Time to Move to New Jersey…
By Brian | October 16, 2006
I heard this over the weekend, but haven’t seen much coverage of it in the mainstream news:
Cory Lidle’s doomed plane didn’t just crash into anybody’s apartment.
It exploded into the empty bedroom of Kathleen Caronna, the Manhattan woman who was critically injured when a balloon knocked part of a lamppost onto her head during the 1997 Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Ms. Caronna was on her way home at the time, so the damage this time was emotional, rather than physical. Still, she’s gotta start feeling like the city is out to get her, no?
Categories: The World Wide Weird | 1 Comment »
John Kerry: Still Crazy After All These Years
By Brian | October 13, 2006
I blogged recently about how intelligent Bill Clinton sounds today, now that we’ve spent the last six years listening to George W. Bush mangle the art of public speaking. So imagine my surprise when I watched Bill Maher interview John Kerry on his HBO show, Real Time, and began longing for the content-rich, issue-oriented nature of a good Bush speech? Seriously. Many things have happened since the 2004 election that made me uncomfortable with the fact that I voted for Bush, but listening to this interview removed any “buyer’s remorse” (Maher’s words) that I might have felt. Not that I’m suddenly pleased with Bush’s performance, but I had forgotten just how vapid and digressive Kerry could be.
Let’s walk through it, shall we? News Busters has posted the transcript.
Maher: You took the high road [in the 2004 campaign], and lost. If you took the low road, do you think you would have won?
Kerry: I thought Americans really wanted to hear more about health care, the environment, energy independence, the real war on terror. And, obviously, [Republican] attacks make a difference. The great lesson is, and it’s a lesson for everybody in ’06 is don’t give ’em an instant. Don’t give ’em a breath of daylight, and if I ever do anything again I never will.
Really? Kerry thought we wanted to hear more about health care and the environment? Could have fooled me. I guess he’d claim that the Republican attacks on his character/war record forced him to constantly debate Homeland Security and the War on Terror, and ignore issues like health care and the environment. Fine. Let’s set aside the concept of “controlling the message” as a qualification for being President, and assume that’s true. Then certainly, in an interview with the left-leaning Bill Maher, he’ll take the opportunity to discuss these things, right? All he needs is for Bill to ask him an open ended question, so he can segue into one of these important issues…
Maher: So, what can you do differently when you run in 2008?
There it is! Here comes the platform speech…
Kerry: Look, um, we’re in a very different place from where we were two years ago. We were one year away from the start of the war. Katrina has just torn away the curtain, and all of America is seeing that there clearly isn’t any wizard behind the curtain. This is a failed policy beyond anybody’s imagination. And I think everybody understands that now. We have a Katrina foreign policy. I mean how can these guys possibly protect the United States of America from terrorists when they can’t even protect us from Congressman Mark Foley. These people are incompetent. I’ve never seen anything like it. You know, you have the Dubai ports, you have Katrina where CNN is broadcasting what’s happening at the Superdome, and they’re sitting there trying to pretend to America we didn’t know people were there. Every step you go here, there’s a disconnect to the real lives of Americans, and I think the American people know that now, so that we’re going to have an easier time making a clearer, simpler message.
OK, you know that sound that cartoon characters make after they’ve been hit in the head with a piano, and they need to make all the stars that are circling their heads disappear? Please imagine that sound now, because I don’t know how to spell it.
In one paragraph, Kerry has revitalized every flaw in his failed 2004 campaign. He was asked how he would differ from President Bush, and he spouted forth a laundry list of “bad for Bush” talking points. He never mentioned himself once, never mentioned a policy proposal, and never suggested a course of action. He also strayed away from the facts just enough to give even a below-average Republican spin-meister room to discredit what he’s said (examples: two years ago, we were one year into the war, not one year away from it. Also, Katrina was one year ago, so two years ago, it hadn’t torn anything away from anybody). For a guy who just finished telling us what he thinks we want to hear about, he is sure in no hurry to tell us. And this is what he calls a “clearer, simpler message.” Moving on:
Maher: What’s wrong with being like Western Europe in the ways they’re better than us? For example, you mentioned Katrina, I think if we could build levees like they do in Holland…
Kerry: I’m with you. I think that Americans have really realized that they’re not going to fall prey to the games these guys play anymore. I think the card has worn thin. You know, every time something happens in America, that begins to nibble away at the perception that these guys know what they’re doing they trot out the fear card. And they play the fear card again and again, and every time we did something, you’d turn around and there was an orange alert, there was a red alert. I don’t think there has been any fundamental alerts since the election. But, more importantly, I think what Americans really care about is what’s happening here. They don’t worry about Europe, they don’t need to worry about Europe. They’ve seen an administration that’s screwing up the marketplace, they’re losing jobs, their health care is disappearing, their pensions are disappearing, they see executives walking away with unbelievable golden parachutes while the average worker is struggling to pay the tuition, pay the gas bill and make things work. So, I’m not worried about what’s happening in Europe. I’m worried about what’s happening right here. And I think that’s what most Americans are concerned about today, Bill. And, I think there’s going to be a profound shift in about five weeks when we have the elections.
More of the same. A question about Katrina provides a good opportunity to talk about investing more in levee construction, improving the Army Corps of Engineers, or even restructuring our emergency response to natural disasters. Instead, we get “the fear card,” “screwed up marketplace,” “losing jobs,” “disappearing health care & pensions,” “golden parachutes” and “struggles paying tuition and the gas bill.” Vote for me because Bush is awful! At least he’s consistent. And again, the facts are suspect: The threat level at airports just went to “Red” for the first time in history this past August (when the London bomb plot was foiled). The economy’s added 1.7 million jobs in the last 12 months (and 6.6 million since August, 2003). And gas prices have fallen 74 cents since early August (source).
When is Kerry going to realize that the only votes he’s winning with this stuff are the people who already believe in President Chimpy McBushitler? When the campaign comes around, the Republicans will have answers prepared for each of these charges. Right or wrong, true or false, Kerry and his Republican challenger will debate these arguments for weeks on end, keeping the debate squarely where the Republicans want it. And at the end of the day, no one will have any idea what Kerry plans to do as President, and they’ll vote for the other guy (gal?). Then the moral outrage will begin, followed by claims of voter fraud, and we’ll spend another four years talking about the “stolen election” and Karl Rove’s dirty tricks. Yawn…
Categories: Political Rantings, Primetime TV | Comments Off on John Kerry: Still Crazy After All These Years
People…People who Curse at People…
By Brian | October 13, 2006
Barbra Streisand is on tour again (for what Variety is calling her “return-farewell tour”). The reviews are generally good – lots of Broadway showtunes, heartfelt ballads and classic standards. The only complaint most critics have is, ironically, the political commentary. Streisand has long played upon the common misperception that famous people are automatically well-informed and intelligent people as well. And so, she insists on taking advantage of the microphone, the stage, and the media attention that always surrounds her to enlighten us with her views on politics, morality, and the American way of life. If you don’t believe me, check out her website, which contains several political “Statements” on the homepage, but requires you to click through to find out anything about her music or other entertainment-related ventures.
All of this is well and good for the casual fan, who can buy her albums, listen to her music, watch her movies, etc. and ignore the political commentary if he/she wishes. But put a few thousand of them in Madison Square Garden, charge them anywhere from $150-$750 for the ticket, and watch how quickly the patience level drops when the music is interrupted for a lesson on representative democracy. Things get even worse when the commentary turns into sketch comedy (a la Saturday Night Live), complete with a George W. Bush impersonator. Here’s how E! Online described the scene:
[Babs:]”How would the President erase the national debt?
[Bush:]”Sell Canada; they don’t use half of it.”[Babs:]How does Bush feel about his low approval ratings?
[Bush:]”If I cared about polls, I would have run for President of Poland.”Some fans began to tire of the twosome’s routine, with one man going so far as to shout, “What is this, a fundraiser?”
Apparently, Babs can dish it out, but she can’t take it.
“Why don’t you shut the f— up?” she shouted back to the delight of her more sycophantic fans. “If you can’t take a joke, why don’t you leave and get your money back.”
Apparently, the man did just that. He left, and Streisand’s people refunded his money. The Daily Intelligencer spoke with some people about the incident after the show:
Among Streisand’s most natural constituency these things went over only somewhat better. “She’s got balls,” said George Gustafson, 49, of New Haven, after the show. He was there with his partner Gary Gustafson, also 49, but Gary wasn’t as forgiving. “He’s the leader of our country, and I think we should respect him.” Oy. On her way out, a woman behind us muttered, “We’re not paying money to see politics.”
And Variety panned it as well:
The angry audience member was a disgruntled Republican, responding to some ill-considered shtick involving George W. Bush impersonator Steve Bridges. No matter what side of the political fence you’re on, the material was lame. . . . The belabored spoken interludes don’t dampen the spell of Streisand’s singing, but they feel pat and counterfeit next to the real, expressive personality in her vocals. That’s why the lapse in self-control and the unleashed expletive were almost welcome.
The irony here is palpable. Streisand is in her hometown, New York City, where her popularity is arguably at its highest, and where the political climate is generally welcoming to anti-Bush or anti-Republican material. Nonetheless, people who are willing to shell out $750 to hear her sing are telling her loud and clear: We don’t care what you think of the President, the war, or the country. Shut up and sing another song.
Maybe this farewell tour should be the real deal, huh?
(SIDE NOTE: Blogger’s spell checker doesn’t recognize “Streisand.” It’s suggestion? “Stressing.” Hah!)
UPDATE: Audience members and other fans have begun writing to newspapers & websites with basically the same message: Shut up and sing!
Categories: Political Rantings, Words about Music | Comments Off on People…People who Curse at People…
A Really Bad Week for the Yankees
By Brian | October 12, 2006
First, there was the embarrasing meltdown against the Detroit Tigers that took the Yankees’ baseball season from successful to disasterous in the space of 72 hours. Then, the media circus about whether or not Joe Torre would remain as Yankee manager and whether or not All-Star and former MVP, Alex Rodriguez, would remain the Yankee third baseman. Finally, everything seemed to settle down so that New Yorkers could look in on the Mets, who swept their first round playoff series despite several key injuries. Then, this: Cory Lidle, a recently acquired pitcher from the Philadelphia Phillies, crashed his private plane into an Upper East Side apartment building.
First, the city went through an eerie deja vu experience, watching pictures and video that came way too close to the memories of September 11, 2001. The various federal agencies deemed it an accident almost immediately, but took precautionary measures – scrambling fighter jets over several major U.S. cities. A couple of hours later, relief. It was just an accident. Then, a different kind of horror – we all know the guy who was killed. He was a Yankee. A recent acquisition, so not a beloved sports hero to be sure, but a Yankee nonetheless. Just a month ago, he told a New York Times reporter about how safe his plane was:
“The whole plane has a parachute on it,” Lidle said. “Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you’re up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly.”
Obviously, whatever went wrong here didn’t allow him enough time to deploy the chute.
I’m sure the Boys in the Bronx are looking forward to a quiet, unexciting winter. They certainly seem to deserve it…
Categories: Sports Talk | Comments Off on A Really Bad Week for the Yankees
Music to Work By…
By Brian | October 11, 2006
My employer, Bank of America, is offering free online equity trades to qualified customers. Great.
We’re handing out snappy looking T-shirts with a big $0 on the front on the streets of New York. Terrific.
We’ve rented a bunch of double-decker tour buses and a combo band to sit on the upper level of each one and play snappy music to go along with the snappy T-shirts. Cool.
We’ve parked one of these tour buses on 50th Street & Rockefeller Plaza, where lots of people can walk by, hear the music, get a T-Shirt, and eventually sign up for the service. Ingenious.
Here’s the downside: 50th & Rockefeller puts the bus right outside my office window, which means I’ve been listening to snappy music for the last couple of hours with no end in sight, AND I don’t even get a T-Shirt!!!
Grrrrrr……..
Categories: New York, New York, Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »
How People Found Me – September Edition
By Brian | October 8, 2006
Here are the most interesting Google searches that caused people to link to my site. I think I forgot to do this last month, so to make it up to everyone, this one has categories. Don’t get used to this kind of service…
Politics:
clinton bashes bush (1 / 2,620,000)
[My blog post is result #1. gop.com’s is result #2, and FOXNews.com is result #3. Gotta love the Google…]
Random Queries:
serious hoopage (1 / 150)
bill maher kids drawings (1 / 291,000)
the great pizza challenge (5 / 5,970,000)
semantic dating (5 / 4,360,000)
why was 2005 hurricane season so bad (6 / 4,440,000)
[Because clearly, I’m the one you’d ask, right?]
liberty de vito no longer with billy joel (10 / 21,100)
billy joel disc reviews (16 / 900,000)
john stewart musharraf blog (40 / 233,000)
People Actually Looking for Me:
brian greenberg bank of america (1 / 774,000)
brian greenberg lehman (1 / 227,000)
[Good to see my new employer draws more hits than my old employer, even if most of them still aren’t me…]
brian greenberg vice president and senior technology manager global markets back office technology bank of america (1 / 88,500)
[OK, this guy REALLY wanted to find me. Actually, to be fair, it looks like he typed in everything on my business card]
Celebrity Look-Alike Queries:
jim carrey look alike (14 / 114,000)
jake gyllenhaal look alike (18 / 79,300)
jay leno frontal face image (1 / 35,200)
selma hayek look alike (19 / 72,200)
[No, not me – my wife]
emmy rossum look alike (1 / 19,900)
[Sadly, not my wife – me…]
hindi celeb look alike (1 / 66,200)
[Unbelievably, still me…]
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on How People Found Me – September Edition
Hastert’s Folly: Foley’s e-mails from last year
By Brian | October 8, 2006
Here are the e-mails that Congressman Foley sent to a congressional page back in 2005 (as reported by the Stop Sex Predators blog). These are the mails that Dennis Hastert alledgedly saw and didn’t react strongly enough to.
I gotta say, the text of these seems so innocuous as to suggest that there must be more, otherwise why would the Republicans be warning pages to stay away from Foley? The closest thing to inappropriate is “How are you weathering the hurricane? Are you safe? Send me a pic of you as well…” and that’s only creepy because “send me a picture” is read through the “child molester” lens. Absent other information, I can easily see how this could be read as “You had a hurricane in your hometown – send me a picture so I can see the damage/make sure you’re OK.” Not a particularly normal thing to ask for, but certainly not worthy of decisive action, right?
If this is really all there was a year ago, I can see why Hastert is refusing to step down. The Democrats are pushing the “he knew about it a year ago” line, and letting people assume “it” is the talk of masturbation, removing clothing, etc. that’s included in the instant messages, when really “it” is “what do you want for your birthday?” and “send me a picture.”
As I say, the fact that Hastert went as far as contacting the boy’s parents (who asked that it be kept quiet) and had other pages warned to watch out for Foley is the real smoking gun here, suggesting that there are either more e-mails, or that Hastert had other ways of knowing what a creep Foley was. ‘Cause the e-mails on their own just ain’t cutting it (at least not for me…)
Categories: Political Rantings | 1 Comment »
Yet another Foley question
By Brian | October 6, 2006
I haven’t posted anything about the entire Foley mess, since I’ve been commenting on both John Scalzi’s and Jason Bennion’s blog on the subject.
Short summary of my comments thus far: the guy is a scary, disgusting creep. He deserves to lose his job, and he deserves the public ridicule he’s getting now, and the continued ridicule he’ll get for the rest of his career/life. Similarly, anyone who knew about this and chose to leave children in a dangerous situation for their own professional gain (be they Republican leaders looking to hold on to a House Seat, Democrats looking for an “October surprise”” or members of the media waiting for the story to be “big news”), deserves the same fate.
So assuming just about everyone agrees with the above, I have a question. I’m fairly confident that I won’t get a straight answer to my question, and I certainly have no shot of finding it on the usual news/web filters, since the topic is saturated with the scandal itself. But I’ll throw it out there anyway:
| As leader of the committee that protects children against online predators, etc., did Mark Foley do a good job? In other words, despite the disgusting revelations, did he pass good laws to protect kids? Did he increase detection and/or prosecution of people who prey on kids? Did he increase the penalties of those were were caught? |
Don’t get me wrong here: I’m not suggesting for a second that he should keep his job, regardless of how he’s performed in it. A guy like this simply cannot be allowed to hold public office, particularly that office, given the obvious conflicts of interest. And even if he has done a good job, surely we can find someone else who’s equally competent, and not a child predator as well.
I ask the question more to find out if his personal failings led him to go easy on these people and if, by doing so, he harmed more kids than just the congressional pages we’re talking about now.
Anyone?
Categories: Political Rantings | 2 Comments »
Playing with Numbers, Part 2
By Brian | September 28, 2006
The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded briefly over it’s record high today, while the tech-laden NASDAQ Composite remains significantly less than half of it’s record high. In keeping with today’s trend data theme, here are some interesting comparisons:
Here’s the graph everyone always talks about – stock market performance from the time the bubble burst (early 2000) until today:
The Dow broke even today (2,449 days after it’s record high). The NASDAQ is still down almost 50%. This data has been used for everything from explaining away bad investment strategies to arguing against the privatization of social security.
But let’s look at two other graphs that may put things in perspective. First, the performance of both indexes over the last ten years:
Obviously, the first thing one notices is the 377% gain in the NASDAQ between 1/1/96 and 3/10/00. But let’s focus on a few other data points as well: First, note that the NASDAQ’s net gain from 1/1/96 to today is 112% (just over 10% per year), which almost equals the more conservative DJIA’s 124% gain (11.5% per year) in the same period. Second, note that at the NASDAQ’s lowest point, 10/9/02, it was still 5% above it’s value on 1/1/96. Finally, note that Alan Greenspan’s famous “irrational exuberance” speech, in which he warned that assets may be overvalued, was given on December 5, 1996, when the DJIA was 6,381.94 and the NASDAQ was 1,287.68 (both roughly half of what they are today).
And yet, the same sorry tale continues to resonate over many beers in many different Wall Street bars: You invested $1,000 in a NASDAQ index fund on 1/1/96. On 3/10/00, it was worth $4,769. On 10/9/02, it was worth $1,052. Although you’d made 5% on your money (a paltry 0.75% per year, but still a gain), you cried to your friends about how you’ve lost your life’s savings. Now it’s 9/25/06, and your original $1,000 is worth $2,124, representing a very respectable 112% gain (more than 10% per year). Still, you cry to your friends about how risky the market is because your portfolio isn’t worth $4,769 like it used to be.
One more graph to illustrate another subtle point. By the end of 2002, the NASDAQ was significantly behind the DJIA, but today they’re just about even. The graph of both markets since 1/1/03 looks like something out of 1999. Well, OK, 1998:
A 62% return from the NASDAQ (16.5% per year), as compared to 34% (9% per year) for the DJIA.
The bottom line: the last ten years have been a roller coaster in the market, to be sure, but at the end of it all, total returns have hovered around a nice, healthy 10% or so. The volatility in between means that some people got lucky and made a killing, and others got unlucky and got killed.
But everyone remembers the lofty peaks, and the psychological loses are much, much harder to make back than the financial ones.
Categories: Money Talk | 5 Comments »
Playing with Numbers, Part 1
By Brian | September 28, 2006
I’ve been playing around with trend data lately, and have discovered some interesting relationships that may provide a little context to current events. For instance, compare the historical price of oil to President Bush’s approval ratings throughout his presidency:
(chart links to a spreadsheet with the underlying data)
The correlation between the two datasets is -81.14%. In other words, over the last five and a half years, every time the price of oil has dropped $1, the President’s approval rating has increased by 0.8% (and vice versa). For the real statistics geeks, the R-Square value is 65.84%, suggesting that 65% of the movement in Bush’s approval ratings are explainable by the price of oil.
Now, I’m no statistician (two intro courses in statistics at The Wharton School were enough to sway me away forever), but I know enough to avoid confusing correlation with causality. This is not proof that the price of oil directly affects Bush’s approval ratings. It merely suggests that the historical data suggests a relationship. There is always the chance that this relationship is purely coincidental.
That said, (and based solely on my own opinion now, not the statistics), I think there is a causal relationship here. When the price of oil drops, the stock market tends to rise and the price of a gallon of gasoline tends to fall. These items have real world impact on most Americans and when they’re all moving in the right direction, I can easily imagine it affecting their attitude towards their president and their responses to polling questions.
What’s most surprising to me here is the extent of the correlation. If this data does reflect causality, then it means that each new opinion poll on the President’s job performance is not the stark referrendum on the Iraqi war, the erosion or our civil liberties, or our treatment of foreign detainees that one side or the other (depending on what the data says) claims it to be. Instead, around two thirds of any movement in the polls is tied to the price of a publicly traded commodity which is, at best, only indirectly controlled by the President himself.
Categories: Money Talk, Political Rantings | 4 Comments »