Pennsylvania: New York

This week's Midweek Briefing:
Newsmax.com's Chris Ruddy says what a growing number of War on Terror watchers are saying -- it's time to reduce our troop presence in Afghanistan. And he favors a plan put forth by Vice President Joe Biden "that involves keeping a smaller force (there) and focusing it on counterterrorism," especially against those nasty al-Qaida cells in neighboring Pakistan. It's likely the best way to better prepare us to handle the growing Iranian threat.
Same old same old. Newsmax is partially owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

Want proof? In an article from October 2008 at the

In this week's column, Jack Kelly wiggles his way into actually spreading the by-now debunked wingnut "government death panel" lie.

In doing so he (inadvertently I am sure) offers us a way to describe his own MO. The first line of the column is:
Who you gonna believe? Me ... or your lying eyes?
It's of course from Duck Soup. (If you're in need of a chuckle, watch the scene for yourself - the joke above is about 2 minutes in.)

The point of the joke (the exact wording of which, incidentally, Jack gets wrong) is that while it's a command to the listener by the speaker to trust the latter's statements over the former's own empirical data, it's the speaker who's wrong, he knows he's wrong, lies about it anyway and tries to get the listener to agree with him.

From Salon.com:
The last time the president of the United States marked gay pride month with anything official at the White House, it was June 2006. George W. Bush decided to throw the weight of his office behind a proposal to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage. After all, the fate of Western civilization hung in the balance. "Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them," Bush said at the time. "And changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure."

On Monday, 40 years and a day after the Stonewall riots began to bring the gay rights movement into the mainstream, Barack Obama took a slightly different tack.

In this week's column, Jack Kelly loyally continues his support of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (no idea why) and in doing so, he takes a swipe at David Letterman.

Good Lord, doesn't he realize how easy this is going to be?

Jack begins:

President Barack Obama is, by far, the most popular politician in America. And there is little doubt who is No. 2.

The city of Auburn in upstate New York, population 28,574, held its first annual Founder's Day celebration June 6. The most famous of the city's fathers is William Seward, who as secretary of state purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867.