Posts Tagged → Governor
Mastriano is the normal guy, Shapiro not
Doug Mastriano is the most normal person you can possibly meet. In 2021 I met and briefly spoke with him, and he was direct, cheerful, serious, confident. He is a former 30-year military career guy, and most men like him are like him in mannerisms and personality. He has been tested in battle, and in the world’s largest bureaucracy (the American military). He has taken dangerous risks, made dangerous sacrifices, for the public. He is a refreshing political outsider, and his political views are normal for his demographic. While I do not agree with Mastriano on everything, I also do not need to agree with him or any other candidate on everything in order to support him.
Yes, there is a TON of negative advertising about Mastriano, and some of it is accurate, and most of it is completely false. The thing I care about is that Mastriano is normal and he stands openly on what he believes. He stands by his views because he has views, and because he is a guy with integrity, he says his views in public and is therefore open to criticism about them. Whatever his views are, Mastriano’s political policies and views are almost unimportant if he wins. I have seen it over and over again: A governor gets elected and within weeks discovers that no one on Capitol Hill in Harrisburg gives two figs about his views. He will have to work within the system in which the governor is just one cog out of three, or four cogs. Maybe it’s five cogs, if we count the state bureaucracy…
Now, let’s consider Josh Shapiro, the candidate running for governor against Mastriano. Shapiro is the definitive political hack, a person with very few real honest to goodness views of his own and very little integrity. Very little real life experience. Certainly no risks or sacrifices for the betterment of society. He has been hiding inside air conditioned offices his entire career. Shapiro is hoping to get elected to the governorship by virtue of committing little to public knowledge, and also criticizing his opponent intensely.
(Incidentally, the phrase political hack comes from the hack horses used in mining and public transportation from about 1750 to 1920. A hack horse is trained to mindlessly follow the familiar horse in front of it, carrying or towing its burden without independent thought or motivation. The same is said of political hacks, who are led by the nose by political bosses and big political donors, and whose sole motivation is self-enrichment)
I have never met Josh Shapiro, but he did something corrupt that affected people near me, including a murder victim I knew personally, and he caused a lot of pain. Here is what I have seen of Shapiro: In 2011, Ellen Greenberg was brutally murdered in her Philadelphia apartment. From the moment after she was murdered, a lot of big political strings were pulled in plain public view to blatantly protect the one person who appears to have probably done the deed, her former fiance.
All kinds of personal favors were done for her fiance’s family, including letting his family members enter her crime scene apartment and removing and tampering with evidence. The Philly Police Department may never have been a bastion of integrity, but its senior personnel managed to hit a real low spot with the sloppy coverups of their officers’ mishandling of the bloody crime scene.
Then there was the coroner who called Ellen’s death like everyone saw it, a murder, and who was then summarily fired. Subsequent scientific and forensic analysis supporting the belief that Ellen was murdered was provided to the Philly Police Department, only to have them sit on it, hide it, ignore it.
It seemed that every official person involved in investigating Ellen Greenberg’s bloody murder was doing everything possible to protect the murderer and to shut up everyone who tried to get answers or obtain justice for this beautiful, sweet young woman.
Literally everyone involved in the obvious coverup is a member of one political party.
All of this came to a head last year and again this year when powerful new evidence about the murder was handed to AG Josh Shapiro. What did Shapiro do with the new evidence? He refused to act on it, sat on it, and then he handed it off to the very same political people who had already engaged in a years-long coverup of the murder of a beautiful, innocent Ellen. Shapiro enabled the coverup to continue, thereby protecting his political buddies and obstructing justice from being done.
AG Josh Shapiro is loyal to his political donors, I will say that much. He is also loyal to his political party, which as he is a political hack is understandable. But Josh Shapiro is not loyal to the rule of law, or to the Pennsylvania citizenry, or to solving crimes when they involve high profile members of his political party. And that makes Josh Shapiro a corrupt person, and really a lawless person. Not a normal person.
Who the hell works hard to cover up a murder and to protect “important people” in a political party who were involved in the murder? A dirtball is who does this stuff, and Shapiro is at the very least a dirtball. Shapiro’s entire career has been spent in politics, and politics is all he knows. He is a political animal, for whom there are no absolute truths or morals, just opportunities to move ahead and get more power, at any cost. Including protecting a politically connected murderer.
Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck.
I know Doug Mastriano has been portrayed as some sort of “right wing” loon, and of course that is BS. The same crap was done to Judge Roy Moore several years ago in an Alabama senate race, and now that Moore is stacking up court wins the truth is finally coming out about him. Roy Moore is innocent of the ridiculous accusations the media and its one political party ally made against him, and Doug Mastriano is likewise innocent of the ridiculous accusations being made against him. Yes, he believes that life begins in the mother’s womb, and so he believes the body of the living child deserves protection. Reasonable people can argue and disagree about this and other issues, but there is no argument about this:
Doug Mastriano has integrity and honesty, and Josh Shapiro has none, zero, nada.
Doug Mastriano deserves our votes for the simple reason that he is a good guy fighting the good fight against a corrupt bipartisan political system that benefits when bad people like Josh Shapiro are in power.
Vote for normal guy, political outsider Doug Mastriano, you will not regret it. If you vote for Josh Shapiro, we will all regret it.
Doug Mastriano praying at the Western Wall. Doug is more pro-Israel, pro-Jewish, pro-Judaism than Josh Shapiro could ever be.
Celebrate Independence Day with A Month of Defiant Acts
Today is July 4th, America’s Independence Day, founded immediately upon the heels of the United States’ successful civil war with Great Britain, from 1775 to 1781. What we call the Revolutionary War was actually a civil war between American colonists loyal to the British monarch, King George III, and his Redcoat soldiers on the one hand, and American colonists loyal to a new idea of democracy and representative self-government, on the other hand.
As we celebrated today, individual freedom, individual liberty, and individual choice won out against and over King George’s tyranny. As a result, America has enjoyed roughly 245 years of unparalleled prosperity and opportunity for even the poorest and least educated human beings from around the planet.
In 1818, then-past-President John Adams wrote that the actual revolution had already occurred among the American citizens and frontier colonists, years before the actual fighting began in 1775. The people’s then-revolutionary views on power sharing among humans, governmental legitimacy through consent of the governed, government transparency and accountability, and a kind of loose and very broadly defined Christian brotherhood united by loyalty to ideas and shared values had already taken hold on the frontier, united more than enough individuals to stand up against what was then the greatest military power in the world.
Today there is without question a formal tyranny afoot in North America. Both Canada (Trudeau) and America (Biden) are presently run by people who are openly and aggressively at odds with the fundamental rights and freedoms the peoples here have lived by for a very long time. It is an effort to consolidate official power over The People that knows no bounds, and official malfeasance and abuse of official positions against innocent but uppity citizens are now daily occurrences in both Canada and America.
Here in America the Department of Justice and the FBI have set land speed records for false accusations and the corrupt detonation of individual due process rights, whereby the criminal prosecutorial process is in and of itself the punishment. Even if an innocent individual is eventually cleared of wrongdoing, the government will have bankrupted them, destroyed their good name, and perhaps destroyed their family, their career, and taken their home, too.
These public employees and agents are pretty much double dog daring everyone to try to hold them accountable within the realm of America’s legal system. And they have access to just enough corrupt and politically partisan activist judges to get the Crackerjack Box search and seizure warrants they need to spread fear and political retaliation under color of official law. But we citizens have a duty to resist this tyranny.
In the spirit of Independence Day, let us all engage in a month of defiant acts against this political corruption and destruction of our rights. You know, live up to those 1970s bumper stickers that said “Question Authority,” which at that time were aimed at the many traditional institutions the Left had not yet captured, corrupted, or destroyed. Of course, if we begin to question the authority of our Usurper in Chief and his minions, they will immediately recoil in horror: “No, don’t question THAT authority! OUR authority you must unquestionably obey!”
If the Left did not have double standards, they would have no standards at all.
Some acts of defiance and questioning authority that you should do:
- Write a letter to your county sheriff, and ask him or her to begin assembling a significant number of armed deputies, to be able to resist illegal invasions or lawless acts in the county by federal troops or agents.
- Write a letter to your county sheriff, and ask him or her to formally communicate with the Department of Justice and the FBI that their partisan corruption is now so great, they are no longer welcome in the county, and their agents encountered in the county will be arrested and held without bail.
- Write a letter to your state Attorney General, and ask him or her to formally communicate with the Department of Justice and the FBI that their partisan corruption is now so great, they are no longer welcome in the state, and their agents encountered in the state will be arrested and held without bail.
- Write a letter to your governor, asking about the possibility of re-assembling the state’s Home Guard, or some similar armed civilian force, that is capable of quickly reacting to and resisting federal troops and agents.
- Write a letter to your state Attorney General, and ask him or her to issue and execute arrest warrants against individual federal agents who have clearly broken state (and federal) laws against illegal searches and seizures, illegal search warrants obtained under false statements by said agents, etc. Most state constitutions have similar limits on government action and safeguards of individual liberties as the US Constitution, so this is not just a federal issue.
- Buy a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and then return it to the store for a refund, because it tasted “off.” Or you can remove the pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream from its freezer at the store, and then kindly leave it in the chips and pretzels aisle. Yes, it will melt and be lost there. But that’s not your problem. What is your problem is a Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream that is actively working overtime with its corporate influence to deprive you of your individual liberties and rights. Show them you don’t care for their anti-democracy meddling.
- Write a letter to your local school board and demand they issue a clear statement that you and other concerned taxpaying parents of school children are not domestic terrorists.
- Etc. Just stand up and be heard for the next thirty days, in the spirit of July 4th Independence Day. Be a naturally defiant American who is naturally suspicious about official authority, who sees himself or herself as part of a citizen brotherhood united against corrupt power, and resist Biden’s tyranny, even in small ways.
Happy Independence From Government Tyranny Day!
Ten take-aways from my Election Day experience
With the Kerwin men, quality people
Primary elections are more important than the general election every November, because voters choose who is going to be representing them at the November election. And in the case of Republican Party voters, if you don’t vote for constitutional America-First candidates, you are guaranteed to have a Republican In Name Only (RINO) liberal running against the Democrat Party liberal in the November election. There’s not a whole lot of philosophical difference between the Republican liberal and the Democrat liberal, and after that November election between a RINO and a Democrat it’s just a question of how rapidly America is destroyed under your feet, slowly or quickly.
On Tuesday I volunteered at four different election polls, handing out brochures for Kathy Barnette, and I spoke with a lot of voters. Here are some take-aways from my experience during and after Tuesday’s Primary Election here in PA:
- Unsurprisingly, voters make both simple and complicated choices in voting for candidates. Simple choices can be lazy or principled, and complicated choices can be bizarre or carefully thought out. Candidate selection is as complex as any other choice in life, and I think that is a good thing.
- Party establishment endorsement is a negative among Republican/ conservative voters, who appear to increasingly view the GOP as a force for bad and not for good. For example, Lou Barletta’s campaign unleashed a tidal wave of Republican establishment career politician endorsements in the days before Tuesday’s election, and if anything these endorsements seemed to hurt Barletta at the polls, not help him; Doug Mastriano crushed Barletta.
- On the other hand, Democrat voters seem highly attuned to and in synch with their establishment, as witnessed by political newcomer Justin Fleming’s trouncing of long time Democrat Party activist Eric Epstein in the newly created 105th Legislative District (PA House). For at least ten years, and probably closer to twenty years, independent-minded liberal Epstein has run for everything from dog catcher to school board to state senate, almost always unsuccessfully but always with close-call results. Not this time. Apparently ten unions and the House Democrat Campaign Committee aggressively weighed in to stop Epstein from finally capitalizing on his well-known household name in southcentral PA. Fleming the unprincipled “electoral pragmatist” won with 61% of the vote.
- Money is not all that it used to be, but it can still matter in elections, no surprise. Case in point is a very small amount of money (like $157,000 total), old fashioned shoe leather, and reasonable social media networking got conservative grass roots favorite Kathy Barnette up to 25% of the vote in an eight-candidate race. This is a huge statement about the lack of importance of money. However, when the wildly false negative attacks against Barnette started pouring in during the last week from McCormick and Oz and their supporters, like Sean Hannity, Barnette lacked sufficient funds to get out her last-minute rebuttals on TV and radio that could have gotten her over the finish line to win. Enough confusion and obfuscation was created by the attacks to blunt Barnette’s position at the top, and allowed both Oz and McCormick to grow their own voter returns at her expense. Had Barnette possessed a million dollars to do last-minute TV and radio ads, she probably would have won the election.
- Negative advertising does work, and it also greatly suppresses voter turnout. At all of the five polls I was at yesterday, voting was down between 10% and 20%, and I believe many voters were just fed up and confused by all of the negative advertising. SO they stayed home and said “I will just vote in November for whoever wins this primary race.”
- Conservative voters are much more oriented toward ideology and principles than political party.
- Almost every primary election has one winner and some losers, and almost always the losers say they will take their ball and go home if they don’t win, and they won’t back the winner of their race. For weeks before and even after the election was over, I heard unceasing complaints from Republicans about how Mastriano is “too conservative” for Pennsylvania, and that his win will automatically hand the governorship to Komrade Josh Shapiro. I also heard unceasing complaints from Republican voters that Lou Barletta was too milquetoast to appeal to anyone in November, except for blue haired suburban GOPe Republicans. Folks, get used to these competitive races. They are good for us. This competition is just the nature of real and healthy primary races, something that Republicans really need, and something that the GOPe HATES. The Republican Country Club Party hates hates hates sharing decision making with the unwashed dirty masses, who keep gumming up GOPe dreams of easy ill gotten wealth and posh fundraisers. Sorry not sorry, GOPe, get used to ceding more and more decision making to the actual people you claim to represent. It is a good thing, and it is why Mastriano won by an enormous margin.
- For the most part, the GOPe got its ass kicked in PA and elsewhere in America. RINOs like Jake Corman (the sitting President Pro Tem of the PA Senate!!), Jeff Bartos, et al either dropped out or finished below 5%, while underdog candidates like Kathy Barnette and Dr. Oz scored big time vote returns against the establishment’s wishes. We are witnessing a power shift away from GOP party bosses, which is a good thing, because party bosses are corrupt and self-serving people.
- Charlie Gerow is still a good guy, and still not a catchy candidate. Once again, voters enjoy Charlie as an articulate proponent of conservative values, but not as a representative in government for their needs. Charlie is a salon intellectual in the mold of William F. Buckley, one of the 20th century’s great conservative crusaders. Not winning elections doesn’t mean Gerow isn’t relevant, it just means his strength is in policy debates and in the conservative salon of ideas. Nothing wrong with that.
- Finally, yard signs and road signs do not mean anything close to what they used to represent even ten years ago. At one time yard signs and roadside signs were a big part of electoral public outreach, but in this digital age, they are becoming less important. I would not say they are unimportant, because in some ways they can be used to get a sense of voter engagement. Like, lots of signs for Candidate X in a county or in a region probably means that Candidate X is well known there. But it does not mean that Candidate X is necessarily going to convert that name recognition into an Election Day win. Information is now moving so fast and so far across the political landscape, that just one gaffe or one slip-up by an otherwise reasonable candidate can mean the end of their lead or presumptive win. No amount of yard signs can counter a fifteen second video of a candidate doing or saying something ridiculous.
Thank you to all the voters who spent time talking with me on Tuesday. I promote candidates at polls on Election Day every year because these are people I believe in, and I believe in sharing the why and how I have arrived at my decision on whom to vote for. One thing that has not changed among voters at polls since I was a teenager is this: Liberal voters at polls are always surly, grumpy, dismissive, or disrespectful. Do not ask me why this is, but it does hint at how some people think.
“Only Trump can destroy Trump”
For five long, brutal years President Donald Trump withstood a non-stop cyclone of misinformation, disinformation, lies, hoaxes, endless false accusations, two fake impeachments, and outright mutiny and insubordination by federal employees and military officers.
President Trump handily won re-election in November 2020 with the devotion of his ardent supporters, and the big lie that basement dwelling corrupt, doofus failed career politician Joe Biden was president only became an official narrative because that cyclone of official insubordination and mutiny around President Trump reached its climax from November 4th 2020 through January 2021 with the help of Big Media lies and Big Tech censorship. All statutory and constitutional safeguards set up to protect sacred American voting from being tampered with failed, because the people entrusted with those safeguards deliberately failed.
And all throughout that five year period tens of millions of American voters kept faith that President Donald Trump would prevail, because they knew that only he, of all of America’s elected officials, believed in a free America with liberty and justice for all. Despite the Democrat Media – Big Tech industrial complex’s best efforts to divide Trump’s followers from Trump, the Trump Train continued full speed ahead. As it does even now, when Trump draws huge crowds to his rallies.
Radio personality extraordinaire Rush Limbaugh used to explain how the Big Media people just do not understand the connection that Trump has with his followers. Rush said many times “Only Trump can destroy Trump’s relationship with his followers. Because that bond of trust between them is so strong.” In other words, it would take a betrayal of that trust by Trump to sever that bond. No big lies, no hoaxes, no fake impeachments would ever dent Trump’s popularity.
And I think we are beginning to see that bond fraying, only because President Trump is fraying it through his own deliberate actions that directly alienate his strongest supporters. No one ever accused President Trump of being a politician, and in fact it is his greatest pride that he is not a politician. He didn’t think that way and he didn’t act that way. But by trying to act like one now, Trump is reaping the kinds of results that politicians invariably get when they literally play politics.
In the past week we have seen President Trump officially endorse for US Senate a known Hollywood liberal RINO candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, instead of a true conservative candidate who actually lives in Pennsylvania. This endorsement was so bizarre that many people are booing its mention at voter gatherings here in Pennsylvania. It is not a popular decision among Trump’s followers.
And now President Trump is actually, incredibly, unbelievably encouraging PA Swamp RINO problem child Jake Corman to stay in the PA governor’s race. Even though Corman has been the biggest obstacle to conducting an official audit of the stolen 2020 election here. Which makes people wonder if Trump is going to endorse Corman, who was just about to file paperwork to withdraw his name from the race, but who is now following Trump’s advice to stay in.
So many old adages address this situation. One goes “If you have nothing positive to say, then say nothing at all.” Another goes “It is better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” And of course Rush Limbaugh’s warning to President Trump (paraphrased here): “Only Trump can destroy Trump.”
If President Trump continues destructively mucking around in Pennsylvania politics, of which he knows little, and in which many of us have devoted decades of our lives at great personal cost while battling the corrupt PAGOP and the Harrisburg Swamp, then Trump is going to break his bond with us.
All of my friends are saying this, and I am saying it, too, as painful as it is. President Trump, we will follow you to Hell and back, if we believe that you have our backs. But when you behave this destructive way and hurt us, then we no longer trust you.
Kellyanne Conway’s figurehead on Jake Corman’s dead pirate ship
Kellyanne Conway, Trump advisor and advocate extraordinaire, has hired her political gun out to the Jake Corman for Governor campaign. What an odd couple, this highly principled, positive, and well spoken woman with this unprincipled, mean-spirited, spoiled, corrupt product of nepotism, Jake Corman.
It is easy for Pennsylvania conservatives to smack their foreheads and cry out “Why Kellyanne, WHY?” Because her action here is at a right-angle inconsistent with what she said and did when she was in the Trump Administration, where she fought daily against RINOs just like Jake Corman. You can’t find two more different people in politics than Conway and Corman…and yet, politics makes strange bedfellows.
I am willing to bet that Kellyanne Conway suffered a lot after the stolen 2020 election. I will bet that her private life and her finances took serious beatings, and I will also bet that she has been very nearly canceled out of just about every aspect of her prior life. She probably went from international spotlight articulate presidential spokeswoman and advocate for America First principles in January 2021, to almost a political nobody in January 2022.
That has to be tough to take. If this same kind of crushing lifetime cancellation landed on you or me, like all negativity when we went to restaurants or the library or the food store, we would be desperate to get some aspects of our former life back. It would be too painful to ignore, unless a person is substantially independently wealthy. And even then those ultra wealthy people tend to live inside their own weather system, so that even small disruptions to their personal lives are artificially magnified and extraordinarily painful to them. And if you aren’t independently wealthy, and I do not believe Conway is, then all the more so does an opportunity like this political consulting job with Corman become attractive.
I think we can all understand her needs and what this job provides her. There is no need to judge Conway harshly. And there is no need to take her seriously, either.
Thus, even a corrupt RINO like Jake Corman has something to offer Conway: some redemption, a small opportunity to re-enter public life with some dignity and public standing; some recognition of her former importance. And some big, big bucks.
Because we just know that the GOPe is writing her a huge check, because so much RINO-ism and continued political corruption is riding on the success or failure of a corrupt man like Corman. The GOPe and their little pet Jake Corman need every swinging awesome woman on deck they can get. I would not be surprised if Conway is being paid a million dollars or more for her campaign role as symbolic figurehead until Primary Day this Spring.
And what does Jake Corman’s campaign get out of spending crazy money on a figurehead like Kellyanne Conway? He gets some of that Donald Trump aura, some of that gen-u-ine all-America-First patriot that Jake Corman himself cannot produce and does not himself represent and can never have. Corman is too well known in Pennsylvania, and especially in his own senate district (where he was about to get primaried), as a corrupt phony and backstabber, to ever stand on his own two feet. After all, his entire career is due to his daddy being a state senator before him. Jake has literally never had a real job!
And oh, the irony of an anti-America RINO like Jake Corman trying to bathe himself in the stars-n-bars Trump glow, transmuted by Conway, because Corman is the primary reason why Trump’s voters never got an election recount in Pennsylvania. Corman not only did all he could to block a recount or an audit of the stolen 2020 election, but he then fired all of PA Senator Doug Mastriano’s senate staff when Mastriano got too close to starting an actual election audit.
Corman’s campaign is like an evil, rotting, dead pirate ship slipping through dark waters, trying desperately to attach a new figurehead to the bowsprit to fool voters from afar. Many people are sad to see Kellyanne Conway in this figurehead role for someone as gross as Jake Corman. I hope it is worth it, honey, because the Pirate Corman stench will never really rub off.
Welcome to PA.
Former President Trump advisor and spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway
If political pirate Jake Corman had a ship, this evil, demonic skeleton would be its figurehead
What RINO Jake Corman is hoping his evil pirate ship’s figurehead will turn into with his hiring of Kellyanne Conway
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.
Koo koo for KoKo Puffs, Crazeeee for Covid
Having deigned to come down from the mountain and mingle with the lowlanders (‘flatlanders’ around here), I was immediately struck by how many people I know in my neighborhood who are still taking the mask thingy so seriously. Wearing the mask like a religious burka, looking all sincerely severe and all. My friends have struck a significant pose with all kinds of massive wrap-around masks that are nonetheless colorful and playful.
It is the ultimate virtue signal: Gotta be some joy in your self-imposed death march, right? Make sure your mask is cinched down real tight and has the requisite flowers or symbols of humor to show that you are not really taking it seriously. Yeah, right.
Recently former Arkansas governor and politico Mike Huckabee said that liberals don’t want to relinquish mask requirements, because they have achieved so much iron-fisted control over so many Americans. Big-government fascist governors Wolf (PA), Whitmer (MI), Newsom (CA) and others have no science on their side, but they are goose stepping down the mask wearing street every day anyway. “You will comply!”
These fascist governors are afraid of what the citizens will do when they rediscover their own freedom, Huckabee says. And while Governor Huckabee is correct, what about people like my friends who take on the onerous and bizarre mask self-requirement? These otherwise fine people are purposefully disfiguring themselves with these ridiculous masks.
Their mask-wearing has to be more than virtue signaling, and it has to be more than fear. Because the mask wearers are surrounded by maskless people going about their lives happily and healthily, there ain’t a whole lot of self-evident virtue or health to be gained from the mask. So it is something else that compels them.
Here is what I believe mask wearing means to mask wearers: It is the personal worship of something larger than themselves. Mask wearing has become the physical and very public demonstration of a belief in something higher and more important than the individual; a sublimation of the self to a higher good.
“Islam” means to submit, and mask wearing is a form of personal submission to some greater authority. It ain’t a coincidence that the Islamic burka and the covid mask both are symbols of personal submission and self-denial. And it ain’t a coincidence that 49.8% of the voters in Dauphin County voted yesterday to continue to grant the Pennsylvania governor the un-ending authoritarian power to keep fake emergencies and crises going for as long as the governor wants. The mask wearers don’t like freedom.
So while Governor Huckabee is correct that authoritarians like Governor Tom Wolf (PA) covet the power over people that the mask commandment has given them, there is another side to this power transaction too. It takes two to tango. That other side is the desire (not just the willingness) of everyday citizens to literally give up their freedom and comfort and happiness and sacrifice it on the Altar of Fake Covid Crises. The mask wearers literally believe they are worshiping something greater than themselves, and it gives them a sense of purpose they could not find when not wearing a mask.
This gets to another and bigger related issue, as if there could be anything bigger. It explains why so many Democrat Party governors engaged (and are still engaged) in the heavy-handed fake and unnecessary covid crisis lockdowns and mask edicts, and also why the Democrat Party stole the 2020 election in the first place. The Democrat Party knows that a large portion of Americans have become not just complacent and lazy, but willingly, almost slavishly devoted to silly causes and fake crises, to the point where they will happily sign over all their freedom for a very shallow sense of personal fulfillment.
The Democrat Party either believes or knows that the actual resistance to their forced and unlawful takeover of America will end up being very little, if anything at all.
Does anyone remember the movie The Matrix, and how the enslaved humans were living in a make-believe world created out of chemicals and human imagination? That is what is happening now. And if we add this Matrix -style method of ruling over Americans to Orwell’s 1984, which Democrats have embraced as a how-to manual, and not as a warning against totalitarian government, we can finally understand what the Democrat Party understands and is fully implementing: Humans just want to be lied to and led.
Mask wearers say: “Free will and free choice is just too damned hard. Just point me in the right direction and I will willingly obey. Gosh that feels good to have no more friction or hard decisions to make in my life!”
And this is why mask wearers are crazy for covid.