Just watching this video hurts every muscle in my body.

Courtesy ABC

From the “What Goes Around” Dept.

The real estate market’s troubles are hitting close to home for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. After reducing the price on his house in a tony New York City suburb to less than he paid for it, Geithner still couldn’t sell and recently rented it out instead, according to real estate agents familiar with the deal.

Geithner put his five-bedroom Tudor near leafy Larchmont on the market for $1.635 million in February, after heading to Washington for his job as the nation’s top economic official.

A few weeks after the asking price was dropped to $1.575 million, the home was rented for $7,500 a month on May 21.

Although $7,500 might seem like a lot of rent, it probably falls a bit short of the monthly mortgage payments on the Geithners’ two loans totaling $1.25 million, plus $27,000 a year in property taxes.

Treasury Department representatives didn’t immediately return calls about Geithner’s home Monday and Tuesday. He was in Beijing for talks with Chinese leaders.

A little job incentive? The man in charge of turning things around can’t even sell his own home.

Embarrassed by fake page?

The Associated Press: Tony La Russa sues Twitter over alleged fake page — Strike three! The AP headline says “alleged” fake page. Why would they use that word alleged? Is there some long shot possibility that it not a fake page and the writer will be sued for saying it is a fake page? Dumb. Anyway, this is pretty funny.

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is suing the social-networking site Twitter, claiming an unauthorized page that used his name to make light of drunken driving and two Cardinals pitchers who died damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress.

The suit filed last month in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco seeks unspecified damages.

California needs to be split into three states. The state was only to be allowed to be as big as it was because it was sparsely populated. With an economy that would be 7th in the world if California was a stand alone country it’s ridiculous that its large mass and huge population is represented by only two US Senators, neither of whom represent the interests of the state as a whole.

The State is also ungovernable as a State of this size with such a large population. It’s more of a country than a State by any measure – and a poorly run one, at that.

Every so often the populace discusses cutting the State in half and making two States. I’ve thought about this and cannot see any logical place to split the state in two, but can see a good argument for splitting the State into three or even more states. The average state in the USA has a population of around 6 million. California has 36 million. It is simply unmanageable and will only get worse.

First of all there are numerous political sub-cultures in California that are so distinctive that they should be separated and given statehood. These areas seldom communicate and rarely see themselves as connected to the other part. Based on dividing the state into just 3 states, they are as follows:

Northern California – This would be a state almost the size of Oregon with similar features and cities. The State begins north of Sacramento with a boundary from Pt. Arena on the west and Lake Tahoe on the east. The suggested Capital would be Eureka or Redding. There is little psychological connection between these folks and the rest of California and their needs are under-represented because of this. The area is massive, yet there is not one University of California campus. It would do better for itself as its own State.

California – The could also be called Central California and it consists of the middle of the State south of Pt. Arena down to just South of Big Sur. From there it cuts across keeping Los Banos while relinquishing Fresno, which people from this area think of as in Southern California. The Capital would remain Sacramento. The University of California, per se is in this area.

Southern California – This includes the entire rest of the State and constitutes the largest land mass. It would still be one of the largest states in the union. There is already a University of Southern California, which is convenient. The placement of the Capital is problematic and the candidates would include: Los Angeles, Pasadena and San Diego — although an even more neutral location such as Riverside or Santa Ana might work too.

Now to find a way to make this happen.

related links: older comments regarding this idea.
Desire to create a State called Jefferson using parts of Oregon and California.

Bureaucrat scuffs dream of homeless shoe shiner — Apparently SF bureaucrats comb the newspaper to find guys like this to rip off. I’d love to find out who this dipshit woman is who made this guy get a permit. No wonder nobody can get themselves out of poverty with people like her around. She probably got a commendation.

He sleeps under a bridge, washes in a public bathroom and was panhandling for booze money 11 months ago, but now Larry Moore is the best-dressed shoeshine man in the city. When he gets up from his cardboard mattress, he puts on a coat and tie. It’s a reminder of how he has turned things around.

In fact, until last week it looked like Moore was going to have saved enough money to rent a room and get off the street for the first time in six years. But then, in a breathtakingly clueless move, an official for the Department of Public Works told Moore that he has to fork over the money he saved for his first month’s rent to purchase a $491 sidewalk vendor permit.

“I had $573 ready to go,” Moore said, who needs $600 for the rent. “This tore that up. But I’ve been homeless for six years. Another six weeks isn’t going to kill me.”

The bureaucrat told Moore that she found out about his business after reading about his success in this paper.

This whole story is rich since San Francisco is crawling with beggars, panhandlers and weirdos. Heaven forbid someone want to work for a living. And why is the permit so expensive? Probably the same reason a parking meter costs 25-cents for five minutes. This city is the worst.

SF Director of Public Works, Ed Reiskin

Found by John Ligums.