Posts Tagged → establishment
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
Vote: NRA Board of Directors
The National Rifle Association board of directors election is happening right now, and your vote counts a lot. And a lot is at stake. The organization is recovering from decades of bureaucratic malaise and overspending, personal ego battles among leaders, and frankly, the overstayed-your-welcome of its longtime Executive VP, Wayne LaPierre. The more people asked Wayne LaPierre to step down, the more he clung to power, hogged public attention, and damaged the careers and lives of those NRA staff and associates whom he perceived to be less than groveling to him.
The NRA has had some rough times, no doubt, and other worthy groups like Gun Owners of America have seized the opportunity to grow their market share of the 2A crowd. But it is still a fact that the NRA is the best sheriff in town to take on the anti-freedom tyrants. Though NRA has had some internal drama (and so has GOA), no one does its job better. NRA still deserves your membership, your support, your donation when purchasing things at Midway.
Yes, Donald Trump is now president, and so no, the federal government is not presently at war with our 2A rights and the groups that protect them, like the NRA. But presidents come and go, and our advocates like NRA must be able to stay in the fight, during the good times and the bad.
Presently there is an internal contest going on at NRA, at the board level and amongst some of the staff, about Whither NRA. There is an effort to keep the “old regime” folks around, when what is needed is a complete overhaul, a housecleaning, an NRA 2.0. For that to happen, new voices and fresh faces have to be voted onto the board. I happen to know a few of the board members (spanning all positions on Whither NRA), and I have been asking them what their opinions are about some of the new faces and some of the old faces.
Couple of recommended NO votes: Larry “Bathroom Bud” Craig (for God’s sake, NRA, have you no shame?), Sandra Froman (been a board member for long enough now, thank you), Joel Friedman, a fantastic 2A stalwart who tied himself too closely to Wayne LaPierre and the old NRA establishment.
Recommended YES votes:
- Knox Williams of the American Suppressor Association. I do not own suppressors, nor am I interested in suppressors. My gun interests are in the circa 1775-1925 range. However, a lot of new gun owners are very into suppressors and the modern sporting rifles they connect to. Young people like Knox Williams speak this new language and are necessary for the NRA to walk effectively into the 21st century.
- Jonathan Goldstein, a well known Second Amendment attorney from here in Pennsylvania.
- Al Hammond, Mitzy McCorvey, Anthony Colandro, Charles Hiltunen, Isaac Demarest, Todd Ellis, and Jim Wallace are all fresh voices much needed on the NRA board.
Your official NRA ballot is due before April 6th, 2025, so get it in the mail, pronto.
Should individual federal agents be held accountable?
Should individual FBI/DOJ/ATF/DHS agents be held personally accountable for the federal government’s Gestapo war of terror inflicted on innocent Americans over the past four years?
This question has been on my mind daily, for the past four years, because I was a law-abiding J6 peaceful protestor who was nonetheless visited and then interviewed by FBI agents, with all that that portends. These FBI visits and interviews with people like me, who they said up front had done nothing criminal, had committed no crime, were done for the sole purpose of political intimidation, with the intimation that a violent early morning FBI SWAT raid through your front door could be the next outcome (as was done to hundreds of innocent Americans).
Now this question of individual federal agents has become a ripe policy subject, because on Friday the acting DOJ secretary demanded a list of all FBI agents and DOJ staff who “worked” on prosecuting January 6th victims.
Yes, I am using a lot of language here that is probably unfamiliar to a lot of Americans, including people who consider themselves politically involved or at least politically educated on both sides of the spectrum. So here are some important facts that will guide your understanding of where people who share my thinking are coming from:
- January 6th, 2021, was overwhelmingly a peaceful protest that I personally participated in, peacefully, non-violently, non-destructively.
- January 6th’s peaceful protest was eventually marred by some violence that was aggressively instigated by the police, Antifa, and a lot of now known federal agents who have been videotaped and identified.
- Using video footage solely from the West Plaza and a couple doorways, January 6th as a whole, as an entire day start to finish, has been purposefully mis-described by the Democrat Party-owned mainstream media, Wikipedia, YouTube, Google, and other Leftist-aligned information outlets and social media companies. The purpose of their deliberate misinformation and censorship of rebuttals was to create a political narrative they could and did use against their political adversaries.
- This false narrative about J6 served as a sort of “Reichstag Fire” moment that the incoming Biden Administration siezed upon to justify its unconstitutional draconian assault on anyone and everyone who was remotely involved with protesting at J6. Including peaceful people like me, who simply happens to hold non-Leftist views about government, governance, etc.
- Much of the DOJ/FBI/DHS/ATF draconian abuse of their American political adversaries involved hyper-violent early morning no-knock raids on families in their homes. These outrageous raids have been widely reported in the non-legacy media, and almost completely censored in the establishment press.
- Over a thousand non-violent Americans were violently scooped up in these dragnets, where dozens of heavily armed federal agents from FBI, DHS, ATF and DOJ would conduct military-style home invasions backed by armored cars and helicopters. Small children, pregnant wives, the targeted husband, grandmas, grandpas, were all handcuffed, taken outside in freezing winter conditions in their pajamas, abused, homes destroyed in unnecessary searches, etc. Families and homes and businesses were turned inside out because some protestor maybe committed a trespass violation.
- The legal justification and basis for literally every one of these cases was one gigantic procedural violation and deprivation of constitutional due process after another after another. Illegal judge shopping, false affidavits, blank search warrants, false accusations, planted evidence, home security cameras turned off… if there was a potential violation of individual rights, the Biden DOJ/ FBI committed it almost as a signal of their lawless impunity and unaccountability.
- Hundreds of innocent J6 political prisoners have languished in prisons and solitary confinement as a result of this lawlessness, including the lawlessness of corrupt federal prosecutors conspiring with political activist judges to deprive these victims of their due process rights.
It is in this context that I ask the question if all of the federal agents who engaged in these violent home invasions should be personally held accountable. After all, they must have known that they were not searching for some drug dealer or violent criminal. And yet they inflicted unbelievable and wildly unconstitutional harm on innocent American citizens.
As we learned at the end of World War Two, the whiny excuse “I was just following orders” doesn’t cut it, doesn’t excuse uniformed police and soldiers from their personal responsibility when committing crimes against unarmed civilians. And I believe there should be no excuse for the many federal agents who carried out these patently illegal raids.
Yesterday I emailed the FBI agent who came to my house in 2022, asking him who at FBI or DOJ had directed him to target me (screen shot of our email chain and his picture at our front door are below). His name, as he represents it on his business card, is Patrick Armor. Patrick and another FBI agent subsequently interviewed me in an attorney’s office. Despite stating up front that they believed I had done nothing criminal on J6, they quickly went for the jugular, trying to get me to say anything or give them pictures or photos that would incriminate me.
It was clear they were trying to get me to say anything they could later purposefully misconstrue as “lying to a federal agent.” Even though I had nothing to lie about and therefore would not lie. It was simply a procedural ruse to catch an innocent person on a “process crime.”
All in support of the establishment’s false J6 political narrative, to help them implement a full takedown of America.
These FBI agents were willfully, knowingly, aggressively trying to entrap innocent Americans like myself, so they could deprive us of our liberty, and then take away much, much more from us. Over the past four years many other FBI agents around America raided bank deposit boxes and private precious metals caches, pocketed the valuables, and rode off into the sunset, with no accountability. These public employees have been the tip of the spear aimed at destroying America’s democratic institutions and norms, our rule of law.
For four years thousands of Americans like myself sat waiting for our front door to be blasted open in the middle of the night, our homes to be violently raided, over at most a trespassing charge.
This unchecked lawlessness is pure evil, and it must be held to account. The people who both enabled and implemented this evil must be held accountable. Every single federal agent who was involved in hunting down J6 protestors must be investigated, prosecuted, and held accountable through the criminal law process. Same for their bosses and the judges who signed off on dubious warrants.
America has just endured four years of a sort of Rwanda, albeit I grant you not yet involving the outright mass butchery and genocide that the full Rwanda experience involved. But America was being set up for that to happen next, because the political enemies of the Democrat Party – concerned parents of school children, conservative Latin Mass-only Catholics, critics of transgender ideology, conservative Christians, political conservatives and constitutionalists and patriots and US military veterans…were all deemed to be “deplorable” and demonized and targeted.
So that our eventual liquidation would be acceptable and normal to everyone else.
In August 2022 I wrote here that America was going to need a truth and reconciliation commission. Well, we are hopefully about to begin that process. Holding the lawless and violent individual federal agents fully accountable will be just the beginning.
And one final thought: Every American should reject the Gestapo fascism that was being inflicted upon at least half of the country these past four years. While America’s borders were being purposefully left wide open and an illegal invasion was under way. And billions of taxpayer dollars were granted to American organizations aggressively and treasonsously trying to destroy America from within. If you are not mad about this, then you either are not paying attention, or you are part of the problem.
FBI Agent Patrick Armor speaking with my wife and daughter, at our home’s front door, June 2022
2024 in Review
Year 2024 was huge. So many changes for good have been achieved this past year. And despite big obstacles remaining for regular American citizens to overcome the Media-Military-Uniparty-Industrial Complex, I think we can see light at the end of the tunnel.
Back in 2008, the Tea Party started, right here in Central Pennsylvania, in response to then US senator Arlen Specter’s clear lack of principle. A town hall Specter was hosting erupted into widespread shouting and wide open frustration after just one person – Katy Abrams – stood up and denounced Specter’s loyalty to politics and self over the elementary interests of his PA constituents. It was the beginning of a grassroots voter rebellion against both the Republican Party establishment, and against the GOPe Uniparty.
That fight has taken on different names and wider meaning since 2008, including Tea Party Patriots, and then just Patriots, and Constitutional Patriots. By 2016 it was the Make America Great Again movement. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign motto grew into the bipartisan/ nonpartisan “MAGA” take-your-government-back movement. MAGA includes a large portion of black and Hispanic voters, as well as frustrated whites of all income brackets, almost all rural voters, and growing numbers of disillusioned urbanites who bear a big burden living directly under failed Democrat Party policies.
This “populist” bottom-up political evolution-revolution has always been by and of We, The People, despite the Media-Military-Uniparty-Industrial Complex’s efforts to falsely brand it as “racist” or “homophobic” or whatever the silly name is du jour. Plenty of groups and organizations popped up to use, re-direct, or take advantage of our intense populist energy, like Americans For Prosperity. AFP was an early ally, then it merged with industry, and industry then went for open borders, and We, The People saw them as sellouts.
I ran for US Congress in 2009-2010, then state senate in 2012, and again in 2015 before dropping out from a bad hunting injury. Being part of this movement has been fascinating, frustrating, exhilirating, energizing, as well as draining tens of thousands of dollars from my own pockets. I always put my money where my mouth was, and believe now it was all well spent.
As a candidate, my political principles were those of America’s founding: Small, responsive, accountable government, and big citizen.
Because government exists solely for the benefit of We, The People, we are now heading into a direct head-on clash between the citizens who own the government – basically the Frankenstein federal bureaucracy, and the posh individual taxpayer-funded Marxist denizens of that Frankenstein bureaucratic behemoth.
Trump is our We, The People champion. Because Trump has suffered a martyr’s mistreatment as he seeks to return power, rights, and decision making to We, The People, he has taken on almost a god-like stature among so many people. The blatantly stolen 2020 election cemented what many Americans already knew in their gut, that we are in a deadly serious combat over raw power.
Despite intense censorship by government and corporations entangled together, new media outlets formed and grew wildly in response to the overtly corrupt establishment media. Americans are hungry for truth or at least an honest opinion. Now the alternative/ new media ecosystem is unbelievably rich, varied, diverse, and useful, while the useless old mainstream media is dying from its own self-inflicted wounds.
Looking back on 2024, it was a year of miracles, a year of difficult trials and tribulations, of intense fear and frustration, of growth and clarity. The difficultues made us Americans stronger. Despite facing immense odds in 2024, the good guys prevailed; hopefully, they are successful in 2025. Recall that some 65 million Americans voted for communism in 2024, so we clearly have real work to do. It remains to be seen if President Trump is as wise and willing to fight as we think he is. God knows, We, The People cannot afford to lose our combat with the Uniparty or its Frankenstein bureaucracy.
Only one of us can emerge victorious, and I hope it is the American citizenry and our Constitution.
[thanks to Ron Boltz for helping me remember a couple facts here]
[ps horrendous human being former failed US president James Carter became deceased in 2024, a net positive for America]
a thousand points of light, a thousand glorious small cuts
Watching a boat sinking out on the water because it was deliberately holed by its occupants is a curious thing.
Watching the people in the sinking boat then continue to deliberately punch more holes into the ruptured hull, even as water is being taken on, which expedites the boat’s failure as a floating refuge on water, is more than curious. Now, we are pretty certain that the self-destructive people in the boat either are stupid, suicidal, or do not even realize what they are doing.
They might think that adding more holes in the boat actually lets the water out…?
Thus is the recent statement by political activist George Stephanopoulos that media personalities having live interviews on TV with President Donald Trump is “journalistic malpractice“ perfectly framed.
George Stephanopoulos is the longtime political director for ABC “News.” As a former extremely politically partisan political activist employed by President Bill Clinton, Stephanopulous somehow seamlessly glided into the awkward and disbelievable role of “news reporter” and “journalist” at ABC. You know, as the kind of news reporter and journalist that is supposed to be accurate, fair, balanced, fact-based, truth-seeking no matter where it takes him. Ideally, and probably much more so in America’s distant past, journalism is done by fair-minded arbiters of truth and accuracy, not political activists.
These two roles are mutually exclusive: Political activists are by definition not fair minded arbiters of truth and accuracy, and so they cannot possibly communicate anything but one-sided political propaganda, narrative, and self-serving lies to their viewers and audiences. Which is what George Stephanopoulos does…speaking of journalistic malpractice.
George Stephanopoulos is not a journalist, he is an aggressive political activist masquerading as a journalist. And the reason he wants to prevent President Trump from having live interviews on mainstream media outlets is that George Stephanopoulos wants to deprive American audiences of having an honest and unfiltered view of Trump. Because Americans seeing and hearing Trump in his own words, as his own self, is going to be completely at odds with the lies, propaganda, falsehoods, and partisan political narrative that political activists like George Stephanopoulos try to paint Trump with all the time.
George Stephanopoulos is actually a censor, the opposite of a journalist. He is someone who tries to stop, limit, or blunt the dissemination of inconvenient facts or truths that undermine the political goals of the censor. Censorship runs totally at odds with the spirit and intent of America’s First Amendment, as well as the open and sometimes raucous format for all of our political discourse since our founding.
Recall that American politicians used to give a “stump speech” literally standing on a fresh tree stump surrounded by interested citizens, such was the nature of America’s rapidly expanding frontier and European settlement. So, a so-called “journalist” trying to prevent a politician from giving his live “stump speech” is actually doing the opposite of journalism: He is conducting censorship, at war with America.
All censors will tell you they are blocking you from having access to the truth, the facts, a certain point of view, for your own good. But they are never really doing this for your own good, or for mine. Like George Stephanopoulos, all censors throughout history engage in censorship for their own good. Whether it is personal monetary rewards or a political outcome favorable to a censor’s political views, censorship is conducted purely for the benefit of the censor.
Censorship is evil, and so-called journalists who are actually censors, like ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, are evil people. Censorship is un-American. Don’t be a censor, don’t support censors, don’t engage in censorship.
Here is an interesting very brief little video of President Trump at a small town hall, with an audience of Americans who had not heard him in person before. The audience members are stunned by the difference between President Trump in person, the actual President Trump, versus the false and heavily filtered/censored image of President Trump they had been fed by the mainstream media, like ABC “News” and George Stephanopoulos.
Here is why censorious political activists like George Stephanopoulos are becoming so bold about their political efforts under guise of “journalism,” which in the past would have itself been a headline: Totally partisan and politicized fake news legacy mainstream media outlets like ABC, CBS, NBC, MSDNC, NPR, PBS, New York Times, Washington Post, etc. are being engulfed in a maelstrom of alternative information outlets, and they are becoming desperate.
Hence shameless George Stephanopuslous in effect knocking holes in his own boat in full public view, destroying his own credibility as a “journalist” and as an American, when he openly admits that he has no other defense against President Trump than artificially filtering Trump, censoring him, stopping the public from viewing him as he really is, and outright lying about Trump.
A thousand points of light (to beneficially borrow a phrase from one of the worst, most corrupt establishment politicians in modern history) are shedding unceasing light on the lies of George Stephanopoulos et al. A thousand small, independent alternative information outlets have sprung up across the internet and anywhere else they are not artificially repressed, censored, or suppressed. They exist because of the truth vaccuum left by George Stephanopoulos and his ilk, and the marketplace of ideas abhors a vaccuum.
Sites like www.breitbart.com, www.thegatewaypundit.com, www.zerohedge.com, www.dailycaller.com, www.rebelnews.com, and a million small websites like this one at www.joshfirst.com, not to mention an incredibly diverse, rich, and interesting constellation of independent political commentary and analysis at www.rumble.com, are each making a tiny cut into the corpulant, stagnant, odiferous, and pus-filled rotting meat that is the body of mainstream media.
This thousand points of light alternative news sources is making it impossible for liars like George Stephanopoulos to get away with his lies any longer. And this thousand tiny cuts of alternative information sources is slowly bleeding out the lying mainstream media, exposing them, weakening them.
Of course every information and news outlet has its own flair, its own bend, its own flavor and goals. This goes without saying. But when I read someone actually bragging about getting their news and information from MSNBC, NPR, and CNN, I wonder how anyone could be so incurious about the wider universe or galaxy they live in. If you are addicted to fake news, like NPR, ABC and George Stephanopoulos, you owe it to yourself to at least add a little cream to your coffee, and see what other people are reporting about the same whatever subject that ABC-NBC-CBS-NPR-ProPublica-CNN happens to be talking about at the moment.
Only censors try to blot out the light that other people need to be able to see clearly. Only fearful, close-minded, incurious, purposefully ignorant people steadfastly choose to support censors and remain behind their own artificial curtain.
Let the sun shine in, America.
UPDATE: Goodness gracious, I was in such a rush to get this essay up that I neglected to include all of the amazing podcasts that Amerians are dialing into every day. There are a whole bunch of podcasts and interactive radio/internet shows, too, that are a blend of Libertarian/freedom/ constitutional/ just askin’ that are just smokin‘ the mainstream media. Shows like Joe Rogan (who I disagree with about 45% of the time, and who has occasionally said some racist stuff that leaves me shaking my head, but who nonetheless addresses important issues head-0n), Dan Bongino, whose uncensored balls-to-the-wall New Yawk accented bare knuckle bulldozer of a daily show is one of the highest rated in America for good reason, can be found on Apple and on Rumble. Dinesh D’Souza is my favorite faux felon, who is incredibly smart, quick, witty, and insightful. Ace interviewer Jan Jekeliek has the most incredible people from all walks of life on his American Thought Leaders podcast. Russell Brand has grown on me over the years, and while he is in no way a conservative, he is a witty, quick, and funny advocate for transparency, accountability, and honesty, which are all good and necessary things in any government, and especially in a government of, by, and for The People like ours. Russell Brand’s mocking of the corrupt FBI agents stealing people’s gold watches is hilarious and cutting.
I could go on and on, and in the interest of time, this short list is a “starter pack” for intelligent, curious, open minded, patriotic Americans. Give these folks a whirl or two and see if you aren’t hooked. Each has a different style and really different content, and yet each of these independent-minded people is providing a life-saving end-run around the rotten and corrupt establishment media complex like ABCNPRCNN…this is the thousand points of light exposing the lying mainstream media and the resulting thousand glorious small cuts bleeding out the fake news media.
Interesting PA 15th district state senate race
Now that the Super Tuesday primary election is over, which Our Lord and Savior President Donald Trump completely dominated in a historic crushing nationwide landslide, Pennsylvania has only another six weeks of national irrelevance to go until our primary election on April 23rd. Which makes Pennsylvania less than unimportant in the grand scheme of national politics, but allows us to focus on some interesting local races.
The election race that grabs my interest the most is for the 15th state senate district here in central PA, centered on Harrisburg City. This is a senate district I ran in one-and-a-half times. First in 2012, which entailed a real head-butting with the GOPe, and in which I did well but did not win. The second time I ran was 2015-2016, and I was the first candidate out of the gate. Color me surprised when another candidate announced (John DiSanto), quite establishment with the charisma of an old shoe, and who was backed by the same acidly anti-establishment state senator I had worked hard to elect in York County (Scott Wagner).
Political races are often weird, and in Spring 2015 I was just getting with the weirdness of facing off against people whom I had worked hard to elect, and who had no explanation for why they were opposing me, when the race got more complicated.
Enter out of the clear blue yonder a very young and very ambitious guy (Andrew Lewis), just moved back to Pennsylvania and fresh from military intelligence work in Washington, DC (now that MAGA knows how corrupt and evil our own American intelligence establishment is, one must wonder if this connection will hurt Andrew Lewis in his future political ambitions). With no local work or volunteer history, other than his family lived in both Juniata and Perry counties, Andrew Lewis became the alternative conservative candidate to me. Good looking and bright, Andrew made a fine candidate. His presence in the race bit into my rural support, and the fact that he, too, was financially supported by Scott Wagner bit deeper into my feelings about Scott Wagner and the people working for and with him.
What the heck did Scott Wagner have against little old me?
My participation in the race came to an abrupt end in late November, 2015, as I stepped up onto a boulder high on a mountain while bear hunting, and awkwardly fell off. My left knee was the knee that had not been previously operated on, and I had babied it for thirty years. The two back-to-back surgeries required to fix its resulting bad tears in the cartilage and frayed ligaments meant I could barely walk. And if there was one advantage I had it was my good door-to-door effort that had paid off before.
Not being able to walk door to door, I had no way of really running a competitive three-way race, and so I bowed out in December. And never a sore loser, I endorsed the same monkey-wrenching Andrew Lewis as the superior of the two candidates.
John DiSanto won that springtime primary election and went on to defeat the incumbent Democrat in the Fall of 2016. After eight years of voting reliably Republican present, but with no distinguishing leadership on issues like election integrity or the state system of education, DiSanto is now giving way to the heavily gerrymandered new senate district.
Our new 15th district map was created by the PA Dems to favor forever incumbent PA House member Patty Kim, a terribly undistinguished, sleep-walking, cookie cutter Marxist Democrat who is tired of not having to run for re-election every two years and now desires to not have to run for re-election every four years.
So we know who the Democrat candidate will be: Patty Kim.
On the GOP side we have two candidates, and this is what I find so interesting about this race. One candidate is an outsider, a nice man named Ken Stambaugh.
Local politicos will recognize the Stambaugh name because so many people from this large and engaged family are involved in politics across three counties here. Having appreciated the opportunity to speak at length with Ken Stambaugh, and having read his near-daily campaign trail updates, I come away with the impression of a good guy with good intentions, and no policy experience or even a desire for good policy, and not a lot of charisma. That he was recruited by incumbent state senator John DiSanto for the Fall suicide run against Marxist Patty Kim seems doubly lost on Ken.
That Ken was endorsed by the Dauphin County GOP is not lost on me or other conservative grass roots activists who abhor party meddling in primary races. Candidates today who tout their party endorsement in a primary race have a tin ear, or just don’t care about the voters.
Sometimes not being “political” can work well to a person’s advantage, and in this case, I think Ken Stambaugh probably sleeps well each night not knowing what politicos know. Let’s keep this a secret, because Ken’s earnestness is refreshing. He means well, which is to his credit.
Out of the blue, longtime politico, former Dauphin County commissioner, and newly elected Dauphin County treasurer, Nick DiFrancesco, has also decided to run for this same state senate seat.
Two weeks ago, the Lower Paxton Township Republicans issued a statement, calling on Nick to drop out of the race.
“I told everyone Nick would not take the treasurer position seriously,” said one frustrated politico.
“You crazy man,” I wrote to Nick. After all, having worked so hard to re-ingratiate himself with the Dauphin County GOP and barely win the county treasurer seat last November, to now run against the party takes real Italian-style chutzpah. Or too much ambition. Or balls. Or leadership….
However Nick’s thumb-in-the-eye and kick-in-the-shins entry into this race is characterized, Nick is at the opposite end of the politico spectrum from nice guy candidate Ken Stambaugh.
Nick DiFrancesco is very experienced with running for office and all of the “retail politics” this includes, such as money grubbing and networking. He also has Dauphin County name recognition, which always goes a long way in a primary race. Nick may be as establishment as a Republican can get, but to run against the party establishment is about as anti-establishment as it gets. Intriguing!
Which raises the question of whether Nick DiFrancesco has a political suicide urge, is addicted to running for office, or does he think he can really win against Patty Kim? I think Nick believes he can win against Patty Kim in the Fall. He says so, and I believe him.
The entire 15th senate district R vs D race in the Fall comes down to the R candidate reaching deeply into the Harrisburg City black community, and getting their votes. Which with the right candidate can be done. After all, decades of Democrat Party rule has left Harrisburg City and its majority black citizens bankrupted and left behind. Like pretty much every other Democrat-run city in America, it should be noted.
American blacks are not stupid, they are incredibly loyal (why blacks identify with the party of Slavery, the Democrats, and not the party of Abolition, the Republicans is a case of effective marketing vs. no marketing at all). They are smart enough to begin asking what the hell have they been loyal to and loyal for. The American black community is beginning to wake up to the fact that white liberal Democrats like Patty Kim are the most racist people on Planet Earth, and that repeatedly voting for them and their guaranteed failure and intergenerational poverty is stupid. And no, I don’t think candidate Alvin Q. Taylor has what it takes to lead, sorry, buddy.
Nick DiFrancesco should play Malcolm X’s “Political Chump” speech all over Allison Hill and Uptown Harrisburg, and lead Dauphin County in a political revolution that all of America needs. If there is one candidate who can do this, who has the balls to try it, to show all the scared Whiteys huddled up in their country clubs that Black people are very engaging and very interested in what candidates have to say, it is Nick.
In this primary race, and in the Fall race, I think Nick DiFrancesco has all of the advantages.
Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin
I have watched the fascinating interview with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin by journalist Tucker Carlson, and if you have any interest in world politics, you should watch it too, right here.
So the mainstream establishment politically partisan leftwing activist media, and their political members like Hillary Clinton, have all piled on Tucker Carlson for doing this interview. I don’t see why, except that the establishment media is jealous, or maybe afraid. Unlike the establishment media people, Tucker Carlson doesn’t ask softball questions or act like a fawning stooge.
He asked logical questions of Putin that visibly provoked Putin quite a few times. In fact, Tucker Carlson asked questions I would not necessarily have thought of, like if it is OK to carve up modern Ukraine among its former occupiers, as Putin stated, then is Putin advocating for giving northern Ukraine to Viktor Orban’s Hungary? Would Putin be ok with Poland taking a big piece of Ukraine, too?
Putin did not like those questions! He oh-so-very-clearly dislikes being challenged and is not used to it.
For his part, Putin was fascinating. He gave an impressive recitation of Eastern European history, beginning at the year 862, from memory. While I have studied the history of Europe a lot, I do not think I could give you all of the “who kicked Mary and who hit John” moments that make up the chaotic past and present of Eastern Europe, much less Western Europe, from memory.
One area that Putin was clearly not being truthful about was this “Denazification” of Ukraine justification-excuse for invading Ukraine. Yes, there were Nazi collaborators in World War II. There were also Ukrainian Communists in World War II. Russia also committed a genocide-by-forced-starvation against Ukraine, called the Holomodor, in great part in retaliation for atrocities committed by Ukrainians against Russians not too long before. There is indeed a long history of blood and feuds here.
Putin also stated that Poland collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. Yes, the same 1939 Poland that was invaded and crushed by the German Nazis, supposedly did it on purpose to help Germany. Despite the fact that it was the Soviet Russians who committed the Katyn Massacre of the Polish elite. Obviously Poland did not welcome or collaborate with the German Nazis, but Putin says they did, and moreover, that the Poles were themselves Nazis.
This is nonsense. It is not factual.
But, like I say, you have to hear this interview yourself to understand how the Russians really think, or at least how they want you to believe they think.
Whether or not Putin actually believes his own propaganda, it doesn’t matter. He says it, and to me it sounds crazy, but I will bet that a lot of other Russians believe the same things. Which is why these interviews and dialogues are so important. We humans should strive to understand one another. Or at least lie to each other, mutually. Some sort of understanding emerges, and if it prevents bloodshed, cruelty, and crying children and destroyed civilizations, then probably for the good.
Putin very clearly has a passion for the region and for Russia, which is to his credit. Because the one thing that has caught the fancy of a lot of Americans is that Putin loves his homeland Russia. If there is one thing that at least half of America admires it is an appreciation for one’s nation, and so Putin’s clear love of Mother Russia resonates with them.
Putin’s love of country, to the point of waging an illogical, incredibly destructive, and probably illegal invasion-war against Ukraine, is something we no longer see in America’s politicians. No, America’s politicians are largely fat globalists, citizens of the world, moral relativists who enter Congress worth fifty cents and who are then worth $29,000,000 three terms later. American politicians love money, not America, and they are allowing America to be invaded. American politicians are selling America to the highest bidders, most especially Joe Biden, whose literal name Joe Biden is all over illegal bribe and graft checks and money wires written by Chinese businessmen to him and his son Hunter Biden.
Putin doesn’t put up with traitors, which a lot of Americans find refreshing and wish would be the norm once again here in America.
Putin gave his perspective on his region’s history, which is obviously from his own view. I know for a fact that asking a Ukrainian citizen will result in a different view on a few of those same exact facts. Same goes for people from Poland, Lithuania, Finland and many other nations around there. For the past few hundred years at least, that big grizzly bear Russia has had its grip tightly on so many of its neighbors. And from the Russian perspective, this is normal and perfectly fine. If you are Kazakh, or Tajik, or some other ethnicity, you probably disagree with Russia’s actions.
One of the regions that Russia invaded and absolutely stomped to pieces in recent times, unarmed civilians and all, was Chechnya. Back before YouTube became all censorship oriented, you could watch actual video footage of Russian soldiers laughingly executing unarmed Chechen civilians in their ragged clothing, mothers and fathers, grandmas, and then walking on to the next rustic stone farmhouse and doing it all over again. I really defy anyone to try to justify this barbaric behavior. Same goes for Ukraine now.
And Putin complains that the CIA was responsible for Chechnya’s response…
Other items that fascinated me are Putin’s view on his experience squaring off against and sometimes trying to work with the CIA and American political leadership over the decades. He seems genuinely flummoxed why American leaders and bureaucrats alike do not trust Russia, even post-Soviet Russia. It is helpful to me to closely watch Putin’s face as he voices his disbelief, and his reluctant acceptance of realpolitik, over the proxy wars and NATO maneuvering along Russia’s borders.
Maybe he really does believe what he is saying.
Long ago, a friend of mine who taught Russian history and military doctrine at the US Army War College in Carlisle, PA, pointed out that over its long history Russia has never had democracy or representative government. Russian culture has always favored some sort of headman, dictator, Tsar, whatever, and so, believe it or not, today’s Russia with all of its obvious problems, and its journalists being thrown out of windows, is still relatively open and free compared to its history and its potential now and future.
In other words, as ruthless dictators go, Putin is not so bad. He could be a lot worse.
In any event, Tucker Carlson has done a good deed here. He sat down and had an honest-to-goodness real and very long interview with a head of state that no one in the American political-media establishment wants us to hear from.
You should ask Why the American political-media establishment wants us to be shut off from Putin’s perspective. Is it because so many American bureaucrats and politicians have been privately and very illegally benefiting from Ukraine’s oil and gas business, and from its illegal bioweapon labs set up at the behest of Dr. Mengele Fauci and American Big Pharma companies? These illegal relationships have been coming to light in the past few years, mostly now as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Watch the interview, and be thankful that a free America still exists in part, despite the Biden Regime’s best efforts to turn America into a violent police state, and freedom never being free and having to be occasionally renewed by the blood of patriots and tyrants alike.
UPDATE: Tucker Carlson goes food shopping in Moscow. Whoa.
Welp, it’s the GOP vs. The People, again
Here in Pennsylvania, we have the annual GOP Stomp On The Little People Event happening again.
Mimicking the failed and useless PA GOP, which is pretty much a reflection of the failed and useless Ronna McDaniel and her ridiculous RNC, yesterday in Dauphin County and elsewhere across our Commonwealth was the county candidate endorsement meeting, where county committee people meet to endorse registered Republicans running for office.
Even before the ballot petition process has started.
Even before we know which candidates are going to be on the ballot and available to the voters.
Even before all the candidates have had an opportunity to present themselves for consideration to elected committee people and political activists.
In other words, this endorsement process is a charade designed to keep ironfisted authoritarian control over the choices available to voters.
If the GOP is wondering why so many people, so many voters, so many political activists are jaded and fed up with the Republican Party and elected Republicans, they might consider how the GOP treats said people, said voters, said activists, much less the Republican candidates, all of whom are Republicans because they believe in freedom.
One of the best ways the GOP shows its disdain and elitist mistrust of the great unwashed Republican Party masses is this endorsement process. Its endorsement process is 100% inside baseball, ultra insular, ultra inward looking. The party endorsement process is designed to keep the GOPe (Republican Establishment) in control of everything, including the usual milquetoast do-nothing stand-for-nothing empty suits who populate the Republican Establishment and its constellation of interest groups.
The Democrat Party is much better at this dance than the GOPe. The Democrats have made a science of both maintaining control of their base and also simultaneously giving a long leash to their base while feeding them plenty of red meat. It is a remarkable and terrifying feature of the Democrat Party that they are now so similar to how the German Nazi Party operated. They are way way ahead of the GOP, and it is no compliment to say that the GOP is unlike the Democrat Party.
The artless GOPe is both hamfisted and snobby, and so it finds itself with an ever shrinking sphere of influence. Its voters are in ever increasing revolt against their own political party.
Take for example the PAGOP’s fake “unanimous” endorsement of globalist RINO and tourist candidate for US Senate, Dave McCormick, whose leftist wife Dina Powell is up to her eyeballs in shoveling illegal immigrants into America.
Dave McCormick and his elitist leftist wife bear no resemblance to the Republican voter base. These two are everything that is wrong with the Republican Party establishment, with the GOPe, with American politics in general. Dave McCormick may have grown up as a tree farmer in central PA, but he long ago threw away those good values not just when he moved to Connecticut, but when he ran a New York City hedge fund and made his millions. Hedge funds operate by betting against and working against what is good for America, good for Americans, good for American workers and good for American companies. This makes Dave McCormick no good for America.
McCormick has an opponent. Her name is Brandi Tomasetti, and she lives in Lancaster County. Brandi is a study in contrast with Dave McCormick: She believes in America and wants to put America first, she is concerned about election integrity, she is concerned about the lawless flood of millions of illegal immigrants into our nation.
I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with her the other day, and I offered her as much help as I can provide in her effort to get on the ballot so she can challenge McCormick.
Brandi told me that she has been overwhelmed with an outpouring of offers of help, from Republican voters fed up with the GOPe and with the Dave McCormicks and the PAGOPs and the Dauphin GOPs and the games, the elitist attitudes, the constant resulting GOP establishment failure. I hope everyone who reads this essay contacts Brandi and helps her out.
First things first: In the next few weeks Brandi Tomasetti must get enough signatures to get on the ballot. She needs registered Republican voters to circulate ballot petitions for her. Hope you can help.
Why the GOP met to endorse Dave McCormick before ever considering Brandi Tomasetti, or any other potential candidates for that matter, is not a mystery. Rather, it is a sordid and pathetic story of insider elitist people lusting for power and control, and lusting for dirty money from democratic representational politics, and this crap is absolutely killing America. And they don’t care.
Put America first and help Brandi Tomasetti get on the ballot and beat the damned GOPe.
Book review: A Rebel from the Start by Avi Yemini
Like a lot of news hounds disgusted by the brazenly partisan establishment narrative activists at the “mainstream media” outlets like MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, PBS, Reuters, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post et al ad nauseum, I have spent years chasing down the few actual news sources that would give me the facts and just the facts. Sites like The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, Zero Hedge, the Epoch Times, and podcasts by Dinesh D’Souza, Dan Bongino, and Jan Jekeliek now give me a 360 degree news and information coverage that has been sorely lacking for so long.
One of my most recent finds was Rebel News, back in 2020, when the world was melting down about Covid and hardly any news outlets were asking any questions about why the world was melting down about Covid.
I was up in the mountains, usually alone, running the sawmill and physically exposed to no one, with my main link to the outside world the very slow internet connection we had then. Then as now, the establishment media simply carried the establishment narrative and fear-mongering political message for the blatantly corrupted CDC and other federal agencies so visibly taken over by the pharmaceuticals industry. Rebel News was different, and from 2020 into 2021 its founder, Ezra Levant, really stood out by asking basic questions. He asked questions of people in power, he asked questions of people in official positions, he asked questions of police officers gleefully and violently enforcing Covid lockdowns in Canada and Australia, and he asked questions of people in the street. How refreshing! A real newsman!
Rebel News then added a few truly intrepid reporters like David Menzies, Sheila Gunn, and a confusing man named Avi Yemini. I don’t want to make this book review all about Rebel News and Ezra Levant, but the fact is that without Rebel News, the free world (ha) would know a lot, lot less about Covid tyranny than we know now. And what we know now has informed freedom loving citizens across Canada, America, Australia, and Europe to demand an end to health tyranny and a return to responsive, representative government.
While all of the Rebel News reporters have done really amazing work, one of them stood out, this earnest, tattooed, sometimes almost innocently child-like Avi Yemini fellow. He was unafraid and would wade right into the lockdown protests with his Rebel News microphone, and was often dogged by Jew haters and violent government thugs alike.
Sheila Gunn, Ezra Levant, David Menzies and other Rebel News reporters all have done great work, but none of them have the cool Australian accent, the Jewfro, or the odd name that Avi Yemini has. And so I really began to closely follow every video and interview he put out. Because Avi Yemini has a foot in about a half dozen different worlds simultaneously, I was more than intrigued. Who was this guy? Why did he remind me of the ADD prancing black knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Where the hell did he come from? Why was he so laid-back-open-minded on the one hand, and yet asking such pointed questions of people in power on the other hand?
His interviews along with Ezra Levant of Hitler Youth climate grifter Greta Thunberg and ultra shady Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla put Rebel News squarely in the international spotlight. He then had an amazing followup debate with Nas Daily, an Israeli Arab who is so fully integrated into the establishment that he carries all the water left in the Middle East for all the political establishment there.
Just when I thought I could not take the suspense any longer, Avi Yemini wrote a book about himself, which debuted a few months ago. Titled “A Rebel from the Start,” Avi seems to bare all in this book. I mean, I don’t think he leaves much to the imagination. Said another way, he seems to be much more honest about his childhood and his failures than anyone else I know would be. Reading the book helped me understand Avi personally, but not really politically, or ideologically. And I am unsure if that understanding will ever happen for me, anyone else, or even for Avi himself. To wit, he is from an Orthodox Jewish family, married to a woman of unclear religious beliefs but who has two Muslim kids from her first marriage. Add in Avi’s two kids and you get this big, boisterous mini riot blur of activity, full-on life engagement, and earnest questions about everything, and yet rigid ideology about nothing.
Avi Yemini is the anti-ideology news reporter. He has no ideological axe to grind. This is so rare in the news business that it is tough to get my head around.
And I think this last observation is probably the most refreshing aspect of Rebel News’ reporting: They don’t do what the establishment media does, which is daily parrot a set of talking points meant to artificially buoy up the corrupt political establishment. Rather, Rebel News staff are unafraid to ask the glaring, most obvious questions that anyone with a scintilla of care about where Western Civilization is headed (presently down the tubes and gaining speed) would be interested in. Avi Yemini is a colorful, inquisitive, fearless, insightful interlocutor and news reporter, and his book is a fascinating read for those of us who have watched his rise in prominence with awe and wonderment. I highly recommend it.
You can buy Rebel from the Start here.
Actual news reporter Avi Yemini was constantly harassed and arrested by the Australian police (who later lost all their cases against him in court), while the fake news establishment political activist in drag as a “news reporter” is carefully protected by the Australian police. Avi is a freedom hero.
We The People 1, Uniparty 0
Overly preened, waxed, effete, phony pretty boy career politician and freaking corrupt as hell now former Speaker of the US House Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his brief Speakership yesterday. First time in American history, the vote on McCarthy represents a slowly turning tide in favor of We, The People as more and more of us American citizens struggle to regain control of our rogue government from an evil bipartisan Uniparty made of both Democrats and establishment Republicans.
McCarthy is the kind of flaccid, spineless, limp-wristed establishment career RINO “Republican” who does everything for his own personal gain, and for his party’s gain, and apparently zero for The American People’s gain.
Despite representing a majority in the US House, since becoming Speaker earlier this year McCarthy gave in on nearly every Democrat Party demand and Big Brother Government funding ploy. There was literally nothing the Democrat Party and the Biden White House demanded that McCarthy did not and would not cave to. An additional 87,000 heavily armed IRS agents? Sure, said McCarthy, why not have an even bigger helping of terrorized American citizens cowering from official jackbooted thugs in their homes.
Like most GOPe pukes, Kevin McCarthy is much more beholden to the politically partisan, far-left, America-hating, American-hating, Constitution hating, freedom hating establishment media like the Washington Post and the New York Times than he is to the US Constitution or even basic principles like individual freedom, small government, less intrusive government, etc. McCarthy is worried about what the partisan establishment media will say about him, and not about what his voters will think of him. His big dollar corporate donors make sure he has plenty of money to repel upstart challengers who might want more decision making put back into the hands of the American citizenry, and less in the hands of corporate lobbyists and their loyal lapdogs like McCarthy.
McCarthy did zero to represent his constituents or the tens of millions of voters who have increasingly voted to stop feeding the Washington DC beast, and apparently it was his secret deal with China Joe Biden to fund Ukraine yet again with billions of US Taxpayer dollars (as our bridges and roads disintegrate) that got him in trouble with his own caucus. Well, some of the Republican caucus, because there are waaaay too many “Republican” congressmen who are perfectly happy with the decisions McCarthy made. These are the congressmen who see themselves as the moderate wing of the Democrat Party, not as an opposition party. Gotta get these traitors out of office, Mister and Missus America!
Anyhow, kudos to Rep. Matt Gaetz for having the balls to take on McCarthy and hold him to the pledges McCarthy had made in order to become Speaker earlier this year. It is telling that McCarthy increasingly broke those pledges and seemed sure that he would not be held accountable. Unlike former speaker Nancy Pelosi, McCarthy had zero interest in unifying and holding his caucus together by giving in here and there to the conservative members by whose grace he ascended the throne (and by whose grace he was removed).
This is a telling fact: McCarthy had no interest in mollifying his conservative patriot wing. He gave them nothing, and gave the communist Democrat Party everything it asked for.
And thus it became apparent that McCarthy (and so many “moderate” “Republicans” like him) has no loyalty to a constitutional America. He blows bullsh*t up everyone’s butt, and then does the opposite. He ran as an R but acted like a loyal D. Hmmmmmmm, no wonder people ask how much secret payoff money McCarthy must have received from China or some other wealthy gift giver somewhere. Anyhow, it was time for McCarthy to be challenged and hopefully removed. Thanks to Rep. Matt Gaetz, We, The People scored 1 against the evil Uniparty.
I am surely not alone in being intrigued that GOPe Republicans and the New York Times alike are horrified, HORRIFIED at the “chaos” supposedly ensuing from McCarthy’s ouster. It is also intriguing that any action that goes against the interest of the bipartisan Uniparty, and which challenges illegal and increasingly un-checked Federal government power over us supposedly free citizens, or which legally challenges blatantly stolen elections, is immediately branded by the Uniparty and its establishment media outlets as an insurrection, chaos, illegal, etc. It is also intriguing that the Uniparty looooves a smoothly running rogue government, and hates anyone who questions it or challenges it.
Kevin McCarthy’s ouster from the Speakership is a really big deal. If nothing else it is a sign that there are at least a handful of patriots in the US House willing to take risks with their political careers for the benefit of We, The People. Turns out there are a few who understand that The Bigger The Government, The Smaller The Citizen. Turns out you and I are not completely alone in our dispute with our rogue federal government.
Some action items for the next Speaker: a) purge the US Capitol Police of lawless rogues who hate America, b) investigate and hold accountable all members of the US Capitol Police who committed unnecessary acts of violence against innocent protestors on January 6th, c) actually release all of the January 6th footage so that Americans can make up their own minds about what really happened, d) begin impeachment proceedings against lawless members of the Biden Administration, including FBI Chris Wray, AG Merrick Garland, DHS Alejandro Mayorkas, and others whose nonstop lying to Congress should land them in jail for the rest of their lives.