Shocking Development In Millcreek Schools

It is with a sense of shock and awe that I read the news the Millcreek School Board actually took a positive step and have signed on Dr. Frank Bova as interim-superintendent for the district.

The Millcreek Schools have been in a state of disarray over the course of the last decade or so, with a charming combination of in-fighting, clueless teacher’s pet school directors, reckless spending and a general lack of real leadership.

While watching the news of the board voting to accept Dr. Dean Maynard’s long over-due resignation, I commented to my wife that they should go out and hire Dr. Bova to fill the position for the upcoming budget process and search period for the next Superintendent. Bova, is the retired head of the Wattsburg District and recently finished a stint as interim leader of the Iroquois School District. He is a well-respected, intelligent leader and the perfect choice for the role.

Let’s hope the board works their way through the budget process without breaking the backs of taxpayers and then begins to focus on finding new blood to lead the district, with an eye towards the future direction that not only the district must go, but also education in general, to properly prepare students for the work place.

Senator Chris Matthews?

The New York Sun newspaper is reporting that things are starting to heat up in the speculation that MSNBC (for those not familiar, it’s a cable news network that no one watches) host Chris Matthews might be tossing his hat into the ring to run against Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter in 2010.

Originally from Philadelphia, the host of Hardball recently did his show from the city of brotherly love in the week leading up the primary election Matthews guests during his stint in Philly was a who’s who of Democrat politics and featured an awful lotta folks that Matthews would have to buddy up with to get the nod to challenge Pennsylvania’s senior Senator.

Other than his ability to speak at a much faster clip than the plodding Specter, I'm not sure what Matthews really brings to the race that would appeal to voters or would provide a distinct difference from Specter. I can’t imagine most folks in the Commonwealth will be able to tell the difference between these two Philadelphia liberals!

Here’s hoping that the real difference might come in the form of a conservative Republican primary challenger for Specter. Last time out Specter had his bacon saved by President Bush and then Senator Santorum who rallying hard for the five term Senator, who narrowly edged out Congressman Pat Toomey.

Toomey is a smart guy and has done a nice job leading the conservative, Club for Growth in the interim and would have a solid base to start from if he chose to run again.

Floyd Boy Roger Waters' Inflatable Pig Votes Obama

Former Pink Floyd tunesmith Roger Waters just headlined day three of the Coachella music festival in Indio, CA with what the AP described as “an epic two-set performance that included playing all of "Dark Side of the Moon" and unleashing a giant inflated pig into the night sky.”

Waters, a Brit who has been a regular critic of the war in Iraq and the Bush Administration apparently had some special graffiti added to his famous, flying pig just for the event. The AP reports, “The pig, which was led above the crowd from lines held on the ground, displayed the words "Don't be led to the slaughter" and a cartoon of Uncle Sam wielding two bloody cleavers. The other side read, "Fear builds walls." The underside of the pig simply read "Obama" with a checked ballot box alongside.”

Not sure what the Obama camp’s reaction will be to the news of the 64-year-old musician and admitted acid user’s endorsement.

It always strikes me a very sad when musicians and performers feel that their celebrity is enough to get us to give a crap about their opinions. The fact of the matter is their opinions are of no greater value than any one else’s, in fact since they live a life sheltered in that celebrity and more often than not are bubbleheads, I tend to place no value on their opinions.

To sum it up, I’ll start to care about Roger Waters’ opinion, when pigs fly. To borrow the title of Laura Ingraham’s first book, “Shut Up and Sing.”

Jimmy Carter Master Meddler

Why would anyone be surprised by the recent actions of former President Jimmy Carter? The Father of the Islamic Revolution, spawned during his tenure in the White House that we still must deal with today, Carter has made a career out of empowering despots and terrorists and his latest actions meeting with the leadership of Hamas is no different.

Tick off the foreign policy blunders that Carter is responsible for both in and out of office starting with the toppling of the Shah of Iran, the botched Iranian Hostage Crisis, his dealings with North Korean President Kim Jong Il that led the Clinton administration to give the diminutive dictator a nuclear store house, and his failure to deal with the Palestinian question when negotiating the Camp David Peace Accord contributed to the wretched state the Palestinian people continued to be mired in.

These are not actions of dimwitted, screw up, but a bought and paid for handmaiden for Israel-hating Middle Eastern types. All you have to do run your finger down the list of contributors to the $200 million endowment that underwrites the $30 million annual budget of the Emory University-based Carter Center and you can read the Who’s Who Of Israel bashers.

According to the Investor’s Business Daily, “Fat cats who've given $1 million since the center's founding in 1982 (and in the hazy disclosures we don't know how much more) include the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the Saudi Fund for Development and the Government of the United Arab Emirates.

Among individuals who donated more than $100,000 in 2004-05, there is His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said of Oman, in addition to bin Talal. Among listed "founders" of the center are the king of Saudi Arabia, BCCI scandal banker Agha Hasan Abedi and Arafat pal Hasib J. Sabbagh.

All of these contributors have virulently anti-Israel elements, and most have medieval records of opposing and obstructing democracy in their own countries.”

The former President’s latest actions have led Michigan Congressman Joe Knollenberg to introduce The CARTER Act, which would prevent U.S. taxpayer dollars from being used to finance discussions and negotiations with terrorist groups.

The Coordinated American Response To Extreme Radicals Act, estimates taxpayers already have given the Carter think-tank foundation some $19 million.

Congressman Knollenberg said in a release, "America must speak with one voice against our terrorist enemies. It sends a fundamentally troubling message when an American dignitary is engaged in dialogue with terrorists. My legislation will make sure that taxpayer dollars are not being used to support discussions or negotiations with terrorist groups."

Knollenberg’s bill is a good first step, but Congress needs to take action to eliminate the ridiculous, and very costly Former Presidents Act, which traces it’s roots to 1958 and was passed when former President Truman ended up flat broke and busted when he left office.
Since that point American taxpayers have shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars for the offices, libraries, travel, phones, security, office supplies and equipment, and the postage of former Presidents and their wives. Given the recent headlines proclaiming President Clinton’s and his wife’s earnings in excess of $100 million since he cleaned out he White House, does anyone think it’s necessary for the American public to pick up Bubba’s cell phone bill which runs into the tens of thousands of dollars?

A 2001 General Accounting Office study estimated that the total costs for former Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush (41) from 1977 to 2000 ran upwards of $370 million.
That number didn’t include the cost of the Secret Service security detail for former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson! Lifetime security for former Presidents and their wives became a reality following the assassination of President Kennedy; I have my doubts that Mrs. Johnson was a target for assassins or terrorists. I have equal doubts that most Americans would have been able to pick Mrs. Johnson out of a crowd, let alone a terrorist.

I’m fine with paying former Presidents their pensions, and for some limited security, but I think they can afford their own office rent, plane tickets, and phone bills. Let Bubba hit on the babes on his own dime and let Jimmy Carter foot the bill to play footsie with terrorists!

Vote In The New Web Poll

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has announced plans to introduce legislation that would temporarily remove the 18.4 cents per gallon Federal tax on gasoline and the 25 cents per gallon tax on diesel fuel. The tax holiday would run from Memorial Day through the Labor Day holiday.

What's your take on the gas tax break? Register your vote in the new Web poll and drop your comments here. Is this a legitimate bit of relief at the pumps or is it Sen. McCain pandering to the American people? Is McCain's goal to really help businesses and individuals that are struggling with higher fuel costs or is he trying to get the eventual Democrat nominee for President on the record by making Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama cast a vote in the Senate?

The Real Shortage is Common Sense, Not Rice

I’ve been amazed by the headlines this week forecasting that the food riots that have occurred in other parts of the world could be coming to our shores. Whoa is me stories of shortages and some left coast retailers placing limits on purchases of rice has been labeled by the lame brains in the lazy media as “rationing.”

Here’s the reality check; the so-called limits placed on rice purchases are four 20-pound bags per visit for individual customers. Now I know that rice is a dietary staple for a lot of people, but what family really plows through 80 pounds of rice in a week’s time? We might go through 20 pounds in a year’s time in our house!

Yes there are some shortages of rice around the world and like every other product, when the supply is down the price goes up. It’s called Economics 101, you know supply and demand. So reacting to the increasing prices, smart business people, like say restaurant owners started to buy up extra stock before the price jumped again. It’s only common sense that if you use a lot of a given product and you want to keep your prices down you stock up at the best possible price!

So with business people buying up the stock, the store shelves where temporarily thin and maybe Mom and Pop couldn’t pick up that hefty bag of rice, which had the media concluding that there was a horrendous shortage, rationing and riots!

If you ever wonder why you’re paying $3.59+ per gallon of gas, this is one of the reasons why. It’s the fear factor premium. There’s the possibility of a problem with oil workers somewhere in the world, a pipeline problem that could take a week to fix, but it COULD BE LONGER, and you get this gloom and doom prediction of shortages and dire circumstances and the commodities traders suddenly jack that fear into the price of oil futures. Often, the expected problem never happens, the pipeline is fixed in 24 hours and no shortage occurs, but we still take the hit at the pumps.

Some may find it hard to believe that it’s not President Bush and his oil buddies that drive the price of oil/gas, but the mysterious world of commodity trading. It might be interesting to take a look at the rice commodities and see what’s happening there.

3rd Congressional Race Showcases Lack of Leadership

Quick, can you name the Erie County Democrat Party Chairperson? Don’t feel bad I couldn’t do it!

While yesterday’s primary election results should be a screaming lesson for local Democrats, in all likelihood today it’s back to business as usual, which means underachieving and no real clear leadership.

The dearth of leadership was highlighted by the race for the Democrat nomination for the 3rd Congressional district and the right to challenge Congressman Phil English this fall. You had four challengers of varying skills, experience, and name recognition raise and spend well over $500,000 in campaign cash all to pick a challenger for one of the Dems top targets.

If there had been a real leader for the Democrat party then the viability conversation would have taken place and some of this group would have been thinned out.

While I’m sure Mike Waltner is an earnest guy who really bought into the blah, blah, blah, change message he was pushing, he raised and spent over $100,000 and got less than 10,000 votes! He would have done more to help the people he wanted to serve in Congress if he’d slipped them each a ten spot.

Attorney Tom Myers also piled up the campaign cash and ran what amounted to a non-existent campaign. The only time I ever saw this guy was during the WICU debate, where he did a really good job of saying nothing! Wonder where he spent the cash? You have to wonder why an Erie Attorney that no one ever heard of decided to jump into the public spotlight.

Erie County Councilman Kyle Foust certainly had the highest profile going into the race, at least in the Erie segment of the district. He’s a second termer on Council and some locals fondly remember his dad’s elective service. Even with the name recognition and experience on his side, Foust struggled to raise money, lagging behind the rest. Whenever you saw the guy at a public event or on TV he looked as if he a bad case of gas and like he wanted to be anywhere but in the race for Congress. I think in old school political circles they would say he lacked fire in the belly.

The evening’s winner was political neophyte and recent Republican, Kathy Dahlkemper. Mrs. Dahlkemper deserved the win. Not only did she raise the most campaign cash, but she also assembled the strongest campaign team and ran by far the best campaign of the bunch. She could present a formidable challenge to English, if she can raise the money and get a foothold in the Butler/Corry/Sharon portion of the district, which is no easy task.

With over $500,000 already sucked out of the coffers of local Dems it’s going to take big time help from the national party to take down English and his $1 million plus and growing campaign war chest. Dahlkemper’s former Republican, conservative/modified Pro Life stances may not sit well with some in the national party, but was the very conservative Democrat strategy that worked so well in shifting the balance of power 2006. The lack of viable local party leadership may hurt here with out a person to champion her.

Dahlkemper will have to resist the urge to play up to the liberal side of the party on issues like the environment and universal healthcare to make up for perceived abortion shortcomings. Let’s hope her handlers will learn a lesson from past campaigns and drop the silly English term limits non-issue, this thing has been asked and answered and never works!

It will be interesting to see English’s campaign strategy unfolds. Lack of experience will certainly be an issue for Dahlkemper, his seniority will be a positive, but because she’s a women he won’t be able to hit he too hard and she’s not a whack-a-mole like independent challenger Dr. Steve Porter.

I’d say I’m looking forward to an interesting debate season, but who would host it locally and make it worth watching or listening (!) to?

Earth Day and Global Warming

I just came across an Earth Day debate asking if global warming is a hoax or not. This question misses the point. No, global warming is not a hoax; it is a cyclical occurrence that has happened and will happen again. What is a hoax is the Al Gore and his ilk’s over-reaction to it, filled with wild tales of floods, doom and destruction.

I continue to wade through the mountains of science and junk science on the subject and all to often it those who want to propagate the doom and despair side of this argument that go off half-cocked based on convenient slivers of science that prop up their side of the argument that global warming is caused by man-made carbon emissions.

Counter science is rife with examples that warming models and carbon emission studies don’t go nearly deep enough into their research to draw the conclusions that they often site as pure fact. They base their claims of global destruction on this partial science and the lazy media refuses to do their own research and choose to simply parrot these stories as based on undeniable fact and to take pot shots at those who don’t buy in as “flat-earthers” or scientific heretics.

For those who aren’t into computer modeling, hockey stick curves or satellite studies let me put those in the most basic terms; if modern man and his carbon emissions are the root cause of global warming, then what caused the Earth’s last significant warming cycle which stretched from the 10th to 13th century?

Known as the “medieval warm period or more commonly the Little Climatic Optimum, when the Earth’s average temperature was 1 to 3 degrees higher than it is today,” according to J R Dunn, writing for the American Thinker.

While Gore gets wild-eyed and preachy talking about melting ice caps, flooding cities, famines and ruination, the facts of the Little Climatic Optimum (LCO) run in stark contrast.

As Dunn points out, “areas in the Midlands and Scotland that cannot grow crops today were regularly farmed. England became know for it’s wine exports. The average height of Britons around A.D. 1000 was close to six feet, thanks to good nutrition.”

While global warming “scientists” express concerns over lost species and the rise of disease, Dunn’s research points out that, “famine and it’s partner plague—appears to have taken a hike for several centuries. We have records of only a handful of famines during the LCO, and few mass outbreaks of disease.”

The LCO also gave rise to what Dunn labels the Agricultural Revolution. “Mild temperatures eased land clearing and lengthened growing seasons. More certain harvests encouraged experimentation among farmers involving field rotation, novel implements, and new crops.”

So what was it that caused this warming period? The obvious answer is the Earth’s only real source of warmth, the Sun.

So where does this leave us in today’s global warming debate? With steady torrent of half-science, alarmism, the bandwagon jumping corporate “greening” and mainstream media pandering many people are being turned off to even common sense environmentalism.

By continuing to over-play their hand the enviro-wingnuts like Gore may actually be doing more harm than good. While the chattering about gloom and doom global warming continues to grow to a full-throated cacophony recent studies show that the reaction of the average person trying to “do something” about global warming is negligible. This repetitive din has become so pervasive that it’s actually reached the point of turning people off to the process.

If the message didn’t have an “end of the world as we know it” quality and was one of common sense conservation, recycling and reuse, most Americans would be more likely to buy into the process. You don’t have to give up your car, wipe your backside with leaves or move into a cave to be a good steward of the Earth’s resources.

Corporations don’t have to expend millions of dollars to tell us how “green” they are, they could start by reducing packaging, developing products that don’t spend centuries breaking down in landfills, reduce corporate meeting travel by utilizing technology and streamlining supply chains to cut down on the impact of transporting products.

This isn’t brain surgery or global climate change science; it’s just simple common sense.

Battle of the Carboard Cut Outs

I did catch some of re-running of the so-called debate between the four Democrat candidates for the Third Congressional district of Pennsylvania, aka Phil English's seat, on WICU. It's a good thing I tuned in late, because I don't think I could have taken to much of this drivel.

Mrs. Dahlkemper, Mr. Foust, Mr. Waltner, and Attorney Myers are just about interchangeable and really add up to a sum total of about nothing. You could have put a cardboard cutout on the stage with a speaker mounted where the mouth should be and play a tape loop of Democrat talking points.

"We need universal healthcare, we need to get rid of the Bush Agenda, the war in Iraq is wrong, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and BIG oil are all bad bad bad." You get the idea?

When I hear nitwits like this flapping their gums about insurance companies and drug companies, I wonder if they've bothered to even look around the district they hope to represent and the state that it sits in? Have they bothered to check out the list of top employers locally and in the state? Erie Insurance, Highmark, UPMC, do any of these ring a bell? Research and development of pharmaceuticals is a huge business statewide, but this bunch would have you believe it is the devil's spawn.

The staff of WICU did a decent job, but just once I'd love to see someone take off the kid gloves and go after these people. Universal health care sounds like a wonderful idea, who could possibly be against it? Now how do we pay for it? When the costs start to spike who gets rationed out of the health care system? Where has universal health care ever really worked, aside from in Michael Moore's mind?

I have no doubt that this will be the toughest reelection battle Phil English has faced, but it won't be based on the challengers in the race, but based on the interest in the Presidential election. "I'm not Phil English" didn't work the last two times and it won't be enough this time.

Dahlkemper has run the best campaign of the bunch hands down and her comment on the tolling of I80 was the most eye-opening of the night, but she's hardly going to inspire a legion of followers to the polls based on one comment and some big signs.

Damn You Hillary Clinton!

Damn you Hillary Clinton! In the grand tradition of the Democrat party, I demand my money back!

I was all set. My friends were invited. The beer was on ice. The snacks were loaded in. We were all set to flop down and tune in the most entertaining show on Tuesday night television. No it's not American Idol! I was all set to tune in to JET-TV's version of Dumb and Dumber (not to mention dumbest and dumber still) AKA the Democrat Congressional Debate!

JET-TV and the YEP kids were all set to bring us 60 side-splitting minutes of the 4 Democrat candidates for Congress showcasing their stupidity and then along came Hillary Clinton and the Doomed to Fail Express bringing their tour to Erie. So the plug was pulled on what promised to be high entertainment for those of us who have a clue.

Apparently the fearful foursome didn't want to miss the opportunity to rub shoulders with and possibly dodge incoming sniper fire with the Senator from New York. One word of advice...serpentine! Never run straight when dodging sniper fire!

I guess I'm stuck with the angry Brit, the ditzy, drugged up pop star, a couple of scrawny blondes, and the dreadful dreadlocks guy for my entertainment.