fake websites and the downingtown mayoral race

It is no secret that runs for something everything candidates on both side of aisle are individuals I find ridiculous. Usually in Chester County they are Republicans but this year it’s Erica Deuso out of Downingtown. A Democrat.

In 2021 she ran unsuccessfully for Downingtown Borough council (https://www.dailylocal.com/2015/05/19/jeff-thomas-wins-the-democrat-nomination-for-downingtown-council/ )

In 2023 she thought she was going to run for state rep against Danielle Friel Otten. (https://www.dailylocal.com/2023/12/15/downingtown-resident-hopes-to-make-election-history-twice/)

The 2023 article always amused me because it said (and I quote):

📌A Downingtown resident making her first foray in elective politics in Chester County is hoping to accomplish two challenging goals in the 2024 race for the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives.📌

But it wasn’t her first foray since she ran for Downingtown Borough Council unless a magic mulligan decreed it not to be trying to run for elected office?

So now she is running for mayor? Well good for her except is it just making her a runs for something / anything / everything candidate?

Her opponent is a guy named Rich Bryant whom I heard interviewed once and seems to have a neighbor who has beef with him for having security cameras?

I still have no horse in this race. Downingtown has some unpleasant politics rather regularly, and I haven’t paid attention to the mayoral race since Josh Maxwell was Mayor. I started paying attention then because I respected a younger guy stepping up for his community, which he now does on a county level.

But this race I heard was getting interesting and well I figured it out. SOMEONE put up a FAKE website MISrepresenting Rich Bryant.

https://downingtownmayor.com

This is the real website:

https://richbryantformayor.com/

So why is Erica Deuso sharing screenshots of a fake website that was taken down because it was fake??

Erica, Erica, Erica. Is this like desperate is as desperate does? Shame on you. You want people to think you are the better candidate? Then be better.

A postscript to all of this are first a handful of screenshots from the defunct website:

Next is a little more unpleasant in my humble opinion. Screenshots of his Twitter feed. This is where this candidate probably now loses me. Why put this on Twitter or X? And why didn’t he clean this up before he announced his candidacy for Downingtown Mayor?

I am glad I do not have to decide between these two candidates. And it’s sad because when I first heard Rich Bryant interviewed a few months ago he seemed like just a regular guy and very pleasant. He seemed real. And I’m not saying he can’t have his First Amendment rights to post however he chooses, but the message in the postings is not pleasant.

Well, we shall see what happens with this race. It ought to be interesting and I think it’s going to get dirtier and uglier before November.

thoughts on the passing of the notorious rbg and a poem by maya angelou.

One of my dear friends posted this this morning. It’s a poem by Maya Angelou. It resonated with me because of the passing of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Justice Ginsburg was a Titan in petite form. Always inspirational and you never doubted her moral compass or breadth and depth of knowledge. She will live on through all of her accomplishments and the memories of friends, family, colleagues, and strangers.

When I heard the news that she had died I wasn’t surprised but I found myself so sad. I was sad as a woman and as an American.

2020 is just a year where the negative hits keep on coming. It started with COVID19, then racism and ugliness. All overshadowed by the US Presidential campaign and the abject horror and ugliness of American politics today.

That ugliness of politics has already polluted Justice Ginsburg’s death thanks to that old ass Mitch McConnell whom I have never liked, even when I was a Republican. His comments so shortly after everyone learned Justice Ginsburg had died are deplorable and I also think they were utterly disrespectful to her memory, her friends, her family. His comments make me embarrassed I was ever a Republican in the first place, but I have to step back and remind myself that a lot of those who call themselves Republican today don’t represent the values originally set by this political party in the least.

I also think there should be some law in this country that would put a freeze on a rush to judicial appointment on Federal benches and the US Supreme Court after a certain point in a presidential campaign cycle. The reason is we need balance in justice. Justice is not supposed to be political, yet it is a political weapon.

This is why yet again we see how crucial it is that we change the tone and conversation in this great nation by changing the face of who governs us in the White House. It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat, you should not find this circus acceptable. And you can’t just be a camp follower and vote blindly.

Get out and vote in November to preserve your rights. Do it for the memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I also highly suggest that you contact every federally elected official you know or have heard of and tell them it is grossly inappropriate to rush in another US Supreme Court Justice just so something else can be polluted by the Trump “brand”. And remember nothing Trump does is for us as Americans, he is a malignant narcissist. And Mitch McConnell is an old fool. And since they haven’t repealed the First Amendment yet I am allowed this opinion.

When Great Trees Fall
by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.