Just a few observations.

While quite a few (an understatement) people drive their personal vehicles in New York, most Manhattanites don’t even own cars because a) N.Y.C. has an excellent public transportation system, arguably the best in the country, b) a guaranteed parking place costs thousands of dollars a year and there are often long waiting lists for same and c) who wants to spend half ones time in traffic gridlock, anyway?

To make up for the usual car owner’s status pecking order, there are…Baby strollers.

A $70.00 Combi might replace a Saturn, while a $900.00 Bugaboo might be another woman’s (and baby’s) Mercedes. A lot is based upon design, storage space (yes, a house wife or her husband might need to pick up a few things, maybe some groceries or whatever, and take baby along for the “ride”, so places to stash the purchases aboard the toddler’s personal vehicle are a plus, as opposed to having to carry a grocery bag and control the stroller at the same time).

I can just imagne the conversations that take place:

Barb: Oh, did you see the new Stokke Xplory Marilyn just bought for little Davey? Eleven hundred dollars!

Harriet: Yes, it’s a dream! And right after Connie picked up that $900.00 Orbit Baby Travel System. Just in time for spring, too.

Barb: I hear Fred’s out of work, and it shows. Mabel’s been pushing Deanna around in that same old $400.00 McLaren she bought two years ago.

Harriet: Oh, that’s so dreadful! How embarrassing that must be for poor Mabel!

******

From a recent column by Mona Charen,

Administrators at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis had seemed to be vying for the title of most ludicrous educators in America. The story began when a student, Keith John Sampson, who worked in the university’s janitorial department, was seen reading the book “Notre Dame Vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan” in the break room. Sampson was notified by the university’s Affirmative Action Office that he had committed the offense of “racial harassment.” He protested that the book lauded the Notre Dame students who had taken on the Klan in 1924. Never mind, said Lillian Charleston, the AAO director. By “openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject,” he had violated university policy.

The university has since reversed itself and expressed “regret that this situation took place.” But consider the fascist environment the PC police have created. That the student felt constrained to defend the book’s content as politically acceptable is an outrage in itself that goes to the heart of academic freedom. Welcome to an America where you must glance over your shoulder to wonder whether your co-workers will inform on you for reading forbidden matter!

Read the entire column here.

******

Go to Chinatown. Ask for Cane. He can help.

He sure couldn’t have helped one hapless little Italian fashion photographer and the model with whom he was doing a shoot yesterday, in the late afternoon rain at the intersection of Chinatown’s Grand and Christie Streets.

I was passing by on my way to the B and D trains’ subway station over there and had to stop and watch.

The model, a tall, thin (aren’t they all!), attractive woman with a familiar face (I’ve seen her picture someplace before, but not being one to care one way or another about such celebrities, I haven’t the faintest idea who she was), was wearing a slinky, silver silk dress and holding up a grey fur coat. The photographer wanted her to walk towards him across the street, but only while there was a walk sign so she could be moving along with the pedestrian flow.

Obviously, he didn’t know Chinatown.

Chinatown here in N.Y. is a densely crowded, fast moving, busy place whose denizens have no brief but for their own day-to-day activities, and no one paid the slightest attention to the model. Everytime the walk sign appeared, she began crossing the street and was immediately engulfed in throngs of other pedestrians headed the same and opposite ways, jostling her, cutting in front of her and generally making it impossible for the photographer to get the shots he wanted.

But he was determined and they kept trying over and over, to no avail.

Seeing the amused grin on my face and having himself picked up on what was going on, a young Chinese man smirked at me and said, “This guy doesn’t seem to know he’s in Chinatown.”

Finally, I shook my head and continued on to the subway station, wondering how many dozen additional attempts it would take before the photographer finally gave up and relocated to Broadway or someplace…

…here is one place in which I believe, at least in recent decades, we conservatives have been deluding ourselves.

Granted, I firmly believe that the “silent majority” of right-thinking Americans referred to during the Vietnam era is still alive and well, our self-deception is in our belief that it is sufficient that we do our talking at the polls on Election Day.

The problem there is that in between mid-term and Presidential elections, the only “talking” that really gets done is between elected politicians. Granted, there are occasional, though few and far between, voter rebellions wherein We, The People intercede en masse, such as the thankfully aborted amnesty legislation a couple of years back, but for the most part, we just kinda’ sorta’ sit back in blissful unawareness or semi-awareness while the commie trash social progressives in Congress gradually assert their socialist political agendas, with either too much compromise or insufficient resistance from those on the right side of the aisle. By the time the next election comes up, these agendas, virtually all of which are contrary to the letter of the Constitution, are already carved in stone. The same goes for “earmarks”, the vast majority of which are little more than bribes from representatives to special interests within their respective constituencies to gain votes for reelection, virtually none of which benefits the American taxpayers as anywhere near a whole. But that’s okay, right? Just ask any politician (you’d probably have to get him/her drunk first, and even then he/she would want to check to be sure you’re not wearing a wire), if Congressman Shmoe wants to get the $36 million bucks for local project A, Congressman Bonehead will be happy to sponsor same in return for The Distinguished Mr. Shmoe sponsoring his own earmark for $41 million toward the latter’s own local industry. Look at all those megabucks corporate agri-businesses that benefit from subsidies that the small, struggling farmers they were originally intended for barely see, or the same for political agenda-based venues like NPR, or the National Endowment For The Arts. Has anyone asked We, The Voters lately if we wanted our taxes to subsidize or otherwise support these institutions?

No, no one has, yet earmarks go on and laws are passed whether we like them or not, whether they are Constitutional (within the purview of our elected officials to even discuss, let alone pass) or not, the overwhelming majority of them drifting in a decidedly leftward direction no matter who we on the right elect to represent us in Washington.

This November, we have no recourse but to vote for John McCain, not because he is even remotely the right candidate from a conservative perspective, but because he’s not as bad as either of the two jamokes vying for the Democratic nomination.

This time out, our options are possibly the absolute worst in my lifetime to date, but what the hay? No matter who wins the White House, the following two years will simply be “business as usual”, the tenacious left sneaking their agendas into the mix, the complacent right ho-humming and making concessions, lining up their ducks for their next reelection campaigns.

No, I’m afraid that speaking our piece by means of the vote alone doesn’t carry the weight it once did and I’m even more afraid that it never will again.

I’ve been trying my best to stay away from politics the last few days while I enjoy becoming reacqainted with my home town.

It’s actually becoming quite fatiguing seeing “Obama this, Obama that, Wright this, Wright that” everywhere I go on the Internet. It’s like watching news sites, blogs and other media flogging the same dead horse over and over while ignoring stuff that is being pushed on us under the radar, using the Presidential campaign as a distraction.

By this time, anyone who, despite all the suffocating coverage, still believes that either Hussein Obama or Hillary Clinton belongs in the Oval Office is either profoundly obtuse, a “liberal-run government at any cost” Utopian, a jihadist, someone who despises either our Constitutional form of government and/or the American People, or a communist. I simply see no purpose in continuing to do what amounts to beating my head against a wall trying to prove a point that’s already been proven.

Especially when trying to convince liberals, who, when confronted with scientific fact or other indisputable evidence that runs contrary to their politically based “beliefs” will shrug it all off with, “That’s your opinion.”

By now, those folks out there in the middle of the road have more than enough evidence to make their own judgement as to the viability of either Obama or Clinton where the Presidency is concerned, as this time out, even the MSM has failed to hide the truth about the two Democratic candidates. All they can do is manage weak attempts at spin or try to divert public attention in what, just as Obama’s efforts to distance himself from Irreverend Wright, are proving transparent efforts, at best.

Face it, no matter which of the Democratic candidates gets the nomination, McCain will prevail in November. Any other outcome would be pure insanity.

Moving right along, on Wednesday evening I visited one of my old Little Italy favorites on Mulberry Street at Broome (they relocated about 12 years ago from a Hester Street location), Umberto’s Clam House. Since I was dining alone, I ate in the kitchen (a small counter from which you can see most of what’s going on and be served directly by the chef). I chatted with one of the owners and ate ala carte, a generous serving of linguini with white clam sauce (I watched the chef shucking a big pile of clams — yum, clams! — for my dinner, what a pro!), a basket of fresh, warm N.Y. Italian bread with butter…

Afterwards, I walked down to my new favorite N.Y. bar, an establishment that’s been in business since 1972, in a building that’s been around since before the last century, Kenn’s Broome Street Bar.

I must confess to a rather lengthy evening therein. It’s a very comfortable pub with a great staff and a good crowd of local regulars (though quite a number of European tourists also find their way there), a large menu of good food, including home-made chili con carne (one of the house dishes, for anyone who’s really hungry and reasonably gas resistant, is an open-faced knockwurst “chili dog” with cheese and a large pile of either crinkle cut potato chips or fries. Their burgers are intense and large, as are all the other items on their menu. They don’t skimp on anything. Daily specials can be anything from blackened fish to langosta and they have a more than admirable Saturday and Sunday brunch menu.

So, Thursday I was up and out early enough to meet a friend for a lunch date, and we headed for Mulberry Street. Mulberry is an Italian food lover’s heaven, more than three blocks lined with Italian restaurants, bakeries (Mmmmmm, fresh cannoli!) and cafes. We were both ready to eat at 11:30, and most of the eateries on that strip of culinary delight don’t start serving until noon.

However, La Mela seated us at an outdoor table at 11:40 and took our orders.

I had pasta in a white sauce with mussels that was awesome, and they were extremely generous with the mussels. If you’ve never had mussels in New York, you’ve never had mussels. Mmmmm, mussels! My companion had chicken scapariello, which I had a taste of and was pretty impressed. I’ll have to order it next time I go there.

Afterwards, we went down to the Broome Street Bar for a drink before parting company. Ah, Guinness!

It began to rain in the evening, so I returned to the hotel to visit my computer and catch up on some of my news reading and so forth.

Through the weekend, there was night clubbing on Bleeker Street in the west village, including a couple of hours of great Jazz at the Blue Note, wherein they serve a remarkably good lobster ravioli (all this eating, in New York, is easily offset by the amount of walking one does in the interests of really seeing the city).

A late Saturday evening dinner date found my companion and I at a neat little Italian joint at East 50th Street and 2nd Avenue called, very appropriately as they specialize in lasagna (17 different kinds, ranging from ground sirloin to prosciutto to lobster to veal and everything in between), Lasagna Ristorante. This was followed by a cab ride downtown to — where else? — Mulberry Street, for canolli and capucino at La Bella Ferrara.

Sunday morning I was down at Duarte Square (Canal & 6th Avenue) to watch the start of a bicycle Tour of New York, wherein some 30,000 participants embarked on a 2-3 hour, 44ish mile ride around the boroughs, equipped with a continuous police escort to block cross traffic. It was a sight to see, every kind of bicycle in the universe, from regular 10 speeds to bicycles built for 3, several side by side 3 wheelers (two people in reclining high backed seats peddling from relaxed positions), some crazy configs wherein there was a small front wheel and a large rear one with the peddles right above the front wheel, a bicycle that was built to resemble a Harley chopper and one individual was pulling a small wooden cage-trailer that looked like it contained his cat.

One morning last week, I took a stroll down Bleeker Street above 8th Avenue (west village), and was totally impressed by the atmosphere of the neighborhood. It is simply beautiful, lots of trees and the view down nearly every side street was profoundly green, the shops all upscale without blaring the fact. I stopped at a local cafe for a chocolate almond croissant and a capucino, sat outside and enjoyed watching the people pass by, the bird sounds and the morning aroma of spring in New York…

…then several cloudy, rainy days arrived, today being the first clear, sunny day.

On a less pleasant note, as I said above, while so many of us make a major event of every word issuing forth from the mouth of Hussein Obama and every outrageous statement uttered by his “former” Pastor Wright, in my opinion doing little or nothing to change the minds of those wingnuts who view him as some sort of messiah (face it, friends, there are a lot of incorrigible boneheads in this country who believe America is the root cause of every problem of every kind, everywhere on earth, and that only the mighty Obama can save the world), we pay less attention to issues that we really need to focus on that amount, basically, to government encroachment on our free enterprise system and the price we pay for this wholly unconstitutional series of actions.

Issues such Congress’ decision to attempt to meddle in banks’ current credit and debit card management methods, the effect the ethanol production mandates are having on food prices across the board, including starvation and food riots in the same developing nations liberals claim to care so much about (this despite the fact that ethanol production and use produce more of the dreaded C02 than regular gasoline use), and still another dreadful bi-product of the government protecting us from ourselves.

Yes, all those high taxes local governments in states like Illinois and New York love to levy on cigarettes, purportedly to “help us”, have created a black market that directly finances terrorism. I ran across the above link at a security industry website, and, in as timely a manner as one could ask for, Walter Williams, one of the most “on-top-of-things” columnists in the business, penned a spot-on piece about it.

While it’s politically popular to impose confiscatory taxes on America’s 40 million tobacco smokers, there are a number of consequences one might consider, but let’s start out with a quiz. If a carton of cigarettes sells for $160 in New York City, and $35 in North Carolina, what do you predict will happen? If you answered tons of cigarettes will be going up I-95 from North Carolina to New York City, go to the head of the class.

Smuggling cigarettes is illegal; so the next quiz question is: Who is most likely to engage in cigarette smuggling? It’s a mixed answer, but for the most part, organized smugglers will be people with a high disregard for the law. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has found that Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Middle Eastern (mainly Pakistani, Lebanese, and Syrian) organized crime groups are highly involved in the trafficking of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes. What’s worse is the ATF found that some of these groups use the money to provide material financial assistance to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Read on…

People who don’t spend a lot of time in major cities might easily miss this, but immigrants from Muslim countries have, over the last several years, established monopolies over certain retail-based industries that in some other sectors would easily inspire anti-trust lawsuits. Small markets selling, among other things, cigarettes are at the forefront of this phenomenon, with convenience stores and fast food restaurants not far behind. Here in New York, pizza shops are also on the menu to some extent, as are what I can’t help but think of as “jihadi wagons”, those stainless steel carts, towed daily to their respective curbside locations, from inside which Muslims serve hot grilled food (shish kebob, etc) through a window. Often one sees them joined within by fellow countrymen, deep in conversation, with others hanging around outside. When I lived here ten years ago, many of them were owned and manned by Russians, but this no longer seems to be the case.

Nice going, politicians — levy taxes, help finance jihad. Now the Bureau and the ATF have even more on their plates, so to speak, a tax-created homeland security issue.

Say what you want about the letter of the law, I tend to agree with Williams’ opinion that,

Some smugglers are good people who differ little from the founders of our nation such as John Hancock, whose flamboyant signature graces our Declaration of Independence. The British had levied confiscatory taxes on molasses, and John Hancock smuggled an estimated 1.5 million gallons a year. His smuggling practices financed much of the resistance to British authority — so much so that the joke of the time was that “Sam Adams writes the letters (to newspapers) and John Hancock pays the postage.” Like Hancock, some of today’s cigarette smugglers are providing a service to their fellow man caught in the grip of confiscatory taxation.

In my book, the Hancock-type smuggler is a hero of sorts. Let’s look at it. During the days of the Soviet Union, Swiss watches were illegal. During our Prohibition era, the sale, manufacture and the importation of intoxicating liquor was illegal. Britain’s Navigation Acts imposed high tariffs and restrictions on goods sold to the American colonies that ultimately led to our 1776 War of Independence. The common theme in all of these acts is government seeking to interfere with, regulate or outlaw peaceable voluntary exchange between individuals.

Reason?

It has occurred to me on numerous occasions and I have mentioned a time or two in previous posts that for some time, our government, and I’m talking about both parties, has been betraying us, treacherously so and purely in the interests of individual political careers by gradually reintroducing the very same governance that our founding fathers saw fit to rebel against and in so doing break away from Great Britain, and found the United States of America.

However, rather than fight it, we collectively permit this regression to pre-Revolutionary War conditions. We continue to reelect politicians who could give a rat’s backside about We, The People or about our great country — to these scumbags, the only thing America means is realizing their own personal political ambitions, getting reelected at any cost, and I have come to realize that no matter how we elevate one above the other in our esteem, you can count all the politicians in this country who entertain even an iota of patriotism on one hand.

That said, two of my upcoming activities will be to catch Clarence Spady live, and also to attend a musical play called Street Dreams (an excitedly upbeat young actress, or aspirant thereof, handed me a hand-out for the play, billed “an inner city musical”, presented by the Rosetta Lenoir Musical Theatre Academy — never heard of it — and it looks like fun) at the ATA Theatre on West 54th.

New York, YAY!!!!

One of my favorite things to do here in Manhattan is to take some time out to relax over a cup of coffee at a vantage point sufficient to watching the city pass by, person by person. The way people dress (this town seems to sport a hundred different fashions at once, there is no apparent finite number of trends), the paces they keep, their expressions and actions and so forth, probably the best way to reaclimate myself to my home town.

It can also be pretty amusing.

Today has been a rainy one, pretty steady, slowing only occasionally to a drizzle — and I have always loved rainy days in N.Y., so I’ve been spending a lot of time out in it. I made a pit stop at a longish, narrow Mexican greasy spoon kind of joint on Kenmare Street (I couldn’t figure out the name of the place, I’ll have to get it next time) ***Got it — The Corner (esquina in red neon) Deli, believe it or not, probably the name of a former tenant of the property, seeing as it’s not a deli, and the current business didn’t bother changing the sign or the name *** — between Lafayette Street and Cleveland Place, a line of stools ranged along a counter facing windows. The eatery is pretty popular, they were doing steady business at the cashier’s station fronting the open kitchen — you pay for your order, take it and find an empty stool.

Okay, so directly across Kenmare is LIEUTENANT JOSEPH PETROSINO SQUARE. It’s actually a triangular square (no kiddin’) bordered by Cleveland Place, Kenmare and Lafayette. On the corner opposite the square on Cleveland Place is Eileen’s Special Cheesecake, a must-go to for anyone visiting New York.

Anyway, back to the story, so typical New York these days.

The intersection of Cleveland and Kenmare is almost always jammed up on weekdays, the product of idiots running yellow lights on both streets and blocking the intersection two different ways when the light turns red on them. So this stretch limo (you know, those foolish looking long-as-a-bus ones) gets stuck halfway across the intersection, heading west on Kenmare, and then an SUV gets stuck right behind it — this happened because another driver, responding to his own green light, cut in front of the limo and got stuck behind another guy who’d done the same thing) and abruptly there’s this mess…

…A traffic cop in his emergency orange rain gear comes out of nowhere, gets in the middle of the intersection and starts shouting orders, whistling and waving his arms (there was also a lot of finger wiggling there, I couldn’t decide whether that was supposed to be more signals to the drivers, but it made him look like he was having a seizure of some kind). He also had a West Indies accent, and the thought did cross my mind that perhaps this was a traffic directing sequel to Cool Runnings.

It was a lot of fun to watch.

The traffic cop did get control of the traffic, though it was a frantic, seat-of-the-pants kind of thing. I heard him yell at one driver, “And you’re going where, exactly!?”

Finally, after about ten minutes, he threw up his hands in frustration and stormed away, and the intersection immediately returned to the mess it had been on his arrival, with him stomping off in the background.

I have yet to figure out whether he was dispatched to the intersection or was simply some sort of roving director of traffic, but he sure put on a fun show.

…New York’s Own Race Card Institution, is…

The Bell shooting and the not-guilty verdict rendered in favor of the police officers involved.

The result of the not guilty verdict, another way of saying that New York police officers will not be crucified for doing what they deemed necessary, at a given moment, to defend themselves, is a rerun of Sharpton and fellow race maggots’ response to the Amadou Diallo shooting. Any excuse to go after “the Man”.

So there are idiots blocking traffic up in Harlem and announcements by Sharpton that he will organize civil disruption of the entire city (same as his attempts after the Diallo case), a despicable business, including lots of people sporting signs that said, “Adolph Giuliani”, and the “reverend” who makes his living off perpetuating anti-white bigotry has even said that he intends to probe the presiding judge’s (in the Bell case) background in search of skeletons.

These folks ignore one simple fact: Big city cops are confronted with the reality that today’s drugged-up gang-bangers have a nasty tendency to open up on a police officer, at the drop of a hat, with more than just a handgun — full auto weapons are a dime a dozen on today’s streets, including machine pistols small enough to conceal with little difficulty under a coat or even a light jacket.

A cop is neither paid to, nor expected to, gamble with his life. If he has cause to believe his life is in jeopardy, he is authorized to respond as he deems necessary to stay alive.

A lesson should have been learned as far back as the Amadou Diallo shooting.

When you hear, “Police! Freeze!” — You freeze. You don’t reach for a wallet or a cell phone, you don’t start dancing, you don’t ask questions, you don’t begin to comb your hair…. You stop dead in your tracks, don’t move another muscle, and you await further instructions, such as “Clasp your hands together on top of your head.” Or whatever.

Make a sudden move and get shot, that’s your problem and your fault, not the cop’s. It’s not his job to wait until you’ve gotten a shot off at him before he defends himself, when your shot might have already killed him. It also doesn’t matter whether he fires one shot or twenty shots. The overkill angle is nothing but pure political enhancement.

While my condolences go out to the dead man’s fiancee and family, who definitely have their right to grieve, they cheapen their loss by allowing it to become a pawn in the race card agenda of Sharpton and his miserable parasite ilk, and by participating as such, they spit on their own lost loved one.

It’s over, let it stay that way.

Tomorrow, I’m switching to another hotel here in New York, not because I don’t like where I’m at or the location I’m in – the upper west side is awesome – but because the new location will be closer to where I tend to spend my time and to where I want to establish a more permanent presence.

So I want to give mention to a few things regarding food up here on the upper west side.

Usually, after I get back to the hotel for the evening and am hungry or before I go out and want breakfast first, I call restaurants for delivery.

First, the best: Texas Rotisserie and Grill (since this is already New Yawk, ha ha, you can’t say “get a rope!”), on the northwest corner of 96th & Broadway.

My first day here, I happened to be strolling past and the aromas coming out of the place were heavenly, so I snagged one of their delivery menus, folded it and stuck it in my back pocket.

On the first occasion that I needed a delivery, I referred to it.

So many choices, not only where entrees are concerned, but appetizers and side dishes as well, and all coming out of one place. I’ve had their rotisserie chicken and their meatloaf, and such sides as their from-scratch mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, whipped sweet potatoes and garlic parsley potatoes, and have nothing but great things to say about all of them.

I am a major meatloaf maniac, and their meatloaf, made with beef and turkey, has got to be the best meatloaf I’ve ever gotten from a restaurant. Yum!

To boot, all the portions they serve are profoundly oversized yet under-priced from a New York standpoint.

Dessert wise, their chocolate chip cake is to die for.

And their delivery time is nothing short of amazing. The knock at your door seems to come almost before you’ve hung up the phone.

Second, the worst. Artie’s, a Jewish deli at about 83rd & Broadway.

I stopped in there for a couple of potato knishes on my second day here, and they were easily of a quality to sing songs over. So…

A couple of days later, when I was hoping to get an early start, I called them at opening time (9 a.m.) and gave them a breakfast delivery order: a Nova lox platter, a potato knish, a chocolate egg cream and two large coffees. The woman who took the order told me it would be around 15 minutes.

At 10:25, I called to ask why the food had not yet arrived. The same woman told me that the cashier was sorry, she hadn’t put the order in on time, but that it was now on its way to me. 25 minutes later it arrived, I paid for it and tipped the delivery guy and took everything out of the bag. There was no knish, though it was on the receipt.

I called Artie’s, and the same woman, in a totally indifferent tone of voice, asked me, “Oh, so do you still want the knish?”

“Since I paid you for it,” I replied, beginning to feel just a little miffed at her attitude, “I would assume so.”

The lox platter was great, generous and very filling, there was a lot of stuff included in it besides the Nova, a bagel and so forth, but when I went to drink the coffee I found it was old and burnt beyond drinkability. When the knish arrived at about 11:00, I was so disgusted I simply threw it in the trash can.

I tried calling the manager to register a complaint. I was told that he would be back in 2 days and that his name was Omar.

I tried, for a couple of days after he was supposed to be back, to get in touch with him, but he apparently doesn’t want to hear customer complaints and is always, therefore, “not there”. The mysterious Mr. Omar, in my opinion, is a scumbag who runs a shoddy business – the indifferent bimbo who runs the place on weekends probably Monicas him to keep her job and as payment for her under-the-desk services, the mutt excuses her ineptitude and lack of any customer service attitude.

Since then, I’ve looked up customer reviews of the place and find that most of them are unfavorable where service and even cleanliness of the place are concerned.

So while I wouldn’t recommend Artie’s for the dog you hate the most, I give major marks to Texas Rotisserie & Grill.

Two upper west side eateries to enjoy dining out at, both also reasonable by NY standards, are Acqua, an Italian restaurant on Amsterdam Ave at 95th that uses a wood oven and serves delicious, wafer thin crust, Italian style pizzas as well as some pasta & veal (I’ve had the aforementioned dishes there) that are extremely desirable to eat, in ways I can’t begin to describe beyond the “adjective” yum!. The other, more laid back but a must for locals-oriented Italian dining, is Perfecto, on Broadway between 92nd and 93rd Streets.

I treated a new acquaintance I met a few days ago to dinner at the latter (her recommendation). For my own part, I had had mussels in a wine and tomato sauce for an appetizer (I sampled my companion’s grilled octopus and it was excellent, as well), and my entrée was linguini with white clam sauce, while she had veal marsala. We tried one anothers’ dishes, and both were Perfecto.

Since then, I’ve tried the Sicilian pizza at Perfecto, and it is also Perfecto.

The above places (with the exception of piece-of-shit-Omar and his Artie’s) are all among the locals oriented eateries that you don’t see in the out-of-town yuppie guides, they are places that locals dine at, within the average middle class budget and every bit as good as the more pretentious “to be seen at” restaurants one reads about in the society pages., where there are dress codes, etc.

Having eaten at some of the most expensive restaurants in NY in the past, I can honestly say that these “common” establishments (we’re talking NY here, where competition is king) feature fare that is equal to or in some cases better than the places where, choked into a suit and tie when you’re not even at work, you can dine for hundreds of dollars, just to say you’ve eaten there.

To tell you the truth, I’d rather have dinner at Mike’s Pizzeria on Yellowstone Blvd in Forest Hills, Queens, than at Mama Leone’s any day of the week.

…days ago, but one thing and another kind of set me back.

I wanted to link this Walter Williams column that says so much about the screwing we’re getting, tax-money and Constitution-wise, from the government, and this is completely non-partisan where either side of the aisle is concerned. And we’re talking Presidents, here!

Most of what Congress is constitutionally authorized to spend for is listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and includes: coining money, establish post offices, to support Armies and a few other activities. Today’s federal budget is over $3 trillion dollars. I challenge anyone to find specific constitutional authority for at least $2 trillion of it. That includes Social Security, Medicare, farm and business handouts, education, prescription drugs and a host of other federal expenditures. Americans who have become accustomed to living at the expense of another American would not want Congress to obey the Constitution, especially if it left out their favorite handout.

Okay, so…

At one time there were presidents who respected the Constitution. Grover Cleveland vetoed hundreds of spending measures during his two-term presidency, often saying, “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.” Then there was Franklin Pierce who said, after vetoing an appropriation to assist the mentally ill, “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity,” adding, “To approve such spending would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

Instead of a Presidential inauguration including “protect and defend the Constitution…”

We should consider ending the charade and get rid of our 200-year-plus presidential oath of office and replace it with: “I accept the office of president.”

Basically, I rest my case, and Walter Williams’ as well.

I’m usually pretty decisive when it comes to deciding how I view issues as they come down the pike, but this one has me just a bit flabbergasted.

Now, I’m not at all a fan of pornography, this for three reasons:

1. I don’t own a pornograph, and

2. I can conceive no thrill whatsoever in watching other people “making whoopee”.

3. I consider sex to be a very personal, private activity to be shared only by those involved.

There’s something cheapening in the very concept, in fact, and when I read of porn “actors”, for some reason the likes of Richard Burton, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, James Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, John Wayne, William Holden, Peter Lorrie and even Raquel Welch and Brigit Bardeaux fail, no matter what, to come to mind.

However, there does seem to be a major market for the stuff, this judging from the myriad sex shops and Internet porn sites, the porn video spam and so forth.

We are a market based republic, and there would not exist this veritable cornucopia of erotic spam unless there was a profitably voluminous response to it.

In other words, the porn industry has achieved its own commercial legitimacy by virtue of its constituency.

I pretty much spit on the legal acceptance that pornography is a protectorate of the 1st Amendment – how does freedom of speech apply to sex flicks? Answer: It doesn’t, but our legal system has become so distorted that our esteemed justices are apt to interpret anything as Constitutional these days.

Sexual relations with camels? Sure, why not? 20 inch dildos? Constitutionally guaranteed. Nipple clamps? An absolute must! Sodomy? An absolute right under the First Amendment, “Cut and Print!”

Here is where my own confusion enters the picture.

We are a free country of Judeo-Christian origins, and we are, to all intents and purposes, a democracy. Those among us who are conservatives believe in limited government and basically, from that perspective, being left alone.

We hate being dictated to by liberals who smother us in political correctness, taxation without representation, multiculturalism (try running a business in which you require all your employees to speak English and see how fast the ACLU rams itself down your throat), G-dlessness in our schools, oppressive gun control measures and other venues that contradict the Constitution, yet we sometimes forget justice and dictate to them as well.

If millions of people want to be able to watch porn at the hotels they stay in, why should we obstruct that particular segment of the marketplace, immoral as it may be, and deny them their perversions? After all, at the end of things, they’ll have to explain their proclivities to a being whose office is several floors above those of us who pass judgment here and now, the CEO of the universe. If He decides that they’ve sinned, He’ll deal with them.

My own take is that any porn available should be restricted to rooms that are occupied only by adults, no rooms booked that in any way include minors, but we should not restrict, by lawsuit or law, these hotels from catering to the demands of their regular guests.

If they want to watch a bunch of sweaty people flopping and squirming on a bed, let them.

My point being, we really can’t force our concept of morality on other people. It’s up to them to make their own decisions, and it’s up to G-d to judge them when they kick the bucket.

This event finds itself rather close to my heart, as my maternal grandmother was a Jew who grew up in Poland. The Nazis killed her two brothers, two great uncles whom, as a result, I had neither the honor nor the opportunity to meet.

At family weddings in New York during my early youth, I met a few older relatives who had been in the camps and who showed me their tattooed numbers, indelible mementos of the horrors they had faced, and unlike millions of others had survived, at the hands of the Germans.

WARSAW (AFP) - The last commander of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, Marek Edelman, on Saturday honoured the memory of his comrades who died fighting Nazi Germany in the doomed Jewish stand against the Holocaust.

Joined by family members, hundreds of bystanders and city officials, Edelman marked the 65th anniversary of the revolt at the imposing monument to the ghetto fighters, unveiled in 1948.

Braving driving rain, the silent participants first laid flowers at the monument.

The frail Edelman, 85, was then pushed in his wheelchair to the site of the bunker where the leader of the revolt, 24-year-old Mordechaj Anielewicz, and 80 comrades had committed suicide as Nazi forces closed in.

The crowd then walked to the site of the “Umschlagplatz”, the railway siding from which the Nazis sent more than 300,000 Jews to the Treblinka death camp in northeastern Poland.

Edelman, who took command after Anielewicz’s death, rarely attends high-profile official ceremonies, preferring to remember his comrades in a lower-key fashion on April 19, the day the revolt actually began.

This year’s official event was held on Tuesday, in the presence of Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski and Israel’s Shimon Peres.
That ceremony had been brought forward because the actual anniversary fell on a Saturday, which is the Jewish Sabbath.
On the eve of World War II, Poland was Europe’s Jewish heartland.

It was home to 3.5 million Jews, and Warsaw alone had a community of around 400,000.

After invading Poland in 1939, Nazi Germany set up ghettos nationwide to isolate the country’s Jews and facilitate the “Final Solution” — half of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust were Polish.

At its height, more than 450,000 were crammed into the walled Warsaw ghetto.

About 100,000 died inside from starvation, disease and in summary executions. Most of the rest were sent to Treblinka in mass deportations which began in 1942.

In the ghetto, a handful of Jewish paramilitary groups, mostly made up of young people — Edelman was just 20 — coalesced into a poorly-armed force of around 1,000.

The banner of one group was a blue Star of David on a white background, which caused Nazi ire when it was hoisted during the revolt. It became the flag of Israel.

On Saturday, youths handed out paper armbands emblazoned with the symbol, which participants wore as they formed a human chain around the monument while sirens wailed and a Polish army honour guard fired a salute.

The ghetto fighters first clashed with the Nazis on January 18-22, 1943, managing to hinder the deportations.

On April 19, 1943, they took up arms again, as the Nazis moved to wipe out the remaining 60,000 ghetto dwellers.

“We knew perfectly well that there was no way we could win,” Edelman told AFP in a recent interview. “It was a symbol of the fight for freedom. A symbol of standing up to Nazism, and of not giving in,” he said.

The fighters held out as 3,000 Nazi troops razed the ghetto with explosives and fire.

Following Anielewicz’s suicide on May 8, Edelman and several dozen comrades escaped through the sewers. The Nazis marked their “victory over the Jews” by blowing up Warsaw’s main synagogue on May 16.

Around 7,000 Jews died in the revolt, most of them burned alive, and more than 50,000 were sent to Treblinka.

Besides denting the Nazis’ sense of superiority, the fighters managed to inflict some damage, killing and injuring a combined 300 troops.

Sporadic clashes continued in the ghetto ruin until the autumn.

Edelman and many other survivors later took part in the Warsaw uprising, launched on August 1, 1944 by the Polish underground.
That failed 63-day revolt and the Germans’ brutal response cost the lives of 200,000 civilians and 18,000 resistance members, and saw the near-total destruction of Warsaw by the Nazis.

While I feel nothing but contempt for the German people of the times who allowed Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann and the rest of those thugs to rise to the leadership of their country – I’m sorry, but while I understand the desperation they must have felt given the depression they were in, debacles such as Kristalnacht and the requirement that Jews bear identifying emblazons as such on their clothing would not have been tolerated by a civilized population to begin with, and when Jewish families began to disappear, well – the indifference of the German citizenry spoke for itself – I attach no blame to German citizens of today, for that would be the equivalent of the likes of liberal guilt-mongers who attempt to commute blame for black slave ownership by people long dead to white Americans living today.

That said, many monsters were produced from among the German people under the Third Reich, including the “man” given the responsibilty for the razing of the Warsaw Ghetto, a particularly vile creature called Jurgen Stroop.

May he and the rest of those Nazi bastards continue to rot in hell.

First, I will say that I actually tried to post on this yesterday, but the hotel I’m presently staying at in New York, only the second I’ve ever stayed in that featured free Internet access – this one’s being wireless only – has a few kinks in the system.

When I first checked in, it seemed like all was just fine, but I have found that it can’t handle video – a bummer as I’ve tried to watch video at other blogs and, well… I’ve also had a few comments I’ve endeavored to make come up: Internet Explorer cannot display the web page. Likewise, my last endeavor to post this got the infamous “Internet Explorer cannot…” and the post disappeared.

This hotel only has 250 rooms, and when you figure that it’s at nowhere near full occupancy just now (I’ve had no trouble adding nights at the last minute, and parts of the hotel are supposedly closed due to renovation and upgrades – I’ve neither seen nor heard any evidence of this, but that’s the going story), there shouldn’t be so many people connected to the wireless network that it would be overtaxed.

However: The hotel’s wireless network is unsecured, all you have to do is go to “Connect To” and click on their network, and you’re there.

Now, this is smack in the middle of the upper west side, surrounded by apartment buildings. I wonder how many zillion people in the myriad apartments hereabouts are using the hotel’s network for free wireless access.

Somewhere in the management sector of this hotel exists a pinhead who hasn’t figured out that all they have to do is secure the network and supply guests with the access information needed to connect.

So now I’m composing posts in MS Word, then copying and pasting them to my blog. Let ‘em look that up in their Funk & Wagnall’s! If I lose it again, I’ll still have it saved in Word to try again.

At any rate, what caught my attention was this piece of news, which defines an issue that should have constituted a dialogue conducted in the light of public awareness a long time ago, rather than dumbed down by liberal academics and the mainstream media in the interests of covering up the formers’ Marxian practice of indoctrinating our youth into the column of left wing political dogma rather than encouraging them to learn how to think for themselves.

An advanced textbook on American government is drawing criticism from scholars for alleged errors concerning climate change and separation of church and state.

American Government (Houghton Mifflin) and was authored by James Q. Wilson and John J. Dilulio, Jr. Associated Press reports that a New Jersey high school student pointed out apparent errors in the textbook to the Center for Inquiry, which then released a “scathing report.”

Scathing, no less!

Under criticism are statements that cause students to question whether the debate over “global warming” is really over, and whether the issue of “separation of church and state” is being correctly interpreted. Critics also accuse the textbook of having a conservative bias on a number of other issues.

Their actual kvetch, expressed in more honest terms, would be, “Hey! This text book is raining on our parade! If these kids learn to draw their own conclusions rather than accept us as the masters of all they think and all they believe, they might well grow into voting adulthood without views that we endorse, those we demand that the rest of society endorse. This is an outrage!”

The executive director of Christian Educators Association International (CEAI) disagrees with the critics. “I don’t think it’s the job of our public schools to indoctrinate children to tell them what they should believe about global warming,” says Finn Laursen, “but let’s educate them; let’s let them [think] like great minds of the past did, and let’s let them openly discuss the issues. And if we don’t let them know that there are two sides, that discussion won’t happen,” he contends.

The CEAI leader fears that the advanced students are no longer being as academically challenged as they have been in the past and are also being taught one-sided arguments.

“I think that most would agree that we [as a nation] are not as competitive as we once were, and I personally believe that one of the reasons is that our advanced students are not being challenged to higher levels of thinking,” the Christian educator argues. “They’re being given one side of topics, told to memorize that and to believe that — and that does not create great minds, and great thinkers, and problem solvers,” he points out.

Very well put, Mr. Laursen.

Another major cudo is due an official in Arizona.

In Arizona, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has said he will not remove the textbook from schools. Horne is quoted by KTAR.com as saying, “the claims made for conservative bias are very mild compared to the liberal bias that I see in most textbooks.”

Emphasis mine.

I would so like to see this argument find its way into the public domain, wherein the American people can decide whether they want their children to be educated as socialist zombies or as individual thinkers capable of making their own decisions.

While mainstream Democrats are by no means a significant minority in this country, the far left elements that have been steering their party, which includes the portside academics and the liberal media that smoke-screen the actual menace they pose to the future of our society via the indoctrination of our youth, certainly are. The media shapes public opinion, and in this instance, among others, has been quite successful in its dubious endeavors where Democrats who should know better are concerned.