Lots of ill wind blowin'

Funny how some republicans want to ban Ron Paul from future debates because he said our foreign policy might have caused 9-11. Hmm. No, Al-Qaeda killed 300 people because they LIKED our foreign policy but hated our freedom. I'll still go with the poster a few weeks ago on Huffington who asked "why do the tornadoes hate our freedom?" Classic. That, and "we have to fight the tornadoes over there because otherwise they'll come here."

Anyone see the Visa ad where everyone in the deli is going 90 miles an hour, then someone has the audacity to pay with cash and everything crashes to a halt? The tag line is "don't let cash slow you down." I think what they meant to say was "don't let cash slow us down." After all, the customer has the cash in his hand to pay the cashier.

Now that Michael Nutter has essentially clinched the Philly Mayor's race by winning the Democratic Primary, we can look back on how Chaka Fattah blew it. The Congressman has name recognition, connections and had a good opening TV ad about how his family took in black protesters (or something like that) in the 60's. But as the Philadelphia Daily News noted here,

Analyst Larry Ceisler said Fattah seemed to take the race for granted.

"He ran the race like a front-runner, and there was a sense of arrogance," Ceisler said.

And while Fattah brought a coherent program of attacking poverty, consultant [Chris] Mottola said he somehow didn't connect with voters.

"His operating slogan seemed to be, 'I'm here, and aren't you lucky,' " Mottola said. "His words were right, but there was no oomph behind them. You couldn't hear the music."

That, and not being disciplined enough to do fundraising calls every day as Nutter did, sank Fattah. Fattah wound up in third place with 15% of the vote, just 30 votes ahead of fellow U.S. Rep. Bob Brady. I doubt Nutter can make any significant changes, but at least John Street won't be in office for another 4 years.

-P