25% of NY residents want to leave the state. Do they move to a red state? Or will they turn it blue?

Blogging from phone. Have a happy holiday

School Board Follies

My new favorite website, seethroughny.net published a list of salaries related to employees for vaious school districts in the state. This is another "public record" that continues to be elusive. So, I decided to take a look at the newest propaganda from the School district and translate it.

First is the letter from the Superintendent, Jeffrey Simons. He makes $132,986.10 as of last year. That's about $65 an hour, if you count the summer. It's also 46% of what the library is asking for in additional funds.

Then there are the school board candidate statements. Since Mary Davis says she's not here with family, I'll assume the two Davis' on the payroll are not related. Chris Esposito is running. There is a Robert Esposito on the payroll. Not sure if there's any relation.

Since 5 people are running for 3 positions, it's pretty much rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I have no recommendations.

And now, the back page:

Sherry Walczak is listed as Assistant Superintendent. No salary available from the website.
Ann McGowan is listed as Director of Business and Finace. No salary available from the website.

This website is starting to disappoint me. Anyway, the Board of Education has Charles Cashulette listed as Vice President. A Mary Cashulette is listed on the school payroll. There is also an Anderson on the payroll.

As usual, I support a no vote on the almost $100 million bugdet. A 3.5% contingency is more than enough now that Paterson is taking away STAR. Also, the library can get their damn money from the city instead of these cash grabs. Don't they make enough money from their capricious fines? Try buying 2 less computers per year and buy 100 new books instead.

This is as close to twitter as I`ll get

Power Base

So, it looks like we won in terms of stopping NYRI. Or at least we made it slightly annoying. I think we can thank a tanking econommy for making this power plan less fiscally effective more than all the weak protestations. The only way this can ever be stopped is by making Utice (and Rome, hopefully) part of a muncipal power system where we could decide who gets our electricity.

If there is a recovery (which is doubtful at the moment) or Obama jacks up electricity prices, NYRI or its successor will be back in the game. This is more of a respite than anything else. We're responsible with our resources, NYC isn't. Like the state's new "eat the rich" tax strategy, those who have something the other guy wants will have it redistributed by the state. We're already getting downstate's drug dealers and welfare cases.

Still Here

Just hanging around for now. I see New York is all excited that they're getting more borrowed money than they thought they would. Which makes me think of "Comando" and "I'll kill you last."

In 2009

Disturbingly, my prediction last year of Hillary Clinton losing the Iowa Caucuses (sans laser fueled rampage) was accurate. Sadly, Obama, and not Sanjaya was the American Idol whose performing abilities won America's heart. And since there is still a planet in 2009, here we go.

Predictions:
1. The Federal government tries to make money by putting every political office up for sale, except for president. That was bought by George Soros already.

2. GM, Chrysler and Ford merge into one automaker, calling itself Crapload. Their marketers are as good as their engineers.

3. MSNBC airs all Obama, all the time. Not much of a change, except Lock-Up stars political associates of his from Chicago.

4. Chris Matthews is asked to resign from MSNBC after spending an hour pleasuring himself to an Obama speech... for the fifth time.

5. Global warming is shown to be directly related to the hot air emitted by celebrities.

6. Governor Paterson initiates a Senator tax, leading to an influx of cash from Caroline Kennedy and a massive lawsuit by Chuck Schumer.

7. Former President George W. Bush gets a shoe endorsement contract in Iraq. That popularity eventually leads to his election as Iraq's next president.

8. Bush's oil industry connections, bold tax cuts and strong security policy leads to a successful and prosperous Iraq.

9. Barack Obama's mind control beam finally breaks down after 3 years of constant operation. One "um" laden press conference later and his approval rating drops from 90% to 40%.

10. Normal people sick of the Pacific Northwest and San Francisco political correctness move to Alaska. Through a process of intentional greenhouse emissions, part of the state is 60 degrees and sunny all year long.

11. China forecloses on America by cashing in all their debt at one time. Alaska suceeds and buys the country for a song. Sarah Palin becomes president by ownership.

What in the Hell is Wrong with David Paterson?

I'm back. I couldn't let this one go. Besides the incompetent boob who was elected President and the dilettante running for Senate, we have a governor who may actually be worse than the whoremonger who previous oozed into office in 2006.

New York is poised to enter the Cuomo years of high taxes and insane fees all over again. Soda tax, haircut tax, multiple fees. Property tax rebates are gone. We don't have to wait for Obama to kill the economy, Paterson is going to dismantle the Upstate economy all by himself.

Retirement

Due to the apparent lack of readership and Google's Orwellian practices of evil, I'm done with blogger and this blog. It's up for now. I may keep it active or take it down. I'm starting a new blog at Wordpress, but not as Romehater.

PUMAcide

I had 2 posts made up for tonight. One for a win and one for a loss. Either way, it was going to be about PUMAs. The Party Unity, My Ass crowd was the mythical group of Hillary Clinton supporters who were disgruntled enough about her stolen nomination that they were going to take it out on Obama.
That was not the case.

It was an unreliable group, to be sure. Having invested my time reading the PUMA blogs I could see both good signs and bad. Most liked Sarah Palin. Some felt John McCain held out an olive branch to them. There were others, however, that became disillusioned with politics entirely. Instead of McCain or Obama, they voted Hillary, or nothing, or for third party candidates. When it came time to pick Obama or not Obama, they chose not not Obama. And that was the same as voting Obama.

At the end, people fell for the hype. The polls are close. McCain is in the margin of error. There's an unseen groundswell. Others saw the truth. Howard Dean and the DNC bought an election. David Plouffe had to pay $60 million instead of the 40 he said, but he bought Florida. I hope all the people, criminals and Soros' out there who bought America are happy with the purchase.

Breaking News: Alaska Democrats Totally Corrupt

So, it turns out that Sarah Palin was found not to have violated any ethics laws as governor of Alaska. The actual decision making body deliberated beyond the snap judgement of one investigator to find she had done nothing wrong. i always wondered why no action was taken those weeks ago when she was considered guilty.

Regardless of what anyone says, go to the polls. Polls in 2004 favored Kerry by eight points. In 1996, they favored Bill Clinton by 9 points. Barack Obama's lead? It's less than 7.

McCain/Palin '08!

For the First Time In My Life, I'm Proud to be a Republican

The first time I voted was by absentee ballot. So while the results of the election that year were favorable, I technically had no impact on it. Absentee ballots aren't counted unless an election is close enough to make a difference. However, this is also when I registered as a Republican.

The Conservative Party has an interesting history in New York. After the bizarre gubernatorial election of 1990, Conservatives became a real third party in the state. But in reality, that party mostly endorses the Republican (and sometimes Democratic) candidate. So, even if I was conservative, I wanted to vote in primaries that would make a difference.

My political views were essentially shaped by Rush Limbaugh and George Orwell. I'm against socialism for the same reasons I'm a Christian. The concept of free will is all we really have. If we can't make the choice of what to believe and how to act, what is the point? I became a social/political conservative first, and a Republican second.

The Republican Party has had some highs and lows. There was Nixon in 1972 and his "win at all costs" campaign strategy. There was the Reagan revolution. There was Bush 41 who squandered that. The Republicans regained Congress only to lose it 12 years later. There have been winners and losers. Now, there's John McCain.

If nothing else, McCain has exposed the seedy underbelly of the modern conservative movement. Reagan talked about a conservative movement within the Republican party. Conservative pundits talk about how much leverage the conservatives can force onto a Republican party. This season has seen a fracturing of conservatives who didn't like McCain's inability to conform to their checklist of single issues. Some have developed empty suit syndrome, where a real human being like Sarah Palin makes them unhinged because she wasn't a beltway fixture for 20 years before she ran for Vice President.

I'm a capitalist, but unchecked capitalism is indistinguishable from socialism. If you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door. Under modern conservative economics, it would be fine for someone to buy the rights to that better mouse trap, burn the design plans and continue to sell their old mouse trap with a better short term profit margin. That is not progress.

John McCain and Sarah Palin represent a Republican Party I can believe in. These people have actually made progress in reducing the size of government, which is the key threat facing us economically. They have a plan that will increase our energy security and not reduce our standard of living. They have moral character and seek out the best of their party, and not anyone with an R in their title. I don't agree with them on every issue, but I don't have to. It may be a slogan, but this year the Republican ticket is putting country first, and now, this Republican is too.

Scary

I don't know about you, but the one on the right sure looks like a vampire.

I am Joe

I almost never post other blog links without comment. However, I think this is an important point to make and a possible sign of things to come.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/10/i-am-joe.html

Breaking News : Alaska Democrats Incompetent

So, the verdict has come down on Tazergate. An investigation launched by Sarah Palin's Democrat political enemies and Republican political opponents before her selection as John McCain's running mate has reached a conclusion. Governor Palin did nothing wrong. Now, you may be confused. If she did nothing wrong, why was there a news headline that said she abused her power as Governor? Basically, this panel can make any determination they want. However, they have nothing they could legally sanction her for.

What happened? Well, the conspiracy theory is that Palin pressured her Commissioner of Public Safety to fire her tazer-happy ex-brother in law. That would be bad. The other possibility is that his public disagreements with Palin's attempts to curb the state budget made him a distraction. Given that she has the complete right to let him go, either one is acceptable. The second one, however makes her a reformer. The first one makes her the status quo. The investigation itself makes her a maverick because it was a bipartisan attack.

Clean Sweep '08 - Arcuri Edition

So, if this Paulson inspired bailout mess passes, I propose the election become Clean Sweep '08. Kick everyone out. And since Obama-Biden is made up of two senators and McCain-Palin is one maverick senator and one non-insider governor, I'm voting for McCain.

Our own Michael Arcuri has to go. Even under today's low confidence, no-pass vote, Arcuri dared to vote yes. And sometimes daring must be revealed for the insane meglomania that it is. So, remember that Arcuri wanted to take almost $10,000 per upstate family to prop up businesses that made up their financial records. We will never learn what something is worth until it reaches its real value.

82%

That's the percentage of FOX viewers who thought McCain won the debate tonight. The other news networks did not air a poll of their own. FOX News has an audience almost evenly split between Republicans, Democrats and Independents.

When I first learned about debating in high school, one of the important things you learned is not to concede to your opponent. Obama did that 8 times. McCain pointed out why Obama was wrong 7 times. Most of Obama's critcisms were focused on the Bush Administration. McCain named a half dozen issuses on which he disagreed with Bush on so strongly that they were news stories.

Now, debates can be scored by defining victory down. And if not babbling like an idiot is victory, well, Obama was still only a draw. In reality, if they were playing par, McCain walked away with the gold belt.

SNL Post Mortem

I decided to turn off MadTV's "So You Think You Can Dance" parody with Bobby Lee playing John McCain pretty badly and switch to Saturday Night Live. The story had been out all day. Barack Obama bowed out of his scheduled appearance and Tina Fey was "likely" to come on. And if Sarah Palin lookalike Fey was on, she was likely to play the governor of Alaska.

In fact she was and she did. In a joint appearance on sexism, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler played the governor and Hillary Clinton. It quickly became apparent that they had seen Bill Maher and were playing Palin as a stewardess. In other words, they liked Hillary, and Sarah was no Hillary.

Tina Fey had originally sung the praises of Hillary being a "bitch," stating that bitches get things done. She even went to far as to say, "bitch is the new black." Palin apparently wasn't quite bitchy enough. This pretty much reveals the point. Hillary was liberal and a woman, a two-fer that was "catnip" for gender ground breakers like Tina Fey.

The irony is that Tina Fey does look like Sarah Palin. They're both attractive and a show like SNL was looking for a writer who could occasionally fill in during scenes that needed more cast. Would Fey have been hired if she looked like Hillary? Who knows. I do know that Fey's impression tended to amplify the differences. She's a little heavier than Palin. Her accent was too Wisconsin by half. Plus, she played her as dumb and oblivious. Who's the one keeping women down now?

Weekend Update continued the abuse with some awful character named "Alaska Pete." Basically, the show defended media bashing (NBC being one of the worst offenders. Funny how that turned out.) They also took it upon themselves to portray the Palin family as white trash with extremely crude allusions to Palin's children and faith.

I'll admit I missed most of SNL. It's really awful. Michael Phelps' wooden performance was almost unnoticeable among the mediocre cast. But I saw the end, and Tina Fey wearing a Cafe-pressed "Leia in '08" shirt. You go ahead and write Princess Leia in, Tina. Don't let reality interfere with your choices.

The MySpace Principle

To put it simply, people put up a MySpace page to be famous, then regret it once they become famous.

The Difference Between McCain and Obama

So, I watched the biographies of McCain, Palin and Obama. McCain and Palin joined government, seeing it as a way to have a voice. Obama started off as a community organizer, basically getting neighborhoods that would have rose up by themselves in generations past to do so after riling them up. He saw government as a way to do things without the uprising part.

This is an important distinction. McCain (and to a similar extent, Palin) rose up through the ranks of government and started to see that the people in it were not serving the people, but their own interests. Obama saw what government did and became adept at playing the political game to get what he wanted done.

So there is a difference. Obama ultimately wants government to do more of whatever its doing, McCain wants government to do better.

Chivalry Ain't Dead

I think the PUMAs are the most objective political presence in this election cycle. Sure, they supported Hillary Clinton, but they were able to break out of party shackles and objectively see that Obama points their party in the wrong direction.

One interesting observation is their surprise at how Democratic party leaders allowed Hillary to be maligned while the Republican party stood by Sarah Palin, even in her darkest hour. Some of those attacks against Hillary were harsh and frequently sexist. Such as Obama's comment about Hillary and "periodic" rage.



Of course, one can argue that this is not the same thing, but I happen to believe the Republicans, or more correctly, conservatives still believe a little bit more in chivalry. Much has been made of Christianity and its demands that women submit to their husbands, but not much is made of the fact that men are told that their families are more important than themselves.

In a liberal world, men and women are equal. Boys should play house and girls should play with trucks. Actually, they should probably be making their own compost pile, but I digress. Obama has turned to saying that Sarah is tough enough to be treated like a man.

Of course, she is not treated like a man. Obama is a weekend parent, but Palin is criticized for having a child and daring to run for president. She is cited for her appearance. Anderson Cooper talked about her manicured nails last night.

There is also the "style over substance" issue. Because Palin is young and attractive, her experience is judged more harshly as a vice presidential candidate than the Democratic presidential candidate. The claim is that she was picked for shallow reasons. Obama was given a speaking position in 2004 because he was one of a very few Democrats poised to win a toss-up seat. A seat he won, to a great extent, because his Republican opponent dropped out months before the election. Not exactly the qualification for a president.

I don't think most Democrats hate women. I do think that the liberal wing of the party has decided to "look past" gender in such a way that they have no qualms about using deeply personal sexist attacks because they "work." Well, in the Republican party, men are men and women are women. And those men love their women.

Aftershocks

On Monday afternoon, I found myself banging my head against the wall of my living room after hearing that Sarah Palin's daughter was, in fact, pregnant. I read the "smears" during the weekend, including the "faked" pregnancy where Sarah Palin supposedly shoved a pillow in her blouse to cover up for her daughter. And while unexpected, the Monday story put the lie to the conspiracy theory in a pretty definitive way.

This was the peak of the political earthquake. While some of the hard core conservatives bring up 2004's Wellstone Memorial as the tipping point for regular voters leaving crazy democrats behind, I see this week as a replay of the National Guard Memo story.

60 Minutes, headed by Dan Rather, tried to pass off a fake memo about Bush's national guard experience as true. Even after compelling evidence came out, Rather stood by the story. When the letter was definitively proven as manufactured, 60 Minutes went back on the air claiming that while there was no letter in their hands, the content was real. This led to an unofficial slogan for the story: Fake but accurate.

And so, the pregnancy story is fake, but accurate. While trying to make Sarah Palin out to be a liar by concocting a conspiracy theory out of whole cloth and manufactured photos, they stumbled onto another story which was private and pretty ordinary. Having a pregnant teenage daughter as a Republican politician is problematic, but much less so when the lie was so much bigger.

As the smear and slander (or libel, as the case may be) continue, the impact becomes weaker and weaker. Sarah Palin was a Buchananite, she cut sex education funding, she belongs to a radical church, (does that sound familiar?) she wanted to secede from the US, she had a secret affair. Really? How can I believe you when you were wrong before?

While the aftershocks lessen, they reinforce the base of the Republican Party. Karl Rove learned in 2004 that if you keep your base, it doesn't matter what the other side tries to do. How's the Democratic base doing lately? Look out for those PUMAs.

Women Hate Sarah Palin

The early polls asking about Palin sight-unseen as a VP choice show something interesting. Men think she is qualified by 5-10% more than women do. The conclusion among a number of bloggers is that she'll have little ability to poach women voters from the Democrats.

First, there is a fundamental poll error involved. There was a poll asking if Republicans or Democrats have better sex. The answer was Republicans. The reason is that more men are Republicans and more women are Democrats, especially unmarried ones. Therefore, in a man/woman separated poll, the plurality of women will be Democrats and not Palin fans.

Second is what I would call the Obama Effect. Remember when Barack Obama was getting creamed by Hillary Clinton among African-American voters? It turns out that this group thought Obama didn't have a chance and Hillary represented the interests of the black community. However, independent white voters in key states pushed the delegate count in Obama's favor and African-Americans quickly came to his camp.

The same thing could happen with Sarah Palin. If moderate women see this 44 year old mother of 5 being attacked for not staying barefoot at home as similar to themselves, it could have an effect. If McCain-Palin gets above 50% and there is a chance of the first woman being elected to the office of Vice President, it could lead to an historic tipping point.

(What's So Funny 'Bout) VP, Love and Understanding

Democrats are turning to their favorite rhetorical argument, hypocrisy over reality. Rather than pose the laughable claim that Sarah Palin is inexperienced for a VP choice when she is arguably more qualified than the Democratic presidential candidate, they are turning their sights to McCain. Apparently, he's a big liar for saying that his top criteria for a VP would be the ability to be president. Back to that in a second.

VP picks are supposed to be based on long personal relationships. I remember the stories of boyhood friends Bill Clinton and Al Gore as kids...oh, wait, they didn't know each other very well at all.

Truly, a VP choice is based on geographic necessity. Cheney's influence in the battleground state of Wyoming... Nope, not that either.

A VP choice has no particular rules. Obama chose Biden because Obama has no experience at doing anything in particular. So, he chose a guy who lost about 3 times in runs for president assuming that running that much must make him a good (Vice) President. That reminds me of Reagan picking GHW Bush who despised Reagan and invented the Democratic rallying cry of "voodoo economics."

So McCain decided to pick a three-fer, if you will. Choosing a governor was pretty much a given. A Senator hasn't won an election since 1960. Also, he wanted to pick a woman. Well, there are all of 3 Republican women governors. One had her own bout with cancer, which is the attack of the day in terms of "McCain has to pick his replacement for VP" claims. He also needed a conservative. Sarah Palin is that, but also a "maverick" in the sense that she has taken on Republicans in her own state.

This is the key. Joseph Biden has experience. He has the experience of sitting in the same office for over half of his life. He has the experience of being a non-executive politician from a state that has about 150% of Alaska's population, but only 0.35% of its size. he also respects John McCain more than Barack Obama, even if her prefers a Democratic win in November.

Sarah Palin is the governor of 16% of the total land mass of the United States. She is on the front lines of the energy policies that affect Middle East relations and the US economy. Most importantly, she is her own person. She praised Obama when he flip-flopped to a pro-drilling stance. She thanked Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro for their trailblazing in politics. She is poised to be a force for change with a candidate who has worked for change his whole career. And that's why she is the choice for a replacement president. She would be comfortable with carrying on a McCain legacy and apparently, he is comfortable with her.

Obama is Only Half Black, but Palin is All Woman

This is the most interesting VP pick since Jack Kemp in 1996. He was a 61 year old white guy and a Washington Insider. Dole was also far behind Clinton and had weak Republican support. McCain has a campaign that is competitive. Even with huge down-ticket pressure, he's been able to stay within the margin of error up to the start of the DNC.

Choosing Sarah Palin has a multitude of effects. It kicked Obama's policy-heavy and inspiration-light speech right off the cable news cycle. It adds a governor to an office that traditionally has been won by governors. It adds conservative credibility to someone "maverick" enough to tick off the right. Oh, and she's a woman.

The criticism is that she is far too conservative to get democratic Hillary voters. That is true to a point. However, a number of Hillary supporters were Bush supports in 2004. Plus, it cannot be overestimated the extent of the hatred of Obama by older women who felt Obama was a jerk, a lightweight, and took away Hillary's chances of running for president.

Another way Palin can help is to shore up the conservative base while McCain leans to the left on social, economic and immigration issues. Biden's advantage is in who he is, but not so much in what he believes.

And on a pointless point, Palin is a looker. She's conservative hot. Glasses, hair in a ponytail, a skirt suit, but in good shape underneath. So, while she may equal Obama in expereince, she surpasses him in the attractiveness factor, which had been attached to him for months now. Palin has been referred to as a female Quayle. However, I'm pretty sure the Democrats don't want to repeat the results of a Quayle/Bentsen matchup.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Generally, I'd avoid such a hackneyed phrase, but it's a fitting title. My barber has retired. This person has been cutting my hair since my first haircut outside of the home. Being as set in my ways as I am, it's a pretty tough situation.

I've decided that finding another barber would be counterproductive, as most of them are on the verge of retirement as it is. I've had to hear from people about the constantly changing staff of the salons they go to. This will probably be my lot. I'll be heading to shop after shop until I can find a place I'll be able to tolerate.

Do they still sell the Flowbee?

Gays Suck

I thought I would move away from my enjoyment of 70s music and move on to more current fare. There's a singer named Katy Perry who has stirred up the listening public and members of the blogitariet with a song called "I Kissed a Girl." After seeing the video on VH-1 I took a little look around the web to see her inspiration for writing the song.

I found a lot of interpretations of her inspiration for writing the song. One near the top of the list was a column at MSNBC.com, where if the song were titled "I Kissed Obama and I Liked it" would probably become the new theme song for Hardball. Contributor Tony Sclafani lambastes the content of Perry's music, then grudgingly accepts her right to make it.

Besides bicurious kissing, Perry had previously penned a song titled "Ur So Gay" about an ex-boyfriend who was so pretty and emotional it was hard to believe he didn't date guys. These songs go to an annoying part of the gay community, whiny victim mentality. Basically, homosexuals are a repressed minority, and these songs perpetuate a series of stereotypes about gays and lesbians not reflective of the diverse community of people.

Boo hoo. Comparing gays to other minority groups tends to break down on its face. Namely, you can't tell by someone's face if they're gay, unlike say, by ethnicity. One of the only minority groups not associated by physicality are religious groups. Of course, gay groups are very tolerant of religious differences.

Except....

The gotcha point of the criticism is that Perry is a Christian, and recorded a gospel album under the name Katy Hudson (How dare she change her name slightly? I'm sure Reg, er, Elton John would be shocked). Remember, tolerance works best with groups who are well tolerated.

Katy Perry is a 24 year old girl who didn't find out about pop music until the 90s were nearly over. Her look and her stage performance tend to reflect a girl who is being sexual in only a superficial, flirtatious manner. And at her age, the term "gay" is bandied about as much as in the average South park episode. You'll probably hear young adults pepper their language with words like "ghetto" and "retarded" as well. But then, if you're the Black Eyed Peas, you'll just change the name of the song to "Let's Get it Started." If I were her, I'd be more afraid of the Chapstick people going after her.

I personally think the song is fun and catchy. Have you heard music from politically active gay musicians? Most of it sucks.

Shut up, Bill

This is actually directed at O'Reilly and not Clinton. Bill O'Reilly is yet again on the oil issue with his frequent shallow grasp of the issue. I was going to write about oil in a blog post, but I thought I would point out the lack of solution in some of Bill's solutions.

1. Make the car companies produce flex fuel vehicles:
Manufacturers don't like to be ordered to make anything. The electric car fiasco of the mid 90s showed this. The fact is, GM and Ford make plenty of Flex Fuel vehicles. No one buys them. Something like 1% of gas stations in the US offer E85 ethanol and many of them are in the corn belt. Hybrids (like the Prius) and plug in hybrids (like the upcoming GM Volt) are the current trend in fuel saving cars.

2. Become the next Brazil and grow our fuel:
I heard this on his radio show. Someone called in and tried to explain that a country that close to the equator could grow sugar cane with a much higher energy content than anything in the US. In typical fashion, Bill ignored it. The US is not Brazil. We have further drives and we're not a socialist dictatorship.Plus, even the tiny increase in corn based ethanol production has lead to a food crisis worldwide.
Now, places like our own Rome, NY are looking into using waste products like wood chips and switchgrass for fuel. But they still have to get over the hurdle of needing as much fuel to cook the source material as they get out in fuel. Right now, corn ethanol has the same problem. With transpost and harvesting, ethanol is a net energy loser compared to petroleum.

3. Us vs Them:
The big bad Arabs at OPEC want to screw the USA. Maybe, but that's not the problem. The "price" of oil is a function of the dollar. A dollar buys less euros, yuans, pounds and commodities than before. Obviously, it's going to buy less oil. Oil trading is based on its future price, like the housing market. When that price becomes higher than its value, like the housing market, oil contracts will devalue fast.
And remember, our dependence on foreign oil does not stop at the US border. All our Chinese and Mexican made products require fuel to produce them. Plus, most plastic is made from petroleum. China has few qualms about buying oil from Iran and drilling in coastal waters. In fact, while the US won't drill on the Florida coast, China is partnering with Cuba to drill 90 miles away on the Cuban coast.

ASCAP: Their Own Worst Enemy

So, I discovered the best show on the web, and that includes the reruns of Moonlight I was trying to watch on CBS' crappy innertube site. The cancelled and semi-revived series "Yacht Rock" details the rise and fall and re-rise of the smooth California sounds of the late 70's post folk era.

I've been watching the webisodes and wondering why I laugh my ass off and try to download every song used in each episode. It's because of the music. Due to the lack of financial reward, the creators of "Yacht Rock" feel free to use significant chunks of Michale McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and the uncharacteristically sinister Hall and Oates. The term "yacht rock" has even become a valid musical genre leading to a small resurgence in the post-billboard careers of the practicioners of smooth groves.

Music in television and movies has become something of a hurdle in the past decade or two. Many shows are now either creating complex arrangements to use popular music in future DVD releases, using less popular music owned by their production companies, or scrapping songs from future broadcasts because of high royalty costs.

One of the worst examples of this is the recent DVD releases of "WKRP in Cincinatti." In 1978, the circumvented licensing fees by recording on videotape. However, modern fees have forced them to replace the original music with "similar" studio junk. So, now old epiosdes of WKRP both look and sound terrible.

This is a shame. Songs like "This is it" (which appeared on WKRP and Yacht Rock) are new to the current generation and nearly forgotten by Gen Xers who heard these songs as kids. The recording industry should look at this as product placement. At a time when a person can buy the full version of a song in 30 seconds after hearing a tease of it on a TV show, maybe they should consider the upside.

This Land is Your Land

Two fun decisions in the land of property tax imposition. All the local school budgets passed, with Rome getting a new slate of educator relatives for the school board. Plus, the feds gave Halbritter the 13,000 acres of land in "trust" that many of us expected.

Amusingly, the county plans to sue the government over the decision. Well, I'm sick of the filthy lawyers. I say the local government should do what it does best, interfere. Learn the example of "The Dukes of Hazard" and impose some Boss Hogg style tactics.

I think we need a massive, multi-year road construction project on route 365. And how about the environmental concerns of all of Turning Stone's water usage? I think we should rethink the wisdom of trying to support such a large resort. And who zoned the water usage for that anyway? For the sake of the canal system, we should cut them back to a water level equivalent to the water tax they pay.