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Colin McNickle of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review explains why Tom Corbett should not heed the Philadelphia Inquirer’s recommendation that he resign for doing his job:

What tees off The Inquirer is that Corbett is doing his job and, in the process, taking stands on issues it opposes.

Think health-care “reform.” Corbett joined a lawsuit filed by attorneys general of several states alleging a federal provision mandating that individuals buy health insurance or be fined is a gross violation of the Commerce Clause.

And it is. The federal government, indeed, can regulate commerce. But it can’t force commerce.

McNickle goes on to say that the Inquirer thinks that pretty much anything Corbett does is nothing but a cynical attempt to gain conservative support for November. Liberal projection at its finest; since they will do anything to get elected and retain power, they assume the same is true of the other side.

The thought never crosses their minds that maybe, just maybe, Tom Corbett and millions of other reasonable people might actually think that ObamaCare is an unconstitutional disaster waiting to happen. No, we’re just trying to protect “the rich”, or we’re “racist”, or we’re “stupid”, or in the case of politicians like Corbett, they’re just trying to gain the support of us stupid racists who vote against our own self-interest in order to protect the rich.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, high-ranking Democrat and madman Howard Dean told Chris Wallace that racists at Fox News got Shirley Sherrod fired. When Wallace pointed out that Sherrod was fired by the White House before she was ever mentioned on Fox News, Dean said that it didn’t matter. Liberalism in a nutshell: Reality doesn’t matter.

Update

Looks like the dishonest filth have succeeded in getting the meme out that Fox News is responsible for Shirley Sherrod’s firing. Today’s Post-Gazette is full of letters from good little Democrat operatives condemning Fox News for being racist and causing Sherrod to lose her job. As I said, reality doesn’t matter with these people.

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Dale, it was discussed on Journolist, and it was decided that you’re a racist.

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What actually happened: Andrew Breitbart put a clip from a speech made by Shirley Sherrod up on his website. In the clip, Sherrod admitted to discriminating against a poor white farmer in the past. And, actually, if you bothered to watch the entire clip put up by Breitbart, you would have seen her admit that it was wrong for her to do so, because she was supposed to be helping the poor regardless of skin color. The Obama Administration’s knee jerk reaction was to fire Sherrod, which left them with egg on their face when they bothered to watch the whole video. After the firing, Fox News started to cover the story.

What happened according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

That’s just plain wrong on so many levels.

And the Post-Gazette laughably said the following in their editorial:

The website that released the edited video is responsible for triggering the media firestorm. But the guiltiest party is an administration so insecure that it would throw a good employee to the wolves. This shameful capitulation to right-wing media must end before more reputations and careers are destroyed.

Rick Santorum, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin, check your voice mail. You might find a few hundred messages from the Post-Gazette apologizing for the endless dishonest attacks on your reputation. Or, not.

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I tried to watch the clip that Joe posted below, but everytime Chris Matthews appeared on the screen I had an urge to tell him to SHOOT the GLASS.

Seriously, dude: What is up with that hair?

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What happens when a group of influential, like-minded journalists abandon their journalistic integrity in favor of their liberal ideology?

A vastly inexperienced, unqualified and radically liberal man gets elected to the most powerful office in the world.

If you are not following the Daily Caller’s revelations on how these opinion-makers began the memes with which we are all now intimately familiar, you are missing the story of the year. And if you are relying on the conventional, mainstream media to be reporting this story, forget it. For the naive out there who still believe conventional journalism is objective, you are in for a rude awakening. For the jaded cynics who always wanted proof of the collusion of lefty journalists’ crusade against the right, the Journo-list expose is the greatest gift to conservatives since the exposure of the Climate Gate emails.

Smug, calculating and brutal, observe how the story of Obama’s 20-year association with the radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright was silenced with accusations of racism. Here’s the paranoid Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent with the plan:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Read about the Journo-listers’ strategy to silence arch nemesis Fox News:

“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.

“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”

And today, read about the Journo-lister plot to destroy Sarah Palin:

Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …. I think people should be replicating some of the not-so-pleasant viral email campaigns that were used against [Obama].”

All of this would almost be funny of it hadn’t proved so successful. These Journo-listers started several memes that were picked up and repeated ad-nauseum by the mainstream media, as they knew they would be. The arrogance of the Journo-listers and their contempt for vast swatches of the American public as gullible rubes proved to be a powerful and effective combination in getting their man elected.

Read everything. And don’t get fooled again.

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And the implication is a bit stronger than what liberals read into the words of conservatives in order to manufacture racism, bigotry, and misogyny.

In his column yesterday, Tony Norman discusses the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. He talks about the two diametrically opposed characters, Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell. Atticus Finch, the heroic defense lawyer who takes on the impossible task of attempting to free a wrongfully accused black man, and Bob Ewell, the monster, a villain among villains, who is responsible for the wrongful accusation.

Tony Norman goes on to compare Rush Limbaugh, Mark Williams, and Glenn Beck with Bob Ewell, a despicable wretch who beat his own daughter just because she was attracted to a black man, then put the blame for the crime on the innocent black man, sending him to his doom:

When Rush Limbaugh referred to the late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in his on-air eulogy as a “cracker who made a lot of African-Americans millionaires,” he probably didn’t consider himself the spiritual heir of Bob Ewell. For allegedly speaking truth to power, Mr. Limbaugh thinks of himself as just a high-tech version of Atticus Finch.

When Mark Williams, a spokesman for the tea party movement, called the NAACP a “vile racist group” that “makes more money off of race than any slave trader ever,” he probably believed he was channeling Atticus Finch. He would probably be ready to fight anyone who compared him to Bob Ewell.

Though Mr. Williams is the same spokesman who referred to Barack Obama as “our half-white, racist president” and an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug turned anointed,” he still wants to be considered racially enlightened. He resents the charge that racists can find a non-judgmental home among the tea party movement no matter what the signs say.

In an impressive bit of sleight of hand, Glenn Beck told millions of his followers that the Silent Generation, the same folks who fell for the Southern strategy that Fox News impresario Roger Ailes helped pioneer in the Nixon White House, gave birth to and supported the civil rights movement.

Yes, indeed. Atticus Finch would be a regular contributor to Fox News, according to the assortment of scoundrels claiming to be modern-day iterations of the character.

I could go through all of this line by line and refute it, but there’s no point. I’m far more concerned with what Tony Norman says at the end of his column. After comparing those three men to Bob Ewell, Norman states:

What passes for racial tolerance and enlightenment these days is embarrassing. Where’s Boo Radley when you need him?

Tony Norman wants to know where Boo Radley is when we need him. And what did Boo Radley do in that book? He killed Bob Ewell. Tony Norman is implying that Rush Limbaugh, Mark Williams, and Glenn Beck should be killed. I’m sure if challenged on that he would say that he was merely joking, though. Haha, saying that people you disagree with should die is so funny! It’s not funny, Norman, and I’m going to write a letter to the PG asking them if they think it’s funny.

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Translation: “Scientists” not getting enough of our money to spend on nonsense.

When the Bush administration left office, there was a palpable sense of relief among the nation’s scientists. The Dark Ages, as many ironically referred to the period, were finally ending.

Apparently this is what science was like between 2001 and 2009:

Climate change, reproductive health, pollution and maintaining the integrity of fish and wildlife habitats were contentious issues between the Bush administration and the scientists who assailed it for elevating politics and corporate interests above science.

So the PG and “scientists” were mad that Bush didn’t agree with Al Gore’s disproven “documentary”, which ignored all actual scientific evidence that weather patterns are cyclical. The PG and “scientists” are also mad that Bush didn’t do more to kill unborn babies. Plus they’re mad that Bush advocated dumping toxic waste into rivers, or something. I don’t remember that happening, but if you ask the left, Bush did a lot of things that never actually happened.

Water quality experts in Florida, scientists studying the effect of dams on salmon populations in the West and environmentalists who expected a more rigorous approach to reviewing oil and gas exploration in Alaska after the Bush years ended are disappointed. They didn’t expect what they consider the Obama administration’s indifference to the environmental impact of its decisions.

So “scientists” are upset that Obama didn’t blow up dams and they’re upset that drilling for oil in ANWR hasn’t yet been declared a federal crime with a fine of infinity billion dollars and eight hundred years in prison.

The Obama administration insists it is committed to giving science an honored place in White House decisions, but it has done a lousy job of it so far. Despite its rhetoric, Mr. Obama’s White House has not moved quickly to reverse the anti-science culture still firmly in place. The long promised guidelines to help it ensure scientific integrity remain as ephemeral as ghosts — and that’s not very scientific, or competent at all.

C’mon, PG – give the guy a break. He’s doing his best to ensure that we’re spending as much taxpayer money as possible on killing unborn babies. That should make “scientists” happy.

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This must be the liberal meme – the New Black Panther Party is laughable! They definitely aren’t a threat to anyone’s rights or safety. Wow, are these people hypocrites. If Samir Shabazz was KKK the PG would be flipping out.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ain’t ‘fraid no Panthers:

Two members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside a North Philly polling place on Election Day 2008 in paramilitary garb. One of the two brandished a billy club looking vaguely menacing, but mostly silly.

The men stood outside the predominantly black polling center for a short time before cops sent them on their way. One of the men is alleged to have said something insulting about white people. Neither was arrested.

On the basis of a silly nonevent by two nobodies, the right wing has invented an outrageous conspiracy theory about the Justice Department’s alleged disregard for the voting rights of white people.

Something else which is probably silly to the PG – Hillary Clinton supporters claiming that Barack Obama stole the 2008 Democratic primary election:

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The latest from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cartoonist Rob Rogers:

The GOP voted against extending jobless benefits because the Democrats did not propose any way to pay for them… not because they want to punish unemployed people.

The GOP opposed and continues to oppose health care “reform” (aka ObamaCare) because it will result in fewer doctors, longer waits, and less quality and quantity of health care… not because they hate sick people.

The GOP opposes taxing “the rich” into oblivion because it is “the rich”, not government, who create jobs. If nobody is rich, there won’t be any jobs. A good way to exacerbate a recession is to raise taxes on the job-creators, thereby raising unemployment and decreasing productivity.

And the fourth panel is madness.

Someone who didn’t like this cartoon very much told Rogers so on his blog, and he responded as follows:

I wish I had the answer to the economic crisis, but I don’t. But I do expect those who were elected to fix it to try and do the right thing. The Republicans are only interested in seeing Obama fail, not in helping the people who really need help. You can decry all of this as partisan nonsense but in the end they have offered no solutions and are not interested in being a part of the process. Until you get past that, no plan will ever have a chance to work.

This leads us back to the old question, are liberals insane, or just dishonest? The GOP has proposed numerous fixes for our health care and economic problems. Just because Obama and his ilk have dismissed those ideas as useless doesn’t mean that the GOP didn’t attempt to get their input in.

I’m leaning towards “insane” when it comes to Rogers. There do seem to be more and more insane people in this world all the time, don’t you think? I sometimes wonder how it is that insane people can manage to function on a day to day basis, but then, Howard Hughes was a great pioneer in the field of aviation despite the fact that he was out of his mind.

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Our friends at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette don’t want this crisis to go to waste:

In his speech, the president also promised to avoid a repeat of the disaster at the Deepwater Horizon rig, in part by reforming the failed U.S. regulatory mechanism, the Minerals Management Service, which has been cozy with oil companies.

He then tackled the root of the environmental and economic horror festering in the Gulf, America’s addiction to fossil fuels, which has led to ever-riskier offshore deep drilling. Mr. Obama vowed to dedicate his administration to a clean energy future for the United States and said that inaction was the only outcome he would not accept.

Actually, the cause of “ever-riskier offshore deep drilling” is government regulations which push oil companies many miles out to sea rather than allowing them to drill where they don’t have to go through so much water to reach the seabed.

Obama and the PG propose “clean energy” to stop disasters like this. What kind of clean energy?

Nuclear? Sure, there are never disasters from nuclear power plants. Just ask anyone who lives in Chernobyl.

Hydrogen power, maybe? Ever heard of the Hindenburg?

Solar? Doesn’t produce nearly enough output to maintain modern civilization.

Wind? Hydroelectric? Again, these don’t generate nearly enough power.

There’s always the “electric car”. Except that advocates of said car always seem to forget that the electricity used to power it is created by burning coal, and that has its own hazards associated with it, environmental and otherwise.

I would like Obama to shut up about how he’s going to kick BP’s ass, and how he’s going to somehow magically stop disasters in the future. I would also like him to actually do something about fixing this oil spill, such as waiving Jones Act, which Bush did after hurricane Katrina.

It’s unbelievable how partisan this country has become. This morning I heard a liberal call up the Quinn & Rose radio show and explain to Quinn that Bush’s reaction to Katrina was terrible while Obama’s reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is great. Other than threatening to kick someone’s ass and picking up a few tar balls off the beach, has Obama actually done anything?

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Sorry, Alex, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says that nobody cares about the White House attempting to bribe Sestak:

And we all know how reliable the PG is.

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From today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Flag Day 2010: Oh, say can you see …

Celebrate Flag Day today by proudly flying Old Glory, which is far more than just the cloth that makes up its 13 red-and-white stripes, 50 white stars and field of blue.

Even more important than those symbols of the original 13 colonies that fought Great Britain for their freedom and today’s 50 states is what the flag as a whole represents: the principles, freedoms, sacrifices and patriotism that have made America the greatest nation on Earth.

And your U.S. flag rippling in the breeze reminds all that beyond this moment’s headlines, America’s history continues to unfold.

How we, as Americans, choose to uphold this nation’s lasting commitment to liberty — how we add to that awe-inspiring legacy — shapes each new chapter of that history. So long as our spirit of patriotic love and heroic sacrifice remains undiminished, America’s fundamental, defining tenets will endure — even as debates, disputes, elections, presidents, senators and representatives come and go.

Especially today, on Flag Day, Old Glory embodies America’s glory — a precious gift bequeathed to us by our Founders and forebearers. We must be faithful stewards of that gift, making sure that future Americans will fly the Stars and Stripes just as proudly as we do today.

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Leave it to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to cry over the White House Press Corps’ loss of a hyper-partisan self-described liberal who was more of a pro-Palestine political pundit than she was an objective reporter.

This comparison that liberals are making between Helen Thomas and Rush Limbaugh or other conservative talk show hosts is beyond absurd. Their latest attempt to find “hypocrisy” in a situation compares men and women who are paid to give their opinions on politics, and they do exactly that, with a woman who was paid to supposedly ask objective questions of the president’s representative. If you’re so upset about Thomas getting fired, PG, why don’t you find some way to get her her own radio show? Or is that not feasible, now that the ultra-left Air America is dead and the “liberal Rush Limbaugh” Ed Schultz is advocating election fraud on the air?

I say, thank goodness that Helen Thomas’ pathetic career of bringing opinion “journalism” to the White House Press Corps by asking sniping “questions” is finally over. Asking Tony Snow how many people have to die before we leave Afghanistan isn’t a legitimate political question; it’s hysterical partisan lunacy. Asking Robert Gibbs if it’s “Christianity” to invade Iraq isn’t an insightful, piercing, “tough” inquiry; it’s mindless crap designed and intended to provoke an unintelligent, emotional response.

Let someone who intends to ask real questions and seek out real answers have a chance in the White House Press Corps.

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I’ve gotten an awful lot of emails from “PA08 Press”, which is Congressman Patrick Murphy’s press release mailbox. They’ve only started in the past week. I didn’t sign up.

I can’t help but notice this is an election year… where he will have a tough fight.

The happened with Jack Wagner’s campaign for Governor. I know I was contacted about his Auditor General press releases… what I didn’t think was that meant that I could have gotten email nearly everyday about his gubernatorial campaign.

I don’t mind getting emails from campaigns & politicians. In fact, it’s a great source of information. I just object to the crassness of these.

Stay classy, Democrats.

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Due to the Attorney General’s pursuit of the bloggers at CasablancaPa, there has been a noted up swing in traffic to Pa Watercooler. As the story has gone national, traffic to their site must be WAY up, and readers follow their link(s) to the ‘cooler.

Retirement is still a ways away though.

Thanks Mr. AG and thanks Signor Ferrari.

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and the majority of the local press apparently didn’t think she said anything newsworthy?

Buchanan promised a “significant campaign announcement”, which turned out to be simply an accusation that her GOP primary opponent Keith Rothfus voted as a Democrat throughout the 1990s. Interestingly enough, county election officials promptly refuted that claim:

Republican congressional candidate Mary Beth Buchanan accused her primary challenger Friday of voting as a Democrat throughout the 1990s, but election officials said the data she used is unreliable.

And:

At a news conference this morning outside the County Office Building, Downtown, Buchanan’s aides handed out a printout of Rothfus’ voting history. The printout shows that Rothfus registered as a Democrat in 1990 and voted in 18 elections as a Democrat before voting in the 2004 general election as a Republican.

“What I learned is that (Rothfus) wasn’t just trying to hide his lack of experience, but that he was hiding that he was a registered Democrat for 13 years,” Buchanan said.

But Mark Wolosik, head of the Allegheny County Elections Department, said the party history data is unreliable because the county switched computer systems in August 2003. Whatever party the person was registered as at that time was assigned as the party for all previous elections.

WPXI reported this announcement as well, but at last check KDKA, WTAE, and the Post-Gazette didn’t mention this “significant campaign announcement” at all.

Not that they’re, of course, the only local media.

Cross-posted to Renner’s Here.

Update: Tim McNulty of the Post-Gazette advises that he did indeed write a blog post and a regular article on Buchanan’s press conference.

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Sestak and Veterans Groups Wrong To Criticize Specter Ad

 “We’re all here because we’re enraged at the fact that someone, anyone in the United States today, would question someone with 31 years of (military) service.”

So said a retired lieutenant general about Arlen Specter’s television ad which stated that Joe Sestak, his opponent in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary, was relieved of duty in the Navy for creating a “poor command climate.”

Other veterans have chimed in with similar criticism of Specter, labeling the Senator and his commercial as “disrespectful” and “unpatriotic,” and adding that it should be off the table to question, let alone criticize, a veteran.

And making the sin mortal, we are told, is that it’s one veteran attacking another.

That line of thinking is not only wrong, but dangerous.

Why should anyone’s record be off limits to scrutiny —veteran or not — especially when that someone is seeking to become a United States Senator?

*****

First of all, allowing anyone’s record to go unchecked is closer to having a dictatorship than a democracy. It goes without saying that our freedom to ask tough questions of our leaders — without fear of retribution — is the cornerstone of a free society.

No one should get a free pass.  No one.

If that ever changes, you might as well pack it in.

Secondly, beyond the tenuous code these veterans like to invoke, it becomes clear that they don’t understand, or don’t want to acknowledge, that two plus two always has to equal four.

Translation: they may not like their candidate being attacked, especially by a fellow vet, but the facts in Specter’s ad are just that—facts.

The issue isn’t whether the commercial is “disrespectful,” but whether it’s true.

And in this case, the facts speak for themselves.

Sestak was a three-star admiral who, in 2005, was fired from his post as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations by then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Mullen. (Mullen now serves as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).

Of significant interest is that Admiral Mullen fired Sestak on the very first day Mullen started in his new post.

According to the Navy Times — a reputable source — the reason cited for Sestak’s dismissal was that he created a “poor command climate.”  The publication went on to state, “Sestak was then shuffled into lower-profile desk jobs before he retired in January 2006 as a two-star admiral.”

In fact, many press reports quote another admiral familiar with Sestak as calling his leadership style “tyrannical,” and one in which he commanded “…by intimidation and fear.”

So let’s recap:

1)    Sestak was a three star admiral.

2)    Sestak was fired from his position as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations.

3)    Sestak ended up working at lower profile jobs.

4)    Sestak retired as a two star admiral — a lesser rank than he held previously held.

It is a reasonable assumption that Mullen was so disturbed by what he saw of Sestak’s command climate that he had no problem demoting Sestak.

So when we read a veteran’s quote stating, “he wasn’t demoted,” it becomes obvious that the issue is more about politics than defending a fellow veteran’s record. 

By definition, when an admiral is relieved of command, that’s a demotion. 

And by the way, according to news reports, Sestak has never demanded….

Read the rest at Philly Post…comments are encouraged:

http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2010/05/04/sestak-and-veterans-groups-wrong-to-criticize-specter-ad/

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Apparently pro-life Catholics are now responsible for rape. I sure am glad that election of Obama has ushered in a new era of peace and put an end to divisiveness:

Ben Roethlisberger’s latest stupidity is, I think, not completely his fault. He is a typical American male in his late 20s, acting exactly how society has taught him to act: with no respect for women. This is what the Western ideal has become. Women are still second-class citizens. Just ask the Catholic Church or the Republican Party.

The current health care bill is a perfect example of this mentality. Certain outspoken elements of our society, with their deluded influence, have dictated that abortion be excluded from any health care coverage, even though this procedure is completely legal and has no business being singled out for exclusion from any health care reform. How on earth could the Democrats or any other progressive-thinking American have allowed this exclusion? The bill is tainted beyond hope and President Barack Obama and his supporters have assisted in selling out to the lowest common (right-wing) denominator.

Rather than calling it abortion rights, we supporters need to start referring to it as women’s rights, because being “anti-abortion” is really to be “anti-women’s rights.”

It’s time for committed progressives in this country to start having some backbone and standing up for real reform and real respect for women. Then maybe self-indulgent football punks like Ben Roethlisberger and his club-hopping cronies will present themselves to society as civilized adults instead of goons.

PERRY MUNYON
Monroeville

Yes – if only the Catholic Church would stop opposing abortion, men would stop raping women. How is it that these people win elections, again?

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           I was at a benefits fair on Wednesday this past week representing the company I work for. It was the normal type of event these shows can be, sometimes busy, most times very slow. It was during one of these slow moments when I had a fantastic conversation that comes few times in a person’s life. The kind that is unexpected, out-of-the-blue, and obviously put in motion for a reason only “He” divines at the time, but you take a moment afterward to silently say thank you to him. This was one of those moments.

            His name is Lovell and he is a Doctoral level Professor at a University. We accidentally became engaged in the same conversation about children, specifically about what we are trying to teach our own kids. Now, he is only about 15 or so years older than myself, so his children are only a few years older than my own, so much about what our children are going through and are learning to make decisions on are the same. We spoke about teaching our children history and the need to learn where we come from to learn where we are going. From there though, something happened. I’m not sure what, but the litany of subjects we discussed from there just blossomed; Science, race, God, America, the different religions, society and it’s idolization of bad behavior, the next generation of Americans, the Holocaust and what those that lived through it could teach us, the best way to transport those stories from the survivors mouths to his students ears, on and on and on. It was one of those types of conversation that really lets you seen inside the mind of another human being and what you see is good. Standing before me was a good and decent human being just trying to show his children and the students he touched day after day what it is to be a good person and a good American.

            Now, anyone who has read any of my previous writings knows that I’m a Conservative in the vein of Ronald Reagan; Limited government, low taxes, maximum freedom with minimum intrusion, dyed in the wool Capitalist. I’m fairly certain that my friend, which I hope to call Lovell someday, was a Liberal. He was a tall black man with an “Obama” ball cap, replete with a swoosh to the name and the Obama campaign symbol adorning it. Also, he’s a Sociology professor at a pretty liberal school. The beauty of all of this though is that it didn’t matter. We were just two dads wondering aloud and talking together on what is best needed to raise our kids’ right and to turn them into decent citizens and Americans. This moment and conversation is what it means to be an American. Speaking our mind freely to one another without fear and with respect. We may not believe in the same political concepts or doctrines. We may not even see in the same spectrum about the “-ism’s” in politics and society. What we could see though was the common goal of our children and doing our damnedest to make sure that they become good people and that life is better for them when they are men talking one day.

            I will reach out to Lovell again, and regardless of our political beliefs, no matter how similar or divergent they may be, I hope that I will be able to call him my friend someday. There is one thing that I have already learned from him though, is that he has given me hope that life will be better and that we as citizens will be able to talk more about what unites us than what divides us. And that I’m proud to call him my Fellow American.

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Philly.com

The local sports mogul and longtime backer of conservative causes says he’s a major investor in a new cable TV network that may have an even more difficult task than bringing hockey’s crown back to Philly, and that is toppling the right-wing ratings champ, the Fox News Channel.

The Snider-funded RightNetwork – with a looser approach to conservative topics, including a comedy show and a jocular front man in sitcom star Kelsey Grammer – is hoping to come to your cable box as early as this summer.

Snider – whose investment in RightNetwork is personal and not linked to his role as chairman of Comcast-Spectacor, which already owns the locally popular Comcast Sportsnet on cable as well as the Flyers, 76ers and the Wachovia Center – was not available for an interview. But he had earlier posted a statement about RightNetwork.

“We’re creating a welcome place for millions and millions of Americans who’ve been looking for an entertainment network and media channel that reflects their point of view,” Snider said. “RightNetwork will be the perfect platform to entertain, inform and connect with the American majority about what’s right in the world.”

Snider, 77, a longtime backer of programs related to the iconic libertarian philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand, has been more public in his support of conservative causes in recent years.

Hollywood’s only outed conservative Kelsey Grammer is involved.

Can there really be enough material?

How many shows about William F Buckley, Ayn Rand and Ted Nugent can we watch?

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