John Lithgow in Dexter

John Lithgow has been in 84 films and he's played some excellent roles, including criminal roles. But in Season 4 of Dexter on Showtime Lithgow is in league with Anthony Hopkins and Lionel Barrymore, among the best villains of all time. Michael C. Hall (Dexter) has been wonderful for the past four seasons, as have the supporting cast including Oz veterans Lauren Velez and David Zayas, Jennifer Carpenter, who plays Dexter's sister, and Julie Benz, who plays his wife. If you get past the premise that a serial killer can be trained to kill only serial killers, the show's story line is rich. Dexter has been great TV, but Lithgow does one better. In the last scene of Season 4, No. 11, "Hello Dexter Morgan", Lithgow's performance is classic. And P.S.--It seems to me that Showtime is outstripping HBO this year.

How Dan Halloran Ran: An Interview with Phil Orenstein

My interview with Phil Orenstein on Dan Halloran's successful political campaign for the New York City Council (Queens) appears on the Republican Liberty Caucus's blog http://www.rlc.org/2009/12/09/how-dan-halloran-ran/

Obama Looks at Change From Both Sides Now

Yahoo! carries this headline: "Obama defends US Wars as He Accepts Nobel". The Norwegians seem to have taken an interest in US Politics. They gave the once-prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to Democratic Party politician Al Gore, who has gone around the world preaching falsified research in order to encourage adoption of a pollution trading scheme that will benefit himself personally. Now they give it to another Democratic Party partisan, Barack Obama, who lied to his followers and told them that he opposed the wars, and now he defends them, preaching the classical Orwellian saws "war is peace" and "change is stability".

Last year no one would listen to me when I called Obama a cheap Chicago politician with extremist left wing views. Now, that he is president, I will refrain from name-calling. Rather, let us view the Nobel Peace prize as a dead letter, much like the socialism of its administrators.

AP on Yahoo! writes:

"And yet Obama was staying here only about 24 hours, skipping a slew of Nobel activities. This miffed some in Norway but reflects a White House that sees little value in extra pictures of the president, his poll numbers dropping at home, taking an overseas victory lap while thousands of U.S. troops prepare to go off to war and millions of Americans remain jobless.

"Just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle in Afghanistan, Obama delivered a Nobel acceptance speech that he saw as a treatise on the use and prevention of war. He crafted much of the address himself and the scholarly remarks — at about 4,000 words — were nearly twice as long as his inaugural address."

Town of Olive Bank Statements, 9-30-09

Through a freedom of information law request I obtained the Town of Olive's bank statements. I had written the request about six weeks before the election in early November and Sylvia Rozelle, the Town Clerk, handed me the statements about 10 days after the election.

Notice that taxes are collected in January, so about 9 of 12 months or 75% of the year had gone by when these balances occurred. With a quarter of the year left, the Town had the following balances:

$1,044,475.38
880,511.51
393,626.14
115,170.24
201,267.64
4,758.24
-----------
$2,441,541.51

The 2000 Census found that the Town of Olive had a population of 4,579, according to Wikipedia. Thus, the Town had about $533 for every man, woman and child. That's probably more than many could afford to save because of all the taxes that they're paying to the Town. Total spending is about $4.3 million, according to the Olive Press so the cash balance is 2.4/4.3 = 55.8% of spending when 25% of the year was left. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party chose to raise taxes by over 6%.