21 November 2007
What Thanksgiving?
Let's hope we all get through the next election. Who the hell are we going to trust the next 4, most likely 8 years, to? Hillary? Rudy? Barack? Hukabee??
Let's face it - we face a complex host of problems and no one of them alone has anywhere near the capability of successfully solving it. Either because they're too much an insider, too much a demagogue, or too much inexperienced with global world power domination as the game is played by that A-Rod of Nations, the United States.
Like A-Rod, it gets greedy. It always wants more, until sooner or later it bites off its lip. The United States has now reached the A-Rod moment when he feels his worth is more than everyone else feels it is. And he learns it the hard way. OPEC is considering valuing the price of oil against the Euro, instead of the dollar. Do you know what that means?
OhhhhhhShhiiittt!!!
Let's face it - we face a complex host of problems and no one of them alone has anywhere near the capability of successfully solving it. Either because they're too much an insider, too much a demagogue, or too much inexperienced with global world power domination as the game is played by that A-Rod of Nations, the United States.
Like A-Rod, it gets greedy. It always wants more, until sooner or later it bites off its lip. The United States has now reached the A-Rod moment when he feels his worth is more than everyone else feels it is. And he learns it the hard way. OPEC is considering valuing the price of oil against the Euro, instead of the dollar. Do you know what that means?
OhhhhhhShhiiittt!!!
Happy Thanksgiving!
hey yo!...just a little hello....hope everyone has a safe and happy thanksgiving and get home safe!
14 November 2007
The Economy
Study: Philly housing prices show first decline in 5 years
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA - A new study apparently confirms what real estate agents in
Philadelphia have been expecting: Home prices in the city are on the
decline for the first time in five years.
Wharton business school economist Kevin Gillen is out with his latest
quarterly survey of the city's real estate market. It covers July, August
and September.
Gillen finds that home prices in Philadelphia are dropping for the first
time since 2002, although the decline, he says, is "very modest" , only one
percent over three months.
Gillen says Philadelphia was late to the housing boom, so he's not
surprised the city is late to the downturn. He expects prices continue to
fall but at a slow pace , as he puts it, "like a feather."
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA - A new study apparently confirms what real estate agents in
Philadelphia have been expecting: Home prices in the city are on the
decline for the first time in five years.
Wharton business school economist Kevin Gillen is out with his latest
quarterly survey of the city's real estate market. It covers July, August
and September.
Gillen finds that home prices in Philadelphia are dropping for the first
time since 2002, although the decline, he says, is "very modest" , only one
percent over three months.
Gillen says Philadelphia was late to the housing boom, so he's not
surprised the city is late to the downturn. He expects prices continue to
fall but at a slow pace , as he puts it, "like a feather."
13 November 2007
Who I Aspire to Be - A Most-Patient Murderer
Murder most patient.
To all of you with late-life literary ambitions, to all of you who've collected enough rejection slips to paper a room, we bring today tidings of great joy in the person of Robin Hathaway.Hathaway, who splits her days between Philadelphia and New York, didn't begin writing until she was 50. For 10 years, everything she wrote was rejected. Her first novel was accepted and published when she was 60. In the spring, St. Martin's Press will publish Sleight of Hand, Hathaway's eighth mystery, which, like most of her other novels, is set in Philadelphia.
Along the way, she has attracted devoted readers and won two prestigious awards. At 73, she brims with new literary projects and a zest for life that's as palpable as it is enviable.
Her advice to struggling authors: "You can't take it personally. You can't think it's because of your work. It's a matter of taste and luck and whether you hit somebody at the right time. You have to keep on going. You can't give up, and it's never too late to start."
Hathaway is her maiden name and pen name. Her legal name is Robin Keisman. Her husband, Robert Keisman, is also her muse and the inspiration for Dr. Andrew Fenimore. Hathaway calls Fenimore, the protagonist of her first series of mysteries, her husband's clone.
Like Keisman, Fenimore is a cardiologist. "He believes in solo practice and spending time with patients and the art of medicine," Hathaway says. "He's kind, intellectual, a low-key kind of sleuth." And in five novels, he keeps happening upon murdered corpses and methodically assembling clues to figure out whodunit and how.
"I always thought diagnosing a disease was similar to working out a murder," Hathaway says. "You gather evidence and put it together and work out a solution."
Jack Kelly cameo
The fictional Fenimore lives on Spruce Street in Center City; his adventures are steeped in local lore. The Doctor Rocks the Boat, for instance, takes place on Boathouse Row and features a cameo appearance by the famed oarsman Jack Kelly, Princess Grace's brother.(In real life, Robert Keisman was greeted by Jack Kelly when, out of curiosity, Kesiman knocked on the Vesper Boat Club door. After a short tour, Kelly invited Keisman, then a resident at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, to join for a nominal fee.)
Hathaway was born and grew up in Germantown and was educated at Germantown Friends School. Her parents were artists. Her father, John Hathaway, won awards at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and distinction for his skill with stained glass.
Robin Hathaway majored in English at Smith College, where she took a short-story class taught by Alfred Kazin, the literary critic and cultural historian. One of her fellow pupils was Sylvia Plath.
After college, she lived in an apartment at 13th and Pine Streets and busied herself taking photographs of derelict buildings in what was then rundown Society Hill and preparing to write the Great American Novel.
"I wrote really depressing short stories. I would give them to guys to read and wonder why they never came back," she said and laughed. Only one swain did - Robert Keisman. Recalls Hathaway: "He said to me, 'Why don't you write something more cheerful?' "
The couple married and moved to the rural reaches of western Delaware County, where they rented a tenant farmhouse and Robin reared their two daughters while running a graphic arts business.
Getting started
When Hathaway turned 50, her husband admonished her: "You always wanted to write. Don't you think it's time to get started?"In three years, Hathaway produced three novels. Here the story becomes predictable. She sent the manuscripts to publisher after publisher. Rejection after rejection. At first they were pro forma, automatic. In time some came back with indications of actual human consideration, even an encouraging comment or two. Still, they were rejections.
After 10 years, Hathaway was ready to quit. One day, her older daughter, Julie, noticed an entry form for a mystery-writing contest sponsored by St. Martin's Press. She urged her mother to give it a try. "I thought, why not?" Hathaway recalls. "This will be my last thing." She submitted her entry and forgot about it.
Nine months later, a senior editor at St. Martin's called with some astonishing news: Hathaway's first mystery novel, The Doctor Digs a Grave, had won the Malice Domestic Award for best first traditional mystery (or "cozy" in the parlance of the mystery writer's trade, as in "tea cozy"). St. Martin's would publish the book and send her a $10,000 advance.
It gets better: A year later, the same book won a coveted Agatha from the Mystery Writers of America for best first novel. Among mystery novelists, an Agatha is equivalent to an Oscar.
Reviewers have praised Hathaway for her "easygoing, unpretentious touch" and her "smooth and entertaining blend of jargon-free medical lore, little-known historical facts and credible mystery plotting." In Mystery Scene Magazine, The Doctor Digs a Grave was hailed as "the perfect combination of the old and the new. The plot is as mysterious as old-fashioned mysteries but the telling is sleek and fashionable and right up to date."
"Her books have a sweet sense of humor," says Ruth Cavin, Hathaway's editor at St. Martin's. "She's very real, and her characters seem very real, the sort of nice people - and maybe not so nice people - you might like to meet. She brings them all to life."
Cavin describes Hathaway as "one of the most lovely persons I've come across in my work." Physically slight, quiet and shy, Hathaway gravitates toward the fringe of the crowd, unnoticed, Cavin says. There, she observes the human pageant, which she records with fond amusement and benign tolerance.
None of Hathaway's books has climbed the best-seller list, but they sell steadily to devoted readers and are in libraries all over the world. Her mysteries are published in Japan and Canada, and she's received appreciative e-mail messages from people in the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
In 2003, Hathaway launched a new suspense series with Scarecrow, which introduced Jo Banks, a glamorous but defrocked Manhattan pediatrician who seeks solace in South Jersey, specifically the area around Salem and Bridgeton. "It's in a time warp," Hathaway says. "It hasn't changed since 1930." There, Banks provides medical services at motels and makes house calls on a motorcycle.
"She's my alter ego," Hathaway says. "She does all the stuff I never had the nerve to do."
For the last 25 years, Hathaway and her husband have lived in Brewerytown, in one of several rowhouses once occupied by managers at a nearby defunct brewery. During the week, she's in New York, where, when it comes to mystery writing, "everything is going on." There, she does the bulk of her writing. She writes in longhand on a legal tablet between 8 a.m. and noon.
New York may be where the action is, but Philadelphia is where her heart resides. Hathaway spends her weekends here, and this is where she does most of her research. She loves exploring local history, and her research for each mystery typically fills several cardboard boxes and consumes at least a third of the time it takes to produce a book (usually about a year).
"Philadelphia has such a rich historical background," says Hathaway, who owns several early volumes of Philadelphia history. "A lot of things aren't generally known. There's no lack of material. It's just loaded."
Her next two mysteries in the Dr. Fenimore series will not disappoint readers seeking a local angle. The Doctor and the Dancing Bear is about gypsies and mystic monks along the Wissahickon, while The Doctor and 'Dem Golden Slippers' will involve, obviously, the Mummers.
Hathaway's fourth-quarter literary success has only fired her ambition. She has no intention of slowing down. Why would she? She's having too much fun.
"What I love about what I'm doing is that it's opened so many other doors," Hathaway says. "I always wanted to teach and now, thanks to this, I got over my stage fright."
The real joy, and occasional agony, remains the writing, doing what she always dreamed of doing as a new Smith graduate with visions of literary glory.
"When I write, I go into another world," Hathaway says. "My husband can tell if I'm working on a book because my voice sounds far away. Stuff comes to me that I don't consciously think about. When my imagination takes over, that's the best part, the happiest part."
To listen to an interview with the mystery writer, go to http://go.philly.com/robinhathaway
staff writer Art Carey acarey@phillynews.com and visit www.robinhathaway.com.
11 November 2007
Presidential Race Heating Up?
Not an important question at this time, but some notable events have occured:
1. HIllary Clinton is still reeling and trying to recover from her off-balanced responses to questions at the Democratic debate in Philadelphia about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants heraled by New York state Gov. Eliot Spitzer (who himself found his own public opinion polls rather week this week);
2. Rudy Guiliaini's politics becoming unbearable: first the endorsement of Pat Robertson (although an inevitability as seeing Rudy as their best chance to stop HIllary, and to keep on appointing conservative judges), but much worse the indictment of Bernie Kerik, his close pal and former Homeland Security appointee, who did "one helluva job" training Iraqi police forces (if you can call it that). Whatever - Bernie's only being accused of conspriacy, fraud, and racketeering through doing business with a company that has ties to organized crime figures in the Mob, not to mention the wiretapping of one of Jeanne Pirro's husband for blackmail purposes. Got a sweet deal on that deck at his condo from that mob-connected company, too.
Rudy's problem is of course how do you spin all that? Well, we try folks, we try....
3. Barack Obama's trying to ride the wave of (a): the benefits of attacks on Hillary at the Philadelphia debate (not to mention those Hillary attacks levied by John Edwards, Rudy, and others), and (b): trying to look more Presidential while at the same time look like HIllary, i.e. Presidential. He's been criticized for not attacking her and others more aggresively. He saw it as risky, but he certainly enjoyed the spoils of victory by attacking her credibility on various substantive issues, making her look like a waffler. And on Meet the Press last Sunday, he also stood up to one of the princes of the Fourth Estate, Tim Russert, when questioned about taking PAC money and donations from friends with legal woes. He's still struggling with attack projection, and if he goes too far it will likely hurt him (that why you should let Edwards do the attacking), but for now he should keep doing what everyone has asked him to do . . .
that said, watch for Rudy to play the race and gender card sometime before this year is out. no doubt, once threatened with a serious Obama turn, Rudy may have no choice in his limited repetoire but to turn on racial-bias doubt for the kill. Obama must head that off early not only to dispel the myth, but expose the person whom for some reason feels he/she can't win on their merits...
4. Michael Nutter won the Mayor's seat of the City of Philadelphia, making him the city's 3rd African-American mayor, and the city has not only seen itself run by black cheif executives for the past 9 years, it will be at least 13 years with Nutter, and 25 years since Wilson Goode took the seat of power in 1983. It must have been fun to win the election within a day of the recent Democratic debate at Drexel, where at the same time it was hosted in the same neighborhood the police were searching for a body of a man who jumped in the Schuykill River after just shooting a police officer in Center City a few blocks away.
So where we goin' wif this? Other cities have had black mayors for several years by now. Some (Atlanta, Baltimore, DC, New Orleans, Houston, Philadelphia) are of significant size and importance to be signifigant in national politics or measure how the country's tide is turning. Most of these cities are not in the best of shape, but the ones mentioned above - with the unfortunate exception - for the moment - of New Orleans - are all viable important centers of American commerce. And even New Orleans, still an important shipping center, has hope. All to say, Philadelphia is at a crossroads where it will have to either evolve into a Black Mecca like Atlanta and DC have (and Baltimore could) or wallow in corruption like Newark and Detroit, who've had black mayors maybe too long. The city under John Street was not the best, and Nutter is left with a deficit budget, serious quality-of-life issues, and a violent and ever-continuing murder rate that clearly threatens a significant portion of the black community. Not necessarily the poorer sections, either. Serious crime have now reached their foregone middle-class communities like Mt. Airy and Overbrook. The elements of the same: hip-hop, drug trade, easy proliferation of guns by youths - are weaving their way into the fabric of our communities. The problem isn't the people - it's the laws and socioeconomic conditions that continue to persist as the cancers of our community. Read into this any way you wish - you must admit that we need to tighten up our communities for a uniform standard of how to live, what not to do (murder, for one) and how to share the wealth that is all around us. as well as some of their suburbslife in the city. Nutter just promised the CofC in Chester County PA that he will bring the region together, to metropolitanize Philadelphia for the betterment of all. He will have to tackle the lifestyle issues first, but will also have to walk a new path that becomes the model of how black urban mayors can become regional leaders of metropolitan areas, a path that all future mayors of that city will have to follow in the future.
Oh, and internationally Musharraf's going mad and trying to suppress Bhutto is a recipe for failure that can only end in a civil war. Imagine that: the Pakistanis in a civil war, the Turks attacking the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, The Taliban still fighting UN troops in Afghanistan, and of course U.S. troops in Iraq.
And all is silent and quiet along the gray shelfs of the mountains where Bin Laden hides in Wazirastan. aaaahhhhhh....jjoooooyyyyyy!!
1. HIllary Clinton is still reeling and trying to recover from her off-balanced responses to questions at the Democratic debate in Philadelphia about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants heraled by New York state Gov. Eliot Spitzer (who himself found his own public opinion polls rather week this week);
2. Rudy Guiliaini's politics becoming unbearable: first the endorsement of Pat Robertson (although an inevitability as seeing Rudy as their best chance to stop HIllary, and to keep on appointing conservative judges), but much worse the indictment of Bernie Kerik, his close pal and former Homeland Security appointee, who did "one helluva job" training Iraqi police forces (if you can call it that). Whatever - Bernie's only being accused of conspriacy, fraud, and racketeering through doing business with a company that has ties to organized crime figures in the Mob, not to mention the wiretapping of one of Jeanne Pirro's husband for blackmail purposes. Got a sweet deal on that deck at his condo from that mob-connected company, too.
Rudy's problem is of course how do you spin all that? Well, we try folks, we try....
3. Barack Obama's trying to ride the wave of (a): the benefits of attacks on Hillary at the Philadelphia debate (not to mention those Hillary attacks levied by John Edwards, Rudy, and others), and (b): trying to look more Presidential while at the same time look like HIllary, i.e. Presidential. He's been criticized for not attacking her and others more aggresively. He saw it as risky, but he certainly enjoyed the spoils of victory by attacking her credibility on various substantive issues, making her look like a waffler. And on Meet the Press last Sunday, he also stood up to one of the princes of the Fourth Estate, Tim Russert, when questioned about taking PAC money and donations from friends with legal woes. He's still struggling with attack projection, and if he goes too far it will likely hurt him (that why you should let Edwards do the attacking), but for now he should keep doing what everyone has asked him to do . . .
that said, watch for Rudy to play the race and gender card sometime before this year is out. no doubt, once threatened with a serious Obama turn, Rudy may have no choice in his limited repetoire but to turn on racial-bias doubt for the kill. Obama must head that off early not only to dispel the myth, but expose the person whom for some reason feels he/she can't win on their merits...
4. Michael Nutter won the Mayor's seat of the City of Philadelphia, making him the city's 3rd African-American mayor, and the city has not only seen itself run by black cheif executives for the past 9 years, it will be at least 13 years with Nutter, and 25 years since Wilson Goode took the seat of power in 1983. It must have been fun to win the election within a day of the recent Democratic debate at Drexel, where at the same time it was hosted in the same neighborhood the police were searching for a body of a man who jumped in the Schuykill River after just shooting a police officer in Center City a few blocks away.
So where we goin' wif this? Other cities have had black mayors for several years by now. Some (Atlanta, Baltimore, DC, New Orleans, Houston, Philadelphia) are of significant size and importance to be signifigant in national politics or measure how the country's tide is turning. Most of these cities are not in the best of shape, but the ones mentioned above - with the unfortunate exception - for the moment - of New Orleans - are all viable important centers of American commerce. And even New Orleans, still an important shipping center, has hope. All to say, Philadelphia is at a crossroads where it will have to either evolve into a Black Mecca like Atlanta and DC have (and Baltimore could) or wallow in corruption like Newark and Detroit, who've had black mayors maybe too long. The city under John Street was not the best, and Nutter is left with a deficit budget, serious quality-of-life issues, and a violent and ever-continuing murder rate that clearly threatens a significant portion of the black community. Not necessarily the poorer sections, either. Serious crime have now reached their foregone middle-class communities like Mt. Airy and Overbrook. The elements of the same: hip-hop, drug trade, easy proliferation of guns by youths - are weaving their way into the fabric of our communities. The problem isn't the people - it's the laws and socioeconomic conditions that continue to persist as the cancers of our community. Read into this any way you wish - you must admit that we need to tighten up our communities for a uniform standard of how to live, what not to do (murder, for one) and how to share the wealth that is all around us. as well as some of their suburbslife in the city. Nutter just promised the CofC in Chester County PA that he will bring the region together, to metropolitanize Philadelphia for the betterment of all. He will have to tackle the lifestyle issues first, but will also have to walk a new path that becomes the model of how black urban mayors can become regional leaders of metropolitan areas, a path that all future mayors of that city will have to follow in the future.
Oh, and internationally Musharraf's going mad and trying to suppress Bhutto is a recipe for failure that can only end in a civil war. Imagine that: the Pakistanis in a civil war, the Turks attacking the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, The Taliban still fighting UN troops in Afghanistan, and of course U.S. troops in Iraq.
And all is silent and quiet along the gray shelfs of the mountains where Bin Laden hides in Wazirastan. aaaahhhhhh....jjoooooyyyyyy!!
28 October 2007
Obama Promises a Forceful Stand Against Clinton - Ungawa Black Powa Part 2
David Ahntholz for The Pic
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 27 — Senator Barack Obama says he will start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more forcefully, disputing and challenging her views on key policy issues. Mr. Obama’s offensive comes just over two months before the first votes are cast for the Democratic nomination, and amidst concern by his aides, donors and other supporters that he has not exhibited the aggressiveness demanded by presidential politics, and that his lack of aggresiveness has allowed Mrs. Clinton to expand her lead in the presidential race.
* Obama the change candidate, as the JFK/Camelot 2 candidate, is fading fast. For one, he is having trouble sustaining the "safe" message (the "safe message" is vital to hold as it is the core of his popular appeal) as well as the charismatic change message a la John F. Kennedy did to a new generation of a modern, post WWII/Depression era young people? Today's young and anti-war crowd is really not one that has survived a real economic or political turmoil conflict, unless you just came over recently from a few places, or you count Paris Hilton's 47 hours in jail (HORRIFIC!) - yehm they just haven't been through it. It's a long race for him to sustain his message. But it's also a long race for him in experience. He's never run or been on a presidential campaign before, running all around the country, knowing the key stops. The stamina involved. The experience with the machine/apparatus/system of modern political campaigns. HIllary, as first lady, is uniquely above virtually all of them in experience with campaigns, save for Edwards, McCain and Kusinich. Richardson has national and international experience which gives him experience with a cross-country campaign schedule. The rest don't have experience running in a presidential campaign.
For months, Democrats, including some within Mr. Obama’s campaign, have questioned whether his promise to pursue a brand of politics that transcended partisanship had so handcuffed him that he could not compete in the most partisan of arenas.
Alan D. Solomont, a former contributor to both Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton who is now raising money for Mr. Obama in Boston, said there was a growing consensus that Mr. Obama had to ratchet up his intensity and draw sharper distinctions with Mrs. Clinton, of New York, and other rivals. “The only way that he’s going to be able to be clear with the American people,” Mr. Solomont said in an interview, “is to draw a distinction between his candidacy and his ideas about change and those of other candidates.”
In the interview, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, acknowledged that he had held back until now, though he asserted it was a calculated decision to introduce himself in early voting states before engaging opponents. But Mr. Obama said the plan had always been for him to take on Mrs. Clinton more directly in the fall. He glared and said no when asked if he lacked the stomach for confrontational politics. He'll get his first big test of his stomach this Tuesday night, when the Democrats meet for a nationally televised debate in Philadelphia.
There are growing signs that Mr. Obama is looking for a fresh start for his campaign after 9 months in which his aides said they were startled by the effectiveness of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, and worried that her support was not as brittle as they had once believed. Donors and other supporters are asking why Mr. Obama was not challenging Mrs. Clinton more forcefully and warning that he could cede the role of the main anti-Clinton candidate to former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who is running an aggressive campaign in this area. Typically, one aide said, the supporter asks some version of the same question: “What happened to the Obama we saw at the 2004 Democratic convention?”
* what happened is simple. this brotha tryin' to stay alive! he don't need nor want to get out there too aggressive. he knows and we all know that a carbine will be pointed (if not one is already always pointed) at the back of his head somewhere below the ear lobe and temple, ready to take our this squire of America, this Black Man our savior, who would save you and be your champion against the robber-barons, someone who would, as McCain has now capitalized on phrasically, give us "Straight Talk" about what's really going on and how we're going to solve and deal with our people's real and immediate problems, who would find peace on earth of which we could be a part. But that is not to be. By the powers that run us, we need someone who will Caeserize the world in the name of democracy and freedom, and keep the system of America going. so that very few will make very many dollars. Until there's a collapse. The powers that be know this, and that's why they can't have an Obama in the White House too long. I assume Obama, at 45 and with a young child, wants to live and enjoy life for a while, a couple of decades at least, without worrying about meeting his fate while serving his country.
But here's Obama's turn of the heel...
Though Mr. Obama’s criticisms of Mrs. Clinton are getting sharper, they were still somewhat restrained, certainly when compared with the criticisms that have been voiced of Mrs. Clinton by Mr. Edwards and much of the Republican field. Mr. Obama rejected the suggestion that he had been constrained in taking on Mrs. Clinton more forcefully because of his promise, at the start of the campaign, to avoid the bitter partisanship of past campaigns. “I’ve been amused by seeing some of the commentary out of the Clinton camp, where every time we point out a difference between me and her, they say, ‘What happened to the politics of hope?’ which is just silly,” he said, laughing. Asked why it was silly, he responded: “The notion that somehow changing the tone means simply . . . . that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have hasn’t been paying attention.”
* Ouuuoohh! is that a threat? hope so. Obama needs to get up there and bitchslap her, cuss her out, call her a liar or link her to one of the GOP lies about her, jump on top of her and tell her you'll have wild estacy-laced axphysiatic sex with her until she chokes & passes out and stays out until after January 4, the Iowa Caucus. That is, if he has the fuckin' balls for it. I have my doubts.....
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