Category → Fruit of Contemplation
Whoopsie Goldberg
Thank you so much, Whoopie Goldberg!
If there is one thing every human being around Planet Earth enjoys, it is getting a front row seat to watch an arrogant, destructive, formerly untouchable person who has hurt a lot of people finally get their comeuppance and suffer the consequences of what they themselves have dished out. And that is the true happiness that dingbat Hollywood figurine Whoopie Goldberg is bringing to us all – she is finally reaping the rewards of the many hurtful things she has said and sown for a long time.
What did Whoopie Goldberg do, to bring us all this enjoyment? Well, basically she made a whoopsie! She, of the culturally misappropriated Jewish name Goldberg, spoke her mind in public in such a way that even her best friends and advocates could not stand by her and defend her.
For one thing, Whoopsie Goldberg said that Adolf Hitler and his murderous gang of thieves, burglars, con men, and sadists were not really racist, because they were only targeting Jews. Only a true believer neo-Nazi or someone from Hollywood can come up with a line this dumb, because if anyone in the history of humanity defined racist, it was Adolf Hitler.
I know, I know, people like Whoopie throw around the word racist a lot, and someone like Whoopie Goldberg probably falsely accuses a zillion innocent people of being racist every week, so that the word loses its meaning to her and everyone else. And when the word loses its meaning, why Whoopsie Goldberg just can’t recall what it means any more. She only knows that she must say it…against just one group of people…which makes her…racist.
Which brings us to a second absurdity that got Whoopsie in trouble. I watched her on the Colbert Show flippantly call “white people” “all you.” As if all of us “white” people all look the same to her, are the same, or something like this, because to her our skin looks white. And you know, all White people are the same. Helloooooo Whoopie…this is racist crap, honey.
And then, the third thing: Whoopie said that only “white” people can be racist. She said it so casually, so disdainfully, that even that audience sat dumbfounded and silent in full recognition that Whoopie Goldberg is a flaming, raging, proud, unrepentant racist.
For the record, as wrong as it is, racism is nonetheless experienced around the world. Everyone does it. People of all colors and ethnicities disdain, mock, and hate one another for differences in skin color, skin tone, facial structure, and even ethnological linguistic differences. The Japanese remain some of the most unrepentant and brazenly racist people you can meet, and while I don’t agree with them on that score, I am in good company still driving their awesome vehicles. And while you are over in Asia noting Japanese racism, make sure to take note of the Han Chinese racial superiority over all other humans.
The Han Chinese number roughly a billion people, believe they are superior to everyone else, and while they are no minority, it is supposedly “racist” for Westerners to criticize the Han imperial expansion across the globe. Take note of how the Han Chinese ethnic group built a railroad train into the heart of Tibet in order to dilute and stamp out the supposedly racially inferior native Tibetans.
Skip over to Africa and you will see roughly 800 different ethnic and linguistic groups across the continent. And while many of them may appear similar to the outside eye, they maintain a serious racial pecking order amongst themselves. Witness the 1990s Rwanda genocide between the Hutus and Tutsis. One group was believed by the other to be too White looking, and therefore worthy of mass murder. And so rivers throughout Rwanda flowed for months with unending streams of butchered human bodies. Now that was racism.
End up as a lost Caucasian in the ‘Hood in America, and you are likely to at the very least get a good earful of racist taunts and nasty looks. Yup, Whoopie, even Blacks can be blatant racists. Racism, real racism, undermines everything “everyone is equal” that America is about.
Racism is everywhere today, just as it always has been, but people like Whoopie Goldberg and her ridiculous show The View have made a healthy living calling everyone who is not a racist leftist a racist, and then trying to blacklist and cancel the poor innocents out of existence, while they themselves (Whoopsie’s leftists) are extremely racist.
It warms my heart to see Whoopie earn a hearty dose of cancel culture herself. The difference is that unlike her many innocent victims over the years, she really is a racist, and she really did deserve to be canceled.
Thank you for this ingenious but incorrect insight, Whoopsie, you racist
What is hunting?
With hunting seasons drawing to a close here in Pennsylvania, it is worth the time to revisit an old question, which is What is hunting?
We ask because, without question, non-hunters overwhelmingly support hunting that is fair chase and purposeful. That is, hunters who are seen by the public to be respectful of our prey are recognized as a positive force, and worthy of continuing their pastime.
Every scientific opinion survey asking Americans their opinion about this subject for the past several decades has yielded the same result: Hunters who actually hunt get respect and support from non-hunters. On the other hand, people who are perceived by the general public to be casually killing animals just for pleasure or for “trophies” usually do not garner much support.
While there is a lot for us to talk about with even just the survey question itself, like how America has become so urbanized and thus our people so distant from the natural resources and processes that feed and clothe us and wipe our butts (toilet paper from trees harvested in forests) etc, this particular question, and its answer, is most important because hunters are a minority of a minority in America.
Positive public opinion about hunters and hunting is necessary to the continuation of regulated hunting as we know it and as it has been practiced for the past 100 years.
Given that American hunters are lamentably awash in a sea of soulless plastic and stainless steel rifles these days, whereupon the Hubble Telescope-equivalent scope is mounted, many owners of these contraptions are regularly and quite naturally tempted to attempt military-grade long distance sniper assassinations of far-off big game animals.
Though fleet of foot, strong of heart, and equipped with majestically sensitive noses, ears, and eyes, these animals cannot compete with humans who are so far removed from the natural zone of awareness these animals’ senses otherwise provide them. This begs the question of whether or not long-long-distance shots at these clueless animals are actual fair chase hunting, or are they incautious and disrespectful maltreatment of animals we otherwise admire.
Honestly, this stark question brings to my mind the images of charismatic megafauna hand-painted on cave walls by our spear-wielding ancestors: Rhinos, gigantic cave bears, massive aurochs, lions, zebras and wild horses, bison, etc. dangerous animals all, taken at great personal risk and at bad breath distance, contrasted with today’s ego-driven high-fence “trophies” mounted on manicured man cave walls around America, animals snuffed out without a chance at fight or flight. The cave paintings were the Sistine Chapel experience for paleolithic humans, and today’s manicured egocentric faux trophy rooms are very sorry substitutes. Authentic versus fake, they couldn’t be more different from one another.
So, a bear or deer taken with a bow, a crossbow, a spear, an atlatl, a blowgun, a shotgun, a flintlock or percussion muzzleloader, or a modern muzzleloader or rifle with open sights seems like a pretty natural example of fair chase. The 400-yard Hubble Telescope plus “500 Magnum Killem” caliber assassination of the unknowing and unsuspecting beast is just that, an assassination. Is there anything fair or chase about it?
Just as political America now requires a return to our simple and beautiful founding principles, so will our hunters benefit from returning to mastering the basics of early American woodcraft, the ability to sneakily slither and glide into the wind across a landscape to get within the animal’s sensory zone and make an honest and competitive kill. This kind of field craft is the essence of fair chase.
Artificial reliance by hunters on high tech is embarrassing, to tell you the truth of how I feel. Repent and return to the basics, brothers and sisters! Our fellow Americans who do not hunt will not only support us, they will admire us, and as a result of their admiration our outdoor lifestyle will have a much greater chance of surviving beyond the high tech culture that is otherwise crushing everything natural and alive in its unwholesome path.
Wild animals have understandably inspired humans since our beginning
Hanging this stag’s magnificent rack on your lodge wall would be earned with the bow and arrow
An honest kill. This is hunting
Steve Bannon: Good, bad, or ugly?
Steve Bannon has been a hero to so many of us in the conservative/ patriot/ constitutionalist movement. In 2016 he fought like hell to get President Trump a win that exposed what is really happening in America (federal bureaucrats, the bipartisan Uniparty, and globalist billionaires tearing America away from the citizens who own it), and even after he was booted from the White House for covering Trump’s back (and neither Trump nor anyone else but Bannon understood the game that was going on there until too late) he continued to be an advocate for America First and President Trump.
And for the past several years he has maintained a radio/TV show called Steve Bannon’s War Room that is like so many other political radio/TV shows. Every day, Bannon discusses the zeitgeist of political issues and personalities from his political perspective. Which is a perspective I share.
That’s the “good” Steve Bannon.
Then there is the “bad” and even possibly “ugly” Steve Bannon. And we are not talking about looks here, folks. I don’t comment on people’s looks, because that is irrelevant, immaterial, and often just shallow cheap shots. Rather, we are analyzing one of Bannon’s public activities and statements, and wondering WHISKY TANGO FOXTROT is going on in that War Room of his.
Below is a screen shot from Bannon’s War Room show as it appears on Rumble a week ago or so. As you can see from this screen shot, Bannon is actually lauding Pennsylvania GOPe careerist-political weasel-hack Jake Corman. This makes no sense, because it isn’t warranted because it’s not true.
Corman is a catastrophe for Pennsylvania, for the Republican Party, and for America in every single way. Corman’s many flaws are well known (directly associated with deep corruption, nepotism, RINOism, failing his constituents in favor of big money Democrat donations etc), and his opposition to a forensic audit of the stolen 2020 election is both public and subject to a behind the scenes battle. As leader of the PA senate, Corman stripped PA state senator Doug Mastriano of his senate staff. Because Mastriano has been working hard to fix the blatant election fraud that occurred here in Pennsylvania in 2020.
All of this and much much more (like Hey Jake, do you know what happened to Centre County DA Ray Gricar? Do you know what happened to his body? How did his mysterious disappearance help you? What criminality were you at risk of having Gricar expose?) makes Corman someone that a “good” Steve Bannon would naturally oppose.
Like, fiercely oppose, call out, expose, and challenge when Corman appears on his radio show and engages in totally obvious dodges and solipses. After all, we are all in the fight of America’s life right now. There is zero room for anyone like Jake Corman to be anywhere near politics or anything else that is important. Bannon is a political gate keeper and should be acting like one.
But instead, we get Steve Bannon actually heaping unearned and laughably incorrect plaudits on Corman on his show, and pitching him bizarre softball questions.
It is difficult to know if Bannon is just kind of playing along with Corman, so he can spring on him later, or if Bannon is bamboozled, or, in the worst and ugliest case, if thirty pieces of silver changed hands to buy Bannon’s fire. And it is this last possibility that strikes both fear into the hearts of constitutional warriors, and also deep resentment and anger. If Bannon has been bought by the enormous and enormously corrupt constellation of bad actors orbiting around their investment Jake Corman, then Bannon is not just “bad,” he is “ugly.”
So which is it, Steve Bannon? Are you good, bad, or ugly? If you are truly good, then you will side on the right side with the good people who are resisting the evil bipartisan takeover of America by the likes of Jake Corman and George Soros. You won’t post ridiculous headlines like this on your show. You will push back against bad people, phony people, dangerous people like Jake Corman.
Whose side are you on, Steve Bannon? Jake Corman’s side, or We, The People‘s side?
Steve Bannon actually wrote this laughably false headline.
The deer that got away, but shouldn’t have
Below is the buck after the second bullet, at about 140 yards, the hole of which is visible behind his shoulder; a classic behind-the-shoulder double lung/ top of heart hit. Usually it’s immediately fatal. Usually the animal is knocked down by the impact. But not that day. He absorbed the second soft point without moving, just standing there broadside, as if I had completely missed him. Even after he dropped he had a lot of life and fight left, as can be seen in his death spiral in the snow.
My challenge was that I did not see him fall, which happened while I was fumbling with my binoculars. Because I do not often use a rifle scope, I do not maintain a magnified field of view after my shot. Going back and forth between open sights and binoculars is my process.
As an aside, you may wonder why I use open sights, or you may be one of those people who deride open sights. Shooting instinctively with open sights is how I grew up and how I learned to hunt. Unlike a scope, open sights can take a lot more abuse in the field before they go out of whack. Unlike a scope, they cannot possibly lose their “zero” after spending eleven months in a closet. Open sights are absolutely reliable, and perfectly effective. Recall that American infantry are qualified on open sights out to 600 yards (or meters), so it is not like these things are relics from the past. Open sights are the best option, provided they are installed correctly and checked annually.
My preference for open sights is about more than performance, however. It has to do with how I like to hunt: On foot, getting close to the animal, within its sensory zone, and trying to kill it on its own terms, up close. This is a true contest of skill, not an assassination. And I hardly think an open-sighted center fire rifle is a disadvantage; it is a huge advantage over a spear or a bow. Scoped rifles are just that much more of an advantage.
So, I did not see the buck fall, and he fell into a small swale where I could not see him. Not wanting to stink up the woods and ruin further hunting, I sat on my butt and scoured the woods for signs of a deer. In fact, I saw a large buck a couple hundred yards away sneak into a thick tree top blowdown. It made me think the buck I had shot at was gut-shot and sneaking away to lie down, and so I did not push him. Only when the crows showed up over an hour later was it evident that the buck was in fact dead right where I had last seen him.
About this “Friendsgiving” nonsense
Why is it so difficult for a bunch of people living the good life in America to say thanks, show appreciation, and have gratitude for what America has provided to them?
Among extremists, America is built on “stolen land,” and observing Thanksgiving Day is honoring a wicked country built on lies. Sorry to use that word “extremist,” but it must be used here, because it is flung repeatedly at anyone who disagrees with the nihilist, racist, genocidal, secular anarchist movement now inhabiting the Democrat Party body and its stinking mouthpiece, the Mainstream Establishment Legacy Media (CNNlol, CBS, ABC, NPR, MSNBC, PBS, PennLive etc et al).
People who posted “Friendsgiving” pictures to their America-censoring social media outlets may be wallowing like pigs in stinking mire and absolutely loving it, but why don’t or can’t they stop and look back over their shoulder? These most ultra of shallow virtue signalers are wearing clothing made by capitalists, living in nice homes built by capitalists, driving cars designed and built by capitalists and that run on fuel (electricity or petroleum) extracted and refined and provided by capitalists, using smart phones and laptops designed and built by capitalists, etc.
This is to say, If America is really so damned evil, and if you all are so really sorry about how we all got here, and you all are feeling so deeply such shame for your benefits and lifestyle, then why don’t you show how you really feel and throw it all away. Put your money where your mouth is, shallowcrats.
Don’t sit here and post these gleeful family pictures while simultaneously lecturing and hectoring the rest of us on how bad we all are. Christ, people, you shallow virtue signalers are the worst hypocrites on Planet Earth, not just in America. You enjoy all the benefits of capitalist America, all its luxuries (oh how Liberals love them some luxuries and swag!), its freedoms to criticize everyone else who is not in your tribe of hypocrites, but then also eschew it all. You get to have it both ways, when in reality we all must make choices in life. To be honorable people, anyhow.
Thanksgiving Day was established early on in American history because people who fought and worked hard to create a free nation showed their true gratitude for it all. For all the opportunities. If there is one defining American characteristic, it is freedom of opportunity, for everyone.
Yes, the American Indians lost their fight to hold on to America, against a seemingly endless tide of human migration. And it is sad, to me at least. I do feel badly for American Indians, what they lost, and most important, how they lost it to people supposedly representing Judeo-Christian ethics, and yet who had no scruples about lying to and deceiving the Indians at every turn.
But let us ask, How much land does a single person need? American Indians probably enjoyed a ratio of 10,000 square miles to each person. Contrast that to the cramped conditions in Europe, where serfs, peasants, and landless native Celts were confined to slums or as de facto slaves on their tiny “freeholds.”
Why was it OK for Asians to migrate to America, set up shop as a hundred different warring, torturing, human-sacrificing Indian tribes, but it was not OK for poverty-stricken landless Celtic tribes (Irish, Scots) to migrate to America and set up shop, as well? Were the Indians really so greedy and selfish that they could not share their incredible land wealth with other needy humans?
Why is it OK for endless illegal migration into America right now (maskless, no vaccine), but we have people celebrating “Friendsgiving” and lamenting the Indians’ stolen Americas?
And about the African slaves…yes, we know that was wrong, because America fought a bloody civil war over the issue, and America made many large sacrifices since then to rectify an issue that affected a tiny percentage of the American population.
Why are people who are living in million dollar homes and driving nice cars prostituting their skin color on this false narrative altar that America never gave them anything? Jesus Christ, people, look at the underpants you are wearing right now! I will bet that just your underpants alone cost more than all the clothes combined in one African village in the Congo or Nigeria. Show some damned appreciation. Show some gratitude for what you have. Don’t engage in this shallow virtue signaling, because all it does is draw attention to what a weak non-thinker you choose to be.
None of this makes a damn bit of sense. But then, making logical, reasonable sense never is important to people on the Left. They live a daily orgy of silly virtue signaling and mea culpas while simultaneously reaping the very best that American capitalism has to offer them, us, the entire world.
Just show some gratitude, some thanks for what you have. If you feel badly about the condition of the American Indian reservations, go help them. They need help and will appreciate your help.
And if you feel badly about the obvious plight of so many descendants of African slaves living in America today, then stop supporting bad policies that lock them into this horrible condition. Stop voting for people and one single political party that makes modern-day slavery to its movement and sacrifice by communal catastrophe an absolute requirement.
Will anyone who should hear these words listen to them? Like the people posting about “Friendsgiving” and how bad America is. Probably not. The fast-happy endorphins released in brains by silly virtue signaling “I am so damned right” are an addictive drug. People are hallucinating and fantasizing while high on endorphins, and while it isn’t real, they don’t care. It just feels so damned good, and they don’t have a care or a thanks in the world.
Alec Baldwin’s snuff film
Hollywood goof Alec Baldwin just gunned down an innocent person on the mismanaged set of his new movie in the making, “Rust.”
There is all kinds of analysis and hand wringing and wonderment about how this murder ever happened, and who is really responsible for it. Let’s take a look at this issue, and in the end I will present my own take on ‘what probably really happened’.
Some people say that Baldwin is 100% responsible for the murder of Galina Hutchins and the serious injury of Joel Sousa, because he ignored Rule #1 of gun use: Never point a gun at something or someone you do not want to destroy (shoot). And of course it is difficult to argue with this line of reasoning. I agree with it. But others have sought to dilute and undermine this thinking.
Other people, notably the establishment press, are trying to find anyone to throw under the bus to save a bona fide Hollywood actor from being held accountable. Remember how much effort went into protecting Hollywood scumbag Harvey Weinstein? And Weinstein really was a lecherous monster who was feared and loathed by most of Hollywood. So how much more so will the establishment wagons be circled to protect a just regular kind of gay-hating, violent jerk like Baldwin?
For example, the establishment press keep writing that the revolver was a “prop gun.” Ummm no, no it wasn’t. It was a real gun. Obviously. But that doesn’t stop the mainstream media from trying to pretend this away as some sort of non-gun-gun-non-crime.
The establishment press also tries to say that other people were more responsible for the gun and how it was loaded etc etc than Baldwin could be. Again, no, because that danged real gun was used for target practice by many of the actors and set workers in the desert surrounding the movie set. They all knew it was a real gun and that bullets had been shot out of it a lot.
Here is what I think probably really happened: Rust was a snuff film, a la Jeffrey Epstein’s way of just having fun and never being held accountable for it, no matter how evil and wicked.
Recall ol’ Jeffrey Epstein, the child sex slave trafficker whose pedophile island hideaway was frequented by the rich and famous like Bill Gates, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and others. The same Jeffrey Epstein who was strangled with a wire garrote in his prison cell while the cctv cameras were turned off and the guards mysteriously walked away. A guy with a lot of names and knowledge in his head, who had to be shut up before things got public and messy.
This is to say that with incredible wealth and power comes incredible debasement and debauchery. Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein epitomized the more openly grotesque aspects of it, as well as Epstein’s teenage girl sex party guests, and I think the murder of Galina Hutchins was probably a more subtle expression of one untouchable person’s secret desire to do something unimaginably evil, in the open, and then get away with it.
If this is true, and why not, then Alec Baldwin purposefully murdered Galina and then tried to blame it on everyone else. But inwardly he is gleefully laughing — he got away with it! With murder. And no one will ever try to hold him accountable for it. Because bully boy Baldwin is one of the many untouchables in America these days. People who commit pedophilia rape, murder, treason, and simply walk away from the scene of the crime because the entire cultural and political establishment surrounds them and protects them.
It is quite probable that Rust was actually a cheap and slovenly run movie set because it was never meant to actually be a movie. It was probably just an elaborate opportunity for Baldwin to live out one of his many sick fantasies, and never be held to account for it.
Just my theory, anyhow. It certainly is possible, because if we look at all the insane crimes that all the other American elites have gotten away with (and I am not even mentioning innocent young Mary Jo Kopechne, the sweet girl murdered by Democrat senator Ted Kennedy, another untouchable elite), murder in the open was just the next logical thing for one of them to do and then go laugh about behind their closed doors.
Talk about rust, this murder is an example of how America is becoming a diseased, corroded hell hole from all this unaccountable elitism. Like a bunch of Emperor Neros prancing around, hurting people and hurting America, with zero consequences…but unlike the Roman citizenry, we Americans do have the means to take matters under control.
But do we have the will power?
PA’s Forester Jim Finley Enters the Forest Cathedral
Penn State forestry professor emeritus, department head, and all-things-forestry guru Jim Finley died yesterday. I was told that he was either felling a large tree on his property, or he was trying to dislodge a large tree that had been felled but was hung up on another tree. Whatever the actual facts are, Jim died from the tree falling on him. It is a reminder that even the best, most experienced forestry professionals are at grave risk.
As trite and awkward as it sounds to write here, the fact is that Jim Finley died doing what he loved in the environment he considered sacred. I am quite sure that had he been asked about whether he would like to die from a tree falling on him, or some more peaceful and less traumatic way, he would have given us the look he is giving below. It is that knowing “Why are you saying that, you know it is wrong” look. In his mid-70s, Jim was nowhere ready to leave us, and we were nowhere ready to let go of him.
His death is a huge loss.
Jim was a remarkable man, who I admired, and who left a way outsized hand print on Pennsylvania conservation and the practice of forestry in eastern America. He was a force to be reckoned with, an institution in his own right, a political-cultural movement, a gentle soul with a will of iron, kind and easy but also passionate and unrelenting.
He did not suffer fools easily, though he accepted honest debate and earnest dissent exactly the way an academic ought to: His eyes took on this hard laser focus, and you could tell he was actively listening and processing, not always ready to give an answer, either. His response might come tomorrow or next year, and if your argument was good, you could tell it had moderated Jim’s perspective.
Jim Finley was an academic, and sometimes prone to the idealism that academics naturally grow into. However, he also had the ability to be hands-on practical, and even more important, he had the ability to support aggressive, hands-on, totally practical forestry practices. You know, the kinds of visual impacts that most urbanites recoil in horror from, and which many land conservation groups really did not want to see, either, no matter how scientifically they were needed or justified. It is an admirable and rare trait to be able to be honest about unpleasant things, and Jim could look at a heavily cut tract with tree tops lying all over the place, and cheerfully explain all of the wonderful things that were now going to follow on the heels of all that disturbance. Because of Jim, conservation easements in Pennsylvania are now a lot more forestry-friendly than they used to be. And a landowner who is able to manage his or her forest as aggressively as they need to under a conservation easement, is a landowner who is much more likely to sign that easement and protect their land in the first place.
Jim invited me to speak to his classes a couple of times, and we worked together when I was at DCNR and the Conservation Fund. I knew him when I was a kid in State College, I knew him as a professional forester and academic at Penn State, and I knew him as a colleague of land conservation legend and Penn State forester Joe Ibberson, whose PSU forestry department endowment Jim presided over at the end of his formal career. It is always a huge loss when someone of Jim’s high caliber leaves us, but it is even more so when he was just starting to become mature, as he would put it in the terms of a tree.
So long, old friend. Happy travels in your peaceful forest cathedral. We who are left behind mourn your untimely departure and we will miss you greatly. You were a hell of a guy, Jim.
Wooden bowls and a vase turned by Jim Finley. Photo kindly provided by forester Dale G.
Charlie Gerow is a good guy
Turns out long time lobbyist and current candidate for Pennsylvania governor Charlie Gerow experienced an odd vehicle accident earlier this year, which has just now come to light in a police report and semi-journalistic analysis by the ardently partisan PennLive.
As reported by the State Police, Charlie was driving home towards the Harrisburg area on the PA Turnpike in the stretch through Chester County, when his car was hit from the side and from behind by a motorcyclist.
The motorcyclist, Logan Abbott, aged 30, who from descriptions sounds like an awesome all-American kind of man, became deceased on the scene after he crashed his borrowed motorcycle, for which he was not licensed, into Gerow’s car at around 9:30 PM. Abbott was thrown from the bike, and then subsequently struck by multiple high-speed vehicles as he was in the Turnpike roadway; he died from one or all of those impacts. I don’t know of any good way to die other than in your sleep, and this death has to be one of the saddest ways to go. I am really sorry for Logan and for Logan’s family. I have kids; as a parent, this is about the worst thing I could hear in my life. Hugs to you from our family, Abbott family.
My friend Dan, a brain surgeon and psychiatrist, calls many young men driving motorcycles “motor donors,” because of their dangerous hot-dogging ways and the resulting high body count statistics. Young men on motorcycles make up a huge proportion of annual highway injuries and deaths. And then donating a lot of young, healthy organs.
From what witnesses saw, Gerow was driving in the right lane at regular highway speed, Abbott was passing Gerow, and then swerved into his car. The rest is sad history. The police report surmises that Abbott was inexperienced at driving the motorcycle and made a fatal error.
Gerow was eventually pulled over by State Police several miles down the road, because the motorcycle was lodged under the front of his car. Witnesses reported seeing the motorcycle stuck in the front of the car and throwing sparks. People are wondering what the hell happened after the impact, and why didn’t Charlie pull over immediately.
Here is my take on what happened:
- The impact came from behind and from the side of Charlie’s car, where he could not see, or at least he could not see very well. We drivers are always focused in front of us when we are driving, especially so on a turnpike with a 70 MPH speed zone. Charlie did not see and could not see what happened.
- The motorcycle driver never appeared in Charlie’s view.
- The motorcycle never appeared in Charlie’s view.
- The motorcycle was lodged under the hood of the car, and out of Charlie’s vision. It would be difficult to see any time, and especially at night, when you can’t see very far ahead and you are looking as far ahead as you can.
- Charlie probably thought he had hit some road debris, of which there is a TON on the Turnpike. Back in the early 1980s, I hit a dead deer lying flat in the middle of the PA Turnpike’s right lane, and it became lodged up under the car’s carriage. My Chrysler K Car rode up on top of the deer like a skateboard for a couple hundred feet before it became dislodged and the car regained its straight trajectory. That was a close call. Today there are lots of dead deer and tons of tractor trailer tires all over the Turnpike.
- When Charlie realized he was carrying the road debris under his car, he probably thought it would eventually break off or break free, so he kept driving.
- He may have realized it was not going to break free any time soon, and like any sane and experienced driver, Charlie was not going to pull over on the side of the Turnpike. No freaking way! That is the most dangerous area of any highway, and especially the PA Turnpike. If you get a flat tire on the PA Turnpike, you are best served by slowly limping to the next designated pull-off area and changing your flat there. If you pull off on the narrow roadside margin and try to operate there, you stand a good chance of being hit either by accident or ON PURPOSE by passing motorists.
- For example, back in 2003 I was driving south at night on a regional highway, when three deer suddenly stepped right in front of my truck. Going 60 MPH, there was no time to stop or avoid impact, and in one second all three deer were scattered across the highway and my truck was severely damaged (but not disabled…it was a Toyota Tacoma). The State Police were immediately on the scene, and as we tried to pull the dead and dying deer out of the roadway, so that other motorists did not strike them and have subsequent accidents, I twice had a trooper grab my belt and yank me backwards. Why? Because as the trooper grimly stated to me matter-of-factly, a surprising number of vehicle drivers actually try to hit people who are alongside the side of the road. I could feel the whoosh of air go right past my face both times, and I could see both vehicles swerve back into the middle of their lane after they had each swerved onto the side of the road to try and hit me. The cops took it in stride as part of the daily risks they face.
- Point being here, Charlie is a smart guy and he knows that the side of the PA Turnpike is the last place you go if you have some road debris stuck up under your car, if you can help it. You wait until you can pull into a well-lit, large, safe place where you aren’t going to be hit or carjacked.
- Troopers who pulled over Charlie’s car then checked him for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and found none. Charlie was not impaired.
- In sum, the conditions of this lamentable accident are a dark night on a busy and fast highway, in a place where road debris is common, and there are few places to safely pull over if you do have an accident or get some debris lodged up under your vehicle. The car driver was not responsible for the impact, did not see what happened at the moment of impact, and he did not see what his car was carrying up front subsequent to the impact. The driver was waiting to find the right place to pull off in order to safely inspect his vehicle, when the State Police pulled him over and told him what had happened.
I am sorry for the Abbott family on the loss of Logan. And I hope that Charlie Gerow, who is a good guy, is not artificially targeted here because of his politically incorrect political beliefs, or because of the Abbott family’s understandable grief. Logan made a mistake (his obituary notes that Logan “had just finished 14 days straight of 12-hour shifts and was looking forward to his 14 days off and camping with his family“), probably due to being exhausted from hard work, and Charlie did nothing wrong. It’s just a damned crappy tragedy, and we should not want to see an injustice done to one party because we are feeling aggrieved over the loss of the other.
And for the record, I am not committed to any candidates for governor right now, not even to Charlie. I do think Lou Barletta has already been in politics long enough and that he should be championing someone younger for PA governor, not seeking it himself. I don’t know how Charlie will fare among grassroots conservatives, because though he is a good guy, he is also a political lobbyist long associated with a political establishment many grassroots voters and activists have come to distrust and even revile.
Fake news doesn’t sleep. One of the reasons I wrote this essay is this kind of lie, from a website proclaiming itself, what else crooks and liars. Nowhere did anyone report a motorcyclist lodged in or stuck to Gerow’s car. Yet this 100% lie remains up on the website
Fake news headline…no one says a “motorcyclist was wedged to his car’s grill,” except on a website that deliberately tells lies like this. And the comments on the article show what gullible fools liberals are. No one stopped to question this outlandish claim or ask for facts.
Logan Abbott, great guy who made a small but costly mistake. Be careful on those motorcycles, folks
Charlie Gerow holding court in January 2015 with Governor Tom Corbett and PA movers and shakers. Note photo of JFK.
Gaza or everything you love: Your choice
Gaza. Poor, poor Gaza.
The ultimate self-victim, the impoverished and destroyed Gaza Strip is the compressed store house for every bad, wrong, foolish, selfish, suicidal, stupid, short-sighted, and self-defeating choice any group of humans ever made or could make. Like launching thousands of randomly aimed fatal missiles at their next door neighbor, and then falsely claiming victimhood when the neighbor defends themselves.
Mentioned in the Bible as one of the great Phoenician strongholds (‘Aza), Gaza’s failure today is Biblical in every way. While the place and its present day human population do deserve better everything, and could have it if they but willed it, its human population has also consciously determined that being miserable, phony symbolic martyrs is their highest and best use. Gaza the ever-martyr serves one purpose: To destroy Western Civilization.
What is Western Civilization? Whether we call it Christendom, Europe, America, Australia, or Judeo-Christian values, it is a rare democracy of republican institutions that diffuse political power among its citizens, rewarding free choice with maximum individual liberty and minimal government power. Open societies, whose governments are owned by The People, not by warlords.
Nothing could be more different from Gaza (or Syria, Iraq, and other self-destroyed Middle Eastern nations etc) than Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Venice, Rome, Madrid, or Manhattan. Willful decay, poverty, and constant pointless warfare on the one hand, juxtaposed to great communal celebrations of freedom of thought and conscience, science, and mutual beneficence on the other carved in stone.
Gaza’s role is to worm its way into the mind of Western Civilization and play Iago, always questioning what our eyes and ears plainly see and hear, and placing the blame for their misery not on the merciless ideology of Gaza’s Hamas, or on the infestatious Arab colonialism that carved up the current Middle East, nor on brute Islamic imperialism, but on the world’s beacon of light, Western Civilization. Gaza’s siren song is playing to the shallow desire for many affluent Western people to virtue signal that they are not really as bad as they might be thought. That they are soft hearted for even the worst of murderers.
And so Western “journalists” — come on, they are open propagandists and partisan political activists, not arbiters of accuracy or truth — broadcast totally false images back into Western Civilization that blames us for what we see happening over there.
These false images are crying parents, grieving over the dead propaganda prop children they allowed Hamas to use as magnets hidden among their missile batteries that targeted children in Israel. Or the destroyed building that the Associated Press knowingly shared with Hamas’ most important people, in addition to missile batteries on its roof, raining down on kindergartens in Israel. None of the sadness for Gaza the media portrays back home is true. It is all false.
Truth represents the penultimate achievement in Western Civilization, and every decision we make is ideally for truth, for the common good. Few other civilizations now or in the past sought truth or common good. Most great civilizations sought power and domination, and most still do today. Democracy and freedom are outliers, and truth is anathema to most governments around the world.
So the idea that a tiny nation of seven million Jews is somehow an unjust outpost in an area a thousand times Israel’s size is a preposterous idea. Most Muslim Arab capitols house more Muslim Arabs than there are Jews on the entire planet, so how Israel’s Jews are a threat is another preposterous idea. Only the most simple minded, careless people can identify with Gaza or its self-manufactured unhappiness.
A month ago, when Gaza was bombarding its neighbor with thousands of missiles, a nice man emailed me. He asked what I thought of the situation. Knowing that my views are generally conservative, I believe he thought I was going to bend the knee and worship the false graven images being broadcast back into our homes by the lying media. And gosh, was the international media ever full of that junk! My response was:
*Flatten Gaza
*Defend Western Civilization
*Do not reward or give in to violent crybullies
The war between Gaza and Israel is the war between good and evil, Hitler and the West, all that is good versus all that is wrong and bad in humanity. Western Civilization cannot afford to cry for Gaza, especially because Gaza does not cry for itself. To allow Gaza to shape Western Civilization is for Westerners like the people who read this blog to throw overboard everything that our own civilization represents. I know this following statement is really difficult for a lot of Westerners today, especially the young, but grow a pair of balls and make a stand for what is right and just and good.
Support Israel, oppose Gaza.