Monday: Why Won't You Wear the Ribbon?

The war rages on. (P-G, Rich Lord)

Pittsburgh Councilman Patrick Dowd plans to introduce legislation Tuesday to give council and the controller some say in the management of the city's challenged pension fund.

Dowd also authored a letter to URA director Pat Ford requesting that the URA refrain from spending UDAG money until it receives approval from the City of Pittsburgh, as is required.

Contrary to popular belief, these requests are in keeping with the Valentine's Day proclamation, in which government officials agreed to work together to improve such things as transparency and accountability.

Brian O'Neill wrote a tremendous column about the Battle of the Take-Home Cars, and the various pros and cons spinning out of it for the public at large.

Unfortunately, he neglects to illustrate the bigger picture by summing it all up like so:

It's very loud, occasionally entertaining, but is more about turf battles than with making Pittsburgh a better place to live.

Cut the mayor's cars. Cap past years' budget leftovers. Leave the rest. Move on.

Move on indeed.

What O'Neill failed to consider is, "turf battles" of any sort have not been waged by the august body of council since the institution of the Home Rule Charter. City Council has taken instead to routinely ceding power to the mayoralty, at an ever-increasing speeds, under ever-more aggressive persuasion.

This habit might be having a distinct effect on our mayors, and thereupon the direction of our city -- even under mayors as seemingly dissimilar as Mayor Murphy and Mayor Ravenstahl.

(All of which is a long way of saying, Go Patrick Dowd!)

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Today is BLOG FOR EQUALITY day, brought to you by Sue Kerr of Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents and by the budding Pittsburgh Bloggers Guild.

Today is the day we all write about the proposed state Marriage Protection Amendment (tm) making its way through Harrisburg. Feel free to join in and use the attached image. The Comet will chime in later, the better to leech off of our colleagues' ideas. If there was some confusion as to who should have been invited to participate in BLOG FOR EQUALITY day, the answer is Everybody Everybody.

Summon your muses and let them muse. If you would like to learn more about the Pittsburgh Bloggers Guild, register your interest here.

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The inaugural edition of the Conversation at the Post-Gazette was pretty good. The black lettering The Conversation floating over Maria's head was a bit of a distraction, as was the Michel Lambesque pantone chosen -- a neutral backdrop full of Post-Gazette logos might have lent the production a more professional air.

Favorite moment: Dayvoe: "Full disclosure: Maria and I are on opposite sides of this."

Comet Suggestion: Make these vodcasts embeddable to the blogs. Yes, we know what you're shrieking to yourself: But then they won't visit our site, and we won't get hits! Pish posh.

There is a natural hesitation among readers toward surfing over to a different page -- especially when one may not feel like watching "now," but would like it to be at our fingertips in a day or two. Bear in mind that a publisher can always put commercials directly onto these things! We the bloggers can be your distributors, and we would do it for free so long as we enjoy the content.

Free the information, plunk yourselves out onto the shelf, and everybody wins.

The music was actually really good.