There's a 2007 charge relating to harming a domestic animal on criminalsearches.com - is this the same crime or do we have to take him to the vet's to get neutered so he'll tame down a little after a second one? (Yesterday | post #42)
I'm not sure if Bubba and the guys in prison would reward him for torturing a small animal or give him a bar of soap. If he rose to the top of the prison totem pole for this act, then I'd lose much of my sympathy for the prisoners. On the other hand, if the prisoners did the finger-crushing he deserves, I'd get a little gut satisfaction. Karma being what it is, however, he'd get a blue hang tag for his rear-view mirror for his handicapped status after his release and all the pain pills he wanted. More and more I am coming to believe that children are being born without souls and it's up to us, the older generation, to help them earn them. In my public service job I'm in now, I've seen a kid go from 12 to 19 and have offered him respect every time I've seen him. He didn't know what hit him when I stood up, greeted him, and shook his hand. He may still head down a bad road, but maybe he'll remember somewhere there's a way out if he straightens up. (Yesterday | post #41)
Amish outhouses not exempt from sewage laws
I can't believe that the best Amish minds and the best "English " ones can't come up with a solution that respects their heritage and modern disease and environmental protection controls. Who could moderate a discussion which would get the Amish to a table with the "English " experts? Someone from K-Town University, perhaps? Or Rodale Press (Modern Gardening magazine, back-to-the-earth experts...). The outhouse should be able to stay - but there has to be a way to capture waste for retention and removal or percolation through a septic system so that it doesn't hit the water table. My family drinks from wells which get tested. Their testing - and the Amish who produce waste and are willing to treat it - is respectful to the earth. (Friday Oct 3 | post #55)
Judge: 'Bubble ' must go from S. Whitehall property
People who are not from Pennsylvania - places like California and Texas where townships are only lines on a map, not political entities - don't understand that if you don't live in a city/borough that you still have government standards and zoning. The family did NOT do their residential homework. Their realtor did NOT help them with their needs. Nobody on the buyers' side explained to the new owners that R1 zoning means RESIDENTIAL ONE-FAMILY housing, meaning no "granny flats" (or potential granny flats which they're calling a "bubble" ). I'm really sorry for them. They should have moved to a place like Greenwich Township in Berks where they wouldn't have had the same kinds of restrictions. They might not have the same kind of police/fire protection, but that's the result of living outside single-family-home zoned areas. Ultimately, they need to either move or put in new double-paned windows and a whole-house HEPA air filtration system. From a practical perspective, they should see they're not welcome any longer and they're fighting a losing battle. (Friday Oct 3 | post #176)
Letterman unloads on McCain for not showing up
Al, While I've disagreed with every other point you've made on this subject, you're finally hitting it on the head with this remark. When candidates appear on talk shows (in Britain they call them "chat shows") during campaigns, they trivialize their message. All four candidates should be out in the US, answering questions put to them by the media, no prompting, no training - let's see what we've got right from their own mouths. Frankly, I think we deserve the Republican and Democratic Party candidates we got. I'm voting for Obama because he has good backup, not because he's the greatest statesman-to-be since Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy. I'm not voting for McCain for two reasons: 1) his response on Sunday night to the question, "How long did you ever live in one place?" (Answer: "Five and a half years.") 2) he chose an inexperienced person recently elected governor from a notoriously corrupt state with separatist leanings. To the extent he chose not to appear on Letterman after his questioning on "The View", I can't really argue with his good sense in pulling out. But surely not out of the debate? (Thursday Sep 25 | post #263)
Acerra still hasn't had drug treatment METROMIX: Browse for wha...
Sex or no sex, drugs or no drugs, Christian nation or not, what does it say about Americans as a people if we don't clean this guy up, get him out of prison (as long as he doesn't mess up again), and put him on the lecture circuit to tell people how they can ruin their lives with drugs? They're not going to get it by people without experience...ever see pictures of people deep into meth addiction? Their brains are fried, faces pitted, teeth falling out. If he can get cleaned up and can convince ONE person to stay clean or get clean, he'll save the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania tens of thousands of dollars. If he was an effective teacher when he was sober, how do you think he'll be when he addresses an auditorium of high schoolers and takes his dentures out as part of his talk? A picture is worth a thousand words. (Saturday Sep 20 | post #34)
Acerra still hasn't had drug treatment METROMIX: Browse for wha...
Acerra needs drug treatment. He's waited his turn; now it's time. It's past his time, actually. It's a lot more expensive to keep him in prison than to treat him and release him. If he fails the "catch, treat, release" path, lock him up forever. Until then, give him the same shake anybody who is low-profile would get. And as for the person making the statement about medication for breast cancer - you'd be medicated and treated. You might be bankrupt by the time you were a cancer survivor (hospitals have aggressive collection departments), but you'd be alive. The same holds true for Acerra. He's essentially bankrupt now. (Saturday Sep 20 | post #23)
E-mail is just another sweet come-on
This is one of those "funny-sad " stories about several people I've met who have emigrated from Africa to the United States and have made good lives for themselves here. They speak proudly about their country's membership in the British Commonwealth, their tradition of being part of the British Empire - but they never name the country they're from. It's pretty clear that they're Nigerian. And we don't talk about it. It's like the f**t in church - everybody knows, but nobody will own up to it. (Friday Sep 19 | post #4)
Police: New Shenandoah attack not racial
There's a short book of short stories about Shenandoah which should be available at the Allentown and Bethlehem libraries. Its name is "The Only Western Town in the East". It was written in 1980 by Francis Norton Gallagher. Shenandoah has been well enough known for its lawlessness for someone to have written a book about the place 28 years ago. When I first read it, the stories were charming. Now, 28 years later, I see that very little has changed. (Thursday Sep 18 | post #25)
Police: New Shenandoah attack not racial
This comes from a comment from the Pottsville Republican's 09/18/08 story on the incident: "Justice is blind unless you are a White, Headeral sexual Male that smokes." It would be easy to make a comment about the person who wrote that and attack him directly. If that's the kind of education that people are leaving the 9th grade with, no wonder the financial world is collapsing - how can we compete with a workforce of semi-literate people? Being a major drug conduit is probably the best financial thing to happen to Shenandoah since they discovered coal. (Thursday Sep 18 | post #24)
What's the future of Mack icon?
Dennis, maybe we should just play King Solomon and split the baby, copying the bulldog and putting it at the BethWorks Sands casino. To people considering the move - it's supposed to be nice, and I think you'll be close to Vanity Fair (VF Corporation) headquarters too. (Sep 7, 2008 | post #22)
What's the future of Mack icon?
If you stop and think about it for a second, what's the Lehigh Valley really good for these days? The answer: logistics. It's at the junction of 78, 22, the PA Turnpike NE Extension, 222, and the east-west Norfolk Southern railroad. LVIA allows high-value goods to be moved in and out by air directly onto expressways for continued shipment elsewhere. This is also why there are so many people from northern New Jersey in the area. It's also why there are so many poor people (regardless of their immigration status) - it's a cheap place to live on the way somewhere. If you combine a *few* of the poor and not-so-poor people and their desire for money or to get ahead AND the excellent transportation system, you have a recipe for disaster. Add in a systematic policy of scaring people away from downtowns (successful in Allentown, Easton, and Reading, and a failure in Bethlehem), you get a drug corridor going straight through from JFK to Harrisburg and points west. I wouldn't want to live in Upper Saucon Township in a McMansion any more than in a Center City Allentown row home. The state of both communities, with Upper Saucon very recently a pleasant rural place and Center City Allentown a bustling metropolis, is directly caused by this second westward push of people, services, and goods (legal and illegal). Look at some of the success stories of the Lehigh Valley - Bethlehem's renaissance, the high livability rating of Emmaus, many good school districts - and see what worked there. You're not going to find an Ardath Rodale or a Moravian Church headquarters to adopt Allentown, but somewhere there's a reasonable response. (Sep 7, 2008 | post #18)
What's the future of Mack icon?
Put the bulldog inside the front doors of the museum. Let it teach tourists and newcomers to the Lehigh Valley and to Allentown of the proud heritage of Mack Trucks. I'd like to see the big neon "Berkshire Stockings" sign replaced on top of the VF Outlet Center building in Wyomissing, but that doesn't stand a snowball's chance. Hold on to what you've got now. (Sep 7, 2008 | post #16)
Two-way traffic for Seventh Street?
Actually, "urban renewal" (i.e., Hamilton Mall) destroyed Allentown's downtown and cities like it. Reading's downtown became a fearsome place when people couldn't get to their cars because Penn Square was pedestrianized. Car-free streets work well in very densely populated places with excellent public transit. Numbers of people raise the sense of safety. Hamilton Mall is really what drove Hess's out of business. What a shame. (Sep 4, 2008 | post #28)
SEPTA will run service to Shelly. That's as far as they can go without making some sort of special agreement with LANTA. I think they were talking about a few shuttle trains in the morning and the evening to connect with the Lansdale-to-Philad elphia (and Doylestown) trains in Lansdale. Where LANTA might get smart would be to run bus service from the Shelly station through Coopersburg to LVIA via Allentown or Bethlehem. If to Bethlehem, there would be an automatic market for casino employees coming up from Bucks County. And LVIA needs frequent service from one city or the other anyway. (Aug 21, 2008 | post #43)
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