Archive → May, 2025
Anatomy of a primary election
On May 20th, Pennsylvania held its primary election. Mostly local seats and judgeships were on the ballot, which are definitely important, but the real prizes were the PA Commonwealth Court and the PA Superior Court. As has come to be usual here and in many other states, the conservative/ independent-minded grass roots fielded their candidates and the state Republican Party fielded its candidates.
And as usual, the PA Republican Party was directly involved in the selection of the primary election candidates, their endorsements, their negative attacks, funding, etc. When a political party gets in between The People and their choice of candidate, the party always loses in the long run. When The People believe the party does not share their views or values, and is only pursuing the selection of certain candidates who will be malleable and loyal to the party, then The People lose faith in the party.
Here in PA there is real animosity between grass roots conservatives and the PA GOP establishment.
This election we had grass roots candidate Maria Battista vs. PAGOP candidate political establishment-endorsed Ann Marie Wheatcraft for Superior Court judge. Battista had run before as the GOP endorsed candidate, and had lost to the grass roots candidate. This time around, for whatever reason, she was on the outs with the PAGOP and on the in with the grass roots groups, like Lycoming Patriots. Wheatcraft had the PAGOP endorsement and money.
For the Commonwealth Court we had well known Second Amendment attorney Josh Prince vs. unknown state bureaucrat attorney Matt Wolford. Bureaucrat Wolford was mysteriously endorsed by the PAGOP, even though he has worked most of his career at the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, an agency that no matter which incarnation it embodies, and regardless of which political party is running it, nonetheless is associated with heavy-handed regulations and lawless bureaucrats who routinely beat up on private landowners and businesses. Not exactly a likely place to give birth to a solid Republican candidate for any office, much less a judgeship.
The long and short of these two races is that Battista the outsider defeated Wheatcraft the moneyed insider, and Wolford the party endorsed yet unknown bureaucrat and mystery “Republican” defeated grass roots favorite Prince. Moreover, Prince was endorsed by numerous organizations, like Gun Owners of America, Firearms Owners Against Crime, etc.
These are strange results.
Normally voters align with outsiders or insiders, but not with one candidate here and not that one over there. And yet that is what happened in this election. Normally, big endorsements gain big traction for candidates, but we saw no evidence of that in the Prince vs Wolford race. Despite his many big endorsements, Prince was utterly crushed even in very conservative rural counties, like Lycoming and Elk, where he was known, liked, and should have won handily. And yet, in these same counties, Battista blew off Wheatcraft’s doors.
Aside from a crooked vote tallying scheme, I have no explanation for this odd outcome that defies all odds and conventional thinking. Except for one possible variable that tends to get overlooked these days, and that is ballot position. That is, where does the candidate’s name fall on the ballot – top, middle, or last.
Studies have shown that ballot position does matter, or it can matter, but much less so when voters feel compelled to look up candidates on the internet. With its easy information access, the internet has been the great leveler of campaigns everywhere. Big campaign money cannot always defend a candidate’s bad record, which will be all over the internet, visible to the voters who but follow a few clicks on a search engine.
Battista had top and Prince had bottom on their respective ballots. Meaning that the 3/4-4/4 super voters who make up the primary election electorate, were unsure of who to vote for and simply and superficially chose the first name they saw for each position. That could explain the opposite results we got for both candidates, Battista and Prince.
As we see here, the voters have to want to know something about the people they are voting for in order to defeat the ballot position factor, as well as overcome often superficial campaign advertising. And so we learned a hard lesson here: The vaunted and lauded super voters did not necessarily do super research into the candidates. They apparently did not bother to look up the candidates before walking into the voting booth. They simply saw a name at the top and made their choice.
And that is the gory anatomy of Pennsylvania’s 2025 primary election, God help us all.
Does ballot position really determine who a lot of primary election super voters choose? From this election, it would seem so.
Elk County is a very conservative rural place where DEP bureaucrats are hated like poison ivy. The 2025 results there make no sense, unless ballot position is the primary factor.
Doesn’t it seem mean spirited to not even mention candidate Josh Prince? Doesn’t it further alienate his supporters? What is that all about?
I have never seen election results like this. If conservative rural Lycoming County super voters feel so strongly about conservative candidate Battista, they for sure would have felt just as strongly about conservative candidate Prince. And yet…the results seem to prove that ballot position is the most important determinant
Dauphin County
Dauphin County
Memorial Day thank you
Thank you to the Armed Services personnel living and passed who have risked and sacrificed for all of us free American citizens today.
Isn’t it strange that there are so many heroic acts of bravery and valor on the battlefield, and yet almost none found in politics?
South Africa 2025 > racism than South Africa 1985
The South Africa of 2025 is a far more racist, more violent, more evil place than the South Africa of 1985. The Apartheid of South Africa 2025 is much greater, much worse, than the South Africa Apartheid of 1985. The South Africa that we see today is a failed state, a leper among nations, and I do not suggest that I know how it can get better. My role is to simply call it what it is: Racist evil.
Like all inveterate racists, today’s South African “leaders” have to want to get better, they have to want to repent, and they have to actually make substantive policy changes, before they are actually better people with a more representative democratic government. Right now, President Ramaphosa and his many associates are only in the early stage of being confronted about their evil racism, and they are trying to put up a fight. Not that Ramaphosa et al are in denial about their racism, no, they are simply telling us all to talk about something else. At least their racist White predecessors acknowledged their own racism. These current people are just bad liars.
Very well do I recall watching the Super 8 camera footage and nascent video footage of uniformed South African police (of all skin colors) beating black South Africans with rubber truncheons in 1985. My dad and I were watching the evening news on television, and the violent images were highly disturbing. Peaceful, non-violent protestors were being beaten badly, sent to the hospital, so that a racist and race-based government in Praetoria could maintain control. It was awful, about as a bad as any government could be. It motivated me to participate in the construction of our own student “shanty town” in front of Old Main at Penn State, and to hold many demonstrations there.
Those violent images did not stop until several years later, when the Whites-only South African regime stepped down and turned political power over to everyone else who lived in South Africa – black, brown, Asian Indian, Muslim, Hindu, white, Christian, etc. You name it, the entire ethnic and religious melting pot that the original South Africa had attracted to live there from across Africa and Europe and Asia since its founding in the early 1700s.
But then new South African images began to enter the nightly TV news: Black South Africans burning each other alive with gasoline and car tires. Butchering one another with machetes. Dragging one another behind vehicles until only a bundle of bloody rags with some bones and tattered meat remained at the end of the rope. Entire shanty towns burned, with poor mothers and children running pell-mell to escape. Such is the cost of political turmoil, one supposes. Perhaps when democracy and self-rule emerges from this turmoil, everyone involved will step back and call it quits.
Nope.
South Africa may have given up the original Apartheid of roughly 1947-1987, but it has only exchanged it for an Apartheid of Black-on-Brown and Black-on-White oppression. Racial oppression is evil, regardless of who is doing it, and the current South African leaders are a bunch of evil racist bastards, who use butchery, rape, and torture to hold on to political power. Don’t try to explain this away. Evil is evil, racism is racism, oppression is oppression, regardless of who is doing it.
And I think one of the lessons we have learned about the current Apartheid South Africa is that they will tell everyone that their oppression and racism is not oppression and racism. That the images of whites being beaten to death on their farms (which I have seen and will not re-post here), and white women being gang raped (which the perpetrators enjoy filming because they are not held accountable, and they are in fact encouraged by President Ramaphosa) before being be-headed, are not violence.
Today President Trump hosted President Ramaphosa at the White House. Ramaphosa wanted to talk about trade and getting more free money from hard working White American taxpayers, but Trump forced him to sit through about five minutes of horrible video showing Black-on-White political activity and hate speech from South Africa, including white-owned farms being gleefully ransacked by racist assholes. Trump also had some White refugees from South Africa talk about being ethnically cleansed from the land their families had called home for over 300 years. Three hundred years anywhere makes you a native.
And yes, let’s talk about human migration a bit, because that seems to be at the heart of all this Apartheid-reverse-Apartheid stuff going on. Fact is, humans migrate across this planet. They all do.
Asians especially have migrated a lot to then-empty lands, occupied them, called them home. Blacks have migrated to Europe in huge masses, seeking economic opportunity unavailable in their home sh*thole countries run into the ground by racist people like Ramaphosa. Whites have migrated out of Europe, Arabs and Asians have violently migrated into Europe over the past thousand years (Ghengis Khan, the Ottoman Turks, the Muslim Arabs).
There has been a non-stop human migration around the planet, but when white Europeans do it, it is oddly decried as Colonialism. Even when the white Europeans founded incrediblly developed, wealthy nations like South Africa, which in turn attracted even more human migration, because of the unprecedented opportunity in the region, and which formed the basis for the modern day Apartheid South Africa that is now run by people like Ramaphosa, corruptly lapping up the last dregs of civilized development and wealth that remain, and creating none to replace what is taken.
Yes, white refugees from South Africa are a reality that breaks the racist narrative that only White people can be racist. Fact is, everyone can be racist – Blacks, Browns, Whites, Yellows, Reds, and all shades in between. Everyone of all skin colors can hog power, and use it unjustly. We are seeing these simple truths with Hamas and Hizb’alla, with the race-mocking Ramaphosa, and with the poorly mis-named International Court of Injustice and Official Discrimination that has sought to finish what master racist Adolph Hitler tried against the Jews.
Only here in America, it appears, do we have an opportunity to create a non-racial society, a racially blind society, where the quality of your character is the sole basis for judgment and measure. I am proud of President Trump for starting a conversation about racism that is looooooong overdue. The fact that the South Africa of 2025 is much worse than the South Africa of 1985 – more racist, more Apartheid-y, more cruel and violent, shows how much work needs to be done. Ramaphosa is a useful foil.
I am looking forward to the honest discussion about it, and in the meantime to helping the refugees from today’s racist South African Apartheid.
Shameless Fake News New York Times created the alternative media that replaced it
The Blaze posts facts that are inconvenient to liars like the New York Times
Vote for Josh Prince on Tuesday
This coming Tuesday is Primary Election Day 2025 here in Pennsylvania, and if there is one person you vote for, it should be Josh Prince, candidate for Commonwealth Court.
Josh has an incredible career as an attorney. Remarkable for someone his age. He has amassed a lot of wins in court by dint of his hard work and intelligence. I know from my own personal experience as a co-client of his, here in Harrisburg, where he successfully represented FOAC, me, and another person, in challenging Harrisburg City’s illegal anti-gun ordinances.
This is why Josh Prince has been endorsed by so many state-wide and national organizations, like FOAC and Gun Owners of America.
Josh’s opponent is the exact opposite of Josh: Matt Wolford is a dreary, inexperienced state government attorney, from an agency known for beating up on innocent people, and who has an interesting criminal history of his own.
Yes, the PAGOP selected Matt Wolford and endorsed him, despite the fact that he is far less qualified than Josh Prince. This strange choice is par for the course and SOP for the PAGOP, which always always endorses weak candidates who then go on to almost always lose in the general election. Probably because the PAGOP wants weak people they can control, instead of strong independent-minded people like Josh Prince.
The PAGOP always prefers to lose elections to Democrats than to have independent-minded conservatives win.
But you, the Pennsylvania voter, do not have to follow the PAGOP. You have agency, your own ability to act on your own, to act in your own best interest, to see your own ideas and values through at the voting booth. If you want the best possible person to be elected to the Commonwealth Court, then vote for Josh Prince on Tuesday.
Also, vote NO on all PA supreme court retentions later this year. Send a strong message. Tell the Uniparty political establishment that you, We, The People, want qualified citizens sitting in judgment of us and our claims. Not spineless political hacks picked from the bottom of the barrel.
You can learn more about Josh Prince at https://www.princeforjustice.com/.
Trump storms the Middle East
Awful lot of hand-wringing and anxiety over President Trump’s un-orthodox approach to the Middle East this week. Understandably. A lot is at risk if the president fails, and he is jumping head-first into a region that is already steeped in failure.
From the Sunna-Shia conflict that most recently showed up in Syria, where Sunni jihadists massacred thousands of Alawite (Shi’ite/Shia) men, women, and children, to the perilous position of all minorities (Jews, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Coptic Christians) in a now overwhelmingly violent Islamic area, it just seems like the Middle East is a gigantic minefield where no matter where a person steps, the likelihood is high that an explosion will follow.
Into this minefield runs head-first our president, Donald Trump. His approach is probably completely different than anything done before by the West. It appears that Trump is forcefully grabbing everyone there into one gigantic bear hug, full of economic prosperity and political legitimacy. So long as they all participate on his terms.
Judging by the openly amazed smiles of the Saudi, Qatari, and Syrian leaders, as they stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, they are indeed surprised and also willing to be hugged. It remains to be seen if they truly understand what Trump wants from them, or if they think they can outwit him and get what they want, without having to give.
Yes, there is real risk with Trump’s approach, but if nothing is risked, nothing is gained. Qatar is funding a great deal of the pro-terrorism unrest on American college campuses right now, as Qatar has also been the source of most Sunni-oriented terrorism around the planet. Home to Islamic propaganda outlet Al-Jazeera and Hamas leaders living in luxury, Qatar has never been a huge friend of the West, but rather an antagonist who has used the West’s openness against it. So, accepting an airplane from Qatar to serve as a government-owned makeshift Air Force One, as Trump has done, and standing with the emir of Qatar as chums, has blurry optics, let alone the probability the plane is loaded with Chinese spying devices that will undermine American security.
But…what if Qatar can be turned from its evil ways? Huuuuge win for world peace!
And Trump trusts American security personnel to sweep the Qatari Trojan Horse gift plane for spy devices, of course, and any that are found will probably be held quietly in reserve, in the event that Trump needs to reverse course with Qatar. Which is a real possibility, as Trump’s tariff negotiations have revealed: Today you are in like flint, tomorrow you are out in the cold, but the following day you are allowed back in the house because you did the right thing. Thus far, Trump has masterfully played tariff and international trade policy like a maestro conducting a symphony orchestra.
Let’s hope Trump can do the same magic in the Middle East, because recognizing as legitimate the bloodthirsty, murderous jihadis in Syria (who most recently axe murdered a bunch of Druze), and negotiating a doomed-from-the-start nuclear deal with ever-lying Iran, carries enormous risk, as does having all kinds of separate American relationships with the Saudis et al that do not include Israel. If Israel sees Iran gearing up for nuclear blackmail or all-out war, then Israel will have no choice but to strike hard.
So, it appears that suddenly Israel is the wild card here, not the evil nuke-happy Iran or jihadist Syria or terrorism-enabling Qatar. And yet, everyone knows Trump is already in like flint with Israel….
What a strange pattern we have here, as President Trump weaves a creative new web to capture and finally hold stable the most difficult and unstable region on the planet. Let’s hope he is successful, and that a Pax Trumpica can finally happen.
John Fetterman, canary in a coal mine
If a healthy body politic is measured by the amount of middle-ground, America is in trouble. If the health of the body politic is assessed by polarization, America is in trouble. If the body politic’s veins are full of founding principles, great, and of the veins are full of foreign bodies and alien ideas, then the very bloodstream is being poisoned and is not healthy. A poisoned blood stream means the body has not long to live.
It might be popular in the Democrat Party’s mainstream media to accuse Republicans of being racist, or extreme, but the fact is that the GOP is filled to the brim with mealy mouthed “moderates” incapable of taking a policy stand of any sort or substance. Note how US Attorney nominee for Washington DC, Ed Martin, was blocked by old guard RINO Sen. Tom Tillis and at least a half dozen other similar minded Republican senators hiding in the shadows.
And it is the Democrat Party that is increasingly radical, extreme, anti-America, and unwilling to brook any kind of moderation in its own ranks. Note how US Senator John Fetterman is now hostilely surrounded by his own party, the constellation of far-Left Marxist interest groups, and their media apparatus, for the simple crime of being too moderate.
And John Fetterman is no moderate! He has simply broken with far-left woke orthodoxy on American jobs, border security, and supporting key American ally, Israel.
This slight amount of independent thinking alone has made him unacceptable to the Democrat Party…then again, RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard were also almost destroyed by a Democrat Party enraged that any of theirs could possibly find ways to work with the other side. His own party is trying to drive him from office with fake MSM reports about him.
All the time I get these ridiculous emails from the Pennsylvania Democrats decrying “extremism,” and yet it is they who are openly extreme. I have no idea how anyone normal supports the Democrat Party today, because their actions and words left all normalcy behind a very long time ago.
Way back when I was a Democrat, over three decades ago, it was a JFK political party that loved America and Americans. I will also say that the NRA member pro-gun and pro-Life Central Pennsylvania Democrat Josh was more conservative than at least half of the elected Republican Party today. This is how far far far Left the Democrat Party has moved.
Who would have guessed it, but Senator John Fetterman is now the main canary in the American coal mine. His political health is the indicator of how healthy and safe America is overall, how politically balanced we are.
If John Fetterman is driven from office, then the only moderation will be on the political “right,” and it will exist only because corrupt spineless jellyfish career GOPe officials like Tom Tillis are too afraid to take quintessential stands on policy based on First Principles (Constitutional principles from our nation’s Founding in 1776 and 1787-1789). And yet they will fight for re-election like their lives depend upon it, because they are making sooooo much money on insider trading.
Senator John Fetterman, you have this Republican’s admiration, and hope for your physical and political health. Hang in there, buddy. We are all watching your senate tenure as a vital sign of life of America.
UPDATE 5/13/25: Senator Fetterman has friends in unexpected places
Says who, the zero credibility far-Left AP? The far-Left teacher’s unions? Sure appears to be a set-up to get a fake negative headline on Fetterman
New York Magazine is another stalwart far-Left Democrat Party machine outlet. Like a sewer outlet.
Sy Snyder is a devoted Democrat Party 360-degree all-things Pennsylvania Democrat “daily pulse” email that also contains the usual left wing marching orders. PennLive is a super partisan pro-Democrat Party political activism organization posing as a “media” outlet. Ha ha.
Don’t leave your records in the sun and other solid life tips
John Hartford played every instrument I could imagine – fiddle, guitar, banjo, harmonica, spoons, sticks, rocks, fence posts, and he played them all well. He was a 20th century artist from the days of the American frontier, or maybe the 1850s traveling circuses, with his crumpled top hat and tatty clothing. Only occasionally obliquely bawdy, most of his songs were silly and clean fun, done in the folk music style that every American enjoys on a sweaty summer day. Summer time is the time to forget all of your anxieties and frustrations, and let traveling entertainers like John Hartford make you laugh with gusto.
Golly, we are just about in summer time, aren’t we? Time for the Artists’ Fair (or is it the Artisans’ Fairies?) in State College, with non-fraudulent all natural ice cream from PSU’s The Creamery. Hot and sweaty guaranteed in the heart of summer. Time to start planning your summer trips, if you have not already done so. And if you find hotels full or too expensive, there is always the local county fair to fall back on, or The Grange Fair in Centre Hall.
Ahhhh, the Grange Fair in Centre Hall, a family staple of ours….My sister puked on one of those big spinny roundy roundy pill-shaped rides that make me sick just to watch, and her vomit hit everyone locked in the cage with her, as well as the many innocent bystanders running for cover. I have not been back to the Grange Fair since that Great Vomit Assassination On The Grassy Knoll in 1977. But I hear the fair is still great. John Hartford could have written a funny song about that vomit event.
Anyhow, John Hartford performed many silly songs, including my favorite, Don’t Leave Your Records in the Sun. For you young people, a record is a round shiny object we used to listen to for entertainment. Now I think you can find videos online of people eating them for entertainment. But they did make pleasing sounds, including music, and if played slowly backwards you might hear Satan’s voice saying something almost on the tip of your tongue. They sure were a lot more entertaining than the chip embedded in your skull these days. And if you left them in the sun, as John Hartford warned us not to do, they would in fact get warped, and they would skip and repeat and make all kinds of annoying sounds.
I have recently learned another piece of useful folk wisdom that John Hartford should have sung about: Don’t leave your butternut squash anywhere you don’t want them to die and make a mess. Because when a butternut squash dies, it takes the surrounding environment with it.
Some of my prized butternut squash (I grow them in my summer garden and eat them all year long; the Princess of Patience savors the seeds roasted with salt) were stored up high on a pine board shelf in a cold guest bedroom hardly used during the winter. I put them there in January, thinking I would pull one down as needed, but last week, when I went to get one, all I found were these horrible science experiments gone wrong. I think the best thing is to keep your prized squashes on a metal rack in the basement for maybe a month or two at longest, after they are picked in late October. Then you have to skin them and cut them up and freeze them in plastic bags.
Or if you have a warped sense of humor, you can deliberately let your butternut squashes die badly, and make a Rumble video about it. Maybe a video of some circus geek eating these dead squashes with a side of crushed record. You would probably get a million hits and become a famous influencer.
Dear John Hartford, we miss you. I saw him at his last performance in State College, when he was in the throes of cancer. I heard he wanted to write a silly song about that, too. Don’t do that, is my advice.
Don’t leave your records in the sun or your butternut squash on a board, shelf, or really anywhere
Kinda proud to say “I made that!”
No, you cannot even make a tea from this horror. Throw it away