Kitten saved

A black kitten who got out of her carrier in a subway station last month was found and is recovering after spending three weeks wandering around the tracks. She had a scratch on her nose and a broken leg, but other than that was OK.


The Daily News had tracked the story so people have been looking for the cat, and an anonymous donor added $500 to the $1,000 reward. Three MTA workers ended up walking around the tracks, meowing, looking for her.

They're taking another crack at it...

Today the campaign accused Obama of lifting words from Deval Patrick. The passage, which Obama used in a speech over the weekend, was a response to Clinton's claim that Obama's smooth rhetoric does not make him a better presidential candidate.

Obama: “Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” he said in his remarks. “ ‘I have a dream.’ Just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’ Just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words? Just speeches?”

Patrick said he had encouraged Obama to use those words, which he used in a 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign in response to similar criticism from Kerry Healey.

Patrick's speech, if you're interested:

"Her dismissive point, and I hear it a lot from her staff, is all I have to offer is words. Just words. 'We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' -- just words. Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Just words. 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' Just words. 'I have a dream' -- just words. "

Obama has responded to the criticism by saying, "I really don't think this is too big of a deal."

I've already heard the pundits compare this to the Biden debacle in 1988, when he lifted part of a speech from the leader of the British Labour Party and ended up dropping out of the race. I don't think the voters will see it that way, but I guess it depends on how much the media plays this up and whether anyone in Wisconsin really cares.

And the comments I've seen so far on the Web mostly talk about Clinton being desperate, saying things like "Made her look like a complete idiot" and "It's really sad. She apprently doesn't realize that we all have eyes and can see through her tactics. I used to respect her. Not any more."

Anyway, I'm thinking Thursday's debate is going to lose the congeniality of the last one and fall back into the tone of the South Carolina debate...

Clinton, once again, trying to start a semantic debate

The Clinton camp has accused Obama of going back on his word about pursuing a publicly financed general election.

This is exactly what hurts Clinton in the long run -- the campaign latches onto something that voters see as petty, Obama reacts articulately and says he doesn't understand why they're focusing on this instead of the issues, and ultimately, more people jump ship from Clinton to Obama.

Here's the gist:
In a questionnaire in 2007, answering a question about agreeing to a publicly financed election, Obama wrote, "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."

Then, at a press conference on Friday, Obama loosened that position, saying, "If I am the nominee, I will make sure our people talk to John McCain's people to find out if we are willing to abide by the same rules and regulations, with respect to the general election, going forward. ... It would be presumptuous of me to start saying now that I am locking in to something, when I don't even know if the other side will agree to it. And I'm not the nominee yet. We're trying to get through this process. As soon as we do, I assure you, my folks and John McCain's folks will sit down and see if we can arrive at a common set of ground rules."

The Clinton campaign pounced, saying this is an example of Obama going back on his word.

Here's The Note's take on it.

The reality is, I think, that this type of campaigning may be effective against McCain, but it hasn't effective against Obama. It has consistently worked against Clinton in the polls, and I'm not sure why the Clinton camp thinks that's going to change.

Maybe I should just get drunk the night before and see what happens...

As some of you know I've been studying like crazy for the GRE. Turns out, studying does not become me. A couple of weeks ago I got a 700 on the math section of a practice test, and tonight, after spending the last few weeks on a detailed GRE math workbook, I got a 630.

This does not bode well for my chances of getting into grad school. But seriously, they asked questions like this:

Talk show host Ralph Blowhard has exactly one guest on his show each day, and Blowhard’s show airs every Monday through Friday. Blowhard always schedules politicians on Mondays and Wednesdays, Actors on Tuesdays and Athletes on Thursdays, but can have a guest of any one of these three kinds on Friday. No guest appears more than once per week on Blowhard’s show. If Blowhard has five politicians, three actors and six athletes he could invite, and if no politician is also an actor or an athlete and no actor is also an athlete, how many different schedules of guests from Monday to Friday could Blowhard create?

For the record, I got that one right. (by multiplying ten gazillion by ten gazillion and then adding it to ten gazillion, if I remember correctly), but like a dumbass I spent seven minutes on it (seriously, Princeton Review clocks this stuff for you), and completely ran out of time two-thirds of the way through.

And then I had no time to work through gems like this:

Seriously. What the fuck?

On the plus side, I've apparently learned the English language since I started studying, having raised my verbal score from tard-level (seriously, I'm not even telling you people how bad) to 670, which is better than the 90th percentile, which is about the best I can hope for. Of course, the verbal is all luck depending on what words you get, so my chances of repeating that are probably crappy.

The "fairy tale"

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aaad0724-dd13-4ffa-810b-d5d3220ff055

The New Republic has an interesting story about Barack Obama's stance on the war. As you guys know, Obama delivered in a speech in 2002 opposing the war. This speech has become a staple of the Obama campaign, as he has said he opposed the war from the start while Clinton voted to authorize it.

Clinton, of course, took to another extreme, calling Obama's war stance a "fairy tale" and trying to paint him as a flip-flopping opportunist who refused to take a hard stance on the war when that stance became a political risk. In approaching Obama's record this way, the Clintons have angered a slew of voters who believe the Clinton campaign is misrepresenting the truth and created harsh infighting within the Party. Obama, meanwhile, takes more subtle swings at Clinton, emphasizing his own opposition over her vote and therefore keeping ride smoothly along his hope/change theme.

The truth about the Obama's stance on the war, stands pretty squarely in the middle of what the two candidates have been saying, according to the New Republic story.

I've been saying that the Obama camp has been misleading on the war. I think a giant percentage of voters do not realize Obama was not in the Senate for the vote, and an even larger number do not know that 99 of 100 members voted to authorize Iraq. Obama did, however, return to his anti-war roots after a brief period of uncertainty (which was when he pulled the speech from his Web site)

In any case the TNR story makes some good points about the issue, namely:
He did, however, strike a different tone during his star turn at the Democratic National Convention that July. Obama's inspiring keynote address barely mentioned the war. ("There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it," he declared.) More notably, in interviews around that time, Obama refused to say flatly that he would have voted against the 2002 congressional war resolution. "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports," Obama told The New York Times on July 26. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that, from my vantage point, the case was not made." In other interviews that week, Obama said, "[T]here is room for disagreement" over initiating the war, and that "I didn't have the information that was available to senators."

That statement, I think, gets to the crux of this debate. Obama acknowledged then that he could not legitimately judge the Senate vote because he was not privy to the same intelligence and was not in the same position as Congress.

The war is obviously going to be an issue in this campaign, and it should. But I wish the candidates would step away from this essentially semantic debate and start discussing the issues where they genuinely differ. I think Clinton would be well-served to stop trying to attack Obama's "fairy tale" and start focusing on their real differences. Any counterattacks she brings tend to bounce back at her -- with teeth.

Of course, she'll have to figure out how to do all this with no money...

Because apparently I don't sleep anymore

I somehow got all excited about successfully writing a specific formula in Excel (because I am that cool), which got me on a what-else-can-I-do-on-the-computer-tonight-that-has-previously-not-been-working-for-me mood, which means I have once again updated my Web site.

Check it out at www.harbatkin.com and let me know what you people think. It's actually almost done, I think, so let me know if any egregious errors jump out at you. You can also tell me what you think of it overall. Be honest, but nice... my brain hurts from state report cards.

Anyway all I'm waiting for now is a suitable version of Adobe Acrobat so I can create all the PDFs. I have been assured that Sara would try to obtain said software for me. Of course that was more than a month ago... hmmmmm...

So who the *#% & $+ wants to know?

I'm not sure if this reached outside journalism gossip blogs last week, but some of the subsequent coverage has amused me, so...

After billionaire Sam Zell bought out the Tribune Co. (L.A. Times, Orlando Sentinel, etc.), he visited the newsrooms and spoke to the employees at each newspaper. Standing behind a podium, speaking to the hundreds of Sentinel employees, he called for questions. Then he said "fuck you" to a photographer who asked a question.

It went something like this:

The photographer asked where the paper's coverage was headed.

Zell said reporters should focus on what readers want in order to make more money for the paper.

The photographer said, readers want "puppy dogs" rather than real information.

Zell responded, "you're giving me the classic... journalistic arrogance of deciding that puppies don't count." He continued by saying if they cover the local puppies well then maybe the paper can generate enough revenue to cover puppies in Iraq.

Then the photographer supposedly started to walk away as he was excoriating her for "elitism" and Zell he added, "fuck you."

You can also view the full video here, complete with a synopsis and comments if you're interested. (If you do, I would also recommend you take a few minutes to scroll down to the reader comments -- they range from

"I throw a secret fuck you into conversations all the time, thankfully with no video evidence.
Fuck you."

to

"TECHNICIAN (into earpiece)
Mr. Zell, your microphone is hot.
ZELL (annoyed)
What?
TECHNICIAN
Your microphone sir, it's on.
ZELL
Fuck you!
TECHNICIAN
Sir, your mic is hot. Please, say nothing more, lest you disgracethyself courtesy of the Internet, prompted by an innocuous query froma photog, of all people.
ZELL (flamboyantly, like Nathan Lane in "The Birdcage")
FuuuUUUUck... yOOOOOOUUUUUUU!

Anyway, this generated all kinds of responses in the world of journalism gossip, and then continued to generate responses about the responses.

The initial coverage in the mainstream papers said Zell responded to the photographer's question with "a two-word profanity," which prompted bloggers/columnists/everyone else to say this type of coverage is why people seek their news on the Internet rather than newspapers.

The reason I'm finally blogging about it is this L.A. Times opinion piece, which ran yesterday. Its headline is "So who the *#% & $+ wants to know?" and it continues to get better from there. My favorite part:

Seriously, Spring Street: a "two-word obscenity?" What on Earth did Zell say? "Darn tootin'? " "God dammit?" (Or is that one word?) "Mitt Romney?"

And we've hit a new low

My team just lost 22-3.

That's right. We scored one point in the first 39 minutes. One. No field goals in 39 minutes.

Then we hit a layup at the buzzer and I considered it a moral victory. Which, I think, I'm going to count as a notch in the win column. Because we need it.

On basketball

I'll probably post something about Super Tuesday when I get home today, but in the interim.

This is something I'd been wanting to write about for a while, and Bobby Knight's sudden retirement gave me a news hook/inspiration.

Column 2/6
(incidentally please ignore the horrible column mug -- they took a new one for the paper but *shock and awe* it didn't make it onto the Web site.)

Still the greatest coach ever

Today my team lost 18-6. The other team was making layups, setting screens and generally doing all kinds of things my kids will never ever be able to do.

One is terrified of the ball and ducks out of the way whenever it comes near him. One runs with it without dribbling -- just running around, ball in hand, until the ref finally calls a travel. One of the tallest kids is stuck to the floor and refuses to jump for rebounds. One shoots a basketball like the rest of us throw a football (although in his defense, he did make one of our three shots today). And one of our point guards just dribbles directly into his defender, hands him the ball and then runs alongside the kid while he dribbles to the other end of the court and makes a layup.

I'm thinking of recruiting Gizmo to be our power forward. I don't think it would hurt.

Why Bush won the presidency

Fox News was voted the most trusted TV news organization for accurate reporting, according to a study of American's trust in the news media by Sacred Heart University.

The poll was conducted through 800 phone interviews spanning 50 states.

Of course, the people surveyed seem to have the IQ of a toad, as 22.3 percent of them said Fox News is "somewhat or mostly liberal."

Did you pay taxes on that blow?

North Carolina has an "unauthorized substance tax," requiring "any individual who possesses an unauthorized substance" to purchase tax stamps within 48 hours of purchasing the unauthorized substance.

In other words, state law requires that anyone who purchases cocaine, marijuana, etc., must purchase stamps from the Department of Revenue and affix the stamps to the drugs. People who purchase these stamps are not required to provide any identifying information, and tax department employees are not permitted to report them (it's a Class 1 misdemeanor), but... Seriously?

From an AP story on weird taxes:

The idea is that a peddler, even one who sells illegal substances,
should pay taxes. But in reality the revenue is only collected after
arrests, when dealers are slapped with a tax bill.

"The only folks we have buying those stamps are stamp collectors,''
said Kim Brooks, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

Gov. Spitzer, of course, (who also wants to start DNA-testing everyone who gets arrested) thinks it's an awesome idea. Back to the AP:

In his budget proposal to the Legislature last week, he promised $17
million in revenue from it. He also wants to require Internet giants such
as Amazon.com to collect tax on an estimated $47 million in sales to New
Yorkers, who are currently on an honor system to report on their tax
returns how much they spend online.

AcRonyMs gOne awRy (ARMOR)

There is a program in New Jersey called ACHIEVE: Action Communities for Health, Innovation and EnVironmental ChangE

Seriously.

Piano cat!

Because I am the best coach ever

Today the youth basketball team I coach scored a total of 4 points over the course of the entire 40-minute game. Four points. That's two shots. In an entire game. How is that possible?

They're too sexy for their hat...

...too sexy for their hat -- what you think about that?

Incidentally in looking up that song to decide what A.M. and Gizmo are too sexy for, I rediscovered that it mentions being too sexy for cats. Which I think is quite appropriate here. (Although it would obviously be more appropriate if it said my cats were too sexy for my bed, but that's just not what the song's about)

Oh and harbatkin.com has undergone an overhaul since you last checked. Still no content, but I created a new design and you can click around a little to the clips and resume pages. So once again, I welcome your aspersions (does that work in this case? this is why I'm going to bomb the GRE). Harsh criticism. I welcome any and all harsh criticism. About the site, of course. Not the cats.

I live in the epitome of suburbia

I got home this afternoon to find two children bopping around on pogo sticks outside my apartment.

Because inexperience is the new experience, and experience is the new herpes

As Barack Obama picks up momentum in the race for the Democratic nomination, the media seems to be reacting to his success with kid gloves instead of the mallets they're using on Hillary Clinton. The rise of the Obama Fan Club is a pretty strange situation -- in straight news coverage and with pundits on both sides of the aisle. Frontrunners are generally stampeded by the opposing party -- think Hillary earlier in the season, Bush, Kerry, etc.

Just passing along some interesting takes on it...

From a Howard Kurtz story in the Washington Post:

The media overall are being swept up by a wave of Obamamania, in which normally hard-bitten journalists watch the orator in action and come away dazzled by his gifts. A New York Times piece Saturday compared the Illinois senator to JFK and Martin Luther King in the same paragraph. A Newsweek cover story out yesterday gushed that Obama, "tall and handsome and blessed with a weighty baritone, knows how to bring along a crowd while seeming to stay slightly above it." The journalistic scrutiny usually visited on instant front-runners has been replaced by something akin to a standing ovation.

From a Gloria Steinem op-ed in the New York Times:

... what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.

What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

Anyway, here's to New Hampshire voters being smarter than Iowa caucusers... in both parties.

On spending your Saturday night watching a fat lady's stomach expand and shrink...

Legend has it that an historical Central Jersey landmark is haunted by the spirits of its past, ranging from orphans to soldiers to Ben Franklin's son. (I'm going to leave off the name of said place in order to avoid offending any ghost/history buffs who might regularly Google the place.)

In any case my coworker Gene decided to do a story on the ghosts that apparently live there, so he invited a bunch of people from the newsroom to hang out there Saturday night, waiting for the ghosts to come out. We arrived at 10 p.m. and stayed until 2 a.m., trying to summon the ghosts. Now the clusterfuck of people who showed was strange enough -- we ranged in age from 25 to 60; editors to reporters to office managers to historians to friends of friends; people to dogs. (OK, so there was only one dog, but she had dreadlocks and there totally could have been more dogs hidden inside them) So about 30 of us were standing around with coffees, beers and subs, waiting for the ghosts to make themselves known.

But it got so much stranger.

The landmark has a house psychic named Jane. She's exactly what you would expect. Large. Bright red hair. Big blue, purple and black sequined shirt. And believes ghosts visit her by penetrating her belly.

She and the house historian took us on a tour, and she was telling us stories about ghost sightings in various rooms. Apparently each ghost has its "path," which it paces in a straight line constantly. For me, walking back and forth along the same path over and over would get boring after eternity or so, but Jane said they do, so it must be true.

How does she know each ghost's path, you might ask?

Her stomach expands when she's walking the path.

Obviously.

She ambled through the house and made everyone watch her stomach expand and shrink as she paced the paths in each room. She even had people two-step with her across the room, holding her stomach as it protruded because she was "walking in the ghost's path." Gene tried to volunteer me to hold her stomach, but I politely declined. (in fact, I think she saw me later trying to make other people feel *my* stomach as I pushed it out and back in *There must be a ghost inside me!* and she was not my biggest fan)

Apparently one way you know a ghost is in the room is by smell. They know horse-ghosts hang out in one room because it smells like horse manure sometimes (and it's just not possible that someone keeps farting). In fact the closest anyone got to a ghost sighting Saturday night was a strong body odor stench in one of the rooms. I mean, I guess it's true that people in the 18th century weren't big on the deodorant.

In any case my editor Lois brought along a Parker Brothers Ouija board, and Jane informed us this is a very dangerous tool but that she'd teach us to use it at our own risk. (Good thing we didn't bring the Monopoly) First, Gene and Lois sat down with the wedgie board and a candle, and, as instructed, asked if there were any "spirits from the light." There weren't. The little Ouija-board-window-thingie sat still in the middle of the board for a good five minutes while they tried to badger the spirits from the light to come communicate.

So Jane told Gene he was doing it wrong and took his place. And just then -- shock and awe -- the spirit came! Its name was Vewstom Ct but Jane conveniently ignored the Vews and Ct part and decided we were talking to Tom. Tom gave us some lottery numbers to play and then said bye. If you're interested, I believe they were 7, 4, 54 or 45 (apparently Tom is dyslexic), 30 and 10. I think.

Then it was time for the seance, in which we all sat in a circle and tried to summon spirits from the light. Apparently some dude named Dennis came and squeezed Gene's left kidney.

So that was the night, essentially. And just in case you're wondering, I'll bullet a list of things I learned from Jane:
• Having more than two alcoholic drinks creates holes in your aura and emits negative energy, allowing spirits from the dark to penetrate your aura and latch onto you.
• If you train yourself right, you can bring spirits into your belly and then release them out into the air.
• Ghosts turn over teacups. (so does Gene)
• Ghosts like to lock people in the bathroom.
• Ghosts from the 1700s know how to operate elevators. They like to turn them off when people are inside.
• Ghosts poke.
• Jane is allergic to wheat.

Incidentally I think Keith got video of Becky two-stepping across the room with the psychic -- I'll ask him about it and post it if I can.

*corrections appended*

Gizmo for president!

Just in case you people are like me and need a fuzzy pick-me-up after Iowa...








Incidentally I'm planning to submit a photo of Giz (and maybe A.M., if she could learn to be more photogenic) for the 2009 Cat-a-day calendar, so you people will periodically be seeing some Cat Photo Shoots.

So if you at any point see one you believe effectively conveys the awesomeness that is Gizmo (or A.M., for that matter), let me know.

Oh, and I soooo don't wanna hear the crazy cat lady comments. You knew I was crazy long before this.