Archive → October, 2020
Review of Kirschner’s deer lures
The whitetail deer rut is now under way across the Americas, and although writing about politics (especially a handful of days before such a momentous Election Day) is the bread and butter of this blog, man does not live on bread alone. Occasionally there must be a beverage. And Kirschner’s deer pee lure is it.
Twenty years ago I first met Bob Kirschner at the Pennsylvania Outdoor Show at the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex, in the traditional archery section. Among a slew of often cantankerous iconoclasts (think about the kind of people who hold onto traditional archery against the tide of ultra high-tech training wheel bows), he was a funny guy. As in kind of odd, as in not a huckster or a salesman, but almost shy.
Even though he was surrounded by a big display of his wares, which included his own videos on how to bowhunt wary deer using his unique deer pee lures, Bob was not a hard selling, fast talking circus barker. Instead, he seemed almost embarrassed that he had to take your money at all. Such is the way of the pure hearted, because of all the deer pee lures out there, Kirschner’s is among the very few that are worth anything. And that is because his pee is pure. No jest.
Somewhere at camp I have one of his videos that shows him making his deer lures. In one scene he is wearing a work smock, a big toothy grin, and carrying a large tub of deer legs sticking out in all directions. Each of those legs has a tarsal gland on it, which deer use to communicate with each other through their highly refined sense of smell. Bob painstakingly cuts out each gland and grinds it up into a paste, which forms the base of his very smelly deer lures. This takes a lot of work and a lot of time.
Contrast Bob’s laborious hands-on process to the over-the-counter stuff sold by the gallon at the big box stores. Not to knock anyone in particular, but my experience with many different brands is they are at best watered down versions of Kirschner’s lures, and at worst they are synthetics that don’t last very long and that lose their smell within a few months of purchase. Like Code Red and Code Blue….golly, guys, what do you put in your bottles? I do not think it is 100% estrus deer pee.
Somewhere a few years ago I saw an article about how much doe pee lure was sold nationwide, which is a LOT, like hundreds of thousands or millions of gallons, compared to how many penned farm doe deer there are, which is very few, and how a basic back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that the vast majority of “doe pee” lure sold in the USA is not actual doe pee. At least not 100%. Because the standards are so lax or even non-existent, what is sold as doe pee lure might only have 1% estrus doe pee in it.
There just are not enough penned farm deer to produce the vast amount of “deer pee” sold to hunters. Not even close. Which means that a lot of what is being sold as deer pee lure is not.
And this sorry situation is NOT what Kirschner sells. He sells stuff that will curl your hair if you sniff it, because it is that nasty tarsal gland paste he made mixed with actual pee from his own pet deer. No, you don’t want to ask how he gets the deer urine….same story with foxes, coyotes, and bobcats, all of which are kept in farms where their excrement is collected and made into lures for trappers and hunters. It is all expensive stuff, and it all works very well.
From the time I bought a small squeeze bottle of Kirschner’s SilverTop at that year 2000 outdoor show (what is now the Great American Outdoor Show, which will not be held in 2021), until four years ago, when it ran out, I killed a PILE of deer coming in to his lure. When I say a pile, I mean a literal pile, like piles of deer stacked like cord wood in the back of my pickup trucks. How, you ask? Answer: I get as many DMAP and doe tags as possible, which might number ten each season, and then usually fill 75-100% of them from archery season through the late muzzleloader season and late shotgun-only season in southeast PA.
Then I ran out of the Silver Top, which only required a few drops on a tampon hung on a tree branch each time hunting, and so it had lasted so very very long. And I thought, “Why not try some other brands, see what they can do, how they work.”
And what I found was that not one other deer lure has worked anything like Kirschner’s in the southcentral and northcentral regions in which I mostly hunt. Not even close.
Bob Kirschner tells me that very few people make deer lure like he does any longer, and at age 74 he is about to hang up his spurs from his incredibly physical work. He says that some Amish farms are beginning to make deer lure the way he does, and that they will have to take up the slack when he shuts down his operation (hint hint young people out there, here is a chance to run your own business and have fun).
So I bought an 8-ounce bottle of Kirschner’s SilverTop the other day, and I am hoping this will last me a good twenty years. How can this one bottle last so long? Because only a few drops are needed each time out.
Here is another hint to hunters: Don’t overuse deer pee lure. It does not need to be sloshed about by the bucketful, and it should only be used during the actual rut, which is end of October into mid-November.
When hunters mis-use deer pee lure, either by using too much or by using it in early October, they are desensitizing deer to their world of smell, and instead of luring in deer, they confuse them and make them cagey and wary.
Using too much deer pee or using it at the wrong time eventually trains deer to stay away from it, or to be skeptical of it.
Two years ago I watched a Maryland hunting guide set off an enormous bottle of “Buck Bomb” for a youth hunter, which filled our woods with a chokingly sick scent that vaguely smelled like doe estrus. One buck was eventually brought in, a nice eight point, but he was so suspicious that he literally ran up to within 75 yards, looked around, and seeing no doe, turned and ran like hell back to where he had come from. Using too much of a good thing is not always a good thing to do, and hunters will do better in the short term and the long term if they are much more judicious in their application of deer pee lure.
So, there, that is my endorsement of Kirschner’s deer pee. I get no royalties, kickbacks, baksheesh, or remuneration from this essay. In fact, I hope Bob does not read it because he will probably object to being called shy. I write this out of simple admiration for a well done product that has made me a very happy hunter for a very long time, and I hope you get some, too. Just use it correctly.
Good luck this season. Have fun and be safe!
ANTIFA’s Supreme Court Black Bloc
ANTIFA has a Supreme Court.
No, no, I am not talking about Facebook’s silly ‘court of appeals’ for users who have had their Fakebook pages locked or shut down for daring to share information damaging to liberal causes like Lyin’ Joe Biden’s sleepy campaign for president. Nor are we talking here about Twitter’s murky blackmail process for re-instating Twitter accounts that have been locked or shut down for posting information damaging to liberal causes, like Hunter Biden’s catastrophically illegal corruption. We are actually talking about the US Supreme Court.
Yes, folks, the violent domestic terrorist group ANTIFA pretty much owns the US Supreme Court, as evidenced by several decisions emitted by the Court over the past week. Yes, emitted, as in something that might emit from one’s bodily orifices, such is the worthlessness and a-legal constitution of these decisions.
The recent US Supreme Court decisions we are talking about here approved clear and obvious voting fraud in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, where true to form, the Democrat Party is busy changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game because it is looking more and more like the Democrat Party might not win the game according to the rules set down when the game (the election) began. Now, ballots filed long after Election Day and even with the wrong signature and with even other otherwise disqualifying flaws must be counted, according to a majority of the US Supreme Court.
And who is this majority on the US Supreme Court that is allowing America to be held hostage to purposefully delayed voting results so that illegal ballot harvesters can run around inventing enough fake ballots to finally declare Joe Biden the winner? Well, it is no surprise that leftists Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer are in this majority. These three Marxist political activists vote together as an unbreakable bloc, and in their somber, black judicial robes they are the Court’s Black Bloc. They never, ever cross over to join the conservatives/ originalists/ textualists on the Court on any decision. Nope, the US Supreme Court’s Democrat Party appointees are reliable, consistent political activists, running interference for the Democrat Party; they are not jurists. But with fellow Black Bloc Justice Ginsburg now thankfully consigned to the dustbin of history, it would take one or two other Justices to join the Marxist Black Bloc to carry a decision over the goal line.
So who has joined the US Supreme Court’s Black Bloc? Unsurprisingly, it is Justice Roberts, whose long commitment to undermining America from inside at every possible turn is evidenced by his many crucial policy decisions, like approving ObamaCare, and not hearing Second Amendment civil rights cases where politically activist lower courts have de facto overturned the Supreme Court’s own Heller decision. Now, Roberts is openly siding with the Democrat Party’s widespread voter fraud, allowing last-second changes in battleground states that could easily change the outcome of the entire election. Roberts does this knowing full well that none of these changes pass the sniff test let alone any legal test or any nationwide consistency test, which is what the Court usually applies.
Last night, Justice Kavanaugh joined the Court’s Black Bloc, not on political policy grounds or on blatant political ‘we-must-save-Joe-Biden’ grounds, like the others, but on the principle that he had to demonstrate extreme fealty to localism and state law, and not allow the federal Court to ‘interfere’ with state laws. Despite the fact that North Carolina is not having a state election, but is participating in a national election for the presidency, a federal issue. A subject the US Supreme Court is uniquely, solely designed to address.
Kavanaugh must be trying to prove his federal aloofness and purity by pretending to live on Mars. He must still be reeling from the brutal and politically motivated mauling at his confirmation hearings.
Putting this situation in the local Central Pennsylvania vernacular for addressing unbelievably foolish outcomes, I shit you not. There is simply no good reason for allowing voting to continue past Election Day. Nor is there any good reason for allowing obviously fake ballots to be counted as actual votes. Every honest American voter should oppose seeing their sacred vote be diluted.
The long and short of these Black Bloc decisions is they benefit ANTIFA, who will be allowed to violently run amok in your neighborhood while America is artificially paralyzed after Election Day, the usual voting results being artificially delayed while we all wait for known fake ballots to be counted as real votes.
And so ANTIFA has their own Black Bloc on the US Supreme Court – Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Roberts, and as long as this group is the dominant force on the Court, ANTIFA owns America’s streets and the US Supreme Court.
U.S. Sportsmen must vote gun rights next week
[A version of this essay was published by the American Thinker at https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/american_sportsmen_must_vote_gun_rights_next_week.html ]
It is not news to anyone who cares about American liberty that guns of every sort, caliber, style, color, and design have been in the crosshairs of anti-gun activists for decades. It is no stretch to describe these anti-gun activists as totalitarians-in-waiting, because their ultimate goal is complete civilian disarmament, which results in only one thing: Tyranny. Yes, even black powder muzzleloading rifles are targeted by gun grabbers, even though the last time an American was hurt by one was when someone took one off the mantel and dropped it on their toe.
Anti-gun activists are especially seeking “universal background checks,” because that process would allow them to build up the kind of individual firearm owner database they need now to do the door-to-door gun confiscation they dream of later on. But on this subject they keep running up against a political and legal buzz saw from the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, Firearms Owners Against Crime, and various state rifle and pistol associations. And so now gun grabbers are going after the one chink in the gun owners’ armor, what they see as the weakest link in the gun owners chain, and that is America’s sportsmen.
Sportsmen are an unusual demographic group of mostly political moderates, super-voters who cherish clean waterways, support land trusts and coastal conservation organizations, and who also cling strongly to their often basic hunting guns. Sportsmen are mostly not the AR15 “black rifle” tactical crowd, and that has made them especially interesting to the gun grabbers.
And so an effort is afoot to convince American hunters, trappers, and recreational fishermen that the most important issues they must vote for and about next week are the environment and public lands. And we all know how that mantra goes: Republicans are bad, and Democrats are good, which translates into Trump Bad, Biden Good. Never mind that most environmental groups are partisan Democrat Party activism centers who use the environment as their excuse to make war, now there are fake sportsmen’s groups and fake gun owner’s groups.
When you dig just a bit under the thin veneer of these groups’ “we are wholesome sportsmen and gun owners just like you” message, what you find is no surprise. They are each just yet one more phony, politically partisan, anti-gun concoction that camouflages itself as something else. Several anti-gun groups in particular are targeting sportsmen with deceptive behavior. The Union Sportsmen’s Alliance and Gun Owners for Safety are chock full of people professing to be ardent gun owners, but who nonetheless inevitably cite the same garbage anti-gun “studies” and who inevitably promote draconian anti-gun policies as “fair,” and “common sense” etc. These fake groups are as easy to spot as phonies as is a pheasant breaking thirty yards out against a clear blue Fall sky.
But a third group that is really gaining traction among sportsmen is Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and they much more carefully, perhaps artfully, straddle the natural mix of environmental quality and gun ownership interests that sportsmen have. And BHA is strident this year about voting on environmental issues alone, to the exclusion of gun rights. Its president, a guy actually named Land Tawney, has a long association with Barack Obama and Democrat Party activism. BHA is partnering with Patagonia clothing company, which has underwritten and promoted a movie called Public Trust: The Fight for America’s Public Lands. This movie is the centerpiece of BHA’s get-out-the-vote efforts this year.
Public Trust is done in a documentary style, narrated by Hal Herring, a long-time writer for Field & Stream magazine. The movie is masterful and has great cinematography. But it is not always accurate, especially in claims about so-called climate change and hanging every environmental problem and cause around the neck of – you guessed it – Republicans and the Donald Trump Administration. Public Trust also plays the usual environmentalist game of presenting false choices. For example, water quality concerns about the proposed Twin Metals copper mine in Minnesota could be addressed through posting a sufficient cleanup bond, but that would negate all the opportunities for political drama that liberals want.
If President Trump’s political opponents forget to mention that he signed the Great American Outdoors Act just a few months ago, allow me to remind them. The GAOA funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund for the first time since human-caused “climate change” was just a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye. GAOA funded national and local parks and forests operations and maintenance backlogs, infrastructure needs, and a host of other conservation and public lands needs from sea to shining sea. Trump is not an evil anti-environment boogey man, but Joe Biden certainly is an ardent gun-grabber, and his inner circle is a constellation of anti-trapping and anti-hunting groups.
Next week, American sportsmen cannot afford the luxury of voting for anything but Second Amendment rights. Without our guns, there is no sporting tradition, period, so vote for President Donald J. Trump. See you in the field afterwards!
Patagonia clothing company has this confusing message posted on its website. See, to me, a “climate denier” is a “science believer” and a human-caused climate change proponent is at best a gullible fool hyped up on a political cause that has no science in it, behind it, around it.
Who knows where Patagonia got this smokestack city photo, but if it is in America, the white emissions are probably steam. Which is water. Which is not a pollutant. To try to sell this as a picture of commonplace industrial pollution, Patagonia and BHA want viewers to believe we are really living in 1968.
A greedy white man in a suit, carving up parts of America for dinner with his cruel, bloody chef knife. A part of my experience tells me there is a grain of truth to this propaganda, because it is true that America’s natural resources have been utilized for three hundred years. Including now by the Crow Indian tribe on tribal lands, thanks to President Donald Trump.
Eugene DePasquale vs. PA Sportsmen
Until a few years ago, Eugene DePasquale was to me just another career politician who was making the rounds of political seats in Pennsylvania, with his eye on the eventual governorship. There are people in both the Republican Party and Democrat Party (I used to be a Democrat) who do this, so I am not going to hang this boring and nettlesome practice around the neck of one particular political party.
Political careerism in a republic like America is inevitable, and while it bothers most voters, those same voters also overwhelmingly re-send their own elected representatives back to office repeatedly. So the idea of term limits is only as good as the voters are willing to make them, themselves.
Don’t like career politicians, most of whom make a hundred promises and say one thing and then do another thing altogether? Then stop voting for the same damned people over and over and over again. This power to inflict term limits is held in the hands of the voters in every election. But like old married couples who argue with one another and poke at each other with their canes, voters eventually become comfortable with the career politicians in their own lives, and repeatedly send them back to office, even while finding their voting record or behavior disagreeable. For whatever reason, this is especially true with registered Democrat Party voters. Senator Bob Casey , Jr. is probably Exhibit A in this phenomenon, because you cannot find anywhere a more do-nothing guy career politician than Bob Casey, Jr., who nevertheless keeps getting re-elected, despite having zero to show for his time on the taxpayer dime.
Eugene DePasquale is another example of this phenomenon, an Exhibit B of revolving door careerism, hunting down one political seat and then moving on to the next. I am unaware of DePasquale actually having a real world job. Ballotpedia lists his biography as:
“DePasquale received a B.A. in political science from the College of Wooster, an M.P.A. from the University of Pittsburgh, and a J.D. from Widener University School of Law. He worked as an attorney and for the City of York as director of economic development. DePasquale then worked as deputy secretary for the Department of Environmental Protection. He also served as chair of the York County Democratic Party from 1998 to 2002.”
In other words, DePasquale’s actual real-world, hands-on life and work experience is about zero, or it may be zero. Candidates from either political party like DePasquale sicken me, because they are power-hungry and their policy lens is shaped entirely by what others (donors, political bosses) tell them to think, or worse, by what they believe will sell to the most voters. This is how we get such polarized political contests; candidates whose entire adult lives and professional careers have been in an insulated, unaccountable womb, where they are being groomed for the next step.
Yuck yuck yuck.
I met DePasquale once, a couple years ago, at a sportsmen’s round table he held in Lewisburg, PA. He was there at the urging of a lobbyist close to him, and to his credit he sat down with about ten of us from around the state, to discuss two things. First subject was his audit of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, focusing on the deer program, including chronic wasting disease, and the collection and use of royalties from oil, gas, minerals, and timber removed from State Game Lands. Second was his openly anti-gun public policy position, which he had found creative ways to implement or promote through his role as Auditor General.
In our discussion with him that day, DePasquale struck a severely cagey disposition. You could just so easily tell that our comments on his various positions and doings were passing right in one ear and out the other. He did not care. This was a perfunctory meeting set up to give the appearance of a career politician listening to constituents, when in fact the politician was probably thinking about dinner out with his wife or mistress or drinking buddies.
DePasquale evinced little concern that his obviously political investigation, designed to burnish his own credentials at the cost of whatever happened to get damaged in the process, could really hurt the PGC. And especially damage both its science-based deer management and its erstwhile political independence. Erstwhile, because as DePasquale’s Grand Inquisition into the PGC books showed, no public agency is bulletproof against meddling politicians. Had PGC officials or staff mis-spent public money, then by gosh fry ’em.
But of course, DePasquale found nothing that the PGC’s own regular annual audits had not found. And thus, the PGC did not have to change course on a damned thing it was doing. But DePasquale benefited politically from making it seem that he had possibly found something. And that is where I come out on this election he is in.
Here we have a candidate who has almost zero private work experience, who is 99.5% a political party construct and product, who has been sucking at the taxpayer teat for his entire career in one role or another, who tried to damage Pennsylvania sportsmen’s interests for his own political gain, running against incumbent congressman Scott Perry. To me, there is little to nothing compelling or exciting about Eugene DePasquale. He is another career politician drone who could be from either political party, except that he hates guns, used his elected position to beat on gun owners, and tried to hurt Pennsylvania sportsmen by hurting the PGC.
In great contrast to DePasquale, his opponent, Scott Perry, has been a complete champion for gun rights, AKA our Constitutional rights. He does not blame law-abiding citizens or manufacturers for other people’s criminal acts. And he has had a whole career in the private sector, including as a small business owner, prior to becoming a politician. I admire these two things about Scott Perry. Yes, yes, yes, I know, I know, I know, he also served in the military, as a chopper pilot, at a high rank.
I am one of those voters who only gets excited about a candidate’s military duty when it shows real gumption and leadership, and I guess Scott Perry has that. But it is his real-life business experience, his willingness to work hard, take risks, and make sacrifices that impresses me the most.
In contrast to Eugene DePasquale, whose biggest risks were wondering which pressed suit to wear to whatever fundraiser, and whether it was worth it to burn the Sportsmen enough to impress his gun-grabbing supporters to a degree that they would really, really write him bigger campaign checks.
In this election for Congress, it is not even close. It is Scott Perry who is the best candidate. That is who I am voting for. The other guy DQ’d himself a long time ago.
Malcom X on American Blacks who vote for the Democrat Party of slavery
Malcolm X was a complex man, a smart man, a conflicted man, an articulate and passionate man. One most admirable thing about him undeniably, he cared deeply for his fellow “negroes” and wanted them to have better lives and more rights. To that end, he excoriated them for reflexively voting for Democrat Party candidates.
Malcolm X called American Blacks who reflexively vote Democrat “chumps.” After all the Democrat Party is the party of slavery, secession, civil war, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Black violence, lynchings, and church burnings. And the Democrat Party is still all of these things today, every single one of them, and yet, unbelievably…American Blacks keep voting for more dependence upon welfare handouts, failure, and permanent underclass serving the bidding of white liberals in the Democrat Party.
Listen to this fifty-some-year-old three- minute speech by Malcolm X. Listen to his passion and ask yourself if he was wrong. Your own conscience will tell you he was right.
Dear American Blacks, what have you got to lose by voting for Donald Trump? Nothing. And I will say that the Republican Party has its warts, its failures, its corrupt members and problems, too, but in all, the GOP can’t hold a candle to the racist discrimination heaped by American white liberals upon poor American Blacks.
Malcolm X: Don’t vote for Democrats!
This election in one interview
If you want to know President Donald Trump like you have never seen him before, and if you want to know the news media like you see them every day but you did not realize just how evil and politically partisan they are, and if you want to know why anyone in America thinks anything negative about this incredible president we have, who should be at a 98% approval rating, then watch this interview with CBS political activist Leslie Stahl. Just watch it. Watch the whole thing.
Here is what I see here:
->President Trump is calm, in control, a perfect gentleman, and direct
->President Trump is incredibly smart and in control of the facts about an incredible array of policy issues that I myself could never master. And I have been doing public policy in one form or another my entire career. Trump has been doing it for less than four years…
->President Trump directly answers a nonstop litany of disruptive, petty and rude questions, about half of which have no bearing on anything of substance and meaning, but which are designed to personally harass and harangue the President of the United States.
->President Trump politely ends the interview when he is told Vice President Pence is about to enter the room, although his antagonist, Leslie Stahl, has about a hundred more ridiculous accusations she would like to throw at him.
->This is not a normal interview. Leslie Stahl does not ask “hard questions,” nor does she ever answer the hard questions that Trump poses to her. Rather, she makes mostly aggressive declarative statements, to which Trump must respond defensively, many of which and maybe all of which are factually untrue. Like her assertion that he is responsible for Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s own negative public standing (recall that Whitmer, whose cruel face and malevolent eyes make her look just like Cruella DeVille from the Disney classic 1001 Dalmations, has had an authoritarian shut-down of Michigan, except for her own husband, who gets to go sailing while the little people are not allowed to). She also constantly interrupts Trump. This behavior makes Stahl an unapologetic political activist, not a reporter.
->Leslie Stahl shows zero interest in the Biden corruption scandal that is unfolding by the hour. She shows zero interest in the biggest political scandal in American history, which is the Obama Administration SPYING on a political candidate, his campaign, and then his incoming administration, that being Trump. In case you did not know, it is incredibly, unbelievably, terribly, totally ILLEGAL to spy on Americans like this, and especially on political opponents. In sum, Leslie Stahl, like the rest of the mainstream media, is 100% in the camp of the other political party, and she is doing everything she can to coverup for them, protect them, and to attack their political opponent, President Donald J. Trump. CBS “News” is not a fair-minded arbiter of truth and accuracy, they are dishonest liars.
Let us call this recording an “engagement” between two opposing forces. What we see is one side that is trying to support, defend, and protect America, and the other side, CBS “News” and Leslie Stahl, trying to do everything they can to destroy America. This is not journalism, it is a political attack. And as President Trump points out repeatedly to Leslie Stahl, she would never and has never asked any questions like these of his predecessor, Barack Hussein Obama, nor of Joe Biden. We know this is true because we have never seen a recording of any kind of encounter like this in the history of our nation. No other president has been tested and abused and undermined like President Trump has.
And it is all because Leslie Stahl and her fellow political partisans want the power that Donald Trump has. They could not win it fair and square in 2016 and they are now trying to make sure that he does not win it again fair and square in 2020.
For those people who wonder about people like me, and why we are so devoted to President Trump, this recorded encounter shows you exactly why. Trump is honorable, good, smart, and direct. He is not evasive. The “news media” AKA the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, is not any of these things, but instead the opposite: Bad, dishonest, conniving, and acting in bad faith.
Tonight’s presidential debate between Trump and Biden, and “moderated” by a far-left political activist masquerading as a “news reporter,” is likely to end up being the same thing as this interview here. And it is precisely why so many Americans have artificially negative views of Donald Trump. The press/ news media are trying to destroy Trump so they can take his power and keep it for themselves, and no voter should ever allow that to happen.
If you love America, if you want America to succeed, to have a strong economy, to be safe and stable, then vote for Donald J. Trump on November 3rd. America has not had a president this good in generations.
This is a calm, articulate, intelligent man who loves America and refuses to put up with any BS
This is Leslie Stahl, a fake “reporter” and big hypocrite who harangued and criticized America’s president about wearing a mask, and yet she herself does not wear one. Stahl is a political activist and nothing more
MIchigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has rightfully earned the scorn and fear of people across the world. Her evil eyes …it is why she is called Cruella DeVille
MI guv Gretchen Whitmer — Yikes, scary lady!
Gretchen Whitmer must have sat for this updated version of Disney’s Cruella DeVille from 1001 Dalmations movie
Original Disney cartoon of Cruella DeVille from 1001 Dalmations movie…now why would anyone want to compare Cruella DeVille to Gretchen Whitmer? Not fair to Cruella!
Carpe diem
Carpe diem means “seize the day,” and while it may have been an especially well worn adage given from fathers to sons standing over large firewood piles that were not going to stack themselves, it became much more widely appreciated and used as a result of one of those now all too rare things – a meaningful Hollywood movie. Yeah, we have to go back to 1989.
In The Dead Poets Society, now deceased and yet still amazing actor Robin Williams plays the sort of inspirational high school teacher we all wish we had (and I did have several like Williams’ movie character, notably Master Spencer Gates, wrestling coach Master Tim Loose, wrestling coach Master Jay Farrow, and Teacher Agnes Hay). While reading and teaching both good and bad poetry with his adolescent students, with humor and also sincerity, Williams’ character leads them into deeper reflection about their growing self-awareness, hopes, dreams, etc. His teaching all culminates in one line, one forever-lesson that must never be let go of for fear of forgetting to stay focused on the best of life: Carpe diem.
In the movie, carpe diem becomes the watch word, the reminder, the quick phrase meant to sum up all the teaching and to remind young people not to live up to the old adage that ‘youth is wasted on the young’. To always do better, to strive for even better than that, and that by seizing the day and making the most of it, a person realizes her or his fullest potential in a life that is under the best of circumstances so very fleeting, and often is truly fleeting.
At his 102nd birthday, my grandfather Morris lamented “I don’t know where my life went!” Despite his long years, dying just two weeks shy of his 103rd birthday, his life had flown by on wings. And he was a guy who had truly lived every day to its fullest, by nearly every measure.
I mention Morris to give the reader some perspective on the true meaning of carpe diem…when you are blowing out the 102 cramped candles on your birthday cake, and you reflect on your long life, and you openly feel like it has flown by you, you had damned well better have made the most of it, in every way, or you have committed both a tragedy and a crime by wasting your God-given opportunities and potential.
This all came to me in recent weeks because of the “permanent retirement” of several people with whom I was close, one way or another. Their sudden and unexpected deaths stuck a sharp stick in my ribs, reminding me of carpe diem.
One of my friends is, or was, US Army Col. John “Jack” Francis Keith, who dropped dead in his foyer three weeks ago after walking the dog, at the tender age of 77. Jack was one of the most amazing and humble men I have known, not necessarily because of his fascinating career, but because of his “way.”
We met when Jack was hired to start up the brand new Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation, and he then came to me for help finding an office in which to set up shop. Naturally, I found him office space one floor below me at 105 North Front Street in Harrisburg, one of Dick Etzweiler’s amazing historic buildings. We immediately bonded and worked together on a variety of projects, as well as hunting together, socializing together, him always gently mentoring me (the poor sonofabitch was a hell of a kindly optimist).
In 2001, Jack got me to acquire my first custom longbow at the Eastern Traditional Archery Rendezvous. It was crafted by bowmaking legend Mike Fedora, the “modern grandfather of traditional bowmaking,” if any of that makes sense, and as it remains an extension of my very soul, I still hunt with it. While he was mostly silent about his Vietnam combat tour, Jack once briefly told me how he had earned a Silver Star for combat valor, among other medals: Their forward position being overrun, like the movie “We Were Soldiers,” the U.S. Army soldiers had backed themselves into a defensive circle around and amongst a copse of trees. Jack distinctly remembers pulling the cord that detonated a dozen mortars or small cannons leveled waist-high around their hastily thrown up perimeter in the dark, and then in the morning finding Vietnamese soldiers both on the ground and literally nailed up to the trees by the long steel flechettes (long nails or spikes made into arrows) blasted shotgun-like from the mortars. He described the various rifles brought into action by the Viet Cong also being pinned across the soldiers’ chests by the same swarm of steel mini-arrows, the carrier and gun frozen in mid-stride.
Like I said, Jack was a hell of a guy. I could go on and on about what he did, the outdoor adventures we had, and how his friendship improved my life. I know that other people also feel the same way about their friendship with Jack.
And other beloved people have also died, one as recently as in the past 24 hours. Joanna was not just a loving mother, daughter, and sister, in terms of career she had “made it to the big time.” Serving as a general counsel attorney at the US EPA, where I started my career oh so long ago, Joanna started feeling not so good just weeks ago. Now she is gone, in her mid sixties, and the people who loved her and who drew strength and deep pleasure from her company, including her own aged parents, are bereft.
If I could ask Joanna one thing, one reflection on the high value of our lives before she floated away, it would be “Should I carpe diem?”
I know what she and Jack would say in response: Do not take any day for granted, make the very most of every day and minute that you are given, gather ye rosebuds while ye may; you never know when it will end.
And so, as these positive, constructive, giving people leave us, as is the end for each and every one of us here, I keep thinking carpe diem. And you should too, I believe. Whatever your dream is, whatever your good and positive passion is or could be, perhaps subdued because of financial fears or some other challenge, carpe diem. Make it happen, make life happen to its fullest, before it is too late.
The kind of Vietnam-era US Army flechettes that shaped a young Jack Keith’s life as he moved forward
A full bag in 2004 (where oh where did that time go?). Me on the left, Jack Keith on the right, and Tim Schaeffer in the middle. If anyone could write a book on carpe diem, it is Tim, who got his PhD and JD simultaneously and now runs the PA Fish & Boat Commission
My wife says that Jack Keith was the most handsome man she ever met. Right on.
Jack in later years with wife Dottie
A remarkably young looking Robin Williams, back when he looked old and serious to my 20-something eyes. He is saying Carpe Diem like he means it.
Trump is Lincoln, and America is Beautiful
President Donald Trump is a lot like Abraham Lincoln, if not the lean rail splitter from the frontier, then the bigger-than-life deal maker from the planet’s economic heart, Manhattan.
Like Lincoln, Trump is president during a time of American civil war, secession, official lawlessness by yet again the Democrat Party, violence, great tumult and turmoil. Like Lincoln, Trump is unfairly vilified daily in the press, which is now an open arm of Trump’s political opponents. Like Lincoln, Trump’s own executive branch is filled with self-serving insubordinate bureaucrats, who routinely ignore the directives from their Commander in Chief and chief Executive, the president.
Like Lincoln, Trump’s ability to hold on to the presidency is what is keeping America together, politically, culturally, economically.
Like Lincoln, Trump sometimes says things that ordinary people don’t like. Lincoln was often plain spoken and occasionally ribald and told naughty jokes, while Trump talks smack and publicly says the equivalent of “mine is bigger than yours,” like football linemen squaring up against each other. Sometimes he says things that rankle people. His opponents say he lies, but Trump does not lie, he says he’s smarter, better looking, and nicer than his opponents, with a humorous twinkle in his eye.
Like Lincoln, Trump is surrounded on all sides by dangerous enemies who want absolute control of America, and who openly say they will do whatever steps are necessary to ensure that they never again lose power. That means the end of American freedom, and probably the beginning of an all-out civil war in those states where freedom and liberty still reign supreme.
President Trump has done more for American Blacks than any other president since Abraham Lincoln freed the ex-African slaves through his Emancipation Proclamation. Trump has been freeing American Blacks from the Democrat Party plantation for four years, and so many of them now see it personally, and they appreciate it. Under Trump’s leadership, Black Americans are finally getting the economic and financial freedom that the Democrat Party has deliberately blocked them from getting for sixty years. [And why, you ask, would anyone block Blacks from being successful? Because the Democrat Party model is to have lots of angry, poor people dependent upon the Democrat Party for handouts, so they deliberately keep Blacks in failed ghettos. Once poor people are economically and financially freed, they leave the Democrat Party]
Like Lincoln, Trump’s greatness will not be appreciated until after he has left office, and the American People have had a real good opportunity to closely see what he has done for Americans. Like Lincoln long before him, Trump has done a lot, lot, lot of policy and law that has turned American government back into an advocate for ordinary American citizens. This bothers the elites in both political parties, who would rather run America without having to share decision making with those pesky peasants (you and I).
In contrast, Joe Biden is openly owned by China. Deeply corrupt Joe Biden is China’s man in the US government. Biden cares more for Chinese workers than American workers, and the only reason he still has a chance of winning this election is that he has millions of people who habitually vote for anyone with a “D” after their name, and because he has the national media running his campaign.
Lincoln once remarked that if you wanted a friend in Washington, DC, then “get a dog.”
And speaking of things Abraham Lincoln and total dogs, check out this wacky mailer a friend of mine received from the mis-named “Lincoln Project” below. For those readers who do not know what the Lincoln Project is, it is a small group of very liberal inside-DC establishment Republicans working with the Biden campaign to defeat Trump in this election. This group of howling, confused malcontents is pretending to represent the party of Lincoln, when in fact they are part-and-parcel of the Democrat Party of Slavery. It’s just that today’s Democrat Party wants to enslave us to them and to their big all-knowing all-controlling government. The irony of this untrue mailer is that it is the complete opposite of what is happening on the ground in America, where hundreds of Trump supporters have been assaulted, and some murdered, by Democrat Party members.
America is still a beautiful place, even if we are going through some difficult times right now. It is by far the best place to live in the whole world, and America’s freedoms are worth fighting for. Hopefully, you are in this fight, donating to the Trump campaign at least.
America is not a “democracy,” it is a republic. Huge difference. You would think the Lincoln Project is hiring people knowledgeable about history and America’s form of government. And it is not “far right militiamen” who are hurting people, it is Antifa, BLM, and violent Democrat Party members who are protected by big city mayors. Fake fake fake!
Illegal billions: Big tech & national media’s undeclared in-kind political donations
For twelve years at least, billions of dollars worth of undeclared in-kind political contributions to just one political party have been made by the Big Tech companies and our national media.
Owners and staff at Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and all of the national media (NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, PBS, MSNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the Patriot News and Capital Star here in Harrisburg, etc.) have gone out of their way to treat one group of people one way, and another group of people a totally different way.
Big Tech and the media go so far as to report only good things, even fake good things, and not report the negative things, about one group. Yet Big Tech and the media only report negative things, especially fake negative things, about the other group, and never report the good things. This artificial treatment of the two groups has had a hugely disproportionate effect on the flow of information to American voters, and, therefore, a hugely disproportionate effect on election outcomes.
Who are the two groups who receive such different treatment at the hands of Big Tech and the national media?
Why, they are Democrats/ liberals/ anarchists/ socialists on the one hand, the favored fair-haired child, and then Republicans/ conservatives/ patriots/ constitutionalists on the other hand, the hated red-headed stepchild. Because the treatments these groups receive are so totally over the top different from one another, you could almost swear that Big Tech and the national media are owned and run only by Democrats and liberals, to the point where they are acting like they are part-and-parcel of Democrat political campaigns.
Today, the Republican National Committee FINALLY filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission about Twitter’s obviously one-sided effort to suppress damning information and news articles about the Biden Crime Family. I say finally, because this issue has been out there in the wide open for many years, and the GOPe never acted on it. It is hard to believe that it took this long for someone to file a complaint, when for years people like me, and much higher profile than I, have documented the unfair one-sided treatment conservatives and Republicans have received from Big Tech and the national media. For my own part, posts on the Josh First Facebook page were mostly shadow banned, and my paid political campaign ads had dubious reach, which appeared to be fraud by Facebook. They took my money, and then launched weak ad campaigns into which I had limited views. Facebook has been doing the same thing to the Donald Trump campaign, too, by the way. Activist Laura Loomer, now a candidate for Congress, has been completely de-platformed from all of these services, without any explanation why. But her political opponent, communista yehudia Lois Frankel, enjoys all the benefits of Facebook etc
It is just not fair. And it is not legal.
All of these one-sided activities by Big Tech and the national media amount to an enormous undeclared political campaign contribution effort that by the simple reading of the statute is blatantly illegal.
During the Obama administration, conservative political activist Dinesh D’Souza was sent to prison for a long time for giving someone money to make political contributions with. About twenty thousand bucks total, if I recall right. Here we have Big Tech and the national media donating billions of dollars worth of free political advertising and political information suppression to the Democrat Party, without ever disclosing it. If D’Souza went to jail for a couple years, then how many decades in jail do Facebook’s Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Dorsey, Google’s Brin, and so on for the many other Big Tech owners and content managers, now face?
All of the Big Tech and national media owners and managers deserve to pay huge fines and go to jail for long times.
I have written about this before, and it is worth it to write about it again. That is because America’s election rules and laws are supposed to apply to everyone equally. No one person or group in America is supposed to receive special treatment, the way Democrats and liberal socialist anarchists do when it comes to our election laws and campaign contributions. That kind of special treatment up-ends the rule of law on which America is based. One rule is supposed to apply to us all equally.
So, if Hillary Clinton is finally going to face the music for her wild crime spree, then the Big Tech and national media activists and political donors, should too.
Lock them all up. They earned it all.
“Ridgie” no more
In 1998 I joined the Governor Tom Ridge administration in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, fresh off of a solid seven years of DC Swamp. Coming from the Washington, DC, federal bureaucracy, I was considered a professional insider and policy whiz. My own view was that I was a refugee from the anti-citizen, anti-taxpayer, anti-America administrative state that was so crazily overboard that I could no longer work inside of it. My job in the Ridge Administration was as Director of Education & Information on the executive staff at the PA Department of Conservation & Natural Resources (DCNR).
The state civil service bureaucrats in Harrisburg had a name for people like me. We were called “Ridgies,” because we were so dedicated to the unique Tom Ridge way of doing things. And what was that unique way of doing things? What was it about being dedicated to Governor Ridge that earned us this almost mocking sobriquet?
In a word, Ridge was honest. He brought a refreshing honesty and down-home common sense to running government that had not been seen in decades. So different and refreshing was this bright light being shone on The People’s business, that it left those of us who were implementing it with almost Moses-like beams of light emanating from our faces. You could say we were bright eyed and bushy tailed, excited to do our work. We humored the staid bureaucrats, but we meant it and we persevered.
I was proud to be a Ridgie, because Tom Ridge represented almost everything that was good and necessary in government doing the taxpayer’s work.
Fast forward 25 years and holy moley, what has happened…. Governor Tom Ridge has endorsed senile, corrupt, pedophile, racist failed liberal career politician Joe Biden over President Donald Trump. Trump being the Tom Ridge of today, Biden being everything that everyone hates about corrupt career politicians.
All that Ridge’s bizarre endorsement did for me was make me realize that unlike when he was governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge now values the permanent and unaccountable administrative state over the interests of the citizenry. When Ridge was governor, he confronted Pennsylvania’s hide-bound bureaucracies and forced them to serve The People, the forgotten taxpayers who underwrite all of government. Now, Ridge is on the side of that administrative state, a complete 180 degree flip from where he was.
What can account for this change of philosophy? Probably that Ridge Global, Ridge’s lobbying and consulting firm, is so closely tied to that same big government administrative state. He certainly is not advocating for good policy, because President Trump is implementing everything that Ridge used to say that he believed in, and here Ridge is opposing it.
I feel badly that such a good man as Ridge has been flipped by filthy lucre. It is painful to see someone whose good citizen name inspired us, his staff, to be proud “Ridgies,” to now renounce and stand against all he once stood for. The person in whom I put my trust to implement citizenry-saving policies is now an open and proud tool for anti-America forces and activists.
Contrary to what Ridge claimed in his Atlantic article earlier this year, he is definitely not a conservative. Because his policy views are very liberal. And based on the things he routinely says in public, and his consistent support for an obviously corrupt Joe Biden, Ridge can in no way claim to be a Republican any longer. Yet he is using his claim as a “conservative Republican” to advance anti-conservative, anti-Republican ideas and people. This is not honest behavior.
Sadly, Ridge is just as much a part of the fake news as all the other fake news people. In turn, I must now say that I am no longer a “Ridgie.”
Unlike Governor Tom Ridge, I remain on the side of The People. I am still, however, a Trumpie, loud and proud.
USA! USA! USA!
TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP!