Gotham Notes...

Sunday, August 31, 2008

It's McCain, Stupid!


Digby talks about the Sarah Palin land mine.
But that's exactly what the Karl Rove machinery wants everyone to be afraid of.

But Amy Klobuchar has it about right.


posted by Gotham 1:29 AM
0 comments


It's OK; He Was A POW...


People have rightly called John McCain old.

Many have declared that John McCain was a fool.

What we've HAVEN'T seen until now is someone calling McCain AN OLD FOOL.

Until now.



It's the ring. Watch it again for the ring.

Now, OK, his eyes may or may not be drifting down to Sarah Palin's chest. It may simply be the camera angle as he's glancing down at the podium, trying to read along from the statement notes in front of her.

Just looks really bad.

But the playing with the wedding ring while in the company of an attractive woman is unmistakable. This is: pure. dog. behavior.

Especially with his current wife, Cindy, in the bright blue dress directly behind them!

Do you think he was playing with his wedding ring when he was first sizing up Cindy?

While he was still living with Carol McCain and the four kids, do you think he was twirling his wedding ring, and taking it off and putting it back on absent-mindedly when he met Cindy Hensley (later McCain) in Hawaii? Or all the other women he admitted to screwing around with before Cindy, while still living with Carol?

I've read reports from friends that called a younger McCain a major dog when he was the hot-headed, cocky flyer. Also even Ron and Nancy Reagan called him on his dog behavior after returning from the Hilton. That's how bad it was.

Then, he was just a fool.

Now, he's just an old fool!

Disgusting.

posted by Gotham 12:36 AM
0 comments

Saturday, August 30, 2008

From Snowshoes To Flip/Flops...


Brother...
As governor, (Sarah) Palin in September 2007 "directed the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to look for the most fiscally responsible alternative for access to the Ketchikan airport and Gravina Island instead of proceeding any further with the proposed $398 million bridge," but in a questionnaire published in the October 22, 2006, Anchorage Daily News (accessed from the Nexis database), then-gubernatorial candidate Palin answered the question, "Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?" by writing: "Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now—while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

"I threw off my flip/flop; stepped on a pop-top."—Jimmy Buffet

Palin is dead set against those dreaded, nasty earmarks, too, eh? Here's a report on how she's REALLY trying to cut back on her Pork consumption:
Earlier this year, President Bush and the congressional leadership announced that the total number and dollar amount of earmarks must be reduced significantly.

The Palin administration has responded to this message by requesting 31 earmarks, down from 54 last year. Of these, 27 involve continuing or previous appropriations and four are new. The total dollar amount of these requests has been reduced from about $550 million in the previous year to just less than $200 million.

Oh. Only $200 million.

That's alright, then.


NO. REPUBLICAN. LEFT. STANDING.

posted by Gotham 3:38 AM
0 comments


The New Presidential Race


With one bold, and extremely stupid, politically calculated move, former GOP front runner John McCain has taken himself completely out of the 2008 presidential race.

With his move today, he has made the One, Clear, Overriding Issue: His age. Exactly what he DID NOT want to have happen—he's succeeded in doing: he's made everyone focus fully on HOW INCREDIBLY OLD HE IS!

Now, everybody is fully focused on the very slim chance this very old man with a history of FOUR bouts with cancer will ever make it to the mid-term elections.

Which has the following impact:

THIS RACE FOR PRESIDENT IS NOW BETWEEN
BARACK OBAMA AND SARAH PALIN.


Obama for president! OR Palin for president!

Your choice...

That's our new race for the White House, 2008.

posted by Gotham 2:58 AM
0 comments


What Is That, You Ask?




"What is it exactly that the VP does, every day?"

Why..., you ask every morning, "Did the president die last night?"

This has been quick answers to stupid questions.

posted by Gotham 2:35 AM
0 comments


The McCain Deathwatch Begins


John McCain had two clear thoughts when naming a novice to be his Vice President.

1) How to tie up the extreme whack jobs of the right, so that they don't sit home, defeated and depressed, on election day.

2) How could he ensure that the American people would gladly continue to give him the best healthcare in the world in order to keep him alive and not have to turn the Oval Office over to the novice.

posted by Gotham 1:35 AM
0 comments

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Good ("9/11") Morning!
Have A Wonderful ("9/11") Day! ("9/11")


Rudy?!

Teeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee.

Hawhawhawhawhawhawhawhaw!!!

Oh. Oh, lord..., oh, lord.

Oh, let me catch my breath...!

Wow, who knew "HE" was still around?

The greatest ball of crap produced by the United States of the 21st Century has re-emerged. And he's proving to be just as wacky as he's ever been.

And, really, what possessed the modern GOP to have Rudy ("YES! I've Smeared 9/11 Dust ALL OOOOOVER MY BOOOOODDDDDYYYYYY!") Giuliani to give the Official GOP 9/11-9/11-9/11 (aka, Keynote) Speech at their convention in St. Paul? Didn't they want at least one word of that speech to be heard, or taken seriously?

Obviously tired of speaking only to NY's former First Homewrecker Judy Nathan since Americans realized what a moron he is, Rudy-9/11's popped out of his restraints to actually offer advice to the very people who stopped listening to him immediately after he was sworn in for his first term as NY's mayor.

Rudy-9/11 advising Democrats on what THEY should do, is hysterically funny. Especially since he's clearly speaking to the GOPer faithful:

RUDY-9/11: SCREW JOHN MCCAIN! I can still be president!!!! President of ALL OF 9/11!!! I wanna run on 9/11 against Hillary Clinton! (9/11!) I want Hillary, DAMMIT!!! I want Hillary! Puhleeeeeeeze let me run against Hillary for 9/11! I KNOW I can beat her, especially with 9/11! Hunh? Joe Biden? Who? Naw, I can't beat him. Hey, did you hear that I was the Hero of 9/11?"

posted by Gotham 2:24 PM
0 comments

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Two Americas, OR:


WHY AMERICA IS PISSED

Money. Period.

Having it; expecting it; having access to the means of having it.

Or not.

This leads us to a stark view of why Americans are angry.

And why the American people keep falling into the same trap set for them by Republicans in every election to, once again, vote against their economic interests.

John McCain limps around, speaking to smallish crowds of middle-class white folk, using all the energy he can muster at his age to lie flat-out to the assembled group (and the cameras) that the Democrats ARE GOING TO RAISE YOUR TAXES! Well, boy, those dirty Dems are at it again, hunh? No qualifiers. Just, "RAISE YOUR TAXES!" hanging there like old gym socks.

While I disagree with him about many things, Barack Obama, however, has consistently said that his financial plan wants to address the imbalance in wealth in the U.S.

(What that means: why do you have zilch, when that guy has everything he wants???)

He says he would do this by rewriting the tax codes to significantly RAISE THE TAXES (OH NO!!!!) of Americans making $250,000 or over. And significantly lower them for everyone making less than $250,000.

That's $250,000 or over.

Let's see, YOU probably make $25,000. Or $70,000. Or $100,000. Or maybe, even $175,000. Hey, you're doing pretty good, by most folk's reckoning. Here in Gotham Land, the landlords have gotten the legislature to declare that: "YOU'RE RICH!" once you've earned $175,000 for two years running, so they can then take your apartment away from you. It's called, "Luxury decontrol." OK, so legally in New York, YOU'RE "a rich guy" once you take in $175,000. Cool.

Obama: $250,000 or over. Ummmm...hmmmm...

A quarter of a million dollars. Twenty-five percent of $1,000,000.

But McCain promised me that the Dems would RAISE MY TAXES!!!!! Hero John wouldn't LIE to me, would he?

The GOP all (or a major portion of their membership and constituency, not to mention almost all of their backers) fall squarely into that "over $250,000" category, or have grand aspirations of someday being in that category, and tasting the "Good Life."

Let's look at some economic realities:

How the working stiff (i.e., YOU) usually lives (an example):
Yonkers schools cut overtime pay to $9.7M | The Journal News of White Plains, NY

Hmmm, sounds about right..., kick those dirty scheming, greedy school bastards, right? That's MY damned money they're stealing!

But how close do these jobs come to yours? The numbers come to what you're making? And how close does this story come to how YOUR job treats you?

Let's look.

The Yonkers schools' overtime caps range from $15,000 for administrators and certificated personnel to $18,000 for custodians, $12,000 for nurses and $6,000 for food service workers. Overtime for administrators and certificated personnel must be approved by the schools superintendent, while overtime for other staff must be reviewed by a supervisor.


Three things jump out, here.

First, all of these OT hours must be approved by administrators. Administrators NEVER throw money around (except on themselves) because it's their books that get examined. So they approve OT only when justified (to save themselves). So, these are necessary hours.

Second, let's look at numbers. What can a school food service worker (i.e., the ladies who pushed mystery meat at you in the cafeteria. Remember?) make in Yonkers, NY? Maybe $15/hr.? Assuming a mid-August to mid-June work year, that's 10 months. 40 weeks. $16,000 a year OT means no more than $400 gross OT a week, via the time & 1/2 of $22.5/hr. That comes to 17.78 hours a week. Or 3 1/2 hrs. a day. Even after all the cutbacks that every school district in this country has endured. We're asking many excessively long days of our local government employees. Not only class time, but what about every school function that happens outside of a set school day? The supervision of detentions, extra-curricular activities, the parent "teas," the meetings, sports, the booster functions, the student social events, etc., which all happen AFTER these people should be off the clock.

Which brings us to the Third point.

Which approach is easier on your property tax pocketbook? Spending upwards to $16,000 for OT for someone in order to get the job done, or hiring another worker for $25,000 to $40,000 to get it done? I know... "Ummmmm."

But those in administrative positions bamboozle and want it both ways. Making themselves look good by cutting back costs by throwing away staff; then denying the means to get the job done adequately to the remaining staff by going to the press and appealing to the financial blood lust of folks who are just as badly off as the folks being abused in this example. That might just be... uhh, you.

Want a simple way to save money? Respect the people who are doing twice as much, with half the help. Sound familiar?

This example just happens to be in the public sector, but the principles are exactly the same in every Fortune 500 company.

An analysis of last year's salary spending by the Yonkers school district revealed that its overtime bill for 2007 totaled $9.7 million, compared with a regular payroll of $242.2 million. That amounts to $1 in overtime spending for every $25 in regular pay, far lower than on the Yonkers city government side where there is $1 in overtime for every $5 in regular pay.

School officials say their overtime policy, adopted in 2006, has controlled compensation for its 4,944 employees.

"Through an aggressive Board of Education policy, which was faxed to you, as well as diligent, continual monitoring by this administration, total overtime expenditures continue to decline and overtime abuses have been eradicated," Schools Superintendent Bernard Pierorazio wrote in an e-mail response to questions about the district's salaries.

So, we see value beginning to emerge. We take the weakest spot we can find—school systems—and kick it. Doesn't that sound just like your department at your job, whatever it is you do? Sure it does.

In this case, it's also foolish, since we'll now complain that our kids aren't being served well. Maybe, that's because we dumbed down and/or fired good teachers to save a few bucks in property taxes, while the mayor and others raked in "the big bucks." At least our kids get to learn all about "Catch-22."
Pierorazio is the district's highest-paid employee at $261,954 in total compensation. On the city side, Mayor Phil Amicone was the 179th highest-paid employee, with Yonkers police Sgt. Kevin Scully's gross earnings of $253,861 making him the top municipal wage-earner.

Now, these guys at the top just made your blood boil, didn't they, right? Dirty bastards.

Well, these guys would get theirs! They'd be whacked with an Obama tax hike. Barely over $250,000, but over nonetheless.
There are 753 school employees, or 15% of the staff, who are paid more than $100,000. On the municipal side, 1,016 city workers are paid more than $100,000.

These guys make a lot more than we do, but don't we aspire to make what they're making? Don't you seeing YOURSELF getting up to a hundred grand a year? Wouldn't that be sweet? That's pretty rich, hunh? But a rich we can reach for.

Those guys GET A TAX CUT!

Hmmmmm...uhhhh, cool. You mean, I could make THAT much and still get A TAX CUT?

That seems to be the plan.

Then, how come we always fall for the GOPers who claim that DEMS ARE GONNA RAISE OUR TAXES?

Simple. The men and women you watch on TV news would HAVE THEIR OWN TAXES RAISED! Most of the anchors you see on TV pull in anywhere from a half million to many millions of dollars a year. It's a safe bet that every talking head, pundit and expert you see on TV who's scaring you into hating Dems about taxes are going to get whacked pretty hard themselves by any Obama tax code reshuffling.

But, John McCain said he would give them A TAX CUT! See, you don't have to be on FOX to be unhinged and unbalanced.

So, the question for YOU to consider is:
Who would you rather have carrying the freight for paying for the day-to-day functioning of this country?
A) YOU?

OR,

B) Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, David Brooks and Keith Olbermann?

OK, one other way to look at this wage inequality:
(again, from the good folks at The Journal News in White Plains, NY)

The minimum major league baseball salary is currently $390,000 a year.

Let that sink in.

The minimum major league baseball salary is currently $390,000 a year.

Remember that dirty bastard Bernard Pierorazio of Yonkers, who was pulling in $261,954 in total compensation, or Yonkers police Sgt. Kevin Scully, whose gross earnings of $253,861 included a lot of fluffing from OT?

Obscene amounts, right?

How about Eugenio Velez? Never heard of him? Well, he's a kid infielder with the San Francisco Giants, who's hit a career .223 with no HRs and 14 RBIs. He's making minimum wage: $390,000 a year.

How about J. R. Towles? Never heard of him, either? Well, if you have, you've probably booed him: he's a catcher with the Houston Astros, who's hit a whopping career .194 with 5 HRs and 28 RBIs. Even HE'S making $390,000 a year, and, I assume, you're not.

Or First Baseman Doug Mientkiewicz who has steadfastly refused to hit a lick for any of six teams over 11 seasons, and pulls in an ... oh so comfortable $750,000 a year.

We needn't even mention Alex Rodriquez, the immortal A-Rod of the struggling New York Yankees. Whether he runs hot or cold, Rodriquez still goes home with $28,000,000, JUST FOR THIS YEAR. Yes, taxpayers, you're booing a guy who takes home a cool 28 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. I'm certain he gives a crap about your opinion of him. And he has, ohhhhh, another nine or ten years to go on his contract. Poor guy.

EVERY player that YOU root for, or boo, while watching a ball game is making more than YOU'LL probably ever see in your lifetime.

But Baseball is the All-American Game, one that any of us can play, right?

It's in all the papers.

Well, it's all in how the corporate media spins all of these stories.

So, let's see...

School workers, and YOU, probably, in your job, are just greedy and should be thankful for anyway small crumb tossed your way.

Politicians, media celebrities, pundits and sports stars are all just simple folks who bring us such pleasure and entertainment, keep us safe, and healthy and keep this sparkling economy humming along smoothly so they can share all of their extra profits with you and all of the rest of us.

That about the size of it?

Look. The next time you want to boo A-Rod or Sean Hannity or any member of the Bush administraion, don't bother. Save your lung power.

JUST RAISE THEIR TAXES AND LISTEN TO THE RICH GUYS SCREAM! And just smile.

(NOTE: this post was inadvertently posted live on August 20, instead of being posted as a draft. This is the corrected post. We apologize for the error. —Gotham Notes)


posted by Gotham 2:59 PM
0 comments

Monday, August 18, 2008

V for Vengence:
The Prequel


The average Briton is being photo ID'd 3,000 times a week.

That's Dick Cheney's wet dream.

We assume the same mechanism is already in the works for the U.S.

Say, "Chees-y."



posted by Gotham 7:36 PM
2 comments


First, The Surge...


Then, It All Recedes...

Why John McCain says we'll be in Iraq for A Hundred Years. Because it's a goddamned mess.

Iraq moves against some US-backed Sunni fighters

This AP story is either:

A) A terribly sloppy piece of writing
B) A picture of how short-sighted Gen. David Petraeus was in his buy-'em-all-off road to "victory"
C) A view of how insane (and incompetent) the Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become
D) A view of how powerful, though dormant, the bought-off Sunnis have been
E) All of the above



posted by Gotham 7:12 PM
1 comments


That Roubini...
He's So Smart!


Dow Murdoch Jones in full panic mode:
U.S. stocks' losses accelerate as financials woes return

Hmmm, seems Gotham has heard something eerily similar lately...




You may ask, "what’s the worst thing that could happen?"

I know! "Let’s see what Nouriel says!"

posted by Gotham 2:12 PM
0 comments


See? It's Easy!


From NYTimes.com:
Musharraf Announces His Resignation

See what can happen when you leave things on the table, Nancy?



posted by Gotham 1:45 PM
0 comments


"You Have Been Warned Here First."
—Nouriel Roubini


Or, as The New York Times Magazine called him in this must-read profile, "Dr. Doom."

Nouriel Roubini is the man who, in 2006, was the U.S.'s financial Cassandra. He saw it coming. He tried to tell people. But, as with every other whistleblower, people laughed at him, said he didn't use the proper economic modeling that they all used—and called him "a perpetual pessimist, what economists call a 'permabear.'"
On Sept. 7, 2006, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, stood before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund and announced that a crisis was brewing. In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The audience seemed skeptical, even dismissive. As Roubini stepped down from the lectern after his talk, the moderator of the event quipped, “I think perhaps we will need a stiff drink after that.” People laughed—and not without reason. At the time, unemployment and inflation remained low, and the economy, while weak, was still growing, despite rising oil prices and a softening housing market.

And, like with every other whistleblower, damned if he wasn't right!

Ummm, maybe we should have made HIM president, hunh? One has, at the very least, to SEE the problem before one can start to fix it.

Update: The laughing poobahs then, of course (you saw this coming, didn't you?), are now all firmly in his camp, pleading with him to save us all.
"If you’re sitting around at the European Central Bank,” Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Harvard who has known Roubini for decades, said, “and you’re asking what’s the worst thing that could happen, the first thing people will say is, ‘Let’s see what Nouriel says.'"

How clever of them. Especially in light of The Times reporting:
Recessions are signal events in any modern economy. And yet remarkably, the profession of economics is quite bad at predicting them. A recent study looked at “consensus forecasts” (the predictions of large groups of economists) that were made in advance of 60 different national recessions that hit around the world in the ’90s: in 97 percent of the cases, the study found, the economists failed to predict the coming contraction a year in advance. On those rare occasions when economists did successfully predict recessions, they significantly underestimated the severity of the downturns. Worse, many of the economists failed to anticipate recessions that occurred as soon as two months later.

Ouch.

Gee, you think these storied economists might be the first to turn on Roubini when things get just a tiny bit better? Nahhhhhhh...

Other Roubini quotes:
"We are in a recession, and denying it is nonsense."

The United States will suffer through an 18-month recession that will eventually rank as the "worst since the Great Depression."

"This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire."

And the money quote:
“Reckless people have deluded themselves that this was a subprime crisis,” he told me. “But we have problems with credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts.” All of these forms of debt, he argues, suffer from some or all of the same traits that first surfaced in the housing market: shoddy underwriting, securitization, negligence on the part of the credit-rating agencies and lax government oversight. “We have a subprime financial system,” he said, “not a subprime mortgage market.” (emphasis by GN)

Oops. Ummmmm...

Who do you think we hate more:

Smart people?
Smart people who care?
Or smart people who care, who have the annoying habit of being right?

posted by Gotham 1:06 PM
0 comments

 

Gotham Notes...
This being an ongoing stream of thoughts on issues that affect us all, from the fairest city in the land: New York, NY.

All content © 2009 Gotham Notes.

NEW!
Send e-mail to Gotham Notes...

Photobucket

Subscribe to our Site Feed

 Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe to Gotham Notes... by e-mail!
Enter your e-mail address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

The Big Apple

NYC Nightlife / Live Music

Political Reports

The First Amendment Center
Air America Radio
**The Randi Rhodes Show
The Progress Report
MSNBC's First Read
BuzzFlash
Tom Paine's Common Sense

Blogs of Note

13
Crooks And Liars
AMERICAblog
Raw Story
Huffington Post
Talking Points Memo
TPM Muckraker
TPM Election Central
Altercations
Political Animal / Kevin Drum
Joe Conason / Salon
Joe Conason / N.Y. Observer
Paul Krugman
The Writings of Greg Palast
Juan Cole / Informed Comment
Daily Kos
Eschaton
Firedoglake
Digby / Hullabaloo
David Sirota
MyDD
Swing State Project
Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal
Countdown
I Blame The Patriarchy

gotham

On the Other Hand...

Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish
OpinionJournal / The Wall Street Journal
The Corner / National Review
Matt Drudge
Instapundit

Groups, Organizations

MoveOn.org
TrueMajority

News Outlets

Dailies:
The New York Times
Newsday
New York Daily News
New York Post
The New York Sun

Weeklies:
The Village Voice
New York Observer
New York Press

National:
The Hill
The Christian Science Monitor
USA TODAY

TV / Radio:
NY1 (cable news)
WCBS Channel 2
WNBC Channel 4
WABC Channel 7
WINS 1010 AM radio
(Many more coming soon!)


Here's a calculator to help you get a clearer picture of just how you'd make out under Obama's tax plan, rather than just extending the Bush tax cuts which is all that McCain is proposing.




Stop the heartbreak of catalog glut.
Click here:




Past Is Prologue (GN archives)

April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 August 2006 December 2006 February 2007 August 2007 October 2007 December 2007 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 current