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Last night we attended a meeting outlining a traffic study of NW Rochester. One of the leading options includes a frontage road that would take out our home.

The very short version:

• If they do a "frontage / backage" road W of 52, our house is nearly certain toast. Other option would take out like 10 homes in the Harborage development (next to 52, marked in blue on the map).
  
• Reading between the lines, there is some chance that the frontage connection is more a "red herring" just because they have to do a "full study" that looks at "all options" for Federal money. We can keep our fingers crossed.
  
• OTOH, Menards owns the land N of 65th. I suspect that Menards and WalMart would love a frontage road running right between their two stores.
  
• Sometime in spring we ought to know what the big plan is, potential dates, etc. Most likely the frontage road (if selected) would be "years" away ... maybe a decade.
  

Bottom line. Not a lot we can do, just have to write some letters and hope for the best. It is CLEAR from the proposal that we would actually be the "lucky ones" even if we got a low price for our home. The rest of the neighbors would have homes on a frontage slated to have somewhere between the number of cars on the WM to Timberlodge road and twice that (8K-16K per day). Getting out of and into your own home would be a major pain! They would only be compensated for 10' of added right of way, most likely be assessed for curb and gutter, and be stuck with homes that are virtually impossible to sell due to the level of traffic on the street in front of them -- sweet.

Still all sinking in. One "somewhat likely" outcome is that the frontage road is low on the list of "improvements" and ends up being "decade or forever" away. In general, we have kind of thought we might like to "live out our days" at this location, but with the future plan hanging over us, the chances of selling the property even if we wanted to might be very dim.

Certainly the most interested that I've ever been in a highway project! It is almost laughable to year these guys talk with confidence about their "25 year plan". 20 years ago, they agreed to put in the Harborage development right where a frontage road OUGHT to go! 55th Street Estates has been here since the '70s -- over 30 years. The lovely thing about government means that it NEVER takes responsibility! Who pays for the poor planning? The people that live along Chateau Road in 55th Street -- and of course, the lucky ones that get to lose their home entirely.

How likely is it that our previous 30 years performance is a guide to the next 30? Reagan was predicted to be a disaster for this country, which Carter had declared to be unsalvageable. Today, we have what the media views as god himself in the White House, and apparently the minions that are at least doing highway planning believe that the shift back to Jimmuh Carter policies with a lot less competence is going to be a ticket to things being at LEAST as good as was achieved by that fool Reagan.

I doubt it. My prediction is that we are in for a long spell here where having to deal with "growth problems" will be a fantasy from the "good old days".

Newsmap, Palin

BBC News - Hurricane Palin rolls into town

About the same time that CNN changed the format of their web page (a change that I hated) I ran into Newsmap. I don't know a lot about it's exact algorithm, but it is trying to make visual sense out of the Google news aggregator, so I'm sure it has something to do with hits / links / measures of popularity. "The Wisdom of Crowds". Like democracy, markets, Wikipedia, etc.

I saw that Palin was very popular, and that the main article was from the BBC -- over on CNN the only thing to be found was one of their talking heads talking about how stupid she is and how much of a problem she is for Republicans. The BBC article points out the rather easy to see comparisons with BO -- "all hat, no cattle" ... "empty suit", BUT, very good at connecting with people and extremely popular with some core segments of the electorate (Sarah with "regular folk", BO with the hard left liberal elite). Naturally BO has the advantage that the media does whatever it can to soften his actual hard left views, lack of experience, smoking and narcissism, while for Palin they do all they can to expose any areas she lacks knowledge, her enjoyment of looking nice as a woman (something I've observed to be shall we say "somewhat common" in the female of the species, and the more egregious cases of her "folksiness". Hillary was certainly a better female candidate, nobody would ever accuse HER of looking good!

My point here is that the BBC seems far more willing to report Palin "straight up" -- as someone that brings out big crowds of adoring supporters in the US heartland -- and at least takes a decent shot at "why" with some level of respect for her supporters, rather than sliding off into  "why Sarah and these people are so stupid". Beyond that, aggregators like Newsmap are constantly making it even easier for masses of people to bypass the selectors at CNN, NPR, NYT etc and tap into the thoughts of a much wider set of people.

Roubini, Reality

A tale of two American economies - The Globe and Mail

Routbini is pretty much the only guy that called the US housing / derivative bubble well in advance (2005).

Consider also what is happening to private consumption and retail sales. Recent monthly figures suggest a rise in retail sales. But, because the official statistics capture mostly sales by larger retailers and exclude the fall by hundreds of thousands of smaller stores and businesses that have failed, consumption looks better than it really is.
And, while higher-income and wealthier households have a buffer of savings to smooth consumption and avoid having to increase savings, most lower-income households must save more, as banks and other lenders cut back on home-equity loans and lower limits on credit cards. As a result, the household savings rate has risen from zero to 4 per cent of disposable income. But it must rise further, to 8 per cent, in order to reduce the high leverage of the household sector.

Nothing new here for readers of this blog. "Kill the rich" does RAPIDLY lower the overall economy. While on a percentage basis, the wealthy may lose more, the middle class and poor are hard pressed to lose even the smaller percentage that falls their way. Added to this is the fact that most of the most "liberal / generous" state budgets are in complete disarray  bordering on bankruptcy, and one sees the sadness of killing the golden goose of economic growth.

Seems like the fact that cutting open the goose of growth to suck out all those golden eggs for the immediate use of the left power elite kills the goose is a lesson that must be learned anew with each generation. They really want to FORCE those rich folks to "product what they want" -- short of the Gulag, as demonstrated in the USSR and China, there isn't a whole lot of way to do that. While I'm sure it gives a lot of the lefties a lot of joy to see the formerly wealthy dying in a labor camp, it still doesn't really put bread on the table for the masses.

Lying or Incompetent?

RealClearPolitics - Video - ABC News: Stimulus Jobs "Created" In Districts That Don't Exist

So BO is claiming that jobs are "created or saved" in congressional districts that don't exist. Suppose this will be a "big story"? Don't count on it. "Created or saved" is so dishonest just as a concept it is hard to imagine someone NOT fudging the numbers to make a meaningless number even more meaningless -- but there is no real reason you have to be so incompetent to get caught at it!

What other choices are there here beyond mendacity or incompetence for reporting numbers from districts that don't exist? Want to bet how this would be covered if it had been Bush? It would have certainly been BOTH incompetence and lies -- the kind of administration that can't be trusted BOTH because they don't know what they are doing AND because they are willing to lie about whatever they can. That was the story that the MSM applied to the previous administration, and "facts" never were even a factor.

The bar got set -- we can see now that the Bush administration was a more competent and truthful administration than the BO administration, but was characterized as absolutely untrustworthy and incompetent. Now we have the MSM lamenting the "lack of trust in government". Duh. If a solidly competent and exceptionally truthful administration is labeled "incompetent liars", and they are followed by folks that are actually completely incompetent to run even a candy store and are so unfamiliar with honesty that it seems clear they have no idea what the truth even is, would one not expect reasonably intelligent people to lack trust? (I guess that is pretty much a pure indictment of the MSM)

If you convince the people of the community that the most competent and moral Day Care Provider in town is a child molester, how do you expect them to trust an actual child molester? Surprise -- dishonesty ALWAYS has consequences, often unintended ones!!

A Little Contrast

Newsweek Photo of Palin Shows Media Bias and Sexism

The only people that these kinds of comparisons are a problem for are those that don't believe that even NEWSWEEK! is biased. I'm thinking that if you don't believe that by now, then it just isn't going to be possible for you to have any problems with anything that is reality based. How about BO being on the cover of Time in very flattering light something like 8 times already? Or the famous Time "GingGrinch" cover of Time with "How Mean Is He" after the Republicans took over the House for the first time in 50 years.

Other than the media that are labled biased (which they are -- just 180 degrees from the rest of them), it is pretty clear who the MSM in this country cheers for and whom then HATE!

BO's 4 Options

Sounds like BO is having a heck of a time figuring out what to do in Afghanistan. Here are the options he must decide between:

1. Immediate unconditional cut and run
2. Small troop buildup for cover, cut and run when enough of those die to call it hopeless
   
3. Lots of talking / apologizing to NATO allies, begging for help, cut and run when they don't give enough.
4. Declare big "mission change", maybe move some troops around, give some speeches, then cut and run in a controlled fashion and declare victory.
   

Sounds like BO is really stressed about all these big decisions. He has to get back to throwing some more staff under the bus for the fact he can't get Gitmo closed, and has to start picking out some sacrificial lambs to throw under there because the stimulus is a failure and the dollar is going down like a neutron balloon in a black hole.

Remember when BO was going to follow Bin Ladin all the way to his hole in Pakistan? It only it were true -- and he would just crawl in there with him, it could save us TRILLIONS of dollars and millions of jobs!

Krauthammer Summarizes our Peril

Newsvine - Center for the American Experiment - Dr. Charles Krauthammer

I think Charles is a bit optimistic, but one can always hope for the best. Just read it, short and I think extremely insightful.

Pork Flu

Radical Islam?

RealClearPolitics - Sometimes, an Extremist Really is an Extremist

How often do we hear of the "radical right" with various statements about the "danger" of everything from Evangelical Churches not having Gay Clergy, to Tea Parties as being "hateful, divisive, etc"? The general MSM response to the Fort Hood shootings is "gee, I hope nobody thinks badly of Muslims because of it". Does anyone else just have a second where they think; "How does the treatment of this compare with the last nut that killed an abortionist?". Recall a bunch of MSM stories trying to minimize the connection between the killer and normal every day folks who just disagree with killing babies that are viable to live outside the womb?

He demonstrated that being a trained psychiatrist provides no immunity to ancient hatreds and religious fanaticism, nor does psychiatric training provide much acuity in spotting such things in others. For example, the London Telegraph reports that, in what was supposed to be a medical lecture, Hassan instead gave an hourlong briefing on the Koran, explaining to colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that nonbelievers should be beheaded, have boiling oil poured down their throats and set on fire.

So, does that sound kind of "radical" to you? or is beheading, pouring oil down the remaining throat hole and setting the beheaded torso ablaze just one of those "cultural differences" that we all need to "respect and honor" since all cultural practices are equal, and to think that ours are somehow "better" is American exceptionalism -- something BO apologizes for regularly. What would it take to be seen as a "radical Muslim" or even a (dare we say it) "terrorist"??

Which raises the most troubling revelation: For a very large number of people, the idea that he is a Muslim fanatic, motivated by other Muslim fanatics, was -- at least initially -- too terrible to contemplate. How else to explain the reflexive insistence after the attack that the real culprit was "post-traumatic stress disorder"? The fact that PTSD is usually diagnosed in people who've been through trauma (hence the word "post"), and that Hasan had never in fact seen combat, didn't seem to matter much.

So how would the MSM treat something remotely "similar" from the "right"? Well, we have something that isn't all that similar, in fact it is really beyond the pale to even see how ANYONE but a confirmed "right hater" could even imagine a connection, but never the less, they did ...

A few months ago, an anti-Semitic old nut named James von Brunn allegedly took a gun to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to get payback against "the Jews" and killed a black security guard in the process.

In response to this horrific crime, the leading lights of American liberalism knew who was to blame: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the GOP. One writer for the Huffington Post put it succinctly: "Thank you very much Karl Rove and your minions."

How can we possibly make anything of this OTHER than our general media has enough blind rage toward anyone that disagrees with their views from the political right that they can find a supposedly important and even "scary" connection where there clearly is none, yet be completely unable to connect an obvious radical Muslim terrorist with his self-identified group even when there is loads of documentation, even including him yelling "Allahu Akbar"as he opened fire!!!

Assuming that we are sober and sane, there isn't any other conclusion. Our media and vast swaths of Democrats have drifted completely off the leftward side of the highway of reality.

Government Wins

RealClearPolitics - On Election Day, a Win for Government

Lest there be any misunderstanding of the what "right" means, it is LESS GOVERNMENT, meaning MORE FREEDOM. Note that this is clearly not "Fascist" or "Nazi", both of which refer to completely oppressive to totalitarian government.

Here's a story you may have missed because it flies in the face of the dreary conventional wisdom: When advocates of public programs take on the right-wing anti-government crowd directly, the government-haters lose.

Dionne is refreshingly honest and clear that the "right-wing is anti-government" -- which is honest and factual for a change. Therefore, we see that even the left fully recognizes that the right is NOT Fascist or Nazi. They just love to use those terms to scare everyone.

So what about "government haters"? Does wanting LESS government equate to wanting NO government? I'd think only in a world where "government lovers" -- certainly a reasonable name for the forces of the left given Dionne's rhetoric would want TOTAL government, in other words TOTALITARIAN government. If Dionne admits that is his goal, then I'll give some credence to the idea that anyone that wants any sort of limit at all on government wants NO government!

Dionne strongly praises the electoral win worked out by the opponents of the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" which was based on the idea that such bills would CUT government programs. What the bill's would do is limit the GROWTH in government to a rate tied to inflation, income growth and population growth. Government could still grow, it just couldn't grow without any restriction.

In the haste to pile on restriction after restriction on business and individuals, the left finds ANY restriction on government to be entirely unpalatable. No question that proponents of reasonable measures to control the growth of government have a lot of work to do -- the MSM forces of misrepresentation won this one!

Paranoia on the Right

Op-Ed Columnist - Paranoia Strikes Deep - NYTimes.com

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America

And there you have it! California is in deep deep trouble. Why? Well, it is because of that teeny tiny rump Republican party! Certainly not due to the vast numbers of Democrats spending, taxing and borrowing as if there were no limits on what sort of fruitcake programs ought to be funded in lala land. Nope, it is those pesky Republicans. Damn!

Just think for one second here. The Democrats have a filibuster proof Senate and a huge majority in the house, but Republicans complaining at all is "paranoid"? Let's wind the clock back to just after the election in '04 when Republicans were like 6 votes SHORT of filibuster proof, and one would have thought the world had ended. Now Nobel Prize Krugman is afraid of there being ANY Republicans? That sounds BEYOND "paranoid" to me, it sounds borderline genocidal!

Divided Republicans Good, Divided Democrats?

A divided party: Progressives threaten Democratic lawmakers | Washington Examiner

As a regular MPR/NPR listener, I'm well versed on the horror of the NY 23rd district. The "sad facts" (but then why do they sound so happy on the air?) are that Republicans are absolutely killing themselves in a "safe district". The local "reasonable Republicans" selected a "suitable moderate" -- pro-abortion, pro-BO stimulus, etc. The kind of "electable Republican" that is the ONLY HOPE for ANY gains in '10. Now, as per usual, those stupid ideologues on the right have created a "classic no win" -- especially since the endorsed Republican candidate dropped out and endorsed ... the Democrat! (thus proving how reasonable she is!)

If the Democrat wins, obviously that means that Republicans are in far worse shape than they thought! Losing a seat that was "safe". If the conservative candidate wins, it might give the national Republicans FALSE IDEAS! (and we know how much the MSM and the Democrats want to avoid THAT happening!!). Why everyone knows that conservatives are "unelectable", especially in fairly liberal districts that have traditionally swung Republican like NY 23! If a conservative gets elected there, it is PROOF that ... er? ah yes, that "conservatives are UNELECTABLE"!!! Simple!!

Now, without even looking at the attached top secret piece of information -- seen nowhere in the MSM, one could just think of Joe Lieberman. Did the fact that he stood up for his own principles and was thrown out of the Democrat party somehow destroy the Democrats in '08? Was there a lot of coverage of old Joe at all? AFAIK, the Democrat VP candidate in '04 might be vacationing on Mars for all the attention he gets.

But DO go read the article. Why is it that the MSM isn't concerned at all -- the the level of not even reporting it, that MoveOn is raising millions of dollars to defeat moderate Democrats?

I think we know. To the MSM, the "moderate Democrats" are BO, Nancy, Harry, John Kerry and all the rest of what they see as "decent Democrats". Any Democrat that would even CONSIDER voting against BOcare is some sort of a "reactionary right wing ideologue that may as well be Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck!! BTW, any media outlet that might have an alternate view of that is so biased that one must question their right to broadcast!

What Job Did BO Run For??

William McGurn: The Post-Gracious President - WSJ.com

This article covers a number of the BO Bush bashes, in some detail. I find this to be just another example in differential treatment between Democrat and Republican presidents taking over. Can you imagine the press cutting Reagan any slack for complainin he had to deal with hostages in Iran upon taking office? They were released the day he took office, that MUST have been because Iranians like Republicans! ... or maybe actors. How about Reagan complaining that the economy was bad, deficits were huge, unemployment was high and rising? Nope. The economy sucked when Reagan took office, and it still sucked in '82 when there was an off-year election and "the failure of Reaganomics" was one of the issues. As Reagan said in '83, he really knew his programs were working when the media stopped talking about Reaganomics!

How about Bush taking over in a recession in '01 with the stock market already sharply lower from it's highs in 2000? Did he get to complain about the "hangover from Slick Willie"? Not that I know of. How about Bush complaining about the security situation left over from Clinton when 9-11 happened? Can you imagine how THAT would have gone over? The MSM was all excited to somehow "blame Bush" even though terrorism was a rising tide all through the '90s. The idea that the MSM would allow any blame to fall on the previous Democrat administration is patently nuts. We know that no matter how many women Slick was groping and fondling in the oval office, his focus was never moved from the weighty issues of his office!

Considering the length of the terms, I'd say that the MSM treats the REPUBLICANS correctly!! After all, what job did BO think he was running for? When a CEO takes over a company, do they get a lot of slack because "the other guy was bad"? How about when a new coach takes over a sports team? Do they get to be surprised by the job they took? How in the world COULD they be? That would mean that they didn't do a careful assessment of the job they were taking before they took it, which would indicate that they were someone that should NOT be in any leadership position at all!! Leaders are HIRED to take positions of RESPONSIBILITY -- that is one of the cores of what it means to be a leader. Why hire a new guy if he is just going to bitch and whine about the old guy?

Obamopoly

The object of the game is to destroy American capitalism by having the government take over everything.

Wanna play? No? Too bad, you're already playing.

Tenacity and BO

Op-Ed Columnist - The Tenacity Question - NYTimes.com

But they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree.

I think the sad part is that they DO know. Afghanistan went to pot shortly after BO came in because I think everyone really knows the answer. Sure, he is tenacious in the destruction of America -- he will not rest until he has licked the boots of every tin-pot dictator on the planet and tearfully apologized to nations like the Russians, French, Germans and Japanese that only exist because of our largess following WWII. We won't have any industries or capacity to create new ones once BO is through with his reign of error.

The experts I spoke with describe a vacuum at the heart of the war effort — a determination vacuum. And if these experts do not know the state of President Obama’s resolve, neither do the Afghan villagers. They are now hedging their bets, refusing to inform on Taliban force movements because they are aware that these Taliban fighters would be their masters if the U.S. withdraws. Nor does President Hamid Karzai know. He’s cutting deals with the Afghan warlords he would need if NATO leaves his country.

Nor do the Pakistanis or the Iranians or the Russians know. They are maintaining ties with the Taliban elements that would represent their interests in the event of a U.S. withdrawal.

The determination vacuum affects the debate in this country, too. Every argument about troop levels is really a proxy argument for whether the U.S. should stay or go. The administration is so divided because the fundamental issue of commitment has not been settled.