Posts Tagged → Pennsylvania
Anatomy of a deer season
It doesn’t matter if you archery hunt for deer religiously, from October 1 to mid-November; the archery season is always over way too fast.
It doesn’t matter if you archery hunt a bit for bear and deer, hunt the week of early muzzleloader for bear and doe, do some small game hunting, have the men up to camp for bear season for four days, and then hunt every day of deer rifle season. The ending is always the same: It ended way too fast. We wait all year for this time, and before you can blink an eye, it is over.
For many hunters, this time is about being afield, hunting. The occasional actual killing part is a welcome indication that the hunting part was done well. Proof that the time spent outside was not wasted.
Oh, we still have some late deer season remaining, which is the late archery and flintlock hunt. But by now, deer everywhere in Pennsylvania are on high alert. A twig falling out of a tree and rustling a leaf on the ground will send a nearby deer herd into panicked stampede into the next county. So getting deeply enough into the sensory zone of these intelligent animals to take one with a bow or a flintlock at this stage takes real skill, not just the usual luck.
Although I will hunt the flintlock deer season, because I have some DMAP tags left, looking back even now with a sense of longing has me thinking about the anatomy of a good deer season. Some take-aways:
- Eat good food. Whether it is home-made jerky and dried fruit we make ourselves for our own time afield, or it is the extra thick gourmet steaks we bring to hunting camp, eat the best quality food you can afford. Hunting alone or with friends and family is a celebration, so eat like you are celebrating. And because Man does not live on bread alone, make sure your drinks are of a commensurate high quality.
- Practice, practice, practice with your gun. Archery hunters practice non-stop, but for some reasons many gun hunters leave it to one box of ammo and the days right before the season to “practice” shooting. Well do I recall sharing a range with a guy from Lancaster County at the bench next to me. Friendly enough, he enthusiastically, if spastically, launched his one box of “extra” shells down range as rapid fire as a bolt action can fire. I had offered him the use of my spotting scope and Caldwell shooting sled, and he declined. He did end up relying on my spotting and calling his hurried shots, however, because he didn’t quite have his scope figured out. The old random “spray n’ pray” is the approach he packed up and drove off to hunting camp with. Do any of us think he hit what he shot at?
- Bring your best jokes, naughty or practical. Hunting camp is fun, and each of us must contribute to that festive atmosphere. Many years ago, I bent down to inspect a strange looking object hiding under the cabin’s kitchen counter. And just as quickly I jumped back and screamed like a little girl when the damned thing took off running. That it was merely a muskrat pelt attached to a fishing line being pulled by Bob and followed by uproarious laughter at my expense just made my revenge all the sweeter. As for naughty jokes and rhymes, the list is endless. Look them up and bring half a dozen. Maybe I am lowbrow, or maybe I have low expectations, but it sure seems that everyone present laughs at these men-only jokes.
- Get out into position early, like at least an hour before first light, and when you move play the wind (nose into the wind), go quietly and slowly, and carry your gun port-arms and not across your back. If you can get out into position at 4:30am, even better. Just bring a blanket and some Zippo hand warmers.
- Food sources matter for deer and bear, too. We humans are not the only ones who both enjoy and need food. In a year of abundant acorns, a stand of sweet tasting white oaks will draw more deer and bear, and you can sit down wind of that stand of trees. In a year of scarce acorns, like this year, any tree that had a decent crop will still draw animals pawing in the leaves for whatever may be left in early December. By this mid-November, almost all of the already scarce acorns were eaten up, and both bear and deer seemed to be moving widely across the landscape in search of any food. It makes for tough hunting, and so we have to team up with buddies and other camps to work together to scoop up what animals are out there. Be flexible and think outside the box of a permanent stand.
- Speak animal language. Last year I grunted in an Adirondacks wilderness buck after busting him out of his bed. He was a territorial and aggressive SOB. But the conditions were all wrong for playing around, and although his body was visible, I could not shoot through the beech brush to get him. This year I returned for Round Two with the same animal, which had probably never seen a human being, and after two days of tentative efforts, Day Three resulted in the furious huge buck storming right in to my position with leaves, twigs, snot and mouth foam flying. I shot him in the neck at five yards, five miles from my truck. Lot of work, totally worth it for that DIY hunt of a lifetime. My position was carefully chosen for what he could see or smell under a certain wind direction. I waited until it was all just right, and let fly. His response was immediate.
- Take pictures, send them in emails. While journaling is not dead, most people today do not write in a personal or camp journal. Instead, we take photos and email them around. The recipients always appreciate them. Especially when ten or twenty years has suddenly passed, our knees don’t seem capable of all those steep climbs and hard sidehilling drives any longer, and a lot of our best times at hunting camp are sitting around with dear friends and reminiscing together. So don’t forget to take pictures and share them.
Northern PA’s acorn crop largely failed in 2021, possibly due to a late frost that killed the acorn flowers. Acorns remaining on the ground looked OK from the outside, but were all rotten like this on the inside. Wildlife is hungry and moving widely to locate food.
My “Freedom Buck,” killed on Sunday November 28th at 7:45am, on private property in PA. The ban on Sunday hunting is an attack on freedom, and so I named this Sunday morning buck after my declaration of freedom.
The deer that got away, but shouldn’t have
Below is the buck after the second bullet, at about 140 yards, the hole of which is visible behind his shoulder; a classic behind-the-shoulder double lung/ top of heart hit. Usually it’s immediately fatal. Usually the animal is knocked down by the impact. But not that day. He absorbed the second soft point without moving, just standing there broadside, as if I had completely missed him. Even after he dropped he had a lot of life and fight left, as can be seen in his death spiral in the snow.
My challenge was that I did not see him fall, which happened while I was fumbling with my binoculars. Because I do not often use a rifle scope, I do not maintain a magnified field of view after my shot. Going back and forth between open sights and binoculars is my process.
As an aside, you may wonder why I use open sights, or you may be one of those people who deride open sights. Shooting instinctively with open sights is how I grew up and how I learned to hunt. Unlike a scope, open sights can take a lot more abuse in the field before they go out of whack. Unlike a scope, they cannot possibly lose their “zero” after spending eleven months in a closet. Open sights are absolutely reliable, and perfectly effective. Recall that American infantry are qualified on open sights out to 600 yards (or meters), so it is not like these things are relics from the past. Open sights are the best option, provided they are installed correctly and checked annually.
My preference for open sights is about more than performance, however. It has to do with how I like to hunt: On foot, getting close to the animal, within its sensory zone, and trying to kill it on its own terms, up close. This is a true contest of skill, not an assassination. And I hardly think an open-sighted center fire rifle is a disadvantage; it is a huge advantage over a spear or a bow. Scoped rifles are just that much more of an advantage.
So, I did not see the buck fall, and he fell into a small swale where I could not see him. Not wanting to stink up the woods and ruin further hunting, I sat on my butt and scoured the woods for signs of a deer. In fact, I saw a large buck a couple hundred yards away sneak into a thick tree top blowdown. It made me think the buck I had shot at was gut-shot and sneaking away to lie down, and so I did not push him. Only when the crows showed up over an hour later was it evident that the buck was in fact dead right where I had last seen him.
Freedom Sunday
Aaaaahhhh, the swell feeling of freedom.
A few days ago, I sat up in a tree stand in Perry County with a loaded crossbow, waiting for a legal buck to walk by. A legal buck in this area of Pennsylvania has at least three points on one side of his antler rack.
The most distinguishing feature of this afternoon deer hunt was that it was occurring on a Sunday. Sunday hunting (beyond coyotes and foxes) is a new addition to Pennsylvania, and as of 2020 we have three Sundays to hunt deer or bear. People like me prevailed in obtaining these mere three Sundays to hunt only after a protracted 25-year battle with the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, whose nonagenarian board members constantly shook their canes at freedom lovers.
We lovers of freedom are also by nature opponents of government overreach, and yet while the PA Farm Bureau is against all kinds of government overreach, they were all fall-on-their-sword supportive of a government ban on Sunday hunting. Even on private property, where land owners could make their own personal choice about how to spend their weekend. The PA Farm Bureau would not, and still will not, budge one inch in their opposition to any sort of Sunday hunting. And incredibly, Pennsylvania’s laundry list of career elected officials went along with the PA Farm Bureau’s twenty nonagenarians, and against the wishes of just about everyone else.
So while we await the day when the Liberty Bell shall yet ring again and proclaim liberty throughout the land, granting Sunday hunting from October 1st through February 15th, we must enjoy what crumbs we may glean from the grips of the power and control obsessed.
This present gridlock situation made my three hours of Sunday afternoon archery hunting bittersweet. On the one hand, I was in fact experiencing one Freedom Sunday. Better than nothing, right? On the other hand, sometimes a taste of honey is worse than none at all, and while I sat there my mind kept involuntarily counting the number of Sundays we were being unfairly excluded from enjoying.
If you are curious, the number of Sundays we hunters are being deprived in Pennsylvania is nineteen (19). That may seem like very few days to the person who gets to do whatever they want to do seven days a week, 365 days a year, and without false moralists looking over their shoulder in hypocritical judgment of whatever their choice of entertainment may be on any particular day. But to us hunters, whose season runs from early October to mid February, and again the month of May’s turkey season, those nineteen days are a huge deal. We can’t make up for them in the summer months. We can’t get them back once they have passed.
This means that we Pennsylvania hunters are missing a significant percentage of freedom in our lives as otherwise free citizens. This freedom is being unfairly deprived to us, stripped out of our hands, out of the lives of our children. It is a bizarre situation, when we look at the states around us that have unlimited Sunday hunting.
For example, a week ago I began an annual wilderness hunt out of state on a Sunday morning. The trail head parking lot I started out from was packed with the pickup trucks and SUVs of fellow hunters, many of whom I learned later are tradesmen and contractors, whose work loads are heavy all week long, and whose weekends are their real opportunity to pursue their hobbies and pastimes. Our presence as free hunters, free citizens, in the Sunday woods bothered no one, impacted no one. Pennsylvania needs a lot more of this same Freedom Sunday.
Freedom Sunday: Me deer hunting on private land last Sunday. Hurting no one, bothering no one. Why not more of this Sunday freedom?
PA’s Forester Jim Finley Enters the Forest Cathedral
Penn State forestry professor emeritus, department head, and all-things-forestry guru Jim Finley died yesterday. I was told that he was either felling a large tree on his property, or he was trying to dislodge a large tree that had been felled but was hung up on another tree. Whatever the actual facts are, Jim died from the tree falling on him. It is a reminder that even the best, most experienced forestry professionals are at grave risk.
As trite and awkward as it sounds to write here, the fact is that Jim Finley died doing what he loved in the environment he considered sacred. I am quite sure that had he been asked about whether he would like to die from a tree falling on him, or some more peaceful and less traumatic way, he would have given us the look he is giving below. It is that knowing “Why are you saying that, you know it is wrong” look. In his mid-70s, Jim was nowhere ready to leave us, and we were nowhere ready to let go of him.
His death is a huge loss.
Jim was a remarkable man, who I admired, and who left a way outsized hand print on Pennsylvania conservation and the practice of forestry in eastern America. He was a force to be reckoned with, an institution in his own right, a political-cultural movement, a gentle soul with a will of iron, kind and easy but also passionate and unrelenting.
He did not suffer fools easily, though he accepted honest debate and earnest dissent exactly the way an academic ought to: His eyes took on this hard laser focus, and you could tell he was actively listening and processing, not always ready to give an answer, either. His response might come tomorrow or next year, and if your argument was good, you could tell it had moderated Jim’s perspective.
Jim Finley was an academic, and sometimes prone to the idealism that academics naturally grow into. However, he also had the ability to be hands-on practical, and even more important, he had the ability to support aggressive, hands-on, totally practical forestry practices. You know, the kinds of visual impacts that most urbanites recoil in horror from, and which many land conservation groups really did not want to see, either, no matter how scientifically they were needed or justified. It is an admirable and rare trait to be able to be honest about unpleasant things, and Jim could look at a heavily cut tract with tree tops lying all over the place, and cheerfully explain all of the wonderful things that were now going to follow on the heels of all that disturbance. Because of Jim, conservation easements in Pennsylvania are now a lot more forestry-friendly than they used to be. And a landowner who is able to manage his or her forest as aggressively as they need to under a conservation easement, is a landowner who is much more likely to sign that easement and protect their land in the first place.
Jim invited me to speak to his classes a couple of times, and we worked together when I was at DCNR and the Conservation Fund. I knew him when I was a kid in State College, I knew him as a professional forester and academic at Penn State, and I knew him as a colleague of land conservation legend and Penn State forester Joe Ibberson, whose PSU forestry department endowment Jim presided over at the end of his formal career. It is always a huge loss when someone of Jim’s high caliber leaves us, but it is even more so when he was just starting to become mature, as he would put it in the terms of a tree.
So long, old friend. Happy travels in your peaceful forest cathedral. We who are left behind mourn your untimely departure and we will miss you greatly. You were a hell of a guy, Jim.
Wooden bowls and a vase turned by Jim Finley. Photo kindly provided by forester Dale G.
Charlie Gerow is a good guy
Turns out long time lobbyist and current candidate for Pennsylvania governor Charlie Gerow experienced an odd vehicle accident earlier this year, which has just now come to light in a police report and semi-journalistic analysis by the ardently partisan PennLive.
As reported by the State Police, Charlie was driving home towards the Harrisburg area on the PA Turnpike in the stretch through Chester County, when his car was hit from the side and from behind by a motorcyclist.
The motorcyclist, Logan Abbott, aged 30, who from descriptions sounds like an awesome all-American kind of man, became deceased on the scene after he crashed his borrowed motorcycle, for which he was not licensed, into Gerow’s car at around 9:30 PM. Abbott was thrown from the bike, and then subsequently struck by multiple high-speed vehicles as he was in the Turnpike roadway; he died from one or all of those impacts. I don’t know of any good way to die other than in your sleep, and this death has to be one of the saddest ways to go. I am really sorry for Logan and for Logan’s family. I have kids; as a parent, this is about the worst thing I could hear in my life. Hugs to you from our family, Abbott family.
My friend Dan, a brain surgeon and psychiatrist, calls many young men driving motorcycles “motor donors,” because of their dangerous hot-dogging ways and the resulting high body count statistics. Young men on motorcycles make up a huge proportion of annual highway injuries and deaths. And then donating a lot of young, healthy organs.
From what witnesses saw, Gerow was driving in the right lane at regular highway speed, Abbott was passing Gerow, and then swerved into his car. The rest is sad history. The police report surmises that Abbott was inexperienced at driving the motorcycle and made a fatal error.
Gerow was eventually pulled over by State Police several miles down the road, because the motorcycle was lodged under the front of his car. Witnesses reported seeing the motorcycle stuck in the front of the car and throwing sparks. People are wondering what the hell happened after the impact, and why didn’t Charlie pull over immediately.
Here is my take on what happened:
- The impact came from behind and from the side of Charlie’s car, where he could not see, or at least he could not see very well. We drivers are always focused in front of us when we are driving, especially so on a turnpike with a 70 MPH speed zone. Charlie did not see and could not see what happened.
- The motorcycle driver never appeared in Charlie’s view.
- The motorcycle never appeared in Charlie’s view.
- The motorcycle was lodged under the hood of the car, and out of Charlie’s vision. It would be difficult to see any time, and especially at night, when you can’t see very far ahead and you are looking as far ahead as you can.
- Charlie probably thought he had hit some road debris, of which there is a TON on the Turnpike. Back in the early 1980s, I hit a dead deer lying flat in the middle of the PA Turnpike’s right lane, and it became lodged up under the car’s carriage. My Chrysler K Car rode up on top of the deer like a skateboard for a couple hundred feet before it became dislodged and the car regained its straight trajectory. That was a close call. Today there are lots of dead deer and tons of tractor trailer tires all over the Turnpike.
- When Charlie realized he was carrying the road debris under his car, he probably thought it would eventually break off or break free, so he kept driving.
- He may have realized it was not going to break free any time soon, and like any sane and experienced driver, Charlie was not going to pull over on the side of the Turnpike. No freaking way! That is the most dangerous area of any highway, and especially the PA Turnpike. If you get a flat tire on the PA Turnpike, you are best served by slowly limping to the next designated pull-off area and changing your flat there. If you pull off on the narrow roadside margin and try to operate there, you stand a good chance of being hit either by accident or ON PURPOSE by passing motorists.
- For example, back in 2003 I was driving south at night on a regional highway, when three deer suddenly stepped right in front of my truck. Going 60 MPH, there was no time to stop or avoid impact, and in one second all three deer were scattered across the highway and my truck was severely damaged (but not disabled…it was a Toyota Tacoma). The State Police were immediately on the scene, and as we tried to pull the dead and dying deer out of the roadway, so that other motorists did not strike them and have subsequent accidents, I twice had a trooper grab my belt and yank me backwards. Why? Because as the trooper grimly stated to me matter-of-factly, a surprising number of vehicle drivers actually try to hit people who are alongside the side of the road. I could feel the whoosh of air go right past my face both times, and I could see both vehicles swerve back into the middle of their lane after they had each swerved onto the side of the road to try and hit me. The cops took it in stride as part of the daily risks they face.
- Point being here, Charlie is a smart guy and he knows that the side of the PA Turnpike is the last place you go if you have some road debris stuck up under your car, if you can help it. You wait until you can pull into a well-lit, large, safe place where you aren’t going to be hit or carjacked.
- Troopers who pulled over Charlie’s car then checked him for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and found none. Charlie was not impaired.
- In sum, the conditions of this lamentable accident are a dark night on a busy and fast highway, in a place where road debris is common, and there are few places to safely pull over if you do have an accident or get some debris lodged up under your vehicle. The car driver was not responsible for the impact, did not see what happened at the moment of impact, and he did not see what his car was carrying up front subsequent to the impact. The driver was waiting to find the right place to pull off in order to safely inspect his vehicle, when the State Police pulled him over and told him what had happened.
I am sorry for the Abbott family on the loss of Logan. And I hope that Charlie Gerow, who is a good guy, is not artificially targeted here because of his politically incorrect political beliefs, or because of the Abbott family’s understandable grief. Logan made a mistake (his obituary notes that Logan “had just finished 14 days straight of 12-hour shifts and was looking forward to his 14 days off and camping with his family“), probably due to being exhausted from hard work, and Charlie did nothing wrong. It’s just a damned crappy tragedy, and we should not want to see an injustice done to one party because we are feeling aggrieved over the loss of the other.
And for the record, I am not committed to any candidates for governor right now, not even to Charlie. I do think Lou Barletta has already been in politics long enough and that he should be championing someone younger for PA governor, not seeking it himself. I don’t know how Charlie will fare among grassroots conservatives, because though he is a good guy, he is also a political lobbyist long associated with a political establishment many grassroots voters and activists have come to distrust and even revile.
Fake news doesn’t sleep. One of the reasons I wrote this essay is this kind of lie, from a website proclaiming itself, what else crooks and liars. Nowhere did anyone report a motorcyclist lodged in or stuck to Gerow’s car. Yet this 100% lie remains up on the website
Fake news headline…no one says a “motorcyclist was wedged to his car’s grill,” except on a website that deliberately tells lies like this. And the comments on the article show what gullible fools liberals are. No one stopped to question this outlandish claim or ask for facts.
Logan Abbott, great guy who made a small but costly mistake. Be careful on those motorcycles, folks
Charlie Gerow holding court in January 2015 with Governor Tom Corbett and PA movers and shakers. Note photo of JFK.
Cultural Warlord Wanted for PA Senate Candidate
While sitting on the North Face cabin porch with some Democrat Party friends on the Lycoming-Tioga county border last Sunday, I was politely asked “the only political question” of our time together:
“What do you think of (D) Lt. Governor John Fetterman’s chances at winning the US Senate seat being vacated by Patricia Toomey?”
And I responded: “John Fetterman may be an anti-democracy, anti-America, totalitarian communist with the face of a worn out prize fighter, but he has an honest charisma that is going to be tough for most Republican Party candidates to beat.”
This is because most Republican Party candidates everywhere, and in Pennsylvania in particular, are well groomed, boring, milquetoast moderates who really stand for nothing except getting a public pension and invitations to all the right cocktail parties. If Fetterman has the looks of a Neanderthal’s old shoe, he still is identifiable as a manly man, and a refreshingly plain-spoken one at that. In a different age and place, Fetterman could easily have been a warlord with a sword across his knee and a coat of chain mail over his shoulders, his beetle brow scouring his subjects with fierce determination to win and to dominate.
Contrast this kind of mindset and distinctive personal presence with the usual GOP spawn that has bubbled up from the top of the donor class to become a candidate for anything: Timid sounding, almost effeminate, tepid, moderate and clean-cut appearing; ruffle no feathers, offend no one, instantly forgettable. And historically speaking, which kind of personal presence wins the hearts and minds of the people, the fierce warlord, or the milquetoast fairy?
Easy answer: Warlords win.
And the American electorate is not just hungry for strong leaders, we are starving for them, because we know America is up for grabs. Leftists know that strong Democrat personalities will make their Marxist revolution succeed, and conservatives know that strong Republican personalities will push back against the Marxists and make America’s Constitution prevail, thereby saving the Republic.
President Donald J. Trump won both the 2016 and 2020 elections because of his fierce and unwavering determination to put The People ahead of the political donor class and the Washington, DC Swamp. The only people who did not understand this then and who not only still do not understand it now, but who also oppose it now are the same old GOP donor class and Chamber of Compromise who try like hell to elect wimpy wusses they can easily control. To the GOPe and its elite benefactors, the Republican and conservative voter is now and always has been barely an afterthought. They don’t give a fig about our views or needs. The GOPe just needs our votes every two to four years to get their milquetoast Gumby candidates over the finish line, and then they immediately kick us and our values to the curb until the next election.
And so looking at the current lineup of declared and possible Republican Party candidates who might be the nominee to face Fetterman, what qualities do we see?
- Feckless
- Hopelessly moderate and standing for nothing
- Money-oriented and ignoring basic values, culture, borders, language
- Afraid of going to war and braving battle to save America
I won’t name names, but outside of Joe Gale, the list of Republicans running for PA governor is pretty much the same thing.
Who Pennsylvania needs to beat Fetterman is a GOP cultural warlord. A candidate who listens to and cares about the electorate, all of whom are values-driven, culture-driven, America-first-driven. Someone who is unafraid at all times, especially unafraid to firmly and honestly speak her or his mind and to do battle to the last dying gasp, for the sake of everything most Americans hold dearest.
I don’t know if I have seen such a person yet, but if you do, please let me know. I’d like to make a small political donation and volunteer my valuable time to help that person beat Fetterman.
Typical Republican candidate
Democrat candidate John Fetterman
“If you don’t vote for me, you’ll get a Democrat,” says the GOPe candidate du jour
The kind of candidate the America-First voters actually want
You say you want an audit of the PA 2020 election?
Lots of Pennsylvania voters are saying they want an audit of the obviously fraudulent 2020 election. A big petition is circulating, digitally. Groups of citizens in almost every county are personally demanding their elected officials get up off their butts and do the audit. Several go-getter PA state legislators traveled to Arizona and toured the election audit taking place there.
OK, so you, too, want an audit of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election? Well OK, here is what you must do to get it.
The biggest hurdle to a genuine audit of the PA 2020 election is the GOPe itself (GOPe means the establishment GOP, not conservatives, not patriots, but careerists who look out for their careers first and foremost, not for their constituents). In particular, Republican PA legislators Jake Corman, Kerry Benninghoff, Brian Cutler and Seth Grove are stonewalling an election audit. State senator Dave Argall may be on board with an audit, or he may not be. He’s all over the place, which is no surprise for such a crafty old political survivor.
So, dear reader, while I admire your enthusiasm and optimism for the possible audit process that is right in front of us, the best path to getting an audit is finding serious primary contenders for these above GOPe RINOs in the near future. Getting primary challengers has the effect of scaring the GOPe into action now while possibly removing them later.
Off and on for five years, I’ve been trying to get someone to primary Corman. It’s tough. Three years ago I bombarded the super voters in his district with absolutely brutal emails detailing Corman’s nepotism, laziness, lack of care for his constituents, insider dealings etc. Feedback from super voters there was overwhelmingly positive, but I was unable to recruit an actual primary challenger.
However, the effects of that email carpet bombing showed clearly when Corman was challenged in the general election that Fall by a liberal Jewish kid from out of town who openly disliked PSU and guns. Which is sacrilege in Centre County. Nonetheless, Corman hardly had a big win. There was just single digit separation between this so-called “Republican leader” and the liberal idiot flatlander. For someone so tough and important, Corman should have had a huge lead over the kid.
One can only imagine how that race would have gone with a serious contender. Even more so a serious primary challenger before we have to let some leftist fool take a Republican seat. Corman among all of these RINOs listed above is vulnerable. No one likes him. He has no allies, outside of a few PAGOP staffers and “leaders.” Getting a solid primary challenger to face Corman next spring could really help Corman find a way to do the 2020 election audit.
This is my considered response to those voters who say they want an audit. You are going to have to work on tangentially related things – personnel changes in the Pennsylvania legislature – to come back around to getting what you really want. This approach prevents us audit advocates from relying on others to do the audit, and particularly unreliable and disinterested others. It keeps the heat on those who can do the audit right now, while giving us the possibility of removing them from elected office entirely not too far from now.
So, if you live in one of these political districts (seats held by Corman – Centre County, Benninghoff – Centre County, Cutler – Lancaster County, Argall – Schuylkill County, and Seth Grove – York County), then start talking to good candidates who can effectively challenge one of these failed elected officials. Set up an election committee, get your candidate on the ballot, and then get them more votes in the primary election than the failed incumbent we need to remove from office. You might just get two birds with one stone.
The GOP is the moderate wing of the Democrat Party
If there is one clear message resulting from all of the activity and inactivity surrounding the stolen 2020 election, it is that the Republican Party, on the whole, is filled with individual people who see themselves more as the moderate wing of the Democrat Party than as a separate political party that either exists to advance a core set of values, or, in the alternative, to at least seriously oppose the Democrat Party’s communist takeover of America.
Recall that the GOP was established as the abolitionist party to fight Democrat Party slavery. That is some pretty tough stuff, because America ended up fighting a bloody civil war over the issue. But somewhere after that, the GOP stopped standing for anything except early golf games, short hair, crisp blue blazers, and money…lots and lots of money. To the point where the GOP culture is so weak that few of its members will even stand and fight the other political party over their theft of the national election in 2020, the theft of the presidency, the theft of America.
In essence, the Grand Ol’ Party Republican Party is really just the moderate wing of the Democrat Party. The two political parties are two sides of the same coin, there really is that little difference between them. The GOP sees itself as existing to mouth a few different-sounding ideas than the other guys, and then leave their offices for the fundraisers and cocktail parties that make holding elected office or their staffer positions worthwhile.
Despite having deep GOP establishment roots, for many years now, my own involvement in Pennsylvania Republican Party politics has been as the self-imposed outsider. Like some other activists still working hard today for change that benefits We, The People, by late 2008 I was disgusted with the GOP’s shallow fawning and or weak cowering before the great impostor, Barack Hussein Obama. In 2009 into 2010 I ran in a Republican congressional primary to challenge then-congressman Tim Holden. At that point, the grass roots reaction to what has become known as the DC Swamp was informally called the Tea Party. As a so-called Tea Party candidate, at our many debates and public meetings I honed my own message: “We grass roots Republican voters want a bar-room brawl with the Democrats, while the GOP establishment wants at most a gentlemanly duel with them and chummy drinks together afterwards. Dear GOP, lead, follow, or get out of our way.”
Last month I had the great enjoyment to personally participate in the public political dismemberment of one of Pennsylvania’s great RINOs, State Senator Gene Yaw. Yaw represents everything that is wrong with the GOP. At a public meeting in Montoursville attended by a hundred impassioned voters, Yaw demonstrated his absolute lack of care for the citizenry, his contempt for his voters, his disgust with patriots and constitutionalists, and his serious resistance to actually rolling up his sleeves and doing the work needed to save America from pending doom. Full of weak excuses and a laughable reliance on “We held fourteen hearings,” Yaw was the equivalent of a defiant and lazy teenage boy who just won’t get his damned family chores done.
After an hour of increasing catcalls, hisses, boos, jeers, and earnest questions from the audience, newly re-elected Senator Yaw stood up, collected his things, and without a word stalked out of the meeting with his toadies in tow behind him. Gene Yaw is the state of the Pennsylvania GOP, which is the state of the nationwide GOP – weak, shallow, zero fight for his constituents, zero push-back against openly communist activists in his Lycoming County district, unremarkable, uncharismatic, boring, low-T, egocentric, and unrepentantly an enabler of Democrat Party treason and insurrection.
Yaw is, in effect, a perfectly representative member of the moderate wing of the Democrat Party.
So, here we are, two more political campaigns that I ran in and eleven or twelve years later after the Tea Party revolution of 2008 – 2009, which is an eternity in politics, and the GOP STILL will not lead, follow, or get out of the way of the grass roots American voters. It is difficult to tell which political party is more resistant to a transparent 2020 election, the Democrats or the Republicans. Some call them the uniparty, and why not; the two political parties are obviously joined deeply together in common interests that clearly exclude the best interests of the American people.
But it is probably more accurate to call the GOP what it behaves like, which is the moderate wing of the Democrat Party. No fight, no spirit, no guts, no passion, no opposition, just some feel-good mouthing of platitudes and then go home early. Let the Democrats do whatever they want, what me worry (Alfred E. Newman’s famous line from Mad Magazine).
What kind of patriotic pro-America voter wants this kind of bad performance from their chosen political party and its elected members?
Today’s GOP Republican Party mascot – Alfred E. Newman, late of Mad Magazine. “What me worry?”
Trump sends warning shot right into Pennsylvania GOP over 2020 election audit
Just yesterday worthless, useless, spineless GOPe hack state representative Seth Grove issued a defiant statement that Pennsylvania would not be holding any kind of election 2020 audit. He gave no reason. Representative Grove also ran into a friend of mine in the Capitol this week, tireless freedom activist Ron Boltz, and behaved arrogantly, and cocky, and defiant, and dismissive, and again gave no reason why an audit of the 2020 election could not be done, or should not be done. From Ron:
“Was there [at the PA Capitol this week] with a constitutional attorney who came up from D.C., with the issue being getting an forensic audit in PA. Of course you and I know they have no interest, and we won’t get one. That doesn’t mean we don’t demand it anyway, and use the issue to beat these assholes over the head. You know how this works…
Well, news of this malfeasance got back to Our Lord and Savior Donald J. Trump, who issued his own statement today:
“SAVE AMERICA
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
JUNE 4, 2021
BEDMINSTER, NJ
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America:
Great patriots led by State Senator Doug Mastriano, Senator Cris Dush, and State Representative Rob Kauffman went to Maricopa County, Arizona, to learn the best practices for conducting a full Forensic Audit of the 2020 General Election. Now the Pennsylvania Senate needs to act. Senate President Jake Corman needs to fulfill his promise to his constituents to conduct a full Forensic Audit. Senator Dave Argall, Chairman of the State Government Committee, has to authorize the subpoenas, if necessary. The people of Pennsylvania and America deserve to know the truth. If the Pennsylvania Senate leadership doesn’t act, there is no way they will ever get re-elected!”
Now this is big talk for anyone, even for Trump, because Trump and his advisors obviously have no idea just how backwards and dug-in the PA GOP is, just how snowed and easily fooled the PA GOP voters are, and how tenacious useless nepotist political hacks like Corman are. For example, despite his poor standing with the GOP voters, Argall has amazingly survived several attempts to dislodge him from his apparent lifetime seat in the PA Senate.
However, on the other hand, for five years I have been trying to find a primary challenger for the seat presently occupied by Corman, because he is very vulnerable, and maybe Trump’s words will help us get the right person. Corman is definitely weak. No one likes him. He has no friends. I am not exaggerating. Check out www.jakethesnake.us
In other words, we could see some real political change in Pennsylvania as a result of Trump bringing fire to the dark recesses of the GOPe electorate. Maybe. Even primarying-out one or two bunkered-in careerists like Corman or Grove would be a huge success, although to President Trump it might not seem like it. These names are all worth pursuing anyhow, for sure.
These corrupt Pennsylvania politicians mentioned above, and including people like PA reps Brian Cutler and Kerry Benninghoff, won’t conduct an audit of the corrupt and stolen 2020 election because they must have personally benefited from it in some way. Now the voters are beginning to see just how aggressively these audits are being fought, and how obvious the steal was, and how our votes are being bought and sold like a sack of potatoes so that political insiders like Jake Corman can get rich, and there is a justified rising tide of anger coming the way of elected officials who stand in the way of getting justice for the voters, for We, The People. Thank you, President Donald J. Trump.
Seth Grove’s ridiculous public statement about not having an election audit. Hey Seth, how do you know what went wrong with the 2020 election if you won’t audit it?