Feel free to thank Governor Spitzer when your online Christmas shopping costs more this holiday season:

New Yorkers going Christmas shopping online at Amazon.com will find an 8.375% surprise at the virtual cash register, courtesy of Governor Spitzer, who is moving aggressively to collect Internet sales taxes that have gone widely unenforced.

Under a new policy, major electronic retailers, such as Amazon.com, will be required to collect sales tax on all purchases from New York.

The policy, based on a novel legal theory, could hasten the end of the Internet’s era as a duty-free marketplace if other states follow New York’s lead.

I know who I’m crossing off my Christmas list this year, Gov. Spitzer. This additional tax move is ridiculous and will hurt online sales.

You’d think that in a state where taxes on clothing were reduced to spur additional retail sales, that the governor wouldn’t create additional taxes on online sales, but that would be too logical, wouldn’t it?

When sales tax on clothing was higher in New York, New Yorkers went to New Jersey to save money, hurting local businesses. I don’t forsee people shipping their online purchases for pickup in New Jersey, but if they live nearby they might drive through a tunnel or over a bridge to save the additional taxes.

UPDATE: Spitzer Abandons Amazon Tax

Yankees manager Joe Torre rejected a $5 million one-year extension from the team Thursday:

In a surprising turn of events, club president Randy Levine announced during a conference call with reporters originating from Tampa, Fla., that Torre declined a contract that would have paid him a base salary of $5 million, with $1 million bonuses for each level of the postseason the Yankees reached next season.

Torre was exactly right for turning down such a patronizing offer from George Steinbrenner and the Yankees. By accepting the offer, which would have been a pay cut for Torre, the manager would have essentially been put on probation by the team, only making his full salary if he guided the team to a World Series win.

Yankees fans should be ashamed at the way the Yankees administration is treating one of the best managers in baseball history, who helped bring the team to 4 World Series championships and 6 pennants in 12 years.

Steinbrenner was patronizing Torre, treating him like a new manager who needed monetary incentives to progress to the World Series. I’d like to see Steinbrenner or anyone else involved in this contract offer to name any other major league manager who did better with a team over a 12 year span as manager. There isn’t one.

I actually got a chance to meet Joe Torre in person, as he received an honorary degree at my college graduation. From what he spoke about that day and from all we know about him and what he has done for medical research, the community, and charity, its obvious that he doesn’t only excel at leading a baseball team. He’s also an all-around great person. Torre is a wonderful asset to have not just for a baseball team, but for a community.

And what the Yankees just offered him, after 12 years of faithful service, amounts to a slap in the face. A one year contract? But, in typical Torre fashion, he simply turned down the offer and left quietly, not making this whole issue into what surely could have become a media circus, complete with raking Steinbrenner over the coals for his questionable decisions over the years.

Joe Torre wouldn’t want that to happen because he seemingly holds one quality dear, respect. Too bad the Yankees and Steinbrenner couldn’t return the favor to Torre.

Barack Obama spoke to thousands of supporters in a rally in Washington Square Park Thursday:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told thousands at a rally Thursday that he would bring serious change to Washington if elected.

The Illinois senator, speaking in front of the landmark arch in Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, said that to truly effect change partisan politics must be stopped and the people must have access once again to the federal government. […]

Obama, wearing dark blue slacks and a light-blue dress shirt with an open collar and rolled-up sleeves, came on stage to Kanye West’s inspirational song “Touch the Sky,” as thousands, including many college students, crammed into the park near New York University.

And here’s a musical recap from the Obama campaign, which is pretty cool:

BONUS VIDEO: I just found this trailer from the Obama campaign that has some funny outtakes thrown in:

Here we are again, on the anniversary of that day that evokes such terrible memories of chaos and death and smells, sounds, and sights that no one should ever have to experience.

For each of the past five years, I have returned to Ground Zero as a way of mourning and as a way of trying to make sense of what I witnessed out my NYU dorm room window that had such a great effect on my life. I also visited the former World Trade Center site to witness the progress of the previous year’s construction of the Freedom Tower and the future on-site memorial.

But, as I wrote a year ago today, while I will never forget what happened on 9/11, it was time I should move on. Dwelling on and trying to comprehend the destruction of 9/11 would only serve to hold me back, thus it was just time to move on.

So this year, I stayed home.

I still watched some television news coverage during the day, but I definitely didn’t tune in for MSNBC’s re-airing of their 2001 coverage of 9/11.

And I was okay with that.

Today, I was able to put my blog posts from 2000 through 2002 back online on BlogSpot. I will eventually reintegrate them here, but for now, feel free to take a look at my original posts over there, including one about my experiences on a free movie day following the attacks, which I found interesting looking back.

Robbers broke into TV host Mark Morrone’s Parrots of the World pet store and stole $58,000 worth of parrots, including African Greys, Cockatoos, and a Toucan:

Brazen, cage-toting burglars smashed through the rear window of a Rockville Centre pet store early yesterday and made off with 45 exotic birds, worth a total of $58,000, police and the store’s owner said yesterday.

Marc Morrone, the “pet-keeper” for “The Martha Stewart Show,” who has owned Parrots of the World on Sunrise Highway since 1978, told the Daily News the early morning heist was not the work of bird-brained thieves. […]

The bandits stole 20 African Grey parrots, 20 Blue-Faced Amazon parrots, 4 Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and one toucan. The birds retail for $1,200 each.

“This is a terrible tragedy,” Morrone said. “They hurt me emotionally. It’s a personal violation.”

More than his financial loss, Morrone said, he’s worried about the safety of his birds.

Mark Morrone has done so much for animal welfare and education and its such a shame that he was targeted like this.

Here’s a video from YouTube to show you what the store’s bird room looks like and how many birds are typically in there at any given time:

Having been to the store and having met Mark, I can tell you that he is one of the nicest and most sincere people I’ve ever met. He certainly didn’t deserve to have the birds he spent so much time socializing and hand-feeding stolen right out from under him.

The last time I was at Parrots of the World, I found Mark in the expansive bird room, his shirt covered in a mixture of poop and baby bird formula, hand-feeding several parrots. After finishing the morning feedings with the help of his staff, he began to personally great each customer who walked into the store, answering question along the way.

I approached him at one point and asked him about the degus he had for sale. He stopped what he was doing behind the sales counter and came over to the cage of degus on a wall that included possums, hedgehogs, and sugar gliders. He reached into the cage, pulled out a degu, and suddenly put one on my shoulder.

Now, I’ve owned degus before — I adopted a pair of them and had them for 2 years before they succumbed to diabetes after being fed a sugar-inclusive diet of hamster food by their original owners. And they would almost always let me handle them.

But the experience I had in Mark’s pet store was different. He and his staff had handled and socialized this degu so well that not only would it let me hold it, but it climbed across my shoulders, up onto my head, and up and down my back several times, and never tried to get away or jump down to the floor. It was amazing.

And if I didn’t have several other pets at home at the time, I would have bought that degu right there on the spot.

Anyway, my point is that a theft of this magnitude couldn’t have happened to a better person and it just is plain wrong that it did.

If you or someone you know has any information about this crime, please call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS. Let’s hope all those birds don’t die in vain as a result of these robbers’ actions.

A NYC restaurant has unveiled a new pizza that has lobster and caviar toppings and will only run you $1000 a pie:

We’ve been dealing with the pocket-emptying effects of rising gas prices, new electric rates, and an increase in cab fare, but how would you feel about breaking the bank all for…a pizza? Now you can find out thanks to Manhattan restauranteur Nino Selimaj, who has apparently brought from the heavens a real “pie in the sky” with his new $1,000 pizza.

Yep, that’ll be $1,000 please.

The pizza will be added to the menu at “Nino’s Bellisima,” one of Selimaj’s six restaurants in the city. Forget traditional cheese and pizza sauce, the record-priced pie will be topped with creme fraiche, chives, eight ounces of four different kinds of Petrossian caviar, four ounces of thinly sliced Maine lobster tail, salmon roe, and a little bit of spice with wasabi.

Who the heck is going to buy 4 slices of pizza at $250 each?!? A $41 burger is one thing, but come on!

Anyone know if they’ll deliver to Trump Tower or Gracie Mansion?

Major media outlets turned out to cover an NYU College Republicans event called “Find the Illegal Immigrant” and the resulting protesters yesterday:

More than 300 protest flooded Washington Place yesterday to protest an NYU College Republican event in which participants attempted to track down a student posing as an illegal immigrant. The protesters, calling the event racist, shut down the street for three hours.

In the end, only 12 people signed up for the competition to seek out the “illegal immigrant,” identified as such by a name tag, in an attempt to win a gift card. College Republican secretary Cait Kannall posed as the immigrant and was identified just before 2 p.m.

The event quickly drew national media coverage, with CNN, Fox News, Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh reporting on it. MSNBC commentator and “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann named College Republican president Sarah Chambers as Thursday’s “Worst Person in the World” in the show’s regular segment.

This isn’t the first time college Republican groups have pulled such a stunt.

The only difference is that the NYU College Republicans haven’t apologized for holding such an insensitive event, nor even acknowledged that it might have offended some people:

[NYU College Republicans President Sarah] Chambers, however, rejected allegations of racism.

“By calling us racists, the protesters are implying that there is only one race of immigrants,” she said.

Yeah, that’s what they’re doing, Sarah. It couldn’t be that racist actions can affect several racial groups at once, right? Like, say, the several groups that are stereotypically known for illegally immigrating to this country? What a stupid way to defend the event.

When I was attending NYU, the NYU College Democrats got great coverage for organizing speeches by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and David Dinkins, among others. Maybe the College Republicans should look into holding events like that.