Take on the Deficit

 

I hate to bore the TOR readership with the minutia of federal budget but the more I hear about the way that the Donkeys and the Elephants want to cut the deficit seem inadequate.    The new Republican class who rode in on a wave of Tea-Party populism has promised to cut $100 Billion from the discretionary Federal Budget in the 2011 year which by the way is already well under way.  In order to accomplish their goals the cuts they have proposed will be deep and painful but maybe necessary.

In term Obama has made some concessions in his budget including a way to trim $1 trillion from the deficit in the next decade and the NY Times put together the following handy chart to show how the federal dollars are spent http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/index.html

Obviously the largest expenditures have nothing to do with discretionary spending like foreign aid, farm subsidies, veteran affairs etc but are overwhelmingly located in the entitlement section (Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security) as well as a huge amount in the 'interest on public debt' category.    Now if you are $100,000 in the hole personally you may try to cut the cost of your deli meat by deciding against Boars Head and instead going with generic bologna but in the big picture that won't put a big enough dent in the $100,000 you owe.   At that point you have to make a couple of bigger decisions.   Now you may decide to not paint your house or pay a guy to mow the lawn and these cosmetic decisions seem logical but the hard part comes when a huge tree collapses and smacks into your roof and there is water gushing in by the tub-load.  Now you can decide to fix the leak in the roof or just throwing a tarp over it and keeping your fingers crossed.

But at the end of the day I would look at this defecit issue and attack it this way..

·         Raise the age of retirement from 67 for full Social Security benefits to 70.   Life Expectancy rates improve constantly, so should the age at which time you collect.  If you are going to give people a cost of living increase then you should also adjust their chance of living criteria.

·         Start moving Social Security into its own slush fund.  Don't include it in the normal federal budget and don't allow the normal politicians to touch it.   Keep it separate and pay out each year based on 90% of what the take-ins where last year, keeping 10% for a rainy day..   For example if this year the government collects $800 billion than you pay out $720 Billion to every person who is eligible that year.  If we take in $900 Billion the next year than each person gets a bit more, if we take in $700 Billion then each person gets a bit less.      Look at how revenue sharing works in the NFL with players making 60% of the total intakes…maybe that's not a good example.

·         Take an ax to Medicaid and Medicare and cut 10% from each budget..  yeah it sucks but let me tell you, when I took a paycut last year it sucked too.    I'm sure there are tons of administrative costs that can be cut here and honestly there is no reason that everybody needs brand-name medicine.   Make it mandatory that every person use 50% generic where applicable.  If you don't like it pay for your own medicine.

·         Use the 'savings' from the Medicaid and Medicare package and apply it to pay off the public debt.     So next year your debt will be less and thus the interest you pay will be less since you will be charged interest on a smaller amount.   Use the 'savings' in next years budget to continue to pay down your debt.    I'd suggest the same for those of you with big credit-card bills

·         Eliminate all subsidies to the gas and oil industries.  They don't need any of our help.. they get enough of my money when I'm paying $3.30/gallon at the pump..    Subsidies are un-American

·         Cut taxes for businesses but make sure everybody is paying their share.

·         Force all companies doing business in the US to pay taxes in the US.   There is no reason there should be any allowable tax-havens in Dominica, Switzerland or Costa Rica

·         Simplify the tax-code by making the whole thing 1 page..   There are too many deductions and too many people able to skate because they are able to hide money.     If you want to donate to the arts or to a church you do it on your own merits not because you get a tax break..

·         Eliminate the subsidies the government gives companies for health-care and have people pay their own way.   Subsidies are anti-capitalism

·         Force Congress to balance a budget every single year..  If I have to sit there and balance a checkbook so should congress.

·         Give every person in congress a 15% pay-cut..just because

Fringe Cringe take 2

For those of you who watch Fringe I need to get something off of my chest. Now granted the show kind of sucks and FOX has already signed it’s death certificate by moving it to Friday Nights right before Full House and after Family Matters so I don’t think anybody has any hope for much longer run.

Sadly I’m still a fan even if as my buddy the Bump will always point out, they always go to the same formula. Something crazy happens, the old guy comes up with some idea, everybody assumes he’s crazy and then 58 minutes later it happens to be exactly as he had predicted.

Now they haven’t used this formula since season 1 and the show has gotten a lot more interesting especially with their whole war-of-the-worlds theme. With that said they throw a lot of clunkers in the middle of the good episodes whose purpose seem to only be fill up space.

I’ve decided any episode which focuses on the bizarre love-triangle between Olivia, Peter and Fauxlivia sucks . Give us more scientists concocting crazy schemes, crazy creatures and episodes with death by paralysis and less lovey-dovey crap. There is NO chemistry between them and the entire thing feels contrived and tired.

BUT what really pisses me off is that they beat you over the head with stuff, never let you think about it. Basically every episode leaves you with a cliffhanger but they can’t just leave it out there like a matzo-ball they have to beat it down like it’s a piñata.

SPOILER ALERT

This week is a perfect example they spend an entire episode talking about cockroaches which is dreadful and when they finally get to the last scene they take the one good part of the story and ruin it. Basically Fauxlivia things she’s infected by a killer roach and is taken in an ambulance where they run a sonogram to find out if they can find the roach in her system. Of course they see something and first assume it’s a roach but after a few seconds they realize it’s a fetus.

Now they could just leave it like that and let the viewer infer.. Obviously they already made it perfectly clear that her fiancé has been away for about 3 months and we know that she’s banging the piss out of Peter while she was in the other universe. BUT NO, they can’t leave it even for the slightest bit of imagination. First they march the boyfriend in there to make sure the baby isn’t his, as if that wasn’t enough they then bring back to her apartment where they show a bunch of empty boxes all in disarray when all of a sudden Walternate walks in to make sure that everybody in the world knew that this was his grandchild as if it wasn’t already abundantly clear.

Now I understand needing to make sure your audience is able to follow the program but when you are basically dumbing it down to the level of a second grader what are you really doing?

Take on Valentines Day

Sometimes we bitch about things we can control other-times we bitch about things we cannot control and sometimes our friends do the bitching for us but the fight remains about us vs them though sometimes the players in the us camp turn into them and the players in the them camp become us.

 

There is an ongoing fight in a number of communities against Wall-Mart and other "Big Box" stores moving in and ruining business for the "mom and pop" stores.  I know we are supposed to side with David and not Goliath, but when David tries to give it to you with no Vaseline, it's hard to take his side.  Case in point:  Valentine's Day.  We all have to go out to buy flowers for the little lady no matter what your hipster senses tell you.  There's what's right and what's right and flowers for you lady on V-day is right.  I stop in the local florist to order a dozen roses for pickup on the 14th.  The owner helps me and writes up my order.  The charge, $85.  Yes that's right, for a dozen flowers.  More than 7 dollars a flower.  I call up a bigger chain to see what their pricing is and they have a dozen for $45, nearly half of the mom and pop.  I know I am supposed to feel for the plight of the small business, but when they take every opportunity to screw the small guy, I won't play ball.  Why not charge a fair price and create a customer for all year, than to just try to cash in on the one day we are commanded to buy flowers.  Don't even get me started on local restaurants and their special prix fixe menus.  $65 a head and they expect you to SHARE a dessert. 

Word Nazi

One thing I can't stand is people who use the term Nazi in everyday speech. It wasn't always this way but now i hear it all the time and it's becoming more and more prevalent in speech. Yesterday I was told I was a Time Nazi because I wanted to get somewhere on time, last week I heard somebody complain about a grammar Nazi for using the wrong their. Not long ago I heard a guy say that his workplace was like a concentration camp but really the liberal use of Nazi to describe any situation which is the least bit demanding is sickening. The words Strict and Nazi aren't synonyms but in this 24 hour News cycle world, people throw it around like 'liberal' or 'conservative'. I am sure that at some point it will lose all it's meaning but I'm not ready for that yet.
Maybe I'm old fashion but that wound still seems a bit fresh, I mean you don't regularly hear people call each other slaves or slave owners and that wound is older than the slavery one. What gets me is this new generation (I feel old everytime I blog like this) just doesn't get it, there are just some things that shouldn't be used in a sentence between 'like' and 'oh my god'
I don't know when it will be OK for me but it won't be any time soon.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Hipster vs New Father

It is sometimes difficult to tell the differences between races. It's not uncommon for somebody to confuse a Korean and a Chinese person although for those of us who can tell the difference the game is as easy as shooting fishheads in a barrel. There are other groups that are difficult to distinguish from one another including Native Americans and South East Indians, Swedes from Nords and Hipsters and New Fathers.

I'll leave the Indian and Northern European discussions for another day but I wanted to give you some information to help you distinguish the other two. Now they share a lot of characteristics including the thick bags under the eyes, general crabbyness and self perceived importance.
BUT there are a few ways you can tell a new father from a new Hipster, you just have to know what you are looking for.

Although they may dress and look similar to the untrained eye the expert can make important inferences with the quickest glance

See although both may wear a hoodie, the hoodie strings for the hipster will be headphones while the hoodie strings for the new father will be only strings.

Pants
The Brooklyn father and the Hipster will both wear a pair of jeans which both probably haven't been washed in months and both will be a tight. The difference is the hipster's will be purposely tight while the new Father will just have put on a few pounds

CellPhone
Both will likely be buried in their IPhones and both may be using the camera.. the difference is that one will look like he's examining nature using the camera while the other is preoccupied with instagram

Then if you look at the apps on their phones you'll see the father has FishSchool while the hipster just downloaded the new Conan app.

Hats
both may wear a baseball-hat though one will probably wear an NFL hat while the other wears a mesh trucker hat.

Homefront
Both the new dad and the hipster will likely make his dwelling in Brooklyn, the difference is the former will come from Park Slope while the latter comes way of Williamsburg

Boots
Both may be wearing boots, the difference is one may have spurs on them while the other has snow boots that don't breath.

Haircuts
Both will have a disheveled hairdo. One will have spent hours on making sure it's perfectly disheveled while the other will just look like crap.

Social Networking
Both the new father and the most cutting edge hipster will have shunned social networking. One will be done with it as he feels his time is better spent with other things while the other has disconnected to fight the power

Pickles
Both love pickles, one buys them from the farmers market while the other pickles veggies himself

But the easiest way to confuse them is based on facial hair. See where both species will likely have some facial hair, the difference is that the new father will wear a scruffy beard while the hipster wears the porn 'stach or a full bushy beard.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

the women of the world

TOR came across this gem during the week at http://i.imgur.com/lO9OV.jpg which came with the following very scientific description. 

This image contains composites representing the "average" woman from each of 41 different countries (or regions). Not "average" in the sense of being a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. They're all very attractive. But "average" in the sense of being the result of blending a lot of individual pics together

We have decided to rank the chicks of the world.. now mind you were are going only by these pictures and not taking into consideration all the wenches we have met over our lives from some of these parts..

1	Greek	Hoya Goya
2	West African	beautiful features
3	Italian	seems this chick is imported
4	Russian	something tells me a Russian Bride looks nothing like this dhick
5	Israeli	how would anybody want to start wars with chicks this hot? Plus you know what they say about Jewish chicks
6	English	oh lord
7	Swiss	very girl next door.. In Switzerland
8	Polish	something about those eyes…and really I don't like sleeping on the couch
9	Montoglian	plus you know she's probably a savage
10	Ethiopian	I'm glad my $0.40 a day has gone to something worthwhile
11	Indian	I like..
12	Spaniard	I would like to be her conquistador
13	German	lady the wall came down 2 decades ago..get some sun
14	Thai	you know this chick might be a dude right????
15	Peruvian	imagine an entire empire of chicks that look like this
16	South Indian	I'm not sure which tribe she belongs to but Cherokee she is not
17	African American	not Hally Berry and not Shaniqua either
18	French	terrible haircut
19	Taiwanese	how about some makeup
20	Central African	I'm not a racist, look at my #2
21	Finnish	exactly average
22	Welsh	Hard to judge
23	Sweden	if this was a bikini contest she would be higher I'd guess
24	Burmese	not ugly.. I just am not into girls who look like they are 10
25	Japanese	at least you can buy her panties out of a soda machine
26	Afghan	that National Geographic chick she is not
27	Cambodian	refuge camp material
28	Iranian	move away from the nuclear reactor
29	Romanian	thumb way down
30	Vietnamese	the classic definition of 'non descript asian chick'
31	Filipino	I think they used the same picture as the Vietnamese one
32	Chinese	she actually looks better than 50% of China.. And that's saying something
33	Latvian	This haircut sucked in 1982
34	Puerto Rican	now realize that she'll be 250 pounds by the time she's 24
35	South African	Michael Jackson???
36	Mexican	the only way this chick swims across a river is it it's made from fudge
37	Irish	built like a rugby player and belches like one too
38	Uzbek	dude this chick has an Adam's apple
39	Korean	I think you can still see a chunk of Kimchee on her chin.
99	Hungarian	that Eastern European life must be rough
100	Samoan	this chick needs a spear in her hand and a boar in the other

Take on the Natural Cut Fries from Wendy's

A few months ago Wendy's unveiled their newest creation in their attempt to kill American's by food.   and were so happy to send these IED's over to us that they were offering them up for free.    TOR stayed away for some time as there really are no equivalents for McDonalds' Fries which are far-and-away the best fries on the market but we felt like it was our obligation to our readership to review them.

I know there is a big push of rebranding in marketing, basically take the same shitty car you have been making and have Eminem driver around in it and all of a sudden you are writing a speech for your CLIO.      Well this is apparently what Wendy's did because the fries are the same soggy strips of fried potato they've always been.   The added sea-salt doesn't add flavor or enhance it but rather just accumulated at the bottom of the cup and even the baked look of the advertisement wasn't close to what they looked like in person.

 

We love a lot of other items on the Wendy's menu but the fries get two thumbs way down

Take On Amazon Reviews

Like many American's I do a lot of my shopping online between Amazon, Woot Overstock, Kodakgallery and FreshDirect I can get anything from electronics, pictures, groceries, diapers and a wine fridge delivered to my house for prices which are more than reasonable.   of course with any online operation you are putting faith into somebody else's hands.   You are depending and trusting the website to put out good products and although they usually offer a money-back guarantee if you get burned you are not as likely to come back.  But the best repercussion you always have is word-of-mouth.  If a company disappoints you then you will tell friends and colleagues about the negative experience which is death for a retailer especially one who cannot ever make a personal impression on you.
To combat this and to give people comfort there are often these areas for customer reviews which allow you to comment on an item you purchased.  In theory a natural community forms which helps fellow customers weed through the countless retailers on a place like Amazon.  The issue is that unless you have a really polarizing experience (good or bad) you really are never going to spend time writing up some lame review.
Well Amazon now sends out reminders and requests for reviews of items you bought and for somebody who easily buys 10 items per month online this becomes a daunting task.   Nobody asks me to review a cup of soup I buy at the deli or paper towels I buy at Rite Aid but in Amazon's world they pester you to review every last thing.
My biggest issue is that although some items are specialty items which might warrant a well thought out review the average purchase it completely mundane.
I just bought a bunch of Tassimo Coffee (went the Amazon route vs th Tassimo.com route after that last time)  and today Amazon is asking for a review with ratings on how satisfied I am.
What the hell should I say???  I ordered an item and paid for it and they delivered it.  I am not overly satisfied'and I am not disappointed I am just happy I got my coffee delivered..   I don't feel like they are owed anything more than a standard yes/no review.  Nothing made the experience exceptional or even noteworthy but I know the way people scan these things and if a retailer doesn't get 5 stars they are assumed to be bad.  I'm not hoping to put anybody out of business but don't feel like as a customer I should be doing backflips either.

 

 

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Take on Insomnia

I lay there trying desperately to relax, I try so hard it makes my eyes hurt.  The clock keeps ticking minutes away which I know will only mean that many less minutes I'll have to recover.  I toss, I turn, I kick the sheets off and I tuck them under and still I cannot find a comfortable spot.  I turn on sportstalk and after hearing the 10th ESPN analysists dissect the beauty of Aaron Rodger's spiral I feel like puking although I don't feel like sleeping.   Well that's wrong, I feel like sleeping but I just can't.   This is the cruelty of sleeplessness....the more you try the harder it becomes.
Now I've traveled the world which has meant being up at all hours watching the red lights of the alarm clock and wondering why they never come with a more soothing color like yellow or blue.  I have counted sheep, done math equations, sorted out playoff seedings for my Fantasy Football league and still I have not felt tired enough to let sleep overcome.
I have screamed, I have cried, I have laughed, I have physically assaulted myself but nothing can force a man to sleep..nothing
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Nastina

So I hear Christina Aguilera screwed up a couple of words to the Star Spangled Banner and the world is now in an uproar. I do get the fact that screwing this up is like a Broadway actor forgetting his lines or an NFL QB throwing an INT on an out pattern because he didn't step into the throw but when this is the most talked about part of the Superbowl than Goodell has more to worry about than week 17 blues and a terrible All-Star game.
I know Christina is not everybody's cup of tea and she is starting to look a bit like Tina Yothers but at the end of the day you have to hope that there is more to talk about in a Superbowl than the terrible half-time show and the national anthem.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

gatorade red

So after a 24 hour body cleanse which would make a colonic sound like a day at the beach, I feel like I'm getting my legs back under-me. Not sure what triggered it but there was something very wrong when you can't muster up enough energy to zipper your jeans. But after going through 24 hours of hell I must say that even the ass-puke, the fever, the hot-spells, the puking and the chills were nothing when compared to the Gatorade aftermath.
Everybody will tell you that you need electrolytes which although we are the most developed country in the world apparently can still only be found in Gatorade. I know the NBA and a few other leagues do their best to promote this stuff but it shocks me that anybody in their right mind could find this stuff appetizing as it is a completely vile concoction of food coloring a sugar. The marketing is genius because somehow they have convinced a generation not only that this is healthier than soda but more importantly that it tastes good .

But the biggest issue I have is not flavor or health based it's chemical based. What I can't figure out is what causes the remnants of gatorade I have left after drinking it for 24 hours straight. There is a layer of red pasted onto my teeth, my tongue's tastebuds have been covered over with a layer as thick as plastic and my lips feel like I've been putting on red-flavored lip-balm.
I'm not sure what part of the formulation does it but there is something in the Gatorade Red which bonds to human cells chemically because brushing, polishing or scrubbing can't seem to remove the two from one-another.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Please shoot me

I can't tell you how miserable a stomach virus can be. In 15 years, I do not remember anything that upended me like this thing. From the second I woke up to the hour I hung with my face in the toilet bowl and then the 12 hours where turning from one side to another seemed like a chore. My body feels like it's gone through all three months of P90X in one day and my head feels like I had 15 shots of tequila last night and my spirits feel like they do after the completion of any Jet season since 1969.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Big Mike

As long as I can remember I have listened to -and got my sports-opinions from- Mike Francesa.   During his prime while partnered with Chris 'MadDog' Russo, the show was can't-miss-radio for those of us who lived for good opinionated local coverage.   When the Knicks were great they took the Garden to task, when the Yankees were on top you'd have to be tuned to 660 on your AM dial at 1:05 because you had to know what the pulse of NY felt.   There were far from perfect as there were too many days when they delved into the minutia of historical baseball facts  on they'd spend hours changing their 'local' feel to some concocted fantasy that anybody cared about Leyton Hewitt or Kim Clijsters and of course their vacations were legendary as they seemed to be away from June through August and all of February to boot.   But even despite these flaws they were wildly entertaining, somehow the combination of one opinionated-blowhard matched with one in-the-closet psychopath made for must-listen-to-radio.

A few years ago the formula changed when the crazy one took his talents to the vast wastelands of satellite radio and left the fat one the honor of hosting the coveted afternoon drive slot.   Although I can only claim to have listened to Russo's show a handful of times, I have tried to stay loyal to Fatso and the rest of WFAN.  But the decline of WFAN's quality is so incredible for those of us who have listened for years.  First they failed to cultivate new talent and have never been able to pry any goods ones away from competitors but even this is better than the fact that they have steadily refused to sheppard out the old guard whose shtick had run dry a decade ago.     But throughout their quality decline the rating stayed good.  They are still tops in their most important demographics even as upstart (weird to think of anything coming out of Bristol as an upstart) ESPN radio started to make headway in the market.    I have moved all my sports-talk listening over to ESPN over the years yet stayed loyal to Francesa but slowly even I am bowing out of my undevoted love for the show.  

Mike's lost any of the fire he used to have, now content with waving off fans or playing footsies with Jim Nantz.   He so desperately needs a sidekick to keep him interested which is the only way he can remain interesting but his oversized ego will just not allow it.  

Just yesterday I get into the car and turn on WFAN and there I hear what sounds like I'm listening to an old man dying.  There is no energy in the studio, no back and forth and even when a caller comes on he gets dismissed so quickly that he doesn't even have a chance to leave an impression…It sounds like Mike is hosting over a funeral, but compare this to ESPN Radio and it sounds like Michael Kay and Don LaGreca are having an orgy.  There is music, banter, jokes, interviews and conversation about Big Ben getting drunk without anybody being obnoxious.  

Now let me be perfectly clear:  I don't like Michael Kay and the verbal felatio he performs on every person (not named Joe Torre) who has ever worn the Pinstripes.  I have never had a desire to turn on his radio show but Francesa has thrown in the towel so I'm forced to do something. 

Snow Boots

After spending 2 months of showing up top work with wet socks after stepping into a bunch of puddles en route, I have had enough. Today I marched up to the NorthFace Store and got myself a pair of gigantic water-proof boots so that I can actually spend a day not basically soaking my feet in a puddle of melted ice collected in my work-shoes
So as I walk out of the store with my little dorky smile on as I splash through puddles all the way up and down Broadway like a school-girl. As I get back to work and get onto a conference call I start to get incredibly uncomfortable, I'm not sure what it is but the glee I had on the street is wiped away. Before I know it I go from uncomfortable to annoyed to irritable to the point I can't sit there anymore. No I'm not going through caffeine withdrawal and it wasn't as if anybody on the call particularly irritated me...it takes me about 20 minutes to figure it out before I realize the ire of my anger.

These water-proof boots let absolutely zero air in too and it feels like somebody has put my feet into a pizza oven. Forget waterboading, if you want to know what Al Qaeda is gonna do next shove a pair of North Face waterproof boots on one of their operatives and you'll find OBL in 15 minutes.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

As American as Apple Pie

The official food of NYC is probably a slice of New York style pizza which I'm sure everybody can agree is an absolute staple. Other staples include dirty gyros from the grease carts, the pastrami Reuben or the bagel and it's hard to argue against any of them but there probably is a case to me made fir the hot-dog as the most New York meal.

Now there are many people will say that there is nothing as distinctly New York as a dirty-water dog from the many street vendors on the street and they do make a point but somehow the quality differs too much from cart to cart. Others may say the grilled dog on a warm summer day in Central Park should be considered and of course Nathans basically has a huge cult following even if their dogs taste like the crap you get at a gas-station on the Thruway.

But I will forever argue that there is no dog more New York than that made by the foreigners working behind the counter and grill at Grays Papaya. Now long one are the days when I'd walk in wirth my Old Man and we'd both be stuffed for $2, but even at $1.50 each pop sandwich brings together all the people of the city like Papayas. Just today I stood in line with 2 homeless guys, one Wall-street type, a lady in fur and a bunch of high-school ages Dominicans.
I walked out spending $6 which is a 600% increase from what I would have spent 25 years ago and it was still the best deal in the city.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I'd happily take this Subway every morning

First they gave us the wedge, then they gave us the 5 dollar footlong including hat catchy jingle and now Subway has done it again.. this time .by reinventing breakfast. There are times when TOR takes a step back from our daily critique and send out a bouquet to a person, organization or company and today's bouquet goes to sandwich deal.

I have found the greatest deal on the earth, the Subway Sunrise Melt with egg-whites, extra turkey, no bacon or ham, topped with cheddar cheese and garnished with banana peppers and tomatoes and then doused in chipolte sauce. You wash it down with a 16 ounce cup of coffee all for $2.50.
But the most important this is that it's not cheap but absolutely delicious, I'm literally licking the sauce of my fingers and BlackBerry keypad as we type this blog.
I don't know how they do it but I do know it is probably only possible as a business of scale so we need to get the word out so that the TOR masses start lining up at 7AM with three Washingtons clenched in their fists demanding a great sandwich and change
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry