The AP calls the race even:

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain’s “Joe the plumber” analogy struck a chord.

Three weeks ago, an AP-GfK survey found that Obama had surged to a seven-point lead over McCain, lifted by voters who thought the Democrat was better suited to lead the nation through its sudden economic crisis.

IBD/TIPP? Ditto:

McCain has picked up 3 points in the West and with independents, married women and those with some college. He’s also gaining momentum in the suburbs, where he’s gone from dead even a week ago to a 20-point lead. Obama padded gains in urban areas and with lower-class households, but he slipped 4 points with parents.

And the Zogmeister?

These numbers, if they hold, are blowout numbers. They fit the 1980 model with Reagan’s victory over Carter — but they are happening 12 days before Reagan blasted ahead. If Obama wins like this we can be talking not only victory but realignment:

Wow.  Sounds serious.

Seriously hosed. 

The only reason for polls like this (and the Minnesota Poll) is to try to depress GOP turnout.

Yes, I am declaring a conspiracy. 

There are two categories of people; those who categorize people, and those who don’t.

Likewise, I think, there are two different types of politicians.

One type, we’ll call the Political Engineer.  He or she pragmatically breaks down every issue, like a good Engineer does, carefully calculating the best path to take through the issue.  Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Norm Coleman, Karl Rove – all of them are Political Engineers.  Just as no engineer drives a pile or moves a circuit from spec to prototype without enough analysis to mitigate risk and controlling uncertainty, the Political Engineer figures the angles before things hit the fan – or tries to, anyway.  Politics involving real people rather than steel and electricity, it doesn’t always work – but then, the Political Engineer knows that.  Political Engineers may have principles and beliefs – they’re human, after all, and rarely driven by pure pragmatism – but those principles and beliefs are wrung through a lot of deconstruction before they go out into the world.

At the opposite extreme is the Political Artist.  They’re driven by something – an issue, a hot-button, a vision.  They have visceral, rather than political, reactions to issues; their heart, not their calculations, tell them the proper response to a political stimulus.  They tend, I think, to be charismatic, driven – and, sometimes but far from always, to have short careers.  For many, I suspect, the emotion that drives them is focused on an issue that precludes a lot of big-picture ambition.  For others, burnout ensues; a person can only maintain that level of emotional intensity for so long.  For still others?  When you wear your heart on your sleeve, as opposed to calculating exactly where you should wear your heart for best results, it’s easy to make a “mistake”, when things get hairy; those who don’t share your emotional commitment to the presenting issue might find allegiance to a Political Engineer less off-putting.  There are quite a few of ’em out there, too; Dennis Kucinich, Keith Ellison, Ronald Reagan (to an extent, although he substituted Ideals for Emotions, I think)…

…and, I think, Michele Bachmann.

First things first:  I support Rep. Bachmann.  No two ways about it; she is one of Minnesota’s very best congressional representatives.  She is vastly more qualified (to say nothing, at this point, of experienced) than her challenger, Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg.  She is a lighting rod for all the usual constituencies that find an uppity, articulate conservative woman to be a huge threat, of course – but any woman that breaks from the mushy-left, pro-“choice” pack is going to be.

And Rep. Bachmann wears her heart on her sleeve.  She’s patriotic.  She’s American.  And in her infamous interview last week with Chris Matthews, she – like any hip-shooter up against a tingly-legged, in-the-bag huckster might – certainly uncorked on “anti-Americans”.

So what is “anti-American?”  Someone who actively connives to destroy this nation?  Certainly.  And in context, I don’t believe Rep. Bachmann was talking about this.

Someone whose actions, you hold, are inimical to this nation’s best interests?  Someone whose actions make this nation a weaker, worse place?  Someone who thinks this nation would be hunky-dory if it were just completely different than it is? 

That, I think, was what Rep. Bachmann was talking about, in context.  And I agree with her; I think there are a lot of people whose beliefs, platforms, agendas and actions could make this nation a really crappy place. And they need to be rooted out – at the polls.  Via our political process.

Would I have picked a different word to describe this idea than “anti-American”?  Probably. Do I wish Rep. Bachmann had?  Perhaps.  Did her propensity to shoot from the hip – to be other than a Political Engineer – slide her into a moment that everyone who wants to see her out of Congress can use to spin until we’re all ready to puke?

Give me a break. Chris Matthew’s leg was so tingly, it could have generated static electricity.

UPDATE:  Kouba’s take is pretty essential:

A conservative is going to get zero breaks from the media, so we need to minimize unforced errors. I’m eternally glad Bachmann is in Congress voting on the side of angels, and I hope it stays that way for a long time. Hopefully this, too, will fade, like so many other campaign flaps before it.

It was Saturday, October 21, 1988. It was my “free” day in Manhattan. I was going to reward myself with a day, and night, of…

…I had no idea what. Roaming the city, doing whatever sprang to mind, mainly.

I walked down to Washington Square. Had a bagel at some kosher bakery just off the Square. Grabbed a copy of the Times and sat on a bench and read for a while.
Took the subway downtown. Got off at Cortlandt Street, and looked up at the World Trade Center towering above me. It was about 10AM. I stood with my back against the wall next to the stairs to the subway and just stared up, not caring that I looked like a total tourist. I crossed the street, and stood for a moment at the northeast corner of the North Tower, just looking up, taking in the huge-ity of the whole thing. It was a brilliantly clear morning, a couple of cirrus clouds accenting the sky like pieces of white garnish on a huge nouvelle cuisine plate.

I went inside, and got into the very, very long line of people waiting to go up the elevator to the observation deck.

I stood behind a couple of very Italian-looking girls from New Jersey – Camille and Angela. They were students at some college or another. We struck up a conversation. I mentioned I was from the Twin Cities. Both of them were huge Prince fans. I regaled them with stories of running into Prince and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in Minneapolis, popping tops with Brown Mark and Matt Fink, shooting pool with Lisa Melvoine, running into Marty Z at First Avenue.

All bullspittle, of course. But I was in New York, place of new beginnings. I wasn’t going to get a little thing like my boring past from four days ago get in my way.

Finally, we went up the elevator. It took a couple of changes, as I recall, to get all the way up to the observation deck (106th floor, I think), but finally, we were there.

I spent an hour and probably a couple of bucks worth of quarters using the telescopes; it seemed you could see halfway to Iceland. Or Iselin. I scoped out the Hoboken docks (I loved On the Waterfront) and the “Swamps of Jersey” between Jersey City and Newark, and the whole panorama of Manhattan and the boroughs across the East River. I circled the deck several times, drinking it in for a solid hour, losing Camille and Angela in the process and not really caring all that much.

I could really learn to like this.

I finally made my way back down the elevator, and jumped on the train. I ran over to Battery Park to the South Street Seaport museum (?) – being a North Dakota native, naturally, I loved ships.  It was all a blur, even then, but I was enthralled.  I could have spent hours more, but I moved on.  I figured I’d be back soon enough.

I grabbed a kebab from a pushcart and sat and just watched New York harbor for a while.  I was too excited to think much; I remember sitting and feeling aware of my blood pounding through my head, my fingers, my teeth, as I sat, ate, watched and dreamed about what a future here could be.

Dayum.

Then it was off to Central Park, where I wandered around for hours, ending up in front of the Dakota on the place where John Lennon was murdered, watching a raucus double-dutch competition across the street.

I could really, really learn to like this.

I got back on the subway as it got toward suppertime, and went back downtown.  My mind churned. What do do? Take the voiceover gig and get a job in a video store or driving a cab to make ends meet until something else comes up that’ll pay the bills for real? Or hold out for one of the better gigs – like the overnight or the network jobs? One of them has to come through – right?

Right?

Well, I had some time to think about it.  I figured in a week or so, it’d all get clear enough.

I stopped back at the loft, clipped some cash into my pocket, and turned around, locked up, and left again. As the unseasonably warm day started drifting into a fairly balmy evening, I walked down Broadway, sauntering slowly, marinating myself in the sights and sounds and smells of the Village. I lost track of how far I walked, but I hung a right on Bleecker Street – mainly because I remembered it from Springsteen’s “Kitty’s Back”, I think – and kept going.

Score.

I walked through a chunk of (I think) NYU campus, and then into a warren of clubs, dive bars and little diners. Guys roamed the streets, pressing “complementary ticket” flyers for bands playing up and down the street into my hand. I grabbed a Gyro at some little diner at Bleecker and – Sullivan, I think? – and sorted out what to do, luxuriating in having too damn many choices, and loving it.

Went into a couple of bars; one horrible punk band, one really good “white soul” band, and a couple of two-drink minimums later, it was back out on the street. It was closing in on 11PM when I walked into a comedy joint.

A woman – the manager? – met me at the door, and ushered me to a table for one. I bought a vodka sour, and waited five minutes for the show – a triple bill featuring a couple of comics and an improv group, “Noo Yawk Tawk” – to start.

The first comic, a guy from Champaign Illinois, who looked for all the world like Mystery Science Theatre’s Mike Nelson, made the biggest rookie flub a non-New-Yorker performer can make in Gotham; he admitted he wasn’t from New York. The hecklers chewed the poor guy to bits. He was a trooper, and he held on by the skin of his teeth, but he got rattled, bad.

The next guy – a short, bald fellow who looked a little like the Gestapo guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark – got the payback, though. He took the stage, stared at the hecklers, and tore them to shreds, shutting them up – I really, really wish I remembered how – before starting his real routine. I was agog; I wanted to learn this.

And then I noticed; he seemed to be playing to me. And not in the whole “make everyone feel like you’re playing to them” sense of the term. As in, lots and lots of eye contact.

He killed. And then he left the stage, and “Noo Yawk Tawk” started their routine, taking suggestions for topics, nouns, verbs, activities and so on from the crowd. And I was gratified to notice that just about everything I yelled out made it into the act. And, like the second comic, they seemed to be giving me a lot of attention.

Twenty minutes into their act, the manager came over to me. “Excuse me, sir – are you a producer?”

I probably did a double-take. “Huh?”

“Are you a producer?”

“Well, I used to be…”

She grimaced. “I’m sorry – this table is just for producers! I’m sorry – could I get you to sit over…”, and she pointed toward the bar. “I’m so sorry – I’ll comp you a couple of drinks. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding…”

I had, and have, no idea why she put me there in the first place. But for a couple of free drinks, it was a worthwhile flub.

———-

I wandered up and down Bleecker for hours afterward, finally walking home up Broadway at around 4AM. I felt – and this was the last thing I’d expected – without the faintest worry about anything going wrong. Even at 4AM, the streets were still plenty busy; I walked past dozens people in small groups.

I got “home” to the loft, and flopped into bed.

I could really, Really, REALLY learn to like this.

The Twin Cities’ tolerant lefties are hard at work vandalizing Norm Coleman’s house:

[Senator ] Coleman and his wife, Laurie, live in the Crocus Hill neighborhood of St. Paul. Spokesman Mark Drake says Wednesday morning that grafitti left on the outside of the garage says: “You are a criminal resign or else”; “Scum,” which is written three times; and “Psalm 2.”

Here’s the big question:  if Obama loses, how violent will the left get?

UPDATE:  They were apparently equal-opportunity vandals:

Also vandalized in similar fashion: U.S. Sen Amy Klobuchar and U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison, John Kline, Michelle Bachmann and Jim Ramstad. Klobuchar and Ellison are Democrats; Coleman, Kline, Bachmann and Ramstad, Republicans.

Ellison’s appears to be the only incident so far in which the home itself was vandalized. Campaign manager Larry Weiss said that Ellison’s wife, Kim, went out this morning and found graffiti that said “Traitor. Resign now. Psalm 2” across the side of their corner home. The word “SCUM” was spraypainted above the garage door — high enough, Weiss said, that the culprit probably would have needed a stepstool.

I don’t care who they vandalized – I hope the perps are caught and prosecuted as far as the law will allow.

And I’d say that even if they’d only hit Ellison and A-Klo.

…and ends with L-O-S-T.

Barack Obama declared last week that his economic plan begins with “one word that’s on everyone’s mind and it’s spelled J-O-B-S.” This raises the stubborn question that Senator Obama has never satisfactorily answered: How do you create more jobs when you want to levy higher tax rates on the small business owners who are the nation’s primary employers? (emphasis mine)

The answer is “you don’t.” Don’t believe it?

How about a word from an expert. A Democrat at that (emphasis mine).

Democratic Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana. Here is what Mr. Baucus wrote in a joint press release with Iowa Republican Charles Grassley on August 20, 2001, when they supported the income tax rate cuts that Mr. Obama wants to repeal:

“. . . when the new tax relief law is fully phased in, entrepreneurs and small businesses — owners of sole proprietorships, partnerships, S corporations, and farms — will receive 80 percent of the tax relief associated with reducing the top income tax rates of 36 percent to 33 percent and 39.6 percent to 35 percent.”

Then they continued with a useful economics tutorial:

“Experts agree that lower taxes increase a business’ cash flow, which helps with liquidity constraints during an economic slowdown and could increase the demand for investment and labor.”

Twelve Senate Democrats voted for those same tax cuts. And just to be clear on one point: An increase in “the demand for investment and labor” translates into an increase in J-O-B-S. So if lowering these tax rates creates jobs, then it stands to reason that raising these taxes will mean fewer jobs. From 2003 to 2007 with the lower tax rates in place, the U.S. economy added eight million jobs, or about 125,000 per month. The Small Business Administration says small business wrote the paychecks for up to 80% of new jobs in 2005, for example.

Apparently there are thirteen Democrats that know what is good for the economy.

Sadly, Barack Obama doesn’t happen to be one of them.

Tax “cuts” for people that don’t pay taxes in the first place coupled with tax increases for those that already bear most of the burden is a tax hike, net/net.

Tax increases of any sort for anyone is a bad idea right now and will further undermine an economy that is about to get a lot worse, with or without Obama’s “help.” Don’t believe it? Does history offer a clue?

In 1932, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president as the nation was heading into a severe recession. The stock market had crashed in 1929, the world’s economy was slowing down, and all economic indicators in the U.S. showed signs of trouble.

The new president’s response was to restructure the economy with the New Deal — an expansion of the role of government once unimaginable in America. We now know that FDR’s policies likely prolonged the Great Depression because the economy never fully recovered in the 1930s, and actually got worse in the latter half of the decade. And we know that FDR got away with it (winning election four times) by blaming his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, for crashing the economy in the first place.

Change the names, and what is about to happen doesn’t seem so far fetched. Eight more years of hearing about the failed policies of the Bush administration, who pushed the same ineffective stimuless button that Pelosi is proposing. Obama and his Liberal Flunkies have blamed George Bush for everything so far, why stop now?

It was Friday, October 21, 1988.

Only one interview today. But what an interview – at WOR Radio. Gotham’s version of WCCO (more or less).

I met the program director at the studios. We had a brief – maybe fifteen minutes – chat. He seemed to have been very impressed – especially with my voiceover tape.

At the end of the conversation, he asked “So if you’re gonna move to New York, I think I can use you as a staff voiceover guy”.

My heart quickened.

“It’d be nine hours a week at $25 an hour”.

I did the math in my head. $225 a week.

“Interested?”

I smiled. “I’d have to figure out how to make ends meet, but I’m interested, yes”

He agreed – I’d have a lot to think about. We shook hands, and I agreed to call with a decision next week.

I walked up to Times Square.

I could really learn to like this, I thought.

Then, I turned my thoughts to figuring how I could move to New York and manage to earn the rest of a living, on the pretty fair assumption that $225 a week wouldn’t go as far in New York as in the Twins.

I took the train back downtown and took a walk through the Village.  I wandered around ’til close to midnight; eating Chinese food and stopping in bars and walking up Broadway way into the thirties, and back, as it got dark.  It was a gorgeous night out. 

Somehow.

I ask my liberal acquaintances if they’re aware that the Democrats plan to muzzle conservative opinion in this country, by reinstating the “Fairness” Doctrine.

Leave aside for a moment that most people of all political stripes have not the faintest clue how the “Fairness” Doctrine worked during its heyday (until Reagan repealed it in 1987), to say nothing of how it would work in the future; the current party line on the left is “Barack Obama doesn’t favor restoring the Fairness Doctrine!”.  I’ve heard it from no less than three different local lefties in the past 36 hours.

It’s true, sort of – in the same sense that “George Bush didn’t support McCain/Feingold”.  He didn’t.  Until Congress made it clear that they did, and he opted not to expend any political capital opposing it.

Because the threat isn’t Obama himself; it’s a Congressional Democrat caucus that’s already thoroughly committed to re-instating the Doctrine, combined with a President that, at best, is going to expend no political capital opposing a Democrat-controlled Congress on the issue.

Brian C. Anderson at the NYPost analyzes the reality:

SHOULD Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats take full control of Congress, next year will see a real legislative attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine – and to diminish conservatives’ influence on broadcast radio, the one medium they dominate.

Yes, the Obama campaign said some months back that the candidate doesn’t seek to re-impose this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan’s FCC phased it out in the 1980s, required TV and radio broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing viewpoints or face steep fines or even loss of license. But most Democrats – including party elders Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Al Gore – strongly support the idea of mandating “fairness.”

Would a President Obama veto a new Fairness Doctrine if Congress enacted one? It’s doubtful.

The Democrats – and their RINOid supporters on the right, the thin film of Republicans who also support them on the Doctrine – paint a rosy picture to each other and the people about what a “Fairness” Doctrine means to free speech in this country.

Anderson has the ugly truth:

The Fairness Doctrine was an astonishingly bad idea. It’s a too-tempting power for government to abuse. When the doctrine was in effect, both Democratic and Republican administrations regularly used it to harass critics on radio and TV.

Most people have at least an idea – however vague and propaganda-driven – of the “what” of the Doctrine.  Few on either side know of the “how”:

Second, a new Fairness Doctrine would drive political talk radio off the dial. If a station ran a big-audience conservative program like, say, Laura Ingraham’s, it would also have to run a left-leaning alternative. But liberals don’t do well on talk radio, as the failure of Air America and indeed all other liberal efforts in the medium to date show. Stations would likely trim back conservative shows so as to avoid airing unsuccessful liberal ones.

Then there’s all the lawyers you’d have to hire to respond to the regulators measuring how much time you devoted to this topic or that. Too much risk and hassle, many radio executives would conclude. Why not switch formats to something less charged – like entertainment or sports coverage?

That, indeed, is exactly what talk radio was before 1987 (except at those very rare stations that could support political hosts on both sides of the aisle – and by “support”, I mean even putting a 25 year old kid on weekend graveyards to talk conservative politics); at all but the stations that could afford to commit to it, the subject was avoided. 

Anderson catches what is by far the most chilling facet of this story; the Orwellian hijacking of the language that the left will need to do to make this go down the American throat:

For those who dismiss this threat to freedom of the airwaves as unlikely, consider how the politics of “fairness” might play out with the public. A Rasmussen poll last summer found that fully 47 percent of respondents backed the idea of requiring radio and television stations to offer “equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary,” with 39 percent opposed.

Liberals, Rasmussen found, support a Fairness Doctrine by 54 percent to 26 percent, while Republicans and unaffiliated voters were more evenly divided. The language of “fairness” is seductive.

Who wouldn’t support being “Fair”, after all?

Of course, it’s ludicrous; there is  no shortage of left-leaning points of view in any medium, other than terrestrial radio (and the left has had ample chances to try to stake out a piece of that turf).  It dominates the print medium, broadcast TV, cable news (save Fox), public TV and radio…every medium save AM radio and the blogs.

Anderson notes, correctly, that the “Fairness” Doctrine is only one of the bureaucratic chicanes – albeit the marquee effort – the left is going to attempt:

[Obama] and most Democrats want to expand broadcasters’ public-interest duties. One such measure would be to impose greater “local accountability” on them – requiring stations to carry more local programming whether the public wants it or not.

And on the surface, this looks like a good thing – after all, my program is local.  Gotta be a good thing, right?

Well, not so much.  The public votes with its feet; and while everyone pays lip service to the benefit of local radio, the market still rewards quality – and for better or worse, the best quality is usually syndicated.   And that syndicated programming – everyone from Limbaugh on down – is rewarded with excellent numbers and tons of money. 

The left wants to kill this status quo with a thousand bureaucratic paper cuts:

 The reform would entail setting up community boards to make their demands known when station licenses come up for renewal. The measure is clearly aimed at national syndicators like Clear Channel that offer conservative shows. It’s a Fairness Doctrine by subterfuge.

Obama also wants to relicense stations every two years (not eight, as is the case now), so these monitors would be a constant worry for stations. Finally, the Democrats also want more minority-owned stations and plan to intervene in the radio marketplace to ensure that outcome.

Read the whole thing.  Become informed.  Because you never know when some mindless lefty parrot is going to greet the debate with “Obama opposes the Fairness Doctrine”, and assume that’s that.

I’d like to welcome this blog’s latest sponsor, Chachi – home of the freakin’ awesome political t-shirt.

Think of them as bumper stickers for your torso.

Buy ’til it hurts!  (That last bit was motivated by pure greed.  Gotta do that before it gets regulated). 

Reason number 10,393 I dig Sarah Palin:

So get this … we found out when Sarah Palin checked into the Omni Berkshire Hotel in NYC for her “Saturday Night Live” performance, she used an alias — first name, Tina.

I smell a “Crocodile Dundee”-style remake here…

I went to a town hall meeting featuring Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN6), DFL-and-Independence Party endorsed challenger Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg, and unendorsed Ventura “Independence” Party challenger Bob Anderson.

The shorter version:

• Tinklenburg:  Platitudes.  Lots and lots of them.  Look, I’ll cop to it; I’m singularly unimpressed by E-Tink.  His performance during the 35W Bridge Collapse was uniquely loathsome, and I won’t be forgiving that for quite some time.  That said, even by the low standards I expected, his performance was unimpressive; loads of platitudes, no real answers.  That he’s even a contender is a sign of how dire things are for Republicans these days. 
• Anderson:  Seemed like a good guy, albeit not a politician.  Confessed to being a fiscal conservative, which introduces an interesting question; given that the Ventura “Independence” Party endorsed E-Tink for CD6 over him, and Dean “Like Ed Schultz, Only Here” Barkley over the Lars Ulrich Skeet Uldrich Jack Uldrich for Senate, where indeed is the notion that there is a place for disaffected Republicans in the IP?
• Bachmann:  I won’t kid you; I went in rooting for Michele.  She’s conservative, she’s sharp, and she’s got the one thing that the left hates most from conservative women; she’s uppity.  And instead of hiding behind platitudes, she grabbed a dry-erase marker and spent five minutes at a whiteboard explaining the numbers behind her opposition to the bailout bill – the trillions of dollars for which we the taxpayers are now on the hook.  It was a pretty polarized crowd – about half of them were obviously fans, and the other half were not (and some of them were pretty rude about it, nattering and chattering away in the audience as the Representative explained her position, although Rep. Bachmann did a great job of fielding their questions). 

It wasn’t a debate – call it a “forum” – and I’ll cop to my biases in advance.  But how anyone who isn’t voting on pure ideology could choose E-Tink over Bachmann is…

…well, finding an analogy is irrelevant, since that’s about the only reason in play at the moment.

…Colin Powell earned the respect of every American.

As a Secretary of State, Colin Powell made an excellent general.

There’s not much I can say about Powell’s endorsement of Obama that others aren’t saying better.

But watching him on Today this morning, one bit stuck out:  Obama, he of the paper-thin resume, with a third of a term in the Senate and a brief career as a Chicago ward heeleer in the Illinois legislature and a barely-filled suit, is a “transormational figure”…

…while Sarah Palin is “inexperienced”.

Jay Reding has more.

MSN Money today, or at least two of their columnists, attributed the 413-point gain (4.6%) on the Dow today to Ben Bernanke’s endorsement of a potential Pelosi stimulus package.

The Democrats are also taking Bernanake’s words out of context to promote their “stimulus” plan, essentially a plan to further mortgage the future to generate welfare checks.

Stocks soared today as higher oil prices set off a big rally in energy stocks and as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke endorsed the idea of a second economic stimulus package from Congress.

This based on an out-of-context snippet of Bernanke testimony today…

“With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate”

“Consideration” is not an endorsement. Unless of course you are a liberal looking for corroboration of your failed economic policies.

Here are excerpts from the full transcript in context (emphasis mine):

I understand that the Congress is evaluating the desirability of a second fiscal package.  Any fiscal action inevitably involves tradeoffs, not only among current needs and objectives but also–because commitments of resources today can burden future generations and constrain future policy options–between the present and the future.  Such tradeoffs inevitably involve value judgments that can properly be made only by our elected officials.  Moreover, with the outlook exceptionally uncertain, the optimal timing, scale, and composition of any fiscal package are unclear.  All that being said, with the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate.

Should the Congress choose to undertake fiscal action, certain design principles may be helpful.  To best achieve its goals, any fiscal package should be structured so that its peak effects on aggregate spending and economic activity are felt when they are most needed, namely, during the period in which economic activity would otherwise be expected to be weak.  Any fiscal package should be well-targeted, in the sense of attempting to maximize the beneficial effects on spending and activity per dollar of increased federal expenditure or lost revenue; at the same time, it should go without saying that the Congress must be vigilant in ensuring that any allocated funds are used effectively and responsibly.  Any program should be designed, to the extent possible, to limit longer-term effects on the federal government’s structural budget deficit.

Finally, in the ideal case, a fiscal package would not only boost overall spending and economic activity but would also be aimed at redressing specific factors that have the potential to extend or deepen the economic slowdown.  As I discussed earlier, the extraordinary tightening in credit conditions has played a central role in the slowdown thus far and could be an important factor delaying the recovery.  If the Congress proceeds with a fiscal package, it should consider including measures to help improve access to credit by consumers, homebuyers, businesses, and other borrowers.  Such actions might be particularly effective at promoting economic growth and job creation.

He’s not ruling it out, but it’s not an endorsement of Liberal welfare stimulus checks. He warns of any plan’s detrimental impact on our future (read national debt), and seems more concerned with job growth (read tax cuts) and less so on putting cash in consumer’s hands (liberal stimulus packages).

…and yes, I am well aware of the fact that the last (also failed) stimulus package was pressed into service by a liberal by the name of George W. Bush.

So why did the last one fail? The same reason the next one will. The same reason Obama’s Marxist “spread the wealth around” policies will fail.

Because our economy is hyper-sensitized to job growth and job security. Right now small businesses are freezing new hires and new expenditures until they see who occupies the Oval Office, what happens in the credit markets, and what is in store for tax and fiscal policy.

As a result, consumers are deferring discretionary purchases; especially big-ticket items manufactured in America. Putting a few hundred dollars in their pockets won’t assuage the insecurity they feel about their jobs and cash flow for the foreseeable future.

Bernanke is convinced that the goverment needs to do something to loosen frozen credit markets and stimulate job growth. Hence the relevance of Joe the Plumber of late. Americans are realizing what a hero Joe and other small business owners are in times like these. They create jobs. Right now they need to be incented, not penalized for doing so.

Barack Obama’s policies play into the worst fears of those who hold in their power the ability to grow our economy. I suspect that has a lot to do with the tightening of the race for the White House.

Question is…is there still time enough for the American people to realize which of the two candidates is most likely to take actions, based on their records, that will address the challenges our economy faces?

PS: So why did the stock market go up today? Because there were more buyers than sellers.

It was Thursday, October 20, 1988. It was my second full day in New York – and the busiest day by far.

My cousins gave me the keys and a self-addressed envelope. They were going out to a “cottage” on Lawn Gisland; I’d have the loft in the Village to myself. I’d mail the keys to them on my way out on Sunday. I thanked them profusely; they headed out by 8AM.

I had my work cut out for me.

My first stop was a shabby office building up in the Thirties. I was going to meet a guy to talk about being a producer/host for an all-weekend, all-talk network – the first attempt I’d heard to exploit the repeal of the “Fairness Doctrine”. The concept: hire talk talent from around the country to do three-hour shows on the weekend; beam the shows via satellite to New York, and thence back out to other stations that wanted quality, major-market talk talent for their weekend lineups. The guy talked a great game; Morton Downey, Tom Leykis, and a slew of other major market names were “interested”.

The job: serve as the network’s producer. This involved working a forty-hour week – on Saturday and Sunday. The work day would involve being in at 6AM Saturday to 2AM Sunday morning, and then again from 6AM Sunday through 2AM Monday morning, with four hours off in between.  Two twenty-hour shifts – a forty-hour week in two days, followed by a five-day weekend.  Or more likely four, if we assume Monday was for recuperating.

To set the hook in my cheek? I’d get a show, from 6-9AM both mornings.

Hell yeah.  I was interested.

I left after two hours. The guy sounded interested. We agreed to talk again in about a month, when the financing picture was a little clearer.

I grabbed a slice of pizza, and went to my next interview. It was at a radio station on Seventh Avenue, just south of Central Park. The program director was a Hispanic gentleman in his late twenties to mid thirties. We chatted for an hour or so. The job…

…well, the job was the perfect metaphor, in retrospect, for the Dinkins years. It would have involved being on the air from midnight until 5AM, every weeknight. “But don’t worry”, said the PD, “you won’t have to do much prep. All anyone wants to talk about is race”. The way he described it, the job would sound a lot like the classic “bigotry” scene from Do The Right Thing, listening to whites, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Russians, Dominicans, Koreans and every other ethnic group bitch about each other all night. “You can try to talk about other things”, he added sardonically. “Sometimes it catches on, but usually, all anyone wants to talk about is race”.

It sounded perfect.

He was interested. We agreed to talk again in a couple of weeks.

I spent some time wandering around the southern reaches of Central Park, on an unseasonably warm day, soaking up New York.

I wandered down Seventh, mildly shocked to see Carnegie Hall – THE Carnegie Hall, I thought, as if there might be another one around somewhere – to my left.  It was late afternoon, and I just kept walking, block after block after long, colorful, filthy, fascinating block, in my interview suit and my new, pinchy interview shoes, wide-eyed and gulping it all in.  And, I might add, fairly sure I wasn’t lost, and that I had a fair idea of where I was…

…until I realized I’d wandered into the top of Times Square, in all of its tawdry, tacky pre-Giuliani splendor. 

I grabbed a hot dog from a street vendor (pondering after I ordered how one could order “onions” on a dog and get a thin, runny slop of tomato broth with a wan assortment of floaties that may have been dried onions that had soaked in whatever the juice was) and wandered around the place, gawking and gaping like a complete tourist and not really caring a bit; I’d imagine people thought I was high.  I had a big day coming the next day – but I was in no hurry to get back to the loft.

I can do this, I thought.

Finally, I hopped the train and rode down to Union Square.  The stairs smelled like urine.  A guy was busking at the top of the stairs, really badly.  I acted like a New Yorker (!) and ignored him completely as I walked up the stairs and over to Broadway to get “home”. 

I grabbed a couple of slices of pizza and went upstairs to the loft.  My cousins were long gone; I had the place to myself.  I was footsore and tired…

…and I couldn’t sleep at all.  I grabbed a beer and a plate for the slices, and sat on the leather couch in my cousin’s front room, looking out at the skyline in the Village, at the apartment building across the street, with lights shining through windows and people having dinner at half-seen tables, and people and cars going past below, and a constant “thrum” of cars and horns and stuff contantly humming in the background.

Something’s gonna break.  I can feel it.

On Saturday’s NARN show, Ed and I spent a segment talking about the Catholic Church’s relative silence (at least in America) on abortion in politics (a conversation Ed continued at Hot Air this morning).

I’m a Protestant, of course, and mildly peeved that the state of discourse is now such that I have to painstakingly disclaim “I’m not anti-Catholic”. 

But I’ve had a few questions for American Catholics for a very, very long time.

Catholic doctrine – to this goy, who had exactly a semester in Catholic school, and that only because my elementary school had to be torn down, so we rented a room at Saint John’s Academy – has always seemed like a bit of a paper tiger among American Catholics.  Catholics in the US seem scarcely less willing than us goyim to do all the stuff the priests and nuns told ’em not to way back when – use birth control, get divorced, knock back a couple of Big Macs on Friday, what have you.  As to being pro-life?  Many of America’s most-Catholic cities – Boston, New York, Philly, Saint Paul, New Orleans – are also the most left-leaning, ergo most pro-“choice”.  And that’s not a demographic accident; generations of American bishops, archbishops and (I dunno) flying-buttressbishops, like Minneapolis/Saint Paul’s former Archbiship Flynn, were scarcely farther to the right than Barack Obama on any issue, and seemed conveniently and consistently silent as re politicians’ stances (especially those of “Catholic” pols, like Joe Biden, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and, lest we forget, pro-“choice” congresswomen Betty McCollum, not merely Catholic but graduate of Catholic women’s college and pristinely-liberal hothouse Saint Catherine’s, in Saint Paul which, like neighboring Saint Thomas, seems to find Catholic doctrine more a matter of fund-raising than a moral foundation.

So when I see this story, about Denver’s archbishop questioning Biden and Obama on “choice”, and lighting a figurative fire under his followers’ (parishioners?  Archbishopricticioners? Prelatistas?) figurative feet over “choice”…:

Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput labeled Barack Obama the “most committed” abortion-rights candidate from a major party in 35 years while accusing a Catholic Obama ally and other Democratic-friendly Catholic groups of doing a “disservice to the church.”

Chaput, one of the nation’s most politically outspoken Catholic prelates, delivered the remarks Friday night at a dinner of a Catholic women’s group.
His comments were among the sharpest in a debate over abortion and Catholic political responsibility in a campaign in which Catholics represent a key swing vote.

…my response wasn’t so much “there y’go” as “why is this news?” 

Of course, it is news; of America’s bajillion archbishops, Chaput would seem to be one of very, very few actually telling Catholic politicians to reckon with Catholic doctrine in adopting their positions.

And, possible Reaganesque flight to the right notwithstanding, an awful lot of Catholics will be voting for The One next month. 

Compare and contrast; when evangelical Protestants don’t vote their faith, it makes the news; when the Catholic hierarchy asks Catholics not even to vote their faith, but for Catholic pols to be aware of the rules, regs and beliefs of that faith, it’s newsworthy.

Where is the Catholic hierarchy?

In 1940, war clouds were gathering on both horizons, as the nation struggled to shake off an epic downturn.  There were those that said socialism was the only way to defeat totalitarianism; that, perhaps, Hitler and Stalin had the right answer to difficult times.

Into that breach, on December 9, 1940, stepped the Chicago Bears.  Heavy underdogs to Sammy Baugh’s Washington Redskin juggernaut, Papa Bear George Halas and quarterback Sid Luckman led the plucky Monsters of the Midway to the most lopsided win in NFL Championship history; 73-0.

I’m not going to say the win ended the Depression and set the stage for victory in World War II – but the fact remains, we’ll never need to know if either would have happened otherwise.  The Bears came through.

And in 1985, as the nation rebounded from a deep recession but struggled with Soviet power around the world, there were those who believed the Cold War was as close to going “hot” as it would ever get.  This – in the days before Rejkjavik and the fall of The Wall, with Contras and Pershing Missiles and demonstrations against the US around the world – was a dire time for the US, and for democracy.

And when the nation needed it most, the Chicago Bears delivered; Jim MacMahon led the Bears to a victory that set the stage for the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the greatest period of prosperity in modern times.

Indeed, it could be said that the onset of the current electoral and economic troubles – the Dems’ win in ’06, the mortgage crisis – coincided with the Bears loss to the Baltimore Clots earlier in 2006.

So today – with times as fraught as they are – it’s good to know that The Bears are not only still there, but they are still beating up on the hated Vikings.

There is hope, my fellow Americans.  It is on the horizon.  And it wears Black really really dark Navy-Blue and Orange.

Courage.

…when the Ventura “Independence” Party in Minnesota finally falls below that magical 5% mark, loses “Major Party” status (which grants it an automatic place on the ballot and a seat at debates), and we never have to hear from hamsters like Dean Barkley ever again.

While I’ve consistently labelled the IP “DFL Lite” – largely accurately – the party’s roots trace back to the old “Reform” party, the last fallout of Ross Perot’s brief political heyday.  And some – a tiny few – of the candidates the IP has put forward have actually been mildly interesting; Jim Gibson, the 2000 Senate candidate who ran against Rod Grams and Brave Sir Mark Dayton, was a thoughtful candidate with a lot of positions that could attract a conservative – indeed, had Grams been significantly ahead in the polls that year (he lost to Brave Sir Mark), I thought about voting for Gibson.  Lars Ulrich Jack Uldrich, the IP candidate who lost the party’s Senate endorsement to Barkley, calls himself a former Republican; I’ve talked with him, and he’s got a few positions that make sense (along with plenty of IP detritus).

But Barkley’s the one the IP is putting out there for Senate.  I talked with Senator Barkley (“Governor” Ventura appointed him to fill the late Paul Wellstone’s seat for two months in 2002, petulantly refusing to give the recently-elected Norm Coleman a head start in office) briefly last night on Marty Owings’ show on Blog Talk Radio. 

I asked him to square his current platform – the one he’s pimping in the debates, which is all sorts of high/mighty talk about fiscal restraint – with the only record the “Independence” Party actually has, the four years of the Ventura Administration, in which Barkley and Tim Penny did most of the thinking, and during which the Ventura Administration turned most of Minnesota’s surpluses into permanent spending, booming the budget by 28% in two years.

Barkley’s response?  “What were you smoking?”  As I tried to focus on actual history, Barkley yelled over me with a trail of peevish ad-homina.

Later, when asked about his Iraq policy, he responded he wanted out “as soon as possible”.  I asked him how he judges the term “possible”; what would make this withdrawal “possible”, according to “Senator”, Senator Dean Barkley. 

For that, I got more ad-homina – to which I responded “I think you’re too brittle to be a Senator; if you think I’m a pain in the ass, imagine when you’re sitting across the table from Vladimir Putin”. 

His only response?  A Sarah Palin joke. 

So OK, all you “Independence” Party people out there (and thanks to Jesse Ventura’s eternal, dumb coattails and no other reason whatsoever, you do continue to poll better than the Libertarians, the Natural Law and Constitution parties); how is it that he is still in public life?

Oh, yeah – Barkley, a lawyer, said he didn’t give or take PAC money when he was working as a lobbyist.  Perhaps; although I’m wondering if he’s not parsing his words a little narrowly.

The Minnesota Poll shows The Obamessiah ahead by double digits.

The poll, conducted Thursday and Friday, found that Obama is supported by 52 percent of likely voters, while 41 percent are backing McCain. The results show that while McCain has cut into Obama’s 18-point lead from two weeks ago, it’s not enough to move Minnesota back into the toss-up column, as it was immediately after the Republican National Convention was held in St. Paul in early September.

Experience says when the Minnesota Poll shows a huge DFL lead alone among polls, it most likely means it’s pretty close to the margin of error, DFLers are scared, and the MNPoll is doing it’s best to coax Republicans into staying home. 

Sort of like they’re doing nationwide.

Don’t believe the hype, Republicans.  It’s gonna be a tough election – but the media and Democrats (pardon the redundancy) want you to believe it’s hopeless.

The behavior of the “tanning bed media” – the hordes of media vultures that descend on whomever dares to question The One – should be getting some reactions.  The “Joe The Plumber” story is merely the latest incident…:

“It actually upsets me,” Mr. Wurzelbacher [AKA “Joe”] said. “I am a plumber, and just a plumber, and here Barack Obama or John McCain, I mean these guys are going to deal with some serious issues coming up shortly. The media’s worried about whether I paid my taxes, they’re worried about any number of silly things that have nothing to do with America. They really don’t. I asked a question. When you can’t ask a question to your leaders anymore, that gets scary. That bothers me.”

Mr. Wurzelbacher confronted Mr. Obama over his tax proposals, asserting that the Democratic nominee’s plan would tax him more if Mr. Wurzelbacher bought a plumbing business.

 

In the course of their conversation, Mr. Obama said, “It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success, too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

…in a trail of behavior that should make every “liberal” that’s spent the last eight years howling about the Bush Administration’s (largely imaginary-to-the-point-of-paranoid) transgressions against American civil liberties blanche with horror – were it not for the fact that nearly every damn one of them is a mindless partisan hypocrite.

The media took plenty of time off from reporting on two wars and an economic crisis to find, and report with rapturous glee, that Wurzelbacher isn’t licensed, hasn’t drawn up a business plan, and wouldn’t be buying a company that made over $250K even if he did, and has a few unpaid fines and a divorce in his past.

I’ve heard a couple of liberals respond “Then his question doesnt’ count!  He couldn’t have even bought the business!”

Buncombe.  A guy can dream – and he doesn’t have to vet his dreams with a producer in New York before asking a Presidential candidate a question.

Is it personal?  Yell, hah.  Last week, I got into an email exchange with a liberal about Obama and his Democrats’ crimes against the First Amendment.

> [The reinstatement of the “Fairness” Doctrine would be a harm felt…]
> by whom besides Limbaugh and those who echo
> him?

Which is a statement that could only come from a person for whom the (liberal) ends justify the (authoritarian) means (and who supports a campaign that seems by all indications to believe the same).  Is Limbaugh’s speech not protected by the First Amendment?  Is not one who a (dimwitted) liberal might believe (wrongly) “echoes” Limbaugh – that’d be me – entitled to it?  (We all sound the same to them).

Apparently not.

In an un-linked sidebar to a Strib editorial full of platitudes about stomping out hate in the presidential campaign (which mentions the incidents involving a few overexcited people at the Lakeville rally last week, although nothing about the physical attacks, sexist defamation and economic threats  against Mac, Sarah and their supporters, and the media lynching of any who dare question The One, not that we expected the Strib to have an especially ecumenical definition of “hate”), the Strib runs this bit by “political media expert” Kathleen Hall Jamieson about Mac’s response in Lakeville:

 “The audience that expressed that needs to be told that’s not the way we campaign and treat the opposing candidate … McCain was slow to respond. He should be applauded for doing so, but he should have done it more quickly.”

“More quickly?”

Perhaps someone needs to do some metrics on the exact delay threshold between “treating the opponent well” and “condoning hatred”.  It’s not a picayune point, as anyone who’s had to “think on their feet” in front of a crowd can tell you.

Oh, yeah – the Strib didn’t see fit to tell anyone that Kathleen Hall Jamieson is “Policy Director” at the Annenberg Foundation.

Does that ring a bell with anyone?

As I read the accounts of Todd Palin’s visit to the Arrowhead, I’m reminded of the 1994 Senate race.

The conventional wisdom said metrocrat DFLer Ann Wynia was going to walk all over Grams, a former TV anchor, to replace Dave Durenberger. 

A last-minute push outstate by the NRA was later credited with pushing Rod over the top, barely tipping Wynia by a fraction of a point. 

Coleman’s going back to that well: 

Todd Palin, the husband of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, campaigned in Duluth this afternoon. He attended an NRA rally for GOP Sen. Norm Coleman. The ex VP of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, also spoke at the rally. 1,000 people reportedly were in attendance.

The Twin Cities media routinely ignores that large, quiet, but in the end formidable constituency.  There’s no mistaking Al Franken for anything but an orc on the gun issue. And guns may not be a make-or-break this election.

But it’s worked before…

It was Wednesday, October 19, 1988. My first “working” day in New York.

And I was going to have to figure out New York’s transit system now. I had an interview at a little talk station in White Plains. I got up at 6AM and caught the subway up to Grand Central Station. I caught a train, next, and watched as the city, eventually, morphed into the leafy ‘burbs of Westchester County; Scarsdale and points north.

The interview?

I should have stayed in Manhattan. The program director – a tired-looking fellow in his late thirties – spent about an hour telling me that White Plains was too expensive for anyone to live in on the salary he was willing and able to pay.

My actual suitability for the job – mid-day talk show host – never really came up.

Two hours later, I was on the train back into Manhattan.

I got back to 12th and Broadway around three in the afternoon, and spent about two hours browsing around the Strand. I picked up a copy of Warsaw Diaries by Kasimierz Brandys – the story of the Solidarnosc uprising and the attendant crackdown in 1981 as told by someone who witnessed the whole thing from a table in front of a coffee shop where he and his graduate students debated the whole thing in the context of post-existential literature. I bought it because…well, it seemed like a Greenwich Village-y thing to do.

———–

My cousins and I left the baby at the apartment (with the nanny, natch) and walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. The sights and sounds of the Village (and the smells – whole blocks reeked of burned hemp) put a spring in my step. I figured I could learn to love this.

Tomorrow – the busiest day of the bunch. Two interviews. I laid out a clean shirt and got ready.

Lame.

A brief behind the scenes sketch and a stint on Weekend Update where she watches while Amy Pollock does a Palin rap.

Plus the musical guest? Who is Adele?

Josh Brolin. Not funny.

If you missed it you didn’t miss it.

I could have been sleeping.

Mitch and Ed are talking about despondent conservatives on the radio on my credenza as I type. Many of us have resigned ourselves to the fact that we are likely to have a Democratic President, House and Senate and may even have lost filibuster protection in Congress. In a sick example of double jeopardy, Al Franken could be the last building block of a Liberal Supermajority.

The huns are at the wall. Soon, no one; nothing may stand between hard-working, self-reliant folks and those that think we are a people of the government, by the government, for the government, and not the other way around as Abraham Lincoln set forth in his Gettysburg Address.

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven’t since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s.

Why do you suppose that happened? Because those were very bad times. America’s economy at its near worst. You’d think that there are enough of us around to remember how bad things were back then, but as they say, history tends to repeat itself; humans being humans after all.

As for being a despondent conservative, I have found my optimism wavering to say the least but at the same time I have given much thought, especially as a financial advisor, as to how this translates into pragmatic action and counsel.

Assuming the worst, what does it mean for the average American? What should we do? How can we prepare?

Sorry Senator Biden, but you are so very wrong, again. Sadly, for the foreseeable future, it will actually be “patriotic” to save more and spend less.

Obama’s “tax cut”, characterized more accurately as a wealth redistribution scheme by analysts with a little more economic acumen than “That One,” will essentially be taking capital from those that have historically known what to do with it and giving it to those that historically have not.

Job creation, investment, and growth will give way to an insignificant blip in consumer spending, mostly on imported goods, and visits to the casino. A drop in consumer spending and job growth will create a cyclical effect that will magnify the effects, even the perceived future effects of a more burdensome government.

You see when you run a business, every dollar you spend is a dollar not spent or invested somewhere else. It’s called opportunity cost. If the government increases its burden on consumers and employers, those dollars have to come from somewhere.

Even the prospect of higher taxes and slowed economic growth will be cause for pause among business owners and consumers. It’s happening already, which is why many believe we have been in a recession for some time now.

And in fact, I have some advice for you: make adjustments now, before you are forced too. Look at your finances with an eye for necessity. Discretionary spending should be closely scrutinized to maximize its value to you and your family or business.

Build a financial buffer of safety around you and your family as the taxman is coming and he doesn’t care what damage he does to your employer. He will simply be doing the bidding of Obama and his liberal economic pinheads.

The verdict isn’t in yet, but your financial advisor may also start to advise you to move your portfolios into allocations slightly more conservative than they have been in the past as financial analysts may determine the higher potential returns earned by investors in exchange for taking more risk (versus risk-free investments) may be reduced for the foreseeable future.

Assuming that a recession has already begun, and the liberal powers that be are likely to make exactly the wrong moves, a recession could extend itself into a depression – essentially the term for a very long recession.

Cash will be King.

And much to the surprise of the liberals that will have caused it, the rich will get even richer as assets will return to their rightful owners as the wealthy scoop up many and varied bargains in equities and real estate discarded by those who have become under or unemployed.

So don’t wait for the effects of an Obama administration and an activist liberal congress to trickle down to your financial situation. Prepare yourself now.

It was Tuesday, October 18, 1988. I was off to New York.

My pal Rich stopped by around 6:30AM; I ran down to the street lugging my duffel and suit bags, threw them in the back of his ’82 Accord, and away we went, through the claustrophobic crack-alley of my street down to LaFayette, and thence to Highway 3 and, finally, 494 to the airport.

My flight left at 7:30; I made it in plenty of time by the standards of those pre-9/11 days. It was the first I’d been in a plane since the summer of ’82, when I went to Europe. It was cool but pleasant out, with scattered breaks in an overcast sky. I sat in a window seat, and watched the bustle of the airport turn into the blur of takeoff, the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers and the southeast suburbs and the farmland of western Wisconson flling away and, finally, the sense of flying over miles of gauze as the plane reached cruising altitude over a wall-to-wall overcast, somewhere over Cheese country.

———-

It was three or so hours later that the plane dropped through the overcast somewhere over the water, on final approach to LaGuardia. The disconcerting part, for me, was seeing nothing but human edifices for as far as the eye could see – not a significant stretch of unblemished green anywhere in sight.

I kinda dug it.

I got my luggage, and walked through

I walked out onto the concourse in front of the terminal and hailed a cab. “Union Square”, I told the rumpled looking Russian driver.

We pulled out onto the freeway, and then over to the BQE, my sense of direction doing flip-flops…

…until I saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center to the southwest. Now I knew where I was.

———-

I got out of the cab near 12th and Broadway, by the Strand Bookstore, and walked up Broadway, looking for the address. It took me a couple of tries, but I found the door, and rang the bell.

My long-lost second cousin and his wife were both big-time executives with Wall Street firms. They had a brand-new baby – maybe six weeks old – and a nanny…

…and a loft apartment straight out of Architectural Digest, seven floors above Broadway. A huge rehabbed industrial space with newly-varnished floors, with a raised kitchen with all-brushed-stainless-steel appliances way back before brushed stainless steel was cool, and three bedrooms spaced around the back of the huge open “living room”, with a gorgous view of the Village out the eight-foot-tall windows over Broadway, this was not, I figured, your typical “New To New York” setup.

My cousins – and their nanny, a sixty-something Queens native who sounded for all the world like a less-screechy Edith Bunker – welcomed me to New York, made dinner, and debriefed me on the last ten years of all of our lives.

I shared a room with the baby but, I was informed, only for two nights. They’d be going out of town on Thursday, and I’d have the place to myself for the rest of my week in the city.

I got my suit situated, and got ready for the next morning. It was going to be a busy couple of days.