The LuLac Edition #5, 674, June 2nd, 2026

 

PASHINSKI SENIOR FAIR.....

 

Dropped by the Wilkes-Barre Area High School Saturday  morning for the annual Senior Fair started by Representative Eddie Day Pashinski. The event is designed to give area seniors information about making their knowledge base increase by tools provided by vendors.

It was great to catch up with Aging Secretary Jason Kavulich as well as some of the folks attending the event. 

Was so glad to see staffers from the Area Agency on Aging there,  Adult Center Manager Toni Mathis and Nutrition specialist Cathy Lockman. 

Wonderful to see 121st district Democratic nominee Jessica McClay in the house (and with providence and luck, THE HOUSE) 

as well as PashinskI Constituent Service Advisor  Kymberly Rosencrans who graciously greeted the folks. 

 

Wayne Mitchell and I had a meet up and Senator Flynn staffer Vince Speduto and Teri Andrews. 

 

Here I am with Eddie Day  Pashinski brandishing my swag bag as well  as  talking with Secretary Kavukich with Harrisburg’s Ken Smith.Smith is Senior District Operations & Outreach Specialist for the State House. I was eying Ken's  fantastic rep tie.

As Luzerne/Wyoming County Chair of the  Advisory Board, I say thanks  to all who made this worthy effort a great success which has been the norm for Eddie's tenure in the Capitol.

 

HOW TRUMP’S RACIST HATRED OF OBAMA SCREWED HIMSELF

When Donald Trump took office in 2017, his mantra seemed to be fire, shoot ready. There were a lot of things he didn’t think through. One of them was the rejection of the Obama-Kerry accords which made Iran accountable to inspections of its nuclear capabilities. Trump and the GOP lapdogs came after Obama for essentially giving millions of their own sanction money back to them. Trump’s knee jerk reaction caused a rift with Iran as well as freeing them from the agreement.  Not satisfied with ending the agreement, Trump started a war with Iran at the same time he was negotiating a “deal” with them.

Now it appears that Trump’s only way out is to give MORE money to Iran to stop the war he himself created passively in 2017 and accelerated in 2026.  The sad part is that in an intervening set of years, by Truimp’s actions, the Iran nuke capability has grown. Saturday Ivo Daalder,  former NATO Ambassador  Obama said this to NPR’s Scott Simon.  

“We had an agreement in 2015, negotiated by President Barack Obama in concert with our European allies, the Russians and the Chinese, that prevented Iran from acquiring the capabilities necessary to build a bomb and, if it were to break out of that agreement, to take more than a year to do so. And look where we are today. If this agreement had still been in force and President Trump had not walked away from it in 2018, today Iran would have had no more than 300 kilograms of enriched uranium enriched to 3.67%, which is sufficient for fueling its research reactor. That would be the case today.

What is in fact the case is that Iran now has 8,500 kilograms of enriched uranium, some of it - 500 kilograms - enriched to 60%, other material enriched to 5% and 20%, sufficient to build not one but perhaps 10 and perhaps even more nuclear bombs. And that's the situation we find ourselves. This has been created by the president deciding to walk away from an agreement that was working and replacing it with, frankly, nothing other than now the use of force, which still hasn't fundamentally altered the nature of the Iranian threat - nuclear threat - as it is today.

On the attack last year in June and the start of war in February, the Ambassador also said, “I think the fact that the United States has now launched two wars - one in June and again now this time - against Iran increases the incentive for the Iranians to maintain the capacity, if not the actual building a nuclear weapon. And I think that's the legacy of this war. Rather than eliminating the nuclear threat, it is more likely to aggravate it over the long run”.

So, there ya go. By Trump’s blind ignorance and hatred, he has not only screwed himself but our standing in the international world community. (NPR, LuLac) 

 

MEDIA MATTERS 

 

Andy Mehalshick announced yesterday that he was retiring from WBRE/WYOU. Andy has been a permanent fixture at the station and we will be sorry to see him go. Here's one of his biggest reports.