Cliff Lee!

So who's your fourth starter? Hot stove season finally warmed up in always sunny Philadelphia. Cliff Lee is a Phillie (again).
Here's another Philadelphian named Lee to start off the day "shouting out loud":

Shouldn't Pretty Pictures make me feel better?

Take a look a the graph on the left and then in your best TalkingHead voice repeat after me: "Obama and the Democrats in Congress are bankrupting our nation with out of control spending."
Now giggle. There, feel better? No? How about if I tell you that the projections in the chart don't take into account the additional expenses of the new Medicare Prescription Drug Program (part D) enacted in 2003, because some of it's estimated 880 billion dollar cost is offset by savings elsewhere.
Still don't feel better?
It's stupid, and if you didn't laugh you'd cry. After 8 years of hearing how everything from 9-11 to the economy was Clinton's fault, then when Wall Street collapsed the Talking Heads on the Right had to go back to 1977 and blame Jimmy Carter for the housing crisis, suddenly the current budget crisis is the fault of the guy with less than 24 months in office. The guy that took office in the middle of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression.
I'm not exempting Obama or the soon-to-be-defunct 111th Congress from blame. They punted on the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts all Summer, when they could have forced the Republican hand, in a vain attempt to save their majority in the House. It was a calculated bit of political cowardice that backfired, and led directly, IMHO, to the current budget-busting extension awaiting approval by Congress.
I know, I know it's a "stimulus" bill. Parts of it certainly are, but not the estate tax provision. Don't take my word for it, hear (or read) it straight from the horse's mouth.
Lower taxes on estates, capital gains, and dividends "mean they (the wealthy) won't have to invest so aggressively, or risk as much - or create so many jobs."
Higher taxes on the wealthy mean less money to leave their heirs unless they invest aggressively and grow the estate. Lower taxes means the super-rich can park their money in safe, low-yield vehicles like Municipal Bonds and still leave a never-work-a-day-in-your-life fortune to their children and grandchildren.
Guess which of these two scenarios creates jobs and encourages the kind of investment that drives the economy?
So all that rhetoric about cutting taxes so the "job creators" can "create jobs"? Hooey. Taxing the rich forces them to put their money to work, which puts Americans to work.

Find the Lady

Watch carefully folks, as Sean Hannity lambastes the left for their use of "harsh vitriol" directed at Republicans, while calling the President "The Anointed One", just one of his pet names for Barack Obama.

Careful attention as the cards move around, Follow the Lady folks. Just as his favorite pollster, Frank Luntz, tries to explain the problem is neither side takes the time to listen to the other, Hannity interrupts him.

The short con continues as Hannity, the man that just referred to the POTUS as the "Anointed One", who regularly refers to Barack Obama as a "radical Socialist", who along with Rush Limbaugh have accused him of "promoting domestic terrorism", and derisively addresses President Obama as the "Messiah" nearly daily on his radio show, innocently declares the problem is strictly attributable to "the Left" and Luntz states he "doesn't disagree". Huh?

Finally, Hannity declares ala Glenn Beck that if he were to use such harsh terms as the President and Members of Congress used this week about the President, he would be fired.

So calling the President a terrorist would get you fired, huh Sean? Then why do you still have a job?

What, me worry?

Polls confirm the obvious: Conservatives don't actually care about the debt. Nor do they care about the deficit.

They want their money, and they want it all.

Damn the consequences, and all the gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing about "the world we're leaving for our children and grandchildren" is smoke and mirrors while they pick your pocket.

Ohhh - scary food police are trying to starve us!

Glenn Beck thinks the FDA is out to starve America!

I am amazed, and stunned, and as usual Jon Stewart helps me make sense of it all.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Food, the Bad and the Ugly
www.thedailyshow.com
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Nigeria Charges Dick Cheney in 419 scam!

Okay, not really. Instead they are charging him with an All-American crime, bribery.

Might I suggest some reading material for Mr. Cheney to while away his time behind bars, should his heart condition not exclude him from jail time?

Yet the rich get richer

"I mean, if we can't win that argument we might as well just fold up," he said. "These people are saying we are going to insist on tax cuts for the richest people in the country and we don't care if they are paid for, and we don't think it is a problem if it contributes to the deficit, but we are not going to vote to extend unemployment benefits to working people if they aren't paid for because they contribute to the deficit. I mean, what is wrong with that? How can it be more clear?" -- outgoing Ohio governor Ted Strickland

This interview with soon-to-be-former Ohio governor Ted Strickland is refreshingly honest, in a way that, unfortunately, is only displayed by Democrats exiting office, not those currently in office. Compromise isn't a one way street, and when the person you are attempting to compromise with is someone whose only goal is your political downfall I'd say it's a dead end street.

Or a back alley.

When up to 3.6 million Americans are gainfully employed due to legislation your opponent wanted to fail miserably because misery and controversy sell ads, and continues today to laugh about children losing health care coverage - when this is what passes for leadership from the right side of the aisle - the Left can't win that argument?

The Left, or at least the portion of the Left represented by the Democratic Party in Congress and the White House, passed major health care legislation that shaves over a trillion dollars off the deficit while covering 95% of all Americans, prevented another Great Depression and enacted legislation to reform Wall Street to help prevent a recurrence of the collapse that got us into the mess in the first place.

 Lets not even get in to the resurgent GM and the subsequent successful IPO.

All of that, a partial listing at best of recent accomplishments that directly benefit a vast majority of Americans, and the populist party is the Republican Party? The Party that insists on ending unemployment benefits for millions of Americans at Christmas? The Party that insists on a massive tax cut for the richest people in the land damn the consequences?

I wish Billy Mays was still with us. I bet he could sell the message for the Democrats.

My Favorite Singer/Songwriter Sharon Van Etten

Has a tiny desk concert up at NPR. Enjoy.

But because it is right . . .

Today Ted Sorenson died at age 82. He was best known as an advisor to President John F. Kennedy, and the speech writer who composed Kennedy's 1961 Inaugural Address.
Much of the language employed reflects the times, smack dab in the middle of the Cold War, but it also reflects a basic civility and respect for humanity that is easy to forget, and hard to practice. Thanks to Messrs. Stewart and Colbert for reminding us to practice basic civility, and thanks to Mr. Sorenson posthumously for his wonderful words so many years ago.

Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation,"² a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

Carlos and the Fam at the Christening

Carlos and the Fam at the Christening
Originally uploaded by djkntz

This day seems like it was yesterday. Carlos stopped by on the Mille for Evie's Baptism, I think he kinda freaked out the Monsignor when he arrived in leather jacket and helmet.
Today she started her first day at St. Martin of Tours school, the same church on the corner where she was baptized.
I have a little less hair and a couple more pounds, truth be told, but man do I feel older than I should.

Erik Buell Racing to release 1190RS street bike

It's been nearly a year since the fine folks at Harley-Davidson abruptly closed the doors on Buell Motorcycles, leaving nearly 200 people jobless in a tight economy, and stranding thousands of current Buell owners, myself included, with White Elephant motorcycles.

This is a video posted by Erik Buell the day of the announcement"



He looks like a beaten man, one whose lifelong dream to produce a great American Superbike, a bike he was on the cusp of producing, had ended.

That moment quickly passed, and Erik left HD, founding Erik Buell Racing to provide support for existing racers of Buell motorcycles, and campaign the already homologated 1125RR in American Superbike with a shoestring budget and a relatively unknown privateer named Geoff May, ostensibly pursuing what HD head Keith Wandell derisively referred to as "Erik's racing hobby".
If HD thought Erik Buell would go gently into retirement, they greatly underestimated him. Here's an interview with Geoff May, AMA Superbike rider for the Erik Buell Racing team discussing the current season, and more importantly next season, when the 1190 race bike, based on the 1190RS street bike, debuts. Yep - street bike. Less than a year after HD shut down his company, Erik Buell is announcing production of a street-legal motorcycle.




 No word on pricing or number of units planned, but if I were a betting man I'd predict the first number is steep due to economies of scale, and the second one minuscule, just enough to satisfy homologation requirements for AMA Superbike.
But I would also bet on this being just a baby step, walk before you run interlude between the HD owned Buell Motorcycles and the next generation of full production street bikes from Erik Buell. I don't know who is on board, although rumors swirl about BRP getting involved. I don't possess any insider knowledge, I just have a gut feeling that a guy who once died and came back after a crash isn't going to let a poor decision by HD stop him from pursuing his dream.