Stuff Real Mayors Do

Mayor of Philadelphia spends New Years' Day speaking to inmates.

On New Year's Day, while many Philadelphians were enjoying bowl games and parades, Mayor Nutter was up early and delivering a message of hope - with a little tough love mixed in - to the inmates of seven of the city's correctional facilities.

He was joined by about 40 clergy members, from a number of denominations, for the annual Ecumenical Services and Civic Engagement Visit to the Philadelphia prison system.

Part of Nutter's message to the clergy, which started at a breakfast meeting, was a practical accounting of money and choices.

He said that of the city's nearly $4 billion operating budget, 24 percent is spent on all the components of the criminal-justice system.

"We don't need more incarceration, we need more education," he said. "Some of these people don't need to be locked up, they need a job."

The message to the 200 inmates at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility - his first stop - was just as pragmatic.

"We spend a lot of money to keep track of you up here," Nutter said. He told them it cost $30,000 a year for each prisoner, compared with $10,000 for a community-college student.

"Where do you think I'd rather spend our money?" Nutter said.

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Before he left Curran-Fromhold, two inmates, Lynwood Ray and Alex Naranjo, presented Nutter with a portrait of him they had painted. He told them he would hang it in City Hall.

Later, Nutter said that it was "painful and personal" to see talent wasted in prison and that the city could be doing more to help inmates.

"It just shows you, when properly motivated and directed, every one of these men and women can be doing something totally different and don't have to be in prison," he said.

When the entourage arrived at the Riverside Correctional Center for women, Nutter received a foot-stomping, hand-clapping, rock-star welcome.

His message was the same. Have a reentry plan. Play by the rules. Stay away from bad influences. And don't return.

"Never, never, never come back to this place," Nutter said to the about 125 women in attendance.

That's all for today's installment of Stuff Real Mayors Do.

It's not paradise

What a difference in just two years.

The homicide rate is down almost 24 percent since 2007. Violent crime receded 10 percent this year.

Single-stream recycling saved $400,000 in landfill fees in September alone.

The number of homeless people is down 26 percent since last year, thanks to a new partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

The city's inspector general, with more resources, is rooting out corruption on an unprecedented scale.

Members of the city's criminal-justice system have reduced the prison population 11 percent in a huge reversal of past yearly increases.

Licenses and Inspections is processing building-permit applications within two days, and customer satisfaction at L&I counter service is soaring.

The city fleet is smaller by 400 vehicles.

Since last year, filled, full-time positions in city government were reduced 705 to a total of 22,625.

We're writing a new zoning code to replace our 46-year-old version.

And the 311 Call Center has handled almost a million calls in less than a year of operation.

It's just Philadelphia under Michael Nutter.

It certainly hasn't been all roses. These are tough economic times in Philly and not everyone is happy about the cuts that he had to make, but an 11% reduction in the prison population in the midst of a 26% drop in homicides is a pretty stunning achievement for a place bit hard by tough-on-crime sloganeers. It's impossible to read Nutter's op-ed in the Inquirer and not hurt over our failure in New Orleans to come together around these kinds of pragmatic reforms. Mayor Nutter broke a cycle of racially divisive municipal campaigns by putting together a working coalition and won election by the largest margin in Philadelphia history. It was a mandate.

And now, for the first time in a long time, Philly has a game plan.

It's an important reminder not just that our issues are not totally unique, but also that solutions are not so impossible to achieve.

Just need a leader with a little vision and big enough guts to put together a coalition for pragmatic progressive reforms similar to those listed in Mayor Nutter's retrospective.

Would anyone be left unsatisfied with a list of accomplishments like this from our Mayor in his or her second state of the city address?

GO PHILLIES!

The best team to ever come out of my home town is going back to the Series for seconds!

CBS: Nation will be pulling for non-phony, non-corporate Phillies

What I've Been Reduced To

This guy speaks for me.

I win

Phillies over Mets.

Fireworks on the Parkway.

Yuengling, Yards, and Kenzinger.

Happy 4th of July!

Can't believe I'm cool with this

It must be that he's got the Phils on the TV in the plaza. Scroll through all the pictures.

More cool new stuff in Philly here. Cool "old" stuff in Philly here.

Damn it.

Worst day ever.

There'll never be another like Harry K. I'm devastated.

UPDATE: Still so upset.

Some place near family and friends comes your baseball play-by-play announcer. Three hours a day, six months a year, every year since I could hear anything I heard Harry Kalas telling me about my Phillies. What a drag.

BOSS FUMO GOES DOWN

I've occasionally mentioned Former State Senator Vincent Fumo here before, who represented me for most of my Philadelphia life. He was as corrupt as they come, a classic machine boss.

He literally lived in this castle on a hill in the middle of his dense urban district.


Today, he was found guilty of all 137 counts against him. Bail has been set at a full $2 million.

His ass is going to jail!

I can't even begin to describe the significance of this moment.

Vince Fumo was my nemesis. I can't tell you how many rants I went on to my dad or to my friends around the lunch table at school.

And now he's kaput.

Vince loved to pick up the tab at fancy restaurants with a credit card he nicknamed 'OPM,' or 'Other people's money,' which he created for himself using a sham nonprofit organization. He borrowed yachts that were property of a museum. He used his legislative aides as personal gophers and bagmen. He alienated everyone in his family. Anyone wanting anything had to kiss the man's ring. Perhaps most emblematic was the time he ordered a hit on his neighbor's dog.

Good luck in the big house Vince!

Philly Confronts Rich Tax Evaders

The beloved Philadelphia Eagles haven't paid their taxes and ACORN was brave enough to call 'em out.

Meanwhile, Mayor Nutter has taken a complimentary approach toward the city's tax delinquents:

Was that just another sidewalk altercation yesterday afternoon on South Broad Street, or was it Mayor Nutter trading verbal barbs with an alleged tax deadbeat?

Robert Gamburg, one of three lawyers at 121 S. Broad St. who owe the city a total of $348,000 in business privilege taxes, didn't like that Nutter chose to shame him with a news conference outside his building.

Nutter called the conference for 2 p.m. yesterday to show the measures he would take to embarrass delinquent taxpayers.

Nutter held a similar news conference in November, when he told those who owed more than $50,000 that he would be coming after them. Nutter said the city has collected $2.5 million in delinquent taxes in that effort.

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After Nutter denounced the three in front of the building, sheriff's deputies proceeded to deliver notices, while television cameras rolled, notifying the lawyers that their belongings were to be sold at auction on April 2 if they fail to pay their bills.

"The city will be forced to collect our money by any means necessary," Nutter said.

Take it to 'em Mike!

Now that's real leadership!

It's difficult to even imagine such bold action on behalf of the public good here in New Orleans and that's shameful.

The racial demography in Philadelphia is not so unlike New Orleans. There, however, diverse coalitions have been able to come together around progressive change. When that happens, so does real world progress. This crackdown on wealthy tax cheats is what is allowing the city to keep neighborhood library branches operating amidst a difficult municipal budget squeeze.

I decided to remain in New Orleans after I graduated college because I know in my heart that we can do the same kind of things here, in spite of all the parochialism and mistrust.

Philly Confronts Reality

In Philadelphia, tax increases are preferable to spending cuts.

Mayor Mike Nutter, elected by the largest margin in City of Philadelphia history, has had a rough first year on the job as a result of recession-induced budget deficit.

His proposed library branch closures were met by a huge public outcry. This environment has contributed to the long overdue reevaluation of the tax hikes v. spending cuts debate.

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New Orleans should go this route as well. We should stop rolling back the millage and start improving services. Obviously, something for after May of 2010 when hopefully a grownup will start restoring some basic financial accountability and public credibility to City Hall.

Lead

Not the verb, the heavy metal.

In related news, Atrios points out that my beloved Mütter Museum in Philly has a special exhibit on the impact of lead on public health

A good test to see if a person is marriage material is to take them on a date to the Mütter Museum.

If they "get" it then you've got yourself a keeper.

Mr. Duncan Black has no guts, he should go check out the guts display on the ground level.

The Roots?

No way!

Philadelphia hometown heroes the Roots will be playing a free show at the main branch of the New Orleans library?!?

Bad ass. My worlds collide.

I think the Roots are amongst the nation's most undervalued contributors to hip hop. To crossover into mainstream circles while still maintaining urban credibility and an original sound is not easy or common.

Public Corruption Day!

In honor of William Jefferson and Rod Blagojevich, I declare today to be Public Corruption Day. This new tradition calls for the whimsical recounting of hilarious and sad true tales of public corruption from across the land.

I'll start it off.

From time to time, I've alluded to my old political arch nemesis in Philly, State Senator Vincent Fumo. In many ways, he is the last old style political boss. Representing my district, you just didn't get anything done in the City of Philadelphia without kissing his ring. The man's reputation as a corrupt official was basic public knowledge sort of the way everyone in town knows who the head of the mafia is. His longtime feud with the boss of the IBEW local, my other childhood nemesis, Jonny Doc, is the stuff South Philly legend.

A few years ago, Fumo's lifestyle started to catch up to him. At one point, it was discovered that he had been borrowing yachts from the Seaport Museum to take his girlfriends out on cruises up and down the Delaware. At another point, it came out that his home, a literal castle on a hill, had been underassessed by several million dollars for years. He finally started to really come undone after one of his charities was exposed as a front for a personal slush fund.

Now he's on trial and it's been a pleasure to take in all of the salacious and sensational details. After being victimized by his corruption for my entire life, I do feel a tad bit entitled to celebrate the scandal at this point.

For instance, now we get to take in the testimony of one of Fumo's ex-girlfriends:

Though she insisted that she still loved Fumo, Dorothy Egrie-Wilcox spent 51/2 hours on the stand corroborating previous testimony about his turning government aides into personal servants.

And, at last, Egrie-Wilcox was revealed to be the source of what has become the iconic allegation in the case: the federal charge that Fumo boasted of spending "OPM," or "other people's money."

"He used it quite a bit," she testified. "When we'd go out to dinner, he would say, 'Let's use OPM.' "

To back up her account, prosecutors showed jurors a 2004 e-mail in which the senator himself used the acronym while talking about buying an ornamental globe.

Fumo signed off by writing, "Love You."

Egrie-Wilcox kept hundreds of such e-mails and turned them over to the FBI. Now they are evidence against the once-powerful Democrat.

But my favorite, or least favorite, juicy tidbit came from Fumo's neighbor in the Fairmount neighborhood:

Liza is a female mixed-breed beagle - a 10-year-old cutie owned by Nick Pappas, Fumo's neighbor on Green Street.

But Liza was just a pup when Fumo moved into his overhauled brownstone, the walls of which touch Pappas' home from the second floor up.

Apparently, Liza barked a bit. As Marrone testified in Fumo's corruption trial last week, the indicted state senator claimed that the dog howled through the night, a situation that Marrone was ordered to resolve.

And, as we all know, when the senator, whose staff slogan is "We get s--- done," gives an order - no matter how petty - his toadies pounce on it like the city will implode if they don't.

Marrone said that he spoke with a Fumocrat on City Council as well as a captain in Fairmount's 9th Police District about whether Liza's barking violated nuisance ordinances. The SPCA even got involved.

Fumo got so fed up, Marrone testified, he installed video-recording equipment outside Casa Fumo in an attempt to capture Liza serenading the neighborhood through the night.

Finally, Marrone testified, Fumo suggested putting some poison on a piece of meat and giving it to Liza.

Fumo literally ordered a hit on a dog and wanted his taxpayer funded staffer to do the deed. Pappas claims that his dog Liza is actually quite well-behaved.

As for me, Liza didn't yip once the entire time I visited. She did, though, wag her tail and lap at my hands like they'd been dipped in gravy.

So, I ask Nick, if Liza was always this quiet, what was going on with Fumo?

He launches into a tirade about the disruption that Fumo's home rehab caused, during the long months that the senator spent renovating the once-tumbledown manse into a showplace that now sports a greenhouse, shooting range, roof deck and elevator.

"The workers were here all the time, on my property," says Nick. "They set up their ladders in my yard without asking me.

"Bricks were falling down in my yard. Trash was everywhere. I'd tell them to clean up and they'd say, 'Tell it to the senator.' "

I miss Vince Fumo already and his trial isn't even over yet.

WCBF Contributes To Naming of Phenomenon Thingie

Remember when I told y'all about the Philly neighborhood of Fishtown after Ben Smith wrote about an anecdote from a canvasser in that neighborhood even though I wrote at much greater length about the same phenomenon in this post about racist union coworkers deciding to back Obama despite their disturbing prejudices.

Well now it's called the Fishtown Effect.
Atrios has already given it his official blog post of approval.

Don't worry, it's okay if I don't get any credit...

I'll take it my self.

.>jerks>/span>jerks

She Might Be Right

Mom says I need a real job.

I mean I already have the haircut.

Correct Me If I'm Wrong

Late last week, Paul Vallas wrote a letter to the editor of the Times-Picayune defending the Recovery School District's controversial school facilities master plan. In it, Mr. Vallas pushes back on recent reports by the Cowen Institute and the Bureau of Governmental Research that criticize the master plan's financial underpinning.

In short, because funding is concrete for only phase 1 of the facilities master plan, the independent groups argue that shortfalls made more likely by the financial crisis could lead to vast discrepancies in the quality of educational facilities in New Orleans with polar haves and have-nots.

In his letter to the T-P, Vallas addressed the uncertain funding structure after Phase 1 ends in 2013:

Phase 1 is funded by federal disaster recovery dollars that must be spent on building schools. While we're sure that we will be able to fund much of Phase 2, we know that in the years to come, the city and state will have to step up to the plate to raise capital funds to fully implement the plan. That is not surprising, or unusual.

In a sense, Paul Vallas is correct. Local and state governments do often have to share the costs of major projects such as the one the RSD is currently proposing. What I'm not sure of, is how usual it is for a project to begin without a plan to win funding. For instance, when a baseball team wants to hold taxpayers ransom for a new publicly-financed stadium, what they do is draw up a blueprint for their new digs and negotiate with the state and city for a plan to share the cost of stadium construction, land acquisitions, and related infrastructure improvements. That sounds similar to what the RSD is proposing but it really isn't. In this example, the team secures whatever legislation they need from the state and from the local city council and then begins construction. What they certainly do not do, is start digging holes into the ground with only enough money to build a third of the stadium. Here, the RSD wants to start construction without any concrete mechanisms to bankroll the later phases of the plan. Phase 1 alone insufficiently meets the needs of our district by concentrating precious dollars into just a few buildings without having evaluated the efficacy of spreading those dollars more prudently into targeted renovations.

The other thing I'd point out in this case is Paul Vallas' record from his time in Philadelphia. I wrote a three part series about this last year. Recall that Mr. Vallas was fired by Philadelphia's School Reform Commission after running unpredicted budget deficits running over $100 million. He seemed to have established a pattern. Mr. Vallas would spend furiously to implement certain aspects of his academic program and when he was forced to go to the state capital or to city council to defend a "surprise" deficit, it Vallas that would apply the pressure, goading lawmakers to "step up to the plate" to make up for his lack of fiscal restraint. To a certain extent, this is admirable because urban school districts are so badly underfunded. In practice, however, it provides for very short-term incremental progress. Vallas was successful once or twice in squeezing out a little bit extra to make up for the over-spending but it is never too long before lawmakers get tired of the act. Of course, in Philadelphia, contributing to Vallas' budget woes were huge increases in the number and value of no-bid contracts and unethical benefits paid out to Vallas consultants.

Here, Mr. Vallas has followed the Philadelphia pattern in an exaggerated sense, having already been raked by BESE for poorly formulated budgets and busted by the T-P and I for inappropriately large consultant contracts - including one to a woman forced to resign after unethical reimbursements paid by the Philly school district.

Also, let us consider Vallas' record in terms of spending on facilities from his time in Philadelphia. This passage is from something I wrote as part of the three part series:

In an op-ed to the Philadelphia Inquirer after Vallas had come to New Orleans, City Controller Alan Butkovitz wrote: (it has become archived, sorry I can't give a real link)

Right from the start we encountered resistance from the former CEO Paul Vallas when we questioned the insufficient progress and costs related to his $1.5 billion capital building program. It had a balance of $469 million - but little to show for it in the way of school construction. Vallas' original plan called for at least 20 schools to be built. At this time, we can only identify seven new schools that have been completed.

Ground broke on some construction way back in 2004. That there wouldn't be a clear accounting of what was built and when and for how much is shocking to me and should raise immediate red flags for everyone here in New Orleans given that the RSD is promising such a massive rebuilding program.

I called Harvey Rice, the First Deputy City Controller of the City of Philadelphia, to get more information about the capital improvement program. This is some of what he told me:

"There were two criticisms. One, we wanted to know what he did with the money. What did he build? No one has gotten that. We haven't gotten it. I don't even know if they have it in a document where they can succinctly sit down with you or anyone and say 'this is what we did'." - "We tried to do it on our own, spent a lot of hours going through newspaper articles, press statements, other statements that he made and trying to piece it all together... it's just been a difficult task." - "The other criticism was... that the school district wasn't spending it. They still have about half a billion dollars left... If you're not spending it, each year, material and labor costs increase, especially in Philadelphia, which is a union town. We thought if you're not spending it now, that sometime later you're not going to get the bang for your buck."
-

I called the Philadelphia School District directly and asked for information related to the capital improvement program. Nobody got back to me. (I'm a nobody though)

Mr. Vallas has been adamant about the need to move quickly to begin schools construction on the master plan, threatening that federal funding could be lost if more time is taken to review the proposed spending. This is an interesting argument given his failure to spend money he was granted in Philadelphia.

---

Lastly

This is the issue I wanted to raise when I titled the post.

My understanding throughout this entire process was that Mr. Vallas was not particularly involved in the master plan. Rather, the sense I've always gotten was that this was the other Paul's brainchild. Pastorek hired Parsons-Concordia to create the master plan before Paul Vallas was brought to New Orleans. It was Paul Pastorek and RSD Director of Facilities Planning Constance Caruso who worked with the hired firm to craft the document. It was Paul Pastorek who rejected a draft of the document in May that forced the delay of the release of the plan until late August.

From what I've gathered, Mr. Vallas's role in crafting the master plan had been limited to academic programming - the negotiation of different curricular themes for different schools. His job with the RSD is as an administrator of the schools themselves and it is my belief that this is what his responsibility was vis-a-vis the master plan.

So to me, it is very interesting to see Mr. Vallas being put up front to defend the plan. Where is Paul Pastorek? Where is Constance Caruso?

I hadn't planned on refreshing myself on Vallas' record in Philly as it pertained to the master plan because my understanding had long been that Vallas had very little to do with the SFMPOP.

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Here is this post's musical accompaniment.

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Expect news of a contract extension for Paul Vallas to percolate soon.

Hateful Rays-Baiting By McCain Camp at PA Stop

This morning I drove to Bensalem, Pennsylvania, just outside Philly, to check out a John McCain event being held at the TC Millwork facility. TC Millwork manufactures fixtures and whatnot for casinos, health care facilities, and other retailers.

I had wanted to check out for myself some of this hatefulness characterizing many McCain campaign events over the last ten days or so.

But aside from a couple of refrains of "communist" or "socialist," McCain supporters in Bensalem were largely peaceful. No overly offensive anti-Obama tee shirts or buttons. The event was tightly controlled and occurred very early in the morning.

I was disappointed that I had schlepped all the way to Bensalem with a camera only to be put back to sleep by the relaxed crowd and the boring speech but trust me when I say how reassuring it was not to have had to witness a bunch of spiteful human caricatures flying off the handle.

Before the speeches began, I was chatting with some members of the local press gaggle who were wondering about just how short the notice was before this morning's rally. The reason was that the event drew no more than 1000 people. The McCain camp has gotten used to smaller crowds in comparison to Obama's events but the advance team seemed to have anticipated a more substantial turnout - a much larger area was cordoned off in the facility than ended up being necessary.

The other thing I noticed about the crowd was how familiar everybody seemed to be with other attendees. Now that's not an observation of the friendliness and camaraderie of McCain supporters - I'm saying that people knew each other, literally. The crowd seemed to be made up of a lot of regular GOP volunteers, not the larger Bucks County population. Also the crowd was disproportionately over the age of - they were freakin' old. There were some nuclear families there too but overwhelmingly, it was the early-bird.

Remember, it's not as if this event was held in Center City Philadelphia, where Obama is wildly popular. This was a campaign rally in the traditionally conservative suburb of Bucks County. Republicans have long relied on the Philadelphia suburbs to offset the liberal voting power of the city proper. But in 2000 and 2004, Bucks rejected George Bush and so did Pennsylvania at-large. In 2006, Bucks flipped the 8th Congressional district by electing Patrick Murphy, the first Democrat to represent the district since 1993.

Apparently, signals coming from the McCain campaign indicate a Pennsylvania-centered strategy over the next few weeks. Without a viable means of keeping up with Obama's message and campaign machine, the McCain camp seems to be realizing that there is no way they can win Colorado, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc. Without flipping a big electoral prize like Pennsylvania, McCain can't win the election. He simply does not have the money, time, or campaign competence to expect to keep all the red states that Obama currently leads in the polls - even if you take Florida and Ohio out of the equation.

To win Pennsylvania, which voted with the Democratic nominee in both 2000 and 2004, McCain will have to reverse the last fifteen years of GOP atrophy and Democratic gain in the Philadelphia suburbs. Not to mention the 8-15 point lead Obama has in the polls in Pennsylvania. He has two weeks to do it and he can't do it without boosting his popularity in Bucks County. And I don't think he can boost his popularity in Bucks County unless he can figure out a way to quintuple the number of people willing to attend his rallies there.

But wait -

John McCain is an experienced candidate and has become increasingly well-versed in the politics of division and deceit. He played the Rays card at today's event in the Philly burbs.

Here's what he said:

I heard that Senator Obama was showing some love to the Rays down in Tampa Bay yesterday. Now, I'm not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states, but I think I may have detected a little pattern with Senator Obama. It's pretty simple really. When he's campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he's campaigning in Tampa Bay, he shows love to the Rays.

That's the most blatant form of Rays-baiting imaginable. McCain is hinging his campaign on Pennsylvania which means he needs to reverse course in the Philly area. So what does he do? He questions Barack Obama's credentials as a Phillies fan.

Brilliant strategy.

McCain's advisers certainly know how important the World Series is for Philadelphia and have likely encouraged McCain to do whatever it takes to impugn Senator Obama on that issue.

But it's wrong!

Barack Obama has maintained that since his hometown White Sox were eliminated, he'd be rooting for those Fightin' Philadelphia Phillies. And good for him. It's the correct policy. Any objective observer that has studied the history of the game and the current baseball climate knows that the Phillies are the right team for the right time.

Yesterday, after the Tampa Rays won their first ever AL pennant, Barack Obama was introduced at an event by rookie pitcher David Price and some other members of the local nine. Obama politely congratulated them on their success, saying this:

"I have said from the beginning that I am a unity candidate, bringing people together," Obama said. "So when you see a White Sox fan showing love to the Rays, and the Rays showing some love back, you know we're onto something right here."

In no way did Barack Obama flip-flop on his endorsement of the Phillies. There is nothing wrong with the Tampa Rays. They have a lot of likable players, have a compelling worst-to-first story, and Barack Obama has no reason not to appreciate their efforts. But let us be clear: Barack Obama is pulling for the Phils!

He first endorsed the Phillies on October 12th. He did so AGAIN over the weekend - to an enemy Florida radio show. So what kind of campaign is John McCain running?

McCain, while accurately quoting Obama, makes an absolutely inappropriate inference about switched loyalties. The derision in his voice was palpable - it was scary.

McCain's decision to Rays-bait a tense Philadelphia shows what kind of man he is. McCain himself does not have the courage to pick a World Series team of his own but he has no problem inciting a crowd to - we're talking Philly sports fans here - violence.

It was a shameful display by a man once destined to be remembered as honorable. My how times have changed.

The Phillies

I can't believe we're going to the World Series.

I've never high-fived so many strangers in my life.

I'm very lucky to have made it home for this.

I'm so happy.

WCBF To Philadelphia

I'll be heading to Philadelphia this Wednesday for two weeks. I'll continue to blog semi-regularly, hopefully with firsthand reports of what a real Presidential campaign looks like. As we know, Philadelphia is critical to Obama's prospect in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania whereas Louisiana is off of the map right now.

(Full disclosure: Everyone knows I'm really only going to watch the Phillies in the playoffs)

(Anyone got tickets to NLCS Game 6? Anyone? Would upstairs Dan like to tempt fate once again?)

I Love My Home Town

Palin subjected to 90 seconds or more of sustained booing at Flyers game.





I was more than annoyed when I'd heard that Sarah Puppet would be given free hockey mom publicity by my hometown ice team. In fact, I said some mean things about the sport of hockey.

How about my Philadelphia brothers and sisters, eh?

From the CNN recap:

"Flyers fans, show Philadelphia's class and welcome America's #1 hockey mom, Sarah Palin," the massive electronic message board pleaded, to little effect. Booing quickly erupted when the smiling candidate emerged from a tunnel leading onto the ice, muffling the applause of any Palin supporters in the crowd.

Some in the audience simply gave her a thumbs down gesture. Others called her names.

But alas, the new Wachovia First Union Corestates Center attracts a corporate crowd compared to the vrai Philadelphians that used to populate the Wachovia First Union Corestates Spectrum. Had the game been at the Spectrum, some crazed fans would have dropped the gloves on Governor Palin at mid-ice, ran the Zamboni over her highlighted hair and sequestered her in the penalty box with that garsh darn mainstream media for the duration of the campaign. Meanwhile, the remaining crazed fans would just go for the beer supplies and end up passed out in the parking lot.

Woohoo!

UPDATE: Seems like Palin got the Philly treatment all day:

Outside the Bellevue, Palin, sitting in her car, gave a little back and forth wave to the protesters, who in return gave her thumbs down and rounds of boos.

"Back to Alaska, They shouldn't have Asked ya!" read one poster on the median.

Police said about 400 protesters lined the streets outside the hotel, the same number that organizers expected at the fundraiser, chanting to each other and to passing motorists. Inside, Palin got her hair and makeup done at Pierre and Carlo salon.

At times, Republicans attending the event and protesters confronted one another.

"They are hooligans," said Bucks County restauranteur and McCain supporter Andrew Abruzzese, after he flashed a peace sign at protesters, who responded with raised middle fingers. Another Republican complained of being jostled.

Er, I suppose she only had the opportunity to blow kisses to protesters when she wasn't getting her hair done at an exclusive salon and shelling out "varying levels of interaction" at $25,000 a fundraiser for a bunch of wealthy hot-and-jostled bigots:

Wally Nunn, a prominent Republican fundraiser who contributed $25,000 to be able to mingle with Palin, said he was disappointed that McCain had come to Obama's defense.

Nunn said he did not believe Obama to be a decent man. Attending the event with former 60s radical turned GOP activist David Horowitz, he said, "This guy Obama scares me."

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Tickets to the Bellevue fundraiser, organized by local businessmen Craig Drake and Frank Giordano ranged from $1,000 to $25,0000, for varying levels of interaction with Palin. Leslie Gromis Baker, a state McCain official would not reveal the amount raised. She said 25 people paid the highest level or more.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama made himself right at home:

By contrast, Obama told supporters in Philadelphia today that with the his Chicago White Sox eliminated, he was rooting for the Phillies in the baseball playoffs.

Let's go Phillies!

For those of you who don't know, Obama's "Yes We Can" slogan was originally coined by Dave Cash, the 2nd basemen for the 1974 Philllies.