Bob Barr speech via Google Video

The same 1-hour 10-minute presentation from Pittsburgh's CMU that featured Bob Barr, Libertarian candidate for US President.

Depending upon your computer and net connection, you might have better success watching from Google Video or Blip.TV.

Check out Bob Barr's speech in Pittsburgh at CMU

Oct. 16, National Ferrell Cat Day

National Ferrell Cat Day is Thursday! There is no content on the page at wikipedia about ferrell cats. http://en.wikipedia.org/Ferrell_cat

Through the miracle of modern technology, voters will finally have a chance to compare Bob Barr with Barack Obama and John McCain.

Starting this evening at 9:00 PM EDT, live and concurrent with the broadcast of the closed debate between the Republican and Democratic nominees, you will be able to see where Bob differs with his opponents. Using digital video recording technology, Bob's responses to the moderator's questions will be spliced in in real time for viewing at the campaign's website at www.bobbarr2008.com/counterdebate Bob will be broadcasting from Newport News, Virginia on the campus of Christopher Newport University before a live audience.

I encourage you to watch and I ask a favor of you. Would you please forward this message to your friends who may be interested? This is their chance to learn that there's not a dime's worth of difference between McCain and Obama - and that Bob Barr offers hope for real change in Washington.

Election Day ballot includes on PA referendum question

On Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008, voters in Pennsylvania decide on a statewide referendum question.

The lone statewide referendum isn't about the drink tax, giggle. Keep reading.

Touch screen ballots will ask whether the state should incur $400 million in new debt to pay for repairs to the state's water and sewage infrastructure.

The funding would be provided in grants and loans to municipalities and public utilities for various construction, improvements, expansions, or repairs to our drinking, storm, and wastewater treatment systems. Projects could also aim to alleviate pollution created by rainfall, snowmelt, former mining operations, urban and agricultural runoff, and sewage systems. Grants and loans would be awarded by the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority.

Judges are still in the process of deciding about the Allegheny County questions about reducing the drink tax.

America could use a few Lessons in Liberty?

Campaign Updates Could America use a few Lessons in Liberty?"Could America use a few Lessons in Liberty?"

Of course we need lessons in liberty. But, I don't like the sales question to be asked. New book: Lessons In Liberty.

Sadly, when Bob Barr visited Pittsburgh on Friday there were no books on hand for sale. This book is another book.

New parents group wants city school board's ear

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A group of parents and taxpayers is coalescing around concerns about the Pittsburgh Public Schools' changes to middle grades and high schools.

Parents United for Responsible Educational Reform introduced itself to the school board last night, saying it expects input into district initiatives and wants officials to answer a raft of questions about school changes.

The group sprang, in part, from some members' unsuccessful fight last school year to stop the closing of the Pittsburgh Schenley High School building. At the time, parents said the district didn't listen to their views or adequately plan for Schenley's dismantling.

Now, they're hoping an organized, unified voice will force officials to pay attention.

"PURE Reform's mission is to review district proposals for public school reform, ask relevant questions, pursue answers to those questions and in general seek transparency and effective public participation in the reform process. We act as a clearinghouse for parents to seek and share information," Annette Werner, a Shadyside resident and group steering committee member, said at a news conference outside district offices.

Later, at the school board's monthly public hearing, Ms. Werner said a commitment to public input only can help the district's leadership turn city schools around.

The district's six-year strategic plan, up for a board vote next month, emphasizes the importance of community input. Asked about the work PURE Reform plans to do, school Superintendent Mark Roosevelt said, "I have no problem with it at all."

Ms. Werner said the group so far has interested "hundreds" of school supporters. It has a Web site at http://www.purereform.com.

Its concerns include whether schools configured for grades six through 12 are effective. The district is moving forward with plans for four such schools, including two that will absorb Schenley's student body.

The group also has questions about extracurricular activities in six through 12 schools, the district's system for evaluating principals and district enrollment decline. In all, 20 questions are posted on the group's Web site.

"Questions we have been asking in person, in the press, via e-mail, via letter and to the school board for more than a year have largely gone unanswered," Ms. Werner said before the hearing.

Ms. Werner said the group wants to work with district officials, not be in conflict with them. But she said the group intends to make an impact -- and get answers to those questions.

"We look forward to the district's response," she told the school board.

Missing cat stirs post-no-bills debate. New champions of US Constitution have 4 legs!

Conventional wisdom says that a dog is man's best friend. Only in Pittsburgh can the four-legged pets be best friends to the US Constitution.

From china - sculpture

Thanks to Bruce Kraus, this is what our city is doing and worrying about.

Missing cat stirs post-no-bills debate: "When John Stocke's cat, Mulva, got away two weeks ago, he put up lost pet signs, hoping the city of Pittsburgh government had decided how to handle fliers for finding Fluffy or Fido.

He soon learned otherwise when, a few days later, a Department of Public Works employee started ripping them down.

'They take 3 percent of my income and spend it obstructing my efforts to find a lost pet?' he fumed. (The city's earned income tax is shared with the school district.) He said he then called the department, and was told he could keep the signs up for just three days.

Furthermore, the start of the weekly city council meetings, Bruce Kraus is keen on putting the cats and dogs of animal shelter at the front of the agenda, before the business of the city and before the citizens have a chance to speak.

Getting the signs torn down is bad -- but wait for the bill to arrive. There can be fines too.

From PPS Safety

I don't want some city employee to be the one who determines the reasonable numbers and durations for signs. If the sign is about fluffy -- okay. If it is about freedom -- then watch out.

So, the public officials are to tolerate some statements, despite the city code's overall ban on posting fliers on public surfaces, but take others to jail. That's a typical Councilman Bruce Kraus' effort.

Lost cat! From china - sculpture

Life is always about an exemption from the bans when the bans are everywhere. Rather than make these exceptions to undo the loss of freedom, it would be refreshing to just propose freedom in the first place. Use what is already in place, at the least.

"There was some miscommunication with these posters," said Mr. Costa of Mr. Stocke's signs.

He said his employees are supposed to remove most fliers. "We do allow lost pet fliers only when they're at intersections," he said. There are two other unwritten rules: "[Do] not blanket the area and don't exceed two-week postings."

Now it is written -- at least in the newspaper and this blog. Unwritten rules from government officials are not healthy.

"A written policy is in the works," he said.

How many exemptions are there?

That could be tricky. In July, Mr. Kraus included a line in a piece of advertising legislation saying that the city's post-no-bills rule "does not prevent the posting of fliers regarding lost pets."

"We had to take it out," he said, because he concluded that the exception would favor one message over others, and could be deemed unconstitutional.

Darn constitution gets in the way of another pea-headed action by some over-reaching legislative do-gooder.

Now we've got constutional champions named "Mochi."

The issue came to the fore when the Shadyside owners of Mochi, a Shiba Inu, were threatened with a fine for posting lost pet signs. The city withdrew the threat, the signs went back up, but the dog was not found.

Mr. Stocke said his friendly, black, white and brown long-haired Mulva has been spotted by someone put on alert by the fliers, but hasn't yet been caught.


Tell Bruce Kraus to put the animal shelter public service announcements at the end of the meetings or at another time.

Lights On Afterschool is in October

http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/

Mark ranting to the PPS School Board - notes

What about this quality? Reactions welcomed

Save me from making a mistake! Feedback welcome.

What do you think? Too hard to see? Too small?

We're playing with a new PC and video software settings, in advance of PghPodcamp, of course.

Test #2 goes here:

Click to play

OpenOffice.org turns 3.0 with general release

The OpenOffice.org Community is today announcing the general availability of OpenOffice.org Version 3. Right from the opening screen, OpenOffice.org 3 has a fresh new look, with a new start screen, new splash screen, new icons, and a host of usability improvements.

The Writer word processor has a cool new slider control for zooming, allows multi-page display while editing, has powerful new multilingual support, and boasts improved notes capabilities. As well as conventional office documents, Writer can now edit wiki documents for the web.

The Calc spreadsheet has been given another increase in capacity - now up to 1024 columns per sheet. It also has a powerful new equation solver, and a great new collaboration feature for multiple users.

Draw can now cope with poster-size graphics (up to 3sq metres), and Impress supports multiple monitors for presentations. Chart now produces much more clean looking graphics by default, and has a range of additional features requested by power users.

The popular built-in PDF export facility has been further enhanced with PDF/A support and a range of new user-selectable options.

OpenOffice.org 3 is now also available for the first time as a full Mac OS X application, bringing the power of the world's leading open-source office suite to a whole new group of users. And it's even easier than ever to persuade MS-Office users to upgrade to OpenOffice.org, with new support for MS-Access 2007 'accdb' files, improved support for VBA macros, and a new ability to read MS-Office Open XML files (Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2008 documents)

OpenOffice.org's support for extensions is really coming of age with OpenOffice.org 3. A rapidly expanding number of additional features are available from different developers to add great features such as an Impress presenter console, support for business analytics, PDF import, and a whole new way of supporting additional languages.

Tell your friends that 2008 is 'The Year of 3'; - the year we released OpenOffice.org 3; the year we make OpenOffice.org available on all 3 major computing platforms (MS-Windows, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X); and the year to realise the 3 key benefits of OpenOffice.org: it's great software; it's easy to use; and it's free.

Links

Official Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/3/prweb1459364.htm
Download: http://download.openoffice.org
Guide to new features: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0
Technical release notes: http://development.openoffice.org/releases/3.0.0.html
Availability of localised versions and ports: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

The OpenOffice.org Community

I've been using OpenOffice.org's prior releases and it is working well. I'm going to upgrade to the general release on all of our PCs and Macs now.

The Tartan Online : Residences on Beeler Street put under law scrutiny

The Tartan Online : Residences on Beeler Street put under law scrutiny: "The independence of Carnegie Mellon students living on Beeler Street is under the public eye and may soon be tested. In the past month, a grievance has been filed with the city citing a Pittsburgh ordinance that makes it illegal for landlords to rent out houses to a group of more than three unrelated residents.

The bills to send a student to CMU exceed $50,000 per year and the city is picking a fight with these kids. Golly. There are plenty of matters to focus upon with the city. Even with the life of the college students some matters do need to be addressed.

Here, again, they miss the mark.

The city needs to make a crack down on bad behaviors where victims are involved. Do not get hell-bent on the enforcement of bad laws where there are no victims.

Should there be people from an address that has problems with trash -- fix it.

Should there be some individuals who are loud and disturb neighbors at late hours -- visit them, fix it, and as necessary, have them pay damages to the victims.

Ueberroth goes on offensive in IOC money dispute - Olympics - Yahoo! Sports

Simple math isn't simple when you deploy a pie chart merged with a round globe. Real world math, real world sports, UN style bills, and pocketbook sportsmanship. Humm.

Ueberroth goes on offensive in IOC money dispute - Olympics - Yahoo! Sports: "“Who pays the bill for the world Olympic movement?” Ueberroth said Saturday in his final speech as USOC chairman. “Make no mistake about it. Starting in 1988, U.S. corporations have paid 60 percent of all the money, period. Be sure you all understand that. The rest of the world pays 40 percent. It’s pretty simple math.”

It was Ueberroth’s first extensive response to comments made by European IOC members Denis Oswald and Hein Verbruggen, who said earlier this year that the amount of money the USOC received was not morally acceptable and called for the revenue-sharing deal to be revisited.

Libertarian candidate Barr attacks 'comfort zone' - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

From people & vips

Libertarian candidate Barr attacks 'comfort zone' - Pittsburgh Tribune-ReviewLibertarian candidate Barr attacks 'comfort zone'"

By Tony LaRussa, TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, October 11, 2008

Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr of Georgia touched on economics, energy policy and national defense during an hourlong speech Friday evening on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University.

Barr portrayed himself as a political outsider who does not meet the qualifications that the media and political pundits are using to judge the Democratic and Republican candidates for president and vice president.

"You might notice that I'm not wearing a flag lapel pin," Barr said, referring to public criticisms leveled in the primary against Democrat Barack Obama, who began wearing one after the issue was raised.

"And I only have one house -- but more importantly, I don't care how many houses these candidates have," a reference to criticisms against Republican John McCain, who hesitated when asked how many homes he and his wife, Cindy, own.

McCain, who has seven homes, later said he was unsure how to answer because he did not know if he should include the homes the couple have provided for their children.

Barr criticized the debate process, which does not include third-party candidates and permits the candidates to set the rules. The problem, Barr said, is that it allows the candidates to "stay in their comfort zone," a term he repeated at least a half-dozen times during his presentation.

"To us, a debate is a real exchange of ideas," he said. "By definition, it is pulling somebody outside their comfort zone."

Barr, who represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, spent most of his time providing a professorial outline of major issues, including:

• The economic crisis: He strongly opposes government bailouts of financial institutions.

• Energy policy: He supports domestic oil drilling as a bridge to the development of alternative energy sources.

• The Iraq war: He would seek advice from military leaders to develop a strategy for troop reduction.

Another good review of the talk.

The P-G posted an article, scroll below, on the web site. However, that article did not appear in the print edition.

And, because I have a lot of photos, here is another.

From people & vips

Barr brings long-shot campaign to CMU

Introduction from Dave Powell, Chair, Allegheny County Libertarian Party:

Thank you all for coming out, I know you all must be busy.

The subject of this lecture series is political leadership. Like many people here, I got very active in politics with the Ron Paul campaign. I’ll just say right up front that I can think of no other current leader in Congress other than Ron Paul that has any kind of credibility whatsoever.

I would also say that this lack of credibility extends to Senators Barrack and McCain. I might have been able to vote for the Obama of 2005. But he voted vote the MCA, the Patriot act extension and to extend funding for the illegal Iraq war.

So no HOPE or CHANGE for me then.

I went to campaignforliberty.com’s Rally for the Republic in September, which was a great event… no tear gas like the GOP rally, but, you know, fun nonetheless. The cops did bring their gasmasks later in the afternoon but, you know, the mood was gone.

I heard this at the Rally so I can’t claim authorship of this but it’s one of the truest things I’ve heard in years. Sometimes it seems that we have a choice between the Evil party and the Stupid party, as they enact laws that are evil or stupid. Sometimes, though, we get laws that are Evil *AND* stupid. ****We call this Bipartisanship****

And so it is with the Great Wall Street Bailout.

If I could go back in time 10 years and ask myself what I thought about Credit Default Swaps, Habeaus Corpus, RFID chips, or waterboarding I would probably have returned a fairly hostile stare and said “What the hell is all that? Stay away from me you WEIRDO!”

So I must ask:

Do we *want* to be activists? Do we *WANT* to be out hanging flyers at midnight? Do we *want* to be answering emails at 3AM? Do I WANT to be here in a hot suit, talking about politics and arcane Constitutional and financial matters?

NO! We have a lot of things we’d rather be doing. We have families and hobbies and some *really good TV* to watch (My Name is Earl just started back up)…but, for some reason we are all here.

WHY is that? Why is that?

It’s because WE HAVE to be

We HAVE To be activists.

WE HAVE to fight for change –Real change.

I am here today because the government has taken away your rights to Habeus Corpus.

I am here because waterboarding is something that *your* tax dollars pay for.

I am here because this deficit spending is nothing more than stealing from our children and grandchildren. The New York City Debt clock was not big enough anymore – THEY HAD TO UPGRADE IT!!!

I am here because the constitution is the framework that enables our country to be great, and our government has been ignoring it for far too long.

If the government does not follow the law THEN THERE IS NO LAW. It is a government of men, with all their imperfections, shortcomings, and faults.

So, if I may take a moment to address the Financial crisis:

You cannot fix a leaky dam with more water. You cannot fix a debt problem with more debt, it’s as simple as that. You cannot prop up failing businesses with tax dollars. We, in this area, know this firsthand, but they don’t seem to know it yet in D.C. And make no mistake, when they talk about “Credit”, they mean “Debt”.

Failed institutions must be liquidated, so that the good stuff can be bought up by people who saved and returned to productivity as soon as possible. Any money spent to the contrary will just delay the inevitable. Look at AIG – we give them $80 billion, and after they throw themselves a half-million dollar party, they come back for some 37 more.

They authorized 700Billion dollars to hold off a stock market collapse. What did we get?

What’s it’s called again? Oh yeah - A Stock market collapse. Even the socialist independent Bernie Sanders voted against the bailout!

Now, what we *really* have to avoid is a currency collapse. As the great Mister Rogers would say: “Can you say “Hyper-inflationary Depression? Sure, I knew ya could.” In case you are unfamiliar, a currency collapse is when your country needs to sell a lot of it’s currency or debt and nobody will buy it. Or, borrow a whole lot of money, and nobody will lend it. So the central banks prints money and the currency buys less and less the more it gets printed.

If other countries stop lending us $2Billion dollars per day, our government would be forced to cut Social security, Medicare, and military spending IN HALF.

Then, instead of just stock market people going broke through inflation, *Everyone* goes broke.

This is why we must END THE FED!

I stand here today to say to all who will listen: * Your republic, *YOUR* Republic is on the Edge.

This Democratic Congress has not had the will to stand up to a corrupt Administration, preferring instead to lapdog themselves into better standing in the next round of handouts. The fact that Bob Barr, and the other 3^rd party candidates were excluded from the Presidential Debates just shows how it debate was just a big joint press conference under the guise of open debate.

We need people to take a stand. We need people to run for local office, and we have a few here tonight: David Posipanka, Titus North, and Jim Barr are all running for office, please stand guys.

We need someone to stand up against the corrupt beltway politics that are bleeding our country dry.

Folks – we have with us tonight such a man. He is a former federal prosecutor and a former member of the United States House of Representatives . He represented Georgia's 7th congressional district as a Republican from 1995 to 2003. Bob joined the Libertarian party in 2006, and served on it’s national committee.

We are all human, and therefore imperfect. Like Earle Hickey on the My Name is Earl TV show, Bob Barr has made decisions in the past that many of us don’t agree with. But like Earle Hickey, he means to make amends, no matter what it takes, and he stands before you today, as a flag-bearer of the Liberty movement, a champion of the Constitution, and a crusader for your personal freedoms.

He is willing to sacrifice to stand for office, he is Ready to lead, he is Our Candidate for the Office of President of the United States

Ladies and Gentlemen - Bob BARR!!!!!

From people & vips

Got some ink at the event today in the P-G, just published.

Barr brings long-shot campaign to CMU: "Barr brings long-shot campaign to CMU
Friday, October 10, 2008
By Dennis B. Roddy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Bob Barr, onetime bulldog of the Republican right spoke in Pittsburgh tonight, shorn of both his party membership and his allegiance to some of the policies he voted for as a Georgia congressman and promises to reverse as the first-ever Libertarian president.

He admits it's a long shot.

Mathematically, he could win the Electoral College, after surviving a gantlet of state ballot access laws and a ballot challenge in some of them.

Conventional wisdom -- the kind that usually prevails in national elections -- suggests he has little hope.

Mr. Barr, in fact, opened his speech before an audience of 150 at Carnegie Mellon University by listing his disqualifications for the nation's top office.

"You'll notice I'm not wearing an American flag lapel pin," he said He also noted he has only one house and doesn't care how many anyone else has.

Like Barack Obama, he said, he has also "had coffee with a number of people of dubious background."

"I'm not afraid to operate outside of my comfort zone," he said.

Mr. Barr represented Georgia's 7th District as a Republican from 1995 to 2003, and spearheaded the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998. He left the party after departing Congress, disillusioned, he said, with the party's trajectory away from constitutional principles.

One of Mr. Barr's key votes in Congress was to support passage of the Patriot Act in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

He regrets that now, saying powers to wiretap and spy have been abused.

"I voted for the Patriot Act -- something that I came very quickly to realize was a very bad vote," he said.

Mr. Barr said the administration promised the act would not be used for non-terrorism investigations and that they would report openly and fully about how the act was being implemented.

"In every instance they failed to honor those commitments," he said.

One key supporter said that change of heart is hardly a disqualification.

David Powell, Libertarian chairman for Allegheny County, likened Mr. Barr to the hero of his favorite television show, "My Name is Earl."

"Like Earl Hickey, he means to make amends, no matter what it takes," Mr. Powell said.

If Mr. Barr was there to make amends, it wasn't with leaders of either major party.

He referred to President Bush as a leader "who, similar to Sarah Palin, did not have any experience operating in the real world outside of the borders of our country."

He mocked the debates, from which he was excluded, as exercises that consist of candidates "answering questions that they want to be asked. That is not what they're going to be called on to do as president of the United States."

Last night's gathering pointed to the growing blur that has emerged between some groups on both the left and right, with right-leaning Libertarians making common cause with groups such as the overtly liberal Green Party.

Titus North, the Green Party candidate for Congress in the 14th District, delivered a speech prior to Mr. Barr's and was cheered when he attacked the Federal Reserve system, long a target of the far-right.

"The old left-right definitions don't work anymore," noted Mr. Powell.

First published on October 10, 2008 at 6:36 pm.

Great re-cap.

From people & vips

Parking at CMU is free after 5 pm on weekends (starts on Friday)

In my email blast I said that there was free parking at CMU after 4 pm on Fridays -- and it is really after 5 pm. Sorry.

Fix it

Be sure to listen to what Oscar has to say, "Fix it!"

Fields & Co. give Pittsburgh faithful a reason for optimism - USATODAY.com

I guess this is what we talk about on a bye weekend for both football teams: the Steelers and Pitt.

Fields & Co. give Pittsburgh faithful a reason for optimism - USATODAY.com: "give Pittsburgh faithful a reason for optimism

Refuse proposal smells fishy - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Refuse proposal smells fishy - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Pittsburgh City Councilman Bruce Kraus plans to introduce legislation Tuesday mandating that owners of small apartment buildings and their tenants sign forms indicating their comprehension of city refuse collection regulations.

Violate those rules post-signature and the fines could be, well, hefty: $500 per violation for tenants and landlords after a relatively modest first-time penalty of $50.