Our good friends on the left are doing everything that they can to express their disgust, and try to score political points with far-left voters, over the eight Senate Democrats who agreed to end the filibuster and allow the continuing resolution to reopen the government to be passed. Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) is trying to tell us that he’d have gotten a better deal to reopen the government, because he finally got the state budget passed, a mere 135 days late. 🙂

Gov. Josh Shapiro says national Democrats folded in the federal shutdown, while he stayed ‘at the table’ for Pa.’s late budget deal

As Shapiro portrays the outcome of Pennsylvania’s 2025 state budget as an across-the-board victory, the path to get there was harder, messier, and longer than anyone in Harrisburg would have liked.

by Julia Terruso and Gillian McGoldrick | Tuesday, November 18, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST | Updated: 10:08 AM EST

The turning point in Pennsylvania’s budget impasse, by Gov. Josh Shapiro’s telling, came just before Halloween, when he and leaders in Harrisburg gathered in his stately, wood-paneled office to meet twice daily to hash out a deal to end the bitter, monthslong stalemate.

The long grind eventually led to compromises 135 days in, and a deal Shapiro said he thinks is far better than what national Democrats, hoping to extend healthcare subsidies, got in Washington at the end of the federal shutdown.

“Sometimes you’ve got to show that you’re willing to stay at the table and fight and bring people together in order to deliver,” Shapiro told The Inquirer in an interview Friday, touting the state budget agreement finally signed that week.

“I think it’s a stark contrast, frankly, with what happened in D.C., where they didn’t stay at the table, they didn’t fight, and they got nothing,” he said.

Let’s tell the truth here: the Democrats in Washington weren’t “at the table” because Republicans wouldn’t negotiate with them, and that’s because Republicans had most of the power. Republicans control the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House in Washington, while they control only the Senate in the Keystone State.

As Shapiro portrays the outcome of Pennsylvania’s 2025 state budget as an across-the-board victory, the path to get there was harder and messier than he would have liked: a nearly five-month slog that strained his dealmaker image and forced concessions to get the deal across the line — including no new money for mass transit. The absence of a new funding stream in the budget marked a final blow in the saga to Southeastern Pennsylvania commuters who rely on SEPTA — and who are likely to be reminded of the beleaguered agency’s funding woes as delays, staffing issues, and needed repairs persist.

Critics are quick to note it took the self-proclaimed dealmaker so long to get a deal. Counties, school districts, and nonprofits struggled through four months without state payments while officials remained at loggerheads. Pennsylvania was the last state in the nation to pass a spending plan for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

The failure of the budget to include new money for SEPTA is the big bugaboo for Philadelphia-area Democrats. They certainly don’t like the apparently horrible idea of raising fares to have the people who use SEPTA pay more of SEPTA’s expenses.

At the federal level, all the Democrats had was the power to keep the Senate from voting on the Continuing Resolution via the filibuster . . . and the Republicans who control the Senate could have used the so-called “nuclear option” to end the filibuster rule, something the President urged them to do.

But things were worse for the Democrats at the federal level than Republicans in Pennsylvania. Sure, many “counties, school districts, and non-profits struggled,” but at the federal level the 42 million SNAP recipients were having to go without their ‘food stamps,’ their EBT cards being refilled. How much longer could the Democrats have held out?

We have previously reported on how Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch and the newspaper’s Editorial Board were just spittle-flecking mad that the Democrats ended the filibuster, and now the Working Families Party — which is a complete misnomer, since so much of their support comes from non working families and welfare recipients — have decided that they are “committed to recruiting and supporting a primary challenge to him in 2028.”

Earlier this year, Fetterman was the first Senate Democrat to support the Laken Riley Act, a Republican immigration bill that requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and take into custody individuals who have been charged with theft-related offenses, even without a conviction. Critics of the law say it severely cracks down on due process for immigrants.

Fetterman was the sole Senate Democrat to vote to confirm Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was one of Trump’s attorneys when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

And he has been the Senate’s most outspoken defender of Israel during its war in Gaza, sponsoring a resolution with Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) against antisemitism and appearing for the first time since his fall at an event hosted by the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington on Monday.

He also received recognition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called him the country’s “best friend” and gifted him a silver pager inspired by Israel’s attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon that exploded pagers.

“He has repeatedly shown disregard for the rights of Palestinians,” the Working Families Party release said. “Refusing to support a two-state solution and breaking with the rest of the Democratic caucus on Israel’s illegal annexation of the West Bank.”

Translation: Senator Fetterman does not hate Jooooos enough.

You know who else do not “support a two-state solution” for the ‘Palestinians’? The ‘Palestinians’ themselves, along with their fellow travelers who chant “From the River To the Sea” in support of them.

The Pennsylvania (Non)Working Families Party hates things like law enforcement, rejoicing over the re-election of Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police hating District Attorney Larry Krasner, and of course they support the blood-thirsty ‘Palestinians’. Mr Fetterman is a surprisingly good Senator, a Democrat to be sure, but a moderate Democrat rather than a wild-eyed leftist.

So, apparently Senator Fetterman will have a challenger from the far-left in the 2028 primary, assuming that he even runs for re-election; he’s not in the best of health, despite being only 56 years old.

A fine gentleman named Tim Hannan, whose Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — biography simply describes himself as “New Yorker, pro-Democracy”, threatened us all with this vicious threat:

From here on out Donald Trump enablers are put on notice. Democracy will survive. We are not scared of Tinfoil dictator Trump. He may never be held to account but you will.

When challenged in Twitter by some, including me, to tell us how he was going to hold us accountable, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, the brave Mr Hannan chose not to respond.

What Mr Hannan wrote is not a legally specific threat, so it’s not something for which he could legally be held accountable, but we can certainly mock him, which many did.

The “No Kings” protests were on Saturday, but here it is, Monday morning, and I have yet to see anything in the news about Donald Trump no longer being President. It’s cool here, but the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and somehow I have yet to be held accountable for having cast one of the 77,302,580 votes which made Mr Trump our President today. 🙂

So very, very many of the pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian demonstrators were decrying ‘genocide’ of the ‘Palestinians’ by Israel in the two-year-long war. They published all sorts of photos of places before-and-after the war. The same could have been done concerning Berlin and Dresden and Tokyo and Yokohama, because that’s what it takes to win wars. The last war we actually won was World War II, because we bombed and burned and blasted the infrastructure of Germany and Japan and, to a lesser extent, Italy, because that was what it took to starve their war machines and their governments. The lesson should be: don’t start a war you can’t win! Japan did, Germany did, Italy did, and now Hamas have done the same thing.

And now we know just what Hamas were trying to do:

Hamas Oct 7 memo shows meticulous plan to ‘end the children of Israel’

Story by Jotam Confino • Sunday, October 12, 2025

Yahya Sinwar sent to his eternal reward in Al-Hawwiyah.

An October 7 memo written by the Hamas leader in Gaza instructed members to burn down entire neighbourhoods, stamp on soldiers’ heads and broadcast the attack to the world.

It was followed up with orders from Hamas commanders to “kill everyone you encounter” and “end the children of Israel”.

The six-page memo, found in a bunker by the IDF, was written in Arabic by Yahya Sinwar, who was the Hamas leader until he was killed by the IDF in Gaza in October last year.

The original was published here, in London’s The Telegraph, but you need a subscription to see it. Here is The New York Times story on the discovered document.

Details were revealed in documents and intercepts discovered in Gaza and verified by The New York Times. They provide evidence that Hamas deliberately targeted civilians, contrary to their own claims throughout the war.

It also shows how carefully planned the attack was, despite some claiming it was sporadic.

It instructed bulldozers to destroy the fence separating Israel from Gaza, and for combatants to “stomp on the heads of soldiers,” as well as “opening fire on soldiers at point-blank range, slaughtering some of them with knives, blowing up tanks”.

“It needs to be affirmed to the unit commanders to undertake these actions intentionally, film them and broadcast images of them as fast as possible,” it stated.

“Two or three operations, in which an entire neighbourhood, kibbutz, or something similar will be burned, must be prepared,” the memo said.

Before the attack, a Hamas commander from Gaza City, known as Abu al-Baraa, told operatives near Kibbutz Sa’ad: “Document the scenes of horror, now, and broadcast them on TV channels to the whole world. Slaughter them. End the children of Israel.”

Well, we know that they did that part! Hamas and their minions did exactly that, and were intensely proud of having done so. The fake ‘journalist’ Saleh Aljafarawi celebrated the October 7 attack, but now he’s been killed, not by Israel, but another ‘Palestinian’ faction. Hamas have been executing Gazans they suspect of having collaborated with the IDF. They are nothing but a death cult.

Of course, our good-hearted and sympathetic and noble friends on the left will never recognize that the people they’ve been supporting are simply bloodthirsty killers. They’re all like the idiotic “queers for Palestine” people, people who Hamas and the other Islamists would happily slaughter for being queer.

And now it is being reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Trump in Washington on Friday. Mr Trump failed in his earlier attempt to broker a ceasefire in the Russo-Ukrainian War, but there was never any real doubt that he’d try again. Will progress be made? Will the President succeed? Only the Lord knows the answer to that, but it is at least a possibility. If he succeeded, no one would be more hurt than Bill Kristol and the rest of the neocons.

It wasn’t like tons of people stated that recognizing the Palestinian state would be a victory for the terrorists who started this on October 7th, right?

Hamas declares ‘victory’ after UK recognition of Palestine

Hamas has declared victory for “the justice of our cause” after Sir Keir Starmer announced Britain would recognise Palestinian statehood.
In a video message on Sunday, Sir Keir insisted the move, one of the most significant shifts in British foreign policy in decades, was “not a reward for Hamas”.

But Mahmoud Mardaw, a senior Hamas official, claimed it represented “a victory for Palestinian rights and the justice of our cause” and would “send a clear message” to Israel.

On Sunday night, US president Donald Trump said the decision was “rewarding Hamas”. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, he added: “I don’t think they should be rewarded. I am not in that camp, to be honest.”

Canada and Australia, which have been overrun with Islamist just like the UK, also recognized Palestinian statehood

“With the actions of Hamas, the Israeli government escalating the conflict and settlement building being accelerated in the West Bank, the hope of a two-state solution is fading, but we cannot let that light go out,” Starmer said.

Alongside similar announcements of recognition from Canada and Australia, he described Hamas as a “brutal terror organisation”.

He said: “We are clear this solution is not a reward for Hamas, because it means Hamas can have no future, no role in government, no role in security.”

The group which is a designated terrorist organization by the UK government disagrees.

Jewish organisations, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, condemned the decision, arguing there will be “deep dismay at the Prime Minister’s announcement across the Jewish community”, while the Campaign Against Antisemitism described the decision as “Sir Keir Starmer’s Neville Chamberlain moment”.

Meanwhile, the families of hostages held by Hamas said the UK and its allies were responsible for a “catastrophic failure of political, moral and diplomatic leadership” and said any recognition of Palestine must be contingent on the release of their relatives.

Britain is lost.

Update: LOL

38^th and Wallace Streets, via Google Maps.

Looking down 38^th and Wallace Streets, using images from Google Maps taken in July of last year, the neighborhood doesn’t look like one of the worst in the City of Brotherly Love. Oh, it’s certainly not Rittenhouse Square or Chestnut Hill, but the rowhouses aren’t falling-down dilapidated, and the streets at least look on the clean side.

Within (long) walking distance of the University of Pennsylvania, it is not in the Philadelphia Badlands, at least as such things are defined, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t become infected and infested with some of the same terrible culture that can be seen too often in Philly.

Teens in West Philly went from brothers to enemies. A trial offered a window inside the lesser-known feud.

Continue reading →

Our previous house in Pennsylvania, photo during winter of 2015-16.

Though I have published pictures of our previous home, of which I was very proud, I usually cropped them on the right, because it was a duplex. When we bought it, in 2002, it was pained entirely white, and the doors were a faded lemon yellow, with a single, brass doorknob on the right-hand door. I added the antique brass door set, deadbolt, and kickplates, and painted it red.

The stained glass in the transom was a Christmas present to my darling bride — of 45 years, 11 months, and 24 days — and the columns are now PVC, purchased from Home Despot Depot, because one of the old wooden ones was getting to be in poor shape. The three-color paint job I left to the professionals. I redecked the porch, but rather than painting it grey, as it had been before, I used Cabot’s Australian Oil in red mahogany on mahogany flooring, and had the porch deck looking like it could have been an interior floor!

Nevertheless, it was a duplex, and that meant a common wall, and a family on the other side of the building. It wasn’t bad, at first; they were decent neighbors. But, alas! they broke up, and the now single guy living on the other side couldn’t afford to keep up the mortgage, and moved out, just walking away, and leaving the other side empty. A young realtor bought it out, did a little bit of work on the inside, and then sold it for an inflated price. OK, fine, that could only increase the value of our side! Continue reading →

Be aware, when you read Adam Parkhomenko’s tweet, screen captured at the left, that his Twitter biography states that he is a “Dem Strategist. Dad to Cameron, Paxton, Moose and Simba. Former DNC National Field Director, Hillary advisor and more.”

The distinguished Mr Parkhomenko is upset, angry, waxing wroth, because President Donald Trump is ending DEI, the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs that the Federal government has been using to base hiring and promotions not on ability or job performance, but whether a prospective candidate is a member of an Accredited Victim Group™.

In the 2003 decision Grutter v Bollinger, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that Affirmative Action plans had to come to an end, that the ‘exception’ the Supreme Court allowed to the 14th Amendment required an end date, and that the Court anticipated that, 25 years from then, they’d expect to see all accomplished, and Affirmative Action ended. Continue reading →