Posts Tagged → PA
18th Century Artisan’s Show a huge success
You know an event has to be good when someone who is not a part of the event’s culture enjoys it, and such was the revelation by the Princess of Patience as she walked out of the 18th Century Artisan’s Show after three hours. Our Brooklyn-bred, pavement loving, city-slicker Princess had mingled with the nicest, friendliest, kindest, salt of the earth people at the Carlisle Expo Center and come out smiling. As she always does.
This show, the 18th Century Artisan’s Show, is all about black powder firearms and related accoutrements, longrifles, 1700s period clothing and related materials, horn and tin mugs, bone handled forks, wood and leather items. All made by hand here in America, many in Pennsylvania.
For a guy like me, not of pavement or city, a show like this is an assumed success before I even set foot in it. This year was the best ever, however, and when I left on Friday afternoon it was absolutely thronged and jam packed with people. If I had another couple hours to spend there, it would have been time well used. After all, there was a new possibles bag to find, and none of what I had yet seen fit my need. The Leatherman is a good stand-by source for rugged and large possibles bags, and as I already use two made by Gary Fatheree, I was in the hunt for a bag with more flair, more color, more personality.
Problem is, all of the pizazz bags are the size of my shoe. Like, it doesn’t seem possible that anything more than a short starter and a ball bag will fit in there. And if there is one thing I want a possibles bag to do, it is to hold all of the possibles I might need, including the kitchen sink. (“possibles” include all of the stuff needed to load and clean a muzzleloading firearm)
This had to be the best 18th Century Artisan’s Show ever, because it was the most filled with cool stuff, the best laid out, and the best attended by artisans and the public alike of all prior shows. The old venue was the Country Cupboard in Lewisburg, PA, and it was kind of tight quarters, with too many passageways and steps, and a requirement that you walk outside to the next building to see more vendors. At the Carlisle site, it is just one gigantic room, with all of the vendors spread out and visible. Best possible situation.
The only “thing” missing at the show was “Yesteryer,” that big huddle of fabrics and mannequins, bonnets and shoes, leggings and pants, waistcoats and longcoats, all of weird hand-ground linens and free range flax and slow roasted tweed, and all of the related 18th century clothing accoutrements that seamstress extraordinaire Barb Shaputis could assemble on the fly as she outfitted entire regiments of reenactors across America. Barb made my own 18th century longcoat for me, absolutely perfectly, with the “RR” buttons for the Rogers Rangers outfit well represented in the Netflix show “Turn.” I wear it every flintlock season, but thankfully, without a tri-corner hat. I have not (yet) gone that far. Barb is no longer with us to sell or make me a tri-cornered hat, and so that part of my life will be left unfinished as a memorial to sweet Barb.
Below are some photos I took of this year’s show. Like a kid in a candy store, I could easily have spent both days there. But then again, the Great American Outdoors Show is in full swing now, here in Harrisburg. So many fun choices! Thank you to all of the fantastic vendors at the 18th Century Artisan’s Show, many of whom are by now my acquaintances or friends. They not only make beautiful things, they also gather up all of their stuff and make long drives to Lewisburg, now Carlisle, and other venues, to give us historically-afflicted people the opportunity to switch gears and live life a little slower and lot cooler than usual.
Gunmaker and president of the Kentucky Longrifle Association, Mark Wheland is a central Pennsylvania artist who has made a beautiful rifle for me. I grew up trapping muskrats on his dad’s farm.
Brad and Shane Emig of York County are known worldwide for their exacting historical work, including making long rifles from complete scratch.
From Rochester New York hails Irv Tschanz, his lovely wife, and Jim Dell, purveying all kinds of beautiful hand-made crafts from leather, wood, horn, and metal
Jymm Hoffman sold me my anvil from a special run he had poured at a Pittsburgh foundry about ten years ago.
Here artisan Jim Dell measures the first wallet he made for me in preparation for making a replacement. Jim has also made our family double thick belts, a belt axe and carrier, and other “Olde Tyme” things we enjoy so very much.
The Leatherman is a big fixture in the black powder world, with founder Gary Fatheree (left) offering all kinds of high quality possibles bags, gun sleeves, cow’s knees, and other items from rare leathers. Clayton Miller(right) is the new proprietor with big shoes to fill
R.E. Davis makes highest quality locks and triggers, like Jim Chambers, whose booth I did not see.
A beautiful rifle for sale with a price tag demonstrating that many firearms are a bridge between art and utility, uniquely blending form and function.
Blacksmith Simeon England makes beautiful tomahawks and knives.
Long Islander Mitch Yates has that whole corner of America to himself. Honestly, is there a gunbuilder artisan of Mitch’s caliber anywhere in New England or eastern New York? I don’t think so. Nice guy, too.
You can pick out a fancy gunstock and a nice straight ramrod from a myriad of choices. The problem is saying “I have enough already”
Historically accurate black powder tools and serving utensils for sale, probably made by Shane Emig of York County
Advice from a deer
As sure as the sun rises, there is sure to be complaining among hunters about the state, condition, blood pressure, and dental hygiene of Pennsylvania’s deer herd. In fact, you can’t escape the topic if you spend any time, like even a minute or two, in the company of devoted hunters. No matter who I am standing around, next to, or in line with, the complaints begin to flow about the Pennsylvania Game Commission and its deer management.
Despite being highly skeptical about government in general, and therefore despite keeping an open mind to complaints about government failings, I find myself repeatedly unpersuaded by these deer management complaints. While not quite ranking up there with UFO sightings or insistence that PGC has helicopter-imported mountain lions and coyotes to eat the deer, the fretting and nail biting and angry denunciations always seem to lack key aspects of any serious argument.
For example, for twenty years I have heard that Sproul State Forest harbors no deer. Then last year I easily killed a deer standing right at the edge of Sproul State Forest, and saw many others. This November, I hunted elk in Sproul State Forest and State Game Lands 100 in northern Centre County, and found myself endlessly surrounded by deer, from dawn until way past bed time while driving. Conventional views that these deer do not exist are easily reinforced around bar stools, but I have found them easily and quickly disproven in personal contact with the deer habitat itself.
One of the real challenges to Pennsylvania deer hunters is the change in deer herd size and behavior since 2001, as well as the maturing of our forests since the 1970s, when a lot of today’s older hunters were really getting into the lifestyle. A hunting culture based on sitting in one place and watching unsustainably sized deer herds migrate by resulted, and now that most rural deer herds have been lowered, just sitting and waiting is not enough. Especially when the mature forests we now experience are devoid of any acorns for the second year in a row.
In 2021 a late frost killed the oak flowers in northern PA, resulting in no acorns up north and spotty acorn crops in the south. In 2022, rampant gypsy moth infestations across the entire state denuded entire oak forests of every leaf and flower, which has again resulted in zero acorn production across a great deal of Pennsylvania’s forests. If you are inclined to blame people for things that are mostly out of people’s control, then I suppose we can point out that PA DCNR seemed to hold back on gypsy moth spraying in 2021 and 2022. Had DCNR sprayed more, then the state-wide acorn crop failure we now behold probably would not have been as bad.
The fact is that a great many of us started sitting or walking in beautiful mature forests this past Saturday or Sunday as PA’s deer rifle season opened up, and found ourselves marveling at the incredible silence greeting us. Hardly any bird activity. Maybe one squirrel seen all day, and certainly no bears and few if any deer. This is the result of there being nothing for anyone to eat in the woods.
So, unless your woods escaped gypsy moth damage and has acorns, get the heck out of the woods and go find brushy and grassy areas where deer can browse. Utility rights-of-way and clearcuts are the best places to find deer this season, and in fact the only person I know of who killed a deer anywhere near me yesterday (Sunday) was an older guy in a deer drive through a beautifully overgrown overhead powerline right of way. His hunting party also reported seeing eight does with the now deceased buck, none of which they shot.
Yesterday, while I was sitting miserably sick in my covered stand and waiting out the miserable cold rain and wind, a deer in a top hat and silk gloves happened by and gave me the following advice:
In general, access your hunting area well before sunrise and start every deer hunt with a quiet Sit from 6:30-9am, overlooking some promising travel corridor, funnel, or feeding area. Then slowly and quietly Still Hunt into the wind or quartering into the wind until lunch time. Then Sit down and eat lunch quietly, while overlooking some promising location through which wildlife regularly pass or eat. At 1pm pack up the lunch stuff and Still Hunt again slowly until 3:30pm, and then find a good spot with good views and shooting lanes and Sit quietly until 15 minutes before shooting light ends. Then slowly and quietly walk out, and maybe kill something on your way back to your vehicle or camp, only unloading your firearm when shooting hours have officially ended.
I myself am about to suit up for a long and slow stalk through some brushy utility rights of way. Yes, they are now wet, and always steep, and the going is tough. But that is where the deer are, because that is where they can eat and survive, and I am hunting deer so that I might actually kill one.
The deer and I must meet in person in order for this transaction to happen.
As much as a covered hunting blind may be a necessity when the hunter is sick or the rain is pouring down, the fact is this not really hunting. Slowly and quietly walking into the wind through good deer habitat with your firearm at the ready is real hunting. Do it.
We interrupt our regular political bickering to bring you Deer Season
People who don’t hunt may think they have some serious political differences. Well, they have not yet gotten involved in the Pennsylvania deer hunting wars, where fifteen years ago PA Game Commission board members and senior staff believed they had to wear bullet proof vests to public policy gatherings, such was the intensity of hate and vitriol…over deer.
With deer archery season ending Sunday night (our first Sunday hunt of the year) and deer rifle season just two weeks away, what better time to interrupt all the political acrimony from Tuesday’s mid-term election and introduce people to some real genuine debate. Yep. About deer.
Last week PA Governor Tom Wolf signed into law a change to the annual antlerless deer (doe) tag purchase system that only took twenty five years of bipartisan effort to achieve. All too well are Pennsylvania hunters familiar with the gigantic pink envelopes that screamed out to anti hunting Postal Service employees “Throw me away, throw me away!”
The gigantic pink envelope doe tag application system had been in place since the 1970s, and the system that was implemented in the 1970s was only a slight modification of the doe tag allocation process from the 1940s. That is how freaking backwards one major aspect of PA’s deer management program has been…hunters living in 2022, but operating in 1945.
And yeah, aspects of 1945 were great improvements over the sinking cultural ship nonsense we have going on today, but the gigantic pink envelope doe tag application lottery was not one of them. In the era of the Internet and email and texting, the now discarded doe tag system relied upon an unreliable Postal Service, two licked stamps, a check, multiple folds in the gigantic pink envelope, exactly the correctly checked boxes, and hoping your application made it in on time, or No Doe Tag For You!
And for most deer hunters, having a doe tag is a really big deal, because the harvest rate on does is about forty or fifty percent, while the success rates on wily bucks is about fifteen percent. Having a doe tag meant a much higher likelihood of getting fresh and healthy venison for your family and personal enjoyment. And not having the doe tag, because of some ridiculous minor bureaucratic rule or unchecked box in the application, was a big deflation for many a hunter.
Now we are going to have an online doe tag lottery and application process. No more photos of gigantic pink envelopes stacked up in Postal Service back rooms, waiting to be sent in weeks after their best-by date.
What is the doe hunt all about? It is about managing Pennsylvania’s over-abundant deer herd so that the non-hunting public doesn’t start to think that we hunters can’t get the job done right. It is a big and important job. In Europe, if wild game populations get too big and begin causing agricultural damage and car crashes, the local hunters actually get fined for it. Here in PA we have an enormous impact from too many deer, and a gigantic whiny peanut gallery that wants even more deer. Much more than the landscape can feed or than the public can afford to pay for.
Deer population management is done by the PA Game Commission. PGC uses hunting harvest numbers, statistical models, and input from individual hunters, hunting groups, landowners, farmers, “birds ‘n bunnies” environmental groups, and timber companies. One of the loudest voices is from hunters who want to see more deer, but who don’t care about the cost that those deer impose on other people. It is a tough job, requiring PGC to balance a lot of competing interests.
I am always surprised to hear hunters complain about PGC’s deer management, because invariably these critics really don’t know the actual mechanics of how it is done. Nor do they bother to take the time to learn the mechanics. Nor do they take the time to go on a local State Game Lands tour, to understand about deer impacts on the landscape. Instead, these hunters behave like communists and demand that everyone else provide year-’round room and board to the overabundant deer that they want to experience for just a few days a year. As much as I love our hunters, I am getting more and more cranky with them in my old age. Guys, please get educated about this subject, or just leave the adults alone.
This summer my wife and I drove out to Colorado and back. We passed endless deer roadkills on I-76 on the way out, but from the Ohio border westward, we saw just two dead deer on the side of the road. One in Iowa and one in Nebraska. On our way back to Pennsylvania, we saw no roadkills anywhere until we crossed into PA on I-80. Literally within the first mile of entering PA we began counting the freshly dead deer, and we continued that counting all the way home to central PA.
This Fall I hunted elk in northern Centre County and western Clinton County, and we saw TONS of deer every single day. This northcentral PA area is supposed to have no deer since 2001, if the official lazy stumpsitter hunter assessment is to be believed. The fact is, both PGC and DCNR have done fabulous jobs of clearcutting large blocks of forest, which has resulted in perfect habitat for deer and a bunch of other important animals. A hunter simply must get up off his butt and go do the Elmer Fudd hunting thing, nose into the wind. If this is too difficult for you, then deer hunting is not your thing.
I have hit several deer on the road in the past two years, each one doing expensive damage to my vehicles. My friend Mark just totaled his expensive sports car on the PA Turnpike 110 miles west of Harrisburg, because a deer walked out in front of his 70 MPH missile. He texted that the tow truck driver said that his was the sixth deer collision the tow truck operator had to address in 30 hours. That is just one tow truck in one small area, and so we know (and see with our eyes) that the deer collision problem is enormous, and expensive, and unnecessary,
Hopefully with the elimination of the gigantic pink envelope the PGC will also change the way it issues doe tags and the number it issues. I hunt all over PA and my opinion is, you can’t really issue too many doe tags. Especially in the southeast part of the state. WMUs 5B, 5C, and 5D should have unlimited doe tags. Apply for one and get one up until the end of the season.
There are so many deer everywhere, and all of them are causing enormous damage and highway carnage. This is presently a hunting problem to be solved by hunters, and unless PA hunters want to go the way of Washington State, where hunting as a wildlife management tool is being taken off the table, they had better step up and do the job and fix the problem.
Sayonara, Gigantic Pink Envelope! We won’t miss ya! And now that that problem is fixed, let the deer wars bickering begin about doe tags all over again. One camp living in 1945, the rest living in 2025. Can’t wait…..
Why I am no longer a Democrat reason # 1,329: John Fetterman’s mean bully tattoo
I mention that I am no longer a registered member of the Democrat Party so that readers understand that I am not a partisan person. To me most partisan people appear to reflexively and carelessly cheer on “their team,” regardless of how little that team may reflect their values or what the team once stood for. The same can be said for the Republican Party, which has way too many corrupt and MIA mild mannered elected officials to stand for much. Recall that the Republican Party was formed as the party of abolition of slavery, and that the Democrat Party was the party of “These are our damned African slaves, they are not yours to set free.”
The Democrat Party has not changed one bit since 1859, and the Republican Party is nowhere near what it stood for in 1859, either.
But right now, especially in a state like Pennsylvania where we have only closed primaries, voters are forced to make a choice. Often that choice is about the lesser lame of two lame-os. But like I say, right now, Americans who believe in a fair America that rewards hard work and risk taking, they have only one political party choice: The Republican Party.
Not that the GOP is my “team” or yours, but it for sure is NOT the team of child rapists, open border fentanyl and drug cartel smuggling, annually resulting in thousands of drug overdoses across America. This pathetic list of unbelievable failure belongs proudly to the Democrat Party. Their own candidates actually run on these issues! As if destroying America and Americans is the right and good thing to do. And one of those candidates is running here in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman.
I left this Democrat Party for the reasons listed above, and for many more. I have to make a stand somewhere on the political playing field, and one of my reasons for leaving that failed political party is well represented in a tattoo that US Senate candidate John Fetterman has on his forearm. His tattoo says “I WILL MAKE YOU HURT.”
Now, who the heck cares if this is a line from a song by Johnny Cash that is often replayed by Nine Inch Nails? That is irrelevant. It is meaningless. It would be a childish excuse. Fetterman could have just as easily chosen a Johnny Cash or Nine Inch Nails line about God, or love, or relationships, and he didn’t. Fetterman carefully chose this specific line for a prominent tattoo on his body for a specific reason.
The adult question is Why the heck would someone go through the trouble to have this mean bully statement permanently tattooed onto his forearm, where everyone can see it?
What angry message or direct personal threat against people around him and the public he encounters is John Fetterman trying to send with this tattoo? It is like someone having a Nazi Swastika tattooed on their body, but then later on trying to lamely explain it away as “something artistic I just happened to like at the time.” No way, John Fetterman. Oh no you don’t, you fake art appreciator.
Fetterman had this mean, nasty, aggressive, threatening tattoo permanently inked into his flesh because it represents his mindset, and he wants everyone to know he is a mean, threatening bully. He wants to intimidate people with it.
Fetterman’s approach to politics and individual people is, I will hurt you into submission to my ideas and my demands. Why does this guy call himself a “Democrat” when he so obviously despises the democratic process of open debate, clean and transparent elections, and checks and balances?
Oh, the irony that John Fetterman is actually a rich playboy whose parents 100% financially supported him up until he got his first real adult job as a mayor of a tiny destroyed town in western PA in his forties. Fetterman further destroyed that small town in just a few years, watching crime there skyrocket under his watch as mayor, who rarely showed up at city council meetings. His destructive personality is no surprise to anyone who follows Fetterman’s soft-on-criminals history on the Pennsylvania Parole Board, or his stated public policies on crime: Fetterman says he would quickly release up to 30% of hardened, violent criminals from jail, if he could.
Yes, John Fetterman is a poser, a fake blue collar wannabe, a liar, and he will make us all hurt if he holds another elected office. He will unleash tens of thousands of violent criminals into American communities, as part of the “defund the police” thing. Don’t ask me why John Fetterman is a violent, mean, bully anarchist at heart. It is probably a result of his having had his mommy and daddy financially support him and his wife until he was in his forties, and he grew up into an inexperienced man-child believing in violent fantasies about “remaking America” by “any means necessary.”
No one ever told John Fetterman “No” as a kid or as an adult, and as a result he is a huge threat to our families and our children. But you voters can tell him “No” on Election Day just a month away. I will tell him No, because I am not mindlessly attached to just one political party, regardless of how bad its candidates are.
Interesting how Google has suddenly blurred out the photo of Fetterman’s “I WILL MAKE YOU HURT” tattoo. Big Tech is no friend of the truth or accuracy
Turns out that the voting public neither understands nor likes Fetterman’s I WILL MAKE YOU HURT tattoo, so he recently had it covered up. But the mean spirited bully is still inside that mean bully face of his.
John Fetterman is one of these people, who believe in letting violent criminals run amok in your neighborhood, victimize you and your family members, no police. Fetterman the lazy mayor proudly led a disastrous spike in crime in his own western PA town. Are you really going to vote for someone like this, this bad?
Ten take-aways from my Election Day experience
With the Kerwin men, quality people
Primary elections are more important than the general election every November, because voters choose who is going to be representing them at the November election. And in the case of Republican Party voters, if you don’t vote for constitutional America-First candidates, you are guaranteed to have a Republican In Name Only (RINO) liberal running against the Democrat Party liberal in the November election. There’s not a whole lot of philosophical difference between the Republican liberal and the Democrat liberal, and after that November election between a RINO and a Democrat it’s just a question of how rapidly America is destroyed under your feet, slowly or quickly.
On Tuesday I volunteered at four different election polls, handing out brochures for Kathy Barnette, and I spoke with a lot of voters. Here are some take-aways from my experience during and after Tuesday’s Primary Election here in PA:
- Unsurprisingly, voters make both simple and complicated choices in voting for candidates. Simple choices can be lazy or principled, and complicated choices can be bizarre or carefully thought out. Candidate selection is as complex as any other choice in life, and I think that is a good thing.
- Party establishment endorsement is a negative among Republican/ conservative voters, who appear to increasingly view the GOP as a force for bad and not for good. For example, Lou Barletta’s campaign unleashed a tidal wave of Republican establishment career politician endorsements in the days before Tuesday’s election, and if anything these endorsements seemed to hurt Barletta at the polls, not help him; Doug Mastriano crushed Barletta.
- On the other hand, Democrat voters seem highly attuned to and in synch with their establishment, as witnessed by political newcomer Justin Fleming’s trouncing of long time Democrat Party activist Eric Epstein in the newly created 105th Legislative District (PA House). For at least ten years, and probably closer to twenty years, independent-minded liberal Epstein has run for everything from dog catcher to school board to state senate, almost always unsuccessfully but always with close-call results. Not this time. Apparently ten unions and the House Democrat Campaign Committee aggressively weighed in to stop Epstein from finally capitalizing on his well-known household name in southcentral PA. Fleming the unprincipled “electoral pragmatist” won with 61% of the vote.
- Money is not all that it used to be, but it can still matter in elections, no surprise. Case in point is a very small amount of money (like $157,000 total), old fashioned shoe leather, and reasonable social media networking got conservative grass roots favorite Kathy Barnette up to 25% of the vote in an eight-candidate race. This is a huge statement about the lack of importance of money. However, when the wildly false negative attacks against Barnette started pouring in during the last week from McCormick and Oz and their supporters, like Sean Hannity, Barnette lacked sufficient funds to get out her last-minute rebuttals on TV and radio that could have gotten her over the finish line to win. Enough confusion and obfuscation was created by the attacks to blunt Barnette’s position at the top, and allowed both Oz and McCormick to grow their own voter returns at her expense. Had Barnette possessed a million dollars to do last-minute TV and radio ads, she probably would have won the election.
- Negative advertising does work, and it also greatly suppresses voter turnout. At all of the five polls I was at yesterday, voting was down between 10% and 20%, and I believe many voters were just fed up and confused by all of the negative advertising. SO they stayed home and said “I will just vote in November for whoever wins this primary race.”
- Conservative voters are much more oriented toward ideology and principles than political party.
- Almost every primary election has one winner and some losers, and almost always the losers say they will take their ball and go home if they don’t win, and they won’t back the winner of their race. For weeks before and even after the election was over, I heard unceasing complaints from Republicans about how Mastriano is “too conservative” for Pennsylvania, and that his win will automatically hand the governorship to Komrade Josh Shapiro. I also heard unceasing complaints from Republican voters that Lou Barletta was too milquetoast to appeal to anyone in November, except for blue haired suburban GOPe Republicans. Folks, get used to these competitive races. They are good for us. This competition is just the nature of real and healthy primary races, something that Republicans really need, and something that the GOPe HATES. The Republican Country Club Party hates hates hates sharing decision making with the unwashed dirty masses, who keep gumming up GOPe dreams of easy ill gotten wealth and posh fundraisers. Sorry not sorry, GOPe, get used to ceding more and more decision making to the actual people you claim to represent. It is a good thing, and it is why Mastriano won by an enormous margin.
- For the most part, the GOPe got its ass kicked in PA and elsewhere in America. RINOs like Jake Corman (the sitting President Pro Tem of the PA Senate!!), Jeff Bartos, et al either dropped out or finished below 5%, while underdog candidates like Kathy Barnette and Dr. Oz scored big time vote returns against the establishment’s wishes. We are witnessing a power shift away from GOP party bosses, which is a good thing, because party bosses are corrupt and self-serving people.
- Charlie Gerow is still a good guy, and still not a catchy candidate. Once again, voters enjoy Charlie as an articulate proponent of conservative values, but not as a representative in government for their needs. Charlie is a salon intellectual in the mold of William F. Buckley, one of the 20th century’s great conservative crusaders. Not winning elections doesn’t mean Gerow isn’t relevant, it just means his strength is in policy debates and in the conservative salon of ideas. Nothing wrong with that.
- Finally, yard signs and road signs do not mean anything close to what they used to represent even ten years ago. At one time yard signs and roadside signs were a big part of electoral public outreach, but in this digital age, they are becoming less important. I would not say they are unimportant, because in some ways they can be used to get a sense of voter engagement. Like, lots of signs for Candidate X in a county or in a region probably means that Candidate X is well known there. But it does not mean that Candidate X is necessarily going to convert that name recognition into an Election Day win. Information is now moving so fast and so far across the political landscape, that just one gaffe or one slip-up by an otherwise reasonable candidate can mean the end of their lead or presumptive win. No amount of yard signs can counter a fifteen second video of a candidate doing or saying something ridiculous.
Thank you to all the voters who spent time talking with me on Tuesday. I promote candidates at polls on Election Day every year because these are people I believe in, and I believe in sharing the why and how I have arrived at my decision on whom to vote for. One thing that has not changed among voters at polls since I was a teenager is this: Liberal voters at polls are always surly, grumpy, dismissive, or disrespectful. Do not ask me why this is, but it does hint at how some people think.
Kathy Barnette in tie for #1 in US Senate race
As it is said, even a blind pig can find an acorn, and while I am not one to brag a whole lot, I did predict from the beginning of this primary race for US Senate that candidate Kathy Barnette stood a very high likelihood of finishing at the very top. Whether I am a lucky blind pig, or just an old political hand who was due for a decent crystal ball moment of his own, it is a fact that Kathy Barnette is presently in a statistical dead heat for number one with the two predicted winners, Dave McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz.
As more accurate information has gotten out about Dave McCormick, his status has fallen and his supporters have been dwindling. McCormick is nothing like what he claims to be. He is a poser, a fraud even, because as much as he sells himself as some sort of down-home country boy from rural PA, the fact is he made his hundreds of millions of dollars in partnership with China. At your expense, at my expense, at America’s expense. And his policy positions over the years have been pretty liberal. Why would anyone be surprised that a rich high society guy like Dave McCormick, who is FROM CONNECTICUT and not Pennsylvania, is liberal?
The same goes for Oz, too. He is a rich Hollywood personality, whose positions on the Second Amendment have ranged from F- Minus to C-Minus, but who now suddenly disavows everything anti-gun he has said over the years. Nope, we ain’t buyin’ it, Oz. You, too, will just say anything to fool Pennsylvanians into voting for you.
So is it any surprise that Kathy Barnette’s own standing among Pennsylvania voters has been rising? I mean, where else would a smart voter put their one vote? Barnette is honest, earnest, truthful, and representative of working people and putting America First. As of last week, Barnette was in a statistical tie with Oz and McCormick for first place. See the poll results below.
Vote for and support America First candidate Kathy Barnette!
“Only Trump can destroy Trump”
For five long, brutal years President Donald Trump withstood a non-stop cyclone of misinformation, disinformation, lies, hoaxes, endless false accusations, two fake impeachments, and outright mutiny and insubordination by federal employees and military officers.
President Trump handily won re-election in November 2020 with the devotion of his ardent supporters, and the big lie that basement dwelling corrupt, doofus failed career politician Joe Biden was president only became an official narrative because that cyclone of official insubordination and mutiny around President Trump reached its climax from November 4th 2020 through January 2021 with the help of Big Media lies and Big Tech censorship. All statutory and constitutional safeguards set up to protect sacred American voting from being tampered with failed, because the people entrusted with those safeguards deliberately failed.
And all throughout that five year period tens of millions of American voters kept faith that President Donald Trump would prevail, because they knew that only he, of all of America’s elected officials, believed in a free America with liberty and justice for all. Despite the Democrat Media – Big Tech industrial complex’s best efforts to divide Trump’s followers from Trump, the Trump Train continued full speed ahead. As it does even now, when Trump draws huge crowds to his rallies.
Radio personality extraordinaire Rush Limbaugh used to explain how the Big Media people just do not understand the connection that Trump has with his followers. Rush said many times “Only Trump can destroy Trump’s relationship with his followers. Because that bond of trust between them is so strong.” In other words, it would take a betrayal of that trust by Trump to sever that bond. No big lies, no hoaxes, no fake impeachments would ever dent Trump’s popularity.
And I think we are beginning to see that bond fraying, only because President Trump is fraying it through his own deliberate actions that directly alienate his strongest supporters. No one ever accused President Trump of being a politician, and in fact it is his greatest pride that he is not a politician. He didn’t think that way and he didn’t act that way. But by trying to act like one now, Trump is reaping the kinds of results that politicians invariably get when they literally play politics.
In the past week we have seen President Trump officially endorse for US Senate a known Hollywood liberal RINO candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, instead of a true conservative candidate who actually lives in Pennsylvania. This endorsement was so bizarre that many people are booing its mention at voter gatherings here in Pennsylvania. It is not a popular decision among Trump’s followers.
And now President Trump is actually, incredibly, unbelievably encouraging PA Swamp RINO problem child Jake Corman to stay in the PA governor’s race. Even though Corman has been the biggest obstacle to conducting an official audit of the stolen 2020 election here. Which makes people wonder if Trump is going to endorse Corman, who was just about to file paperwork to withdraw his name from the race, but who is now following Trump’s advice to stay in.
So many old adages address this situation. One goes “If you have nothing positive to say, then say nothing at all.” Another goes “It is better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” And of course Rush Limbaugh’s warning to President Trump (paraphrased here): “Only Trump can destroy Trump.”
If President Trump continues destructively mucking around in Pennsylvania politics, of which he knows little, and in which many of us have devoted decades of our lives at great personal cost while battling the corrupt PAGOP and the Harrisburg Swamp, then Trump is going to break his bond with us.
All of my friends are saying this, and I am saying it, too, as painful as it is. President Trump, we will follow you to Hell and back, if we believe that you have our backs. But when you behave this destructive way and hurt us, then we no longer trust you.