The great Nor’easter of 2011

Okay, 2011 has seen many “great” storms, including the blizzards earlier in the year.  But yesterday’s storm dumped about 3-4 inches of global warming onto central Jersey, and today was just warm enough to melt most of it away, creating miles of heavy, wet slush throughout the area.  My friends and family in Northern Jersey were the hardest hit however, with over 6 inches in most areas (and over a foot in Sussex County). 

With one of the earliest snowstorms on record (early being late October), piling snow onto trees which are still laden with leaves, which have only just recently begun to turn, the biggest danger we’ve had has been snapping trees and tree branches.   Thanks to that, power is out all over the state. 

During the warmer months, and into the fall, and before after daylight savings time, I usually forgo the gym for walking and hiking.  I really enjoy the seclusion and austerity of an hour-or-so walk.   Roosevelt Park is somewhat close to my home and one of its great features is a 3+ mile hiking trail, which includes a paved walkway for about a quarter of the trail, and forest trails for the remainder.

This morning I bundled up to take a walk in the brisk post-storm air (sunny and upper 40s most of the day today) to find that the Nor’easter did a job on the trail that would make any landscaper proud.   The trail already took a hit with Hurricane Irene this past August, and now even more damage was done.   I took some photos with my iPhone. 

Upon entering the trail:

Amazing how this happened:

In the following shot, you can see a stream.  Up until August, you couldn’t see it from the the trail path.   After Irene, it was partially visible.  This morning, it’s in plain sight:

More ruined trees:

Finally, you can’t make it out to well, but here is significant damage to the trail which all but blocked the path:

Obama: You need me to increase your dependence on the government

The Occupier-In-Chief:

At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.

“The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘you are on your own,’” Obama told a crowd of 200 donors over lunch at the W Hotel.

“If you get sick, you’re on your own. If you can’t afford college, you’re on your own. If you don’t like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, then you’re on your own,” he said. “That’s not the America I believe in. It’s not the America you believe in.”

You really don’t need to read any more to confirm that Barack Obama, the career community organizer, is just fine with Occupy Wall Street’s collective stamping of the feet.  In fact, Obama has lifted the bar for populist rhetoric the past few weeks, offering student loan “relief” for college students (who have a big presence at the OWS clown parades) among other hand-outs and free passes to various freeloaders, in a pathetic attempt to buy votes.

Moreover, this is the kind of rhetoric that is red meat to the OWS crowd, and the overall base of the radical Democrat party.  The politics of entitlement and dependence  is a powerful opiate and will be tough for Republicans to overcome.

Indeed the Democrat fringe has used that weapon to enslave generations of blacks and minorities in a ruinous cycle of dependence.  Republicans need to pound the message home about alternatives, and to point out these blatant truisms of the Democrat party.

Barack Obama in a nutshell

Monty over at Ace of Spades put up his daily Doom post earlier, as he does each and every weekday morning.  It’s well worth checking out for your daily fix of financial/economic misery.

As part of today’s lineup, he writes this sentence which stuck out to me and which succinctly sums up Barack Obama, the man and his career:

 Obama isn’t trying to solve the problem at hand, but he wants to appear to be solving it.

To that I will add that this is all done to further his and his party’s goals of exponentially inflating the size of government.  Plain and simple.

Harry Reid: Private sector employment is ‘fine’

The irresponsible leader of the irresponsible Democrat majority in the US Senate:

James Sherk clarifies:

Senator Reid is not just mistaken; he has his facts exactly backwards. If the recession has barely touched one sector of the economy, it is government. Since the recession began in December 2007 the private sector shed 6.3 million net jobs, while government payrolls are down by just 392,000.

That amounts to a 5.4 percent drop in private sector employment, while government employment has slipped only one-third as much (1.8 percent). Education-related government jobs have fallen even less, down 1.4 percent.

The majority of the American unemployed, those not employed by the public sector, will be glad to know that their Senate leaders are completely clueless about what’s going on in the real world.

More on Steve Jobs

He left a personal fortune of approximately $6 billion and, interestingly, the bulk of his net worth was not in Apple, but rather his holdings of Disney and Pixar.

And, he appeared to be a relatively practical individual:

Jobs did not part with money easily, as he showed in June when he rejected a Cupertino City Council request for something extra for approving Apple’s new headquarters.

City council member Kris Wang jokingly asked the mogul at the time, “Do we get free Wi-Fi or something like that?”

Jobs replied, “Well, see, I’m a simpleton. I’ve always had this view that we pay taxes and the city should do those things.”

Democrats have their Wall Street cake, and eat it too.

This is certainly not surprising to learn, but it is amazing that Democrats are always this brazen about their hypocrisy:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said taking money from a group doesn’t equate to supporting them. “It’s what you fight for and how you vote, it always has been,” Kerry said in a recent interview. “It’s hard to run for office and not have somebody in some sector or some industry have contributed to you; but the question is, are you voting commonsense and values and for the interests of the people, broadly?”

See?  It’s ok to pander for money from greedy, Wall Street 1%-types, who, say some OWS clowns, should be executed, and throw them under the bus while on the campaign trail at the same time.

It’s also OK for Senator Kerry to dock his boat in Rhode Island to avoid his state’s onerous luxury yacht taxes.  It’s all for the betterment of Massachusetts voters, and Americans in general.   So, when will you ignorant Tea Partiers stop being such rubes?

Remembering Steve Jobs

I’m still sifting through all of the remembrances and recollections about Steve Jobs since his passing last week, and here’s a bit of one that stuck out:

One of Jobs’s many gifts was that he knew what to give a shit about. He knew how to focus and prioritize his time and attention.

That would strike me as being true about most successful entrepreneurs and innovators.

This past weekend, I made a trip to the Berkshire mountains in western Massachusetts to take advantage of the long weekend, so I kind of unplugged myself from everything and tried to relax.

Yesterday, the Steve Jobs news really hit me upon waking into a Barnes & Noble, with all of this week’s news magazines were on the racks, with several of them featuring Jobs’ likeness on their covers.

Long weekend time

It’s a three day weekend, so me and the signifcant other are packing up the car and headed to western Massachusetts, the Berkshires to be exact.  As of right now, we should be driving up I-95. 

Normally it’s supposed to be in the 50-60 degree range up there, but this weekend is supposed to be sunny and unusually warm–more like low 70s.  Hopefully, I can get to relax and recharge from an anxious, stressful few weeks.   And some nice New England foliage won’t hurt.  To wit:

Occupy Wall Street to lawmakers: “Time to kill the wealthy”

The leftist MoveOn.org/union-sponsored Occupy Wall Street crowd is doubling down on the anger:

Several influential New York lawmakers have received threatening emails saying it is “time to kill the wealthy” if they don’t renew the state’s tax surcharge on the millionaires, according to reports.

“It’s time to tax the millionaires!” reads the email, according to WTEN in Albany. “If you don’t, I’m going to pay a visit with my carbine to one of those tech companies you are so proud of and shoot every spoiled Ivy League [expletive] I can find.”

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos reportedly received the email, as did Assembly Majority Leader Ron Canestrari. The governor’s office did not tell the New York Daily News whether the governor himself received the email.

The email, with the threatening subject line of, “time to kill the wealthy,” was detailed and disturbing.

“How hard is it for us to stake out one of the obvious access roads to some tech company, tail an employee home and toss a liquor bottle full of flaming gasoline through their nice picture window into their cute house,” wrote the author of the email.

The email references terminology that has been used in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement – that of 1 percent super-rich exploiting the remaining 99 percent of Americans. The angry message demanded that Albany politicians “stop shoveling wealth from the lower 99% into the top 1%” and “set aside your ‘no new taxes on anybody’ pledge.” […]

“You’re going to do [renew the surcharge], or we are going to sow the kind of choas [sic] you are unequipped to deal with,” the email said. “And you’re going to find yourself in a country where you and your wealthy friends are gonig [sic] to be hunted.”

But this is not class warfare. No.  That’s legitimate protesting right there.

Question for those Democrats in Congress who have not yet supported this protest–will you be denouncing the vagrants at Occupy Wall Street now, or after blood is shed?

Andrew Sullivan can’t help himself

What a sick human being. 

On a night when the news of Steve Jobs’ passing and Sarah Palin’s announcement not to run for president take place within two hours of each other, he chimes in comparing the two:

It’s a fitting comparison: achievement versus resentment, creativity versus narcissism, hope versus fear. I know which one will get the bigger headlines tomorrow. And there is some comfort in knowing it will pain her.

Yeah, Steve Jobs will be getting the headlines tomorrow, Andrew.  The man just passed away after a life of changing the very fabric of our lives through technological innovations, the founder and leader of one of the most powerful companies in the world. 

Palin merely announced she wasn’t running for office.  One definitely takes precedent over the other in the news cycle.  This, despite the importance that you, yourself, and your psychotic, obsessive ramblings about Palin and her uterus have placed on her.

The weed and the meds take its toll on the normalcy of the brain, Andrew.  Stay classy.