Heightened Terror Alert

Here we go again. Excuse me while I shit my pants and hide under the bed.
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U.S. Headed for 'Heightened Alert' Stage
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It worked like a charm in 2004.
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I see that Tom Ridge will be touring PA with John McCain on Monday. Someone told me that the real reason that Ridge resigned as DHS Secretary is that he is color blind and the terror alert system turned his life into a living hell.
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Via Attytood

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YouTube weekend

More techno

Kraftwerk - Autobahn

YouTube weekend

Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl

Straight Talk Express Crashed

Really.

McCain bus in Miami crash

Into a blue van no less.

Maybe John McCain will now get around on a Jazzy supplied by Dan Meuser.

I've been told that he showed up for the big Harley rally in Sturgis riding one.

Sturgis: Sex, Alcohol, Drugs, Bikers And John McCain

PA 11th poll

It comes from the Lou Barletta campaign so take it with a grain (boulder) of salt.

From PolitickerPA:

The poll, conducted by Susquehanna Polling and Research in Harrisburg, found Barletta leading the longtime incumbent, 45 percent to 41 percent. An earlier poll commissioned by the campaign, released in in June, found similar results. In both polls, a margin of error of almost 5 percent means the two candidates continue to be in a dead heat in a race that has grown increasingly contentious.

Without the methodology and cross tabs it's hard to decide if this is a valid picture of the race. It's not uncommon for a campaign to put out favorable poll numbers in a race whatever the source

The TL also covers it:

“We don’t comment on our opponents’ polls and we don’t release the data in ours,” Kanjorski campaign spokesman Ed Mitchell said.
Barletta spokesman Shawn Kelly said the campaign is pleased with the results, especially since Kanjorski has begun airing television ads.

The Thompson Street Block Party

Mark of Wilkes-Barre Online and his neighbors are having their annual blowout on Saturday:

Last call for partiers!
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Three days and counting before the first barrel gets tapped, etc., etc., etc.
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Since one of it’s extra-terrestrial founders is going to be on hand here on Thompson Street, the secretive Saturday OT Committee and Operatic Society, which has cures-in-waiting for 99% of the world’s many ills, is obviously invited. ...
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As one of the joint chiefs of the long-running local bloggers (BLOGCOM), I would also like to invite all of my fellow BLOGCOM joint chiefs and underlings. Are you a member of BLOGCOM? Easy, are your archive listings longer than your most recent post? Yeah? Well, there you go, you’re practically a joint chief already.
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Personally, I’d like to see every local blogger here on Saturday, because I think it’d be a hoot watching so many people trying to avoid having their pictures taken at the same time. Point….click…mass duck.

See you there.

Wilkes-Barre Barack Obama HQ opening

From That's How I See It :

This is the Grand Opening of the Wilkes-Barre Obama Headquarters.

Time and Info

Date: Thursday, August 7, 2008

Time: 7PM-10PM

Street: 238 Kidder Street

City: Wilkes-Barre

Update:

The Speakers will be:

U.S. Senator Bob Casey

Luzerne County Democratic Chairman Mark Bufalino

State Representative Eddie Day Pashinski (121st District)

Delegate to the National Convention Rita Boyle

Meet the candidate

Mifflinburg, PA—Congressman Christopher P. Carney has announced his next Listening Tour Town Hall Meeting at 1:00PM on Friday, August 8th at the Carriage Corner Restaurant at 257 East Chestnut Street in Mifflinburg. We’ll be focusing on the very important and pressing issues of Social Security and Medicare and I have asked the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) to join us at the town meeting for this discussion. The National Committee is a membership organization that advocates on behalf of Social Security and Medicare and other programs affecting older Americans.


Chris Hackett is having a BBQ with John Boehner House Republican Leader
Saturday, August 9th, 2008
12:00 Noon at
The Farm of Michael and Barbara Lacey 613 Valley View Rd Dallas, PA 18612

DeAngelo brothers threaten to sue Kanjorski

From Rollcall:

Barletta Associates Pre-emptively Threaten Democrats With Legal Action

Business associates of Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta (R) have issued a rare pre-emptive strike against possible Democratic plans to use their troubled past to smear the Republican in his race against Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.).
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To read the whole story you have to have a subscription but it has to do with this story by Borys in the CV.

Barletta contributors questioned

Paul and Neal DeAngelo, the owners of DBiServices Inc., each gave Barletta $1,000 on March 28.In 1994, Paul DeAngelo was sentenced to 18 months in jail for his role in the Empire drug ring, which operated in the late 1980s. He was released in 1995.

I'll post an update as soon as I get more details.

Update from PolitickerPA:

Barletta allies seek pre-emptive deflection of campaign attacks

Specifically, the brothers and their company, DeAngelo Brothers Inc., sought to prevent any allegations that the brothers purchased Barletta's company with illegal money, allegations both Barletta and the brothers describe as patently false....

"The purpose of his letter is to inform you that such statements are demonstrably false and are considered by DBI and its principles to be defamatory," attorney Donald Brobst of Rosenn Jenkins & Greenwald LLP wrote in the July 25 letter, Roll Call reported. "You can be assured that DBI and its principals will immediately take all steps necessary to protect their interests in the event that you or any other persons acting on behalf of the Congressional Campaign of Congressman Kanjorski make false and defamatory statements concerning the purchase of IRM or any other matter."

A DCCC spokeswoman told Roll Call that the letter said more about Barletta's campaign than about any campaign plans by the Democrats, saying "voters ought to question what's worrying Lou Barletta's supporters so much that they resorted to these heavy-handed threats."

Russ Bigus for State Represenative

"I want to be in Harrisburg. I'll do whatever it takes to get there."-Russ Bigus

PolitickerPA has an interview with 117th State Rep District Democratic nominee Russ Bigus. The last time he ran for office he was a Republican candidate in the 20th Senate District primary in 2006, he came in fourth. Since then he switched party's along with his pal Bill Jones.


Chris Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown thinks he has a good chance of winning; "Because he had his roots as a Republican, he might be able to draw some support from across party lines." He also points out that a freshman that had a competitive primary race may be vulnerable. James May gave Karen Boback a good run in the spring but came up short by about 1100 votes out of 7300 cast while Bigus was unopposed for the Democratic nomination and garnered 5665.

Bigus takes some unconventional positions for a Democrat backing the NRA and bashing teacher's strikes and is trying to win over May supporters.

PAPoliticker reporter Dan Hirschhorn tried to get Karen to talk about the race but:

Boback did not return nearly a dozen messages left in July at her district office, her campaign office and her house.

Maybe this constituent has her cell phone number.

Christopher Concert for Congress

It looks like Kurt Shotko didn't get enough signatures to get on the ballot but you can still run a write-in campaign.

Concert to seek write-in

Christopher Concert of Swoyersville Tuesday said he will challenge 12-term Democratic incumbent Paul E. Kanjorski and Republican challenger Lou Barletta as a write-in candidate...

Concert said he believes the new electronic voting machines make it easy to get write-in votes.

The write-in strategy will probably not work in a high profile general election race but it has possibilities in a local primary contest like tax collector or city council.

Update: He has a website

Crazy Chris's Woodshed

Huh?

A story in yesterday's CV about the latest squabble over campaign contributions in the 11th Congressional district race had this tidbit:

In 1994, Paul DeAngelo was sentenced to 18 months in jail for his role in the Empire drug ring, which operated in the late 1980s. He was released in 1995.

As a government witness in the trial of another ring member, Neal DeAngelo, who was not charged, testified that Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan called him in 1986 to say Paul DeAngelo was doing business with a cocaine dealer who was being investigated. The judge, according to the testimony, offered to put them in touch with a Florida dealer, Neal DeAngelo testified.

Conahan was never charged in the case.

I wasn't aware of this case because I wasn't living in Luzerne County at the time. Conahan is the subject of an FBI investigation involving PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care centers formerly owned by his business partner attorney Robert Powell.

Conahan has also steered over $1 million in county business to his brother-in-law and has lead the witch hunt against Judge Ann Lokuta.

Boscov’s

My favorite department store is in financial trouble filing for Chapter 11 protection yesterday. The rumor that Boscov's will close it's Wilkes-Barre store has popped up over the last few years but now it may be closer to reality.

I would hate to see it go because I usually do my Christmas shopping there instead of dealing with the overcrowded malls and the prices are better.

Al Boscov stuck with Wilkes-Barre during the dark days when he would have been justified closing the doors when the square was looking like a ghost town. And he was instrumental in getting my favorite entertainment venue, The Kirby Center, off the ground:

Businessman Al Boscov drew praise when he acquired the Fowler, Dick and Walker: The Boston Store, one of the last remaining downtown department stores in Wilkes-Barre, in 1980. He opened his store on South Main Street in 1981. Four years later, Boscov, August L. Simms, attorney John Moses and the F.M. Kirby Foundation assembled a team of local business and civic leaders and put together a drive that raise $3.3 million to acquire and restore the old Paramount Theater. Thanks to the funds raised, the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts opened on Sept. 19, 1986.

And whenever I have to go downtown I park in their garage. It's free if you buy something so the free parking usually costs me about 50 bucks by the time I get done shopping.

Sitemeter explains what went wrong

From Michelle


Problems this past weekend

As many of you are aware there was a significant problem with our SiteMeter code and IE 6/7 browsers Friday night and early Saturday morning. Now that we’ve fixed the problem and had a chance to catch our breath we wanted to take a few minutes and provide a more detailed explanation of what occurred.

The explanation gets all geeky but they say they are sorry:

Sadly this situation required many of you to stay up late Friday night or get out of bed early Saturday morning to work on your websites. For this we sincerely apologize.

I slept in Saturday morning.

President-The map

Dem: 298 - Rep: 240

Colors are reversed.

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The way I see it.

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Solid McCain:

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South Carolina 8 Electoral Votes, Tennessee 11, Alabama 9, Kentucky 8, Nebraska 5, Oklahoma 7, Idaho 4, Wyoming 3, Utah 5.

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Lean McCain:

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Mississippi 6, Louisiana 9, Arkansas 6, Texas 34, South Dakota 3, Kansas 6, Arizona 10, West Virginia 5

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Toss Up:

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New Hampshire 4, North Carolina 15, Georgia 15, Florida 27, Missouri 11, Ohio 20, Indiana 11, North Dakota 3, Montana 3, Alaska 3, Michigan 17

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Lean Obama:

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Pennsylvania 21, Virginia 13, Minnesota 10, Iowa 7, Colorado 9, New Mexico 5, Nevada 5

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Solid Obama:

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Maine 4, Vermont 3, Massachusetts 12, Connecticut 7, Rhode Island 4, New York 31, New Jersey 15, Delaware 3, Maryland 10, DC 3, Illinois 21, Wisconsin 10, California 55, Washington 11, Oregon 7, Hawaii 4

Right now I would say it's going to be a blowout.

YouTube weekend

Then you flew your lear jet up to nova scotia To see the total eclipse of the sun

Your So Vain~Carly Simon

You Tube Weekend

The evil Viacom Company won't like this

Cyndi Lauper - I Drove All Night

You can read the blog in Firefox

Internet explorer has a glitch right now that I hope will fixed before I wake up tomorrow. But until then there are no error messages if you open Gort42 in Firefox.

From Another Monkey:

By the way: SiteMeter is causing an error in all Blogspot blogs (and other sites) when you open them through Like, you can't open the sites. At all. I'm going in throug a SiteMeterectomy. Hopefully they will get this issue resolved pronto.This must be some new feature - it was only a problem with some sites last night, and now it seems universal. So they must have been rolling it out on a few servers last night, and then got them all by today.



Thanks DB

Spiro Agnew

All the talking heads on the cable news channels, newspapers and bloggers are caught up in the veepstakes.

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My view is that it doesn't matter much who McCain or Obama picks for the number 2 spot because people don't vote for Vice President. As long as they don't get burned by picking a Tom Eagleton or Admiral Stockdale it won't impact the campaign. Nixon won with Agnew on the ticket and President Bush got away with Dan Quayle.

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Trying to make the VP pick an issue didn't work for Hubert Humphrey but I love this old ad.

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1968 Election Ad

Give the money back

Everybody is dumping indicted Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens money and Down With Tyranny is alleging that the Northern Lights PAC is a money laundering scheme.

Getting in on the act Paul Kanjorski is calling on Lou Barletta to return a $1,000 contribution he received from Stevens in 2002 saying "Barletta basically buys into the GOP culture of corruption that forced them out of the leadership in Congress in 2006 and still persists today. Special interests like Halliburton and oil companies dominate the Bush administration, lobbyists run the McCain campaign and indicted public officials contribute to Barletta.”

Barletta campaign manager Vince Galko said Kanjorski’s “desperation knows no limits.”
“This campaign has not received a contribution from the PAC in question,” Galko said. “Six years ago this PAC made a contribution to the 2002 campaign. This was long before any allegations were made against the senator.”

I hate to agree with Barletta on anything but I think he has a point. Just about every campaign has a few of these give the money back squabbles.

A few weeks ago Chris Hackett called on Chris Carney to return contributions from Charlie Rangel.

Most of the time these inside baseball arguments are don't register with voters. Maybe a public financing scheme for Congressional campaigns is the best way to get past it. An added benefit would be that the "special interests" won't be able to buy legislation.