Vonderheid is so concerned about keeping his job today that he can't see yesterday.--Casey Jones

That's it. Keep it up. Keep pushing for that home rule question that was so soundly trounced by the voters. And keep vilifying Vonderheid, so that when he finally takes office, we'll have the dolts with one hand on the newspaper and the other on the SAYSO hotline. Keep it up. Keep stoking that fire. One thing though, if home rule were to come to this county, even though we already voted against it, Vonderheid would keep his job anyway.

Check this snippet from Casey's column:

If the courts determine that the home rule question was not properly advertised, we'll be given a chance to vote again, to correct our mistake.

And there it is, we made a mistake. Every single time the supporters of home rule speak, their obvious disdain for the average voter slips out sooner or later. We were given the opportunity to vote correctly and we screwed it up again. Maybe we should no longer be trusted with the right to vote. Maybe the editorial board at the Leader should get together every four years and simply ordain the next county government. We wouldn't want us ignorant voters screwing things up again. The folks with the superior intellect, the media, can no longer count on us fickled voters to do the right thing as they have decreed it. Thanks Casey. I got the message. I'm stupid.

I found this to be somewhat interesting:

Wow! We know the Leader and the Voice have been waging their range war for over twenty years, now the Leader is hacking on WILK. Zing! Hang up? I was unaware that an answering machine could arbitrarily decide whether to accept an incoming message, or hang up on it. The difference between SAYSO and WILK is that when someone calls WILK and sounds stupid beyond belief, they find themselves being rebuffed. When a dolt calls SAYSO, they are free to ramble on unchallenged. Much like this:

If this started as a call to WILK, it would have ended right quick and we'd most certainly have to tolerate Kevin's annoying cackling immediately afterwards. Rightfully so. But as a call to SAYSO, this moronic bantering ends up published and later added to some dolts scrapbook.

So we can now add horse poop to the list of things Wilkes-Barre residents should be willing to remove from their streets? It's getting to the point where we're going to need a daily planner to keep track of our responsibilities. Monday: Clean gutters. Tuesday: Clean catch basins. Wednesday: Clean up what was dropped when the recyclables were picked up. Thursday: Pull back from the curb the cardboard that was scheduled to be picked up, but wasn't. Friday: Remove horse poop. Saturday: Volunteer to clean city parks. Sunday: Plan next week's freebies. You know, we might be able to get a grant to purchase a bucket to be carried in every residents trunk. This is the curbside pick-up capitol of the world, heyna? Yeah. Every third Wednesday: Horse poop pick-up.

Did anybody catch the typo in the Voice' Party Animals column?

I know what they meant to say, but this turned out perfect. What better way would there be to sum up the mayor's eight year run other than by saying NOT! Ya gotta love it. The luncheon will NOT! the mayor's two terms and birthday.

Isn't is completely lame to expect the general public to celebrate the mayor's birthday anyway? Should we use a personal day and buy him a gift? What would you buy for him? How about a one way ticket to obscurity?

Did anyone have a problem with the Voice story $53 million this morning? I did. It kind of reminded me of Bill Clinton's constant sniping of George Bush' administration. Who better to critique the current leader than someone who wishes they were the current leader?

Tom Leighton addressed the city's financial problems in a very honest way. Whether we like what he has to say or not, he's telling it like it is. We've got some major monetary hurdles to clear and he floated all of the options available to us as we rush towards 2004. The short version is we're broke, we're in serious debt, and we've got to deal with it now. Reorganization was mentioned. Possible layoffs have been mentioned. Tax increases are a possibility. Property reassessments may need to be done. And for the first time, Leighton mentioned distressed city status in public.

If I may take a brief aside here, I harken back to when mayor McTommy lashed out at his internet critics a ways back. What was it that he had to say to the press? Something like, 'Anybody can sit in their basement and type whatever they want?' Cute. What was it that his biggest internet critic kept pounding over and over at the time? Wasn't it "we're broke" and Act 47 awaits us? As it turned out, some of us basement dwellars knew what we were talking about all along, while mayor McClueless spent us into oblivion. Some of us do our homework. Some of us chase garbage trucks and snow plows.

Any-freaking-way, on to my problem with today's Voice story. We recently held an election and I thought that we chose Tom Leighton to lead this city into the future. As I made my way through that story this morning, it almost seemed as if we elected co-mayors. Tom Leighton said this, what say you Christine? Tom Leighton is leaning towards X, Y and Z. What does Christine think of that possible game plan? Tom Leighton might opt for this, that and the other thing, but Christine does not agree. Christine says she agrees with X, does not agree with Y, and would like to see M, and possibly S instituted. Who?

It's funny, I don't remember any reporters scurrying around to get Ed Soltis' opinion of Tom McGroarty's decisions. Mayor McTom wants to build A, B and C. Let's find out what Harry McCarthy thinks of that. It seems to me that if you shun gainful employment and become a full-time, professional gadfly, the press automatically elevates your opinion to some lofty status. The Wilkes-Barre Taxpayer Association, Christine's claim to fame, have been yammering on and on about the city's outstanding debt, pegged at $50 million-plus for years now. Today's story points out that $30 million of it was mandated by the state to prop up the city employees pensions. We all know that mayor McTom has screwed our finances up, but as long as the debt payments are being made, they really aren't a big deal. Yeah, but we're $50 million in debt, what say you professional gadfly turned politician?

In the future, I would hope that when the local newspapers seek "professional" opinions of Tom Leighton's actions, they would approach independent and objective professionals who actually have some experience where governing is concerned. To seek out the opinion of someone who has designs on one day replacing the person they are critiquing only serves to bolster their four year election campaign barely cloaked as being that of a taxpayer advocate.

The way I remember it, we elected Tom Leighton. I really don't care what Christine Katsock thinks about anything until she runs against him again three years from now. For the press to still be portraying her as the Robin Hood of Wilkes-Barre at this point is doing the voters of this city a dis-service. If it walked like a candidate and it talked like a candidate, and it won't go away, it's probably still a candidate.

This is freakin' classic. I copied this from some Hip Hop site where the webmaster, armed only with a ball cap turned backwards, reviews rock albums. This peon actually thinks Eminem is superior to Guns 'n' Roses. Maybe abortion should be legal afterall.

Wacked Out Old Rokk At Its Corporate Worst!! November 12, 2003 Yo hip-hoppa's, how ya'll be?? You know, just like everyone, when I turn on the radio, I wanna hear nu rock, nu metal and hip hopp!! Yet all I keep hearing is dumb old bands that have NO prupose now and have never had any purpose at any point in their careers actually!! Why is the airwaves clogged up with this junk anyway?? "Welcome To The Jungle" has a horrible riff, dumb lyrics, and is the theme song for the Cincinnati Bengals, the wrost football team ever!! "Sweet Child Ov Mine" is a cheesy toon about remembering childhood, "Mr. Brownstone" is about a cooky neighbor, and "Paradise City" goes on for about 6 minutes too long!! Enough with all the annoiyng guitar solos, their sooo annoying!! Axl also has the most whiny voice ever. Plus the bass playa sounds like he's just tapping his bottom string and not playing, listen to the intro of "It's So Easy" and ya'll see whut I be meanin'!!! For good music, look to bands like Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Disturbed, KoRn, Bubba Sparxx, Eminem, Puff Daddy, Puddle Of Mudd, Seether, Saliva, Nickleback, Drowning Pool and the new talent like Clay Aiken and Smile Empty Soul :]!! Skip this WASTE of plastic!!! Peace out G'N R dudes....

The Baathists, who pay to build Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), provide RPGs to fire at convoys, orchestrate mortar and rocket attacks, and finance Jihadist-suicide bombings, know American politics better than they know military tactics. They watch American television on their pirate satellite dishes and read American newspapers online. They know that when they kill an American soldier, blow up a Humvee or even shoot down a U.S. helicopter, the action is militarily insignificant. But they also believe, based on what they see, hear and read in our media, that the U.S. public has a very low threshold for pain and that their nemesis -- George W. Bush -- is vulnerable; they know we are going to have an election next year. Captured "former regime loyalists" smugly tell interrogators that their goal is to simply "hang on" until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2004. Then, they are convinced, "anybody but Bush" will move into the White House, and the United States will pull out of Iraq.

Read the entire article. Be warned. I have built some clever HTML coding into this post that will cast a curse upon your children if you do not follow this link. Please read this.

I know Gage Andrew fully enjoyed his big sled ramp, but I busted my ya-yas to create it. Pouring water over it was a nice touch. Zoom! Zoom! Feel free to bring the toddlers by. The sled ramp is open for the time being.

December 7th. When I was a little kid, December 7th was a day that caused most people to seethe with anger. It was still a very bitter and painful memory. Now, it's but a footnote in history. It bothers me to think that the generation that faced that attack and all that followed remembered it until the day they died many years later, yet, these days, we seem to have forgotten our Pearl Harbor in less than two short years. The next one will remind us.

The Jints play today, don't they?

That sucks.

Later kiddies