Weekend in Saratoga Springs

Gone betting, be back Sunday.

Karl Rove is Good for the Little Guy

So says Michael Gerson in an editorial todays Washington Post. Kevin Drum calls Gerson on his opinion.

Really? Rove is the opposite of a cynical political operator? His great passion is helping the little guy get ahead? And his evidence for this is....wait for it....the mortgage interest deduction and 401(k)s? In case you're wondering, the first is an outgrowth of the generic interest deduction that was included in the very first income tax legislation nearly a century ago (and was originally aimed at businesses, not home mortgages) and the second is a program that was accidentally created in 1978 under a Democratic administration and then put into its current form by a benefits consultant with a nose for loopholes. The IRS under Reagan didn't shoot down the idea, but that was about all they had to do with it.

Gerson should know of what he speaks, afterall, he is a good, staunch Christian who wrote the phrase "Axis of evil" for his boy Bush. Gerson believes that atheists have trouble making moral decisions. This from a good Christian that had no problem with the USA invading Iraq with the resulting deaths of over 100,000 human beings.

Will we ever stop listening to these idiots?

Expensive Military Hardware: If You Include Shipping

Military hardware $68,000, shipping military hardware $20,000,000, cost of the war in Iraq, priceless.

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, U.S. officials said.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

Numbers 32:23

But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out.

The movie....not so great.

Hawk

Maple Ridge Wind Farm

Danger Democrat points us to this youtube video.

Adirondack Park On a Lighter Note

My favorite family blog is 46erfamily. Lots of pictures of a couple of kids having the summer that they will remember for the rest of their lives (even if they don't know that yet).

Saranac Lakers: Be Prepared for Nuclear War

Our friend Jack Phillips has some good advice for all you survivalists out there.

Everyone needs to know that “Nuclear War Survival Skills” by Cresson H. Kearny, originally produced at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1979, was updated and expanded in 1987 and is available from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, P.O. Box 1279, Cave Junction, Oregon 97523. This 282-page book ($19.50 post paid) provides the information people will need to survive in the event of an emergency, including detailed instructions for building and operating simple field shelters.

Save the $19.50 for your freeze-dried food stash. The book is available online free of charge.

Iraq War

Always Low Postal Rates: For Mega Publishers

Here is a good example of lobbyists hard at work.

Earlier this year, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) rejected a postal rate increase plan offered by the U.S. Postal Service. Instead they opted to implement a modified version of an extraordinarily complicated plan submitted by media giant Time Warner.

So the small publishers of activists magazines, of the political left and right, pay more postage than the big guys. Seems reasonable. Afterall, the big guys have more money to use bribing (donating) our politicians.

Can Saranac Lake and Harrietstown Share Services?

Local residents of Saranac Lake and the Town of Harrietstown have been asking for the sharing of municipal services for a long time. Many residents want to dissolve the Village of Saranac Lake altogether and let the Town of Harrietstown provide municipal services. But will shared services ever become a reality? An article in todays Adirondack Daily Enterprise makes it appear shared municipal services are not just around the corner. At least the possibility of a sand/salt storage shed shared between the Village and the Town seems unlikely at the moment.

Village Manager DePuy is quoted as saying: "stupid idea". Village Trustee John McEneany doesn't want to share a $175,000 state grant with the town. McEneany also said: “All the department heads are against it, and we aren’t listening to them,” he said. “The decision where to put the sand shed was not agreed on by everybody.”

I have no idea if the potential agreement between the Village and the Town is fair or not because I havn't seen it. But it sure seems that some attitudes need to change in some manner if shared services (and tax savings) is ever going to become a reality.

Rove/Bush Legacy

Conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan succinctly summarizes the Rove (and Bush) legacy.

• a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history
• a generational shift to the Democrats
• a resurgent al Qaeda
• an endless catastrophe in Iraq
• a long hard struggle in Afghanistan
• a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade
• the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa

Can we add lying to the public about reasons for invading Iraq, dividing the country when they had a chance of uniting it, making the USA a pariah among nations, leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent, violating the Hatch Act, bringing partisanship to the US Justice department, subordinating policy decisions to politics, making the absurd charge that Democrats support terrorists, and smearing John McCain in the 2000 Presidential election? I'm sure there is more.

I wonder which University in Texas is going to welcome Rove as a Professor?

UPDATE: NYT editorial this morning makes a good point. Bush should have made it clear to Rove that his job was to promote the interests of the American people, not just the Republican party.

Thanks to Karl Rove, this administration has injected divisive politics into everything they have attempted. Especially leading the country into a "preventative war".

Karl Rove Resigns

All Karl Rove did was put lives at risk.

Bill O'Reilly Caught in a Lie? How Can That Be?

Mr. Falafel just makes it too easy. He's checked the transcripts at FOX news and NEVER has John Edwards been treated unfairly.

Saranac Lake: A Community of Socialists or Communists?

An interesting morning on todays WNBZ radio Talk of the Town. One caller basically accused the supporters of the Saranac Lake Community Store of being Socialists and another caller accused special interests groups petitioning village government officials of being communists.

It isn't real clear how a group of people getting together and investing money to form a company can be called socialistic. It seems like it fits more with the definition of capitalism.

As for local progressive groups attending local government meetings and voicing their opinions....how exactly is that communism?

This actually all about opposition to a proposed two year retail store size limit and support for that limit by groups such as Sound Adirondack Growth Alliance and Save Saranac Lake Coalition. The proposed limit under discussion is similar to the one instituted in Lake Placid in 1998 that limits a single store to 40,000 square feet (the size of a football field) and a retail plaza to 68,000 square feet.

UPDATE: There has been some confusion as to the definition of socialism. A whole bunch of definitions of socialism can be found here. The common theme seems to be government ownership and control(socialism) versus private ownership and control (capitalism) of industry and business.