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John Barbero, the voice of the Pittsburgh Penguins, has died after a battle with cancer.
” ‘The Pittsburgh goal. Scored by No. 66. Mario …’ The way he stretched out that ‘uuuu’ with Mario’s last name, you can hear it now.”
-Mike Lange
Rest in peace, Barbero. We’ll never forget your voice.
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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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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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I know people were praying for rain during the recent heat wave, but I don’t think they wanted it all to come at once. Overbrook’s flooded, and the public transportation system is being shut down in some places. They’re using shuttle buses to help people when the light rail system is flooded, but what if the shuttle buses get stuck?
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Just got an email to this link from Obama’s goon squad:
Voter Registration in Bloomfield (Raise Your Vote: Voter Registration Event)
We’ll host Voter Registration on Saturday, July 17th in front of the Crazy Mocha in Bloomfield, located at:4525 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15224From 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.
I decided to répondez s’il vous plaît with the following:
Will you attend: No, I will not attend.
How many attendees total: (incl. yourself) 0
Add a comment: (optional)
Sorry, can’t make it. I’ll be busy working this weekend, paying my taxes which fund “community organizers” who are working to destroy my way of life. I’m sure, however, that you’ll be able to gather plenty of people who lack the ambition to find employment at your event, however, and you can all bow down and worship the great Obama, with all his empty promises.
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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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They lose like 20 in a row and then take 3 of 4 vs. the National League Champs. What’s there to say but…
LET’S GO BUCS!
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The National Right to Life Committee held a convention in Pittsburgh recently, so it goes without saying that angry pro-aborts wrote letters into the PG:
I’m commenting on Ann Rodgers’ June 26 article about Wanda Franz, president of the National Right to Life Committee (”Retired Educator Has Spent 20 Years Battling Abortion,” June 26). The National Right to Life Committee is a conservative organization
Really? NRLC supports lower taxes and strong national defense? NRLC is not “conservative”. It supports all pro-life causes and that’s it.
founded in the early 1970s by a group of extremist Catholic bishops
While the mental imagery of a bunch of gun-toting terrorist bishops is amusing, sad to say, NRLC was not founded by Catholic clergy, gun-toting or otherwise. In response to the Roe v. Wade atrocity, numerous state pro-life groups started to be formed by Americans. The various state groups eventually combined into the NRLC.
in response to growing public support for women’s reproductive freedom.
Actually, NRLC formed due to an imaginary right to kill your children being “found” hidden in a penumbra from the US Constitution by seven unelected “Justices”.
Its members are predominantly from male-dominated conservative Catholic and Protestant denominations.
I wasn’t aware that only men are capable of supporting the right of innocent humans to live.
Its main purpose is to recriminalize medically safe abortion.
Actually, we want to recriminalize abortion in general, regardless of how medically safe it is, because when done correctly, it always results in the death of a human being.
I found much of what Ms. Franz had to say deeply disturbing and hypocritical — especially coming from a psychology professor and a woman.
Because only men can oppose killing innocent humans!
It’s unconscionable for anyone to compare the Holocaust with women’s reproductive freedom!
Is that because only about 10 million Jews and Catholics died in the Holocaust, while considerably more people have died from abortions?
Women and doctors who respect women’s moral authority aren’t Nazis.
Only if they aren’t supporters of national socialism.
Women’s lives, circumstances and conscience actually matter.
I agree; the lives of unborn women actually matter.
The 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized medically safe abortion was a milestone for women’s equality.
Except for unborn women.
I remember the days of the Underground Railroad for women. Just as some folks today deny the Holocaust ever happened, NRLC too denies the tragic plight of women before Roe v. Wade.
NRLC does not deny that women have been forced into killing their children. And the irony is not lost that now, there are women who fight tooth and nail to ensure that more children are killed.
The so-called “partial birth abortion” ban was a political scam used to sensationalize a rare alternative medical procedure used to protect the health and life of the mother.
Except that suctioning your unborn baby’s brains out is never medically necessary.
This ban will never save one fetus!
Then why are you concerned about it?
I believe abortion is a moral option between a woman and her faith or conscience.
Taking an innocent life is taking an innocent life, whether you “choose” to acknowledge it or not.
From experience I know women don’t take their decisions lightly.
Aside from a few insane liberals, women don’t abort because they have “choice” – they abort because they feel that they have no choice. Often it’s because their boyfriend or husband either abandoned them or commanded them to get an abortion. How “feminist” to have no choice but to destroy your offspring on the whim of a man.
Wanda Franz will continue to defend the patriarchy and its oppression of women because she doesn’t know any better.
Sue Amos will continue to defend child murder and its slaughter of innocents because she doesn’t know any better.
To do otherwise would require her to examine her own “inner patriarch.”
And she says it once again – only men care about protecting the innocent! What a scandal.
SUE AMOS
Morgantown, W.Va.The writer is a member of the National Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
For Jesus but against babies. The very definition of “perverse”. Do not look for Christ in the finery of a clerical robe; look for him in the face of that tiny baby you said “No” to. The tiny baby who you told that he was not wanted or welcome. The tiny baby who you killed. Your ideological progenitor is not Hitler; it is King Herod. It is the Pharaoh of Egypt.
While I would rather that people like Wanda Franz not get the attention they crave (”Retired Educator Has Spent 20 Years Battling Abortion,” June 26), I recognize that the National Right to Life Committee’s gathering in Pittsburgh is news. Your paper was right to cover it and also correct to send your religion reporter, Ann Rodgers, since the activities of this group are not so much political as they are an improper interference of religion in politics.
The previous letter writer claimed that only men can care about innocent human life. This one tells us that only religious people can do so. Oddly enough, NRLC is not a religious organization. What it is is a pro-life organization.
Furthermore, the irony is no doubt lost on the PG that they published a letter from a “religious” pro-abortion woman and followed it with a letter from a secularist pro-abortion man, bemoaning the fact that religious people are involved in politics.
That said, I must object to the statement that Ms. Franz’s group “does much of the legislative heavy lifting for opponents of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.” In fact, everyone is opposed to infanticide, which is why it has always been illegal.
You would think that everyone would be against infanticide, but Barack Obama supports it. That’s why as a member of the Illinois State Senate he voted against hte Born Alive Infant Protection Act which would prevent babies who survive abortions from being the victims of infanticide.
Grouping abortion with infanticide
Inside the womb and outside the womb. It is like the difference between vehicular homicide and murder with a pistol.
– and lumping the difficult issues of assisted suicide and living wills under the umbrella of “euthanasia,” as if these were the same as Nazi Germany’s massacres of people with disabilities — are both insidious attempts by the Right to Life Committee to draw a moral equivalence between these practices that does not exist.
How we delight in pretending that the Nazis somehow exist outside of our reality; we could never be like them! Sure.
To enable this rhetorical trick is to confer on this group a legitimacy that it does not deserve.
JOHN LACNY
Overbrook“Choice” is a rhetorical trick. “Yes We Can” is a rhetorical trick. NRLC is for innocent life. That’s it.
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Tonight at the NHL Awards in Las Vegas, Pittsburgh Penguins Captain Sidney Crosby was honored by hockey legend Mark Messier, receiving his award for superior leadership. Crosby’s leadership on and off the ice earned him the award as well as great praise from the six-time Stanley Cup Champion Messier.
The Hart trophy for League MVP was awarded to Henrik Sedin of the Vancouver Canucks. Though I would have liked to see Crosby win it again, it was good to see a very deserving player who doesn’t get all of the media attention of Sid and Ovi be rewarded. Speaking of Ovechkin, it would have been a terrible move to allow him to retain his title of MVP, considering that he was suspended twice this year. Many commentators stated that Ovi deserved the award as he racked up a huge number of goals and assists while he didn’t play as many games as Crosby and Sedin did. However, four of the games he missed were due to his suspensions, and it would be outright foolish to reward a player for being suspended. Fortunately the NHL did the right thing and awarded the Hart to a more deserving player. Congrats, Henrik.
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The local chapter of the Boy Scouts has prevailed in its federal case against the city of Philadelphia.
At issue, the Boy Scouts ban on gays and whether the Philadelphia chapter – the Cradle of Liberty Council – could stay in its city-owned headquarters rent-free.
The trial lasted about a week. The jury took less than a day to return its decision.
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The Pittsburgh Pirates knew they had to make a desperate move after their 9th straight loss, and that move was bringing up the great Bucco hope Pedro Alvarez from the minors. Alvarez was supposed to bring some batting power to an offensively-struggling club.
After three games, Pedro still doesn’t have a hit. His major league batting average is 0.00. He has struck out 5 times.
And the Bucs continue to lose.
12 and counting.
Waah.
Is it hockey season yet?
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Six errors! SIX! That has got to be some kind of record.
Gotta love our Buccos!
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Brian O’Connor thinks so, based on this Trib article. I’d tend to agree, given Obama’s reverse Midas touch this year.
WTAE has semi-objective reporting on the presidential visit.
Cross-posted to Renner’s Here.
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Seems odd that the Pittsburgh Penguins are going to be involved in another Winter Classic so soon, but I guess the NHL and NBC can’t get enough of Crosby vs. Ovechkin, a matchup they were denied in this year’s playoffs due to both teams being defeated by trap hockey. (Dear Sidney Crosby, please spend the summer figuring out how to destroy the trap.)
Still, I’m not going to complain. Heinz Field seats 64,000 people. That means that there will be nearly 60,000 Penguins fans at the game – more than three times as many as have ever attended any Penguins game. Every time Ovie touches the puck you will hear 60,000 people booing. It’s going to be awesome.
Some superstitious Penguins fans are nervous about the game, however. The road team in the past three Winter Classics has advanced to the Stanley Cup Final – Pittsburgh in ‘08, Detroit in ‘09, and Philly in ‘10. If this trend continues, Washington will reach the Final next year, which means the Pens will be eliminated before they get that far. But superstitions are just that.
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This letter says it all:
Rivers Casino’s newest promotion includes the opportunity to play tic-tac-toe with a chicken.
Like all gambling ads, the radio spot ends with the obligatory “If you have a gambling problem …”
Skippy, if you’re playing tic-tac-toe with a chicken, you have a gambling problem.
KEVIN G. BARKES
South Park
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The Pittsburgh Pirates rebounded from a 2-12 loss to the Phillies yesterday to win tonight’s game 2-1! Let’s Go Bucs!
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The very first Pittsburgh Penguins game played at Mellon Arena was a loss to the Montreal Canadiens. So it is only fitting that tonight, in the very last game ever to be played at Mellon Arena, the Penguins once again lost to the Montreal Canadiens.
I attended tonight’s game. It was a very strange game full of unbelievable events, which lead me to shrug my shoulders, say that it was just meant to be, and just enjoy one last hockey game at the old arena. 10 seconds into tonight’s Pens vs. Habs Game 7 Sidney Crosby took a very uncharacteristic boarding penalty. He just went up to a player for the Canadiens and hit him from behind into the boards for no apparent reason. Then on the resulting power play, the Habs scored by tipping a shot through Marc-Andre Fleury’s six-hole – that is, between his arm and his body. A bizarre penalty, a bizarre goal, and that put the Penguins in a complete state of disarray for most of the remainder of the game.
After taking the 1-0 lead, the Habs kept up the pressure while the Pens looked just plain confused. A second flukey goal followed as one of the Habs turned and fired a loose puck at the net. Then in the second period, Michael Cammalleri who has proved to be an unstoppable force for the Pens scored the Habs third goal. When the disordered and dazed Penguins’ attempt at a power play finally resulted in a short-handed and fourth goal for the Habs, it was time to remove Fleury from the net. While it looked like the Pens might come back from the 0-4 deficit with two goals scored later in the second period, all of the momentum they had dissolved into nothing in the third period.
In the end, I was left surrounded by Habs fans singing “Ole Ole Ole!” and cheering “Go Habs Go!”. Unfortunately a drunk Habs fan or two decided to cause trouble during the game, but most of them were gracious in victory. Some of them were ribbing us during the game by asking where Crosby was, due to his lack of scoring against the Canadiens – especially this young French-Canadian woman sitting next to me. I was so hoping that Crosby would score just one goal so I could tell her, “Hey, I found Crosby”. But, alas, it was not to be.
It was a pity to see the Penguins eliminated from the playoffs, but as I have said before, I didn’t think this year’s Pens had the best shot at winning the Stanley Cup. They had a very poor record against teams that have a defensive style, and the Habs have such a style, protected by their goaltender Jaroslav Halak who has absolutely been standing on his head throughout the playoffs.
The Philadelphia Flyers, however, have managed to force a Game 7 against the Boston Bruins. On the verge of elimination in Game 4, they avoided a sweep with a goal in overtime. Now it’s anybody’s series as the Flyers play the Bruins one last time in Boston for the right to advance and face Montreal for the Eastern Conference Championship. This could very well be the first time that the two very lowest seeded teams in the entire League faced each other for the Prince of Wales Trophy! What a crazy, crazy year. What other sport with best-of-seven playoffs could see the two lowest seeds advance so far? Best sport in the world.
I stayed at Mellon until long after the handshakes, and yelled “Let’s Go Pens!” at the top of my lungs when the Penguins lifted their sticks to salute their fans. No Canadiens fans tried to mess with me, because they could see that my pride for the Pens could not be broken by this loss. Then I took one last slow walk around the concourse of Mellon Arena. See you in the Consol Energy Center next year, boys. Another year, another chance to win the Cup again!
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For the second time this postseason, the underdog last seed Montreal Canadiens have survived an elimination game and forced a Game 7 against their opponent. The Pens and Habs return to Pittsburgh for the final game of the series, which will be the final game ever played at Mellon Arena if the Habs win. And the first game ever played at Mellon Arena… was a loss to Montreal. The only good thing about it is that win or lose, Wednesday’s game is going to be historic.
The Penguins had to be perfect to beat the Canadiens tonight, and they were far from it. Numerous defensive breakdowns, including a misplayed puck in the first 90 seconds of the game, resulted in far too many scoring chances for the Habs.
The good news is that the Pens managed to score 3 goals against Jaroslav Halak tonight, while the Capitals only managed 1 in their Game 6. The bad news is that if the Pens don’t get their act together and play a flawless Game 7, their season will end on Wednesday.
The Philadelphia Flyers, playing in Boston at the same exact time as the Pens, demolished the Bruins to force Game 6 in their continued bid for a comeback from a 3-0 series deficit. If the Flyers succeed and win the next two games, they will be only the third NHL team in history to do so.
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The Philadelphia Flyers avoided being swept by the Boston Bruins last night with a 5-4 win in overtime. The Bruins lead the series 3-1, but returning Flyer Simon Gagne was a big help who could possibly get the Flyers back into the series as it heads to Boston for Game 5.
The Pittsburgh Penguins are tied in their series with the Montreal Canadiens 2-2 leading up to tonight’s Game 5 at Mellon Arena. In the morning skate at the arena, the Penguins line combinations were as follows:
Kunitz-Crosby-Guerin
Talbot-Malkin-Dupuis
Cooke-Staal-Kennedy
Rupp-Letestu-Adams
This is very good news. Bill Guerin’s return puts Sidney Crosby back with his standard linemates who helped him tie for the Richard Trophy in the regular season. Ruslan Fedotenko and Alexei Ponikarovsky have been slumping lately so they’ve been benched and Evgeni Malkin has instead been teamed up with Maxime Talbot and Pascal Dupuis, who have been playing excellently in the playoffs. A player caught in a slump can be just as bad as having injuries on the team, so the Penguins’ depth really helps out here.
The third line which worked so well last year has been reunited – Jordan Staal at center with Matt Cooke and Tyler Kennedy as his wingers. When they’re all healthy, they are the best third line in the NHL. The fourth line is centered by Wilkes-Barre/Scranton AHL Penguin Mark Letestu, who may very well be promoted to the NHL permanently next year. Letestu has given his all on every shift, and he’ll be playing with Craig Adams who elevates his game in the playoffs and steady veteran Mike Rupp.
These are the lines we need for this critical Game 5. But we also need the Pens to play with desperation, as if this is an elimination game. That’s the way the Habs play every single game, especially since they proved themselves by defeating the number one seed in the NHL. If the Penguins play hard for 60 minutes, I have no doubt that they will win tonight’s game. If they relax at any point like they did for the first five minutes of the third period in Game 4, it’s anybody’s game.
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Today was just a bad day to be downtown. The Marathon runners got drenched, the folks in the Eucharistic Rosary March got drenched, and traffic was nightmarish due to those two events and the Pitt graduation AND the Penguins game ALL being held at the same time. And then this supposed bomb scare. What a mess.
Thanks to NBC, not only did the Penguins game have to be at 2PM instead of a normal 7PM time, but they also weren’t allowed to broadcast the game on the large TV outside Mellon Arena. Our local NBC affiliate is trying to blame this on the NHL, but it’s all about NBC not wanting to lose ratings due to a few thousand people going downtown to watch the game. FSN and Versus don’t have any problem showing the games outside the arena, so trying to blame the NHL is ridiculous.
Folks who went downtown to see the Pens contended with the weather, the Eucharistic Rosary March with Bishop Zubik which was started at Epiphany Catholic Church which is literally right across the street from Mellon Arena, the Marathon, and University of Pittsburgh traffic… and to make it a perfect day for them, the Penguins lost 3-1.
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