FunkyPundit

Frightening Debt Facts

2012-01-05T07:54:00.004-05:00

If you like to start off your day with tears, I suggest signing up for "The Economic Collapse" newsletter. Today's deals with debt, listing 34 facts that will turn even the most pollyannaish into doom-and-gloomers:

#1 During fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent 3.7 trillion dollars but it only brought in 2.4 trillion dollars.

#2 When Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. national debt was less than 1 trillion dollars. Today, the U.S. national debt is over 15.2 trillion dollars.

#3 During 2011, U.S. debt surpassed 100 percent of GDP for the first time ever.

#4 According to Wikipedia, the monetary base "consists of coins, paper money (both as bank vault cash and as currency circulating in the public), and commercial banks' reserves with the central bank." Currently the U.S. monetary base is sitting somewhere around 2.7 trillion dollars. So if you went out and gathered all of that money up it would only make a small dent in our national debt. But afterwards there would be no currency for anyone to use.

#5 The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.

#6 The U.S. government has total assets of 2.7 trillion dollars and has total liabilities of 17.5 trillion dollars. The liabilities do not even count 4.7 trillion dollars of intragovernmental debt that is currently outstanding.

#7 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#8 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will surpass 23 trillion dollars in 2015.

#9 According to the GAO, the U.S. government is facing 34 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. These are obligations that we have already committed ourselves to but that we do not have any money for.

#10 Others estimate that the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government now total over 117 trillion dollars.

#11 According to the GAO, the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP is projected to reach 287 percent of GDP by 2086.

#12 Others are much less optimistic. A recently revised IMF policy paper entitled “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?” projects that U.S. government debt will rise to about 400 percent of GDP by the year 2050.

#13 The United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.

#14 If you divide up the national debt equally among all U.S. taxpayers, each taxpayer would owe approximately $134,685.

#15 Mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.

#16 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.

#17 During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

#18 When you add up all spending by the federal government, state governments and local governments, it comes to 46.6% of GDP.

#19 Our nation is more addicted to government checks than ever before. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.

#20 U.S. households are now actually receiving more money directly from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.

#21 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#22 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#23 In 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.

#24 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.

#25 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

#26 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.

#27 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.

#28 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#29 A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

#30 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 470,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#31 If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

#32 According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. is facing a "fiscal gap" of over 200 trillion dollars in the future. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article that he did for CNN....

The government's total indebtedness -- its fiscal gap -- now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations -- including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt -- and all projected future taxes.

#33 If you add up all forms of debt in the United States (government, business and consumer), it comes to more than 56 trillion dollars. That is more than $683,000 per family. Unfortunately, the average amount of savings per family in the U.S. is only about $4,735.

#34 The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.

Christopher Hitchens, RIP

2011-12-16T11:10:00.007-05:00

This Wednesday I thought to myself, "I haven't read anything from Hitchens recently ... I wonder how he's doing." Last night delivered the unfortunate answer.

My interactions with him were few but memorable. While producing Laura Ingraham's radio show, I regularly tried booking him, though not regularly succeeding. During my rookie year, I began one such solicitation: "Hey, Chris ..." He politely declined due to a scheduling conflict and ended his note, "And please feel free to call me Christopher." Which naturally made me feel like a jackass. Another time he demurred, "Sorry, caught between Cuba and Venezuela," which of course wasn't a joke.

Once when he was in the studio, I asked if he'd like a glass of water for the interview. He said no, pointing out that he already had one. That appearance was actually a debate over the premise of his book, "God Is Not Great." This is the subject where Hitchens, in my opinion, was at his weakest, but even then he took on all comers -- his Christian minister sparring partner, Laura, the callers -- with wit, eloquence, and charm. Afterward, I settled back into my seat and accidentally mistook his water for mine, immediately realizing he was actually drinking straight vodka. Mind you this was 10 AM. And if memory serves, after his cancer diagnosis.

I agree with William F. Buckley, who, as his son Christopher recounts, thought Hitchens intolerable after reading his latest attacks on the church; yet no matter how badly he offended, ultimately he always proved irresistible. He lacerated Mayor Bloomberg in the most satisfying way, and for that alone he'll always have a special place in my heart.

And that's how I'll remember him. As someone evinced the best qualities of rebellious American individualism and the graceful, fluid wit to be expected only from the pen of a Brit.

Speaking of Bloomberg, below are highlights from his pièce de résistance:

The lawbreaking itch is not always an anarchic one. In the first place, the human personality has (or ought to have) a natural resistance to coercion. We don’t like to be pushed and shoved, even if it’s in a direction we might choose to go. In the second place, the human personality has (or ought to have) a natural sense of the preposterous. Thus, just behind my apartment building in Washington there is an official sign saying, drug-free zone. I think this comic inscription may be because it’s close to a schoolyard. And a few years back, one of our suburbs announced by a municipal ordinance that it was a “nuclear-free zone.” I don’t wish to break the first law, though if I did wish to do so it would take me, or any other local resident, no more than one phone call and a 10-minute wait. I did, at least for a while, pine to break the “nuclear-free” regulation, on grounds of absurdity alone, but eventually decided that it would be too much trouble.
So there are laws that are defensible but unenforceable, and there are laws impossible to infringe. But in the New York of Mayor Bloomberg, there are laws that are not possible to obey, and that nobody can respect, and that are enforced by arbitrary power. The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law. Tyranny can be petty. And “petty” is not just Bloomberg’s middle name. It is his name.

In the space of a few hours late in November, I managed to break a whole slew of New York laws. That is to say, I sat on an upended milk crate, put my bag next to me on a subway seat, paused to adjust my shoe on a subway step, fed some birds in Central Park, had a cigarette in a town car, attempted to put a plastic frame around a vehicle license plate, and rode a bicycle without keeping my feet on the pedals at all times. I also had a smoke in a bar and at a table in a restaurant. Only in the latter two cases would I hitherto have been knowingly violating a city ordinance. ...
The previous night I had been to the movies and had been annoyed, as one often is, by people chatting and commenting in the back row. This is the height of antisocial behavior, because it ruins the pleasure of others while bringing no benefit to the offender. I normally deal with it as I do when people in cinemas fail to turn off their cell phones. I turn round and tell them that I know where they live, and I know where their children go to school. Others are usually on hand with similar suggestions, especially in New York. It’s all part of the fun. Ask yourself: what if uniformed cops were standing at the back of the theater enforcing the no-talking rule? It wouldn’t be quite the same, would it? But in Bloombergville, where the citizen is treated like a backward child, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this was the next bright idea.

Decency forbids me from mentioning where I ate lunch, because the proprietor is an old friend and a beautiful and conscientious restaurateur and I can’t risk having him treated like a fractious juvenile. On September 11, 2001, he turned his place into a casualty-treatment station and general refuge, and he does everything he can think of to make his guests welcome and well fed. It was a fairly slow lunchtime, and I was able to ask all diners present if they minded my lighting a cigarette for the purposes of a Vanity Fair photo shoot. All of them said go right ahead and good luck to you. So that’s all I need say about that, except that New Yorkers are no longer trusted with such discretion or good manners. It is government alone that knows what’s “appropriate.” There cannot be a single exception. One size must fit all. This casual destruction of Bohemia, in one of its oldest and most famous redoubts, is an unquantifiable loss. It misses the point of New York—in fact, it negates it. The backward child in this case—also the spiteful and bullying and smug and spoiled child—is His Honor the Mayor. May he one day be cornered in the schoolyard at recess, and without his team of hired toadies and informers, and taught the lesson of a lifetime. ...

I have only ever heard one defense of this reign of error, which is that it mimics the “broken window” street-level campaign that began to tackle crime under Bill Bratton and Rudy Giuliani about a decade ago. But, excuse me, that was directed at people making a nuisance of themselves by wielding squeegees at intersections, or panhandling with an attitude, or offering their bodies for sale at unwanted moments and locations, or jumping over turnstiles. This current Niagara of pettiness and random victimization may well be Bloomberg’s attempt at a wannabe reputation as heroic crime-fighter and disciplinarian. Who knows what goes on in the tiny, constipated chambers of his mind? All we know for certain is that one of the world’s most broad-minded and open cities is now in the hands of a picknose control freak.

RIP.

Spitzer's Shame Deficit

2011-07-14T00:40:00.013-05:00

Disgraced ex-New York governor Eliot Spitzer's certainly made his fair share of mistakes in life. Yet I only seem to recall him apologizing for one. The others he'll never apologize for, seeing as he views them as his greatest accomplishments (namely, turning New York's attorney general's office into the official micro-manager of the global financial industry -- never mind the billions in market capitalization destroyed as a result).

Writing today in Salon.com, the recently fired CNN host is now calling on Attorney General Holder to take out Rupert Murdoch:

The Murdoch empire is falling apart—criminal behavior and disregard for basic ethics having permeated its highest ranks. News Corp. executives' claims of a full and thorough investigation and that there were only a few bad apples have been exposed as feeble and false. The pseudo-investigations conducted by Scotland Yard are likewise proving to be corrupt and unreliable. Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron's government is running for cover, but it cannot escape the untoward relationship that it had with Murdoch.
So how does all this concern Americans? First, it is hard to believe that the misbehavior in Murdoch's media empire stopped at the water's edge. Given the frequency with which he shuttled his senior executives and editors across the various oceans—Pacific as well as Atlantic—it is unlikely that the shoddy ethics were limited to Great Britain.
Much more importantly, the facts already pretty well established in Britain indicate violations of American law, in particular a law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Justice Department has been going out of its way to undertake FCPA prosecutions and investigations in recent years, and the News Corp. case presents a pretty simple test for Attorney General Eric Holder: If the department fails to open an immediate investigation into News Corp.'s violations of the FCPA, there will have been a major breach of enforcement at Justice. Having failed to pursue Wall Street with any apparent vigor, this is an opportunity for the Justice Department to show it can flex its muscles at the right moment.

Are you man enough, Eric? Spitzer may as well call him a pussy, punch him in the face, and launch the investigation himself. That is his style, after all.

Only Spitzer could suggest an attorney general engage in blatant prosecutorial overreach while feigning devotion to the cause of justice. As everyone in New York is well aware, The Post -- one of Rupert Murdoch's prized holdings -- savages Spitzer with regularity and evident delight. Smelling blood in the water, Spitzer wants revenge. Using the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a way so utterly unrelated to its original purpose recalls Spitzer's serial abuse of New York's Martin Act. Many years ago, AIG's founder and then-CEO Hank Greenberg audaciously spoke out against Spitzer's politicization of NY's AG office. Spitzer responded by using his beloved Martin Act to force AIG to depose its leader, thereby initiating the company's lengthy, expensive, and widely destructive downfall. The re-insurance industry may have been destroyed in the process, but at least Eliot got his guy.

Speaking of serial abuse, if Salon's going to permit Spitzer to publish on its site, the least it can do is impose a quota on the word "should" -- perhaps one of the most obnoxious words in the English language. Example:

If DoJ does investigate and if a court were to find News Corp. liable, the penalties should extend beyond the traditional monetary fine. News Corp. should also have its FCC licenses revoked. Licensure and relicensure by the FCC require that the licensee abide by the law and serve the public interest. News Corp. appears to have blatantly violated this basic standard. Its licenses should be pulled.

There are many things Eric Holder SHOULD do. Listening to Eliot Spitzer is not one of them.

Democrats: Let's Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment

2011-07-13T15:49:00.005-05:00

In today's White House press conference, Press Secretary Jay Carney explained the president's opposition to a Balanced Budget Amendment:

The President believes that we do not need to amend the Constitution to cut the deficit. We need to get beyond politics as usual, and find bipartisan common ground.
A balanced budget amendment has, today and has always been, about ducking responsibility rather than taking our challenges head on. This is not -- we don’t need -- I mean, the Constitution should not be used to simply abdicate responsibility. What we need to do here is not complicated. It does not require a constitutional amendment and the ratification by preponderance of states here. It requires people rolling up their sleeves -- the leaders, the representatives of the people in the Congress and the President, the Vice President and others here -- and working out a compromise to achieve a goal that we all share, which is significant deficit reduction, a plan that gets our fiscal house in order that deals with our long-term debt.
It is something we can do. And in some ways, while these are hard issues, it is something we can do easily if people accept the principle that we have to compromise to do it. So, no, we do not support the balanced budget amendments.

Which places the president even further to the left than Harry Reid. This afternoon, the National Republican Senatorial Committee distributed the following quotations from Senate Democrats:

SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH): “Before I ask for your vote, I owe it to you to tell you where I stand. I’m for… a balanced budget amendment.” (Rep. Brown, “Where I Stand,” YouTube, 11/1/06)
· BROWN: “I stood up to a President of my own party . . . In support of the balanced budget amendment, in restoring fiscal sanity to our government.” (Ohio Senate Debate, City Club Of Cleveland, 10/27/06)
SEN. DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): “I crossed the line to help balance the budget, as one of the Democrats that broke with my party.” (Michigan Senate Debate, 10/22/00)
SEN. MARK BEGICH (D-AK): “It’s time to stop playing political brinksmanship with the budget and do what every Alaskan is doing - balance the budget.” (Sen. Begich, “Begich Statement On 2011 Budget Vote,” Press Release, 4/15/11)
SEN. BILL NELSON (D-FL): “Over the years, I have supported a balanced budget amendment…” (Sen. Bill Nelson, Congressional Record, S.1920, 3/29/11)
· “Senator Nelson has been a long-time supporter of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, going back to his service in the 1980s, and will continue to reach across the political divide...” (“Support For Balanced Budget Amendment,” Columbia County Observer, 3/8/11)
SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): “[T]he balanced budget amendment's very, very important to me and to every governor, to every state, to every household, especially in West Virginia. And if they can do it, they think we can do it also.” (U.S. Senate, Budget Committee, Hearing, 1/27/11)
SEN. BEN NELSON (D-NE): “I voted yes and support a balanced budget amendment that allows for flexibility in times of war and for natural disasters.” (Sen. Nelson, Press Statement, 3/4/11)
SEN. MARK UDALL (D-CO): “I've long gone by the saying, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. By restoring healthy and responsible spending through a reasonable Balanced Budget Amendment, we can begin filling in that hole.” (Sen. Udall, “Udall Co-Sponsors Balanced Budget Amendment,” Press Release, 2/1/11)
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO): “U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet broke his hesitation on endorsing the balanced-budget amendment last week… pledging support for the idea.” (“Bennet Balancing His Approach To Budget,” Denver Post (CO), 3/6/11)
SEN. CLAIRE McCASKILL (D-MO): “I think they should. …It would be great if that discipline were in place. Clearly it’s a goal we’ve got to work toward…” “…responding to a question of why the federal government can’t have a balanced budget amendment…” SEN. CLAIRE McCASKILL (D-MO): “I think they should. …It would be great if that discipline were in place. Clearly it’s a goal we’ve got to work toward…” (“McCaskill For ‘Responsible’ Balanced Budget Amendment,” PoliticMo, 6/29/11)
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY): “New York families must continuously balance their checkbooks. Forty-nine states, including New York, require a balanced budget. An amendment to the Constitution will finally hold the federal government to the same, common sense standard.” (Rep. Gillibrand, “Nation Deserved A Balanced Budget,” The Time Union, 6/4/07)
SEN. TOM CARPER (D-DE): “As a Member of the House, when I served with Senator Santorum over there, we were great proponents of something called a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution…” (Sen. Carper, Congressional Record, S.8063-4, 7/14/04)
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV): “…I believe we should have a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. I am willing to go for that.” (Sen. Reid, Congressional Record, S.1333, 2/12/97)
SEN. KENT CONRAD (D-ND): “I believe deeply in the need to balance the Federal budget… I would support an amendment to the Constitution.” (Sen. Conrad, Congressional Record, S.1147, 2/10/97)
SEN. HERB KOHL (D-WI): “The balanced budget amendment does, in my opinion, embody a principle simple and vital enough to deserve inclusion in the Constitution.” (Sen. Kohl, Congressional Record, S.1609, 2/26/97)
· KOHL: “…I am committed to the concept of the balanced budget amendment.” (Sen. Kohl, Congressional Record, S.2947, 2/22/95)
SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA): “I took a position to support a Balanced Budget Amendment…” (Sen. Landrieu, Press Conference, 2/25/1997)
· “Landrieu had touted her support for the balanced budget amendment in order to win moderate votes … she would uphold her campaign promise.” (CNN’s Inside Politics, 2/28/97)
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): “The spending trends are what really motivates me, and I hope others, to accept a constitutional balanced budget amendment.” (Sen. Feinstein, Congressional Record, S.1594, 2/26/97)
SEN. TOM HARKIN (D-IA): “Mr. President, I have long supported a balanced budget amendment. I expect to do so again...” (Sen. Harkin, Congressional Record, S.2460, 2/10/95)
SEN. TIM JOHNSON (D-SD): “It is time to get our priorities straight. I've been a strong supporter of a balanced budget amendment…” (Rep. Johnson, Congressional Record, H.11213, 10/26/95)
SEN. MAX BAUCUS (D-MT): “I have always supported a balanced budget. Montanans want a balanced budget. We must listen to the people and give them a balanced budget.” (Sen. Baucus, Congressional Record, S.2469, 2/10/95)
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): “…we need to move toward a Balanced Budget Amendment.” (Rep. Durbin, Congressional Record, H.1310, 1/11/95)

One Man, Many Ideas

2011-06-29T12:05:00.004-05:00

President Obama is a man of many ideas. Sometimes these seem to randomly join together to form a larger vision, but more often they're scattershot, coming from all points across the political spectrum to collectively present a man not of deep thinking or complexity, but of profound confusion and unwarranted faith in himself. Consider:

Obama kicked off today's presser with a boast of all he's done to boost business, specifically by studying how burdensome regulations might be reformed. Later during the Q & A, a reporter asked about the National Labor Relations Board's threats against Boeing for trying to open a non-union facility in South Carolina. Seemingly being just the sort of burdensome government interference Obama proposed reforming only minutes earlier, one might've expected him to use the opportunity to pledge to remove this roadblock and clear the way for Boeing to create these much-needed jobs; instead he extolled the virtues of government regulations, crediting them with keeping the air clean, the water pure, the food edible. And, presumably, union workers happy.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from today's speech is Obama's strong desire to hike taxes on "corporate jet owners," whom he suggested were somehow guilty for amassing America's national debt. With aviation on the mind, Obama also relayed his opinion that the airline industry is one of America's dominant sectors and that he planned to ensure its continued success. So America's jet culture is a point of pride, or enmity? Hard to say.

Today's topic, of course, was America's ever-worsening debt crisis. Early on, Obama said we must take a "balanced" approach (not, by the way, toward budgeting, but toward mixing spending cuts with tax hikes). Yet while he was clear enough he sought to raise Americans' taxes, he was less clear regarding where he proposed cutting. He actually rattled off several spending areas he considered inviolable -- e.g., the budgets of the National Weather Service, food inspectors, medical research, scholarships, programs for seniors. Addressing congressional Republicans, Obama lectured that it's time past-time to make some "tough choices" and, presumably, jack up taxes. Tough choices for thee, not for me.

By the time all was said and done, Obama boasted of being a "tax cutting" president, while also bashing tax cuts as irresponsible and unethical, and then supporting them again when discussing business investments; he insisted the Constitution plays no role in his decision to invade Libya, while also saying his decision to unilaterally revoke the Defense of Marriage Act was motivated by his devotion to the Constitution; he claimed to avoid doing"scare tactics," while also telling senior citizens that Republicans planned to cut off anticipated benefits; he roared that he's the president of the United States and he's here "to lead," while also explaining that the debt crisis is so important he delegated the task to Vice President Biden.

In all, today made for a very confusing introspection into the inner workings of President Obama's mind. But that isn't to say there are no clear takeaways. In every instance, Obama expressed complete confidence that his ideas were perfect (even when they contradicted each other). And while he invoked certain conservative ideas -- tax cuts, spending cuts, a strong foreign policy -- he more passionately offered ideas that undermined the conservative ones. A cynic might say Obama doesn't really believe everything he says. That he marches forward a very liberal agenda, but under a banner preaching conservatism. I'd tend to agree with such a cynic.

Missing Brooklyn

2008-05-05T08:45:00.002-05:00

Sharon and the Kings of Dap do well showcasing the borough that's thorough in their new video for "Tell Me":

What, Were You Expecting Me To Gloat?

2008-03-11T21:10:00.004-05:00

The FunkyPundit's got too much class for that.

Gullible Is Written on the Executive Chamber Ceiling

2007-12-19T18:49:00.000-05:00

Governor Spitzer falls victim to a hoax.

(via the Daily Politics)

Quote of the Day

2007-12-19T15:17:00.000-05:00

“It’s probably better than anything we would have passed, if we were still the majority”
-- a conservative Republican Senate staffer on the $900 billion omnibus spending bill that keeps spending contained at President Bush's requested levels.

So That's Where My Green North Face Went

2007-12-14T17:30:00.000-05:00

Missing items that turned over to the MTA are often stolen by the MTA, The Daily News reports:

At least the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board is upfront when it picks riders' pockets.
With the MTA board poised to approve fare and toll hikes, a probe found dozens of instances where lost property turned over to workers simply disappears.
Investigators, posing as commuters, handed 26 items to bus and subway workers, saying they were found and must have been lost by a rider.
Only three of the items made it to the lost property storage unit, according to one report.
"Despite repeated attempts, we could not locate these items," auditors from the MTA's inspector general's office wrote.
The property - including cell phones, watches, glasses and clothing - were given to NYC Transit and Long Island Rail Road personnel.

TREND WATCH: Proposed NY Bans

2007-12-13T17:47:00.000-05:00

List is current as of 5:47 PM, Friday, December 14th ...

New York City:

2007:

2006:

pit bulls
trans-fats
aluminum baseball bats
the purchase of tobacco by 18- to 20-year-olds
foie gras
pedicabs in parks
new fast-food restaurants (but only in poor neighborhoods)
lobbyists from the floor of council chambers
lobbying city agencies after working at the same agency
vehicles in Central and Prospect parks
cell phones in upscale restaurants
the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., because of a unionization dispute
mail-order pharmaceutical plans
candy-flavored cigarettes
gas-station operators adjusting prices more than once daily
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
Wal-Mart
the process that makes steaks pink
subway ads poking fun at outer boroughs

2004:

2003:

Cell phones during public performances

2002:

New York:

2007:

A Christmas Cartoon

2007-12-07T14:48:00.001-05:00

(via the Center for Consumer Freedom)

What I'm Thankful for Today

2007-12-07T14:15:00.001-05:00

Not being a Muslim-to-Christian convert.

Interesting Reading

2007-12-07T11:54:00.000-05:00

A gay University of Virginia undergrad student explains his opposition to gay marriage. All I'll say is that it's an argument that can't be reduced to smug sound-bites.

Today's Funk Special

2007-12-06T12:01:00.000-05:00

Paul Dateh & inka one = hip hop, strings style!

Why Hillary Can't Win

2007-12-04T18:46:00.000-05:00

Americans declare her the candidate they would "least like to watch on television for four years." Rudy Giuliani is the candidate Americans would most like to watch.

In this age, is there a poll that matters more?

(via AEI's December Political Report)

Snoop's Sensual Seduction

2007-12-04T18:24:00.000-05:00

This being funkypundit.blogspot.com, it seems mandatory to note that Snoop is declaring the G-Funk Era back on:

Well played, Mr. Snoop -- well played.

Stop the Checkpoints

2007-12-04T17:48:00.000-05:00

If you were me, you would already be well aware that there's nothing quite as aggravating as a DWI checkpoint. But since you're not, a friend of the FunkyPundit, Sarah Longwell, breaks it down for you in the pages today's New York Sun:

Federal funding policy requires roadblocks to be "highly publicized." So authorities regularly publish roadblock times and locations in advance, allowing veteran drunk drivers simply to drive around them. The word also gets passed around via the word-of-mouth and cell phone networks, which are similar to truck drivers who tell their friends about speed traps.

Testimony from an official at Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation, Louis Rader, demonstrated that roving patrols, where cops swarm the roads looking for erratic drivers, are a superior tactic for catching drunk drivers. Mr. Rader testified that only 0.7% of all drivers stopped at DUI checkpoints are charged, while 7.7% of suspicion-based stops made by roving patrols yield charges. That's 10 times more arrests per car stopped.

In the war against drunk driving, setting up roadblocks is like expecting the enemy to walk into your camp and surrender. It would be laughable if it weren't so tragic.

To which a pundit of the funkiest variety could only add: Word.

Diversity Enthusiasts Beware!

2007-12-03T12:12:00.000-05:00

Irish Independent columnist Ian O'Doherty declares he has "no respect or tolerance" for Sharia:

Anywhere in the world where Sharia law is practised, such barbaric and disgusting practises take place on a regular basis.
Don't believe me? Well, Iran has been in the news for the most recent example of a woman being sentenced to death by stoning. But they are also partial to hanging gay people and women with too much attitude.
And they quite like a bit of eye-gouging as well, when the mood takes them, such as the woman who had her eyes gouged out in a public square because she fought off a man who tried to rape her. Check that out on the internet when you fancy losing your lunch.
Or what about precious little Palestine, where 50 women have been killed by their own families this year alone, and where the beating of women who aren't sufficiently "modest" is common under the fanatics of Hamas.
Or Afghanistan, where women are routinely raped and murdered by family and strangers with impunity? Or Chechnya? Or Somalia? Or anywhere Sharia is practised.
And yet we are constantly instructed by the multicultural, liberal, chattering classes to show "respect" and "tolerance" towards Muslims who want to practise their cultural heritage in Western countries.
Well, you know what? I don't have any respect or tolerance for not just the actions, but also the mentality.

And, yes, he concedes, this makes him "Islamophobic":

Well, I am Islamophobic in the sense that I'm phobic towards the notion of treating women as third-class citizens, flogging people and killing them for having an independent thought.
I'm phobic towards the idea of killing Theo Van Gogh because he made a movie they didn't like. I'm phobic towards killing a Japanese translator because he worked on the Satanic Verses.
I'm also rather phobic to the notion that the Muslim world has the right to riot and kill each other because of a few unfunny cartoons in an obscure Danish publication.

Protestations from the Ivory Tower notwithstanding, there's nothing high-minded, chic or compassionate about tolerating barbaric acts of intolerance. Indeed, tolerating intolerance feeds its growth and provides its sanctuary. O'Doherty also reports that the Saudi woman who recently suffered the misfortune of being gang-raped and later sentenced to 200 lashes for the offense was also targeted for death by her very own brother. She had violated the family's "honor," after all.

It's too bad President Bush and many of his Anglosphere allies are so jaded with misplaced notions of "tolerance" that almost nothing is said of women's abuse under Sharia law. Why not push for a United Nations resolution that simply expresses the belief that state-sanctioned abuse of rape victims is inhumane? It wouldn't have much practical effect, but it could go a long way reminding people there's no shame in being intolerant of barbarity.

Pol of the Day: Tom Lantos

2007-11-29T16:55:00.000-05:00

From The Wall Street Journal's Political Diary:

Dutch Treat

Guantanamo Bay is likely to close as the chief U.S. prison for terrorist suspects in the next year or so, but that doesn't mean it's stopped hosting delegations of outraged Europeans who want to make grandstanding points against the U.S.

Happily, at least one U.S. lawmaker has called some of the European headline-hunters on the carpet. During a recent meeting in Washington with Dutch parliamentarians who had just come from the U.S. Naval base in Cuba, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos minced no words. On being informed by the Dutch lawmakers that the prison was an abomination, the California Democrat coolly replied that "Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay."

Mr. Lantos, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor, wasn't done yet. He offered advice to Dutch politicians who are debating whether to keep sending 1,600 troops to Afghanistan as part of the NATO mission there: "You have to help us, because if it was not for us, you would now be a province of Nazi Germany."

The Dutch did not take kindly to Mr. Lantos' perspective. "The comments killed the debate," Harry van Bommel, a member of the Dutch Socialist Party, told reporters. "It was insulting and counterproductive."

Perhaps, but it was also a refreshing departure from the normally vapid "diplomospeak" that such meetings are usually conducted in.

-- John Fund

Global Warming Update

2007-11-29T11:47:00.001-05:00

The chart below plots atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide alongside a global monthly temperature mean. Presumably there should be a correlation, as the theory of global warming posits that the greater the concentration of CO2, the greater the greenhouse effect.

Instead, as CO2 has risen steadily, average global temperatures since 1998 have been in decline. The reason for the 1998 spike is the super El Nino that warmed the Pacific. (Via ICECAP)

And in other global-warming news ...

The National Hurricane Center is being accused of artificially inflating the number of officially designated hurricanes.
American CO2 output declined in 2006 by 1.6 percent -- but the greens aren't happy, presumably because the decline didn't come through command-and-control regulations.
Not that such regulations work: European emissions continue to rise (as seen below). So much for Kyoto.

What I'm Thankful for Today

2007-11-28T11:41:00.000-05:00

Not having ever run afoul of Qatar's alcohol laws.

UPDATE: Also, that I'm not a woman in the Congo.

Sean Taylor, RIP

2007-11-27T11:32:00.000-05:00

The hardest hitting safety in the NFL, the leader of the Redskins' secondary, Terrel Owens' worst nightmare -- Sean Taylor was these things plus, as teammate Pierson Prioleau said, "a dad, a brother, a friend of ours."

'Clinton Style Evokes Concern Among Critics'

2007-11-20T18:20:00.000-05:00

Anyone see this story that just moved over the Reuters wire? Surprising what passes as news these days:

Clinton Style Evokes Concern Among Critics

By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton vows to cave on terror, chooses confessed criminals as advisers and pretends nationalizing health care isn't socialism.

Add to those views a reputation for being power hungry, and Clinton often evokes the word "scary" from opponents who find this self-aggrandizing image that serves her so well in New York now a cause for concern as she seeks the U.S. presidency.

What's that? This can't be a real story? True, it's not -- but this is:

Giuliani Style Evokes Concern Among Critics
By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican Rudy Giuliani vows to be tough on terror, chooses advisers who want to bomb Iran and doesn't think pretending to drown prisoners is torture.

Add to those views a reputation for being combative, and Giuliani often evokes the word "scary" from opponents who find the tough-guy image that served him so well after the September 11 attacks now a cause for concern as he seeks the U.S. presidency.

Spitzer vs. the Little Guy

2007-11-19T12:34:00.000-05:00

In 2005, The New York Times ran an in-depth series on Medicaid fraud in New York. By the paper's estimate, New York was annually losing upward of $18 billion on fraud, waste, and abuse. This put attention on then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, whose office was responsible for overseeing the system. His Democratic opponent for governor, Thomas Suozzi, accused the AG of neglecting state interests, focusing too much on high-profile cases.

Spitzer said Medicaid was receiving his investigators' attention, announcing as an example litigation against a Park Slope dentist. The suit alleged that Leonard Morse had bilked more than $1 million from New York. But as The Post reports today:

The charges collapsed at trial after reams of records were ruled inadmissible.
In the end, prosecutors asked Justice John Walsh to consider charges that Morse stole just $3,000. The judge found the dentist not guilty on that charge.
But today, Morse's patients are long gone -- scared off, he says, by the barrage of press releases calling their dentist a thief.

Claiming to having lost his client base, Morse is now suing Spitzer for $75 million.

"I think I want beyond money," said Morse. "I want justice. I want my good name back. I want all those thousands of patients back who I treated for 30 years. I want all my friends and neighbors and relatives to see that I didn't do anything. I became a political pawn."

Spitzer's suit was curiously timed in that its evidence was an audit performed in 2002. Last year I wrote about another instance where AG investigators uncovered small-time villains at the perfect moment; three small-time gas station were sued for alleged price gouging -- just as soaring prices filled headlines and airwaves. Because the piece is no longer available online, I'm reprinting it below:

SPITZER'S TWISTED GAS CRUSADE -- June 5, 2006

WHAT does Eliot Spitzer have against small New York businesses?

Asking that question are three gas station operators whom the attorney general is suing for "price gouging" in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

In the midst of the late '70s oil panic, the Legislature made it a crime to "sell or offer to sell any [vital goods and services] for an amount which represents an unconscionably excessive price." When gasoline prices spiked in Katrina's wake, Spitzer invoked the statute against stations across the state.

Last September, the AG's office subpoenaed sales information from dozens of gas stations across the state, subsequently offering settlements to those it determined had gouged. Most chose to pay a fine rather than fight. But three refused; Spitzer is now pursuing civil cases against all three.

"[Spitzer's] ruined my reputation in [Oswego County] forever," fumes Joe Wiedenbeck Jr., who owned the Penn-Can Truck Stop Mobil in Center Square (Oswego County) at the time of the alleged gouging (he's since sold his business and retired to Florida). "We were in business for 31 years; we donated to every cause in the area.

"Why is he coming after me?" asks Danny Cianciulli, owner and manager of My Service Center in New Rochelle -- who says that his station lost money in the post-Katrina weeks, and on the year. In fact, he put up $50,000 of his savings just to keep the station afloat.

"Price gouging?" asks Cianciulli. "I haven't taken a vacation since 1985. I work from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., six days a week. . . . It's my obligation to sell as low as I can. When gas prices go up, I lose money. If people think they're being mistreated, they go elsewhere."

Joe Alonzo, a partner at Wever Petroleum, which runs the Schaghticoke Mobil station in Rensselaer County, points out that at the time referenced in Spitzer's suit, he was charging 10 cents a gallon less than the nearest other station.

Cianculli says he sets his price by maintaining a 10-cent margin over whatever Exxon currently charges him for gas.

Wiedenbeck says he always set his price by adding a cent to whatever Wal-Mart and Fast Track were charging. After Katrina, "the supplier was changing his prices two to three times a day," he explains. "You have to be able to afford the next shipment of gasoline, because you have to pay for it before you receive it."

Spitzer says the stations did wrong by raising their prices on gasoline that they'd already bought at a lower price. "If they had gas in the ground, that they paid a specific price for, their costs did not go up, nor is it an acceptable excuse to raise their price," argues Paul Larrabee, a spokesman for the attorney general. Adjusting prices to changing costs, says Larrabe, "is not a defense under the [price gouging] statute."

But that's how small service stations do business, the defendants argue.

"We would have been out of gas if we sold by prices set in the past," said Adam Peska, an attorney for My Service Station. "Besides, whatever [short-term] profits he made were immediately eaten up by the next shipments."

Jim Calvin, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores, an industry group, says, "There's a longstanding established practice of pricing motor fuel at replacement cost."

He compares it to real estate: If I bought a house four years ago for $100,000, he asks, and I sell it for $100,000 when prices have doubled, "how would I afford my next house in the new real-estate market?"

But the defense attorneys have a better reason for confidence: The statute's simply too unclear. It fails to define the "gross disparity" in prices that it says constitutes gouging. The standard is so vague that someone who wants to obey the law can't know how to obey.

Even Spitzer implicitly concedes this point: He has asked the Legislature to amend the price-gouging law so that prosecution would be more practical.

So why did he bring up these cases in the first place? He insists he's just fighting for the public good. Indeed, he brings the issue up on the campaign trail -- bragging that he's the nation's toughest state attorney general in fighting gas-price-gouging. (In fact, a new Federal Trade Commission study shows that Georgia's AG beat him, having settled with 64 gas stations, to Spitzer's 18 total.)

The defendants see politics in the timing. All three refused to pay the fine demanded in Spitzer's initial letter, instead submitting the requested documentation on their post-Katrina pricing. When they heard nothing more, they assumed Spitzer had decided to drop a weak case.

Then gas prices hit the news again in April -- and so did another Spitzer press offensive, announcing the three prosecutions. In fact, the defendants first heard of the suits from the media.

Spitzer's people managed to alert the press in time for the papers of Friday, April 21 -- but failed to serve any of the paperwork on the operators until the next Monday or Tuesday. ("We attempted to serve these stations prior to the public release of this information," insists a Spitzer spokesman.)

If politics is Spitzer's motive here, he's safe even if the cases eventually get thrown out of court: The proceedings likely won't wrap up before Election Day.

Meanwhile, he can keep on alleging that these small-time gas operators that struggle to stay in business have intentionally ripped off consumers -- a telling presumption for their aspiring governor.

UPDATE: The Morse complaint is here.

TREND WATCH: Proposed NY Bans

2007-11-16T17:53:00.000-05:00

List is current as of 5:58 PM, Friday, November 16th ...

New York City:

2007:

2006:

pit bulls
trans-fats
aluminum baseball bats
the purchase of tobacco by 18- to 20-year-olds
foie gras
pedicabs in parks
new fast-food restaurants (but only in poor neighborhoods)
lobbyists from the floor of council chambers
lobbying city agencies after working at the same agency
vehicles in Central and Prospect parks
cell phones in upscale restaurants
the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., because of a unionization dispute
mail-order pharmaceutical plans
candy-flavored cigarettes
gas-station operators adjusting prices more than once daily
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
Wal-Mart
the process that makes steaks pink
subway ads poking fun at outer boroughs

2004:

2003:

Cell phones during public performances

2002:

New York:

2007:

Why Do I Hate the Candidates I Like?

2007-11-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

Readers may recall that an earlier political quiz identified the FunkyPundit as a Brownback man. Well, he's come and gone. And I've since come across a new political matchmaking site called Glassbooth. This time I've most closely identified with ... Tom Tancredo?

What gives? I love Mexicans!

Anyone else getting interesting results?

Question of the Day

2007-11-13T16:20:00.001-05:00

Is, or is not, Ticketmaster the absolute worst company in the United States of America?

Having just purchased two $25 tickets from Ticketmaster and receiving a final bill -- after its Orwellian "convenience charge" -- of $72(!!!), I'm now thinking I haven't been ripped off this badly since ... since ... well, since my last Ticketmaster purchase! Actually, there's also last month's Cablevision bill, which is perhaps the only reason why today's answer could very well be, "no."

By the way, this is what I'll be seeing. Everyone of sound mind ought to do the same.

Politicians Being Politicians

2007-11-13T14:47:00.000-05:00

For it's impressive distillation of nauseating backslapping, mawkish self-celebration, and dubious factuality into one hugely lame quote, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's comments in a Governor Spitzer press release on New York's self-imposed Kyoto Protocol could go down as a politicians-being-politicians quote of the year:

“Bravo to Governor Spitzer for striking this blow against global warning and greenhouse gas emissions—and for recognizing that with a little courage, being ‘green’ is much easier than people think. Here in cutting-edge Brooklyn, we’re proud of our solar-powered subway terminal at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island, our co-gen co-ops in Clinton Hill, our huge new green roof in Red Hook, our food justice efforts in East New York—the kinds of sustainable initiatives that have the rest of the country saying ‘Brooklyn, NYC, and New York State — How green it is!’”

Yes, that's exactly what everyone's saying.

This Is a Public Service Announcement From The Gza

2007-11-13T12:08:00.000-05:00

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Today's Funk Special

2007-11-12T15:20:00.000-05:00

Beck plays "Nicotine and Gravy" at Germany's Bizzarefest in August 2000:

Thanks my friend Pat, this song has been stuck in my head since Saturday night. Now it will be stuck in all of yours!

Huffington's Huff of the Day

2007-11-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

In the course of criticizing Democrats for being insufficiently aggressive with Republicans, Yale Professor David Bromwich offers this:

Given the chance to resist as a formed majority, their opposition has, in less than a year, been whittled down to ceremonial remonstrance. And the pattern is now almost ingrained. After all, this was the first president in our history to boast of assassinations: "All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries," he said in his State of the Union address of 2003. "Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem." President Bush, in his own words, told us that he was talking about suspects, not men convicted on evidence of a crime. The president made us all his accomplices when he remarked that the murdered men had not been given a legal process. That easy slide into the argot of hoodlums by the leader of the free world was noticed by a few at the time.

No comment.

Americans Want To Hear More About Iraq ...

2007-11-09T17:52:00.000-05:00

But the media has moved on. From a Pew Research Center analysis:

News about the Iraq war does not dominate the public’s consciousness nearly as much as it did last winter. Currently, just 16% of Americans name the Iraq war as the news story that first comes to mind when asked what has been in the news lately. In December and January, a period when U.S. policy toward Iraq and President Bush’s troop surge drew extensive news coverage, as many as half or more named the Iraq war as the first story that came to mind.

Despite decreased public interest in the war [this doesn't logically follow the last 'graf -- FP], a growing number of Americans fault news organizations for providing too little, rather than too much, coverage of the war. In particular, the public believes that the challenges and experiences of U.S. soldiers – both while serving in Iraq and after returning to the United States – are receiving too little news coverage.
Fully 63% say that “the challenges faced by some U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq” have received too little news coverage; about the same number (61%) say that reports about soldiers’ personal experiences have been undercovered.

It's no surprise the media's clammed up on Iraq just as the reasons for hope grow steadily stronger. For the last three years, most major media outlets have invested their personal credibility in the all's-doomed angle. Allowing that this call may have been premature is embarrassing. But more interesting is the implicit conceit that there's no such thing as good news, as World News Tonight anchor Charlie Gibson recently opined:

One item from Baghdad today. The news is … that there is no news. The police told us that, to their knowledge, there were no major acts of violence. Attacks are down in Baghdad and today no bombings or roadside explosions were reported.

Apparently, Americans disagree -- this is news.

Great News in the World of Sports

2007-11-07T18:34:00.000-05:00

The bidding war Alex Rodriguez assumed would erupt just as soon as he left the Yankees has failed to materialize.

Save Lives: Bring Back Trans Fats!

2007-11-07T10:26:00.000-05:00

Today The New York Times reports that obesity increases a person's chances of surviving various diseases:

Linking, for the first time, causes of death to specific weights, they report that overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease.
As a consequence, the group from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute reports, there were more than 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in 2004, the most recent year for which data were available, than would have expected if those people had been of normal weight.

Their paper is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers also confirmed that obese people and people whose weights are below normal have higher death rates than people of normal weight. But, when they asked why, they found that the reasons were different for the different weight categories.

Wouldn't it be ironic if New York City's chief of the food police, Dr. Thomas Frieden, was actually responsible for increased mortality rates owing to his ban on trans-fats?

The Nanny Inquisition

2007-11-06T15:01:00.000-05:00

The crusade continues, The New York Times reports:

Moonshine is the kind of cozy, lived-in Brooklyn bar that allowed customers to bring dogs inside and meat for the grill outside, both of which, it would come to learn, are against New York City health department regulations. But no one foresaw one violation uncovered during a recent surprise inspection of the Red Hook tavern.
It was tucked within the array of more common infractions on the inspectors’ forms for which Moonshine was cited: the grills, the “live dog” in the bar, fruit flies and “7 mice excreta” in the basement. If widely enforced, it is not an exaggeration to say that the rule would radically change the way thousands of bartenders do one small but vital part of their job every single day.

“A male worker observed having bare-hand contact with one slice of ready-to-eat lime while placing on top of beer bottle for patron in bar,” the citation, dated Oct. 9, states. Bare-hand contact? How else is a bartender supposed to get a ready-to-eat lime slice into a bottle of Corona for a patron? According to the health department, there are two solutions.

Plastic gloves or tongs.

In other words, every time a bartender in New York City puts a lime slice in that Corona with bare hands, he or she is breaking the law. ...
An informal survey of several bartenders on whether they use gloves or tongs when garnishing beer bottles was met with incredulity, ridicule and disdain. But when asked to perform this alien ritual, they did their best with the tongs, gripping the little wedges and guiding them into the bottles. Some fumbled, while others took to it like surgeons performing a transplant. None of them seemed happy with the thought of doing it every day.

The first stop was Smith & Wollensky, the revered brass-rail bar and steakhouse in Midtown where the staff wears sharp white coats. Patrick Ford, a bartender for 35 of his 53 years, was standing behind the polished bar amid gleaming bottles on a busy Tuesday night as he considered how to legally garnish a beer.

“I won’t wear gloves,” he said, his tall frame so thin it seemed his white coat was still on a hanger. “It’s not a doctor’s office. It’s a saloon.”

He fished out a Corona and looked around. “We don’t have tongs,” he said. “I’ll use a fork.”

He speared a little wedge of lime and walked past several amused regular customers, toward a waiting Corona. In his coat, holding the fruit before him, he looked like a mad scientist with a laboratory specimen. The lime addressed the lip of the beer bottle with uncertainty, but when Mr. Ford removed the fork, it stuck there. Men cheered.

“Hey, Patty,” one man bellowed. “Give me a Corona over here! Be sure to use a fork!”

While putting lime in beer borders on criminal, I believe the surgeon general recommends that anyone who would ban the practice be kept at least 100 yards away from any position of authority. It's just safer for everyone.

Around the Web

2007-11-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

-- The New York Times is no johnny-come-lately on climate change. One of its first distress signals was printed way back in '95 -- 1895, that is!

-- Here's something as rare as a "smoking permitted" sign: The Wall Street Journal's Hugo Restall spends an entire column waxing rhapsodic on the joys of smoking.

-- The birthplace of Ebenezer Scrooge moves to ban Santa Claus.

-- Be proud: Your tax dollars are financing post-Thanksgiving congressional vacations to Brazil.

-- Councilman James Oddo, fresh from his long, lonely and hard-fought battle to ban metal baseball bats, has another big idea.

An Eco-Warrior of Convenience

2007-11-02T10:41:00.000-05:00

Today Mayor Bloomberg is delivering the keynote address at a Seattle climate-change conference sponsored by the United States Conference of Mayors. He will propose taxing carbon emissions, which will be levied upon companies -- not individuals themselves -- which is an important distinction.

A recent New York Post analysis of Hizzoner's real-estate portfolio and travel style found that no one holds a candle his massive energy consumption (well, except for maybe Al Gore). His personal carbon footprint equals that of "18 average Americans, 53 Europeans or 404 Guatemalans."

His (conservatively) estimated 364 annual tons of smog-inducing carbon dioxide is equivalent to "keeping 69 cars a year on the road or lighting the Empire State Building for 4 days," The Post reported.

Besides his spacious Upper East Side townhouse, the mayor owns five homes: a country house in Armonk; a farm in North Salem, both in Westchester; a four-bedroom condo in Vail, Colo.; a palatial flat on London's posh Cadogan Square, and a sprawling, 6,000-square-foot beachfront spread in Bermuda.
Together, the properties boast enough square footage to swallow two mansions like the 10,000-square-foot one owned by former Vice President Al Gore, one of several leading climate-change critics rapped lately for being voracious energy users themselves.
Bloomberg's carbon footprint swells to epic proportions when you include his penchant for reaching his far-flung getaways by one of the handful of private jets owned by his financial information firm, Bloomberg LP.

Fortunately, this chief of the Green Police has a get-out-jail card.

A City Hall spokesman said the mayor has chosen instead to donate to worthy causes -- "public health, the arts and education" -- while seeking "broader change."

Beyond taxing businesses guilty of producing the energy Americans demand, Bloomberg has also proposed city-specific policies: energy quotas on Gotham's private sector, mandatory hybrids for all cabbies, an $8 motorist tax for driving in Manhattan, new taxes on consumers' electricity bills. He's even threatening to devastate Gotham's natural landscape by planting one million new trees.

In other words, by forcing New Yorkers to consume less, the city serves as Mayor Mike's personal carbon offset.

How convenient.

Huffington's Huff of the Day

2007-11-01T16:11:00.000-05:00

It's a long one, but totally worth it. "Writer, director and producer" Bob Cesca says its time to put President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, "out of his misery":

It shouldn't be this difficult. Waterboarding is torture. Holy shit. How disgraceful is it that Americans have been forced to define waterboarding and various other torture techniques in the first place? Yet thanks to the Bush administration here we are anyway, and the Mukasey hearings haven't even really enumerated the syllabus of other enhanced interrogation techniques presently listed on the American torture menu.

Why is Mukasey and the White House being deliberately deceptive? Naturally because we're torturing detainees. Right damn now.

And if that makes you feel safer, then you're an idiot.

You're an idiot for fearing Filet-O-Fascism in the first place, since, despite what Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee say, the Filet-O-Fascists are absolutely not the biggest threat America has ever faced. Not by a long, long, long shot. Giuliani, Huckabee and the other fear-merchants are, in effect, inflating the egos of al-Qaeda by elevating their strength and capabilities to a level more dangerous than Nazi Germany or the Cold War Soviets. Talk about emboldening the enemy.

No comment.

Speaking of Sharon Jones ...

2007-11-01T13:05:00.000-05:00

In the latest Harp Magazine, Andy Tennille, the brother of a FunkyPundit friend, has a feature on the Daptone Records' origins. In the beginning, label co-founder and Dap Tones bassist Gabe Roth struggled to find an audience for vintage soul and funk:

Obsessed vinylphiles were always looking for old, limited-edition pressings of rare funk and soul 45s, the more obscure the better. A few months later, Desco issued The Revenge of Mister Mopoji by an unknown group named Mike Jackson & the Soul Providers, heralding it as the long-awaited reissue of a soundtrack to an obscure ’70s kung fu movie.
“It was a fake reissue of a soundtrack to a kung fu movie that never actually existed,” Roth confesses with a sly grin. “We would go to record shops in New York to sell the album and store clerks would tell me, ‘I don’t want that. I got the original.’ There was no original soundtrack; there was no fucking movie to begin with. It was unbelievable. That’s when I realized how full of shit most of these people were.”

Should you have an interest, the whole piece is available here.

Funk's Video of the Day

2007-11-01T12:48:00.000-05:00

Hot off the editing reels!

It's my hero, mentor and life-long love, Sharon Jones, with her hit "100 Days, 100 Nights" off their new album of the same title. According to the director, it was filmed with two vintage TV cameras purchased off e-Bay for $50 apiece.

Funk Fund -- Week 8

2007-10-28T11:27:00.000-05:00

For the latest in an experiment that has gone horribly awry, here are this week's picks, per week one's guidelines:

-- $20 6-point teaser on Colts (-7), Giants (-10), & Saints (-1) (payout: $52)

-- $10 straight bets on Colts, Giants, & Saints (payout: $20 each)

-- $5 3-game parlay on Colts, Giants, & Saints (payout: $36)

This week's total possible payout: $145

Current account balance: $-104

UPDATE: Karol is insistent I start providing updates after each Sunday. I said it's too embarrassing to report that my vaunted strategy is failing week in and week out.

Nonetheless, like so many weeks before, week eight missed out on a profit by a mere point. The Colts won 31-7, the Saints won 31-10, but the G-Men gave up a late-game touchdown to win by just 3, thereby losing the teaser. Once again, the only bets to hit were two straights. Ironically, I was pulling for the Dolphins to make it close, as I was personally predicting they would cover the spread.

Question of the Day

2007-10-26T12:32:00.001-05:00

Should dueling be brought back?

What about public hangings?

Please discuss. Thanks.

Karol Sent Me This

2007-10-25T17:45:00.000-05:00

And it is terrifying.

She also sent me this -- a helpful explanation of why my interest in converting to Japanese is waning.

Huffington's Huff of the Day

2007-10-25T11:21:00.000-05:00

Bob Cesca, a "writer, director and producer," on why America isn't generally conservative:

The United States of America is composed of around 300 million mostly good people who are sometimes misguided, destructive, religious, arrogant, ignorant and self-important -- conditioned to consume everything. We're fat, prone to addiction and we love awful things like Steve Doocy and BK Stackers. We're a lot of crazy things, Senator McCain, but America is definitely not "right of center."

Also, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson asks where the National Guard is:

In California, the Guard force is authorized to have over 21,000 members. Today, that number is just under 15,000. Why the decline? I believe it has nothing to do with a diminished commitment to service, but rather is a frustration with having that commitment abused, and families turned upside down, just so President Bush can continue to pretend his war can succeed.

Quote of the Day

2007-10-24T12:48:00.000-05:00

Via The Wall Street Journal's Political Diary:

"I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism.... I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.... According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of 'Lonesome Dove.') The committee further concluded that the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history. ... As with the Duke Lacrosse case, the truth about Jena will eventually be known. But the town of Jena isn't expecting any apologies from the media. They will probably never admit their error and have already moved on to the next "big" story" -- Craig Franklin, assistant editor of The Jena Times, writing in the Christian Science Monitor (available at csmonitor.com).

Around the Web

2007-10-23T15:05:00.000-05:00

Pat Buchanan actually writes something worth reading (even if Stephen Moore wrote much the same column only a few weeks ago).

An anti-tobacco activist says New York City's health czar, Dr. Thomas Frieden, manipulates the science of second-hand smoke in the tradition of the infamous Tobacco Institute.

Robert Gates continues his audition for the next Clinton Administration.

The Center for Consumer Freedom's Rick Berman reports: "During the same time that health officials have placed increasing emphasis on obesity rates, the incidence of eating disorders has nearly tripled."

A Johns Hopkins professor says claims of an obesity epidemic are "wildly exaggerated" and hurt children.

A British editorial says a proposed regulation that will "warn" parents of obese "seem to assume a level of stupidity among the general public." It also has an intriguing suggestion for remedying obesity: "eat less and exercise more."

(hat tip to my pops & the Center for Consumer Freedom)

This Should Solve It

2007-10-22T17:24:00.000-05:00

Responding to a recent proliferation of nooses, New York lawmakers are proposing "to make it a felony to etch, paint, draw or otherwise place or display a noose on public or private property."

From the press release:

"This is a vile act that must be dealt with harshly," said New York State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean G. Skelos [who sponsored the legislation]. "There is no place for racism and intimidation in America and this rash of incidents clearly demonstrates the need for tough new penalties. The Senate will act today to make displaying a noose a felony and I encourage the Assembly to reconvene and pass this legislation as soon as possible."

"This legislation recognizes that a noose continues to be a powerful symbol of racism and intimidation towards African Americans, and that it is solely meant to harass and threaten another person or a group of people. Today the Senate Majority will take decisive action to protect all New Yorkers from the menacing and disturbing actions of a few," [Republican] Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno said.

Yes, banning the drawing of nooses (even on private property) certainly does qualify as "decisive action." Whether it's a decisive in the direction of common sense is, alas, quite another question.

Congestion Indiscretions

2007-10-22T16:48:00.000-05:00

"Mayor Bloomberg says congestion pricing will raise $390 million a year for mass transit, but that figure is nothing more than an educated guess," The Daily News reports.

Reviewing internal documents made available through a Freedom of Information Act request, the News finds that in January 2007 the Department of Transportation was developing a congestion-pricing "System [that] runs 346 days each year, capturing cars and trucks four times on every trip, processing 6,052,000 transactions each day. Each license plate costs 75 cents to read. The annual operating cost is $884,168,938, or 44.4% of total revenue."

But by April, after some tweaking to predicted costs, the numbers changed: "System runs 248 days each year, capturing cars and trucks two times on every trip, processing 2,796,000 transactions each day. Each license plate costs 15 cents to read. The annual operating cost is $232,640,000, or 35.2% of total revenue."

In London, operational costs consumed nearly two-thirds of the system's revenue in its first year. Afterward the toll was raised to $16 from $10. By nature governmental programs cost more to run than anticipated -- New York's especially. The News therefore notes that Bloomberg's estimated $390 million in new MTA revenue can't be counted on: "While the mayor's plan assumes it will cost $232 million a year to operate the system, just two little tweaks in the model -- four sensors per trip, and 75 cents to read a license plate -- would raise the cost to $685 million per year, leaving nothing for mass transit."

Meanwhile, Richard Lipsky at the Neighborhood Retail Alliance says Bloomberg's prediction that congestion pricing will ease traffic volume 6.3 percent seems to have been pulled from thin air.

Spitzer News Wrap

2007-10-22T15:42:00.000-05:00

Despite calling only months ago for a "new humility" in politics, The New York Times says Spitzer has gone "on the attack once again."

Officials at the Board of Elections worry Spitzer's drivers' licenses-for-illegals plan could lead to widespread voter fraud, The New York Post reports.

New York Democrats are worried Spitzer could harm other Democrats at the ballot box -- even threatening the presidential chances of Sen. Hillary Clinton, The Post reports.

"Gov. Spitzer touted support yesterday from terror expert Richard Clarke for his plan to issue illegal immigrants driver's licenses -- but critics promptly revealed the former federal official had raised concerns about the idea just months ago," The Post reports.

"Critics of Gov. Spitzer's plan to let illegal aliens get drivers' licenses tore into the administration yesterday for backing off a policy they say would have made it tougher for illegals to unlawfully register to vote,"The Post reports:
Social Security numbers cannot be required to get motor-voter registration forms from the Department of Motor Vehicles, the administration now says, marking a policy shift reported yesterday by The Post.

The Spitzer administration, which has pledged "full cooperation" with investigations into the dirty-tricks scandal, has "officially notified the Senate Investigations Committee that [it] will fight subpoenas issued to Spitzer's top aides seeking documents over an alleged plot to smear Senate Republican Leader Joseph Bruno," The Press & Sun Bulletin reports.

"Illegal immigrants in New York who don't drive but nevertheless want official state identification will be eligible to receive nondriver IDs under Governor Spitzer's new policy," The New York Sun reports:
The contentious debate over Mr. Spitzer's immigration policy has focused on his recent decision to grant driver's licenses to state residents without regard to their legal status.

Republican lawmakers hostile to the governor's policy are now trying to draw attention to the fact that undocumented New Yorkers, many of whom don't own a car or drive to work, can apply for nondriver photo identification cards, which serve the same identification purposes as driver's licenses. Lawmakers argue that granting nondriver IDs to illegal immigrants undercuts one of the main arguments Mr. Spitzer has articulated in defense of the policy.

The Sun also reports that "city immigrants are wary of governor's plan on IDs."

Funk Fund -- Week 7

2007-10-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

This weeks picks, per week one's guidelines:

-- $20 6-point teaser on Steelers (-3.5), Pats (-15.5), & Bengals (-6.5) (payout: $52)

-- $10 straight bets on Steelers, Pats, & Bengals (payout: $20 each)

-- $5 3-game parlay on Steelers, Pats, & Bengals (payout: $36)

This week's total possible payout: $145

Current account balance: $-89

Selective Health Paternalism

2007-10-19T16:52:00.000-05:00

From today's Best of the Web:

The Associated Press reports, "[San Francisco] health officials took steps Thursday toward opening the nation's first legal safe-injection room, where addicts could shoot up heroin, cocaine and other drugs under the supervision of nurses."
Meanwhile in Portland, Maine, the AP reports that "school officials on Thursday defended a decision to allow children as young as 11 to obtain birth-control pills at a middle-school health center."

In both San Francisco and Portland, however, smoking in bars is strictly prohibited. It's bad for your health, after all.

Meanwhile, in other health news:

-- Hillary Clinton makes fun of Americans for being fat.

-- New York City's Health Department will be visiting homes in Harlem to ensure nobody is smoking around children.

Friday Funk

2007-10-19T09:34:00.000-05:00

From prison guard to soulstress hero, a short CNN clip on Ms. Sharon Jones.

Completely unrelated but also worth checking out is this compendium of foreign movies nominated for Oscars.

Fact of the Day

2007-10-18T14:50:00.000-05:00

Bluefin tuna can accelerate faster than a sports car. Also interesting is that they weigh up to a 1,000 pounds and are worth as much as $15,000 each.

The Noose Nuisance

2007-10-18T11:43:00.001-05:00

Mirroring my own thoughts on the matter, New York Sun columnist John McWhorter says, "The next time somebody plants a noose, let's just ignore it. Really. No press conferences, no news stories. Nothing."

Since a hangman's noose found its way onto the office door of a Columbia University professor and a media kerfuffle ensued, reports of noose sightings have been popping up everywhere: Downtown Manhattan, Long Island, Coast Guard locker rooms, and, I'm sure, elsewhere. My own suspicion isn't that a budding white power movement is responsible, but rather rascally teenagers toying with the media. Teenagers love nothing better than making trouble, and what easier way than simply hanging up a piece of knotted rope?

The simplest remedy, then, is just ignoring them.

We're #1!

2007-10-17T11:27:00.000-05:00

Today I'm brimming with patriotism. I've just learned that American Internet users lead all other nationalities in Google searches for "burrito."

To be fair, I deserve most of the recognition, considering my tireless efforts. But I don't mind at least partially sharing the glory with my fellow compatriots. Americans are indeed intrepid explorers of the vast wilderness of the World Wide Web, and something tells me our efforts could soon clear the way for a more peaceful world.

(The above image comes from a Google image search for "burrito"!)

UPDATE: Thanks to my bro for the new & improved version.

This Is Going To Be Fun

2007-10-17T10:54:00.000-05:00

The Times' editorial board now has a blog. And judging from its first posts, there'll be even less restraint than usual.

(H/t: Mr. Wilson)

'It Shines for All'

2007-10-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

The paper with the best movie reviews in the city is in my opinion The New York Sun. Its website recently went totally free, and these movie reviews are now available in an online archive here. A great resource for any cinephile.

TREND WATCH: Proposed NY Bans

2007-10-15T18:01:00.000-05:00

Note: I'm now including a category for New York state. I'm sure I've missed a bunch, so don't hesitate to bring others to my attention. I'm also including older proposed bans, too.

The latest ...

New York City:

2007:

2006:

pit bulls
trans-fats
aluminum baseball bats
the purchase of tobacco by 18- to 20-year-olds
foie gras
pedicabs in parks
new fast-food restaurants (but only in poor neighborhoods)
lobbyists from the floor of council chambers
lobbying city agencies after working at the same agency
vehicles in Central and Prospect parks
cell phones in upscale restaurants
the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., because of a unionization dispute
mail-order pharmaceutical plans
candy-flavored cigarettes
gas-station operators adjusting prices more than once daily
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
Wal-Mart
the process that makes steaks pink
subway ads poking fun at outer boroughs

2004:

2003:

Cell phones during public performances

2002:

New York:

2007:

NOTE: List updated again as of 12:12 PM, October 16th.

Huffington's Huff of the Day

2007-10-15T16:59:00.000-05:00

Marty Kaplan offers a primer on the Constitution:

Article V explains the process for amending the Constitution. An amendment is like a PS; it's something that the Founders forgot to say. Examples of things they forgot to say include: gay love is sin, abortion is murder, and flag-burning should be punishable by death.

Article VI says that no religious test should be required as a qualification for public office. Isn't that marvelous? In practice, this means that Christians never have to take a test to prove they believe in Jesus; that Jews get the benefit of the doubt because they're on the road to being perfected as Christians; and that Muslims have to swear on the Koran that they're not terrorists.

This Probably Won't Go Anywhere ...

2007-10-15T12:55:00.000-05:00

But it says quite a lot that after only 10 months in office, New York assemblymen are talking about orchestrating a recall effort to oust Governor Spitzer from office.

In other Spitzer news ...

-- A new Siena poll finds that fully 22 percent of New Yorkers support Spitzer's plan to furnish illegal immigrants with drivers' licenses.

-- "Gov. Spitzer has lined up a Manhattan lawyer - at taxpayer expense - to help him quash subpoenas sent to his office by a GOP-controlled panel investigating the Troopergate scandal," The Daily News reports.

-- After Democratic Assembly Minority Leader confessed to being in on a plot with Spitzer to sic the IRS on Republican Senate Majority Speaker Joe Bruno, Spitzer "angrily called Smith and 'questioned his ability to remain as the minority leader,'" Fred Dicker reports today in The Post.

-- Dicker also reports today that "even Democrats fear 'dirty tricks' from Spitzer.

-- Spitzer's most powerful political ally, Assembly Leader Shelly Silver, is asking the governor to call off the attack dogs after it was reported last week he was behind in the IRS plot against Bruno.

-- The Post editorializes today that Spitzer's plan to cure upstate New York's economic maladies will only make things worse.

-- And, finally, The New York Sun's Albany reporter, Jacob Gersham, imagines himself inside the mind of our beleaguered governor:

I was once Wall Street's top cop, the "enforcer," the "crusader of the year." Now, I'm taking orders from Sheldon Silver. My most powerful political ally is an obscure comptroller. And I'm insulted on a daily basis by a discredited, retired boxer named Joe Bruno.

'It was time, I felt, for an Agonizing Reappraisal of the whole scene.'

2007-10-15T12:26:00.000-05:00

My colleague Steve Couzzo took to the pages of yesterday's Sunday Post (in the brand new Post Script section) to offer the definitive account of Bloombergism -- the "independent" form of governance wholly preoccupied with busybodying even as core responsibilities (infrastructure, power, civil services) suffer -- in all its messy infamy:

The city's still in sound shape, and Bloomberg is entitled to a share of the credit. Crime is at record lows and the town is more bustling and cosmopolitan than ever.
But are we having fun yet? Not enough for the mayor, who wants us to take our medicine and be happy about it. He's left the Republicans and the Democrats behind to forge a new kind of political philosophy: Benign Billionaire Knows Best.
For him, our waistlines, our sex lives, even the behavior of our pets are fair game for improvement. Just as rezoning will produce a more sleekly contoured New York, so will tinkering with our everyday habits yield a bountiful future where no one need be fat -- or even, God forbid, stuck in traffic.
In Mayor Mike's ideal metropolis, the town would be cleansed, not only of cigarette smoke, but of a lengthy hit list of real and presumed urban evils -- among them, dogs that bark too loud and fast-food restaurants that fail to warn you of every calorie.

If you read one piece today, read this one.

Extra Credit: Anyone know where the hed for this post comes from?

Funk Fund -- Week 6

2007-10-14T11:46:00.000-05:00

I hope none of you are playing along at home. Here are this weeks picks, per week one's guidelines:

-- $20 6-point teaser on Eagles (-4), Bengals (-1) & Cardinals (-6) (payout: $52)
-- $10 straight bets on Eagles, Bengals & Cardinals (payout: $20 each)
-- $5 3-game parlay on Eagles, Bengals & Cardinals (payout: $36)

This week's total possible payout: $145

Current account balance: $-54

UPDATE:

Out of curiosity, I looked to see how the Funk Fund would have performed in Week 1. (I hadn't started it until Week 2.) The picks would have been: Steelers (-4.5), Eagles (-3), Seahawks (-6). The Steelers and Seahawks both covered; Eagles lost by three. That means the straight bets on the Steelers and Seahawks were good, the parlay failed and the tease hit. Because the Eagles lost by 3, that makes that game a push in the tease (as it "teases" the spread six points in the your favor). When there's a tie, the payout is reduced by one game -- in this case, the "decimal multiplier" is reduced from 2.6 to 1.83. So a $20 bet would have paid $36.6. That means week 1 would have actually won $21.

Because this is an experiment in the interests of furthering science, I am going to retroactively adjust the net balance as if the Funk Fund had been in around for the entirety of this season (i.e., Week 1). This post will be retitled Week 6, and the current account balance is changing to -$54 from -$75.

Fact of the Day

2007-10-11T17:34:00.000-05:00

Ninety-four percent of Japanese women in their 20s own a Louis Vuitton item.

Video of the Day

2007-10-11T15:58:00.000-05:00

Does Stacy Hedger even need an introduction?

Gotham's Butter Cops Run Wild

2007-10-11T10:44:00.000-05:00

The first fines in New York City have been issued for illegal possession of margarine. The so-called grace period, where restaurants received warnings as opposed to fines for use of trans fats, expired September 30th. From Oct. 1 through Oct. 5, 20 restaurants received trans-fats citations -- most for possession.

The Post reports:

The fines ranged from $200 to $2,000, and all the restaurant owners are entitled to challenge the summonses at hearings.
Nearly all of the ticketed eateries were cited for using trans-fat-laden margarine.
Only one, Ballato on East Houston Street, which has hosted the likes of Sophia Loren, Roberto Benigni and Daniel Day-Lewis, was cited for using oils that lacked proper labels about the trans-fat content.

In other words, it's now illegal to possess unlabeled containers of oil. So much for those exotic, high-end olive oils retailed in ornate bottles -- too much work for the food cops to determine whether the law is being broken.

Owner Emilio Vitolo said he'll fight the summons because the oil in question was peanut oil -- one that doesn't contain the offending fats. He insisted that he never uses trans fats in preparing his meals.

Workers at nearly every restaurant contacted by The Post said the infractions were for stray containers of spreads or oils that hadn't been tossed out -- and they insisted their cooking is trans-fat-free.
"I didn't know [the new rules] applied to bakeries as of yet," said Rajandra Mahase, owner of Little Guyana Bake Shop in Queens.

That's also news to the Health Department -- from a recent press release: "This first phase of the regulation applies to oils, shortening and margarines used for frying and as spreads. It does not apply to baked goods or prepared foods, or to oils used to deep-fry dough or cake batter. Those products are covered by the second phase of the initiative, which takes effect on July 1, 2008."

And all this while the science behind the ban is dubious at best.

Councilman Oddo Threatens to 'Beat the S**t Out of' a Female Reporter; Daily News Cheers

2007-10-10T17:34:00.000-05:00

Councilman James Oddo would appear to want nothing more than to go down as the guy who pried metal baseball bats from the hands of New York City's little leaguers. The Staten Island councilman, a self-described "conservative Republican," insists wooden bats are far safer.

It's a good thing bats of either variety were absent from his recent interview on Ricket's Rost, a Colbert Report-type fake-news show in Norway. After Oddo quickly realized he was to be made the butt of a joke, he called in his assistant and demanded an explanation. Anger then morphed into rage: "Get the fuck out of my office!" Sixteen f-bombs later, fully inebriated by his own rage, Oddo threatens "to beat the shit out of" the interviewer, a cute 26-year-old Scandinavian comedienne.

Today The Daily News editorializes in favor of Oddo's outburst. "We salute the man as a genuine Stand-Up New Yorker," the editorialists write. "Our compliments."

Here's the video -- judge for yourself whether his behavior is commendable:

Oddo's mistake was his own, in that he believed European media was actually interested in seriously interviewing him. While it's certainly understandable that he was upset his time was being wasted on a prank, it takes a righteous sense of self-importance to fly off the handle so quickly. A classier, cleverer man would have turned the joke back around on his interlocutor -- "May I ask you something? Is it true that only left-handed Norwegians know how to read?" Or, "On what day does Thor's birthday fall? Or are there other holidays you pagans celebrate?"

A great statesman Oddo is not. At least as compared to masters like Winston Churchill. When Lady Astor huffed, "If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee," Winston curtly replied, "If I were your husband, I'd drink it!" My colleague John Wilson reminds me of another: Once at a dinner party, a woman at the prime minister's table angrily accuses him of being drunk, to which Winston responds, "This may be well and true, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly."

These of course require being quick witted and bright. Oddo instead is just your stock school-yard bully.

Full disclosure: I am eminently biased on this subject. As part of my day job I was once required to call up Mr. Oddo to ask whether his bat-banning bill included a school-budget supplemental to finance the costs of replacing the wooden bats that would inevitably break throughout the season. Oddo was displeased The Post's editorial page would be weighing in against the ban yet again, shouting words to the effect of, "You f*cking think I'm going to f*cking give you the bullets to shoot me down. You've already shot me down three f*cking times. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid." It was pretty much like the video, except that it went on for about 10 minutes. Here's the editorial.

Dr. Frieden, Call Your Office

2007-10-10T14:12:00.001-05:00

New York City may have already sicced its food cops on anyone using trans-fats, but according to a new report, that may have been premature. John Tierney reports in yesterday's New York Times:

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office’s famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of “comparable” magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964.”

That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.

Read the whole thing. It's a fascinating take on how one myth can cascade into conventional wisdom. This seems to be exactly what's happened with fears of secondhand smoke.

The Tyranny of 'Universal' Health Care

2007-10-10T10:49:00.000-05:00

No matter how chippy the Democratic presidential primary eventually becomes, at least the candidates will always be able to agree on the nation's pressing need for "universal" health coverage. Every major Democratic candidate has such a plan, the idea being that only this way will the country's "49 million" uninsured find reprieve. But government-run health insurance carries unintended consequences -- chief among them is a loss of civil liberty.

In today's D.C. Examiner, I have a piece exploring how national health coverage necessarily entails a loss of personal freedom. After comparisons to what Mayor Bloomberg has done here in New York City, the piece concludes:

Universal coverage invites Congress to legislate approved lifestyles. And this while a recent Gallup poll finds that Americans now “express less trust in the federal government than at any point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era.” Don’t like the decisions politicians are making for you? Have fun lobbying both houses of Congress to relinquish their new power.
The last few years have demonstrated that rare is the place politicians are unwilling to tread in the name of public health. Delegating greater responsibility to the government is a bad bargain that will inevitably lead not to better care, but to increased coercion.

Here's the whole thing.

Quote of the Day

2007-10-09T14:37:00.000-05:00

"Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice" -- Salman Rushdie & Sam Harris on the latest tribulations in the life of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Huffington's Huff of the Day

2007-10-08T16:02:00.001-05:00

An oldie, from the day after Milton Friedman died:

"Did you hear? Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist, just died. 94 years old. It's true, only the good die young. Milton Friedman never had a moment of self-doubt in his life. And people without self-doubt always go straight to the burning torments of Hades. ... I'm glad he's dead. Not as glad as I was when Nixon died. Nixon knew what he did was evil. Friedman didn't know and didn't care what part of his work was right and what part wrong." -- Playwright Jeff Dorchen

John McCain's Daughter

2007-10-08T15:51:00.000-05:00

Looks like a character from The Hills.

Funk Fund - Week 4

2007-10-07T11:40:00.000-05:00

Merely for the sake of science, here are this week's bets, per week one's guidelines:

-- $20 6-point teaser on Giants (-3.5), Green Bay (-3) & New Orleans (-3.5) (payout: $52)
-- $10 straight bets on Giants, Green Bay & New Orleans (payout: $20 each)
-- $5 3-game parlay on Giants, Green Bay & New Orleans (payout: $36)

This week's total possible payout: $145

Current account balance: $-40

Isn't This What the Soviets Did?

2007-10-05T17:33:00.000-05:00

Nanny-state operatives make kids rat out their parents' illicit behavior.

At what point will people say enough, I wonder? Ever?

Quote of the Day

2007-10-05T17:16:00.000-05:00

"In a poll that should be shocking, but isn't, one out of of five Democrats think the world would be a better place if the U.S. lost the war. This means that four out of five Democrats are not being represented by their party." -- Rush Limbaugh

Real People, Fake Products!

2007-10-05T12:18:00.001-05:00

A friend of the FunkyPundit, Matt McClain, is now writing for Super Deluxe. Enjoy one of his first skits:

Huffington's Huff of the Day

2007-10-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

Introducing a new feature here on FunkyPundit. First, a little background: Every morning my in-box receives the Huffington Post's "Daily Brief." Generally I'll click the most offensive sounding article, read it, take umbrage, contemplate commenting, think better of it (why get lost in the weeds of pointless argument?), consider a blog response, think better of it, then, finally go on about my day, rather satisfied my life involves more than venting on a website.

Today it occurred to me that a typical Huff Post -- fallaciously argued, self-defeatingly offensive -- demands no riposte. Really, they speak for themselves. Just reprinting selected passages will do the work a thousand bloggers could not.

The first installment comes courtesy of actor Steven Weber commenting on President Bush's veto of a bill that would move two million children with private health coverage into inferior, government-run care -- it's a twofer:

"[National health care] is what the Commies would have done had they won the Cold War instead of us. They would have overrun their newly conquered slaves with affordable health care, those savages."

"George Bush would rather spend a trillion to kill Iraqi children than 35 billion to save American children."

Al Gore Debates Global Warming!

2007-10-04T10:52:00.001-05:00

After refusing countless invitations to debate a global warming skeptic, the folks over at JunkScience.com have gone ahead and sponsored a debate on his behalf:

Steve Milloy explains the value:

Last March, the prestigious New York debating society Intelligence Squared sponsored a debate on global warming, which may be viewed here. A pre-debate poll indicated that, by 2-to-1 (57 percent to 29 percent, with 14 percent undecided), the audience believed that manmade global warming was a crisis. But in the post-debate poll, the audience reversed its pre-debate views - the ranks of the skeptics swelled to 46 percent, the believers plummeted to 42 percent and the undecided declined slightly to 12 percent.

"That's the power of debate," said Milloy. "Though Al Gore aggressively promotes global warming alarmism, he unfortunately seems to lack confidence in his ability to debating climate change against others. But Al Gore's curious reluctance will hardly stop the public from being able to see how his points stack up against that of climate experts," Milloy concluded.

America Falling Behind

2007-10-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

The Pew Global Attitudes Project is releasing a survey today showing that while the rest of the world is moving ahead, Americans are becoming less understanding of the values in free trade. A few key findings:

Large majorities think international trade is benefiting their country and multinational corporations that dominate global commerce generally receive favorable ratings.
Still, enthusiasm for global trade has waned over the last five years in the West, especially in the United States.
In most countries, majorities think people are better off under capitalism, even though that means some may be rich and others poor.
Support for capitalism increased most in Latin American and Eastern European nations where satisfaction with income and personal progress have increased markedly over the past five years.

This would seem to confirm the WSJ poll Karol highlights: Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade:

The poll shows that six in 10 Republicans believe free trade has harmed the U.S. economy by reducing demand for domestic goods, wiping out American jobs and importing products that may be unsafe.

The solution, I think, is obvious: People need to stop watching Lou Dobbs!

Who Knew?

2007-10-02T10:35:00.000-05:00

Apparently I'm a Brownback man.

Who's your candidate for 2008?

Jimmy Rollins, Prophet?

2007-10-01T11:05:00.001-05:00

Last January the Philadelphia Phillies shortstop caused a stir in predicting the Fightin' Phils were "the team to beat" in the National League East -- this despite the Mets only looking stronger than last year's near-World Series season. Well, 162 games later, the Phils fought from a disappointing, last-place start to the division title. The late-season surge marked the biggest comeback in Major League Baseball history, having been down seven games as recently as Sept. 12th. It's the first time in 14 years they've reached the playoffs, but for this Phillies fan, it seems far longer than that.

What accounts for this dramatic comeback? Many of the qualities that animated, and I do mean animated, the '93 team are seen in this team. Think of '93's stand-out players -- Lenny Dykstra, Darren Daulten, Micky Morandini, John Kruk, Mitch "The Wild Thing" Williams, Pete Inkavelia ... these weren't coddled, well-manicured professional athletes, but a rag-tag bunch of hard-nosed ballplayers who hustle every play and only blame themselves when things don't go well. Today's Phillies -- Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Pat Burrell, Aaron Rowand -- exhibit many of the same qualities: a lot of personality, little ego, and an obvious passion. No steroid scandals here. In the last stretch, the Phillies late-game bullpen -- J.C. Romero, "Flash" Gordon, Brett Myers -- were being worked like dogs. Asked how his body was holding up, Myers said concerns for his physical health could wait; the playoffs were his priority.

Contrast this with the Mets, where instead of collective sense of purpose competing egos tore the team apart. Billy Wagner, a former Phils closer now with the Mets, blamed Mets Manager Willie Randolph and pitching coach Rick Wilson for the bullpen's late season fall-off. "We've been throwing four innings a night!" he whined to New York Magazine. "[Wilson] has no idea what if feels like. And neither does Willie. They're not a lot of help, put it that way." It's attitudes like that that plague a club house. (After Wagner left the Phils, he criticised the team for apparently not sharing his own professional qualities. Burrell said Wagner is "a rat.")

Anyway, congrats to my boys. The last two times they've made the playoffs, they reached the World Series. My prediction of a Yanks/Phillies series is looking less ridiculous every day!

Funk Fund -- Week 3

2007-09-30T11:20:00.000-05:00

Looks like it's time to things with the booky to the next level. Here are this week's bets, per week one's guidelines:

-- $20 6-point teaser on Houston (-2.5), Green Bay (-1) & Dallas (-13) (payout: $52)
-- $10 straight bets on Houston, Green Bay & Dallas (payout: $19 each)
-- $5 3-game parlay on Houston, Green Bay & Dallas (payout: $36)

This week's total possible payout: $145

Current account balance: $-25

The Lengths Pols Will Go To Take Your Money

2007-09-27T13:13:00.000-05:00

Someone please explain to me what America is coming to.

People being imprisoned for a minimum of one year for possession of cigarettes? Cars being impounded for possession of just three cartons? In Tennessee?? I mean, here in New York, sure -- but Tennessee??

A Bollinger Critic

2007-09-25T11:16:00.000-05:00

Scanning today's newspapers, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger seems to be getting near universal praise for his surprisingly harsh introduction of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The New York Sun said Bollinger did "pretty darned well"; The Daily News, which has led the charge against the appearance, said "Bollinger did a creditable job."

But not everyone appreciated Bollinger's toughness: Columbia undergrad John Host took to the Huffington Post to express his wish that Bollinger had "done better."

I found his petty insults (at one point he charged "I doubt you have the intellectual courage to answer these questions") to be unnecessarily aggressive and uncivil. He promised a "robust discourse" and delivered a bait-and-switch public admonition, to which Ahmadinejad rightfully took offense, as a guest of the University.

Now, there is a case to be made that Columbia breached standards of decorum by inviting a guest to its campus only for its chief to bash him. But it's odd Mr. Host took exception to the line, "I doubt you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions." First, it's more a prediction than a slur. Second, Bollinger said far more caustic things ("you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator"). But mostly because it was obvious this is precisely what Ahmadinejad would do, and Bollinger, having some experience in intellectual skirmishes, knew it would be more effective acknowledging this up front, rather than pretending to be aghast afterward that his questions went unaddressed.

Meanwhile, harsh introductions aside, Ahmadinehad has already succeeded using his Columbia speech for purposes of propaganda. If Iranians believe the things they read in state-sponsored media, the Columbia appearance garnered him unearned legitimacy.

UPDATE: For those still unsure what to think about Columbia's invitation, I highly suggest Roger Kimball's blog post at Armavirumque:

Universities are institutions dedicated to the pursuit and transmission of learning and the furtherance of civilization. They are not circuses for the exhibition of politically repugnant grandstanding. Free inquiry is not a license for moral irresponsibility. At a university, as at every other human institution, freedom can thrive only when it is limited by allegiance to certain positive values--the value of historical truth, for example, or the moral truth that human dignity is worth preserving.

FunkyPundit, Newshound

2007-09-24T12:17:00.001-05:00

Just took Pew's "News IQ" quiz and scored 12 of 12 -- though the questions seemed unfairly easy.

Put your own current-events knowledge to the test, here.

Funk Fund -- Week 2

2007-09-23T10:14:00.000-05:00

First, a correction: Last week I immediately subtracted the bet amounts from the Fund, leaving it at $55 before the games began. I have since realized I forgot to include the price of the straight bets in the value of the possible payout (meaning, a $10 straight bet pays $20, not $10, as you're essentially doubling your money on 2-1 odds.) That means the current balance is actually $65.

This week's bets, per last week's guidelines:

-- $20 6-point teaser on Carolina (-4), Indy (-6.5) & Denver (-3.5) (payout: $52)

-- $10 straight bets on Carolina, Indy & Denver (payout: $19 each)

-- $5 3-game parlay on Carolina, Indy & Denver (payout: $36)

This week's total possible payout: $145

Current account balance: $10

UPDATE: Once again, only one bet hit, leaving the current balance at $30.

What Ebbets Field Wasn't

2007-09-19T17:15:00.000-05:00

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn highlights a New York Magazine piece contrasting the differences between Brooklyn's fabled Ebbets Field with the Nets Arena proposed for the Atlantic Yards:

But as a metaphor, it’s the exact opposite of Ebbets. Ebbets was a tiny, neighborhood-uniting orthodox baseball temple that was built, in less than a year, on an old dump crisscrossed by goat paths. Atlantic Yards is a huge, neighborhood-raping megadevelopment, pinned between two of its developer’s own malls, that violates every design principle of the borough’s small-scale, organic history. Construction is scheduled to take ten years. It is pure real estate, with sports as a footnote. The Nets haven’t grown, like the Dodgers did, directly out of the Brooklyn soil—they’ll be transplants, a squad of mercenaries paid to sell the neighborhood’s new regime. It’s hard to envision the natives finally bonding with the gentrifying hordes over $50 seats at a Nets game. (Bruce Ratner has skillfully scrambled the racial politics of the project, enlisting—some say buying—widespread black support and casting opponents as selfish gentrifiers.) Atlantic Yards is Dodgers nostalgia run amok: New Brooklyn getting rich on the dying myth of Old Brooklyn—a supposed tribute to the borough that may well end up defacing the Brooklyn it’s pretending to honor. The Nets are less a karmic reversal of the Dodgers tragedy than its logical conclusion. O’Malley ruined the borough by leaving; Ratner will ruin it by moving in.

I'm occasionally asked how a pro-growth, pro-development, free-market conservative such as myself opposes a project like the Atlantic Yards. This piece gets to the nut it: If preserving a neighborhood's character is a priority (and for me, it is), growth cannot be imposed from the outside; it needs to come from within, to be organic, and its sponsor can't cheat, using the heavy-hand of government to steal private property to make way.

'Columbia's Astroturf'

2007-09-19T14:51:00.000-05:00

In today's Post, I take a look at how Columbia is managing its campaign to cultivate grassroots support for its planned expansion into West Harlem:

COLUMBIA University is making great efforts to pre vent community objections from derailing its plan for a massive expansion in West Harlem. But its methods seem to rely more on big-money power politics than on listening to the folks who live and work where the school wants to build.
At a meeting held last month by West Harlem's Community Board 9, for example, a good chunk of the school's "local supporters" looked to be patients from an East Harlem drug-rehab clinic.
Several people were outside handing out pamphlets castigating area business owner Nick Sprayregen, the expansion's most vocal critic. Visnja Vujica -- a recent Barnard grad and member of the anti-expansion Student Coalition on Expansion & Gentrification -- says she discovered that the pamphleteers were patients from East Harlem's Addicts Rehabilitation Center (ARC).
"I talked to one man, J.R., I think, who was wearing one of the 'Future of Manhattanville' stickers. He said he was paid; wouldn't tell how much, but said something like, When you're given pretty much a blank check, you don't ask questions," she said.

Read the rest here.

Accompanying is another piece look into Columbia's dealings with AKRF, an environmental consulting firm with a rich, storied history with the city:

TO realize its planned expansion in Man hattanville, Columbia University will need the power of eminent domain -- that is, the ability to force property owners to sell at a "fair" price, below what they'd otherwise hold out for. The prospect of such takings has probably caused more resentment than any other part of the school's plan.
Technically, the power would be exercised by the state-run Empire State Development Corp. (ESDC) -- which must first reach a formal finding that the area is "blighted."
But the ESDC has subcontracted the study that will make that determination to the consulting firm of AKRF -- which Columbia itself has already hired to help sell its overall plan to city officials.

Here's the piece.

Tonight, Manhattan borough President Scott Stringer will hold a hearing on the expansion. More fireworks no doubt to come.

October 12th

2007-09-19T14:11:00.000-05:00

The end of Israel?

When Democratic Delusions Collide

2007-09-19T13:48:00.000-05:00

"According to a Heritage Foundation estimate, some 70,000 families that would become eligible under SCHIP [a federal government-run health insurance program intended for poverty-stricken children] would at the same time also be paying the Alternative Minimum Tax aimed at 'the rich.'" -- Brendan Miniter, in today's Political Diary, describing one of 11 spending bill Congress is preparing to send to the president. He has threatened to veto 10.

Also good is today's Quote of the Day:

"The average net worth in 2006 of Forbes 400 members without a college degree was $5.96 billion; those with a degree averaged $3.14 billion. Four of the five richest Americans -- Bill Gates, casino owner Sheldon Adelson, Oracle's Larry Ellison, and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen -- are college dropouts" -- from the new book "All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make -- And Spend -- Their Fortunes," by Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan.

The Brain Is a Curious Thing

2007-09-18T17:12:00.000-05:00

Brain surgery leaves boy speaking like the Queen

Crash victim wakes up speaking English

He Should Have Been Tazered Twice

2007-09-18T12:34:00.000-05:00

This kid was acting like a jack ass, and clearly wanted to get the kind of response he did:
Story here.

UPDATE: He agrees.

Curing Your Case of the Muuundays

2007-09-17T15:02:00.001-05:00

One disturbing/hilarious website at a time.

Hot Chicks With Douche Bags -- The site description is pretty apt: "Pictures of hot chicks with total and complete douche bags. With commentary."

Marry Our Daughter -- Like Amazon.com, except instead of books, buyers purchase teenage brides with only limited self-esteem issues. The testimonials lead me to believe it's fake.

Something tells me the Internets actually have lots more to offer. Know of anything?

Please kindly deposit links in the comments section. Your generosity is appreciated.

Quote of the Day

2007-09-17T14:33:00.000-05:00

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

-- Mark Twain

'Funk Football Fund' - Update

2007-09-17T10:21:00.001-05:00

Terrible kick off for the Funk Fund, losing all but one bet yesterday. With two big upsets -- the Bengals' loss to their home-state rivals in Cleveland as well as the Saints falling to Tampa Bay -- things were off to a bad start from the get-go.

The account now stands at $55.

'Funk's Football Fund'

2007-09-14T16:30:00.001-05:00

This is the beginning of a new feature here on FunkyPundit. It's an experiment in progress. Should all go well, it will lead to fame and fortune. If not, it will be quietly abandoned.

Here's the back story. Three NFL seasons ago, I discovered the glory that is online gambling. Going halvsies with my bro-piece, $50 was deposited into a now-defunct online gambling account. Our goal was to bet weekly, but also smartly and conservatively, so that our fund lasted all the way to the Super Bowl. We succeeded, ending up losing around a hundred bucks on the last game.

The next season we did the same, but this time setting a rather more ambitious goal: lasting all the way to the Super Bowl without re-upping, and this time making $1,000 in the process.

We succeeded. Believe it or not, in early February I cashed a check for approximately $1,100.

Last season, the same, though this time the goal was upped to $2,000. And believe it or not -- it worked! Actually, we failed. Badly. We added more cash to the account on more than one occasion and ended up with nothing. It was humbling.

But that hasn't shaken my confidence in the betting strategy we've developed. Last season featured tons of weird upsets -- I don't know anyone who did well.

This season I'm going to try something new. I'm going to start with $100 fake dollars and see how the "investment model" of the 'Funk Football Fund' plays out. Here's how it works: Combining the security of hedge bets with a "wisdom of the crowds," futures-like take on the week's best bets, the model is meant to be conservative yet reliable. Essentially, each week I'll take the top three consensus picks as determined by the users of Wagerline.com -- see here, for instance -- and use those as the basis for a series of bets. This week, Week 2, has 86% of Wagerline users thinking Cincinnati will beat its 7-point spread over Cleveland; 84% think New Orleans will beat its 3.5-point spread over Tampa Bay; 79% think Dallas will beat its 3-point spread over Miami.

(These are actually pretty big margins. Having obsessively monitored/used these Wagerline prognostications in seasons past, it's not often there's a 75-plus percentage consensus on anything.)

So that makes this week's picks Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Dallas. The first bet is a so-called 3-game teaser, where the line moves in your preferred direction by, in this case, 6 points. (Teasers can move the spread more than 6 points, but that lessens the payout. We'll use 6 for this imaginary fund.) Teasers also can come in multiple game varieties, whereas the outcome of the bet can be determined by 3, 4, 5 or more games. It's up to the bettor. Again, the harder one makes it, i.e., the more games, the larger the payout. For purposes of the Funk Fund, we'll keep it simple with three games. Because teasers move the line in your favor, they're probably the least risky bets in football. For that reason, the Funk Fund calls for it to be the biggest bet -- $20.

Next, straight bets. Betting straight-up on each of these three individual games provides more hedge security. Should either the Bengals, Cowboys, or Saints be unexpectedly blown out, the teaser may be lost, but two of the three straight bets are still in play. These can cover other losses. (Likewise, it's possible to lose all three straight bets, but win the tease, owing to the line moves.) Because straights are riskier than the teaser, we'll put $10 on each.

Finally, a parlay. Only through these bets can real money actually be made. Unfortunately, this is also what makes them so hard. To win a parlay, a bettor has to correctly pick two or more outcomes. (If the odds-makers in Vegas do their jobs well, the chances of picking a winner is 50/50. A three game parlay, where your bet is now dependent on the outcome of two games, thus reduces your winning probability to 25%.) Accordingly, we'll put $5 on a three-game parlay.

The payout for these bets are: $52 for a winning $20 3-game tease; $10 for each winning $10 straight; $36 for a winning $5 3-game parlay. In all, $55 will be bet for a possible total payout of
$118. On the flip side, $55 could turn into zilch.

This being the first week, things could turn sour quickly. Should every bet fail, continuing this investment model into the second week will be difficult, as there's only $45 left in the imaginary fund. If that should occur, we'll bet in the same fashion and in the same proportions, though with smaller amounts.

Incidentally, this isn't precisely the way I bet. I use Wagerline more as a resource than a guide. If, say, 75% of its users say the Eagles are going to top the Skins (my boys!), I know that's ridiculous and I'll abstain. I also sometimes see bets I consider a lock that Wagerline users seem to think are up in the air.

Current status: $45

I'll check back in Monday to see how things went.

Beastie Boys on Charlie Rose

2007-09-05T11:18:00.000-05:00

Part 1, part 2, part 3.

Best question & answer:

Rose: What do you think of the current state of hip hop?

Ad Rock: I think it's fabulous what they've done with it.

(The Beastie Boys, it should be noted, refuse to slam contemporary rap, much to the dismay of the countless music journalists who try to bait them nonetheless.)

New Funk: 'A Sunday Smile'

2007-09-05T10:41:00.000-05:00

New single off Beirut's forthcoming The Flying Club Cup. Check it out here.

Saving Columbia Records

2007-09-04T16:54:00.001-05:00

Rick Rubin, as we all know, founded Def Jam records in his NYU dorm room in 1983. He's since gone on to reinvent the careers of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, the Dixie Chicks and countless other acts. This week's New York Times magazine looks at his latest challenge: saving Columbia Records and, quite possibly, the record industry itself.

The piece is an interesting take on an industry in full-fledged panic mode. With CD sales plummeting and companies like Apple reaping the lion's share of music download profits, once-dominant labels are struggling just to stay viable.

My question: Do we even need major record companies? Rubin seems to think so, pointing to their ability to spread new music to the masses. Yet one of his latest obsessions -- British-born Paul Potts -- has achieved notoriety almost entirely through YouTube. The primary asset of record labels is their ability to set artists up with record contracts, studios, and professional producers. But with technology becoming more affordable, there are countless smaller labels able to perform these same functions (albeit with the exception of a long-term record deal, though those aren't much use if all the major labels fold a few years hence).

The piece reminded me of an oped in today's Journal by Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. (Sony, by the way, owns Columbia.) Lynton argues that contrary to assertions by the likes of Thomas Friedman, globalization is not "making the world more homogeneous." Instead, he says, while Hollywood films once flourished in foreign countries, these same markets are now being dominated by locally produced films. This, one imagines, is once again a product of the increasing affordability of technology, with the expanding wealth afforded by globalized trade, and Hollywood itself responding to new market demands.

Wealth and technology are decentralizing the power once afforded to the big players dominating industries like music and cinema, enabling up-and-coming talents to create mass followings unassisted.

So, can music survive without institutions like Columbia and Capitol? Hard to see why not.

'Triumph of the Heart'

2007-09-04T15:58:00.001-05:00

Another great video from Bjork: