City Editor's Blog

Goodbye, Maurice; goodbye, 22nd District

2012-01-20T13:17:00.015-05:00

Take a good look at New York's 22nd Congressional District in the map at right (click to enlarge). And then forget about it, because you can bet your bottom dollar that it won't be there come election time this fall.

With New York needing to eliminate two congressional districts this year, due to population shifts reflected in the 2010 Census, and with longtime Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey, who occupies the seat in the 22nd, announcing this week that he'll retire at year's end, getting rid of the district is a no-brainer.

My guess is it will chopped into three pieces and that each piece will be attached to an adjacent district.

I see it going down one of two ways:

1. The thin, L-shaped western arm of the district — the piece that includes Binghamton and Ithaca — gets absorbed into District 24, just above it; and the fat eastern part of the district — which includes Ulster and Sullivan counties and small parts of Orange in Dutchess — gets sliced horizontally, with the top half joining the 20th District and the bottom half joining the 19th.

2. The Binghamton-Ithaca part of the district still joins District 24; the top half of eastern 22 and the westernmost counties in District 20 are added to the 21st District, which includes Albany; and the bottom half of eastern 22, as in the scenario above, joins the 19th.

I could be wrong about the exact boundaries, but one thing is certain: New York's current 22nd Congressional District is a goner.

All about Iowa

2012-01-03T14:13:00.004-05:00

If you're getting caught up in all the hype about the GOP's Iowa caucuses on Tuesday, consider this: John McCain, the Republican Party's eventual presidential nominee in 2008, came in a distant fourth in the Iowa caucuses that year, with barely one-third of the vote total of winner Mike Huckabee.

Also finishing ahead of McCain in Iowa that day: Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.

Are the Iowa caucuses important? Sure. But will they foretell a party's nominee for the fall election? Maybe, maybe not.

The process of picking a major-party candidate to run for president is long and drawn out, and with good reason. To suggest that one day of caucuses in a single state 10 months before Election Day is the be-all and end-all is to completely misunderstand the process.

Time for some REAL economic development

2011-12-06T14:27:00.003-05:00

I was happy to learn yesterday about two "new businesses" coming to a vacant site in Kingston — until I read the fine print.

On the surface, the news was that two manufacturers had announced plans to set up shop on the Flatbush Avenue site formerly occupied by Colony Liquors, which bolted for Greene County a few years ago.

The reality, though, is that one of the two "new" companies, Stavo Industries, merely is moving from another site in the city; and the other, Wolf-Tec, simply is moving to Kingston from the adjacent town of Ulster. Stavo says it will add 14 employees to its current staff of 47, and Wolf-Tec says it will add 27 jobs to its current 69, but I'll believe it when I see it. After all, if the total number of jobs promised at TechCity and the Kingston Business Park in the past decade had materialized, Ulster would be the boom county of New York state. Instead, it continues to be on the brink of bust.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is that we've so lowered the bar in our economic development expectations in these parts. Kingston, after all, is the city where economic development is defined as tearing down a McDonald's restaurant in order to build on the same site ... another McDonald's restaurant; tearing down a Stewart's convenience store in order to build on the same site ... another Stewart's convenience store; and tearing down a Citgo gas station in order to build on the same site ... another Citgo gas station.

A new era is about to begin in Kingston with the swearing-in of Shayne Gallo, the city's first new mayor since 2002. Here's hoping Mr. Gallo sets the development bar higher than it has been in recent years and brings real economic growth to the city.

Cain train derails

2011-12-06T11:31:00.004-05:00

I was taking one of my occasional breaks from blogging when the Herman Cain scandal was unfolding, so I never got the chance to comment it on it here.

To make up for it, I'll share with you, in order, the four comments about the scandal that I posted on my Facebook page:

* If I was German, and Herman Cain asked me whether he should stay in the presidential race, I'd reply: "Nein! Nein! Nein!"

* Does it really matter at this point whether Herman Cain decides to quit the presidential race or stay in it? I'm pretty sure the voters already have decided for him.

* I, for one will be sorry to see Herman Cain go if he quits the race. I liked his 9-9-9 plan: A nine-slice pizza for $9, with delivery guaranteed in nine minutes. Take THAT, Dominos!

* Why do politicians who are caught in scandals always blame the media? Note to Herman Cain: It's not the media's fault that you sexually harassed three women and had a 13-year affair while married. It's YOUR fault.

Getting their goat

2011-11-11T12:13:00.005-05:00

We're hearing from Freeman readers today that our front-page story about two people being arrested in Kingston's now-infamous "goat graffiti" scandal is much ado about nothing, non-news, overblown and so on.

Interesting, then, that the story has generated more hits and more comments than anything else on our website today.

I want your Six

2011-10-28T00:55:00.006-04:00

I've said it many times before, and now I'm certain of it: There's nothing better than Game 6 of a World Series.

The evidence:

* Carlton Fisk's walk-off home run in the 12th inning of Game 6 in 1975 to keep the Red Sox alive against the Reds.

* Reggie Jackson's three home runs in 1977's Game 6 to give the Yankees a 4-2 Series victory over the Dodgers.

* Mookie Wilson's slow roller through Bill Buckner's legs in the 10th inning of 1986's Game 6 to keep the Mets alive vs. the Red Sox and pave the way for New York to finish off Boston in Game 7.

* Kirby Puckett's walk-off dinger in the 11th inning of 1991's Game 6 against the Atlanta Braves, leading to the Twins winning the Series in Game 7.

* Joe Carter's walk-off, Series-ending home run in 1993's Game 6 off Philadelphia closer Mitch Williams to give the Blue Jays their second consecutive title.

* The Angels' six-run outburst after trailing the Giants 5-0 in the seventh inning of Game 6 in the 2002 Series, keeping the Halos alive and opening the door for them to win their first World Series title the next night.

* And now, the unforgettable Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, in which the Cardinals rallied from two-run deficits in the bottom of the ninth and 10th innings before David Freese hit a walk-off home run to lead off the bottom of the 11th and force Game 7.

Seven may be heaven. But I'll pick Six.

In baseball, life imitates art

2011-10-07T07:08:00.012-04:00

On Tuesday, I saw the movie "Moneyball," the story of how Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane fielded a successful team in the 2002 season on a shoestring budget.

Last night, I watched the biggest-budget team of them all, the New York Yankees, end their season without a World Series title for the 10th time in the last 11 years; and the biggest-budget Yankee of them all, Alex Rodriguez, choke in the postseason yet again — first by striking out with the bases loaded in the seventh inning and then, for the second consecutive year, ending his team's season by striking out in the ninth.

And let's not overlook the contribution of overpaid, overhyped and, yes, overweight pitcher CC Sabathia — giving up, in his first-ever Major League relief appearance, the fifth-inning run by the Tigers that turned out to be the game winner.

The teams that have eliminated the Yankees in postseasons of the past decade — notably the 2002 and 2005 Angels, the 2003 Marlins, the 2007 Indians, the 2010 Rangers and now the 2011 Tigers — all had payrolls substantially smaller than that of the Yankees, but they all had more heart, more cohesion and, as it turns out, more talent when it mattered.

And those things, both in "Moneyball" and real ball, are what matter most.

Time to move on

2011-09-12T15:58:00.012-04:00

Like a lot of Americans, I watched TV yesterday, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. And I've gotta say: Enough already.

I have no problem with news coverage of memorial ceremonies or interviews with survivors, emergency workers, government leaders and people who lost loved ones. But there is no redeeming value — none — in showing, again and again and again, the planes hitting the two towers of the World Trade Center, the towers coming down, a large section of a wall at the Pentagon collapsing or that field in Shanksville, Pa., smoldering after the crash of United Airlines Flight 93.

It's been 10 years already. We all know what happened that day. We know how many people died. We know how awful it was and how gut-wrenching it felt. We remember. We don't need to see it.

And before anyone makes the argument that it's important to keep rebroadcasting the horrible images so that subsequent generations remember the devastation of 9/11, ask yourself this: Do we need to see the footage of a bullet shattering part of President Kennedy's head to remember he was assassinated? Do we need to see security camera videos of the massacre at Columbine High School to know two deranged teenagers carried out a slaughter of their classmates? Do we need to see pictures or newsreel of Nazis murdering millions of Jews to know the Holocaust occurred? No, on all three counts.

9/11 happened. It was terrible — perhaps the darkest day ever for the United States. But it's the magnitude of the event and its lasting impact on our collective psyche, not archival images of the attacks, that have forever cemented that day in our minds and in our history.

Goodnight, Irene

2011-08-28T21:09:00.011-04:00

I'm willing to concede that Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene was more serious than I expected (see previous entry) if the weather forecasters are willing to concede how overblown, and largely incorrect, their buildup was.

First, let's not forget that when Irene formed in the Caribbean Sea, about a week ago, The Weather Channel and National Hurricane Center predicted the storm would skirt across the top of Cuba, turn northward, hit the bottom of Florida directly from the south and then peter out. Yeah, like that happened!

When that miscalculation became evident, they shifted into "May Hit North Carolina" mode, and to sex it up a little, predicted the Category 2 storm could strengthen into a Cat 3 or — gasp! — even a Cat 4!! Guess what: It never got above Cat 2, and it dropped to Cat 1 shortly after hitting North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Then, looking northward, the fear-mongering forecasters — "weather terrorists," a Facebook friend of mine calls them — laid out catastrophic scenarios for New York City, among them that Kennedy and LaGuardia airports and the Battery section of lower Manhattan could be "under water" and that the storm surge from New York Harbor could be so powerful that walls of water could overwhelm the streets of lower Manhattan's financial district.

By late Sunday morning, though, The Weather Channel's hyperventilator-in-chief, Jim Cantore, looked positively mystified as he stood in lower Manhattan amid only minimal flooding and moderate winds from what had been downgraded to — sigh! — a measly tropical storm before it reached the Big Apple.

Virtually ignored, meanwhile, was that here in New York's Mid-Hudson Valley, where the precipitation was forecast to be only moderate and winds were to top out around 40 mph, we got more than 7 inches of rain, wind gusts of over 60 mph, catastrophic flooding in some high-elevation communities, widespread tree damage and more than 100,000 power outages. And, oh yeah, the Thruway was shut down from Albany to Westchester County.

The prognosticators also missed, and the breathless on-air personalities underreported, the storm's widespread impacts in central New England, focusing their Sunday afternoon broadcasts instead on the Boston area and Cape Cod, which were supposed to bear the brunt of the storm but escaped largely unscathed.

It's like these people went into the weekend with an agenda and preconceived notions and weren't going to let something trivial, like reality, knock them off script. They just couldn't bear to admit — or change their reporting to reflect — the fact that this storm was not another Katrina (2005), Andrew (1992) or Agnes (1972).

Irene was bad, to be sure — about 20 deaths, millions of power outages and serious flooding make that fact hard to deny. But I'm still waiting to hear the forecasters say the storm didn't play out at all like they expected.

Earl revisited?

2011-08-24T16:10:00.004-04:00

Just about a year ago, in early September 2010, a hurricane named Earl was curving through the Caribbean and heading toward the East Coast of the United States.

Forecasters predicted — practically guaranteed! — that Earl would pound the Outer Banks of North Carolina and then follow the coastline northward, delivering a glancing blow to New York City (and us, here in the Hudson Valley) then score direct hits on Long Island and Cape Cod.

In reality, Earl took an unexpected northeastern turn, missed the Outer Banks, missed New York City, missed Long Island and missed Cape Cod.

Now, in late August 2011, we have Hurricane Irene, starting out along the same path as Earl and rendering the exact same forecasts.

I'm just sayin' ,,,

Whole lotta fakin' goin' on

2011-08-24T10:34:00.012-04:00

The Great East Coat Earthquake of 2011 (sarcasm intended) struck just as my wife and son and I were leaving Woods Hole, Mass., on Tuesday at the end of our annual Cape Cod vacation. For the record, we didn't feel a thing, despite being a mere 5 miles from Martha's Vineyard, where President Obama was vacationing and where reporters insisted the quake was noticeable.

I bring this up not to make the point that I didn't feel an earthquake, but to comment on news coverage of the event — specifically by New York City radio station WCBS-AM 880, which I listen to often and respect and which is strong enough to be picked up on my car radio on the Cape.

Unaware of what had happened only minutes earlier, I turned on WCBS at 2 p.m., just as we started driving, to catch some top-of-the-hour news. When I heard talk of an earthquake, I assumed it was in one of the typical hot spots — perhaps California, Mexico or Japan. I quickly realized, though, that the news anchors were talking about people in Manhattan feeling the jolt, and then I began to grasp the full story — that the quake was centered in Virginia but felt over a wide area of the East Coast.

Soon, though, it became evident that in the New York City area, the quake had done nothing more than alarm people. There was no structural damage. There were no injuries. The city's airports and tunnels closed briefly, but only as a precaution.

Why, then, did WCBS spend more than two hours talking about the quake's impact (or, rather, lack of impact) in and around New York City? More than two hours — with no breaks for other news, sports recaps, stock market reports or the features with which the station usually fills its time. It was All Quake, All the Time, and often with nothing more than the same sound bites being repeated.

If the station had been covering the quake's impact in Virginia, where the Richter Scale reading was a rather shocking 5.8 and some real damage occurred, or in Washington, D.C., where spires atop the National Cathedral broke off, that would be one thing. But instead, the anchors and reporters spent more than two hours focusing almost entirely on an area where the event had absolutely no impact and where the shaking measured a measly 2.1 on the Richter Scale. In California, quakes that measure 2.1 rarely get even a paragraph in the newspapers. They certainly don't get two hours, or even two minutes, of coverage on all-news radio stations.

My point is merely this: The news coverage of an event should be commensurate with the magnitude of the event. And a magnitude 2.1 earthquake — especially on a day when Libya's leader was about to fall, the Dow Jones industrial average was racing toward a 322-point gain and a major hurricane was making a beeline toward the United States — does not justify magnitude 9.0 coverage.

Stock market silliness

2011-08-08T17:12:00.004-04:00

Let me see if I have this right:

Investors dumped stocks today (to the tune of a 634-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average) because Standard & Poor's lowered the nation's long-term debt rating.

And what did these same investors buy with the money they moved out of the stock market? U.S. Treasury notes.

In other words, investors who are in panic mode because they don't trust the financial health of the United States are "protecting" their money by investing in ... THE UNITED STATES!

Yeah, that makes sense.

Irresponsible vote

2011-08-02T15:35:00.003-04:00

Sen John Kyl, Republican of Arizona, said today that defense spending cuts insisted on by President Barack Obama as part of the deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling are "irresponsible" and amount to the "knowing destruction of the U.S. military.”

“Can you imagine anything more irresponsible than for the commander in chief of the military to promote, not just promote, but insist on the knowing destruction of the U.S. military as a means to threaten Congress?” Kyl said on the Senate floor, according to The Associated Press.

Kyl then voted in favor of the debt ceiling legislation.

Here's a dollar, John. Go buy yourself a spine.

Just do it

2011-07-29T10:21:00.007-04:00

Let me see if I have this straight: House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is wheeling, dealing, twisting, turning and convulsing (and probably crying) in an effort to get support from his own party members to pass a debt-ceiling-raising, spending-cutting bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., already has said has no chance of passing in his chamber.

In other words, Boehner has been spending most of this week trying to strike a deal to win approval for a bill that will NEVER BECOME LAW.

And members of Congress wonder why their work gets such low approval ratings from the public. Sheesh!

Here's an alternate suggestion, Mr. Speaker: Rid your bill of all the proposed spending cuts that no one can agree on anyway, and bring to the House floor a bill that will do nothing other than raise the nation's debt ceiling. You'll have no trouble getting the support of all the Democrats in the House, along with a good number of moderate Republicans, and the thing will pass with ease. The Senate then will pass it too, President Obama will sign it, and our nation will avoid the embarrassment of its first-ever debt default.

Yes, the spending cuts that Republicans want — but can't seem to agree on — are important. And, in some form, they need to be approved and enacted. But that will have to wait. For the time being, at this moment, raising the debt ceiling is more important. And it cannot be dragged out beyond Tuesday's deadline by elected officials who are more interested in scoring political points and getting their faces on TV than they are in doing what's best for the country.

You were elected to do a job. Mr. Speaker. Go do it. Now.

Bad food, bad film, bad lifestyle

2011-07-26T14:17:00.010-04:00

* McDonald's has announced that apple slices will be added to its Happy Meals ... as if a few slivers of fruit will offset all the fat and cholesterol in the meals' greasy burgers and fries. This is roughly the equivalent of believing it's OK to eat half-a-dozen Dunkin' Donuts as long as you wash them down with a glass of low-fat milk.

* "The Undefeated," the documentary film about Sarah Palin, has flopped at the box office, so it's going to be released on pay-per-view TV, according to Reuters. Got news for you, Sarah: If people weren't willing to pay to watch this thing in theaters, they won't pay to watch it in their living rooms, either. Perhaps Palin's 15 minutes of fame (14 minutes more than she deserved) are finally over.

* Need proof that the death of British singer/trainwreck Amy Winehouse came as no surprise to anyone? Consider this: Whenever the death of a well-known person is seen as imminent, or at least likely, news wire services, like The Associated Press, will have an obituary prewritten and ready to go so only limited reporting and writing will be needed when the death occurs. Winehouse, all of 27 years old, was one of the celebrities for whom the AP had a prewritten obit. Pretty sad, but obviously pretty necessary.

Guilty of public embarrassment

2011-07-09T20:40:00.008-04:00

As I watched the freak-show circus outside the Orlando, Fla., courthouse where Casey Anthony was on trial for killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, I couldn't help but wonder: Don't any of these playing-to-the-cameras protesters have jobs?

In the case of the woman pictured here, who was protesting the verdict after the trial ended, I guess the answer is: "I couldn't find a job because all the positions I applied for required the ability to spell basic English words."

Associated Press photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack

Playing politics with our economy

2011-07-08T12:22:00.008-04:00

Cable TV financial channel CNBC had Rep. Michele "I Hate Everything About the Government (Except My Paycheck)" Bachmann on this morning after the U.S. Department of Labor reported that only 18,000 new jobs were added in June and that the nation's unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent.

Asked for her reaction to the jobs report, the first words out of the White House wannabe's mouth were: "Well, this is terrible news for President Obama."

Really, Michele? That's the most important thing about the job situation — what it means for the president?

Sorry, Congresswoman, but the most important thing about the job situation is what it means for the country and for the millions of people who are out of work and struggling to pay their bills. It would behoove you to understand that if you hope to someday be the leader of this land. (And you also might want to work on not smirking on national TV about bad economic news.)

But as long as we're playing politics, I'd remind you that the blame for the nation's economic problems doesn't start and stop at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It extends down the road to the Capitol building, where you and your fellow members of the Republican majority in the House have done nothing to help get us out of this mess.

Egg on HLN's face

2011-07-05T14:29:00.011-04:00

HLN — once the respectable Headline News arm of CNN, but lately just a dumping ground for tabloid trash — just proclaimed, after learning Casey Anthony had been acquitted of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, that "her lies worked."

Having invested so much time, effort and money into covering this case since Caylee was found dead in 2008, and having made the inexcusable mistake of giving Nancy Grace her own show and letting Grace make the crucfixion of Casey Anthony her personal crusade for three years, HLN just couldn't bring itself to believe that Casey — derisively and condescendingly nicknamed "Tot Mom" by the network — might actually not have killed her daughter.

The bottom line is that HLN jumped to conclusions about what it wanted to be the facts of the case rather than spending any real time looking into what the facts of the case actually were. And now, with a jury of 12 people having decided that the largely circumstantial evidence did not support the notion that Casey Anthony killed little Caylee, the network clearly would rather protest the verdict than accept it.

Now I can't say with any certainty that the jury was right and that Casey Anthony truly is innocent. But I can say with certainty that our criminal justice system is well-designed and that it generally works. And I'm willing to accept that it worked in this case.

Perhaps HLN should, too.

GCI: Greedy company, indeed

2011-06-21T15:28:00.005-04:00

Newspaper giant Gannett Co. Inc. announced today that it's laying off 700 people, or roughly 2 percent of the company's workforce.

This just three months after the company revealed CEO Craig Durbrow had his salary doubled and received a $1.25 million cash bonus.

Good lord.

What a Weiner!

2011-06-06T22:06:00.004-04:00

Note to Rep. Anthony Weiner:

When your constituency, your congressional colleagues and your own party have turned against you, it's impossible to be an effective legislator.

It's time to go.

Not in a week, a month, at the end of the year or by getting voted out of office in November 2012. Now. Right now.

You're extramarital behavior was reprehensible, you're a bald-faced liar, and you can't be trusted.

There's the door. Use it.

The idiots are coming! The idiots are coming!

2011-06-06T10:56:00.005-04:00

Republicans are calling for a law that would require presidential candidates to provide proof of being born in the United States.

OK, fair enough. But then I'm calling for a law that requires candidates to pass a basic American history exam before being allowed on the ballot.

As the 2012 presidential race begins to take shape, we have potential Republican candidate Sarah Palin insisting that Paul Revere's midnight ride of April 18, 1775, was intended to warn the British that British troops were advancing. (And worse yet, she defended her statement when called on it by a news anchor for Fox, the network that employs her.)

We have fellow potential Republican candidate Michele Bachmann telling an audience in New Hampshire that "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord." Well, at least she got the names of the towns right. Unfortunately, they're in Massachusetts.

And we have declared GOP candidate Herman Cain, who apparently believes that running the Godfather's Pizza chain and hosting a radio show qualifies him to be leader of the free world, recently declaring that the U.S. Constitution guarantees "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Right words, wrong document, Herman. That line is in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

Before any of these people raise their right hand and put their left hand on a Bible, perhaps they should use both hands to open a history book.

Camping out

2011-05-23T13:12:00.004-04:00

Harold Camping, the civil engineer-tuned-radio evangelist who predicted the Rapture would occur this past Saturday, says he's "flabbergasted" that nothing happened at the expected hour of judgment.

The only thing that flabbergasts me is that countless respectable media outlets wasted ink, airtime and Web space covering this obvious loon.

And, for the record, the world will end when God decides to end it, not when Harold Camping or some other huckster says God will end it.

Seriously, Sarah?

2011-05-19T23:45:00.004-04:00

So Sarah Palin thinks Arnold Schwarzenegger fathering a child with a woman other this his wife was "irresponsible and really pretty disgusting."

But whenever the media questioned Palin about her unwed 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy in 2008, she insisted it was a private family matter that was none of the public's business.

Hypocrite.

Random thoughts

2011-05-15T12:09:00.016-04:00

Been absent from blogging for a couple of weeks, so allow me to clear my head of some thoughts that have been cluttering it up lately

* People who comment on the Freeman's online stories went predictably bonkers last week when we ran a piece about Ulster County Democratic lawmakers calling for healthy snacks to be among the offerings in county-owned vending machines. Virtually everyone who posted a comment accused the Democrats of a "nanny state" mentality and said our government has more important things to do than worry about the contents of vending machines. Strange, then, that a solid majority of our online poll respondents answered "yes" when we asked, on the same day, "Should at least some healthy snacks be mandatory in vending machines in county-owned buildings?" Hmmm.

* Too bad for the Republicans that Mike Huckabee has decided not to run for president. I don't care for his politics, but he would have made a good candidate and a formidable opponent to President Obama. Unlike most high-profile Republicans, Huckabee doesn't come across as mean, angry and arrogant. He simply calls 'em as he sees 'em, and he does so in a pleasant and congenial way. He might have had a shot at beating Obama. The other GOP contenders right now? Probably not.

* Osama bin Laden's son Omar said the United States violated international military law by carrying out the raid in Pakistan in which his father was killed. He noted, in particular, that his father was unarmed when shot in the head by a U.S. Navy SEAL. The al-Qaida leader was "summarily executed," Omar said. Yeah, well so were the 3,000 unarmed people who Daddy slaughtered on 9/11 — in a series of barbaric attacks that most certainly "violated international military law." Put simply, Omar, your old man got what was coming to him. I'm only sorry I couldn't have been there to fire the fatal shot.

* Speaking of bin Laden being killed, I can't help but notice that the only major polling group and/or news outlet that hasn't conducted a poll on President Obama's job approval since the raid in Abbottabad is Fox News. I guess they can't bring themselves to release a number that shows how popular Obama has become since the al-Qaida boss was eliminated. (Worth noting, too, is that Fox was the only major national news outlet that didn't report on last week's scathing report by the Senate Ethics Committee that accused former Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., of breaking federal law, making false statements to federal elections commissioners and obstructing the Ethics Committee's investigation into his conduct. The committee also referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. But to watch Fox, or read its website, you'd think it never happened. Can you image how Fox would have covered such a story if the target was, say, Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel? Oh, yeah. That happened. And Fox played it up like a scandal of Watergate proportion. Fox News — unfair and imbalanced to the end.)

* Also regarding the bin Laden killing, will the righties ever stop nitpicking every point of the raid that finally got him?
"Release the death photos." "Stop altering the accounts of what happened inside the compound." "Perhaps the killing wasn't legal." "Did we give away military secrets by not completely destroying the helicopter that landed hard outside bin Laden's house?" "Obama said 'I' too many times during the speech in which he announced the killing." "Why didn't the SEALs take bin Laden's wives into custody?" "Why is the White House revealing intelligence that was seized during the raid?" "Obama's trip to Ground Zero was a 'victory lap.'"
SHUT UP ALREADY!!
If bin Laden had been killed when George W. Bush was president, Fox and right-wing radio hosts would have spent days, perhaps weeks, doing nothing but gushing about what a great leader he was and about how he made the world safer by overseeing the raid that put a bullet in the scumbag's head. And they would have used the word "unpatriotic" to describe anyone who dared question the methods used by Bush. But they refuse give Obama credit, no matter what. It's what I call HOATO — a "hatred of all things Obama" — and the righties have a BAD case of it.

And, on lighter notes...

* Ashton Kutcher is a funny enough guy, but he can't hold a candle to Charlie Sheen as a sitcom actor. I predict "Two-and-a-Half Men" will be canceled during or at the end of the 2011-12 season.

* I've yet to see this weekend's box office numbers, so I may wind up eating the words I'm about to type, but what's the point of releasing a movie like "Bridesmaids"? The title alone turns off half the movie-going population. And of the rest, a good number are likely to conclude what's obvious from the trailers: It's not that funny. But knowing that people will shell out hard-earned money for two hours of even the most inane material, this thing probably will be a smash hit. I hope I'm wrong.

Mission accomplished — at last

2011-05-05T09:30:00.003-04:00

So now the right-wing talking point is that President Obama is wrong to go to Ground Zero to mark Osama bin Laden's death because it amounts to "a victory lap."

This, mind you, from the people who had no problem with President Bush being flown onto an aircraft carrier, strutting across the deck in a bomber jacket and giving a ridiculously premature speech about success in the Iraq war while standing under a "Mission Accomplished" banner.

The date of that speech, by the way? May 1, 2003 - eight years, to the day, before a Navy SEAL put a bullet in bin Laden's head, accomplishing the mission that Bush never could.

Time passes

2011-04-20T15:45:00.031-04:00

In October 1994, the week after Susan Smith strapped her two young sons — 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander — into the back seat of her car and let the vehicle roll into John D. Long Lake in South Carolina, drowning both children, Time magazine made the tragedy its cover story (left), with the headline "How Could She Do It?"

There they were for all to see, on the cover of one of the nation's most widely read publications: those two sweet, cherubic, adorable children; the offspring of married parents; the products of a middle-class background. And white.

This past Monday, six days after Lashanda Armstrong drowned herself and three of her children by driving her van into the Hudson River in Newburgh, N.Y., not only did Time opt to keep the heinous act off its cover, it skipped the story altogether. There was no mention anywhere in the magazine's 70 pages (not even on its one-page roundup of national news) of Armstrong and the three children she murdered: 5-year-old Landen Pierre, 2-year-old Lance Pierre and 11-month-old Lainaina Pierre; and no pictures of the three children — sweet, cherubic and adorable; the offspring of separated parents; the products of a slum. And black.

Imbalanced news coverage based on race? You make the call. But the message I take away from this is that Time found it unthinkable that a middle-class white woman would kill her children, but was unsurprised — to the point of ignoring the story — that a low-income black woman would do the same.

But Time is, after all, the same publication that famously darkened the police mug shot of O.J. Simpson, also in 1994, making the black football star-turned-murder suspect look more sinister on its cover. (Note the obvious difference between the simultaneous Newsweek and Time covers at right.) So the magazine's refusal to even acknowledge the terrible fate that befell Landen, Lance and Lainaina Pierre seems par for the course.

Incidentally, the cover story on this past Monday's Time was a religion feature called "What If There Is No Hell?" Lashanda Armstrong better hope so. Because if there is a hell, it's my guess that she's either there or on her way.

And if there's a heaven, it's my hope that Armstrong's children — whose only mistake in life was getting into their mother's van eight days ago — find eternal peace there.

From the mouths of teens

2011-04-11T15:51:00.004-04:00

I was going to post a snarky comment about the Kingston school district's ridiculous decision to make up a snow day by scheduling a day of classes in the middle of spring break, but a friend of my 17-year-old son said it best in his Facebook status:

"The people who set the school day schedule deserve a gold star — cleverly making the Monday of spring break a school day when it's likely attendance will be abysmal. Genius! And the Monday after that is off? I envy their extraordinary organizational skills."

Amen.

A tax is a tax is a tax

2011-04-06T12:27:00.003-04:00

Have you seen these pro-Andrew Cuomo commercials that are running on TV?

Akin to campaign season ads, they laud the New York governor for getting a state budget approved that contains "no new taxes."

Well, yeah. But the budget also makes massive cuts in state aid to public school districts. And how exactly are those districts making up for the lost revenue? By raising our taxes, of course.

Either way, we pay.

Another snow — uh, rain — job

2011-04-01T07:10:00.005-04:00

Don't have much time to blog right now. Gotta go out and shovel that 8 to 14 inches of snow we were supposed to get.

Oops. I mean 6 to 12.
No, strike that. It's 4 to 8.
Wait. I mean 3 to 7.
I stand corrected. 2 to 4.
What? It's only raining?!
Never mind.

I don't know who the bigger April Fools are — the weather forecasters for their never-ending inability to get this stuff right, or us for believing them.

In the Nicky of time

2011-03-31T14:10:00.007-04:00

Former town of Ulster Supervisor Nicky Woerner (pictured at left) has moved to Kingston and plans to run for the Common Council seat in the city's Fifth Ward.

It's not exactly carpet-bagging, given that Woerner spent at least the first 18 years of his life in Kingston and he's only 26. But here's a piece of free advice, Nicky: Choosing as your "official" campaign photo an image that shows you wearing a "Town of Ulster" pin on your lapel (pictured below) probably wasn't a good idea.

Hypocrisy at Fox

2011-03-24T12:14:00.003-04:00

Just wondering:

Why does Fox News — which proclaimed upon the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that it's improper to question a president's military actions during wartime — see fit to bash President Obama relentlessly for the current U.S. attacks against Libya?

I guess Fox feels that if it makes the rules, it can change the rules ... especially to give itself license to question everything Obama does.

Pheeling bad for Phoenicia

2011-03-20T10:49:00.010-04:00

The adorable little hamlet of Phoenicia, nestled in the Catskill Mountains in the western Ulster County town of Shandaken, recently was voted one of the 10 coolest small towns in America by Budget Travel magazine. But not much else has gone right for the community lately.

* Twice in recent months — once in October and once in December — Phoenicia was beset by serious flooding when heavy rains caused the Stony Clove Creek to overflow.

* The hamlet's most popular restaurant, Sweet Sue's, has been forced to close for an undetermined amount of time because of a septic problem caused by — what else? — flooding.

* And in the predawn hours of Saturday, the local library, in a converted two-story house on Main Street, lost all of its contents to a fire.

That's a lot of bad luck in a very short amount of time for such a small place.

Here's hoping things get better soon for Phoenicia — and stay that way for a long time.

Hoop, there it is

2011-03-17T12:20:00.003-04:00

There's a stench of hypocrisy in the air, and it's coming from loudmouth conservative pundits who are criticizing President Barack Obama for filling out his NCAA basketball bracket on national TV amid the earthquake/tsunami/meltdown disaster in Japan.

Why hypocrisy? Because I never heard a peep of criticism out of these same people when President George W. Bush spent a total of more than 300 days vacationing away from the White House — at Camp David or his ranch in Texas — during his eight years as president.

17?!

2011-03-04T11:59:00.002-05:00

My son Marc turns 17 today. I feel old (but look MAH-velous).
Happy birthday, rugrat. Stop growing up so darn fast!

Selective outrage

2011-03-01T10:27:00.003-05:00

I find it amusing that people are up in arms over Stone Ridge resident Melissa Leo uttering the F word while accepting her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress on Sunday, but many of these same people are fawning over Best Picture winner "The King's Speech" and particularly its Best Actor winner, Colin Firth, who blurts out the exact same word more than a dozen times in the course of less than a minute in one of the film's most memorable scenes.

Un-f**cking-believable.

Separated at birth?

2011-02-25T21:44:00.004-05:00

Texas terror suspect Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, left, and Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong.

Come to think of it, Green Day concerts are filled with onstage explosions, so maybe these two are actually the same guy!

You have GOT to be kidding me!

2011-02-25T07:58:00.004-05:00

The Kingston school district does it again! An early morning snow has changed to rain, the temperature is about 35 degrees, and, for the unthinkable EIGHTH time this school year, classes are canceled.

Our children deserve an education, but the only lesson they're learning from this district is how to make irresponsible decisions.

Three quick thoughts

2011-02-15T09:41:00.004-05:00

* Lady Gaga needs to get over herself.

* The "Jeopardy" game featuring the IBM computer Watson makes for interesting science but terrible television. In particular, the first of the three broadcasts (which aired last night) came across as a half-hour commercial for IBM rather than a game show.

* Why all the fascination among restaurants and TV cooking shows with the word "chipotle"? Well, I guess it's more appealing than calling it what it is: "smoke-dried jalapeno."

Scary math

2011-02-07T20:32:00.003-05:00

I just saw an ad on TV for the upcoming Grammy Awards. It focused on the fact that the show will feature live performances by Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Mick Jagger.

Bieber is 16 years old. Perry is 26. Gaga is 24.

Jagger is 67 ... older than the other three combined.

Ouch.

Up in the air ... or not

2011-02-02T09:30:00.004-05:00

I received the following e-mail from Albany International Airport at 8:48 a.m. today:

Albany International Airport is open and operating.
All departing flights are canceled until at least 2:45 p.m.

Roughly the equivalent of saying "Schools are open, but none of the teachers will be in today."

And snow it goes ... again

2011-02-01T09:44:00.005-05:00

Here's a look at how the snowstorm that's covering all of New York today is affecting schools and events in four regions of the state.

Rochester area: One school district on a two-hour delay, everything else open.
Syracuse area: Three school districts closed, one on a two-hour delay, everything else open.
Utica area: One senior citizens' meeting canceled; no schools closed.
Mid-Hudson Valley: Everything closed, everything canceled, widespread panic.

Gee, what a shock.

Murder by numbers

2011-01-28T11:03:00.003-05:00

Commenting on a story this morning on the Freeman's website about a high-ranking Kingston cop being suspended, a reader wrote that "'60 minutes' should do a piece on Kingston," in part because of "all the murders and bank robberies and shootings and corruption."

Look, I know this city has its problems. But "all the murders"? In fact, perhaps a story is in order on how few murders Kingston has. Since January 2007 — four years ago this month — there have been exactly two homicides in Kingston. Nearby Newburgh, meanwhile, generally has more than 10 killings per year despite having roughly the same population as Kingston.

All things considered, Kingston is a pretty safe place for a city its size.

The roads less salted

2011-01-19T11:53:00.004-05:00

Remember that one word of advice to Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate"? Plastics.

Well, I'd like to offer one word of advice to the city of Kingston's road crews: SALT!

Icy conditions, like those that made driving difficult on Tuesday, and slushy conditions, like those we're having today, cannot be resolved with plows and sand. Salt is the one an only solution.

This was abundantly clear this morning on John Street in the city's Uptown business district. A stretch of sidewalk that business owners had treated with salt was merely wet. The adjacent road, which clearly had not been salted, was slushy, slippery and dangerous.

But don't take my word for it, Kingston officials. Spend a wintry day in Syracuse, Rochester or Buffalo; watch the heavy snow come down for hours on end; and wonder to yourself, "Hey, how come the roads are so clear?"

One word: Salt.

Another snow job

2011-01-19T08:08:00.005-05:00

Congratulations, Kingston school district. There's about half an inch of fresh now on the ground, nothing else is falling, it's 33 degrees outside, and you've canceled school yet again.

It's Jan. 19, and you've blown your fourth snow day of 2010-11. And it's supposed to snow again Thursday night and Friday, so that'll certainly be No. 5. (You allotted six, right? So if February is anything like January, the kids of the Kingston schools can kiss their spring break goodbye.)

This is the Northeast, for heaven's sake, not Atlanta. Snow happens. People deal with it — and drive on it — all the time. Why can't you deal with it, Kingston school district? And why can't your buses drive on it?

This attitude of "It's snowing, so we have to close the schools" — or, worse yet, "It might snow, so we have to close the schools" — has got to stop.

The weather outside is ....

2011-01-18T14:23:00.004-05:00

Right now, at 2:23 p.m. on Jan. 18, the Kingston page on The Weather Channel's website has an icon that shows snow is falling locally. The in-motion radar map lower on the page has a mass of pink (meaning mixed precipitation) over Kingston. And upon walking outside just now, I discovered the current precipitation is all rain.

Once again, a forecasting operation proves that not only can't it predict the weather, it can't even accurately tell me what the weather is right now.

Reject Beck

2011-01-12T11:37:00.003-05:00

Right-wing TV and radio personality Glenn Beck, deflecting allegations that angry rhetoric from the likes of him or Sarah Palin somehow drove Jared Loughner to shoot Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords on Saturday in Tuscon, has issued a challenge to all Americans: Reject violence.

Perhaps Mr. Beck should take his own advice. Here's what he said on his syndicated radio show on May 17, 2005:

"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore. Could I kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it? No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out."

I know Mr. Beck would like to think he's part of the solution. But in fact, he's part of the problem.

Off the grid

2011-01-03T10:43:00.004-05:00

The 7-9 Seattle Seahawks get into the NFL playoffs but the 10-6 Giants don't. Is any more proof needed that the league's postseason eligibility system needs to be changed?

Gas pains return

2011-01-01T17:40:00.003-05:00

I just read an article that said the price of gas is predicted to hit $4 per gallon sometime in 2011.

I wonder: Are the prognosticators cited in this story the same ones who swore, about six months ago, that gas would fall to $2.30 per gallon by the end of 2010?

On the roads again

2010-12-29T10:59:00.003-05:00

Hats off to the Kingston Department of Public Works for doing an amazing job of clearing the city's streets during and after the Sunday-Monday snowstorm.

Virtually roads in Kingston were passable by 9 a.m. Monday, just after the storm ended, giving local drivers one less headache to deal with.

Names that work

2010-12-24T21:16:00.002-05:00

There's a photo running on the front page of the Freeman Christmas morning of a pupil at an elementary school in Saugerties being given a gift by Santa Claus.

The child's name? Christian Infante.

You can't make this stuff up.

Turnabout is fair play

2010-12-20T10:21:00.005-05:00

The lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are furious that someone in the Swedish police leaked to the media the details of the sexual assault charges against Assange.

Julian Assange's people are angry about leaks? Seriously?

How they can make such a complaint with a straight face is beyond me.

Sometimes, we DO need nannies

2010-12-16T12:23:00.005-05:00

A conservative, anti-Big Government friend of mine is complaining today about the federal government banning drop-side cribs — an action prompted by the deaths over the last decade of more than 30 infants and toddlers who got their heads stuck in the cribs' movable parts.

It's another "Nanny State" intrusion, my friend declares, parroting a popular mantra of Tea Party types.

Funny, but I've never heard these same people complain about federal regulations having to do with auto safety (i.e. seat belts, air bags, child seats, speed limits).

I've never heard them complain about minimum age requirements for smoking and drinking.

I've never heard them complain about laws that state some buildings must have fire escapes, or smoke detectors, or carbon monoxide detectors.

I've never heard them complain about laws that regulate air pollution.

But a law that might prevent more senseless deaths among infants and toddlers bothers them.

Amazing.

It was 30 years ago today

2010-12-08T11:22:00.005-05:00

Empty Garden (Hey, Hey, Johnny)
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin
Recorded by Elton John, 1982

What happened here as the New York sunset disappeared?
I found an empty garden among the flagstones there
Who lived here?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
And now it all looks strange
It's funny how one insect can damage so much grain

And what's it for, this little empty garden by the brownstone door?
And in the cracks along the sidewalk, nothing grows no more
Who lived here?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
And we are so amazed
We're crippled and we're dazed
A gardener like that one no one can replace

And I've been knocking, but no one answers
And I've been knocking most of the day
Oh, and I've been calling, oh, hey, hey, Johnny
Can't you come out to play?

And through their tears
Some say he farmed his best in younger years
But he'd have said that roots grow stronger if only he could hear
Who lived there?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
Now we pray for rain
And with every drop that falls
We hear, we hear your name

And I've been knocking, but no one answers
And I've been knocking most of the day
Oh, and I've been calling, oh, hey, hey, Johnny
Can't you come out to play?

Be careful what you wish for

2010-11-26T16:54:00.004-05:00

I am not, by nature, a warmonger. But I understand that, sometimes, the use of force against an enemy nation is necessary.

Case in point: North Korea.

Saber rattling, which the North's dictator, Kim Jong Il, has turned into an art form, is one thing. But bombing a South Korean island and killing innocent people is quite something else, and it can't be tolerated.

Kim warned on Friday that planned joint military exercises nearby by the United States and South Korea will bring the region to the "brink of war."

Perhaps it's time for the Obama administration to prove Kim right — and shut him up once and for all.

The slow death of real news

2010-11-23T14:22:00.006-05:00

North Korea bombs a South Korean island today, resulting in military fatalities and subsequent artillery exchanges between the two sides — an escalation of hostilities made all the more frightening by the presence of nuclear weapons in the region — and what were CNN, Headline News and Fox News devoting large chucks of time to this morning? The fact that a human jawbone found in Aruba does not belong to missing American teenager Natalee Holloway.

I guess there was nothing new to report on how Bristol Palin is doing on "Dancing With the Stars."

Not hearing the fat lady sing

2010-11-04T14:58:00.011-04:00

Republican George Phillips is trailing Democratic U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey by about 8,200 votes in New York's 22nd Congressional District election but is refusing to concede.

Phillips, behind by a count of 90,412 to 82,202, apparently is pinning his hopes on the estimated 12,600 absentee ballots cast in the election.

With all due to respect, George, do the math. (I mean, I know you're a history teacher, but do the math.) Even if you picked up 10,000 of the 12,600 absentee votes, you'd still lose: 93,012 to 92,202.

To win this thing, Phillips would need nearly 83 percent of the absentee ballots to go his way in an election where only 47.6 percent of voters favored him at the polling places.

Seriously, George, do the math. And then do the honorable thing: Concede.

The bums stay in

2010-11-03T09:35:00.006-04:00

Voters baffle me.

For the last two years, we've been hearing the public scream loud and long about how New York has the most dysfunctional state government in the nation and that the only plausible solution is to "throw the bums out."

And what happens last night? Every state legislator in the Mid-Hudson Valley (save for one who was in a too-close-to-call race at the end of Tuesday) is re-elected.

Kevin Cahill, Marc Molinaro. Joel Miller. Cliff Crouch. Pete Lopez. All awarded new terms in the Assembly. And incumbent Frank Skartados looks to be heading toward victory.

Bill Larkin. John Bonacic. Steve Saland. Jim Seward. All headed back to the Senate.

I just don't get it. And neither, apparently, do the people who went to the polls yesterday.

Some sanity is left

2010-11-01T10:30:00.009-04:00

As it did for the Glenn Beck rally in late August, CBS News hired a company called AirPhotosLive to do a fly-over estimate on Saturday of the crowd at the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert "Restore Sanity and/or Fear" rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The magic number? 215,000.

That's about 2-1/2 times the size of the Beck crowd, estimated by AirPhotosLive at 87,000.

Maybe America hasn't swung quite as far to the right as all the screechy conservative pundits would like us to believe.

This is too damn silly

2010-10-28T14:43:00.003-04:00

An online retailer called HeroBuilders.com is selling a talking action figure of Jimmy McMillan, the gubernatorial candidate of New York state's The Rent Is Too Dam High Party.

The cost for said action figure? $49.95.

Sorry, but that's too damn high.

Empty promises

2010-10-28T14:37:00.001-04:00

Driving through Uptown Kingston today, I noticed the windows of two vacant storefronts — one on John Street, the other on Fair Street — plastered with campaign signs for U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley.

In this economic climate, I'm not sure Democrats want to be drawing attention to unoccupied commercial buildings.

Another day, another poll

2010-10-26T15:51:00.003-04:00

A new poll from the Siena Research Institute shows Democratic Rep. Scott Murphy trailing Republican challenger Chris Gibson by nine points in New York's 20th Congressional District race. This just a month after the same poll showed Murphy ahead by 17.

But then, Siena is the polling outfit that showed Republicans Carl Paladino and Rick Lazio in a dead heat just days before Paladino won New York's GOP gubernatorial primary by 24 percentage points last month.

So the new poll in the Murphy-Gibson race is probably best taken with a grain of salt.

Has Carl conceded?

2010-10-23T14:13:00.005-04:00

According to a Gannett News Service report, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino has no public appearances planned for today.

It's the Saturday leading into the final week before Election Day, and Carl Paladino is laying low? This is traditionally one of the busiest campaigning days of the year, with candidates for offices high and low knocking on doors, strolling through neighborhoods and greeting people at pumpkin farms, apple orchards and fall festivals.

And Carl Paladino is not out stumping for votes today?

Perhaps he's finally realized that he does more harm than good every time he shows his face in public and every time he opens his mouth.

Just desserts

2010-10-23T00:08:00.007-04:00

Is there anything sweeter than watching Alex Rodriguez strike out to end the Yankees' season — against Texas, the team he abandoned, no less?

I think not.

Baby, you can drive my car

2010-10-21T15:24:00.003-04:00

Great commercial, especially for those of us who are parents of 16-year-olds.

Kookiness from Koch

2010-10-14T01:13:00.005-04:00

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat, came to Kingston on Wednesday to announce he was crossing party lines and endorsing Republican George Phillips in the state's 22nd Congressional District race over incumbent Democrat Maurice Hinchey.

Koch said that, as was the case in 2004, when he endorsed Republican George W. Bush for president, he disagrees with the GOP on virtually all domestic issues but favors the party (and, by extension, Phillips) for its stand on foreign policy matters, particularly those pertaining to Israel and the fight again terrorism.

Just one problem: Every major poll this year has found people's votes in the upcoming midterm elections are being driven by domestic issues (principally the economy and jobs). So whether he realizes it or not, Koch, while endorsing Phillips, told the electorate he thinks the would-be congressman is not qualified to solve the problems that are foremost in voters' minds.

Party poopers

2010-10-12T14:29:00.008-04:00

Sharron Angle, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada, claims at least two communities in the United States are at risk of falling under "Muslim law."

Christine O'Donnell, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Delaware, has dabbled in witchcraft

Carl Paladino, Republican candidate for governor of New York, portrays himself as a family-values candidate despite having fathered children with both his wife and his mistress.

And Rich Iott, Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio, dresses up in Nazi garb for World War II re-enactments, refuses to say the Nazis under Hitler were "not valiant men" and belongs to a history group on whose website the World War II section makes no reference to the Holocaust.

This was supposed a pendulum-swinging year in which Republicans, largely out of power in this country since January 2007, came storming back to win a majority of the seats in Congress and and retake control of dozens of statehouses.

But with people like Angle, O'Donnell, Paladino and Iott on the ballots, the GOP might just find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Not so fast, Mr. Mayor

2010-10-08T15:04:00.003-04:00

A New York Daily News story says Mayor Michael Bloomberg already is planning the Yankees' World Series victory parade in lower Manhattan's Canyon of Heroes.

I'd suggest Bloomberg check out the hitting prowess of the Texas Rangers, who the Yankees likely will face in the American League Championship Series, and the incredible pitching of the Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants, one of whom is likely to represent the National League in the Fall Classic, before he starts booking any marching bands and signing off on police overtime.

I've been predicting a Rangers-Phillies World series for weeks now, and I'm sticking to that. As for the result, I'll say Phillies in six games.

Poll imposition II

2010-09-16T12:30:00.002-04:00

I read a news article this morning that said every major political poll shows Republicans will pick up significant numbers of seats in the U.S. House and Senate this fall.

The same polls, the article stated, have found Americans hold a dimmer view of Republicans than of Democrats.

Huh?

Poll imposition

2010-09-15T11:16:00.005-04:00

When debating politics with a friend of mine who is — shall we say? — across the aisle from me, I often cite major polls in trying to make a point.

But this morning, my faith in polls is more or less shot.

A couple of days before New York's Republican gubernatorial primary, the Siena College Poll, long respected as an accurate gauge of statewide political sentiment, had former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio and Buffalo developer Carl Paladino in a virtual dead heat. (Lazio was ahead by 1 point in the poll, which is considered statistically insignificant.)

But with virtually all the votes in Tuesday's race now counted, Paladino is the winner by a whopping 24 points — 62 percent to 38 percent.

How could Siena have been so wrong? Missing the result by a few points, even 10, would be one thing. But Seina missed by 25 POINTS!

That being the case, I don't see much sense in paying attention to any major poll — Gallup, Harris, Pew, Quinnipiac, et. al.. — between now and Election Day.

You want to know how the Nov. 2 elections will play out? I'd suggest you wake up the morning of Nov. 3 and check the results.

Reaching new heights

2010-09-06T13:11:00.013-04:00

So I finally ventured out onto the Walkway Over the Hudson on Sunday— no small task for a guy who has a fear of heights.

Actually, I handled being 212 feet above the Hudson River fairly well. The metal railings mitigate the sense of being so high up, and my wife (pictured at right, with me) and son and I walked primarily down the middle of the Walkway, rather than close to either side, so most of what I was seeing was a broad view of my surroundings, rather than the dramatic distance to the water below. That helped a lot.

My reaction to the overall experience, though, was mixed. The view from the Walkway is all it's cracked up to be, but I was surprised at how bare-bones the whole thing is. There isn't so much as a bench along the 1.28-mile crossing, let alone vendors on the bridge or anything else to make the walk more than just a walk. (Trash cans would be a good idea, too.) And I was unpleasantly surprised to learn bicyclists are allowed to share the Walkway with pedestrians. The Walkway is only 14 feet across, and on a day like Sunday, when the place was teeming with visitors, the prospect of someone on two wheels running into someone on two feet seemed high. It didn't happen, to the best of my knowledge, but why allow the risk?

Would I recommend a trip to the Walkway to people haven't been there yet? Sure. It's free, and it's a nice way to spend part of a day. But I'd feel obligated to tell them it wasn't quite what I expected.

Last words on Earl

2010-09-04T13:05:00.008-04:00

Reaction on Cape Cod to the overhyped and underwhelming Hurricane/Tropical Storm Earl, according to The Associated Press and the Boston Globe:

Red Cross worker Harry Watlin: "Everybody was ready for something big to happen. But when it came, most of us hardly even noticed."

Peter Judge, spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency: "It wasn't even a really bad rainstorm."

Norm Frazee, resort company employee: "That was just normal 'winter' weather. We get winds like that almost every day in the winter."

Shelley McThomas, visitor from Kansas City, Mo.: "Earl petered out. I'm disappointed with Earl, like so many men in my life."

Missing from the above list of quotes, of course, is any weather forecaster saying "We got it wrong."

Earl was a washout

2010-09-04T00:10:00.006-04:00

According to weather forecasts broadcast late Thursday, Earl was supposed to still be a Category 2 hurricane (sustained winds of 96-110 mph) after nightfall Friday and hit Cape Cod directly.

According to reality, Earl was downgraded to a tropical storm, with winds of 70 mph, at 11 p.m. Friday and was centered so far east of Cape Cod that the famed southeastern arm of Massachusetts got winds no stronger than 35 mph.

But The Weather Channel, having devoted so much money and manpower to covering Earl, continued to insist late Friday that the storm was a very big — and very dangerous — deal. News flash, folks: It wasn't. It was a summer rainstorm. Nothing more.

I said it in my last post, and I'll say it again: Why are TV weather forecasters so incapable of saying "We got it wrong"?

But TV doesn't bear all of the blame. At least one newspaper — the ridiculous New York Post — should be ashamed of itself, too. The Earl story that appeared in Friday's Post focused on the storm's threat to eastern Long Island and began with the following sentence: "Hamptonites thought they would be preparing for the end of the summer — instead, they are preparing for the end of the world." Good Lord!

For the record, Earl missed Long Island altogether.

Rain! Wind! THE END IS NEAR!!!

2010-09-03T14:58:00.007-04:00

Why are weather forecasters so incapable of saying "We got it wrong"?

Despite all the ominous prognostications, Hurricane Earl weakened more than expected by the time it drew even with North Carolina, missed the state's Outer Banks by nearly 100 miles and now appears likely to pass considerably east of Long Island and Cape Cod.

But the facts be damned. The Weather Channel and the various cable news outlets have committed tons of time, money and manpower to covering this storm, and they're gonna make it seem like the Armageddon is at hand even if it isn't.

When all is said and done, eastern North Carolina, eastern Long Island and Cape Cod will have gotten moderate amounts of rain, a bit of flooding, some gusty winds and perhaps scattered power outages — in other words, the same things most places in the country get every time a summer thunderstorm rolls through.

And no amount of hyperventilating by raincoat-clad TV reporters standing on beaches will change that reality.

Excellent ... NOT!

2010-09-01T14:41:00.011-04:00

I think the Woodstock Film Festival is a wonderful thing.

It brings to the public movies that otherwise might never be seen, and it gives its namesake town and the surrounding area a great deal of positive exposure.

But about those awards ...

An "Excellence in Acting" honor for Keanu Reeves? Seriously?The wonderful Danny Glover and Edie Falco also are attending this year's festival, and the 2010 "Excellence in Acting" award is going to Keanu Reeves? Good Lord!

Reeves probably is among the five worst actors in Hollywood today — alongside the equally unwatchable Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell and Matthew McConaughey — and nothing he has done on the big screen can be considered excellent.

Earl the swirl

2010-09-01T12:33:00.004-04:00

I sure hope Hurricane Earl hits something as it makes its way along the East Coast in the coming days. If it doesn't — which is looking more and more likely — a whole lot of TV networks will have have wasted a whole lot of money covering a whole lot of nothing.

Couldn't have said it better myself

2010-08-30T16:32:00.002-04:00

Truth (and lies) in numbers

2010-08-30T14:16:00.007-04:00

Knowing full well that the self-aggrandizing, egomaniacal Glenn Beck and his right-wing/Tea Party minions would grossly overestimate the size of the attendance at Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday, CBS News wisely commissioned a crowd size estimate by a company called AirPhotosLive, which does this kind of thing for a living.

So now, when Beck proclaims, as he did this morning, that "at least 500,000 people" attended, and loony Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., says "We're not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today — because we were witnesses," those of us who don't drink the tea can point to the AirPhotosLive estimate of just 87,000 and expose these nut jobs as the liars that they are.

But Beck and Bachmann, I'm sure, will keep repeating their B.S., knowing the inflated numbers will get picked up by myriad irresponsible news organizations and bloggers and become the de-facto truth.

Monday musings

2010-08-30T12:59:00.008-04:00

* The accident on Route 28 in Boiceville that claimed two lives last week has me wondering: Why does Route 28 have a 45-mph speed limit between Kingston and West Hurley, where the road is four lanes wide and relatively straight, but a 55-mph speed limit after West Hurley, where the road narrows to two lanes and becomes curvy? Seems a bit backward to me.

* Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, on page A4 of this morning's Freeman, chides the Obama White House for ignoring polls that show the president's popularity is dropping. Didn't conservative columnists and the right-wing radio loudmouths spend most of George W. Bush's second term insisting that presidential poll numbers don't matter? Well, when your guy's approval rating is 23 percent, I guess ignoring polls is the only way you can sleep at night.

* Speaking of right-wing loudmouths, could the ubernarcassitic Glenn Beck have been any more hypocritical at his "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday? On his radio and TV shows, he always criticizes President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party for ignoring the Constitution. Then, at the rally, he said America isn't religious enough and needs to "turn back to God." I think you need to reread the Constitution, Glenn, starting with Amendment No. 1.

* And finally, I noticed this morning that the Emmy Award for "Best Writing for a Music or Comedy Special" went to the 63rd Annual Tony Awards broadcast. When award shows start giving awards to award shows, you can be sure the end is near.

Life, interrupted

2010-08-25T10:25:00.018-04:00

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth - though my absence from blogging for the past three weeks might suggest otherwise. I merely fell out of Kingston, for both planned and unplanned reasons.

The game plan was to take off from work the weeks of Aug. 8 and 15, spending part of the first week at my parents' house in Rochester and all of the second week on Cape Cod with my wife and teenage son.

But it didn't work out that way.

I could hear in my mother's voice, when she called the morning of Aug. 3, that it was bad this time; that my dad's health, which had been declining for several years, had taken a serious turn for the worse. He was in the hospital, she said, not eating and losing his ability to communicate.

I stayed in Kingston just long enough to throw some clothes and personal items into a knapsack and stop by the Freeman office to tell our managing editor that I had to go out of town indefinitely. And then I was off. I hit the road about 11:30 a.m. and arrived at Highland Hospital in Rochester about 4 p.m.

By the time I got to his room, my father - who, though fighting Parkinson's disease for years, was lucid until the day before he was hospitalized - was more or less uncommunicative. His heart was failing, the doctors told us, and he didn't have long to live.

My mother and sister, who had been at the hospital all day, finally went back to my parents' house around 10 p.m. Not wanting my father to die alone, I stayed in his hospital room, but by about 3:30 a.m. (even with the benefit of a turkey sandwich a nurse brought me in the near darkness of the cardiac ward about an hour earlier), I barely could keep my eyes open anymore, and I figured I'd be better off sleeping in a bed than in a hospital chair, so I, too, went back to my parents' house.

My sister returned to the hospital about 8 a.m., with our father still hanging on, and my mom and I followed around 10 a.m.

It was clear, though, that the end was very near, and, in compliance with my father's wishes that no artificial measures be employed to keep him alive, we told the hospital staff to discontinue the intravenous fluids he was being given and to begin hospice care.

Around 3:30 p.m., with a hospice nurse in the room explaining to us how my father would be looked after in the little time he had left, his breathing stopped, then briefly restarted, and then - with my mother, my sister and myself standing at his bedside - stopped for the final time. Peacefully, and without any notable pain or suffering, his life quietly came to an end after 80 years, one month and 25 days.

The hours and days that followed are a blur, but everything went as well as they can in these situations. Funeral arrangements were completed within three hours of my father's death - Judaism, our religion, dictates burial be held as quickly as possible - the service was two days later, and we then sat shiva (the Jewish rite of mourning) for several days at my mother's house, welcoming numerous friends, relatives and colleagues who came to pay their respects.

Before long, though, duty called. There was work to be done, and it couldn't be ignored.

I left Rochester about 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 11 - a week after my father's death - got back to Kingston before 11 a.m. and went straight to the Freeman office to quickly edit and assemble our annual "Back to School" section, which was appearing in the next day's paper and which I had planned to put out the previous week. I then worked the next evening, at my regular task of putting out the morning paper, and worked a day shift on Friday, Aug. 13, to catch up on numerous non-deadline tasks that had to be shelved when I left to be with my father.

Saturday, Aug. 14, was a long-awaited day off, occupied, in part, by a visit to Kingston by a longtime dear friend who lives in Albany and was unable to attend my dad's funeral. And then, amazingly, we left for Cape Cod, as planned, the morning of Sunday, Aug. 15. (I must have spent part of the previous day packing, but I really don't remember.)

Our week on the Cape was exactly what I needed it to be: relaxing and uneventful - a chance to unwind, reflect and recharge (and celebrate my 47th birthday) before getting back to the rigors of real life. And though unsure I should take a pleasure trip so soon after losing my father, I was urged by mother to do just that. She noted the trip already was paid for and that I already had arranged for the time off from work. "What are you gonna do - sit around your house for a week?" she said. Right as always, Mom.

We got back from the Cape on Sunday (three days ago). Monday was spent unpacking, doing laundry and catching up on things that needed to be taken care of around the house. Tuesday was my first day back at work, and today, finally, I've found the time to write about what's been going on in my life these past few weeks and why I've been absent from blogging.

Life gets in the way sometimes. Death, too. I trust you understand.

The REAL Rhinebeck

2010-08-03T10:06:00.005-04:00

I did something Sunday night that very few other people did: I went to Rhinebeck.

No, I wasn't hoping to catch a glimpse of some celebrity still hanging around after the Clinton wedding; and no, I wasn't hoping to be interviewed by some tabloid TV show still looking for a story. Rather, I was looking for — and found — an evening of peace and quiet in a village known for peace and quiet.

Specifically, I went there to catch a movie at Upstate Films, something I love to do on Sundays, and was relieved, upon arriving, to find the sidewalks largely empty and that things were back to normal after the frenzy that had overtaken the village Friday and Saturday. (The clearest sign of normal was that I was able to find a parking space on Montgomery Street, right in front of the theater.)

If you've ever seen a movie at Upstate, you know that a theater staff member usually stands in front of the screen and makes a couple of announcements before the lights go down. On Sunday, the woman handling the task ended her remarks with "And isn't it nice to have our town back?"

I couldn't agree more.

The weekend was a hoot. And those of us who live around here will remember it for years to come. But now it's time to let Rhinebeck get back to being Rhinebeck.

Separated at birth?

2010-07-17T17:39:00.002-04:00

Justin Bieber in 2010, left, and Donny Osmond in 1972.

The difference? Osmond was a decent child singer. Bieber's voice is dreadful beyond description.

On my mind this day

2010-07-06T10:22:00.011-04:00

* The National Weather Service has issued "heat advisory" for today ... as if forecasting a high temperature of 96 degrees wasn't enough of an advisory that the heat will be extreme.

* I have no plans to seek political office - ever - but if I were a candidate for mayor of Kingston, I would have a platform consisting of exactly one promise: The city's Fourth of July fireworks will always be on - wait for it now - the FOURTH OF JULY. This age-old tradition of holding the city's fireworks the weekend before the holiday has always struck me as ridiculous, but never more than this year, when the Fourth of July fell on a Sunday and the city launched its fireworks on June 27.

* It's time for Major League Baseball's All-Stars to be picked solely by the league's managers or by the sportswriters who cover the game, because letting the fans participate in the process of deciding the rosters for the Midsummer Classic makes the exercise nothing more than a popularity contest that favors the league's best-known players and those in the largest markets. Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto being left off this year's National League roster is the perhaps the best example of how screwed up the current system is. The guy is hitting .318, has 21 home runs, is in the Top 5 in all three Triple Crown categories in the N.L. and is the main reason the Reds are atop the N.L. Central right now, but he finished well out of the running in first-base voting.
And just as ridiculous: Not a single member of the San Diego Padres - who lead the N.L. West, have the best record in the National League and have the second-best record in all of baseball - made the N.L.'s starting roster. Yeah, that makes sense.

* I see the U.S. Postal Service is about to raise its rates again. The service says the higher rates are necessary because its financial losses are growing. It seems that was the excuse for the last increase, and the one before that, and the one before that, and so on. In other words, these rate hikes don't reduce the Postal Service's debt; they make it larger. Why? Because each rate hike leads people to use the mail less, not more, especially in this era when letters have been replaced by e-mails, bills can be paid online, birthday greetings are delivered via e-card, and packages can be handled by the likes of UPS and FedEx for less money than the Postal Service charges. If the Postal Service wants to make more money, it seriously should consider cutting its mail rates, perhaps by as much as 50 percent. Anything in the other direction will do more harm than good - as history has proven again and again.

Crime time

2010-06-18T14:51:00.003-04:00

We ran a story in the Freeman the other day that said the town of Woodstock may institute a curfew in an attempt to reduce late-night crime by youths.

Dan Leader, owner of the Bread Alone bakery in Woodstock, is among those pushing for the curfew. In making his case to the Town Board this week, Leader said his business was "broken into six times last year" and that the vandals "broke the pipes (and) flooded the building." He also said his staff has "had to clean up countless hypodermic needles on our patio."

"It's serious," Leader said. And I agree.

But does he, or anyone, really think a curfew will solve the problem?

Young people who violate municipal curfews generally are picked up by police, taken home to their parents and given a warning - and perhaps are fined if the problem persists.

The people who have caused Leader so much anguish clearly have no qualms about breaking and entering, destroying property and using illegal drugs - crimes that could land them in prison for several years. It's my guess, then, that they're not likely to be deterred by the prospect of being caught violating a town curfew.

Municipalities and their police departments need to reduce crime, to be sure, but success will require more than simply telling young people to be off the streets by a certain time.

Oh buoy!

2010-06-12T12:49:00.002-04:00

The good news is teenage sailor Abby Sunderland has been rescued from the Indian Ocean two days after her boat was damaged during her effort to circumnavigate the globe alone.

The bad news is she's now aboard a fishing vessel, likely populated only by men ... men who haven't seen a female for quite some time.

Seems Abby might have to be rescued again.

Sticker shock

2010-06-10T15:03:00.005-04:00

A car parked on Main Street in Kingston this morning had a bumper sticker that read "Had enough? Vote Phillips."

The message, for those who don't know the local political players, was that incumbent U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, should be replaced in Congress by Broome County Republican George Phillips.

But all I took from the sticker was that people should vote for Phillips simply because he isn't the incumbent.

Look, I know there's an anti-incumbent sentiment in this country, and that many current members of the House and Senate are likely to be voted out of office in the November election, but please, please, PLEASE tell me the challengers who are likely to win these races bring more to the table than just being non-incumbents. Please tell me the have concrete ideas for change and that they have platforms that tell us why we should replace the old bosses with new bosses.

Because if they don't, and we elect them anyway, we're just being fooled again.

TWO blown calls

2010-06-03T20:51:00.016-04:00

Bud Selig got it wrong. No two ways about.

It seemed unlikely that there ever could be a bigger mistake in Major League Baseball than umpire Jim Joyce's blown call at first base Wednesday night that denied a perfect game to Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga. But Commissioner Selig's decision on Thursday to let the play stand as called was worse. FAR worse.

This wasn't, as initially described, a "disputed call." This was a blown call. Everyone, including the now-repentant Joyce, knows Cleveland's Jason Donald was thrown out at first after grounding to the right side of the infield with two down in the ninth inning on Wednesday. It wasn't even close. Every video replay shows the same thing: the ball in the mitt of Galarraga - who was covering first - and Galarraga's foot planted firmly on the bag before Donald reached. See picture accompanying previous post. This wasn't one of those too-close-to-call plays. It wasn't a case of the runner getting the benefit of the doubt when the call could have gone either way. This was, plain and simple, an umpire failing to see, and hear, the completion of the out with Donald still a full step away from touching first.

What, then, was the point of Selig not reversing the call and giving Galarraga the perfect game? Who was he impressing, or protecting, by refusing to publicly acknowledge what everyone saw to be true? Was he honestly afraid the game's good name would be tarnished if he took the nearly unprecedented step of overruling an umpire? It seems to me that such a move would have helped the game's integrity, not hurt it.

But then, Selig is the man who thinks baseball somehow benefits from his refusal to expel known steroid users and his refusal to void the records of such juicers as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised by his brainless decision in the Galarraga matter.

I guess it's easier, at least in Selig's mind, to forgive cheaters than it is to acknowledge one of the game's most outstanding accomplishments.

And that's a shame.

The blown call

2010-06-03T00:04:00.010-04:00

I wanted to write something wise, insightful and downright angry about umpire Jim Joyce's blown call Wednesday night that cost Detroit Tigers pitcher Armondo Galarraga a perfect game, but Yahoo Sports' Jeff Passan did it better than I ever could, so I direct you to his column, here.

I will add this, though: The Debacle in Detroit and the announcement on Wednesday that the great Ken Griffey Jr. had retired make June 2, 2010, one of the saddest days in the history of Major League Baseball.

'MacGruber' update

2010-06-02T15:16:00.002-04:00

A friend posted the following on my Facebook wall:

"MacGruber" took the biggest hit of the weekend, tumbling 62 percent for an estimated $1.9 million. With a mere ... $7.6 million in 11 days, the action spoof is on track to becoming "Saturday Night Live"'s lowest-grossing release ever.

... to which I posted the following response:

Yes!!!!

Mixed message

2010-06-02T15:11:00.002-04:00

I saw a car today that had two bumper stickers - one opposing abortion, the other promoting the rights of hunters.

So this guy is both opposed to killing and in favor of killing.

I'm so confused.

Say what?

2010-05-28T11:42:00.007-04:00

Dutchess County Legislator Joel Tyner, in announcing his longshot bid to become the Democratic candidate for governor of New York, said in a prepared statement this week: “It is unconscionable, quite frankly, that Andrew Cuomo has almost completely capitulated to right-wing conservative ideology on tax/budget issues and the neoliberal punditocracy consensus that’s built up over years for Cuomo’s economic talking points that spell only more doom and gloom for New York’s middle class."

"Capitualted to right-wing conservative ideology"?
"The neoliberal punditocracy consensus"?

Huh?

Look, I'm no expert in campaign methods, but it seems rule No. 1 should be candidates must convey their messages in plain English, not political gibberishspeak.

Statements like Tyner's turn people off and cause them to tune out.

Not what he was aiming for, I'm sure.

Selective outrage

2010-05-27T23:19:00.006-04:00

Joe Sestak, who beat U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary earlier this month, claims the Obama White House offered to give him a job in the administration if he would abandon his bid to unseat Specter.

Eager to jump on anything potentially damaging to the president, the HOATOs (people with a Hatred Of All Things Obama) - particularly several Republican members of Congress - ran to the nearest TV cameras and declared the as-yet-unproven job offer an "impeachable offense!!"

These same people had no problem with a Republican president misleading the American people into a war that has killed more than 4,000 U.S. troops and perhaps 100,000 Iraqi civilians, but a simple job offer (unlikely proffered by Barack Obama himself, if at all) is, in their eyes, grounds to throw the current Democratic president out of office.

Amazing.

Ka-boom!

2010-05-23T16:56:00.005-04:00

"MacGruber," possibly the worst "Saturday Night Live" sketch ever to be turned into a movie - and that's saying a lot when you consider that SNL bits gave us such awful feature films as "Superstar," "A Night at the Roxbury" and "It's Pat" - bombed at the box office on this, its opening weekend.

The movie, starring Will Forte and the chronically unfunny Kristen Wiig, opened in sixth place with a paltry $4.1 million take at the box office.

Let it never be said there's no God.

MacGruber, played by Forte, is a bumbling version of the 1980s TV character MacGyver. The difference between the two is MacGyver was able to defuse bombs just before they were set to go off. MacGruber has no such ability. The bomb always goes off, though, sadly, he gets away unscathed every time.

Thankfully, though, the movie bearing his name appears to one bomb that will blow up right in his face - and in the face of highly overrated SNL producer Lorne Michaels.

Maybe now, finally, Michaels will learn that if something isn't funny on the small screen for five minutes, there's little chance it will be funny on the big screen for an hour-and-a-half.

Cashing in on carelessness

2010-05-18T12:13:00.004-04:00

Bristol Palin gets $15,000 to $30,000 for abstinence speeches

Let me see if I have this straight:
Irresponsible teenage girl has unprotected sex, gets pregnant and now is paid up to $30,000 a pop to stand in front of a crowd and say "Do as I say, not as I do"?
Un-freakin'-believable.
What do responsible teenage girls have to do to make that kind of money?

Three years and counting

2010-05-16T20:20:00.003-04:00

My blog turns three years old today.
I can't believe no one threw it a party of bought it any presents.

Cheaters should be going, going, gone

2010-05-15T17:11:00.007-04:00

Various media outlets are reporting today that Alex Rodriguez's seventh-inning grand slam last night was his 587th career home run, moving him ahead of Frank Robinson and into seventh place on the list of all-time home run leaders.

By AP's count, the current home run leaders and their totals are:
1. Barry Bonds, 762
2. Hank Aaron, 756
3. Babe Ruth, 714
4. Willie Mays, 660
5. Ken Griffey Jr., 630
6. Sammy Sosa, 609
7. Alex Rodriguez, 587
8. Frank Robinson, 586
9. Mark McGwire, 583
10. Harmon Killibrew, 573

... except that A-Rod and McGwire are admitted cheaters - both having 'fessed up to using performance-enhancing drugs - and there isn't a person with a brain stem who doesn't believe Bonds and Sosa were juicers, too. Including these four people on any list of home run leaders is an insult to the game's history and its fans.

So, for the record, here's the real list, as of today, of baseball's Top 10 home run hitters:
1. Hank Aaron, 756
2. Babe Ruth, 714
3. Willie Mays, 660
4. Ken Griffey Jr., 630
5. Frank Robinson, 586
6. Harmon Killibrew, 573
7. Jim Thome, 569
8. Reggie Jackson, 563
9. Mike Schmidt, 548
10. Mickey Mantle, 536

(So-called official lists of home run leaders have Rafael Palmeiro tied with Thome, and Manny Ramirez between Jackson and Schmidt, but they, too, are proven cheaters and thus unworthy of any mention among the great - and honest - players of the game.)

Baseball fans and the game's historians understand the difference between real and fake achievements on the field, and they know enough to laugh off the likes of Bonds, A-Rod, Big Mac, Palmeiro and Ramirez, and to never include them on any list of the sport's top performers. It's time for the writers who cover the game to get on board and make the same distinctions. Otherwise, they're just part of the problem.

Sarah shoots from the lip

2010-05-14T16:10:00.005-04:00

Former vice presidential candidate, Tea Party hero and national embarrassment Sarah Palin said today that President Barack Obama would ban guns and ammunition if he could get away with it.

Well, no. Not by a longshot, in fact. But when has Palin ever let the truth - i.e. the fact that Obama recently signed legislation allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks - stand in the way of a good soundbite?

For Obama's real position on the issue of gun ownership, read this February 2008 comment by the then-presidential candidate:

"I think it’s important for us to recognize that we’ve got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets, and cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions."

In other words, legal gun ownership by law-abiding citizens is OK with Obama. What he opposes is illegal gun ownership by criminals and people who are likely to use the weapons irresponsibly.

And Palin has a problem with this?

There are never 32 cops around when you need them

2010-05-14T14:33:00.011-04:00

How many heavily armed law-enforcement officers does it take to arrest one gang member in Newburgh?

Thirty-two, apparently.

No, this isn't a twist on the old lightbulb jokes. It's a mathematical reality based on Thursday's crackdown on gang activity in the crime-infested Orange County city.

According to articles that appeared in the Freeman and other local newspapers, a total of 600 federal, state and local law enforcers participated in the citywide raids, which - despite authorities playing up the fact that there were 78 indictments in the crackdown - resulted in only 19 arrests. (Forty-four of those indicted were in custody already, and 15 remained at large.)

Six-hundred cops to arrest 19 bad guys? Seriously?

Look, I'm all for the overwhelming use of force to ensure police aren't wounded or killed by potentially armed suspects. And there's no way I'd expect only one or two officers to attempt arrests like the ones made on Thursday. Five cops per arrest, or perhaps even 10, would be appropriate. But a 32-1 ratio is just plain excessive, not to mention expensive. Heck, I've seen fewer than 32 cops respond to hostage situations in which the suspect was known to be armed and threatening someone.

Assuming, though, that the use of 600 cops in Thursday's operations can be justified, I can't help but wonder: Wouldn't it have been smarter to devote that amount of police staffing to patrolling Newburgh's troubled neighborhoods all along so the problem didn't become serious enough to warrant Thursday's action?

Legal evil

2010-05-04T09:04:00.003-04:00

So after all the hysterical exaggeration in recent weeks about the threat posed to our nation by illegal immigrants, does anyone else find it ironic that the suspect in the Times Square car bomb case is a legal immigrant?

And correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge, no Mexicans who have crossed into Arizona illegally have filled SUVs with explosives in an attempt to commit mass murder.

Unprotected ... STILL

2010-05-03T18:27:00.008-04:00

I got off a Metro-North train at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, just 24 hours after a potentially devastating car bomb failed to detonate in Times Square, less than a mile away. And the visible security presence at the high-profile station? Zero. Zilch. Nadda. No cops. No bomb-sniffing dogs. No National Guardsman. Nothing.

I've commented before in this space about the alarming lack of security at New York City's prime terror targets (bridges, tunnels, theaters, sports venues and, yes, Times Square), but never have I been more amazed - and disturbed - to see such a complete lack of concern for the public's safety as I was Sunday evening.

The people responsible for this lapse in judgment should be ashamed of themselves, and then they should be fired.

... and so should the people responsible for security at Radio City Music Hall - a concert at which was my reason for being in Manhattan.

Just one day after the would-be car bomber tried to commit mass murder on Seventh Avenue, I was allowed into the world-famous theater on Sixth Avenue without so much as a pat-down or a request to empty my pockets.

Moments later, I stood in a lobby crammed with hundreds of people, and all it would have taken was the detonation of a nail-filled bomb strapped to my torso to kill most of them.

But no one bothered to check whether I wearing such a bomb. Unbelievable.

The bottom line here is that I refuse to be scared by terrorists and the threat of terrorism. The fact that I went to New York City on Sunday proves that. But I do expect the people who are paid to protect us to do their job, and near as I can tell, they're not doing anything of the kind.

Silly censorship

2010-04-21T13:15:00.014-04:00

I was in my car this morning, listening to a local radio station, and the Billy Joel song "Captain Jack" came on.

This song, as Joel fans know, includes the line: "Your sister's gone out, she's on a date. You just sit at home and masturbate."

The version played by by this particular station muted the vocal when Joel got to the word "masturbate."

But two verses later, the line "So you play your albums, and you smoke your pot" was left untouched.

So I guess the message here is: Stimulating oneself sexually, bad. Using illegal drug, OK.

... unless the song in question is Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How it Feels," in which the version regularly played by the same station (and others, I'm sure) features Petty singing "So let's get to the point, let's hit another joint" instead of the original "So let's get to the point, let's roll another joint." (It appears Petty recorded two versions — with the revised line in the latter being a reference to going to a nightclub — knowing some radio stations would object to the original.)

So now, unlike in the version of "Captain Jack" played on the same station, the message in disallowing the phrase "roll another joint" appears to be "using illegal drug not OK."

I'm so confused. And I'm sure other listeners are, too.

So here's a suggestion for all the radio stations that play the edited versions of the Joel and Petty songs, and that long ago gave up playing the original version of the Who's "Who Are You?" because it includes the F word: If you find a song objectionable, don't play it. That's your prerogative. But if you are gonna play a song, play the original version — the way the it was intended. Anything else is disrespectful to the song, the writer, the performer and, most importantly, the listeners.