Mike Doyle Talks To Chris Potter

In this week's City Paper (available everywhere that's anywhere) Chris Potter does what I did a week or so ago - he talks with Congressman Mike Doyle.



Of course, Chris writes it better - the rat bastard.



And they discuss our current political climate:

Most Americans were appalled by the months-long fiasco. And while cuts could have been worse -- programs like Medicare and Social Security are protected, for now -- the debt ceiling has never been used as political leverage before. With the tactic's success proven, future hostage-taking seems likely.



But if you ask Congressman Mike Doyle (D-Pittsburgh), the problem isn't that democracy doesn't work. It's that only one side is working at it.



"If I held a town-hall meeting," says Doyle, conservatives "would have no trouble turning out hundreds of people. They'd travel in from outside the district just to say, ‘Hi.'" By contrast, "There isn't a Republican in the area that has received that type of pressure. … If liberals don't like what the tea-party movement is doing to the country, they need to start showing up in droves. And then you'll see people starting to show the courage we wish they would have."

In droves.



Go read Potter, it'll do ya good.

Welcome To The World, Cormac!

From this Early Returns piece from Friday, we read:

And mazel tov to new dad Chris Potter and wife Melanie for the birth today of son Cormac.

Potter's been a good friend and on occasion (but only when he thinks it's warranted, of course) an annoyingly passive-aggressive critic to this blog for a long long time. Except for the stubborn defamation lawsuits that our attorneys assure us have direct links to something Potter suggested to us, his insights are, for the most part, not so damaging as to force us to shut down the blog and move to Toronto to avoid Homeland Security.

Usually.

But I fear I've said too much. I do want to take a moment to congratulate Mr Potter on his great good fortune!

And in his defense, I'd like to point out something to Tim McNulty, P-G writer who included this in his piece:

Pittsburgh City Paper's cover story this week is on the Corey O'Connor/Chris Zurawsky race to replace Doug Shields as the Democrat in council district 5. (We're frankly shocked that Potter* didn't go with a "hair apparent" headline.)

Tim, have you seen Potter's "hair line" these days? It's farther back than mine! If there's a reason he didn't make up some cheap coiffure drollery to describe a full head of hair, it's probably because he is, like me and Tony Norman, unfairly hair-free up top.

Life's hell for the follicularly challenged, you know. Cormac will understand this in about 45 years.

One Thought On Potter's Update

Potter's Slag Heap's been doing a great job following the FOP Press Release for sometime now.

Today he had a most interesting update:

Also, just for those of you who are fans of this hoax -- and I know you're out there ... a sharp-eyed reader has pointed out that the faked press release also contains another secret message, in addition to the one we've previously noted.

If you look at the very first letter of each line of the release, it spells out the following message:

"Fuck da pigs in pgh."

The previously noted secret message is found in the logo at the top of the hoaxed press release. Instead of the Latin "Jus Fidus Libertatum" (translation: Law is the safeguard of liberty), the logo in the hoaxed press release reads "Justicia Volutabrum".

"Volutabrum", Potter dutifully tells us, is Latin for "pigsty".

Back to the second secret message. If you look at the hoaxed release, you'll see that what Potter wrote is not the only plaintext hidden in the first letters of each line. The complete plaintext is:

"fuckda pigs inp gh tdj"

(The spaces above align with the paragraph breaks in the hoaxed release.) I do have to wonder why there's a space between the "p" and the "gh" though. Given the amount of time it must've taken to compose the message, surely a little more consistency might have been achieved.

It's my guess is that too much work was put in composing the whole thing for "TDJ" to just fill out the last (and unconnected) paragraph. It's necessary otherwise so it must be a part of the message.

How much you wanna bet the police really want to speak to someone with the initials TDJ? Or three people whose initials are T, D, and J?

Of course, I could be completely wrong. It's just a guess on a frickin' cold Saturday afternoon.