Summer 2012 started 7:09 p.m., today, June 20 which should be the time this post appears.
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So sit back, catch some rays, drink some wine — chilled white is good –, and eat some cheese. It’s what being smart is all about. |
Congressman Mark Critz (D) To Skip Party Convention
Mark Critz, who holds Pennsylvania’s 12th District congressional seat once held by John Murtha, is not going to among those cheering Barack Obama’s renomination at the Democratic Party National Convention Sept. 4-6.
He has decided his time would be best campaigning closer to home in the district that stretches from Johnstown to Pittsburgh.
For some reason he doesn’t think a photo-op with the President will help him, it seems.
Joe Barrett, Newsman, Soldier
Joseph Barrett died Sunday, June 17. He was 90. Mr. Barrett was an award winning police reporter for 27 years for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and one of the first reporters hired by the respected weekly County Press.Despite his journalistic achievements which included a Keystone Award from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association in spot news for a report of a Rittenhouse Square bank holdup and a Fraternal Order of Police Award for best police story that concerned the murder of warden Patrick N. Curran and his deputy, Robert F. Fromhold, at Holmesburg Prison in 1973, the subject most dear to his heart was likely his World War II experiences.
He landed on Utah Beach on D-Day as a member of the 474th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion fighting with them through the Battle of the Bulge until the surrender of Germany.
One radio reporter working out of Room 619, City Hall Press Room enjoyed boasting about being the last American to interview Adolph Hitler. Mr. Barrett once quieted him saying “You entered Berlin with a typewriter. I went in with an M1”.
Mr. Barrett liked to tell of an incident that occurred on D-Day when his battalion inadvertently shot down an American P-51 fighter. Barrett said the pilot parachuted to the beach wearing his dress uniform and carrying a bottle of whiskey. He had a date with an English nurse in London that night and was only supposed to make a single pass over the beach and go home.
“He was mad as hell but in our defense we had been told to shoot at anything lower than 1,000 feet”
The story, oft told to his friends, was recorded by historian Stephen E. Ambrose and published in his 1994 book D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of World War II.
Mr. Barrett said the beachmaster did arrange for the pilot to get a ride back to England that day.
“He was lucky,” he said. “If he had landed on Omaha Beach, they would have handed him an M1 and put him in the infantry.”
Mr. Barrett was active in Battle of the Bulge organizations.
Mr. Barrett who grew up in his beloved “Swampoodle” near 22nd and Lehigh and old Shibe Park in North Philadelphia was a long-time resident of Havertown where he attended St. Denis Church. He was a devout Catholic and rarely missed Mass citing the Battle of the Bulge and the Blizzard of 1993 as two occasions on which he remembered doing so.
He was active in Alcoholics Anonymous becoming sober in 1961.
He had a degree in economics from Villanova University.
He was the first police reporter hired when the County Press began in September 1982 nine months after the Bulletin’s closing. He held the post for several years.
He was married to the former Josephine Quinn, an Army nurse with three battle stars from Korea. She died in 2001.
He is survived by sons Joseph P. Jr. and Anthony; a daughter, Jo Ellen Keating and grand children Alysa, Kaitlyn, and Samantha.
Viewings will be 7- 9 p.m. Thursday and 9:30-10:30 a.m., Friday at the The Funeral Home of John Stretch, 236 E. Eagle Road, Havertown, Pa. 19083.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 11 a.m., Friday in St. Denis Church, 2401 St. Denis Lane, Havertown.
Burial will be at St. Denis Cemetery.
Donations in his memory may be made to Southeastern Veterans Center Welfare Fund, c/o Welfare Coordinator 1 Veterans Drive, Spring City, Pa. 19475.
Irresponsibility Illustrated In Pennsylvania
Commonwealth Foundation has provided an excellent illustration regarding the irresponsibility of Pennsylvania’s budget deliberations.
It uses the example of someone $500 in your checking account who expects a $400 raise next month but whose credit card payment increase by $80 next month; health care premium by $840; retirement contribution by $690, and rent by $135.
The Foundation asks whether this person would spend the $500 in the checking account on a shopping spree today and notes that is basically what the state legislature proposes doing in budget talks—only with a “million” to each number.
A Bad Omen For O In Pa.
Political witch doctors use the primary election “undervote” as a means evaluating a candidate’s health. Undervoters are voters who pass over the button for an uncontested person in the party primary.
An undervote of 10 percent means the candidate has a big problem.
Barack Obama was uncontested in Pennsylvania’s Democrat Primary on April 24. His state-wide undervote was 30 percent, according to Mike Flynn from Breitbart.com.
Flynn says he has never known a candidate with an undervote of 30 percent to win a general election.
The bright side is that the undervote for Obama was 0 in Philadelphia and just 6 percent in Delaware County. It was 9 percent in Chester County just under the danger zone. Of course, everywhere else, well, man the lifeboats.
Pennsylvania has not voted for a Republican for president since 1988.
Hat tip TrueBlueLiberty.com
It’s The Dummies Who Think The World Is Warming
If you’re smart you know the world is warming and we must. do. something. about. it. now!
Right?
Wrong. A tax-funded study by the US National Science Foundation has revealed that the more scientific and mathematical knowledge one has the more skeptical one is regarding the dangers of climate change.
Why was it tax funded? The bureaucrats and globalists who have the keys to the treasury and who want to rule us by cooking up chicken-littleish fears to grant them power thought it would demonstrate the opposite.
Well, ho ho ho.
Since they can’t deny the data and can’t accept the possibility that global warming is not a crisis they attribute the results to selfishness and psychological issues on the part of the responders. To wit:
Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.
Hat tips: TrueBlueLiberty.com; The Register; and The Telegraph
Who Is Smarter — Quayle, Dubya, Sarah Or Obama?
Courtesy of Judy McGrane
This really is an interesting short quiz….. Try it…!
Concentrate on each question. Remember Dan Quayle? He was the VP under Mr. GHW Bush. Of course you remember Sarah Palin as a former Governor of Alaska. I am sure you know by now that Barack Obama is our current President. Last but not least is George W. Bush whom you remember as the one that got to take a look at the soul of Russian President Putin.
All have been labeled idiots by one faction or another… at one time or another…
You must take this quiz seriously, it is very enlightening and fun. Listed below are 10 direct quotes. You have to guess which American politician said it.
Your four choices are:
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
Former VP Dan Quayle
President Barack Obama
Former President George W. Bush
Ready? Here we go!
1) “Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
2) “I’ve now been in 57 states I think one left to go.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
3) “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen
heroes, and I see many of them in the audience here today.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
4) “What they’ll say is, ‘Well it costs too much money,’ but you know what?
It would cost, about….
It would cost about the same as what we would spend. Over the course of 10
years it would cost what it would costs us.
(nervous laugh) All right. Okay. We’re going to. It. It would cost us about
the same as it would cost for about… hold on one second.
I can’t hear myself. But I’m glad you’re fired up, though. I’m glad.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
5) “The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings
and inefficiencies to our health care system.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
6) “I bowled a 129. It’s like – it was like the Special Olympics, or
something.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
7) “Of the many responsibilities granted to a president by our
Constitution, few are more serious or more consequential than selecting a Supreme Court
justice. The members of our highest court are granted life tenure, often
serving long after the presidents who appointed them. And they are charged with
the vital task of applying principles put to paper more than 20 centuries
ago to some of the most difficult questions of our time.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
8) “Everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the
emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma.
They end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just
gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment,
and a, a breathalyzer, or inhalator, not a breathalyzer. I haven’t had much
sleep in the last 48 hours.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
9) “It was interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not
that different from the United States Senate.
There’s a lot of …I don’t know what the term is in Austrian…. wheeling and
dealing.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
10) “I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in
the future.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
Sorry. This was a trick quiz. All of the correct answers are the same
person.
Each of these quotes are directly from President Barack Obama.
And now you know why he brings his teleprompter with him everywhere he
goes…even when talking to a 6th grade class.
Philadelphia Music Of The Day — Boyz II Men
The World Has Gotten Safer
One of the few dead tree publications worth reading is Outside magazine, which is sort of like Sports Illustrated for people who think.
The most recent issue featured an interview with Robert Young Pelton who is best known as the author of The World’s Most Dangerous Places, a travel book first published in 1996.
The world is becoming a safer place, he notes.
“The first edition had 26 countries and now I’m going to have a hard time covering 12 in the next edition,” he says.
He notes that Eastern Europe, a lot of Africa and Colombia are no longer eligible.
I think we can safely say that this one is Bush’s fault.
He also said that the kids today are just not that adventurous.
“Millennials would rather buy a new iPhone and try the latest cocktail,” he said. “The most exotic thing they do is change their coffee at Starbucks.”
Good for the Millennials. Maybe the future will be OK.
Honor Flight To Staff Stand At The Linc
Honor Flight Philadelphia, which is the local hub of the national organization that provides free trips for veterans to Washington D.C. to honor their service, will be running concession stand 110 at Lincoln Financial Field for tomorrow’s Kenny Chesney concert.
The group gets 9 percent of the proceeds. Stop by and help them out if you attend.