3 Responses

1. Let’s connect the dots in the $60 million dollar PSU Sandusky settlement. Would things have turned out differently for PSU and Tom Corbett if John Brabender and Baby Brian Nutt weren’t offering the White Knight AG Tom Corbett high-priced Strategic Political Advice? The roosters have come home to roost. Why was Big Daddy Roger Nutt selected to head up our Turnpike Commission? What does Baby Nutt know that he’s keeping to himself? NITTANY LION PROUD!!!

2. Why does Tom Corbett love Corporate Cyber Charter Welfare Queens like Vahan Gureghian so much? OFF THE FLOOR: ‘Pickleface Picture’ means Gov. Corbett will be GOP nominee again.
   By Peter L. DeCoursey
   Bureau Chief
   Capitolwire
   HARRISBURG (Oct. 28) – A photograph called the “Pickleface Picture,” intended to provide proof of a Gov. Tom Corbett-arranged Montgomery County political marriage has been hurtling around the Internet, but to my surprise, few have seen what the picture really means.
   Because the guy in the picture who is not smiling, Republican National Committeeman Bob Asher, the state’s foremost Republican fund-raiser, is the guy looking like he is thinking “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Tommy.”
   As you will see it is a picture of Corbett clapping, with Asher looking annoyed to raising his arm as if a victor with the biggest eastern GOP donor and charter school magnate Vaughn Gureghian. Gureghian looks happy. And Corbett, for a guy who arranged all this, looks more put-out than Asher. But that is just Corbett grimacing for the camera again, a common activity for this governor.
   To understand Asher’s facial expression and attitude, you have to know some history, and this Philadelphia Inquirer article is a good primer.
   In short, Asher and one-third or more of the other poobahs in the Montco GOP have been hatcheting each other for decades. Asher and Commissioner Bruce Castor being the leading combatants the last eight years or so, with GOP county chairman Bob Kerns as his Castor’s trusty sidekick.
   That split helped spur the demographic tidal wave that ensued. The split also helped turn a strong suburban GOP county into a rising tide of Democratic power, with voters filling the county commission first in 2007 with a hybrid GOP-Democrat anti-Castor ruling coalition and then with two Democrats in 2011.
   It also meant that while Corbett won the county in 2010, which was a rarity as Republicans lost the presidential vote in Montco in 2008 and 2012. The demographic changes for Montgomery, Bucks and Delaware County are big reasons why the Republicans haven’t won the presidential vote since 1988.
   So Corbett desperately wanted to heal this breach generally and get both Gureghian and Asher mending the party rather than building rival machines that fought each other as much as they did the Democrats, at least in Gureghian’s case. Asher, who is probably the most loyal Republican in the state, still worked hard for the GOP slate, but only after a lot of infighting each spring.
   And Corbett was clear about the effect of uniting the party at its fall dinner in Jeffersonville: he said the Asher-Gureghian-Kerns pact to work together was “one of the best presents you could have given a Republican who is running statewide.”
   But this was not a matter of Asher, Kerns and Gureghian being thoughtful. The governor demanded his allies – and both Gureghian and Asher count as top allies, with Asher being in the inner circle and Gureghian just in the next circle of Corbett intimates – gave this to him.
   And as one long-time Asher-ite said: “Bob was tongue-kissing Vahan because the governor asked him to. Everyone was talking about how Leslie [Gromis Baker] made the biggest sacrifice to save Tom. Well, not sure that is true anymore.”
   In addition to showing how loyal Asher is to GOP governors, it also showed something else.
   Virtually every plausible scenario that results in Corbett not running for governor starts with Asher, Gromis Baker, Pat Solano from Northeastern Pennsylvania, Jack Barbour from the west, and maybe a few others sitting down with the governor in the next few weeks to tell him his polls are historically dreadful, so he can’t win and shouldn’t run.
   First of all, none of those people are about to do that, or even close to doing that, especially not Asher. And since most agree he would have to quarterback any such effort, the “PickleFace Picture’s” significance emerges. Asher would not have buried the hatchet and posed for photos with Gureghian if he was about to switch governors. Simple as that. If he was going to switch candidates, he would have put off the peace pipe ceremony until after the switch.
   And he certainly wouldn’t have let a lame duck force him into this co-fund-raising king for the Montco GOP arrangement with Gureghian. Asher is in his 70s and nobody can force him to do anything anymore. But he helped Corbett decide to run, and likes being a kitchen cabinet member and has been loyal to Republicans a lot more annoying than Corbett – Gov. Dick Thornburgh and U.S. Sens. Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter, to name three.
   He took the PickleFace Picture because he was standing by his Gov, simple as that. And he plans to be standing by Corbett right up to the election night party in Pittsburgh in November 2014, and hopefully from 2015 to 2018.
   So, sure there are potential candidates out there still planning in case Corbett drops out. But the Gov consistently tells his friends and supporters he is running and won’t change his mind.
   And his closest allies and supporters believe him. And unless the governor changes his mind – which doesn’t often happen – none of the first-tier candidates will run, not Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, not U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, or any of the rest.
   Could Corbett get some opposition? Sure. Heck, half his staff wants state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, to run in the primary or some other Tea Party type, to make Corbett seem more moderate.
   But he will be the nominee. And you don’t have to believe me. But you should believe the PickleFace Picture.

3. Ah yes, I am glad to see that Brendan Boyle is actually on the job about transit funding. I must ask though, where is State Senator, congressional opponent, and clown college dropout Daylin Leach on this issue. Perhaps Daylin is more of a moderate Republican than we thought, and thus, doesn’t care as much about transit funding as he does hot button social issues.

   http://liberalsagainstleach.wordpress.com/2013/10/26/jon-geeting-exposed/

   “Politics Is Serious Business, We Need A Congressperson, Not A Clown”
   -Liberals Against Leach