Sign for No Kings 2

Our “No Kings” rally will be in Lehighton on Saturday from 12 to 1 p.m.  It will be along the Stanley Hoffman Boulevard, often called by locals “the bypass.”  I have not decided what poster to make.  I was thinking about “King George III had less power than President Trump.”  That is a true statement.  King George III had to get Parliament’s approval to wage war and to raise taxes.  Still, that seemed too academic.  Half the people won’t know who King George was.

Now I’m thinking:  James Madison warned:  “A standing military force with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”  

It’s a bit wordy, I’ll grant you, but I like quoting James Madison.  And if any MAGA followers are reading this, James Madison was one of the men who wrote the Constitution.  He also served as our fourth president.

An offer from Eric Trump

 OK, who is the wise guy who put me on this list?  Today I got a letter from Eric Trump.  He’s the one who used cocaine, right?  Anyway I will quote part of the letter for your amusement.

     I want to offer you a complimentary copy of my new book, Under Siege.

     It’s a story that began on June 16, 2015–when my dad made the courageous decision to forego a very comfortable life to serve the good men and women of the United States of America.

...and put my family directly in the crosshairs of everything the Radical Left could throw at us.

They accused us...

Indicted us...

Debanked us...[sic]

Weaponized the Department of Justice against us...[oh, the irony]

Censored us...

Raided our houses...

Tried to kill my dad–TWICE...

Killed a friend near and dear to my entire family...

Impeached my father...
...

Yet here we are.

Still fighting...

     It continues like that for four pages with a fifth page for donations.  If you give $50 or more, you get a copy of Eric’s book entitled Under Siege.  If you give $150 or more, he will send you two copies!

Indigenous People's Day

I’ve lived in CA too long.  We were celebrating Indigenous People’s Day when my daughter was in Rockridge Elementary in the Oakland school system.  Why would we celebrate a day dedicated to a guy who “discovered” a continent when people were already here?

I live in a township–Towamensing–that has a name taken from the Lenape

Nation.  Unfortunately, I don’t know any members of that tribe.  They were driven out of the area into western PA, then Ohio, then further west.  That is, those who weren’t killed by European diseases or shot to death.

Today there are three federally-recognized Lenape tribes, none in Pennsylvania. 

Saving American education

My friend David (yes, that David) sent me a link to some information and a petition to sign.  I did it, and you can too.  Here is the link:

Save American Higher Education (video)
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/save-american-higher-education-video?r=5n73h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Ozymandias–Taking the long view

What will people think about Trump in a thousand years?  Shelley answered this question already in one of the best poems in the English language.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Congrats to Maria Corina Macha

Congrats to Maria Corina Machad0   

    The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 was won by Maria Corina Machado, an amazingly courageous opposition leader of Venezuela.  She certainly deserves the prize, and I am so pleased that the Prize committee did the right thing.   

                                                                       

Tree huggers win

The Borough of Jim Thorpe received an “offer” from a company to buy timber from a 600+ parcel of woodland the Borough owns.  The trees would have been mature oaks and other hardwoods.  The company said the cutting would be selective and would help to prevent forest fires.

The environmental group Save Carbon County (I’m a member) showed up in force at the Jim Thorpe meeting with knowledgeable people who actually knew something about forestry.  It was pointed out that the resulting increase in underbrush in an eastern Pennsylvania forest would actually increase the fuel load, that erosion results from logging, that invasive species grow if no further steps are taken after logging, and that logging trucks can do damage to borough streets.

The Council voted unanimously to end negotiations for company to cut any trees.