Posts Tagged → Virginia
I-81, the 1950s relic
While making an epic deep-South deep-dive last week, I had the interesting experience of driving on a great long stretch of the I-81 interstate. Holy Moses. I have returned alive and in one piece to report back on this journey-by-traffic, and to ask a basic government policy question.
Originally started in 1957 to connect northeastern Pennsylvania to Upstate New York and southern Canada, for moose hunters, one presumes, today I-81 connects Upstate New York/ Canada with Tennessee, and in doing so it transverses New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and penetrates deeply into Tennessee, where I-81 ends and I-40 then seamlessly takes up the west-ward flow of vehicles and young men.
In its day, it seems that much of our 1950s built infrastructure was considered grand, even sometimes grandiose. Sure, back then, the idea of paving hundreds and hundreds of miles of highway with bazillions of tons of mined quarry aggregate and petroleum tar probably seemed an achievement just short of landing on the moon. And indeed, building modern highways is still a real achievement of science and technology, as well as physical manpower.
After all, a road is nothing more than liquid rock, which was mined, picked, blasted, bulldozed, lifted, trucked, crushed, and re-constituted in heated form with tar that, when it all settles and dries, provides a comfortable high speed driving surface. It is nothing less than a miracle to remove millions of tons of rock from the ground, process it, then put it back on top of the ground so that humans can easily and smoothly travel.
Today, Americans take good roads, smooth roads, for granted. Probably like everything else in our lives, to be honest. But the harsh truth is that our road system is aging, and I-81 is a good example of both the old combination of muscle, modern science, and good government, in short a real miracle, meeting up with the harsh reality of fulfilling our dreams by failing to maintain the big investments of yesteryear.
What did not follow in I-81’s wake, in either functional or miraculous form, was the simple funding necessary to operate and maintain this and all of the other incredible roads that make up our interstate system.
The I-81 experience today of driving at modern posted speeds of 60-70 miles per hour, on a crumbling two-lane roadway, that is chock full of bumper-to-bumper traffic, sucks mightily. Such a wild experience begs the question: Why the hell is 2026-level traffic expected to safely transit from Canada to Tennessee on a crowded two-track?
Why the hell is I-81 almost entirely two lanes in each direction, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, with only a few three-lane passing zones on steep hills thrown in helter skelter? It is a study in modern combat driving. It is a study in strange political choices, funding priorities.
The same can be said for the two-lane I-78, which brings New Yorkers and New Jerseyites westward into Pennsylvania, where, after fleeing their fouled nests back east, they settle here and begin voting for the same damned failed policies and ideologies that fouled their nests and drove them out in the first place.
Come to think of it, keep I-78 at two lanes.
And now come to think of it, while remembering a couple of the conversations I had with locals in the middle of rural southern Tennessee farmland on the Mississippi border, maybe this is the reason why I-81 remains a two-track the entire damned way: Keeping the damned Yankees out!
And with that in mind, now I understand: The narrow road and the local Southern attitude are both relics of the 1950s. Yep, now it all makes sense.

First and only Stars-and-Bars I saw the whole trip, and this in central VA. None in rural TN, where I saw they dominated the American flag forty years ago.

Said living former PA politician texted back “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Different guy, same name.
Citizen wave arrests aggressive elites
If yesterday’s amazing election results show anything, it is that Mister and Missus America have had enough and are fed up with aggressive cultural elites. It also shows that stolen elections have consequences, because when election thieves actually believe that their un-just, unconstitutional, coerced, forced, aggressive policies are justified by the fake “mandate” they never got through the election they never won, they get some come-uppance.
And this, despite their best efforts to steal yet more elections, as in Fairfax County, Virginia, being oh-so-sadly unable to show their election results on Election Day. The corrupt Democrat Party stronghold county did their level best to hide, manufacture, fake and lie and cheat and steal more votes to get candidate governor Terry Macauliffe over the finish line, but they failed.
Republican Youngkin won the Virginia governorship, and Republicans swept Virginia’s other offices from stem to stern. And again, this is despite the rampant vote stealing there that a corrupt judge OK’d at the last minute yesterday.
Republicans won in Democrat Party strongholds across the east coast yesterday, showing that regular old Americans are fed up, even Democrat Party members, with the wild communist policy overreach that has come to mark the Democrat Party today. This is the proverbial “citizen wave” that anyone with any connection to working people could see coming ten miles away, and which is still building up steam and coming even harder in 2022.
Here in Harrisburg outgoing mayor Eric Papenfuse attempted a write-in campaign to hold on to his office. Despite doing well as write-in efforts go, he nonetheless gathered about 33% of the vote, and Wanda Williams will move in to the mayor’s office. I give Eric credit for trying, as he cheerfully handed out literature at our polling place yesterday. But after eight years of indistinct presence in the mayor’s office, it is time to let someone else have a try at it. Hopefully Wanda will do better than Eric, and do better than her Democrat Party would want her to do.

Outgoing Harrisburg mayor Eric Papenfuse cheerfully running a write-in campaign for mayor on Election Day 2021.
Jusse Smollett hoax an inevitable result of 24/7 Fake News industry & why ‘racist’ now a dead term
Jusse Smollett is an aspiring actor who falsely accused some MAGA-hat-wearing “white men” of attempting to lynch him with a rope, because he is black and, therefore, automatically a victim and automatically given credence by a mainstream media eager to promote such stories because such stories advance a political narrative that suits the liberals running the mainstream media.
Problem was, Smollett’s false accusation turned out to be a hugely, ridiculously contrived, utterly false hoax.
So unbelievable, so incredibly disbelievable was it that on a 10-degree-Fahrenheit night in one of downtown Chicago’s best neighborhoods that a couple of mean old white privilege racist MAGA hat wearing men would be prowling, just looking for someone to victimize, that the police were already kind of suspicious of his story.
And the rest is recent and public history: Smollett is a liar, guilty of not only creating the false police report to build up his own public standing, because he is a bit-actor desperately wanting to be a celebrity actor, but of also racistly slandering/maligning an entire group of Americans because of their skin color (white men).
The question is, why did this even happen?
Another question is, why did the national media report his accusation before waiting for the facts to emerge?
The answer to both is painfully simple: Jusse Smollett’s fake accusation racial hoax is a natural byproduct of the 24/7 Fake News mainstream media industry that promotes and protects false accusations and victimhood by favored groups and individuals, while simultaneously protecting racist and sexist liberals and Democrats from being publicly outed for their very real racism and sexism.
Think Judge Kavanaugh being falsely accused by mainstream media darling but obviously disbelievable Blasey Ford.
Think the Rolling Stone story falsely accusing an entire men’s sport team of gang raping a black woman and using racist epithets during the non-deed.
Think of the mattress-carrying college student who destroyed a young man’s life with a false accusation of rape, because he would not date her.
Think of the violent criminal thug Trayvon Martin physically attacking an innocent bystander, receiving a huge dose of justified physical response that left him dead, and yet nonetheless becoming a poster child hero for (totally fake) racism.
Think of the serial rapist and sexual harasser Bill Clinton.
Think of the serial rape and sexual harassment enabler Hilary Clinton.
Both Bill and Hill get total and complete passes from their media chums for their known evil deeds, because they are in the “right” political party.
And think of the recent atomic explosion of Democrat Party malfeasance in Virginia, where nearly every senior Democrat Party leader there is now proven to be a racist or is seriously alleged to have been a rapist and/or sexist…and yet, the Washington Post and other mainstream media arms of the Democrat Party are doing everything they can to cover for these Democrats, to protect them, to shield them from public scrutiny by explaining away facts or declining to report the facts at all.
A week ago an imbecile congressman named Green actually took to the floor of the US House of Representatives to claim that even the over-the-top Democrat Party racism, rapism, and sexism in Virginia was excusable “because of President Trump.”
For real.
And of course the mainstream establishment legacy media let Mr. Green off the hook by allowing his ridiculous statement to stand unchallenged.
In other words, if you are a Democrat, liberal, or Hollywood celebrity, you get a complete pass from the mainstream media, from Hollywood, and academia: You can be the biggest racist, rapist, sexist, or anti-gay person in your state, you can say and do just about anything, and no matter what, they will all protect you by failing to report the actual facts.
On the other hand, regular Americans just need to have the letter (R) listed after their names, or white skin, and the same mainstream media falsely accuses them of being automatically racist, sexist, anti-gay etc. Even and often especially when the person is none of those things! And even if you are a MAGA hat-wearing teenager minding your own business saying nothing to anyone!
It is a complete and totally contrived double standard, all created by a totally racist and misogynistic Democrat Party and supported by its 24/7 Fake News mainstream media arm.
So into this double-standard environment steps Jusse Smollett, who figures all he has to do is make up a story and the media will run with it, make him a victim, make him a star. And it turns out, Smollett is probably smarter than he appears, because he was right, the media did run the story, with some outlets tossing in an “alleged” or “reported” here and there, but all of them reporting it long before any actual facts were known. They wanted him to be believed.
Smollett’s fake accusation against “MAGA hat wearing white men” is a natural outcome of the totally phony mainstream media’s openly partisan propaganda activism and endless double standards. Smollett’s fake accusation fits right in with all of the fake fake fake accusations and news that have gone on, including the most very racist notion of “white privilege.” Apparently, this is the price Americans must pay from Fake News 24/7.
And the other takeaway from all of these recent events in Virginia, in Hollywood, and in Chicago, is that the white liberals behind the modern Democrat Party have pretty much destroyed the term “racist” by using it for partisan purposes, by repeatedly crying “wolf!” with it. You cannot use that term again and be believed, and what a shame that is.
It is a shame because there is an entire American political party built on racism and devoted to promoting racism, and it needs to be corrected: That is the Democrat Party.
And that is probably why the Democrat Party has destroyed the believability of racism, to cover the party’s own ongoing racist mis-deeds.
It’s official: Sunday hunting in VA
Two weeks ago the Virginia state House passed a Sunday hunting bill out of a committee that had bottled up similar bills for decades before. It was a surprising statement that it actually got through committee. Then it passed the full state House, which surprised even its most ardent sponsors.
Well, today the Virginia state Senate passed the companion bill. It allows hunting on private land on Sunday, a private property rights win if there ever was one. If you pay property taxes, say on a remote mountainside property, and you are deprived of 14.2% of your full use of that property for some vague reason, you might get frustrated. It is your property. You can shoot 1,000 bullets at a target on Sunday, but you cannot shoot just one at a squirrel. Laws like this are by their definition arbitrary, the bane of democracy.
Virginia’s governor says he will sign the bill into law.
Welcome to the modern era, Virginia! We are envious of you.
Kudos to Kathy Davis of PA-based Hunters United for Sunday Hunting (www.huntsunday.org), who has devoted the past two years of her life to this issue, and who helped a great deal with getting the Virginia law passed and the lawsuit filed there. The lawsuit compelled the state legislature to act, before a judge ruled against the state and the entire state was opened up. While I would like to see public land open for Sunday hunting, I am satisfied with private land as a start to implementing it state-wide. This really is an issue of the most basic American rights.








