Joe Biden: the most honest man in Washington

I’m so ashamed

First came his admission that ‘bama had buried the middle class, today he fessed up to how sorry he is to have ever gotten involved with the man. “There’s never been a day in the past four years I’ve been proud to be his Vice President”.

I could begin to like this guy.

UPDATE:

“You need to take a vacation!” the host told the vice president of the United States.

“Well, I’m going to take a vacation about three days after this election is over,” Biden revealed. “That’s what they told me.”

Yeltsin and Obama have a nice Siberian dacha already picked out.

What good, political considerations aside, could this possibly do?

Obama orders millions of gallons of fuel to be distributed in northeast.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is ordering the purchase of up to 12 million gallons of unleaded fuel and up to 10 million gallons of diesel fuel for distribution in areas impacted by Superstorm Sandy to supplement private sector efforts.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday that President Barack Obama has directed the Defense Logistics Agency to handle the purchase of the fuel. It will be transported by tanker trucks and distributed throughout New York, New Jersey and other communities impacted by the storm.

The current gasoline shortage afflicting our area is caused by lack of electricity to pump it and not because of a shortage of fuel itself. When the power comes back on, the “crisis” will end. Nothing Obama or any other politician may order will hasten that day. There’s no indication whatsoever that the distribution system devised by non-governmental entities has failed or isn’t working; in fact, we need less governmental interference, not more of it, as evidenced by the EPA being forced to suspend its “winter gas” requirements for the duration so that gasoline could get to regions that need it.

So why is Obama intruding now? Four more days.

Four more years?

Hopelessness and change, the Obama way

Since most people die in bed, why not just sleep on your couch?

Eschewing such a simple solution, gazillionaires are building 40,000 sq.ft. bunkers, according to the Wall Street Journal, safe from nuclear attack, hurricanes and halitosis.  Whereupon they’ll get into their private jet and fly it into a mountain.

Oh well.

Well by definition ….

 

And I’ll drive the short bus!

Feeble minded encouraged to vote for Obama

Canadians save our bacon

One of the Super Mario Bros. was just (2:20) getting off I-95 and espied this truck near the Greenwich train station. Hooray!

Live, from Quebec!

Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man

Should we bury our power lines?

Popular Mechanics has a good article on the subject here. Pros and cons (the cons being mostly the expense) but you’ll get a good understanding  of the issues involved, I believe.

It can be somewhat affordable to use underground power cables when you’re starting from scratch; developers building new housing tracts can install buried power cables alongside fiberoptics lines and water systems.

But retrofitting is much pricier. “If you’re talking about a built environment where the lines are already up and you’d have to dig through peoples’ lawns and driveways, it becomes prohibitively expensive,” Garvin says.

For example, in a new suburban neighborhood, installing ordinary overhead power lines costs about $194,000 per mile on average. Installing underground power lines would cost $571,000 per mile. And to retrofit an older suburban neighborhood with underground lines, the costs climb up to an average of $724,000 per mile.

For high-voltage transmission lines—the thick cables typically slung between towers that carry electricity across long distances—new underground installations can cost as much as $23 million per mile. Those costs get deflected to the consumer.

Buried lines are no protection against floods, so Old Greenwich would have gone dark regardless, but the rest of the town would be sitting pretty today if our system were immune from falling trees. While I don’t see how we could afford to do this, the PM article closes with a quote from a Swiss source who points out that his country put its lines underground decades ago and wonders why on (in?) earth we don’t do the same. Probably because there’s nothing sexy about a politician standing in front of a ditch digger, but there you have it.

Seven weeks late, four lives short

 

Yeah, Top Bum here – wha’s up?

White House sics commandos on Libyan killers. After ignoring the Benghazi cover-up for all that time, even the major media is finally telling its viewers that something terribly wrong went down and the White House blew it. The New York Times, of course, refuses to notice and Obama’s crew is stonewalling until the election’s over with.

Greenwich Time’s parent company runs an intelligent article

Global warming didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy and anyone who says it did is either pandering to the clueless or a scientific idiot or both.

IT’S SCIENCE, STUPID

Science tells us this is not a new normal.

Science tells us climate change has not had a discernible impact on global hurricane activity. A warmer climate, of course, is changing hurricanes. But, scientists consistently tell us, that change is so small it cannot be measured at the present and likely won’t be measurable until the middle of this century.

But what about Sandy?

Earlier this week Andy Revkin compiled some opinions of actual hurricane and extreme weather scientists on Sandy. Kevin Trenberth, who in interviews with me has spoken nearly as ardently about the perils of climate change as has James Hansen, said of the idea that a warmer Arctic contributed to Sandy’s intensification (see Francis et. al.), “With respect to the Arctic connection, I don’t believe it.” And later, he said:

It is true that hurricanes normally recurve and head east, especially at this time of year. So we do have a negative NAO and some blocking anticyclone in place, but the null hypothesis has to be that this is just “weather” and natural variability.

Of course Sandy’s effects were exacerbated by rising sea levels. According to NOAA data, the sea level in Manhattan has risen by about half a foot during the last century. Some, but not all, of that rise is attributable to human greenhouse gases. So the surge was a few inches worse because of climate change.

But that’s as far as the science goes. And my purpose here is to follow the science, not an agenda to change U.S. carbon emissions policy nor deny science or climate change.

There’s lots more in this lengthy article, all worth your reading. Too bad the Soda Pop Kid won’t do so.

What would you expect from a man who thinks soda pop and gay polar bears are more important than his city’s destruction?

I demand that all New Yorkers use only the teeny cups to bail out their basements!

Bloomberg diverts massive generator to fuel NYC Marathon activities

As hundreds of thousands of Big Apple residents suffer in homes left without power by Hurricane Sandy, two massive generators are being run 24/7 in Central Park — to juice a media tent for Sunday’s New York City Marathon.

And a third “backup” unit sits idle, in case one of the generators fails.

The man’s megalomania has driven him over the seawall. One more year!

UPDATE: I see that Bloomberg defends his decision by claiming no essential people will be diverted from recovery efforts. If NYC really has so many police, firemen and sanitation workers that it can afford to divert thousands of them to running a footrace while the largest cleanup effort in its history is going on, while entire sections of the city have burned down and there are thousands of people still homeless and cold, then I’d say New York City has far, far too many workers on its payroll.

Dear Abby: I voted for Obama last election and now …

Get over it, honey – you was had

Remorse after a one night stand – what to do?

Q: I met a man online, and we “dated” for about four weeks. Then we decided to meet in person, and we ended up having sex.

Now I’m feeling cheap, and I also think the relationship might not lead anywhere. I’m feeling very insecure. What should I do?

A: First, burn this experience into your memory and promise yourself that you’ll never have sex on the first date again. If the relationship is meant to be, there will be other opportunities.

The obvious answer for this lady to feel better is to vote for Mittens, but that’s not mentioned – incomplete advice, however well meaning.

Ah, New Yorkers!

 

Cos Cob residents, on the other hand, headed west

Flocking to Greenwich after sucking their own state dry. No lines or shortages in Stamford or Norwalk, but I guess these idiots drive all the way up here and get off at the first exits. Just like the lottery lines of yore, when we had mobs of people at every convenience store and ticket outlet standing in line for hours when a few towns up they could have strolled right in and thrown away their money effortlessly.

Forget the old wives’ tale abut filling your bathtub before a storm – fill the gas tank of your car. I did, and it’s been one less thing to worry about all week.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy

 

Run away!

400 huge FEMA generators sit idle as officials try to match specific needs with the individual machines. Good idea, but it’s not working. Should have listened to von Moltke.

If you think this headline is about Greenwich, think again

Go ahead, make their day: click on this link from Greenwich Time and read all about power being restored in Bridgeport. That should make you feel better. By the way, although Fudrucker probably has the exact number of residences in Greenwich at his fingertips from his years at P&Z, wouldn’t 14,000 homes still without power be about half the homes in town?

UPDATE: who needs Frankie when we have Wikipedia? 24,511 households, so a more accurate headline might read, “58% of Greenwich homes still without power”. But when you edit a paper from Bridgeport, do you really care about accuracy?

It’s almost cute when a nine-year-old kid says it. Adults, not so much

All these chillun are goin’ to Hell, ’cause my preacher tells me so

“If Romney wins we’ll be back in the fields picking crops”. So says “Brandon” age nine. If you wonder where he might have learned that, you should know that the young man has been “working on a project” – in school, presumably, making Obama posters.

When asked what he wanted Obama to do in his second term, Brandon said, “I want [Obama] to change the world like he did. He’s gonna change the world.”

The poor kid’s as deluded as his parents and 43% of the populace. I blame Cheney.

Look for, the Union label ….

NJ towns refuse aid from volunteer line crews because they’re non-union. One group came all the way from Alabama to help out. Let ’em freeze in the dark.

It’s an ill wind that blows no good

 

Bummer, Babe

Storm washes away “Jersey Shore” town.