Hot Beef Sundaes and Hockey Moms

The New York State Fair is down to its last weekend here in Syracuse, and I was able to tear myself away from papers and books last night to go take in the atmosphere... and the food.

See, you have three reasons to go to the Fair. The first comes as a kid, when all you want to do is go to the Midway, play the games, and go on the rides. Then when you get older, you decide you want to go see the exhibits in the various buildings... but for most of us that gets old after a few years. So then your primary reason to the Fair becomes... to EAT.

And you will eat things you would NEVER eat any other time in your life than at the Fair, because it's the Fair. This includes the large amount of deep-fried foods (often on a stick) that are the big fad in State Fair dining these days. Deep-fried ice cream (yes, it can be done), deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Snickers bars... I had the deep-fried macaroni and cheese, and it was terrific. You can even get shark on a stick if you look hard enough for it. But the big deal this year for food at the Fair is the HOT BEEF SUNDAE.

Yeah, I know, your immediate vision was of a disgusting combination of beef and ice cream. Actually, it's roast beef with mashed potatoes, shredded cheese, a dollop of sour cream (to look like whipped cream) and a cherry tomato on top. These are all things I'd eat anyway; it's all in the presentation. So I plunked down my five bucks and bought one and it was tremendous. I was a little disappointed that they have not found a way to put this on a stick, but they've got until next year to figure that out. Then I got the obligatory 2-foot long fried dough and was on my way. Got to Chevy Court just in time to see Ted Nugent do "Stranglehold". A complete and satisfying evening at the Great New York State Fair.

However, I did not get to see either the Hollywood Racing Pigs (which have racing silks on them... begging the questions, "How do they put those on the pigs?" and "Why?"), or the Banana Derby. The Banana Derby is perhaps the greatest thing ever... monkeys riding dogs. Does it get any better than that? I think not.

Now due to all this excitement, I got home halfway through Barack Obama's speech last night. I listened to about 30 seconds of it, heard the same talking points I've heard for the last 8 years, and changed the channel. I did flip back at the end, just to hear Chris Matthews on the verge of tears because Obama makes him swoon so much. John McCain made a very classy move last night, airing an ad in which he congratulated Obama on winning the nomination. What was the response from liberals on YouTube? Classless attacks. Typical.

McCain then made a brilliant move today by announcing Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his running mate. I was hoping and praying that she would be the pick ever since she was first mentioned, because she is exactly what the so-called "base" of the party wants, a pro-life, gun-owning, fiscal conservative. She's also a self-described "hockey mom" (presumably because you can't really play soccer in Alaska much of the year) with five kids, the last of which was just born in April and has Down Syndrome. Her eldest son is going to Iraq to join McCain's son (and Biden's son). And she kinda looks like Tina Fey... I'm just sayin'...

Most importantly, this pick threatens to drive a permanent wedge between Obama and still-angry Hillary Clinton supporters. They are already upset that Hillary wasn't offered the VP spot on Obama's ticket (and Obama himself was ripped by the AP's Ron Fournier, of all people, for the Biden pick), and now the Obama campaign has to tread lightly with Palin. Failure to do so will only gin up memories of how the Obama campaign treated Hillary and drive more of her former supporters to McCain.

Unfortunately for Obama, his campaign's immediate reaction was to bumble its "official response" to the Palin announcement. Obama's campaign spokesman immediately rushed out a statement blasting Palin for having no experience (and Obama DOES?) and essentially saying not only does McCain = Bush (which I have said before is completely wrong), but Palin = Bush. Okay, other than a handshake at a governor's conference, I doubt Sarah Palin has ever even spoken with President Bush, let alone act as one of his cronies. A few hours later, Obama came out with his own joint statement with Senator Biden, praising the selection because it brings another different voice into the campaign. He then blamed the mess-up on campaign staffers with "hair triggers". Of course, this is more of the same from the Obama campaign, where Obama portrays himself as about hope and change and a new kind of politics, while his staffers and party bigwigs (and MoveOn.org) issue the vicious attacks.

We'll soon know if this VP decision blunts Obama's post-convention bounce in the polls (as of today, Obama is up 8 in the Gallup poll, 4 in the Rasmussen). But I can definitely see McCain's post-GOP convention bounce next week boosting him into the lead. And we've seen just what a heavyweight fight this election has become. Obama threw his punch by picking Biden, threw another haymaker with his speech last night, and now McCain has come back with a very effective counterpunch. Yes, I know Governor Palin is not the first woman to be on a presidential ticket. But unlike Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, Palin is the first woman who actually has a chance to win. However this ends, there's a new sense of excitement in the presidential campaign.

Of course it's not as exciting as monkeys on dogs, but hey, what is?

It May Be Time to Think Outside the Box... or Country...

Governor Patterson has called the New York state legislature back into session this week to fix a looming fiscal crisis. The state government has relied too much on Wall Street money in recent years, and with the market down, the money isn't there anymore, but costs are rising (especially those related to gas) and the red ink is rising. Patterson's solution is to do what most of us normal folk do when we have more expenses than money coming in... cut back, tighten the old belt.

The centerpiece of Patterson's plan to fix things in New York is to cap the growth of property taxes. Property taxes are the number one reason why jobs and people are leaving New York; they are among the highest in the nation and a business-killer. However, this does not sit well with fans of tax-and-spend policies. The usual suspects are out... teachers' unions, civil service unions, and the Socialist, errrr... "Working Families" Party. They and a bunch of 527 groups are bombarding the airwaves with ads blasting Patterson and the State Senate for pushing this plan.

After all, don't you just know that if we *gasp* don't give the state a blank check to spend as much as they want any time they want, our children will go uneducated. They point to Massachusetts as an example of a state whose children "suffered" when education spending was reined in. That's kinda funny, considering Massachusetts had the HIGHEST TEST SCORES of any state in recent assessments. If that's what depriving our children of a "quality education" looks like, deprive away!

Of course, the real motivation is to keep the public money flowing, not to save our children or our senior citizens, because the money of course goes through unions and bureaucracy before it ever reaches a child or elderly person. I heard County Executive Mahoney on the radio earlier today, and I understand that actually cutting services amounts to nothing more than passing the costs on to the counties, who then have to raise property taxes themselves or cut the programs. I get that. Again, it comes down to property taxes. So trim the fat out of the budget in rational ways, but in order to increase revenues, you need more businesses in this state, and the way to do that is to cap property taxes. Incidentally, our County Executive is for the cap.

So what is the solution proposed by the Socialist, errr... "Working Families" Party? They have actually done us the favor of not sugar-coating or hiding their real agenda; they are screaming it out in their ads on radio and TV. For them, the solution is... to RAISE taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

EXCUSE ME?

How does THAT solve anything? Let me repeat: OUR TAXES ARE TOO HIGH AND THAT IS WHY PEOPLE AND JOBS ARE LEAVING! Raising taxes farther does not fix the problem, it exacerbates it. Raise income taxes on rich New Yorkers and just watch how quickly they move away and never come back. And don't give me this BS about how this tactic has worked in the past. That's the new liberal spin... that the Bush tax cuts caused our current economic problems. Gee, didn't realize there was a 5-year delayed reaction between a tax cut and any effects. If that was really the case, we would never pass ANY tax laws, especially in our "I want it now" society today. Yes, Liberal Letter-Writing Minion, the economic hardships of 2008 were preceded by the Bush tax cuts... and by 5 years of ECONOMIC GROWTH caused by those tax cuts. I know you've been hoping for bad economic news for years because it just didn't work when you blamed all our woes on the tax cuts but times were good. Now, you're just being silly.

So the Socialists are calling for higher taxes to solve our problems caused by high taxes. And then of course there is Sheldon Silver and the Assembly, refusing to take this property tax cap seriously. A majority of New Yorkers in a recent poll said they don't think anything will come out of this session; that's just natural cynicism from us New Yorkers, who NEVER expect anything from the most dysfunctional state government in the nation. Those of us who live Upstate have to deal with leaders from the NYC area deciding things for all of us, and some have called for Upstate to secede from the rest of New York and form our own state. Some in NYC want the same, cuz they of course believe that civilization ends at the Westchester County line. I would say that, all things considered, that's not good enough. So I am here to propose my own radical solution to the economic woes of Upstate New York...

Secede from the entire country and join Canada.

Yeah, you may think this is crazy, but apparently I'm not the first to propose such a solution... although I kinda resent the "give Upstate to Canada" line. We're not a charity case, we WANT to leave your asses! You don't talk like us, you annoy the hell out of us, we're outta here... but we're taking Suozzi with us. You don't deserve someone that smart. Fuhgeddaboutit...

Anyway, I hereby propose that we become not the 51st U.S. state, but instead the 11th Canadian province: New Southern Ontario. Don't get me wrong, I love the United States and this is certainly not a slap to our way of government and way of life... I just think this would be a win-win situation for both New York and Canada. Canada wants more people; they openly advertise that they want more population. Well, here ya go, a few million new residents! No need to worry about the Buffalo Bills moving to Canada... they already WOULD BE in Canada! Speaking of sports, we could pull Syracuse University out of the Big East, put them in a Canadian college conference and they would immediately dominate... cuz they've gotta be better than any college team up there. On the downside, we probably would have to keep the whole Chiefs-Toronto Blue Jays relationship since we'd be fellow countrymen now... but the first thing we could do as a Canadian province would be to deport the Simones.

Trust me, it won't be a tough transition. We're getting Tim Horton's here in town soon anyway so we'll fit in quickly. Radio would instantly get better because the stale Syracuse stations would have to play 30% Canadian music. TV would get better because you could watch your favorite American shows and the good Canadian shows like "Degrassi" and "Corner Gas" without needing cable. Plus, we'd all have universal health care... oh, wait... the Canadian system sucks. Okay, scratch that as a positive.

But these guys know what they're doing fiscally; they post budget surpluses and have a *gasp* LOW NATIONAL DEBT. If you're concerned about China owning half our debt and a government that prefers to try to spend its way out of trouble instead of cut, this is a good way out. Let's face it, folks, Canadians already flock here to Syracuse to take advantage of our weak dollar; I say let's get in on the action. Change out our Georges for loonies and twoies, cross the new international border at the Tappan Zee Bridge, go to NYC and SAVE, SAVE, SAVE!

Of course it would mean we'd all have to learn French to read all the bilingual signs... hmmm... I might want to rethink this...

Americana Panorama 2008

This past week, I was actually able to get away for a few days, leave work behind, both job-related and school-related and head down to Northern Virginia to see my sister, brother-in-law and nephews. Okay, I didn't actually leave all my work behind... when you are a grad student you can never entirely leave work behind, but the laptop stayed at home so I actually made a conscious effort to forget about everything... most of the time.

Anyway, the trip down reminded me of a suggestion I made a long time ago about the state of Pennsylvania. When you drive into PA, the sign should say, "Welcome to Pennsylvania, You're Going to Be Here a While." There is no relatively quick way to go through this state, certainly not in the summertime. There will always be road construction, and in this case it was on I-81 through the mountains, and on this day, the traffic was so bad that it was backed up from one construction zone through another one and 4 miles back. This immediately added 40 minutes to the trip, caused me to take a detour that probably added more time to the trip... and yet I still managed 34 mpg on my 2000 Stratus for the trip... ask me sometime how I do that.

Speaking of gas, when you're on a trip outside of New York (where it is STILL $4 a gallon), you need to do your best to bargain shop. As I traveled farther south through Pennsylvania, the gas prices kept dropping... $3.80... $3.72... and on. Passing through York on I-83, I saw a sign for $3.66 a gallon and got this feeling in the back of my mind that if I didn't stop there I'd be sorry. However, I decided to see what it would be over the state line in Maryland. Stopped at the first station I saw in Maryland... $3.85. Damn.

One thing I had to deal with for my entire time in the DC area was the notorious Beltway Driver. You can spot Beltway Driver pretty easily when he's outside of his native habitat... Maryland or Virginia license plate, blowing past you doing about 20 miles an hour over the speed limit. The more I drove down there, however, the more I realized that I've seen this type of driving behavior before. Riding your tail and flashing high beams because you're ONLY doing 63 in a 55? Natural characteristic of Northeast PA Driver. Ignoring yield signs like they weren't even there? Common trait of both PA and Central New York drivers. Weaving across lanes at any given moment without giving a thought to signaling? Hell, Central New York Driver does that on city streets. Plus I made sure that when I was going somewhere that involved Beltway driving, I went during off hours.

The next misadventure had to do with the efforts of my brother-in-law and I to find a golf course. This should have been a pretty easy task, as there is a full 18-hole course right there on the base where my brother-in-law is stationed. However, on this particular day, the entire golf course had been reserved. We went into the pro shop and asked the guy there if there was anyplace else nearby, and he gave us a couple of options, a county-owned course and a public 9-hole course, both more or less up the road from base. We went to the first one, brought our clubs up to the starter's shed, where an older good-ole-boy Southerner told us that the course is packed with senior citizens right now because this is the time reserved for them... which would be followed by the time when the course is reserved for high schoolers. So if we wanted to play, we would have to join a foursome of fossils. No... thank... you.

Then at our last option (the public course), the cost of 9 holes was almost as much as 18 holes at the county course. End result: we hit a bucket of balls at the driving range and called it a day.

I had never been to Washington, DC before the last couple days, and considering I lived 90 minutes away for 3 years (when gas was much cheaper even) and did not make my way down there, I took advantage. The family and I did some sightseeing in our nation's Capitol on a fairly decent day, saw the Smithsonian (although the American History museum, the one with Archie Bunker's chair and the Fonz's jacket, was closed for renovations), walked from one side of the Mall to the other looking at all the monuments, went to the National Archives and saw the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, many of these old documents are badly faded and you can't really read them all that well, but it was still very cool to see these things, and besides, if I wanted to read the First Amendment, I can just walk outside of Newhouse III and read the windows. Put me down as the 50 bazillionth person to tell you that this is quite an experience and one you need to do at least once in your life (DC, not Newhouse III). And of course, you can't do it all in one day, so I will be making return trips, especially because as a group we didn't feel like paying $20 a head to see the Newseum.

On the way home, I followed an old personal rule of mine: Always take a different way home. Not wanting to deal with the I-81 construction again, I instead went through the mountains on US 220, down a winding path of small towns, nice vistas, and on and off showers. Strangely, it seemed like I would be under dark clouds and nothing would happen, then as soon as the sun came out, it would start raining. Taking in the scenery like that is the way to go if you can spare the extra time on your trip to do so.

All in all, it was a great vacation and of course too short. Now that I am somewhat recharged, I'm ready for a return to classes and jobs and responsibilities... and of course, more blogging...