While PA football fans can't be happy about the result from today's Iggles game against a Florida squad nor the Stillers game against the hapless Raiders, they can be happy for me and the 5 - 2 Giants.
All alone atop the NFC East.
It's now eleven days until the midterm elections. Democrats are busy trying their hardest to alienate the most active part of their party and the Republicans are busy drumming up scare tactics and whatnot to keep voter turnout low.
Lady told me earlier today that a terrorist warning was issued last night or today for NYC, Philadelphia, DC and LA. I laughed. Wow. Four of the largest cities where four of the largest blocs of Democratic voters live. Add in Chitown and Beantown and you got a real blue party, but I guess that would be a tad too obvious eh? This "threat" was to span from October 31st through the holiday season. They might as well just said "Dear Democrats, Independents and non-neo Conservative Right Wingers: Don't go vote on November 7th. Please. Love, Repugs."
And what did I read yesterday that made me gag? This NY Times story stating that the IRS has suspended back tax collection from Hurricane Katrina victims… until after the elections. Fuck them.
The commissioner, Mark W. Everson, who has close ties to the White House, said in an interview that postponing collections until after the midterm elections, along with postponing notices to people who failed to file tax returns, was a routine effort to avoid casting the Internal Revenue Service in a bad light.
"We are very sensitive to political perceptions," Mr. Everson said Wednesday, adding that he regularly discussed with his senior staff members when to take actions and make announcements in light of whether they would annoy a powerful member of Congress or get lost in the flow of news.
And further along in the article,
Former Commissioner Jerome Kurtz, who served under President Jimmy Carter, responded, "Never, never, never," when asked if he would have considered delaying broad-based enforcement actions like sending notices because of any election, national or local. "Oh my God, that is unthinkable, Mr. Kurtz said.
On the other hand, Mark E. Matthews, the I.R.S. deputy director of services and enforcement, who participated in the conference call with Mr. Everson, said that "the reference to elections was in a litany of things we were running through here" and that "I did not read it as being politicized." Mr. Matthews noted that he is a Democrat who worked in the Clinton administration.
Republicans want to cut taxes and then delay the collection of taxes and they want all the credit. They want to gut our federally funded programs and then complain about them. Then, they privatize those programs and give out contracts to their friends. Lovely.
You gotta think that the idiots over at Ford just don't care. Now I'm not talking about Joe Assemblyman and Rosie Riveter, I'm talking about the fat cats sitting on top of the company. The ones who will be doing just fine whether the company makes $5B in profits in a quarter or lose $5.8B in a single quarter.
A $5.8 BILLION loss in the third quarter.
The typical Detroit turnaround, based on plant closings and introducing a few hit vehicles but with little change in attitude, will not be enough to see Ford through, Mr. Mulally said in an interview at Ford's headquarters here on Monday.
The company, posting a $5.8 billion loss for the third quarter, has to first acknowledge the grim realities of the marketplace and then realign itself to be more productive and nimble.
"The most important thing to watch," Mr. Mulally said, "is do the leaders have a view that's different than the way it's being done today. Because if they don't, we are surely not going to get there."
Now that's for damn sure. But things probably won't change. At least not as quickly as they need to - as in a decade or so ago. Their stubborn ways of pushing their heavy inefficient trucks instead of moving towards more fuel efficient cars was stupid. War or no war, they knew that gasoline would not be the future. Skyrocketing prices sped things up and the bloated Ford could not would not keep up.
Ford expects to stay in the red until 2009. Chroist.
Karl must live two lives in order to get all that he gets done done. One in a parallel universe whose actions are reflected in the world the rest of us inhabit. He set up a new Philadelphia search engine crawling through Philly area blogs and websites. Awesome. Try it out. Go give it a whirl.
Lady and I went up to Germantown to our friends' house for their annual pumpkin carving party. We got to bring up some belated birthday presents too which was nice. And they even had a late birthday present for Lady to top things off!
After an hour and change of catching up with the gang, I sat down to start my pumpkin. Slimy pumpkin seeds are always fun to scoop out. I'm happy with the way mine came out.
But who made which one? Any guesses? Here's what I created last year.
Dragonfire is putting on a panel discussion this weekend over at the Rittenhouse Barnes & Noble. It's going to be a discussion about "how bloggers and digital media specialists are helping to shape journalism" which sounds like it'll generate some interesting discussion. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to the event, I gots work.
::Schedule::
1:00 pm — Amy Webb, Founder and Editor In Chief of Dragonfire
Speaks about how the medium doesn't matter as long as the reporting is good
1:30 pm — Alex Koppelman, columnist and writer, Salon.com
Speaks about his experience as a blogger, ousting bloggers at the Washington Post and about creating digital journalism at Salon.com
2:00 pm — Dick Polman, columnist and political writer, Philadelphia Inquirer his blog
Speaks about blogging and politics
2:30 pm — Dan Rubin, columnist and blogger, Philadelphia Inquirer his blog
Speaks about blogging, traditional journalism and norgs, the concept for a news organization of the future
And if you do go and you're planning on buying a book or calendar or dictionary or one of those damn Dummies books, print out this voucher and a portion of your purchase will be donated to Dragonfire which is a nonprofit outlet.
I have no idea how I ended up on a distribution list for John Hall for Congress (NY-19), but I did. I've been getting emails for a couple months now and the campaign manager, Amy Little, sent out a note saying that Hall would be on The Colbert Report. I eagerly awaited to see him in action with Colbert. And last week, it finally aired. Above is a You Tube video of the appearance. So funny.
My parents actually live just outside the contested district to the south and east of the Hudson River. If I were living at home and if I were as politically active as I am now, I could possibly have been working on his campaign.
The NY Times editorial board likes him enough to give him the nod for the 19th.
John Hall was a member of 70s soft rock band Orleans which cranked out "Dance with Me" and "Still the One" and after a quick look at the band's website, it looks like they're still together.
But go with what you know and watch the video. Oh the hilarity.
So won't you vote for me…
I've seen a couple of these photo collages of Bambrey St around Center City in the last week. This one is on Pine St around Juniper St.
It looks like it was made from a dozen or so photos of a new building.
Bambrey St runs intermittently through Philadelphia as a North/South street in between 25th and 26th Sts.
I saw this poster pasteup last week over on Spruce St on either 18th St or 19th St. It's such a weird piece, it caught my eye instantly. There isn't any more story to it, the website the poster refers to [www.dbruva.vesana.com] doesn't work. But the artist is eian.
Is it a local play? Is it a local art show? Is it a local band?
The correct site is http://dhruva.vesana.com.
Jay-Z has been one of my favorite rappers for a decade now. He's made beaucoup bucks over the years. He's put out some of my favorite albums. I love Reasonable Doubt. It was stolen from me at some point in college. I haven't gotten around to finding it at a used CD store just yet, but I have some of the songs in .mp3 format. And The Blueprint is an incredible album as well. He spit some of his best stuff in years teaming up with Eminem on "Renegade" resulting in a lyrical gun slinging.
His Roc-A-Fella Records label imported it's own vodka ditching Belvedere for Armadale - I recall hearing that it's the only vodka sold in Jay's 40/40 clubs. He has his own clothing line. He's considered one of the greatest of all time - love him or hate him. His commercial with HP was cool [the whole new marketing campaign of HP is awesome with Shawn White, Pharrell, Jay Z…]. But I just saw him in a fucking Budweiser commercial. Chroist.
Jay-Z has been a commerical success for quite a while now. It's not like he all of a sudden needed the dough - he's the President of DefJam! - or anything. And he was supposed to be retired too. Budweiser. Good god. And according to this AP article that's he's the new co-brand director of Budweiser Select. Blech.
And on his "retirement" - his new song sucks. It's all over the place. He's trying to do too much with it. You can listen to it here. Judge for yourself. His new album drops November 21st. I won't be buying it. It'll be the first new release by Jay that I won't buy in many years.
