Posts Tagged → map
This election map says it all
If you are shocked at how easily the 2020 election was stolen from the legal voters of America, then take heart. Two can play that game, and IF the Republican Party will only gain its nerve and assert itself half as hard as the Democrat Party, the tables can be turned.
After 300 Democrat Party lawsuits nationwide right before the 2020 election in dozens of states attempting to overturn established election laws, and about a dozen broad daylight unilateral and illegal usurpation of election law jurisdiction and plain-as-day constitutional limits by secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and other states that allowed unsupervised absentee ballots, ballot harvesting, delayed voting until the “right number” of votes are found, and a bunch of other non-transparent “voting” techniques that are all designed to steal elections, it is time for conservatives to quit whining and get with that program.
If you are in a lacrosse or hockey match, and one team is just high-sticking and high elbows right and left and beating the crap out of your team, and scoring on your team as a result, and the referees are not calling the illegal hits, then play the game to the referees. Play to the standard the referees are playing at, not to self-imposed rules that make you “better people” than the other team.
There is no need to be a martyr and to lose the entire game or match because you would not lower yourself to play (cheat) like the other team did. Forget that, play to win! Do whatever it takes, whatever the other team is doing, to win. That is fair. What is unfair is what happened in November 2020, where one political party changed all the rules at the last second, spammed the voting system in a bunch of swing states, and stole the election in a mass of vote fraud, and is now trying to shut down investigations into the obvious fraud.
If the 2020 election was fraud-free and clear, why is one political party doing its utmost to stop transparency into the voting process? In Arizona, the entire Democrat political party is seething around the Maricopa County vote recount, trying to stop it through legal channels, and also to infiltrate it and cloud its legitimacy.
And so, if you look at the map below, you will see that America is almost entirely red. That is, America is almost entirely conservative, patriotic, Constitutional, committed to the rule-of-law etc. Even in supposedly “blue” states like Virginia, Oregon, Washington State, and New York, the number of red voting districts far outnumber the blue ones.
This means that if the red voting districts have the same 150% voter turnout that the blue voting districts had in the 2020 election, and that 97% of that 150% voter turnout goes to the Republican candidates, then the Republican Party should win handily just about everywhere. Even in states that supposedly have a Democrat Party voter edge. And especially in the swing states that so magically had Democrat Party-dominated cities vote at about 150% voter turnout in November 2020.
This would not be cheating, per se, it would simply be following the lead of the Democrat Party and doing just as they do. Everyone following the same rules of the game, the same referees.
And it means that when some federal investigators show up to view that 150% voter turnout, your county sheriff and dozens or hundreds of deputies not only physically stop the investigators from viewing the ballots, they arrest them for attempted vote tampering themselves. Holding a couple dozen communist anti-America federal employees without bail in East Succotash County Jail for a few months will probably send a strong message to communist-occupied Washington, DC, that our votes will not be stolen or rigged. The only unknown here is whether or not the Republican Party actually wants to win elections, or are they happy to be the powerless perpetual minority?
If every red voting district nationwide has the same 150% voter turnout that the Democrat Party claimed in many swing state cities, the Republican Party should do great in the 2022 election.
Reflections on 2020 bear season
As if by magic or just the batting of an eyelid, the much anticipated 2020 bear season is now behind us, having concluded at dark yesterday. Sad to see our friends go; we had such a fun time! The last of our bear hunting guests have left, cleanup has commenced, preparations are under way for Thanksgiving, and there are some reflections to be had on bear season.
First, where the hell were the bears? Serious question here. We hunt in a mountainous Northcentral area that is Pennsylvania’s “Bear Central.” And despite us daily scouring a lot of remote, very rugged territory that is usually home to lots of bears, we saw neither bears nor bear poop. None. It could be the warm weather has bears hunkered down under cool overhangs in even more remote places. It could be the low acorn crop has bears going in to hibernation early, because there is no more food for them to eat to put on the extra fat they need to hibernate successfully. The truth is, no bear tracks or poops have been seen around here for months, which is remarkable. I cannot think of any year prior like this.
Second, where were all the hunters? We heard only a few shots between Saturday and Sunday, and either none or one on Monday, and for sure none on Tuesday; and very few hunting parties were on the radio on any day. This means that few large scale hunting drives were going on. Without hunters moving across the landscape, the bears don’t have to move out of their way. They can just sit still and not run the risk of exposing their rib cage to a hunter’s bullet. That means that the bears can loaf about in some remote corner, escaping the unseasonable warmth or just waiting for the wafting human scent to drift away before making their usual rounds again. Which means the few hunters who are out don’t see much action.
Third, where were all the other critters, like turkeys and deer? Like with bears, we saw very little deer or turkey poop in the woods. And although I myself saw two whopper bucks and a five-point up close, no one else saw any deer. Nor did any of us see any turkeys. Once again, the absence of these otherwise ubiquitous animals could be due to the relative absence of acorns. Which would push the wildlife far afield to find food sources.
Fourth, despite all of our hunting setbacks, did any of us care a bit? No! We missed all of our friends who could not be with us for various reasons, like fear of the CCP virus, or family emergencies requiring them to stay at home. But those of us who gathered had a lot of fun nonetheless. And with or without a bear on the game pole, we would not have missed this time together for any reason at all. We caught up on our families, our work, our homes, cars, friendships, wives, and politics (yeah, there was a lot of pro-Trump politics). Some people drank way too much alcohol, and we got some great pictures of it all, like the one guy asleep on the cold ground outside. No, we don’t post those here. We ate like kings, that is for sure, and no one lacked for food or drink.
Finally, it is possible that the new early bears seasons (archery, muzzleloader, and special junior+ senior rifle) are removing so many bears from the woods that come rifle season, very few huntable bears remain to be had. According to real-time hunting harvest data posted at the PA Game Commission website, more bears were killed in the early seasons than in the official rifle season this year. This means there are fewer bears available for the rifle hunters. It is possible that many hunters expected this, based on last year’s harvest patterns, and they stayed home or hunted alone, instead of joining the big crew at camp, like usual. As of late today, just 3,138 bears had been killed total this year. That is about a thousand fewer than expected.
Based on this raw data alone, the early bear seasons are actually backfiring. They are not removing the high surplus number of bears that are beyond Pennsylvania’s social carrying capacity. Rather, the early bear seasons are removing the easiest bears and leaving few to be hunted in the later rifle season.
And this new dynamic could be the real story in PA’s bear season: There are so many early season bear hunting opportunities for individuals that they collectively take the wind out of the sails for the regular season hunters, thereby having a boomerang effect on the entire thing and limiting it.
We won’t know what all this data really means for another few years, and by then either great or even fatal damage will have been done to Pennsylvania’s traditional bear camp culture, with its big gatherings and big drives and big camp camaraderie dying out, or we will simply all have to learn to adapt to new ways of hunting. I have to say, there is no substitute for men gathering at a camp to hunt together. The gathered hunting party is the most human of experiences; it is an institution as old as our species. Its purpose was not just making meat, but also social and sociological.
I sure hope these myriad new early bear seasons are not self-defeating, in that they do not kill that traditional bear camp culture by removing its whole purpose ahead of the game. Question for the PGC: What incentive is there to push your body hard through rugged and remote landscapes, destroying your boots, tearing your clothing, and often losing or breaking some of your gear, including damaging your gun, when the animal you are seeking has already been removed?
Below are some photos from one of our trail cameras two years ago. Just days after bear season ended, a bear was caught gloriously and most joyously rubbing its back against a young white pine tree. Almost like a pole dancer. Pretty hot hip shakes there. We haven’t seen a bear anywhere around here since May this year.
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When one of our guys is finally browbeaten into washing dishes after years, it is cause for “Notify the media” acts like taking his unhappy picture. This is back in 2015. He still has to be browbeaten into washing the damned dishes
Lycoming County is the boot-looking shape in the northcentral area. Its northwestern corner is where we hunt. The darkest township there demonstrates the importance of organized hunting drives. A bunch of large hunting clubs are located in this area, and their members put on highly coordinated, obviously successful drives.
PA Supreme Court Magically Turns Itself into Legislature
In an anticipated 4-3 partisan decision today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court majority rejected the original and heavily gerrymandered map submitted by the PA Senate Republicans, as well as three heavily gerrymandered maps subsequently submitted in the past week by the PA House Democrats, PA Senate Democrats, and even PA Governor Tom Wolf.
Instead of declaring none of the legislative district maps to be constitutional, because theoretically none of them have met the constitutional tests for compactness and adhering to existing political boundaries, and instead of declaring the governor’s map completely unwelcome because it is not his role to draw voting district maps, the PA Supreme Court has actually drawn its own redistricting map.
No court anywhere has the constitutionally derived role of drawing voting district maps, and no court anywhere can justify doing so. According to the US Constitution, drawing voting district maps is specifically a state legislature role.
I will say that the latest map, drawn by the PA Supreme Court majority, looks better in some ways than the other four maps recently submitted for review. This map is certainly tighter and breaks fewer county lines than the others. In that sense, it is a more reasonable map.
But that is not the question.
The first question is, should Pennsylvania just get on with voting, as we are now running out of time for the primaries, and just use the established map, deficient though it may be?
The second question is, should the US Supreme Court allow the PA Supreme Court to, in effect, turn itself into a legislature, by performing a key function that is specifically relegated only to the state legislature by the US Constitution?
Hopefully, the US Supreme Court will deny the lower court’s power grab, and direct Pennsylvania to go on with the previous voting district map, flawed though it was, the greater interest being in letting voters have a say at all, as opposed to political elites pulling strings to keep themselves in power.
As imperfect as the legislative process is, and as distasteful as the gerrymandering process is, it is what it is, meaning that this is what we’ve got. No court can magically turn itself into another branch of government. So let’s go with the existing map we had six weeks ago, and get on with elections.