Oy

Just two things about this Joel Stein clusterfuck:

1. Does Time employ anyone in, say, an editorial capacity?

2. When I was growing up my grandparents would always tell me about how the 69th Street neighborhood had "changed," which was, let's say, euphemistically simplistic. And I never really had a lot of sympathy for two Jews who lived during World War II and were still stuck on how good things were in the 1950s. But at least I could always chalk it up to a different time, and hey, they were my grandparents so I loved them.

But Joel Stein is not my grandparent, and he is 38-years-old (almost 39--happy birthday Joel!!). So he can go to hell.

And he should feel more than a little embarrassed that he sounds just like my grandparents.

We Actually Really Do Need Federal Money

Here are the top-6 most read stories on Philly.com as of Monday morning:

• Body of triathelete recovered and identified
• Bam Margera testifies at hearing about attack outside his club
• Pit bull found savagely killed in Northeast Philly
• Wife and lover charged in husband's death
• Delco triathlete feared dead in Schuylkill River
• Two lovers, a plot, and murder

Which is only to say: we really need more money, community services, and police, not less.

Not among the most viewed articles on Philly.com as of Monday morning was this article about how fucked PA and NJ are because of the shameful decision by Republicans and Ben Nelson to filibuster the tax-extender bill in the Senate, which:

would reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for people out of work for six months or longer, would protect doctors from a 21 percent pay cut for seeing Medicare patients, and would provide billions in aid to state Medicaid programs.

This awesomeness, it seems, is causing all sorts of $850 million fun in Harrisburg:

the lack of federal money will force more painful cuts to programs, including mental-health and children's services, whose funding has already been eviscerated the last few years.

Not receiving the federal Medicaid funding "would be devastating," said Tim Allwein, assistant executive director of governmental and member relations for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

School districts in Pennsylvania, he said, would likely lose the extra money Gov. Rendell is proposing for basic education, leaving them to raise taxes or slash programs and teaching jobs.

Rendell had one word last week to describe the impact on the state budget should the Medicaid money be permanently axed: Armageddon.

Hyperbole aside, this is sweet, huh? But it could be worse. We could be living in New Jersey, where conservative messiah Chris Christie has decided to compound the above problems by trying to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit--that is, raise taxes by $45 million on 485,000 families who have children and make under $48,000 a year. And this is after vetoing a small tax surcharge on 16,000 New Jersey millionaires because "another tax increase will punish the state’s struggling small businesses and set our economy further back from recovery."

I happen to agree that raising taxes right now is a really terrible idea, which is why Christie shouldn't do it and why the Senate should get off its ass and save our states.

Let's Try This Again

Okay, so my last blog basically turned into a twitter feed for my parents. I didn't even blog my awesome pictures from Japan. Whatever. It's over. Dublin is over. Explaining why it's a complete fail of a city is over. Suggesting improvements that the people of Dublin might want--but refuse--to consider is over. I'm moving on.

I'm back in Philly. And I will probably forget to/be too lazy to blog all about it. It's gonna be awesome.

Oh, I'll also blog about all kinds of other stuff you aren't interested in. But I'm interested, and it's my blog, and I know my mom will read it. Probably my aunt too.

Ok, fine. One picture of Japan:

Shosei-en Garden, Kyoto