Not that anyone should really care what Al Jazeera has to say ever, but it is interesting that it isn’t just some fabrication of outrage by the pro-Israel lobby that has Obama taking a beating.

The Al-Jazeera satellite television station recently broadcast footage of Obama on holiday in Hawaii, wearing shorts and playing golf, juxtaposed with scenes of bloodshed and mayhem in Gaza. Its report criticising “the deafening silence from the Obama team” suggested Obama is losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realise has even begun.

“People recall his campaign slogan of change and hoped that it would apply to the Palestinian situation,” Jordanian analyst Labib Kamhawi told Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune. “So they look at his silence as a negative sign. They think he is condoning what happened in Gaza because he’s not expressing any opinion.”

Regional critics claim Obama is happy to break his pre-inauguration “no comment” rule on international issues when it suits him. They note his swift condemnation of November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Obama has also made frequent policy statements on mitigating the impact of the global credit crunch.

Obama’s absence from the fray is also allowing hostile voices to exploit the vacuum. “It would appear that the president-elect has no intention of getting involved in the Gaza crisis,” Iran’s Resalat newspaper commented sourly. “His stances and viewpoints suggest he will follow the path taken by previous American presidents… Obama, too, will pursue policies that support the Zionist aggressions.”

Whether Obama, when he does eventually engage, can successfully elucidate an Israel-Palestine policy that is substantively different from that of Bush-Cheney is wholly uncertain at present.

It’s something he’s going to have to deal with sooner or later; it’s just a shame it’ll now appear as if he was shamed into doing so.

Here’s a warning to all you white male Senators out there: don’t count on having your job very long, and don’t count on being able to ever get it back if you lose it to a woman or a black person at some point. You see, there’s a new rule for the United States Senate. We’ll call it the rule of sames.

Sames applies to three things: Party, Race, and Sex.

We’re seeing the rule of sames in two Senate vacancies as we speak.

In Illinois, disgraced Governor Rod Blagojevich has been warned on numerous occasions that Barack Obama’s vacant seat belongs to a black man.

Chicago political consultant Philip Molfese said Blagojevich has no choice but to consider race in his decision.

“That’s, I think, an important consideration the governor has to take,” he said. “Barack Obama was the only African American in the U.S. Senate.”

Note they aren’t talking about qualifications or experience, just skin color. In New York, the situation is equally ridiculous, only instead of pigmentation, the issue is genitalia. Senator Hillary Clinton was chosen to be Obama’s Secretary of State, leaving Governor David Paterson the chance to pick her replacement. It’s expected he’ll replace her with a Democrat, but calls have been coming continuously for him to replace her with someone of similar genitalia:

“As a woman, as a feminist, I think it’s time to put another woman in the seat,” CNN contributor and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said. “I think Caroline Kennedy will bring a great deal to the table.”

When did race and gender become the primary consideration in chosing a replacement for the Senate? I only ask because I’ve never heard anyone tell a Governor to replace a white male with another white male so as to not upset the balance of the Senate. In fact, I’ve often heard of such replacements referred to as “opportunities” to bring about… You guessed it… Change!

I fully expect Governors to bring in people of the same party. No one is that free thinking (save for Jesse Ventura who, despite his utter idiocy and conspiracy theory dopeyness had the stones to tell the Democrats to eff off after the Paul Wellstone funeral and picked an independent to fill his seat) in the year 2008. That being said, it bothers me that we’ve essentially employed affirmative action in the Senate with replacements being seated. I don’t doubt the character of either of the two choices, either. Caroline Kennedy is a good person with a solid community resume, and Roland Burris was an Attorney General under one of the few Illinois Governors that aren’t in jail for corruption. That being said, is picking a Senator based on such arbitrary things as gender and skin color a good thing?

Let’s take a look at what happens if Kennedy does get the nod in New York State. Picking her means not picking Andrew Cuomo, another Democrat, and my choice for the seat. By not picking Cuomo, Governor Paterson would be passing on a man who is the current Attorney General of the State of New York, and a man who was the head of the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; a cabinet-level position. Caroline Kennedy, on the other hand, has absolutely zero experience and has actively avoided politics her entire life.

Who would you choose? And if you say Caroline Kennedy, on what basis other than gender are you making that choice?

As with most affirmative action-style programs, the choices made in the name of diversity and affirmative action often leave more qualified and better-suited people on the outs for positions they should, by all means, be entitled to. If Andrew Cuomo wants the position, he should be able to walk into David Paterson’s office and say “I want it,” and walk out with it. Instead, the Governor will have to contend with dopes like Donna Brazile who think the only requirement needed in the year 2008 is a vagina.

Something’s wrong there and it doesn’t take a gynecologist to see it.

On Friday afternoon, in a fit of complete and utter “nothing to do”-ness, I rented The Dark Knight on my AppleTV. I decided it was finally time to buy into the hype and see what all the fuss was about. As someone who really enjoyed Batman Begins (even saw it in the iMax) I had a feeling I’d love The Dark Knight just as much. After all, people have been relatively shameless in calling for it to be named best movie ever and Heath Ledger to be named Pope, King, and Jesus Christ’s direct descendent.

Are you people out of your damn minds?

After watching The Dark Knight, which can only be called the most overly-long movie I’ve ever seen, I can only assume that people calling for Ledger’s coronation into the annals of great Hollywood performances did so because the man is dead and will be for the foreseeable future, and they felt a debt of obligation to lift a decent (but certainly not great) actor to a level he didn’t acquire while he was alive.

Ledger was good, but his performance was nothing remarkable. In a cast of stars in a pretty good (but not great movie) he was definitely right there with the rest, but I think the people who loved his performance as much as they did were more caught up in the myth of Heath than the performance he was giving.

A smart man I know responded thusly when I mentioned I didn’t get the accolades for Ledger:

Agreed. All actors know the easiest roles are playing psychos.

He’s 100% right, and for that reason alone, Ledger’s performance is utterly forgettable. Another over-the-top cookie cutter psycho. He may have brought a new dimension to the Joker character and elevated him from campy to evil, but that isn’t worthy of the praise he’s received and if he was alive, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now.

You’ll never convince me otherwise.

As Barack Obama was running for President, many of us wondered how he would deal with Israel. Typically, very few Democrats ever take strong positions on Israel and Israel defending themselves unless they’re from a predominantly Jewish area (for example, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, for the most part, are very much pro Israel). The question marks come when you’re from an area that’s very left-leaning and not as much Jewish.

In Barack Obama’s weekly address this week, we got our answer, whether he wanted to give it to us or not. His address to the nation (because, as you know, it’s important for a man who holds no office yet to tell you what he thinks) this week did not mention Israel. Not one time. Not at all. Not even in passing. In fact, since Change.gov launched, Israel has only been mentioned once, and then only in the concept of a general foreign policy outline.

I’m not saying he needs to layout his entire plan, or that he even has to come charging onto the camera and call for Hamas to be destroyed. What bothers me most, however, is that this conflict has been going on forever, and over the past month has escalated. Originally, it was Hamas and their lackeys firing rockets into Southern Israel, hundreds at a time, for a few weeks. Eventually Israel started striking back, and it escalated this weekend with Israel sending ground troops into Gaza.

Despite this escalation, Barack Obama has chosen to make the topic of this week’s address the economy.

Doesn’t that seem odd to anyone?

Now you may say that his video is pre-done. That’s fine. This conflict isn’t new and he hasn’t addressed it yet. President-elect Obama doesn’t seem to have an opinion on the issue in any way. In fact, the AP noticed it and contacted the Obama campaign to get some clarification.

As the clock ticks down to Barack Obama’s inauguration, the US president-elect has kept silent on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its latest deadly turn in the Gaza Strip.

Obama transition officials have ventured little more than saying their boss is “monitoring” the situation in Gaza, where at least 460 people have been killed in eight days of air raids before a ground offensive began Saturday.

In the same period, Gaza militant rockets have killed four Israelis and wounded several dozen people.

“The president-elect is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza,” his national security spokeswoman Brooke Anderson said in a statement after the ground assault got underway.

But she offered no further comment on the violence in Gaza and used a phrase repeated often by Obama and his aides: “There is one president at a time and we intend to respect that.”

Oddly enough, the fact that there is only “one president at a time” has never kept the Obama “transition team” from discussing other issues such as the economy, the environment, and so on. 16 days from the inauguration, and this is the issue he’s decided to defer to the President on? I guess there wasn’t only one President back in July, when Barack Obama told the New York Times:

In a July interview with The New York Times, Obama said he did not think that “any country would find it acceptable to have missiles raining down on the heads of their citizens.

“If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” he said. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

As for talking with Hamas, Obama told the Times that it was “very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries.”

It would be nice if our future President would stand by his words, but I don’t see it happening. He’ll just defer to W. until he’s in office and then make no decisions and defer to Congress. This is the guy you elected, America. President Hopeandchange.

A teen convicted in the “Jena Six” beating case shot himself in the chest and was taken to the hospital Monday, days after his arrest on a shoplifting charge, police said.

Mychal Bell’s wound isn’t life threatening, said Monroe Police Sgt. Cassandra Wooten. The 18-year-old used a .22-caliber firearm in the shooting around 7:40 p.m., she said.

Wooten believes Bell was upset over media coverage of the arrest last week.

“I think he was upset over the incident … and didn’t want to be in the news again,” she said.

Way to go, dope. You sure accomplished that goal.

I’ve never understood the contradiction of Blue States. On one hand, they’ll tell you left and right that money should be confiscated from the rich to help the poor; it is after all their solemn obligation as citizens of these here United States to do the right thing for their fellow man. We’re often reminded, particularly during election time, that candidate X or candidate Y is not going to be benefitting the working class. In fact, you need to only look back as far as the prior election to see plenty examples of President Elect Barack Obama telling us that everyone (except him, of course) has plans to hurt blue collar workers.

A few weeks ago, New York introduced their “doomsday” budget which included new taxes on all kinds of fun stuff like beer, soda, movies, etc. New York City’s MTA is also going through a massive budget crisis requiring them to raise fares from $2.00 per ride to $2.50 per ride in the next few weeks. On top of that, North Carolina was reported as working on a plan to get drivers to have their odometers checked once a year so that they could be taxed on the miles they drove.

Apparently, Oregon caught wind of it and is now in the planning stages of implementing a similar tax, this time based on GPS positioning.

A year ago, the Oregon Department of Transportation announced it had demonstrated that a new way to pay for roads — via a mileage tax and satellite technology — could work.

Now Gov. Ted Kulongoski says he’d like the legislature to take the next step.

As part of a transportation-related bill he has filed for the 2009 legislative session, the governor says he plans to recommend “a path to transition away from the gas tax as the central funding source for transportation.”

What that means is explained on the governor’s website:

“As Oregonians drive less and demand more fuel-efficient vehicles, it is increasingly important that the state find a new way, other than the gas tax, to finance our transportation system.”

According to the policies he has outlined online, Kulongoski proposes to continue the work of the special task force that came up with and tested the idea of a mileage tax to replace the gas tax.

The governor wants the task force “to partner with auto manufacturers to refine technology that would enable Oregonians to pay for the transportation system based on how many miles they drive.”

This got me thinking… Oregon, New York, and North Carolina are Blue States. If you notice, you don’t hear about these draconian taxes being proposed in Red States at all, only Blue States; the ones that supposedly care most about the hard working average guy. The problem with that, of course, is that every single one of these taxes that are being proposed are 100% regressive, meaning they hurt the poor and working class more than the upper wealthy class.

How do people reconcile this? They never explain how this isn’t a regressive tax that hurts the working stiff more than it hurts the upper class. Put it another way: some guy making $250,000 and driving a $75,000 car to work every day has to pay $500 a year in road-use taxes. Another guy barely making ends meet has to pay the same tax. Who does it hurt more? I’m not about class warfare and I’m certainly not saying this should only be a tax on the “rich” people who drive, but I’m bringing this up as a point of questioning; how do those who claim everything is an attack on the poor and working class reconcile that with regressive taxation that will, in the end, only hurt the bottom income levels?

Let’s face it; the Blue States love putting their hands in your pockets, no matter your income level, and the next time you hear some lefty loon telling you how evil Red Staters are only out for the rich, ask yourself how a regressive tax such as a road use tax actually helps the poor. And, when you come up with that answer, leave it in the comments, because I sure as hell would like to know the answer myself.

No sooner do I write a post castigating two of the biggest blowhards in social media when I get a present dropped in my lap in the form of an idiotic post from the internet’s top idiot, Robert Scoble.

To refresh (in case going back to yesterday is too much for some of you!), here’s what I wrote on this very topic yesterday.

That’s what Web 2.0 is as of 2008, and what it’s likely to be in 2009. The so-called “thought leaders” who don’t allow actual thought unless it’s in lockstep with theirs, and the mindless drones who follow them in the hopes that riding those coattails long enough will get them the fame they so desire. Maybe, with some luck, that shell will be cracked and original thinkers will emerge from this cesspool of unoriginal milquetoast garbage, but I think true thinkers are just going to avoid the space entirely so as not to have to be stifled by the Laportes and Scobles of the world.

Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic, dared to insinuate that Twitter should allow searches based on authority, and according to Lemur, a reasonable measure of authority would be follower count.

What we need is search by authority in Twitter Search. Technorati had nailed it years ago by allowing searches filtered by number of links the blogger had. It would be very easy for Twitter to add an authority line in their search criteria, with the number of followers so that you can search for say, only people who have more than a thousand followers and see what they say. React as fast as you can for criticism from them. It is not a criteria for being smart or not, but clearly a criteria for how fast something can spread.

Seems totally reasonable, right? He even backed it with examples in his post.

Comments about your brand or yourself coming from @techcrunch with 36000 followers are not equal than someone with 100 followers. Most people use Twitter with a few friends, but when someone who has thousands, if not tens of thousands of followers starts to speak, you have to pay attention.

Brands do pay attention and already start understanding the difference. We made the experiment with Ben Metcalfe. I started complaining that Sprint was not offering the new Blackberry (they still don’t, I want a BB Bold with worldwide unlimited data) on Twitter and minutes later a Sprint representative contacted me and offered me VIP customer service. I loved it. For the experiment, @dotben started also complaining about the same issue (and really would love a Bold too, it was true) but nothing happened for Ben. Why not? Sprint understood that I have nearly 10x the number of followers of Ben so I had to be answered immediately, even with my weird last name no one can pronounce. Ben has almost 2000 followers, I think Sprint should actually pay attention too.

So far, everything he’s said is rooted in solid logic, right? So what happens? Scoble tears him a new one for daring to insinuate that follower count should be relative to a person’s authority, because, as you know, everyone can have tons of followers really easy. Forget the fact that most of the “uber Twitterers” are considered authoritative and happen to appear the top of the list (that little fact doesn’t get mentioned in Scoble’s diatribe), you just have to understand one simple facet of Twitter and Twitter relationships.

Here’s why I’ve been saying for the past year that it is far more important who you follow than who follows you: if you follow people just to get followers you’ll end up being overworked, deep in information overload, and superficial to boot.

Remember… This is Robert Scoble writing this, not Vincent Ferrari. That would be this Robert Scoble:

Yep, that same Robert Scoble who’s following over 20,000 people wants you to believe that such a number is unimportant and having too many followers makes you superficial. Of course he isn’t applying that to himself; just you. He hand-selected all 20,000 followers because they were “thought leaders.” We won’t get into his auto-refollow script that Twitter was running for him that automatically followed back every single person who followed him; I’m sure he was only expecting thought leaders to follow him at the time.

The reaction to Le Meur’s post have proven, in a better way than I ever could even hope to, just how devoid of thought people like Scoble really are. Le Meur makes a thoughtful request for a feature he would like to see and backs it up with two examples, and then Scoble comes screaming into the room about how that’s a stupid idea, it would ruin Twitter, and cause world hunger, all the while completely ignoring that the feature could be optional, meaning if you don’t like it, don’t use it! Ahh, but it doesn’t work that way, because in the world of Web 2.0 where people like Scoble are the self-professed keeper of the kingdom, a feature they don’t want is a feature that shouldn’t exist at all.

Because they’re smart.

And they know what’s good for you.

Incidentally, Mike Arrington beats Scoble over the head for his stupidity pretty solidly.

I think, if anything, the BS term of the year would have to be “community.” In the era of social networking and social media, everything is all about community. We have to have twittering plants, twittering babies, and even blogs for our kids who aren’t even old enough to speak, let alone write. But does any of this promote an actual “community?” Well, that really depends on how you define community.

For example, head into the Twit forums and criticize Leo Laporte. Surely you know Leo Laporte. He’s the tech guy who used to be at the top of the tech podcasting heap on iTunes who’s now relegated to lists that include “Classic” podcasts. Whereas he used to put time and effort into his podcasts, he can’t be bothered now because he has an office in Petaluma where he streams video of him shooting the shit with his “friends” on Stickcam. Yep, Leo’s a real trooper, so go ahead and tell him his shows are losing what made them great a few years ago (namely, the attention he used to put into them). Or, if you really want to be bold, suggest how he could do better.

You will undoubtedly and immediately be pounced upon as if you were promoting Hitler in a Jewish forum. You see, your criticism is not welcome in that forum. Laporte himself has said he’s tired of the criticism, and insists that despite the donations and sponsors, he’s doing Twit for free (an obvious and blatant lie) and his “community members” jump right in to back him up, never questioning the stupidity of the claims. Your criticism ruins the “community,” because in the web 2.0 world, a community is no place for disagreement or criticism of any kind.

Then of course there are morons like Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. Go ahead and follow them on Twitter. You’ll really enjoy it if you like milquetoast non-interesting blather from two dopes whose biggest claim to fame is that they showed up to their co-written book’s launch naked. No, I won’t share that picture; no one should have to look at that. Their book, Naked Conversations, was designed to get businesses to open up and be more transparent. You were told to accept criticism from your customers and learn from it. So what do they do if they see a tweet or post they don’t like? Why, they block you, of course because your negativity is hurting their community and upsetting the folks who do what you’re supposed to do in the web 2.0 world: kiss arse.

Let’s face one fact about this whole Web 2.0 thing. It isn’t about community, it’s about communalism. It’s the idea that I can build an army of like-minded people who don’t dare think for themselves. It’s a power-hungry group of kids who were never popular in school trying to make up for it by showing you how powerful they are now. Folks like Leo Laporte and Robert Scoble have rings that must be kissed, lest you not be allowed into their club. There is no community of equals, only a community of like-minded automatons that are there to validate everything you do and say and promote your words to the unwashed masses.

That’s what Web 2.0 is as of 2008, and what it’s likely to be in 2009. The so-called “thought leaders” who don’t allow actual thought unless it’s in lockstep with theirs, and the mindless drones who follow them in the hopes that riding those coattails long enough will get them the fame they so desire. Maybe, with some luck, that shell will be cracked and original thinkers will emerge from this cesspool of unoriginal milquetoast garbage, but I think true thinkers are just going to avoid the space entirely so as not to have to be stifled by the Laportes and Scobles of the world.

Let’s play hypotheticals. After all, I love them more than I love many other things in the world.

It’s 9/12/01, and the United States has just been attacked by terrorists. As thousands of Americans are now dead, the President says we don’t need to have any investigations into what happened and the intelligence failures that lead to it. In fact, we should just sit tight because George W. Bush would let his government investigate itself. A few months later, Tom Delay comes out and says there’s nothing to see, and standing beside him, Robert Moller, the head of the FBI nods approvingly.

How many people in the real world would suddenly go “Oh, phew, the government says the government didn’t do anything wrong. Let’s all relax, now.”

Hopefully nobody, right?

Well, we know that we didn’t have such a thing happen because we ended up having a 9/11 Commission that, essentially, wasted millions upon millions of tax dollars only to arrive at the conclusion that it was a failing of many agencies, a too-strict ahderence to protocols that crippled them, and a lack of preparedness on the part of the airlines. No matter how obvious it was, we needed an independent commission to tell us this.

A few months ago, many of the Presidential candidates (and even some current members of the House and Senate) were talking about an independent commission to investigate the causes for going to war with Iraq. Oh sure, President Bush told us it was for the right reasons, but why believe him? He’s part of the problem man! Talks are still circulating that this is what the left side of the aisle wants, and some have even mentioned impeachment.

In the corruption case of Rod Blagojevich, we’ve seen no such objectivity. On Wednesday, the Obama team dumped a huge lump of documents on reporters about to break for their Christmas vacation, and in essence they just told everyone, “yeah, everything’s cool. Nothing to see here, move along.” We’re meant to believe that because Obama’s team has told us that there was nothing improper in regards to his vacant Senate seat, we should believe him.

When the hell did this happen? Why is it that we have to have an independent commision and investigation to look into everything that happens except whether or not the President Elect of the United States or one of his duly appointed surrogates acted improperly in trying to buy a Senate seat from the Governor of Illinois? Why is it that his word is good enough for everyone?

For 8 years, under President Bush, as the media questioned every move he made and word he spoke, we heard about the importance of an adversarial media. Was that just a smoke screen for their partisan bias and bitter sting from their fair-haired boys Al Gore and John Kerry losing their respective elections to this man who they went out of their way to portray as an incompetent dope?

It’s something to think about as the Blagojevich case moves along and we start hearing the media taking Obama and his team on their word that nothing improper was done. I for one am sick of the double-standards.

It isn’t safe for planes to take off, and cars driving around are sliding like they’re on slip and slides. What do the scumbags who run the hansom cabs do? Why, they keep them working, of course!

No one I know in NYC is in favor of these insane hansom cab rides, and the city itself promised to deal with the conditions these poor horses are forced to work under. In all the time that has passed since, we have nothing that resembles better working conditions for these animals or regulations for their treatment.

Instead, we have hundreds upon hundreds of corn-fed midwesterners in NYC every day with their drawls telling us how ahhhhsum it is to rod a hawrse in nue yoooork siddy.

Animals can’t speak for themselves, and it’s our obligation to be good stewards. That video above should be a wake up call to people that we can do better.

via Gothamist

The insane just gets insaner…

Justice Plummer Lott declared a mistrial Monday afternoon in the case of Lee Woods, 30, after a female juror, who had reported hearth palpitations and high blood pressure on Friday morning, said that she was unable to resume deliberations until she underwent more tests.

State law prohibits substituting an alternate juror once deliberations are underway, unless the defendant agrees. That didn’t happen.

“He is upset in the first instance because he wanted a verdict,” said lawyer Sam Karliner. “He wanted to see this through…However, the jury that he wanted, including that juror, was unable to continue.”

The parties will return to court Jan. 14 to plan for the retrial.

He wanted a verdict? My ass. He wanted to delay it and try again. Getting a verdict wouldn’t have been a difficult thing, particularly since the jury was already in deliberations; what he wanted was a favorable verdict. Most definitely not the same thing.

And secondly, what the hell is going on with the DA’s office? Three cut and dried cases of murder, and they got one conviction, one walk, and a mistrial? For a baseball player, .333 is a good average. For a DA? It’s a disgrace.

Between this case, and the Brancato case, maybe it’s time we cleaned house and got some competent prosecutors? I think Michael Cutter would work.

Well color me stunned. A few days after a jury let Robert Ellis walk for murdering Russell Timoshenko, they also let Lillo Brancato walk for murdering a police officer. To be honest, I never saw that coming.

Former actor Lillo Brancato has been cleared of the most serious charges against him, including murder in the shooting death of off-duty police officer Daniel Enchautegui.

However, the jury did find him guilty of attempted burglary in the first degree and will be sentenced on January 16th.

The jury weighing the case against Lillo Brancato was sent home Friday because a juror had a prior obligation.

Jurors told the judge last week they were deadlocked 11 to 1, and asked the judge for two of the charges to be read to them again.

I have to wonder if the jurors heard about Ellis getting the skate before they made their decision, thinking that if they couldn’t pin a murder rap on him when he was admittedly in the same car a few feet away from the shooting of Timoshenko, how could they in good conscience send Brancato away for a similar offense?

Whatever the case, Brancato will be sentenced soon and I fully expect the judge to show a ton of leniency. I wouldn’t be surprised if rehab was involved, either.

Source

We’ve heard the word sacrifice come up quite often in recent weeks; usually in the same context; how much the “rich” (whichever loosely defined income group they decide “rich” are) needs to give back as a privilege for making money.

What shouldn’t surprise you, however, is that Congress has no intention of taking the lead and giving anything up. At a time when many Americans are starting to live paycheck to paycheck, and state governments are figuring out new and exciting ways to tax every little thing that people do, think about, or enjoy, Congress is about to get a nice little raise in the form of a $4,700 “Cost of Living” increase.

Each lawmaker’s annual salary is due for a $4,700 cost-of-living increase starting in January, which will amount to a cost to taxpayers of $2.5 million in 2009, infuriating watchdog groups.

“Members of Congress don’t deserve one additional dime of taxpayer money in 2009,” said Tom Schatz, president of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste.

“While thousands of Americans are facing layoffs and downsizing, Congress should be mortified to accept a raise,” he said in a written statement.

Members of Congress make an average of $169,300 a year, with Congressional leaders making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cailf., makes $217,400, while the majority and minority leaders in the House and Senate each make $188,100.

The raise will increase the average salary to about $174,000, up 2.8 percent.

Pelosi’s and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s offices did not respond to FOXNews.com’s requests for comment.

So as the government hands out tons of free money to bank after bank, automakers, and manufacturers of arrows for childrens’ bows and not figuring out for one minute how we can afford these massive “fix your crappy business” fees, we now have to watch congress people collect an additional $4,700 for doing, well, whatever the hell it is they do.

Apparently, at a time when consumer prices are low, inflation is non-existent, and gas prices are through the floor, we now have to accept that poor Representatives and Senators just can’t function on a mere $170,000 a year, despite the fact that much of their daily lives is already subsidized by taxpayers anyway!

In the end, what does Congress give up as they preach to everyone about how gluttonous they are and what they need to sacrifice? It would appear that the answer is absolutely nothing.

But you already knew that.

Fox News via Wizbang

From the NY Daily News:

A jury convicted triggerman Dexter Bostic of murdering Officer Russel Timoshenko Friday night, ensuring he will rot in prison.

The verdict - guilty on all counts - was handed down after 14 hours of deliberations over two days.

“It was a pretty watertight case,” said a 29-year-old juror, the only white person on the jury of 10 African-Americans and one Latino.

“The men [on the jury] were saying, ‘These were bad dudes, these were gang bangers,’” said the woman, who asked not to be identified. “We felt they were on a crime spree that weekend.”

The decision came as a relief to Timoshenko’s parents, who were shocked when another jury acquitted Bostic’s co-defendant, Robert Ellis, two days earlier.

A third jury will continue deliberating the fate of the final suspect, Lee Woods, on Monday.

The most horrific part of the Dexter Bostic conviction is that it was based on a crime that happened inside a car that Robert Ellis, who was not convicted of murder last week, was driving. Defense lawyers made a point of telling everyone that he wasn’t, in fact, the shooter, and was just the driver in a car where the shooting happened. Well, now that we know for sure that one of the passengers in the car did, in fact, kill Russell Timoshenko, how can Richard Ellis walk on the murder rap?

That doesn’t make any sense to anyone with half a brain.

Put that in context with the absolute insane vigor that the prosecutors in the Bronx are using to go after actor Lillo Brancato, Jr., a case the jury is still deliberating on.

A Bronx jury finished its third day of deliberations yesterday without a verdict in the cop-killing trial of actor-turned-drug addict Lillo Brancato.

The panel, after announcing a day earlier that it was deadlocked by a single holdout, deliberated all day until being dismissed at 4 p.m.

The jury, which spent its first day in acrimonious talks, will return Monday.

Brancato, 32, is charged with felony murder in the Dec. 10, 2005, shooting of off-duty Officer Daniel Enchautegui. Brancato’s drug-addled friend, Steven Armento, shot the three-year veteran.

Note that Brancato was charged with murder even though he wasn’t the trigger man. If the jury found that Ellis didn’t pull the trigger based on testimony that proved that at least one of the other passengers of the car he was driving did, why is he not guilty of murder? I don’t know anyone in this city, police officer or civilian, who isn’t baffled by the Ellis / Bostic / Woods case, and it ought to be interesting to see the verdict when the jury gets back on the Brancato case because the situations are almost identical.

My guess is that Brancato gets put away and we’re left scratching our heads trying to figure out how Ellis beat a clear-cut murder rap.

Governor Paterson warned that a tax on the “wealthy” may be hitting New York State soon in an effort to close the budget gap that no one saw coming. In a prepared statement to the media, Paterson warned:

“Taxing the wealthy is probably going to be part of the solution if the deficit gets any worse, and all indications are that it probably will. If the deficit starts to grow again, then we’re out of moves. I’ve cut as much as I could.”

While the Governor gives his doomsday scenario and tells everyone that he’s already made cuts to everything, anyone in the know can just sit back and laugh because despite the “cuts,” Paterson’s plan for FY 2009 will see spending go up 5.5% from where it is right now. The question is, what did Paterson actually cut that caused spending to actually rise 5%?

Well, nothing. In a word, Paterson has done what politicians (particularly activist Democrats) have been doing for years; they call a slowed rate of growth a cut.

Allow me to give you an example.

Let’s say your allowance is $5 a week from mom and dad. Every year they raise your allowance one dollar, so that after five years, your allowance is now ten dollars a week. Realizing they can’t keep up the pace, they decide to raise it in year ten by only fifty cents. Your allowance after five years is now $10.50 instead of the $11.00 you were expecting it to be. In any normal mind, you got a $0.50 raise because your allowance went up $0.50. In the activist Democrat mind, your allowance was cut $0.50 because you didn’t get the dollar you normally got.

For example, while people gnash teeth about things like the “$700m cut to education,” buried in the explanation is that most of that relies on a four-year delay in increased aid to pre-kindergarten classes and a hike to tuition for CUNY and SUNY schools. The “doomsday” budget also includes “cuts” to Medicaid that, by some miracle, manage to raise spending on Medicaid by $1.1bn. How does that exactly work?

In the end, the New York State budget is a damn joke. Albany has no idea how to balance a budget, and for years has done so by increasing taxes and fees but rarely ever makes any cuts in their budget. This year is no exception because despite the “devastating effects” of the budget and the huge deficit we face, the Governor’s new budget is higher than the one that got us into this mess to begin with.

From Fox News, Wednesday December 17th:

Twenty-two of the 36 states facing budget deficits this fiscal year are increasing spending. Yes, increasing. Many states are collecting significantly less revenue than they counted on when budgets were drafted six months ago.

Spending cuts or tax increases will be necessitated because a number of states are required by law to balance their budgets. Cybercast News reports a survey from the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers released this week says the biggest offender is Nevada which at mid-year was $115 million in debt but plans to increase spending by just over 11%. New York will spend about 5.5% more despite being $1.8 billion in the red. Rounding out the top five are Ohio, North Carolina and Connecticut.

If that doesn’t stand out to you as utterly ridiculous, nothing will.

This chick cracked me up.

Just for the record, I hate the jewelry commercials, too…

via Meg @ Consumerist

UPDATE: The stupid video embed isn’t working, so you can watch it here also.