The only election Lyndon Johnson ever lost was due to it being stolen. It was stolen for his rival Pappy O’Daniel not by O’Daniel’s allies but by his enemies because they wanted Pappy, the sitting governor of Texas gone. So when the chance came to steal that senate seat after Johnson made a rare mistake in reporting a key district early they jumped in with both feet and Johnson would have to wait six years to steal that senate seat back from Pappy’s successor Coke Stevenson.
And that brings me to something a friend of mine said in conversation yesterday that frankly I didn’t think of.
As you all know by now Kamala ended up picking the rather incompetent governor of Minnesota Tim Walz over the VERY competent governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro as her running mate. This was likely because a pick of Shapiro might disturb the vital “death to Israel” and “death to Jews” vote that has been very vocal lately.
My friend noted that Shapiro is one of those rare things, a competent Democrat who has not driven his state into the ground. Furthermore he has ambitions for higher things and there is one thing we can be sure of: If Kamala Harris somehow wins in 2024, he wont be running for president until 2032.
BUT if Trump is elected he is instantly a lame duck meaning that he can run in 2028 against a J.D. Vance who will likely be bloodied in some tough primaries as there is actually a pretty deep GOP bench.
Do I think Shapiro would try to steal Pennsylvania FOR Trump? Nope, that would be an unforgivable sin for too many Democrat voters, but he might choose to do the next best thing, not allow them to steal it for Kamala.
Not only does preventing such a steal raise his cred with swing voters within the state when his re-election comes around but would allow him to co-operate with a Trump administration on energy which would produce a boom there that he could take credit for. It would be a powerful contrast to California the disaster where his chief rival Gavin Newsom is presiding over.
I must confess none of this had occurred to me but it DID occur to my friend who also notes that with the woke currently in retreat Shapiro might be able to marginalize that wing of the party, blame them for any Trump victory and in a sense use that to purge them from their place of power.
The one fly in the ointment is that simple demographics says to me that he can’t purge the “death to the Jews” wing but you might recall when he was being considered for the VP slot he was already hinting at compromises to appease them and of course in four years there might not be a Hamas or Hezbollah for them to support.
Will it work out this way? I don’t know but I do find the argument credible and thus has given me real hope, because the only way the steal worked last time was because everybody was on board. If Pennsylvania doesn’t play along the likelihood of successfully stealing the national election is low and the risk of an investigation from a crusading Trump AG and Justice department who would be highly motivated to investigate any steal in Arizona, or Michigan or Wisconsin is just too dangerous for a party that can’t stand scrutiny.
And frankly for all their anti Trump furor the Democrat party and the media didn’t want Kamala and were talking about her as a liability right up until Biden forced her on them.
In the old days when a party was facing a bad loss they basically took the hit and started planning on their comeback, if my friend is right the Democrats might actually be forced to play it on the up and up, not because they love Trump but because of the ambitions of a key Democrat in a key spot who might just decide to force them to do the right thing (and the smart thing in the long run) to satisfy his own personal agenda.
Tom Hagen:Well, I say yes. There is more money potential in narcotics than anything else we’re looking at now. If we don’t get into it, somebody else will, maybe one of the Five Families, maybe all of them. And with the money they earn they’ll be able to buy more police and political power. Then they come after us. Right now we have the unions and we have the gambling and those are the best things to have. But narcotics is a thing of the future. If we don’t get a piece of that action we risk everything we have. Not now, but ten years from now.
The Godfather 1972 Emphasis Mine
Boston Common 2018 leftist “anti-racists” mob a guy wearing an Israeli flag
There is an interesting piece at Hotair concerning Pittsburgh and change in (almost all) Democrats concerning the aftermath of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting titled: Is Pittsburgh still stronger than Hate? by Salena Zito. She talked about the unity against the slaughter of Jews and the Pittsburgh stronger than hate campaign which isn’t what it once was:
…seemingly everywhere you went, the Pittsburgh Stronger Than Hate logo, which cleverly had the Steelers’ distinctive mineral elements as part of the design, was on T-shirts, kippahs, lawn signs, hoodies and more.
Recently, however, Pittsburgh became the site not of strength and unity but of hatred and division. A group of over 300 far-left activists established a Gaza solidarity encampment on the private property of the University of Pittsburgh, and the community has not been the same since.
You see the Ghastly Tom Hagen Math has caught up with Pittsburgh and math being math it’s unrelenting:
Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future. In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.
And if that means more LGBT Americans have to live in fear during those two decades, well it’s small price to pay for power.
Given the rise of “Queers for Palestine” It seems the LGBT community has seen the tiger charging and decided their immediate goal is to run faster than the Jews in order to be eaten last.
Meanwhile Democrats with power can also do the math and with new math comes new priorities:
Both the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County leadership were noticeably mute in the first 30 hours, with both Mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Chief Executive Sara Innamorato, the latter having her early political success as a member of the Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists, saying absolutely nothing for over a day.
When Gainey finally did offer a statement, it was through the Pittsburgh Public Safety spokesperson who wrote that the “encampment/sit-in at the University of Pittsburgh is strictly taking place on private campus property.”
As one elected Democrat who asked not to be identified said to me in a fit of frustration, “If the KKK had been doing this at Pitt, private property or not private property, I can guarantee you Gainey would be there in a heartbeat.”
Jewish progressive Democrats don’t seem to get it:
“The swiftness of it when you think of it is head-turning,” DePasquale said. He said no matter what happens on social media, he will always stand up for what is right when it comes to any religious group.
“I am all for standing up for the First Amendment,” he said, adding that calling for the end of Jewish groups or intifada is beyond a bridge too far.
Pennsylvania state Rep. Abigail Salisbury, a Democrat, Jew and proud progressive, who Gainey, Innamorato and Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) recently unsuccessfully tried to oust in a Democratic primary, (emphasis mine) said on Facebook, “It seems that many people expect Jews to sit quietly with our hands folded and allow others to tell us what is antisemitic. We won’t.”
They don’t see the math behind all of this both those Democrats who denounced hate all those years ago who now wanted the pesky Jew defeated see Muslims who want Jews dead as the future of their party:
For every Frankel, Heisler, Salisbury and DePasquale, there were the posts or retweets by Lee, county Councilwoman Bethany Hallam and city Councilwoman Barb Warwick that cut to the heart of Salisbury’s post.
Warwick, who tried but failed to introduce a Pittsburgh City Council ceasefire resolution and represents Squirrel Hill, issued a statement that said in part that the words “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” hold different meanings to different groups.
Could you imagine Democrats supporting someone who defended the Confederate battle flag saying it meant different things to different people?
The truth is that this is all about timing. It’s likely true that Mayor Gainey would have acted if the KKK was behind the camps today, but I suspect if the KKK ran such a camp in say 1920-1950 when the KKK was a political powerhouse within the Democrat party then I suspect Mayor Gainey would have acted much as he did now. And it goes without saying if Gainey was mayor of a city in the deep south during that period he might have joined the encampment itself.
You see the Democrat party needs to explain to Jewish Democrats like Frankel and Salisbury the real mathematical and demographic principle that’s in play here and nationally among Democrats. This principle can best be expressed by rephrasing Lincoln famous speech concerning his priority being not abolition but union. It would go something like this:
Our Paramount goal is to elect democrats and is not to prevent or enable the slaughter and/or oppression Jews in Israel or America
If we can elect democrats by protecting Israel and Jews in America from slaughter or oppression we will do it
If we can elect democrats by enabling the slaughter or oppression of Jews in Israel and America we will do it.
and if we can elect democrats by enabling the slaughter and/or oppression of Jews in some places while protecting Jews from slaughter and/or oppression in others we will do that too.
Now there was a time when such a manifesto might have been unacceptable to Democrats and to some like Senator John Fetterman who was Lt. Gov of Pennsylvania at the time of the Tree of Life Synagogue slaughter such a position still is but to those more “pragmatic” democrats in a party that his largely secularized such position doesn’t pay any percentages. Islam is a thing of the future and the Democrats want those young voters from large families who are now calling for the slaughter of Jews in their camp.
I’m sure that someone can be sent privately to Frankel, Heisler, Salisbury and DePasquale that none of it is personal, it’s strictly political business.
Closing thought #1: The real irony here is that many of these progressive Jewish democrats fought hard to secularize the nation and the laws to push Christian faith out of the public square and out of their party. In retrospect that might have been a bad idea.
Closing thought #2 One of the most interesting things about this development is how it crystalizes the Democrat’s war on the past. They were against anti-Semitic hate when it didn’t cost anything politically but now demur when it does. It’s very telling.
If you want to figure out which democrats would have stood against the KKK when it was electorally dangerous to do so (1920-1950) look at the ones who have stood against the anti-Semitic encampments all over blue states & universities and if you want to figure out which Democrats will be making excuses for those who who will be lynching Jews and throwing gays off the roofs of tall buildings in blue America in twenty years look at those who are not.
Closing thought 3: I personally saw all of this coming in Boston 6 years ago when organizers of an “anti-nazi” protest had to hold their people back from beating a person wearing an Israeli flag.
Now they don’t feel they need to so do anymore.
UPDATE: Here is an article title that nobody born in 1963 ever expected to read:
Last year, someone created detailed holiday drawings on the classroom whiteboards at the elementary school here in Muncy, Pennsylvania.
“It went through the elementary building like wildfire. It was a game every day for the kids to come in and see who got ‘elfed,'” said Corey Palmatier, the Muncy School District’s building grounds supervisor.
The morning the first drawing was done, the Ward L. Myers Principal Steve Haddon went to the classroom to check out the sketch.
“It was this amazing detailed picture,” Haddon said. “Then they started popping up all over, and nobody knew who it was. It excited everybody; the kids loved it.”
Amy Rosenbaum, a first-grade teacher, said her students guessed she was the secret artist. “They walked in and were completely shocked and they thought I drew it. I explained I definitely do not have this art skill.”
Over time, Logan Pena, one of the school district’s custodians, was found out.
“Last school year, he did it sporadically throughout the building, so you never knew whose room was going to have a drawing on the board. So the kids were trying to guess whose room was going to be next, that was exciting,” said Nevada Davidson, the lead custodian.
Pena could stay under the radar partially because his work schedule is the second shift, beginning at 2 p.m.
Pena, who is self-taught, has Asperger’s Syndrome, which can affect his social skills. But all the attention has brought Pena out of his shell, according to the staff.
“I like being by myself and just getting the job done,” Pena said. “Doing the artwork is a great way to communicate — most of the time, I am just a ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ kind of person.”
One year later, the staff and students still requested drawings from Pena, whether students were asking for a particular animal or office staff wanted festive windows.
“We were just thanking Logan for taking the time to cheer up the building during that time of year — just spreading that holiday cheer,” Principal Haddon said.
As Pennsylvania voters head to the polls next week, the Democrats have created another gimmick to boost their chances for all future elections, including the 2024 presidential campaign.
Pennsylvania played an essential role in the nail-biting elections of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, so any change in the state election process may become critical.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has announced that Pennsylvania will implement automatic voter registration when someone gets a new driver’s license or renews an old one.
What’s wrong with the plan? It’s already incredibly easy to register to vote. If the estimated 1.7 million Pennsylvanians who haven’t registered to vote are that lazy, let them stay unregistered.
These “new” voters are more likely to use mail-in ballots, which Democrats to “harvest” ballots in 2020. Ballot harvesting occurs when individuals take advantage of the options to “harvest” or collect voters’ completed ballots and return them on behalf of the voter. While it may seem like a kind gesture to assist voters in submitting their mail ballots, ballot harvesting can severely undermine the fairness and honesty of elections.
A 2021 study by researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of California-Berkeley found that automatic voter registration increased registration in states where it was in effect and boosted the number of people voting by more than 1%. Instead of the voter registration gimmick, state and local officials should investigate some serious organizational problems in the election process.
Just a stone’s throw away from Biden’s birthplace of Scranton, Luzerne County is a mess!
The Associated Press recounted that “the polls had just opened for last year’s midterms in Pennsylvania when the phones began ringing at the election office in Luzerne County.
“Polling places were running low on paper to print ballots. Volunteers were frustrated, and voters were worried they might not be able to vote.”
Emily Cook, the office’s interim deputy director who had been in her position for just two months, rushed to the department’s warehouse. She found stacks of paper, but it was the wrong kind — ordered long ago and too thick to meet the requirements for the county’s voting equipment.
Guess how Luzerne County votes. Democrat. Guess where the ballot shortages were most prominent. Republican precincts.
The 2022 ballot debacle, referred to locally as “papergate,” was just the latest problem in a county on its fifth election director in the past three years.
Election offices have been understaffed for years. But 2020 was a tipping point, with all the pandemic-related challenges before the presidential vote and the hostility afterward.
A wave of retirements and resignations has followed, creating a vacuum of institutional knowledge. In Pennsylvania, officials estimate that 40 of the state’s 67 county election offices have new directors or deputy directors since 2020.
Unfortunately, Al Schmidt, who oversaw the presidential election in Philadelphia in 2020, serves as the secretary of the Commonwealth, which runs Pennsylvania voting. Although Schmidt claims he is a Republican, he’s clearly one in name only from his background in Philadelphia.
The Pennsylvania election scheme is an absolute mess, and such messes make it a lot easier to steal votes or suppress them, and the Democrats have almost complete control of the operation in 2024.
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