Kathy Barnette for U.S. Senate!

Posted on May 8, 2022 by Mike Shortall

Allow me the extravagance of offering you suggestions for the upcoming Pennsylvania Republican Primary. The most important choices to be made this year are for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Pat Toomey and endorsements for the PA Governors race. Personally, I feel much stronger about our choice for the Senate race, so I’ll address that here.

First off, I have a real problem with carpetbagging politicians. “Carpetbagging” in the sense of those who relocate purely for the political opportunities they see versus an actual desire to live in – and fight for – a particular constituency. For this reason, I will never support Mehmet Oz or Dave McCormick.

Oz lived in Northern New Jersey; McCormick in Connecticut UNTIL Pat Toomey announced his desire to leave the U.S. Senate! Both moves were obviously made in attempts to maximize personal political power, where both men KNEW they could not win such exalted positions with the slate of current Senators in New Jersey and Connecticut!

Carpetbaggers, crooks of Reconstruction in the South

Kathy Barnette, on the other hand, is not only a political neophyte but also a military veteran. She has corporate financial experience and served for years on the Board for a pregnancy crises center. She is an author, writing “Nothing to Lose; Everything to Lose: Being Black and Conservative in America”.

She’s a huge fan of Conservative mainstay, Newt Gingrich, and a frequent guest on Fox News, even demonstrating self-defense techniques for women and children, another issue of which she is passionate.

Kathy’s Day One focus includes objectives I personally feel strongly about … Protecting individual freedoms, Peace through Strength, Energy Independence, Healthcare autonomy, and – if you consider the shaky status of world food supplies – American Agriculture.

From a purely political perspective, I cannot ignore or over-estimate the prospects of a younger, dynamic, black American woman’s ability to draw members of her social demographic away from the crazed, whacked out direction the Democrat Party has taken in recent years!

Fortunately, that is the very least of Kathy Barnette’s qualifications and capabilities for representing the People of Pennsylvania in the United States Senate!

Schiff: Intel Committee to probe Hatboro bakers.

Posted on October 19, 2020 by Mike Shortall

BREAKING NEWS: House Intel Committee Chair, Adam Schiff, announced an investigation into possible Russian agents, allegedly posing as confectioneers at Lechol’s Bakery in HATBORO, PA, for attempting to influence the American Election. The plot, uncovered by the American Bakers Association, allegedly involved the baking of 2020 Presidential Election cookies under the names BIDEN and TRUMP.

Schiff claimed that “anonymous baker people” told him that Eric Trump attempted to meet secretly with the Russian bakers this week. When Trump’s visit to Lechol’s Bakery was uncovered, witnesses allege Eric Trump acted as though he had simply stumbled upon the bakery and then threw rock-hard cookies at passers-by to distract attention.

Four people were injured in Eric Trump’s attack. Three had their feelings hurt, and one was struck in the eye by a ricocheting jimmie. Others on the scene accused Trump of abusing the working class by providing incredibly delicious cookies without a proper milky beverage.

First responders claimed it was the worst bakery attack they ever saw.

Schiff also claimed to have called Lechol’s Bakery during the baking process and heard Al Stewart’s “Road to Moscow” playing in the background. AOC called cooking baking “a selfish act of privilege contributing to the death of the planet”.

Nancy Pelosi called for impeachment proceedings to be authorized.

The electoral cookie count was allegedly manipulated by adding beet juice, borscht, and pumpkin spice to the Biden cookie mix. An attempt by this reporter to confront the Russian co-conspirators was ended by a well-aimed vatrushka.

No explanation was provided as to why anyone would have wanted a Biden cookie in the first place.

Eric Trump seconds before his heinous cookie attack.

Police Academy 19

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Mike Shortall

For 19 times the police departments of Horsham and Hatboro, Pennsylvania have presented a seminar-type forum know as the Citizens Police Academy. Having heard several rave reviews of the program, its organization, and presentation, I decided to register and take a look at what our local law enforcement types do and how they do it. There are local CPAs in surrounding communities as well, such as Abington, Cheltenham, as well as both regionally and nationally.

This past Wednesday night was our first session. And although the first session was by necessity a bit dry and full of background information and program objective, several interesting factoids were presented that would make the under-educated (police service-wise) go, “Hmmmm …”

If subsequent sessions appear to be nearly as interesting as I think they might, I intend to share some of my experiences and lessons-learned with you. I will not promise to do so each week; but I will not let anything of value out.

By way of full disclosure I reveal the following. I have several former and current officers in my family, including one who retired from a command position in a fairly large police department out west. Currently, I have one extended family member serving as a patrol officer (last time I checked) in Wilmington, Delaware.

The objective of the Citizens Police Academy (CPA) are fairly obvious.

Improved community relations
Improved public safety
Crime prevention through the elimination of Opportunities to commit crime

Of course, the primary goal is an outreach to its citizens as a way of fostering familiarity with police roles and techniques, an understanding of what police can and cannot do, as well as a forum for citizens to learn how to prevent the most common criminal acts and how local police will react and handle those situations. The underlying theme is to promote a tighter relationship between the community and the police, and to encourage greater participation by everyday citizens in community.

Personally, I find it to be an excellent way to show support for local law enforcement as well as taking an interest in the important role they play in making our community a safer, more attractive place to live.

My class has roughly 20-25 attendees on the first night, coming from both Horsham and Hatboro. For those not familiar with the two communities, they are located very closely though they do not physically border each other. The township of Upper Moreland separates the two by a thin piece of land, known by some as “the dog leg”. However the two communities share a common school district, known appropriately enough as the Hatboro-Horsham School District.

I live in Horsham. But in a strange quirk of U.S. Postal Service zip-coding, my residence holds a Hatboro zip code. (Not sure how that fits the narrative here, but there ya go!)

You want to do what?!?
(generic CPA photo)

Our first class was mostly a familiarization session, with some random facts and an opportunity to check out the routine equipment carried and used by today’s officers. Most of this was interesting in a hands-on way, being able to feel the heft of the expandable baton or noticing that their sidearm ammunition used hollow-point bullets or imagining what it feels to have 50,000 volts of taser hitting your muscles from an effective range of 25 feet.

Does this come in pink?
(generic CPA photo)

Future classes will include patrol functions, a session on District Courts, use of force, crime scene and homicide investigations (CSI), the FBI, terrorism, Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), K-9 programs, and drug awareness.

Some other random tidbits picked up in our first session:

Although Pennsylvania is an open carry” state, as soon as you enter a vehicle with your weapon, it is considered to be “concealed” for the purposes of requiring a Concealed Carry permit.
The average police shooting last 3-6 seconds from a distance of 3-6 meters where 3-6 rounds are fired.
Police officers “walk through” every school in the Hatboro-Horsham SD at least once a day.
Hatboro will be celebrating its 300th birthday in 2015!

More to follow …

The Power of Pancakes

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Mike Shortall

IHOP declared today to be National Pancake Day. It says so on my Facebook feed, so it must be important. It is also Happy Faschnaut Day, a.k.a. Donut Day.

National Carb Days are almost semi-religious holidays for corporate Big Carb evolving from fear for the dawning of the Christian Lenten season, where Catholics in good standing will forsake the siren calls of the IHOP/Dunkin Donut/soft pretzel triumvirate.

Well, maybe not so much the latter in this area. That’s a Philly thing. We can only go so far in demonstrating our devotion. We barely survived edicts of meatless Fridays, which tended to put an economic crimp in the local cheesesteak economy.

In any the case, the point of this post is to celebrate the mystical properties of the pancake! Any connection with National Pancake Day is purely coincidental.

I say this because I witnessed the Power of the Pancake this weekend!

The story has its genesis in the struggle of addressing the needs for elderly parent care. There is never an easy solution to the question, what do you do when parents are aging to the point where more focused supervision is required?

My experience includes the breadth of care options available, from Independent Living through intensive, full-time managed care to end-life hospice services. There are blessings and curses with each choice.

Our latest experience and challenge is the decision to invite our last parent to join us in our home. My father-in law in a good guy, one I have always gotten along with though he has his blustery side and bouts with stubbornness.

When the choice was presented, I agreed easily enough, although there was a bit of anxiety about how such an arrangement might change a home dynamic with which we were all comfortable. My wife’s piece-of-mind over a relative living alone was enough to persuade me.

Our solution was to remodel our basement in recognition of my FIL’s desire to remain as autonomous as possible. So autonomous in fact that his new digs are the nicest in our home (just in case your first impression was an episode right out of the King of Queens)! The transition however has been anything but seamless.

We had to move him in earlier that expected and before his new palace was in move-in shape. The remaining construction and approaching holidays made the situation a bit dicier, resulting in a hangover that threatened our expectations for limited disruption to the established household routine.

The difficulties which developed involved the usual sources of close-proximity conflict … mismatched expectations, fumbled communications, and the tendency to avoid rocking anyone’s boat at all costs. Growing frustrations however required that the situation be addressed sooner rather than later; before the atmosphere we were trying to protect turned fetid, breeding anger.

I was tasked with being the Diplomat of Harmony.

My solution? Breakfast!

So this past weekend I invited my FIL out for breakfast at Hatboro Dish! I did not tell him the reason for the invite. Found out later he was suspicious, thinking we were going to through him out. (Insert link for King of Queens episode)

Carol, not a fan of Big Breakfast, opted to let the guys hammer things out at an establishment full of sharp objects.

As we sat down, Jim dithered over the menu options. I chose the bakery-quality cinnamon roll French toast, which is made by Lochel’s Bakery a few hundred feet up York Road, and Jim chose the pancakes … with strawberries … and whipped cream … soon to be marinated in maple syrup poured from a jar, not emptied from cheap plastic packaging.

Did I mention he’s diabetic? However, it’s my belief that once you get to a certain age, you should be free to enjoy whatever you can, reasonably and safely. I let him enjoy his loaded pancakes.

Once we finished our morning meals, it was time for The Talk. Dreading the moment I put all my cards on the table, I wasn’t sure how Jim would take the challenge. Changes had to be made. But addressing them would not necessarily be easy.

What I found out though was that Jim was as unsettled about what was going on as we were. We had a factual, very honest discussion of expectations vs. reality as it existed. It was more relaxed than I had anticipated … a friendly, direct, unemotional conversation about how to improve the home situation.

Our discussion couldn’t have gone better. Almost immediately function and comfort returned to our home!

Now this pleasant outcome could be attributed to a number of things – personality traits, mindsets, shared values – that helped us at the breakfast table that day. Either way you look at it, it’s hard to have a bad morning when looking over a stack of pancakes!