Happy Birthday, Bob!

Bob Dylan is 72 years old today.

In his honor, let's listen:


And:


And:


And then finally:


Considering the election of this week, that last one may or may not be poignant.

Elections Have Consequences

Sometimes good ones.

The Ellwood City Ledger's Eric Poole describes what's going on in Ellwood City regarding that Nativity Scene that keeps popping up (Note: there's lotsa names floating in Poole's paragraphs so I've bolded them all for clarity):

During a forum last month for Ellwood City Council candidates, David DeCaria appeared – at least in my estimation – to have talked himself out of a job.

In response to what might have been the biggest controversy of 2012, DeCaria said the borough was right to move the borough’s Nativity scene off the municipal building’s front lawn.

And let’s be clear about it, he didn’t dance around the matter the way council members Anthony “Lefty” DeCarbo and Judith Dici did by saying they would have liked to keep the display where it was, but a threatened lawsuit by the Madison, Wisc.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation forced the move.

DeCaria said the Nativity shouldn’t have been on public property in the first place because it violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause. He’s right about that, by the way. But saying it seemed like a sure way to lose a Republican primary in Ellwood City, not that he cared.

And:

Conversely, had I been publicly handicapping Tuesday’s borough council primary vote, I would have thought Michael “Mundo” Parisi, probably the town’s loudest proponent for returning the Nativity to borough property, would have benefited from a stand that seemed wildly popular.

The night before Tuesday’s election, I told Jim Arkett, who advocated fighting those meddling atheists from Wisconsin, that I thought his support for the tradition would help him win a Democratic nomination.

And finally:

Arkett finished outside the crucial top four Tuesday and failed to get a Democratic nomination. Rocco “Rocky” Ierino, who lent his support for keeping the Nativity display on borough property, finished flat last among the Democratic candidates.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Parisi finished in next-to-last place, well behind DeCaria, who earned one of the four GOP nominations. DeCarbo and Dici won Democratic nominations.

Basically, lotsa folks who in one way or another want the unconstitutional nativity display on public grounds won't be on the ballot in the fall.  As Poole concludes:

Regardless of what happens in November, it’s a virtual certainty that the issue won’t be revisited next year when a new council takes office. And that new council might not be all that new. All four incumbents won nominations Tuesday.

Let's hear it for the Constitution and the Separation of Church and State in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania!

Well This Is Embarrassing...

Hey anyone remember when the Tribune-Review was using Alex Jones' Infowars as a credible information source?

Then, the braintrust published a bit o' paranoia about how the guv'ment is buying up all the ammo.

Now Alex Jones is exposing the guv'ment's secret weather controlling technology:



From Mediamatters:

On the May 21 edition of The Alex Jones Show, a caller asked Jones whether he was planning to cover how government technology may be behind a recent spate of sinkholes. After laying out how insurance companies use weather modification to avoid having to pay ski resorts for lack of snow, Jones said that "of course there's weather weapon stuff going on -- we had floods in Texas like fifteen years ago, killed thirty-something people in one night. Turned out it was the Air Force."

Following a long tangent, Jones returned to the caller's subject. While he explained that "natural tornadoes" do exist and that he's not sure if a government "weather weapon" was involved in the Oklahoma disaster, Jones warned nonetheless that the government "can create and steer groups of tornadoes."

Yea, the braintrust knows where to get the good info - Alex Jones' Infowars!

To show you how good Alex is at digging through the guv'ment code, he mentions how in "Title 50 Chapter 32 Subsection 1528 Paragraph b":

...allows chemical biological radiological or any other testing, even lethal on citizens unsuspecting. The government claims it's allowed to kill us.  In the main title it says it's illegal but in the subtitle it says unless for law enforcement or research purposes.

The thing is...(and you know where this is going, right?) there is no subsection 1528 of Title 50 Chapter 32.

Either Jones misquoted some other place in the code or he's making it up.

Yea, the braintrust really knows where to get the good info - Alex Jones' Infowars!

Peduto Wins.

From KDKA:

Longtime City Councilman Bill Peduto has won the Democratic nomination for mayor, defeating former state auditor general Jack Wagner and state Rep. Jake Wheatley.

A repost:

You still have an hour...

VOTE!

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

It's important.

More Credibility Problems For Stephen Hayes

And, of course, his friends on the Tribune-Review Editorial Board.

Remember this?  It's my blogpost deconstructing this Trib editorial where the braintrust presents us with this:

The Weekly Standard's Stephen F. Hayes writes that emails sent during that process make it “clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public.”

The world has since learned (with the White House release of the entire email chain) that Hayes got it wrong.

Wrong.  Stephen Hayes was wrong on Benghazi.

From Mediamatters:

The idea that [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland's overriding concern was political -- and that her concern was shared by the White House -- is key to the notion of a "cover-up" by the administration. Hayes' articles came to that assumption based on incomplete information and misrepresentation of emails between agencies.

But, just saying it isn't nearly enough - how do they support their assertion?  This is how:

In a follow-up article for the May 20 edition of The Weekly Standard, Hayes kept pushing the idea that Nuland's concern was solely political, and misrepresented an email to UN ambassador Susan Rice to make the argument that the talking points were edited to reflect that concern. The National Security Council Deputies Committee met on September 15 to work out the various agencies' issues with the Benghazi talking points, and a summary of that meeting was emailed to Rice.

And then MediaMatters show its work.  They start with how Hayes described that email:

The proceedings were summarized in an email to U.N. ambassador Rice shortly after the meeting ended. The subject line read: "SVTS on Movie/Protests/violence." The name of the sender is redacted, but whoever it was had an email address suggesting a job working for the United States at the United Nations.

According to the email, several officials in the meeting shared the concern of Nuland, who was not part of the deliberations, that the CIA's talking points might lead to criticism that the State Department had ignored the CIA's warning about an attack. Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA, agreed to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to edit the talking points. At the time, Sullivan was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department's director of policy planning; he is now the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Denis McDonough, then a top national security adviser to Obama and now his chief of staff, deferred on Rhodes's behalf to Sullivan. [Bolding in Mediamatters original]

And then they show what the email actually said:

HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] request: Late this week, CIA Director Petraeus gave the HPSCI a "hots [sic] spots" briefing and was asked for unclassified talking points that its members could use about the incident in Benghazi. (Apparently NCTC Director Matt Olson received a similar committee [sic] from a congressional committee.) The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable (based on conversations on the SVTS and afterwards) because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy. On SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy editing hand to them. He noted that he would be happy to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points. McDonough, on Rhodes's behalf, deferred to Sullivan. It was agreed that Jake would work closely with the intelligence community (within a small group) to finalize points on Saturday that could be shared with HPSCI. I spoke to Jake immediately after the SVTS and noted that you were doing the Sunday morning shows and would need to be aware of the final posture that these points took. He committed to ensure that we were updated in advance of the Sunday shows. I specifically mentioned [REDACTED] as the one coordinating your preparations for the shows and also strongly encouraged him to loop in [REDACTED] during the process. [Bolding in Mediamatters original]

And they point out what should be obvious:

It makes no mention of perceived criticism of the State Department.

And thus, Hayes got it wrong.  The "defend Clinton's State Department" part of Hayes' (and the rest of the right wing media's) "cover-up" argument dissolves completely.

And if Hayes got it wrong, then the braintrust got it wrong.

Will we be seeing a correction/clarification any time soon?

Some Follow-Up On Those Susquehanna Poll Numbers

There's a little more to say about the Susquehanna poll out a few days ago.  Mostly about the remaining undecideds.  From Keystone Politics:

The final poll of the Pittsburgh Mayor race, from Susquehanna, shows Bill Peduto leading Jack Wagner by 9 points, 42-33.

But wait aren’t there a lot of undecided voters? Sure, there still are about 16% undecided, but when the pollsters pushed them to say which way they’re leaning, Wagner only gets 20% of them. With the soft supporters included, Peduto still has a 7-point lead – safely above the poll’s +/-4.88% margin of error.

I have to add a slight "Yes, but..." here.  In an election of this size (a municipal election where the margin of victory might be a few thousand if not a few hundred votes) nothing is "safely above" or assured.  The worst thing would be for a voter to assume that because these numbers point in one direction that his or her the race is over.  (And this is true for either camp, Wagner or Peduto.)

Moving on:

Wagner would need to win 80% of the undecided voters to overtake Peduto’s lead. Could that happen? It’s unlikely in the extreme.

But it's still possible.  There's only one solution for this situation:  VOTE!

At this point it's all about GOTV - the candidate with the better Get Out The Vote organization will probably win.

It's really very simple.

Let's Redd Up City Hall: Vote for Bill Peduto Tomorrow!

Help Bill make a clean sweep!

In less then 24 hours, you can change Pittsburgh. You can make this the city we know it can be!

The Peduto Phenomenon

I have no idea who these people are but since they're in tune when they break into harmony, I will assume one or more of them have some musical training.


I am also assuming they're proscuito, voluto, menudo, potato Peduto supporters.

I haven't been able to find any similarly kewl Wagner videos.

Not So Fast, My Friends

It should not be surprising to readers of this blog that the editorial board of the Tribune-Review routinely misleads its audience by only presenting part of the story when it tries to make some point.

What's only surprising about this example is how much they mislead over such a short amount of text:

Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, forced to resign in the conservative-targeting scandal, was set to leave that post anyway, as early as June. Ooooh, talk about “forceful” action, eh? [Bolding in original.}

Let's take a trip to an actual news source to see how much they left out.  While still spinning the "ain't so much 'fired' meme" ABC does fill out some telling details:

It appeared that President Obama had taken decisive action late Wednesday when he announced that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had demanded the resignation of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller amid the growing scandal over targeting conservative groups. But it turns out that Miller was subject to a term limit that would have forced him out of the job in three weeks.

Miller, a 25-year career IRS employee, was appointed acting commissioner on November 9, 2012. According to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, his 210-day term would have set his last day in that post as June 8.

This does not mean that Miller is not paying a price. His intention had been to go back to his job as Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement, a position that put him in charge of the tax exempt unit at the center of a scandal over targeting conservative groups.

This statute makes it clear Miller could not remain acting IRS commissioner unless he was proactively reappointed as acting commissioner for another 210 days, or Obama nominated a permanent commissioner allowing Miller to remain in the job until that person was confirmed.

So Obama could have tried to appoint him to another 210 days (and let's be honest, that would have been a foolish thing to do considering) or Miller could have remained acting commissioner while his replacement was confirmed.  In any event he planned on remaining in the IRS to a position that would have overseen the unit at the center of the scandal.

Instead, he resigned completely from the agency (and let's be honest, that was the right thing to do considering).

Now go back to read what the braintrust presented to you.  They left out the part about how Miller was planning on staying with the IRS after his 210 days was up, didn't they?

How much does that change the meaning of their all too short blurb?

Alot, doesn't it?

Hardly surprising, coming from Scaife's braintrust.

More Momentum For Peduto

From the Tribune-Review:

City Councilman Bill Peduto grabbed the front-runner status he once claimed to have in the Pittsburgh mayoral race, seizing on growing disapproval of chief opponent Jack Wagner in the campaign's bitter, final weeks, a Tribune-Review poll shows.

Peduto surged ahead of Wagner to stake a 42 percent to 33 percent lead among 400 likely voters a week before the decisive Democratic primary on Tuesday, according to the poll by Susquehanna Polling and Research. The poll shows a 9-point gain for Peduto, 48, of Point Breeze and a 7-point drop for Wagner, 65, of Beechview since an April 1-2 survey by the Harrisburg firm.

The Trib even has some art work to illustrate the swing if you wanna go see it.

The context of the earlier poll is important.  If we sort by the change in percentage points between the two polls, we might be able to see where support was lost and where it was gained.

• Peduto - 9 point gain (up to 42 from 33 percent)
• Wheatley - 2 point gain (up to 6 from 4 percent)
• Undecided - 4 point loss (down to 16 from 20 percent)
• Wagner - 7 point loss (down to 33 from 40 percent)
• Richardson - No change
• Other - No change

The big looser, then, according to this poll has to be Jack Wagner.  Of the overall shift of 11 points (what Peduto and Wheatley "gained" and what Wagner and the Undecideds "lost") more than half came from Wagner.

The Trib presents a few ideas why:

“It looks to me like whatever the Wagner folks have done might have backfired,” said Jim Lee, president of Susquehanna Polling and Research. “All the movement has clearly gone to Peduto.”

And:

Mudslinging that punctuated advertising during the past three weeks, including an anti-Peduto ad from a Republican consultant hired by a Ravenstahl political committee, impacted Wagner's popularity.

“The credibility of the mayor at this point is rapidly decreasing, and that has hurt Jack Wagner,” said Gerald Shuster, a political analyst with the University of Pittsburgh. He said Wagner has not distanced himself from Ravenstahl as a federal investigation of city spending moves closer to the mayor's office.

The Trib quoted a Wagner spokesman saying that they'd "disavowed" the Ravenstahl ads.  You remember, those, right? The swiftboat ads?  It looks like Luke's swiftboat ads damaged Wagner's credibility.

Another really smart move from the soon-to-be former boy-mayor.

But of course, none of this means anything if Pittsburgh's Democrats don't vote.  So:

Both campaigns said they would focus on Sunday and Monday on “get out the vote” efforts, noting that voter turnout could make the difference. Peduto will “be out on the street,” Toler said, and Wagner scheduled 20 events between Friday and Tuesday to allow him and about 400 volunteers to meet people, Abbott said.

GO VOTE ON TUESDAY!

Hey Pittsburgh! Do you believe?

  "Be the change that you wish to see in the world."

RIP Michael Lupinacci. You will be missed by so many...

My brother Michael passed away last night after a year and a half battle with cancer. You often hear people say after a person dies that they have touched many lives. That could not be more true for my brother. He served the public for nearly his entire life. Volunteer rescue. Volunteer firefighter. Assistant Communications Manager for Allegheny County's emergency operations center. Police Officer. And, for the last two years, Police Chief of Lincoln Borough.

He often saw society at its worst, but also at its most vulnerable. And, he'd run into that burning building, or be the first to come to your aid in a dire medical emergency, or go out on a call for help not knowing if he'd make it back...

He even played a long-distance part in the rescue of two fellow officers that became the subject of the movie "World Trade Center" which I wrote about here seven years ago.

And of course, his family and friends could rely on him for anything.

Last December over 500 of them and his fellow first responders came out to an event to help raise money so he could go to Sloan-Kettering. Thank you for that!

Now upon hearing of his passing, so many are remembering all that he did. But they also are recounting his wicked and mischievous sense of humor and how he loved to laugh at the absurdities of life.

He's survived by his wife Carolyn, his son Michael and his daughter Melissa (who by the way, also runs into burning buildings) and his five siblings.

We love you Michael and we miss you already.

You were one of the good ones.

 

UPDATE: News story in the Trib today on my baby bro.

You want real response? Call P-E-D-U-T-O!

The Braintrust's Getting Desparate

Over this news:

For the first time in human history, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million (ppm). The arrival at this threshold represents a powerful symbol of the growing human influence on the Earth’s climate.

Manmade emissions of carbon dioxide have increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from around 270 to 280 ppm in the late 1700s to today’s record high level – a 43 percent increase. Measurements of CO2 trapped in air bubbles from ice cores in Antarctica indicate today’s levels are unsurpassed in at least 800,000 years.

Keep note of those years when you read how Marc Morano (the Tribune-Reviews editorial board's non-scientist, swiftboater go-to "expert" on all matters pseudo-scientific) tries to reassure us all that it's not that big of a deal.  For example they quote him with this:

From geology's long-view perspective, current CO2 levels are remarkably low.

Considering that "geologic time" tracks things in the millions, tens of millions and hundreds of millions of years, and remembering that the Earth (sorry young Earth creationists, but you're still wrong on this, no matter what your Bible tells you) is 4.5 billion years old, a mere 800,000 years really is a very short time - so it's not surprising that at some point in the Earth's past CO2 levels were higher at some point for some reason during that time.

Still doesn't disprove that we've been polluting the air and now the planet's warming up because of it.

800,000 years is a long time in human standards, though.  How long a time?

Take a look:

The last time there was this much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere, modern humans didn't exist. Megatoothed sharks prowled the oceans, the world's seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer than it is now.

Now go look at the bullet points the Braintrust wants to reassure you with.

As they're bereft of actual chronological context, they're more or less beside the point.  And that's hardly reassuring.