USPS Has Removed Listing For Springfield’s Brookside Site

The Lyndon LaRouche supporter who set his table outside the Springfield Post Office chose a day in which the mercury is expected to reach triple figures to tell the Saturday morning (July 23) masses who use the facility  to Save NASA, Impeach Obama, and to restore the Glass-Steagall Act.

For the curious the Glass-Steagall Act was a law passed in 1933 that divided banks into commercial and investment institutions and prohibited their mixing. It was repealed in 1999.

In an unrelated note, the United States Postal Service has removed the eventually-to-close Brookside building from its official listings.

End Of Space Shuttle

End Of Space Shuttle — Chris Freind has an interesting but sad column on the demise of our space program under President Obama.

He notes that  we are in “the peculiar situation of having to rely on the very same folks who less than two decades ago were our archenemy — the Russians.”

He wonders how a parent could explain such a thing to his child.

“Dad, how do we get astronauts to the space station?”

“Well, uhhh… since we put all of our space ships into museums and don’t have any new ones, we now have to hitch a ride with the Russians.  But there’s good news.  They used to be our enemy, but now they’re run by the Mob.”

Check out his column here.

 

End Of The Shuttle

Did You Hear About The Big Chinese Oil Spill?

Two wells sprang leaks, June 4,  in the Penglai 19-3 oil field in China’s Bohai Bay which is off the Yellow Sea on that nation’s northeast coast polluting 1,650 square miles of sea.

Yes, there were lots of dead fish.

So did you hear about it?

Of course not. It’s a Zen thing. If a fish dies in China and Casey Anthony is on trial does it make a sound?

The field is 51 percent owned by China National Offshore Oil Corp. and 49 percent owned by ConocoPhillips of Texas.

The  Chinese government blamed ConocoPhillips for the disaster and fined it 200,000 yuan which equals $31,000.

This has upset many Chinese who have learned about the incident via Sina Weibo which is a Twitter-type service. They are pointing to the $4.7 billion coughed by BP for Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and want a similar smack given to ConocoPhillips.

One sympathizes until one remembers that, unlike in China, the government was not the majority owner of the operation in the Gulf.

Still, if ConocoPhillips finds itself on the hook one supposes they can ask the Obama Administration for a bail out. Obama gave the OK to a $2 billion loan to the Brazilian oil company Petrobras allowing them to make a $10 billion deal with the Chinese for drilling off the coast of Brazil.

Remember hearing about that one?

Of course not. It’s a Zen thing. If a foreign oil company gets a $2 billion U.S. government loan and a Democrat is president does it make a sound?

Pat Meehan’s Constituent Conference Call

Kudos to Congressman Pat Meehan for the innovated conference call he just completed (noon, July 20) with residents of his PA7 district wisely avoiding gatekeepers with a well-deserved reputation for hostility to conservatives.

Among the many issues Meehan touched upon was the way unnecessary and counter-productive over-regulation from Washington is destroying Delaware County refineries and Chester County pharmaceutical firms.

It doesn’t help Mother Earth any for our oil to be refined in Nigeria rather than Marcus Hook.

Farewell, Borders

Farewell, Borders — Borders Group Inc., which is the nation’s second largest bookstore chain, cannot not find a buyer and is going to liquidate.

It’s a shame as it has dramatically improved over the last year but creative destruction happens.

Not that that’s going to make any better the feelings of the chain’s 10,700 workers who will be added to the rolls of the unemployed in these Obama years.

 

Farewell, Borders

Pa. Wind Turbines Destroying Environment

Bats, as scary as they are to some, are one of the more useful mammals in creation. The diets of those species common in Pennsylvania consist of mosquitoes and other insect pests including the ones that damage crops.

A colony of 100 brown bats can consume of a quarter-million insects in a single night. Science magazine has estimated the pest control service provided by bats can save farmers about $74 per acre.

Well, the unattractive wind turbines built at the hectoring of  the nature worshipers who’ve managed to convince most that they are the arbiters of all dogma scientific are turning out to be a bit of an environmental disaster.

The 420 wind turbines in use in Pennsylvania  killed 10,000 bats last year.

The plans call for 2,900 turbines to be placed in the state by 2030 so figure on 72,000 less bats per year by then and 180 million more bugs.

And a lot more expensive tomatoes.

Meanwhile, nuclear power, which is probably the most environmentally friendly energy source, is constantly vilified by the nature worshiping pseudo-scientists and fear mongers with the talent to make you forget about a 9 magnitude earthquake and a 30-foot tsunami if a nuclear power plant can be blamed for something.

If the citizens of this nation don’t learn to turn a deaf ear to them we are going to find ourselves walking five-miles to work as their gardeners and bean pickers while living in thatched roofed huts.

Penn State Tuition Hike Lowest In Decade

Those evil Republicans running Harrisburg cut funding for the wealthy state-affiliated colleges and, lo and behold, Penn State just announced an in-state tuition hike of 4.9 percent.

Just proves how much Republicans hate education, right?

Not right.

Charles Mitchell of Commonwealth Foundation points out that this year’s increase is the smallest — by far — in a decade being just a tad over half of the school’s average 8.4 percent annual gouge of young persons and their families since 2001.

Penn State Tuition Hike Lowest In Decade

Toomey Explains Why We Won’t Default

Six days ago, July 13, Pennsylvania’s competent senator, Pat Toomey, explained the debt ceiling debate to Neil Cavuto of FoxNews.

“If we get to August 2 without having raised debt ceiling that will be disruptive,” he said. “That will be a partial government shutdown.  But we will not default on our debt. There is enough ongoing revenue in
the form of tax revenue to prevent that. And, frankly, if we just raised
the debt limit without the structural reform, without the real spending
cuts we need, then we’re inviting a catastrophe down the road.”

He also said the Republican are more than willing to raise the debt ceiling if the President offers a path to a balanced budget, which he has been strangely and extraordinarily adverse to doing.

“I think there is overwhelming, if not unanimous, support among Republicans
to raise the debt ceiling, which is what the president has insisted he
vitally needs,” Toomey said. “So, we’d be willing to do that. I won’t speak for all of my colleague,
but I think a big majority would be willing to raise the debt limit if
we were on a path to a sustainable balanced budget. I don’t see why the
president can’t accept that.”

Hat tip to Bob Guzzardi

Cleared Christine Fires Back; Moody’s And Ponzi Schemes

The woman who was the subject of unending abuse during her run to represent Delaware in the U.S. Senate has been cleared by federal investigations of the charges made against her by the cynics willing to do what it takes to grab power.

And now she’s fighting back.

U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly III in a letter sent Friday to  Christine O’Donnell’s campaign
lawyer said that prosecutors had finished a probe
of allegations that Ms. O’Donnell used campaign funds for personal
use, including rent, and had made false statements in Federal Election
Commission filings.

“I write to inform you that this office has closed its review and does not intend to pursue criminal charges at this time,” Oberly said in the letter to Cleta Mitchell.

Meanwhile, the Federal Election Commission has voted to end an investigation as to whether Ms. O’Donnell’s campaign and the California-based Tea Party Express illegally coordinated campaign spending.

With  exoneration, Ms. O’Donnell now gets her turn at bat and she has filed a complaint with the FEC asking it to investigate Melanie Sloan who is executive director of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) which filed the claim of wrongdoing by the O’Donnell Campaign.

Ms. O’Donnell complaint alleges that  CREW based its claim on an affidavit that it failed to vet  former O’Donnell campaign worker David Keegan, Jr. 

The affidavit, according to Ms. O’Donnell, contained false information.

“Although the purely political
motives behind the submission to your office are not illegal, making
false statements to the United States Attorneys’ office and/or FEC would
violate federal law,” said Ms. O’Donnell’s lawyer, Richard Abbott.

In other behind the headline news, Reuters is reporting that Moody’s ratings agency wants the U.S. to end the statutory limit on debt so bondholders won’t be subject to “periodic uncertainty”.

So holders of existing debt are somehow endangered when an institution declines to keep borrowing? Only in a Ponzi scheme. Has Bernie Madoff gotten a prison job managing Moody’s?

In a certainly unrelated matter, the Obama Administration is reported to be considering civil fraud charges against Moody’s and fellow respected ratings agency Standard and Poor’s regarding their actions relating to mortgage debt and the collapse of the housing market.

Expect to see the investigation dropped.

Against Moody’s anyway.

How deep does the corruption in our government go?

Sharpshooter

The finest shot on the planet at a time when marksmanship was prized as an international sport (second half of 19th century) was one William Frank “Doc” Carver, friend of Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody — so say both the dime novels and authentic newspaper documentation. After establishing his dominance, Carver teamed with Cody to form the first large-scale Wild West show. But as an entrepreneur and personality, Cody was superior. He became the icon, Carver a footnote.

But Doc Carver created an enduring show biz act after splitting from Buffalo Bill: the Diving Horses, that quirky yet dramatic splashdown that became the calling card of the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. I’m researching Carver’s life for a new book. Interesting character. — Jim Waltzer

Jim Waltzer’s novel “Brother’s Keeper,” set in 1920s Atlantic City, has just been published.