Tube City Almanac

April 15, 2005

What, No Screaming?

Category: default || By jt3y

From the Tube City Almanac National Affairs Desk, well, there goes that wacky, zany Howard Dean again! Hoo, hoo, hoo, wait 'til you read his latest crazy, outrageous comments in USA Today:

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean says his party needs to do more to appeal to voters who have been lost because of unease over "values," including people who oppose abortion and parents who are dismayed by TV programs they find offensive for their children.


"We need to be a national party, we need a national message, and we need to understand why people in dire economic straits --- people who certainly aren't being helped by Republican policies --- why they vote for George Bush," he said. "We need to respect voters in red states who want to vote for us, but we make it hard for them by not listening to what they have to say."


Ha, ha, ha, that screaming liberal goofball! That left-wing ... wait, what did he say?

What Democrats need to do now, Dean said, is recast the debate on issues including abortion and win back voters who might be drawn to the party for its stands on economic issues and health care.


Karl Rove, busy torturing rats with a hacksaw in the White House basement, just shuddered. "I sense a great disturbance in the force," he said.

Democrats get "caught" in defending abortion, he said. "Well, there's nobody who's pro-abortion, not Democratic or Republican. What we want to debate is who gets to choose: (House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay and the federal politicians? Or does a woman get to make up her own mind?"


He said the party also should encourage "pro-life Democrats" to run for office.


At the headquarters of Planned Parenthood, the phonograph needle just scraped across the record and a tray of glasses crashed to the floor.

What Dr. Dean is saying is that the Democratic Party needs to focus on winning elections, not placating its warring factions. Because in its desperation to build consensus, the Democratic Party for the past decade has stood for everything, and thus for nothing. Too many national Democratic leaders have walked around for years looking down their snoots at the great unwashed who vote Republican, which has left them feeling morally superior and utterly out of power.

And ... surprise! ... Dean isn't focusing on the thoroughly stupid idea, advanced by the (losing) Gore campaign team and the (losing) Kerry campaign team that Democrats can some how ignore the South and Midwest:

Dean promised to do more to bolster state parties, including in places where Democrats haven't fared well lately. He announced grants totaling $465,000 for state organizations in Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota and West Virginia --- all Bush states.


If this means that the Democratic Party is finally going to be wrenched from the professional New York, L.A. and D.C. handwringers, bellyachers and assorted other mushy-heads who have handed the reins of power to the Republicans on a silver platter, then I'm all for it.

Meanwhile, in local news stories you may have missed, there's word (via Brandy Brubaker in the News) of a major new shot-in-the-arm for the Mon-Yough area's economy:

Glassport soon will welcome a new and improved Rite Aid. The national drug store chain plans to move its Monongahela Avenue store to a vacant lot on the site of the former Copperweld office building and Johnny K's Lounge along Ninth Street.


Rite Aid will build a new store more than twice the size of the current location. Reportedly, only one store in Ohio is as large as the one planned for Glassport.


Wow. We used to be the steel capital of the world. Soon, we'll have the world's second-largest Rite Aid. (Not the largest, but after all, that would be gaudy, and we in the Mon Valley have always been known for our exquisite good taste.) Feel free to take the rest of the day off.

Down in Metropolitan Finleyville, rumors that a Wal-Mart is coming to town are hurting business at Trax Farms, writes Mary Niederberger in the Post-Gazette.

Since word got out last summer that a developer was planning to build a shopping center with a Wal-Mart on land south of Trax Farms, "rumors have been floating that we closed or that we sold the farm to Wal-Mart," said John Trax, retail manager for the farm market and one of 17 Trax family members who own the farm. ...


Salesmen who call on the farm said they also had heard that Trax had sold the property to Wal-Mart. Trax said the rumors became so rampant that he had trouble convincing employees that the farm was not going to be sold. "It's really hard to keep employees' morale up when they are hearing this all of the time," he said.


In Turtle Crick, there's an exceedingly nasty race for borough council, writes Bill Heltzel in the P-G. Some of the language is barely fit for print:

Incumbent Bob Mullooly said his late wife, Helen, persuaded him to run for council eight years ago. ... He bemoaned decisions to build the expressway through Turtle Creek and to keep the junior high school in town, but he said there isn't much that council can do about other government agencies.


"Every time something comes down the pike," he said, "we get the poopy end of the stick."


Good Lord! Watch your language, Councilman Mullooly. There are ladies and children present!

Finally, over in Irwin, Patti Dobranski writes in the Tribune-Review that borough council is preparing to pave Pennsylvania Avenue, also known as Old Center Highway: "'That street looks like the Ho Chi Minh trail ... and that's the gateway to our town. It's got to be done,' said Councilman Harry Neil."

Some how I think Harry Neil means the Burma Road and not the Ho Chi Minh trail, unless there are Viet Cong snipers hiding behind the Irwin Park Amphitheater that I'm not aware of. Maybe someone should call Berk's ... are they selling a lot of cone-shaped hats and black pajamas these days?

...

To Do This Weekend: The Downtown post office, Walnut Street at Ninth Avenue, will be open until 9 p.m. today for you last-minute tax filers. ... Book Country Clearing House, located in the old Potter-McCune warehouse at 3200 Walnut St. in Christy Park, hosts another book sale Saturday and Sunday. Call (412) 678-2400. ... McKeesport Little Theater, 1614 Coursin St., presents "A Bedfull of Foreigners," today and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Admission is $15 or $7 for students with ID. Call (412) 673-1100.






Your Comments are Welcome!

If you want to get technical about it, Gore won. I am not a conspiracy theorist; Kerry did not.
Derrick - April 15, 2005



Here is the key sentence (or a fragment of it):

...the Democratic Party needs to focus on winning elections…

That’s exactly what this is. A political game, nothing more. Not a change of heart. My favorite so far is Hillary Clinton’s half-hearted attempt at appeasing the pro-life people. Does ANYONE believe that for a nanosecond?

I hope she runs. Really, I do, just so I can have the pleasure of voting against her.

LKB

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L. Kah Bongh - April 15, 2005



Hillary may be a wonderful person, but if she runs for President, she’ll set the Democrats back 20 years. I suspect Walter Mondale’s campaign would look like a raging success compared to “Hillary-for-President.”

And if she some how won, it would finally be my cue to move to an offshore island somewhere.
Webmaster (URL) - April 16, 2005



Hmm.
Given the number of times I genuinely fantasized about cultivating expatriot status whenever any or all Bush(s) was/were elected president, one wonders what Hillary could POSSIBLY do to engender such disillusionment..
Perhaps one has a knee-jerk (reactionary?) sexist on one’s hands…......
heather - April 18, 2005



I resemble that remark.

The United States is long overdue for a woman president. We’re lagging far behind other countries in that regard —- Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel, to name a few. (Part of the problem is that we have too few women running for office in this country for governor and U.S. Senate, and we need to correct that.) But Hillary is not the right candidate; she carries too much baggage.

I also tend to doubt Hillary Clinton’s qualifications. (Not that the current President’s qualifications have been anything, but that’s an issue for another time.) If her name were Hillary Stokowski, she wouldn’t be a candidate. And I dislike the idea of American political “dynasties,” whether they be Bushes or Clintons or Kennedys.

In addition, I like the way the right-wing has splintered lately. There are few things that would unite the far-right and the right in more of a blinding rage than a Hillary Clinton presidency. I think the Republican campaign would make the attacks on John Kerry look like a Sunday tea-party, and that Hillary couldn’t win the general election.

Were she to win, we’d be in for four incredibly ugly years of right-wing hatemongering that would prevent a Hillary Clinton Administration from getting anything done.

I know you’re probably teasing, but I don’t think I’m being “knee-jerk” and “reactionary.” Anyway, I kind of like Hillary, because I think strong women are cool, and she has to be tough to have put up with some of the stuff she’s taken over the years.
Webmaster (URL) - April 18, 2005



Were she to win, we’d be in for four incredibly ugly years of left-wing dictatorship that would probably make the Patriot Act look like the Declaration of Independence.

I have no problem with a woman president. I do have a problem with Hillary becoming president. (Not enough to cultivate expatriate status, however.)
Ill K-Bonng - April 18, 2005



P.S.

Yo.
Ill K-Bonng - April 18, 2005



Look here, K-Bonng (you aren’t related to Ernie K-Doe, are you?), Hillary (and Bill neither) are hardly as left-wing as they’ve been made out to be. Compared to Tom DeLay, maybe.

Otherwise, I’d argue that Bill Clinton was closer politically to Nixon than to either of the Roosevelts. It was R.M.N., after all, who federalized the railroads, created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, imposed wage and price controls, etc., while Clinton deregulated broadcasting and created welfare-to-work.

In the meantime, mister, we could use a man like Hoiboit Hoover again. We didn’t need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight. Gee, our old LaSalle ran great!

UPDATE: CORRECTION, NOT PERFECTION: President Eisenhower established the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, not Nixon. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency.
Archie "Webmaster" Bunker (URL) - April 18, 2005



I think Clinton went whichever the way the wind blew.

(Insert your own “blew” one-liner here.)

Can’t shake the memory of his first few years with Hillary’s health-plan boondoggle and Joycelyn Elders proposing to teach children to, well, you know.

And, no, I don’t know Ernie K-Doe, but maybe I’ll sample him, when my new album comes out, on K-Tel. You’ll hear it on K-Rock.
Ill K-Bonng - April 19, 2005



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