November 9, 2009
chris –
Last night, your representative, Rep. Jim Himes, cast a courageous vote to help pass comprehensive health reform. After months of debate and decades of false starts, this was the biggest step yet on the path to making real health insurance reform a reality.
But before health reform can become law, it must pass one more time through the House of Representatives. The insurance companies will be throwing everything they can at changing Rep. Himes’s vote for the final round, so it’s crucial that we publicly show that the voters in your district support reform and are counting on Rep. Himes to stand firm.
One of the best ways to help is to write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper thanking Rep. Himes for supporting health reform. Can you write one today?
November 9, 2009
Dow up 155 and going higher. Obviously, not many people down there on Wall Street share my pessimism. And they’re all wealthier than I am, so I suppose I should listen. But I won’t – this can’t last, or socialism really does work, after all. Of course, I said the same thing about the Dot.com boom and though I was right in the long run, an awful lot of people made a lot of money while I sat on the sidelines shaking my head.
November 9, 2009
“Going Muslim”
“Going postal” is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker–archetypically a postal worker–”snaps” and guns down his colleagues.
As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub–disconcertingly–”Going Muslim.” This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American–a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood–discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.
Reuters and the Times still refer to terrorists as freedom fighters so I’m not holding my breath on them adopting this term. But we can.
November 9, 2009
292 Davis Avenue
The last unit of this three-unit condominium project on Davis Avenue has sold for $975, a substantial discount from its 2007 price of $1.965 million, but surprisingly close to the other two units’ sales in 2008 of $1.1 and $1.0675, so the builders were surely not disappointed by what this one fetched (its last asking price was $1.060).
All three units are beautifully finished and so I understand their appeal but when Pal Nancy lived on Locust, a block away, back in the late 70’s, she had to avoid this area during her morning commute because the kids at the housing project enjoyed tossing stones at passing cars. I’m sure that’s all changed now, but it left us, at least, with misgivings about the general location that still linger.
November 9, 2009
44 Grahampton
This house on Grahampton continues to disappoint its owners. Built in 2002 and listed for $6.150 million, it didn’t sell until 2004, for $5.125. The buyers fixed it up to their taste and placed it back up for sale in 2007 at $6.995. The price has dropped since then, all the way to $4.995 (assessment is $4.715) but still no one wants it and today it’s been withdrawn from the market. I like the house, generally, but obviously buyers in this price range don’t. Perhaps spring will see new buyers more susceptible to its charms.
November 9, 2009
160 Bedford Road
I love this house- a 1930’s classic, with pool, pool house and 8 acres of rolling lawn (a good portion of which I’d plant as a wildflower meadow). It was priced at $5.3 million in 2004 and took three years to sell, for just $3.3 million. The buyers then returned it to the market a few months later, pretty much unchanged, but place its price back at $5.295, a puzzling strategy that hasn’t produced the hoped-for result. Today it’s continued its return to earth with a new price of $3.195. Assessment is low $2s, which seems too low, but somewhere between there’s a fabulous buy here.
November 9, 2009
8 Sherwood Farm
8 Sherwood Farm Lane – built new in 2006, listed for $5.8 million in 2007, sold Friday for $3.8 million. That’s above its assessment of $3.2 but still cold comfort to everyone else in that development who paid $6 million for his own home. Oops.
November 9, 2009
NBA star Allen Iverson has cut the price of his Mainline, PA home to 65% what he paid for it in 2003.
Perennial NBA All-Star Allen Iverson has trimmed the price of his Philadelphia-area home again, this time to $3.25 million—35% less than the $5 million he paid for it in 2003.
Mr. Iverson, 34, originally listed his home for $6.3 million after the Philadelphia 76ers traded him to the Denver Nuggets in 2006. The guard has since been traded to the Detroit Pistons and, this season, signed with the Memphis Grizzlies. The 14,000-square-foot, four-story home is in Villanova, part of the Main Line area, and has six bedrooms, a movie theater and a guest suite. A closet in the master suite has space for 500 pairs of shoes. The four-acre property has a pool house, and a stream runs through it.
Mr. Iverson put the home on the market in 2007 and cut the price by 37% the following year.
November 9, 2009
44 Sumner Road
This house on Sumner Road (way up Round Hill Road) was listed for $2.195back in 1994 and stayed four years on the market before finally selling for $1.350 in 1998. The buyers fixed it up in 1999 and placed it back up for sale this spring at $2.395 million. Today they’ve reduced it to $2.149.
November 9, 2009
Germany marked the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall today and our president chose not to attend the ceremony. The Messiah isn’t too busy to fly with 500 of his people to receive his gong in Oslo later this year, but that’s about him, which is different.
But I suspect there’s more going on here than just an egotistical man who won’t play with others; I believe Obama and his advisors just don’t get it. They don’t believe that Communism is bad, so what’s to celebrate about people breaking free from its crushing hands? It’s a non-event to the folks occupying the White House as they strive to socialize our own country. Freedom from the government is an oxymoron – freedom is government, which is why Obama is not in Berlin and why young Iranians will soon learn, to their bitter disappointment, that “Obama is the One” is a sad mistranslation of his name.
November 8, 2009
From 90% to 71%. Presumably the least qualified didn’t show up this year and their low scores didn’t drag down those of others. And sleeping late on a Saturday morning makes sense: why plan on college at a zillion dollars a year when you aren’t suited for it and there are no jobs waiting for you if you graduate? Which brings up, again, my gripe about the high school disbanding its non-college curriculum – there are excellent jobs available for kids who aren’t academically inclined yet we do nothing to prepare them for that avenue. Bring back auto shop.
November 8, 2009
From the folks who brought you airport “security”, confiscating your toothpaste while ignoring fanatical rants on the Internet calling for jihad by a gay who proceeded to shoot 42 people, comes this comforting tale of how our Homeland Security chief is spending her time.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – U.S. Homeland Security officials are working with groups around United States to head off any possible anti-Muslim backlash following the shootings at Fort Hood inTexas, the agency’s chief said Sunday.
The comments by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also appeared part of efforts to reassure the Arab world that U.S. authorities were taking measures to quell anti-Islam sentiments after last week’s rampage by an American-born Muslim serving as U.S. Army psychiatrist.
“This was a terrible tragedy for all involved,” Napolitano told reporters in the United Arab Emirates’ capital Abu Dhabi. “Obviously, we object to—and do not believe—that anti-Muslim sentiment should emanate from this.”
Napolitano said her agency is working with state and local groups to try to deflect any anti-Muslim anger after the Thursday attacks by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded.
“This was an individual who does not, obviously, represent the Muslim faith,” she said after meeting with a group of women university students.
Excuse me, Janet, but “does not represent the Muslim faith“? Of course he does, you dolt. The angry major is an adherent of wahhabism which does not merely condone but actively encourages acts like his. He may not represent all Muslims, but to maintain he’s some non-mainstream nut job is delusional.
The establishment is doing everything it can to pretend that this horror is not what it is. The NY Times says that the Doctor, who never saw combat, suffers from combat fatigue. The Washington Post says that, though never deployed overseas, the doctor snapped because others at Fort Hood were deployed. And now Homeland Security denies he’s a muslim.
Wahhabism is taught throughout the schools of Saudi Arabia: it’s the official curriculum. It’s taught throughout the world to millions of little Muslim boys and even right here in our country, and its indoctrinating them to hate the infidel and kill him when they have the chance. Why our officials and members of the press won’t admit and address this is curious but for now, all I know is that we have met the enemy and he is not us. He’s them.
November 8, 2009
Drew Marzullo
Voters rejected a homophobic candidate and elected a gay one. I can’t say either matters, although one is a personal belief that gives me the creeps, the latter is just who the person is, but I’m glad for our town that the choice went the way it did. Besides, Drew is a great guy and if I can just wean him from Frankie Fudrucker’s influence and lead him to see the error of his political views, he’ll be a terrific public official. Just so long as he doesn’t over-compensate and become a Republican.
November 8, 2009
So, with another 15% now on track to be forcibly seized from taxpayers, I thought it would be interesting to see what a rich family earning $100,000 will have left at the end of each year. Uh oh, looks like our government! They’re running a deficit!
Soc. Sec. 15%
Ct. Income tax: 6%
Fed. Tax: 20%
ObamaKare: 15%
Total taxes 56%
Housing: 36% ($3,000 monthly rental)
Food, clothing : 15%
Transportation: 6%
Fed. suicide guidance: Free
November 7, 2009
Walt asked and he’s going to love this phrase.
Come a cropper – to fail badly
“Cropper, ‘to go a cropper’, or ‘to come a cropper’, i.e., to fail badly.”
For the actual derivation we need to consider the nether quarters of a horse – the croup or crupper. In the 18th century, anyone who took a headlong fall from a horse was said to have fallen ‘neck and crop’. For example, this extract from the English poet Edward Nairne’s Poems, 1791:
A man on horseback, drunk with gin and flip,
Bawling out – Yoix – and cracking of his whip,
…
The startish beast took fright, and flop
The mad-brain’d rider tumbled, neck and crop!
‘Neck and crop’ and ‘head over heels‘ probably both derive from the 16th century term ‘neck and heels’, which had the same meaning. ‘Come a cropper’ is just a colloquial way of describing a ‘neck and crop’ fall. The phrase is first cited in Robert S. Surtees’ Ask Mamma, 1858:
[He] “rode at an impracticable fence, and got a cropper for his pains.”
By the time John C. Hotten published his A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words in 1859, the phrase has come to refer to any failure rather than just the specific failure to stay on a horse:
November 7, 2009
I'm shocked, shocked!
Barney’s in the news with anther troubled lover, this time involving Barney and friend together in Ogunquit, Maine when the police arrived to bust boyfriend for growing pot. Barney swears he didn’t know what his boy toy was up to, didn’t know nothing about no pot and wouldn’t know the plant if it bite him on his ample rear end. This is just about the same story Barney pitched in 1989 when his former page boy, Steve Gobie, admitted he’d been running a prostitution service while living in Frank’s Georgetown townhouse. (Although Frank did admit, in this case, that Gobie had bitten him on his rear end, numerous times, and he’d paid Gobie to do so).
Could Barney really be so clueless, so out of touch? If so, should he be running our country?
