I’m still reeling.
Here’s the definition of “reeling” I’m thinking of, courtesy Dictionary.com: “A staggering, swaying, or whirling movement.”
The Pittsburgh Penguins won game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. It was an unbelievable game.
If you missed it, you missed some of the most exciting moments in the history of hockey.
These kids can play — and play they did.
Hats off to Sidney Crosby and the entire Pittsburgh Penguins team.
This was an electric night.
The Pittsburgh Channel sent a newsflash indicating that Senator Edward Kennedy was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital after falling ill at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. Kennedy, 76, spent two hours in the emergency room before being transported via MedFlight helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
CNN reported Kennedy had symptoms consistent with a stroke.
Kennedy maintains a vigorous schedule. According to he web site, yesterday he was keynote speaker at a ribbon cutting ceremony at New Bedford Whaling National Park:
BOSTON, MA- Senator Edward M. Kennedy today joined Congressman Barney Frank, Dennis Reidenbach, the Director of the National Park Service for the Northeast Region, Lisa Sughrue of the Waterfront Historic Area League (WHALE), State Senator Mark C. Montigny and State Representative Antonio F. D. Cabral at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the newly named Corson Maritime Learning Center in New Bedford. The event celebrated the successful preservation of the Corson Building after a fire destroyed it in 1997, as well as the reopening of the structure that now holds new exhibits, theaters, and educational and archival space as part of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park.
Senator Kennedy said, “Today, we celebrate New Bedford’s history and reaffirm our commitment to build on the great legacy of those who came before us such as, Herman Melville and Frederick Douglass to build a strong future for this unique city, a city that Melville called the ‘dearest place to live in, in all New England.’”
Senator Kennedy and Congressman Frank have secured $6.4 million in appropriations through the United States Department of Interior for the renovation of this historic building. For more information on the Corson Building and the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, please visit www.nps.gov/nebe/.
His remarks for the event as prepared for delivery follow:
A little less than two years ago, we broke ground for this extraordinary facility, and today we can see that it was easily worth all the effort that so many put into this impressive project.
When this National Park was created over a decade ago, thanks to the vision and hard work of Tony Souza and WHALE, we knew it would be a success. But we had no idea how much it would actually add to the fabric of our city and to all the wonderful things going on in downtown New Bedford.
We could barely imagine how well the Park would work with the Whaling Museum, the new ferry service to the Vineyard, the AHA! arts programs, the College of Visual and Performing Arts at the renovated Star Store, and the revitalized shops and restaurants to bring people downtown and add to our city’s vitality.
In little more than a decade, because of all your outstanding work, the Whaling National Historic Park has set a shining example for cities across the country – an example of the power of historic preservation and the importance of cultural awareness and education bringing the community together and promoting economic development.
What you have all built here will ensure that generations to come will learn about New Bedford’s remarkable history and enduring spirit. Needless to say, we also owe thanks to the National Park Service and its staff who have worked so hard and well with our community to make this new vision a reality.
I especially commend the Piva and Florek family members who have worked with all of us to turn the tragedy of the fire that ravaged the historic Corson building in 1997 into an opportunity to build an enduring new home for the National Park, and create this impressive learning center we’re opening here today. It would not have been possible without you.
Today, we celebrate New Bedford’s history and reaffirm our commitment to build on the great legacy of those who came before us such as, Herman Melville and Frederick Douglass to build a strong future for this unique city, a city that Melville called the “dearest place to live in, in all New England.”
We’re also blessed to have had such a strong group of committed civic leaders supporting us led by our great Mayor Scott Lang. We’re proud of New Bedford and its amazing history, and we’re sure that our Whaling City’s greatest days still lie ahead.
So, I thank all of you for the impressive job you’ve done. Congratulations on this major accomplishment, and I look forward very much to our work together in the years to come.
Gays and lesbians will soon have the irrefutable right to marry. It’s inevitable. Even John Roberts’ Supremes won’t be able to stop it as a matter of law.
Today California’s Supreme Court ruled that state laws prohibiting the recognition of same-sex marriages violate state constitutional rights of gay people. The 4-3 opinion came from three Republican and one Democratic appointee.
According to Lisa Keen at the Windy City Times:
The legal issue before the court was whether state laws banning the legal recognition of same-sex marriages in California violate the state constitution’s guarantees of equal protection, freedom of expression, right to privacy or the fundamental right to marry. The laws banned both the licensing of same-sex marriage in California and the recognition of same-sex marriages licensed elsewhere.
The 172 page opinion comes in a case that consolidated six appeals. The court acknowledged the magnitude of the present moment:
We are in the midst of a major social change. Societies seldom make such changes smoothly. For some the process is frustratingly slow. For others it is jarringly fast. In a democracy, the people should be given a fair chance to set the pace of change without judicial interference. That is the way democracies work. Ideas are proposed, debated, tested. Often new ideas are initially resisted, only to be ultimately embraced. But when ideas are imposed, opposition hardens and progress may be hampered.
We should allow the significant achievements embodied in the domestic partnership statutes to continue to take root. If there is to be a new understanding of the meaning of marriage in California, it should develop among the people of our state and find its expression at the ballot box.
Same-sex marriage is as inevitable as the next network broadcast of The Wizard of Oz.
We’re not in Kansas any more.
According to Ilya Sheyman at TrueMajority.org, the U.S. House of Representatives has just voted 149 to 141 to cut off funding for the war in Iraq. According to Sheyman, “This was followed by votes to put significant restrictions on President Bush’s war policy, including a timeline for withdrawal, and creating a new GI Bill to help returning veterans.”
Sources listed are:
I have no more right now, and will update as more information becomes available.
The alerts just started pouring in from the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and others:
John Edwards will endorse Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination tonight at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign said.
This is tremendous news for the Democrats, and should seal the deal for Obama.
With one grand jury investigation currently investigating the use of Country Club Hills firefighters to demolish a pool house at the home of Mayor Dwight Welch, the Sun-Times reports Mayor Welch continues to turn his nose up at the taxpayers of Country Club Hills with a $27,000 weekend training seminar for “some aldermen, department heads and city employees.” The seminar was held at the The Abbey Resort, billed as “Only Full Service Resort And Spa On The Shores Of Lake Geneva [sic],” according to their Internet ads.
$27,000.
Welch defended the expense.
“That was the deal, $27,000. We [rented] a room for [each] person. If they were married, they could bring their husband or wife. That’s like it is on any convention. . . . It’s not like we were going to some exotic place,” Welch said.
The seminar was conducted by Dr. Paul Craig, according to the Sun-Times. Craig is “a senior fellow in the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs in Champaign.”
Country Club Hills spent $1,447.50 to bring Craig along, “$1,000 for the seminar, $187.50 in travel expenses, $60 for meals and $200 for lodging.”
That leaves $25,552.50 for the remaining members who attended.
I know Dr. Craig. He’s worth every penny they spent on him and more. If anyone can help a politician find his soul, it’s Dr. Craig. He’s extremely well-read, perceptive, and, most of all, ethical.
But the student needs to be open to the lesson.
Look, this just all smells bad.
When the news about the demolition of the pool house first came to light, one Country Club Hills resident, Robert Darnell, expressed his support for Mayor Welch, “Mayor Welch has done such a good job, I can not say anything bad about him,” Darnell, 73, said.
That’s admirable. Not everyone was so impressed:
One 67-year-old woman, a 20-year resident, said Welch “gets all kinds of perks,” and joked that firefighters “can paint my deck and back porch. I can’t tell you my name. If I did, they’d be out tomorrow, tearing down my garage,” she said.
What are residents saying now? Is a weekend at a luxury hotel and resort acceptable to the taxpayers of Country Club Hills?
Too often, public officials start to believe they’re royalty, pampering themselves, spending taxpayer dollars as if it was their own.
$27,000 for a weekend away? Did they really need to go to Wisconsin, to a luxury resort?
Nero wouldn’t bat an eye.
The stage is set for tomorrow’s primary elections in Indiana and North Carolina. 218 delegates are up for grabs: 84 in Indiana and 134 in North Carolina.
If any Democrats are undecided, listen: It’s gotta be Obama. Here’s why.
First, let me be clear. If Hillary Clinton somehow wins the nomination, I will fight for her as if the future of the world depended on it. But if anyone in North Carolina or the Hoosier state has any doubts, go with Obama.
Don’t worry about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. We all have a crazy uncle in our families. I had the highest respect for Rev. Wright until last week. The National Press Club appearance was unnecessary and narcissistic. He says he’s not a politician but a pastor. I don’t buy it. He’s sounding more and more like a politician attempting late night comedy — and that’s never a good thing.
Forget the Reverend. No matter who wins the nomination for the Democrats, we’re going to find a lot more people they know or knew who occasionally went off the deep end. And we’ll find the same for John McCain. Remember, John McCain’s wife Cindy has already been outed for drug addiction, and steeling the drugs from her own nonprofit medical organization.
Oh, my.
Look, we need Barack Obama. Hillary is wonderful, but she’s running on a 90s redux platform, and that’s not good enough for the primaries. Yes, Bill was wonderful back then, but his time has passed.
I’m not endorsing change for the sake of change. I’ve had the pleasure of talking to Barack Obama on a few occasions, and I am convinced he’s the best candidate for President of the United States. Lock it up now, and we can spend the next six months convincing rest of America that Barack Obama will help us rediscover what it means to be an American after 8 years of the Bush Administration throwing America in the mud.
It’s gotta be Obama. It’s time for change. It’s time for Barack.
(Photo: Barack Obama at the Rialto Theater in Joliet, IL, courtesy eNews Park Forest)
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a heartwarming story about an 85-year-old woman who came to vote on a stretcher, right after a dialysis treatment. Perhaps we should somehow be more understanding because of her age, but this is what Mary Hilferty told reporters:
“I’m here for Hillary, and I hope everyone else is, too. There are some black people who are ready to be president, but [Illinois Sen. Barack Obama] is not one of them. [New York Sen. Hillary Clinton] has made some goofy mistakes, but she’s a woman and she thinks like a lady.”
Evidently thinking like a lady entails making a decision as to whether one of those “black people” is ready to be president.
Take a trip to Pittsburgh, sometime. It is still very, very segregated. Century III Mall in West Mifflin is a haven for white people. Eat’nPark on Clairton Blvd. just up the street from the mall is whiter than white.
How much was race a factor in Pennsylvania?
It was huge.
The alerts are already arriving. Hillary Clinton has won Pennsylvania. The victory is not an overwhelming, but it is sound. Unofficial AP numbers at 9:51 p.m. ET show Clinton leading 55 to 45 percent. This trend among Republicans was reported by the Boston Globe last month:
Spurred by conservative talk radio, GOP voters who say they would never back Clinton in a general election are voting for her now for strategic reasons: Some want to prolong her bitter nomination battle with Barack Obama, others believe she would be easier to beat than Obama in the fall, or they simply want to register objections to Obama.
There are numerous reports of Republicans crossing party lines in Pennsylvania, a process which is a bit more involved in the Keystone state. Republicans must officially changing registration to the Democratic Party to take a Democratic ballot in the primary.
Democratic superdelegates need to keep this in mind as we get closer to the convention. These numbers are significant and warrant consideration. According to the Boston Globe, “About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.”
Sources in Pittsburgh report watching media interviews with PA Republicans letting everyone in on the game plan.
How many Republicans changed parties in Pennsylvania for the primary? We’ll learn that soon. But I would certainly not award Senator Clinton the nomination based on the wishes of Republicans.
Yes, senator, you could’ve handled this one better.
I know Obama did not intend to insult anyone in Pennsylvania, but he played right into the hands of those who parse words for their own benefit.
I grew up in Pittsburgh, and Barack is right. It was hard as hell watching the steel mills close. When I was young, we would watch the workers pour slag on the next mountain over from the top of our street. The glow of the molten stone as it slid down the hillside somehow added to the heat of summer, even though we were a few miles away.
Barack was right. Some people in Pennsylvania are bitter. They did not see the middle class prosperity of the 90s. Instead, they did fall through the cracks. While the riverfront in Homestead may be thriving, there are many Homestead residents who did not get the new jobs.
The senator from Illinois is right. Dead on. People do cling to God and guns when all else is lost. That is not a slam at religion or the first amendment, nor is it “elitist”, as the senator from New York insists. While many in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh might be better off, there are plenty of people in the center of the state who never saw the prosperity of the 90s, and they’re hurting now. They’re especially hurting as gas prices approach $4.00 a gallon.
Something has to give, eventually. Senator John “McBush” McCain will ruin this country if he wins. We cannot win Iraq, especially since no one knows what “winning” entails, exactly. We need to leave, and allow Iraq to move in whatever direction the people there wish it to move. As Dahr Jamail says, “Many Iraqis have come to believe that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is just as much a dictator as Saddam Hussein was.”
We’ve won nothing, and the people of Pennsylvania will be paying over $4.00 a gallon for gas soon enough.
Look, Obama was right. Quit the silliness and stop with the election rhetoric.
Here’s what Obama said. Please read all of it:
Obama in context
Here is the larger context of Obama’s comments as reported on the Huffington Post web site. Please read it all:
“The places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people are most cynical about government … everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the Black guy.’ … There were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today — kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.
“In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism,” Obama said to laughter.
“So the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? … we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — to close tax loopholes … roll back the tax cuts for the top on perent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to uh middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide healthcare for every American.
“Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
“Now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical.”
He’s not being elitist. He’s being honest. People in Pennsylvania are hurting. Twist that any way you wish. It’s the truth.