I grew up knowing KKK people in Coatesville, PA. A few of them going back to the lynching of Zach Walker in 1911. I recognized them in York County and Chester County. I can only say I can feel them when I’m standing or sitting near them.
When I’m threatened I automatically go into investigative mode using public records & face to face talk. Investigating is sooo much easier now with the internet.
If you never came across someone who you could call a monster consider yourself lucky. I genuinely like everyone I meet, even monsters. I can always find something good about them. I once took a psychological test regarding career possibilities. Clergyman was the strongest. Maybe that’s it.
Right wing extremists were always part of Chester County politics, But they were on the fringes. Since 2005 I've been trying to explain that right wing extremists were coming into main stream Republican politics. Now right wing extremists dominate the Chester County Republican Committee.
The CCRC now dominated by right wing extremists is unrecognizable to a traditional Republican voter.
Some of those Republican voters had grandfathers or uncles who fought “Republicans” like those now dominating Chester County Republican Party politics in Europe in 1944.
In my political head addled with the knowledge a man I knew fairly well allegedly pushed Zach Walker back in the fire as a boy. He became leader of the Coatesville KKK. It's likely he lit a cross on my Uncle Lou’s lawn in the 1930s. My Uncle Lou who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
I was invited to shoot clay birds at his gun club. I wasn’t sure if I would leave alive.
A head who knew Sante Piscoglio ran scotch whiskey in Prohibition times from Canada to Chester County judges. His 1920s style elegant home is up 13th Ave a few blocks from our home.
My mom watched me eat peas. Sante & Concetta's daughter put a pea up her nose & died from infection.
Mom & Dad visited Sante and Concetta who in my 5 year old mind Sante was obviously an important man. Concetta was gracious and attentive to me. I wanted to see the Lionel Trains in the basement.
By the time I was 10 the New York Times was my favorite paper to read in my Uncle Nicks store. I went there after school. My dad went from his crane operator job at Lukens to help out at his brother’s store so I didn’t need to walk the mostly uphill mile up Black Horse Hill Road home.
I listened to the men at the store. Set in stone in my head is Democrats are steel workers, Republicans doctors & crooked organized crime connected judges.
"Peter Navarro —an architect of the attempt to overthrow democracy-serving federal time for contempt of Congress, was promised by Trump in prison that he would be hired back at the White House, joining a long line of felons and the disbarred who will work for Trump again." Michael Popok explains:
You might not see this MTN Meidastouch Network post a corporate news site. Maybe on page 32 of The New York Times:
"In addition to promising to pardon J6 defendants who beat police officers, and sharing the stage with 2 gang members currently out on bond for a 140 count indictment including conspiracy to commit murder, Trump finished up the week pledging to commute the sentence of one of the most notorious drug traffickers in American history.
Trump was given a list today by the Libertarian Party of the Top 10 most important issues for delegates attending their National Convention this weekend. The first item on that list was to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht.
Ulbricht created the dark web network called Silk Road which was used to traffic narcotics to over 100,000 buyers in hundreds of kilos of a variety of drugs. The drugs sales using Ulbricht's network totaled over $183 million. Ulbricht was convicted at trial of 7 counts of distributing narcotics and was sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole. The Supreme Court refused to hear his final appeal in 2018."
Ron Filipkowski is a former federal and state prosecutor. A Marine and former Republican, Filipkowski has amassed a massive following for his reporting exposing those who threaten American democracy. Filipkowski is the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch.com and co-hosts the hit podcast 'Uncovered' on the MeidasTouch Network.
The top of the Washington Post site states, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
It’s “BLUE HOUR” 20 minutes to darkness, The Washington Post is finally partly accepting the reality that another President Trump will be a dictator leading a KLEPTOIDIOCRACY!
"When a second flag was discovered flying,this time over Alito’s New Jersey home, the Times reported that the “Appeal to Heaven” flag in question was also “carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021” and “is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.” And this symbol of Christian nationalism was aloft Alito’s house in 2023.
With a second flag story, Durbin got huffy on social media. “This incident is yet another example of apparent ethical misconduct by a sitting justice, and it adds to the Court’s ongoing ethical crisis,” he tweeted. “Justice Alito must recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection.”
In response to Durbin’s empty words, constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe declared that the issue was no longer “just about the insurrection-abetting Sam Alito, [but] about the AWOL Senator Durbin.” Tribe added, “He has no excuse for not holding hearings about Alito now.”
After all, Alito cannot very well blame his wife or another rude neighbor for this violation of the principle of judicial impartiality. The second flag not only sheds doubt on the veracity of the first round of excuses; it suggest he harbors an affinity for an antidemocratic group that defines the United States as a White Christian country, repudiates the division between law and Christian dogma and views the United States as under siege from secular forces. At the very least it suggest the appearance of such partiality. That is a gigantic problem for a justice who is required by statute to be and appear impartial. On issues involving the establishment of religion, gay rights and abortion, litigants opposing the Christian nationalist viewpoint should not have confidence they are dealing with a fair and impartial court.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has been investigating the ethical crisis at the Court for more than a year, and that investigation continues. And we remain focused on ensuring the Supreme Court adopts an enforceable code of conduct, which we can do by passing the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act.
More than a year?! (Well, at least we know he has remained “focused” on ethics reform.)
Alito’s misconduct also brings Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who heads an entire branch of government, to an inflection point. If he does nothing, Roberts is complicit in the destruction of the court’s reputation. Such spinelessness might even snatch from Roger B. Taney, the author of the majority opinion inDred Scott, the title of “worst chief justice ever.”
In one sign the pressure on Durbin is building, he and Judiciary Committee member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) released a letter to Roberts imploring him to make certain that Alito recuses himself “in any cases related to the 2020 presidential election and January 6th attack on the Capitol, including the question of former President Trump’s immunity from prosecution.” They requested a meeting with Roberts “as soon as possible.” They continued, “Until the Court and the Judicial Conference take meaningful action to address this ongoing ethical crisis, we will continue our efforts to enact legislation to resolve this crisis.” Though Roberts is unlikely to agree, a refusal might then spur Durbin into taking meaningful action.
To be blunt, Durbin’s oath of office to protect the Constitution demands he do something. And Alito’s grotesque malfeasance tests not only Durbin, but also Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). His credibility and fidelity to his oath remain in question unless he can push Durbin to take real action.
Without hearings, no short-term response (e.g. passage of ethics reform, investigation of any grounds for impeachment) or medium-term fix (e.g. elevating the Supreme Court as a voting issue) to Alito’s bias — and his affinity for an anti-constitutional movement that his oath of office obliges him to oppose — can be attained.
The long-term imperative must be to educate the public about the extent to which the court has been compromised. Only then can democracy defenders build consensus for serious reform such as term limits or the appointment of additional judges to rebalance the court and restore its stature. That process should begin now.
Furthermore, when a future court (soon, we hope) reexamines some of the era’s most reckless, precedent-wrecking and historically cherry-picked cases, the questionable legality of justices sitting on cases in violation of legal recusal requirements (28 U.S.C. §455) should be a valid consideration in determining the opinions’ precedential value. Put differently, overtly ideological, biased judges may have muscled through radical opinions, but that does not mean we should take the tainted pronouncements of robed partisans as the definitive word on controversial topics.
Alito’s misconduct, if unaddressed, would make the 2024 election a referendum on the court. Barring a sufficient response from Alito and Roberts, voters will be left to decide how to rehabilitate the court, rid it of the stench of scandal and insulate it from MAGA extremists. Democrats must be prepared to offer solutions."
The next day the New York Times reported it was air pollution, ozone air pollution. It covered all of the New York city area, New Jersey Philadelphia and Delaware. One of the high school football teams moms said, “Oh it was only air pollution.”
In a sculling boat going downstream on the Schuylkill River something was hitting my paddles. I let the boat drift by dead fish.
I was afraid of falling into the river, not because of drowning, because the water smelled so bad.
I worked at Charles P. Mills, Photography Inc. Independence Hall. I was impressed by the plexiglas chandeliers in the Rohm & Haas building right next door. As I walked towards 7th Street an odor a mix of raw sewage, beer, wine & noxious chemicals some from the factories that made the plexiglass chandeliers in the Rohm & Haas building drifted. It was the smell of the Delaware River.
“Once upon a time, you could touch the air in New York. It was that filthy. No sensible person would put a toe in most of the waterways.
In 1964, Albert Butzel moved to New York City, which then had the worst air pollution among big cities in the United States.
“I not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills,” Mr. Butzel, 78, an environmental lawyer, said. “You’d look at the horizon and it would be yellowish. It was business as normal.”
"It’s worth reflecting that New York City before the E.P.A. and the movement it represented would be almost unrecognizable in 2017.
In the 1960s, my playmates and I stopped everything when it began “snowing” ash from incinerated garbage. We chased tiny scraps of partly burned paper that floated in the air as if they were blackened snowflakes. According to a study published in 2001, the quantities of lead in the sediments of the Central Park Lake correlated strongly with the vast quantities of particles emitted from garbage burned in Manhattan during the 20th century. The study found 32 garbage incinerators that were operated by the city, and 17,000 others in apartment houses.
Many power plants in the city were fueled with coal and heavy grades of oil, which led to noxious emissions.
Thanksgiving weekend in 1966 was warm, and a haze of smog — sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide — wrapped around the city. About 200 people died, a toll similar to a smog crisis in 1953."
Air quality index (AQI) and PM2.5 air pollution in Philadelphia
Check air quality
The Department of Public Health provides real-time daily updates and other resources about the air quality in Philadelphia.
The air quality readings on this page use the U.S. Air Quality Index (AQI). These categories were created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Learn more about the AQI.
AQI basics for ozone and particle pollution
Green
Good — 0 to 50
Air quality is satisfactory, and air pollution poses little or no risk.
Yellow
Moderate — 51 to 100
Air quality is acceptable. However, there may be a risk for some people, particularly those who are unusually sensitive to air pollution.
Orange
Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups — 101 to 150
Members of sensitive groups may experience health effects. The general public is less likely to be affected.
Red
Unhealthy — 151 to 200
Some members of the general public may experience health effects. Members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health effects.
Purple
Very Unhealthy — 201 to 300
Health alert: The risk of health effects is increased for everyone.
Maroon
Hazardous — 301 to 500
Health warning of emergency conditions: everyone is more likely to be affected.
