In exchange for their donations to fund the Buffalo school administrators retreat, vendors got a room in a villa, a place to shop their wares, and more.

Answers still sought in shooting that killed two, wounded three others.

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Harry Smith, a humorist?
Who knew?
Smith, the former CBS News anchor-reporter (see right), made his debut on NBC Thursday night with an amusing piece on the “Nightly News with Brian Williams” on President Obama turning 50.
Williams introduced the four-minute light feature as an owner’s guide to turning a half century before Smith noted the President has many difficulties ahead as “a man of a certain age” that Congress can’t help him solve.
As if it has been any help anyway.
The reporter suggested “prayer and patience” in eventually dealing with teen-age daughters, golf as a safer sport than basketball and joining AARP to get good hotel deals.
Smith did break one cardinal reporting rule – he made himself part of the story. As a photo of Smith next to the President was shown, Smith added “that gray is OK, but bald is beautiful.”
He didn’t think that the President was in danger of experiencing a mid-life crisis because he’s “already married up.”
After the classy piece, Williams noted that Smith didn’t deal with any medical issues that arise at 50, which prompted a discussion of a procedure involving a camera where the sun doesn’t shine.
All in good fun, of course.
I imagine Katie Couric – who actually had a colonoscopy on live TV during her “Today” days — was even smiling.
If you missed it, you can watch Smith’s piece online.
* Speaking of men of a certain age, sources tell me that Buffalo News reporter Brian Meyer has signed up for the current buyout offer and Dan Herbeck was expected to if he hasn’t already. The deadline is Aug.12. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll get it because it is based on seniority. Meyer is much further down the seniority list than Herbeck and less likely to be able to get it. Jerry Sullivan, Donn Esmonde and Jim Heaney haven’t decided what they will do.
* And former “Cheers” and “Becker” star Ted Danson – who went gray decades ago and has been fighting hair loss forever – has joined the cast of “CSI” as the replacement for Laurence Fishburne as the supervisor of the Las Vegas unit. The 63-year-old actor is expected to bring a lighter touch to the drama. And I’m, not just talking about his hair.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/44026884#44026884

pergament@msn.com

Tradition, innovation and some good old fair magic combine to offer something for everyone at the Erie County Fair, which opens Wednesday and runs through Aug. 21.

A state inspector and two City of Buffalo inspectors are among 9 individuals and 2 companies charged.

Pits four incumbents against each other in two of 11 districts.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 512 points Thursday, its ninth-steepest decline.

Familiarity with Gailey's system will make it easy for quarterback to get up and running with Bills.

Star Trek II: The Rath of Walter

Vowing to settle the matter for once and all, U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny imposed a new set of 11 Erie County legislative districts that will pit existing legislators against each other in mortal combat to keep their job…and their life…

Due to a voter-approved mandate, the current size of the 15 member legislature will be reduced to 11. This caused much political consternation and anger as shifting alliances and backroom deals resulted in competing plans at redistricting that failed to satisfy anyone completely. This June, the matter reached Federal Court. Says Judge Skretny:

“This redistricting plan will best serve the voters of Erie County, while respecting municipal boundaries in a way that makes sense to the various demographics of the area. Unfortunately, in two instances two sets of current incumbents from the Republican and Democratic parties would face each other in an election. Therefore, to spare all of us the drama of such an event, I hereby order these parties to fight to the death in traditional Vulcan combat.”

Amherst Republicans Ray Walter and Ed Rath III will battle each other for their lives and to determine who will lead the district. In addition, Democrat Tom Mazur will square off against fellow party member Tim Whalen. Traditional Vulcan combat (known as “kal-if-fee”) had been in the past used to settle challengers to a pre-arranged wedding.

The combatants will fight in an enclosed ring of barren land (perhaps near the grain elevators?) and will fight using traditional Vulcan weapons that were used before the Time of Awakening. The lirpa is a Vulcan weapon consisting of a wooden staff a little over a meter in length, with a semicircular blade at one end and a metal bludgeon on the other. It is similar to the monk’s spade. In addition, combatants can use the ahn’woon: a Vulcan catch-strangle weapon, similar in principle to the Earth Roman gladiator’s cast net. The multi-strapped weapon (approximately 1.1 meters long) uses weights on the ends of the straps to entangle, stun, or cut the target, and the application of tying action and wrapping can restrict the breathing of the target, asphyxiating the victim.

The actual date of both combat sessions has not been determined by the Judge yet, who will preside over each. It is expected to occur in November.

Who will live long and prosper? And who will die in honorable combat? And you thought Genesee County politics were brutal!

So, I don’t normally care about athletes’ Twitter accounts, but yesterday was mind boggling. The Buffalo Sabres’ Derek Roy has been on Twitter lately and according to folks who know better than I do, the account has been verified. Here’s the thing, some of his tweets are just bizarre, like this one about the ladies room at a golf course:

He attached this picture:

Of course, I had no other choice but to make this:

Yeah, I know, there go my chances to be invited to his awesome hockey shack. Listen, I respect the guy. I don’t care what anybody says; he’s a point per game center in the National Hockey League, but if your Twitter account is completely off the wall I’m going to have to wonder about you.

How do you top ladies’ room toilet tweets? Well, you don’t; so that’s all I have for today…I mean really, isn’t that enough?

Bump it for Derek Roy's Hockey Shack

I’m assuming this is a one-of-a-kind 1956 Ford Sunliner convertible. I don’t imagine too many others have a propane grille where the engine used to be, a cooler built into the trunk, and an interior modified to resemble a 1950s’ diner. See more pics here. — Jim Corbran, You Auto Know

Running back Fred Jackson took the handoff and was in the midst of making his first step forward when linebacker Shawne Merriman was suddenly all over him. ``I didn't see him coming,'' Jackson said...

I read things, lots of things. I keep a list of the best things and post them here for you. Enjoy the news and views that make your morning constitution a little less grumpy.

1. Let’s start the Friday grumpy with this awesome story of petit City Hall corruption and incompetence. You might remember the saga of former City of Buffalo Human Resources Commissioner Karla Thomas, fired by Mayor Byron Brown after the City Comptroller’s office found the HR department paid out over $800,000 in health insurance premiums to dead people. The process of firing her was a political circus and exposed fissures in the foundation of the Grassroots political organization and humiliated the Mayor for months.

The city spent more than $200,000 and invested dozens of hours in hearings to prove that Thomas, its human resources commissioner, should be fired for failing to do her job

The investigation leading to a report which justified the Mayor’s firing of Thomas was pretty pricey as well.

The mayor removed Thomas from her $91,734-a-year job in January, shortly after Michael Battle, a former U.S. attorney, conducted a hearing and concluded that Brown was justified in firing in his onetime political ally.

Battle’s 23-page report criticized Thomas for ignoring Brown’s order, issued a year earlier, to correct deficiencies in her department. They included an embarrassing discovery unearthed by the City Comptroller’s Office: The city had been paying health insurance premiums for 170 dead retirees.

According to figures released Wednesday by the Comptroller’s Office, the city paid Battle $134,600 — or $425 an hour.

The best part? After all the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and hundreds of hours spent in hearings and testimony, Compensation and Benefits Director Antoinette Palmer failed to deny Thomas’s claim for unemployment benefits. Thomas has been receiving those benefits for seven months.

The Mayor took action and suspended Palmer from her position. Amazing how the rank incompetence of this administration never seems to get laid at Brown’s footsteps. Ignorance of the law, corruption, and unethical behavior is always the fault of some underling, never Byron Brown.

Not only is he a do-nothing caretaker mayor who lacks a vision for the city, he clearly doesn’t believe that the buck stops with him. 2013 can’t come soon enough…

2. Thanks to the Citizens United decision—which allows for corporations to contribute unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns, we get awesome stories like this,

A mystery company that pumped $1 million into a political committee backing Mitt Romney has been dissolved just months after it was formed, leaving few clues as to who was behind one of the biggest contributions yet of the 2012 presidential campaign.

Essentially, an LLC was formed by a lawyer who works for a law firm that has been a long term business partner with Romney’s former company (Bain Capital). The offices of the mystery corporation were listed in corporate filings as being at a building in Manhattan which also happens to house offices for Bain Capital. The mystery company than made a $1MM donation to Romney’s campaign and then promptly dissolved itself. Welcome to the 2012 Presidential elections, banana republic style.

3. Kevin Drum breaks down the current economic situation thusly.

2001-2008: Republicans run economy into ditch.

2008: Obama elected.

2009-2011: Republicans respond by doing everything possible to prevent him from fixing things.

2012: Republicans use lousy economy as campaign cudgel against Obama.

2012: Republican candidate wins presidency (maybe).

Yup, pretty much sums it up.

4. The jobs report that will be issued today will be a collective kick to the nuts for the American economy and will send the markets further into panic mode. But, a report issued yesterday by the IRS is even more alarming.

The data showed an alarming drop in the number of taxpayers reporting any earnings from a job — down by nearly 4.2 million from 2007 — meaning every 33rd household that had work in 2007 had no work in 2009.

Average income in 2009 fell to $54,283, down $3,516, or 6.1 percent in real terms compared with 2008, the first Internal Revenue Service analysis of 2009 tax returns showed. Compared with 2007, average income was down $8,588 or 13.7 percent.

Looking for a silver lining? Here ya go.

No income tax was paid by 1,470 of the 235,413 taxpayers earning $1 million or more in 2009, compared with the 959 taxpayers with million-dollar-plus incomes who paid no income taxes in 2007.

Phew! I’m glad those millionaires, I mean “job creators” are keeping it together!

5. A clever website as we gear up for the 2012 election, Multiple Choice Mitt, exposing the litany of positions Mitt Romney has taken on a multitude of issues as he panders to whatever base stares him in the face.

Here’s a fun example on the issue of gun control.

And, then there’s this:

Heh.

6. How are foreign powers responding to the debt ceiling debate and the resulting political chaos? It smells something like schadenfreude.

As the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, China’s interest in the debt ceiling debate was hardly academic. State wire service Xinhua expressed its dismay at the potential of a default in the run-up to the final debt decisions, calling the political brinkmanship in Washington “dangerously irresponsible” in an editorial last week.

The Chinese state-sponsored paper Global Times takes a bigger picture view, editorializing on how the -debate has already negatively affected U.S. standing in the world. “The US is well-known for promoting rules and regulations to other countries, but now countries are increasingly realizing Washington can stamp all over its own rules and regulations,” the editors write.

The Hindustan Times editorializes that “If routine has become Armageddon, the US cannot be counted on when the tough decisions are being made.”

7. From the seminal work, “What’s The Matter With Kansas“, a quote to help make sense of the last few years of Tea Party politics…

8. I’ll leave you with this, Christopher Walken reading “The Three Little Pigs”

Have a day!

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A quick look at what's happening today in Western New York