What went wrong?
At the beginning of the week of Nov. 13, neighbors on the 100 block of Laurie Lane received notices alerting us to the annual food drive sponsored by the Boy Scouts and several other organizations. As in previous years neighbors put out bags or boxes of food to be picked up on Saturday, Nov. 19. The flyer asked that donations be put out before 8:30 a.m. on the 19th. (Mine was out around 8:00.) Sadly, unlike previous years no one bothered to pick up our donations.
Denise Ellner
Bustleton
Bad location for UPS
Mr. Boyer’s “approval” of the location of the UPS distribution center is, naturally, biased (11/16). The construction jobs will benefit him. There will be jobs no matter where this behemoth is built. Just maybe not for his crew.
Mr. Boyer doesn’t care a whit for all of the people whose daily lives will be severely impacted by the traffic, noise and nighttime disruption this facility will produce. The Greater Bustleton Civic League has hired traffic engineers and other experts who concur that the traffic will be a huge problem at and around this location.
This site is surrounded by residential neighborhoods. A truly “ideal” location would be somewhere away from people’s homes, in an industrial setting with quick access to major highways.
Mr. Boyer would feel very differently if he lived in, and cared about, this area.
James P. Cantwell
Bustleton
Election a rejection of MAGA Republicans
PA voters flatly rejected MAGA Republicans and Trumpism on Nov. 8, which includes many of the commentators who regularly express their views here. Everyone who reads this opinion section is well aware of these regulars and their views. These lunatics warned of wokeism, grooming, critical race theory, socialism, criminals pouring in from the borders, “death on our street,” “bullet-ridden corpses that are laying in the streets,” and one commentator even implied that President Biden was a pedophile – and all of this rhetoric was wrapped up in racist overtones and threaded with conspiratorial thinking. Voters unequivocally rejected these ideas as the pure nonsense, fear-mongering and baseless accusations that they are. By Nov. 10, when it became clear that Democrats would hold onto the Senate, the stock market reacted by jumping 800+ points. Investors reacted with huge relief that once more, the crazy MAGA Republicans had been held at bay by the voters.
Before the election, every Fox News talking-head went on and on about the gigantic, massive red wave that in reality turned out to be a little puddle. Now, the knives come out and Republicans are looking for those who are to blame for their astounding losses in these midterms. MAGA Republicans were rejected in the 2018 midterms. They were rejected in 2020. And they have been rejected once more now in 2022. The MAGA Republicans and their supporters, including those who I have quoted here, are going to begin looking for explanations for why their hallucinations never manifested in reality. Soon, they will be purveying all kinds of election disinformation as a way of explaining and making sense of their massive losses.
But what these MAGA Republicans will not do is accept reality and accept their losses. Unlike emotionally mature adults, these people will not acclimate themselves to their losses through the power of self-reflection. Through self-reflection, they might conclude that their ideas are either terrible or not rooted in any empirical reality. But when a person’s reality is a hallucination, what can any of the rest of us expect from such a person? Readers here should prepare themselves because the last time MAGA Republicans lost, audiences had to hear about Italian satellites changing votes, Hugo Chavez resurrecting himself to change votes, and 60 lawsuits later, each one claiming some kind of voter fraud, and all of them lost or thrown out by courts across the country, and yet MAGA Republicans still cannot accept their losses. There is a red wave coming – a red wave of election disinformation. Forewarned is forearmed.
Michael A. Podgorski
Fox Chase
Avoiding a disaster
Thanks to the voters who did not take the bait on all the negative/false TV and radio ad attacks on now Sen.-elect John Fetterman. Even though his debate speech was not so clear we got the message. Josh Shapiro will be a good governor. Oz and Mastriano would have been disastrous for PA. I voted not just on women’s rights and abortion. Also for exposing racism and rogue police behavior. Speaking out on gun control and against corporate greed. raising the current poverty minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. Voicing to save democracy and Social Security, protecting health and Medicare. Standing up to voter suppression, propaganda network on the right’s news lies, radical groups led by Trump and hypocrisy. Keep in mind that gas price is a global issue not just a U.S. concern. The 2017 economy that Trump rode in on from the Obama/Biden administration was doing great until he did not know how to handle the then-deadly COVID-19 crisis. We are still recovering from that damage. Inflation and price hiking is all about greed from CEOs who favor the rich and prosperous. How can any party say they want to fight crime but won’t help sign or support a bill to be more firm on gun control and assault weapons sales? Instead of blame, what were their policies if any?
Think over it.
Carl Williams
Rhawnhurst
