Wants to Reform Government

I just noticed in the Plain Dealer that Mayor Edward FitzGerald is openly running for County Auditor either for the open seat if Frank Russo gets indicted/convicted or in the Primary in May 2010.

Lakewood Mayor Ed FitzGerald, a Democrat who was elected in 2007, also wants to reform government starting with Russo's office. That's why the former FBI agent is openly running for his seat.

FitzGerald met recently with Russo to tell him of his plans. If Russo seeks re-election, he will face FitzGerald in the Democratic primary in May of 2010.

But FitzGerald, who has worked on wide-ranging political corruption investigations in Chicago, is really betting that Russo will be forced from office before the primary.

FitzGerald says party members are encouraged by his pedigree and promise to bring reform.

On the street level, ward and precinct leaders -- traditionally beholden to the party bosses -- are acting a little more like free agents, not worrying about what Dimora and Russo think.

Democrats don't need the outrage that sparked the civil rights and anti-war movements and the presidential campaigns. They just need enough to give themselves the courage to stop embracing the antics of politicians such as McFaul.

I think this is the money quote:

Ed FitzGerald, a Democrat who was elected in 2007, also wants to reform government starting with Russo's office.

Hey Ed, How about finishing the job of reforming Lakewood before you jump off to something else!

40 Years Later - A Life Saving Reunion

A warm story about a young baby in 1968 being rescued by a fireman and reuniting with that fireman, 40 years later.

The firefighter crawled on his stomach through the pitch-black apartment, the smoke so thick he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. Somewhere inside was a baby and he had to find her.


A window broke, light filled the room, and he saw her lying in her crib, dressed only in a diaper, unconscious. Soot covered her tiny nose. She wasn't breathing and had no pulse.

He grabbed her and breathed life into her as he ran from the apartment.

A newspaper photograph captured their image - a white firefighter from South Boston with his lips pressed to the mouth of a black baby from the Roxbury public housing development - at a time when riots sparked by racial tensions were burning down American cities.

But despite this most intimate of introductions, they remained strangers. William Carroll won a commendation for the rescue, stayed on the job another 34 years, and retired. Evangeline Harper grew up, lost her family to drugs and illness, had six children of her own, and became a nursing and teaching assistant. And through it all someone would often tell her the story about the day she almost died and the man who would not let it happen. She always wanted to meet him and say thank you.

Yesterday, more than 40 years after the fire, she finally did.

In the neighborhood where they first met, Carroll, a slim 71-year-old, got out of his car, dressed in a navy blue uniform he had borrowed from a fellow firefighter, strode up to the 40-year-old woman, and beamed.

"You've grown a lot since the last time I saw you," he said, laughing and putting out his hand. She smiled, gently took his hand, and looked at him almost shyly.

"Thank you so much for remembering me," he told her.

Then he pulled her into a tight embrace and they held on to each other as they stood on Keegan Street, just a few yards from where he had carried her limp body decades ago.

"Thank you so much," she said softly.

The Globe arranged the meeting after Evangeline Harper, now Evangeline Anderson, introduced herself to a reporter at a community meeting and asked for help tracking down Carroll.

Anderson, who now lives in Dorchester, had tried twice before to locate the firefighter, first when she was 18, after her adoptive mother told her about the rescue, and again right after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

She tried to get his address from the Fire Department, but they said they could not give out personal information. She left her name and phone number, but never heard back.

"I thought, 'Oh, forget it. He probably doesn't remember," she said. " 'He's not interested.' "
That could not have been further from the truth.

"Evangeline Harper," Carroll said. "I'll never forget her name if I live to be 100 years old."

He heard once that she had been trying to get in touch with him, but somehow her phone number was lost and he did not know how to reach her.

For a while, Anderson stopped looking. Then, she heard the news about Lieutenant Kevin M. Kelley, the firefighter who was killed in January after his firetruck crashed into a Mission Hill building.

" 'Oh my God, this could have been this gentleman, and I never got a chance to say thank you,' " she recalled thinking. "I didn't want him to leave this earth or I to leave this earth without saying thank you."

Yesterday, she brought her youngest child, 6-year-old Reginald, and her godmother, Jacqueline Greer, who witnessed the rescue. For the meeting, Anderson swept her hair in a curly updo and carefully applied lip gloss.

The women brought Carroll a giant stuffed bear, and a thank-you card tucked inside an envelope addressed "To Our Hero."

Richard Paris, vice president of the firefighters union, stood nearby with Carroll's wife and little Reginald, who kicked at the frozen snow on the sidewalk as Greer, Carroll, and Anderson reminisced about the neighborhood. Gone were the brick high-rises that had once formed Orchard Park. In their place were two-level attached apartments painted in pastels and browns.

"I haven't been here in so long," Carroll said.

No one could remember exactly what started the fire on Nov. 7, 1968, but Greer said it began in the family's kitchen. Carroll, who was assigned to Engine 3, heard the report of children trapped in a burning building.

When Carroll arrived, Greer was at the scene, screaming and crying hysterically.

Carroll saved Evangeline, while Firefighter Charles Connolly rescued her 17-month-old brother, Gerry, and handed him to Lieutenant Joseph O'Donnell, who gave the boy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

"He just cared," Greer, now 60, said of Carroll. "It wasn't that the child was black or she was white. It was a child and he was trying his best to bring her back her life."

Yesterday, both remembered who was missing from the reunion. Connolly and O'Donnell died long ago of heart problems. Anderson's brother Gerry succumbed to pneumonia as a toddler. Her grief-stricken mother turned to drugs for comfort, and died of an overdose at age 25. Her two sisters died young of natural causes. Last year, Anderson lost both her adoptive mother and uncle.

"I wish my friends . . . were here," Carroll said. "But they're up there watching over us."

"That's what I say about my family," Anderson said.

The two quickly built a rapport. He asked about her children, and she told him her eldest son was studying forensic science in college and how musical her other children are.

He told her he wanted to get to know her, and she promised to cook him some soul food.

"Oh, baby," he said, laughing. "I love it, but my stomach don't."

Carroll then took the group for lunch at Florian Hall, the union's headquarters, where Carroll still goes every week for coffee with friends or to help fellow retirees with healthcare questions. Over sandwiches, the group looked at old black-and-white photos of that day and traded stories about the challenges of raising children.

Carroll bonded with Anderson's son, who drew a picture of himself holding Carroll's hand.

Parting in the parking lot, Carroll hugged Greer and Anderson and told Reginald to call him.

"There's your new grandpa," Anderson said to her son.

"What a beautiful day," the retired firefighter said as he turned and walked back inside.

A beautiful day in deed!

A Look at a Buffalo Winter Pastime

On this day 200 Years ago

Abraham Lincoln was born 200 years ago.

In November of 1863 he would give a small blueprint on how this still very young nation should live and learn:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.


But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

But, to put into prospective he also in very short statement some five years before provided another portion to the blueprint of freedom, with these paraphrased words from Matthew :

A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

Sixteen months after the Gettysburg address he would become a martyr to cause of freedom and equality.

Is the Party over for Obama?

Jon Stewart of the The Daily takes a look at the Obama Press conference the other night.


I think he understands what a lot of people have already realized as to the effectiveness of the early days of his administration.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - The Stimulus Package

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This is getting Ridiculous!

Will someone please step forward and help out the vetting process for the Obama administration. They certainly have shown that they can't handle it.

Look at this list:

Bill Richardson - Dropped out from Commerce - Under threat of Indictment
Timothy Geithner - Confirmed Secretary of Treasury with tax paying issues
Tom Daschle - Dropped out of HHS - Tax Problems
Hilda Solis - Labor Secretary nominee - Tax Liens
Eric Holder - Attorney General with issues from the Clinton administration regarding circumventing the pardon process to get some pardons issued.

Just yesterday it came to light that a former aide for the Commerce Secretary Designate is under investigation for accepting tickets and other items in return for legislative favors.

Not to mention all the former lobbyists that work in the Obama administration:

Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Geithner, was a top lobbyist for Goldman Sachs Group

William Lynn, deputy secretary of Defense, lobbyist for Raytheon last two years.

William Corr, deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, was a federal lobbyist with the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids

John Podesta, Transition co-chair; lobbied for the Center for American Progress

Mark Gitenstein, Advisory board member; lobbied for Merrill Lynch, KPMG and Ernst & Young

Tom Donilon, Member of the State Department review team; lobbied for Fannie Mae

Cassandra Butts, Senior staff member; lobbied for the Center for American Progress

Patrick Gaspard, Senior staff member; lobbied for 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East

Christine Varney, Senior staff member; lobbied for the Online Privacy Alliance

Michael Strautmanis, Senior staff member; lobbied for the American Association of Justice, a trial lawyers group

Ron Klain, Chief of staff to Joseph R. Biden Jr.; lobbied for Fannie Mae

Sally Katzen, Agency review working group member; lobbied for Amgen

h/t Chuck Z for the list

When it rains it pours!


Then you have the Press secretary Robert Gibbs who doesn't think that its a pertinent question regarding transparency.

It just seems this administration can't get its act together either to hire people or assist in getting the stimulus package passed.

I wonder if some country that does not like the US will use the extremely apparent inexperience to take a shot at America to see if they can get away with it.

Best line of the day from Ed Morrissey:

Have we had a more incompetent vetting process in the White House over
such a short period of time? When we criticized Barack Obama’s lack of
executive experience, even we didn’t think it was going to be this
bad.

I needed to laugh

h/t Allahpundit - Hotair

Medical Mart

Well, the site for the Medical Mart has been chosen. Some say it was a rash judgment since there was discussion of looking at the East Bank of the Flats.
Which in the long term might have been the best place for it to be built since the Stark Group had already begun infrastructure work thereby eliminating some early costs.

Mayor Jackson appears to be building a spine on this issue, and is now asking for assurances on costs and maintenance over the long haul.

The City and County government are not great builders or developers so look for the $18 million savings from the Tower City site to be used faster than than water can go down the drain.

The Citizens of Cuyahoga County will be pumping money into this site for a long time.

Dennis Kucinich

Interesting comments from DENNIS! I, like Glenn Beck agree with some of the statements that Rep. Kucinich makes. But, then he goes off with again and giving people back the money.

Tried to embed, but blogspot is giving me some issues, here is the link:

I am now a member of the Loyal Opposition

Congratulations Barack H. Obama, 44th President of the United States of America.