I left a gathering of friends tonight on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and headed for my car which was parked in the garage underneath.  When I pulled out onto the street there must have been a hundred people buzzing around with cell phone cameras blocking my exit from the garage.  As I got closer they moved aside and let me through.  It was then that I saw they were watching a movie scene being filmed across the street. 

I called a friend who loves movies thinking she would enjoy seeing this.  She said she would so I headed down to pick her up.  We got back about 15 minutes later only to find the scene had already been shot and the fawning crowds had dispersed.  No problem... it was still fun to watch the crew tearing everything down that made up the scene that took less than 15 minutes to shoot.  (Yes, this all has a political point).  

Katie Clark drives 100 miles a day to care for Evelyn and Bill Harman in Union, Mich.

Democrats have told us in recent years that no party has a monopoly on religion - and they prove it by showing that they support government programs that give money to the poor.  They claim Republicans' religious inclinations are misplaced with their emphasis on moral concerns like same-sex marriage and abortion. They say that their support for these government programs proves that they are more concerned for the poor and therefore at least as religious as Republicans. 

Well, apparently their policies are hurting the poor more than helping.  A New York Times article published today, reveals how the Democratic prohibition against domestic oil drilling is hurting the poor and elderly the most. 

SOUTH HAVEN, Mich. — Early last month, Jeanne Fair, 62, got her first hot meals delivered to her home in this lake town in the sparsely populated southwestern part of the state. Then after two deliveries the meals stopped because gas prices had made the delivery too expensive.

“They called and said I was outside of the delivery area,” said Mrs. Fair, who is home bound and has not been able to use her left arm since a stroke in 1997.

Faced with soaring gasoline prices, agencies around the country that provide services to the elderly say they are having to cut back on programs like Meals on Wheels, transportation assistance and home care, especially in rural areas that depend on volunteers who provide their own gas. In a recent survey by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, more than half said they had already cut back on programs because of gas costs, and 90 percent said they expected to make cuts in the 2009 fiscal year.