If you didn't hear Slick Rick Santorum's interview with P.J. Maloney over KQV (1410), you missed a real treat. (Well, perhaps not if you're a Republican.)
Maloney keeps his cool while the junior senator from Penn Hills, Virginia, blows a gasket. The audio (apparently captured from the station's webstream) is currently making the rounds on the Internets.
(The fact that Santorum accuses Maloney of "being on (Casey's) side" is a hoot, if you realize that noted leftist Richard Mellon Scaife owns 51 percent of KQV. Curse you, liberal media!)
Last week, the Post-Gazette blasted Sen. Torquemada in an editorial that was rare by that newspaper's standards for both its vitriol and because it actually made a point:
Mr. Casey described Sen. Santorum's claims as "weird" and "bizarre." Actually, they are beyond weird and raise serious questions about the senator's ethics that go beyond the residency question. In a letter to Mr. Casey, he speaks of his "outrage" regarding the actions of the Casey campaign "which have put our six young children at a serious safety risk."
Though that suggestion is far-fetched to the point of absurdity, it would be a potential source of fear only if the senator actually lived in Penn Hills, but -- let us repeat one last time -- the Santorum family is at no risk because he doesn't live here anymore and the family is in Virginia most of the time. So what we have is the senator making untrue and outrageous comments while seeking to hide behind his wife and kids in order to get around an inconvenient fact.
Last summer, when I returned from Florida, it became clear that my refrigerator was dying. The poor old Frigidaire would chug along endlessly until dragging its inside temperature down to a balmy 45 degrees, at which point its compressor would stop, exhausted, with a cough.
My regular repairman came out and told me it should be put down, but volunteered to tinker a little bit, and see if we could get a few more months together. Well, glory hallelujah, perhaps knowing that the end was near, the refrigerator rallied.
Sure, some people say it's because the humidity went down; others say that the minor adjustments the repairman made helped the compressor eek out a few more BTUs; but I know the real answer --- the refrigerator just didn't want to give up. It was going to fight.
But the time comes when all good refrigerators must finally surrender to their fates, and last week, I noticed with mounting horror that things inside the fridge were becoming decidedly un-refrigerated again. The milk was spoiling; the lettuce wilting.
And so, with great reluctance, born of infinite sorrow, deep guilt, and the sadness that comes with the thought of making payments for the next 12 months, I arranged to have a certain large department store chain deliver a new icebox.
Naturally, they can only promise that it will arrive "sometime Tuesday." Morning? Afternoon? Evening? They're not sure.
In any event, on Tuesday, I get to take a day off of work and wait for the new fridge to be delivered.
Oh, I'm sure there will be some tears shed (especially as I write the first check) when the old refrigerator goes away to that big kitchen in the sky. Sure, I'll tell the old refrigerator about Appliance Heaven, where newly departed Samsungs and Kenmores meet the Philcos and Kelvinators and Coldspots that went before them. I hope that comforts the Frigidaire in its final hours.
Myself, I'll take comfort from the fact that I can finally bring a damned frozen pizza home and ensure that it will stay frozen --- unlike the one that I cooked the other day, only to learn, to my utter disgust, that it had apparently defrosted, spoiled, and then refrozen at some point in the past.
If there's anything that smells worse than spoiled pizza cheese that's been heated up to 350 degrees, I don't want to know.
I mean, seriously: You didn't really think that I was getting all misty-eyed over this piece-of-junk refrigerator, did you? I'm liable to kick it a few times before they roll it out the door.
Well, OK, the stuff about me weeping every time I write the checks --- that is true. In fact, even as I write this, I feel a little pain in my wallet.
(Sniff.) Excuse me, I need just a minute.
. . .
I'm better now. In purchasing the new fridge, I ran head-first into a new trend I hadn't heard about --- larger appliances. According to the Wall Street Journal, more and more Americans, apparently unsatisfied with driving giant SUVs and using most of the world's energy, are now demanding restaurant-style appliances in the kitchens of their 14-bedroom McMansions:
The bigger-is-better trend is being driven in part by high-end manufacturers that are looking for a new way to distinguish themselves, especially since the commercial look --- such as stainless-steel finishes and double-door refrigerators --- has already trickled down into less-expensive brands. Gigantic refrigerators are riding the “Costco effect,” or people’s desire for more space to store the items they buy in bulk.
I keep hearing commercials that say that Memorial Day is "the official start of summer."
No, consarn it, it isn't. It may be the "unofficial" start of summer, but the official start of summer is, was, and always will be June 20 (the first complete day of summer is June 21).
No wonder children are getting such poor educations --- they're being made functionally illiterate by boneheaded advertising copywriters. (And rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?)
Memorial Day, of course, commemorates the sacrifices of our brave men and women to defend our right to a three-day holiday and zero percent financing on a Chevrolet. Or at least that's what you'd think the holiday means. It's not just "the official start of summer" (he said, grinding his teeth).
In fact, you can read about the history of Memorial Day, which was originally called "Decoration Day."
Believe it or not, legend has it that the holiday was created not far from here --- in Boalsburg, Centre County, near present-day State College. The story goes that in October 1864, the mother of a soldier who had been killed at Gettysburg went to the cemetery to decorate her son's grave. There, she met another mother who was doing the same thing.
They resolved to hold a community-wide observance the following year on July 4, and response was overwhelming. According to the legend, the custom spread from there.
Most others credit Gen. John A. Logan, commander of the Union Army, with creating the holiday in 1868 when he issued an order directing soldiers' graves to be decorated at Arlington National Cemetery every May 30.
The custom spread across the country during the 1870s, and by 1890, all of the Northern states were commemorating the deaths of soldiers, sailors and marines on Decoration Day --- the South, naturally, refused to participate in a holiday to honor Yankee scoundrels.
So, that's what Memorial Day is supposed to mean. It's not just a day off, nor is it rightly a holiday for all veterans (that's what Nov. 11 is for), or even a holiday for all people who have died.
I could write more, but as with so many things, Johnny Cash said it better, and certainly with more eloquence and power than I could ever muster.
So now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go clobber the guy in my neighborhood who keeps shooting off fireworks. The "official start of summer" stuff is bad enough, but fireworks?
For crying out loud, that's Independence Day, you blockhead. Next he'll be hanging Christmas lights and trick-or-treating.
. . .
In other business, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, to the Angry Drunk Bureaucrat for telling it like it is about the Mon-Fayette Expressway (or as he calls it, the "Mo-Fo Excessway").
I've written about this before. The Mo-Fo is too much, too late, and it's already wrecking communities like Braddock, where property owners refuse to repair or develop their real estate --- they're waiting for the magical Turnpike money to come through.
Some money quotes from the ADB:
I'm not interested in creating a "Cranberry South" that will detract much needed revenue and resources from communities that need them more. I do not believe that the State and Local Governments should be active participants in facilitating sprawl or unsustainable development.
OK, the primary reason, or so I've been told, that the Mon-Fayette has to be built is that so many of the old, disused mill sites could be more readily used if they had better access to transportation, i.e., tractor trailers are necessary to access any light industrial sites that could be developed. That's a fair assessment, and it could have been much more useful in, say, 1970 ... however, that does not preclude an expansion or reengineering of existing roads and highways to better accommodate these transportation and shipping needs.
If your big concern is the flow of commuters from the Steel Valley to Downtown Pittsburgh, you could always regulate the flow by installing some sort of Light Rail or mass transportation system along the existing CSX lines... although, I suppose that that would pose problems of its own... but it beats the hell out of the North Shore Connector!
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