Posts Tagged → house
Back to basics, America
We have a Republican Party crisis here in Pennsylvania, and in Dauphin County, and this blog will be addressing these problem children soon. However, the real friction happening between lawless, rogue judges and the Trump Administration is the most defining issue of the day.
As most politically interested and involved readers already know, a real contest of wills is developing betwen the Trump Administration on the one hand, and politically radical / rogue/ lawless politically activist judges on the other hand. This contest may seem alarming to some people, but it is a perfectly natural and healthy aspect of how our Constitutional republican form of government is designed to operate.
With three separate but co-equal branches of government forming an equilateral triangle, but made of living, breathing people, and usually the most aggressive, power hungry, conniving people at that, American government is designed to have friction. That friction results in constant contest, and a constant creative renewal, as all three branches naturally seek to exert as much dominance as they can get away with over the other two branches. Or as much outright control of the decision process as the other branches will concede.
So when grotesquely overreaching politically corrupt activist judges, like James Boasberg, “order” the executive branch to turn around planes carrying lawfully deported violent gang members to foreign destinations, and return said violent deportees to American soil for the judge’s evaluation, we can expect some friction to result. The executive branch, and its chief executive/ military commander in chief (the president), is well within its rights and within its sole discretionary function when it engages in illegal alien deportation, as defined by the US Constitution.
The Trump Administration is under no duty or obligation to do whatever some judge tells them to do. Judicial Tyranny might be a goal for some Americans, but it is not something anticipated or accepted by the Founders and writers of the Constitution.
Not every situation or question or policy is justiciable, meaning that not every question can be resolved in a court of law. Some things, like deportations and war and a host of other subjects and government functions, are the sole purview of the executive branch. Neither the legislative branch nor the judicial branch have anything to say about it. It is not their “lane.”
Or, the judicial and legislative branches can try to say something about a given policy, but the best way to force the executive branch to follow is to pass a law requiring it.
In this particular case, President Trump blasted Boasberg’s unconstitutional overreach, and called for his impeachment, which is built right into the Constitution. Then US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in turn criticized the President for his calls to impeach said America-hating radical, James Boasberg. While Roberts personally dislikes Trump, he is defending his judicial branch more than anything, and trying to take power away from the executive branch.
This is all normal stuff, even if America has not seen this kind of constitutional friction in a long time. To my mind, this activity just shows that the various parts of the government machine are working properly. It took a Donald J. Trump to actually test run the American machinery for the first time in about seventy years. What is scary is how aggressive the judicial branch has been about hogging power over the past fifty years, and how little pushback the executive branch did until now. Presidents and Congress alike keep conceding judicial review as though the judicial branch is some sort of hallowed gathering of super smart and pure minded arbiters of fairness. Ha! Judges are just politicians in black robes, as one of my Penn State professors used to say.
Don’t worry, America has been down this path before in recent times. The Obama Administration, especially, engaged in a ton of simply ignoring judicial holdings and decisions and demands and orders; Obama DOJ lawyers were repeatedly held in contempt by a number of judges over the tenure of that administration. Not one judge got up out of his or her chamber to go enforce their order in person…nor could they.
And that’s the rub here: Crazy judges and even crazier Justices who allow some members of the judiciary to run wild, without restraint, can expect constraint by the branches they impact. Especially the executive branch.
Judicial review is not sacrosanct, it is not wide-open, nor can judges simply demand obedience to whatever or wherever their egos or political interests take them (or in the case of corrupt Judge James Boasberg, where his family’s wallet takes him on policy questions). Judges’ credibility depends upon the dignity and caution with which they discharge their duties.
When judges like Boasberg run bloody roughshod over America’s Constitutional geometry, and when justices like John Roberts do nothing to rein Boasberg in, but rather defend the indefensible, then they pretty much deserve what they have coming: Impeachment by the US House of Representatives, and being simply ignored by the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief as he does what his job requires him to do.
As one US president said in a similar moment of great friction, “Let the judge come and enforce his order himself.”
And no, that judge did not attempt to personally force the executive branch machinery to bend to his will. He astutely stood down and granted to the Chief Executive that which was his, and which still remains his. If Justice John Roberts wants Americans to respect his office and his decisions, then he must act similarly. We have to get back to the basics of running American government.
Uniparty movie & more Democrat Party lawlessness
The “Uniparty” is quite real. It is an unholy amalgamation of elected Democrats and Republicans-In-Name-Only as well as their assorted financial backers. Both of these groups have more in common with one another than what separates them, because their common interests are Democrat power and Republican money. The RINOs will always sell the Democrats power, and the Democrats will always ensure that the Republicans get lots and lots of money.
This cozy relationship is already on display, as something like 30 “Republican” US senators have lined up to oppose President Donald Trump’s strongest cabinet picks, people who would bring law and order and clean elections back into vogue. E.g. Trump nominated Rep. Matt Gaetz to be his Attorney General, and already the DC Swamp RINOs are lined up to oppose his nomination. Gaetz is among a literal handful of elected Republicans across the entire nation who both could and would make election integrity real, and vote fraud accountable to the law.
Think just how rotten to our core America is with elected “leaders” who actually oppose election integrity. A bunch of them must be making a lot of money from the corrupt status quo, to be so brazen in their opposition to election integrity and accountability to the law.
Witness also the open and defiant voter fraud taking place in Bucks County, PA, and in other Democrat Party strongholds in Pennsylvania. We are watching Democrat county commissioners openly flout the law and two recent PA Supreme Court holdings while they count ballots that are clearly disqualified.
Says Democrat Bucks County commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, “Precedent by a court doesn’t matter any more in this country. And people violate laws any time they want. For me, if I violate this law, it is because I want a court to pay attention to it.”
In other words, elected Democrat Diane wants a different court to have a different holding than the two holdings the PA Supreme Court already had on this very exact subject and question. She wants to help Democrat lawyers seeking out friendly activist Democrat judges to keep ignoring the law and the legal precedents that are standing in her way of getting more power. This is not an act of personal defiance or of some citizen engaging in civil disobedience against some terribly unjust law. No, this is just yet more Democrat Party lawlessness in a long long line of Democrat Party lawlessness going back to 1860.
Nothing has changed there.
What has changed is that the Republican Party, created in 1855 to oppose Democrat Party slavery and in fact throwing down in the Civil War, has long ago capitulated to the Democrats in these apparently boring matters of clean elections and the basic rule of law. The rotten GOPe just doesn’t care, because as far as they are concerned, win or lose, they still have their official positions and they still make lots and lots of money from insider trading with the Democrats.
So US Senator-elect Dave McCormick must watch in disbelief from the sidelines as the GOPe does and says literally nothing to save his already acknowledged two-week-old electoral win over election denier and anti-democracy candidate Bob Casey from the lawlessness out of Bucks County and other Democrat strongholds. Elsewhere in America, Democrat strongholds like California are STILL counting (fake, illegal) ballots to get their Democrat candidates disbelievably over the Win finish line in Republican districts, weeks after Election Day ended with the Republican candidates winning.
And yet neither the Republican Speaker of the House nor the Republican US Senate majority leader have voiced their opposition to seating such clearly fraudulent candidates in their respective houses. Both Speaker Johnson and Leader McConnell are GOPe RINOs. The rule of law is unimportant to them; money is.
Here is a funny thirty-three second Charlie Chaplin silent film that fits the Uniparty situation perfectly. The two supposed opponents face off against one another in a duel, and yet both opponents are reluctant to actually shoot at one another. Each ends up firing his revolver randomly in all directions, taking out birds aflight as well as the bystander people involved in overseeing the duel. When it is apparent that neither opponent is injured, they celebrate together and run off screen hugging one another, uncaringly jumping over the prostrate bodies of their apparently dead seconds and assistants.
This silent film sums up the Uniparty perfectly. America as a nation, our rule of law, clean elections, our democratic norms and American citizens alike are the innocent bystanders gunned down by the corrupt Uniparty. Watch it and cry.
2024 Election results reveal 2020 Election was stolen
2004 Election: 121 million votes cast
2008 Election: 129.5 million votes vast
2012 Election: 126.8 million votes cast
2016 Election: 128.8 million votes cast
2020 Election: 155.5 million votes cast
2024 Election: 141 million votes cast
Numbers don’t lie, and the numbers from six elections, and especially the three last elections, tell us that the 2020 election was blatantly stolen.
Trump just won with about 73 million votes to Kamala Harris’ 68 million, roughly speaking, as drips and drabs of overseas ballots are still be counted.
In prior elections, neither Hillary Clinton nor Hussein Obama obtained anywhere near 81 million votes, which is the number attributed to Joe Biden in 2020. In 2020, doddering, dementia-ridden, no charisma Joe Biden hid in his basement, held few rallies, and the rallies he did hold were super low T low energy low turnout. Historically, in human history, this kind of political campaign just cannot win.
In 2020 Trump got 74 million votes nationwide, in what was considered to be the hottest, most aggressive race and the most popular, most energized individual campaign since Obama’s first run. Recall that Trump had huge rallies, had all the polls and the momentum on his side.
And after Trump won decisively on Election Day 2020, but then waited in good faith for days afterwards for several swing states (PA, GA, AZ, MI) to finish counting “newly found” ballots behind closed doors with no Republican observers present, suddenly, magically, ridiculously, Biden was declared the winner of 2020.
The MSM claim was that Biden had obtained the unbelievable number of 81 million votes.
While the 2020 Trump campaign did object to the hastily declared win on so many procedural grounds, because there were so many crazy high numbers of really crazy, blatant election law violations, not one court would hear the lawsuits. Not one court decided a 2020 campaign lawsuit on its merits. Rather, the entire political establishment just looked away as the political assassination and theft of a nation played out in front of everyone’s eyes. It was a time of mass insanity.
And so for four subsequent years, the conservative base, patriots, working people, moms and dads, began networking and paying closer attention to political procedures, to school boards, to the massive government overreach happening everywhere. And this new body politic grew its own information networks, and fueled others that had been kind of on the sidelines. Sources like Breitbart and Gateway Pundit suddenly grew by leaps and bounds. Trump’s Truth Social became a place where conservatives could communicate and share information without fear of being censored. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter, and fired about 80% of the hard-left staff, and made it into Free Speech Central.
And as the lid came off the information flow, more and more Americans began circumventing the partisan establishment media, and getting the truth about the lawless disaster that is the Biden-Harris administration. Next thing ya know, a mass movement for freedom, for America, and for Trump was re-invigorated, especially after Trump was martyred weekly with false accusations, lawfare and bizarre court proceedings that everyone could see were unfair.
And the Republican National Committee also changed leadership, removing listless, petulant, pouting, lazy, useless do-nothing Ronna McDaniel, replacing her with Lara Trump and Michael Whatley. Whatley and Trump focused on all the lessons learned from the procedural failures of 2020, and began building a political machine with lawyers tied in with the voter base and polling places. Something that RNC elites had not done in many decades.
When the 2024 election arrived, RNC attorneys and poll watchers were everywhere, watching everything, refusing to allow Republican poll watchers to be violently removed from polls and vote counting, like they were in 2020. Refusing to allow truckloads of unknown, undocumented ballots from being delivered to vote counting locations without a fight. And so, RNC resistance to cheating and vote fraud in 2024 staved off another stolen presidential election.
Attempts are happening right now to steal several congressional elections around the country using the overseas ballots, which the DOJ was trying hard to protect from scrutiny earlier this year. Here in PA we have (US Senate race) Dave McCormick ahead of Bob Casey by about 28,000 votes, and (US House race) Scott Perry ahead of Janelle Stelson by something like a couple thousand votes, and the UOCAVA ballots are now being used to try to overcome these leads. If real scrutiny is applied to these ballots, and only the real ones are counted, then the leads of McCormick and Perry should hold.
I got a call an hour ago, with the RNC trying to locate as many election law attorneys as they can find to cover this new front in the election.
Back to Kamalingus: Somehow she got thirteen million votes LESS than Biden did just four years ago? And somehow America lost fourteen million votes overall between 2020 and 2024? No. These votes did not just vaporize and disappear two days ago. They never existed. They were just made up of fake ballots. These numbers show just how bad the cheating was in 2020, and that means that Joe Biden was not elected president. Trump was.
Bottom line is, Democrat Party cheating just never stops. It is an ingrained part of the party’s culture, and it will not stop until cheating is made less possible. It is why the Biden DOJ fought every voter integrity law passed across the USA over the past few years, and why the DOJ just fought (and lost) to keep illegal aliens on the Virginia voter rolls.
God willing, America now has a Republican majority House, Republican majority Senate, and the White House, and if nothing else, they must pass voting laws that prevent the kind of cheating we saw in 2020 from ever happening again.
UPDATE November 9, 2024: Trump has now exceeded the number of votes he obtained in 2020, somewhere north of 75 million, while Harris has also increased her votes somewhat. More and more people are openly questioning and mocking the fake “81 million votes” number that Biden supposedly got in 2020. How the 2020 election was fraudulently stolen is going to come out soon.
Sunday Hunting
Two weeks ago I was hunting and fishing in Alaska. Moose, sheep, goat, and grizzly seasons all began on a Sunday, and my religious, Evangelical friend and I were right there opening morning, rifles in hand, ready. Now, Alaska may be the world’s most prominent destination for hunting and fishing, and hunting and fishing may be significant parts of the state’s economy, but don’t you think it says something that the hunting seasons for the most sought after species all began on Sunday?
No one blinked an eye, no one gnashed their teeth, no one howled at the sky about the supposed sacrilege, the horribleness of it all. People in Alaska either hunt on Sunday, or they choose not to hunt on Sunday, and they do not make a huge whiny federal case about it. They are adults about it.
Like Alaska, nearly every other state in the United States has Sunday hunting. Unlike here in Pennsylvania, where for some inexplicable reason a lot of annoying busybody people in politics believe it is their job to police how we grownups spend our Sundays. These people have made Sunday hunting, and only hunting, not sports or fishing or drinking at bars or whatever else, a very difficult thing to do in Pennsylvania. Unless you are from Schuylkill County, where everyone does it, law be damned, and no is ratting out anyone else about it.
On October 1st, next Tuesday, the PA House Game and Fisheries Committee is holding a hearing on a Sunday hunting bill that will allow the Pennsylvania Game Commission to set game seasons any day of the week, including Sundays, if that makes the most sense to our professional game managers. You are encouraged to contact the PA House Fish & Game Committee members and let them know what you want: You want hunting freedom like almost every other state in the USA, you want to make your own choices about how to spend your precious Sundays, you want to be able to hunt without having to take time off from your week day job.
You can also join or financially support Hunters United for Sunday Hunting, a group I used to have a long founding association with, and which I am still indebted to for their hard work trying to establish freedom here in PA.
Pennsylvania should be able to join the 20th century, at least, on this issue. Pennsylvania is after all the Keystone State and the cradle of American democracy and FREEDOM.
Mayorkas impeachment = detectable pulse in GOP
Foreign-born US Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has finally been impeached by the US House of Representatives. Surprise to me that Mayorkas is the first cabinet-level federal employee to be impeached in something like 150 years.
Why this roughly 150-year gap between cabinet impeachments exists is likely because in normal times of governance, the mere credible threat of impeachment would be sufficient to garner a resignation. But America is not now living in normal times of governance. Rather, America is living in a time of blatantly stolen elections, illegal border-jumping alien replacement of American citizen voters, and a brazenly political mainstream media that mass-lies and disinforms the roughly half of the American population still asleep at the wheel.
So, with massive daily doses of partisan propaganda and outright lies from the mainstream establishment media (NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, MSNBC, ABC, Washington Post, NY Times etc) to cover up the stolen elections, people like Joe Biden are unaccountable to the voters. He literally cannot be voted out of office, because if his opponent gets a billion votes, Joe Biden will magically get a billion and one votes. So, without electoral accountability, evil villains like Alejandro Mayorkas continue to purposefully destroy America from within, like the gnawing rat that he is.
For the record, the official job that Alejandro Mayorkas has is the head of the Department of Homeland Security, in which he is allowing and facilitating the complete and completely illegal invasion of America across our open borders. Terrorists and drug dealers and military age single men are illegally pouring across our border every day, which puts Americans in direct danger. Alejandro Mayorkas has been refusing to do his sworn duty for three years now, and as a result American citizens are suffering terrible crimes of violence and fentanyl poisoning, and who knows what terrorism is coming down the pike.
Alejandro Mayorkas has blood all over his hands, and he deserves to be impeached, and removed. If anyone deserves to be impeached and removed from office, it is Alejandro Mayorkas and his boss Joe Bribem. But first things first.
But the US Senate Democrats will do everything possible to stonewall and slow-walk the senate trial of Alejandro Mayorkas.
Not all is bleak, however. Two good things have emerged from this impeachment: First, two of the three useless, spineless jellyfish RINO “Republican” congressmen who unbelievably voted against impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas have announced they will not seek re-election. Both Ken Buck and Tom McClintock have announced today that they will not seek re-election. Let’s say this one more time: Voters are incensed by the Washington DC swamp-slug behavior of their elected representatives, and voiced enough displeasure that said DC Swamp-Slugs are retiring from office. Success!
Number two is that this small step for humankind demonstrates that there is still a pulse in the Republican Party. Faint though this pulse may be, it indicates that there is some fight, some resistance to the Marxist coup d’etat happening right now. This resistance is noteworthy because maybe the GOP isn’t completely dead after all, and rather is only mostly dead.
With the promise of maybe waking up and going to war against the Democrat Party traitors who are purposefully and willfully destroying the America they were sworn to defend and protect. Best news in years!
Is the Republican Party really dead, only mostly dead, or just playing dead? Impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas shows there is still a faint pulse in the GOP
Trump wants to be liked by the mean boys
President Donald Trump is a good guy, and it is why he keeps making the same mistake over and over with people who are not good. He understandably sees himself as a reasonable person, a respectable person, a responsible person, and he also desperately wants to be somewhat, even a little bit, inside The Republican Club.
This is why he endorsed politicians who were openly antagonistic to him: Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Brian Kemp (Georgia), to name just two. Trump keeps thinking, and hoping, that the Republican politicians who hate him and reject him will nonetheless ultimately come to like him, admire him, and appreciate him. This is why he keeps on trying to play their insider game, and he keeps on losing at it.
The problem is that the career Republicans are mean boys (and a few mean girls), occupying their own little tree house club house. And while they may have vicious squabbles amongst each other inside that tree house, their hideout remotes a closed club to outsiders. Closed even to people who may think the tree house is plenty big enough for more people, and in fact might benefit from having more people in it.
We have seen this exact same dynamic play out even down to the legislative staffers in Washington and in state capitals across America. A sense of elitist prestige and exclusive specialness. These people have spent their entire careers knitting together personal power by carving out a niche for themselves inside the bureaucratic spiderweb, and by God, they are never ever going to share that power with anyone they don’t have to share it with.
President Trump’s latest mistake is constantly weighing in on behalf of US Congressman Kevin McCarthy, a highly preened, plucked, scrubbed, and unprincipled careerist from California who desires to be the next Speaker of the US House. We can see by now, after seven failed votes among US House members, that McCarthy obsesses over and craves the Speaker’s gavel and office like various brainwashed victims in The Lord of The Rings who are caught caressing The One Ring and calling it “My precious.”
McCarthy even moved into the Speaker’s office despite not actually being elected Speaker!
Anyhow, President Trump. What a window into his mind this endorsement business has been, this public craving of his to be accepted into the mean boy RINO club, or at least to be publicly valued and acknowledged by the RINOs. It is why he keeps giving them unearned endorsements. And he knows that even if he helps McCarthy prevail and become Speaker, he will still be ignored and cast off afterwards. It is like Trump is so loyal, and so earnest, that he simply cannot fathom the treachery and selfishness endemic to career politicians like McCarthy and McConnell.
No, President Trump, these careerist jerks will never change. Stop thinking they will.
The good news is that a cool black guy, Byron Donalds, got the most dissident votes for Speaker today. Smart, articulate, brave Byron Donalds is exactly what the Republican Party needs from top to bottom. But the bad news is that instead of grooming Donalds for future leadership, the so-called “leaders” of the House Republicans (Scalise, McCarthy) are running around twisting arms and trying to hurt and threaten fellow House members for not supporting McCarthy for Speaker.
Kind of interesting how this mean boys club works. It is almost like it doesn’t matter which political party these people are in, at the end of the day they are all the same: Mean, coercive, uninterested in listening to people who disagree with them, unwilling to negotiate a settlement, and vicious. They never back down no matter how much people reject them, they are always selfish and demand that we all acknowledge their selfishness and reward it. In short, McCarthy et al are gross yucky people. Not nice.
President Trump, this is not your fight and these are not your people. Forget about it, let this play out without your participation. You can’t win here, no matter what you do. You are not a career-long mean boy and you don’t belong in this squabble.
Kevin McCarthy is an evil DC swamp thing
Congressman Kevin McCarthy is a corrupt career politician from the Marxist state of California. To be a Republican from California in 2023, you would by necessity have to be really slimy and corrupt. McCarthy has been in Washington DC for a long time, and his ties to the evil DC Swamp run long and deep. Heck, just look at his shielded face, his hooded eyes. You can easily read McCarthy’s crookedness by his outward facial appearance and body language. In fact, he has a lot of Justin Trudeau’s same body language going on (Canada). And Gavin Newsom’s for that matter (California governor).
These people above all share a common lust for power and control that overrides elementary human decency and empathy. Anyone who wants that much control should never be allowed to have it, and yet, if McCarthy becomes the next Speaker of the US House, then he will have it.
My congressman, Scott Perry, has been wonderfully vocal about McCarthy’s cozy relationship with the DC Swamp, and how McCarthy refuses to make commitments to transparency and accountability that would change the way Washington DC spends our taxpayer money. Thank you, Congressman Perry.
What is really amazing is how weak willed and sycophantic most elected congresspeople are. They each want power and control so badly that they fall all over themselves to elect someone dirty like McCarthy. The people supporting McCarthy for Speaker are not conservatives, they are career politicians in search of wealth and power through a public service job. And this list of lame-os now includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman congresswoman who has raised hell with Washington DC criminality since the day she arrived.
How did fake Republican Liz Cheney go to Congress for just six years at an annual $175,000 salary, and emerge as a multimillionaire? What kinds of illegal, unethical, anti-citizen, anti-America back-room deals did she make to earn that kind of wealth? And it’s not just Liz Cheney, it is the vast majority of the elected officials in Washington that use their official office for personal gain.
Yuck!
So here we are today with RINO Rep. Kevin McCarthy trying to gain the speakership at all costs and with no commitments to advancing Republican values like good government, limited government, accountable government and public employees. I wonder if USA arch enemy China has purchased McCarthy like a sack of potatoes, too.
Like a lot of Americans, I am fed up with the political parties. They do not interest me, because it’s like watching two criminal gangs fight each other. The citizens lose no matter which gang is in charge. What does interest me is limited government, transparent government, accountable government.
Like: Why the hell is the IRS now empowered to track our $600.00 (six hundred Dollar) purchases and incomes, along with enormous destruction of our individual constitutional rights, but We The People have zero control or information over how the federal government, like its IRS, spends OUR money?
Kevin McCarthy is an evil DC Swamp Thing. He cannot be Speaker, and if he does become Speaker through the weakness of most GOP congresscritters, then America is done for, because he will protect the DC Swamp from being changed or challenged or held accountable. And America will never have another opportunity after this Congress to hold DC accountable.
Harrisburg Candlelight House Tour 2022
The Princess of Patience and I have an annual event we enjoy, and that is the Candlelight House Tour organized by Historic Harrisburg Association.
The homes are historic, often brick and stone, but increasingly being rehabbed and rebuilt to suit modern lifestyles. Mid Town Harrisburg is the center of a great deal of this gentrification and re-use, the reclamation of its former glory days by investors, young couples, and entrepreneurs taking empty dilapidated homes and fixing them up into tax-paying structures once again.
Often the true downtown homes are as-is-as-found-as-was, somewhat cluttered and dark, filled with holiday tsatchkes, very homey and comfortable. These downtown spaces are all smaller attached homes from the 1860s-1900s, whose original materials and design often require a significant boost to make them truly livable today. And yet so many owners keep the original pine flooring, which is as attractive now as it was 130 years ago. Many owners aggressively incorporate new steel I-beams and wall materials, and install new windows in the former closed brick, while maintaining as much of the original construction as possible. The result is always a fun and harmonious combination of antique and modern, and I would say that most of them make me wish I had it as a pied-a-terre.
One of the big efforts is taking old mansions and commercial buildings and turning them into apartments. This is not an easy or cheap thing to do. When I was in graduate school, I lived in an old Victorian mansion on Lyle Avenue that had been turned into apartments by an enterprising cocaine addict named Steve. Steve lived in one of the larger apartments that spanned from the basement to the roof. One day, while watching Steve hold his own, raging drunk, buck naked and armed with a single shot .22 rifle, in an armed stand-off with the Nashville police, who had taken cover with their service revolvers over the hoods and roofs of their squad cars and a humorously deployed bullhorn, I came to appreciate the thick, strong brick construction of the building I was in. If the bullets ever flew, I was without a doubt immune to dying from acute lead poisoning behind those bunker-like walls. Ever since then I have admired the must-be-crazy people who seek to bring these clunky dinosaurs into the current day and age as livable spaces.
One of the people I spent time talking with was Nathaniel Foote, who took the old Carpets & Draperies building and provided Harrisburgers with luxury loft apartments. His emphasis is on short-term nurse housing. Another entrepreneur I spent time talking with was Justin Heinly, who has restored both the historic Cottage Ridge Mansion and the historic Donaldson Mansion next block down. Justin told me true rehab war stories, like finding old brick chimneys upstairs that had been pulled apart downstairs, thereby leaving thousands of pounds of hidden unsupported weight bearing down hard on the floors below.
This historic home rehabilitation work takes real dedication, risk, and sacrifice by people who have slight streaks of both crazy and artistic creativity. This work directly benefits everyone who lives in Harrisburg, or who owns real estate in Harrisburg. Thank you Nathaniel, Justin, and all the others who are making Harrisburg’s old abandoned areas now livable and desirable once again, one building and one apartment at a time.
And thank you to all of the home owners who let the public enter their private spaces, and to Historic Harrisburg, for bringing us all together as the community we are.
A home place that was special in 1900 and is once again in 2022.
Real estate entrepreneur Justin Heinly keeps a smile on his face, despite encountering unbelievable engineering challenges resurrecting majestic old mansions for today’s renter
The Princess of Patience listening in surprise to home rehab war stories from entrepreneur Justin Heinly
Perfectly produced home tour booklet by Historic Harrisburg
Ten take-aways from my Election Day experience
With the Kerwin men, quality people
Primary elections are more important than the general election every November, because voters choose who is going to be representing them at the November election. And in the case of Republican Party voters, if you don’t vote for constitutional America-First candidates, you are guaranteed to have a Republican In Name Only (RINO) liberal running against the Democrat Party liberal in the November election. There’s not a whole lot of philosophical difference between the Republican liberal and the Democrat liberal, and after that November election between a RINO and a Democrat it’s just a question of how rapidly America is destroyed under your feet, slowly or quickly.
On Tuesday I volunteered at four different election polls, handing out brochures for Kathy Barnette, and I spoke with a lot of voters. Here are some take-aways from my experience during and after Tuesday’s Primary Election here in PA:
- Unsurprisingly, voters make both simple and complicated choices in voting for candidates. Simple choices can be lazy or principled, and complicated choices can be bizarre or carefully thought out. Candidate selection is as complex as any other choice in life, and I think that is a good thing.
- Party establishment endorsement is a negative among Republican/ conservative voters, who appear to increasingly view the GOP as a force for bad and not for good. For example, Lou Barletta’s campaign unleashed a tidal wave of Republican establishment career politician endorsements in the days before Tuesday’s election, and if anything these endorsements seemed to hurt Barletta at the polls, not help him; Doug Mastriano crushed Barletta.
- On the other hand, Democrat voters seem highly attuned to and in synch with their establishment, as witnessed by political newcomer Justin Fleming’s trouncing of long time Democrat Party activist Eric Epstein in the newly created 105th Legislative District (PA House). For at least ten years, and probably closer to twenty years, independent-minded liberal Epstein has run for everything from dog catcher to school board to state senate, almost always unsuccessfully but always with close-call results. Not this time. Apparently ten unions and the House Democrat Campaign Committee aggressively weighed in to stop Epstein from finally capitalizing on his well-known household name in southcentral PA. Fleming the unprincipled “electoral pragmatist” won with 61% of the vote.
- Money is not all that it used to be, but it can still matter in elections, no surprise. Case in point is a very small amount of money (like $157,000 total), old fashioned shoe leather, and reasonable social media networking got conservative grass roots favorite Kathy Barnette up to 25% of the vote in an eight-candidate race. This is a huge statement about the lack of importance of money. However, when the wildly false negative attacks against Barnette started pouring in during the last week from McCormick and Oz and their supporters, like Sean Hannity, Barnette lacked sufficient funds to get out her last-minute rebuttals on TV and radio that could have gotten her over the finish line to win. Enough confusion and obfuscation was created by the attacks to blunt Barnette’s position at the top, and allowed both Oz and McCormick to grow their own voter returns at her expense. Had Barnette possessed a million dollars to do last-minute TV and radio ads, she probably would have won the election.
- Negative advertising does work, and it also greatly suppresses voter turnout. At all of the five polls I was at yesterday, voting was down between 10% and 20%, and I believe many voters were just fed up and confused by all of the negative advertising. SO they stayed home and said “I will just vote in November for whoever wins this primary race.”
- Conservative voters are much more oriented toward ideology and principles than political party.
- Almost every primary election has one winner and some losers, and almost always the losers say they will take their ball and go home if they don’t win, and they won’t back the winner of their race. For weeks before and even after the election was over, I heard unceasing complaints from Republicans about how Mastriano is “too conservative” for Pennsylvania, and that his win will automatically hand the governorship to Komrade Josh Shapiro. I also heard unceasing complaints from Republican voters that Lou Barletta was too milquetoast to appeal to anyone in November, except for blue haired suburban GOPe Republicans. Folks, get used to these competitive races. They are good for us. This competition is just the nature of real and healthy primary races, something that Republicans really need, and something that the GOPe HATES. The Republican Country Club Party hates hates hates sharing decision making with the unwashed dirty masses, who keep gumming up GOPe dreams of easy ill gotten wealth and posh fundraisers. Sorry not sorry, GOPe, get used to ceding more and more decision making to the actual people you claim to represent. It is a good thing, and it is why Mastriano won by an enormous margin.
- For the most part, the GOPe got its ass kicked in PA and elsewhere in America. RINOs like Jake Corman (the sitting President Pro Tem of the PA Senate!!), Jeff Bartos, et al either dropped out or finished below 5%, while underdog candidates like Kathy Barnette and Dr. Oz scored big time vote returns against the establishment’s wishes. We are witnessing a power shift away from GOP party bosses, which is a good thing, because party bosses are corrupt and self-serving people.
- Charlie Gerow is still a good guy, and still not a catchy candidate. Once again, voters enjoy Charlie as an articulate proponent of conservative values, but not as a representative in government for their needs. Charlie is a salon intellectual in the mold of William F. Buckley, one of the 20th century’s great conservative crusaders. Not winning elections doesn’t mean Gerow isn’t relevant, it just means his strength is in policy debates and in the conservative salon of ideas. Nothing wrong with that.
- Finally, yard signs and road signs do not mean anything close to what they used to represent even ten years ago. At one time yard signs and roadside signs were a big part of electoral public outreach, but in this digital age, they are becoming less important. I would not say they are unimportant, because in some ways they can be used to get a sense of voter engagement. Like, lots of signs for Candidate X in a county or in a region probably means that Candidate X is well known there. But it does not mean that Candidate X is necessarily going to convert that name recognition into an Election Day win. Information is now moving so fast and so far across the political landscape, that just one gaffe or one slip-up by an otherwise reasonable candidate can mean the end of their lead or presumptive win. No amount of yard signs can counter a fifteen second video of a candidate doing or saying something ridiculous.
Thank you to all the voters who spent time talking with me on Tuesday. I promote candidates at polls on Election Day every year because these are people I believe in, and I believe in sharing the why and how I have arrived at my decision on whom to vote for. One thing that has not changed among voters at polls since I was a teenager is this: Liberal voters at polls are always surly, grumpy, dismissive, or disrespectful. Do not ask me why this is, but it does hint at how some people think.