Category: default || By jt3y

I have mixed emotions about the decision by the McKeesport Zoning Hearing Board has granted a variance to Propel Schools to put a charter school in the Executive Building on Fifth Avenue, Downtown.

On the one hand, I'm glad to see something coming to Fifth Avenue that will bring some life to the Downtown area. Will this be the first primary school Downtown in Our Fair City since St. Mary School on Olive Street closed, or am I missing one? Fifth Avenue may be a ghost street some days, but it's not dirty, and it's not dangerous. It just desperately needs some young people --- and their parents --- to liven it up.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I agree with the concept of charter schools. I fear they divert resources and energy from the public school system that would be better spent improving that system. (As a product of parochial schools, I have nothing against private schools; I just don't want my tax money being spent on them, and that includes Catholic schools like the ones I attended.)

Anyway, you can find out more information, and judge for yourself, by visiting Propel Schools' Web site. The McKeesport Area School Board rejected Propel's charter application, so they've appealed to the state. Pending a successful appeal, Propel wants to open its school Downtown in time for the 2005-06 academic year.

Propel's school in Homestead is already open, and early reports on it are enthusiastic. I'm open-minded enough to give them a chance.

...

I'm also open-minded enough to like Cyril Wecht. In fact, I would go so far as to call myself an admirer, even when he does things that aggravate me, like endorsing a Republican candidate over someone from his own party, as he did the other day. (It's a pity, too, because the one thing Joe Hoeffel's Senate campaign needs right now is a coroner. The latest polls show him nearly 20 points behind Darlin' Arlen Specter.)

Thus, it was nice to see him grab some ink in Salon the other day in an article about the 40th anniversary of the so-called Warren Report. Salon Editor David Talbot calls Wecht one of "a heroic and indomitable band of citizen-investigators ... all of whom refused to accept the fraud that was perpetrated on the American people."

Naturally, Talbot means the Warren Report is a "fraud." Being the geek that I am, I've read the Warren Report. I even have a copy.

I've also read Wecht's books, some of the conspiracy books and Gerald Posner's Case Closed (which Talbot savages, unfairly, in my opinion), and I've seen a bunch of documentaries as well as highly-fictionalized accounts, like Oliver Stone's JFK.

My uninformed opinion is that the Warren Commission set out to prove Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK, instead of trying to find out who shot JFK. They had their conclusion, and worked backward to the answers. It's not a good way to conduct an investigation, to put it mildly.

That said: The evidence compiled in the Warren Report is fairly compelling, and one is left with the feeling that, yeah, Lee Harvey Oswald was just crazy enough to do it. John Hinckley shot Reagan with much less provocation that Oswald thought he had. And besides the motive, Oswald had the means and opportunity. (The idea that Oswald couldn't work the slide on his Mannlicher-Carcano fast enough to fire the shots is bogus, by the way. It's advanced by people who can't do math.)

Could he have hit Kennedy from the School Book Depository? As someone pointed out to me the other day, Oswald "may not have been a great shot compared to other Marines, but compared to the average guy, he was pretty good."

Look, he had to hit a slow-moving Lincoln Continental using a military rifle with a telescopic sight. From that distance, he could have hit Kennedy and Connally with a handful of manure. The only way they could have made it easier for Oswald would have been if Clint Hill had been holding up a big bull's eye over Kennedy's head.

Was the Dallas police investigation incompetent? Well, considering they passed the evidence around the hallways so that the bystanders could handle it, and that, oh, oopsie, their prime suspect got murdered while in their custody, I think we could reasonably say they were incompetent.

Did the Warren Commission try to bury conflicting evidence? Yes.

Was the Secret Service derelict in allowing the President to travel through a city full of people who hated him, past the skyscrapers downtown, in an open car moving at 10 miles per hour? Gee, I dunno, you think? In fairness, though, it was Kennedy's political advisers who pushed for a trip through Texas, and they're the ones who wanted the car's top down, so that the public could see him.

But the people who produce posters with 78 different photos of Lee Harvey Oswald with circles and arrows pointing to tiny, minute imperfections to prove a conspiracy are the same ones trying to prove that Jerry Killian, using a professional-quality typesetter, snuck into his own office, late at night, and typed memos to himself that, when faxed to CBS from a Kinko's in Abilene 31 years later, could conveniently be used to discredit George W. Bush.

They need to give it up. Conspiracy theories do not help the national dialogue move forward. The very fact that we're still hashing around the Warren Report, or the President's National Guard service, means we're stuck in the past instead of focusing on future threats.

...

Besides, we don't need to make up conspiracy theories. The real news is bad enough. While the Bush administration is running around "painting smiley faces on Iraq," to use a phrase I saw a conservative writer use recently, military experts are warning that the occupation of the country is turning into a debacle --- and is helping al Qaida.

These wild-eyed leftists are from hotbeds of liberal thought like the Army War College.

...

From the Los Angeles Times:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld mixed up Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein twice in a speech Friday. ... In Afghanistan, he told the National Press Club, "the leader of the opposition Northern Alliance, Masoud, lay dead, his murder ordered by Saddam Hussein, by Osama bin Laden, Taliban's co-conspirator." ... Later, Rumsfeld said, "Saddam Hussein, if he's alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to not get caught. And we've not seen him on a video since 2001."

It could have been worse. I mean, he could have said, "You know, all those swarthy Arab guys look alike to me."

...

A Tube City Almanac correspondent asks when, exactly, former George W. Bush rival John McCain became such an apologist for his old nemesis's political campaign. My only conclusion is that McCain's re-election campaign in Arizona is tighter than it looks, or that he's worried that if his support of the President is viewed as weak, that he'll be targeted with a smear campaign by Republicans in that state.

Or, it's possible that McCain was brainwashed while he was a prisoner of war, just as the whisper campaign that was started against him in 2000 alleged. Maybe he's actually the Manchurian Candidate, and Barbara Bush must have shown McCain the queen of diamonds, which triggered his subconscious impulse to become a Bush water carrier.

But I think it's actually the re-election thing, even though McCain's challenger, a public schoolteacher named Stuart Starky, has been given about as much chance in Arizona as a snowball in ... well, in Arizona.

...

I used to like President Bush the Elder, even if I thought he was kind of out of touch ... like Fred MacMurray in My Three Sons.

But when I read things like these anecdotes, I start to wonder if he's not a cynical, frustrated conniver ... like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. (Tip of the hard hat to Jonathan.)

...

Alert Reader Arden sends along this link to an article in Seattle's alt-weekly, The Stranger, in which writer Neal Pollack calmly expresses a few thoughts that may be on the minds of many Democrats:

A note to the leadership of the Democratic Party: Wake the f--- up, you pathetic wuss-bags! They're kicking your a--!

You disagree? You think you're "talking tough?" Here's a quote from your candidate, John Kerry, drawn from his "tough-talking" midnight rally after the RNC: "I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq."

Good lord, by the standards of this year's Bush campaign, Kerry's statement was equivalent to "Bush is a great president and a vote for him wouldn't be wasted." ...

Democrats had better realize that people buy this s---. While they're saying that President Bush has failed to "provide jobs and healthcare to working Americans," the Republicans are saying that Kerry faked his war wounds. Sorry to burst your bubble, readers of The Nation, but Americans respond to lies, and the more vicious the lie, the more effective.

Gee, Neal, what are you trying to say? Tell us what you really think, don't beat around the bush. (Or the Bush, as the case may be.)

...

To Do This Weekend: White Oak Lions' Club presents "Kids' Day America" at the municipal building on Lincoln Way, from 12 to 3 p.m. Saturday. There will be free fingerprinting and scoliosis screenings, along with presentations on bike safety and crime prevention. Children can also explore a fire engine and meet firefighters. Co-sponsors include Rainbow Volunteer Fire Department and the White Oak police. Call 412-751-4991.