"Shovel Ready": Former "America's Governor" Ed Rendell Speaks Out, Then Dines Out

“I don’t think we meant to be deceptive.” -- Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell



              Back in October, when Obama admitted that he had to learn on the job that shovel-ready jobs don’t exist, then-governor Ed Rendell (D., Penn.)  — a leader in the push for the stimulus — told the New York Times it was all a terrible misunderstanding and called the question of "shovel-ready jobs" a "definitional” issue.

              Rendell said “shovel ready” always meant that projects were ready to begin the sometimes long process of public bidding by contractors.

            “When we said ‘shovel ready’ we meant ‘shovel ready’ in the way we do things.” 

                He added, “I don’t think we meant to be deceptive.”

        Note: The above post, keyed mostly to this column by Jonah Goldberg concerning the "shovel-ready job" travesty/deception portion of President Obama's "stimulus" program, but containing some additional language from the earlier Peter Baker New York Times interview with the president, must be especially disheartening to those people who believed in both the sincerity and competence of the actors involved.  Everyone else simply feels continued disgust. Long before the Times piece appeared last fall, I recall reading a Philadelphia Magazine interview with a city infrastructure executive who, responding to questions concerning the ongoing, perpetual deterioration of our Schuylkill Expressway and the permanent I-95/Blue Route intersection bottleneck, explicated and debunked the myth of the "shovel-ready job".  That city manager was a Democrat also, but he felt the need to give a straightforward, factual answer to the reporter's question.


        Former Governor Rendell is, interestingly, one of the few politicians who is difficult to picture with a shovel in his hands.  (Shovel photos tend to be regular, almost heraldic political symbols because of politicians' regular attendance at groundbreaking ceremonies.)  Actually, the only photograph I could find of the current MSNBC pundit-at-large/Large Pundit holding a shovel was taken last November 7th at the  United Flight 93 memorial groundbreaking in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where he was sporting an incredibly inappropriate grin.  Out of respect for the families of the brave passengers and victims of Flight 93, I decided not to post that photo.  

        Pictures of Rendell in the vicinity of and eating cheesesteaks abound, however, so here are two.  I recall with amusement the time Rendell took then-presidential candidate John Kerry on the obligatory campaign cheesesteak run in Philly (at the iconic Pat's, I believe, pictured here) and Kerry tried to order his steak with a gruyere cheese topping, thereby making himself look completely ridiculous.  

                 It has always been said that Ed Rendell looks convincing eating a cheesesteak.  It will not be gainsaid here.

        A Large Man, never at a loss for words, former Governor Rendell clearly regards the rest of Us as small. 

Suspended Animation (Japan and Libya)

Elisabeth Sladen (as Sarah) shows the effects of suspended animation in Doctor Who 

       The tragic, still unfolding events in Japan and Libya have awoken in me a curious and disturbing sense of suspended animation., i.e., the slowing of life processes by external means without termination.

        It seems so strange  -- the protracted and seemingly endless alternation of unverifiable, unreliable and  unsustained "good news" and "bad news" from Japan, dispensed and rotated through half, quarter -- even shorter -- cycles.  Things must seem twice as incoherent over there  -- unless they're receiving different and more consistent information than we are here -- and they are as unaware of our alternate universe as we surely are of theirs.

  

Jupiter Mission:  2001, A Space Odyssey


        Libya, a completely different situation and one suffused with an obvious (except in the sense of being easily understood) political superstratum, is scarcely more coherent and confuses both spatial/political (right and left) and compass directions. (Civil wars are like that.)   Please note that this is not a political posting expressing a personal conclusion or point of view on these matters.  However, for an opinion/analysis of a person on the right (Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post),  click here.   To read a "left" alternative view (from Michael Kinsley in the Los Angeles Times), click here.   Both writers are knowledgeable and thoughtful.  Neither paints anything like a happy, contented picture.

        While both catastrophes are still "current events", they now each seem to have gone on for so long without obvious milestones or signposts that I feel myself cryonically frozen in a permanent fuzzy present tense with no expectation of any future arrival at any point of entry or safe harbor.

Where my knowledge of suspended animation first began.


        On a much more trivial level, a similar sensation of suspended animation arises from experiencing the continuing, practically incessant television appearances of former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, former Tennessee U.S. representative Harold Ford, and former Newsweek magazine editor Jon Meacham (the man who single-handedly wrecked Newsweek, in business since 1933, by making it unreadable, uninteresting and actually physically unpleasant to the touch) on various news shows where they each discourse interminably about subjects they know very little about.  At least Rendell is in his element here -- turn on the switch and he just Goes, kind of like Jane's brilliant Kung-Fu Hamster.  The other two just emit wheezy sounds. 

Unrelenting blowhard, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who will speak at any length on any topic.

Former U.S. representative from Memphis, Tennessee, Harold Ford -- icy opportunist and "higher office political hopeful" turned soggy pundit and  "investment banker"/Rolodex whore.  Encountering him on a Manhattan street is scary -- is he a revenant or an extra-terrestrial visitor from an ongoing real-life "V" invasion?  And why is he making that face?

Jon Meacham -- he actually destroyed Newsweek magazine all by himself.  By making its appeal more "selective", he completely eviscerated it so quickly that he should receive the Admiral Graf Spee Award for speedy scuttling.  A cure for insomnia in human form, being subjected to Meacham's Hamlet-like soliloquies is clearly collective karmic payback for some mysterious wrong thing each of us did to someone sometime somewhere.  For what it's worth, I'm so sorry.  As Linda Blair once said so memorably: "Mother, make it stop." 

Kung-Fu Hamster -- in Todd Rundgren's words, A Wizard, A True Star.  

Click on link above and here to see hamster in action.