Back hair, chest hair, belly hair…baby, I got it all and more
Confession time: I have a hell of a collection of back hair, belly hair, chest hair, even butt hair and ear hair. Fo’ real.
I know, I know, a man of my age does not age well, as “things” begin to grow from every orifice and heretofore unknown location, but so why then do we have to write about it…sorry, my apologies. There is an honest purpose here.
You, the lone, long-suffering sole reader of this blog, are probably already thinking to yourself “Good Lord, this guy has finally gone off the deep end with this TMI shock jock shtick. ” And were we actually talking about real body hair from my own voluptuous, idyllic form, you would be correct. However, as racy or as disgusting as this may sound, the fact is that I do have a pretty cool record-setting collection of all the aforementioned clumps of hair, but they are not from my own body.
Again and now even more so, whoever is left reading here at this point is gagging, and wondering what happened to the erudite intellectual who used to occupy this lonely outpost of fascination. Well, the bad news is I yet remain under the mal-influence of one Bill Heavey, the also-lonely humor writer of the once-wonderful magazine known as Field & Stream, now digitally un-dead and unknown to Americans under the age of sixty.
The good news is that I am not talking about human hair here, but rather the hair, or fur, of the many deer I have shot arrows at over the past five decades. This is true. I am not lying.
See, I fancied myself an archer at a young age, and so I got somewhere (probably at the kind of now-gone country auction that elderly collectors dream about and salivate over) a cheap recurve bow and a motley assortment of mis-matched arrows and dull broadheads, and set out to bag a deer.
Yes, I practiced, for years, as only the uninitiated and un-groomed and un-mentored can practice. Which meant that on Tuesdays and Fridays my archery “form” aligned well enough that I could hit the broad side of a barn, which were plenty, large, bright red, and quite broad where I grew up. And on all other days of the week my arrows sailed off into the wild blue yonder, to sit hidden in the fallow weeds and maybe puncture a neighbor’s tractor tire the following spring. Or maybe eventually catch my eye and be re-purposed as an arrow, more defunct stick than game-getter at that late point, but available and at-hand, and so useful nonetheless.
As a young man, I shot at deer from the ground and from neighbor’s hillbilly blinds, AKA rickety wooden death traps in today’s more refined hunting circles. My woodcraft was then and remains now unbeatable, and I am not lying or exaggerating when I tell you that I could stalk within feet of a dumbfounded deer, and let fly. Only to watch my arrow clip hair from the aforementioned areas and parts of the deer’s external anatomy, time and time again.
Bill Heavey would tell you, had he been as cool as me as a kid himself, that the deer died of laughter from the ridiculousness of the experience. But no, my deer did not die of anything. Not from shock, not from surprise, not from overwhelming mockery of the incompetent human mere feet away, and not an arrow in the heart. No, my deer stood stock still, with grass or acorns or corn hanging out of their slack jaw, staring at me in disbelief. Some even provided me with two shots.
I could have died from the shame of it all.
This routine of Bad-Indian-Sucky-Bow went on for decades, even as I graduated to used but working Fred Bear Kodiak recurves and then to custom “stick” bows. My prize and pride is a beautiful reflex-deflex longbow made by none other than Mike Fedora, the dean of modern traditional archery in America. Back in 2000, Jack Keith and I traveled from Harrisburg to the Eastern Traditional Archery Rendezvous, then at Denton Hill in Potter County (home of many more bears than people), where we connected with Jack’s dear friend John Harding, and where I was introduced to Mike Fedora.
At ETAR, Fedora traced my bow-holding hand, did some phrenology-like measurements of my various body parts, and pronounced that the bow of my dreams would be ready within a few months. And no sh*t, Mike Fedora did produce a beautiful bow that was like an extension of my soul. I could then and still can shoot that thing into bullseyes all day long. At archery targets, me and that custom bow are deadly.
At deer, I still drop the ball. No can hit. Must be nerves, which are steely when I am hunting with a rifle. And so my arrows continue to clip bits of hair from all over deer bodies all over Upstate New York and Upstate Pennsylvania.
I am telling you, my collection of these bits and clumps of hair is large and legendary. If nothing else, no human being alive has missed so many deer at so short a distance for so long as I have. A living, walking, malfunctioning Guiness Book of World Records I may be in this regard, around these parts it is nothing to brag about. Rather, I inspire pity from even little kids dressed in camo who have already arrowed several Pope & Young bucks by the age of seven.
In the not too distant past, someone with my pathetic archery hunting skill would have perished from starvation long before amassing even the beginning of such a fine and rare collection.
And yet, I have discovered hope, salvation for my pathetic-ness and hopeless skill-less-ness. As much as I hate to admit it, I, a traditional archery snob who mocked bows with “training wheels” (compound bows) and belittled “bow-guns” (crossbows) as un-sporting arms that no worthy deer would allow itself to be taken by, I have finally fallen to the siren song of the modern crossbow. Or, to be honest, the cross-gun that shoots a short arrow like some kind of James Bond super-weapon.
Despairing of my ineffectiveness at archery hunting, and desiring to finally carve some notches in something to prove my prowess as a traditional hunter before I expire, I went and bought a Ravin R10X crossbow. It came highly recommended by contractor Ken Pick of Renovo, PA, whose son aced a very nice mountain ten point with one two weeks ago at the distance of 87 yards.
I can barely hit a deer with a modern centerfire rifle at 87 yards, so when I saw the photos of the young chap and his buck and his James Bond cross-bow-gun, I decided if I could not beat them, I had to join them. And join them I did, by buying said Ravin R10X at Baker’s Archery in Halifax, PA. Vindication and verification and all related cations came at me real fast as soon as I took that scary-ass contraption afield.
This is no lie and no exaggeration: Ten minutes after I took a little mosey to a spot where I had not hunted before, but where I thought deer had to be (this is the woodcrafty Josh), I had whacked an anterlessless deer. I had only put the scope reticle on the spot where I thought the arrow would hit the deer, and before I even pulled the trigger a loud THWACK resounded in the woods.
The deer ran twenty yards and died of fright, with a gigantic hole coursing through its body where I must have aimed but do not remember doing so, due to my own shock at having actually killed something with a stick and a string.
Life is full of surprises. Don’t deprive yourself of these dangerous-as-hell you’ll-poke-yer-eye-out-kid bow-gun contraptions. Dude, they are cool and totally worth it.
Take my experienced word for it.
The trophy of my dreams: A yearling button buck taken with a James Bond super weapon on a ground stalk
A young man who was mentored in traditional archery, with good form, at ETAR 2020 at Ski Sawmill
People’s trail cameras are literally everywhere. This was sent to me as I was preparing to ask this kind young man to help me drag the deer fifty feet to the gravel road
No joke about it, my friend and archery and life mentor, Jack Keith, was the real deal in everything, and I miss him every day.
People who subsist on archery can’t afford to write silly essays about sucking at archery
Traditional archery legend Fred Asbell showing how to correctly hold the bow while hunting. Fred took all kinds of animals all around the world with traditional archery tackle
A young man with even better archery form at ETAR 2022
The Hangover Part 27: The Trump Effect
Welp, that didn’t go well yesterday, did it…
Like a lot of other conservatives, I am sitting here with a political hangover, trying to make sense of the ass whoopin’ we got at the nationwide polls yesterday. Looks like I woke up with a freaky Democrat-shaped tattoo across my face, and a set of tire tracks across my back.
Couple of things jump foremost into my mind:
One lesson is that Leftists / Democrats care about winning, period, end of story. Winning at any cost, with any candidate is their Job #1. Anyone with a “D” after their name gets Democrat Party support and votes. Heck, the entire Democrat Party is openly devoted to protecting and supporting illegal alien invaders, violent criminals, and drug cartels, at enormous cost to American citizens. And yet…they do it.
One successful Democrat candidate in Virginia had openly fantasized about killing Republicans and their children. He is now the Attorney General-elect there. His voters did not care one whit or one bit about his violent fantasies. They wanted him in power. In fact, many Leftists probably share his violent fantasies.
Lesson #2 is Rule #2, Republican activists and voters and politicians care waaaay too much about public perception. Even manufactured perception. The Democrat Party media (AKA establishment media ABCCBSNPRBBCNBCNYT etc) knows this and aggressively preys upon it. When a Republican anywhere sneezes out of place, the establishment media is all over it, critical of it, magnifying it. Had a Republican candidate for dog catcher, much less AG, anywhere in America similarly written his fantasies about murdering Democrats and their children, his career, not just political career but his life supporting career, would be over. Finished, kaput, done, canceled, terminated. The (far-left) media sees to it every time, even as it protects Democrats from legitimate scrutiny and criticism.
Why Republicans / conservatives / normies continue to play by this rule is a mystery to me. And in fact, I do think that many in the conservative base are tiring of the political “professionals” foolishly playing by this rule, and that is why we have such a strong swing among some towards truly extreme and evil views. It is probably why treasonous bullshit artist Tucker Carlson and angry closet homosexual Nick Fuentes enjoy any support at all. Plenty of voters on the Right are just sick and tired of playing by the Left’s rules, and losing, and so they are beginning to make up some rules of their own. Not all of these rules are wholesome or pure American goodness.
Lastly, lesson number three, for better and for worse, the Trump Effect was in full force yesterday. The Trump Effect is a double-edged sword. On the one hand when Trump’s name is on the ballot, voters come out in droves to support him. On the other hand, when his name is not on the ballot, those same people stay at home and sit out the election. They think “Why should I vote? Trump is in office and he is kickin ass and getting things under control.”
Which is a fatal mistake, because while he is in office kickin ass and getting law and order re-established, Trump is also up to his eyes in lawless alligators afraid of being turned into hides on the wall. Trump threatens the political Left unlike any prior Chief Executive, all of whom, including Ronald Reagan, were content to play by the political establishment rules, written and enforced by the political Left. And so Trump invigorates the political Left through fear, and pushes them to the polls, while his own voters think everything is just hunky dory and stay home.
Add to this a lethargic and largely moribund Republican Party establishment, or an aggressively insular and inward-looking state GOP like we have here in Pennsylvania, and we can see that it does not take much effort for the political Left to win elections.
I will tell you that we did have some wins yesterday. One was in Lycoming County, where the No Butts on the Bench campaign did eject the county’s sitting president judge, Nancy Butts. Judge Butts had once run and won on a campaign of law and order, but had then become the usual backsliding leftist activist Americans have come to expect of establishment Republicans once she got on the judicial bench. She is now uninvited, disinvited, ejected and soon to be no longer a judge.
Another win reported to me by a friend in Schuylkill County is Christian Lengel, who becomes a Magistrate District Judge. A good candidate surrounded by fierce volunteers, Mr. Lengel now becomes Judge Lengel, to the advantage of western Skook citizens.
And that is a wrap. I am out of words and not quite yet out of feelings. It is time now to crawl back under my bed with a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Me, this morning, and possibly you, too
Election Day confession
Confession: I am a political junkie, addict, hound, nerd. Have been so since age fifteen. Don’t know why, but I really enjoy being involved in political everything. Today I yet again donated much of my time to being a poll greeter. You know, one of those annoying, pushy people promoting candidates and certain policy positions to voters walking up to the polling place.
My shtick is to make people smile, hopefully laugh. Especially the ever-crabby Liberals. Self-deprecating humor works. At least with older Americans.
Most of my time today, at a poll in West Hanover Township, was spent handing out “palm cards” promoting Jim Zugay and Fran Chardo, candidates for county judge. Fran is Dauphin County’s current District Attorney, and Jim is our current Recorder of Deeds. Both have been practicing attorneys for decades, and are highly qualified. Unlike their opponents, one of whom has been a lawyer in private practice for less than ten years.
I enjoyed talking policy etc with several interesting Democrats, who were up to it. Civil discourse is awesome. One said I had persuaded her to vote for Jim Zugay, who she said she had heard good things about. The one Democrat poll greeter, Sarah, was very nice and easy to chat with. She stayed until about 6:15 tonight, right after I left.
Yours truly on site, reporting live
Two military veterans discuss their combat experiences, and how those shaped their political views. Fascinating to listen in
A bad moon rising on Election Day? We shall find out momentarily
People are cool. I collect people. This windshield message accompanied a (I think) Democrat voter today
I confess to not understanding how Liberals think. But I enjoyed talking with some today, as we all engaged in the most important thing Americans can do: Vote.
Vote like this on Tuesday
- Vote “NO” to not retain activist judges who act like kings. You want no kings? Then eject king-like rogue judges here in Pennsylvania, whose wild behavior belongs in the legislature, not on the judicial bench.
- Speaking of qualified judges, here in Dauphin County, vote for Fran Chardo and Jim Zugay. They are the two most qualified candidates for the two county judge spots that are open. Fran is the current District Attorney, known for his fair minded, staid and serious demeanor. Jim Zugay has been a Public Defender, a private practive lawyer, and the Dauphin County Recorder of Deeds. A lady named Kennedy-McShane is running against them, and while she is nowhere near as qualified as Zugay and Chardo, she is just too liberal, on every issue, to be a judge. Liberalism and liberal / leftist policies just do not work; they hurt people and break communities. Dauphin County deserves solid judges, not radical leftists with a nutty political agenda. Vote for Zugay and Chardo.
- Here in Harrisburg City, we have an interesting contest between two liberal Democrat candidates for mayor, Wanda Williams and Dan Miller. Wanda is a nice enough person, but she has not done much as mayor. Dan Miller has been City Controller and I think will do more good than harm. I am voting for Dan Miller, and I hope other city residents will, too.
Democrat Party shut down the US govt, aiming for America
American federal government has been shut down for weeks now, as a result of all Democrat Party US senators being unwilling to vote for the same continuing resolution bill they voted for four or five times already in the past several years. Because this funding bill requires a super-majority, not a simple majority, even the minority party (Democrat) can stop it.
Much has been said elsewhere about why the Democrat Party would not vote to keep their own precious government open and their own precious federal workers (Democrat) on the job and paid. Yes, it is true that they (Democrats) are demanding (forgotten) taxpayer subsidies for illegal alien healthcare that (forgotten) taxpaying Americans themselves do not qualify for, let that sink in.
And yes, these same recalcitrant senators have already voted a bunch of times for the same “clean” bill before, without the illegal alien healthcare subsidies they want put in it now.
But what seems to be missing in the public debate about why the Democrat Party has shut down the American federal government is the real why. The core purpose. Which seems to be their goal of shutting down America, all of it, all of us, forever.
After all, this is the same group of people (elected Democrats) who allowed an incredible illegal invasion of America to happen from 2021 to 2024. The roughly 15 Million illegal aliens who illegally crossed our borders imposed budget-breaking costs on hospitals, public schools, and public infrastructure, and sky-high crime rates that overwhelmed police departments and court systems.
You don’t allow America to be overwhelmed and severely damaged, if you love America.
This is the same group of people (elected Democrats) who have time after time, even this weekend, sided with violent illegal alien criminals over American citizens, sided with South American drug dealers and child sex slave traffickers over American citizens, sided with violent repeat American criminals over law abiding American citizens, etc.
The Democrat Party is openly not on the side of America being successful or peaceful or happy. Rather, they (Democrats) are public about their disdain for pretty much everything that makes America successful. Except your tax money, of which they want a lot more.
So this government funding dispute seems to be really about just shutting down America, totally, trying to create all of the chaos and unhappiness possible, and probably also about trying to stop the Trump Administration from operating.
For the umpteenth time over the past ten years at least, it sure appears that the Democrat Party wants to once again burn America to the ground.
So I have a question for registered Democrats: Can you explain this situation? Can you defend it? Can you help us bystanders understand it?
Can you tell us what the Democrat Party stands for that American citizens might support? Can you explain why you continue to vote for Democrat candidates?
I ask as a former Democrat myself. Because I did not leave the Democrat Party, they left me; just like they are leaving America behind right now. And I am confused about how anyone who loves America continues to support this bizarre and destructive organization.
Does JD Vance have what it takes to be president?
Like nearly everyone, or probably literally everyone, on my side of the ideological spectrum, I have enjoyed watching JD Vance’s political life grow from infancy to Vice President of the USA over the past few years.
The guy went from rural poor house to successful book author (“Hillbilly Elegy”) to state politics to US Senator to Vice President in a short amount of time. Pretty much the American dream. Most people have to spend a lot of time to get this far in politics.
Another dream: Unlike 95% of former Vice Presidents, Vance has been greatly empowered by President Trump to have a robust public life on key policy issues. Historically, most Vice Presidents are shunted aside, or are given vague ribbon cutting ceremonies at best. Under Trump, Vance has been all over the place, all around the planet, speaking his mind, carrying the administration’s messages on fair trade, free speech and Western Civilization, etc.
Vance has thus gained traction among many on the right, who were unhappy with his past vilification of Trump, which we saw as un-earned and more of a publicity stunt than a legitimate policy critique.
Vance’s throaty America First stance certainly gets people like me standing on our feet in full applause. Over and over, Vance has said what conservatives think has been absent from most Republican leaders (or any other elected officials, for that matter) for decades. So, until a week ago, I and many others in my corner were excited about Vance’s prospects as a 2028 presidential candidate.
And then came Vance’s openly arrogant and pompous declaration about Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria, both the current administrative arrangement and the prospective legal annexation. For a guy like Vance, who earlier this year proudly championed the prospective outright American annexation of Greenland, by legal or military means, and who prides himself on maintaining a rational, logical, linear policy perspective, this statement was a non-sequitor surprise.
There are few if any Americans living in Greenland.
America has never claimed Greenland as the USA has claimed Puerto Rico, Guam, or other territories we captured in war.
Israel is 8,019 square miles in size. Greenland is 836,331 square miles in size, literally over a hundred times the size of Israel. Judea and Samaria are the historic homeland of the Jewish People; they comprise 2,183 square miles, nearly 1/400th the size of Greenland, and are home to about a million Jews.
Many of the current Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are built on the ancient ruins of former Jewish settlements dating back 4,000 years. Jews living there today are not newcomers to the area. Rather, they are de-colonizing it. Fact check alert: Arabs are from Arabia, Muslims are from Mecca, neither of which are in Judea or Samaria. Muslims and Arabs who live in Judea and Samaria are the colonizers, as they are the colonizers elsewhere across the entire region.
Israel captured Judea and Samaria in a defensive war, and reaffirmed their hold on the area in subsequent defensive wars. To the victor go the spoils of war, in treasure and in land; this is elementary international law. Israel has every right to control or annex Judea and Samaria. Vance himself invokes this very same principle in his argument for America taking over Greenland (which I support).
To watch Vance on camera on this subject is painful. He comes across as a petulant, arrogant bully, back to where he was when he vilified Trump just a few years ago.
Vance actually said that he was “insulted” that Israel’s democratically elected parliament had passed a bill to annex Judea and Samaria. Why would JD Vance feel personally insulted about the sovereign act of a soverign democratic nation fighting for its life that has zero to do with him, he, JD Vance, late of 1794 militarily conquered and European colonized Maumee Indian lands in Ohio?
If Vance is so opposed to Israel being in Judea and Samaria, to which they have a 4,000 year old claim, then is he going to make a big showy statement and give back his Ohio home to the Maumee Indians? We all know the answer to this. Vance likely believes that the conquest of American Indian tribes and the colonization of their lands is settled business.
Does Vance really think that Israel annexing a small area over which it has maintained control for nearly sixty years is going to somehow hurt the United States?! Even a little bit?
From a rational policy perspective, Vance’s blanket statement on Judea and Samaria is a 180 degree deviation from all of his other American policy statements. Perhaps this is attributable to all of the Qatar money pouring into American politics right now. Or maybe it is attributable to the Vatican’s longstanding antipathy towards Jews, Judaism, and the modern state of Israel. Whatever his reasons for his a-historical rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me statement, Vance is way out of step with Ambassador Mike Huckabee, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the hardest core of American patriots who feel directly connected to Israel, Judea, and Samaria, and who see Qatar’s cash dump into American politics and universities as a huge threat to Western Civilization.
It makes one wonder if JD Vance has what it takes to be our president. An effective president cannot afford to alienate anyone on his side, at least not for long. Trump can get away with pushy bluster, because he is a likable person with a very long track record of positive achievements in both private enterprise and public office. Sometimes his bluster is just that, bluster, to test the waters.
Conversely, Vance’s personal anger about Israel’s one policy looks the equivalent of Joe Biden’s public “I’ll be damned” brag about corruptly quashing Ukraine’s investigation of Burisma and Hunter Biden. This is not presidential stuff, it is not leadership stuff, sad to say. I hope JD Vance fixes this, not just the policy stuff, but his own public performance, his control of his own personal self.
It is one thing to be a heavily battle scarred Donald John Trump and say sh*t, but to be a relative newcomer overnight rock star like Vance, his strange outburst could and should hurt his prospects.
Middle East ain’t like Mid-Town Manhattan
Despite President Trump’s best efforts at creating “peace” or at least the absence of violence, for a while, in the Middle East, the latest agreement, deal, whatever we call it, is failing.
Of course it is failing. The Gaza “ceasefire” was declared to be the “peace in our time” of most-mistaken Neville Chamberlain, without anything backing it up beyond President Trump’s own public standing. Which is taking a beating now that Hamas has killed a bunch of Israelis, in violation of the supposed ceasefire terms.
Vice President JD Vance said that there is “no mechanism to dis-arm Hamas”, which means the Trump Administration rejects the only mechanism there is: the IDF. Vance is going to Israel momentarily, mostly to strong-arm Israel into not responding militarily to Hamas violence against Israel. This is just going to result in more ceasefire failure and policy failure and more one-sided violence.
President Trump has oddly placed his own personal credibility in the hands of those who support Hamas, Qatar and Turkey.
I give Hamas some credit, for returning the twenty remaining living Israeli hostages. Hamas did get a hell of a boost to their fighting ranks, however, with the simultaneous release of over 2,000 hardened criminals held in Israeli prisons, most of whom with innocent blood on their hands. So it was a careful calculus that Hamas did. Had nothing to do with peace, and everything to do with rebuilding its obliterated ranks.
The mistake that all Westerners make when dealing with Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East (versus the Muslim Arab American guy in the cubicle down the hall from your own office here in America, who has a chance of being fairly acculturated into American values) is believing that if we are nice, they will reciprocate, and that their pledges mean something.
Their pledges -hudna, takiya- don’t mean anything, except for buying time, so Hamas et al can regroup and go back to war better than before.
President Trump is a good man, with good intentions, good hopes, good dreams. He is trying to do good in the Middle East, but he is failing. Badly. He is trying to do a deal there like he would do a real estate construction deal in mid-town Manhattan, where the shared win-win 360-degree rising tide of financial success floats all boats whether they are contractor, union, supplier, or whomever. This is a fine model for rational problem solving in America, and we certainly do need more of it here.
But the Middle East is not Manhattan, and it is not New York, or America, or even Europe, yet. Rather, the Middle East is the martyr-littered place that the Christian Crusaders attacked for hundreds of years, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully. It is the place that is riven by a million bloody blood feuds, run by back-stabbing and suicide bombing and civilian murder as a matter of course. Western ideas of mercy, fairness, kindness, earnestness, honesty etc have no place in the Middle East, and President Trump is only now beginning to learn this hard fact.
Because Israel will go along with most of what President Trump wants or needs, it is natural for the Trump Administration to lean ever more heavily on Israel to acquiesce and bend and absorb the foolish notions, rather than push harder on Qatar, Turkey or Hamas, who will never bend or acquiesce. They will lie, at best. But Israel will once again be put in a weakened position, and this will incite the blood lust of its enemies, and the cycle of violence will begin anew.
Because the Trump Administration wants to “be nice.” For God’s sake.
Similar foolish mistakes:
- Forcing Israel to stop bombing the evil Iranian regime when it was at its most vulnerable and the most change could be brought to the region. President Trump believed that showing the Iranian mullahs mercy would inspire them to act like Westerners and acquiesce. But nope. Iran says they will get the nuclear bomb and the ICBM means to shove it up America’s ass no matter what. Iran learned nothing from Trump’s largesse, and Trump gained nothing from his largesse, and the world is a more dangerous place because of his largesse.
- Giving evil terrorism sponsor and Hamas-hiders Qatar protection from Israel. This inspires Qatar to double down on its active terrorism and rotgut far-left academic investments in American universities.
- Failing to hold Egypt accountable for its unwillingness to accept fellow Arab Muslim refugees from Gaza, and for creating a huge offensive military buildup in the Sinai Peninsula, contrary to the peace agreement with Israel.
- Failing to hold Turkey accountable for its Islamist terrorism machinations and imperialist dreams.
- Failing to help establish Kurdistan once and for all.
- Giving the psycho sadist ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria any credibility.
The list of policy failings in the Middle East grows longer every day, and as a result the world becomes less safe and less stable. Again, President Trump deserves credit for trying something new, but now that we all see that it has failed and that his empty threats against Hamas are laughed at (and that his real threats against Israel for retaliating against Hamas ceasefire violations damage Trump’s standing even more), it is time for this incredible president to stop being Mister Nice Guy.
It is not working, so stop it, for your own good.
No Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Trump, despite him earning it a hundred times over. No recognition was given to him by the Islamist-run United Nations. Absolutely zero of the so-called self anointed “peace” organizations gave Trump any credit for his peace-making efforts. So, Mister President, forgetaboutit, as they used to say in the Bronx when they spoke American there.
You want to create peace in the Middle East?
Here is how: Tell Qatar that they and their oil fields now belong to America, and that the royal family will enjoy a generous stipend, but that they also no longer run the tiny country. Same goes for the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Take their oil, take their lands, make it ours, and we will see peace like you never believed possible begin to reign across that crazy region. Hell, we will see peace right here in America and in Europe like we have not seen since the 1950s!
This is real out of the box thinking, and it is exactly the realpolitik that everyone in that region understands fully. It will work. The issue is whether or not the Trump Administration has the stomach for it.
Good luck, President Trump! We still love you. We just know what is best for you better than you do. You are blinded by good intentions.
Why retain lousy judges?
Pennsylvania voters will have the rare opportunity to NOT RETAIN three lousy judges in a few weeks, and how can you vote to retain these people?
Don’t!
The “PA Dems” send me their daily emails, which I dutifully read. It is fascinating material, mostly because there is no substance to it. It relies on an “Us vs. Them” version of politics, which I think most Americans are tired of in so many ways. This same tribal hate-filled scapegoating is what got Charlie Kirk murdered, and which has boiled up from the far-far-Left gutter of the Democrat Party’s base.
Just like the phony “COEXIST” bumper sticker, the old “Hate is Not a Family Value” bumper sticker also was a bold lie. Americans who sported these on their cars were neither coexisters nor peace loving non-haters. The coexist people are the meanest, angriest, least capable of co-existing with different Americans, and hate is now an out-and-proud defining characteristic of the Democrat Party base.
It all flows from the 1960s Marxist academics, like Herbert Marcuse, who told their college students that it is OK to hate and hurt people who disagree with Marxists, because those people are automatically just bad, bad people, and they deserve to be hated, and hurt. And so hate has become a fundamental part of the Democrat Party messaging, including the emails that I get.
The PA Dems say that the court is their “firewall” on policy, but this is all wrong, that is not what courts are supposed to do. Congress and state legislatures are charged with writing laws and policy, and the courts are supposed to simply interpret it all as either consistent with the constitution, or not. Not act as another legislature of just a few people. And so it is this political activist judge thing that has got so many Pennsylvanians wound up tight about this upcoming retention vote.
Says one activist I admire, “Vote “NO” to retain the PA Supreme Court Justices. Below are the current salaries of those justices along with all tiers of the judicial system including our local Common Pleas Court Judges. By choosing to run for retention instead of re-election, these Justices, if retained, will be serving another 10-year term in which their salary for that time will total $2,619,760, and the Chief Justice will receive a total of $2,695,990. I don’t believe she can serve another full term due to mandatory retirement age in another two years or so. In addition to their generous salary, they also receive an annual cost of living raise and the best benefits as far as healthcare, prescription drugs and eye care. Regardless of the justices being on the wrong side of so many issues, there is no reason to hand them another term instead of making them stand for election.”
In other words, the judges chose a simple political dodge instead of running a real campaign, to stay in their cozy taxpayer funded jobs. Even one who should automatically age out in just a couple years!
We do not need more elected officials with this rotten, selfish mindset.
Additionally, the activist policies these judges pushed were destructive nonsense that served the political interests of just one political party, at the cost of tossing our rule of law right out the window along with believable election results:
- they approved a heavily gerrymandered electoral map, which a lot of Americans say they do not like,
- they allowed the use of highly corrupt vote “drop boxes” despite Act 77 not authorizing them,
- they extended the deadline for mail-in ballots by three days, in violation of the law, among other non-legal, anti-legal decisions that damaged Pennsylvania’s election integrity
Christine Donohue, David Wecht, and Kevin Dougherty do not deserve to serve as judges any longer. They have failed at this job, badly, and they should not be retained. Time for a change, time for people with integrity to sit in those seats.
Vote NO on November 4th to not retain them on the court.
You must flip over your ballot to check the NO box.
And you can also term-out Judge Dubow and Judge Wojcik, too.
US Army Corps of Engineers: America’s Black Hole in Need of Cosmic Level Fixing
Because it is a relatively small part of our big military and kept in a dusty back room far from the shiny B-2 bombers, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been off the radar of legislators and commanders-in-chief alike since George Washington ended his presidency.
But in the intervening 250 years since its founding, the USACE has gone from building bridges for troops and cannons, to aggressively stealing private property rights and forcing a Marxist environmentalist agenda on domestic citizens under the guise of “civil works.” Of all the federal agencies I have dealt with professionally and personally, including USEPA where I worked for seven years, the USACE has had the biggest mission creep in the worst directions of all. So, for USACE’s 250th birthday this year, can we please give Americans a gift of freedom, and see this most hidebound, insular, destructive, over-reaching, and unaccountable agency finally get the keelhaul overhaul that Americans deserve?
Not that I am rooting for Navy here, but our sacred Army has no business getting its good hands dirty with the USACE’s lawlessness. Big change must happen there, and with fresh new appointees from the Trump Administration, hope should be on the horizon. I hope these appointees are tough as nails, because they are facing a deeply entrenched bureaucracy as jealous of its ill-gotten power as any other federal agency has been, and they have the arrogant, dismissive staff culture to show for it.
USACE “manages” 12.5 million acres of formerly private land, much of it associated with water projects for hydropower, flood control, and public recreation. Sounds useful and wholesome enough: Waterskiing, fishing, hiking, families picnicking, with downstream communities protected from heavy rains up in the watersheds. Problem is, most of USACE’s flood control lakes are heavily silted in and barely functioning as advertised or designed. And probably 95% of this enormous land collection was obtained at gunpoint, through eminent domain against private American landowners, including the Seneca Nation, who still have a formal land treaty with the US government that was reached with George Washington himself, and which the USACE violated.
Absolutely nothing and no one is sacred to the USACE; not the US Constitution, not us citizens, not our property rights.
Anyone familiar with federal eminent domain knows it is rife with abuse and below-market values forced on private landowners for the most frivolous purposes. And while some federal agencies will attempt to reach willing-seller-willing-buyer agreements before going nuclear, the USACE just used legal sledgehammers against American landowners right from the get-go, because screwdrivers have never been in their toolbox.
But the situation is worse than just USACE’s rampant takings of privately owned lands that could have easily served the USACE’s goals while remaining in private ownership. Back in the 1950s-1970s good ol’ days of “Big Government Knows Best,” when the agency was most active, the USACE also stripped many of its condemned properties of their valuable subsurface oil, gas and or mineral rights, too, without paying for them. Not content with taking the surface rights for managing surface water, the agency simply took what it wanted and dared the beaten-down landowners to try to beat them in government courts. Today, millions of Americans are deprived of substantial and highly valuable subsurface private property rights at nearly every single USACE water resource project. These oil, gas, and mineral rights should be in their families’ private ownership, but are wasting away under USACE theft and neglect.
A group of military engineers and their civilian hangers-on have no business running public recreation facilities on American soil. The USACE’s job started as support of military combat troops in 1775, and it is incredible that we are having this discussion in 2025. The marrying of USACE hydroelectric dams and flood control facilities to public service recreation has not worked, because the agency’s staff developed a culture of untouchable bullies. The US military is not supposed to operate on American soil, for damned good reasons, but the USACE does so, with predictably bad results.
USACE is over-ripe for huge change. At the very least USACE needs the deep cleaning treatment of staff and structure that chief administrator Lee Zeldin is doing over at USEPA. USACE’s “civil works” must be spun off to actual civilian oversight and management in the agencies that have historically done this kind of public service and natural resource management. Nearly all of USACE’s physical assets should be moved to the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the US Forest Service, all of which have much better track records dealing with public service than the USACE. Which is saying a lot, because all of these federal agencies have had real rough patches in their public land management history and public service interface cultures, too.
Josh First wrote his 1991 master’s thesis on the USACE’s nationwide water resource projects, and, ironically, has randomly ended up owning substantial acreages adjoining two USACE water resource projects in Pennsylvania as an entrepreneur. He will write about his own related experiences with USACE in future essays.
This essay originally appeared at American Thinker.
Playin’ the Quatar in the quicksand
Past few weeks I have been overwhelmed with the fast pace of everything, including my work, and just let the last blog post stand as the latest word on things: America is badly divided, really like two different countries at this point. President Trump is about to declare the Insurrection Act in effect, something this blog advocated back in 2020. Lawless judges continue to try to play policy pro with legal cases that require a simple Yes or No ruling. It has been amazing to watch the “Blue” states and jurisdictions demand that the Feds stay out of their crime waves. They like their crime, and by God, they are gonna keep it…forgetting tha we Americans have a right to go anywhere in America without fear of being beaten to death.
Then again, the 1940s-1950s Democrat-run South was like this: Lawless, violent, in open revolt against the federal government’s effort to integrate public schools.
But President Trump stole the show with his effort to bring peace of some sort to Gaza and Israel. This looks like languidly playing a Quatar-guitar while also sinking into the Middle East quicksand. Because the people supposedly facilitating this momentary conclusion of hostilities with Trump are the very same people who have been stoking the same conflict for the past seventy years, including on our own American college campuses: Qatar.
For decades, Qatar has dumped billions of dollars into American college campuses to buy entire programs filled with far-Left Marxist pseudo professors who preach hatred of America, Christianity, Capitalism, Israel, and Western Civilization. Qatar is a tiny postage stamp of a country with more oil money than it can use at home, so it is very effectively using it to eat into America’s foundation with jihadism and faux journalism.
Maybe Trump is playing Qatar here, but it sure openly looks like Qatar is playing Trump, luring him in with unrealistic promises meant to further weaken America and Israel, bog down America in the Middle East quicksand, and stop the anti-jihad momentum that Israel and America have been successfully implementing the past six months.
For example, now American troops are supposedly going to be stationed in Gaza to enforce the ceasefire….a stupider idea cannot be invented, but here it is. Our own troops will be at the mercy of Hamas, and will serve as a block on Israel being able to get Hamas back in the genie bottle. Anything that happens to our troops will be blamed on Israel. A wedge will be further inserted between these two great natural allies, America and Israel, and the only people benefiting are the jihadis of Qatar, Hamas, Turkey, and Iran.
Maybe it will hold, and it will all work out great. I am no pessimist, but I am a realist. I admire President Trump’s willingness to take big chances for the right reasons, but I also worry that he tends to see everything in the world narrowly through his own lens of golf courses, resorts, and money-solves-all-problems. Including the flea-infested quicksands of the Middle East, which have historically eaten up and spit out the bones of many different great civilizations. Sometimes reality just has to be accepted, no matter how frustrating or painful: appeasement is not peace, and appeasing the jihadis only encourages them to do more damage.
America is not too big to fail in Gaza, and a lot is riding on the line. Good luck to America and Israel and to our entire Western Civilization.