April 2008 Archives

Last Sunday, I wrote about the necessity of eliminating Punxsutawney Phil -- with extreme

And the guy made me an honorary member of Punxsy Phil's Fan Club. (Shouldn't that be "Phan" club?)

Oh, well.

As Bill Murray once said, so I got that going for me.

OK, not really Fight Club. But if you think the battle for the Democratic nomination has turned into a knock-down-drag-out fight, click here to have a real knock-down-drag-out fight.

It's the New York Post's Obama-Clinton fight game.

WHTM-TV (Channel 27) got around to doing a story about the billboards around town touting an upcoming gun show at the York Fairgrounds. The billboards depict a blond woman holding targets.

Gives new meaning to the phrase "gun rack."

Just saying.

A colleague said, "I guess guns aren't the only thing bitter small-town people are clinging to."

The marketing person says the ad targets a specific audience for gun shows. She doesn't add that they apparently are the socially and emotionally retarded.

I was going to sign off the live blog by posting from my basement in my underwear, because that's what bloggers do, right? Just wanted to bolster my blogging street cred. Ya feel me?

But my wife said that would scare the dogs and, well, her too. So I'm still here at the bar.

I may be back.

Maybe not.

Until next time...

Obama's about to speak. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews is saying what on earth can Hopey McHopeington say now that he's had his butt handed to him, but doesn't know how bad his butt was handed to him.

Wait a minute. Obama is in Indiana, hanging out with John Mellencamp. Guy couldn't wait to get out of Pennsylvania.

No guy wearing boxing gloves in sight.

Party's kind of thinning out here.

Well, it is a Tuesday.

A commentor on Wonkette, a snarky political Web site, proposed this ticket: Clinton/Rasputin '08.

Isn't that redundant?

Philip Given, an Obama supporter from Manchester, watching Hillary's victory speech, said, in a mocking, sing-song voice, "She scares me. I'm frightened of her."

While Hillary was delivering her address, there was a guy standing behind her on the stage wearing boxing gloves.

I guess it was a "Rocky" reference. It bears repeating, Rocky was beaten by Apollo Creed, a black guy.

Hillary said a bunch of stuff. Mostly, she likes Pennsylvania.

The guy wearing the boxing gloves was clapping.

Boxing gloves.

I can't focus on what Hillary is saying because, for one thing, it's pretty loud in here and for another thing, what's with the guy wearing the boxing gloves?

To see additional primary night posts, see Tom Joyce's Articles of Confabulation and Jim McClure's York Town Square.

At one point at the Obama party at Cobblestones, CNN flashed a county-by-county map of Pennsylvania. A big cheer went up.

Obama had won York County.

Hillary was winning the state by 8 percent.

That's like kicking a field goal in the fourth quarter of a game you're losing 48-3.

One Obama supporter said, "We won York County. That's not bad."

Jeremy Hilley has piercings and sports a mohawk. He wears a studded belt and a I.W.W. union T-shirt.

And he's a Hillary supporter.

I asked him why Hillary, and he went into a lengthy discourse about health care and compared Hillary's health proposals with Obama's. He talked about stem cell research and what Hillary had proposed for that. He talked about how when Bill Clinton was president the federal budget ran a surplus and the national debt was decreasing and how that affected the economy and interest rates.

Hilley is 27. He works as a pizza delivery guy.

Go figure.

To see additional primary night posts, see Tom Joyce's Articles of Confabulation and Jim McClure's York Town Square.

I was in the bar at the White Rose, talking to an 18-year-old kid from Conewago Township named Mark Sollars who was explaining the slogan he's adopted to express his devotion to Hillary Clinton when his words were drowned out by a loud cheer from the crowd.

At 9:05 p.m., with 7 percent of the vote in, CNN was projecting Clinton the winner of the Pennsylvania primary.

Sollars led the bar in a chant -- "HILL-AR-EE" -- that went on for a while.

The slogan?

"We want cash, not change."

Here's a photo taken after the crowd calmed down.

To see additional primary night posts, see Tom Joyce's Articles of Confabulation and Jim McClure's York Town Square.

Tim Malinky of Springettsbury Township was canvassing for Obama Tuesday when he knocked on a door looking for a voter named Jack.

A woman Malinky described as stunning answered the door. Tall. Long blond hair. Very attractive.

"Is Jack here?" he asked.

The woman said Jack wasn't there.

Malinky told her he was there to see whether Jack had voted.

The woman said, "Jack's not here, but Jacqueline is and she did vote."

She or he did vote for Obama.

To see additional primary night posts, see Tom Joyce's Articles of Confabulation and Jim McClure's York Town Square.

This is John Biechman.

He's wearing an Obama yard sign. Now, I know things are tough, but wearing a plastic shirt...

Biechman is from Alexandria, Va., and has traveled to York to work for Obama. He has plenty of time; he's currently unemployed, laid off from his job in government relations.

Sorry about that "tough times" crack.

He spent the day knocking on doors and getting the Obama vote out. He's dedicated. A lot of the Obama are dedicated, but not all of them are wearing a yard sign.

"They ran out of buttons and I thought it would make a statement," he said.

Mission accomplished.

So who is this McCain person? Is he running for something?

The campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has seemed like a badly plotted wrestling match.

Well, guess what?

World Wrestling Entertainment turned it into a badly plotted wrestling match.

I'm not sure whether this is entertaining or disturbing. Obama, for one thing, has some huge ears.

Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States -- some huge Samoan guy with face tattoos.

The afternoon disc jockey on WXPN mentioned election day and said, "The eyes of the nation are upon us."

Oh God.

Usually, when the eyes of the nation cast their steely gaze upon us, we do something really bad. No need to review; you know what I'm talking about.

So, the eyes of the nation are upon us. Don't do anything stupid, OK?

So I stopped by the polling place at the York Art Association and ran into Linda Hudson.

Linda, a retired teacher from Dallastown, is an old friend. Her mother, Agnes, was a good friend of my wife's. We caught up and she offered doughnuts. While I was talking to Linda, Edward Guyer came in and asked, "Where's Hillary?"

He said he thought she'd be there handing out pamphlets or serving coffee or whatnot. Guyer, an 81-year-old retired sales and marketing guy, said it wouldn't have made any difference. He voted for Obama.

"Basically, the issue is change," he said. "Everything is so depressed economically and the war and everything. I hope we can pull out of it all right."

The economy -- and when you talk about the economy, you have to talk about gas prices.

I stopped at the Rutter's at the intersection of Prospect and Haines roads and watched as Diana Nusz filled the tank of her Ford Explorer. She didn't even fill the tank all the way, and it still cost her $60.

"This is the worst I've seen it," said the homemaker from Red Lion. "I never thought they would be this high. It's affecting everybody and everything. I don't see anybody doing anything about it."

She doesn't have hope that any of the presidential candidates can do anything about gas prices.

"Nobody wants to see what's going on," she said. 'I do think they're human, but not being in our shoes, they don't feel it like we do."

She hadn't planned to vote today. She thinks if she'd vote for anybody, she'd go for Obama, though.

P.S. Daily Record/Sunday News reporter Tom Joyce is blogging on today's primary, too. Check it out.

Bill Hicks, a 56-year-old disabled machine operator from York, stopped in for a cup of soup and a sandwich. He's had two heart attacks and open-heart surgery.

He has opinions.

He doesn't think this election willl change much. He's a registered Republican and he liked Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas.

"People are just getting fed up," he said. "No matter who you vote into office, nothing changes. As long as they keep us divided on petty issues, they're going to get what they want. Government by and for the wealthy.

"There is no end to the greed of the well-to-do."

Of the three candidates remaining, he thinks Hillary is the best.

"She just seems to be more politically savvy," he said. "She's been through a lot."

OK, enough of Maple Donuts. Owner Charlie Burnside just came in and joked that I can't work here. "People come in here to relax and talk to their friends," he said. "It's not a workplace."

I told Charlie, "Somebody has to do some work in here."

"You got a point there," he said.

You are witnessing history -- perhaps the first live blog ever from Maple Donuts on East Market Street.

The waitress, Jessica, doesn't think it's ever happened before. She said a few customers were talking about the election. I asked her if they were saying anything interesting.

"Nope," she said.

Do they ever say anything interesting?

"Not really," she said.

Dale Paules, a 67-year-old retiree from Verizon, was taking a break from building a playhouse for his grandkids, having a doughnut and a cup of coffee. A registered Democrat, he hadn't voted yet, but was planning to.

"I'm going to vote for Obama," he said. "Things need to change in this country."

He's always voted for Democrats -- except in the '80s when he voted for Reagan.

He doesn't have anything against Hillary Clinton. In fact, he said, he thought her husband did a lot of good as president. And he doesn't have anything against John McCain.

"I like John McCain, but he's going to be the same as we have now," he said. "We don't need that."

He thinks Obama has what it takes to beat McCain. The country, he said, wants a change.

"We have to change things from what's happened the last eight years," he said. "That guy's going to go down as the worst president in the history of this country. How he got in there for eight years is beyond me."

I'm live-blogging election day, all afternoon and into the evening until what CNN referred to as the "political combat in Pennsylvania" is over and it's time to count the dead and go through their pockets.

So stayed tuned for updates and smart-aleck remarks and general fun with the electoral process.

CNN was reporting this morning that our primary is the "biggest day in Pennsylvania since Groundhog Day."

That big, huh?

I guess if Democratic voters see their shadows, we'll have six more weeks of campaigning and TV commercials and mailings and robo-calls.

Later, CNN referred to "political combat in Pennsylvania."

Next, I'm guessing, CNN will call the primary the apocalypse in the Commonwealth.

Be careful out there.

Our six-week long statewide nightmare is nearly over.

For six weeks, you haven't been able to swing a dead cat without hitting somebody who wanted to bloviate about the presidential primary that may eventually select the next leader of the free world.

We've been treated to a series of craptacular TV commercials -- mostly I'm thinking about the ads where the phone's always ringing at 3 a.m. In one, the commercial's about economic crisis and the phone's ringing at 3 a.m. If the phone's ringing at 3 a.m., it won't be a financial crisis. It'll be Bill looking for a ride home.

We've had one candidate traipse through town and surrogates for the other visit and take a look around and wonder what they were doing here.

We've had mailboxes -- at least those belonging to the 12 or so registered Democrats in the county -- stuffed with flyers and pamphlets and whatnot.

We've had the phone calls from pollsters and the robo-calls where it appears Rob Reiner or Ed Rendell or Bob Casey is asking for your vote for their candidate.

We've had more attention than we ever asked for.

When this enterprise began, so many months ago, we all decried that the primary season would be over by the time the Pennsylvania contest rolled around. We were hoping we'd get the chance to make a difference.

OK, so how do you like it now?

My Monday column recounts the battle between Alene Meckley, a 76-year-old woman, and Intown Motors, which towed her car while she was paying her taxes last week.

Guess who won?

Post your own thoughts, impressions and car-towing stories here.

Those are the words used by the author of a study of the Iraq war.

And what left-wing think tank did this come from?

The Pentagon's own National Defense University.

The study begins: "Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle."

Read about it here.

Today is National Columnists' Day in honor of Ernie Pyle, one of the greatest columnists in the history of American journalism. The day was set aside by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists to help remember Ernie and call attention to columnists. (Full disclosure: I am the current president of this organization. I'm still not sure how that happened.)

Anyway, to remember Ernie, read this , perhaps Ernie's masterpiece, called "The Death of Captain Waskow."

I headlined this entry with the words of the late, great Edward R. Murrow, one of the greatest television journalists ever, to spotlight what had to a performance by two of the worst television journalists ever.

Of course, I'm talking about ABC News' Charlie Gibson and George Snuffleupagas at what was billed a "debate" last night in Philly.

The couple spent a good amount of time hashing over the B.S. agenda of this campaign, reducing the selection of the next leader of the free world to a game Trivial Pursuit, only with less substance.

The pair lobbed ridiculous questions at the candidates. They asked Barack Obama about not wearing a flag lapel pin, his relationship with his pastor and, in a question that came from right-wing moron Sean Hannity, about Obama's less-then-specious connection with a '60s radical. They asked Hillary Clinton, yet again, about her exaggerations about her Bosnia trip as first lady.

This nonsense has been hashed over to death, for one thing. And for another, are they really issues that anyone cares about? What about health care and jobs and, oh, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the mortgage and housing crises, and education, and taxes, and well, just about everything else?

The ironic thing is these same morons -- my sincere apologies to morons for comparing them to these clowns -- will then bloviate about how the candidates aren't discussing anything of substance and decry the trivial nature of this campaign.

Sheer idiocy.

The news media has received a lot of criticism for its performance during this presidential campaign. And, judging from that "debate," it's all deserved.

In 1958, Murrow told a convention of broadcasters: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

If Edward R. Morrow were alive today, he'd never stop throwing up.

First, Barack Obama said something about people from small towns being bitter.

Then came the ads.

Here's Hillary's:

Here's Obama's:

USA Today sent a reporter to Jacobus to take the pulse of the electorate, and they interviewed a retired Harley guy who said, "I'm not going to vote at all, because I don't believe in (any) of them."

The guy's name, according to the paper?

Glen Rock.

No word on whether he was hanging out with his girlfriend, Fawn Grove.

Come to think of it, as a colleague pointed out, Peach Bottom would be a good name for a porn star.

UPDATE: USA Today changed its on-live version of the story. Glen Rock, apparently, was a man named Robert Seigman. The reporter apparently mixed up his notes or something so it was an honest mistake.

This has craptacular written all over it. Oliver Stone, who, I read somewhere, hasn't made a decent movie since the Zapruder film, is making a bio-pic about Dubya.

The script was leaked to ABC News. It's pretty amusing and, according to ABC, contains this passage:

"(Bush) interrupts a meeting with Prince Bandar, in which he informs the Saudi ambassador about plans to invade Iraq, so that he can catch the rest of the 2002 Miami Dolphins-Baltimore Ravens playoff game. Bush is later shown choking on a pretzel and passing out during the second quarter."

It doesn't get any better than that.

Click here to read the first four pages of the script. (It's a pdf file and Adobe Acrobat is required.) Click here to read the ABC story that summarizes the script.

Josh Brolin has been cast to plat Dubya. I think Stone should have gotten Will Ferrell. Seriously. Just watch this:

Case closed.

Here is a video of a speech by a delegate of the Virginia legislature, lamenting the fact that nobody was taking his proposal to ban truck nuts seriously. The real fun begins about a minute and a half into it.

Enjoy.

Lots of people have been asking, "So how's Ed Berry doing?"

Ed's doing all right.

If you'll recall, he was badly injured in a fight a couple of years ago and was temporarily paralyzed. He still has some lingering problems from that, but he's doing OK, generally.

Anyway, I talked to him for Friday's column and as usual, when you get to talking to Ed, there was some stuff that didn't make the column. Here it is.

We were talking about bar arguments and Ed told me about the time he was almost shot in the old King George Tavern. He was in there, after his shift at Cole Steel, watching some guys play pool, when another guy came through the front door and pointed a gun at Ed.

"Hey, Tom, where's my dope and my money?" the guy demanded.

Ed said he wasn't Tom and he didn't have the guy's dope or money.

The guy insisted and everyone in the bar starting saying that Ed wasn't Tom. The guy was getting confused and Ed thought he was going to buy it right there in the King George.

He survived a couple of tours in Vietnam -- on the ground with the 82nd Airborne -- only to die on North George Street.

"I thought that would be about the worst thing that could happen to me, to be shot my mistake," Ed said. "Had I been Tom and took his dope and money, I probably deserved to be shot. But I wasn't."

The guy approached Ed and looked closely at him.

"You're not Tom," he said.

And he left.

Ed's also a master of trivia. Here's one: Who built the biggest battleship during World War II?

"Everybody says the Bismark," Ed said. "But it wasn't. It was the Japanese, the Yamato."

And another one. Ed said this question took his friends four years to figure out.

Who was the voice of Mister Ed?

Of course, this was pre-Internet and there was no easy way to look it up. For four years, they guessed and nobody got it. For a while, they thought Ed didn't know himself. The show's credit only listed "Mister Ed: Himself."

Ed only knew it from reading a book about B Westerns.

Finally, after four years somebody got it.

It was Allan "Rocky" Lane.

Lane, it seems, was embarrassed to be playing a horse and he was upset that they used wires to move the horse's mouth -- he thought it was cruel. But he needed the money and agreed to do it only if his name didn't appear in the credits.

There you have it.

This passage, from the New York Times, about says it all:

"Question to our Keystone State readers: What is it with this Pennsylvania fetish for bizarre world food combinations? In Johnstown, this New Yorker encountered the artery-clogging prospect of cheese-fries. And here in this diner in a perfectly lovely corner of this Berks County we come upon the Marvel Mess, a sandwich combining eggs, potatoes, onions, cheese, green peppers and Shiva only knows what else. (And in Philadelphia, my college son Nick tells me they serve up a sandwich called the Roethlisberger, named after the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, which sound so utterly and purely disgusting in its bouillabaisse combination of mystery meats and cheeses and coarse spices, as to induce a stomach-throbbing ache just hearing of it)."

Answer for our New York friends, what are you talking about? Last I heard, it was possible to get cheese fries in New York.

I suppose Pennsyltucky is a like a foreign land to our brethren in New York. Hey, we even speak English. Well, sort of.