The LuLac Edition #716, Feb. 6th, 2009

PHOTO INDEX: OUR 1964 LOGO, GOVERNOR ED RENDELL AND PRESIDENT OBAMA.

TIME FOR HARD BALL

The noted basketball devotee, President Obama has to change his game with the U.S. Senate. Obama has somehow landed on the defensive by being “too nice” to the loyal opposition. Obama’s mistake was to think that the GOP really cared about the country’s economic woes and wanted to work in a bi partisan manner. The lack of any GOP votes in the House should have given him a clue. To me it is hysterical that the GOP is worried about deficits. This was the party that for 8 years poured billions of dollars into a war that has no real payoff for this country. While running up the debt, our food became unsafe because of neglected federal oversight, big business has raped their share holders out of retirement funds and then we reward them with taxpayer money. Now the GOP Senate led by McCain sidekick Lindsay Graham and Mitch “No Chin” McConnell have the nerve to say that the stimulus plan will ruin the country for future generations. Hey, I have news for them, our future generations are screwed already thanks to them. In a perverse role reversal, these GOP morons say that FDR’s economic programs didn’t stimulate the economy. Well, if you look at the facts, the New Deal reduced unemployment from 25% to 11%. And FDR’s big mistake was to work with conservatives in the Senate to forge a bi-partisan alliance. The Dems have to put bi-partisanship aside because quite frankly the GOP has spurned it. At the 2004 convention, the Dems tip toed around the failings of President Bush so as to not offend middle Americans who liked the President. In the meantime, while the Dems were playing “patty cakes” , the campaign of John Kerry was redefined. Think about this, only the GOP mind meld machine could turn a war hero and three time medal winner who actually served in Vietnam and turn him into a villain. In the meantime, they take a drinking, ROTC sky pilot who avoided service in real combat and turned him into the next coming of Audie Murphy. If this stimulus plan needs to pass, the Obama administration has to change the tone, change the message. The GOP, in its actions don’t care about the jobless, those without health care and those people screwed out of their retirements. They only care about preserving what is left of their pathetic right wing, pro life, anti woman, pro big business, war mongering excuse for a political party. President Obama: can the bipartisanship. You won a mandate, more than the last so called President. You have a majority: use it. Don’t take the breaks off once you get going. The GOP has you already in its sights. Don’t let them take control of your message. Future generations are going to pay down the debt, but it’s not yours. Take a lesson from LBJ and FDR, use your party and electoral capital to kick some Republican ass, not kiss it!

BEN MAKES CORRECTION

The Vatican demanded that a prelate who denied the Holocaust recant his positions before being fully admitted as a bishop into the Roman Catholic Church. It also said Pope Benedict XVI had not known about Bishop Richard Williamson's views when he agreed to lift his excommunication and that of three other ultraconservative bishops Jan. 21. The Vatican's Secretariat of State issued the statement a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the pope to make a clearer rejection of Holocaust denials, saying there had not been adequate clarification from the church. The Holy See on Jan. 24 announced the rehabilitation of four bishops excommunicated in 1988 after being consecrated without papal consent. This is news that is a relief to me in the sense that the Pope was unaware of the prelate's leanings. As mentioned last week in one of our editions, we felt it was a step backward for the Pope who has been trying his best to bring stability to a turbulent time in the Church.

MORE BUDGET STUFF

Governor Ed’s Budget Message is still resonating with the state. Many wags have said the address was much too long and some compared it to a session of the English Parliament as seen on CSPAN Sunday nights. Governor Ed said there should be no whining but cigarette smokers are ticked because of the adding of a dime per pack to the cigarette tax. The Governor wants to legalize video poker machines and using the money generated to help thousands of college students pay tuition. The Governor told PCN’s Francine Schertzer the other night that many parents of college age kids had savings accounts for their children since the kids were babies. But many of those accounts were reduced in size or eliminated altogether because of the financial rape of those investors by the big business pigs on Wall Street.
Rendell said he wants to eliminate 400 of the state’s 500 school districts to make public education more efficient. He asked lawmakers to fund a commission to plan for consolidation. Oh man, I was around for the school jointures in the 60s and old loyalties died hard. I once dated a woman who even though she graduated from Coughlin, regards herself as a graduate of Plains High School. To this day she still says that. By the way, she left high school in 1974. Under the three hots and a cot category, Rendell would add 2,400 beds in prisons and community corrections facilities. The budget would more than double the number of lower-income residents in the state’s adult Basic health coverage program to about 90,000. Expanding the program has been a priority for the governor, but he’s failed in the past to get it through the Legislature. The Governor also said that he would cut some state jobs. There was no move by the still bloated State Legislature to get rid of its own party caucus slush funds or reduce anything in staff salaries or even staff itself. The Governor is said to be annoyed by the term "lame duck," I can assure you he can go out with a blaze of glory by trying to call a Constitutional Convention to reduce the size of the districts. But like loyalties to high school football teams, this will be a tough one to tackle simply because of the little fiefdoms built up by our State Legislature. Also telling was the fact that Ltn. Governor and Minority Leader Joe Scarnetti liked the budget with its no big tax increases. As mentioned yesterday State Senator Robert Mellow essentially said this was not the Guv’s best effort. Mellow who has been testing the water for a possible run at the top job might be wise to put some distance between his party leader and his own beliefs. But with the failure of any appreciable tax relief for property owners (an issue that is a sore spot in Western Pennsylvania) look for the next Governor to come from the Allegany regions of the state.

FIGHTING THE BISHOP

Representatives from about half a dozen area parishes met behind closed doors Thursday to discuss possible responses to the closing of churches across the diocese of Scranton. Anthony Foti, one of the people who spearheaded the formation of the new group called the “Council of Parishes of the Diocese of Scranton” said it was an organizational meeting and promised more.
Telling the Times Leader, “We are realistic,” Foti said after the meeting, “We know this is a long, long uphill battle, but we are encouraged that there are other parishes that feel the same way we do.” Foti and his wife Noreen formed the Sacred Heart Wilkes-Barre Foundation in 2007 in an effort to spare than church from closing, but Bishop Joseph Martino announced it will consolidate with nearby St. Stanislaus, with Sacred Heart shuttered for good. Good luck with all of that gang. Not to beat a dead horse, but in June of 2008, after a century of service, the Diocese closed the church I grew up in Pittston, St. John the Baptist Slovak Church. At the church closing, it was all love and friendship. There would be a museum for pictures and artifacts of the Slovak church’s history. Last I checked, no “room of memories”. The final resting places of the souls who built the parish would be taken care of with loving intensity. Yeah, right! My mother’s grave had a huge hole in it from the day she was buried, June 19th to October 3rd. After calling the Diocese, the church it was consolidated with, St. John the Evangelist and getting no action after months, my brother in law and his two friends filled in the hole. Themselves! Nothing but inaction from the church, the Diocese and the cemetary crew. So much for perpetual care. I understand they stripped the church of all of its possessions. So much for trying to sell it to a worthy buyer. Nope, my sources tell me they’ll level the majestic little church and turn it into a parking lot so the remaining people can access St. John the Evangelist with greater ease. Good luck to the new committee formed. But remember this, no matter what they tell you, (and this may not happen in all cases, I just use St. John the Baptist in Pittston as an example) the Bishop will lie and the guy left in charge to tend to the those precious “memories” of your long departed church will also lie. From YOU TUBE: here’s a video I did on the closing of my church. Take a look at it again before they turn it into a parking lot.

1964

The Beatles vault to the #1 spot on the U.S. singles charts for the first time, with "She Loves You" forever changing the way popular music sounds to Americans, also starting the British Invasion in America..........Protesting against alleged de-facto school racial segregation, Black, Yellow and Prince Edward Islander groups in New York City boycott public school........The Government of the United States authorizes the Twenty-fourth Amendment, outlawing the poll tax......Cuba cuts off the normal water supply to the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in reprisal for the U.S. seizure 4 days earlier of four Cuban fishing boats off the coast of Florida………………as the 1964 Presidential race starts to heat up, one major player was missing, the late John F. Kennedy who was sure to be a lock for re-election. The 1964 aspirants who sought to replace him are listed here as well as what they were doing and their reaction to the death of JFK on Nov. 22nd, 1963. Nelson Rockefeller, the first announced candidate was having lunch with former GOP nominee Thomas Dewey….Barry Goldwater was in Chicago with his wife and the body of his departed mother in law. He was overseeing the transfer of her coffin from an airliner to a private plane for her funeral…..William Scranton was presiding over a private lunch of business people in Harrisburg when he was handed a note and abruptly announced, “Gentleman, the President is dead”. He asked for a moment in prayer and then went to a Pine Street Church in the Capitol City for a hastily called prayer service………Richard Nixon flew out of Dallas that morning on business for Pepsi and heard the news on a taxicab radio returning from Idlewild (soon to be named JFK airport) airport…..Lyndon Johnson was in Dallas with Kennedy and was sworn in as the 36th President at Love Field before returning to D.C....Statewide, Democratic liberals blasted Justice Michael Musmanno for his conspicuous minority ruling in the obscenity case against Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" which in Musmanno's view was "Not a book, but a cesspool, an open sewer"……………………………in Luzerne County, Minority Democratic Commissioner Ed Wideman begins to make his voice heard opposing key proposals of the Jim Post/Bill Goss budget plan and forty five years ago, the number 1 song in LuLac Land and America was by a group that would storm American TV in just a few February days. From You Tube: “She Loves You” by the Beatles.