There is a common misconception amongst New Yorkers, the city kind, that Westchester county is Upstate NY. Hell, if they're feeling crazy they might call the Catskills Upstate NY. But the truth is that Upstate New York doesn't start until you get to Albany, the state capital, 120 miles north of Yonkers. If you were making a run to Canada you'd still have 5 hours of pavement to cover from Albany north. This is Upstate NY.
I went home a few weeks ago to visit a few remaining friends in the area, saw my sister play some games, and stayed at my folks house. October in upstate is something else, an animal that makes you feel the hum of the earth and the character of your surroundings. The older I get the more I feel drawn to those places that the earth is slowly reclaiming as hers. Perhaps I am alone sometimes in this sentiment but I find these moments beautiful.
Yet McCain seems to think he's an honest, upright American citizen, worthy of being a visual calling card for his tax plan. Actually under Obama his business would pay less money and he'd even be eligible for a tax break. I'm so sick and tired of McCain lying to the American people.
Here's the story from the Associated Press:
One week ago, Joe Wurzelbacher was just another working man living in a modest house outside Toledo, Ohio, and thinking about how to buy the plumbing business where he works. But when he stopped Senator Barack Obama during a visit to his block last weekend to complain about taxes, he set himself on a path to becoming America’s newest media celebrity — and as such suddenly found himself facing celebrity-level scrutiny.
As it turns out, Joe the Plumber, as he became nationally known when Senator John McCain made him a theme at Wednesday’s final presidential debate, may work in the plumbing business, but he is not a licensed plumber.
Thomas Joseph, the business manager of Local 50 of the United Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters and Service Mechanics, based in Toledo, said Thursday that Mr. Wurzelbacher had never held a plumber’s license, which is required in Toledo and several surrounding municipalities. He also never completed an apprenticeship and does not belong to the plumber’s union, which has endorsed Mr. Obama. On Thursday, he acknowledged that he does plumbing work even though he does not have a license.
His full name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. And he owes back taxes, too, public records show. The premise of his complaint to Mr. Obama about taxes may also be flawed, according to tax analysts. Contrary to what Mr. Wurzelbacher asserted and Mr. McCain echoed, neither his personal taxes nor those of the business where he works are likely to rise if Mr. Obama’s tax plan were to go into effect, they said.
None of that is likely to matter to those who see Mr. Wurzelbacher as a symbol of the entrepreneurial spirit they hope to foster with tax cuts, but even Mr. Wurzelbacher said he was shocked by all the attention.
“I’m kind of like Britney Spears having a headache,” he told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Everybody wants to know about it.”
Just five days ago, Mr. Wurzelbacher, 34, lived in anonymity in Holland, Ohio, a single father who, as he said on national television, worked all day and came home to fix dinner and help his son, 13, with his homework.
But he became the hero of conservatives and Republicans when he stopped Mr. Obama, who was campaigning on his street, and asked whether he believed in the American dream. Mr. Wurzelbacher said he was concerned about having to pay higher taxes as an owner of a small business.
“I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year,” he told Mr. Obama. “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?”
That encounter wound up on YouTube and led to appearances on the Fox News Channel, interviews with conservative bloggers and a New York Post editorial, all of whom seized on a small part of Mr. Obama’s long reply. “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” Mr. Obama had said.
Mr. McCain invoked Mr. Wurzelbacher in Wednesday’s debate as a way to criticize Mr. Obama’s tax plan and wealth-sharing argument, and picked up the theme again on Thursday.
“You know what Senator Obama had to say to Joe? That he wanted to spread his wealth around,” Mr. McCain said at an event in Downingtown, Pa. “America didn’t become the greatest nation on earth by spreading the wealth,” he said. “We became the greatest nation by creating new wealth.”
After some version of “Joe the Plumber” was mentioned two dozen times during the debate, Mr. Wurzelbacher found news crews outside his home and Katie Couric on the phone.
Mr. Wurzelbacher told reporters that the company he works for, Newell Plumbing & Heating, has two full-time employees: himself and the owner, Al Newell.
Neither Mr. Newell nor Mr. Wurzelbacher responded to telephone calls. And Mr. Wurzelbacher has provided only vague information on his and the company’s finances since talking to Mr. Obama. But if the plumbing business remained a two-person company and the net proceeds — after deductions for business expenses — were shared by the two men, both incomes would most likely fall well below the top tax brackets on which Mr. Obama wants to raise rates, as would the company itself.
Both, in fact, would probably be eligible for a tax cut, said Bob Williams, senior research associate at the independent, nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, though the cut would probably be greater under Mr. McCain’s tax plan than Mr. Obama’s.
According to public records, Mr. Wurzelbacher has been subject to two liens, each over $1,100. One, with a hospital, has been settled, but a tax lien with the State of Ohio is still outstanding.
In his interview with Ms. Couric, Mr. Wurzelbacher, who voted Republican in Ohio’s March primary, said that his encounter with Mr. Obama had been prompted by his desire “to ask one of these guys a question, and really corner them and get them to answer a question for once instead of tap dancing around it. And unfortunately I asked the question, but I still got a tap dance.”
He added, “He was almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr.”
During the Presidential debate tonight John McCain said that we need to "change our culture" in regards to abortion.
I'm sorry John but you're an egotistical lunatic if you honestly believe that people WANT TO BE LIKE YOU. 54% of Americans don't want to "change their culture" to be like you. In fact 54% of Americans want to have their constitutional freedoms protected. John, isn't this what you stand for, at least you say it is. Yet you have this radical set of blinders on that limits you to only seeing the world as you personally see fit.
Unfortunately John this is not the way the world works. The world is about people being different and us accepting others for having their own beliefs. You are the most self centered self righteous self proclaimed moralist I've ever heard of. You consistently talk about how you've spent your entire life in the service of this nation. This is true. But by choosing only to represent one type of person you unfortunately haven't spent your life representing those who are different than you. People aren't going to change to adopt your points of view.
Do you not realize that Obama offers me a choice? He also offers you a choice. You're "culture" doesn't have to choose to have an abortion. But he's going to let 54% of Americans have their own belief and their own choices.
Why don't you "change your culture" and become like the majority of Americans? How would you like that?
My little sister showed me these videos last week. All four kids go to my old high school, and most of them are in my sisters grades or a few above. The guys in the Backstreet video are all in a hardcore screamo band. Those 3 think they're tough guys so the pure fact that they made this video and then put it on youtube is awesome. I 100% applaud their courage in stepping outside the box and making fun of themselves.
It was the spring of '98. I was allowed to participate in Senior Skip Day even though my mother was a teacher at my high school. Ryan T and I drove two and a half hours to Utica to see matchbox twenty play in some run down minor league ice hockey arena.
In '01 I lived in France for a while. I found this photograph this morning of my friend Alix and I somewhere in Nice whilst on a night out on the town. I don't know where she is these days. I kind of wish I could find her and tell her how nice it was to see this photo. Brought back a flood of memories.
Sarah Palin did not visit troops in Iraq, a spokesperson for the Republican VP nominee confirmed Saturday, as new details emerged about the extent of the Alaska governor’s foreign travel.
In July of last year, Palin left North America for the first time to visit Alaskan troops stationed in Kuwait. Palin officials originally said her itinerary included U.S. military installations or outposts in Germany and Kuwait, and that she had visited Ireland. An Alaska spokeswoman for Palin had said Iraq was also one of the stops on that trip.
The Boston Globe reported Saturday that Palin visited the Iraqi side of a border crossing — but never journeyed past the checkpoint.
Earlier, campaign aides confirmed reports that Palin’s time in Ireland on that trip had actually been a re-fueling stop.
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Do you realize that Palin has never left the United States before last year? How can someone like this have any sort of worldly experience? Wait, isn't that necessary for someone in her potential position? This makes me want to vomit.
Why does she have to lie about the places she thinks she visited? Is she that unintelligent that she can't tell the difference between visiting Ireland and sitting on the plane while it refuels?
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Oh and this just in.
Sarah Palin's reputation for rarely deviating from a scripted stump speech as she travels from city to city is not entirely accurate. She’s open to changing a few lines here and there — depending on the audience.
Consider her speech Saturday in Nevada, site of the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository, a controversial project that would store radioactive waste in Nevadans’ backyard. At nearly every campaign stop over the last two weeks, Palin has touted McCain’s plan to expand nuclear energy, including storage and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
“In a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to expand nuclear energy, expand our use of alternative fuels, and drill now to make this nation energy independent,” she said to cheers last week in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.
But in Carson City, where the Yucca issue hits closer to home, that remark about expanding nuclear energy disappeared.
Palin also gave a pair of modified stump speeches during her recent Welcome Home tour through Alaska that failed to mention the notorious Gravina Island Bridge, subject of her usual applause line on the campaign trail that “I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere."
The Alaska governor routinely cites her opposition to the bridge on the trail to reinforce her reformer reputation, but fact-check groups and the Obama campaign have noted out that Palin supported building the bridge before she came out against it.
At rallies last week in Fairbanks and Anchorage, where Palin's original position in favor of the bridge is well-known, her “thanks but no thanks” was left behind in the Lower 48.
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So let me get this right, she ditched the "thanks, but no thanks" line when in her own state because everyone there knows her original position of supporting the bridge yet she still lies about it to everyone else in the Lower 48? That's incredible. If she has no problem lying about this then think about everything else she'd be inclined to lie about.
Oh and she lies to the communities closest to Yucca Mountain because she knows they're against the fuel dump yet she boasts about it everywhere else? Okay, so she lies, we know that, but now she lies to people's faces? And they don't feel the need to stand up and shout? I know she's not intelligent, but the citizens of that town needed to stand up and scream.
1. A John McCain web ad that was running on YouTube has been yanked because of a copyright claim filed by CBS.
The McCain campaign tried to 'spin' footage of CBS news anchor Katie Couric talking about sexism, as it related to Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign, to their own benefit by tying it to Sarah Palin.
A CBS spokesperson said, "CBS News does not endorse any candidate in the Presidential race. Any use of CBS personnel in political advertising that suggests the contrary is misleading."
That was a little shady of the McCain folks, don't you think?
2. (as reported by the AP and NPR amongst other news outlets)
Palin's only talking point this past week has been regarding her desire to cut pork-barrel spending/earmarks and how she killed the plan for the "bridge to nowhere". Well the truth is that not only did she SUPPORT THE BRIDGE PLAN while running for governor, but she was a STRONG SUPPORTER.
In fact appropriations process for the bridge happened before she became governor. And although most of the earmarks for the project -- which involved more than one bridge and a road -- were removed, Alaska received "every cent of its application," meaning that Palin had nothing to do with shooting down the bridge plan, it was done before she could do anything about it, but she went ahead and received all the pork barrel money from the fund anyway. Who knows what she did with it????
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Pretty much wherever she goes on the stump, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tells voters she killed Alaska's now-infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in portraying herself as an anti-pork-barrel reformer.
And yet, pretty much every time journalists have compared Palin's record with her rhetoric on that proposed bridge, they've called a foul. The results — whether from CBS News, USA Today, the Anchorage Daily News, NPR or some other outlet — have been remarkably consistent. The surprising thing is how little effect that journalistic fact-checking has had on the campaign trail.
"It is pretty striking that so many news organizations have looked into this independently and come to the same conclusion — that she didn't play that much of a role in ending the bridge," says Bill Adair of the St. Petersburg Times and the Web site PolitiFact.com. "And yet they continue to say it — day in and day out.
"I just hope the voters will stop to take the time to learn what's true and what's not — from us or from some other source — and then make their own judgment," Adair says.
'Thanks, But No Thanks'
Palin, the first-term governor of Alaska, usually offers up a formulation like the one she gave at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
"I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks, on that Bridge to Nowhere,' " she told cheering delegates. "If our state wanted to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves."
She has repeated it at campaign stops since, as recently as Wednesday, and the anecdote has become a key element of her political biography as the campaign of her running mate, Sen. John McCain, casts her as a reformer in his own image. McCain has consistently opposed projects that are funded through specific earmarks tucked into larger legislation.
"Whether it's killing the Bridge to Nowhere … or vetoing $500 million in government spending in Alaska over the last two years, she has earned and deserves the title of reformer of her state," says Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign.
A Complicated Record
Palin's record, however, is more complicated. The bridge involved would have connected the small town of Ketchikan with a sparsely populated island that has an airport. The bridge would have also cost several hundred million dollars. It is true that as governor, in 2007, she announced the project was dead.
But, as McClatchy Newspapers political reporter Margaret Talev says, "She was for it before she was against it — and actively for it before she became actively against it." McClatchy owns the Anchorage Daily News, which has covered Palin's quick ascent in state politics thoroughly.
While running for governor in 2006, Palin said she supported federal funding for the bridge, and she praised the state's two senior lawmakers, Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, who were promoting the project.
But it came under national fire, and as Stevens and Young became tainted, political support for the project ebbed. (Stevens is now facing federal charges in a political corruption trial. Both Stevens and Young are battling for re-election.)
Congress dropped the specific designation of the more than $200 million in federal funds for the bridge, instead releasing it for use for any Alaska projects. Palin wanted to direct the money to other projects that would prove less embarrassing. So, according to major news organizations that examined Palin's record, there was no "thanks, but no thanks" moment.
Last Rites For The Bridge
"Even in Alaska, there were a lot of people who were opposed to it. So it's not like she boldly stood up against it," says Adair of the St. Petersburg Times. "What she did was, seeing the political reality, she ended it."
"It's not that she really killed it — but she did perform the last rites," Adair says.
As for the larger issue, as a small-town mayor, Palin hired lobbyists, and as a mayor and governor, she sought such targeted earmarked funds herself. The Associated Press reports that Palin is seeking another $200 million in such projects for Alaska next year.
Adair calls Palin's account of her role in the bridge's demise a "half-truth."
Jack Nelson, the retired Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, has a tarter term for it: "It is a lie," he says.
That's not a word most journalists use, because it is so charged. Nelson says he can use it because he is retired.
"Most of the time in past campaigns, when major news organizations have come out and said that something is totally false, the candidate will drop it," says Nelson, who was a reporter for more than five decades. "In this case, they are repeating it over and over and over."
But with so many other sources of information and opinion online, revelations in mainstream news organizations don't pack the same punch that they once did.
Campaign Defends Palin's Record
Porritt, the McCain-Palin spokesman, says there is no reason to back down.
"There have been a number of distortions about Sarah Palin's record as a reformer," Porritt says. "But this isn't about claiming the title. This is about having a record to back that up."
Porritt points to journalistic site FactCheck.org to prove Palin is telling the truth. But FactCheck.org wrote last week that Palin's line about the bridge is "inaccurate."
In fact, FactCheck.org cited the Bridge to Nowhere first in its list of reasons why it concluded Palin was "short on facts" during her speech at the Republican convention.
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I especially love this video where Karl Rove talks about how a certain Virginia Governor can't possibly have the experience necessary to join a Presidential ticket yet he doesn't realize that Palin has much less experience. Obviously Rove didn't read the municipal code for being the mayor or Wasilla Alaska
1. Preside at council meetings. The mayor may take part in the discussion of matters before the council, but may not vote, except that the mayor may vote in the case of a tie.
2. Act as ceremonial head of the city
Ceremonial. Laughable.
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And finally Palin doesn't even know what a Vice President does.....
i have to watch what i say. i'm lonely. thinking about going somewhere for a while, maybe forever. i found these photographs today. they're from march.
ps - don't steal these. i own the copyright. i hate to write things like that but people love to take others photographs, it hurts me when you do. thank you.
The new Crooked Fingers album is about to be released with my photograph as the cover image. I believe you can order the album October 7th from any independent music store only.
I also took the background photo there during my music video shoot for Eric's solo song outing "Man O' War" which is now available online at my NEW WEBSITE! You can also check out the music video for his new song "Let's Not Pretend (To Be New Men)".
Here's a full quality image of the CD cover. What a great photo shoot! Can't wait to see this whole project in vinyl sitting in my living room.
Whilst shooting some acoustic music videos up at the studio Rod Richardson + His Poy Boys got together for a one off recording session. We churned out a radio edit of Dylan's classic "Knockin On Heaven's Door" in record time, one take.
Rod "Moonshine" Blackhurst on Vox and Keys Kelly "Boxcar" Magelky on Six String Aaron "Slowhand" Johnson on Skins
Last week was busy. The whole touring crew flew into town Sunday afternoon for band rehearsals so of course I had to go chat with Lavery and Maher, always great to see those guys. Monday morning brought the cover photo shoot for Denver Magazine followed by an afternoon running errands for gear rentals and photo downloads. Monday night was a pro-hang at the private DNC show. Tuesday at the crack of dawn I flew to Chicago to shoot a VH1 Making Of The Music Video for the band's new music video. After landing we had some time to kill before shooting from 6PM till 5AM. Managed to get some sleep, woke up at noon and checked out, killed time before heading to day 2 of the shoot on the south side of Chicago from 6PM till 7AM. After wrapping drove right to the airport Thursday morning, crashed hard, runway to runway, for 2.5 hours before arriving back in Denver. Exhausted I met FBI Agent Crenshaw downtown for tickets to the closing night of the DNC to see Obama on his way to becoming our nation's president. Met Josh in the highlands and we rode bikes down to the DNC.
This is what we saw when we go there.
It was like playing Where's Waldo or that old computer game where the worm eats the food pellets. There were times where you'd be standing in a line to nowhere only to end up in a circle. Sometimes lines merged sometimes they just dead ended and nobody knew where to go next. After 3 hours of standing in line we were in.
My friend Josh had the hook up on the tickets. We took photographs like nerds.
By this point I hadn't slept in 32 hours. I was so tired but so excited to be there, being part of one of the most important political events of my life. Since I was in middle school I've always been fired up about being involved. In Mr. Hill's 9th grade social studies class I once administered a questionnaire test to show my classmates that just because their parents were Republicans that that didn't mean they were as well. All but one person realized trough the multiple choice test that they would all be Democrats could they actually register to vote. In fact most of them would have been Socialists. The feeling of being in Invesco Field was unlike anything I've ever experience in my life. I was surrounded by thousands of people I didn't know all of whom had the same goal in mind of changing the future.
We found our seats in time to see Al Gore speak. Soon we were caught up in listening to Joe Biden talk and then it was time for Obama.
I'm more concerned now for the future of my country than I've ever been (although I still get a sick feeling in my stomach thinking about the past two elections). But once again, just like with Al Gore and John Kerry before him I am proud to support Barack Obama for President. Its time to let individuals be individuals and let each live according to his or her own rules and ways.
I just got back my first two rolls shot on my Hasselblad Xpan. I had the rolls processed as low quality web scans but I'm still happy with the colors and textures.
These four images are test photographs that I took and doctored up for a short film my friend Dave and I have coming up this week for a short he wrote called The Predator. There are a few other scenes that I don't have stills ready for but you get the idea. Should be a good looking little piece....
Looks like someone over at Warner Brothers edited together a trailer for my short film "Choke, California" about Jacks Mannequin. The trailer doesn't do the piece justice really but this is what they've cooked up...
You can also order the disc from his website today: http://jacksmannequin.com/TGP/
