Springfield Giant Opens

The Giant Supermarket had its grand opening today in the Springfield Shopping Center in Springfield, Pa. There were lots of samples and friendly staff and some nice deals.

The store is at the site of what once was E. J. Korvette with its legendary record department which closed circa 1978 and whose building was then used by a series of hard-to-remember discount stores. The building was demolished to make way for the much larger Giant and since non-union labor was used in construction, pickets often with a large inflatable rat and always overseen by county deputy sheriffs, graced the Woodland Avenue construction entrance for the last year or so.

Anyway, the store opened and I applied for a courtesy card and they simply scanned in the code from the back of my drivers license without me having to fill out any forms.

It was neat and rather amazing but I suspect it would be unconstitutional in Arizona.

Philly Volunteer Fire Companies, Where Are They?

Philly Volunteer Fire Companies, Where Are They? — Philadelphia, Monday, began closing fire companies to save money.  The closings are daily, temporary and done in a rotation. They stem from the $47 million in spending cuts Mayor Nutter demanded last month to balance the city’s budget.

Local 22 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, which represents Philadelphia’s fire fighters, is upset as are residents faced with the obvious loss of an accustomed service.

But stones don’t have blood so new taxes weren’t an option and so there they are.

Which leads to the question, why doesn’t Philadelphia have any volunteer fire companies? Neighboring Delaware County, for instance, has 81 public-service fire companies of which 77 are primarily volunteer with the Chester City companies being the only ones that use mostly personnel paid via taxes.

Philadelphia, which has three times the populations, has just 56 fire companies which, btw, is seven less than two years ago. It should be noted that Delaware County has its share of tank farms, probably a larger industrial base and plenty of narrow streets with row homes.

So why doesn’t Philly have any volunteer fire companies? It’s because Local 22 would be joined by its fellow politically connected unions in going gonzo if the topic should be broached as even a joke.

This is a shame because the benefits would be far more than saving the large amount of money that would result. The suburban volunteer fire companies are breeding ground for community leaders who are quite often independent of the party machines. Further, they give young men a chance to channel their natural aggression into something rather constructive.

But don’t expect the subject to be broached in Philly.

Even as a joke.

 

Philly Volunteer Fire Companies, Where Are They?

What Made The Obama DoJ Jump

Universities including Princeton, Arizona State and Case Western Reserve experimented last year with allowing students to use Amazon’s Kindle for textbooks. It was just a pilot program but if it managed to fly just about everybody would have saved money, time and aggravation, and of course many fewer trees would have been destroyed.

Well one of the many groups in this country dedicated to scratching the scabs off of grievances filed a complaint with the Justice Department  citing the American with Disabilities Act and claimed the policy violated the civil rights of the blind.

The DoJ is now run by Barack Obama and Eric Holder. So, did it direct the universities make certain that the textbooks be also available in Braille or audiotape? Did it postpone action in lieu of Amazon’s promises to make the Kindle more accessible to the blind?

Of course not. It squashed it,  as they might say, como una cucaracha.

If only Amazon had been smart enough to  grab a nightstick, put on a beret and make racially disparaging remarks outside a Philadelphia polling place.

3rd-Party Candidates In Pa. Races

Pennsylvania’s filing deadline for minor and independent candidates for state-wide races was yesterday.

Among those who appear to have acquired the needed number of signatures are John Krupa, who is running for governor under the “Tea Party” banner; engineer Douglas Jaimson who is running for U.S. Senate as a Libertarian; and York County homosexual activist Marakay Rogers who will be the Libertarian candidate for governor. Ms. Rogers running mate will be Kat Valleley.

Ms. Rogers ran unsuccessfully for Superior Court last year.

It also appears that the Green Party will have a candidate in the staunchly Democrat 14th Congressional District race in Ed Bortz. The district  includes Pittsburgh and is represented by  Mike Doyle. Bortz’s concerns include the development of Marcellus Shale.

Also, in the governor’s race write-in campaigns for governor are being organized for Sam Rohrer, the state rep from the 128th District who was defeated by Tom Corbett for Republican Party nomination for the post.

Rohrer has not endorsed the campaigns, but he has not dis-endorsed them either.

Hat tip to GrassrootsPa.com

To The Pennsylvanians

The great English poet William Wordsworth in response to a certain U.S. commonwealth shamelessly defaulting on its debt in 1837 wrote this:

To The Pennsylvanians

Days undefiled by luxury or sloth,
Firm self-denial, manners grave and staid,
Rights equal, laws with cheerfulness obeyed,
Words that require no sanction from an oath,
And simple honesty a common growth–
This high repute, with bounteous Nature’s
aid,
Won confidence, now ruthlessly betrayed
At will, your power the measure of your
troth!–
All who revere the memory of Penn
Grieve for the land on whose wild woods his
name
Was fondly grafted with a virtuous aim,
Renounced, abandoned by degenerate Men
For state-dishonour black as ever came
To upper air from Mammon’s loathsome den.

Does Pennsylvania need another Wordsworth today? Why? The words from 1837 don’t need any changing.

JournoList Scandal Has Columnist’s Panties Bunched

JournoList Scandal Has Columnist’s Panties Bunched — Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will “He-ever-get-his-panties-out-of-a” Bunch threw a hissy fit a few days ago about being included on a list of propagandists pretending to be journalist that sought, with success, to influence the 2008 presidential election in the Democrat Party’s favor.

” . . .based on the increasingly unhinged comments I’ve been getting on the JournoList lately — thought I should check to see if I had been erroneously placed there as well. Of course, I was. It’s 100 percent wrong. I was never on the now-defunct JournoList at any time during its history, nor was I ever asked to be on it, ” he wrote.

Bunch speculates he is being tied to the scandal because he allowed his name to be attached to an open letter objecting to the questions posed by moderators George Stephanapoulos and Charlie Gibson to Barack Obama during an April primary debate with Hillary Clinton.

He says his objections were only driven by concerns of journalistic integrity. Why would Stephanapoulos — that communications director for the, apparently in Bunch’s view, right-wing Clinton administration — think it of relevance to ask about a possible president’s connections to bigots like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and radicals like Bill Ayers?

Bunch downplays that how to keep Wright and Ayers from being a topic of the election was a major discussion on the list, and apparently feels it isn’t strange that these connections never were discussed much by the old media despite its willingness to report Sarah Palin’s religious views and such things as claims that she sought a library book ban, despite the claims being political and overblown .

Bunch feels it important to note that working journalists did not make up most of the 400 or so posters who he describes “as working for publications like the Nation with an openly liberalorientation, as well as academics and a few advocates.” He did not feel obliged, however, to point out that the list was founded by Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein and that some of those working journalists included Ryan Donmoyer who was covering the campaign for Bloomberg News and Ben Adler who was then writing for Politico and is now an editor at Newsweek.

Here is a link to the list about which Bunch is objecting.

Bunch, btw, is someone who hides his bias in plain sight.

And Will, unless you think that blacks are somehow inherently different than whites — a distinct possibility since you are a leftist — the handling of the voter intimidation incident by New Black Panther Party thugs   is a serious scandal.

JournoList Scandal Has Columnist’s Panties Bunched

JournoList Scandal Has Columnist's Panties Bunched

Senator Williams School Choice Bill

Senator Williams School Choice Bill — Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams , the Democrat whose 8th District includes a large swath of southeastern Delaware County, introduced to little fanfare last month a bill in Harrisburg that would pay the private school tuition of poor kids in crappy school districts.

SB 1405 — cosponsored by Republicans Stewart Greenleaf (12 ), Donald White (41) and Mike Folmer (48) — would provide children living in a district with at least one “chronically failing school” scholarships if their families have a low enough income. The value of the scholarships would be the state per-pupil  aid plus half of the district per-pupil aid times the household income ratio which would be between 1 and .5.

“Chronically failing school” is specified in the bill as is the family income level. Two districts to which this would obviously apply are Philadelphia and Chester.

So kudos to Sen. Williams for taking on some of the evil that so horribly corrupts his party. For the Democrats to once again be respectable, the party is going to have to condemn and disassociate themselves from the vile groups that have so much sway over their agenda — and the anti-choice, anti-child National Education Association is among them — just as they once had to disassociate themselves from the Ku Klux Klan.

Hat tip to GrassrootsPa.com and Pennsylvania Independent .

 

Senator Williams School Choice Bill
Senator Williams School Choice Bill

Brit Recorded Death Via Phone Pixs, State-Paid Docs Ignored Her

Brit Recorded Death Via Phone Pixs As State-Paid Docs Ignored Her — A terrified 25-year-old woman in a British hospital recorded the spreading rash using her cellphone camera nearly up to the time the disease of which it was a symptom took her life 14hours after she was admitted, it was revealed at two-day coroner’s inquest that began Wednesday.

Joanne Dowling was admitted 3:25 p.m., Nov. 23   to Milton Keynes Hospital, which is in the town of Milton Keynes 45 miles northwest of London. Her family doctor, Nessan Carson, diagnosed the  purple mark as a  symptom of meningococcal septicaemia and so informed hospital authorities.

The rash, however, began spreading after the state-paid National Health Service doctor Chris Akubuine ignored that diagnosis, removed her from antibiotics and put her on pain relievers in an observation ward at which the staff was not very observant.

Vivake Roddah, a doctor in training, failed to keep a written observation record but told theinquest he had not seen any purple rash. Five nurses also testified they had not seen any rash.

Meanwhile, Miss Dowling was emailing photos — more than 40 — of the spreading rash that she had taken with her cellphone camera. The last message was sent about four hours before her death which came at 5:20 a.m., Nov. 24. The last time someone at checked in on her was about three hours before her death from septic shock and fluid-filled lungs.

This is America’s future under ObamaCare. If you don’t believe it work it out for yourselves fewer doctors + fewer nurses +less motivation + more patients =

Hat tip to FreeRepublic.Com

 

Brit Recorded Death Via Phone Pixs As State-Paid Docs Ignored Her

Brit Recorded Death Via Phone Pixs As State-Paid Docs Ignored Her -- A terrified 25-year-old woman in a British hospital recorded the

 

Ras Still Has Toomey 6 Points Ahead Of Admiral Joe

The latest Rasmussen poll still shows Republican Pat Toomey ahead of Democrat Congressman Joe Sestak in the race to replace Snarlin’ Arlen Specter as senator from Pennsylvania.

The 45-39 percent breakdown is unchanged from two weeks ago. Ten percent are undecided and 6 percent prefer someone else.

This has not been a very good month for Sestak who says he loves Jews because he served in the U.S. Navy. TV stations ultimately ignored his demands to remove opposition political advertising; he was caught in shameless hypocrisy when he was found accepting campaign dough from those for whom he did favors despite a pointed promise that he would not do such things; and the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a guest piece defending his cozy ties to the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) written by the executive director of CAIR’s Philadelphia office side-by-side with an article pointing out CAIR’s numerous terrorist connections written by Benyamin Korn who is director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin and former editor of the Jewish Exponent, an influential Philadelphia-area weekly.

Admiral Joe started this race leading the mild-mannered  Toomey in the polls.

Comcast Cuts Customer Service Costs; Subscribers Drop

Munāphē mēṁ vr̥d’dhi which is how to say “we are in the money” in Hindi, at least according to Google’s translation service.

Philadelphia communications giant Comcast Corp. announced yesterday that profits rose 6 percent to $9.5 billion clearly helped by a  2.4 percent cut in customer service expenses and a 7 percent cut in technical labor.

In a certainly unrelated matter subscribers fell by 265,000.

This particular news site was one of them switching to Verizon. While there have been some glitches, Verizon customer service has been Americanly superb and there is no looking back.

 

Comcast Building Lobby Comcast Cuts Customer Service Costs; Subscribers Drop

Comcast Cuts Customer Service Costs; Subscribers Drop