Slow Eddie Rendell is what's wrong with America. [Totalitarian Pennsylvania Update]

PA's lameass lameduck gov has vomited up another pant-load of classic left-fascist bile designed to further enslave us simpletons.


Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Opposition mounts to Rendell's transportation funding plan

Opposition mounted quickly yesterday to Gov. Ed Rendell's proposed increase of motor-vehicle fees and taxing of oil companies' profits to generate up to $1 billion a year for highway and bridge improvements and mass-transit agencies.

Republican leaders described Rendell's proposal as a "quick fix" unlikely to gain approval before his term ends in January, and oil industry trade groups said what he wants to do is simply "illegal."

Yet, Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the proposal is a step in the right direction and inaction to repair deteriorating highways and bridges would "not only be putting Pennsylvanians in jeopardy but putting our financial future in jeopardy as well."

Will anybody ask this cretin what his Party of Blasphemy, Buggery, and 'Bortion has done to maintain our roads and bridges over the last...oh, I don't know... five decades? Don't hold your breath, kiddies.

PennDOT Secretary Allen D. Biehler said state leaders "can't afford to wait" to find ways to plug a $472 million hole created when the federal government shot down the state's plan to impose tolls on Interstate 80 and use proceeds for transportation projects. Even that money, however, would fail to meet transportation needs, according to a Transportation Advisory Committee study suggesting the state needs an extra $3.5 billion a year to do so.

"I don't think the price tag is too high," Biehler said before a bipartisan meeting of House and Senate members.

Under Rendell's proposal, the state would levy an 8 percent tax on the profits of oil companies doing business in Pennsylvania and bar them from passing along the increase to consumers. [Emphasis mine. That's the illegal part, kiddies. But all you need is a couple more Okhrana Supreme Court appointees to fix that. - F.G.] Also, the state would increase more than 60 license, registration and vehicle fees to reflect the inflationary increase since their last adjustment. Some of the latter fees haven't been increased since 1977.

The oil tax would generate an estimated $576 million a year for transportation, and the vehicle fees would raise $434 million, officials said. Of that, 70 percent would go toward highways and bridges. Thirty percent would go toward public transit and, among other things, "allow the Port Authority of Allegheny County to avoid precipitous service cuts," Biehler said.

For those of you unfamiliar with how things work here in the Keystone Gulag, let me assure you that nowhere near 70% of that money will be used to repair roads and bridges. PA kleptocrats have for generations promised exactly the same thing and our infrastructure continues to crumble into dust.

The first thing the power-mad clowns in Harrisburg will do with the money is buy reelection by funding "mass" transit boondoggles in Philly and Pittsburgh. If there is any left it will go to enhance security at the memorials they are building [with our money, of course] for their criminal brethren, Senator Brain Damage and the late, unlamented John "Bad Mutha" Murtha. [And believe me, they will need security, kiddies.]

Note to the secret police: That's not a threat. I'm a political satirist. Kind of like Senator Unfunny-Moron-Who-Steals-Elections-With-The-Votes-Of-Felons from Minnesota. [No, I didn't know he was an Indian either. He must belong to Ward Churchill's tribe.]

Officials from two oil trade groups -- the Harrisburg-based Associated Petroleum Industries of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association in Wexford -- disputed the legality of the proposal. No other states have a similar tax, they said.

Rolf Hanson, executive director of the Associated Petroleum Industries of Pennsylvania, said it would violate the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution that "prevents states from imposing a tax which discriminates against interstate commerce by providing an advantage to local businesses or by burdening out-of-state businesses."

Preventing companies from passing on a related rate increase to consumers in Pennsylvania would harm consumers elsewhere, Hanson said.

Rendell spokesman Gary Tuma said the administration thinks it has "a strong case" to enact the proposal.

That's because nobody in their administration [talk about using a term loosely] has ever had a job, owned or managed a business, or met a payroll.

None dare call what America has become a Kafkaesque nightmare, kiddies. Except for your humble narrator, that is.

Under the proposal, the four-year driver's license fee would increase from $21 to $25, and the annual registration fee for a passenger car would increase from $36 to $49, the governor's office said. The fee for a certificate of title would rise from $22.50 to $31.

The average motorist would face an increase amounting to 33 cents per week, Rendell said. He pointed to polling data that said people support raising vehicle fees, 48 percent to 45 percent.

Golly, I wonder who had to do the math for him.

"Fee increases tend to be more palatable to motorists since they are a one-time expense, as opposed to a gas-tax increase that affects motorists every time they go to the pump," said AAA spokesman Brian Newbacher.

Senate Transportation Chairman John Rafferty, R-Chester County, said the Democratic governor's plan is unlikely to win approval before Rendell leaves office.

"It'll be up to leadership, but I don't see anything on the horizon," Rafferty said. He called the proposal a "quick fix."

Although House Appropriations Chairman Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, predicted eventual passage, he said: "I won't tell you we will do it before the (November) election."

"This is all political theater," said Rep. Tim Krieger, R-Hempfield.

Kafkaesque nightmare, kiddies, Kafkaesque nightmare.

Bill Millin, Requiescat In Pace.

Bill Millin: The 'Mad piper' who piped the allied troops ashore on D-Day

Bill Millin was the "Mad Piper" who played allied commandos ashore under heavy German fire at Sword Beach in Normandy on D-Day, on the extreme eastern flank of Operation Overlord.

He was the only piper to lead allied troops into battle that day following a War Office ban which said pipers would attract sniper fire. But his commander, Brigadier Lord Lovat – Simon Fraser, hereditary chief of the Clan Fraser – was a law unto himself. "Ah, but that's the English War Office, Millin," Lovat told him. "You and I are both Scottish so that doesn't apply."

Ahh...the Scots could produce a few men back in the day...

Millin recalled: "Lord Lovat said this was going to be the greatest invasion in the history of warfare and he wanted the bagpipes leading it." On the landing craft sailing out of the mouth of the River Hamble in southern England, "he said I was to play and he would worry about the consequences later."

The "Mad Piper" label came from both Millin's own comrades and the German defenders of Sword Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer, who said after capture that the only reason they didn't shoot him is that they thought "he must have gone off his head."

In the First World War, the Krauts called the Scotsmen "the ladies from Hell" because of their kilts and the number of Germans they slaughtered.

Although one man was shot dead alongside him on his landing craft, and he saw many of his comrades floating face down in the surf, he said the sound of his pipes drowned some of the gun and mortar fire. "I didn't really notice I was being shot at myself," he said. "The water was freezing. The next thing I remember is my kilt floating in the water, like a ballerina." He launched into one of Lovat's favourites, "Hielan' Laddie", as he waded ashore. Lovat, firing his old non-service issue Winchester rifle and brandishing a walking stick, gave him a thumbs-up.

Amen to that, Brother.

On the beach, in the heart of the battle, Lovat asked him, "Would you mind giving us another tune, Millin? How about 'The Road to the Isles'?" Millin half-jokingly replied: "Now, would you also want me to walk up and down, Sir?"

"Aye, Millin, that would be nice. Aye, walk up and down."

The piper recalled the tremor of mortars in the sand as he walked up and down Sword Beach three times amid thick smoke and dead and wounded comrades yelling for medics. "When they heard the pipes, some of the lads started cheering but one wasn't very pleased and he called me 'the mad bastard'. Well, we usually referred to Lovat as the mad bastard but this was the first time I had heard it referred to me."

Millin, whom Lovat had appointed his personal piper during commando training at Achnacarry, near Fort William in Scotland, was the only man during the landing who wore a kilt – it was the same Cameron tartan kilt his dad had worn in Flanders during the Great War – and he was armed only with his pipes and the ceremonial Skean Dhu dirk sheathed inside his right sock. His exploits on that day, 6 June 1944, were immortalised in the star-studded 1962 Hollywood blockbuster The Longest Day, which showed his character ignoring sniper fire to lead Lovat (played by Peter Lawford) and the commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade (1 SSB) over the Bénouville bridge, later renamed the Pegasus bridge. "It seemed like an awfully long bridge," Millin recalled. Lord Lovat was badly wounded six days later, ending his war, but he lived until 1995, when Millin played at his funeral.

I had always thought that scene was just Hollywood being Hollywood. The truth is more magical than fiction, kiddies.

Lovat's 1 SSB, including the Free French green beret commandos, had landed in support of British paratroopers of the 6th Airborne Division, who had landed by glider earlier and were involved in close combat with the bridge's defenders. In the film, one paratrooper says to another: "Listen ... I thought I heard bagpipes." "Don't be daft," his buddy replies before the "Mad Piper" marches across the bridge playing "Blue Bonnets over the Border". Contrary to many reports, the part of the piper was played not by Millin but by Major Leslie de Laspee, an official piper to Buckingham Palace at the time.

Born in Regina, Canada on 14 July 1922 to a father of Scottish origin who returned to Glasgow as a policeman when William was three, he grew up and went to school in the Shettleston area of the city. He joined the Territorial Army in Fort William, where his family had moved, and played in the pipe bands of the Highland Light Infantry and the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders before volunteering as a commando and training with Lovat at Achnacarry along with French, Dutch, Belgian, Polish, Norwegian, Polish and Czechoslovakian troops.

Millin saw further action with 1 SSB in the Netherlands and Germany before being demobbed in 1946 and going to work on Lord Lovat's highland estate. In the 1950s he became a registered mental nurse in Glasgow, moving south to a hospital in Devon in the late '60s until he retired in the Devon town of Dawlish in 1988. He made regular trips back to Normandy for commemoration ceremonies and a 10ft bronze statue of him and his pipes is being completed in Colleville. He donated the famous pipes to the Pegasus Memorial Museum in Ranville, close to the Pegasus bridge, and France awarded him its Croix d'Honneur for gallantry. In 2006, a Devon folk singer, Sheelagh Allen, wrote a song about him, "The Highland Piper".

How cool is all that?

Millin, who suffered a stroke in 2003, died in hospital in Torbay. His wife Margaret (née Dowdel, from Edinburgh) died in 2000. He is survived by their son John.

William Millin, soldier and registered mental nurse: born Glasgow 14 July 1922; married Margeret Dowdel (died 2000; one son); died Torbay, Devon 18 August 2010.

Have mercy on your mad piper, Lord, and all his comrades in arms.

Can a Hail Mary a day [or a billion for that matter] help Cristobel Hitchens find his way?

Christians pray for cancer-stricken atheist Christopher Hitchens

By TERRY MATTINGLY, Scripps Howard News Service

One of the last things Thomas Peters does each day is face the Cross of St. Benedict that hangs over his bed and says his evening prayers.

Shouldn't that headline read "Catholics"?

The sobering final phrases of the Hail Mary prayer have recently taken on a unique relevancy: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

A month ago, the conservative Catholic writer challenged readers of the American Papist website to join him in praying one Hail Mary a day on behalf of the iconoclastic atheist Christopher Hitchens, who has been stricken with esophageal cancer, a disease that leaves few survivors.

To me, he's been "Cristobel" ever since his sick commentary at the death of Mother Teresa. [In case you don't know, kiddies, on her worst day Mother Teresa did more for humanity than Hitchens could even if he lived a thousand years.]

"I am going to begin praying ... for the salvation of his eternal soul," wrote Peters, "that God will be with him 'at the hour of his death,' that God will help his unbelief in this life, and that those he has led away from God will come back to His infinite love and mercy. I am in no way praying for him to die, I am praying for him to live eternally."

Amen to that, brother.

Peters is not alone and Hitchens knows it. While some believers hope that he suffers and dies, post haste, the author of "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" told CNN that he has been surprised that others -- who are "much more numerous, I must say, and nicer" -- are praying for his healing, both body and soul.

Where are all his concerned atheist friends? Perhaps they'll send him some "medical" weed.

This has been one of the strangest side effects of Hitchens' journey across the "stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." This is a zone in which almost everyone is politely encouraging, the jokes are feeble, sex talk is nonexistent [WTF? - F.G.] and the "cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited," wrote Hitchens, in a Vanity Fair essay. The native tongue in "Tumorville" is built around terms such as "metastasized," phases such as "tissue is the issue" and quotes from the writings of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

Seriously, kiddies! What is up with that? No sex talk for the dying guy? You'd think one of his leftard friends would buy him some Larry "No Feeling Below The Waist" Flynt porn or dial a 900 number for him. Or a hooker! There must be hookers who specialize in the terminally ill...I'll check the Obamakill plan and see if our Fearful Leader can kill a couple of extra WWII vets to save enough cash to pay for a "tumor job".

Most of the inhabitants also do quite a bit of praying -- for themselves, for their loved ones and even for suffering people they have never met.

Hitchens told evangelical broadcaster Hugh Hewitt that he remains convinced these prayers "don't do any good, but they don't necessarily do any harm. It's touching to be thought of in that way."

Holy crap! The God-hater is touched? I'm guessing that is a PR ploy. In his heart - oops, I mean in his rational mind - he's snickering at those he sees as deluded rubes and simpletons.

The bottom line, explained Peters, is that his faith asks him to "pray for everyone, even those who hate us. ... Hitch just happens to be a famous public enemy of the faith, so more people know what is happening in this life, so more people are talking about why it's good to pray for him."

While it is "absolutely horrible" that anyone would pray for Hitchens to suffer and die, he added, many believers may find it hard to do more than pray for "God's will to be done." That is the "safe prayer" that is always appropriate.

Amen, again.

Meanwhile, a quick Internet scan reveals that some believers are, predictably enough, praying for Hitchens to be converted to Christianity for the sake of his own soul. Others are specifically praying that the scribe who -- with Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins -- is called one of the "four horsemen" of the New Atheism will not only convert, but also become an apologist for faith.

That happened decades ago with an atheist named C.S. Lewis, after all.

Maybe he should talk with Anne Rice...or read something by that great convert to the One, True Church John Henry Newman [who will soon be canonized]...or perhaps Malcolm Muggeridge would be more suited to his taste.

"Ultimately, I simply will pray that Hitch has a good and holy death," said Peters. "I really do not care if he has a public conversion. I care that he, somehow, has a private conversion and that he will be reconciled to God."

This is our faith in action [no pun intended], kiddies.

As much as believers love these kinds of "foxhole conversion" stories, Hitchens is convinced he will not surrender. However, should rumors spread that he has "hedged his bets," the writer has made several public statements warning his admirers that if such cry to the Almighty were to take place, they should ignore it.

With admirers like that, who needs Satan?

"If that comes it will be when I'm very ill, when I am half demented, either by drugs or by pain and I won't have control over what I say," he told CNN. "I can't say that the entity that by then would be me wouldn't do such a pathetic thing. But I can tell you that -- not while I am lucid. No, I could be quite sure of that."

Poor dumb bastard. I am not permitted to believe in invincible ignorance, but there is such a thing as willful ignorance.

(Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Contact him at tmattingly(at)cccu.org or www.tmatt.net)

I hereby pledge to say a Hail Mary for La Hitchens each day until he learns The Truth, whether he learns it the easy way or the hardest possible way.

In fact, as a good Catholic, I'll go one better. I will continue to pray for him even after he croaks, on the off chance he lands in Purgatory for a few million years. [Quit your whining, you prods. You knew it was coming.]

If you ever wondered where those surplus Nazi buzz bombs went...

AP: Iran inaugurates nation's first unmanned bomber

Iranian President Hungadunga on Sunday inaugurated the country's first domestically built unmanned bomber aircraft, calling it an "ambassador of death" to Iran's enemies.

The 4-meter-long drone aircraft can carry up to four cruise missiles and will have a range of 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), according to a state TV report -- not far enough to reach archenemy Israel.

"The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship," said Hungadunga...

Don't worry, kiddies, our jug-eared Commie-In-Chief can decipher that sentence. He'll keep us safe by talking ol' Hungadunga into sanity.