one day when I, a middle-aged woman, was getting out of my car. I glanced up at the young man walking nearby. He was wearing the same jacket.

Usually when a brand moves from urban chic to suburban moms, or from elite athletes to everyday wear, it loses some luster. But the North Face seems to have escaped that fate, and is embraced by the city student, the rural rancher and just about everyone in between.

Further searching backed up my anecdotal evidence. There’s a picture of President Obama in a North Face jacket, dropping off his daughters at school. In the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, campaigned in North Face jackets, one black, one red. The rapper Drake wears a leopard-patterned one. Students in South Korea have called it “the uniform worn over the uniform” and rank classmates according to what type they own, according to a CNN article last year.

******

When asked about the secret behind its unusually widespread appeal, the people at North Face and its holding company, the VF Corporation, weren’t so eager to talk. Or rather, they were happy to speak endlessly about the North Face-wearing marathoner, snowboarder and mountain climber — the sort of athlete featured in the company’s newest national television commercial, which began appearing last week.

The commercial shows several athletes skiing perilous slopes, running near a waterfall or staring soulfully from a sailboat, all with a backdrop of spectacular scenery and a voice-over reciting the words of John Muir and ending with his famous line, “The mountains are calling and I must go.”

North Face ads don’t really focus on the rest of us, who wear the jackets as we commute to work or take a stroll in a city park.

And there are a lot of us. In 2012, North Face accounted for 33.5 percent of the outdoor apparel market in the United States, according to SportsOneSource, a market research firm. That number refers only to apparel like fleeces, jackets, vests, pants and hats, not to backpacks and other gear — and only to products sold by sporting goods retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods and REI, not North Face’s own outlets. But those big retailers represent the largest share of outdoor apparel sales, said Matt Powell, a SportsOneSource analyst.

Rather than tooting its own horn, North Face, based in San Leandro, Calif., denies that it dominates the United States market that much. It said in an email that “once you include sportswear, footwear, equipment and the other categories the share is not that high.” But the company didn’t want to provide its own number.

Croton fixture "Grouchy Gabe's" under new ownership

Go here for a bit of info -

MEET THE NEW PEOPLE AT GROUCHY GABE'S

Stepinac football season ends in the semi-finals.

UPDATE: Here's the Journal News/Lohud report on the game.

Stepinac falls to St. Anthony's

Losing to St. Anthony's, the Long Island HS football powerhouse. Final score 14-35, with Stepinac never really in the game. So we finish overall with a very good season, 7-4.

Here's a little bit from the Catholic HS football website, posted by St. Anthony's.

Stepinac 14 - St. Anthony's 35

A look at today's Stepinac-St. Anthony's semi-final game

Brigid and I will of course be going to the game, 2 o'clock in Melville, Long Island. 

CHSFL AAA semifinals preview: No. 1 St. Anthony’s vs. No. 4 Stepinac

O’Donnell told me that Stepinac was “a little too uptempo” in the teams’ last meeting. The Crusaders do have the ability to sustain drives, bit they’ll have to do that while putting points on the board. Can they do it?

Either way, getting to the game, against the perennial league favorite, is an achievement in itself for Stepinac. Whether or not the Crusaders take advantage remains to be seen.

“We’re really excited about playing them in the semifinals with a shot to go to the finals,” O’Donnell said. “it’s a great challenge for our program. We’re looking forward to it.”

Mike O'Donnell, the head coach for the last 26 years.

 

"Morning Jolt" from Jim Geraghty - quite good.

Geraghty is a columnist from National Review online (NRO) and he has a quite witty email newsletter - you can't link to it - which I just recently started receiving. I suppose I like him because he's witty and insightful, reminding me of myself. it goes along with the six newspaper emails and two websites I check every morning.

Below from his Friday note, about the Obama statement/press conference. I only saw a few short excerpts of it - my friend Judy watched the whole thing - time off purgatory for her!

President Obama’s Chernobyl-Like Meltdown

Did you catch Obama’s Thursday press conference? If you are not a fan of this president, you may want to put aside some time and watch it. More specifically, you’ll really want to watch it if you’ve been wondering when the rest of the world would see the same guy you’ve been seeing since, oh, 2007 or so . . . in over his head, out of touch with the real world, banal in his off-the-cuff remarks, and unable to distinguish between good intentions and genuine results.

Sure, Obama’s remarks drag on interminably, but there’s something revealing in those hapless, meandering, slow remarks. Our Charlie Cooke said Obama looked “broken.” Sometime in the past day or so, the mobile bubble of happy-talk was pierced, and he’s starting to realize the scope and depth of the mess he’s in, and how unlikely he is to get out of this mess for the remainder of his presidency.

Ultimately, his big idea doesn’t work. It began with a promise he never could have kept (insurance policies aren’t carved in stone). It advanced through a smoke-and-mirrors p.r. campaign obscuring the taxes, the regulations, and the considerable trade-offs. His idea was greatly complicated by the epic failure of a website he was completely convinced was ready. But even if the website stopped crashing, Obamacare would ultimately run afoul of one or more of the other lurking problems: disinterest among the young, sticker shock among buyers, lack of cyber-security, and the threat of identity theft.

Americans are starting to realize who the biggest losers under Obamacare are: “in good health, relatively young, with moderate to high incomes, and not receiving health insurance through work.” People like Kirsten Powers. These folks haven’t done anything wrong, and they’ve made the responsible choice to buy health insurance even though they don’t get it through their employer. And they’re getting punished for making that responsible choice. As Powers noted, “There's no explanation for the doubling of my premiums other than the fact that it's subsidizing other people.”

Of course, if Obama had pitched his health-care-reform plan as an effort at economic redistribution that would include millions of Americans losing their insurance and millions more facing higher premiums, it never would have passed.

Maybe this is the most significant moment from Obama’s press conference, where he came dangerously close to admitting that he never really understood health insurance at all:

What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy. And another mistake that we made, I think, was underestimating the difficulties of people purchasing insurance online and shopping for a lot of options with a lot of costs and lot of different benefits and plans and — and somehow expecting that that would be very smooth.

“We” are not discovering this, Mr. President. You and your team are. You clearly had no real idea of how your system was going to work, or what the average uninsured person needed. The “complicated nature” of buying insurance that you’ve suddenly discovered is the precise opposite of what you were saying October 1:

Just visit healthcare.gov, and there, you can compare insurance plans side-by-side the same way you'd shop for a plane ticket on Kayak or a TV on Amazon. You enter some basic information, you'll be presented with a list of quality, affordable plans that are available in your area with clear descriptions of what each plan covers and what it will cost.

Five years into his presidency, Obama announced Wednesday that he now realizes that the federal government has a really hard time keeping up with the latest technology.

And you combine that with the fact that the federal government does a lot of things really well. One of the things it does not do well is information technology procurement. You know, this is kind of a systematic problem that we have across the board.

If only he could get into some sort of elected position where he could have some sort of influence over how the government operates.

But he’s such a bystander to his own administration, he didn’t even know how bad the problems with the websites were, one week after launch:

So, clearly, we and I did not have enough awareness about the problems in the website. Even a week into it, the thinking was that these were some glitches that would be fixed with patches.

Oh, and while he never explicitly came out and said it, they’re not making the end-of-the-month deadline:

In terms of what happens on November 30th or December 1st, I think it’s fair to say that the improvement will be marked and noticeable. You know, the website will work much better on November 30th, December 1st, than it worked certainly on October 1st. That’s a pretty low bar. It’ll be working a lot better than it is — it was last week and will be working better than it was this week, which means that the majority of people who go to the website will see a website that is working the way it’s supposed to.

Mr. President, once again, that’s not what your administration promised:

The troubled HealthCare.gov website will be running properly by late November, said Jeffrey Zients, President Obama's appointee to fix the problems that have plagued the site since its Oct. 1 opening. "By the end of November, HealthCare.gov will work smoothly for the vast majority of users," Zients said Friday.

Now Obama’s moving the goalposts again, and the cherry on top of his awful appearance Thursday was a whine that everyone expects perfection: “I think it is not possible for me to guarantee that a hundred percent of the people a hundred percent of the time going on this website will have a perfectly seamless, smooth experience.”

Oh, and His Proposal Stinks, Too

In other news, Obama’s latest proposal -- telling insurance companies that they’re allowed to offer the insurance plans they just canceled again, as long as they tout the exchange website (that isn’t working) and their local state insurance commissioner signs off on it -- doesn’t even sufficiently solve the political problem before Democrats.

A bunch of them still feel the need to vote for a bill that would allow them to say, “hey, I voted to make sure you could keep your old plan.”

On the Senate side, some Democrats said their concerns were allayed by Obama's fix. But a significant few — including Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Mark Begich, D-Alaska — said they will continue to work for a legislative fix.

Landrieu called the president's actions a good "first step" but said she will continue to push her own legislation — with five Democratic co-sponsors so far — to require insurers to reinstate canceled plans for existing customers and to provide notification letters to consumers on the plans that are available to them. "We will probably need legislation to make it stick," Landrieu said.

However, Senate Democratic leaders remain firmly behind the administration, making a vote on Landrieu's bill unlikely. They are wary of reopening the health care law for debate in a divided Congress where Republicans unanimously oppose the law. Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., announced shortly after the meeting with White House officials that there is "no need" for any legislative fixes.

So Harry Reid’s going to block the “Keep Your Health Plan Act.” The ad guys at the National Republican Senatorial Campaign should send him a fruit basket or something.

That’s just the politics. The policy implications of Obama’s proposal are worse. Here’s an actual USA Today headline:

Chaos ensues after insurance cancellation reversal

Obama has literally brought chaos to the country’s health-care system.

So, Which State Is Botching the Obamacare Changes Worst?

Vermont may be the single worst state for health care soon. You can’t keep your old plan, and you must use an exchange that the state can’t get to work:

Thursday night, Gov. Peter Shumlin indicated that his commissioner of financial regulation would reserve that authority and not allow Vermonters to extend their current plans for another year.

After March 31, the roughly 100,000 Vermonters buying insurance independently or via businesses with 50 or fewer employees must buy new plans on the state-run market, Vermont Health Connect. A Web-based market that is still not fully functioning.

Wait, maybe the worst state is Oregon.

State regulators have rejected an idea to push back the cancellation dates of more than 140,000 Oregonians' health insurance policies despite public confusion and momentum among California officials and some national Democratic Party leaders to do so.

Oregonians must use the state marketplace website. You know, the one that has failed to successfully sign up anyone yet.

Or perhaps it’s Maryland. In that state, 73,000 people have gotten cancellation notices. The state is still deciding whether to approve Obama’s proposal, but at least one insurer is already making clear not everyone’s getting their old plan back: “CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, the largest insurer in the state, said it's studying the implications of the president's announcement. The insurer had notified state insurance officials that it would not renew more than 43,100 policies.”

Maryland’s exchange managed to sign up about 1,200 people so far. But . . . well, you can probably guess:

Maryland Health Connection’s website is certainly not fully functioning. Users are having problems creating accounts, determining their eligibility for federal subsidies and viewing available insurance plans. Insurance carriers have yet to get key information about new members successfully enrolled in health plans through the exchange.

ADDENDA: Epic denial: “We don’t have a policy problem,” Pelosi told her Democrats in the private meeting, a defense of the law written by Congress. “We have a website problem.”

. . . . I’m reminded that Jim Capretta’s primary affiliation is with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in addition to Heritage and AEI.

 

 

The NY Times reminds us that while Obama's got trouble, Bush was REALLY bad

Hahaha ... desperation.

Health Law Rollout’s Stumbles Draw Parallels to Bush’s Hurricane Response

Now, Ann Althouse blog posting (former Obama supporter) points out among other things:

1. Bush's political party didn't design and enact Hurricane Katrina.

2. Bush didn't have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane.

3. Bush didn't have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it.

And this -

6. If Bush experienced a disaster like the rollout of Obamacare, the NYT wouldn't use its front page to remind us of something Bill Clinton did that looked bad.

 

What it's like to be the last Jewish person in Afghanistan

FULL DISCLOSURE: My grandmother was a Polish Jew.

From The Independent (UK).

The precarious life of Zabulon Simintov, the last Jew in Afghanistan

Uh oh: "Al-Qaeda cuts head off wrong person"

From the Telegraph (UK) morning email today.

Not funny at all if it's your head.

In one of the world's more extreme PR gaffes, militant Islamist rebels in Syria have apologised for cutting off and putting on display the wrong man's head.

Members of Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, appeared in a video online holding up a bearded head before a crowd in Aleppo. They triumphantly described the execution of what they said was a member of an Iraqi Shia militia fighting for Bashar al-Assad.

But after the head was recognised as originally belonging to a member of Ahrar al-Sham, a Sunni islamist rebel group that fights alongside ISIS, they backpedalled.