Posts by Berck

Some coyotes woke us up last night. They were yapping away like drunk teenagers. This is nothing unusual–they wake us up at least once a week. At the same time, there was a siren, followed by more sirens and a lot of banging noises. The sirens are not all that unusual; there’s a fire department just up the road, and there’s a huge residential area served by the road just outside our apartment. The banging was unusual, and the noise of a helicopter circling over head finally prompted me to look outside the window.

“Uhh, Jonah, there’s a big fire out there.”

Jonah got up and got very excited, and decided that we should go investigate. I wasn’t inclined to get yelled at by cops at 3am, but decided that since there was no way I was going back to sleep, we might as well. I put on some clothes, and we started walking up the street. They were evacuating the apartment complexes just up the street and across the road from us. The cops were banging on doors, telling folks to get out. Dozens of people were standing around in pajamas, with blankets and their pets.

We stayed out of the way, and watched the blaze appear to get larger, rather than smaller, despite the half-dozen fire trucks who’d tapped every hydrant in sight. They finally started making progress after they got a huge ladder truck set up. The explosions continued; who knows what that was. Parts of the building falling, cars burning, and natural gas meters blowing up, probably. After it looked like they’d gotten it mostly contained, we went back to bed.

No one’s speculated about the cause of the fire yet. It destroyed 8 apartments and burned 10 cars. Everyone appears to have escaped uninjured, though there’s still one person unaccounted for.

The road was still closed at 10am this morning, and we had to drive all around the back side of the neighborhood to figure out how to get out. By noon, they’d opened 3 of the roads at the Rockrimmon/Delmonico intersection, but one side of Rockrimmon is still closed.

The police have a couple of RV’s set up in the road. I’m not sure why the police need RV’s. Donut storage and coffee production? The fire department still has quite a few trucks out there, as the fire is still smoldering, though they’ve finally stopped watering it.

I thought Jonah said she was getting the camera last night, but it turns out she was asking me to get it. So we didn’t have it. But, the local news seems to have captured some pictures.

Jonah tries to hint that the republicans would have prevented the current situation if only the democrats would have let them.

She misses the point: The Republicans created the problem. Republicans, including John McCain, are responsible for the The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This is the act that allowed insurance companies to get involved with investment banks. Without this act, AIG never could have bought into all those bad mortgages. McCain’s response? From the above-linked article:

McCain now condemns the executives at those companies for pursuing the ambitions that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act made possible, saying that “in an endless quest for easy money, they dreamed up investment schemes that they themselves don’t even understand.”

Unregulated capitalism, in spite of the Republicans fancies, doesn’t work. This is proof. They were wrong, and now they’re having to pay the consequences.

So, is the bailout a good idea? I’m inclined to think not. I think that we most certainly shouldn’t go anywhere near Dodd’s plan, and Paulson’s is even scarier. I suspect that all a bailout will do is toss $700 billion worth of inflation onto the fire. Keep in mind, this is essentially $700 billion worth of fake money. It’s not like anyone is loaning the money, the Feds are just going wish it into existence. The hope, of course, would be that it would be repaid, but this seems unlikely.

Let’s put it another way: Dubya wants a bailout more than the other republicans do. Let’s remember what happened last time he wanted something more than the other republicans.

Hopefully not me, yet, but no hard numbers so far. The e-mail said mentioned 150 surplus pilots and offered voluntarily leave of absence to anyone who wants it. There are 189 pilots below me, so I should be okay for another week, but who knows.

I suspect it’s simply a matter of time before I’m looking for another job. Anyone need a pilot?

Wow. So, there’s a real chance that if elected, McCain might die in the next 4 years, and this is the woman he’s picked??? It’s not like Couric was asking really tough questions here, or even surprising questions.

I’ll just go ahead and toss in (in case you missed it) Letterman’s bewilderment at McCain calling him on the phone to say that he was rushing back to Washington, so he couldn’t be on the show. Which turned out to be an out and out lie, since he was actually next door doing his interview with Couric.

All I can say is that I’m amazed that there are so many people willing to vote for this man. While I’m at it, I would also like to disagree with Letterman’s statement that, “He’s a man who gave everything except his life for his country.” What a crock of hooey. It’s well documented that McCain was an absolutely lousy pilot. He never would have gotten through flight training in Pensacola had Daddy and Grandaddy not been 4-star admirals. The man destroyed 5 aircraft, 3 of them accidents that were blatantly his fault. Had he been flying under FAA regulations, his certificate would have been revoked after the second one, in all likelihood.

Being a pilot isn’t that hard. Had he actually given his all, studied harder, known his aircraft better, and displayed some real dedication toward his chosen career, perhaps he never would have been shot down. As someone who’s trained hundreds of military aviators, I’m saddened that this man was allowed to ever be in the cockpit of a fighter.

Worse, he was rewarded for his poor service! The man only flew 20 hours of combat, and in that time managed to collect 28 medals. Do you really believe those 20 hours were that meritorious?

Now, after voting for the deregulation that helped put this country in the financial crises in which it now finds itself, he’s asking you to reward his continued poor service with the highest promotion we’ve got? Now that takes some serious balls.

The aptly-named B train runs from Bedford Blvd, Bronx to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

In inaptly-named Madison Square Garden is nowhere near Madison, is not in any way a square (it’s more of a cylinder), and is certainly not a garden by any stretch of the imagination.

The BQE is easily confused with the BQ in casual conversation. One is the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, while the other is a pair of concurrent train lines.