Budget Impasse Wreaks Havoc In Pa. - Politics News Story - WTAE Pittsburgh

I was on WTAE TV 4 News the other day. It was just before the state had its mini-shut down. I gave a few comments to the TV Reporter about the state plan that shut the state parks.

I can't find it online. But it aired as a couple have told me they saw the news.

Budget Impasse Wreaks Havoc In Pa. - Politics News Story - WTAE Pittsburgh Budget Impasse Wreaks Havoc In Pa.

Pointers welcomed.

NCAA Penalizes 75 Schools - meanwhile the swimmers got crushed at Ohio Univ.

Talking NCAA sports and academic progress.

TEXAS SWIMMING: NCAA Penalizes 75 Schools 112 teams at 75 colleges failed to meet the Academic Progress Rate requirements.

81 of those 112 teams face scholarship cuts.

49 teams have received warning letters for failure to meet academic standards for three (3) consecutive years.

44% of men's basketball teams face sanctions next year.

40% of football teams face sanctions next year.

35% of baseball teams face sanctions next year.

67% of the teams facing penalties are men's basketball, football, or baseball teams.

Ready for the swimming numbers? Only one school in the country (Florida A&M) was cited for poor academic performance in swimming.

So here it is in a nutshell:

We pump all kinds of money into football, basketball, and baseball only to see these sports at the top of the 'Dumbass' category.

We cut sports like swimming that rarely get into academic trouble. We are near the top in academics but are told we shouldn't exist.

What a screwed up world it's become....

The Ohio University Men's Swim Team was cut. They swam this year. The team won't be around next year. This is still a bad decision and makes me sad.

But there is more. The guys on the squad were able to transfer to other NCAA schools. However, the NCAA rules of making annual academic progress were hard, if not impossible, for some of the student athletes because Ohio University is on an academic calendar that has QUARTERS and most other universities have SEMESTERS. The quarter hours don't always transfer into another system so as to meet the 'academic benchmarks' that the NCAA rules require. More dumb rules.

So, lots of the swimmers lost their team to no fault of their own. And, when forced to transfer to another school to continue to study and swim -- they lost a year of eligibility and opportunity.

Any athlete that is in a program that gets cut (because of Title IX) should be able to be eligible for a transfer for the next season without hardship on the athlete. The athlete should be given a free pass to play anywhere that will have him or her -- for the next year -- without worry about grades and academic progress.

Everyone out of the pool -- and unplug that iPod

Our swim practice yesterday had a thundering exit. We hear thunder, the kids get out of the pool. One of our meets was knocked off its schedule too -- to re-play on Monday. Expect another storm Monday night as Crafton visits Green Tree then.

From signs

Experts warn of lightning-strike injuries with iPods

Lightning traveled through a man's iPod causing burns on his chest and neck

Colorado teen struck while listening to a music player

Eardrum ruptures are the most common ear injury in lightning-strike victims

(AP) -- Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than electrifying tunes.

A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player's wires.

Last summer, a Colorado teen ended up with similar injuries when lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn.

Emergency physicians report treating other patients with burns from freak accidents while using personal electronic devices such as beepers, Walkman players and laptop computers outdoors during storms.

Michael Utley, a former stockbroker from West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, who survived being struck by lightning while golfing, has tracked 13 cases since 2004 of people hit while talking on cell phones. They are described on his Web site, www.struckbylightning.org.

Contrary to some urban legends and media reports, electronic devices don't attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does.

"It's going to hit where it's going to hit, but once it contacts metal, the metal conducts the electricity," said Dr. Mary Ann Cooper of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an ER doctor at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

When lightning jumps from a nearby object to a person, it often flashes over the skin. But metal in electronic devices -- or metal jewelry or coins in a pocket -- can cause contact burns and exacerbate the damage.

A spokeswoman for Apple Inc., the maker of iPods, declined to comment. Packaging for iPods and some other music players do include warnings against using them in the rain.

Lightning strikes can occur even if a storm is many miles away, so lightning safety experts have been pushing the slogan "When thunder roars, go indoors," said Cooper.

Jason Bunch, 18, says it wasn't even raining last July, but there was a storm off in the distance. Lightning struck a nearby tree, shot off and hit him.

Bunch, who was listening to Metallica while mowing the grass at his home in Castle Rock, Colorado, still has mild hearing damage in both ears, despite two reconstructive surgeries to repair ruptured eardrums. He had burns from the earphone wires on the sides of his face, a nasty burn on his hip where the iPod had been in a pocket and "a bad line up the side of my body," even though the iPod cord was outside his shirt.

"It was a real miracle" he survived, said his mother, Kelly Risheill.
The Canadian jogger suffered worse injuries, according to a report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

The man, a 39-year-old dentist from the Vancouver area, was listening to an iPod while jogging in a thunderstorm when, according to witnesses, lightning hit a tree a couple of feet away and jumped to his body. The strike threw the man about eight feet and caused second-degree burns on his chest and left leg.

The electric current left red burn lines running from where the iPod had been strapped to his chest up the sides of his neck. It ruptured both ear drums, dislocated tiny ear bones that transmit sound waves, and broke the man's jaw in four places, said Dr. Eric Heffernan, an imaging specialist at Vancouver General Hospital.

The injury happened two summers ago and despite treatment, the man still has less than 50 percent of normal hearing on each side, must wear hearing aids and can't hear high-pitched sounds.

"He's a part-time musician, so that's kind of messed up his hobby as well," Heffernan said. Like the Colorado teen, the Canadian patient, who declined to be interviewed or identified, has no memory of the lightning strike.

In another case a few years ago, electric current from a lightning strike ran through a man's pager, burning both him and his girlfriend who was leaning against him, said Dr. Vince Mosesso, an emergency doctor at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Eardrum ruptures are considered the most common ear injury in lightning-strike victims, occurring in 5 percent to 50 percent of patients, according to various estimates -- whether or not an electronic device is involved. A broken jaw is rare, doctors say.

Ron Morris' newsletter covers Russ Diamond on the need for constituional convention

Ron Morris' - The American Entrepreneur FREE Newsletter: "WHY WE NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION"

I'm not sure we need a constitutional convention. But, since Russ is talking, I'll tune in.

Should a convention occur -- count me in. I'd love to be a player at those meetings.

Watchdog's remark sends Rendell on a tear

pacleansweep : Message: Watchdog�s remark sends Rendell on a tear
'Eric Epstein,' boiled Rendell, 'is about as mentally stable as that guy who ate all those people.'

Speaking of good food and bad, taste this blowback.

Chinese food 'made from cardboard'

Chinese food 'made from cardboard' - CNN.com BEIJING, China (AP) -- Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said.

Are we going to pick on China for the next year until the 2008 Olympics? Or, will the picking go on for the next decade?

I've got a bunch of nice food photos from China. I didn't ever have any cardboard. But, don't drink the water.

china - foods

Minority Report - Pittsburgh ignores the plight of black citizens at its own peril - Views - Revelations - Pittsburgh City Paper

Woops. Pittsburgh's Nasty Little Secret gets some play at the City Paper, again.

Pittsburgh - Minority Report - Pittsburgh ignores the plight of black citizens at its own peril - Views - Revelations - Pittsburgh City Paper Ralph Ellison wrote about the 'Invisible Man'; I am going to talk about Invisible Leadership. I find it disgraceful that so many black and white elected officials (with the exception of Hill District state Rep. Jake Wheatley Jr.) could remain silent or neutral on these issues.

How do you remain silent or neutral about us losing our very lives? What does it matter if you have a good job or a nice car if you can get shot on your way to work or carjacked at every turn? If your kids can't go to school with other children because so many of their peers are ill-prepared and, therefore, poor role models? I saw a billboard for a K-12 'cyber school' the other day and it sickened me: Are we that removed from each other's essential humanity?

A question was asked -- and the answer is "sorta."

Some are, some are not.

Of course you can't 'privatize' a soul. But, you can mostly keep families gated.

To be honest, we do NOT need to 'interact' for any of us to survive. One can't 'have to' care. That graph is just a bit over the top to be taken without a blink. Think again.

We cannot privatize our souls. We can't keep our families gated. We are going to have to interact. And talk. And care about one another. Unless we do, none of us will survive.

But, right on about the rest. Indifference sucks.

Complaint Department rumbles with City Paper and Police Promotions --- sustain

Pittsburgh - Complaint Department - News - News - Pittsburgh City Paper The whole issue of promotion shows there are real problems with the police force.

Tax UPMC and then what

Over at another blog I posted a reply to the notion that a tax on UPMC is what is needed.

---

Folks, think again.

If Pittsburgh's Politicians should move to tax UPMC, Pgh would be a REAL Ghost Town. Then we'd really be able to watch another chapter of the cancer spread.

It is the same type of observation of when talking about the downtown if you are the Pgh Downtown Partnership. The bums, hobos, street people are messing up the downtown streets. -- WRONG -- Fact is, the streets are so empty that the only ones you see are the more seedy folks. The problem is that they are the only ones you notice when nobody else is around.

UPMC isn't the problem. The problem is that everyone else has already departed.

Taxing UPMC won't bring everyone else back.

Envy can't drive the region and city into the future. That's not a formula for success. That's not how I want to raise my children. And, when they get mature enough to see it for themselves, they'll not want to stick around and be a part of it either.

Likewise, clearing the bums off of the downtown streets won't allow downtown to thrive again.

Think again if you think that the root of the problem is to 'tax UPMC.'

I can not tell a lie

Wizards are wonderful.

International Solidarity Commssion (ISC) of the IWW - All Star 2007, Community Collective Bargaining with the Home Team

July 11, 2007 marks one year since the Pirates Baseball Club hosted the All Star Game and promised the people of Pittsburgh that they would investigate working conditions in the factories sewing Pirates’ apparel. As the Pittsburgh General Membership Branch of the IWW reminds the Pirates at their July 8 game at PNC Park against the Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh has high standards for workers’ rights. The City’s Sports and Exhibition Authority has recommended the investigatory protocols of the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), disclosure of wages and factory locations, truly independent investigations, and a commitment to the factories where investigations take place.

The International Solidarity Commission of the Industrial Workers of the World stands alongside the Pittsburgh Anti Sweatshop Community Alliance and SweatFree Communities in requesting that all unions and solidarity organizations support workers sewing their Major League Baseball (MLB) teams’ apparel by holding their Home Teams – rather than MLB -- accountable for workers’ rights. MLB is amongst the largest licensers of copyrighted logos in the world. If MLB had any sincere concern workers rights, it would already be following WRC protocols, and previous investigations would have been more substantial than the public-relations-white-washes workers have experienced thus far. The Home Teams represent the people in their respective cities, and it is the Home Teams that will be held accountable for the working conditions in factories sewing team apparel.

It is up to each community to hold its Home Team accountable for sweatshop conditions in factories sewing team apparel. The ISC extends greetings of solidarity to all workers sewing baseball merchandise. The ISC will receive testimony from workers sewing apparel with any of the team logos and distribute that testimony to unions and solidarity organizations for presentation to their respective baseball teams. To that end, the ISC wants to familiarize workers with the MLB logo that appears on all licensed merchandise.

The National Garment Workers Federation of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity have already provided specific testimony about the factories in which their members work sewing Pirates/Major League Baseball apparel. One year after the Pittsburgh Pirates promised to investigate working conditions, the team has dropped the ball, which makes the occasion of the 2007 All Star Game a sad day for the people of Pittsburgh.

At the pinnacle of the baseball season, when all eyes are focused on San Francisco, the ISC urges baseball fans, unions and solidarity organizations to leverage each team’s efforts to represent them and hit a home run for workers rights. By community collective bargaining with the Home Teams, we can set a new standard for accountability in the global apparel industry.

The ISC invites unions and solidarity organizations to join us in Chicago on Labor Day weekend for a SweatFree Baseball strategy session. We invite union activists to draw on the ISC as a resource when preparing apparel industry solidarity trips to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Contact: solidarity@iww.org
IWW SweatFree Baseball link (for information on New Era and Majestic) www.SweatFree.org/Baseball

Realbeer.com says put a buzz on PA -- in creation of a political buzz

Talk about seeing -- or saying -- double.

Realbeer.com Beer Therapy -- Blog Archive -- Beer Activist help needed in Pennsylvania Beer Activist help needed in Pennsylvania

Beer ActivistsSupport Your Local Brewery has issued an ...

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Freedom and Benevolence Go Together

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Freedom and Benevolence Go Together: "Doesn't it stand to reason that someone who wants everyone to be free of tyranny does so partly because he cares about others? Wishing freedom to one's fellow human beings strikes me as a sign of benevolence. But Moore and the left don't see it that way."

The Demise of Rachel Ray?

This morning on the radio I heard that Rachel Ray, the spunky little chef, is moving out of the digs she shares with her husband of two years and perhaps moving to an apartment.

What's Rachel cooking up? Adultry.

Will the rumored affair with Colby Donaldson of "Survivor" and razor blade commercials fame tarnish Ray's "Girl Next Door" appeal?

Will the housewives and female general populous continue to adore the plucky Rachel, as she whips up delicious recipes with a boy toy in the wings? I haven't seen Rachel's syndicated TV show in a while, I understand that Colby is a part of it now.

Don't get me wrong, even a straight-as-straight can be Republican like me can see why Rachel will throw her up-until-now blemish-free public image into the kitchen garbage can for a handsome cowboy like Colby. And we don't know anything about Mr. Rachel Ray; perhaps he's a cad.

Don't know.

It's just a question: will these shenanigans do anything to the empire that IS Rachel Ray? Perhaps she will be on Dr. Phil before we know it.

Boogie Man Thinking

This is an absurd statement in a posting on another blog: "Conservative thinking is what got us here."

The conservative tag, as well as liberal, and progressive is only a tag. None of them fit me well.

What got Pittsburgh into its mega mess is one-party rule by Democrats. We've had nothing but Dems. That's for sure. That's been constant. That's been a source of the problem. That is the first and NEXT log jam to fix.

The one tag that works throughout for all of us is ''screwed up city.''

Pittsburgh got in trouble because it was in a habit of giving too much away. Too much went to corporations. Too much went to the unions. Too much went to the developers. Too much went to the workers. Too much went to the sports teams. Too much went to the bankers for bond re-finance deals. Too much went where it should not have gone. Too much went to brownfields without any return.

We need government to focus on liberty, freedom and not the world of other things that are constant give-a-ways that are unfair to some and benefit others.

China executes ex-drug chief for graft - CNN.com

China executes ex-drug chief for graft - CNN.com BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- China executed a former drug and food safety chief on Tuesday for corruption in an unusually swift sentence which will serve as a warning amid a series of health scandals that have stained the 'made in China' brand.
art.

The Supreme People's Court approved the death sentence against Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, who was convicted of taking bribes worth some 6.5 million yuan ($850,000) from eight companies and dereliction of duty, Xinhua news agency said.

They don't fool around.

In the US, Libby gets a pardon. In China, he'd be dead.

Today's front page photo of Fast Eddie with a big smile with a solution to the budget -- days late -- might have a different outcome if we were in China. If they are known to be corrupt, and say, can't pass a budget. They would not lay off thousands of employees and close the parks, owned by the people. Heads would roll, literally. They are there to do a job. Otherwise, they leave.

Drink this and choke on Onorato's brew

Tuesday takes - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Onorato's stealth tax: Governor-in-training Dan Onorato, Allegheny County's chief executive, lost an incredible amount of goodwill by secretly lobbying state legislators for a 10 percent tax on all alcoholic drinks to help fund mass transit. It's one thing (bad) to publicly propose new taxation; it's quite another thing (one might say chicken-livered) to do so on the sly.

Another MSM interview -- or two -- about Ron Paul

Wars Costing USA $12 Billion a Month

This must be what a surge looks like.

My Way News - Report: Wars Costing $12 Billion a Month WASHINGTON (AP) - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war in Iraq and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.