So, so many fake Japanese swords
A quick ebay search for “gendaito” results in dozens of purported Japanese katanas for sale.
Hand-made “art sword” gendaitos were very few in number to begin with, maybe a few thousand by 1944, and after 1945, when Japanese swords of all qualities were being melted down, there were a lot fewer left.
When I began collecting antique Japanese swords in 1993, it was a pretty structured environment with plenty of Vet bring-backs available through newspaper ads and at gun shows. But most of those swords were basic Showa shin-Shinto machine made swords of solid stock. Created en masse for Japanese NCOs, they were the great bulk of “samurai” type swords captured and brought back to England and America after WWII. Though justifiably iconic in their own right, as they are beautiful weapons by design, none of them were art swords. None were made by hand in 1562 by a famous swordsmith.
Enter China. And with her came all kinds of fakery of every kind of antique collectible you could ever want. Guns, swords, knives, bayonets, not to mention shoes, purses, clothes etc. The first faked Japanese swords from China were easy to spot. Some were laughably crude, some were pretty good but either missing or overplaying critical aspects of real antique Japanese swords. Either way, only the most gullible or inexperienced buyers took them.
Today, however, you can find practically mint condition gendaito or older swords, with a nice new reddish rust on the tang, selling for half or a third of what such swords used to bring. Lots of them. Most of these fake blades are in authentic WWII military fittings, giving them a false air of authenticity.
The reason for the price drop is that so many fake Japanese swords have been brought to market that the natural demand and market absorption is oversaturated. Thus, supply exceeds demand, and price drops accordingly. Greedy dealers looking to enrich themselves at the expense of would-be collectors have driven this dynamic.
Oh, there is a demand out there for real Japanese swords. People from all walks of life recognize how perfect these edged weapons are, and how refined and representative they are of the warrior ethos. Japanese swords are iconic, and therefore inspiring. They bring a lot of happiness to their owners, if only to serve as reminders of the old ways, like when men were men.
But sword dealers have now definitely overplayed their hand. The evidence of this fakery is overwhelming.
There is not only no possible way that one dealer can have so many authentic Japanese swords for sale at any one time, and there are dozens of dealers each stocked to the gills with fake swords being represented as authentic antiques, there is no possible way that this many authentic antique Japanese swords were ever available at one time in any one market, except maybe on the entire island of Japan in 1944.
After 1944 and Japan’s fall, swords were outlawed by the Allies, and they were destroyed by the thousands. Just like fabulous rifles in Germany and Austria were destroyed by the Allies. Though highly lamentable, it was all done to protect our troops. Very few Japanese swords or German rifles made it out alive, so to speak.
If I were to describe the ways these fake swords leap off the virtual pages of ebay and other sellers and scream “I am a fake,” I’d write a book. However, I’m just disgusted by it all, and writing a book is not in my future. However, here are some things to look out for: 1) tangs that have reddish rust. A true old worn rust is tough to fake. 2) file marks on tangs running the wrong way. 3) Tang inscriptions that are either perfect or that are cut over the defined edges. 4) Blades that are perfect, or that have a perfect yakiba or perfect hamon. This is the biggest red flag of all. Most Vet bring-backs were abused by the soldiers themselves, through horseplay. The swords were then used by kids in the 1950s for horseplay and cutting experiments. These swords were not then that valuable or collectible, so they were rarely protected from use or abuse. They were simply the artifacts and relics of brutal, cruel, sad warfare that their captors wished to forget. So to see so many shiny, smooth, perfect blades represented as antiques is a huge red flag. Very very few actual antique Japanese swords made it to 2017 unscathed, either through actual battle use or more likely, through abuse in American backyards at the hands of playful boys or demonstrative uncles in the 1950s-1970s. To see such incredibly distinct hamons on so many “antique” Japanese swords is a huge red flag. A real antique blade will naturally lose its luster over time, and the hardened cutting edge will follow that process, to the point where it becomes faint and barely distinct. Most blades will show clear splotches, discoloration, some rust, from having sat in a basement or living room for 70 years.
Guys, it’s tough to say this, but a lot of you are buying fake Japanese swords that are in reality made recently in China for the American collector market. It’s cliche, but caveat emptor. Ask yourself and your seller some really basic questions. The most important question to a seller being: How on earth do you keep finding these very rare swords, in such high quantities, in such incredibly good condition, to sell at such low prices?
You know the answer, or at least you should know it. The sad answer is the sad fact that it appears about 90% to 95% of the purported antique Japanese swords being sold today are fakes, most likely of recent Chinese origin (Pakistanis are getting better at making old looking edged weapons, too).
Do your research. Think hard about how each sword now for sale made its way to market. You’ll come to the natural and healthy conclusion. And you’ll run away, and save your money for real antiques.
Historic Harrisburg Association Home Tour another success
Though we have to date declined to allow hundreds of strangers to walk through our home amidst the cold weather and holiday cheer, there are one to two dozen other Harrisburg homeowners braver, more open, more comfortable than we who do so, and they are the ones who make the annual Historic Harrisburg Association home tour so much fun.
While seeing people’s fascinating, often perfect, intriguing and tantalizing homes is in itself fun, we also get to see old friends both on the tour and in their homes. It really is a lot of fun.
But let’s face it, though mostly beautiful Harrisburg City is broke, with a completely dysfunctional school district, and has high taxes.
These unfortunate factors artificially suppress home values. This can lead to parts of town where old homes sit vacant until they fall down.
I have lost track of how many times we have heard “If your house was where I lived, it would be worth millions!”
It is true that we have a high standard of living here, with access to fabulous homes at reasonable prices. Investing less up front in the acquisition of the old home provides an opportunity to make improvements that otherwise, in other places, might prove unobtainable or too expensive.
One home we visited was at 2333 North Front Street, the latest residence of Kristine and Alex Hartzler.
Alex and I knew each other at Penn State lo these many eons ago, and we have stayed in touch through the decades, which I find rewarding.
Alex is a guy who was destined to be a friendly but exasperated, overworked, underpaid attorney and lobbyist like so many others, but who in a fit of desperation signed on as legal counsel to a tech start up, which did well, which made Alex financially independent.
Alex now runs WCI Partners, which invests in Harrisburg City real estate.
Yes, that is correct, they invest in Harrisburg real estate.
Maybe it is voodoo economics, but they make it work.
Do you know how to create a five million dollar building in Harrisburg? Build a ten million dollar building in Harrisburg, and overnight it will be worth five million dollars.
Such is the economics of this city.
And yet, Alex and his partners remain undaunted, persevere on, carefully charting new neighborhoods out of old, using historic facades and structures wherever possible, and breathing new life into moribund and frankly decrepit parts of town that are otherwise only useful for briefly accessing hookers and heroin.
Alex and Kristine’s latest home at 2333 North Second Street is fantastic. It is a 6,000 square foot stone home that no one knew was there because of one of those infamously hideous 1960s “improvement” additions that so many beautiful stone homes suffer from all over the area.
Somewhere in the midst of the dopey free love ’60s someone got the bright idea to ruin this beautiful home with a cheesy coverup job. Until the Hartzlers removed it, no one knew the house was even there.
Honestly, I went to the home just to ask Alex what the heck “fenestration” means, a word he used in the written description of the home in the HHA tour brochure.
Must be a twelve dollar word for doorway.
After buying and renovating and living in and then passing on to the next happy owners five other Harrisburg homes, I think Alex is entitled to use fancy words that no one else knows.
Thank you to all the home owners who invited the paying public into their homes.
Here are our gracious hosts Alex and Kristine Hartzler, with long time friend Laura Campagne and the incredible Princess of Patience, Vivian.
Judge Roy Moore is a Victim, and He is Going to Win Alabama
Judge Roy Moore is a candidate for the vacant US Senate seat in Alabama.
Moore had the temerity, or strength of character, to openly criticize a bipartisan political establishment that is destroying America from within.
As a US senator, he would be in a unique position to openly confront those same people who cling to power and lord it over a cowed American public.
For that “crime” Moore has suffered unbelievable attacks on his character from top elected officials in both main parties, as well as endless fake news and tens of millions of Dollars spent to deliver it all to the voters of Alabama.
If you are at all interested in this story, then you can simply start to read about it. Read widely. Look for the facts, as opposed to the common fake news started and spread by the Washington Post.
The Washington Post is not a news organization. Rather, it is an aggressive communication arm of the political party opposing Moore’s quest to fill that senate seat.
This is a gentle way of saying the Washington Post is a propaganda machine.
An example of this is how the organization simply repeats lies like Moore has seven, eight or nine “accusers,” as if somehow he is awash in sexual harassment claims.
As it turns out, Moore has been accused of sexual anything by two women, not seven or nine, one of whom sounds somewhat credible, and the other is now being shown to be a bold faced liar.
The lady with credibility describes how forty years ago (40!) Moore invited her to his home for sex when she was a teenager (she was then at the age of consent in Alabama, which for a Yankee like me is pretty bizarre), and how she went there, and then declined, he accepted that and then he took her home.
The balance of the women involved simply say that they were young when he asked to date them, and that there was no sex-anything about it.
To call these women “accusers” is a lie. It is not true, it is not truth.
This is simply an effort by the Washington Post and the bipartisan political establishment in Washington to keep Moore away from their taxpayer-funded honey hole.
Moore has done absolutely nothing wrong, though where I am from the age of consent in Alabama is pretty freaky and it makes me uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, the guy has clean hands, and the accusations against him are junk, lies, made up political assassination to try to keep him from getting to Washington and upsetting the apple cart.
Moore is up in the polls, some showing a 5% lead, others a 15% lead.
Either way, it is likely that Moore will win this senate race, and that he will be seated. He has done nothing wrong, and therefore cannot be subjected to further attacks by ethics committees or other organs of the state.
What has bothered me the most about this is how craven the “moderate” Republicans have been. People like pollster Frank Luntz, and local politicos like Charlie Gerow (who I have always liked and admired), have sought to stay on the anti-Moore bandwagon. It just looks like they are trying to curry favor with the liberal media, as if they are afraid of the media, instead of doing the right thing and standing up to it and confronting its open warfare against the American People, against their form of government, and against honesty, truth, and accuracy.
Everyone shoulder to shoulder now with Judge Roy Moore, for America, for truth, for honesty.
You call that resistance? THIS is Resistance
Over the weekend at a lovely social event arranged by dear friends and populated by wonderful people, I was approached by a well meaning and hell-of-a-nice-guy doctor.
This is a man who has helped my oldest kid with her career choices, and who is always a friendly and pleasant person to spend time with.
So, despite wanting to talk with me about a subject that is beyond passe for me, I stood with him and others interested in this subject, and let him explore the many “common sense” and “reasonable” ways government can steal my liberties.
While trying to stay focused on the wide variety of quality spirits available within arm’s reach, I answered his questions as best I could.
“Why can’t we just take all semi-automatic rifles and lock them up at a range? Then when you want to go shoot them, you go to the range and get your gun,” he proposed.
Then, as an afterthought, the good doctor admitted “I don’t know much about guns, I don’t like guns, and I am afraid of guns, but I am interested in what you have to say.”
In stepped another helluvaniceguy doctor, an organ transplant specialist renowned locally for probably being the most genuinely kind and thoughtful person on Planet Earth.
“I am a liberal, but because my dad hunts I grew up with guns and I can tell you right now, you are not going to eliminate crime by restricting the rights of the law-abiding,” he said.
Having a political ally at a social event is an uncommon and most welcome opportunity for me, so I just sat back and let the two doctors politely muddle their way through the subject of gun control.
Finally, I was again asked my opinion, and with no one else in the circle of drink holders willing to step in or step up, I took a deep breath and said
“If you come for my guns, I will kill you or go down fighting trying to kill you.”
You might guess this caught the nice, inexperienced doctor by complete surprise.
The idea that his long time friendly acquaintance would openly admit such a psychotic goal was shocking, and it showed on his face. He was stunned and uncomfortable.
“Hey, if you were able to implement the gun confiscation policies you just listed, what you call common sense gun control” I said, “then you would have de facto declared war and death on me, my friends, and family. So I am just telling you that we would meet fire with fire.”
It appears that so many people have so much faith in big government, that they cannot imagine what the actual, practical implementation of their ideas would mean.
When someone talks about “common sense gun control,” they are inevitably talking about gun confiscation and the elimination of the Second Amendment liberty on which America was founded. Some activists have become brazenly open about this goal, after decades of pooh-poohing it, denying it, and calling wary gun owners “kooks” for believing they did, in fact, mean to take away guns from law abiding citizens.
Gun confiscation means going door to door and taking away guns, or sending threatening letters to gun owners followed up by home visits from police.
None of this gun control has any connection to crime control. Zero.
In fact, gun control and gun confiscation increases crime, because criminals do not follow the law, they will hide their guns from the police, and they will use their guns to further victimize a now disarmed population.
So, when some well ignorant, intellectually lazy, but well-intentioned person tells me they are going to in effect declare war on my family, by way of invading our home, taking our property, and threatening our life, limb or liberty for some vague purpose, I now simply respond “We will see you at the barricades.”
Or something similar to what I said to the doctor, and what I said after a live TV debate with a pro-gun control police chief (to be accurate, we were behind the stage and I said that if I were driving down the road in his jurisdiction and saw him in duress, I would immediately risk my life and come to his aid, and that if he came to my home to take my guns, I would kill him. He was unfazed and admitted that since moving to Central Pennsylvania, local citizens had said the same thing to him repeatedly).
It really is that simple.
Or as I said to the nice doctor, if you sic armed thugs on me (a law-abiding citizen), I will be an armed thug in response.
Because that is what this gun control issue has come down to. Probably like abortion to some other Americans, who assert they will not comply with laws restricting abortion.
As is otherwise so casually asserted these days, this is actual “resistance” to political interference.
People want to talk resistance?
Try to take my guns. You’ll get to see what real resistance looks like, then.
So can we please talk about something else? This subject has grown boring.
There are no gun grabbing schemes that I am going to agree to. There is no such thing as “common sense gun control,” and no matter how much a person tries to doctor it up and make it sound “reasonable,” there is no way I will go along.
The answer is simply “No.” I will not obey any more such laws.
Now would someone please pass me the bottle of Scotch, no not that one, yes, that one, and some cheese and crackers?
Being Human: What is Your Rite of Passage
A rite of passage is quintessentially human. It goes back to our very beginnings as a species.
Achieving some important goal that separates children from adults, dependents from the self-reliant is a critical step in being a whole, healthy human.
Few opportunities exist in today’s material West. Playing video games in a virtual reality is the opposite of achievement, the opposite of reality. Compare the virtual lifestyle to the refugee survivors in Iraq and Syria. The adults there who managed to get their families to safety. They are real people, survivors. They are due respect.
This coming Monday is the Pennsylvania deer season opener. For rifle hunters.
About 700,000 hunters will go afield here on Monday.
For the youngsters among them, killing a deer is an important rite of passage. Hunting skills are as old as our species, and to many these skills are sacred.
Just because Giant has cheap meat doesn’t mean humans should trade away the most important skill set we can have.
Never know when you’ll need it again.
What’s your family’s rite of passage?
How can we Americans not give thanks every day?
America is such a wealthy, successful nation that it’s impossibly bad manners that our people do not give Thanks every single day.
We have much to say Thank You for, and little to complain about.
Yes, sometimes political results don’t match our expectations or desires. Ok, America provides a solution to that: Get out and organize!
But don’t sit around harping, complaining, kvetching, because it all looks like whining.
And there’s nothing attractive about someone whining while surrounded by tremendous opportunity.
America, there’s no other place anywhere close to it. Love Her, protect Her, and thank God you and I live here.
Happy Thanksgiving Day, fellow Americans.
Tidal wave vs. The People
When I was a kid at the New Jersey shore, I remember how some of us young boys would bob in the beach zone where the sandy bottom dropped off and the waves hit the hardest. If Jersey waves can hit hard…though they did to us kids.
We would square our shoulders and lean into the hardest waves, barely touching bottom, trying our best to withstand them.
It was a physical test and a test of willpower, kind of a test of our budding manhood. Man vs. Nature. Primal combat.
It was summer vacation, what can I say. We were kids and let our imaginations run. By today’s video games standard, it was quite wholesome and innocent.
Today I feel like we are all right back there facing down waves.
This time the waves are assaults on our society, civilization, by a media-political complex bent on crushing everything in its way. Especially the traditional people who represent or hold onto the old ways that built America and which are the foundation of Western Civilization.
A recent example of this was when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1994.
Clinton had a whole host of women accusers surrounding him. Accusations of rape, sexual assault, harassment, etc. And despite that, plus his shady business dealings, the media-political complex circled the wagons around Clinton and did everything possible to get him elected president.
In the course of that process, the media-political complex allowed Clinton to dodge, avoid, and lie about his actions, and get elected as a result. They attacked his accusers and protected him, because they shared his political views.
Another example of this was when Barack Hussein Obama was elected president in 2008. Obama had a whole host of questions surrounding him, including his shady business dealings and his overblown, shallow professional qualifications. As well as his citizenship qualification, which was raised first by his primary opponent Hillary Clinton, and recently resurrected by Obama’s own Kenyan brother, who last year was sending out a photo of Barack’s original Kenyan birth certificate.
In the course of that election process, the media-political complex allowed Obama to dodge, avoid, and lie about his actions, and to get elected as a result. The media-political complex circled the wagons around Obama and did everything possible to get him elected president, because he represented their values, their desire to “transform America.”
Today we are seeing this same old process unfold yet again, in the case of the US Senate election in Alabama.
There, a conservative anti-establishment candidate, judge Roy Moore, is facing an obviously contrived and coordinated attack by the media-political complex bent on crushing him and overturning the will of the people, the voters of Alabama.
That media-political complex is made up of BOTH political parties, as well as political and social elites.
Doubting that assertion? Consider that US Senate leader Mitch McConnell prefers a liberal Democrat over the independent minded Moore in that seat. McConnell can easily work with liberal senators. He knows how to horse trade with them. How to give in, roll over. He knows Moore will not roll over, and is not interested in the careerist perks McConnell can offer.
It may not be politically correct to be this honest, but the truth is, I do not believe the accusations against Moore. They are just way too conveniently timed, and are obviously led by GOP squishes like McConnell.
Where were these accusers decades ago? Suddenly now they’re available?!
And where was this same media scrutiny when rapist Bill Clinton was running amok and poised to become president? Where is that scrutiny now? Well, Bill Clinton is a hero to liberals. So he got the pass.
Where is the same media scrutiny for US senator Al Franken, whose damning photo shows him illegally groping a sleeping woman (who also accuses him of attacking her elsewhere)?
Where is the same media scrutiny for the dozens of Hollywood elite also accused of pedophilia, sexual assault, rape, and harassment?
Nearly crickets out there, folks, except in the unbelievable cases where the media-political complex is trying to protect Franken.
But Hell’s bells, you get an independent-minded guy like Moore, and the whole world is descending on him and demanding him to bow out of the race, with no proof other than these obviously well-timed political accusations.
So it is the Roy Moores of the world now, squaring their shoulders, standing in the surf where their feet barely touch the sandy bottom, and facing down the big tidal wave of contrived fake news designed to wipe them out of the only political process anywhere on Planet Earth designed to capture the will of The People.
Moore may not be a young kid, but it is the innocence of America that is at stake here.
Win, Moore, win.
Win for The People.
Thor & Moore: Media-Entertainment Complex On Defense
What does the new Hollywood “Thor: Ragnarok” movie have to do with the NFL and Judge Roy Moore’s US Senate campaign?
A lot.
Besides both being part of the Media-Academia-Entertainment Industry complex, both Hollywood movies and the NFL have been on the decline. A freefall might better capture these downward slopes.
Hollywood managed to combine insipid and pedantic movies appealing to very few people for a long time, and watched its profits end by simple market forces of supply and demand.
But Hollywood also has a preponderance of sanctimonious fools, professional actors and producers living life so far removed from the great deplorable unwashed that they openly mock the very people who spend their money on Hollywood products, and then wonder why their “art” goes unappreciated. And unprofitable.
Ditto for the NFL, where guys who get paid millions of dollars for simply running up and down a field decided they knew better than their fans what their fans wanted. And so they, too, became sanctimonious fools, hectoring people in the bleachers about phony political issues. Only to wonder why the stands are now so empty.
Enter politics! Whoda thunkit, but yes, politics is now heavily laced throughout everything in America, whether you want it, or not.
The same newspaper that endorsed a far-left candidate in Alabama for the US Senate three weeks ago suddenly publishes fake sex accusations against that candidate’s opponent. The accusations are so wild and out of character that voters would just have to believe them. I mean, that bad, that crazy, they gotta be true, right?
And that is how the Washington Post tries to shoehorn in a blue candidate into a red state. Just make stuff up. Like they did with our current president, when they couldn’t defeat him with facts, too. Lots of fake news. Fake news defines the Washington Post, and for good reason.
The Washington Post is simply one communication arm of one political party. It is not a news organization in the sense that it reports actual, factual news. Rather, the Washington Post creates news, suppresses news, edits news, and interprets news to support a political narrative conducive to its political favorites winning and its political opponents losing.
So it should come as no surprise that this same newspaper is trying to discredit destroy Judge Roy Moore, the conservative candidate in Alabama who sure looks like he is going to win that US Senate race. A charismatic, principled guy like Judge Roy Moore in the US Senate is a huge threat to the two-party career political hack dominance of the DC swamp, of which the Washington Post is the written record of record.
And in the same Washington Post this week there are scads of sugary sweet write-ups and promotional “reviews” of the new “Thor: Ragnarok” movie.
This is a movie carefully designed to have enough violence, unvarnished manliness, and traditional iconic weapons that red-blooded Americans just might be enticed back into an evening with Hollywood, even if just for a couple hours. In a way this movie is a last gasp from an industry that is fast taking on water and looking like it is about to go under from the one-two punch of having bad products and bad people.
The Media-Academia-Entertainment Industry complex that has for so long softly, gently held America by its throat is now struggling to maintain its grip. America has slowly awakened, sat up, and recognized what has been done to her while she slept. NFL players slapping Americans across the face, Hollywood actors spitting in America’s face, newspapers and media personalities laughing in America’s face…at some point America was going to wake up from it all.
If “Thor: Ragnarok” is as much of a financial disaster as it deserves to be, and if Judge Roy Moore wins his special election the way he deserves to, the evil Media-Academia-Entertainment Industry empire will have taken two hard blows. Not fatal, but enough to stagger an opponent backwards.
So this weekend I WILL be mailing a donation to Judge Roy Moore’s campaign, and I will NOT be watching the silly Thor movie.
Take that, swamp critters.
Property Tax Accountability
Yesterday a majority of Pennsylvania voters passed a referendum, the first step in amending the Pennsylvania constitution to allow for a much fairer property tax situation.
The current Pennsylvania property tax arrangement is backwards, dating either from the 9th Century or the 1720s, either way fundamentally unfair to home owners.
Perhaps in the 9th Century or the 1720s owning a home or property was a big deal and unusual, indicating great wealth. Taxing the source of that great wealth may have made sense a thousand years ago or three hundred years ago, but today’s America bears no similarity to those bygone worlds.
In fact, one of the great things about America is that our form of capitalism distributes the greatest amount of wealth to the greatest number of people, based on one’s willingness to work hard. This is the heart of American meritocracy, and home ownership in a meritocracy is widespread, not unique. Owning your own home is an American standard, a basic goal of all Americans.
And so punitively taxing the very emblem of meritocracy is an artifact of the feudal society America rejected in 1776.
But Pennsylvania home taxes are now so high that people are essentially renting their homes from the government.
No matter if you buy your home with cash, build it yourself on property that has been in your family, or buy it with a mortgage that you eventually pay off, you still must pay incredibly burdensome property taxes that bear no relationship to the actual costs your home might (or might not) impose on the surrounding community.
Property taxes are now a form of rent. And if you run out of money to pay the government rent, the government can come and steal your home from you and sell it cheap to someone else.
The unpleasant truth is, your home is now a cash cow for others.
Teacher’s unions and their pet career politicians are the primary beneficiaries of the current property tax arrangement, rooted as it is in the government threat to steal your home if you don’t pay their crazy rent. Current property taxes are conveniently off the books, coerced from unwilling serfs, and paid to unaccountable government employees who by all standards are primarily failing.
Most government-run schools are disasters, failing to deliver on the most basic educational results, and yet the tax-paying public is constantly told that we must pay ever yet more money “for the kids.” And here in PA, the teachers automatically must pay the unions, and the unions then dump our own tax money into buying yet more career politicians to work against our interests.
Something has to give.
This is more about making government tax collection accountable to the people who pay the taxes, than it is about total tax reduction. Right now there is zero accountability for property tax expenditures or increases. Greedy unions control almost the entire process.
Unaccountable government schools continue to underperform and yet demand more and more money. The government schools oppose all forms of competition because they are committed more to holding onto their own power than they are to the success of the children they are supposed to educate. The way property taxes support this shameful situation serves everyone involved except the children and the taxpayers.
Something has to change.
The Pennsylvania of the 21st Century cannot continue to live under an ancient feudal arrangement. It is not fair, it is not sustainable, it is not good government.
We all deserve better.
My Morning Drive with NPR
Early yesterday morning’s two-hour drive involved a sparse radio channel selection in rural Pennsylvania.
Northern Schuylkill County is, after all, The Skook, and thus devoid of radio signals or much else emanating from the early Twentieth Century.
In a world of handheld oblivion, to some, including me, this insularity is a charming reminder of the rural good life. Rural people are largely content, and contentment is its own form of riches.
However, this long drive through raped coal fields also necessitated taking what I could get on the radio to help keep me awake, and that fell to the many taxpayer funded National Public Radio “public” radio signals along the way. Not even country stations had staying power beyond thirty seconds before fuzzing out and melding with some other vague music sound.
Having once been a fan of NPR, and still occasionally listening to NPR out of morbid fascination, I decided to open my heart and give another open-minded listen to what has become a notorious gateway for All-Things-Leftist propaganda.
“What the hell, it’s a long drive, might as well listen to these guys. They are the only stations coming through strong, anyhow,” I mused, while sipping the other second coffee.
Coffee quickly became passé, as I choked halfway through a sip and then involuntarily devolved into increasingly animated banter with the various NPR personnel as they were successively trotted out with the morning’s news items.
Within seconds, a skyrocketing heart rate, eyes bulging, and spittle flying meant caffeine was no longer needed to get me awake and keep me alert. I was there.
Was this some sort of Skook Zone reaction to news I couldn’t accept because of partisanship or unwillingness to consider inconvenient facts?
Categorical denial right here, no, it was not.
My sudden screaming match with the radio was a result of profound disgust and a sense of grating unfairness. A feeling of being violated by snobby DC Swamp dwellers who have no sense of propriety for factual accuracy or for the proper use of public tax dollars coerced from American citizens, and then turned against them.
To wit, Exhibit A, NPR news anchorman interviewing former US State Department career official and Washington, DC, insider Nick Burns about the situation with North Korea: Burns accuses Trump administration of “hollowing out” the US State Department, the US EPA, and the US Department of Interior, in an effort to undermine these agencies and their effectiveness. The notion being that failing, bloated federal agencies filled with unaccountable bureaucrats are what the American taxpayer really needs most.
The focus of Burns’ complaint was on the US State Department and how “enough” career foreign service personnel are not being hired to “adequately” represent the United States abroad. No alternative perspective was presented, no alternative view was sought. It was simply a careerist DC bureaucrat complaining to a sympathetic NPR employee about how the new administration was altering decades of government mismanagement. One long anti-Trump bitch session.
Exhibit B followed on the heels of Exhibit A. NPR reports that the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau leadership role is being contested by a holdover from the past administration, a woman who was appointed to lead the CFPB by the former administration in its last days. This woman has filed a lawsuit (already appealed because she lost the first round) challenging the new administration’s right and ability to appoint someone else as the head of the US agency.
Nowhere in this “report” is it mentioned that this is at best a symbolic contest, or at worst a leftist shopping around for a leftist federal judge who will throw the rule of law out the window in the search for political dominance. Thereby granting said former federal employee the right to unilaterally override the President of the United States on selecting senior federal employees.
Nowhere is it mentioned that the new administration has full authority to hire, fire, and appoint senior staff to executive branch agencies, and that decisions made by past administrations are null and void.
Nowhere is the rule of law mentioned.
Nowhere is this growing activist federal judge phenomenon mentioned.
Instead, it is reported as apparent support for an Obama-era employee and Obama-era policy (“under assault” by the Trump administration) with no alternative view offered, and no factual view presented, such as such a lawsuit would be baseless.
This report is a live, on-air anti-Trump bitch session.
Exhibit C followed on the heels of Exhibit B. This involved an NPR anchorman interviewing an NPR “foreign correspondent” about the current tensions with North Korea. NPR’s anchorman categorically states that President Trump uses “bellicose language” that antagonizes NK’s homicidal dictator into being even more homicidal.
The “foreign correspondent” replies that President Trump uses “antagonistic” words because anything else would require America to “make concessions” to NK on its threats to use nuclear weapons against America.
Nowhere in this anti-Trump bitch session is it asked how America is supposed to concede to North Korea in a way that preserves American security.
Are we supposed to allow NK to bomb us just a little bit?
Maybe only California and Hawaii, but nowhere else?
What parts of American security are less valuable than other parts, and which ones should we concede to North Korea?
Nowhere is it mentioned that “bellicose language” is often used by national leaders everywhere when warning off other nations that have threatened them with annihilation.
I mean, isn’t it the responsible thing for a president to do? Or is he supposed to play nice, like Neville Chamberlain did with Adolf Hitler, hastening Hitler’s rise to power and enabling his genocidal wipe-out of Europe?
The on-air discussion between the two NPR employees comes across as sympathetic to North Korea and hostile to President Trump.
Exhibit D followed on the heels of Exhibit C, and involved another discussion between NPR staff about Project Veritas.
Project Veritas is James O’Keefe’s response to a corrupt media-political industrial complex protected by organizations like NPR, the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc.
Project Veritas conducts inside sting stories where media personnel and politicians, including NPR staff, openly and often gleefully disclose on hidden camera that they are hypocrites, liars, politically partisan, and that they happily use their supposedly neutral and professional reporting roles to advance a partisan and extreme political agenda.
When they become public, these private disclosures are bombshells, because the lid comes off the corrupt media-political industrial complex, allowing the Great Unwashed to peer in and see what a corrupt cesspool is being funded with their tax dollars.
Establishment media like NPR don’t like Project Veritas, because it has taken over the role of investigative reporting that places like NPR, the Washington Post, and the New York Times used to do and which they still claim to do, but do not do.
In this discussion between NPR personnel, project Veritas is simply alleged to have edited its videos in “misleading ways,” without describing how they are misleading, and thus is just a bad outfit unworthy of consideration.
Over the years I have watched many of these Project Veritas tapes, and they don’t seem misleading to me. People like NPR’s former CEO are caught on hidden video saying things that fly in the face of their public claims about being balanced, fair, accurate, neutral, professional.
Part of this NPR on-air discussion about Project Veritas is really a defense of the crossover of overtly partisan and political agenda-driven editorial roles into news reporting at organizations like The Washington Post.
Not that this is surprising, given that NPR openly crossed that professional line decades ago, now openly serving as a communications arm for one political party and Leftist ideology.
Noah Rothman at Commentary Magazine is interviewed about this, and he provides another fascinating view into the Washington DC Swamp.
Rothman is represented as a political conservative, and therefore as an outsider source lending credence to the NPR allegation that the fruit of Project Veritas has been poisoned, because… it is just so mean. And edited.
But instead of lending credibility, Rothman comes across as a bitter clinger to the Never-Trump mantra, a guy who cannot let go of his DC Swamp allegiances in the Age of Trump & The American People.
If anything, Rothman reaffirms what many people like me already believe, which is that Washington, DC, is full of self-important nitwits who have self-selected a small circle of similarly minded people from both major political parties to reinforce an artificial and meaningless debate between Leftists and Moderates while they mutually feast upon the carcass of the American People.
That artificial debate is really about how fast or slow to grow the American juggernaut government, and how quickly or slowly it should erode, grab, undermine and other remove liberties, rights, and Dollars from the forgotten American taxpayer.
This whole narrow circle of likeminded Republicans and Democrats is euphemistically known as the DC Swamp, which candidate Trump pledged to drain, and which President Trump is mostly draining. Rothman is one of these Swamp people and he shares much in common with the interviewers at NPR, much more than he shares with the average American.
Listening to these people bitch and moan about how unfair it is to see their swamp drained is annoying. That they argue for the failed status quo is annoying. That they never mention the interests of the American People is startling, and indicates just how insular and out of touch they really are.
After all, American government runs by the consent of The People, not unelected bureaucrats and self-adulating pseudo intellectuals who sit around DC cocktail parties and politely, mildly debate the speed of our nation’s ruination.
During my morning drive through The Skook, NPR comes across as a farce. It is clearly not a news organization. From what I could tell, NPR is just one long anti-Trump bitch session.
CLICK! goes the OFF button, and I drink the remainder of my coffee, lost in my own thoughts of how far America has fallen and how lucky people are to live in such rural places where the simple things are still the best things in life.