pawatercooler.com

By Peter Hall:

A trio of Bucks County residents backed by the county Republican committee say they have evidence linking Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy’s campaign to a scheme to flood the county voter registration office with fraudulent applications for absentee ballots.

In a petition filed Tuesday, county Republicans say the name of Murphy’s campaign manager appeared on a Bristol post office box where voters were urged in a series of letters paid for by the state Democratic Committee to send absentee ballot applications.

The county Republicans submitted with the petition a photograph of a note inside the mailbox that said, “Tim Percico and Paul Hampel only pick up mail.” Tim Persico is Murphy’s campaign manager, although his name is misspelled in the note. Hampel is a volunteer for the Democratic state committee who said he collects mail from the box.

While county and state Democratic officials denied involvement in the letter campaign or refused to discuss it, Persico said Tuesday that the “PA Vote 2010″ project that paid for the letters is a partnership between Murphy’s campaign and the state Democrats.

Read the whole thing here.

 Let’s get something straight this campaign season. There are no “un-decideds.”  Or at least there shouldn’t be.

If there are, they should be banned from voting. As Dean Wormer said in Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.”

And if you’re truly undecided, that’s exactly what you’re doing.

So for those wannabes who think it’s desirable and politically correct to seem overly “deliberative” during a poll, do us all a favor: pick a side.

The choices have never been clearer.

*****

The role of a columnist is not to endorse candidates; that’s best left to the editorial pages.

However, it bears asking how people could actually vote for some of the candidates running this fall — assuming those voters acknowledge that the country is in an extremely perilous position.

That in mind, it defies common sense to support people who are, for the most part, the very ones responsible for the current economic calamity. It’s akin to rewarding the man who just burglarized your house.

While the Democrats are in power, and therefore will suffer the greatest losses next Tuesday, Republicans are by no means immune. 

Consider:

-Soon-to-be former Congressman Mike Castle lost his bid for U.S. Senate against the controversial Christine O’Donnell.

Was he better suited to win the general election?  The universal answer is yes, but Delawarians were at their wits end with Castle, who had been a fixture in elected office for nearly half-a-century.  The mentality was simple: despite O’Donnell’s baggage, she had fresh ideas and wasn’t part of the Establishment that gave us this severe recession. And while Chris Coons many not be the answer, voters may give him the benefit of the doubt that he too will be a fresh face in Washington.

-Philadelphia Republican State Representative John Perzel finds himself in the race of his life, despite the massive GOP wave sweeping America.  Sure, the fact that he’s been indicted in Attorney General Tom Corbett’s Bonusgate legislative corruption probe doesn’t help matters, but Perzel’s problems are much more basic.  He was Speaker of the House for years, and, despite the immense power of that position, Pennsylvania continued its downward….

Read the rest and post a comment on Philly Mag’s Philly Post:

http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2010/10/26/hey-undecideds-stop-being-pc-and-pick-a-side/

Chris Freind is an independent columnist, television commentator, and investigative reporter who operates his own news bureau, www.FreindlyFireZone.com

Readers of his column, “Freindly Fire,” hail from six continents, thirty countries and all fifty states. His work has been referenced in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, foreign newspapers, and in Dick Morris’ recent bestseller “Catastrophe.”

Freind, whose column appears nationally in Newsmax, also serves as a guest commentator on Philadelphia-area talk radio shows, and makes numerous other television and radio appearances, most notably on FOX.  He can be reached at CF@FreindlyFireZone.com

From the Reading Eagle:

Congressman Tim Holden has suspended his re-election campaign to be with his gravely ill mother.

According to Holden’s campaign manager, Eric Nagy, the congressman’s mother, Catherine, is under hospice care at her home.

Holden, a Democrat, represents the 17th Congressional District, which includes part of Berks County.

He is running against Republican state Sen. David G. Argall.

Holden’s upcoming events will be either postponed or canceled.

Read it here.

I don’t know how this is going to affect the race. Argall has been lagging far behind Holden and the Susquehanna Poll taken back on Oct 21st had Holden 30 p0ints ahead. Argall is only polling 28%, mostly because nobody knows who he is. The national repubs have pretty much given up on Argall, but this might attract their attention.

Check ‘em all out.

CBS3.com

Vice President Joseph Biden has been forced to move a scheduled Wednesday appearance for a Democratic congressional candidate to a new location after being turned away by Radnor High School.
And the snub has sparked a political controversy.

VP Biden will be holding a rally for Bryan Lentz, a Pennsylvania state representative running for Congress against Republican Pat Meehan

The school board killed the event on Monday evening. It was too partisan for their tastes.

They did, however, find an alternate location.

Rumors that the local Starbucks was considered aren’t true. But it is true that they would have had plenty of room inside.

If you are in the mood for a break from the relentlessly political chatter of the season, check out these pictures of the paradise that is Pennsylvania in the Fall.

A kettle of vultures over Port Clinton.

Farm in Lancaster County with the full moon rising.

The distant ridge in the middle of this picture is “Pinnacle”, the highest point in Berks County.

Black vultures roosting at the South Lookout on Hawk Mountain.

Huffington Post….

At the heart of matter is the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA). Pia Varma, who was recruited to run for a House seat there, recently wrote about it in her new book Brotherly Love – A Cautionary Tale of Naivete, Deceit, and Corruption and detailed the wink-wink inner dealings of how her own party makes deals with the Democrats in order to keep what she refers to as “patronage jobs.”

Doling out the jobs is a coordinated effort between former Philadelphia GOP Chair Vito Canuso, City GOP Legal Council (but the de facto City GOP Party Boss) – Michael Meehan, and incumbent member of Congress Bob Brady. Everyone gets their slice.

Of course, these men are far from becoming anything like jailed Philly mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo. However, they sure have a very brazen, and cozy relationship of convenience to keep things the way they are, and can affect things with an environment of little or no competition, but tons of cooperation. Why wouldn’t they…

According to Varma’s book, Michael Meehan’s old law firm earned over $1.3 million in legal fees from no-bid contracts from the PPA during 2005 – 2009. During that time Michael Meehan was also the legal council for the Republican City Committee. Now that’s tribute!

…. and of course, there’s more.

Here’s the video Dale….

I thought maybe I was the only one who noticed it.

“I tell people, as I go around, I can remember sitting there on the ground in Afghanistan for a very short mission, and it was short. There was a farmhouse late at night, a couple of Navy Seals, 2 a.m. in the morning looking out, no roof, broken windows,” Sestak said, taking small steps forward, backward and sideways as he talked.

“You look outside, and a little bit of repair, and we wouldn’t have to be here. You go around the streets, and you do a little bit of healing, and America has all the opportunity it needs for us to be great. And that’s what this race is about,” he said.

Sestak’s rambling near-incoherence – he told the volunteers he was at his tenth event of the day (it was his fifth) – is likely due at least in part to the frenetic pace he is keeping in the campaign’s final week. He knows the only way he can beat Republican Pat Toomey is to somehow rouse the hundreds of thousands of Democrat voters in the city of Brotherly Love to go to the polls on Nov. 2.

From Breitbart:

Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA), Chariman of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, was on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell this morning.  He was explaining how the Philadelphia machine was working to ensure Joe Sestak’s victory in the closely watched Senate race in Pennsylvania. Ms Mitchell asked, “What is the secret here to turn out? In the old days, the old machine days, what we called ‘walking around money,’ handing out money to get people to vote. Is it still the case? What do you do, what is the magic in Philadelphia?”

Rep. Brady (who looks and sounds like he came right out of central casting for the part of shady, party boss) shockingly acknowledged that the cash-on-the-streets strategy is not an antiquity but still part of the Democratic Machine’s playbook in 2010: “We still have the street money and we’re very knowledgeable,” he said.

Can’t get much clearer or brazen than that.

Read it here.