The Specter of defeat

After Humpty Dumpty’s fall, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
And they won’t be able to put Arlen Specter together again either. At age 80, the eternal moderate and creator of the Single Bullet Theory in the Kennedy assassination has nothing left in the chamber to squeeze.
Joe Sestak cleaned the old relic’s clock in the Democratic primary Tuesday, snuffing the career of Pennsylvania’s longest-serving senator ever.
Specter got whacked in his bid for a sixth term because Democrats didn’t buy his conversion from Republican to Democrat. That’s why the rabbit got caught in the briar patch despite backing from the Democratic establishment that included President Obama and Gov. Rendell, not to mention organized labor.
Now Sestak, a former admiral, navigates against Republican Pat Toomey, a Tea Party darling from Allentown.
But November will come soon enough. This is about last night, which showed how limited Obama’s political power is. He and the White House political operation couldn’t deliver a victory to their new ally. It was striking that Obama didn’t campaign for Specter in the final days.
Obama clearly was reserving his political capital. And last night also demonstrated how much has changed since 2008 when Obama was heralded as a force that could remake the political landscape.
As for Specter, his landscape now has nothing but sunset hovering over it.
He had stepped into the ring once too often, goaded by ego and a refusal to let go, fat jellied on his political muscle, his message sighing and his campaign wheezing like a busted old fan.

At least Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal didn't claim to have served with John Wayne in The Green Berets

Evidently Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal had a little white lie sitting beneath the brim of his cap all these years.

The problem is the white lie kept slipping from his lips over and over and over.
The Democrat apparently claimed numerous times over the years that he served in Vietnam when he didn’t.
The suit of heroism definitely is not a good fit for Blumenthal, who received five military deferments before settling for the safety of the Marine Reserves.
The New York Times outed Blumenthal, who conceded today he had “misspoken” in claiming repeatedly that he served in Vietnam and dismissed the furor as a matter of “a few misplaced words.”
I think I’m going to hurl.
Republican candidate Rob Simmons, who actually served in Vietnam, immediately pounced on Blumenthal like the North Vietnamese Army did on Saigon on April 30, 1975.
“This is a big, big issue,” Simmons said on Fox News (where else?). “Army veterans do their very best to be honest about their service.”
Since he obviously is no Rambo, Blumenthal henceforth may have to prove his toughness by chewing a bucket of nails instead of rubber chicken at every subsequent campaign stop.

Obama administration hoping Rendell has enough clout to save Specter from getting knocked out

The question of the day is not why navy bean soup seldom is on the menu.

The question of the day is how is Arlen Specter going to do tomorrow and what will be the implications for the White House.
As you likely know, Specter has been a Pennsylvania senator since the Lincoln administration. Granted, he started life as a Democrat. But that was before the invention of electricity. Not sure if this is linked to the invention of the iPad, but Specter now once again is a Democrat after a marathon run as a Republican.
The Obama administration needs Specter like Kim Kardashian needs cameras. With crucial votes coming up on financial reform as well as energy and climate change, Obama needs Specter in his corner.
But a sledgehammer by the voters Tuesday could knock Specter out of the ring. He’s on the ropes against Joe Sestak and it remains to be seen if he can pull off a Floyd Mayweather.
Privately, the Obama folks are crossing their fingers, toes, eyes and themselves that the Pennsylvania electorate won’t open a huge can of hurt — comparable to a basketball passing through a kidney — by whacking Specter across his aging knees Tuesday.
They are banking on Governor Ed Rendell, that noted football freak, to hit a bigger Hail Mary than Donovan McNabb’s 4th and 26 to Freddie Mitchell.
“Rendell says Specter will win and win comfortably,” said a White House senior aide. “And I never bet against Rendell.”
Granted, anything is possible. After all, look at the miracle currently breaking a sweat with the Philadelphia Flyers.

I guess we all should be grateful BP didn't morph the entire Gulf of Mexico into the Tar Pit of Mexico

Treading oily water in the maelstrom of reports that the Gulf of Mexico oil leak may be easily five times the government estimate of 5,000 barrels a day, BP CEO Tony Hayward put such a spin on it that it makes you wonder whether the guy is a washer or a top.

His take: That pesky spill is “relatively tiny” compared to the “very big ocean.”

Apparently it is true that one cannot be a CEO without checking your soul and conscience at the office door.

Once the BP shareholders deep-six Hayward, he might have a future in PR.

Town Square is as cool as the underside of the pillow

That buzz you’ve been hearing in Berks County this spring is not restricted to honey bees who are big enough to saddle.
The new Town Square business directory right here on readingeagle.com is responsible for the extra buzz these days.
Indeed, Town Square is cause for some serious jubilation among Berks businesses and consumers. And is pasting gigawatt smiles on faces at Reading Eagle Company.
Hopefully you’ve already checked out Town Square. If you haven’t, you likely are a party of one. If you are THAT person, please click here before taking your next breath.
Town Square is the perfect intersection for commerce. It makes for a great gathering place … all the businesses (a whopping 80,000-plus of them) in Berks have their name in front of the nearly 15 million visitors and 50 million page views readingeagle.com draws in a year.
All those folks now have a one-stop shopping center in Town Square without jockeying for a parking spot or using their engineering degree to get their youngest kid out of the car seat … all intersecting on readingeagle.com.
Cool is the rule for Town Square. And it’s only going to get cooler.
Dave Kauffman, our Web Development Manager, has a mind that whirs like a giant Transformer. Trust me, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have nothing on this guy.
Dave sculpted Town Square like some sort of virtual Michelangelo and he’s in the perpetual process of refining it. He likes to say that right now this is just Town Square 1.0. Yeah, there still may be a glitch or two in 1.0. But can you imagine what 2.0 and 3.0 are gonna be like with Dave so wired into this?
Town Square is segmented by business category and municipality. Businesses are in the process of claiming their business to enhance their basic information.
And with each passing day more busineses are seeing the benefits of upgrading to a premium Town Square presence that gives them heightened visibility in our listings as well as the ability to post additional photos/information and a link to their Web site.
The awesome part of a premium membership for a business is that its name also is integrated with articles referencing its municipality. It’s called a geo-centric audience of potential customers who don’t have to fill up their tank to patronize the business.
And if a business opts for a countywide premium presence, the name of the business pops like a flashbulb in front of plenty of eyeballs. By the way, 70,000 eyeballs — two to a browser in most cases — focus on readingeagle.com on a given day.
We’re confident that Town Square is going to take off like space heaters in Iceland … with businesses spinning gold out of their Town Square visibility and shoppers stretching their dollars by making more informed consumer decisions.

Elena Kagan simply should tell all the homophobes that A-Rod has dumped Cameron Diaz for her

OK, apparently we aren’t that evolved after all when it comes to the overcaffeinated subject of sexual orientation.

Too many folks still go somewhat berserko over the topic, frothing at the mouth and speaking in tongues.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan now is in the midst of a washer spin cycle of rampant rumors and insulting innuendo about whether she likes Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. The chatter is swelling like a blowfish on Viagra.

I say who the hell cares? I don’t care if she’s sleeping with the Geico gecko. And neither should you.

But prejudices in the populace can be addictive and the cycle feeds on itself.

Why all of this is fodder for such controversy shows that too many people have algae growing between their ears.

In fact, when the Wall Street Journal ran a front page shot of Kagan playing softball, some perceived it as a jab at a stereotype of lesbians.

I thought that stereotype struck out years ago, back in the day when all female gym teachers looked like Bruno Sammartino.

It’s all gotten so absurd that Sarah Walzer, one of Kagan’s best friends who also was her roommate in law school (stop snickering), told POLITICO that “I’ve known her for most of her adult life and I know she’s straight. She dated men when we were in law school, we talked about men — who in our class was cute, who she would like to date, all of those things. She definitely dated when she was in D.C. after law school, when she was in Chicago –- and she just didn’t find the right person.”

This is all too much information. What matters is whether or not she has the legal chops to sit on the Supreme Court even though the only bench she has sat on has been a softball bench.

Weighing in on this was another member of Kagan’s social circle, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer of all people. Spitzer, as evidenced by his taste for pricey call girls, is straighter than 6 o’clock.

Said Spitzer, who knew Kagan at Princeton: “I did not go out with her, but other guys did. I don’t think it is my place to say more.”

Or mine.

Oil czars pass the buck with more force than a tsunami tangling with a tornado

Executives of the three oil companies who mucked up the Gulf did so much finger pointing today at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing they all likely developed one helluva case of carpal tunnel.
BP, Transocean and Halliburton execs evidently were downright frisky in fricasseeing one another in a blame game as slick and transparent as, well, an oil spill.
Transocean, which owned the rig that exploded, suggested work done by subcontractor Halliburton could have been the key factor. Halliburton and BP said the blowout preventer that failed on Transocean’s rig was critical. Transocean countered by claiming the ultimate responsibility falls on the operator — BP.
Granted, nobody expected any of them to gleefully stand up and take the fall.
Ultimately, they’re all gonna go splat anyway … kind of like a bug hitting an oil truck windshield.

Prime choice! Obama's Supreme pick is Kagan, who has no experience as a judge for Republicans to pick on

Elena Kagan doesn’t even cast the thinnest shadow of judicial bench experience.
In fact, she’s never ever honest-to-God been a judge. Judge Judy has it all over her when it comes to sitting on a bench.
Which is exactly why President Obama has nominated Kagan to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
Granted, you wouldn’t want the chief brain surgeon to be somebody who has never wielded a scalpel. And you wouldn’t a guy who has never held a wrench repairing your Porsche.
But the judicial realm is a whole different ballgame, boys and girls. Kagan is the perfect choice for Obama because she’s also young (50) for a Supreme (even younger than Diana Ross) and, oh yes, liberal (notice that Obama is looking left in the above photo but never mind that she’s looking right — it’s a smokescreen).
While Kagan has never pounded a gavel, it’s not that she hasn’t a rag of credibility to her judicial pedigree.
She has so many firsts in her professional life she should play first base on the Supremes’ softball team.
She is the first female solicitor general, was the first female dean of Harvard Law School and the first woman to serve as the top Supreme Court lawyer for any administration.
The lady obviously is no ambulance chaser.
And apparently she is not merely an intellectual. She is politically savvy, giving her more than a teasing hint of pragmatism.
Again, her best qualification is her lack of bench time.
That means she and the White House don’t have to worry about explaining a lot of nuisance legal opinions to irritant Republicans during the confirmation process.
No paper trail to nitpick for sound-bite assaults. And it’s doubtful the Republicans or Fox News will plow through all her boring-as-a-monotone-preacher academic writings.
While Kagan likely won’t totally escape hearing the Republican Greek chorus, nothing at this juncture suggests her nomination will snap, crackle or pop in the Senate.

More jobs, more jobless and capital markets more volatile than a Third World dictator all add up to economic voodoo

Today finds me in an economic state of mind. Which isn’t good. Economics is a subject that does worse things to my head than a hangover.

First of all, the latest job figures came out today and as usual, you can cook the numbers like a chicken-fried steak.

The good news: Jobs in April ballooned by 290,000, the biggest spike in four years. The bad news: The jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent as more people, seemingly sick of worrying about their golf stance, grip and alignment, gushed back into the job market.

People will crunch those numbers, trying to read them like tea leaves. Well, let them have at it until next month’s fresh figures scramble the algebra. Because there is a much more important financial matter that should frighten us all more than living in Reading.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich writes that the stock market could destroy us all. This after the Dow Jones acted like a runaway rollercoaster on an Almost Black Thursday, plunging almost 1,000 points before somehow swallowing hard and seesawing back from the brink of disaster.

Reich says nobody really knows why. It could have been the economic nightmare in Greece. It could have been a trading error caused by a glitch in a computer program that moves light years faster than a three-toed sloth.

What should send us into a slobbering state of high anxiety is Reich postures that the nation’s and the world’s capital markets are now a mammoth out-of-control casino in which fortunes can be made or lost in an instant.
And since most of us have put our life savings there, our futures hinge on a mechanism that can lose a trillion dollars in minutes without anyone having a clue why.
The fat cats of this morning could be skinned cats by this afternoon.
We might as well just take our money down to Atlantic City and play craps. At least that’s an exciting roll of the dice and they ply you with free drinks.

Act 47 and an act of God can't help a poverty-riddled Reading … but a Monte Carlo makeover can!

It’s not true that poverty was invented in Reading, but Reading is now its hometown.

Which is why everybody poor-mouths our once fair city and why it was plunged into Act 47.

The leaders of Reading’s Act 47 recovery team today proposed a mix of tax increases, wage freezes and increased efficiencies to pull the city of a financial hole bigger than Donald Trump’s ego.

Frankly, they would have a better chance of pulling Alice out of the rabbit hole.

Only an act of God can save Reading from being more bankrupt than Lawrence Taylor’s conscience.

Then again, God isn’t real big on Reading since they took down the cross on the old St. Joe’s Hospital building.

Therefore, what to do? We can’t simply throw out our empty wallets in despair. Quitting, as cigarette smokers know, is not an option. As George Bernard Shaw once wrote before Al Gore invented blogging, very few people can afford to be poor.

I say we simply transform people’s perception of Reading. Let’s turn our town into the Monte Carlo of Pennsylvania.

OK, perhaps Monaco is a tad prettier than Reading but let’s not focus on the negative. Like Monte Carlo, Reading has an exceptional location between mountains and water. So what if the Schuylkill right now isn’t as sexy as the Mediterranean?

And like Monte Carlo, Reading has athletic and cultural events, monuments, gardens, museums, theaters and a castle.

Granted, Monte Carlo has a casino; Reading doesn’t. So why not close Reading High, where a lot of kids drop out anyway, and turn the Castle on the Hill into a casino?

Seriously, study the pictures atop and below this post and see if you can tell the difference between Monte Carlo and Reading. Even without my rose-colored glasses.

Let’s make Reading the area of Pennsylvania where the real money is flung about … the ideal destination for celebrities, tourists, romantic vacations and unforgettable conferences.

And no, I haven’t been smoking anything funny today.